Ranting and Roaring

London, Ont. — Re The Mostly Right Stuff: How The Americans Make War (Dec. 22): Marcus Gee notes that Washington spends more than $300-billion a year on its armed forces, more than seven other major nations combined. Let’s imagine that amount being spent on peace, not war.

Over the years, it could have provided clean drinking water, sanitation, primary education and basic housing for the world’s population; set up health clinics and treated malnutrition, leprosy, AIDS and blindness; solved problems of environmental degradation, inequitable food supplies and desperate living standards.

With this money, Washington could have practised genuine aid and also paid its fair share to the United Nations and international organizations. Its influence might have inspired other nations to follow — including Canada.

Had all this happened, we might be living in a different and more compassionate world. Mr Gee’s statement that “the U.S. military had a job to do in Afghanistan” would not have applied. Money is always available. We choose whether to use it to destroy or benefit the world.

“What $300-billion could do“, Jane Vincent-Havelka, The Globe and Mail (Letters), 2001.12.27

A Canadian citizen for whom Prime Minister Jean Chretien once went to bat is on a list of nine al Qaeda members most wanted by the United States, a list led by Osama bin Laden, the Washington Post reported in Wednesday’s editions.
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Kadr [Ahmad Sa'id al-Kadr/Abu Abdurrahman, 53, an Egyptian-born Canadian citizen] was detained by Pakistani police in connection with the Nov. 9, 1995, bombing of the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, the Post said.

“While he was in prison, Prime Minister Jean Chretien was on a state visit to Pakistan and raised Kadr’s case with then-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Kadr was released a short time later and joined bin Laden in Afghanistan,” the report said.

“Report: Canadian Citizen Among Most Wanted Al Qaeda“, Yahoo (Reuters), 2001.12.25

A “University of Washington senior wants the student Senate to show support for the war in Afghanistan, but his resolution failed twice amid cries of racism.
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“Our purpose for existing is to make things more equal and get rid of institutional racism — and, in this war, a certain ethnic group was singled out,” said Alex Narvaez, a senate board member. “There are a lot of innocent people in Afghanistan.”

Some students are now pushing for a resolution urging the school to adopt an anti-war stance.

“Washington student’s pro-war resolution sparks debate“, Canoe.ca (AP), 2001.12.26

Many lie in a delirium, still unable to comprehend the incomprehensible. A woman named Maureen lies, pathetically, in a fetal position. She rocks back and forth, gently cradling her keyboard in her arms, as she whimpers, barely audible, “quagmire, murky…they’re bogged down–they must be bogged down…quagmire…”
…
I stop by one of the therapy centers to observe.

“Now Sunera, let’s try this again. All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore…?”

Sunera frowns, and sweat appears on her forehead. Hesitantly, she ventures, “Therefore…Socrates is the basis of male-centered western patriarchal violence that continues to brutalize women and grind them under its bootheels…?”

“No, Sunera,” the therapist explains patiently. “We’re practicing logic here. Lo-gic. Remember what I told you about logic?”

I close the door quietly. It will indeed be a long and hard road.

“Entry: Media Casualties Mount As War Success Continues“, Transterrestrial Musings, 2001.12.24

America now addresses its international responsibilities. The Third World left is up in arms, shrieking about neoimperialism and neocolonialism, the surest sign that Washington is on the right track. There is a blunt “us and them” approach to foreign relations, and the American Street, to borrow a phrase employed to describe public opinion in the Middle East, is deeply skeptical now of states that, in any way, put a price on their support in the war against terror. America now seeks unconditional, instinctive allies, not opportunistic ones. This is part of the post-Sept. 11 yearning for clarity–a clarity of purpose, of intention, of morality, of allegiance, alliance and friendship.

“A New World Order“, TUNKU VARADARAJAN, WSJ, 2001.12.24

… In particular I noticed a lot of post-40 bellybuttons. You might expect me to say something negative about this, but in truth they were a bunch of damn fine bellybuttons. (A 17-year-old may show her bellybutton just because other teenagers are, but a 47-year-old doesn’t show her bellybutton unless she’s pretty sure it’s a damn fine one). America probably produces more good-looking older women than any other country on the planet. Yet another thing to be proud of.

“RETAIL SUPPORT BRIGADE UPDATE“, Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit.com, 2001.12.22

The Pentagon is sending 10 new high-tech, bunker-busting bombs to Afghanistan that it says are more effective at destroying underground caves and tunnels.

The laser-guided bomb is a “thermobaric” weapon, a high-temperature, high-pressure explosive that uses a new class of fuel-rich explosive in its warhead. The explosive releases energy over a longer period of time than conventional explosives, allowing for a longer period of high pressure inside a confined space and creating more destruction via higher temperatures.
…
“So this sucks air in and out of caves because of the thermobaric pressure that builds up there and the heat,” Shepperd said. “So it’s very effective against caves, and we rushed it together as we do in all conflicts.”

“Pentagon to use new bomb on Afghan caves“, CNN.com, 2001.12.22

Life evolves by building on its own complexity. Technology evolves by building on past knowledge. As David Ackley of the University of New Mexico points out*, the evolution of computer technology claims a special kinship with life. Life processes information, and it advances by evolving more powerful information-processing techniques. Evolutionary breakthroughs have come with breakthroughs in life’s software.

Life began with direct coding on bare, carbon-chemistry hardware, like amino acids and proteins. Higher programming languages, like DNA and RNA, evolved gradually. Computers began in a similar fashion, with programmers coding on to the bare machinery of their circuits. Higher programming languages have followed, each generation more powerful than the last.

There is, of course, one big difference between biological and machine evolution. It took life billions of years to evolve the information-processing skills that lie behind the evolution of the human brain. Computers have made giant strides in half a century.

“2001: a disappointment?“, The Economist, 2001.12.20

A Canadian actor [Brendalee Doen, 24] who won a role in the sequel to the science-fiction thriller The Matrix has lost her chance to appear in the film after being deported from Australia under the country’s zero-tolerance immigration policy.
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Originally from Edmonton, Ms. Doen worked in the Toronto and Montreal restaurant industry before travelling to Australia 18 months ago. She was spotted on the street by a magazine photographer and cast in the Cougar commercial in the role she describes as “the hottie blond barmaid.” The commercial led to modelling work in magazines and a casting call for The Matrix Reloaded.

“Australia deports Canadian actor“, Glen McGregor, Ottawa Citizen, 2001.12.20

The most authoritative defence of the status quo is the 1996 report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. “Canadians need to understand that Aboriginal peoples are nations,” wrote the RCAP commissioners. “Only as members of restored nations can they reach their potential.”

There is a place for treaty rights and aboriginal self-government, but the Royal Commission seriously overstated the case. It ignored the extent to which many aboriginals want to participate in mainstream society; it exaggerated the potential for economically viable on-reserve communities.

Even with modern treaties transferring employment-generating forest and fishing rights, reserves can supply but a small fraction of the jobs required to create prosperity. In the absence of jobs, federal policy has transformed band governments into agents disbursing welfare. To cite just one statistic, over the 1990s approximately 40 per cent of on-reserve Indians relied on welfare funding via Indian Affairs. The ratio rose a little during the early-1990s recession and declined thereafter, but at decade’s end was the same as at its beginning.

As a prominent American analyst of urban poverty once noted, “Employment failures are the greatest cause of family failures.” One cause of employment failure is excessive use of social assistance. Aboriginals comprise nearly one half the welfare caseload in western provinces and, as with on-reserve welfare, excessive reliance on welfare has exacerbated aboriginal difficulties.

The one Canadian senior government to have rigorously tackled the welfare issue is Alberta. Under the lead of Mike Cardinal, at the time minister of social services and himself an aboriginal, Alberta reduced its (off-reserve) welfare caseload from roughly 7 per cent of the population in 1993 to 2 per cent in 2000. In the other western provinces, the comparable statistics ended the decade where they began it — at 6 per cent.

“Let’s get past our reservations“, John Richards, Globe and Mail, 2001.12.18

In fact, there’s a good argument that “welfare benefits + ethnic antagonism” is the universal recipe for an underclass with an angry, oppositional culture. The social logic is simple: Ethnic differences make it easy for those outside of, for example, French Arab neighborhoods to discriminate against those inside, and easy for those inside to resent the mainstream culture around them. Meanwhile, relatively generous welfare benefits enable those in the ethnic ghetto to stay there, stay unemployed, and seethe. Without government subsidies, they would have to overcome the prejudice against them and integrate into the mainstream working culture. Work, in this sense, is anti-terrorist medicine. (And if you work all day, there’s less time to dream up ways and reasons to kill infidels.)

“Does Welfare Cause Terrorism?“, Mickey Kaus, Slate.com, 2001.12.17

…
I was not unhappy with The New Yorker piece, as Allan Fotheringham would have discovered if he had tried to ask me my opinion. Making such an inquiry, by contacting my office, like Hugh Winsor consulting Hansard, would have been a cruel imposition on Allan’s work habits and rudimentary professional ethics, and would have furnished a different result from what he desired.

Allan Fotheringham, who has never been a fitness magazine centrefold candidate himself, is an unregenerate plagiarist and former heavy drinker.

I haven’t seen more than two amusing lines from him in the past 10 years. But he perseveres, fulfilling my well-known description of many Canadian journalists in my presentation to Senator Keith Davey’s committee 32 years ago.

“My ancient Canadian foes are calling after me“, Conrad Blank, National Post, 2001.12.19

Black told a senate committee in 1969 that “a substantial number of journalists” are “ignorant, lazy, opinionated, and intellectually dishonest.” For good measure he added that the profession is heavily cluttered with “aged hacks” who are “decrepit” and “alcoholic,” but also “arrogant and abrasive youngsters who substitute ‘commitment’ for insight.”

People who download movies off the Internet are “thieves” who threaten the potential of the film industry, Tom Cruise said Tuesday
… “We want to make movies, and in order to do that they (the films) have to be able to pay for themselves,” Cruise told reporters …

“Cruise: Web Thieves Hurting Industry“, Yahoo News (AP), 2001.12.18

Technically, the economic winds changed for the online world very quickly, and caused us to have to change our business plan to match those changes. The development lead time of those new changes, coupled with a lack of resources to develop our research facilities to their full potential, put us in a position where we simply could not continue our operations without outside funding. We still believe that our business model will work; it will just have to work for someone else, as our timing was not ideal. We’ll work on that.

Obesity is reaching “epidemic proportions” in the United States, Surgeon General David Satcher said Thursday, and could soon cause as much preventable disease and death as cigarette smoking.

“Satcher: Obesity almost as bad as smoking“, CNN.com, 2001.12.13

There will be no fireworks this New Year’s Eve on the St. John’s waterfront.
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Fireworks at the harbourfront is synonymous with New Year’s Eve in St. John’s. But Sears is ready for any backlash that might ensue — a barge would set the city back $1,000 to $15,000.

“Fireworks moving“, The Telegram, 2001.12.18

A book published in the United States that argues Canada is an ideal launching pad for international terrorists has been turned back at the border by Canadian authorities, says the volume’s author, an Ottawa-based public-sector official.
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A Canada Customs official said it was unclear why shipments of the book, written under the pseudonym Mike Pearson, had been prevented from entering Canada.

If the agency has objections to written material coming into the country, it notifies the publishers immediately, said spokesman Michel Proulx. There is no record in the agency’s national registry of the book having been stopped, although it could have been intercepted by a local official, he said.

It is also possible Canada Post, which has access to Customs stickers, may have taken action independently, said Mr. Proulx

“Book on terrorism in Canada turned back at border“, Tom Blackwell, National Post, 2001.12.18

A self-confessed child molester might avoid justice in Ireland and live out his days in Canada because bureaucrats have yet to ratify an extradition treaty to which they have agreed in principle.
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Canada has extradition agreements with 50 countries, including Haiti, Tonga, El Salvador and Liberia. For other countries, extraditions can be arranged through diplomatic channels on a case-by-case basis, said Patrick Charette, a spokesman for the Department of Justice.

“Priest may face extradition once treaty signed“, Joseph Brean, National Post, 2001.12.18