Sarkozy and the Burqa

French president Nicolas Sarkozy's recent controversial statements about the status of the burqa or niqab have divided the French blogosphere (according to a news article I read somewhere). No big surprise there. The complete veiling of Muslim women has always been something of a controversial issue in the West, so it's no surprise that such a strong stance against it, in a country with the largest Muslim population in western Europe, would draw considerable comment. Especially since the small number of veiled Muslim women in France is growing.

In a statement from Verseilles on Monday, M. Sarkozy said that to veil or not to veil was not a religious issue, but one that dealt with the subjugation of Muslim women, and finally that "la burqa n'est pas la bienvenue sur le territoire de la République française," (the burqa is not welcome in the French Republic).

"In our country, we cannot accept women imprisoned behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all
identity. That is not our idea of dignity for a woman."
- Nicolas Sarkozy, translation by me from this article

It isn't, or often isn't, a strictly religious issue -- I'll give M. Sarkozy that. But his comments betray an enormous ethnocentrism on his part. Westerners tend to view the niqab, the burqa, and even the hijab as a restraint forcably imposed on Muslim women by their misogynist or mistrustful male relatives, garments that keep women in their subjugated place. However, Muslim women tend to have a very different view of the role of veils. Ladies, how many of you have noticed a marked increase in wolf-whistles, creepy compliments, and other generally pervy behaviour on the parts of strange men (frequently on public transit or at stoplights for some reason) during shorts-and-t-shirt weather? Muslim women have figured this out, and they've realized that shapeless clothing makes you invisible to creepy pervs. For them, being veiled is not about being subjugated or objectified -- rather the opposite. And they have different standards of what is considered appropriate. In the same way that you wouldn't wear short-shorts or a tube top to your job at the bank, Muslim women don't want to go around with their necks and hair hanging out there for just anyone to see.

That being said, M. Sarkozy has a badly-phrased point. The burqa "issue" is one that goes back -- last summer, a veiled Muslim woman was denied French citizenship. Although the report made little mention of her niqab, the media made much mention of it, suggesting that the xenophobic immigration officials just wanted to keep Muslims out of the country. However, the real reasons for citizenship denial were rather more alarming.

A report from a French government commissioner submitted to the council said the woman told officials she was unaware of her right to vote, and would only remove her veil after men left the room. "She lives in total submission to the men in her family ... and the idea of contesting this submission doesn't even occur to her," the government report said.

There is nothing wrong with denying citizenship to someone who is unaware of their right to vote. Citizenship is far more involved than merely living in a country. Citizenship requires civic, social, and cultural education. To become a citizen of a new country implies a willingness to learn about and fit into it. Not being aware of your right to vote could not be phoning it in more. If this woman wanted to be a French citizen, she could have at least glanced at the workbook.

Bearing in mind that citizenship means accepting and integrating into a new culture (not necessarily abandoning your old culture, but not just taking advantage of the economy and living standards of a new country), a case can be made for abandoning veils. Eye contact is extremely important in Western culture, and we become unnerved and a bit weirded out when we are speaking face-to-face with someone we can't identify visually. And yes, women who choose to wear the veil must understand that it is perceived very differently in the West and that there are some who are going to feel pity and assume that it is a sign of subjugation, no matter the actual reasoning behind it. Perhaps those who criticize M. Sarkozy for stigmatizing and marginalizing Muslims in France should consider that, by choosing to dress differently from the traditional garb of the country in which they have chosen to live, these women are marginalizing themselves.

Pro-life murderers: a further exploration of mental deficits among select members of the Religious Right

There's been another abortionist shooting -- the first since 1998, but alarming nonetheless. The man was shot on a Sunday morning, while in church. I am sure that the pro-life groups, not to mention Jesus, are very proud of you, Mr. Roeder.

Probably the vast majority of people (most of those involved in pro-life groups included) can condemn this as anything from a really bad course of action to a crime against humanity. But, like many fundies in the near-theocratical USA, certain people have slightly disturbing views on the matter. From the New York Times article:

'Of Dr. Tiller’s death, Mr. Leach said, “To call this a crime is too simplistic,” adding, “There is Christian scripture that would support this."'

Oh. My. Fuck. For the benefit of Mr. Leach (and perhaps, unfortunately, others, who do not understand that disestablishmentarianism was one of the founding principles of America), let's review what "crime" really means.

Crime (noun):

1. An act committed or omitted in violation of a law forbidding or commanding it and for which punishment is imposed upon conviction.
2. Unlawful activity: statistics relating to violent crime.
3. A serious offense, especially one in violation of morality.
4. An unjust, senseless, or disgraceful act or condition: It's a crime to squander our country's natural resources.

Apparently, Mr. Leach missed the part where it did not say, "An act not supported by Christian scripture. KJV only. Acts condemned by other religions still fair play." Because the act perpatrated by Mr. Roeder quite clearly fits definitions one through four (minus the stats bit).

Perhaps yet more disturbing were assassin Scott Roeder's apparent motive. You have to give credit, however begrudgingly, to someone who stands up for the defenseless and all that s/he believes to be good and right.

Someone named Scott Roeder posted a message on the Operation Rescue blog about Dr. Tiller that read, in part: “Tiller is the concentration camp ‘Mengele’ of our day and needs to be stopped before he and those who protect him bring judgment upon our nation.”

However, someone who's just trying to chuck a scapegoat on the flames in order to save his own ass from "judgement"? You know, Mr. Roeder, I am not sure that offing a guy in church is the best way to avoid God's wrath. Jokes aside, statements like the above are apalling all on their own, even without the accompanying murder.

The National Post has a sense of humour

After Michaëlle Jean's controversial seal heart eating shennanigans (which, in my opinion, was awesome on several levels) and Europe's heart-stopping horror, and all this being in the wake of the EU's seal product ban, the National Post has demonstrated an understanding of satire. NP blogger Matt Gurney today wrote part one of a (implicitly) series on the horrors committed by Europeans for the sake of cuisine. The first harmless, helpless creature? The snail.

These helpless creatures' defences have proven no match for the cruelty of man. For thousands of years, they have been hunted and subjected to bizarre tortures before being consumed as a delicacy by heartless and out-of-touch Europeans.

From Barbaric European Food Practices, Part I: The snail

I was as surprised as you and my officemates were to find this delightful bit right of the National Post's yellow banner, but there you have it. If we can expect more of the same from Mr. Gurney, I'll finally have more reason to read the Post than idle wondering about what the right-wingers are saying about things.

Stop Banning Baby Seals!

So the EU wants Canadians to stop cruelty to animals -- well, the cute ones, anyway.

The EU has banned seal products, in a sense. They can still be imported and even sold, just not promoted or advertised. Basically, Europeans who want some sweet sealskin or delicious healthy seal oil now need to whisper discreetly to the shopkeeper and take their purchase home in a brown paper bag. The reasons for condemning the seal hunt are about as obvious as it gets: baby seals are freaking adorable.

Condemning the death of adorable animals is about as uncontroversial a statement as you can make (usually), roughly on par with declaring that you are in favour of world peace or fewer reality TV shows. This is probably why so many celebrities oppose the "seal slaughter".

However, the reasons for supporting the Atlantic seal hunt are rather more complex. Canada's 2007 export of seal products was worth about $13M, a small but nevertheless significant amount. An estimated five to six thousand people are to some degree employed in sealing during the season. Some say that the bans are really unnecessary and that a free market should decide the seal hunt's fate. But with its bad press, well, the fate of this industry does not look good. Imagine this:
JANE: Hey, I love your jacket.
SUE: Thanks, it is made from dead baby seals!
Sue may as well hang a dead puppy around her neck. (Also, Jane and Sue are speaking Norwegian since 80% of sealskin goes to Norway.)

Opponents of the seal hunt need to ask themselves exactly what makes the seals so special, other than the fact that they are cute. A (slew of studies) found clubbing to be the most effective way of rendering seals dead, or at least brain dead. The seal population is anything but endangered, with caps being set on how many seals can be caught each year (actual numbers often fall quite short of these caps). No one is issuing a ban on the live boiling of lobsters, a more ugly and delicious source of meat. Most non-Muslims couldn't care less about the cause of death of their hamburger, at least when there are no mad cow scares going around. And if people had decided that the fact that chickens running around after their heads are cut off was indicative of severe pain and cruelty, there would be quite a hole in the fast food industry. Hell, it looks like all these celebrities and Europeans care more about baby seals than, say, waterborded US war prisoners or Tamils caught between terrorists and government armies.

The biggest proponents of the seal hunt ban are, of course, the folks at PETA. For those of you who are unaware, PETA is the organization that tries to convince people that cruelty to animals is wrong because hot naked girls think it is wrong, and also think that using human breast milk as an alternative to cow's milk is more humane. The sophists over at PETA have invested significantly less energy in saving lobsters and political prisoners.

The people in parliament want the Canadian Olympic Team to incorporate sealskin into their uniforms to help the cause. Opponents say that this will unnecessarily politicize the games. Superficially, sure, it is a political statement. But really, while it might be controversial to those who can't see past a whitecoat's big dark eyes, is it really any more "political" than any athlete wearing or using his or her country's trademark products? To anyone who thinks logically, it's about as inhumane as serving maple syrup.

Yet More Coalition Banter

A handful of things have been preventing me from blogging lately, namely school work and personal frustration. But I have definitely been feeling guilty about it, and I seem to be arguing politics fairly regularly through Facebook and e-mail anyway, so I suppose I may as well do it on my blog (isn't loudly trumpeting one's views and the exclusive validity thereof the reason anyone even gets a blog, anyway?)

I doubt I have anything very original to say re: the coalition, given the plethora of discourse that already exists on the topic, but I feel compelled nonetheless. Canadians discuss politics when they aren't exciting, so this shouldn't be at all surprising. So. The Coalition. A coup d'état spearheaded by the scattered and discordant left plus the evil separatists, that is bent on deposing the democratically-elected right and sending Canada straight to hell, of course. It couldn't be simpler*!

*Valid only for right-wing media.

Where to even begin? A coup d'état is a sudden and decisive action in politics, esp. one resulting in a change of government illegally or by force¹, or at least the "illegally or by force" is what is usually implied when the term is used. A coalition, on the other hand, is a group of usually two to six male lions that drive off and replace the male lions in a pride in order to mate with the females and protect the resulting offspring. Ooops, wrong definition. I meant to say, a coalition is completely legal, and they happen in Europe all the time. As I'm sure anyone who has heard the phrase "62% Majority" (i.e. Canadians who read or watch the news, or exit their houses from time to time) is aware, the general argument contre the "coup" and "democratically elected" defense is that 62% of Canadians who voted said "I'd prefer someone other than the Tories to be in power." Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that 62% of Canadians support a coalition government, but, well, there are certain implications . . .

So, let's say that the left gets its shit together and does this thing. There is still the issue of the evil, soul-sucking Bloc whose main goal is to fuck up Canada as much as possible. I hear they eat kittens, too.

Bloc MPs, as depicted by the English media. Lucky for Harper that his patronus was a prorogue!

Wait, NEWSFLASH! It turns out that the Bloc is not made of evil and darkness, nor are they actually this poorly Photoshopped in real life. They are just regular MPs, elected by (whether anyone likes it or not) regular Canadians, and are a regular part of the House. The only difference is that they are epically disinterested in anything outside of their own province. In fact, the Bloc hasn't been running on a platform of separation for a while now. See for yourself.

Contrary to what the ROC seems to fear, a coalition with support from the Bloc does not mean that Quebec will be setting up boarders and issuing passports tomorrow, nor will they be holding a referendum, nor will the rest of Canada be forced to speak French, join unions, and close stores at 5 PM on weekdays. What those who rant and rave about the Bloc wanting to "hurt" Canada don't realize is that the Bloc simply doesn't care enough about the rest of Canada to "hurt" it. All they care about is Quebec getting a sweeter deal.

Interestingly enough, I take Bloc-related complaints from the Québécois more seriously than those coming from the ROC. One of my friends (interestingly enough, a federalist) is baffled that the Bloc, who of course did start out on the whole idea that Quebec should be independent, should be taking the side of the guy responsible for the Clarity Act. (This conversation took place before the Iggy Takeover.) "They are either dumb, or hypocrites," he said. He was no more supportive of Dion teaming up with his "mortal enemies" (and this is where the credibility stops for me).
"So basically you are against them putting aside their differences for the good of parliament?"
"Yes."
Welp, there you have it. Partisanship is the biggest barrier to national functioning.

Speaking of partisanship. I would have no problem with the Tories governing for a while -- I mean, they are the party that the fewest Canadian voters hate, fair and square -- if Harper was willing to play nice and share. The Conservatives got 38% of the vote, you can't argue with the facts. But that means that they did not get 62% of the vote, and the fact of a minority government is that you actually cannot just flip the bird at those who did not vote for you (or else you risk losing the confidence of the House, surprisingly enough). Harper, your buddy Charest just won a majority in Quebec and he's willing to play nice with Pauline Marois, or at least he says he is. Did you not think, "Hey, maybe stacking the senate with conservatives might piss off liberal and even centrist Canadians"? Or "Re-opening the gay marriage debate would be really cool, except that the vast majority of Canadians don't really seem at all interested in that"? If you're going to pretend that an election is winner-take-all, well, don't be surprised if the kids in second and third place decide to beat your ass.

Coalition Rally on Parliament Hill - Video

As rallies go, this one had all the makings of a good one: clever signs, lousy weather, counter-protesters, and upbeat fiddle music.

This was slapped together a bit rapidly, but is still decent. Unfortunately, I arrived a bit late and didn't get any decent footage of anyone saying anything good. But there is plenty of clever sign footage!

(I apologize for the quality. I am still getting used to iMovie. I'll post something of higher quality within the next 24 hours.)

Liberal Leadership Litigation

As we all expected, poor Mr. Dion did the smart thing and announced his resignation on Monday. However, he surprised us all -- and showed he had some fight in him -- by resigning to delay said resignation until May, when the Liberals will swarm Vancouver in an attempt to get elected leader of the party. Oh boy, oh boy, who will it be, this new leader?

Top contenders as of right now seem to be Bob Rae and Micheal Ignatieff, the two front-runners in the last Liberal leadership race before Dion snuck up with a surprise-attack Kennedy endorsement. But are either of them up to the job? I mean, it was bad enough two years ago, what with the Sponsorship scandal and Jean Chrétien's book and Canadians hating Paul Martin's big dumb face. Now, with their worst showing in over a century (that sounds WAY longer than "since Confederation," for some reason), the Grits are going to need some serious horsepower to pull them out of the mud. They'll need someone who can demonstrate strong leadership, ensure that the party isn't so desperately cash-strapped, and inspire confidence in voters in the way that Dion didn't seem to be able to.

While Rae and Iggy would probably objectively make good leaders, they both have baggage. Iggy the egghead spent 30 years gallivanting around the USA while Rae let the Ontario economy go down the tubes as premier in the 90s, before abandoning the Ontario NDP for the federal Liberals (the fact that his reasons for leaving were probably totally accurate is beside the point!).

So, I propose a few other names for Liberal leadership.

Indiana Jones
circa Raiders of the Lost Ark

Will pointed out that if Indiana Jones was a spry, treasure-hunting, Nazi-thwarting professor in the '30s, he is almost certainly dead by now, to which I reply that Indiana Jones is a fictional character and therefore cannot technically die. Dr. Jones almost certainly has tenure, considering he seems to be able to take long sabbaticals from work (maybe he simply doesn't lecture during the summer semester) and often be on the questionable side of the law without ever being fired, or even subject to a performance review. So we can safely assume that he has the intellect and dedication necessary to run a party and hopefully a country. After all, politics and Judeo-Christian history are practically the same thing, right? Furthermore, he's a doer as well as a thinker, and has an uncanny ability to talk his way out of situations before busting out the gun and/or whip.
Leadership skills: He can lead crusades and raiders, why not a parties and countries?
Financial force: He doesn't seem to be independently wealthy, so we are assuming he gets funding for his crazy adventures from the university. If you can convince your faculty to give you money to go find the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail, you win the Lifetime Fundraiser Award.
Voter confidence: If he can woo the female vote as well as he can woo the females, he is basically set.


Batman

Batman is a total BAMF. No one is going to mess with him. Unfortunately, the House of Commons is more about verbal debates than ass-kicking, so Batman might be at a disadvantage there, but he looks so tough that it is going to be hard to criticize him for fear of what might happen in the parking lot afterward. Bruce Wayne is a business magnate, so we can feel confident that he knows what he's doing with the economy, and if his cabinet is anything like his collection of advisers in The Dark Knight, it will be iron-clad.
Leadership skills: So-so. He's more of a figurehead than a policy-maker, that's for sure. He had better find a Harvey Dent to be his deputy if he ever gets elected.
Financial force: Again, Bruce Wayne is a billionaire, so his head for finance should be good. At least you can rest assured that he will pay his tab after the leadership race is over.
Voter confidence: Questionable. Batman may not be the Prime Minister Canada wants, but the one it deserves ... or needs ... something like that.


Vladimir Putin

Sometimes I wonder if Vladimir Putin is a man, or a drop of some war god's testosterone-laden sweat made flesh. Putin's CV of ass-kicking could rival that of Batman -- Putin does it without a fancy suit or gadgets. Now, he even has a DVD out to help you learn judo! You too can fight tigers, Georgians, and nosy journalists.
Putin has an advantage over the other contenders on this list: political experience. He was President of Russia for a while, and then he decided to be Prime Minister (the electoral process is so messy, wouldn't you agree?). He might have a bit of a difficult time putting together a caucus, however, as nervous MPs look the other way while thinking about polonium cocktails.
Leadership skills: Proven to be absolute, even if it means circumventing democracy (or the spirit thereof).
Financial force: Russia's economy is no longer crap, so someone is doing something financially right. In a pinch, he can always sell more judo DVDs, or pose for a Vladimir Putin swimsuit calender.
Voter confidence: Depends on the demographic. He's already a political sex symbol, and fascists will love him. But the Ukranians aren't so crazy -- Putin would lose the prairies like Rae would lose Ontario.

E-night

If the Conservatives get a majority, I swear to fuck, I am moving to Canada Europe.

The bitches scooped me!

While I sit here, feverishly working away on my Sexy Candidates list (and I do mean feverishly -- I've caught the nasty cold that's been going around campus, and the Dimetapp is not helping me work), the CBC has scooped me.

Now, they didn't necessarily take the "sexy" angle. Theirs was "candidates under 30". But since "sexy" and "under 30" are often synonymous when it comes to politicians, they scooped me on eight of my twenty-five Sexy Candidates. My only hope is that they didn't do the article in French, so I can at least reach the francophone community first.

You can read the article here, but I'd kind of rather you didn't.

Conservative comedy

Oh, how dark it is.

Gerry Ritz's "cold cuts" joke may be old news-wise, but I am still getting Facebook invites to join a group calling for his resignation. And seriously, WTF?

I may have an incredibly dark sense of humour, but that's not why Mr. Ritz's joke doesn't bother me. The fact that it bothers so many other people so much is what bothers me. This is a clear case of PC-gone-wild if I ever saw one. I don't think it's a stretch to say that even the families of the victims -- oops, I mean, terminally bacterially challenged individuals -- are going a bit crazy (although I'll concede that the Wayne Easter line was a bit much).

And finally, I've found someone who agrees with me, in a fun tongue-in-cheek kind of way: Tabatha Southey, my new favourite Globe & Mail writer.

"Stephen Harper shouldn't axe anyone for demonstrating what Liberal leader Stéphane Dion calls 'a lack of sensitivity.' That would be like the New Democrats firing someone for smoking pot. Mr. Harper has long had the insensitive vote locked up. No reason for Mr. Dion to keep congratulating him on it."

You can read the full article here: Wait, what if the Conservative Party is just an elaborate, high-concept comedy act?

Election time: attack ad fun

They say that politics is the second-oldest profession. If that's true, then attack ads must be the oldest form of ad. Back when "politician" was synonymous with "despot", the original attack ads were literal attacks, as in, "Accept my authority or I will attack you with my warriors." But then the agricultural revolution started getting really popular, and things like art and increased literacy meant that just having a bunch of soldiers and a state religion wasn't enough; you had to kind of convince the population at large that you were the right guy to make laws and declare wars and stuff.

I doubt that many elections, or wars of conquest or civil wars or revolutions, have been won by leaders who said, "You know, the guy currently in power is pretty cool. But I might also be pretty cool." No, you have to convince the masses that the guy currently in power is leading them on a path straight to hell, and that if you get in power, they will all become richer, happier, and better-looking. Or, if you are the guy in power, that if you get deposed God will rain down fire from the sky as punishment. Thus, the attack ad was born.

For a while, literacy was awesome for this purpose. You could appeal to voters' intellects to convince them that you were the right one to lead them into costly and sometimes unnecessary wars. Then universal suffrage happened and voter turnout became kind of a big deal; luckily radio and TV were invented shortly thereafter and you didn't have to appeal to voters' intellects anymore. Thank God.

Today (and I mean literally today, because for the purposes of this blog everything else is irrelevant), most political ads contain a combination of attack and promotion. This is the best way to go about it, because undermining your opponent does nothing unless you make yourself look good as well. But not all ads have the same combination. Observe:



The Liberals, perhaps assuming that the last two years of the Conservatives' minority government were attack enough and that Canadians want slow, gradual progress anyway, have run a fairly clean television campaign and mostly base their ads around the big, exciting new Green Shift platform. That's not to say they don't sling their share of mud, though. The Young Liberals, for example, participated in a smear campaign re: the Chuck Cadman affair as well as the In-and-Out Scandal the day after the RCMP raided Tory HQ. And just because they don't air attack ads on TV doesn't mean they don't exist: hi.im.a.liberal.ca.

The NDP and the Bloc have been kind of equally attack-y, although the NDP practically makes criticizing other parties part of their platform (Bob Rae knows what I'm talking about). And this is not necessarily a bad thing; duly noted criticism is part of any healthy democracy. Unfortunately, this is not something on which to build a government (Bob Rae knows what I'm talking about). But their caustically sarcastic New Kind of Strong ad is still a lot of fun. Attack ads can often be caustic, but they are rarely caustically sarcastic.

The Bloc was a little late in rolling out their ad (only just posted today on their website), and it's exactly what you'd expect from a Bloc ad: a mime who is sad that the Québecois don't get enough respect. I cannot fathom why M. Duceppe thinks that Quebeckers deserve "plus de respect" since they get plenty of it as it is - certainly financially! - but if he didn't, he wouldn't have a platform. As anyone who knows me knows, I absolutely adore French Canadians and Québec, but as anyone who has ever come close to mentioning separatism around me knows, don't even get me started. Hey Gilles? Why don't you complain about federal funding to Alberta? And why don't you complain about your culture getting the shaft to the Acadians? Still, the Bloc's chanson de campagne is kind of fun, in the same way that Mes Aïeux's Chanson à boire is fun.

Finally, the most attack-y: the Conservatives. And it's understandable that they be attack-y. When you're the guy in power, it's more about undercutting the other guy than building yourself up. Well, assuming your government is good, anyway. Maybe that's why they released the promote-y ads as well. But it's the promote-y ads I don't really understand. There are two extremes when it comes to evaluating politicians: the American way, and the French way. The American way says that a good politician is "good" in every aspect of his life: he goes to church, he has a wife and 2.5 children, the only time he ever drinks is a glass of red wine once a week for the health benefits, and everything he knows about marijuana cigarettes, he learned from Reefer Madness. You solicit gay sex in an airport bathroom just once, and all of a sudden, you are no longer a good candidate for government. In France, you can be caught sniffing cocaine in a blonde wig and high heels, and even though every man, woman, and child in France will read about it in the papers, if the economy is good you have a reasonable shot at re-election. Canada is somewhere in between these two extremes. Stephen Harper seems to think that we lean much more towards the American way. "Wow, Stephen Harper plays music with his kids? Well, that makes me feel much better about the copyright bill!" Am I the only one who finds it ironic that Stephen is styling himself as a "family man" only two years after he shook his kids' hands on the first day of school? (Say what you will about the triviality of this matter, it is not normal not to hug your elementary-aged children on the first day of school.) Weird promote-y commericals aside, the Conservatives' attack website against Dion, notaleader.ca, is still the most fun attack-related material I've seen since the writ dropped. Admittedly, I am the exact demographic it's targeting -- and it's totally working. Last post, I talked about the fun of "make-your-own-attack-ads". I couldn't find any at that time, but apparently Google failed me, because notaleader.com has one. Unfortunately, they had to infringe some copyrights to create this bit of fun, and a few of the copyright holders (TVO) were unimpressed. Maybe that's why when I tried to access it today, it wouldn't work. I foolishly believed that it was easy to load websites.

Once more, stay tuned for more Election time fun. Next time, how to talk to a friend who refuses to vote.

Edit: A Liberal attack ad!
One finally made it to the televised arena after all, but since no one actually watches TV anymore, you can see it here: Harpernomics ad
This changes the entire spectrum I so cleverly photoshopped up there. I'm not going to re-photoshop it though. I have two papers and a magazine article to write in the next 72 hours!

Election time!

Everybody loves election time!

Although I confess that my sample group is skewed, as the majority of the people I hang out with on a day-to-day basis are from the Political Science and other politically-oriented departments at my university (politically affiliated boys totally put out). We must also keep in mind the number of taxpayers who are unimpressed with another multi-million-dollar election to pay for. We must keep in mind the members of the electorate for whom the last general election was practically last week, not to mention those in Ontario who are scratching their heads and thinking "Didn't we just have an election last October?"

There is a disturbing number of registered voters who engage in a number of disturbing practises, including but not limited to:

• Voting for a party because it's the same party for which they've voted for the last 65 years
  
• Voting for a party because it's the party their parents vote for
  
• Choosing a party to vote for using methods not much more sophisticated than closing their eyes, waving their arms around, and placing an X wherever the pencil lands
  
• Ignoring the 18,000 sets of verbal instructions and diagrams, and marking the ballot improperly
  
• Not voting

But sometimes I wonder if we can really blame them (for all but marking the ballot improperly). In a perfect world, everyone would act like they belonged to the Political Science department, and general elections would be as exciting as the Olympics, the playoffs, and New Year's Eve put together. On election night, everyone would get together at the bar or their friend's place to gather round the TV and trade projections as to the outcomes while the CBC played the Election Night in Canada theme (too soon?). Sadly, this is not the case. Much to my bafflement, people don't discuss politics around the dinner table or water cooler with the same frequency that we do in the campus bar. Or at least, not analytically. For many, many people, general elections are just another nuisance that hog media attention for a month and add another errand to the to-do list on E-day. And let's be honest: your vote, all by its lonesome self, doesn't actually count. But, like the 7 cents of change you drop in the Tim Horton's charity box, it's part of a greater whole.

So, putting all that depressing cynicism behind us, let's discuss the exciting parts of the general election!

Campaigning is fun, and not just for the free food. Interesting people campaign. If someone is campaigning, or even just showing up at a rally or debate, it is indicative of the fact that they care. How much is open to debate, but at least enough to drag themselves on down. Youth events have the palpable taste of youthful enthusiasm, making them feel like a smarter, cooler frosh week where you don't have to hide your alcohol. The conversations might not be objective, but with a little prompting, they can certainly be analytical. Best of all, you don't need to prove your party allegiance in order to go campaigning, which means that theoretically you can campaign for as many parties as you like. Be careful though, lest you be accused of being an ideology whore.

Speculation is fun. The conversations at the campus pub get more heated and urgent. And you learn things, sometimes more than you did in the lecture you just left. For example, last provincial election, I learned that there are blue Tories under the age of twenty-five.

Attack ads are fun. So far, my favourite is the wickedly clever DionBook and Excuse Generator from the Conservatives' notaleader.ca. During the 2004 provincial election, the Star ran a "create-your-own-attack-ad" Madlib, because they were just so darned easy to satirize. I can't find it anymore, so maybe I'll make one of my own. Keep reading!

Working as a poll official is fun. There are the obvious perks (money, a power trip when you get to count up the ballots, prestige and respect in the form of a big yellow sticker, all the free pens you can steal), but the sense of excitement and satisfaction gained from knowing you helped to uphold democracy is, well . . . almost as cool as the free pens.

There is no doubt going to be much more about the election over the next month. Keep reading for dissertations on Harper's soulless stare, Dion's wicked English, Layton's critical chops, why Elizabeth May can't (but should be able to) catch a break, and Gilles Duceppe's beautiful blue eyes - plus why opinion polls are important, why I withdrew my offer to run for the Greens in Durham, and why you should talk to your parents about how they'll be voting before somebody else does.

All-natural = safe. Not.

Ah, the voice of reason. How sweet it sounds -- or in this case, reads.

Canada.com ran an article today which introduced the Environmental Working Group (EWG)'s new list of which fruits and veggies contain the highest number of pesticides. This seems like a good public information endeavor, no? Their project presents a bunch of fruit and veg, listing their "pesticide loads". Onions, for example, have a "pesticide load" of 1, whereas peaches have a "pesticide load" of 100. Wait a second, EWG, what exactly is a "pesticide load"? My first warning flag went up when there were no defined units. Does "100" mean my peach got a slightly-bigger-than-normal spray of a mild compound, or was it dunked in cancer-causing toxic sludge?

The article later clarifies that it simply means that there are 100 times the pesticides on your typical peach than on your typical onion. In other words, a "pesticide load" is an arbitrary unit of measurement which is next to meaningless. The fine author of the article in question goes on to interview a scientist who asserts the importance of real units of measurements to determine whether there actually is a risk associated with eating commercially-grown peaches.

"Just because something is there doesn't mean that it's doing anything. Amounts matter. Where is the information that the level of pesticide contamination that they're talking about has any relevance to humans? Where is any study that has shown that those amounts have any negative effect?"

- Joe Schwarcz, the director of McGill University's Office for Science and Society

Now, I must confess to being a little more informed and a little more biased than average on the topic of "chemicals", or at least as they relate to the chemical-versus-all-natural debate. I am the daughter of one pharmacist and the niece of another. I was given medication for most of the ailments I encountered as a child, and have been subjected to many pharmacological debates over family dinners. Thanks to the information I have absorbed from my mother, I know which kinds of OTC medications can be mixed with alcohol and with one another; I know which medications are okay to take before bed and which ones will keep you awake; I know the generic names of more drugs than I can count on my fingers. I can even identify the indications of several drugs based on their suffixes! As if this weren't enough, I have suffered from migraines since the age of six. I am pretty convinced: chemicals are my friend.

My mother, while being an advocate of dugs, is also a strong advocate of common sense. Whenever anyone (usually my hippie grandmother) trots out a new, barely-supported claim that too much such-and-such is bad for you, my mother will reply, "Yeah, well, too much water is bad for you!" She isn't making this up; water poisoning occurs when you drink way too much water way too fast, and your body's chemistry is altered due to the overwhelming amount of water compared to sodium and electrolytes in your system. Apparently, your brain is not a big fan of this kind of thing. In any case, you have little to worry about; you need to chug around 10 litres of water in the span of a few minutes, without eating or drinking anything else. And something tells me that the average person will probably feel pretty darned uncomfortable before they hit seven.
In another example of quantity over chemical, my mother has advised me more than once that I should never, under any circumstances, eat a polar bear's liver. Vitamin A, while crucial to good health in moderate doses, is present in such great quantities in polar bears' livers that to eat one would be fatal. Now you know.

This, however, does not mean that my mother the druggist nor I shun "natural" or herbal remedies. My mother always supplements the drugs she recommends with non-medication advice: cold clothes and dark rooms for headaches, heating pads for cramps, better diet for constipation. And she takes herbal remedies herself. Until ColdFX appeared on the market, there was always a steady supply of echinachea on hand for any colds or flus that might crop up in our family. (The reason we switched to ColdFX is that it can be safely taken all winter long; echinachea merely stimulates your immune system to go double-time, and if taken for more than a couple weeks, can result in "burn out".) I myself have conducted extensive research which suggests that a certain herbal remedy, when smoked, is an excellent painkiller. But please don't tell my mother that.

Still not convinced? Then please stop reading my blog, I only want smart people here. Nah, just kidding, you can stay. Provided you look at the following chart. This information doesn't really require a chart, but charts are kind of exciting.

	All-Natural	Synthetic, or "chemical"
Safe and/or beneficial	Aloe vera, evening primrose oil, chamomile	ibuprofen, lidocaine, clotrimazole
Unsafe and/or highly poisonous	Poison ivy, hemlock, holly ... asbestos, mercury, perchlorates ...	Bisphenol-A, gasoline, phthalates
Not necessarily safe, but a lot of fun	Marijuana, magic mushrooms	MDMA, LSD

I would like to add some weighty words in support of chemicals to beef up my argument, and thus I turn to Mr. Dave Barry:

"Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer."

On one final note, I would like to point out that I have somewhat above-average knowledge regarding peaches and pesticides as well. The summer after I graduated high school, I worked picking fruit for a sweet old Dutch couple. They grew, among other things, currents, raspberries, and peaches.
Now, picking fruit is not an intellectually demanding activity, and thus you tend to converse with those around you as you pick. The wife half of the sweet old Dutch couple once told us a story about a friend, another fruit farmer (peaches are rather a popular crop in the Niagara region) whose peach-growing neighbour elected to go "all-natural" and forego the use of pesticides on his peaches. The peaches became so gross and pesticide-infested that the friend-farmer was forced to secretly spray a row of the neighbour-farmer's peaches when he did his own, to prevent his own crop from getting nastied up. So really, we need to assess chemicals on a risk basis: would you rather have slightly pesticide-y peaches, or gross, wormy peaches?

Amusing news: August 8 2008

One of my favourite quotations in the news this past week (or however long I've been saving it up; I've been so busy working on my upcoming website, traveling to Québec City, and dates, I've not had a chance to update for a while) came from a Canada.com article titled "Women on antidepressants benefit from Viagara". This could be good news, except that there is a small problem with marketing:

"I'm going to get myself in big trouble for saying this, (but) I'm not sure women are willing to pay eight bucks a pop to have sex," says Croft, medical director of the San Antonio Psychiatric Research Centre. "Guys are."

Another great news article came from National Geographic. It seems humans aren't the only race dealing with baby mamas and teen sex, although at least Tasmanian Devils have a good excuse - it seems a widespread cancerous facial tumor is reducing their life expectancy, necessitating popping out baby devils earlier.

But my (dubious) favourite was the recent story about the crazy Phelps family from Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas going to protest Tim Mclean's funeral. For those of you that haven't been following along, Tim Mclean was killed in a graphic, gory bus murder that reads more like a midlist horror film than a news story. Because I am a total voyeur for sensationalist news, I did a bit of back-reading on WBC and the Phelps family, and I am not really sure whether or not they're serious. (Check out godhatesfags.com to see what I mean.) If they are, I am forced to conclude that they've spent so much time being right-wing nut jobs and telling the world how much God hates it that they haven't had time to get through the last of the minor prophets and into the New Testament parts of their Bibles. Man, are they going to be embarrassed when they find out that God gave up on the whole "wrathful" thing and decided to go "loving"! I watched several YouTube interviews, and not once did anyone mention the word "Jesus". In fact, Shirley Phelps-Roper actually told Tyra Banks that the way to get to heaven was, essentially, being a good person (ie not being a "fag" or a "fag enabler"). Clear proof that she got stuck in Leviticus and didn't make it to the new testament.

In closing, a jab at both WBC and Fox news: this was my favourite Phelps-Roper interview. Once again, Fox presents us with fine investigative journalism. Tough it out through the nauseating patriotism to the interview with Shirley PR, and you'll see what I mean.

(I am not certain of the exact date of airing, although the date it was added to YouTube was June 14, 2006).

Death of a Politician

There is a young politician.

For the past several years, the incumbent party has been letting their government slide. Inflation is out of control, and there is no middle class. The opposition party is gaining ground. The people are ready - desperate, in fact - for a change. And from one of the poorest neighbourhoods comes this guy. He represents the opposition. He's promising the people of his city better health care, better infrastructure, more government accountability. He's a youth activist. He teaches tired, jaded people, disillusioned with their government, about their rights. He's young and charismatic and well-liked. He is a promising young individual, exemplary, a figurehead and a symbol for his party, for change.

Due to the recent election, he has been on the road a lot. He is exhausted. He hasn't seen his wife and two young children for weeks. His wife misses him. She begs him to please come home, to see her, to see his family, just for one night. He agrees.
That night, he visits with his family. He sees all his extended relatives, as well as neighbours and friends. They believe in him; they believe that he can change things and make a better country for all of them. He is happy to be able to see his kids. He hopes they will grow up with the same idealism and spirit, but in a country with a higher standard of living, with greater freedom. He hopes they will not spend their lives in a slum like this one. He makes love to his wife that night, and sleeps soundly, relishing the chance to rest.

The next morning, his wife wakes up early. She knows he needs to sleep, so she quietly gets the children ready for school. She is cooking breakfast for them when there is a knock at the door.
Several big men are standing outside her door. Some of them are armed, with huge black guns. They ask to see her husband. The sight of the guns frightens her, and so, trying to keep the panic out of her voice, she calls to her husband in the bedroom, telling him that someone is asking for him. He sleepily replies that he needs more rest, and tells her to ask them to come back later. Still scared, but putting on a brave face, she politely but firmly asks them if they can please come back later. They push her away from the door violently, knocking her down, and force their way into the house.
Now she is terrified. She gathers her children in the kitchen, tells them to be quiet and not to move. She is terribly afraid for her husband, but even more afraid for herself and for her children - she cannot hope to stand up to several armed men. The children are scared and confused and obey their mother out of fear and shock.
In the bedroom, the thugs beat the young politician.
His nose is broken. Blood is running down his face and over his lips and chin. His limbs are bruised. He is hit so many times that his head starts getting fuzzy. Finally, the men drag him out of the bedroom. He is wearing nothing but a pair of underwear. He sees his terrified family as he is being dragged through the kitchen, but he can't say or do anything.
The men throw him into the back seat of a truck. He screams, but nothing changes. His wife and children are standing at the front door, shocked and horrified as they watch the events unfold. One of the thugs stuffs a dirty rag into his mouth, and another wraps something around his neck and tightens. The politician can't breathe. He's panicking. He knows he's going to die. He sees his family through the tiny window, and then everything goes black.

His wife and children watch the truck pull away from the house.
Weeks later, his body is discovered, by accident, in a morgue several cities away. His face is so badly smashed that identification is difficult.




If this happened, why didn't anyone do anything about it?
Why were the thugs not tracked down and arrested?
Why didn't it make headlines?

Because it happened in Zimbabwe.
www.blueridgenow.com/article/20080622/ZNYT03/806220405/1042/NEWS/ZNYT03/Assassins_in_Zimbabwe_Aim_at_the_Grass_Roots
That promising young man, 30 years old with a young family, was just another victim of the violence in Africa which has become so characteristic that we barely even think about it anymore.