It is now mid August and I have to wonder: What happened to summer? After a crippling heat wave that destroyed the front lawn (and will probably guarantee me a few skin tumours later in life for all the time I spent in the sun), I find myself going out at night with a sweater on just to stay warm. I would like to point out that I'm not complaining, just sort of idly curious, I may not like the oppressiveness of the 30+ Celsius degree heat that lasted almost three weeks, but I am even less enamoured of the biting cold that I have to guard myself against every winter.
When I look back over the last two months, I can't even remember anything I did that screams out 'hooray'. I worked, that's it. Ok, ok, I nearly broke my ankle at a friend's birthday party and was in so much pain I blacked out for a couple of minutes (which freaked people out enough that they called an ambulance), but that hardly qualifies as a good time; although working my way through the last four bottles of beer from the six pack I brought made up for it - a bit.
Summer is viewed by many as a time to relax, and I have no idea why. I only used to like it when I was a kid because it meant I was out of school, which I can now say that I hated with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns. I find now, however, that my favourite time of year is the fall, and if I can arrange it, I am going to use up the five weeks of vacation time that I have banked up to enjoy it to the best of my ability (and as my budget allows). To that end I have decided to spend a week in Montreal this year, my sister lives there with two of her friends, and as such I will have three potential tour guides who can steer me around the town and help me maximise the enjoyment of my stay there.
Here's hoping, at any rate, that the last of the reasonably good weather holds until the first week of September.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Friday, June 15, 2007
Out of Sight, Not Out of Mind
Been watching the news lately? You should - OK maybe not CNN with its wall to wall coverage of Paris Hilton - but seriously, watch the news, because if you pay close attention, you find out what your Canadian citizenship is worth; right now you can sum that up with three small words: Not a lot. If that didn't piss you off, then I worry about you, because it should. In fact it should enrage you. Why? Simple. If you've gotten the same picture of the current government of this (once?) proud nation that I have from the available media, you begin to realise that Steve and the Gang up on Parliament Hill will hang us all out to dry if it serves their own (party or personal, take your pick) interests.
Where to begin? First off, Omar Khadr: Picked up by the US Army in Afghanistan at the age of fifteen, and locked up in Guantanamo these last five years, he is a Canadian citizen. His crime was throwing a hand grenade at a US soldier and killing him. What were you doing at fifteen? I don't even remember, personally, but I'd bet that it didn't involve being shot at by a bunch of foreigners. I didn't even see the Soviet Union as a threat back then (I just didn't see the point - they couldn't make decent cars, for God's sake). To be fair, Omar is believed to have been raised in close proximity to Osama Bin-Laden, and who knows what that did to his young - and likely impressionable - mind. My point? This was five years ago! The man is now twenty and if the US government has its way they will keep him there until he's dead; of old age or due process is one and the same. Where the HELL has the Canadian government been? Do they even care? Where is their accountability? This Blog alone probably means I should avoid travel to the US, although I get the feeling that being white and English-speaking would get me better from the Conservative government. Not that I think for a single second that they are bigoted in any way, but they are politicians, and that does make them pathological.
Moving on to the environment. The government's stand: We'll just sit it out until the US tells us what to do. Like the planet will put Global Warming ON HOLD! Deep breath. Count to ten. Canada could have shown some true leadership on the point at the G-8 summit in Germany this year, but no, Your good buddy and mine, Stephen Harper, decided that signing his name to something that would be good and decent for the world was too much effort. Christ only knows why I expect better from the man. Citing the notion that our drive to meet Kyoto targets would place Canada at an 'economic disadvantage' if no one else (read: The U.S.) does it too, the government has basically chained our hope of having a planet worth living on to the environmental policies of the world's biggest polluter. It's probably just as well I don't have kids.
Domestic Economy. The 2005 Atlantic Accord let both Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador keep all their offshore oil and gas revenues, with no clawbacks from the federal equalization program. This year's federal budget, though, increased the equalization pot, but put a cap on payments. Naturally the provinces are mightily annoyed about this. They feel (not without cause to my way of thinking) that this constitutes a breach of contract at best, at worst, a betrayal. Harper's response - and I don't make this up - "Sue me." And it was done. Saskachewan's Premier has decided to do just that, and he is likely to be joined by others soon. What really shows Stephen's true party colours is that veteran Nova Scotia MP Bill Casey was expelled from the Conservative caucus after voting against the federal budget after being told that the party members had the freedom to vote their conscience. Probably be a while before that political character flaw gets the better of any one in the Conservative Camp.
Mark Twain once said "Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it." Well I don't see the conservatives as being smart, so that pretty much narrows things down. I intend to hang on to my citizenship, if for no other reason than to keep voting against Stephen Harper and his Band of Merry Twits. Right now, that's all the worth it has.
Where to begin? First off, Omar Khadr: Picked up by the US Army in Afghanistan at the age of fifteen, and locked up in Guantanamo these last five years, he is a Canadian citizen. His crime was throwing a hand grenade at a US soldier and killing him. What were you doing at fifteen? I don't even remember, personally, but I'd bet that it didn't involve being shot at by a bunch of foreigners. I didn't even see the Soviet Union as a threat back then (I just didn't see the point - they couldn't make decent cars, for God's sake). To be fair, Omar is believed to have been raised in close proximity to Osama Bin-Laden, and who knows what that did to his young - and likely impressionable - mind. My point? This was five years ago! The man is now twenty and if the US government has its way they will keep him there until he's dead; of old age or due process is one and the same. Where the HELL has the Canadian government been? Do they even care? Where is their accountability? This Blog alone probably means I should avoid travel to the US, although I get the feeling that being white and English-speaking would get me better from the Conservative government. Not that I think for a single second that they are bigoted in any way, but they are politicians, and that does make them pathological.
Moving on to the environment. The government's stand: We'll just sit it out until the US tells us what to do. Like the planet will put Global Warming ON HOLD! Deep breath. Count to ten. Canada could have shown some true leadership on the point at the G-8 summit in Germany this year, but no, Your good buddy and mine, Stephen Harper, decided that signing his name to something that would be good and decent for the world was too much effort. Christ only knows why I expect better from the man. Citing the notion that our drive to meet Kyoto targets would place Canada at an 'economic disadvantage' if no one else (read: The U.S.) does it too, the government has basically chained our hope of having a planet worth living on to the environmental policies of the world's biggest polluter. It's probably just as well I don't have kids.
Domestic Economy. The 2005 Atlantic Accord let both Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador keep all their offshore oil and gas revenues, with no clawbacks from the federal equalization program. This year's federal budget, though, increased the equalization pot, but put a cap on payments. Naturally the provinces are mightily annoyed about this. They feel (not without cause to my way of thinking) that this constitutes a breach of contract at best, at worst, a betrayal. Harper's response - and I don't make this up - "Sue me." And it was done. Saskachewan's Premier has decided to do just that, and he is likely to be joined by others soon. What really shows Stephen's true party colours is that veteran Nova Scotia MP Bill Casey was expelled from the Conservative caucus after voting against the federal budget after being told that the party members had the freedom to vote their conscience. Probably be a while before that political character flaw gets the better of any one in the Conservative Camp.
Mark Twain once said "Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it." Well I don't see the conservatives as being smart, so that pretty much narrows things down. I intend to hang on to my citizenship, if for no other reason than to keep voting against Stephen Harper and his Band of Merry Twits. Right now, that's all the worth it has.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Quis custodiet ipsos custodies?
"Who will watch the watchmen?" This famous line from second century satirist Juvenal has been plaguing me for a few days now, but in some twisted, prophetic way, it has come to mean something to me.
If you were hoping for a punch line at this point, sorry - because this ain't funny.
You see, while reading a recent article by Robert Fisk in the online edition of 'The Independent" of London (the complete article can be found by clicking on the link following this Mercerish rant), I have discovered that the US Department of Homeland Security is operating on Canadian soil - that's right folks; the same bunch of fun-loving government goons who get paid to throw innocent people out of the U.S. on a daily basis in the name of 'state security' have set up shop here in Canada. They may be limited to operating in Montreal's Trudeau airport, but this is something that I really think should be looked at a lot more closely.
Who knows? This could just be par for the course in major metropolitan airports, and I could just be pushing more of my alarmist buttons subconsciously again (I do that a lot, but if I didn't I'd have nothing to write about). The thing that really worries me is that this - at least as far as I can tell - is not a widely known fact. Not once have I had it even hinted at that American law enforcement agents were able to operate in Canada, without a hell of a lot of oversight from the likes of the RCMP, that is. As for the RCMP, where the hell are they in all of this, damn it! In their shoes just now with that whole Maher Arar incident having just blown up in their collective face, you would think that they would treat anything that comes out of the mouth of U.S. law enforcement's mouth as highly suspect indeed.
Right now, Canada has what must be an enviable reputation in most of the world. We take human rights very seriously extending them to all people within our borders, not because that is the law - which it is - but because that is the way we would hope others would treat us. The worrying thing for me is that if we allow ourselves to become complacent about how we treat people who come here - whatever the reason - we will begin to emulate the behaviour of agencies like Homeland Security; and by so doing lose some essential part of what makes us, if not great, then at least less dislikable.
Like it or not, if we don't watch future events regarding this issue with due care, we could very well find ourselves with watchers we don't want.
Link to 'The Independent' website - http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2469270.ece
If you were hoping for a punch line at this point, sorry - because this ain't funny.
You see, while reading a recent article by Robert Fisk in the online edition of 'The Independent" of London (the complete article can be found by clicking on the link following this Mercerish rant), I have discovered that the US Department of Homeland Security is operating on Canadian soil - that's right folks; the same bunch of fun-loving government goons who get paid to throw innocent people out of the U.S. on a daily basis in the name of 'state security' have set up shop here in Canada. They may be limited to operating in Montreal's Trudeau airport, but this is something that I really think should be looked at a lot more closely.
Who knows? This could just be par for the course in major metropolitan airports, and I could just be pushing more of my alarmist buttons subconsciously again (I do that a lot, but if I didn't I'd have nothing to write about). The thing that really worries me is that this - at least as far as I can tell - is not a widely known fact. Not once have I had it even hinted at that American law enforcement agents were able to operate in Canada, without a hell of a lot of oversight from the likes of the RCMP, that is. As for the RCMP, where the hell are they in all of this, damn it! In their shoes just now with that whole Maher Arar incident having just blown up in their collective face, you would think that they would treat anything that comes out of the mouth of U.S. law enforcement's mouth as highly suspect indeed.
Right now, Canada has what must be an enviable reputation in most of the world. We take human rights very seriously extending them to all people within our borders, not because that is the law - which it is - but because that is the way we would hope others would treat us. The worrying thing for me is that if we allow ourselves to become complacent about how we treat people who come here - whatever the reason - we will begin to emulate the behaviour of agencies like Homeland Security; and by so doing lose some essential part of what makes us, if not great, then at least less dislikable.
Like it or not, if we don't watch future events regarding this issue with due care, we could very well find ourselves with watchers we don't want.
Link to 'The Independent' website - http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2469270.ece
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
Heeeere's Johnny!
Life is strange, and my job is like the mafia, just when you think that you're out, they pull you back in. I have been working for about a month now and I have actually been a lot happier since. I have had several meetings with my boss and have - I think - impressed upon him the absolute necessity of having more staff in my old department (that being the condition whereby I would consider going back). I am anticipating a fresh round of negotiations to begin sometime in the next couple of weeks.
I realize that I have let my blog slide for a while; I have been doing some heavy reading. I picked up Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon and The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East, both by Robert Fisk (combined total of about 2000 pages of fine print). I also picked up a book titled The Deserter's Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War in Iraq, Joshua Key as told to Lawrence Hill. The latter is a very good, if occasionally brutal story, but I highly recommend it.
These books are a part of my on-going quest, I suppose, to learn about the increasingly chaotic world that I seem to be living in. I try to get as complete a picture of the world as I can and then modify my worldview to fit the facts that I have been able to acquire - needless to say, my worldview changes with every passing day. I don't doubt that this desire to see the world through the eyes of others has left me with a slightly skewed view of it, but to study the world is to study its history not its present, so I try to get the best histories that I can, and go from there.
Anyways, it's late, I'm tired, and I have at least another 1300 pages to get through.
I realize that I have let my blog slide for a while; I have been doing some heavy reading. I picked up Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon and The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East, both by Robert Fisk (combined total of about 2000 pages of fine print). I also picked up a book titled The Deserter's Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War in Iraq, Joshua Key as told to Lawrence Hill. The latter is a very good, if occasionally brutal story, but I highly recommend it.
These books are a part of my on-going quest, I suppose, to learn about the increasingly chaotic world that I seem to be living in. I try to get as complete a picture of the world as I can and then modify my worldview to fit the facts that I have been able to acquire - needless to say, my worldview changes with every passing day. I don't doubt that this desire to see the world through the eyes of others has left me with a slightly skewed view of it, but to study the world is to study its history not its present, so I try to get the best histories that I can, and go from there.
Anyways, it's late, I'm tired, and I have at least another 1300 pages to get through.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
The Rhetoric of Hope
I wrote before that I'm a news junkie, and the news these days is downright scary. I find myself asking the question 'why?' a lot when I watch things like CNN, the BBC, or even CBC Newsworld. The big one for me right now is: Why does it seem like our actions in the Middle East bring nothing but suffering? I know, I know, the question is incredibly subjective, and you could blame it on a lot of things... But why? It always comes back around to that crazy-making question.
As much as it pains me to admit this, I was a staunch supporter of the Canadian government's decision to send troops to Afghanistan, and not Iraq, but with the news item recently about civilians getting caught in Canada's crossfire, I have begun to wonder if maybe things aren't getting too hot to handle over there. The tipping point for me was the unit's commander telling the press that it wasn't their fault, it's the Taliban's fault. In all fairness, that unit was under fire, and I can't even imagine the stress that they must have been under. The fact is, it could have been a whole lot worse. Is it unreasonable of me to ask one thing; that we say that we screwed up and are really sorry? When we start looking to assign blame on others for our failings, we risk tainting our every effort in any direction thereafter. Why not admit our wrongs and ask for - if not forgiveness - then at least understanding. Surely that would not be too hard?
A lot of people ask why the people of the Middle East hate us so much. Well... they don't. By and large the people of the Middle East are just about the most generous, friendly and compassionate people on the planet; they treat their guests with great kindness and have a strong sense of community. This is probably why they have endured so much in the last thousand years, and yet have prospered. Until now. Up until now they have had one thing that has allowed them to thrive - not just to survive. That one thing was hope. Hope that if we were to come - as in Iraq - that we would give them freedom from fear. Hope that the quality of their lives would improve. Hope for a bright future for their generations as yet unborn. Hope that tomorrow they would look out on a better, more tolerant, world.
Instead, we gave them rhetoric. A patronizing 'father knows best, so run along and play' rhetoric that was used to cover for our cynicism, imperialism, and worst of all: Greed. And the people we said we wanted to save saw right through it.
I no longer want to hear the rhetoric of hope, I want to see its reality.
As much as it pains me to admit this, I was a staunch supporter of the Canadian government's decision to send troops to Afghanistan, and not Iraq, but with the news item recently about civilians getting caught in Canada's crossfire, I have begun to wonder if maybe things aren't getting too hot to handle over there. The tipping point for me was the unit's commander telling the press that it wasn't their fault, it's the Taliban's fault. In all fairness, that unit was under fire, and I can't even imagine the stress that they must have been under. The fact is, it could have been a whole lot worse. Is it unreasonable of me to ask one thing; that we say that we screwed up and are really sorry? When we start looking to assign blame on others for our failings, we risk tainting our every effort in any direction thereafter. Why not admit our wrongs and ask for - if not forgiveness - then at least understanding. Surely that would not be too hard?
A lot of people ask why the people of the Middle East hate us so much. Well... they don't. By and large the people of the Middle East are just about the most generous, friendly and compassionate people on the planet; they treat their guests with great kindness and have a strong sense of community. This is probably why they have endured so much in the last thousand years, and yet have prospered. Until now. Up until now they have had one thing that has allowed them to thrive - not just to survive. That one thing was hope. Hope that if we were to come - as in Iraq - that we would give them freedom from fear. Hope that the quality of their lives would improve. Hope for a bright future for their generations as yet unborn. Hope that tomorrow they would look out on a better, more tolerant, world.
Instead, we gave them rhetoric. A patronizing 'father knows best, so run along and play' rhetoric that was used to cover for our cynicism, imperialism, and worst of all: Greed. And the people we said we wanted to save saw right through it.
I no longer want to hear the rhetoric of hope, I want to see its reality.
Friday, February 9, 2007
Friendship is Freedom
*The following is an excerpt from a personal journal written Sept 19, 2001*
Oscar Wilde once said: "A true friend stabs you in the front". This is a very true statement, after all, if the people we know, and love, and (hopefully) respect won't tell us to our faces when we do or say monumentally stupid things, then when do we know? Probably never.
Everyone says "Friends come and go". I say "Friends come and set you free".
After all, there's a great degree of freedom in friendship; here are the ones with whom you can communicate, who will tell you when you screw it up, and will not abandon you. Ever.
Liberating, isn't it?
Oscar Wilde once said: "A true friend stabs you in the front". This is a very true statement, after all, if the people we know, and love, and (hopefully) respect won't tell us to our faces when we do or say monumentally stupid things, then when do we know? Probably never.
Everyone says "Friends come and go". I say "Friends come and set you free".
After all, there's a great degree of freedom in friendship; here are the ones with whom you can communicate, who will tell you when you screw it up, and will not abandon you. Ever.
Liberating, isn't it?
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Confessions of a News Junkie
That's right, my name is Johnny and I am a News Addict, I have been an addict for about four weeks now and I can't seem to stop watching, reading or listening to the news. It's weird how that sounds, but the fact is it's true; I can't seem to get enough news, and the sad thing is that I have learned that this kind of intellectual binge means that I have been feeding my brain a lot of crap. It's like I'm doing to my brain what Morgan (Super Size Me) Spurlock did to his body. I have discovered, however, that I can still cram a lot of useless junk into my well developed cerebellum than I had at first thought. Oh, and CNN is to journalism what MacDonald's is to cuisine.
Time for me to rant.
CNN thinks that it can pass of mediocrity and blandness to the viewing public and get away with it, and why shouldn't they? They are the biggest, therefore they must be the best; otherwise they wouldn't be the biggest, right? WRONG! Damn it! CNN has finally pissed me off. I had to subject myself to them for at least a couple of hours a day (I could have made it four, but I also subscribe to Democracy Now! and Al-Jazeera), but it finally dawned on me that CNN's entire staff - particularly that putz Wolf Blitzer - wouldn't recognize honest journalism if it blew up in their faces like an Iraqi-made roadside bomb. I mean, for crying out loud, there are unexploded cluster bombs killing children in Baghdad (go to Al-Jazeera for the full story) and the best that they can come up with is a story on how it's not good for kids to insult other kids. Well FUCK YOU Paula Zahn! I used to get eight shades of shit kicked out of me by bigger kids in school, and that, on a good day.
I think that the desire, of outfits like CNN, to keep our eyeballs glued to the channel with their inoffensive oral flatulence, could be best halted with a return to a single, one-hour per day news program. That really is nostalgic optimism getting the better of me, I know, but I want to turn on the news tomorrow and see something that will provoke me to do more than just spit at the TV in frustration. To prove my point, I submit to you, the reader, that the CBS show '60 Minutes' crams more real journalism into one show a week than CNN can put into a 24-hour day. Mind you, I have my guilty pleasures; including The Daily Show (with John Stewart), and The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos on CBC Television. I also love our local news media, it may not be slick, but at least it's relevant.
One last thing: Bill O'Reilly doesn't even rate an insult. I got better things to do... Like sleep.
Time for me to rant.
CNN thinks that it can pass of mediocrity and blandness to the viewing public and get away with it, and why shouldn't they? They are the biggest, therefore they must be the best; otherwise they wouldn't be the biggest, right? WRONG! Damn it! CNN has finally pissed me off. I had to subject myself to them for at least a couple of hours a day (I could have made it four, but I also subscribe to Democracy Now! and Al-Jazeera), but it finally dawned on me that CNN's entire staff - particularly that putz Wolf Blitzer - wouldn't recognize honest journalism if it blew up in their faces like an Iraqi-made roadside bomb. I mean, for crying out loud, there are unexploded cluster bombs killing children in Baghdad (go to Al-Jazeera for the full story) and the best that they can come up with is a story on how it's not good for kids to insult other kids. Well FUCK YOU Paula Zahn! I used to get eight shades of shit kicked out of me by bigger kids in school, and that, on a good day.
I think that the desire, of outfits like CNN, to keep our eyeballs glued to the channel with their inoffensive oral flatulence, could be best halted with a return to a single, one-hour per day news program. That really is nostalgic optimism getting the better of me, I know, but I want to turn on the news tomorrow and see something that will provoke me to do more than just spit at the TV in frustration. To prove my point, I submit to you, the reader, that the CBS show '60 Minutes' crams more real journalism into one show a week than CNN can put into a 24-hour day. Mind you, I have my guilty pleasures; including The Daily Show (with John Stewart), and The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos on CBC Television. I also love our local news media, it may not be slick, but at least it's relevant.
One last thing: Bill O'Reilly doesn't even rate an insult. I got better things to do... Like sleep.
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