About-face

Well, I just can't do it. Continue to limit my blog to political commentary, that is.

I was watching CBC Newsworld this morning, and left it on after Antiques Roadshow ended. The news featured a disection of our new PM, Stephen Harper. Who is the man? What do we know of him? Is he the man we thought he was during the campaigning? All of a sudden, everything we thought we knew for sure about Mr. Harper has been turned on it's head, and maybe he's not so conservative as we might have thought.

Good grief, Charlie Brown. As always, the practices of politics and of pandering to politicians leaves me unsure of what to believe. When I start feeling like this, it's time to look around and see if I can take a step sideways to avoid the whole mess, and what do you know, I can. So my blog will now be commentary about "life, love, and everything," as the tag-line says.

I generally enjoy the news coverage on Newsworld, since it's a drastic change to news as it's covered on CityTV or Global. However, sometimes I find that the reporters spend too much time covering something neither newsworthy nor interesting, and when that happens, I find myself changing the channel.

The main reason I ever watch Newsworld is for Antiques Roadshow. I am pretty pleased that there is now a Canadian Roadshow competing against the original British Roadshow for Newsworld's airtime . You can go to the CBC website to view a daily or weekly program shedule, and read summaries of all the programs CBC airs - T.V. and radio. The website is defaulted to Eastern Time, but you can select your own timezone by entering in your postal code.

On both the British and the Canadian Roadshow websites, you can learn more about how the show works, find out where their next tours are taking them, and, my favourite, see pictures of show highlights and read what the experts had to say about them. The Canadian Roadshow website is a little easier to navigate than the British one, and features a link to a weekly story on the home page. The British site, on the other hand, has a link to test out your BritSpeak. Sadly, the the test timed out on me before I could finish it.

I have to give CBC one more plug, because this weekend CBC Radio 2 is hosting a Mozart Weekender and they are currently airing my favourite song composed by my favourite composer: "Fantasia in D Minor." And who ever is playing it cerainly puts my rendition of the song to shame. The Mozart Weekender is a celebration of Mozart's legacy, and coincides with 2006 being the year of Mozart's 250th birthday. The Mozart Weekender website offers Mozart resources, CD's, and the top 27 Mozart compositions as voted for by Canadians.

Always an excellent site to check out for information, Wikipedia has a good biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart that lists all of his works and clears up many of the myths surrounding the man.

Interestingly, after playing "Fantasia in D Minor," I always thought the the person who could compose such a song must have some sort of mental imbalance - schizophenia or Tourette's, perhaps. According to Wikipedia, there is a great deal of evidence that supports the notion that Mozart did indeed have Tourette's syndrom. Regardless of this, or maybe even in part because of it, the man was a genious. And I think every genious must have a spark of madness in them somewhere, albeit some more than others.

To get a sense of what I mean about "Fantasia," you can listen to the beginning of the song on Amazon.com. Scroll down the page just a little ways and you'll find that "Fantasia in D Minor" is the second song on Disc 4. You can listen to more excerpts from the song by visiting Digital Piano Voicing. The site isn't much too look at, but you will find the link to listen to parts of the song right in the middle of the page. You can also read what Grant Hiroshima of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association has to say about this song by clicking here.

Happy 250th Birthday,
Mozart!

Peter Julian, re-elected

Burnaby-New Westminster results:

Peter Julian, NDP: 16,968 votes (38.83%)
Mary Pynenburg, LIB: 13, 052 votes (29.87%)
Marc Dalton, CON: 12061 votes (27.6%)
Scott Henry Janzen, GRN: 1614 votes(3.69%)

Did my vote make a difference? Well, better safe than sorry, but it looks like the Liberal reputation damaged Mary's chances - either that, or Peter's reputation as a man of action ensured that none of the other candidates stood a chance, anyway. I think there's too many immigrants in this riding for there to ever be a Conservative MP elected here. And the poor old Greens... Canada just isn't ready for such radical idealism.

Now that all the hype is over, I'll have to spend some time evaluating how the new government ends up working and what kind of progress they make on their campaign promises. I will continue to pose my thoughts and ideas as they are inspired by books such as Saul's The Unconscious Civilization. And I will occasionally delve into trains of thought that could easily begin with "If I were Prime Minister..."

To protest the vote...

or vote to protest.

If voting NDP is the equivilant of voting to protest against the Liberals and Conservatives, then spoiling one's ballot is probably the equivilant of protesting against voting. So, in the end, I followed my friend Kate's advice and voted with my head.

This just in: we have a Conservative minority government. The polls haven't yet closed, but the way this country is stretched out, B.C. has very little impact on what kind of government we end up with.

I guess the least I can hope for now is that we don't end up with a Conservative or Liberal MP in Burnaby-New Westminster.

Indecision

I clearly cannot vote for the right-wing conservatives or the loopy Liberals today. It seems my riding has a good candidate in our current NDP MP, but I find it very difficult to separate the candidate from the party, and the NDP just isn't a party that I believe in. My friend Vince reminded me that while voting Green is essentially throwing your vote away, every vote they get will help that party with their funding. Is that enough reason to vote Green, though? They have some very lofty goals of reforming the WTO, IMF and the World Bank. But wouldn't it be better to start instigating change within our own boarders, and work with industries and manufacturers to create sustainable markets? OK, part of that likely invovles taxing the heck out of organizations that don't adhere to environmentally and socially resposible regulations.

Actually, upon closer inspection, the Green party has quite a few items on their platform that I can support, mostly on the community level. On the international level, they are in favour of fair trade (like the coffee), not free trade. (They'd have to be careful not to use the term "regulated".) They would turn Canada into a military free zone, and a nation of peacekeeping. They would "reform taxation so that our spending better reflects the goals of a healthy and safe Canada."

This last is all fine and dandy, but shouldn't taxation be reformed so that the process itself better reflect said goals? For example, give a tax break to car manufacturer A who produces a certain amount of hybrid vehicles, thus presenting consumers with a more environmentally-friendly option. Give a bigger tax break to car manufacturer B who only produces hybrid vehicles, thus only presenting consumers with environmentally-friendly options. And tax the heck out of car manufacturer C, who doesn't bother to offer consumers any options that are even remotely environmentally friendly.

Anyway, after all that, I'm going to have to think long and hard about what I'm going to do when I get to the polls this evening.

Burnaby-New Westminster

Here's some facts about my municipality, as reported in today's Province:

• Of the 111,048 residents counted in the 2001 census [hmm, I lived in South Vancouver for that], 47% belong to a visible minority and 2% are aboriginal.
• Average family income: $58, 734
• Average house price: $259,720
• Mother tongue: English 50%, Chinese 8%, Punjabi 5%
• Religion: Protestant 21%, Catholic 8%, Punjabi 5%
• Education: Didn't finish high school 22%, trade certificate 11%, finished college or university 42%
• In 1980, New Westminster became the first city west of Ontario to be incorporated
• After Willowdale, Ont., this riding has the largest Korean population in Canada

The Province notes that the three main issues are crime, health care, and immigration. The crime part is growing problems with drugs, criminal activity, and homelessness in the community, while the health care and immigration issues are more national: the future of Canada's health care system and the wrongful Chinese Head Tax of an ignorant yesteryear.

Previous election results average 34% for the NDPs, 33% for the Liberals, 28% for the Conservatives, and 5% for other.

My so-called options

The election is just around the corner. As promised, I've had a look at the Burnaby-New Westminster candidates...

Liberal: Mary Pynenburg

Pynenburg is a member of the Burnaby Board of Trade and the New Westminster Chamber of Commerce, like any good Liberal should be. She is focussing her campaign on three key themes that her constituents have brought to her attention: accountability, community, and prosperity. Unfortunately, like many politicians, she has it stuck in her head that the prosperity people are interested in is the monetary kind, not the kind that comes from inside. Her community development scheme does nothing to get to the heart of the real issues that drag all communities down. And her accountability plan includes a number of listening sessions and open houses, neither of which mention any kind of two-way dialogue. Pynenburg ran last time around, and was beaten by only 329 votes.

Conservative: Marc Dalton

This ex-pastor has taught elementary school and highschool, and has been in the army. He has a B.A. in French and History, and a Master's degree in Leadership, but that doesn't mean you can learn leadership in the classroom. His website certainly shows no leadership, indeed, it serves to make him look like just another Conservative tool, since anything important he could have to say is replaced by a link back to the Conservative website. Dalton doesn't live in this riding, but he told reporters at The Record that he would move here if elected on Monday.

NDP: Peter Julian

My current MP, Julian is the NDP's critic for International Trade and Globalization, Persons with Disabilities, Transportation, Treasury Board and Natural Resources. He maintains a presence in the community, and it seems he's accomplished a lot during his year and a half in office, but he has no mention of what his promises are for the next term in office. According to The Record, Julian is "running on his reputation" - a reputation for being a man who gets things done, since he was named both most active rookie and most active MP from B.C. during his first elected term in office.

Green: Scott Janzen

Janzen's priorty is "making sure we have a sustainable future for future generations." He joined the Green Party because he considers it to be the only party that shares that priority. He doesn't say why running as an independent isn't an option. Family is very important to Janzen, and if elected, he promises to "showcase Burnaby as a model for other municipalities." Uh... what about New West?

...

In the end, there are two kinds of campaign promises: Those I'm afraid won't be kept and those I'm afraid will be kept.

A little equilibrium

One week to the election, and counting.

I used the Chapters gift card I received for Christmas to purchase On Equilibrium, by John Ralston Saul (go figure). Here is an excerpt from the chapter "Ethics" (p. 102).

...the people who have set and who continue to set the ethical agenda of our time are absent from the chambers to which the citizens send their representatives. They don't want to be there. When pressed, they tend to respond that elected officials have no real power. But if they don't believe it is worth being elected, then they don't believe in democracy. If they don't believe in democracy, what do they think should replace it? And however much they believe they are right, do they not believe the citizenry have the right to make the final decision? If so, how, since they themselves have rejected the legitimacy of the legislature?

The people Saul is talking about are the people in NGOs. A page later, he goes on to comment that citizens aren't "interested in leaders who say they want power but protest they cannot actually use it because they feel victimized by forces of inevitability."

One of the major problems I have with the platforms on the table for the next week is that they all ignore the underlying social causes of so many of the problems they are trying to manage. How can the Liberals expect to do anything solid about gun control when they can't even control the corruption that goes on in their own party? What good are the Conservatives if they're sleeping with right-wing Americans, as the Liberals claim?

The people in charge would all protest that they are merely victims of the inevetability of trade and economics, and charge that they do the best they can, each claiming superiority over the other. Me, I have the heart of an NGO, and the desire to not only stand up to the so-called forces of inevitability, but to reshape those forces. I also know that neither one of us is better than the other, but together, we can do better. I'd probably get laughed out of the polling booth.

In my next entry, I will finally get around to taking a look at who's running for office in my electoral district (Burnaby-New Westminster).

Inspiring eye-openers

I have been thinking that it might be helpful for you to know what has shaped my views on politics.

Back in 2002, I was majoring in Anthropology at UBC. My focus was on Archaeology and Physcical Anthropology, but we had to fulfill a certain number of ethnographic credits. After much endorsement from classmates, I enrolled myself in a class called The Ethnogography of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, taught by Michael Ames, then curator of the Museum of Anthropology, and Jim Green, at the time a member of Larry Campbell's COPE party.

In class, we looked at the Downtown Eastside through a global lens, and read authors such as Antonio Gramsci, Pierre Bourdieu, Earl Shorris, and Paulo Friere. The first book I read for that class, however, was a homegrown one: John Ralston Saul's The Unconscious Civilization. And that was the book that did it for me.

Did what, exactly? It opened my eyes to a whole new way of understanding the world around me. More precisely, it gave me a language to understand the dissatisfaction I felt with the world and the way things often are. I still feel this dissatisfaction, but having read these authors, I know better what my own role is in contributing to the discontent I find with the world. Which is why, one day when I'm ready, I will jump into the world of politics and do what I can to eliminate some of this discontent. Then I really will be able to put an X in the box next to my name on a ballot.

Political promises

Today is Friday the 13. (At least it was, when I started typing this entry.) A day associated with bad luck, nightmares and horror movies. And also the day that marks the countdown to the last ten days of election campaigning across the country.

What a circus. I am not fond of politicians, and I am even less fond of the games they play. I have never voted in a Federal election, and that kind of pisses me off, because gosh-darn it, it's my right as a Canadian citizen to vote for someone that I believe will do a good job running the country. The problem is, I have yet to see a candidate and a party that I can believe in. Let's look at the options this time 'round.

Liberal: Current PM Paul Martin

On the heels of the scandal that brought about the non-confidence vote that resulted in the upcoming election, the Liberals have their work cut out for them. Here's an exert from the summary of their platform, as found on their website:

The Liberal Party’s platform, “Securing Canada’s Success,” commits to
cutting tuition for students, making child care funding permanent, adding 1,000
new family doctors and amending the Constitution to remove the federal
government’s ability to overrule the Supreme Court.

The Liberal platform commits to ensuring Canada will:

• meet the challenge of an aging population;
• remain competitive in a changing global market;
• build a safe, inclusive and environmentally-responsible society; and
• guarantee that government is accountable and efficient

Their whole campaign platform is a whopping 86 pages long. Not nearly as long as the infamous Gomery report, but then, that report wouldn't exist without the Liberals. Enough reason for me to not even consider them.

Conservative: Stephen Harper

Harper has outlined five priorities should we end up with Conservative government:

• Clean up government by passing the Federal Accountability Act;

  Provide real tax relief to working families by cutting the GST;

  Make our streets and communities safer by cracking down on crime;

  Help parents with the cost of raising their children; and

  Work with the provinces to establish a Patient Wait Times

Too bad the Conservatives are so cozy with our right-wing neighbours to the south.

NDP: Jack Layton

According to the NDP website, the comprehensive NDP platform includes:

• Help for seniors to stay independent as long as possible with improvements to home care and the creation of long-term care spaces so that quality care will be available when it is needed.
• Helping children get a good start in life with investment in the child benefit to reduce child poverty and more quality child care spaces along with legislation to ensure national standards for quality child care.
• Building opportunities by ensuring young people get the education they need without being burdened with huge debts.
• Legislation to stop the spread of private, for-profit health care and concrete improvements in the health care system including first steps towards a National Prescription Drug Plan and training more health care providers such as nurses and doctors.
• Cleaning up government with legislation to ensure politicians can be held accountable and reforming our democracy with a proposal to improve Canada’s electoral system.

Despite having been a member of two different unions, I'm just too anti-union to consider the NDP.

Green: Jim Harris

The Green Party's vision includes building a sustainable fiscal framework, building a sustainable, a healthy, and an inclusive Canada, and renewing our democracy. If only I hadn't been weaned on the bread of the pulp and paper industry, and my continuing debt-free eductation didn't rely on my dad's job in said industry. Too many jobs are at risk in BC if the Greens should get power.

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I still haven't decided if I will vote in ten days time, although I will exercise my right to vote regardless. Due to my love for this beautiful land of ours, Green is the closest thing to an option that I feel I have, but, and I hate to say it, spoiling my ballot is a somewhat more appealing one. Maybe I'll add my own selection to the choices on the ballot, and vote for me.