Category: Politics

Let's all personally groom in a public place

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Tonight we saw the world premiere of Let’s All Hate Toronto (hot docs), a funny & quirky little documentary about Torontonians confusion as to why the rest of the country dislikes them. I read the blog kept by Rob Spence (aka Captain Canada) when he was travelling across the country holding Toronto Appreciation Days, much to the anger and dismay of Canadians everywhere. There was nothing groundbreaking or insightful about the documentary; it was just good fun.

Except for the really loud lady sitting behind us who, unless I’m mistaken, was cutting her fingernails during the film. Awesome.

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Why, why does our environment minister look just like Lester from Mississippi Burning? And why does he spout alarmist rhetoric like “meeting our Kyoto targets will put us in a recession”?

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All Quiet On The Western Front might be remade. It’s one of the few movies I’d look forward to a remake of…if it’s done right. All this talk about making it into a “big budget, sweeping Hollywood epic” smacks of Pearl Harbor, and nobody wants that.

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On the eve of the Toronto Raptor’s playoff series against New Jersey, I feel nervous. While confident that Toronto is the better team, should New Jersey pull off an upset, the psychological scarring that would result from losing to Vince Carter in the playoffs would be deep and long-lasting. Here’s hoping Bosh hangs a triple-double on them tomorrow, and that Kris Humphries or Joey Graham put sissyboy on his ass once or twice.

[tags]let’s all hate toronto, john baird, kyoto, recession, all quiet on the western front, toronto raptors, vince carter[/tags]

Hey, I know: how about a show called Video Game Killer Investigations?

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Now that the carnage at Virginia Tech is past and the identities are known, I have another fear: that useful reactions to what happened will be ignored in favour of the irrational. My wager is that politicians will be scared to raise gun control as an issue, but that some bright light will call for the FBI/police to monitor creative writing assignments to screen for violent content, just as calls went out to restrict video games after the shootings at Columbine.

Interesting note from Wired: 8 hours after the VT shootings Reuters had raised the spectre of video games once again.

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Still in a betting mood, I’ve got $20 that says the Globe’s Andrew Ryan is right about the inevitable creation of a CSI channel. I think maybe it’ll start out as a Law & Order/CSI channel; twice as many episodes that way. And hey, maybe they could add on Cold Case and Without A Trace and Crossing Jordan and just call it the Vanilla Predictable Investigation Channel. Their tagline: don’t think too hard.
[tags]virginia tech, gun control, creative writing, video games, csi, law & order, cold case, without a trace, crossing jordan[/tags]

I am Jack's [li] tag

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My life is very, very point form right now. Nellie’s down at the new condo painting while I clean up the mess that has become our old place and write a paper for my class. We were up at 6-something this morning to pick up the car (from Autoshare) and drive to home depot, so the only thing keeping me awake right now is a steady Diet Pepsi drip.

Meanwhile, I have these for you:

OK, back to work.

"To do less would have added moral shame to humiliation."

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Colin sent me a link to this New Yorker article today about Iraqis who joined up with the invading American forces to become translators and civil servants. It’s long, but very interesting.

The Arabic for “collaborator” is aameel—literally, “agent.” Early in the occupation, the Baathists in Ali’s neighborhood, who at first had been cowed by the Americans’ arrival, began a shrewd whispering campaign. They told their neighbors that the Iraqi interpreters who went along on raids were feeding the Americans false information, urging the abuse of Iraqis, stealing houses, and raping women. In the market, a Baathist would point at an Iraqi riding in the back of a Humvee and say, “He’s a traitor, a thug.” Such rumors were repeated often enough that people began to believe them, especially as the promised benefits of the American occupation failed to materialize. Before long, Ali told me, the Baathists “made the reputation of the interpreter very, very low—worse than the Americans’.”

The article laments the American administration’s treatment of these Iraqis, and rightly so, but I thought it ignored the historical parallel of how such people have been viewed by the occupied citizenry in past conflicts. For example, while officials in the Vichy French government may have felt they were doing the best thing for their country by siding with the Nazis, that didn’t stop the French resistance from hating them. Obviously American foreign policy in Iraq is markedly different than Germany’s in 1940, though the average Iraqi might not appreciate the nuance. I just think the article should have gotten some reaction directly from Iraqis opposed to the occupation, to get a balance.

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Ever since Flickr’s map view of images was launched I’ve had fun playing around with it, but it comes in really handy when you’re looking at travel options. Is that town pretty? Let’s see…yup. Very. I think I’ll go there.

[tags]iraqi translators, vichy, flickr[/tags]

"Market's bubbly boom" is the new "Cellar door"

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Another positive step for Canada:

The Canadian parliament has voted against renewing two controversial anti-terror measures that had been adopted after the 11 September attacks.

The measures allowed suspects to be detained without charge for three days and could compel witnesses to testify.

The minority Conservative government accused the opposition Liberals of being soft on terror.

I’m not sure how accurate that accusation can be when it was the opposition Liberals who introduced the measures in the first place. Anyway, though they were never used, I’m glad they’re gone.

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The Economist’s Free Exchange blog touches on yesterday’s market troubles in this morning’s memo, and hints at how powerful Alan Greenspan’s mutterings are even now that he’s no longer the Fed chairman. I wonder what would happen if Greenspan just wandered up to a camera crew and yelled “Soy! Soy! Buy all the soy futures you can get your hands on!” into a microphone?

[tags]canadian anti-terrorist measures, economist, free exchange, alan greenspan, soy futures[/tags]

Urinary sphincter? Check!

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This is a scary, scary story: a 9-year-old Canadian kid and his parents being held in a Texas immigration jail for almost two weeks now.

“Now, just to be clear, you were never planning to end up in the United States, is that right? You were flying to Canada, but another passenger on the plane had a heart attack, and so you guys had a forced landing in Puerto Rico, and when you had to come out of the plane, while he was taken off the plane, that’s when they took you?”

This comes on the heels of a unanimous decision by the Canadian supreme court that six terrorism suspects have been unfairly denied trials, and that the use of “security certificates” (whereby suspects can be held on secret evidence) are unconstitutional. Just as Canada takes one important step forward, they take another step back as they remain silent about this 9-year-old boy.

[via POGGE]

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On a lighter note, we watched an absurd (in a good way?) film last night: Crank (imdb | rotten tomatoes). It was like one big frantic idiotic music video…which is decent entertainment for a Friday night when you’re not really feeling up for anything beyond that.

[tags]canadian boy held in texas, crank[/tags]

Congestion: media & traffic

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I used to think John McCain being the American president wouldn’t be too bad, but between his continued support for the Iraq war and his recent statements about overturning Roe v. Wade, he’s become as unpalatable as the other candidates. OK, maybe not as unpalatable as Sam Brownback, but unpleasant nonetheless.

And I, like most people, am shocked to find myself agreeing with something that Newt Gingrich said:

“Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Friday said the early kickoff to the 2008 presidential race was ‘stupid’ despite a recent poll putting him in third place among Republican candidates.

‘I think the current process of spending an entire year running in order to spend an entire year running in order to get sworn in in January 2009 is stupid,’ Gingrich said at a news conference for his new book, ‘Winning the Future.'”

Amen. Or something.

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Once again, the topic of a congestion charge for driving in downtown Toronto has been raised.  This time we get the hilarious input of CAA spokesperson Faye Lyons:

“In our view, this is just another tax on the already overburdened motorists.”

Absolutely. Overburdened motorists are tragic figures in today’s society, what with how they’ve been forced to shell out tens of thousands of dollars for a comfortable vehicle in which they can ride to work alone. I mean, c’mon, what do you expect them to do? Car pool? Work closer to home? Take public transit? I ask you, sir, have fascists taken over? Is that what’s happened?

Ahem.

Obviously I’m all for this idea. I do think you have to be careful about how you charge people living downtown but still have legitimate needs for a car (families, for example) but if you make the charge a flat fee — say, just over twice the price of two TTC metropasses — I think that’d be fair.

[tags]john mccain, sam brownback, newt gingrich, toronto congestion charge[/tags]

Wonderbread and Cheez-Whiz, gimmie!

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It’s cold. It’s colder than cold. It’s hell ass balls cold. It’s so cold every car made before 2002 squeals when it’s started. It’s so cold my headphone cord turned into a pipe on the way home.

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My Nomad randomly played “What An Idiot He is” by Ashley MacIsaac today. I don’t think I’ve heard it in eight years; had I, I would’ve wondered how Ashley came to write a song about future president Bush.

“He’s always got a dumb expression on his face
Makes me feel sorry for the human race
‘Cause I’ve got a funny feeling that he’s runnin’ the place…”

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I’m on my third WordPress theme of the day. I kind of like this one so far.

[tags]cold weather, ashley macisaac[/tags]

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."

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Proof of evolution: just five years ago Stephen Harper called the Kyoto Accord a money-sucking “socialist scheme”, but today he’s a good steward of the environment. Welcome to the party, Steve.

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There was an interesting article in the October issue of The Atlantic called “Prophetic Justice” about the grounds on which terrorism suspects are being tried, the ignorance and fear that allows the situation, and the political climate that fosters it.

That inculcation has ample source material, Haykel said, because many hadith and Koranic verses seem to advocate violence; most Muslims just know not to take them literally. Is it possible, he was asked during cross-examination, that someone radically inclined might take al-Kousi’s words as a call to action? “Well, the Koran can be taken as a call to action,” Haykel answered. “You don’t need to listen to al-Kousi.”

Religious speech is extreme, emotional, and motivational. It is anti-literal, relying on metaphor, allusion, and other rhetorical devices, and it assumes knowledge within a community of believers. Its potency is deliberate: faith is about calling on a higher power, one stronger than ourselves, and the very language we use helps inflate that strength. We arm ourselves (itself a violent metaphor) with prayer.

This is hardly unique to Islam. The question of how to interpret a text may be as old as writing, and it applies equally to determining where the power of religious speech inheres. In authorial intent? A reader’s interpretation? Historical or modern context? Over the centuries, and even today, the Bible and Christian theology have helped justify the Crusades, slavery, violence against gays, and the murder of doctors who perform abortions. The words themselves are latent, inert, harmless—until they aren’t.

It’s long, but worth the read.

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My favourite new source of excellent music: the KEXP “song of the day” podcast. It’s usually something I haven’t heard, and is almost always very good.
[tags]stephen harper, kyoto accord, prophetic justice, terrorism, kexp[/tags]

Hello, bigoted pot? This is retarded kettle calling. You are black.

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The best part about this CNN story regarding the imminent gay marriage ban in Massachusetts: the colossal irony of the accompanying picture.

[EDIT: I suppose it could be an opponent of the gay marriage ban carrying this sign, which would kill both the irony and my witty subject line. Therefore, I choose to stick with my original interpretation: the man holding the sign is a weenie.]

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The Economist’s Free Exchange blog has yet another thought-provoking post, this time about the decline of violence in recent decades and the 20th century overall (despite what the news might suggest). Being the Economist’s blog, the topic is tied back to factors like wealth and trade, and to the question of whether economic prosperity reduces violence; my opinion is that it does, but the writer himself points out one of the most common arguments against such an opinion:

“Increasing trade has made it harder to go to war without at least temporarily doing violence to one’s own economy. Of course, I believe this argument was once advanced as a reason that World War I was impossible.”

By the way…cat-burning? I couldn’t have lived in the 16th century.

[tags]gay marriage ban, massachusetts, economist, free exchange blog, decline in violence, cat-burning[/tags]