Preemptive Political Strike

The Conservative Party will be airing ‘campaign-style’ ads today attacking Stéphane Dion on TV. I hope none of my tax money goes towards it. Usually they wait till the last couple of weeks of an election to air attack ads, now they are doing it before even an election is announced. Are they really that insecure, so threatened by Stéphane Dion? I like Dion but he does not look like a good campaigner to me. The guy is smart but not very charming. Particularly in English, he is hardly understandable. Is this a kind of preemptive political strike? The U.S. invaded Iraq just in case there is a chance of a threat in the future; and now the Harper government attack Dion just in case there is a chance of an election the Conservative Party cannot win? If there is no immediate election, they should deal with issues in parliament; and if there is an election imminent, then announce it. This must violate some election laws. If it does not, it should.

A Lovely Sun Rise, Finally!

The weather this winter has been so nasty that we have been having at least a storm a week, and as much as three a week, since November. Stanley Park, as well as my green house, were damaged beyond recognition. This morning, surprisingly, it cleared and the sun rise was spectacular! This is taken around 6:30am on my back porch.

To Laugh or Cry?

This report in the Vancouver Sun is really interesting. The reason I say it is interesting and cannot come up with anything more interesting is because I do not know I should laugh or cry. The Minister of Education of British Columbia sent out a letter to all students that: “it is my pleasure to tell you that all [emphasis hers] B.C. K-12 students are now eligible for a free [again, emphasis hers] public library card. This is our government's way of encouraging you to visit your public library and enjoy the gift of reading." In a way this is funny, it must have been a joke, right? It is like taking credit for “now the air you breath is free, so inhale!” 600,000 of these letters were sent. I certainly hope that the day of 600,000 children were laughing when they got the letter because that is all it is good for. Since access to public libraries has always been free, unless the government is introducing user’s fees, this is doing nothing to encourage usage of the public library. What are they going to do next, send me a letter to tell me that by the grace of my provincial government I can now look at the Burrard Inlet for as part of the government’s effort to promote outdoor activities? Maybe I should cry, my own provincial government think we are all idiots.

Who's Dump is That?

A friend of mine in the manufacturing sector in a foreign country told me a story that a major ‘western’ come to the factory demanding extraordinarily low prices for products with the promise of large contracts and growth. While the price is lower than the factory sold their products domestically, they took the contract because of its size and future promises. Soon after the first delivery was made, anti-dumping laws were applied and all their goods were smacked with destructive fines and taxes. Not only were they not able to get paid for their goods, their future exports were, for all intends and purposes, cut off. Heavily in debt because of the expansion and lost of revenue, the manufacturer declared bankruptcy and closed. Not only is that manufacturer closed, all manufacturers in that sector failed because the anti-dumping measure was applied to the whole sector. Meanwhile, the major company moved on to another country doing business the same way. They had already gotten the discounted products and when anti-dumping laws were applied, they simply get the products somewhere else.
In North America and Europe, we tend to see things one-sided. Other countries dump their good and we lose jobs. Often, however, it was us who demanded the low price that is so damaging. What is missing is this whole discourse is the role of the middle man. If we require the importers, the retailers to buy good at a fair price, fair both to the foreign and local producers, then there is no issue of dumping. Who would rather sell for less when they can sell for more? The problem is then the market place will be fair and the major in the story will not be able to continue their predatory business practises. Ah, what is not good for M&M Enterprise is not good for the country. Pardon me.

Modus Operandi

Fareed Zakaria’s last article in Newsweek should be a requirement for all who is interested in the past and future of Iraqi War. The brief history he gives of the war in this article is excellent. The narrative is of course familiar to all—the step by step decent into deadly chaos as soon as the mission was declared accomplished. How this article differs from others is Zakaria’s memory and vision of the reason of failure. Most journalist and commentators register the reason of failure on physical things—the inability to rebuild the infrastructure, the incompetence of the Iraqi government, Iranian agents, etc.—and not look at the fundamental reasoning of the decisions. Zakaria’s delineation of the reason is very revealing. None of these mistaken reasoning are new. Take trusting the exiled opposition too much for example, no less of a ‘great’ president as Kennedy did just that when committing to the invasion at the Bay of Pigs. And is ideologically driven policies not the signature of the international financial doctrine of the United States? And most glaringly, has any military forces that U.S. built in foreign soil not resulted in a dictatorial force? These are not unique to this war; they are the modus operandi of the U.S. government. And that is perhaps the most worrisome.

Fishing Rights

Sometime Op/Ed can provide well-considered pieces also. Next to the Corcoran article is a piece by Hamar Foster, a law professor at the University of Victoria, on the legal history of Native fishing rights. It is a well laid out rebuttal to the charge of the fishing rights being racist: fishing rights are treaty rights giving in exchange for land and other rights. The people who are against native fishing rights live on land procured with these fishing rights. It is race based only in so far as the treaty was made between to groups of people primarily of two races. The argument against native fishing right is therefore like if I buy a television from Futureshop for $1000 and later found that it is inconvenient to have $1000 less in my pocket and want my money back from Futureshop while keeping the television. A pretty nice scheme. Of course this scheme had been used many a time. I would like to think that we, our country and our province, are more educated, more just and more honest to run such schemes again. Obviously this wishfully thinking is not very accurate. I am glad that the government had made new treaties recognizing these rights. Hey, this is two days in a roll I defended the Harper government! Well, when they are right, they are right.

Don't Know to Laugh or Cry

Op-Ed pages are interesting; articles on them can run from agreeable to infuriating with detours at confusion and unintended humour. What is always consistent though is over-simplicity. It is the nature of the genre so one should not make too much of it. Sometimes though one encounters an ‘Op’ that is so simplistic and confused that makes reaction difficult. You cannot be angry at it because that would give it too much weight and importance. You cannot make fun of it because it is hard to make fun of a joke, however unintended. You cannot pretend to agree with it because that would take inhuman mental discipline. You can only point it out and it will embarrass itself. One such article appeared on the Financial Post. Terence Corcoran got hot under his collar with the Conservative government’s apparent agreement with David Suzuki’s assessment that Canada is failing in environmental policies and needs to do a lot better. It is dangerous to write when one is still hot under the collar. Corcoran’s argument against “Suzukiism” seems to be: how dare they put our great country below Mexico! This may be patriotic but hardly an argument. The argument behind it is that Canada is more prosperous then Mexico so of course we pollute more, there is nothing wrong about that; to say we should pollute less is to say we should become the backward lazy dirty Mexicans. This logic is almost beautiful in itself perfect roundness: we are rich so we pollute and we must not stop polluting for that is what make us rich. It is hard to argue for pollution and Corcoran made a wholehearted go at it. Unfortunately, it makes absolutely no sense. If the rich pollute far more than the poor, should the rich not try harder to pollute less? I would hate to think that Canada is prosperous because we pollute. And since pollution is a by-product of our prosperity, should we not shoulder a heavier burden in lowering pollution? If “Suzukiism” blames pollution on prosperity, and I am not sure that it does, the counter argument should be that pollution is not a necessary by-product of prosperity. It is shocking to see such an article on the newspaper. Granted, the Financial Post a single issue paper, still there should at least be a little hint of intellectual vigor from its columnist. I do not read the National/Financial Post but it bleeds into my local paper’s Op/Ed page. And that is a good example of pollution from the rich.

Nature of the Black Market

Someone has claimed that he has broken the AACS encryption on high definition discs. Regardless of the validity of this crack and its degree of success, a fully functional crack is not a question of if but when. There is great anticipation out there for this to happen and it is beyond the cracker community. General consumers are waiting for it too. The problem with AACS is with the content it is trying to protect. What is burnt onto these discs are not meant to last, they are supposed to be fashionable, i.e. disposable. A movie is meant to be watch once, twice at the most. Consumers are supposed to buy a new disc every time they want to watch a movie. That is why there were attempts to make one-play discs before. This way the major companies think they can keep the buyers coming. The problem is that disposable items are supposed to be cheap. Who want to pay US$30 for a disposable DVD? People buy them but how many think they paid a fair price? These greatly overpriced disc are what created the piracy market. If they were priced at $5, say, would people go through the trouble to download them on P2P or Usenet? Would they search out street venders to buy pirated disc of uncertain quality? Technies focuses their anger on the AACS’s problems with hardware—it would not let them play the discs on some expensive equipments. The bigger problem with general consumers is the disparity between price and the disc’s disposable nature. As long as this disparity continues, there will be a black market and the inevitable crack will make this market possible. And all of these have nothing to do with intellectual property right but the severely overpriced nature of the products.