Posts Tagged ‘Politics’

Political Cartoons get a lot of flack for being as recycled and unoriginal as the newspapers they are printed in. Fortunately, there’s one artist out there who seems to be getting with the program. This awesome Obama/Ash cartoon is from Terrence Nowicki Jr.’s This is Historic Times, a site which is destined to go down in my RSS reader.

First, a little bit of background. The Canadian Board of Health recently appointed Bernard Prigent, Medical Director of Pfizer Canada. This presents a potential conflict of interest because the last time a Pfizer executive was appointed to a Government advisory committee, their recommendations included reducing support for generic drugs and doing away with drug research committees like UBC’s Therapeutic Initiative.

A friend of mine sent the Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq a letter explaining that appointing Mr. Prigent would skew the boards decisions in favor of Pfizer’s stock price rather than the Canadian People. The Health Minister’s reply was a single page of a two page letter, stopping in mid-sentence. (Click to Enlarge)

I wonder if the good people of the Health ministry are aware of their position here. To them, this might be a small office mix-up, but in the age of viral social media, word gets around. This one letter alone is not enough to start a revolution, but it raises questions about how the Canadian government communicates with people. Even if you disregard the missing page, it carries that passive aggressive tone of “we appreciate your concern, but you’re just an anonymous screwball, so there.”

So if were not going to rise up against the corporate plutocracy, what are we to do? For now, we’ll just make a note of it, keep an eye on the situation, and spread the word. This is just one example of the government acting callous, but if we come up with more of these, then we’ll start to see something happen.

People like to complain about the weather, but no one seems to be doing anything about it. When it comes to tawdry celebrity stories about addiction, Dr. Drew takes it on the way only an actual medical doctor can.

I found out about Dr. Drew through stories told by Adam Carolla on his podcast. They both hosted a radio call in show called Loveline for 11 years. He’s also been practicing addiction medicine for over twenty years, making him one of the most knowledgeable people in the media on the subject. While most drug use critics and advocates are motivated by politics, Dr. Drew talks more about the science behind drug addiction rather than the moral posturing surrounding it. A common thread among his patients, which include some celebrities, is a high level of narcissism, which he talks about in his new book, The Mirror Effect.

Narcisissm. That sounds about right, doesn’t it? That’s the reason we’re bombarded by celebrity news, featuring empty-headed young slackers in a competition to see who can go on the worst bender, isn’t it? Well, it is, but not in the way you would think. Narcissism is not the same thing as vanity. In fact, it’s the product of intense self-loathing. People who have a high level of narcissism create a persona that is outgoing and confident to make up for their lack of self-esteem. Actually, most healthy people do this. Celebrities have high narcissism because it helps them deal with the rejection that comes with trying to be an actor or a musician. It becomes a problem when it divorces people from reality. Narcissistic people turn to drugs, sexual promiscuity, and other dangerous behavior in order to cope with their lack of self esteem and any other trauma they might have. The mirror effect the book refers to is the concern that the pervasiveness of celebrity bad behavior will serve as modeling behavior to people with high narcissism, including children and young adults. Narcissism is not necessarily the cause of these problems, but it does increase the severity and scale of them.

If there is one thing that I took away from Dr. Drew’s book, it’s that addictive behavior is an extremely complex psychological problem. Each individual’s path to recovery is different, and it’s achieved through slow, incremental changes. I’ve also been listening to Dr. Drew’s new radio show as a podcast on iTunes. One of the things that he said that really stuck with me was that a patient’s prognosis for cancer is better than drug addiction. If you walk into a hospital with lymphoma, you have a better chance of walking out of there than the guy who’s hooked on Demerol. I would really like to know what he thinks of the problem of the Downtown Eastside. Vancouver may have some advantages since the addicts are crowded around such a small area, but it would be nice to actually see addiction treated as a disease from a medical science point of view.

I just had this little known fact about our National flag revealed to me today. Tell me, can you see the two faces in the Canadian Flag?

Here’s a little help from MS Paint.

The two faces are named Jack and Jacques, and from their position and expression, it looks as if they are arguing. It’s debatable whether this example of figure-ground reversal was intentional. Still, it’s a symbol of how our country was forged from a tacit agreement of equals rather than a glib consensus. I like that.

Via Mayerson on Animation

Here’s a video by Clay Shirky, author of the recent bestseller “Here comes Everybody”. He gives a little more detail to the kind of changes that are happening to mass media. I love it when he describes the Great Fire Wall of China as the Maginot line of the digital age. If you think about it, any countermeasures against transmitting or processing data are ultimately just as avoidable as the Maginot Line was. It goes against the basic tenets of what a computer is supposed to do, kind of like trying to stop an internal combustion engine using a fire extinguisher.  It’s especially ironic considering that China manufactures most of the devices that it’s so desperately trying to hobble.

Dave Rosenberg’s column will fill you in on the details, but Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton had this to say in front of an audience of journalists and students at a breakfast at Syracuse University:

“I’m a guy who doesn’t see anything good having come from the Internet…(The Internet) created this notion that anyone can have whatever they want at any given time. It’s as if the stores on Madison Avenue were open 24 hours a day. They feel entitled. They say, ‘Give it to me now,’ and if you don’t give it to them for free, they’ll steal it.”

No one argued with Lynton that media content, like Sony Pictures’ movies, were flowing through the internet without the original creators making a dime. The problem here, is that with the internet around, you CAN have the stores on Madison Avenue open 24 hours a day. The marginal cost of distributing a piece of music, text, or video is essentially zero, so you’ll have a hard time selling something that consumers know is pure profit. Instead of using the technology to its full potential, he wants to impose legal roadblocks that keep technology at the level that his business can use forever.

This isn’t the first time that Sony has caused controversy with their remarks towards the internet. Sony was also responsible for including a root-kit on CDs that interfered with the vital functions of computers that tried to play them. One of the attorneys for Sony BMG famously stated:

“When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song.” Making “a copy” of a purchased song is just “a nice way of saying ’steals just one copy’,”

The current controversy is reminiscent of previous legal battles over new technology, such as VCRs, audio cassette tapes, even terrestrial radio. In each of these circumstances, media companies were able to make billions without resorting to the kind of restrictions they were howling for in the first place. Why do we keep having this debate every time media distribution gets easier and cheaper?

On the surface, you could say that people don’t want to spend any money that they don’t want to, so any change, good or bad, is going to be fought tooth and nail by any business. I think the problem runs deeper than that. Most of the cries of indignation do not come from the artists themselves, but from the companies that represent them. In other words, they are the people who press the plastic discs and make all the deals necessary to get them to the stores. They are the sales people. Artists aren’t happy playing the same songs or acting the same lines over and over again, but salespeople would gladly sell you five copies of the same movie or the same album.

The real reason salespeople don’t want their business to change is that they do not consider what they do to be real work. If they wanted to do work, they would get into carpentry, engineering, or flower arrangement. Workers in those industries have to compete with each other to produce better products, but not salespeople. They’re happy to sell the same loaf of bread in a different bag, and will fight tooth and nail against doing otherwise. We as a society allow this state of affairs because we expect no better of salespeople. We don’t consider sales to be real work either. If a product gathers more sales because it has a better name or packaging, we consider it cheating. Our media is flush with stereotypes of sleazy salespeople who will do anything for a buck except work for one. We consider the ability to “sell ice to eskimos” as the mark of a good salesperson.

The truth is that sales IS real work. The cold calling, the knocking on doors, the networking, all of it. We need to enforce the idea that responsibility of the deal lies not with the producer, the consumer, nor market that created it. It lies with the salesperson himself. If you can’t sell this product, find a better one. If you can’t find a better one, improve the one you’ve got. If you can’t improve the one you’ve got, include a free gift. Salespeople will do what they have to do to make a living, but the fundamental fact here is that the central relationship in a salesperson’s professional life is between him and his consumer. Invoking the powers of government to maintain your bargaining position is no substitute for this kind of rapport. I’m not saying that giving movies and music away for free is the answer, but trying to hobble technology for pure profit is not the answer either.

Hummingbird604.com’s Raul Pacheco had the opportunity to ask all three BC provincial party leaders the same three questions about the election. One of the questions was, “Give me three reasons to vote for each one of the other parties (NOT to vote for yours).” The answers were quite telling.

No leader would directly answer the question. All three used the question as an opportunity to re-iterate their party’s platform. Gordon Campbell almost had an answer by acknowledging the Green Party’s commitment to the environment. The Green Party mentioned the governmental experience of the other two parties, but used that as a basis for their argument that the Liberals and the NDP were too beholden to special interests to properly serve the public. The NDP did not make any mention of the other parties at all.

Of course, it is counter-intuitive for political parties to say anything nice about their opponents. However, shouldn’t they at least know why certain sections of the population vote for their opponents? Wouldn’t that be the whole reason they are traveling the province, shaking hands and kissing babies? I hope for their sake that they were simply providing their answers for the benefit of a popular local blog. If BC-STV referendum passes, they’ll have to be able to acknowledge why people vote for their opponents if they are going to get anything passed in the legislature. Canadians have demonstrated, at least at the federal level, that they prefer the compromise and negotiation of a minority government over the sweeping mandates and agendas of a majority. Bit by bit, we’ll all have to consult each other over which direction this country is going.

It was like seeing the set of a big budget movie, only it really happened. Corregidor was a 90 minute ferry ride from the docks in Manila. Along the way we could see a myriad of tiny fishing boats bobbing up and down in the waves. From there, we loaded into open-air tour buses that reinforced the Universal Studio Tour feel. However, as we passed the distance numbers on the road and the dilapidated pill boxes in the trees, everything became just a little more real. None of this was for show, everything had a purpose of some kind. This was where the fate of the world was decided long ago.

In British Columbia, there are no great battlefields. Aside from the paranoia of the Japanese internment camps, the bases for training soldiers, and perhaps the odd submarine, war was a stranger to my part of the world. All the battles for Canada as a nation were fought on the east coast.  BC’s border disputes were decided in the halls of government rather than through the barrel of a gun. Corregidor is unique among WWII battle zones. While London, Berlin, Pearl Harbor and Tokyo were all rebuilt for the sake of the people living there, Corregidor was home to no one save the birds and monkeys. Its guns were rendered obsolete by the events of the war.  In addition to the museums and monuments, the ruins of the base that once defended Manila bay serve as a reminder to those who died in the war.

There something about all of those ruined structures that can’t be captured with photographs. A step in either direction reveals never-ending caverns of lonely building guts. It reminded me of the last scene in “Slaughterhouse Five” after the fire-bombing of Dresden. There really is such a silence after a massacre. It’s not the kind hear, though. At once you think about the people who made those buildings their home and the mechanical savagery by which they were destroyed. The bullet holes conjure images of a young soldier leaning on a machine gun trigger until his box of ammo was empty, yet the look on his face is the same as if he were working an industrial press.  The craters and pock-marked concrete were only a inkling of the violence that took place here.

As the tour went on, we learned about how the Americans and Filipinos had defended the island until their ammunition and water had run out. We walked through Malinta Tunnel, where they had lived while the Japanese bombers deforested the island. When they surrendered, the Japanese marched all 72,000 of them up the Bataan peninsula, which we could see in the distance. 54,000 made the journey alive. When the Allies retook the island in 1945, the Japanese soldiers, honoring their Bushido code, would commit suicide by jumping off of cliffs overlooking the sea. That was where the Japanese government eventually erected their own shrines to the sons they had lost there.

In this day and age, we are so removed from the horror of that time. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan almost seem like small-time thuggery by comparison. Americans, Filipinos, Canadians, and Japanese now visit this place as tourists, whereas 60 years ago they would have been the bitterest of enemies. The fact that there has been peace between those countries for so long raises a few questions. How could we reconcile what happened here with what we have today? What changed? Was it our ability to communicate over television and computers? Do our well-heeled post-war lifestyles prevent us from getting the idea to kill each other? And whatever caused this reconciliation, can we put in a bottle or a book or something so we can send it to places like Afghanistan and Iraq where they really need it?

There was an article on esquire.com recently about how the US Republican Party cannot survive in it’s current form. The author posted this video of RNC chairman Tom Price as evidence.

In that shaky, distorted video, Price derides the Democratic party for making “shady back-room” deals by daring to write their bills behind closed doors like every other political party in the free world. Now, the tone and format of that video sound familiar. Where have I seen it before?

If there is a sign of a party on the run these days, it’s the shaky video confessional. (To be fair, Stephan Dion’s video had higher production value. It just goes to show you what kind of shape the Republican Party is in.) In institutions where the flow of ideas is key, the muddying of communications is a sin of the worst kind. No matter what their stances on the issues are, I hope the Republicans and the Liberals both clean up their act in delivering their ideas to their respective countries. If they fail, their ruling government parties get a mandate to make laws that fit an ideology rather than reality. Debate is the lifeblood of Democracy, and it is just as bad for one side to cede control as it is for the other to dominate the discourse.

It’s a common phrase on the front lines of class conflict: “Why don’t you just get yourself a job?” It comes up when people talk about employment, poverty, or wages. I am often surprised by the amount of glee taken when people complain not just about the homeless or the unemployed, but about people working for minimum wage. The question is often asked, “Why am I paying their tax bill?” “What do you mean I should pay for public transit? I have my own car”, “Why should they get anything more than they already have? I worked hard for what I have. I deserve it. They don’t. I’m a self made man”

I hear that and I think to myself, maybe they’re a manager who just had to fire somebody. Maybe they’ve just passed one too many strapping young panhandlers on the street. Maybe they’ve just had a look at their T4 slip. However, all the maybes in the world doesn’t make them any less wrong.

No one, not one single solitary person, “gets themselves a job”. Every job is dependent on someone else. In order to have a job, you need a company to work at. In order to have a company you need customers to sell to and suppliers to buy from. In order to keep using the labor and capital that your business depends upon, your customers will need to give you money. Money is little else but a giant confidence game we invented to distribute goods and services. Those Good and services are worth what people will pay for them, but the opposite is also true. A dollar is only worth what you’re willing to trade for it.

We’re in an economic crisis right now because a lot of financial institutions suddenly had to stop lying to themselves about how much they were worth. Pretty soon, more and more people will also have to stop lying to themselves. Companies are shutting down right now because they can’t pretend they’re making anything anybody will buy. All that is left will be thousands or even millions of people re-evaluating their place in society. I think that’s where the solution to the crisis lies. Premier Gordon Campell wrote on Twitter today that he was looking for unfiltered ideas on how to create jobs in this new economic landscape. I believe I have one. Find out what we have to offer the world, and also find out what we want from the rest of the world. If anything comes from the myriad of stimulus packages being passed in parliaments and senates all over the world, I hope that at least some of those funds go towards creating new markets. This will require us to answer this question: What are we all doing here? When North and South America were discovered, people made their fortunes creating new societies there and bringing resources back. When the industrial revolution started, we made machines that could make items like clothes and fine china at rates previously unheard of. In the 20th century, we connected the whole world with automobiles, satellites, and computers. In this new century, we must decide what the next chapter of the human endeavor is. If we can find a challenge that can speak to our souls, it is there that we will find our future.