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September 30, 2006

Mandate creep

MADD is turning into a hardcore temperance movement so gradually we aren't even noticing, to paraphrase the Simpsons. Reader Adrian Willsher points me to this article about Dr. Robert Solomon, co-author of "Youth and Impaired Driving in Canada: Opportunities for Progress," who says:

I was very concerned with the current messages: If you drink, don’t drive. I support that message, but implicit in that is this sense out there that it is all right to get as drunk as you want as long as you are not driving.

Right, like if I was to say "If you take NyQuil, don't operate threshing machinery," it's implied that you can drink as much NyQuil as you want as long as you stay in the farmhouse.

Posted by Chris Selley at 09:19 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

September 29, 2006

The Interminable Ballad of Warren Kinsella

Kevin Grace makes his case against Warren Kinsella, whom he justifiably calls "one of the most contemptible figures in Canadian public life," and the results are frighteningly entertaining. Mr Grace has many personal grievances with Mr Kinsella, and I have none. I just think Kinsella's insufferable. This is someone who seems to spend a significant portion of his life filing trivial lawsuits and levelling puffed up allegations at inconsequential people both online and off, all the while presenting himself as the most principled man in the universe. There doesn't seem to be anything or anyone he won't use to leverage the making of his own exploded myth of himself.

To the extent Kevin Grace's legal complaints have merit — judge for yourself — I hope he wins what's coming to him. I'd say that for anyone, Kinsella included. But I avidly, exuberantly and unconditionally support The Ambler in his efforts to bring Kinsella down a peg. Or fifty.

Posted by Chris Selley at 07:59 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

September 27, 2006

Memo to the TTC

The following is not a very helpful announcement for someone who has no prior knowledge of a service disruption: "Service has resumed between Bloor and Lawrence."

What you meant to say was "The service disruption between Bloor and Lawrence is now clear, and service is returning to normal system-wide."

That is not what I assumed you meant.

Thanks for dropping by.

Posted by Chris Selley at 10:51 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Finally!

Antropov: Borat is Hilarious

Now that's a sports story! It should not have taken this long for Kazakh hockey players to be asked their opinions on this topic. I hereby demand to know what Vitaly Kolesnik thinks about Borat.

Posted by Chris Selley at 12:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 26, 2006

Help us

The untendered three-quarters-of-a-billion-dollar contract for new Toronto subway cars will go ahead, absent some kind of federal heroics (the fallout from which might keep David Miller in office for 25 years — tough to know what to hope for on this). I can't decide which sentence in the Star article best sums up the state of Toronto municipal politics.

Candidate #1:

"I guess you'll have a nice trip home," a supporter of the Bombardier deal told Thunder Bay Mayor Lynn Peterson as a small tear trickled down a cheek.

"Every job counts," Peterson told reporters. "Somebody is employed, can pay their mortgage or feed their kids. It doesn't matter if it's in my city or yours."

As a humanist statement that works fine. As a guiding principle for municipal politicians it's baffling.

Candidate #2:

"I'm shocked, utterly shocked as a Torontonian, as a proud Canadian and as the mayor of Toronto, that there's even an argument about this," Miller told a lunchtime rally organized by the Labour Council of Toronto and York Region.

Brilliant — multifariously so. Miller is shocked that some people want to run Toronto the way most other cities around the world are run, and he's expressing it in front of the very union folk whose interests he's really protecting.

Candidate #3:

While German-based Siemens said it could have supplied the cars for a lower price, two consultants hired by the TTC said the price negotiated with Bombardier was a reasonable one.

That's exactly the state of the debate. John Q Public asks, "Why are we potentially paying more to buy these subway cars from Thunder Bay?" David Miller says, "Our consultants say it's a reasonable deal" and disappears in a puff of smoke, as Mr. Public tries in vain to explain that that doesn't answer his question.

Candidate #4:

"If I as mayor stood up and said `We're going to take $500 million from the federal government and the provincial government and we're not going to use it to create jobs in Ontario — we're going to use it to create jobs in China — the federal and provincial governments would never give us another nickel for public transit," Miller said before the final vote was cast.

Uh-oh. Has anyone told Vancouver? They've got 20 trains on order from Korea for the new Canada Line. Edmonton will be getting 26 new California-built LRVs from Siemens in 2008, and Calgary's lousy with similar Germanic rolling stock. I can't find any mention of the wrath the federal government intends to inflict on these cities for their heartlessness.

There is hope for the future, though:

Councillor Mike Del Grande (Ward 39, Scarborough-Agincourt) accused fellow councillors of hypocrisy for insisting on made-in-Canada subway cars while buying foreign-built cars for personal use.

"Even the mayor drives a Prius, which is built in Japan," he said.

Zing! Seriously though, Miller must have a formula. Input weighted factors of union interest (anti-Japanese) and environmental concerns (pro-Prius) and divide by cost. Purchase accordingly and act shocked that there's even a debate about it. It is so depressing that his only competition in the upcoming election is from Jane Pitfield, whose platform amounts to little more than "everything David Miller is not."

Posted by Chris Selley at 11:54 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Why did the peanut jump the shark?

There is no conclusive evidence that airborne peanut matter can cause anaphylactic shock, and there's plenty of evidence that says it almost certainly can't.

A commonly held belief is that the odor from peanut products such as peanut butter can result in allergic reactions and anaphylaxis… However, a recent blinded, placebo-controlled trial of children exposed to open peanut butter was unable to document any reactions (Sicherer et al)…
…
There are case reports of severe asthma from airborne exposure to food but the typical inhalation reaction would be similar to that suffered by a cat-allergic person exposed to a cat walking into a room: itchy eyes, sneezing, and runny nose. The chance of a life-threatening anaphylactic reaction from airborne exposure is very small.
…
Is inhaling food protein as described above equivalent to smelling the odor of a food? Can allergic reactions occur from an odor? To answer these questions, we must analyze the actual process of smelling. The brain registers the sensation of an odor when it receives a nerve impulse from the nose. The nerve impulse is triggered by chemicals in foods that stimulate nerve endings on the mucous membranes of the nasal passages. The key fact is that these chemicals are not proteins and, therefore, are incapable of causing allergic reactions.
…
How then do we explain the case reports that have been associated with the odor of peanuts? These can be conditioned physiologic responses, akin to the famous experiment of Pavlov, in which dogs were conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell. Almost any physiologic response can be conditioned, including changes in blood pressure, heart rate, body temperature, skin rashes, and respiration. The conditioning stimulus can be the sound of a bell or in this case, the smell and aroma of peanuts and peanut butter.

That is one of the more sympathetic pieces I've read about the possibility of severe reactions not related to actual ingestion of peanuts, which isn't surprising — allergysafecommunities.ca is a joint venture of the Allergy/Asthma Information Association, the Canadian Society of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, Anaphylaxis Canada, the Canadian Allergy, Asthma and Immunology Foundation and l'Association Québécoise des Allergies Alimentaires.

Just to be clear, though I have at times appeared slightly obsessed about this subject, I only object to the allergy safety movement when it runs afoul of logic. So Craig Courtice's piece in today's Post about companies moving to peanut-free factories — thus allowing allergy sufferers to eat products that those companies heretofore wouldn't vouchsafe — is fine. But in light of the accepted scientific wisdom about indirect contact with peanuts, Michael Lawson's sidebar about "pea butter" is totally off the deep end:

For some allergy sufferers, however, peanut butter is like Kryptonite. They need only sit next to an open jar of the substance for its noxious fumes to produce an anaphylactic nightmare. Needless to say, most people afflicted thusly would prefer to live in a peanut-butter-free environment. Given that severe discomfort is but the low end on the spectrum of allergic reaction -- the highest being death -- such a preference seems a reasonable request.

But for those who have never lived through the horrors of an anaphylactic reaction, the demands of peanut-butter haters can seem onerous. Even the most sympathetic nut-enabled person may be reluctant to forego the pleasures of a good PB & J sandwich. "It's not like I'm going to make you eat it!"
…
Although Peabutter seems to be intended as a way for peanut-phobes to experience the joys of toast slathered in brown paste like everybody else (a treat that years of anaphylactic fear has probably rendered unappetizing, to say the least), the ideal consumers of Mountain Meadows' pea goodness are those conscientious citizens who love their peanut butter but are loath to poison the atmosphere of the allergy sufferers around them.

Golden peas may not seem as appealing as processed peanut spread, but given the alternative -- cold-turkey-style withdrawal vs. a trip to the hospital or even the morgue -- you may as well give peas a chance.

That sort of hysteria doesn't help anyone, allergic or not.

More about allergies to come in tomorrow's Post, apparently.

Posted by Chris Selley at 12:03 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

September 25, 2006

Around the World in 80 Canapés, cont... (St Vincent & The Grenadines)

Ralph E. Gonsalves, Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, has a couple of chips on his shoulder. He is impertinent enough to suggest that the UN might lack a certain swiftness or decisiveness in its handling of important events:

Madam President, the world's marginalized and disadvantaged look askance at a United Nations which daily seeks to choreograph the dancing of angels on the head of a pin. They care very little for the bureaucratic harangue that the United Nations' "system-wide coherence has been addressed and enhanced," important as that may be for some professional diplomats. The world's people want to know, and see the practical evidence, that the United Nations is tackling in a purposeful way the issues of global poverty, environmental degradation, climate change, the empowerment of women, the protection of children, the promotion of peace and security, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the provision of clean water and an adequate supply of food, among other such telling requisites.

And he's got a bit of a slavery hangup, too:

Madam President, next year, in March 2007, people of African descent and all freedom-loving peoples and nations commemorate and celebrate the 200th anniversary of the passage of the Act abolishing the British trade in African slaves to the Caribbean and the Americas. This is an occasion for historical reclamation and the righting of historic wrongs. The trade in, and enslavement of, Africans was a monstrous crime against humanity and an exercise in genocide unmatched in the history of the western world. European nations and their North American cousins have failed and/or refused to acknowledge this sufficiently or at all. There has been no apology for this crime against humanity and genocide, conducted over a prolonged period. There has been no practical recompense in the form of reparations to the affected nations and peoples in Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas. Surely, this issue must be put squarely on the agenda of the United Nations for speedy resolution.

Without in any way diluting the force of this representation, indeed in bolstering it, it is necessary, and desirable, to link it in our region with the genocide of indigenous peoples, including the Callinago and Garifuna of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and the wholly wrong and inhumane exploitation by colonialism and imperialism of indentured labour from Africa, Madeira, India and China after the abolition of African slavery in the Caribbean. Europe has much to answer for on these matters and should be made to answer properly, appropriately. Historic wrongs not righted remain scars on the soul of the oppressor and the oppressed alike which continue to haunt over the ages; it is a hateful burden which must be lifted. This dark night must give way to a brightened day.

Posted by Chris Selley at 10:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Around the World in 80 Canapés, cont... (various artists)

Manesseh Sogavare, Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands, on… relatively successful elections:

Four months ago my Government came into power after the country's seventh national election since attainment of political independence 28 years ago. We have had the honour of having the Electoral Assistance Division of the United Nations Political Department monitor and coordinate international observers overseeing elections in the country. Despite the positive verdict declared by the international observers, a minor hiccup during the second part of the election culminated into three days of riots.

Abdullah Gül, the Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs, has a daunting proposal:

…Madame President, regardless of where we are from, whether the East or the West, or whatever faith we profess, and whichever tradition we represent, we must all act responsibly.

In this world where information travels at the speed of light, we must all refrain from acts and statements which can be misconstrued and strengthen the hand of extremists. Likewise, our reactions must demonstrate this sense of responsibility.

The Prime Minister of Bhutan, name of Lyonpo Khandu Wangchuk, highlights a very oddly located meeting:

A summit meeting of the landlocked developing countries was held on 14 September in Havana, Cuba. This was the first ever summit meeting of the landlocked developing countries that highlighted the serious constraints faced by landlocked developing countries. It is our hope that the international community will provide due consideration to the problems of landlocked developing countries and support the roadmap for global partnership set out by the Almaty Programme of Action.

(It was actually part of the Non-Aligned Movement summit, but it still has to be a kick in the teeth to discuss the concerns of the landlocked on a Caribbean island. Did someone say beach party?)

Mr Wangchuk also mentions the made-in-Bhutan development index that might be his kingdom's most famous export:

Bhutan's development is guided by the conviction that human wellbeing and contentment must be promoted through pursuit of material progress on the one hand and fulfillment of spiritual and emotional needs on the other. This development philosophy, as I have mentioned before in this Assembly, is defined as pursuit of Gross National Happiness rather than just Gross National Product. We will be happy to share our experience on this development philosophy as we did at the international conference on "Rethinking Development — Local Pathways to Global Wellbeing" that was held in Nova Scotia, Canada in June 2005. We believe that "The Happy Planet Index" that was recently published in the United Kingdom by the "New Economic Foundation" bears close relation to the development paradigm pursued by Bhutan.

Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Prime Minister of Malaysia, on Islamic nations' relationship with the west:

I am afraid that the schism between the west and the Muslim world will grow even deeper unless the international community is prepared to accept certain facts as the truth. The fact is that the sense of humiliation being felt by the Muslim world is the root cause for the loss of trust and confidence between the Muslim world on one side and the Judeo-Christian civilization on the other side. If the international community refuses or fails to accept this fact, then I am afraid we are denying the truth.

I believe much of the prejudices against Muslims stems from a lack of understanding of the true nature of Islam and what it stands for. For instance, there is a lack of appreciation in the west of the role of religion in the lives of Muslims. Modern Europe has generally embraced secularism and largely removed religion from the public domain into the confines of the home and family. For the Muslims, the teachings of Islam serve as their guide for doing all things, whether conducting their affairs in the public domain or practising the religion in their private homes. I suggest that much of the misunderstandings especially between the Christian west and the Muslim world arise out of this fundamental misunderstanding about the place of religion in the daily lives of Muslims all over the world. When dealing with Muslims, one cannot separate them from their religion because that is their way of life.

And Islam in Malaysia:

My country Malaysia is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-cultural country. However, Islam is respected by all the people as the official religion. The government which I now lead has embarked on a program to communicate a proper appreciation of Islam as a force for good. We call it Islam Hadhari, which is actually an approach for achieving a progressive society that is compatible with modernity yet firmly rooted in the noble values and injunctions of Islam. The approach has been accepted by everyone in Malaysia because underlying the whole message of Islam Hadhari is a call for equitable development and progress. It is a call for moderation and tolerance as well as the assurance of justice and fairness for all irrespective of their faiths.

Posted by Chris Selley at 09:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Around the World in 80 Canapés, cont... (Zimbabwe)

Mugabe, you old charmer:

One explanation for our development predicament and the many failed initiatives is the wide gap between rhetoric and concrete action on the ground. We have on many occasions agreed on making available the means for implementing agreed goals. We have made targets for making those resources available. Yet, at the same time, we have witnessed some countries and groups taking concerted actions such as illegal economic sanctions to frustrate our development efforts.

In the case of Zimbabwe, these countries have blocked any balance of payments and other support from the international financial institutions that they control. Following the heroic and successful efforts of the people of Zimbabwe in clearing requisite arrears to the IMF, these negative forces manipulated decision-making at the institution to deny us any new support. They have even tried to restrict investment inflows, all this on account of political differences between them and us. Is it not a paradox that while we are denied resources for development, funding is readily made available to support elements bent on subverting the democratically expressed will of the majority of our citizens and to unconstitutionally effect regime change? We condemn this interference in our domestic affairs. This warped thinking must not, and will not succeed. My Government will carry out its mandate to protect the country's citizens. We warn that any attempt to change that mandate through unconstitutional means will meet with the full wrath of the law. It is for this reason that we welcome this debate that seeks to address the yawning gap between agreed action plans and implementation, and between rhetoric and what actually happens on the ground.
…
The tendency to use assistance in the fight against HIV/AIDS as reward for political compliance and malleability is a policy which the United Nations should condemn. Given the fact that the pandemic does not respect borders, the denial of assistance to countries on political grounds through a self-serving and selective approach would do more harm and weaken international efforts to fight the pandemic. In my country, for example, on average, a Zimbabwean AIDS patient is receiving about US$4.00 per annum in international assistance compared with about US$172.00 per annum for other countries in the region. However, even against this background, my Government has registered some modest success in reducing the HIV/AIDS prevalence rate from about 29 per cent in 2000 to 18.1 percent in 2006 on the strength of its own resources and programmes.

(Well, he might be right about that. The only way to remove an HIV positive person from the national tally is for him or her to leave the country or die, and Mugabe's "resources and programmes" are well-designed to make it happen.)

Posted by Chris Selley at 09:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Around the World in 80 Canapés, cont... (Lebanon and Kuwait on Lebanon)

Kuwait's position on the Israel-Lebanon conflict isn't what you'd call nuanced:

During the last few weeks, the brotherly Republic of Lebanon was subjected to a vicious Israeli aggression, which caused the death of hundreds of innocent civilians and injuring thousands others, more than 1 million people became refugees. Moreover, scores of homes, bridges and civilian installations were purposely targeted to destroy the infrastructure in a systematic practice of state terrorism, in flagrant violation of International Humanitarian Law.

Kuwait, in that instant, condemned very strongly those shameful inhuman crimes against the brotherly people of Lebanon.

Nor, as you might expect, is Lebanon's:

From July 12 through August 14, my country was subjected to a barbarous aggression and to a rarely seen campaign of savage dismemberment, when hundreds of fighter jets emptied their loads of heavy and banned bombs, targeting mostly civilians, killing and maiming thousands, and destroying all that made Lebanon a viable state. Obviously, this was a premeditated Israeli "sentence" to destroy my country and everything it stood for, having been blessed and termed by His Holiness Pope John Paul II as a "unique message to Humanity," in which people of different sects could coexist and live together peacefully. This aggression became even more cruel, when it won the tacit approbation of certain great powers.
…
It becomes self-evident for us to question the "credibility of the United Nations," in light of the Secretary-General's acknowledgment that the delays in adopting Security Council Resolution 1701 did indeed harm this credibility. Moreover, we cannot but have serious doubts as to this organization's ability to safeguard world peace, when its resolutions are subjected to the vagaries of a very few world powers.

Today, as I stand before you, I ask:
How many Children was this evil, vengeful machine of destruction supposed to have killed, before the world community decided to respond in defense of a "rightful" cause?

Posted by Chris Selley at 09:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Around the World in 80 Canapés, cont... (Sao Tome & Principe)

President Fradique Bandeira Melo de Menezes of Sao Tome and Principe is a bit of a downer, but he gave what reads as one of the more rousing addresses at the UN General Assembly:

HIV/AIDS is still out of control. In my own tiny isolated country we were long immune from this pandemic. Despite desperate efforts at education and prevention, our tiny population is being laid waste by a shocking spiral of HIV/AIDS cases. We have only one hospital, a handful of doctors, and we are helpless in the face of this crisis, as we cannot afford the retro-virals we need for all our sick, nor do we have the ability to police our maritime borders to keep out the main source of infection. Our women and children are faceless victims, among the millions of others around the world, and without help, we could one day face extinction.

Climate change is already sabotaging many efforts to achieve sustainable development goals, augmenting poverty in developing countries, especially in the Least Developed Countries and the Small Island Developing States. There is new and strong evidence that most of the warming observed is attributable to human activities. As the polar ice caps melt, my low-lying island country faces a second kind of extinction: that of disappearing beneath the waves of the ocean.

He mentions Taiwan, the topic of which pops up seemingly at random in these speeches, but Sao Tome and Principe has an interesting historical relationship with Taiwan:

I cannot continue without again asking why a country with 23 million people is not represented at the United Nations where every country is supposed to have one vote? I want to mention Taiwan, an established democracy, whose people live in freedom and in peace. Their dynamic and technologically advanced economy is a model for creating wealth in today's global economy. Taiwan is also an excellent world citizen, generous in humanitarian and development aid.

For centuries the people of Sao Tome and Principe were debilitated and thousands died from endemic malaria. Countless attempts to control the mosquitoes carrying this disease failed, until Taiwan brought the necessary know-how and resources to bear. Today cases of malaria are reduced by 60%. Our doctors and nurses have never seen so few cases of malaria in living memory. Thanks to Taiwan and also to the Global Fund, we are well on the way to finally bringing this scourge under control.

He then lays out what he calls "some of the unspoken truths about poverty":

Why have so many other countries been left behind? The newest theories tell us that the answer is simple. With or without natural resources, with or without human resources, with or without technology, badly governed countries are poor countries. Bad government causes poverty.

When states do not protect property and people; when national revenues benefit self-interested political insiders who oppose any actions that would lead to more equal distribution of income and resources; when government officials waste funds; when people are hired on the basis of being from the right family or region or political grouping; when nobody monitors government spending; when corruption is noted but never punished; and illegal activities are not restrained by law, the press or democratic opposition, then miserable results follow.

We have all heard about the "natural resource curse" which shows that large amounts of oil or diamonds, for example, tend to make democracy and good government less likely. But recent studies have also found that there is also an "aid curse." Without meaning to do so, multi-lateral and bilateral donors can actually make governments worse.

And just as badly governed countries tend to be poor, so badly governed aid projects, without transparency or accountability, tend to fail.

Posted by Chris Selley at 08:37 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

The Energizer Bigot

RightGirl declares jihad against metaphors:

The usual apologists and appeasers will cry out when I remind you that Islam is a religion of hatred, intolerance, sex and death. Women and children are nothing but sex objects and chattel to the men in pajamas who rule with their death-cult bible - the Koran. Go ahead. Scream that I am a bigot. Scream that I must be silenced. Maybe send a bunch of bearded bastards to my house to show me what the Religion of Peace(tm) does to mouthy women. I don't care at this point. All I care about is ridding the world first of its blinders that keep us bound and gagged, unable to speak out, and then ridding it of the danger that masks itself as legitimate religion.

Posted by Chris Selley at 12:44 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Self-terminate

At the ass end of Space's Terminator weekend, the perfectly serviceable Nick Stahl pretty much kills off the franchise when he tells the woefully miscast Claire Danes, "There's enough C4 here to take out four supercomputers."

Or so you'd think. They're making another one.

Posted by Chris Selley at 12:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 24, 2006

Citizens of the world

If I didn't hold two citizenships I suspect I'd be among those questioning the concept. Now that all the Canadians who were in Lebanon are safe — many back in Lebanon — I have no problem with a debate about whether dual citizenship is appropriate for Canada. That said, the debate would be a damn sight more credible if people stopped bitching about the price tag of the Lebanon evacuation. This isn't, or shouldn't be, a money issue, and indeed the evacuation strikes me as pretty much inconsequential. If in future we don't want to pay to evacuate Canadian citizens from countries in which they are permanent residents, then let's go ahead and institute such a policy.

If we're going to get rid of dual citizenship, acceptance of which is the norm among western nations, then surely we should at least prove it's a problem. Andrew Coyne's column in yesterday's Post sounds nice:

If a nation is something we do together, with and for each other, it requires us to make certain commitments to one another: to pay our taxes, to accept decisions that don't go our way, in extremis to lay down our lives for one another -- in short, to put each other first. The associations that inspire our fiercest loyalties -- our team, say, or our unit -- are not those that give things to us, but those that ask things of us. What, if anything, have we asked of ourselves?

If there was a moment when this thought began to crystallize in a lot of people's minds, it was a few years ago when Yann Martel, the winner of the 2002 Booker Prize for his novel The Life of Pi, referred to Canada as a "hotel." He meant it as a compliment, "the greatest hotel on Earth," but the image was jarring, almost transactional, implying the most fleeting sort of attachment.

And yet we have not drawn the appropriate conclusion. We still try to buy each other's affiliation, "selling" Canada to disaffected parts of the country on the basis of the benefits it can provide -- for what they can get out of it rather than what they can put into it. And we do not seem to notice that the more we have done so, the more disaffected they have become.

But is dual citizenship part of the problem? Would getting rid of it make things better? We have no idea. A lot of things have happened in the 30 years since Canada signed off on the concept that might be the cause of this "hotel" problem, if it is a problem. Millions of single-citizenship Canadians don't give a tightly coiled pile of shit about their country, while many dual citizens like me care a great deal about Canada.

(If any nation should have a problem with me it's the UK, where I've never lived or paid taxes. In a pinch I'd definitely head to the British embassy over the Canadian one, but that's just because I trust their foreign service more. I certainly wouldn't begrudge them if they sent me back to the embassy of the country I live in.)

The fact is, dual citizenship wasn't even on the public opinion radar screen until last month. This is still about the Lebanese evacuation, a situation that could have been averted in all kinds of ways that wouldn't have forced loyal dual citizens to "choose". By all means let's study whether dual citizenship is still appropriate for Canada, but let's take the word "Lebanon" out of the debate, and let's make sure dual or single citizenship actually makes a difference to anything before we alter a reasonably successful status quo.

Posted by Chris Selley at 11:55 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

September 21, 2006

The end of death?

Boris Johnson's always entertaining dudgeon is redlining over the UK's insane new booster seat law:

How old do you think they have to be before the nanny state will let your kids sit in the back without a car seat? Did I hear six? Did I hear seven? No, my friends, we are being asked to put our children in plastic booster seats until they reach the ripe old age of 12 or attain a height of 135cm, whichever is the sooner.

When I first heard of this plan I thought it must be some garbled echo from one of Bill Cash's froth-flecked Eurosceptic digests. But as of this week, millions of hard-pressed British families have been stampeded to the shops, where they have been forced to pay as much as £30 for these ludicrous plastic banquettes, and my feelings of disbelief have gone, and I find myself shocked by the depth of my own anger.
…
Has Labour gone finally potty in asking the cops to spend their time poking their noses into the back seats of our cars? Why the hell are we doing this, when violent crime is going up, when burglary has been virtually decriminalised, and when the number of children killed in car accidents has been steadily diminishing for the past 20 years?

Between 1981 and 1985 there was an average of 18 fatalities per year of children aged eight-11 using roads in the United Kingdom. That had fallen to 12 in the period 1994-98, to 11 in 2002, and in 2004 the total number of fatalities stood at four – an astonishing reflection on the growing safety of cars, when you consider how enormously they have increased in number.

Posted by Chris Selley at 08:46 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Around the World in 80 Canapés, cont... (Costa Rica)

(More speeches from the UN General Assembly.)

Let no one accuse Dr. Oscar Arias Sánchez, President of Costa Rica, of going through the motions. His speech to the UN, modestly entitled "The Brightest Future We Could Dream Of," is something of an epic, and not in a bad way — it's just funny to see such ambition from a country like Costa Rica. There is unbridled optimism:

In the last twenty years we have won memorable victories of the human spirit over strong and ancestral enemies. We saw the blows of the hammers that brought down the Berlin Wall, that signaled the definitive triumph of democracy, of human rights and of the dignity of individuals over totalitarian systems. We saw the end of the abhorrent system of apartheid in South Africa and an unprecedented expansion of democratic governments that today, for the first time in history, are the rule rather than the exception. We saw the definitive installation of environmental awareness at the center of the international agenda, to which the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, and its ratification by 150 nations, is great testament.

We saw impressive progress in human development: the rate of illiteracy on the planet is today half of what it was in 1970, infant mortality has fallen 25% since 1980 and 2.4 billion more people have access to potable water than two decades ago. We saw the emergence of the Millenium Development Goals, endorsed by 189 countries, as a palpable demonstration that, for the first time, humanity is capable of setting great common goals, that we are beginning to understand our interdependence, that, at last, our species is beginning to acquire self-consciousness and behave like a family—a dysfunctional family, perhaps, but a family nonetheless.

There is introspection, followed by self-congratulation:

But if it is sad that the richest nations, through military spending, are denying development opportunities to the most poor, it is worse still that the poor are complicit in destroying their own future. In effect, it is tragic that the governments of some of the most underdeveloped countries continue to hoard tanks, troops, warplanes and missiles to supposedly protect a population gripped with hunger and ignorance.

My region of the world has not escaped that phenomenon. In 2005, the countries of Latin America spent almost 24 billion dollars on weapons and troops, an amount that has risen 25% in real terms over the last decade and that has risen substantially in the last year. Latin America has begun a new arms race, even though it has never been more democratic and there have been very few military conflicts between countries in the last century.

But for avoiding this impulse, I believe Costa Ricans have reason to be proud. Since 1948, due to the vision of the wise ex-President José Figueres, Costa Rica abolished its army and declared peace on the world.

There is pacifism, segueing effortlessly into magic realism:

For the United States, the richest country on the planet, the amount they spend on their military is at very least 25 times as much as they give in aid. What is this but an eloquent demonstration of twisted priorities and the most profound irrationality?

Because, at the end of the day, rationality counts. Since the tragic events of the 11 th of September 2001, a little more than 200 billion dollars have been added to global military spending. There is not a single indicator that suggests that this colossal increase is making the world more secure and human rights more widely enjoyed. On the contrary, we feel more and more vulnerable and fragile. Maybe it is time to think of other ways to deploy those resources. Maybe it is time to realize that with much less than that sum we could guarantee access to potable water and primary education for every person in the world, and maybe there would be enough left over, as Gabriel Garcia Marquez once suggested, para perfumer de sandalo en un día de otoño las cataratas del Niagara—roughly translated, to perfume the waters of Niagara Falls on one autumn day. Maybe it is time to understand that all this is what would really make us happier and more secure.

And finally there is a simple plan for the future of humankind:

As was the case twenty years ago in my first message to this General Assembly, today I can say to you with satisfaction that I come from a country without weapons, that our children have seen neither a tank nor attack helicopter, neither warship nor cannon. I can say to you that in my country, fathers and grandfathers explain to the youth the curious architecture of our schools, in terms that attest to the fact that long ago those schools were military barracks. I can say to you that in my homeland, none of our citizens, man or woman, knows oppression, and that there is not a single Costa Rican that lives in exile. I can say to you today that mine is a nation of liberty.
…
This is a road that neither my country nor I are willing to abandon. And not only that: it is a road that we wish all humanity to follow.

(By this time next year, I will have converted Costa Rica and its citizens to pure energy. How about you?)

Posted by Chris Selley at 08:36 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Around the World in 80 Canapés, cont... (Kiribati)

(More speeches from the UN General Assembly.)

Teima Onorio, Vice-President of Kiribati, strikes a balance between international affairs:

I note, therefore, with much disappointment and regret that the desire of the 23 million people of Taiwan to join this organization of ours continues to be rejected. This is despite Taiwan's demonstrated ability, willingness and commitment to contribute to international collaborative efforts in the pursuit of global peace and security.

There has been much talk over the past years of good governance, of democratizing nations. Should we also not talk about adopting good governance in our multilateral organizations? Should we also not talk about democratizing our multilateral organizations?

We deplore this sad state of affairs that deliberately excludes a nation of 23 million people from participating as an equal member of the international community.

... and more, uh, local concerns:

Consisting of low-lying coral atolls, Kiribati is particularly vulnerable to the impact of global warming and sea level rise. For countries such as Kiribati global warming and sea level rise are critical security issues.

While we welcome the support that has been forthcoming in developing adaptation strategies to these phenomena, there is a limit to how far we can adapt. As sea levels rise it will affect our ground water supply and gradually erode whatever land is available on our thirty three islands. Yes, we could always move inland to avoid the rising sea levels. But with our narrow islands if we move inland too far we risk falling into either the lagoon or the ocean.

Posted by Chris Selley at 08:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 20, 2006

Around the World in 80 Canapés

I've been browsing through the various speeches from the delegates to the 61st Session of the UN General Assembly (aka "the annual bid to exhaust world supplies of lobster, Pomerol and hypocrisy"). There's a lot of predictable tat in there, obviously, but a few rare nuggets of insight and a few interesting/odd/frightening perspectives as well. I will post them as I find them, with no (or little) comment offered.

Let's start with our critical ally in the War on Terror, General Purvez Musharraf, President of Pakistan:

While we confront terrorism, our strategy must seek to eliminate this phenomenon comprehensively. We cannot do so unless we understand and address the root causes of terrorism today. How are terrorists able to find willing recruits even among educated youth in advanced and democratic societies? The reasons are clear.

Across the Muslim world, old conflicts and new campaigns of military intervention have spawned a deep sense of desperation and injustice. Each new battleground involving an Islamic state has served as a new breeding ground for extremists and terrorists. Indiscriminate bombings, civilian casualties, torture, human rights abuses, racial slurs and discrimination only add to the challenge of defeating terrorism.

In my view a two pronged strategy, which I call "Enlightened Moderation", is required to address the situation. This strategy envisages that, apart from combating terrorism frontally, the international community must undertake resolute efforts to resolve the conflicts afflicting the Islamic world. Unless we end foreign occupation and suppression of Muslim peoples, terrorism and extremism will continue to find recruits among alienated Muslims in various parts of the world.

We also need to bridge, through dialogue and understanding, the growing divide between the Islamic and Western worlds. In particular, it is imperative to end racial and religious discrimination against Muslims and to prohibit the defamation of Islam. It is most disappointing to see personalities of high standing oblivious of Muslim sensitivities at these critical moments.

It is time to end Israel's conflicts with all its neighbours. It is time, first and foremost, to end the tragedy of Palestine. There is no doubt in our mind that this is the core of the challenge, not only to overcome the Iraq and Afghanistan problems, but also to deal with the menace of terrorism and extremism.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, President of Brazil:

Aside from the countries directly involved, Middle Eastern issues have always been dealt with exclusively by the great powers. They have achieved no solution so far.

One might then ask: is it not time to call a broad, UN-sponsored Conference, with the participation of countries of the region and others that could contribute through their capacity and successful experience, in living peacefully with differences?

Brazil believes in dialogue. For this reason we held a South America-Arab Countries Summit in 2005. We also have good relations with Israel, whose birth as a state came about when a Brazilian, Osvaldo Aranha, presided over the General Assembly.

Conflicts among nations are not solved only by money and weapons. Ideas, values and feelings also have a place, particularly when based on real-life experience.

Posted by Chris Selley at 11:33 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Not sorry

Susan Riley ends a fine column (subscribers only) about the RCMP's disgraceful handling of the Maher Arar affair with this maddening cliché:

…we have responsibility as journalists not to trade in whispers, and as citizens not to believe everything we are told. And… to let Arar know how sorry we are.

The idea that citizens should apologize or take responsibility for the incompetence of their governments is bad enough, especially considering the pains governments have taken to alienate themselves from their constituents. Now that John Q. Canadian risks prosecution by smoking in a private club or buckling his kids up without booster seats, he is less likely than ever to picture himself in the same Venn diagram as his governments. I wonder how many people in line at the Passport Office or at their local Ministry of Transportation would apologize for what the RCMP did.

But worse, there's something very patronizing about the idea of seeing Arar on the street and apologizing to him: "Sorry about what Canada did to you, old boy. Chin up!" He's Canadian. In failing Maher Arar the Canadian government and the RCMP failed us all, and that's a far greater sort of kinship than could be conveyed with an insincere apology.

(Cross-posted to the Shotgun.)

Posted by Chris Selley at 10:58 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Fat and stupid

CBC News reports:

A Tim Hortons double-double — with two creams and two sugars — has 160 calories per 10-ounce cup. A black coffee had about 10 calories and no fat.

I'm noticing a lot of statements like this of late. News organizations seem to be compensating for a large number of Canadians who have literally no idea what's in food, where it comes from, or what will happen to them if they eat too much or too little of it. For thousands of years the search for a "balanced diet" was simply a matter of intuition and listening to your body. Now a great many of us apparently think there might somehow be fat in black coffee.

Food labeling seems like a reasonable line of defense, but it can only go so far. McDonald's is resisting the idea of putting caloric, fat and carbohydrate counts right on its menus, and well they might. Their website lets you customize your meal right down to the soft drink and calculate its nutritional value (or lack thereof). Printed brochures are available at all its locations, and they are even planning to put the information on the food packaging itself (thus encouraging fatties like me to throw out the food once we've bought it? I don't get it). They're moving to cut out trans-fats, and they've given people who for some reason have no option but to eat at their restaurants all sorts of unappetizing yogurts and salads to choke down. I think they could very reasonably claim to have done plenty and tell the health police to back off for a while.

It must be especially galling for McDick's to play this game when the anti-corporate agenda of so many of the organizations pushing the labelling agenda is so obvious. Take the Centre for Science in the Public Interest, author of the coffee drink study mentioned in the CBC report. It publishes a helpful brochure entitled "10 Foods You Should Never Eat!", which are:

1. Pepperidge Farm Original Flaky Crust: Roasted Chicken Pot Pie, which ostensibly comes with misleading nutrient data for only half the pie.

2. McDonald's Chicken Selects Premium Breast Strips, which are no healthier than Chicken McNuggets. (Why would they be? –ed.)

3. Cheesecake Factory's 6 Carb Cheesecake, which has the same number of calories as the regular cheesecake. (Why wouldn't it? –ed.)

4. Dove Ice Cream, which dares to have a lot of calories and saturated fat.

5. Mrs. Fields Milk Chocolate & Walnuts Cookies, ditto.

6. Starbucks Venti Strawberries & Crème Frappuccino Blended Crème with whipped cream. Gadzukes — it's full of fat and sugar!

7. Burger King fries.

8. Campbell's Soups, which have too much salt.

9. Hershey's Swoops, chocolate that has too much sugar and fat in it.

10. Häagen-Dazs' Mint Chip Dazzler — that pesky sugar and fat again.

They could have said, "Avoid overindulging in flaky pastry made from pure butter, deep fried potatoes or breaded chicken, cheesecake, iced or whipped cream, cookies, overly salty soup, chocolate, and hot fudge." Instead they basically said, "Avoid all of the above entirely when they're concocted and marketed by corporations, and regardless of how much you exercise after eating it." How exactly is this advice going to encourage a more widespread understanding of what, and how much, one should eat?

Number 10 is a great example. The CSPI invites readers to think of the Mint Chip Dazzler "as a portable T-bone steak with Caesar salad, and baked potato with sour cream." Well, thanks for the analogy, but I wanted desert. Focusing on the corporate brand implies that assembling the same thing at home wouldn't produce the same nutritional effect. And if people can't think of the Mint Chip Dazzler as three scoops of ice cream, hot fudge, Oreos, chocolate sprinkles and whipped cream — which is what it is — and conclude that it's not your average after-dinner treat, then we've arrived at the heart of the matter: future generations need better education about food and body management than the current ones got.

It's not a particularly complex or difficult subject. Meat is protein, bread and pasta are carbs, and liquids with the basic consistency of water tend not to have fat in them. Expend as much energy as you consume and you'll stay the same weight. All the food labels in the world won't help if people insist on treating food as an unknowable mystery or an evil corporate plot.

Posted by Chris Selley at 10:11 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

September 19, 2006

Welcome home chickens!

A cheeky 17-year-old fencer named Miles Gandolfi made "rabbit ears" behind Cherie Blair's head during a photo-op at the UK School Games, it was reported yesterday, to which Ms Blair responded with a playful slap on the back. Miles apologized. Thereupon "at least six detectives from Strathclyde's serious crime squad," along with child welfare officers, descended upon the scene to investigate. To investigate Cherie Blair, that is. Miles' mother weighed in:

"It wasn't an assault or anything like that. It was just a bit of fun on his part. She's had teenage boys so she knows what they're like," Mrs Gandolfi says in today's The Mail on Sunday. "Miles made a statement to the police in Glasgow. I have absolutely no idea why it all blew up. It just seems totally bizarre. We couldn't believe it when the police got involved."

Well, get used to it. Tony Blair's Labour is exactly the sort of government that nurtures the climate of stifling insanity that his wife encountered in Glasgow (though it is disappointing for the purposes of this parable that Blair never came out against spanking).

Libby Purves nails it, as usual:

…the whole incident is beautifully in tune with the times. Fretting about children is all the rage. The famous letter against “toxic childhood” dominated last week’s news; now the Archbishop of Canterbury endorses a serious investigation. From every corner rush experts and counter-experts: commercialisation, divorce, technology, exams and nutrition take turns as chief enemy.
…
…not a word has been spoken about the lad’s disrespect: he was questioned by the police not as a perpetrator but as a “victim”. The underlying implication, all too familiar to teachers and children, is that if you are under 18 you are safe, however rude you are, and if you are an adult you are under suspicion.

This does matter. The atmosphere created, accidentally, by child protection legislation has often eroded children’s security rather than improved it. It creates a sense that the child world — of its nature anarchic and impulsive — outranks the adult world of responsibility and constraint. Instead of the imposing policemen and revered teachers of the past (who had their faults, admittedly) we have built a sense that childhood is always innocent and adulthood threatening… Yet any real child knows quite well that there is a dark side to its condition, and would like adults to represent safety and reason.

Forget violent video games, in that case. Keep them away from the news.

Posted by Chris Selley at 10:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The new alternative

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has some questions:
• Why are Canadian troops suffering a disproportionately higher [sic] number of military deaths than our NATO allies?
• Canada has taken on a very dangerous mission and is shouldering an unfair burden in the coalition. Why that is ... we don't have an answer for that yet.

A few unscientific suggestions, just off the top of my head:
• Because as has been repeatedly driven home by the current, former, and former-but-one Prime Ministers, Canada is taking a leading role in the mission, in the most dangerous part of Afghanistan.
• Because the Canadian force is disproportionately made up of ground troops, while both the British and the Americans have significant air forces in Afghanistan. It seems logical to me that a ground force in combat would suffer heavier casualties than the guys in the planes giving them cover.
• Because a dusty, sun-parched counter-insurgency campaign against arguably the world's fiercest warriors is the wrong place to look for proportionality (or indeed any kind of pleasing statistical logic).

I have a couple of questions for the CCPA, should any of its members be browsing past: One nation has to have the highest per-capita casualty rate in every conflict — my calculations show that to be true even in South Lebanon or Darfur. So if the mission is valid, then why shouldn't that nation be Canada? And if the nation isn't valid, which you guys appear to believe, then isn't it totally beside the point even to be discussing relative casualty rates among coalition members?

UPDATE, hours later: Don't bother reading this post. Wonderdog did far more work on this than I did. See also Prairie Wrangler.

Posted by Chris Selley at 08:31 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Snark

Pestiside has a truly hilarious take on yesterday's riots in Budapest:

But as the demonstrators broke through police lines and stormed TV headquarters, leading to the most violent political clashes in Hungary's post-communist history, editors in newsrooms around the world were left reeling by the sudden realization that what seemed at first like another camera-friendly "people power" uprising was actually something rather different. Unlike the crowds of hopeful and fashionably scruffy liberals who had taken to the streets in recent years to protest against - and help topple - authoritarian regimes in Ukraine, Georgia and Serbia, the mob in Budapest was mostly composed of crude, tracksuit-wearing right-wing yokels of the type no enlightened foreign correspondent-type would ever want to hang out with…

At the same time, the government under fire - a recently-reelected but wobbly coalition of rich ex-commies and narcissistic Jewish liberals - represents exactly the sort of snooty overclass cosmopolitanism favored by the brie-eating poofs who populate most western newsrooms, at least compared to the "God, blood, soil and lots of government handouts" nationalists even most western conservatives find a little creepy.

If only jaded ex-pats wrote all the news!

Posted by Chris Selley at 08:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 17, 2006

Trains in vain

Reports yesterday suggested, promisingly, that the federal government might withhold its share of funding for new Toronto subway cars unless the TTC puts the contract out to tender.

It's not an outrageous request. David Miller and Howard Moscoe constantly claim that Toronto has an obligation to keep jobs in Ontario even as the Bombardier plant in Thunder Bay churns out rolling stock for cities around the world. I'm sure the irony is lost on them.

If they can prove this moral obligation exists, then why not quantify its cost? Put the contract out to tender and then explain to Torontonians why's worth $20 million or $100 million to take the Bombardier bid. Clearly the majority of cities around the world do not operate on these principles. The burden of proof rests squarely on Miller's and Moscoe's shoulders, but they remain totally unwilling to make the case.

Since City Hall feels this burning obligation to the constituents of its senior government, I can think of nothing more fitting than an even more senior government bailing out the people whose interests City Hall was supposed to be protecting in the first place. As Kevin McGran wrote in the Star:

…an 11-year-old could tell you the best way to get the best deal is to shop around for the best price. Just about every purchase the city makes, or the TTC makes, is based on this premise.

Indeed, the City of Toronto deploys all sorts of vehicles on a daily basis that are made outside Ontario. Here's a whole page worth of city-owned cars that come from the US, Europe and Japan. What's so special about subway cars?

Posted by Chris Selley at 06:36 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Free advice

Some constructive criticism for the Winnipeg Sun's Tom Brodbeck on the occasion of his flaming wreck of a column in today's edition:

It didn’t take long for proponents of the failed long-gun registry to try to capitalize on the bloody shootings at Montreal’s Dawson College this past week.

Some nut-bar with an illegal, automatic a legal, semi-automatic weapon opens fire on students at the downtown college, and supporters of the registry suggest it’s proof we need to keep forcing duck hunters and farmers to register their rifles and shotguns.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

I see the link.

I wish they could explain how registering a hunting rifle would have prevented some lunatic from illegally legally owning and firing a prohibited weapon. That would be a neat trick.
…
The only thing the long-gun registry does is force licensed firearm owners (yes, they would still have to obtain a licence to own a long gun even if the registry was abolished) to register their legally owned firearms every few years. What does that do, except pad the pockets of overpaid federal bureaucrats and cost Canadian taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars?

The answer is nothing.

If you could legally own and register the type of firearm used at Dawson College and if people were demanding those types of weapons be prohibited, that would make some sense.

At least there would be a logical connection.

But the firearm used in Montreal is already prohibited, and the person using it obtained it illegally.

(The Globe published a thorough explanation of the legality of Kimveer Gill's weapons three days ago.)

Posted by Chris Selley at 04:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 14, 2006

Stolichnaya Syndrome

Ontarians will by now have heard of their Liberal government's plan to have the LCBO charge a deposit on every bottle it sells, but not take those bottles back. Customers will have to return them to The Beer Store, ostensibly because its recycling program is so effective — according to its latest environmental report, it recovered 98 percent of "industry standard bottles" sold system-wide (i.e., including at the LCBO), and 66 percent of cans.

I have to say, offering cash for empty bottles never struck me as a particularly challenging business model. For every Torontonian unwilling to have small change hurled at him by a Beer Store employee for whom every waking second is a crushing imposition, there are at least two industrious gents panning the city for 10-cent nuggets.

In fact, The Beer Store isn't so special. 2002 statistics compiled by Washington's Container Recycling Institute showed that Quebec's supermarket- and dépanneur-based returns system recovered around 98 percent of bottles — better, in fact, than Ontario. No province recovered less than 91 percent of refillable beer bottles, while three fared considerably better than Ontario in the cans department.

I am loath to take a union’s word on anything, but I think OPSEU has this one about right:

"If McGuinty's plan is such a great idea, why was there no public consultation? Why did the big brains in the Premier's office decide to announce it on a Sunday morning before Sept. 11?" [Union President Leah] Casselman asked.

"Obviously the Liberals are trying to get credit on environmental issues while avoiding any public scrutiny of the serious thinking errors involved in what they're actually doing."

She also raises a couple of practical posers:

…"A lot of people who shop at the LCBO never go near The Beer Store, which can only make the deposit/return system less effective," Casselman said.
…
"That's bad enough, but a much more serious problem is that giving control of empties to The Beer Store will actively prevent the re-use of containers.

"The only way to create a system that encourages re-use is through close co-operation between the retailer — the LCBO — and the wineries and
distilleries," Casselman said.
…
"The LCBO is an alcohol super-power," she said. "It has not only the obligation but also the ability to be a global leader in environmentally-friendly packaging. In contrast, The Beer Store has no connection whatsoever to wineries and distilleries."

And what does our Premier have to say to all these impertinent questions? "Shut up and drink," basically:

"The single most important thing that Ontarians need to know is that we have come kicking and screaming out of the dark ages when it comes to LCBO containers," he said.

"It's the concept here that's really important to Ontarians."

Anyone casually acquainted with the state of "competition" between the LCBO and The Beer Store knows there's far more to this. The LCBO and the government are facing pressure to recycle, but would rather not set up another system. The Beer Store, for its part, hates that the LCBO sells so much beer. The proposal (which the Toronto Star, apparently in earnest, called a "public-private partnership") helps all parties: "Insiders" told the Star that "The Beer Store expects more visits from customers who are likely to buy more beer and coolers when they return LCBO empties."

They hope Ontarians will drink more, in other words, and in a competitive retail economy that would make perfect sense. In Ontario, however, where the LCBO is charged both with selling alcohol and with discouraging its consumption, it's problematic. Which is more important: recycling or alcohol abuse? What about air pollution? The proposal would certainly increase the number of people driving (sober, one hopes) to The Beer Store with cars full of empty bottles. And while convenience is obviously not a core LCBO value, they might spare a thought for the elderly, people who don't drive, and all those not so blessed as to live near a Beer Store outlet. Oh, but I keep forgetting: it's the concept that’s important to them.

To be fair, this isn't totally out of the blue. I buy lots of beer at the LCBO and return it at the Beer Store, and my brain hasn't yet melted. But the LCBO currently charges a deposit only on products you can also buy, and thus can return, at The Beer Store. This is consumer choice, however meager. I am free to purchase certain beers from not one but two government-approved organizations.

By extending the deposit to products that are only available at its stores and then refusing to take them back, the LCBO is officially enshrining into Ontario society something my grandfather used to lament about modern life: "Nothing ever takes one trip anymore." Think about it: Responsibly consuming a bottle of wine in Ontario will now involve visiting a third party that sells nothing but beer. This is not the end of the world, of course, but it doesn’t make any friggin' sense whatsoever. Having lived under this bizarre, needlessly anachronistic alcohol regime for so long, I wonder if Ontarians will even notice.

Posted by Chris Selley at 10:30 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Case in point

I don't mind Toronto; I just think it's... um, let's say "not as cosmopolitan as it thinks it is." I've always found that difficult to explain to short-term visitors, to whom the Tdot usually seems like a reasonably happening joint. In future, I'll just direct them to this.

Posted by Chris Selley at 09:03 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

September 13, 2006

It's probably nothing

Did anyone else notice that all the print news reports of the Dawson College shooting today initially referred to the students as "women" and "men"? I'm pretty sure normal practice would be to refer to 16-to-19-year-olds as "young people" or something like that, and "students" and "young woman" do seem to have become the norm as the day went on.

My suspicion is that newsrooms outside Quebec didn't know what a CEGEP was, and assumed Dawson was a community college. Not a big deal or anything. But on a day when every Canadian's heart goes out to the victim(s), it just highlighted how little Canadians really know about each other.

Posted by Chris Selley at 10:00 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Why won't this die?

Politicians both north and south of the 49th parallel continue to insist upon the idea that Canadians are too stupid or poor to obtain passports. Tuesday in Halifax, Condoleezza Rice became the latest:

"It will not be the necessity of a passport. We are looking for an authentic document, a document that can authenticate identity but one that is relatively cheap and easy to acquire but that can help to keep the border secure…"

Your long search has ended, Madame Secretary. Behold — sound the clarion! — the Canadian passport.

The world must have finally gone totally mental — unless some senior Conservative apparatchik is buddies with a biometrics tycoon I can't see why we would still talking about this. A Canadian passport currently costs almost exactly as much as an Ontario driver's license. It is madness to think that it could possibly cost less for a "security-enhanced driver's licence that includes biometric and citizenship information," which the feds are apparently still pushing — or indeed for any brand-new technology, especially one that would have to be rolled out in 13 Canadian jurisdictions.

We'd end up paying more for these things, either at the Ministry of Transportation or on tax day, and the only possible benefit would be to maintain a purely cosmetic sort of "special status" for Canadians at the US border. That can't possibly be worth it.

It says here every nanosecond the Canadian government expends on this file should be in pursuit of two goals:
• Encouraging the US government to develop something cheaper and more convenient than a passport for Americans to use when coming to Canada. (It might make no more sense for them to do so than for us, but that's not our concern. The fewer Canadian tourists who go to the US, the better for the Canadian economy. We need the Americans to keep coming north.)
• Encouraging Canadians to get passports ASAP, and adding more staff and resources to the Passport Office to cope with the increased demand.

(Cross-posted to the Shotgun.)

Posted by Chris Selley at 09:20 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

September 11, 2006

Summer is a-goin' out

Has anyone seen the Wicker Man remake? When I first heard about it I assumed I'd see it no matter how awful it sounded, but… yikes. A few weeks ago Kathy Shaidle wagered that the evil pagan villagers in the original would probably become evil Christian villagers in the remake. I could easily have seen it happening, but it turns out the premise is even stupider: the American Summerisle is inhabited only by an all-female cult of beekeepers. Seriously. Says A.O. Scott in the New York Times:

I’m trying to imagine how this movie was pitched. There’s this island, see, and it’s ruled by women. Goddesses! Most of them are blond, and a lot of them are twins, and they have all this honey, and these wild costumes. Porno? What are you talking about? It’s a horror movie. Don’t you get it?

The BBC’s Mark Kermode (who made a documentary about the original) tore a strip off it on his Friday podcast, and his impersonation of Nic Cage in the final scene (stupid mook voice: “Oh no! Oh no!”) almost tipped me towards "no way" all on its own. Cage has always annoyed me, and he certainly isn’t high on my list of actors who can play “brave, unyielding, self-confident to a fault”. I wouldn’t mind seeing him burn to death, I suppose, but at PG-13 I see few prospects for that.

The tragedy, Kermode argues, is that this is a rare classic that might be worthy of a remake. Upon reflection, I agree. The original film is flawed, and often unintentionally funny. It was made for next to no money. And it’s not as if there wasn’t scope to make an American version under the original rules of engagement — this is a fiercely Christian nation whose last-but-one President once famously wondered if atheists should be considered citizens.

So how about this: Hippy nihilists kidnap the Vice-President’s daughter and take her to Nevada… for the best Burning Man ever! No? I have others…

As an aside, I don't think Tasha Robinson's review of the remake was up to The Onion's usual standard:

Much of the fun of the original 1973 film version of Anthony Shaffer’s novel The Wicker Man came from its thoroughly unlikable protagonist: Playing a pushy, prudish Christian zealot, Edward Woodward stormed through the story like a cut-rate Cotton Mather, condemning everyone around him and earning himself a fate that was simultaneously fitting and ironic.

Anyone who paid attention to the original knows that last part isn't right. Nothing Sergeant Howie did on Summerisle affected his fate. Rather, he was lured there (though I never quite understood how the islanders knew to do it) because he met the pagans' needs so perfectly.

Posted by Chris Selley at 10:45 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

September 07, 2006

Say it a thousand times and it's true

Sheila Copps may no longer be a politician, but she’s still a liar:

According to a recent SES-Sun poll, Canadians respect Harper's willingness to make decisions, but there is real doubt about the nature of those decisions. As two opposition parties weigh in, there will be pressure on the PM to withdraw Canadian troops from a peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan that has turned into war.

She must know that’s not true. Her boss never called it peacekeeping, nor did his successor. What is wrong with these people? Tell me it’s unwinnable. Tell me Canadians are too gentle to fight wars. Pitch me any kind of opinion and try to back it up, but please, we have got to stop rewriting history — especially history that’s not even five years old. The Liberal speeches are all on the record: this will be a long war; it’s not peacekeeping; expect casualties. By the standards of the Chretien and Martin governments, they were remarkably clear on the nature of Canada’s mission in Afghanistan.

This is not a partisan matter. This is the chasm between functional adulthood and mental retardation. Sheila Copps needs to mind the gap.

And then there’s this:

Harper should prepare an exit strategy, which shares the burden of war with other countries and ensures continuity in Afghanistan.

Two things:
1. Does Copps actually think we’re the head honcho in Afghanistan? Were it not for the “peacekeeping” thing I’d assume that was impossible.
2. Again, Sheila, you’re not a politician anymore. You might get away with suggestions like "ensuring continuity in Afghanistan" in a press scrum, but not in a newspaper column. The problem is that it doesn't mean anything. And if it did, I fail to see how it could possibly mean anything good.

Posted by Chris Selley at 09:49 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

September 05, 2006

Double-ouch!

…for David Miller:

Contrary to arguments by anti-airport groups, there is no evidence that Toronto's sputtering waterfront plans would be endangered by the proposed flights and no sound reason to oppose this fledgling air service.

The chequered history of Toronto's waterfront shows that a thriving City Centre Airport was no bar to development in the past. This small downtown terminal, currently providing no airline flights at all, was busiest in the mid-1980s when about 400,000 passengers yearly flew to or from the island. Ironically, that period coincided with booming condominium growth in the immediate vicinity of the airport.
…
Currently, the shoreline is far from "green" — and it cannot be transformed into a lush green space just with the disappearance of the island airport. Long-time uses include a sugar refinery on Queens Quay and ferry docks. Furthermore, the Gardiner Expressway, vast rail yards and growing GO Transit commuter train traffic all loom in the immediate area. And thousands of condominium units have already been built near the airport, with more on the way.
…
If anything, commercial flights to the airport would enhance the downtown's economic prospects. A commuter airport on its doorstep would improve the city's reputation as a well-connected business centre. Such an airport could appeal to U.S. businesses from Boston to Chicago that face increasing difficulty and delays for employees flying into major airports because of increased security concerns.

To its eternal credit, and my considerable shock, that is the official position of the Toronto Star’s editorial board. At this point, if Miller, Olivia Chow et al want media support for their Island Airport obsession, they're basically going to have to start their own newspaper.

Posted by Chris Selley at 11:01 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Not our kind of people (anymore)

If nothing else, the timing of Jack Layton's mad dash for the lifeboats is certainly suspicious. Perhaps it’s true that this isn’t the right mission for Canada, that it’s unwinnable, that it lacks “achievable, measurable goals”. It’s just rather convenient that it comes as we reach the new high water mark of Canadian casualties.

Mike from Rational Reasons left this comment on my last post about Layton’s proposed retreat:

…we should be doing something to help stabalize Afghanistan and to help the people there. In the long term that will be good for all of us. But I fail to see how imitating the the strategy and tatics of the US in Iraq and Viet Nam will accomplish that. Either we do it right, with measurable goals and the ability to know when we have finished, or we get out. Sadly we don't have that right now.

So we are there without a plan, with no measurable goals supporting a government with dubious values and members. Our fighting is actively being undercut by a supposed "Ally" - Pakistan is making deals with Taliban and pro-Taliban militias, allowing them to concentrate on attacking ur guys (Gosh, no wonder they haven't caught Bin Laden yet).

And I fail to see how, starting with the current status quo, we could "stabilize Afghanistan" and "help the people there" without to some extent "imitating the strategy and tactics of the US in Iraq and Vietnam" — the parts that involve taking the fight to the enemy, anyway. Push for different tactics, if you want. Push for measurable goals. Push for troops along the Pakistani border or measures designed to mitigate Pakistan's interference. Why pull out? And if it's not selfish, simple-minded squeamishness or preemptive political campaigning, then why now?

It's the part about the "dubious" quality of the democratically elected Afghan government (and by extension its constituents) that really bugs me. It raises the same question I asked when people were so astonished to find that Afghanistan’s a little lukewarm on Christians: Can we really have been so naïve? We went to make a deplorable situation better, not to make Afghanistan safe for Canadian tourists and missionaries. Kandahar is never going to be "the next Prague".

A CTV/Ipsos Reid/Globe & Mail poll conducted in October 2001 found roughly 72 percent of Canadians in support of “strikes against Taliban military sites in Afghanistan and terrorist camps.” As Canada prepared to move troops and material to the Middle East, the lone, shrill voice of complaint came from Alexa McDonough, who warned that bombing civilian targets would accomplish nothing (as if that was the plan). As the mission intensified, the perceived lack of humanitarian aid became a common gripe. Now we've reached the point where Layton and his partisan followers want us to pull out completely.

So what happens to the people who were to receive all this humanitarian aid, the ones the NDP was so eager to help?

Remember Djamshid Popal, the nine-year-old Afghan boy with the serious heart condition who was nursed back to health in Ottawa and Toronto? Boy, did we ever feel good about ourselves. There’s been no news of the little guy since September 8, 2005, when newspapers reported that his prospects were grim. I guess we've moved on. This stomach-turning letter in yesterday's Globe & Mail, certainly suggests so:

Judging by the response to Jack Layton's proposal to open negotiations with the Taliban, it would appear that the principal purpose of Canada's military deployment in Afghanistan is to ensure Afghan girls receive a proper education. This laudable goal might be more realistically achieved by other means. I recommend all Afghan girls be offered the opportunity to go to school here. While our schools might be underfunded, they are at least in little danger of being destroyed by insurgents. After graduation, some of these young women will likely choose to stay, helping avert our coming demographic crisis. Rather than pouring billions into fruitless overseas military adventures, our government could make a solid investment in both Canada's and Afghanistan's future. Unrealistic? Impractical? Surely less so than our government's current Vietnam-esque doctrine.

Most Canadians claimed to support the mission to bring down the Taliban, and its logical follow-on mission to help establish a stable government. Maybe it was a moment of clarity. Maybe the horror of September 11 just temporarily overrode Canadians' innate suspicion of everything American.

Either way, our concern for the Afghan people rang true, and it certainly wasn’t misplaced. But five years on, with things relatively (if deceptively) back to normal, Layton’s position, and that hideous letter to the editor, show what the poor and wretched of Afghanistan always were to these people: rhetorical devices — useful for sniping at excessive “American-style” militarism and easy, eventually, to forget about altogether. All the easier when you consider how unlikely any of them would be to vote NDP.

Posted by Chris Selley at 10:18 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Paul Martin: still relevant

His latest triumph is an uncredited role in this photo, which accompanies an Onion story: "Caltech Physicists Successfully Split The Bill."

That's funny whether they realized what they were doing or not.

(h/t Sean)

Posted by Chris Selley at 07:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 04, 2006

Ouch

Stéphane Dion's Clean Air Plan isn't exactly his.

Posted by Chris Selley at 07:30 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

September 03, 2006

Under pressure

For the sake of argument, let's accept Mark Steyn's and David Warren's contention that extreme Muslims will see in the "conversion video" further evidence of the West's weakness. If that's true, it's fair to judge Fox News' Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig for whatever (unquantifiable, but surely not disastrous) damage they've done to "our side" in the process of saving their own skins. In an ideal world, it probably would have been better if they'd said "No way, man. You can't make me say anything I don't believe, no matter what you do to me."

Note that Mr. Steyn holds western hostages to a very high standard of conduct, most famously criticizing Kenneth Bigley's "pitiful" comportment leading up to his decapitation. It appears the only hostage who did it right was Italian Fabrizio Quattrocchi, who declared his defiance ("I'll show you how an Italian dies!") and was promptly dispatched with a bullet to the back of the head.

So, how common is the sort of bravery Steyn and Warren wanted to see from Wiig and Centanni? Common sense says less so now than in decades past, but I don't know how you'd go about proving it. Gallantry and heroism certainly don't seem to be lacking among modern, professional Western militaries. Steyn devotes three paragraphs to a heroic tale of defiance from the late 1800s, in which a group of Brits and Americans was kidnapped by Egyptian extremists and refused to convert to Islam at the point of a gun. Problem is, it's an Arthur Conan Doyle novel.

Would defiance even have been bravery at all? It depends. If Wiig and Centanni are Christians, then perhaps they did let their lord and saviour down. If not, it seems to me they have only this unquantifiable assistance their actions gave the enemy to bother their consciences (a "big picture" concern that I imagine is hard to get your head around when you're blindfolded, shackled and terrified). David Warren says he "assume[s] they are not Christians" since "few journalists are", but then launches into this:

…had they ever been instructed in that faith, they might have grasped that conversion to Islam means denial of Christ, and that is something many millions of Christians (few of them intellectuals) have refused to do, even at the cost of excruciating deaths. Christianity still lives, because of such martyrs.

That's not much relevant to people who don't believe in god, eh? I for one would never hesitate to pledge allegiance to a religion if it improved my chances of survival. If David Warren told me I'd denied Christ, I'd tell him I didn't need to. It never occurred to me to accept him in the fist place.

Indeed, I think there's a pleasant connotation to the idea of extremists seeing the forced conversion as a sign of weakness, because it presupposes that they think we're all Christians. They will in fact be watching a New Zealander with a Scandinavian name and an American with an Italian name, of indeterminate religion, who value their lives more than whatever portion of their dignity was taken from them by a gang of twisted, joyless thugs. This should not be an indictment of the West. Perhaps it would have been better if Centanni and Wiig had managed to keep all of their dignity, but it says here they lost less than Steyn and Warren do when they question the fear-driven actions of innocent people held hostage by terrorists.

Posted by Chris Selley at 08:31 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

September 02, 2006

The Loneliest Multilateralist, or, The NDP's Vision for Canada

As I understand it, Jack Layton's position on Afghanistan is essentially this:

Item #1: We will pull the troops out of Afghanistan by February 2007 at the absolute latest.

Item #2: Having publicized Item #1, we will undertake negotiations with all parties, including the Taliban.

This will appeal to the squeamish corners of the Canadian left, I'm sure: war is bad, after all, and Canada is good. Ergo, Canada should not fight wars. Layton is probably aware of the logical deficiencies in his position, chief among them the laughable idea of Taliban insurgents negotiating with an already-fleeing military force. But the far left long ago resolved itself to ignoring state-sanctioned torture and subjugation of women when they're practiced by medieval theocracies that can only be removed by force.

But the status-of-women angle wouldn't be the most odious thing about sitting down with the Taliban. Canada didn't go to Afghanistan to free its women and girls — that was just a happy side effect. Canada went to Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban. No one ever said it would be quick, easy, or painless. Indeed, Jean Chrétien said exactly the opposite right from the start. Of course it's difficult-to-impossible to pursue humanitarian work with Taliban insurgents running around, but that's not the point. The mission wasn't to rebuild Afghanistan; it was to rebuild Afghanistan after destroying the Taliban. Layton is essentially proposing that we conditionally surrender to a bunch of illiterate, woman-hating yahoos that once comprised perhaps the most despicable government on earth. It is incumbent upon him to explain why the hell we would do that.

Other random notes on Layton's position:

▪ Andrew Coyne:

Leave aside what there is to negotiate with the Taliban. (Perhaps we'll only stone some of the homosexuals to death? Every third school to be burnt to the ground?) Is it to be imagined that they would be content with a share of power, a portion of the territory? The most extreme exponents of an apocalyptically extremist sect, a movement absolutely devoted to the absolute necessity of absolute rule, in which the church-state regulates everyday life down to the most insignificant detail? That Taliban?

▪ I find myself amazed at Layton's idea that Canada is "blindly following the defence policy prescriptions of the Bush administration." Canada's international partners in Afghanistan, whom Layton proposes to leave holding the bag, are as follows: Albania, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland — Switzerland, for Christ's sake! — Turkey and the United Kingdom.

If we're blindly following Bush in Afghanistan, then so is pretty much the entire western world, including five countries that are officially neutral. Or maybe there's nothing blind about it. We didn't go to Iraq, after all, along with many other nations. And it's worth noting that 13 of the countries mentioned above lost at least one citizen in the September 11 attacks.

UPDATE: The NDP has launched a petition: "Support our troops. Bring 'em home." That's what it's called, anyway, and that's Layton's position, but the text of the petition calls only for the "withdrawal of Canadian Forces from the counter-insurgency mission in southern Afghanistan". Is this just bad writing, or is Layton going to back off his "leave the Afghans to their own devices" position somewhat?

Over at McClelland's Asylum, "Raging Ranter" comments thusly:

After the troops come home, we call upon the Government of Canada to redploy them to:
A) Lebanon
B) Darfur
C) Both Lebanon and Darfur

For reasons unclear even to us, we believe that our troops will somehow be safer in these locations, and have much clearer objectives, criteria for progress, definition of success and exit strategies. We have no idea why we feel this way, we just do.

I enjoyed that immensely.

Posted by Chris Selley at 06:28 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

I need a headline, quick! No time to consult a thesaurus!

From this morning's daily book what's written on really light paper:

Tourists tough it out in water hungry Tofino

Posted by Chris Selley at 01:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack