Fatal Flaw With Hillary and Barack?

If Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama (or both) are the nominees in the 2008 presidential election, all the Republicans need to do is make the election about Iraq. That won't be hard to do because Bush has created such a godawful mess there. In fact, it might be in the Repub's interest to keep Iraq a mess.

The Achilles heel of both Clinton and Obama is their perceived inability to be Commander in Chief. Obama just doesn't have the experience. Clinton is a woman, which the Repubs will try to twist into unsuitableness for a War President, and she has more experience but not that sort. The Repubs were even able to paint John Kerry as unable to handle a war portfolio, and he's a decorated war hero.

If the Republican candidate is John McCain - war veteran, former PoW, hawk - I don't see how Clinton or Obama can win. Perhaps I'm just feeling pessimistic today.

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Dion Has Nothing to Apologize For

I heard a Conservative spokesman on CBC radio today saying that as Environment Minister, Stephane Dion presided over a 35% rise in greenhouse gas emissions.

This is a lie.

Stephane Dion was appointed Environment Minister by Paul Martin in 2004, and he presided over an aggressive agenda to improve greenhouse gas emissions. In April 2005, 8 months after becoming Environment Minister, Dion launched Project Green, which was a climate change plan aimed at meeting our Kyoto commitments. His program was trashed by the Conservatives when they took power in early 2006.

The 35% figure refers to Canada's rise in emissions from the time it signed Kyoto in 1993. Prime Minister Chretien promoted the idea of greenhouse gas emissions, but he did not do a great deal to contain them. Why did emissions rise? Over half of the cause was the oil boom in Alberta. Some of the rest was due to the low Canadian dollar causing a boom in manufacturing, mostly in Ontario - over this period, manufacturing processes became much less polluting, but the great rise in volume caused greater emissions. Why wasn't Ottawa able to rein in Alberta? Well, the Alberta-based Conservative party (nee Reform, prev. Alliance) had something to do with that. Also, if you remember, Chretien had to devote most of his resources to fixing the economy in the 90s, and every other brief suffered. I'm not arguing that he made the right choice on that, but we all benefit from it today.

During the Chretien years, Dion was not involved with the environment. He was kept busy as Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs and he did a very able job at it.

See also
Those Pesky Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Earth Day


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Give Us the Option To Buy Refillable Glass Bottles

Seventy percent of glass bottles that are put in recycling bins are sent to the dump. Part of the reason is preventable (like people trying to recycle bottles that have metal or plastic on them) and part is not (like current recycling technology just not dealing well with glass).

What we need is the option to buy refillable bottles for wine, pop and beer. A wine company might find that it's a competitive advantage to offer the refillable option. Companies like the Pop Shoppe were very successful in selling crates of 750-ml returnable pop bottles from Pop Shoppe bottling centers. We don't have to force every bottler to provide refillable bottles - we just need the option.

In Ontario, grocery stores used to have automated bottle return centers, where you put your bottles on a conveyor belt and the machine gave you a store credit. We had refillable bottles then because there was an Ontario law that forced bottlers to provide a percentage of their product in refillable bottles. All that ended when the government got a pay-off from bottling companies to allow them to sell 100% of their product in disposable (mostly plastic) bottles.

The environment is supposedly the number one political issue for Canadians today. Do we just care about the environment in the political arena, or are we willing to do something about it ourselves? Recycling is great, of course, but in some respects is a false fix. A lot of pollution and energy is used in recycling, and the main benefit (arguably) is reducing municipal waste management costs. In terms of real environmental progress, we need to start creating less waste - less garbage and less recycling.

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We Want Our Two Million Dollars Back

After his term as Prime Minister, the RCMP conducted an investigation of whether Brian Mulroney received kickbacks from a man called Karl Schreiber in a military deal to purchase Airbuses. The RCMP sent a letter to the Swiss government asking for Schreiber's bank records, mentioning Mulroney's name. Mulroney heard about the letter, sued for defamation of character, and got a settlement (out of court) of $2.1 million. Later on, Karl Schreiber admitted that he gave Mulroney $300,000. Mulroney claimed the $300,000 was for his consulting expertise in a pasta business. Schreiber said that was a lie.

The Globe & Mail reported recently that the government looked into trying to get our $2 million dollars back, but dropped the attempt. But there are other ways to bring some closure to this sad tale. Can a case be made that Mulroney perjured himself? Even if the case never got to court, there must have been some claim of innocence in the statement of the case. Can the kickback investigation be reopened now that Schreiber is talking?

There are a lot of people with egg on their face after this fiasco. There are questions about why the government paid the $2 million to Mulroney so quickly, when the usual M.O. is to hold up the funds for years (remember the civil service pay equity lawsuit, anyone?). Why was the RCMP unable to turn up evidence when the media was able to get it? How did journalist Stevie Cameron get so utterly smeared and discredited as she attempted to uncover the truth - were Mulroney supporters behind that?

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My Problem with Jimmy Carter's New Book

Defending his new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, Jimmy Carter said this week that one of the two main premises of the book is "the horrible persecution and oppression of the Palestinian people." What Carter doesn't say in his sound bite is why the situation exists as it does today: that the Palestinians and millions of other Arabs surrounding Israel do not recognize Israel's right to exist and Israel is under constant military threat, forcing it to protect itself. Carter went on to say, "Israel needs peace and the Palestinian people need peace and justice and I hope my limited influence will help to precipitate some steps." He's implying that the Israelis do not need justice - the Israelis who suffer from regular domestic bombings, rocket attacks from across their borders, and rhetoric from Palestinian and other Arab leaders that all Jews should be killed.

I'm certainly not saying that everything Israel has done has been right or fair to the Palestinians, and I believe as much as anyone that what is needed first and foremost is peace. But if you believe that Israel has a right to exist, and if you believe that a people have a right to defend themselves from genocide, then how can you try to force them to stop defending themselves?

I haven't read the book, and don't intend to, for two reasons. The first is that I tried to read another of Jimmy Carter's books and couldn't get through it because it was so boring. (This even though I was a major fan of Carter's presidency and I read a lot of dense non-fiction.) The second is that the title is inflammatory and counter-productive and makes me not want to have anything to do with the content.

Carter should know that there are a lot of people in the west who believe that Israel does not have a right to exist, and the title of his book gives them justification to pursue those views. Anti-semites throw around the term apartheid to describe Israeli-Palestinian relations (as we learned in our recent Liberal leadership race). Whatever the fine points of his argument are (and I'm sure, knowing the man, that he has many good insights), his title is a blunder that will set back the cause of peace, not help it.

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Time to Speak Up Against Capital Punishment

Canada hasn't had the death penalty in a long time, and it may have become one of those things that could be rolled back because we've grown complacent about it. As of yesterday, Canada has a new Attorney-General/Minister of Justice, Rob Nicholson, who wants to bring back capital punishment, and his mandate is, apparently, to get things done.

To put this issue in context, it has been a long long time since we've had a government that wanted to reinstate the death penalty. Martin, Chretien, Mulroney and Trudeau were all against the death penalty. In 1987 there was a free vote in the House of Commons on the death penalty, but it was defeated.

Following the effective abolition of the death penalty in 1976 we entered a 20-year period of declining murders in Canada, although the decline was small. The biggest effect of abolition was an immediate large increase in the conviction rate for murders - after abolition, juries were twice as likely to convict a murder suspect.

Nevertheless, public support for the death penalty is currently at about 40%. (It has been as high as 73%, but that was when the survey question asked about "capital punishment"; when asked about "the death penalty", the positive responses are cut nearly in half.) Add to that a Prime Minister and Justice Minister who want to bring back capital punishment, and we are in grave danger of becoming a killing state again.

Some reasons why I am vehemently opposed to the death penalty:

1. Numerous studies, and the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, have concluded that the death penalty offers no deterrent effect.

2. The class system is alive and well in the justice system. For identical crimes, a poor or marginalized person is much more likely to face sterner punishment.

3. Since 1976, at least six Canadians convicted of first-degree murder were later found to be innocent.

4. There is no humane way to kill a person. Even lethal injections are currently banned in Florida and California because of recent botched killings that caused prolonged pain and suffering. (link)

5. State executions are about the most barbaric thing that could be done to a person and to a society. No one should have the ability to kill another person except in self-defense or, arguably, war. No one should face death from their government.

You can write our new Attorney-General at Nicholson.R@parl.gc.ca.
You can find your MP's contact info here.

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Latest News from "Baghdad Burning"

The young woman blogger from Baghdad writes:

End of Another Year...

You know your country is in trouble when:

1. The UN has to open a special branch just to keep track of the chaos and bloodshed, UNAMI.
2. Abovementioned branch cannot be run from your country.
3. The politicians who worked to put your country in this sorry state can no longer be found inside of, or anywhere near, its borders.
4. The only thing the US and Iran can agree about is the deteriorating state of your nation.
5. An 8-year war and 13-year blockade are looking like the country's 'Golden Years'.
6. Your country is purportedly 'selling' 2 million barrels of oil a day, but you are standing in line for 4 hours for black market gasoline for the generator.
7. For every 5 hours of no electricity, you get one hour of public electricity and then the government announces it's going to cut back on providing that hour.
8. Politicians who supported the war spend tv time debating whether it is 'sectarian bloodshed' or 'civil war'.
9. People consider themselves lucky if they can actually identify the corpse of the relative that's been missing for two weeks.

A day in the life of the average Iraqi has been reduced to identifying corpses, avoiding car bombs and attempting to keep track of which family members have been detained, which ones have been exiled and which ones have been abducted.

2006 has been, decidedly, the worst year yet. No- really. The magnitude of this war and occupation is only now hitting the country full force. It's like having a big piece of hard, dry earth you are determined to break apart. You drive in the first stake in the form of an infrastructure damaged with missiles and the newest in arms technology, the first cracks begin to form. Several smaller stakes come in the form of politicians like Chalabi, Al Hakim, Talbani, Pachachi, Allawi and Maliki. The cracks slowly begin to multiply and stretch across the once solid piece of earth, reaching out towards its edges like so many skeletal hands. And you apply pressure. You surround it from all sides and push and pull. Slowly, but surely, it begins coming apart- a chip here, a chunk there.

That is Iraq right now. The Americans have done a fine job of working to break it apart. This last year has nearly everyone convinced that that was the plan right from the start. There were too many blunders for them to actually have been, simply, blunders. The 'mistakes' were too catastrophic. The people the Bush administration chose to support and promote were openly and publicly terrible- from the conman and embezzler Chalabi, to the terrorist Jaffari, to the militia man Maliki. The decisions, like disbanding the Iraqi army, abolishing the original constitution, and allowing militias to take over Iraqi security were too damaging to be anything but intentional.

The question now is, but why? I really have been asking myself that these last few days. What does America possibly gain by damaging Iraq to this extent? I'm certain only raving idiots still believe this war and occupation were about WMD or an actual fear of Saddam.

Al Qaeda? That's laughable. Bush has effectively created more terrorists in Iraq these last 4 years than Osama could have created in 10 different terrorist camps in the distant hills of Afghanistan. Our children now play games of 'sniper' and 'jihadi', pretending that one hit an American soldier between the eyes and this one overturned a Humvee.

This last year especially has been a turning point. Nearly every Iraqi has lost so much. So much. There's no way to describe the loss we've experienced with this war and occupation. There are no words to relay the feelings that come with the knowledge that daily almost 40 corpses are found in different states of decay and mutilation. There is no compensation for the dense, black cloud of fear that hangs over the head of every Iraqi. Fear of things so out of ones hands, it borders on the ridiculous- like whether your name is 'too Sunni' or 'too Shia'. Fear of the larger things- like the Americans in the tank, the police patrolling your area in black bandanas and green banners, and the Iraqi soldiers wearing black masks at the checkpoint.

Again, I can't help but ask myself why this was all done? What was the point of breaking Iraq so that it was beyond repair? Iran seems to be the only gainer. Their presence in Iraq is so well-established, publicly criticizing a cleric or ayatollah verges on suicide. Has the situation gone so beyond America that it is now irretrievable? Or was this a part of the plan all along? My head aches just posing the questions.

...and she continues.

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Repairing a Wrong and Getting Decent Courier Service

From time to time we hear horror stories about our free trade agreement with the US... Canada is forced to import toxic chemicals we previously banned because of a NAFTA ruling or some such thing.

But here's one I like, and apologies in advance that I can't remember all the details of this as I'm not sure where to find the historical info.

Some years ago (in the 80s?) Canadian postal workers went on strike to prevent competition from courier companies, and eventually the government gave in. Ever since then we have had crappy courier service in Canada, unlike the US, where courier delivery is fantastic - you can order plants, perishable food, furniture, whatever, and get it delivered the next day at low cost. The US postal service is also far better than Canada's in terms of reliability, cost, delivery speed, deliveries on Saturdays and holidays, and yes - packages. I have to think that the difference is due to the competition the US posties face from couriers.

The worst part is that we subsidize Canada Post's courier monopoly through the inflated prices of postage stamps. We get crappy service, and we pay more - all because the union wanted to guarantee a slightly larger membership.

So now UPS is trying to rectify the courier situation in Canada. Here's the Canadian postal union's response. This story seems to have been mostly picked up by the pro-union press, and they paint some pretty bleak pictures. (See here and here.) The other side of the story is here.

Here's a quote from an anti-UPS article: "CUPW are launching a postcard campaign against UPS with the slogan "Hands off my mail." The postcard encourages Canadians to tell UPS that public postal service is too important to be undermined by a courier company that puts profits before service." This is kinda funny, since UPS provides such amazing service and Canada Post is, well, not quite so exemplary.

In this case, it seems that the only power able to straighten out this twisted result of blackmail is NAFTA. We Canadians haven't had decent courier service in 20 years or more, and it seemed we would never have it again. I don't support union breaking, and I don't want NAFTA to mess with our health care or other internal matters, but in this one case I think we couldn't fix a terrible situation without outside pressure, and I say: Hooray. CUPW was wrong to screw up our mail and courier system for their own gain, and it's time to put an end to it.

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Mother Jones Takes on Hillary

This month's cover story in Mother Jones is called Harpy, Hero, Heretic: Hillary.

This article may be of historic importance to the place of women in politics. The intent, or at least the effect, may be to clear the Pigpen-like haze that surrounds Hillary Clinton and give her a fair shot at running for president. The method is to expose everything - every gory detail, every prejudice, every fear, every thought we have about Hillary. It's a sort of Twelve Days of Christmas of all the ways we despise Hillary Clinton, and they even provide a new word - Hillarating - to define how we despise her.

I don't agree with everything the article says. But once these things are out in the open, perhaps we can move on and see Hillary Clinton as a politician, and not as an icon of sexuality, motherhood, marital crisis, threatening femininity, female ambition\duplicity or feminine opportunism.

We (men and women alike) need to confront our prejudices towards women, and their root - sexuality. Sharon Stone is quoted as saying, "A woman should be past her sexuality when she runs. Hillary still has sexual power, and I don't think people will accept that. It's too threatening." Putting that out in the open allows us to confront it, which we must do... because as women we're hit both ways. While sexual, women in the public sphere are threatening and so are put down. When their looks go, women in the public sphere are ridiculed and so are put down. Hillary could very easily reduce her "sexual power" by letting her hair go grey. But then she'd be seen as old and ugly, and she'd have a much harder time being taken seriously.

In the last 50 years we moved from a time when women were discriminated against to a time when women are overly sexualized. There is too much emphasis on whether a woman is sexually desirous or not. That has nothing to do with their ability to do their job. And we still seem to be on the arc of increasing the sexualization of women (and girls). I don't think we'll see vast improvements in equality in politics until we start to let women be people. Otherwise, female candidates will continue to be seen in their female stereotypes (mother, whore, shrew, crone) and their job-qualification attributes will not be paramount.

The importance of all this to me is not whether or not Hillary wins the primary or the presidency. It's the hope that this might clear the air, just a little, for women in high leadership positions. It's the hope that what happened to Sheila Copps when she became deputy PM - the embarrassing photos in the newspaper, the jokes and ridicule - won't happen to the next uppity woman who makes it near the top.

As an aside... I thought I liked John McCain, but the genial guest on The Daily Show takes on a different color in this quote from the article: "John McCain once got a lot of laughs cracking this joke: 'Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno.' Chelsea was still in high school at the time."

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What's Good About Waterloo

What have I missed? In no particular order (or rather, in the order things popped into my head):

- No poisonous snakes or spiders.
- Virtually never have storms bad enough to cause serious property damage.
- 90 minutes to downtown Toronto and all it has to offer, especially the new Four Seasons opera hall.
- 75 minutes to Toronto airport; plus we have our own international airport with limited service.
- Two universities and a community college.
- Opera Ontario.
- 30 minutes to the Elora Festival featuring the inimitable Noel Edison.
- Two good and very different cinemas: Waterloo Galaxy and Princess Twin.
- Great restaurants, especially Bhima's Warung and the Harmony Lunch.
- Lectures at CIGI.
- 30 minutes to the Stratford Festival and the town of Stratford.
- 2.5 hours to the Shaw Festival and Niagara-on-the-Lake.
- Waterloo Farmer's Market.
- Old Order Mennonites.
- Waterloo Park.
- Downtown Waterloo.
- Ducks.
- Multicultural population (and all the good food that entails).
- Relatively low crime.
- High tech sector with lots of interesting jobs.
- Affordable housing (relative to salaries).

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Killing the President

Saddam Hussein, President of Iraq, overthrown by a foreign invasion, is to be executed within 30 days. I have so many types of objection to this that I almost feel unable to do more than sputter and wave my arms around in exasperated anguish. Of course I don't think he was a good man or the people's choice as president. But...

- People who support the death penalty like to think that executions are humane, but they're not. Even lethal injections, supposedly the most painless method, are currently banned in California and Florida because of recent executions where the administration of the drug went wrong. Saddam Hussein is to be killed by hanging. The US banned hanging years ago on the grounds that it is cruel and unusual punishment. I read an eye-witness account of the hanging of Nigerian poet Ken Saro-Wiwa. He didn't die and after leaving him to dangle for a while they tried dropping him again. They hanged him several times before they killed him, and he was conscious, in unbelievable agony, until he died.

- People who think Saddam's regime was unusual have no understanding of what's going on in the world. There are recent African rulers who ate their political enemies. There are scores of dictators running countries. Many countries don't have elections; many do but they're completely rigged. Sure, it's great to overthrow vicious dictators, but only when the populace and neighboring countries call for it - in this case, the Arab world formally condemned the invasion before it happened.

- The American press never seems to refer to Saddam Hussein as president - they call him the dictator. This sort of loaded language helps them justify what they're doing, I suppose. Oh and the Americans aren't executing him. Their puppet regime is. And it was a coincidence that the verdict was delivered two days before the US mid-term elections. A man is being killed in the Middle East for domestic political gain in the United States.

- The Iraqi blogger Baghdad Burning says, "When All Else Fails... … Execute the dictator. It’s that simple." She describes an unfair trial, an unfree press and a foreign occupation that has destroyed her country.

- I'm not a religious person, but I feel in my gut that death is just about the most important thing that happens to us, at least consciously (birth being something we don't experience in the same way), and we must help each other go through it with dignity. Capital punishment is the opposite of that. State executions are about the most barbaric thing that could be done to a person or to a society. It should never happen, no matter what crime a person has committed. Governments would do well to adopt the medical precept "First, do no harm."

- The US invasion and occupation, and now this barbaric murder, are worse than anything Saddam Hussein ever did. More Iraqis are dying under US tyranny than under Saddam's tyranny (and especially over the last ten years of his rule). And the slaughter continues - in fact, it's getting worse. The world needs an international court with the teeth to make the US pay for their murderous acts in Iraq. Everything about this is evil.

See also: Saddam: Hanged for the wrong reason

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We Need a Song

Driving in my car this morning listening to CBC Radio One, I found myself singing along to a catchy tune about wanting to go home to Alberta. Just yesterday I was singing along to David Bromberg's version of "Kansas City". There are songs about New York, Memphis, St. Louis, Chicago... There are tons of songs about Alberta. There are songs about the Maritimes. Don't even get me started on European cities. Good Lord, Neil Young even wrote a song about Omeemee, population five! (That's the town in "There is a town in north Ontario...")

The only song I know about Toronto is the wonderful but not-so-complimentary "I Don't Want to Go to Toronto" by Radio Free Vestibule. (In the background some people are chanting, "I don't want to go to Toronto/I don't want to go." In the foreground a man who sounds like a paranoid schizophrenic is saying things like "All of the food in Toronto is made of edible oil products. They don't have bagels in Toronto. They have donuts... It's illegal to possess brightly coloured balloons in Toronto... All of the children in Toronto must wear suits. Even the girls." It's very funny.) Although I guess there are a bunch of songs set in Toronto, which is just as good, like "Spadina Bus."

What we need is a song about Waterloo. Why is it we don't get a song? We have a distinct culture, even if it's eclectic. We are a nice enough place to stir up a little emotional attachment. We have musicians. Maybe we should have a contest to write songs about Waterloo. They don't have to be sentimental... they could be funny. They could be sad. They could tangentially mention the town while focussing on somebody's cheating heart. All is possible.

Or maybe what we need is a movie set here... Or a big blockbuster romantic novel that makes it to Oprah's book club list... (does Oprah still have a book club list)?

Just another thought in my latest preoccupation with Waterloo, Ontario:
Acquiring a Stadium for Waterloo's New NHL Team
A Poser: Where to Build the Stadium
Naming Waterloo's New NHL Team
Waterloo: A City Whose Time Has Come

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Acquiring a Stadium for Waterloo's New NHL Team

In my continuing series on the possibility that local billionaire Jim Balsillie will buy Waterloo an NHL team, I have a plan that might expose my utter and complete ignorance or who knows, might not be so dumb.

The Ontario government should build us a stadium. Why would they do this? Because we could make a deal that if they build us a stadium, we'll take Toronto's garbage. It could work like this: the stadium could be built on the land that is now used as the Waterloo Regional landfill facility (you know, the Erb Street dump). That land is on an aquifer so should not be used as a dump, anyway. Then a new, bigger dump could be built closer to the 401, and could be used for Waterloo Region and Toronto.

Several Ontario governments have tried to find a place to dump Toronto's garbage but the NIMBY factor always thwarts them. They just haven't found an enticing enough carrot. Imagine the public backlash if someone tried to kill a deal that would mean we got an NHL team. Now that's a carrot.

The location would fit Graeme's comment on an earlier post that it needs to be at least 60 miles from the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, because it's west of Fisher-Hallman. The location also fits Mark Dowling's comment that it might be good to put it near UW and have an agreement that the universities can use it too. As for his comment that it should be near restaurants, well... hmmm. There aren't too many restaurants around the dump, but they could be added. There's a Costco going up across the street, which doesn't seem ideal.

(What shall we call our new hockey stadium on Erb Street? Instead of naming it after some stupid company, perhaps we have a chance to give it a really good name... like Maple Leaf Gardens was a good name. And let's not end it with "Centre". Borrrring. The UW rink is called the Columbia Ice Fields... something like that would be perfect.)

Of course, striking a deal with the government of Ontario is small potatoes compared with the difficulty of convincing the NHL to allow another team in Ontario. The problem seems to be that the NHL is primarily interested in TV viewers. If they put a team in New Mexico where nobody likes hockey they'll pick up some new viewers. But everyone in Ontario is already watching as much hockey as they can, so putting a team here - even though the games would be sellouts - is a non-starter. In other words, the NHL is not operating in the interest of the fans. It seems that the fans must rise up and do something about this. Sue the NHL. Act up. Something.

See also
A Poser: Where to Build the Stadium
Naming Waterloo's New NHL Team
Waterloo: A City Whose Time Has Come

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Meme games

Sparky Duck has tagged me for a meme, and as this is my first tagging I'll give it a go. Since his tagging contained no instructions (his exact words were, "Oh and I have tagged you for a meme, totally random like"), I'll take the opportunity to talk about meme tagging. The concept has been around for years, but I never paid much attention till now.

Originally, the word meme meant something like, "The cultural counterpart of a gene, a meme is a self-propagating unit of cultural evolution (an idea or value or pattern of behavior) that is passed from one generation to another by nongenetic means (as by imitation)." Meme rhymes with dream.

Now the word seems to be used more to mean "an idea transmitted from person to person like a virus." You might say it's a fancy word for "fad".

Meme games are a variation on the old chain letter, except they take advantage of the linking capabilities in blogs, so you only need to link to the person who tagged you for the meme. Sparky tags me, I tag someone else, and on and on. The key element is that when you are tagged you must provide a link to your tagger in your blog.

Meme games are a good way to increase your Technorati ranking and get some more traffic to your blog, but they serve a more important purpose, which is to create new connections between bloggers. Say I tag you with a book meme (for example, provide your five favorite books); you comply, and tag some of your friends to do the same. They look at your post and link to my list and perhaps we have something in common.

I'm not at all sure how to apply meme games to blogs like mine that aren't personal diaries. I can't see myself choosing someone from the Liblogs blogroll and tagging them with a meme. It could have cool consequences - illuminate our shared ideas, increase the bond between bloggers, increase traffic to our sites - but it seems to be a game for another realm. Or maybe we just need to find a way to further evolve the meme to our realm.

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Drink Tap Water

More evidence that bottled water is not the way to go: New research shows that after 6 months of storage, a potentially toxic chemical called antimony leaches into water from plastic containers, and it does so in concentrations that may be harmful.

There have been lots of studies that prove that North American tap water is tested more rigorously and is more safe to drink than bottled water. I wouldn't mind if people still chose to buy bottled water, except for the pollution caused by the millions of tons of plastic.

Time was, public places had drinking fountains. Now we must pay a buck or two for our sip of water - and then we toss the plastic bottle. Worse, people drink bottled water when they could just as easily drink tap water - at home, in the office, and so on. You don't need to filter it, and you don't need to buy it bottled. Just turn on the tap and enjoy. If your tap water has a chlorine taste, let it sit for half an hour.

This is one of the few areas where the Europeans have a worse record than North Americans in terms of polluting. On a recent trip to Germany I found that it was impossible to get a glass of tap water in a restaurant. When I complained of the waste I was told that it was no problem - the glass was recycled. But glass recycling is the most expensive and least efficient recycling there is, which means that most of the glass that is slated for recycling is diverted to the dump. And in any event, the fact that something is recycled does not make it magically non-polluting. A lot of energy goes into recycling, and a lot of waste results.

As an aside, here's an interesting bottled water story. When I lived in sub-Saharan Africa we had plenty of water but it was highly unsafe to drink and had to be both boiled and filtered. When I needed water away from home I bought bottled water. The cheapest brand of bottled water in Tanzania in 1997 came from the desert country of Saudi Arabia. I assumed it was produced by desalination of sea water. The label boasted that it was "Low Calorie!"

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Single Issue Parties Aren't Always What They Seem

When asked to give her stance on abortion during the recent London by-election, Green Party leader Elizabeth May said, "if one group of people say, "A woman has a right to choose," I get queasy, because I'm against abortion. I don't think a woman has a frivolous right to choose." (Full text here.)

Judy Rebick responds here.

Most Canadians assume that the federal Green Party is a left-leaning political group with a socially progressive platform. That is just not so, and my guess is that it's a strategic decision: the NDP and Liberals have the environmental left pretty well sewn up, so the Green Party is trying to attract disaffected environmentalists in the Conservative party.

I first cottoned on to the right-wing leanings of the Green Party during the 2004 federal election, when all they seemed to talk about was a green tax they wanted to impose to replace income tax - which struck me as irresponsible and crazy. Their idea was to do away with our progressive tax system in which richer people pay higher marginal tax rates than poorer people, and replace it with a regressive tax system based solely on how much energy we consume and how much we pollute. Their plan would have significantly reduced taxes for corporations and the rich and increased the tax burden on the poor.

As wikipedia currently says, "The direction of the 2004 platform ...was perceived as shifting from a centre-left to a centrist stance or even centre-right position. An emphasis on a green tax shift which favoured partially reducing income and corporate taxes (while increasing taxes on polluters and energy consumers) created questions as to whether the Green Party was still on the left of the political spectrum, or was taking a more eco-capitalist approach by reducing progressive taxation in favour of regressive taxation."

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A Poser: Where to Build the Stadium

Freshly armed with the correct spelling of Pittsburgh and justly chastised for my egregious mistake in saying the Penguins are an original NHL team, I am back to carry on with my speculations about local billionaire Jim Balsillie getting my home town of Waterloo its very own NHL team. Go Jimbo!

Now, in my extremely hazy understanding of the World of Sport, moving major league-type teams to a town is supposed to be a town initiative. We should be agitating, money-raising, pledging support, blahblahblah. However, in this case we are able to circumvent all that hard work because of the presence of our hockey-loving, Blackberry-making local hero. This is not necessarily a problem because there is no question about the importance of hockey in this community. (Small plug: my company's A-league hockey team has wrested the trophy away from RIM and displays it in pride of place on our reception counter.) We are no fair weather fans. We play hockey; we watch hockey; we live hockey; we are hockey. Well, that's a kind of an antiinclusionary "we" that doesn't include me.

Despite our lottery-like windfall, we shouldn't be too complacent... if he buys a team he might not move it, or he might move it to, ug, Hamilton. The least we can do is provide some input into the logistics of our brand new NHL team.

So where to put the stadium? The obvious choice is between the Waterloo Regional International Airport and the 401. This would provide easy access by air and also put the stadium within an hour's drive of Toronto and its urban sprawl, Hamilton and its urban sprawl, and London with its urban sprawl. All in all, an easy drive for over 5 million hockey fans.

Another choice is the Chicopee Ski resort. It is near the 401, already has roads and parking, and hasn't been able to open much in the last few winters.

It is difficult for me to give up on the idea of situating the stadium in the town of Waterloo, even though we are the furthest part of the urban sprawl from the 401 and the airport. After consultation with my Waterloo city map, I think we need to build it near hiway 85, and it looks like it's going to require tearing something down. (You can't make an omlette without etcetera.) But heck, our city hall expropriates people's homes so developers can create nice new subdivisions unpolluted by old farmhouses, so you'd think they could turf the Waterloo Motor Inn and a couple of car dealerships. I'm not asking for the Conestogo Mall for heaven's sake. Although that's an idea...

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Naming Waterloo's New NHL Team

In the day and a half since I speculated that our local billionaire, Jim Balsillie, was going to buy my home town of Waterloo (pop. 100,000) our very own NHL team, I have learned that Pittsburg, the town most likely to lose an NHL team in the near future, is a hockey town, and the Pittsburg Penguins are an original NHL team. It seems unfair and cruel to strip their team away from them; I do not wish that on anyone.

So, moving on with my speculation that Jim Balsillie, local billionaire, is going to buy us an NHL team, I will pretend that he will buy a team from some southern US town that never gets snow and where nobody cares about hockey.

That said, it's time to start choosing a name.

I like "the Waterloo Menno Men" a lot, and the fan props would be great - the flat-brimmed black hats, the bonnets, the riding whips, and of course the orange triangles worn on the back. But I fear that there is some slight possibility of offence so I will drop that.

And the Waterloo Rimmers is out, out, out.

Given our local high tech sector and all the math and physics research going on around here, the Pi's would be obvious. (At my company, we get free pie every March 14 at one minute before 2 PM... 3.14159, get it... grooannn.) But you know, that's just a little too cutesy for me. If there was a math symbol named after some sort of fish or facial tick, that might be funny. Pi has sort of been done, if you know what I mean.

Of course Waterloo doesn't have to gobble up all the fame. Since we're part of an urban sprawl that is getting to be known as Grand River (as in Grand River Hospital and Grand River Transit Authority), we could always use that in the title. The problem might be that Grand River doesn't appear on any maps (other than as a river), but then, Waterloo doesn't appear on a lot of maps either.

Surrounding municipalities have been slaughtering tufted cormorants to help support our enormous Great Blue Heron population, so "The Great Blues" or "The Herons" might be good names. But on the birdie front, now that I think of it, the bird/fowl that defines us as Canadians is that lonely hooter of the northern plateau, the loon. "The Grand River Loons." I like it. Put it on the list.

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The Politics of Polarization

Stockwell day wrote, "Aaaaanyway, it appears that local libs now send bits and pieces of my local columns to their favourite spear-chuckers down east who are quick to unleash a volley of indignation, which makes for good fodder back here at home."

This statement has been interpreted as racist because the word spearchucker has been used as a slur against black people in the US. My guess is that Day doesn't even know that meaning of the term. I don't think there's anything racist in his statement.

However (or should I say, Aaaaanyhooo...) there is something really offensive about the statement, and that is his mass dismissal of Eastern Canada. He not only makes an inept attempt to smear us as "spearchuckers", but he implies we're shrill, whiny complainers who Albertans laugh at. This is part of a pattern of contempt for people who live east of Manitoba.

This smacks of the successful Republican ploy to refer to anyone who lives in the eastern US as "east coast elitists", with extra scorn reserved for people who went to Ivy League colleges, as if rednecks and good 'ol boys are the only ones who understand the common folk. And it's worked brilliantly in the US, resulting in the current faux Texan commander in chief.

This sort of politics of polarization should be vehemently resisted. We in Ontario suffered through years of it during the reign of Mike Harris. The right-wing strategy of polarizing parts of the population to create greater support in their base while disenfrachizing those who don't agree is about as anti-democratic as it gets. In Ontario, it resulted in jack-booted riot cops planted outside Queen's Park and all kinds of horrible stuff it's too depressing to relive... a 17 year-old Sarah Polley having her teeth kicked in, a cabinet minister leaping backward into a bush and claiming he'd been pushed by a protestor, a demonstration being pushed from Queen's Park and moving up Yonge Street while a small handful of looters broke windows and armed police calmly watched, thereby discrediting the entire demonstration... it was a dark, scary time and not one to return to.

Government should govern for everyone, not just their so-called "base". The Alberta-based Harper government gets a lot of leverage out of pissing on the majority of Canadians who live in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes. We're not laughing.


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Waterloo - A City Whose Time has Come

I was eating my muesli and yogurt this morning while listening to CBC Radio One, and I may not have been concentrating adequately because they seemed to be saying that RIM co-CEO and local billionaire Jim Balsillie was thinking of buying an American NHL team and moving it to our little town of 100,000 people. For an hour or so I really thought it was possible we might get an NHL team... until I mentioned it to someone at work and they told me I was out to lunch. Apparently Balsillie's bid to buy the Pittsburg Penguins fell through and I guess the CBC bunch were just spitballing. I obviously know nothing whatsoever about hockey.

But I do know that the NHL started in Canada; Canadians are nuts for hockey; and almost all the Canadian teams moved to the US because US cities provide such ginormous incentives in terms of stadiums, subsidies and tax breaks, while Canadian cities aren't into that stuff. Well, I don't even know that, but I think I heard it somewhere. And it provides me with the moral justification to say that it's a Good Thing for our local billionaires to buy us some US hockey teams.

Especially Waterloo. This is a city whose time has come, and we need something big to define it for us. Not that we haven't got a lot of good stuff already, a lot of it thanks to RIM. Balsillie funded the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), which does all kinds of good work but more importantly for me puts on brilliant lectures accompanied by free food. His co-CEO Mike Lazaridis put up the hundreds of millions necessary to create the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, which also has a huge public outreach program with lectures and concerts; and just to balance the physics trends, the Centre for Quantum Computing. Other RIM employees have contributed millions towards our big sports park (RIM Park) and our Children's Museum. All this is added to a community with a world-class concert hall, two universities, a vibrant high-tech sector, a sizable community of Old Order Mennonites, close proximity to the Stratford Festival, and a bunch of other stuff that make it a pretty special place to live.

But I feel sometimes that Waterloo is more an urban sprawl than a city. We have a charming but very small downtown and one big mall, all surrounded by a rolling sea of subdividisions. There's no identifying characteristic, no center. We're a pool of houses off the 401. And to tell you the truth, all those institutions and theaters I mentioned in the big long paragraph that you probably skimmed over - only a tiny percentage of the population ever takes advantage of them.

So I think that an NHL team is just the ticket. Too small a market, you say? It's all in the fan enthusiasm. Here's a story: A cousin of mine went to the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. When she lived there, the city of Knoxville had 100,000 residents. The university football stadium held 105,000 people. And it was sold out a year in advance for every game.

If Jim Balsillie can't make the magic and buy us an NHL team, then I think we'll just have to dream up something ourselves. Olympic bid, anyone?

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