加拿大 in 20 years?

My friend Riley Hennessey came up with a brilliant question over at his blog: what would we want Canada to look like in 20 years?

(Of course, by 'look' we mean strictly policy-wise looks... although it would be interesting if Canada became entirely turquoise by 2020...)

His list:

- Fully or greatly subsidized post secondary education to the equivalent of one undergraduate degree for all Canadian citizens.
- 20 new medical research and treatment facilities around the country
- full prescription pharmaceutical plans for every Canadian citizen
- clean transportation technology (ie new fuel cells, high biofuel engines in all government vehicles and federal transportation jurisdictions)
- every city able to fully treat all its sewage and drainage systems so that our rivers, lakes and oceans are no longer plagued by waste
- a complete national energy grid providing secure, clean energy access to every part of the country providing for more free and balanced energy trading between provinces.
- federal and provincially partnered low income housing projects built to run on renewable energy in every capital city across the country.

Compelled as always by my startling lack of originality, I thought I would offer my own list. Rather than trying to outdo Riley's list, I thought it would be useful to be complimentary and tackle issues not mentioned in his post. Most of them are foreign policy-related. And keep in mind that, despite the length, this list is by no means exhaustive. Here goes... In 20 years, I would like to see a Canada that...

-Has met its 0.7 per cent GDP commitment to aid. The last official line from the government was that it would make an effort to pull its aid commitments out of the current rut -- we sit at about 0.28 per cent of our GDP, or about USD $2.9 billion -- and move it up to the magic 0.7 percentage that’s been promised for decades. If we did so, we should also limit the number of countries that receive our aid, giving more dollars to fewer countries instead of a few dollars to many countries. We can compensate nations cut out of our aid roster by coordinating aid efforts with other OECD nations — we'll cover their half of one nation if they cover our half of another, for example — so that worldwide aid efforts are more focussed, streamlined, and effective;

-Has reworked the post-secondary education funding formula so that PSE grants to the provinces go through a dedicated transfer that is separate from the CST lump transfer. This transfer would furthermore be based on the student population in a province, not the province's overall population (changing this formula would more than double the amount of money Nova Scotia would have to spend on PSE — we're the hardest hit province in the country in terms of funding education because we have the highest proportion of out-of-province PSE students in Canada... nor would such a change totally aversely effect the province now benefiting from the formula, namely British Columbia);

-Has offered major tax-incentives to clean businesses and car manufacturers/sellers who pursue green-friendly business models (this should be coupled with major tax incentives for consumers to purchase things such organic foods and hybrid cars);

-HAs overhauled its military so that it can better react, independently, to nation-building situations such as Afghanistan. While this might spell the need for larger defence budgets, it is important we specialize our military so that it is best suited for Canada's specific foreign policy mandate: nation-building, peacekeeping, and post-conflict policing. There won't be another conventional World War, but there will be more Afghanistans, Haitis, and Sudans, and we need to be able to react to them effectively and on our own. No more piggybacking with the Americans. No more waiting for NATO or UNSC go-aheads over genocides that will be over before these institutions lift a finger. And no more trying to cover every base — we should concern the Canadian forces only with nation-building enterprises, natural disaster relief, and the monitoring of our oceans;

-Has reformed all provincial electoral systems so that they follow a facsimile of the PR system now being considered in British Columbia (taken from N. Ireland). Other good models for effective PR include Germany and Japan, where Canada's FPP single-member plurality system is mixed with regional proportional voting to produce a more proportional legislature. This sort of reform won't solve the democratic deficit, but it will help reduce 'wasted votes' and the widespread distrust in the effectiveness and fairness of our electoral system;

-Has recognized the increasing importance of cities by politically separating Canada's five major urban conurbations from their surrounding provinces. This would include Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, and possibly Ottawa-Gatineau. This is a major political undertaking that has worked wonders to increase rural-urban awareness and allow the sharp differences in policy needs between either to be properly addressed;

-Has made great attempts to become more involved in Asian political forums. Canada has tried to lessen its economic and political dependence on the U.S. for decades. The burgeoning economies of China, South Korea, India, and a reborn Japan present Canada with a vital opportunity to diversify its trading portfolio beyond its neighbour to the south. These four countries collectively represent nearly half of the world’s population. By 2025, they will comprise at least half of itm China and India both reaching 1.5 billion residents each. All four countries do not have the natural resources they require to maintain even a marginal level of economic modernization. As a result, China has become the world's largest importer of coal, steel, cement, oil, even grain. All of these are found in abundance in Canada. We’ve so far made attempts to court Chinese and Indian business with fairly good results. But Asia's need for oil and water and Canada's willingness to supply it may hit an impasse when the increasingly unsustainable life enjoyed in the Western portion of the U.S. suddenly goes belly-up and requires resources from abroad — namely, Canadian water and oil. We must take steps to integrate ourselves into the growing Asian political dialogue so that we are not left alone to fend off the world's only two superpowers when these scarcities become a reality. And political integration in a cooperative Asia-Pacific can also work toward fostering a better U.S.-China relationship: by tapping mutual concerns and interests, Canada can ensure that U.S.-China-Japan communication lines stay open, and that a "new cold war" over the Pacific remains a distant fantasy enjoyed only by neo-realists and Pentagon kooks;

-Has secured itself against terrorism by participating fully with international terrorist watchdogs, dedicating itself to promoting aid and human rights legislation abroad, and maintaining some neutrality when it comes to Israel-Palestine-Lebanon-Syria relations;

And a Canada that has...
-made sure that it stands the forefront of international social liberalism. Decades from now, human rights historians will look to Canada as having paved the way for future norms: women's rights, black rights, gay rights, minority rights, and a working model of immigration and integration. We must make sure that it keeps 'working.' Part of this will come about when more political power is given to cities, where most immigrants reside. Another part must come from redeveloping our immigration policies themselves. Reducing the barriers to professions now faced by immigrants will be key as our domestic population shrinks and the demand for licensed practitioners increases.

* * *

Overall, I see a Canada that has recognized the need for an international leadership that is based on promoting consensus and cooperation but that is not afraid to take charge and make committments. I see a Canada that has gone into its past looking for a lesson it can use in the future: the functional principle as a pillar of Foreign Policy. Canada is a middle power that has lost a lot of ground in international spheres since its maxim in the 1950s. It can regain that ground — and be taken seriously — by combining focussed political efforts with a dedicated stream of resources. Instead of trying to be everything to everyone and doing so without putting any money up front, Canada should focus on what it does best: playing sober second thought to sometimes-brash Western policies, and being a voice of progress in the testy international spectrum. Instead of simply talking about Darfur, we should do something about it. Instead of simply talking about human rights, we should make sure we are at the forefront of international human rights initiatives. We should limit our scattershot foreign aid to fewer countries in consultation with other OECD countries (who will do the same) so that no developing nation is “left behind,” and we should challenge our military to re-envision itself as post-conflict force that can do the job better than anyone else. Even more importantly, we should take steps to ensure that our cities do not become breeding grounds for cross-cultural violence and antagonistic socioeconomic disparities. In 20 years, Canada can regain its once relevant international voice — but it should speak only when and where, to use the colloquial, it can “put its money where its mouth is.”

Mild lukewarmedness

I've made a few cosmetic changes to the site over the last few days that I feel I should announce to all you 'dedicated readers.'

Well, actually, I've only made one cosmetic change: the 'other blogs' section of the navbar has been re-worked to include Jen Bond's space (a great source for N.S. political commentary from an ex-DSU tightass) , Kevin Wasko's space (diddo for Saskatchewan stuff, also from an ex-DSU tightass), Ann Beringer's space (a great source of random musings that really only make sense if you know Ann, which I only half do — so as you can imagine I only understand about 50% of her site, which, uncoincidentally, is also brought to you care of an ex-DSU tightass -- spot the theme yet?), and finally Li Dong's slice of the internet pie (brought to you by a Gazette loose-ass, which is much worse), a sorry excuse for a blog that is mostly about gambling and travelling through Europe on gambling spoils and getting bored of all this "church shit" Europe seems to be filled with.

(Ah, memories of my semester in England, AKA Church Tour 2003...)

I've also added little general topic headers to each blog link. In most cases, these aren't entirely accurate; for example, Nadine talks about more than Fashion, and 'more life' doesn't actually have any meaning. Unfortunately, as a full-time existentialist, part-time nihilist, and postmodernist by convenience, it is my duty to inform you that there is no objective truth and, if there is, you shouldn't bother your limited intellect with trying to figure it out. Inaccurate blog subject headers are about as accurate as anything you'll ever understand, even if they're completely off the mark. Cheers!

In other news, this blog has recently been the target of a number of annoying spam attacks. In response, I've enabled the word verification feature built into the comment system. Word verification requires a little more work from readers who want to post comments, but it also saves me the hassle of manually deleting 50 "Great site! Try Herbal Medicine" messages from each of my posts.

再见。

现在的战争不好

In response to the arguments put forth by my various poli sci colleagues, some of whom have gone so far as to say that "I am a Westerner, I support Israel":

When, I ask, will staunch supporters of Israel understand that bludgeoning a neutral country full of civilians simply does not work as a counter-terrorist strategy?

When will Israel and its detractors realize that a spiral of violence is just that — a spiral of violence that does nothing but feed terrorist ideologies, empower Israel's right-wing, and march leagues in the opposite direction of the fragile peace process that until a short while ago seemed to be finally arriving at the gates of Arcadia?

Last night I had the pleasure of hearing Bill Clinton speak at the Halifax Metro Centre. He gave his opinion on many subjects, a lot of them following the "common-sense" line put forth by moderate liberal politicians in both Canada and the U.S. You know, the "we must work together," "individuals can do great things," and "what sort of world do we want to leave our children?" fare. Much of it was not new, but almost all of it was very well said.

Of the various topics and opinions covered that evening, one struck me as being particularly relevant and, from Clinton's purview, well-informed: the matter of Israeli aggression. Clinton, above perhaps all other Presidents, took great pains to push the Israel-Lebanon-Palestine area toward a concrete and lasting peace. Although he quipped about Arafat's poor timing, it was obvious that Clinton took great pride in his push for a stable Middle East. Equal to this, it seemed, was his dissapointment with the current Israeli-Lebanon spiral into self-fulfilling violence.

Clinton's speech underlined a truth that those on the right often fail to recognize: that the terrorist ideologies fueling the militant elements of Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iran do not exist in a vaccum. They exist in opposition to an Other. Israel. And while we may never be rid Islamic fundamentalism, massive, disproportionate bombing campaigns hardly do anything but ensure that fanaticism will continue to thrive on the dead bodies and shelled-out cities we create.

This cause-effect thinking is not difficult to imagine. Do you think that, if a citizen of Lebanon has just had his house bombed, his family killed, and his life shattered, he is going to be more open to a pacifist approach to Israel? Do you that there is a chance for peace when Israel's counter-terrorist actions are percieved by almost all Lebanese as nothing more than brutish attacks on a crippled nation? Do you think there is a chance for peace when Israeli bombing runs are ruining the Lebanese economy, inspiring unemployment, poverty, and the worst international business phobia north of Liberia?

And what will this Lebanese victim do when he is homeless, poor, and unemployed, his family murdered by an incoming American-made bomb? Try to help negotiate a peace process full of powersuits, politicians and Westerners? Or pick up an AK-47?

Terrorists are bad, but they were — are — also people. It's that simple.

* * *

These views are not meant to be apologetic to terrorists, as detractors of the left often like to assert. They are instead grounded in pragmatism. To succeed in a 'war against terror', a full-hearted campaign against fanaticism is required. This takes guns, guts, and sound intelligence; crippling the ability of terrorist groups to organize and produce "terror" is, to be sure, a must.

But there is second front to any war on terrorism — that which is fought against the "ism." Terrorism is an ideology. It has prophets, philosophers, and policies. And like any fanaticism — imperialism, communism, fascism, nazism, racism, materialism — it is wholly consuming. It casts itself and the Other in stark black and white, precluding any grey areas in which rationality is the norm. To the jihadist, recruitment is a war of perception. If potential recruits percieve the world in only blacks and whites, and not greys, the war is won. And we, as the targets of this fanatacism, must seek out these organizations and remove their ability to dictate perceptions.

And, as Clinton underlined in his speech, we must also practice some greyness ourselves. We must look to education, state policies, and the individual as the root causes of fanatical thought, and work to change them. To do this, we will have to cooperate to some extent with states like Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Iran, under their current governments or the next, and push reform on Middle Eastern politics so that the fanatical few are not the mouthpieces of the moderate many. There are two ways to do this: we can invade these nations and install our own moderate governments, hoping for the best, or we can approach them diplomatically, using economic carrots and sticks to inspire gradual political and social reform. The greatest single source of Islamic fundamentalism in the world is, after all, a major client of the U.S. Wahhabist Saudi Arabia. It is the purpose of talks like Clinton's to make us ask: Where are the soldiers in this front of the 'War of Terror'?

* * *

My father was in Beirut, Lebanon just a few months ago. He came home ripe with visions of a nation that was just now throwing off the coattails of a terrible civil war and was now ready for investment, growth, and opportunity. A 'diamond in the rough,' as they say. When I broke the news to him that Beirut was being bombed by the Israeli military, and that the airport he flew out of had been airstriked, he became immediately frustrated. "When will Israel learn that violence only breeds violence?" he asked. "Hezbollah started it," I responded — and nations have since the days of Athens and Sparta had the right to defend themselves.

Still, I understood his frustration; his thoughts echoed why I shifted my focus in politics from the Middle East to East Asia — unending frustration. Frustration with cyclical violence, with cyclical recrimination, and with cyclical, unmovable, and unchangable ideological fanaticism. A sickness. A psychological fascism turned into one-part terrorism and one-part foreign policy.

The dove is no more alien to any place on earth than it is to the Middle East. But this extra-terrestriality is not instrinsic to the region's soil, monuments, or nations. It is the product only of people and their decisions to kill other people. And it is that simple.


再见。

*phew*

Weddings make two people nervous: the groom, who has just signed his life away, and the best man, who must talk about it.
-Myself, on having to give a speech at Brian Walker's wedding

...By most accounts, the test jokes went well...

You know, they tell you at these things to imagine that your audience is naked or in their underwear. Well, I'm doing that now... and all that's happening is I'm getting strangely aroused.

Another:

Leave it to Brian to pick his most loquacious, long-winded, and notoriously late friend to be responsible for A. getting him to the wedding on time and B. delivering a short speech.

And an audience favourite:

Well, as you can see from this slide, Brian wasn't born like most children but instead emerged from the waters of Lake Ontario..

My stint as Best Man went off without any complete disasters. I am sure Brian's stint as a married man will be at least as good.

* * *

In other news, my friend Li Dong is in Europe, my favourite of all continents. More specifically, he's in Italy, my favourite of all nations on that continent. And, for the time being, he's in Rome, the most historically impressive city in that nation and perhaps the entire world.

Juventus!

(Li: just avoid the pickpockets. Italian thieves, like Italian shoemakers, designers, mafiosos and sports cars, are bloody good at what they do.)

Mr. Dong has a blog dedicated to his earnings, er, travels. Do visit.

* * *

Has anyone noticed how the summers in Halifax have progressively gotten shorter since, like, I was born? It's the end of July and we've had maybe two weeks of sunshine. A message for those in charge of global warming: you're supposed to make this place like Miami, Florida, not London, England. Please mind the gap.

* * *

Finally, in other other news, it is thesis crunch time for us Political Science MAs. That mean I've got a lot of work to do between now and Mid-August. And it also means you can expect more concise-type posts — and fewer of those long diatribes I am generally known for — to be put up here.

* * *

Pfft, screw that. We're creatures of habit, after all, aren't we?

再见。

今天天气很好！

Ah, summer. There is nothing in this world quite as unstoppable as my ability to do nothing in the summer. Perhaps you know the feeling: waking up at noon, donning the same clothes you've worn for three days running, and wandering out onto the yard in bare feet (alternatively, if you don't enjoy the feeling of wet grass prodding about your bare soles, the cool tile of the kitchen will suffice).

Summer laziness, I have concluded, is the ultimate procrastinator's ecstasy. Options for the wayward procrastinateur are limitless. Perhaps a carefully positioned deck chair and the latest copy of a glossy magazine will do for today; perhaps an iPod and a cool glass of lemonade are preferred instead. Details don't matter. This sort of summer frolicking has but one prescription: all activities must reflect the spirit of the keyword 'sloth'.

(If you're still in the kitchen, you can also pick a mollusk as a keyword. Mollusks are always fungible.)

* * *

Unfortunately, I have been rather busy for the last few weeks. My "cozy" research jobs have been put aside for no less honourable a shtick(s) than: A. my best friend's wedding, coming up this weekend; and B. the Dalhousie Student Union handbook.

(Which, by the way, is set to be just as good as last year's handbook. And by that I mean that it is largely the same.)

I still find some time to do nogoodery between turns of fixing DSU rhetoric and spending money on a sport that hates me, however. (Clue: the sport's palindrome is 'flog', which, coincidentally, is a mightily apt description of how I play it.) Regular readers of this blog will know that this nogoodery entails a number of spectacular feats, some of which I tell people about, some of which I keep secret for reasons that will soon become obvious, and all of which are imprecise and unspecific and not abnormal for a 23-year old male, not in the least. And what I mean by that is that if I say "I watch a lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, lurk around Buffyverse newsgroups, and would order all seven seasons of BtVS and all five of Angel if not for the fact I am broke," it is to be taken in a most general, non-disturbing, and not-in-the-least, non-abnormal sense.

(Coincidentally, that entire statement is true, so we'll work from there.)

Other general, non-disturbing hobbies of mine include:

-Drooling at the expensive guitars listed on eBay;
-Playing loud, impressive music at the kids across the street so as to inspire phear in them;
-Squirting Spray & Wash at the ants that choose the untimely death of crawling out of a hole in my wall at precisely the same moment I am watching it;
-Flipping between Charlie Rose, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, then re-watching all three on YouTube and Google Video to get the bits I missed;
-Sending nasty emails to CTV and PBS admonishing their decision to air The Daily Show and the The Colbert Report at the same time as Charlie Rose, and vice-versa, thus causing me to experience unpleasant apoplectic fits of rage that are surely taking years off my life;
-Waiting for civilized, problem-solving responses to those letters;
-Leafing through an odd assortment of magazines that includes The New Yorker, The Walrus, Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, Maclean's, Time, FHM, Maxim, Stuff, Playboy (for the articles!), Rolling Stone, Spin (though not since May 2006's makeover), Downbeat and Guitar Weekly; and, when my subscriptions have run dry,
-Looking for the perfect Wikipedia page.

* * *
Wikipedia is one of those things I both love and hate. It is notoriously inaccurate — thousands of Wikipedia's pages are complete garbage. Many of them, however, are simply excellent, containing a wealth of information archived in such a way that regular encyclopedias simply cannot compete (take the example that most Wikipedia entries are interlinked with web citations, websites, relevant links and other wikipedia pages; also take the example that Wikipedia pages can be updated as soon as something happens; and also take the example that many of Wikipedia's pages are subject to vociferous and objective debate).

Despite the "you're potentially reading misinformation" con, I spend hours upon hours browsing Wikipedia, sifting from one linked page to another until my brain begins to twilight and my eyes see red. I do this not in search of any particularly accurate information, or any specific information at all, but instead because it doubly satisfies my summer credo: I am doing no work; I am relaxing. At the same time, I'm engorging my addiction to information and my desire to learn without breaking any sweating rules. It is an unconscious, mouse-click-driven education. It allows those of us who wish to immerse ourselves in the world to do so without actually being in it. It is a fix. It is a problem that fills your head with loose ends and words instead of serotonin and poison. And it is the perfect escape.

* * *
Lately, I've found myself reading Wiki pages on a widening number of topics: the Church of Satan, The Who, Napoleon's Italian campaigns, the Tang Dynasty, Erik Satie, Syriana, existentialism, anagrams, Hitler's wives, Bauhaus architecture, and so on. I have even gone so far as to occasionally contribute to a few pages (Dalhousie University; The Dalhousie Gazette; The Who). Other times, I simply leave comments (a few Buffyverse-related pages).

Last night I topped all of my previous searching, editing, wondering, and lusting by stumbling on this page, dedicated to explaining the Inverse Ninja Law. It is not a particularly useful page, nor is it all that eloquently written or designed. But it does just what Wikipedia does best: it satisfies an urge to digest, to know, and to read about things that are just outside the scope of regular encyclopedia radars, but sit square in the sights of the modern lexicon, the evolving language of concept, and that post-modern beast known to most as 'The Internet'.

(I'm fixed for another day. Thank you, temple o' useless knowledge. Next up: the Uncanny Valley.)

* * *
Ah, summer. There is nothing in this world quite as unflappable as my ability to do nothing in the summer. Summer laziness is indeed the ultimate procrastinator's ecstasy. Options for the wayward procrastinateur are indeed limitless. And Wikipedia, along with The New Yorker, expensive eBay guitars and the phear I am inspiring in the children across the street, are just a few ways that life chooses to say I'm sorry.

I'm sorry for all that work you have to do. I'm sorry for all that time you must spend wondering and worrying about your future, your career, your life and your health. I'm sorry for making you skinny, for giving you those ears, and for making you so anal you refuse to let anyone else cut your hair. I'm sorry for inventing pain. I'm sorry for making musical instruments difficult to play, and math frustrating to learn.

And, most of all, I am sorry for winter.

* * *

Most apologies are meaningless. As I sit out on my deck, a warm wind blowing about my feet, it occurs to me that this is one that is not. In Joseph Heller's Catch-22, a favourite book of mine, there is a character named Captain Dunbar who is entirely devoted to making time pass as slowly possible. "Do you know how long a year takes when it's going away?" he asks at one point, rhetorically. "This long," he says, snapping his fingers.

"A second ago you were stepping into college with your lungs full of fresh air. Today you're an old man."

If there is one good thing a little laziness does in this world, it is that it forces us to live in the present for a moment, free of worries, free of the future or the past, forced to take our time and develop an unmoving, unshifting realization — of existence, of consciousness, and of the nature of inaction. It is, as Dunbar aptly identified, a fix; a state of being in which we cease moving through life, as we have often the tendency to do, and finally let life move through us.

For once. The perfect escape. A bee gathering pollen. The feeling of wet grass beneath the sole of a foot. The rustle of trees. The sound of a car engine running. It is the paradox of progress, and like an encyclopedia, it is static; reality seen in an imprecise, piecemeal, and unspecific way. It is the conscious immersion in the world — without actually being in it.

* * *
Cheers to summer. We barely get three months of it. So here's to Dunbar, and to making summer laziness last in all of its imprecise, unspecific glory.

再见。

How much of a fence-sitter are you?

I spied a little dandy of a quiz over on Kevin Wasko's blog that asks users a number of questions and then tries to calculate whether they are liberal or conservative. Given the fact that political qualities such as "liberal" and "conservative" are stereotypes at best, and especially given the fact that one can be economically conservative, socially liberal, and hawkish, all at once, the quiz is doomed from the get-go. Taking the quiz isn't any better. Some of the ridiculous black-or-white questions it asks are unnerving. Should taxes be... cut to stimulate the economy and give people more of their money back, or something the rich pay more of (they can afford it)?

Uh, how about both?

And how do I choose between making our immigration policies less strict (because immigrants enhance this country) or more strict (because too many people enter illegally) when the characteristics of the policies themselves — not the strictness — is what actually needs changing? So, uh, how about neither?

(The quiz also has a few deplorable grammatical gaffs. Tsk tsk.)

In any case, here are my results:

Your Political Profile:

Overall: 20% Conservative, 80% Liberal

Social Issues: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal

Personal Responsibility: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal

Fiscal Issues: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal

Ethics: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal

Defense and Crime: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal

Feel free to try it out. Exciting!

当然

Just when you thought things might change, the same ol' shit hits the same ol' fan and splatters all over the news, again. China, in a shocking move (so shocking!) has stated that it will veto the current motion being put through the United Nations Security Council (veto!) in response to North Korea's missile launches. China says that the sanctions, strong words, and UN Charter Chapter 7 spanking called for by the Japan-tabled proposal will come down too hard on North Korea, which, as we all know, is actually quite a schoolyard wimp when it comes to surviving isolation.

*cough*

The folks in charge over yonder in the Middle Kingdom took this very same position last week and, after some deliberation, statements of sympathy for U.S. and Japan, and mild condemnation of North Korea's missile tests, it seems they have decided not to budge. Instead, they've offered their own set of demands that, if all goes according to lunar caldendar, the U.S. and Japan will probably reject.

Coincidentally, a talk radio station (News 95.7) that broadcasts out of Halifax, St. John and Moncton contacted me over the weekend to see if I could weigh in as an "expert" on their North Korea segment. Also coincidentally, but not unexpectedly, I was out of town, missed the message, and could not take them up on their offer.

Ah, the story of life.

In other news, the Earth continues to spin around the sun.

Shine on you crazy Syd

Roger Keith Barrett, the founder of prog/space rock group Pink Floyd and pop music's most famous recluse, died on Friday. He was 60.

Better known as Syd, a name he copped from a Cambridge jazz drummer, Barrett stands alongside Jim Morrison and the Grateful Dead as a one of rock's most important musical explorers, moving the fledgeling genre away from its blues roots and into newer, more sophisticated soundscapes not yet explored at the time. Barrett's psychedelic songwriting, jazz-influenced arrangements and unique singing accent (the first real British one) helped establish Pink Floyd as the premier psychedelic rock band in a world flooded with pyschedelia; in his three years with the band, Barrett helped inspire the glam-rock movement perfected by David Bowie, the ambience of progressive rock, and later artists looking to tap into Pink Floyd's modern, jazz-infused 'mood' such as Brian Eno, REM, Led Zeppelin and Kraftwerk. Scores of other bands including The Who, Phish, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Sonic Youth, the Smashing Pumpkins and Blur have also drawn from Barrett's then-peculiar dissonant guitar style, now identified as part of the founding language of punk, grunge, post-punk and garage rock.

Although Barrett quit Pink Floyd before the group recorded either of their biggest prog/space rock albums, Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall, he set the band on its track to prog-rock stardom. Barrett's longstanding mental instability formed the subject matter/inspiration for my favourite Pink Floyd Album, 1975's Wish You Were Here. A fat, completely bald Barrett (including eyebrows) allegedly sat in on the recording session of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" — a tune about him — and went completely unnoticed by the band. When Roger Waters finally recognized him, he was reduced to tears.

If you've got the time, pay homage to one of Rock's greatest (and most confused) artists; put on Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the Pink Floyd debut album that Syd penned almost by himself, or Shine on You Crazy Diamond, the aformentioned post-Barrett tribute. If you don't have either of those, The Wall, Dark Side of the Moon, a kaleidoscope, or simply a psychedelic, philosophical thought or two should do just fine.

You were caught on the crossfire
Of childhood and stardom,
Blown on the steel breeze
Come on you target for faraway laughter,
Come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr
and shine.

Island Hopping & Korean Affairs

I am off to Prince Edward Island for the weekend, golfing with a few friends and my main man Brian W. Walker, who is getting married to Angela MacNeil on July 22 here in Halifax. We're heading to Brudenell resort for one night (and golfing on the actual courses Brudenell and Dundarave), and Charlottetown for one night. Golf legends Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson visited Brudenell two weeks ago, and I haven't been to PEI since a grade 9 band trip, so this should be fun.

Before I go, a few of you have asked me whether or not North Korea's July 4/5 launches affect my thesis. Unless these launches lead to breakthroughs at the negotiating table, or World War III, my answer is an unequivocal 'no.'

For the curious, here are some points to think about:

• All of the North Korean missiles are some variation on the Soviet "scud" and are not nearly as advanced as the ICBMs you normally hear about from news agencies. If a BMD system could have a good hope of one day shooting something down, it would be a North Korean missile.

• The six Nodongs/Rodongs launched are old news. Korea has been testing them since 1993, and they've likely sold plenty of them to Libya and Syria, with plans going to Iran and Pakistan. They are nothing more than a retro-fitted, reverse-engineered SS-1c "Scud-B" type intermediate-range missiles, though North Korea could have hundreds of them, precluding the effectiveness of a BMD shield. Nodongs can easily strike South Korea and Japan.

• The Taepodong-2, which is a big brother of the Taepodong-1 tested in 1998 and is loosely built off of the Nodong design, carries more cause for alarm. Unfortunately for North Korea, the missile didn't last. This model, though very little is known about it, could potentially hit Alaska or, if improved somewhat, Hawaii.

• From its graphite-moderated nuclear facilities alone (Yongbyon), North Korea has extracted enough plutonium to build between 8 and 20 (approx) nuclear warheads. This saying nothing of the regime's alleged secret uranium enrichment programme, which was the cause for tensions in 2003, sealed the fate of the 1994 Geneva Agreed Framework (which did not cover a uranium programme) and put us into the current round of "six-party" negotiations.

• Despite all this, North Korea still has not tested a nuclear device or proved that it can mount a warhead as complicated as a nuclear warhead on any missile of any kind. My educated guess is that the right political "climate" for a nuclear test has not yet occurred — if North Korea tested tomorrow, it would do more harm than good and current allies of the regime might shift position. The same cannot be said for next week, however.

It is important to remember that, by most accounts, Kim Jong-Il the foreign leader is neither mad, nor crazy, nor suicidal. He may have colourful personal tendencies — driving luxury cars, watching thousands of Hollywood films, and kidnapping South Korean film directors are three of his favourite pastimes — but most signs point to his loyalty to Juche, the North Korean ideology of self-sufficiency, containment, and survival that has so far made North Korea the worst country in the world to live in. Invoking a nuclear or military attack on North Korean soil through threats or pre-emptive strike would be suicide for the Kim Family Regime. In other words, Kim is unlikely to nuke another nation unless he has been backed into a wall. This is because...

• The latest round of tests, rather than meaning to indicate doom and gloom to the world, are simply part of an ongoing challenge-bluff pattern that began in 1993 and in which North Korea threatens the world just enough so that it can extract maximum economic and political leverage from diplomatic negotiations, later reneging on deals and agreements, and then restarting the process with new threats. This allows Kim to consolidate domestic legitimacy, paint the U.S. as an evil "Other", and score points internationally. All of this is normally accompanied by a contradictory slew of improvements to North Korea's foreign relations with South Korea, China, Russia, and Japan, as well as other activities that challenge U.S. patience, including money laundering, illegal arms trafficking, and bucketloads of sabre-rattling.

• Negotiations have stalled not because of anything explicitly North Korean, but because the U.S. and Japan have not been able to reconcile their hard-line stick positions with the softer carrot approaches preferred by China, Russia and South Korea. The U.S. and Japan, drawing from the aformentioned 1994 GAF, on which both North Korea and the U.S. cheated, are calling for CVID — complete, verifiable, irreversible disarmament — before they will offer North Korea any carrots. The others — and China, especially, since it dumps billions of dollars into North Korea and is its primary ally — see CVID as an unacceptable ultimatum for North Korea, which fears U.S. aggression and is unlikely to oblige.

• Despite the negotiations impasse, a military solution is dangerous. Even without a nuclear-equipped missile, North Korea could do significant damage to South Korea and Japan by simply launching Nodongs as conventional missiles equipped with conventional explosives, or as part of North Korea's myriad WMD/Chemical Weapon capabilities (think Saddam Hussein launching into Israel). Seoul, a city of 9 million people (and some 15-20 million in the greater metropolitan area -- slightly larger than New York City), is within striking distance of regular North Korean artillery. If we count Japan and South Korea alone, there are nearly 200 million people within striking distance of North Korea's simplest missiles. 50 million of them live in the metropolitan areas of Tokyo-Yokohama and Seoul.

• Ignoring North Korea isn't a walk in the nuclear park, either. While you've been reading, North Korea has continued to operate and extract plutonium from Yongbyon (5MWe), build two new graphite-moderated power plants (50 and 200MWe, respectively), develop its secret uranium enrichment programme, and continue to improve its missile technology. The threat of the Kim Family Regime/leadership of North Korea actually going crazy, dying off and leaving a power gap, or simply seeing no way out, is very real, and could kill millions of people. Otherwise, North Korea may attempt to make up losses from sanctions by doing what it normally does: selling its hardware to rogue states, like Pakistan and Iran, that are connected with terrorist groups.
  
  
• Thus, we are left with diplomacy...

The Footprint is Radioactive! (大蜥蜴)

Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer, lead scientist of the Manhattan Project, quoting the Bagavad-Gita in reaction to the first atomic explosion. Los Alamos, July 16, 1945. On August 6 and 9th of that year, two similar bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing 214,000 people, most of them civilians.


If [it] is used even once, politicians from around the world will see it. Of course, they'll want to use it as a weapon. Bombs versus bombs, missiles versus missiles, and now a new superweapon to throw upon us all...
-Akihiro Hirata, playing the part of Dr. Daisuke Serizawa-hakase in Godzilla (Gojira), directed by Ishiro Honda. Toho Film Company Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, 1954.

Life as a grad student, particularly one who has nothing more to do than hand in an 80-page document after four completely stress-free summer months, is, to be fair, honest, and equitable, one of the most ambitious and glorious states of existence there is.

Such an existence is so glorious, in fact, that it leaves plenty of spare time for those of us with wandering eyes and lazy minds who wish to do nothing more than read fiction, browse the internet, watch movies, attend concerts, and flip about the vast stimulating ocean of colour that is T.V.

Had you been surfing the tube late Saturday night/Sunday morning, as I was, being an ambitious grad student myself, you would have noticed two things:

1. Very little of any worth is on at 3:30 A.M., aside from "free sex chat" infomercials and the irritating grate of the snow channel; and
2. Despite the appealing offer of "five minutes free!" worth of phone sex (plus $20 for each additional half-hour), the venerable and decidedly unsexy CBC instead aired something of some worth: a grainy black-and-white film, made in Japan, that only a cinématiste would have bothered watching at such an ungodly hour. Complete with horrible acting, a ridiculous script, and the worst special effects since Plan Nine from Outer Space caused several hundred eyeballs to bleed out of their skull cavities, Godzilla appears to be, by any modern estimation, a completely unwatchable film.

I was thoroughly engrossed as soon as I spotted it.

Old Lizard, Old Movie
Let's be clear: Godzilla (Gojira in Japanese), released by Toho Film Company Ltd. in 1954 and filmed on a "budget" that was at least a fiber or two short of a full shoestring, is a ridiculously entertaining pile of steaming Japanese celluloid. The film's special effects, which look like they were composed by a toddler with a limited collection of lego trucks and barbie dolls (and one big lizard suit), do the film no great favours. Nor does the director's decision to juxtapose the stiff, inexpressive rubber lizard suit of great city-levelling fame with a chorus of ovebearing performances that run between banal (A scientist, having just inspected a giant footprint with a geiger counter, stands up, looks around for a few seconds, and then proclaims: "The Footprint is Radioactive!") and pure camp ("We Must Kill The Beast With The Oxygen Destroyer!").

(I use Title Caps here because I feel this is the closest written approximation to the ecstatic, near-Biblical effort the actors put into delivering each line of script).

And for those of you who missed the picture when it first hit theatres, let's recap: a 127-million year old lizard is awakened by U.S. atomic bomb testing, decides to destroy Tokyo one screaming civilian at a time, breathes both fire and ice from its rubbery mouth, and is found to be impervious to every destructive device created by man save a silly little ball called the "Oxygen Destroyer" — which does just that; destroys oxygen — the ball itself allegedly invented by an equally silly little scientist named Dr. Serizawa, who wears a silly little eye-patch, is in love with another character who does not love him back, perhaps because of the eye-patch, perhaps because of the silliness, and who ends up committing suicide while frolicking about at the bottom of the ocean by cutting his swimsuit's vital oxygen tube, only after, of course, killing the giant lizard with the Oxygen Destroyer — and, oh, oh the irony.

(On an aside, according to IMDB.com the name Gojira is "a combination of the Japanese words for gorilla (gorira) and whale (kujira). It was originally a nickname given to an immense man who worked as a press agent for Toho.")

Thankfully, the unwatchable film is worth watching. One reason is the presence of my favourite favourite Japanese actor, Takashi Shimura (of Seven Samurai fame). Even though Shimura had no doubt been instructed to overact along with everyone else in the lizard-pic, he handles theatre bill well, employing silence, subtle facial expressions, and long gazes into sweet nothingness (or, perhaps, a fine Japanese dame in the production crew) to punctuate the verbal outbursts and foot-stomping sessions served up by the script. And while every character on screen calls for an immediate end to Godzilla's sushi party, Shimura's character protests, explaining that Godzilla should be studied, not killed, if only so we can find out how anyone on earth created such a big lizard suit.

Gojira is coming!
Rather than simply serve as an oasis of sobreity in a movie that is otherwise silly beyond belief, however, Shimura's resolve to 'save' Godzilla instead introduces us to an analogy that lies at the core of the film. In a crucial scene, two of Godzilla's main characters act against Shimura's wishes — they go to Dr. Serizawa's laboratory in hopes of getting the Oxygen Destroyer. But the invention is so destructive, the young Serizawa argues, that its use anywhere will alert the entire international community to its existence, a community that will want to copy it, that will demand it, and that may even kidnap Serizawa so that he may be forced to produce new plans, new documents, and new Oxygen Destroyers. Such a device, in the wrong hands, could bring the end to humanity, he argues — too hefty a price to pay just to stop just a single rampaging rubber lizard.

In the end, Serizawa uses the Oxygen Destroyer against Godzilla, burns the device's schematics, and kills himself. These are convenient plot devices that successfuly end the movie; not-as-convient are the analogies drawn between the Oxygen Destroyer and the Atomic Bomb, between Godzilla, the Pacific War with Japan, and the dominance of the "nuclear threat" over the power politics of the last sixty years.

Indeed, when all of Godzilla's overacting and cheap special effects are washed away, we are left with is a deeply serious film about the dangers of nuclear war and the weakness of man.

Enter Kim
Just yesterday, both of these were put on international display: North Korea launched seven medium- and long-range missiles into the Sea of Japan, essentially threatening the world with possible nuclear annihilation. Kim Jong-Il's brutual regime remains commited to its own survival, and the international community remains committed to thwarting it.

Elsewhere, Pakistan, India and China continue to develop their respective nuclear programmes. Russia and the former states of the Soviet Union continue to have difficulties securing and tracking their own arsenals. Israel denies the existence of its nuclear weapons, and Iran, quick to draw lessons from the invasion of Iraq and the longevity of North Korea's Kim Family Regime, is now threatening to become the first Islamic state in the Middle East to possess the bomb.

Most political scientists and nuclear proliferation experts today argue that the advent of the atomic bomb stabilized the international system — preventing a World War III, for example, and shifting international focus to transnational conflicts in the second and third worlds.

This was not an accepted truth in 1954. Dated as it may be, Godzilla brings us back to the laboratories of the Manhattan project and puts us in an environment where, facing a threat of unprecedented scale, the development, construction, and use of an equally unprecedented weapon was ordered.

Taken in today's context, the "wrong hands" Serizawa was so afraid of can be closely aligned with North Korea, with Iran, and with Pakistan's Abdul Qadeer Khan, who sold nuclear technologies to (among others) terrorist organizations, weapons dealers, and all sorts of regimes we in the West would normally classify as totalitarian, autocratic, and "rogue." The era in which only the great powers control nuclear arms has long since passed, of course, but it may only be now that the repercussions of atomic technology in "the wrong hands" — i.e., terrorists — may become clear and present. The lukewarm successes of IAEA nonproliferation efforts, the failure of the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and the stalemates of the bilateral and mulilateral talks in North Korea should all serve as a wake-up call for the West. But we're still asleep. The U.S., the UN, and the whole of the international community still chooses to ignore India and Pakistan's nuclear ambitions, capabilities, and dangerous first-strike policies; Israel's nuclear arms remain undeclared and unmonitored; the ABM treaty has been thrown out without a suitable replacement; and no movement has yet been made toward a realistic solution in North Korea.

Godzilla raises questions: can mankind be trusted if given the ability to destroy itself? Can nations and groups be trusted to work together, responsibly, or will the weakness of man prevail? And what would it take to move us toward the former and away from the latter?

These are questions that still need answers. The footprint is radioactive, indeed.

Subterranean Homesick Liberals

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

Bob Dylan put it best. Although it is now cliché to quote Dylan in any context — and particularly offensive to quote from the tune transcribed above — there's a reason Dylanites have been condemned so. Writing in 1963, Bobby painted a stirring picture that frames almost any political or social conundrum: the problem of change, and resistance; the infaliability of truth, and denial; and the danger of rot and decay. Dylan is so prescient because — this plain truth tells us — 'times' will always be changing, whether we realize this or not, whether we want this or not, and whether we act on this or not.

Likewise, Bob Dylan's message will always be an appropriate anthem not only for both young and old, but for reawakenings, for change, and for that very important realization that, as Edmund Burke is rumoured to have put it, "all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

Perhaps more aptly:

"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts."

The acumen of Dylan and Burke was certainly on hand yesterday when my friend Riley Hennessey quit the Liberal Party of Canada. After a decade of membership, volunteerism, dedication, and sweat (and Lord knows does Riley like to sweat), Mr. Hennessey has put down his banner, cleared out his shelves, and taken up with yours truly in the great chasm of non-alignment, of non-partisanship, and of those who see a future in party politics but, alas, no party for the future. It's quite a sight.

再见。

Make a wish... 今天是加拿大的生日！

Happy Belated Birthday, Canada. For an old dame of no less than 139, you're looking pretty damned good. Except for the fact that you're completely bald up North, of course. But hey, who's looking?