I have been so frustrated (disgusted) at the coverage I've been seeing and reading of the current Israel-Lebanon 'unwar.' I know the number of Israeli citizens 'slaughtered by terrorists' better than I know my own heartrate thanks to perpetual news flogging of that information, but I can barely even find two sources that agree on the number of Lebanese civilians lost thus far. I know we're all soft and wet for victims of 'terrorism' right now, but when did we stop caring entirely about collateral damage?

This conflict- the latest in a seemingly long line of 'unwars' (conflicts, disputes, actions, football matches - whatever you want to call them, if you're shooting at people in the street, using tanks and missiles, it's pretty much a war) is so grossly disproportionate. While human suffering and death is always sad (just you wait and see how much every man's death diminishes us...), I can't help but notice that virtually all of the Israelis killed so far have been soldiers, aka fair game in the middle of a conflict. On the other hand, all of the Lebanese civilians killed have been - wait for it - CIVILIANS!! You know, those people whom it's against international law to target deliberately, those people not involved in the conflict and not posing a danger to anyone.

I know full well that the Lebanese government isn't a bunch of lovely, koombaya-singing internationalists whose greatest concern is global serenity. In fact, I even suspect that they have problems with corruption, intimidation, and major armed groups influencing government. Holy shit! That sounds like a freakish anomaly - or, most of the world. It's a bad thing, this helping people who wish others harm hide out and conduct operations, but when did it become acceptable to bomb the shit out of a nation's civilian population in order to try to end it? Are we really buying the myth that the population of Lebanon is like
"Hey-ya Hezbollah, oh how we love you all-a, please keep manipulating our government-a and making us scared to let our kids play outside-a. Hey-ya Hezbollah, we don't really need any democracy-a, more guns and missiles, that's what our region needs-aya!"
and therefore somehow culpable in this whole mess?? The thing is, what makes terrorism so insidiously sinister is their targeting of civilians. Hmmm.

So do the math. human=human. israeli human=lebanese human=american human=french human=roughly a dolphin (kidding, okay)=nmibian human=kiwi human=0.5 canadian human (okay, kidding again). You get the point. white israeli jew=brown lebanese arab. The killing of both is unacceptable. (Unless one's a soldier and the other's a civilian. That's just how international law works).

summer time and the living is easy... that's how it's supposed to go, right?
It seems like this summer had something else in mind though, and not just for me, but for an alarming number of people around the world. I can't flick on the tv or pick up a paper these days without a chill running down my spine as I think about the recent violence in Lebanon. In the back of my mind are all of the sections from Clinton's "My Life," which I finished a few weeks back, where he writes about all of the efforts he was involved in to build peace in that region. What is perhaps the most haunting is knowing how close they've come sometimes - that's what makes me the saddest, to think about how far we are now from where we've been. But I still can't see the struggle for peace as futile.

Here in Vancouver, the city feels a bit like a pot near its boiling point. Between debates over allowing Walmart to open in our city, new transit plans, development and the environment (think Eagle Ridge), and the covert beginnings of downtown gentrification and dislocation in preparation for the Olympics, we seem to be involved in a fundamentally lager ideological discussion over visions for the post-modern city and the role of family, community, and government. Yet we aren't engaging this debate on that higher level; instead, we dwell on the details and try to dismantle the real issues at stake detail by detail in a way that fundamentally looks like no decisions and muddied outcomes. So the tensions rise.

These are only two examples. Looking at the "Western government" that currently sits uncomfortably in Ottawa provides an easy third. All of these tensions seem to rise from our reluctance to genuinely engage in a full-fledged discussion about our visions for the world and for our communities. Personally, I feel like my life right now is dominated by differing vision of post-secondary education - between public and class-oriented notions of access. I don't know what flag of optimism I can wave - these debates are as serious as the issues they cover and represent. They are hard issues to face, and even harder to resolve. It's easy to see why we avoid them. Can we all reconcile our visions for tomorrow?

I have no idea.

I'm headed to house sit at my sister's for a week, so if you need to get in touch, drop an e-mail and I'll give you the # there.

Otherwise, the endless cycle of school and life keeps turning. With classes starting at 8 am now (meaning I have to be up by 20 to 6) I feel like I'm perpetually in search of sleep and everything else happens in a fog.

We're all still holding our breath, waitin gfor the Vancouver School Board to begin the round of hiring that was supposed to happen last month. The waiting game. We hoped that the resolution of the teacher's contract might help spur hiring, but as yet - nada. At least it's everyone I know, not just me.

The final world cup game is about to start, and living where I do, I expect to hear nothing but car and air horns for the next 7 or 8 hours.

play safe.

i'm writing to you a day late america because i think it might actually do you some good to think that people forget about you every now and then. see, your ego can be a titch much to take sometimes. that's okay though, since i see a very humbling future coming your way. i won't sit and try to list all of the ways you've erred, or crimes you've committed against your own citizenry this year, since what i know, everyone knows, and yet it represents very little. what with your massive corporate media oligarchy controlling pretty much all information dissemination, alongside your own tendencies towards secrecy, you know far better what crimes you have committed than i do. i will not regale you with tales of your sins, anecdotes about your idiotic leader, or cautionary notes about domination by corporate interests. instead, here's my message to you: you need not go gently into that good night.

the sun always sets, and when it comes to the sun (son) of empire, we know that exceeding your reach tends to bring things to a rather hasty (at least as far as history is concerned) end. the sun finally set on the british empire for the same reason it set for the romans - both strayed too far, too frequently, from home. this is a lesson that you, with one hand in afghanistan, and another in iraq, might want to consider before reaching for iran. but it's not too late. the romans and the british endured remarkably different fates. the romans were pretty much crushed outright by domestic conflict and barbarians at the gates. the brits, on the other hand, had some sense of when they had gone to far, and pulled back in time to watch the sunset of empire turn into an everlasting (okay, they're hoping...) evening of enduring importance. they remain the spectre of a giant, and so could you, but not if you keep reaching. not if you go gently into that good night.

the choice you face as you move forward into this new year of your life america, is essentially imperialism or democracy, but be wary. as you play your imperialist games abroad, all is not well on the home front. in a democracy, the people have to know more than their masters would want them to if they are to make any reasonably intelligent decisions. democracy depends on the huddled masses being able to make discerning decisions, a capacity that is increasingly endangered by the consolidation of media motivated by the same corporate engines that even now drive your nation forward. but you do have a choice america. you can choose to not go gently into that good night, but it will require that your people rise up and rage, rage against the dying of the light.

We are the Canadian Borg.
Resistance would be impolite.
Please wait to be assimilated.
Pour l'assimilation en francais,
Veuillez appuyer le "2".
- Found on some random blog where it was cited as having been lifted from "somewhere on the web"

LOL
Please wait to be assimilated - isn't that pretty much what we've said to everyone who arrived on our soil for the past 150 or so years? and the continent's original inhabitants? we're SO f**cking PC.

don't worry, as the 4th approaches I'm scrambling to come up with something appropriately sardonic. in the mean time, mexico: more like the US than we think?
well, they DO have two people declaring presidential victory...
(here's hoping this ends up as a turn for the Chavez)

p.s. I think I've decided that anyone who buys a brand new vehicle that's not a hybrid has no soul. Don't you think?

Well, happy 139th Canada. I'll try not to let this past year's antics ruin my perceptions of you entirely, even though you've done nothing but parade around reveling in how outdated value sets, if used correctly, can get you loads and loads of stuff! With 1990s era Alberta in your head, you've had a long year of big boxes, "family values," and horse shit. Everything hits Alberta a decade late; what we're having to re-adjust to is Alberta running smack into Ottawa and trying to govern things.

In the past year you've elected a neckless Dr. Evil to run the most fragile and beautiful machine I know of, and the situation is unsettling. As a stalwart protector of democratic rights, the good doctor has embedded 2000+ of our youth in a massive opium-and-AKs quagmire in Afghanistan (the country the rest of the Middle East looks at to feel good about themselves) in order to restore a stability that has yet to be located, and right here at home has begun to clawback not freedom of the press, but access of the press. It's not that they're not free to print whatever they want, just that they're no longer allowed anywhere near the government and are increasingly being reduced to a bunch of "what lindsey lohan ate for lunch" useless tabloid-y piles of rubbish who can be raked across society to spread a value set as fresh as last year's forgotten compost pile from the latest unfunded DTES community garden. Ohhh the smell.

I'd like to raise my glass and say some lofty tripe about this day marking the beginning of some shiny new utopia, and blah blah blah, but let's face it, these things usually get better before they get worse and with no other political party in this country even willing to pretend to be electable, this birthday is far more likely to resemble when a 15 year old meth head finally turns 16 and runs away to realize their dreams of endless partying in some crack house downtown where no one can stay sober long enough to decide whether the rats or fleas should be exterminated first than the starry-eyed first steps of a recent graduate from the school of hard knocks. What I mean is that things will probably get worse before they get better. It's the Canadian way to elect a government that does nothing until we get frustrated by a lack of progress, elect someone who only pedals backwards and scares the shit out of us, only to collapse, twitch, and re-elect the guys who do nothing. I'm not sure that we fear change, but we sure as hell aren't willing to take responsibility for it.

Okay Canada, I'd better wrap this up quickly since the glaciers on your cake are melting quickly, and projections show I live in one of those places that will end up under water. Canada, you've learned to talk the talk. Inventor of peacekeeping, that lovely charter, your whole progressive rhetoric of multiculturalism, it all sounds so good. But now, on this the 139th eve of your inception, it's time to walk the walk. Constitutionally protecting the rights of your indigenous citizens while in reality consigning them to live in 3rd world squalor and die before they turn 50 is, frankly, just embarrassing for a country your age. Constantly spewing the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions doesn't look so great either. Time to grow up, lay off the drive-thru and learn how to cook. I hear Norway makes a great wind-power soup and I'll bet they'd teach you the recipe if you asked nicely. I know making it on your own, and living up to all of that talk might sound scary, but it's not nearly as bad as the alternatives. Canada, as the first lesson of your adult life, I offer you this: you are responsible both for what you do, and for what happens because of what you do. Consider your actions carefully, or the results may be more nationally unbalancing than an Albertan politician with BSE. Arusha-arusha, they all fall down.

Blow out your candles Canada, and may this be the last time this year that you really blow.