Month: May 2008

Not that I'm taking a triumphalist turn or anything, but I note this morning that, despite the press release from the federal government trumpeting the fact that Canada's fresh new C-17 fleet was just the tool we needed to help in places like Burma, our fresh new C-17 fleet was not able to do so. My friends Daniel and Steven have the details this morning. As a result, we turned to the Russians, as we often have in the past, to get our aid where it had to go on time and they were able to respond, as they often have in the past, as fast as if we owned the plane ourselves.

Now I was lucky enough to get a ride on Canada's first C-17 the day it landed at CFB Trenton; I've talked to Canadian C-17 pilots and crews and I agree with them: It's a magnificent machine. But when a country like ours has scarce resources and lots of pressing needs, you would think military equipment purchases would be justified according to priority scheme that might look like this: 1. Failure to buy puts Canadian lives in dangers; 2. Failure to buy prevents CF members from completing missions; 3. Buying enhances or extends capabilities.
So far as I know, no one has yet identified one instance where we were unable to rent rides to get our gear where it needed to go on time.* In other words, had we not bought C-17s, no Canadian lives were in danger nor was the CF unable to carry out assigned missions. Owning them does extend and enhance our capability. But can we “rent” search-and-rescue capability? Nope. And failure to own this kit can put Canadian lives in jeopardy. Can we “rent” long-range surveillance aircraft? Nope. And, I know the Air Force has announced a program of upgrades but a failure to provide for their replacment jeopardizes the CF's ability to complete this mission. That's why I wonder, wouldn't the money spent on C-17s have been better spent on capabilities where old, outdated equipment is in danger of imperiling lives and missions?
* Many defenders of the C-17 purchase say Canada's DART team was delayed getting to southeast Asia after the 2004 tsunami. Not true. The delay was the result of political dithering by the PM who would come to wear that moniker. Martin's cabinet made the decision to send the DART on a Sunday night; a plane was rented to take it overseas; and the DART team took off from CFB Trenton on a Thursday.

If you're one of those who like to communicate via the BlackBerry PIN, I've a new PIN effective immediately.

Alberta, as we all know, has been getting filthy rich on oil and gas royalties. Newfoundland and Labrador will soon lose its “have-not” status thanks to its energy revenue.

And then there's this “we're getting rich, too” press release from B.C. today:

The May 21, 2008 sale of oil and gas rights sets new records with $441 million in bonus bids and higher average per-hectare prices than any previous sale. Yesterday's sale brings the fiscal year-to-date total to more than $480 million and puts B.C. on track to smash the $1.2-billion record set last fiscal, Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources Minister Richard Neufeld announced today.

Now, these are one-time revenue shots, of course. The real money comes when the oil and/or gas starts flowing and provinces get a piece of every barrel of oil or cubic foot of gas sold.
Still, B.C.'s big bonus for selling drilling rights underlines, I think, why, net-net, high energy prices are a positive for Canada.
Check out the scorecard for oil and gas drilling rights.

Jennifer Smith is a “left-leaning opinionated writer, singer, woodworker, genealogist, runologist and entrepreneur” who lives in Milton, Ont. She's also a blogger and she was prepared to get herself accredited and pay her own way out to cover the 2008 Conservative convention. She applied, as per instructions at the Conservative Web site, but today, received her rejection letter from party operative Paul Stickney.

UPDATE: A Conservative Party official called to say that neither I nor readers of this blog should get the idea that the party is vetting bloggers based on their political leanings. Some Liberal bloggers, this official pointed out, have already been approved — step forward, Jason Cherniak — and the party is urging the folks behind the Liblogs blogroll and the Blogging Tories to create a joint Convention blogroll that will link to all accredited bloggers no matter their political affiliation.

Greg Elmer interprets the invitation by the Conservatives to accredit bloggers to read that the Conservatives are looking for fellow travellers. Again: The Party says they are not.

It's probably also important to point that, just as with the MSM, in accrediting one blogger and not another, the party is not endorsing the views or opinions of that blogger (just as they don't endorse the views or opinions of MSM reporters or organizations simply by accrediting them). I point that out because that issue may come up if, for example, Kate McMillan of Small Dead Animals wants accreditation.

Technorati Tags: blogs, conservatives, journalism

“Instead of teaching history we walk children through museums and memorials. Worse still, we encourage them to see the past—and its lessons—through the vector of their ancestors' suffering. Today, the “common” interpretation of the recent past is thus composed of the manifold fragments of separate pasts, each of them (Jewish, Polish, Serb, Armenian, German, Asian-American, Palestinian, Irish, homosexual…) marked by its own distinctive and assertive victimhood.

The resulting mosaic does not bind us to a shared past, it separates us from it. Whatever the shortcomings of the national narratives once taught in school, however selective their focus and instrumental their message, they had at least the advantage of providing a nation with past references for present experience. Traditional history, as taught to generations of schoolchildren and college students, gave the present a meaning by reference to the past: today's names, places, inscriptions, ideas, and allusions could be slotted into a memorized narrative of yesterday. In our time, however, this process has gone into reverse. The past now acquires meaning only by reference to our many and often contrasting present concerns . . .

“Until the last decades of the twentieth century most people in the world had limited access to information; but—thanks to national education, state-controlled radio and television, and a common print culture—within any one state or nation or community people were all likely to know many of the same things. Today, the opposite applies. Most people in the world outside of sub-Saharan Africa have access to a near infinity of data. But in the absence of any common culture beyond a small elite, and not always even there, the fragmented information and ideas that people select or encounter are determined by a multiplicity of tastes, affinities, and interests. As the years pass, each one of us has less in common with the fast-multiplying worlds of our contemporaries, not to speak of the world of our forebears.

All of this is surely true—and it has disturbing implications for the future of democratic governance . . .

“…Politicians in the US surround themselves with the symbols and trappings of armed prowess; even in 2008 American commentators excoriate allies that hesitate to engage in armed conflict. I believe it is this contrasting recollection of war and its impact, rather than any structural difference between the US and otherwise comparable countries, which accounts for their dissimilar responses to international challenges today. Indeed, the complacent neoconservative claim that war and conflict are things Americans understand—in contrast to naive Europeans with their pacifistic fantasies—seems to me exactly wrong: it is Europeans (along with Asians and Africans) who understand war all too well. Most Americans have been fortunate enough to live in blissful ignorance of its true significance…

From Tony Judt, “What Have We Learned, If Anything?” in the New York Review of Books, May 1, 2008

Technorati Tags: democracy, history, tony judt

Lawrence Hill (right) of Burlington, Ont. is this year's winner of The Commonwealth Prize for his novel The Book of Negroes. (It is published in the U.S. as Someone Knows My Name, apparently because the U.S. publisher thought the word 'Negroes' was a bit incendiary. Honest — that's what Hill says to a Guardian reporter.

Hill wins 10,000 pounds for the honour.

Previous Commonwealth Prize winners include “…Rohinton Mistry, Peter Carey and JM Coetzee. Last year's winner was Lloyd Jones's Mister Pip, which went on to be shortlisted for the Booker prize. To be eligible, the authors must be citizens of one of the Commonwealth's 53 member countries and write in English. Each year there are separate regional shortlists, and prizes of 1,000 before all of the winners are considered. The winners were chosen by a panel of judges from six different countries who met over two days during the final programme.”

The federal Conservative Party of Canada, like the two major parties in the U.S., will put some bloggers on the same footing as the mainstream media for their fall policy convention.

Bloggers, like the MSM, will have to pay their own freight to get to Winnipeg this fall and pay for their room and board. (Actually: I assume they'll have to pay their own way, just like the MSM. Some bloggers are very closely connected to the party and it wouldn't surprise me if some bloggers had their bills paid by the party or like-minded political organizations — and that goes for bloggers from the right and left. The CBC journalists, for the record, who will attend will have their tabs covered by federal taxpayers; private sector MSM journalists — possibly yours truly — will have their bills paid largely from the sale of advertising.)

UPDATE: A Conservative party official writes in to tell me that while bloggers are free to apply to attend the convention, the Party will not be assisting them with any of their expenses.

It also looks like the party won't accredit bloggers on demand. Instead, the Conservatives say that: “The accreditation of bloggers will be based on various factors – including interest; space availability at the convention; the readership and influence of a blog; the amount of original content the blog typically generates to name a few.”

[Tip o' the toque to Greg Elmer]

Technorati Tags: blogs, democracy, journalism, conservatives

David Steinhart was my colleague and a day-oner at National Post. He was a barrel-chested bundle of energy and enthusiasm and was an important part of making those early days at the Post so much fun.

David passed away in his sleep last night. He was just 43. No rhyme or reason for this sort of thing. It just is.

I hadn't seen David in a while, though I talked to him once or twice over the last year or so. But I'm told he was in the best shape of his life and I know, cuz he told me, he was on top of the world at Toronto sports radio station The FAN.

Another colleague, Rob Thompson, has a great tribute. I agree with every word Rob wrote.

My condolences to his family. He was a tremendous guy. Other colleagues and friends remember him that way, too.

Technorati Tags: David Steinhart, journalism

Thanks. Neat idea. Good luck Brijit editors.

Technorati Tags: journalism

A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to a small workshop at Queen's University with some other journalists. We met researchers there working on issues involving technology, surveillance, privacy and the interface between human and machine. It was a lot of fun.

Coming away from that seminar, though, I was reminded of a book I'd read a few years ago by Andrew Feenberg called Questioning Technology. Feenberg was then a philosophy professor at San Diego State University but I'm pleased to see that he's been lured up to the Great White North and holds a Canada Research Chair in the Philosophy of Technology in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

At Queen's, we got into a discussion (ok, I kinda dragged everyone there into this topic) that touched on what I'll call the perceived neutrality of technology. When people say technology is neutral they're really making the “guns don't kill people, people kill people” argument. Scientists and techno-enthusiasts will often dress that argument up a bit, saying that tools, methodologies, inventions — technology — are valueless and that they acquire values — good, evil, helpful, hurtful — only from use. A knife is just a tool. But use it to cut your veggies, it becomes a good knife. Use it to kill, it is a bad knife.

I'm not so convinced of that view. I think technology, more often than not, has a value system built it into it. I think Feenberg thinks the same way too:

… the democratic movement [used to] g[i]ve is fullest confidence to the natural processes of technological development, and it was only conservative cultural critics who lamented the price of progress. The Ruskins and the Heideggers deplored the dehumanizing advance of the machine while democrats and socialists cheered on the engineers, heroic conquerors of nature. However, all agreed that technology was an autonomous force separate from society, a kind of second nature impinging on social life from the alien realm of reason in which science too find its source. For good or ill, technology's essence – rational control, efficiency — ruled modern life.

But this conception of technology is incompatible with the extension of democracy to the technical sphere. Technology is the medium of daily life in modern societies. Every major change reverbates at many levels, economic, political, religious, cultural. Insofar as we continue to see the technical and the social as separate domains, important aspects of these dimensions of our existence will remain beyond our reach as a democratic society… [p. viii]

… insofar as democracy challenges the autonomy of technology, the “essentiast” philosophy of technology around which there used to be such general consensus, is challenged as well. … [p viii]

…technologies are not merely efficient devices or efficiency oriented practices but include their contexts as these are embodied in design and social insertion. The contexts of technology include such things as its relation to vocations, to responsibility, initiative, and authority, to ethics and aesthetics, in sum, to the realm of meaning. [p xiii]

… the notion of the “neutrality” of technology is a standard defensive reaction on the part of professions and organizations confronted by public protest and attempting to protect their autonomy. But in reality technical professions are never autonomous; in defending their traditions, they actually defend the outcomes of earlier controversies rather than a supposedly pure technical rationality… [p 89]

You can read the preface to the book, from which I've quoted several chunks, here.
If you like that, by the way, I'd also recommend We Have Never Been Modern by French philosopher Bruno Latour. Can't say I'm smart enough to understand everything Feenberg and Latour are talking about it, but their writing seems to start firing some critical thinking neurons in my brain and that, I suppose, is what good philosophy is supposed to do.

Technorati Tags: Andrew Feenberg, Bruno Latour, democracy, ethics, philosophy, philosophy of technology, values, surveillance