forward to the future

One day soon, computer AIs are going to datamine things like email, and discover interesting patterns of "structural" anxieties manifesting through email forwards.

I received the first copy of this email in December of 2000, shortly after the first Bush election. I then received a whole bunch of emails with slight variations on this text shortly after the 2004 election. Suddenly, in early 2007, this forward returns to my Inbox.

you can tell that this text is a response to an election by the date given for "Come-Uppance Day", which is November 2. The presidential elections are always in the first week of November, and the 2004 election was nov. 2. Weirdly enough, this latest round of circulation doesn't follow any American election, save last november's midterms which saw the Democrats take back the House and Senate -- a move slightly antithetical to this email's call for "Revocation".

The attribution of this letter to John Cleese is what I find most interesting. This little addition opens the door to all kinds of theories. The reader is granted an authoritarian vindication for the sense of enjoyment they gain by reading the email, thanks to a more credible satirist. A desire for Empire, represented not only by the British history invoked in the email, but also by the legal framework and interpellative process by which the forward is structured (the reader is interpellated as an Imperial subject), suggests an unconscious and reflexive application of guilt on the part of Americans who are against Bush's policies, and yet do no further political action than send dispirited emails to each other at work. Furthermore, by invoking Cleese, a "friendly" subversive (Cleese was the most conservative member of Monty Python), the email is an impotently nostalgic return to the radical culture of the sixties -- a culture which was instrumental in realizing the most important anti-war measures of the late twentieth century.

That last point begs reflection: can a degree of political agency be realized by the citizenry? The most America seems to be able to do is send email and get its wishes vetoed by the President.

Fossils + Boughner @ Loose Cannon

Wednesday, March 28 was supposed to be one of the landmark nights for the Hamilton noise scene. Local acts were to be joined by genre stalwarts Prurient and Burning Star Core. Thanks to the whims of the border agencies which kept the headliners from entering Canada (obscenity laws!!!), only the local acts were able to perform. Despite the logistical chaos of a wholly improvised show, the evening's performance proved solid enough. Fossils (David Payne, Scott Johnson, and Jeremy Buchan) & Matthew Boughner were able to invoke a variety of harsh soundscapes throughout their short but inspired set.





Sadly, my attempt to preserve an aural record of the evening was foiled by the incapacity of my $2 microphone to not be overdriven simply by the volume of the performance. The MP3 file below requires explanation, as the recording process did indeed alter the sound. First off, I was using a Creative Zen, which records and compresses data to MP3 in real time. To dampen the sound and keep the crappy vocal mic from distorting, I placed the recorder inside a cloth bag, which I then covered with my jacket and some random pieces of clothing that I found on the floor. Furthermore, I used my arm to cover this whole mound of crap for the duration of the recording. Despite my hand and at least five centimetres of cloth in the way, the volume level produced during the performance was enough to overdrive my microphone to the point of distortion. Since I was actually at the show, this new "filter" on the sound is an interesting addition to what was heard that night, and serves as a nice reminder of the aesthetic divergence of performance and the process of archiving. For those of you who were not there, consider this audio file to be tangental to the live performance, and in no way indicative of how the musicians wanted themselves to be heard.

You have been warned / invited to listen.

MP3: - Fossils, live @ Loose Cannon (compressed and contained through a voice recorder direct to MP3)

Deerhoof - Friend Opportunity

Deerhoof
Friend Opportunity
[Kill Rock Stars, 2007]

‘The Perfect Me’ opens the record at a riotous pace, and listeners will quickly understand that the Deerhoof of 2007 is a more precise animal than evidenced by the noisier songs of their early output. This time the San Francisco trio wants to rock in a slightly more conventional manner. Of course, for this arty band convention is a slippery concept. Think of how David Bowie returned to the fold by releasing his famed Berlin records after Station to Station and you might get a sense of how Deerhoof views convention. Some of the band's ideas are a bit retro: the slinky riff at the heart of ‘Believe E.S.P.’ comes straight from 1973, vintage Orange tone intact. Others are a little more inspired by modern electronic cacophony.

Throughout the album, drummer Greg Saunier provides a loose, busy, and muscular rhythmic foundation that sounds like how drums were played before metal made precision famous. The chorus of ‘Matchbox Seeks Maniac’ would not have sounded too out of place in one of Pete Townsend’s operas. Of course, the band’s fractured, video-game-like compositional aesthetic keeps things far more interesting than simple rock nostalgia suggests. And Satomi Matsuzaki’s twee vocal performance of fairytale-epic lyrics is as childishly saccharine as ever. All this cacophony might be expected by longtime fans, but it is this album’s melodic cohesion that ranks Friend Opportunity among the best of this prolific band’s career.

MP3: Deerhoof - The Perfect Me

Boris with Michio Kurihara - Rainbow

Rainbow
Boris with Michio Kurihara
[Inoxia, 2007]

Longtime Boris fans have come to expect a different approach to hard rock composition with each new release. Originally famous because of their extended, fuzzed-out drone records and extended Sabbath odes, the band has also been known to engage in several detours into more traditional songwriting. For their new album, Boris have teamed with current Ghost player Michio Kurihara, who is one of Japan’s more fiery guitarists. Naturally, there are solos aplenty scattered throughout this album’s nine tracks. The album opens with the slow burner “Rafflesia” before moving to the late-60s lounge-inspired “Rainbow”. If you are into the band's more psychedelic side, you might want to focus your attention on the strong middle and end sections of this release. The lengthy feedback-and-tom interplay of "Fuzzy Reactor", for example, will extend many a horizon.

Many of the songs on this album sound entirely in line with the emo-cum-shoegaze compositions found on 2006's Pink. This tendency is perhaps best exemplified by “Starship Narrator”, the third track on the album, which is notable for Kurihara’s tasteful harmonic phrases. While in many respects Rainbow is the most accessible release in the extended Boris discography, some might prefer the more restrained chaos of this record to the epic bombast which brought the group to the attention of heavy music fans around the world.

MP3: Boris with Michio Kurihara - Starship Narrator

Hamilton Harlots fundraiser

an open letter to Stockwell Day and the Conservative Party of Canada

Hon. Stockwell Day,

The other day, I somewhat accidentally managed to come across your blog, and while I am supportive of the need to express your feelings with your constituents, I do wish to challenge some of your assertions.

First of all, let me deal with this procedural detail: I am aware that your personal site in no way represents either the Canadian government, or even indeed your own party. I am also aware that this email address represents an official government of Canada member, and therefore you are not legally required to address non-governmental issues. At the same time however, I cannot separate the opinions expressed on this website as more or less "Official", as they will inform your decisions regarding governmental matters.

I hope it is no surprise that the environment is suddenly a Political Issue (sorry for the capital letters, but since you espouse the National Media...) I have to mention the issue that's perhaps most important for 2007 is Climate Change.

Now just to make the reference, as your writings on the subject are two months old, I would like to quote the following:

"Maybe all my constituents living high up on the West Bench, or Lakeview Heights , or the hills of Logan Lake will soon be sitting on lakeside property as one of the many benefits of global warming.

All I know is last weekend when I got home from Ottawa there was more snow in my driveway than we usually get in a year.

And I was begging for Big Al's Glacial Melt when the mercury hit -24°. Do not despair, my fellow dwellers of the Okanagan and Nicola Valleys ."

I must take your expertise in the matter of Climate Change as proof of your well-read and thoroughly scientific examination of the facts at hand.

Can I take these sets of statements as proof that you do not consider Climate Change to be an important issue? After all, the climate changes on a daily basis, especially in reference to one individual person who might only have the vantage point of one location at a specific point in time. One day in June it's warm, and then come December one looks around and experiences colder weather, at least here in southern Canada.

And so, in late November you came home to witness the accumulation of "more snow in my driveway than we usually get in a year". Might I suggest that having "more snow" is consistent with the fact that as the climate warms and the glaciers melt, more water circulates around the planet as precipitation, which in the winter months in Canada falls as snow. Of course, having more precipitation in some areas means that other areas will experience the opposite. Somewhat tangentially, I wish to mention that my grandfather sold the wheat farm he had been running since the 1940s in Stavely, Alberta after nearly ten years of droughts in the 1990s.

Can I here mention that while it was cold out west in December, southern Ontario did not receive any winter until February. While some record low temperatures were set in B.C., we in southern Ontario enjoyed record highs, including one January day which was nearly 15 degrees. See how the Climate Changes as you include other perspectives?

Frankly, I do not wish to dwell on the science or consequences of Climate Change, as this area has been well-covered in the past year by the Stern Review Report on the Economics of Climate Change, published by the British government, or the preliminaries of the upcoming report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Just in case you missed them, they can be read online:

It is not my intention to provoke any name-calling, buck-passing, or any other such immature approaches to democracy. Frankly, I'll lay my cards down on the table and state that I do not believe that the Conservative party cares one iota for the well-being of the planet. Your party (although, not your party alone) represents corporate and industrial interests, which by their very nature (both legally and ideologically) place their own economic interests above any other interest, including the welfare of the public.

The problem with this approach is that it is our very capacity for industry and corporate exploitation that is at issue here. We abuse the Earth in the name of profit. Furthermore, adherence to the profit motive is not a rational decision when viewed in the context of unequal distribution of economic resources. The only way that anyone can say that "we have to keep industry going at its current pace" and speak from an ethical foundation is if this inequality is addressed. The economics, thanks to people like Sir Nicholas Stern, is clear on this issue. In sixty years, it is not likely that the average person will be able to afford the consequences of climate change; the wealthy will be immune to change in real terms, while the poor face an extinction-level event. In a world in which 2% of the human population controls 50% of the wealth, you cannot talk about the morality of contemporary business practices as the solution to Climate Change.

All that climate change is doing is giving the issue of inequality a temporal dimension: we can act now while we have the choice to either act or not, or we can be forced into change as our climate becomes increasingly inhospitable to our lifestyle. I personally will endorse leaders that espouse leadership by making the energy policy choices necessary for the benefit of all humanity, not simply the business elite. Leaders should be able to see the horizons of history and society, and act according to the interests of human civilization.

From the contents of your own website, as well as the numerous statements that have been made by members of the Conservative government, I cannot in all honesty state that we as a nation are enjoying Enlightened Leadership (see: another Big Idea!).

As a personal message to you Mr. Day, might I appeal to your Christian instincts? Due to the limitations of human nature, are we not intended to be stewards of this Earth and not masters?

2006: The Year of “You”

In the middle of December 2006, Time Magazine released its annual Person of the Year issue and stirred up a small media frenzy by proclaiming this year’s winner to be the somewhat eponymous “you”. The idea behind this proclamation is the supposed influence of the accumulated efforts of the “little people” against the might of concentrated power. Thanks, Time, for yet another sentimental ode to the “little people”. This media-constructed humunculus – “you” – has, according to this particular arm of the Time-Warner media empire, taken power away from the corporate and media elite by means of YouTube and Wikipedia, open-source software and user-produced media, and Web 2.0 and cellphone cameras. What a magical and revolutionary time in which we live, when technology is available to liberate the individual.

Well, please forgive this “little person” writer from Hamilton for questioning the wisdom of the Time-Warner empire trumpeting the technological utopia which awaits, but Pardon My Lunch Bucket.

Ok, just so the cards are on the table here: one of the largest media conglomerates in the world is telling us that through the collective will of our user-produced efforts, the power dynamic is switching from elite control to mass, democratic control of the mediasphere. Finally, after years of neglect by the media hierarchy, suddenly the voices of the mass citizen are being heard. The will of the people is now more accurately realized. Democracy 2.0, if you like. But of course, we won’t know the full story of this revolution unless money is exchanged so that a certain media conglomeration will release to the masses this knowledge in the form of a paid-subscription magazine. Which sounds suspiciously like that old democracy that we already have, and which for the vast majority of the working population amounts to Democracy 0.7 (beta).



So what? you might ask, they’re just trying to sell magazines. And here we come to the point. Time-Warner sells roughly 5 million monthly copies of Time Magazine in North America. It is not unreasonable to assume that an end-of-year special issue sold around the holiday season has the potential to double those sales figures. All told, production of this magazine amounts to roughly 200,000 tonnes of waste and consumes roughly 1,000,000 trees per year. You might assume in an era of blue-box programs that Time-Warner could use recycled paper to print, instead of cutting down virgin forests. In 1994, they did indeed move to a 10% recycled-paper mandate, but changed that stance less than a year later.

To make the issue even more obsessive, I am not so sure that the metallic foil used to create the mirror on the cover of the 2006 “You” issue of Time Magazine is the most recyclable thing. I would guess quite the opposite in fact, and thus the whole issue would end up in the trash in the face of the economic reality of recycling, namely who sorts the shit. Furthermore, we can talk about the environmental impact of the energy spent producing and distributing the magazine. Long story made brief, by purchasing this issue, “you” are indeed making waves in the world. To summarize: this corporation cuts down forests and contributes to climate change to sell us a product describing how we the “little people” are affecting positive change in the world.

2006 was for many the year of environmental awareness. After the surge in environmental “events” over the past three or four years, the media could no longer ignore the science of climate change. Leaders of the world’s nations are now almost universal in their call to address the issue. In the wake of a poll suggesting that 70% of Canadians think the environment to be one of the most important issues for the country, the notoriously anti-green Conservative government has done an about-face and reinstituted the Liberal government’s previous environmental policies that it had scrapped the year before (read: no new money, in real terms).

In light of the urgency of the matter (as of January 21, 2007, I would like to welcome most people who live in southern Ontario to the beginning of only our second week of “proper” winter temperatures) I think that Time Magazine’s rather empty gesture can be easily co-opted into something of greater significance. This indeed is the time in which “you” is a needed concept in relation to societal change, but not in the superficial manner suggested by Time .

Conceptually speaking, Time’s notion of the power and influence of “you” is misguided at best, and self-serving and delusional at worst. If Time Magazine were serious about its conception of this all-important “you”, then it would have printed a magazine containing user-produced content of the type it is glamourizing. A whole issue created by the readers. Or it might have put a different image on its cover, such as what I have here produced in five seconds.



An even more interesting discussion would be about the true power of this “you” in relation to social change. Along the lines of, say, the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine a few years ago. Remember that little “you” event, when millions of Ukrainians participated in daily protests and general strikes until the leaders who stole power gave up control of the government to properly elected officials?

Such efforts might prove useful in dealing with the fact that 70% of the American population wants the Iraq war to end at the same time that the White House is requesting the commitment of additional troops. Follow that example of “you” from eastern Europe: stop going to work, stop going to school, stop going to the mall, stop everything until the war stops. Then when the war stops, put an “American” spin on the event by going back to work and fighting for health-care. Surely, Time could mobilize its wide readership to act for change by talking about this revolutionary “you” power in a more legitimate sense than they have. But then again, in the process Time-Warner would probably lose a great deal of ad revenue, among other things.

And yet the Time article was not wholly wrong. The technologies to which it refers in judging the importance of “you” are indeed progressive technologies. But the important thing about YouTube is not that more and more people are making videos about politics using Lego parts. It’s that people are realizing that they would rather spend hours and hours making said Lego masterpieces than sit and watch network television or otherwise participate in the traditional mediasphere.

I am well aware as to the reasons why a legitimate debate concerning the true impact of “you” on human civilization and the Earth as a whole will not happen in a publication such as Time Magazine. That discussion might begin by investigating the degree to which journalism has fallen from its once important function as arbiter for the public good.

Don’t listen to the media elites as to why this change occurred toward the end of the last century; they’ll tell you that they are simply providing that which “you” are demanding. After all, it was “you” that brought to television American Idol and to the internet the execution of Saddam Hussein. So it will be “you” that programs the next revolution: a people with revolutionary potential are reduced to staring into the cover of a magazine in a supermarket, trying to find themselves.

FWCI no more...

Normally I don't put too many personal details on this site, but today I found out from Paul Schaffer that my old high school has closed. It was a great school, and I credit several of the faculty there for setting me in a decent direction in those rather turbulent times of my youth.

Apparently this is not new information, but the fact that I learned nothing of this event until now reflects the fact that everybody I know from Thunder Bay has long since left that town. There is always a sense of sadness in a small town as it ages...

no snow = me cry now

It's January 4, and I am outside wearing just a t-shirt and pants. As I was biking home from work today, I passed several groups of kids who were outside playing. Not a single one of them was wearing a jacket. In Hamilton, it's currently 8.4 degrees Celsius, and from the picture you can see quite obviously that there is no snow on the ground. Statistically average temperatures for our region tend to hover around -4.5 degrees Celsius. This time last year, January was exceptionally warm and was followed by a cold February. When I was a child (we're talking the 1980s, so not really that long ago), winter was a season lasting many months, usually from early November through to late March. From the look of things currently, it seems as though southern Ontario will once again experience a drastically shortened winter season, perhaps only a little more than one month.

For those of you outside North America, now is traditionally the time in which the whole of Canada is stuck in a deep-freeze. The winter is a major component of our national cultures and identity. Furthermore, the season is a source of revenue for some and an ecological necessity for others. I myself am a big fan of snow, and its rather conspicuous absence so far this year suggests to me something exceptionally alarming. More alarming however is the fact that other than a major breakup of ice in the Canadian arctic, the weather is not really being discussed in the general media.

There was a bit of an awareness campaign that was sparked by the release of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change by the British government. Frankly, this little bit of bedtime reading should be mandatory in schools and boardrooms.

Oh yeah, that same British government is expecting 2007 to be the hottest year in recorded history. So far, we're off to a tragic start.

Happy Holidays

From all of us from who knows where, Happy Holidays!

Junior Boys at Pepperjack Café

Hamilton has proven itself quite capable of producing a diverse array of musical performers. Many local acts have come to define their respective genres. And yet the most popular -- pop music, itself -- is the one area in which Hamilton’s music scene remains relatively obscure. The city has come to be known for its noise, art-rock, hardcore, drone, indie, and various other forms of good independent music. But a Top-40 hit has been largely elusive for the Steel’s musicians.

Enter the Junior Boys, who produce synth-heavy pop with sentimental lyrics and a vocal presence that has more than a passing nod-and-a-wink to Faith-era George Michael. If it weren’t for the digital complexities in their production, you might assume their music to be a post-New Wave revivalist act. In that difference, however, can be found the true pleasure of their music. Like the decade’s other great electronic music producers, Junior Boys realize that a subtle tempo shift, a beat seemingly misplaced, or a glitch made rhythmic are key to bringing out a sense of sensuality in machine-based music.

The rapid success of 2004's Last Exit was precipitated largely thanks to the online music scene, as critics and bloggers devoured some of the freshest beat production of that year’s pop music revival. It was no surprise that Junior Boys embarked on extensive overseas touring for the year following the first full-length.

Despite the band’s hipster-name-drop status, recognition remains somewhat elusive in this country. Perhaps it is mainstream Canada’s predilection for mind-numbing, recycled bar rock and painful, faux-sexuality teen-pop that’s keeping Junior Boys off the radio.

Junior Boys co-founder and principal sonic architect Jeremy Greenspan reflects on the genesis of this year’s critically-lauded album So This Is Goodbye. “A lot of the new album deals with travel, and the feelings of disorientation, etc, that go along with that. I guess some of that has to do with all of the travelling that we did on the first record. Touring has obviously become a big part of our lives and all of those experiences are bound to be reflected in the new music that we've been making.”

This last statement brings to mind how pop music responds to the world which consumes it. Are creative people destined to a sense of responsibility to society? More importantly, does it even matter to have a “meaning” behind pop music other than the fact that a given group of people like it for a given amount of time?

“Pop music is ultimately an incredibly malleable art form,” Greenspan muses. “The thing that is best about making pop music is that there are no rules. All that is important is that it moves people, in some way, and that people want to listen to it over and over, and beyond that a musician is free to experiment as much as possible. That can be extremely liberating.”

Typical for musicians who compose in a studio setting, the Junior Boys live experience has evolved significantly since the first tour. “I think we've become much more comfortable as a live unit. We take playing live far more seriously than we used to, even though we still think of ourselves as a sorta "studio band". It is far more interesting for us now that we have added a third member (Dave Foster on drums) to our live lineup. Dave adds a lot to the shows.” The addition of a live drummer should prove particularly invigorating to the rather introspective direction that the new music has taken.

Pepperjack Café, the venue which is hosting the band’s performance on December 26, is no stranger to audiences who seek danceable performers. Even with a packed room, there is space to move if one is so inspired. Greenspan is candid about his appreciation of the local scene: “The last time we played in Hamilton, we had a great time. It was the first show that we did with our new lineup and we were pretty nervous. Luckily the show was a big success, and hopefully the next show will go just as well.” Rising scene-stealer Gary Buttrum will be on-hand with one of the better DJ mixes being produced these days, providing yet another reason to attend early and leave well into the night.

MP3: Junior Boys - So This Is Goodbye

Joanna Newsom - Ys

Joanna Newsom
Ys
[Drag City, 2006]


The success of Joanna Newsom’s 2004 album The Milk-Eyed Mender tore the pixie-voiced harpist from the warm yet fiercely overprotective clutches of “outsider music” into the fickle puritanism of that year’s folk-revisionist indie mainstream. If that sentence seems a wordy introduction, feel free to avoid Newsom’s new release. Ys is a baroque, lyrically-dense album which revels in the self-placating joy of wordsmithing.

Over the course of five long tracks, lushly orchestrated by Van Dyke Parks and mixed by Jim O’Rourke, she examines many of the triumphs and platitudes which come to determine human relationships. On “Monkey & Bear”, for example, the mutually-dependent titular couple escape from a farm only to learn about the harsh realities of life without a food hand-out. They find success as entertainers as one of them manipulates the other; the latter realizes the narcism inherent in this acceptance, and ultimately dissolves the relationship.

It is quite interesting that fans of instrumental music have taken an interest in Newsom’s output. Her lyrical performance is indeed quite acrobatic, and much like Bjork’s is definitely an acquired taste. However, those with a sense of adventure will want to explore this satisfyingly dense album.

MP3: Joanna Newsom - Emily

Leafcutter John - The Forest and the Sea

Leafcutter John
The Forest and the Sea
[Staubgold, 2006]

London-based John Burton has been producing interesting variations of traditional electronic music for several years. Not happy with the limitations of either analog or digital sound sources, under the Leafcutter John moniker Burton has released several albums featuring his uniquely introspective amalgam of groove-based and electro-acoustic music. Unlike contemporaries Four Tet or Matmos, Leafcutter John preferred abstraction to propulsive grooves, which perhaps explains his status as a peripheral collaborator to the mainstream of electronic music.

Soon into the pastoral eloquence of album-opener “Let It Begin”, subtly metallic drones begin to add a dirt-ridden subtext. Likewise, in “Maria in the Forest”, narratively-suggestive location recordings are gradually transformed into digital noise leading to an abruptly interruption by more folk-inspired musings on acoustic guitar. Propulsive rhythms issue from the inky depths of drone partway through “In the Morning”. A piano and bell cascade into digital abstraction, only to return as lullaby “Seba”. All of the tracks demonstrate an obsession with the fractal-like textures created by acoustic instruments, and Burton allows the listener enough time to breathe everything in.

The Forest and the Sea is an attempt to tell a story; this gesture is not alien to either electroacoustic or folk music. Leafcutter John has proven quite adept at sculpting with the temporal nature of sound. With this new release, he demonstrates that what is normally a cold and cerebral aesthetic can be a bodily experience as well.

MP3: Leafcutter John - Seba

check out his software, which lets you play in a sound-sculpted forrest

gay, constitutionally so

Thankfully the Conservative motion to reopen the same-sex marriage debate was rejected by Parliament this week. Frankly, there is little that the government can do to restrict people from marrying each other, regardless of sexual orientation. Judges throughout the country have upheld the notion that the right to marry a loved one is constitutionally-bound. Under Canadian law, the only way to circumvent the Charter of Rights is to use the Notwithstanding clause.

There is an important legal distinction here, however. Even if the government were to invoke the clause and remove from homosexuals the right to marry, that revocation would still be an acknowledgement that homosexuals possess the legal right to marry. The government would then have to justify the reason for removing a fundamental human right from a particular group of its citizenry. Naturally, that justification falls apart when all you have are religious doctrine and talk along the lines of, "well, that's just the way it should be".

It's time to put this issue behind us. Hopefully this latest rejection of a motion supporting intolerant, old-world attitudes of man-woman perfect family bliss means that we can ask our government to take a harder look at issues which are more important for the country.

entre-acte: ending suburbia

The Guardian mentions that there is a high likelihood that Britain is going to use taxation as a means to control vehicular emissions and encourage energy conservation. This week saw a monumental amount of rain fall on British Columbia, while simultaneously people in Alberta were playing golf in shorts and tees.

As a pleasantly informative digression from your individual fulfillments, why not expend a little electricity watching The End of Suburbia? While the video is sensationalistic at times, the message is well expressed and the history behind the rise of suburban life in North America is quite arresting. Peak oil and climate change are occurring more or less coincidentally, and this happenstance should prove informative to our actions over the coming decade.

there is no war in iraq

I am not against the War in Iraq, because it is not happening. Shocking words perhaps, but let’s not forget that the actual War part of the War in Iraq ended on the first day of May, 2003 when Bush landed on an aircraft carrier off the coast of California. Since then, America has been executing operations “In Iraq” in an occupational capacity, as it were.

I also do not really care about the 2,838 dead American soldiers (up to November 10, as confirmed by the U.S. Department of Defense) whose ashes are being sprinkled throughout our cultural landscape. First it was with every newscast that we got used to the saying along the lines of “2,838 American soldiers killed in Iraq so far..." Since then, dramas and comedies have taken up the cause, talking about “our heroic dead”. Talk shows tell us that the war is going badly because the number of American soldiers who have been killed is on the rise. Furthermore, Democrats have been using the tragedy of “our heroic dead” as a means to gain votes and win America’s favour away from the Republican party. I don’t want to suggest that I wish soldiers who die in war their deaths, but focussing moral outrage on the tragedy of American deaths is akin to giving honour to the invasion itself.

The main reason that I disbelieve in an Iraq War is the fact that there is no way to bring the conceptual and logistical focus of the hostilities that the American occupation of Iraq to the American populace in a direct manner. Soon after 9/11, American voters needed to be convinced that their country had found itself “in a time of war”, and thus should follow their leadership without question. That the American government successfully convinced Americans that they were at war when not a single shot was fired on U.S. soil has proven to be one of the most successful propaganda campaigns since Big Oil hired a few “climatologists” to show how normal our climate is these days.

My father was born in England in 1941 and entered life knowing that his country was at war. Enemy planes flew over his head and dropped bombs throughout the southern part of the country. Schools, factories, and offices held bomb drills because they were actually being bombed. Many families had learned the extent to which war would affect their lives, and exactly why their soldiers were losing their lives to defend the country. Step forward two generations, and we witness an entirely different situation. Despite the fact that not a single Iraqi military unit ever came close to American soil, that country was demonized to the point where most Americans seemed to actually believe that it posed a very grave and immediate threat to their existence.

In fact, it turns out that the direct opposite was true. Iraqis live daily with hostile planes flying overhead, with daily bombings, with soldiers who break into their homes for random patrols, and with military prisons full of “non-combatants” who are tortured for information that they quite likely do not possess. It is they who are truly living “in a time of war”. We are not in fact hearing their stories or documenting their lives – or even counting the number of deaths that have occurred since the invasion began. Consequently, for those of us in the West the war is not really happening; there is no zero degree of immanence with warfare.

We need to legitimately talk about the fact that deaths within the Iraqi population are not being tracked. We need to talk about the studies on Iraqi casualties which have been released by various organizations which suggest that the death toll for the Iraq occupation ranges from about 75,000 to over 600,000. When the number of dead in Darfur reached 400,000 we began to talk of genocide. So what then of Iraq? Until we can begin to honour the deaths of the untold number of Iraqi dead, I do not want to hear another word about the tragedy of 3,000 dead American soldiers. Frankly, complaining about American casualties during an American occupation is akin to complaining about running out of bullets while simultaneously firing the gun.

We hear things like the U.S. infusing a half-billion dollars into Iraq’s healthcare system and we are to assume that the American government is itself generously offering its funds for reconstruction efforts. Corporations such as Bechtel (who recently announced that they will be leaving Iraq), Halliburton, Dyncorp, and Research Triangle Institute, have greatly expanded their portfolios:

✓ Running the Los Alamos National Laboratory
✓ Gas and oil field development in Russia and elsewhere
✓ Products and services for the oil industry
✓ Drug discovery and development
✓ Reaping billions from the untold suffering of the Iraqi people.


Since 2003, America has attempted to expand its economy using another country’s seeming instability as a pretext. Industry analysts have repeatedly stated that America’s economy is tied to its energy resources. Given that these resources are in decline as compared to demand, you can begin to see that future growth is not possible under the traditional economic model. An infusion of resources is required, and thus we come to the Invasion of Iraq. All of the so-called reconstruction efforts have surrounded Iraq’s oil infrastructure, which is now controlled by American corporate interests.

The recent congressional victories by the Democrats will hopefully end any Neo-Con hopes to further expand into Iran. This is a shame, really, as I personally wanted to see the Greatest Hits of the Twentieth Century, as performed by the American government in a single decade. We had covered the Gulf War and the preliminaries of Vietnam (Iraq being Cambodia to Iran’s Vietnam). With a return to the Korean war and the second Great War of human civilization, my hopes were rested on one man: George W. Bush. Sadly sir, you let me down last Tuesday. Hang your head in shame. Your Risk-like attempt to take over the world is being delayed.

I find that it is not simply my cynicism that suggests that the Democrats will in fact do little to change the situation in Iraq. Surely the John Kerry-era talk about bolstering the soldiers’ armour remains key to Democrat strategy two years later. If the Dems ably demonstrate that they support the troops more than the Republicans, then they have a chance at the Presidency and their own Thermidor. The GOP must be hoping that the occupation turns considerably against American interests. Catastrophic violence in Iraq is exactly what will allow a Republican president in 2008.

Let me be clear about one thing: if the Democrats don’t force the Bush White House to bring the soldiers home by Christmas, then they aren’t fulfilling their potential. Forget the bullshit about how staying the course in Iraq will keep the country from the horrors of sectarian violence. The line of thought that includes the notion that peace will be found in Iraq only by means of the U.S. military is exactly what led to the invasion in the first place.

Hopefully, the Democratic mantra reflects a newfound sense of conviction and determination. If they really and truly wish to present America as distinct from the unruly, arrogant philistine that it has demonstrated itself to be ever since the right-wing coup in 2000, they can begin with the following: kindly and immediately get the hell out of Iraq. Furthermore, maybe last week’s Democratic victory will transform the party from one of excuses into one of material reality. This past weekend was one of the most bloody since the occupation began; Mrs. Nancy Pilosi, the ball is in your court.

torture guardin'

I recommend listening to the following while reading this article:
MP3: Meira Asher + Guy Harries, "Torture -- Bodyparts"

Ah, torture in the fall.

With all the recent talk about the United States Senate legally authorizing the use of torture for the continued execution of the War of Terror (oops, that’s a typo; there should be a colon after “War”) as well as the renewed public interest in the Maher Arar case, my thoughts have moved to a new place: are we at the end of history as we have known it so far? I do not mean to suggest that the human experience of life will stop or that the world will be uninhabitable or anything quite as apocalyptic as all of that. While all of the proceeding is true, if not likely, I am presently talking about a change in the zeitgeist and not the material conditions of human civilization. Instead, the course charting, over many centuries, the emergence of the modern individual from the bondage of despotism is itself altering in a rather dramatic fashion.

It appears as though a certain regression is emerging as the dominant philosophy of the modern subject. Insular, self-reflexive, and superstitious to the point of being totemismistic. Solutions to problems have become things that you buy, and so far the War on Terror has cost America around $400 billion, and some people are going so far as to suggest that the war in Iraq alone will cost the US economy over $2 trillion). On the point of totemism, I’ll leave the last word to the American government, which has again proven a certain arrogant disregard for the international community. On helping to pass the Detainee Interrogation Bill, which allows the White House to suspend what most people call human rights at its discretion, Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo, said: "Some want to tie the hands of our terror fighters. They want to take away the tools we use to fight terror, to handcuff us, to hamper us in our fight to protect our families." Sometimes I too think that my family will only be safe when enough people have been waterboaded into making up yet another Arabic-sounding name.


waterboarding in Antwerrp, 1556

The public sphere has been relatively clean and gore-free since the end of the Second World War. Only occasionally and in isolation have events of significant violence occurred. In the decades that followed the 1940s, however, there was not a sense that violence pervaded the dominant culture in an open manner. McCarthyism, Vietnam, the October Crisis, and other forms of localized and violent division can be seen to be more akin to the residue rather than a reanimation of prior horrors. Many of the institutions that have kept the world relatively peaceful despite occasional lapses of barbarism, such as the United Nations and the concept of human rights, came about as a direct response to the horrors that much of the world experienced in the 1930s and 40s.

However, it seems as though this generation, which has not seen the full extent of human misery except though media reconstruction, is seeking a more intimate association with violence. This trend is occurring on two levels. The first is among those who understand that the true power of the modern subject is to realize existence as they imagine and then by means of technological access drastically alter their environment. Witness not only the rise in school shootings and other acts of urban guerilla violence, but also the tactics employed in terrorist deployment including the planes that were flown into the World Trade Center (9/11 is the remix album for the aviation industry). In each case, small groups of people using readily-available consumer technology and services caused a significant amount of political and social disruption.

The second level of the modern desire for violence is an issue of representation. Torture-as-entertainment is certainly not new, however the entertainment industry moved from gladiatorial fights to horror movies at about the same pace that society moved from despotism to democracy. However when you begin to analyze the manner in which violence is being represented in contemporary media, it becomes clear that the public’s bloodlust is rising. Computerized depictions of violence, usually in microscopic biological detail, in video games, films, and television are increasingly common. More screen-time is being given to close-ups of wounds, and many acts of violence are depicted in slow-motion so that the viewer can more casually receive all of the visual information.

Torture has become a common thematic device in cinema and television these days. Many horror movies are realistically depicting the violence of torture rather than the fantastic and supernatural gore that was previously quite popular. Torture has even entered into mainstream tastes through shows like Lost and 24. The war in Iraq has itself become a remix project, as YouTube documents many attempts to turn war footage into music videos and reality-style television.

Let’s get back to the American government for a second. First and foremost is the White House’s often-noted disregard for the international community, and with the United Nations in particular. Arguably, when America usurped the UN’s authority it demonstrated to every other nation that strength can legitimize any ideological position. We are still waiting for answers as to why Israel bombed the UN observation post in Lebanon.

In relation to the DI Bill, President Bush said: "The American people need to know we're working together to win the war on terror." With all due respect given to discretion, that’s the fucking scariest statement by a human that I have ever read. The American government is allowing violence to escalate because, deep within the conditioning of many of their officials, they truly believe that America is strongest when it is applying strength to others. The American people, consciously or not, want torture to become an authorized ritual meant to release insecurities about their national/personal security.



How do I know this? Rather than examine in detail the extent to which the DI Bill undermines the foundations for civil governance that most of the world’s nations have utilized since last hacking themselves to pieces, the media has taken upon itself to focus on the case of a Republican Congressman who sent dirty messages to pages. You are supposed to feel safe now that an aggressive, manipulative predator is out of power: Fox News is both ecstatic and confused (Foley is a Republican) now that he can no longer touch the body politic with his filthy pedophile hands. Thanks to the implications of the DI Bill however, the government will indeed be touching us all, and in ways that can at best be described as Guantanimaginable.


America is, apparently, a Christian nation

And it is here where history for the modern subject ends. As of September 27, 2006, the American government can officially attach electrodes to your genitals. Mark Foley did leave his mark on government after all. A new history will emerge as necessary – in this capacity, Gabriel Range’s “fictional documentary” Death of a President, which screened at this year’s TIFF, is a significant development – but that is beside the point. Historically speaking, it is during these interregnum periods that violence has proliferated and become accepted by an increasing percentage of the population as the principle means to ensure survival. Hopefully, the upcoming elections in America will allow a more rational government to reorder its international associations in a positive direction. Only with the major countries united under international law will chaos be avoided. Truly, it is not a precipitous drop from officially-sanctioned torture to even more absolute and widespread horrors.

steal this movie

A report recently issued by the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) concluded this week that movie pirates cost the American economy over $20 billion in lost taxes, jobs, and revenues. It should be noted that the IPI limited its research to data supplied by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). With this one gesture, the highly contentious issues of intellectual property copyright and consumer protections were thoroughly ignored. Instead, the public has been handed yet another industry manifesto in the guise of legitimate and productive discourse.

As a side-note, to take get a decent view of the biased nature of the IPI, here's a great video feed of a Capitol Hill briefing from September 19 concerning health care.

Watch the archived video of IPI's Sept. 19 Capitol Hill Briefing The Dangers of Undermining Patient Choice: Lessons from Europe and Canada. (depending on your system, in order to see the video you might need to copy the URL from the website that opens into Windows Media Player, Winamp, etc)

The issue of media piracy can be viewed as one of the defining examples of the problematic transition from a culture of physical media (books, records, film stock, etc) to one of digital ephemerality. No longer do I need the information contained in a film to be delivered to me using film stock, magnetic tape, or metal sandwiched between plastic. Instead, films can be delivered in a less tangible way. Many people already experience digital delivery of films and television through their cable boxes, which is a service that the MPAA and similar organizations endorse. Others happily avoid both pay-per-view and the movie theatre by downloading movie files from the internet. This last fact is where the discussion over fair use of intellectual property is most required. For the moment, I will ignore the tragicomedy surrounding the MPAA’s numerous legal suits pending against consumers who wanted to see MPAA films. Instead I want to focus more on the media distribution system itself.

Currently, there is no technological limitation to the immediate digital delivery of films, television, and music. Those among us who know where to locate such things on the net can tell you that downloaded films are often of comparable quality to a DVD. In some cases, downloads are of superior technical quality than the official release – think of high definition, which was not available until a few months ago.In the case of a few select films, marketing decisions might render a particular DVD issue less-than-optimal. North American issues are frequently censored or otherwise altered in order not to offend the more “puritanical” mores believed to exist in this continent.



Stanley Kubrick’s unfinished 1999 film Eyes Wide Shut, for example, has a highly problematic North American release. The film was digitally altered so that it would receive an R rating, and as such the narrative continuity between audience and protagonist is demolished (ie: the film’s meaning changes). Now I myself am an adult with the emotional maturity to handle looking at an erect penis or a simulated act of fellatio. Apparently, so are Europeans, who were treated to a non-altered DVD issue. Thanks to the brilliant marketing decision to incorporate region-coded limitations into the DVD format, I cannot even play a legitimately purchased European DVD on my North American player. I have to point out that it is highly likely that Stanley Kubrick wanted me to see the version of the film that he actually made, and not one that is region-specific. In this spirit I feel fully confident in my rights as a consumer to download a European DVD-rip, burn it to a disc, and then show this version to students or friends. Since I feel that I am more enlightened about this issue than the marketing department at Warner Brothers, I will supercede their authority over which version I am allowed to watch. When contacted, the MPAA mentioned that each region gets the “optimal” version of the film, and that region coding is intended to curb piracy. It seems that China is at the heart of the issue, and here we come back to the IPI report.

For a film to be considered “legitimate”, it has to go through regular distribution channels, involving lawyers, middlemen, retail expenses, and mark-ups galore. Since so many people get a slice of the revenue, that pie needs to be big enough that everyone is satisfied. The IPI (by extension the MPAA) argued that piracy has cost all of these people their livelihoods (more specifically: $5.5 billion in “lost” earnings; 141,000 new jobs not(!) created; film studios losing 10% of their potential revenue). At this stage it should be noted that all these “loses” remain in the jurisdiction of potentiality. To be fair, there is a case for the loss of potential revenue, however misguidedly optimistic such a concept might initially seem. At the same time however, we cannot let considerations of possibilities consume the argument, which should be focussed on both consumer rights and intellectual property rights. I have a right as a consumer of a cultural product to a direct relation with the art involved; I will not have that right taken away from me by non-artists who believe that marketing concerns trump aesthetic or philosophical ones. Out of this comes a dictum of sorts: it is more important to experience art than to pay for that experience. In this guise, call me a communist if you must.



In China, the consumers are winning. The reason for this is simple: the Chinese market has rejected the idea that films should cost as much as they do in the rest of the world. When the cost of producing a DVD is around 50 cents (not a burn, which can be significantly cheaper than 50 cents, but an officially-printed disc), it should not be sold at retail for more than ten times that price. Consequently, when Hollywood attempted its North American standard pricing of $24.99 - $34.99 it was almost laughed out of the country. No thanks, the Chinese consumer seemed to say, we’ll just make our own copies and sell them at more reasonable prices. Hollywood responded by trying to strongarm Chinese consumers into paying the “regular” price, but after almost ten years the fight has concluded. Warner Brothers recently announced that it would release the Chinese version of Superman Returns on DVD for around $2, thus pricing an official release competitively with its bootleg counterpart. Similarly, when I was in Korea I purchased an official 6-DVD boxset of Kieslowski’s Decalogue for $30, while the cheapest North American release I found was a 3-disc set for $95. I ripped the Korean DVDs to my computer thus bypassing the regional coding, then burned them to DVDs that my player would read. MPAA, please send your lawsuit to: my ass, c/o bite it.

This issue is about balancing consumer rights with those of the producers of intellectual property. I thoroughly believe that the arts deserve financial support, which can involve a significant investment on the part of the consumer. With Hollywood however, we are for the most part not really talking about art but rather product, and consumers will respond in rather mechanical ways to its consumption. Personally, I think that for North America, $5 is a good digital download price, while $10 would be a great retail price (barring limited/special issues). More DVDs would be sold, and while initially the studios would not see higher profits due to the lowered price, any dime-store business student can describe volume as more important than margins in the long-term health of a company.

Groups like the MPAA whine that the high cost of films reflects ever-increasing production costs. No offense MPAA, but that’s your fucking problem (YFP). Not too many industries complain about production expenses while continually raising them. Furthermore, in and of itself production costs do not explain the public’s dwindling interest in Hollywood properties. To paraphrase a conversation that I had with a local video rental retailer, the 2005 Pink Panther remake tanked at retail, rental, and the box-office not because of piracy or lack of marketing initiatives. That movie and many like it lost money because they fucking sucked donkeys. At the end of the day, it boils down to a simple query: why has the cost of making Hollywood films escalated to two or three hundred million dollars? Coupled with the aesthetic and narrative bankruptcy of most Hollywood releases, this trend signals to me that the writing is on the wall for this little self-important group who consider themselves to be at the forefront of world culture. I can just picture the cynics lined up on Hollywood Boulevard: there’s rampant poverty in this country, real wages are declining rapidly, jobs are being outsourced, only half the country has medical care, Asian and Indian cinema are progressing exponentially, an energy crisis is looming, etc, etc, and you are spending how much money to make a Superman movie???

Hammer City Roller Girls

Note: this article was not published by View magazine on or around July 20, 2006.



Sometimes you just have to hit a girl.

Or, at the very least you have to make sure that if she’s jamming for the other team in a bout, you give her a solid check to keep her from coming straight up the outside lane.

If that last statement is foreign to you, then obviously you missed the February issue of View which introduced Hamilton’s rapidly growing Rollerderby scene. To catch up: two teams of rollerskaters jostle for position within a scrum to allow a lead skater who scores for one team or the other by passing blockers and lapping the whole pack as many times as they can within a two-minute jam.

At its core, the sport combines elements of hockey, rugby, 70s kitsch burlesque, a little roll-bounce, and the bitchslapped soul of rock. Which means a quickly paced game in which some people might get hurt. And that will only make them angrier, since all of the athletes will be wearing really cute uniforms that bring out the best in a roller skater.

Currently, the burgeoning Hammer City Roller Girls league contains the Hamilton Harlots and the Steeltown Tank Girls. While two teams might seem a limitation, the proximity of teams in other leagues along with the half-dozen new faces seen at each practise suggest a bright future for the sport. If you consider that two teams emerged for this relatively new sport in half a year, the promise for an eight or ten team southern Ontario league cannot be too distantly realized.

This Saturday night at Central Arena in Burlington, the Harlots and the Tanks will go head to head for the first time with their holds no-barred. Practises have so far been rowdy affairs, with injuries and retribution equally meted out. With sponsorship from the Steamwhistle brewery and local bands Sons of Butcher, The Orphans, and The Sam Lawerence 5, you can be sure that your beer and rock needs will be met.

Tickets are $10 ($15 if you want to catch the bus from Corktown), and are available at Reigning Sound, the Corktown, or online. The ticket price includes admission to the after-party at Corktown featuring Toronto punks The Screwed.

Hammer City Slam
Saturday July 22, 7pm
Central Arena, Burlington.

Andy Warhol celebrates the death of us all at the AGO

Andy Warhol,
Triple Elvis, 1964,
aluminum paint and silkscreened ink on canvas.

America is a hybrid nation, stuck between the physical rendition of nationality as buildings, presidents, and a sizeable military, and an internalized ethical identity on the part of its population interpellated as citizens. Importantly, this is a trans-border phenomenon. American business interests, which have proliferated across the globe over the past century, are themselves means of conferring the American form of citizenship upon a foreign (host) population. Citizenship may only be conferred for a moment or two, perhaps the duration of an electronic financial transaction at the point of purchase, but yet the effects of inclusion in this manner are persistent.

The American system has many problems, the first of which is its unmatched economic success. Politically, dominance within the world marketplace has created a series of aggressive, arrogant governments which have guided American foreign policy to its current trends of unilateralism and military conquest.

And yet the philosophical tradition of the nation promises both freedom and opportunity, and to some extent these goals are indeed realized. However, the country experiences a drastically uneven distribution of wealth, most obviously in the uneven distribution of municipal, education, and healthcare infrastructure. Without social support structures, there exists a serious political vacuum manifesting as poverty and criminality unmatched in the developed world. In both cases many rights and guarantees that normally are provisional with citizenship such disappear.

On the other side of the coin lies American Celebrity, which perhaps best demonstrates the cultural supremacy of the American political and economic system. Individuals such as Bill Gates, Paris Hilton, and Dick Cheney enjoy a degree of wealth and social opportunity unimaginable when viewed against the reality that 3 billion people worldwide live on less than two American dollars per day. Celebrities themselves are in many ways dead before their time, as media representations of their persons and lifestyles render them in- and trans-human.

Andy Warhol understood the extent to which America could invent itself as a mighty and surreal transnational entity. His was not an analytic process, but rather by reproducing and manipulating images of household products, car crashes, and various celebrities he came to understand modern citizenship in the guise of a juxtaposition and simultaneity of the sacred and the profane. Citizenship was inclusive (everyone can afford to buy the same products, and consequently consumers become a relatively homogenous group), finite in time (witness Warhol’s fascination with instruments of death, such as those used by the State to terminate the lives of its undesireables) and yet infinite in magnitude (Warhol’s infamous statement to the effect that everyone will enjoy fifteen minutes of fame is rendered inverse by the repetition of Jackie Os and Elvises in many of his silkscreen pieces).

It seems quite fitting that David Cronenberg curated a new Warhol exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario, opening July 9 and extending to October 22. I have a feeling that the auteur of some of modern cinema’s most intellectual and disturbing films might have something to say about Warhol and his creative process. Check out Andy Warhol -- Supernova: Stars, Death, and Disasters 1962-1964 for yourself.

CBC has an interview with Cronenberg posted on its website.

Tory math makes children cry

Since the minority Tory government was installed in January, the Conservatives have made quite a lot of noise about the importance of their budgetary tax cuts and changes in government spending. In addition to a $1200 per year child support allowance, the Tories have promised a one percent reduction to the GST, a slight increase to the personal exemption credit, a much-needed mass transit credit worth 15.5% of the cost of a pass, and a tax increase from 15 to 15.5 percent on the first $36,000 of your income. That last point is worth noting, as this is the first recorded instance in Canadian history of a government decreasing income taxes by increasing the income tax rate.

In reality, save for the transit credit there is no way that these tax cuts will amount to anything for the vast majority of Canadians. Only those whose income is high enough to allow them to freely spend thousands of dollars each month will see anything of merit. If you have an income of, say, $3000 per month, you might have $500 of it to spend at your leisure. By lowering the GST by 1 percent, you will save around $5 of that $500 per month. A one percent reduction in retail tax does not address any of the problems faced by people who pay taxes or work in this country. It will not stimulate retail sales, or put any extra money back into the pockets of those who might need it.

Furthermore, it really is a shame that the plan for child care in this country fell through the floor. Since when does a $1200 yearly cheque pay for day care? By this, I can only assume that the Conservatives cannot rationalize their costs on this one. If they could, they would see that by giving working families $4.80 per business day (assuming you qualify for the full $1200; since the rebate is reduced by income, if you earn $30,000 you will not see anywhere near $1200) they are insulting employed parents by ignoring their actual living conditions. Furthermore, they are insulting early childhood care providers who surely make more than five bucks in a day. The old Liberal plan for child care was to increase the number of childcare facilities and staff to the point where it could be incorporated into the educational system as pre-kindergarten. Now I don’t like the Liberals either, but that sounds like a real plan. Some might even call it a strategy for future success. Now, to add balance to this argument let’s look again at the Conservative plan.

There is no Conservative plan for childcare in Canada. Instead, the Tories are doing something for which they have criticized every other party: throwing money at the problem. Literally. “Hey problem-with-childcare-in-Canda-wherein-working-families-
cannot-afford-childcare, how are you doing?” Stephen Harper might say. “Here’s $1200 bucks. Go away.”

To analogize, the Tory "plan" for daycare is akin to giving parents $15 bucks a day and calling it a functional educational system. Maybe the Tories thought you could add the $5 monthly GST rebate to the $4.80 childcare “program” to further provide for the well-being of your family. This brings the total amount of care that the Conservative government wishes for your children to $5.04 per day. Which is about the cost of a movie rental these days. Which gives us a TV babysitter in the guise of a Tory Childcare Plan. Moving on. Dot. Org.

More interesting to those who study semantics is the increase in the tax rate for income up to $36,400. I think it works as follows: for many workers, there will be an increase in the tax rate decrease of negative 0.5 percent. That’s right working-poor, look forward to that tax decrease of -0.5% as if you earn up to $36,400 you will not see your taxes go down, but rather in the negative-down direction. Which is up. As in the poor pay more taxes and have even less disposable income for the GST credit.

This now explains to me why the Tories have changed Canada’s strategy for childcare. To the best of my abilities, the assumption works like this. If you get two overworked parents to spend $1200 on miscellaneous crap to appease their tired lives, they will ignore the fact that their kids underperform at school and their taxes have negatively gone down. This underachieving lifestyle is due primarily to the lack of an “environment of intellectual interest”, which usually involves parents having the time to involve themselves or the money to involve other people in the lives of their children. Hopefully, the $1200 also appeases the many single parents who might have a job or go to school and who thus far don’t have any choice but the whoever-works-for-free-oh-wait-you-aren’t-available-anymore policy that they can afford. In either case, neither parents nor their kids in these situations will have a good chance of securing the education they need to get good jobs and move them out of the $36,400 tax bracket. Since more taxpayers are to be found in a bracket which had its taxes decreased by negative 0.5 percent, the economy is stimulated enough to offset the $15 billion in increased military spending. Now that’s how you grow an economy, son!

Some economists hypothesize that the economy would be best stimulated by raising the disposable income of the bottom twenty percent of income earners. Their reasoning suggests that it is better for the economy and most citizens within to have one million consumers spend ten bucks each rather than one man spending ten million in one go. When you consider that the masses are going to make small purchases more habitual and frequent than the wealthy are going to make large ones, you cannot help but assume that tax cuts for the working poor will make more money available to the system as a whole and thus stimulate the economy in the negative-down direction.

None of these economists are in the employ of the Conservative government.

For such a junk budget, the transit tax break is nice to see, even if it is a direct descendent of a Liberal attempt to adhere with the Kyoto accord. Frankly, with the mounting expenses associated with global climate change, now is indeed the time to encourage progressive solutions such as mass transit through tax incentives.

I think the Conservative government needs to go back to school on the tax issue, that is assuming they don't use one of those "10 bucks per day" schools to which I earlier referred. Perhaps the real issue which we should discuss is why $15 billion of our money is being spent on military acquisitions. For example, maybe we could claw that back to $10 billion and spend the other five on a child care program. Oh wait, that was the last Liberal budget, wasn’t it???

I find it more than fascinating that Conservative parties tell us that they are the only ones who have the economic expertise to balance the books while they are in fact a most spendthrift group of faux-economists. Only after a few years will we see whether the Conservatives will maintain Canada’s world-leading budget surpluses (inherited from the Liberals) or squander the wealth for inaccurate tax cuts and bad spending. The fact is, if you search the net for any of Harper’s past writings or speeches, you’ll soon realize that this government is shying away from the media for the very obvious reason that it has a degenerate ideological approach to governance. By giving the Conservatives the vote at last election, we traded a child care plan from a group of lying backscratchers for a short-sighted rebate coupon from a group of covetous and prehensile ideologues whose numbers don’t add up.

By the way, did you notice that your taxes are going up this year?

An Inconvenient Truth

According to the vast majority of the world’s climatologists, when carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere reach 400 parts per million, we will have attained a level that can only be described as “dangerous”. At this point, the earth’s climate will have reached a “tipping point”, after which there is simply no return to the temperate climate which has sustained human civilization for the last ten thousand years. What puts this little fact into perspective is that our CO2 levels are currently sitting at 379 parts per million, and that number is increasing at a rate of 2 ppm per year (a figure which is itself growing as well). That gives us about ten years, folks.

Scientific data such as this constitute the heart of the film An Inconvenient Truth, which documents Al Gore’s project to bring awareness of the implications of climate change to the masses. Thankfully the film sticks to the climate message without getting bogged down in the behind-the-scenes showbiz minutiae of Gore’s speaking tour.

The facts of Gore’s case are ably presented by director Davis Guggenheim. In most cases, both Gore and the science he presents are allowed to speak for themselves. Gore explains some of the processes behind gathering and interpreting such data – ice cores, atmospheric readings, satellite data, etc. – and then follows through with the results, in a typically professional PowerPoint fashion.

It is important to stress that there is little to no dissension among the scientific community. Gore notes that while scientists are universal in warning us of the dangers we are presently facing, the media has considerably distorted and clouded the issue. You don’t have to look further than a recent Fox News (sic) piece in which a senior member of the National Center for Policy Analysis denounced the science in An Inconvenient Truth by referring to a paper which was published by his own organization (note: the NCPA is not a major centre for climatological research) instead of one from, say the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society. You can see some more of Fox News (sic) in action here.

The “tipping point” that was referred to above works as follows. As the atmosphere accumulates CO2 and the Earth continues to warm, the polar ice caps begin melting. Since ocean water absorbs heat while ice reflects sunlight from the Earth, the arctic must be seen as a “canary in a mine”. Gore explains that if even only parts of the arctic melt, sea levels world wide would be raised seven metres, enough to submerge coastal cities such as San Francisco, Shanghai, Calcutta, and New York. When the arctic disappears, we will have a new climate and geography, period.

It’s a message that most people have heard before, although not likely in such a pressing or intimate manner. Gore likens it to the sudden awareness brought forth by science that cigarette smoking would prove fatal to most smokers. His own family earned a fair amount of money growing tobacco over the years until Gore’s sister, herself a smoker, died. We also get to see some telling photographs demonstrating the effects of climate change over the past few decades. One interesting bit of data that has presented itself to recently for this film to document is the occurrence of the fabled North-West Passage – a shipping lane that has been dreamt of for five centuries – in the Canadian arctic this winter. The times they are indeed a changin’.

Some of us had parents who would tell us almost every day of the week to take out the garbage. We ignored and ignored – sometimes even more so when the nagging persisted – and then all of a sudden garbage day had passed and we were left living with a smelly bag of garbage for another week or two. The insistence is more serious in the case of global warming. Since we are out of balance with the natural order of which we are a part, any catastrophic strain on the system is a catastrophe for us. The focus isn’t really on the future but rather, like Gore’s sister, how we live in the present.

After seeing the film, it is hard not to ask the question as to why the Democrats didn’t run with this at the heart of their 2000 presidential campaign. The Al Gore of this film is passionate, funny, intelligent, and a demonstrable leader. Perhaps the fires in Gore’s belly were lit when he saw the presidency stolen out from under him. At the same time, had the American population witnessed the passion and ability of 2006 Gore in 2000, the vote would likely not have been close enough to allow the legislative coup that brought Bush to office. One cannot help but wonder how differently this new millennium might have progressed under an Al Gore White House.

More importantly, maybe some real democratic change can be effected as distribution for this film expands. Gore’s take at Hollywood stardom right before mid-term elections and 18 months before the next presidential campaign might seem like post-modern politics at its best. However, even the most cynical viewers of An Inconvenient Truth will be hard pressed to ignore the consequences of inaction. Begin the process of change by taking several of your more environmentally sceptical friends to see this film.



continue watching the film

when the robots start to sing...

Upon encountering the aural landscape of Michael Waterman's Robochorus installation, one cannot help but consider the ontology of human creativity. Must all aesthetic experiences spring directly from the artist to be regarded and savoured as a means to discern the contents of their soul? More precisely, can the expressions of an artist be authentic when voiced by a third party? If one is to have faith in transubstantiation by means of pencil, musical instrument, or paint brush, surely there is space in the religious cannon to include machines, robots, and electronic devices.



Waterman's history as a purveyor of bricolage and recontextualization greatly informs his latest installation. The eight individual Robochorus "singers" are homebrew anthropomorphic robots manufactured from the consumer audio detritus of several decades. These sentinels are located throughout the gallery space and sit mute without viewer interaction. When their internal motion sensors are triggered, the figures self-illuminate and begin to emit one of eight harmonic pitches in response to external stimuli. It is with these sounds that Waterman's interest in collage is most evident. Each of the eight tones is comprised of numerous audio sources, including radio broadcasts and environmental audio, which combine into a single, polyvalent drone. As the eight robots are voiced in the harmonic series, when all of them are triggered they can be heard to sing in conversation with each other. Taken together, the robots form the latest in retro home entertainment made public.



Part of Waterman's intention is to demonstrate the influence of commerce on our appreciation of art. The artist seems to want to bring the latent ambiguities of modern electronics and consumption to the fore. By triggering the robots and making them come to life, the audience gains a degree of control over the electronics that Waterman has put into play. Normally, we walk through the valley of technology with blinders; the vast majority of the population has little or no operational understanding of the devices that are consumed. This lack of understanding when merged with late capitalism's mantra of planned obsolescence has resulted in our present-day throw-away economy, which interpellates us as contingent psychotics disregarding the apocalyptic damage we are doing to our biosphere while simultaneously feeding off our nostalgic instincts for the purity of our collective past. We live and breathe garbage on a habitual basis. With Robochorus, Waterman has restructured our forgotten machines from their original functions to a more primitive and abstract level to allow a greater degree of understanding and sympathy.

What was once the latest in high-fidelity audio equipment has here become recontextualized into the latest in post-human technologies. Our machines play on, long after they have become obsolete and forgotten (by extension - does art outlive our critical interest?). By situating the listener as principle agent within a continually changing aural geography, Waterman's robomorphic singers demonstrate the very human characteristic of wanting to be loved (or more precisely, wondering why their love is no longer being returned when once it was so freely given). Individually, their voices are polyphonic yet highly articulated. When heard en masse, the effect is of an unarticulated yet aurally rich cluster of voices, situating the listener as chief conductor.



Several critical responses quickly elicit themselves. Am I supposed to understand what these robots are telling me? Do they themselves understand, or are their utterances the robot equivalent of a nervous tick? While the installation might suggest movement and progression akin to a narrative, when examined in more detail the piece becomes much more abstract and schizophrenic as the individual sound sources become supra-liminal. In some circles this aesthetic is named microsound: audio, when listened to under the microscope as it were, reveals increasing amounts of information. It is the impossibility to properly locate sounds that gives Robochorus its semantic resilience. Robochorus wishes to engage at both the macroscopic and the microscopic level, and yet this very process of "straining to hear" brings the listener back full-circle, (sitting "alone") in a darkened room, illuminated by the robotic extensions of humanity. The point, dear listener, is yourself, listening.

Michael Waterman's Robochorus runs from May 5 until July 9 at the Hamilton Artists Inc.

here we go again, or: how i learned to stop worrying and love the bomb

MP3: Sun Ra Arkestra - Nuclear War

There has been quite a lot of talk about Iran in the North American media these days. We hear many things: that they are bellicose fundamentalists intent on destroying the west; that they have nuclear ambitions which threaten every nation on earth; that they harbour terrorists and train them for future activities. The new mantra down south seems to be one of preemption, a get 'em before they get us attitude.

It might seem dreadfully obvious, but such talk in the media would likely convey to Iran an idea that the only way to defend itself against American aggression would be a strong nuclear arsenal. You really do have to love catch-22 situations, especially in regard to lobbing nukes around. The seeming inevitability of the situation evokes an almost religious fatalism, and that is precisely what hardline American and Iranian officials are exploiting in their separate camps. According to an article published in the New Yorker, President Bush is absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb" if it is not stopped, and that he must do "what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do ... saving Iran is going to be his legacy." Since it is highly unlikely that George Bush was actually elected in either 2000 or 2004, this statement is perhaps the most disturbing bit of information ever to emerge from the White House.

The U.N. Security Council is also concerned with Iran, as it is concerned with any member nation which seems to be pursuing nuclear ambitions (except the US of course, which has had free reign to develop weapons of mass destruction; will we one day see America sanctioned for its militarism?). President Bush has repeatedly stated that his administration is pursuing every diplomatic means at its disposal (importantly, the CIA describes this as "inaccurate", but doesn't elaborate). It should here be noted that currently the US military is staging a continual series of military training exercises - such as strategic nuclear bombing simulations - within arms' reach of Iran. Of course, then there's that grand military exercise which is the occupation of Iraq.

Interestingly enough, Iraq seems as a quasi-ironic precursor to a more open form of regime change, ie nuclear war. Talk about Saddam Hussein and his government has adequately diluted the debate surrounding American involvement in the Middle East. No longer is the Palestinian-Israeli issue at the forefront; similarly pushed aside is the influence of American foreign policy on Lebanon and Syria, among others. We now have the great and secret show which is the trial of Saddam Hussein to occupy the foreign correspondent sections of our newshours and RSS feeds. What we are in fact getting is the classic bluff-and-swap manoeuvre. The White House is not filled with idiots, despite the child-king who is their leader. It was known for a long time that Hussein posed little threat to world peace. After all, it was America which sold Iraq much of its military arsenal. It seems much more likely that Iraq was invaded to secure a large oil deposit while simultaneously granting a second strategic foothold (after Israel) in the Middle East.



Seymore Hersh stated that in conversation with several high-ranking civilian staffers at the Pentagon, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was repeatedly described as "the next Adolph Hitler". Here's the switch after the bluff. Public debate concerning tyrants and monsters such as Hussein and Hitler, when breathed in the same utterance as Ahmadinejad, serves the purpose of rhetorical contingency that most listeners find captivating. Of course Ahmadinejad is bad, the public will say, lacking all proof to that effect other than I don't like Hitler.

According to several Pentagon-affiliated sources, America is quite advanced in the planning stages for military operations in Iran. We should not assume this operation to be as 'bloodless' as Iraq (to the 50,000 dead Iraqis, please pardon the use of this term). After all, after wiping out Iraq's army in 1991, military strategists knew full well the extent of Iraq's military capacity - none. In regard to Iran, the question is a lot more open. Iran does indeed have a standing army which is decently equipped. As well, there can be no denying that Iran has the potential for nuclear deployment.

In light of this, Pentagon strategists have come up with an all-or-nothing solution. Conventional and chemical weapons, such as those currently in use in Iraq, will not be able to decisively annihilate Iran's geographically dispersed nuclear processing facilities, nor will they be able to penetrate Iran's purported underground uranium enrichment facilities. Some estimates posit that more than five hundred distinct sites would have to be rapidly destroyed to ensure Iran's submission to American nuclear authority. Consequently, only the nuclear option remains to ensure that Iran doesn't respond to a military strike with a nuclear counter-attack.

In light of this might we surmise about a statement in the Project for a New American Century - that wonderful and terrifying in situ holocost museum - released a little more than a week after the 9/11 attacks. To ensure American hegemony over key material resources, namely oil, water, and uranium, and continue the war on terrorism, the country would have to escalate warfare considerably. Winning the war on terrorism would likely "require the United States to engage a well-armed foe". Just to remind you, the signatories and principal architects of PNAC are currently members of George W. Bush's administration.

Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy is quoted in the New Yorker as saying that "we have to be ready to deal with Iran if the crisis escalates....This is not like planning to invade Quebec." So the waters of an invasion into Iran don't get diluted by another bluff-and-switch potential, I'll leave that last somewhat ominous Freudian slip for a future article.