jnarvey.com

This blog has been moved. Jonathon Narvey continues to post at jnarvey.com

For those who care about these things, I moved my blog for two reasons: my URL was stupid and awkward and I wanted one that was short and easy to remember. Hence, the name switch. The new site looks a whole lot like the old one, but I plan on making a few improvements to it shortly. Enjoy.

Did I say vile? I meant, style...ish... yeah, that's it!

Canada's Liberal Party just keep taking flak for shooting their mouths off about the recent shooting war in the Middle East.

The latest casualty is Thomas Hubert, a local blogger and BC Young Liberal communications vice president, who wrote that "History will remember Hezbollah as an organization that stood up to the most vile nation in human history" and that Israel is "a state that survives on the blood of innocent people", among other things. He has since resigned his position and his website reads, "The longwalk.ca is currently under revision and restructuring. If any previous comments made on this blog were offensive to anyone, please accept the apologies of longwalk.ca."

Hubert is only 17, so he can and should be forgiven, assuming his apology is sincere (and there is no reason to suspect that it isn't). I believed a great number of stupid, offensive things at that age and no doubt would have published them had blogging been so easy in the early '90s. It's a terrible thing to have one's reputation tarnished before life really begins.

Sadly, the recent Hezbollah-Israel conflict is bringing out the worst in a lot of people (especially Liberals, it seems) who would otherwise have no motive or opportunity to shame themselves with their own ignorance.

As an aside, the idiots who started the war now claim they never even saw it coming. Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said the following in a TV interview aired today, "We did not think, even 1 percent, that the capture would lead to a war at this time and of this magnitude. You ask me, if I had known on July 11 ... that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not."

Oops. Next time, think before launching rocket attacks and suprise raids on soldiers across a fortified border. Who knew that kind of stuff actually started wars?

tags: Liberal Party Canada, Hezbollah apologist, Thomas Hubert, anti-Israel bias, Sheik Nasrallah

Harper versus Ignatieff, Clinton versus Rice

Are we ready for the new faces of politics?

On Canada's own Maclean's magazine, Harper-lite Liberal leadership contender Michael Ignatieff looks like he's about to challenge the Prime Minister to a hockey-goon-style bust up. Meanwhile, Democratic former first lady and New York Senator Hillary Clinton gazes up on the cover of Time smiling at something - no doubt, George W's approval ratings.

The juxtaposition of their mugs this week was interesting. The political opposition in both Canada and the US are both trying to recover from electoral disappointment in a modern electoral millieu where getting a percentage point or two more of the popular vote than last time can be decisive. The Democrats have squandered far more time getting their act together, but both Liberals and Democrats are currently suffering from a lack of clear leadership and inspirational policy.

I'll be keeping an eye on Ignatieff. It would be nice to have some election debates with candidates that don't have to rely on speech writers to formulate policy.

Looking to our southern neighbors, though, I have fond but faint hopes for a real contest in 2008: Hillary Clinton versus Condoleeza Rice.

Bill's ethical dissolution seems not to have hurt his wife's reputation. If anything, it casts Hillary in a comparatively purer light.

To an even greater extent, Condoleeza seems unaffected by the shadow of George Bush Jr.'s unpopularity, even as she has risen to become possibly the most powerful woman on the planet. The American Secretary of State and chief diplomat reportedly is closer to Bush than anyone. Her teflon status could be a very advantageous talent should she choose to preserve some continuity between administrations by throwing her hat into the ring.

With a minority parliament, Canadians will likely run through the election mill before our US cousins. That contest will be exciting enough on its own. But when Americans go to the polls, I'm looking forward to seeing a woman running the White House - no matter which party gets elected.

tags: political ambition, Michael Ignatieff, Stephen Harper, Hillary Clinton, Condoleeza Rice

Hedy Fry and the Liberals awry... oh, my!

I don't know why it still surprises me that Liberal politicians think Canadians are idiots.

The latest insult to our collective intelligence comes from Vancouver MP Hedy Fry, who popped a plain brochure into my mailbox some time today. Evidently, she's been taking some flak about the Liberals' waffling policy as regards Canada's Afghanistan mission.

"The Liberal Opposition recognizes the need for Canadian troops in southern Afghanistan and supports their continued presence in the country to establish peace and security," she writes. Of course, she would have to say that; our Afghanistan mission began under a Liberal Prime Minister.

But then she goes stupid on us. "However, as we send them out to protect and ensure the freedom and human rights of others, we have a responsibility to make sure that they are not sent into areas of unnecessary risk." In other words, Liberals are all for sending troops into war zones to protect innocent people from fanatical killers - just so long as our troops don't actually risk taking casualties ourselves.

Keep our forces locked away in some bunker in Kabul while the Taliban takes over the rest of the country - and get out before the bad guys are strong enough to try for the capital again. There's the Liberal strategy for winning the peace.

Hedy Fry and her Liberal conspirators are only fooling themselves if they think they can skirt both sides of this issue.

If any other Vancouverites are interested in giving Ms. Fry their opinion on this issue, her email address is fryh@parl.gc.ca

In the meantime, I'm soooooo looking forward to the next brochure.

tags: Hedy Fry, Liberal Party of Canada, waffling foreign policy, Maginot Line

Straight from the source's mouth

A report out of the Washington Post indicates that Canada will benefit from the onset of global warming. In particular, Vancouverites can look forward to a mob of new tourists wanting something a little less stifling than forty-degree vacations in Cancun. Is this the big break the local tourism industry has been waiting for?

Sadly, the article is only another example of poor journalism repeating unproven - wacky, actually - claims by dumb jerks posing as real professionals.

The "experts" in question are suggesting that Canada's tourism industry will get a 220 per cent boost in tourism as our average temperature rises, at the expense of temperate countries like Mexico that will become intolerable, sweat-soaked salt lands. That sounds super, until one reads that the economists' projected three-degree rise is predicted to take place by 2100 or so.

Projecting into the future based on current trends is only legitimate to a point. By 2100, it's entirely possible that the world will be at least three degrees warmer than now. But there are far too many variables to make any kind of prediction about the state of the world 94 years from now. Assuming that global warming leads to the catastrophic changes that most scientists seem to think will occur, it's likely that the era of lesisure tourism by the average person will be long over by then.

What I found particularly amusing was the researchers' factoring of current economic figures into their data. Economists can barely extrapolate predictions for their own countries one year into the future from the most up-to-date statistics. How can this research possibly factor in reliable economic data for 2100?

The article from the Washington Post is not news. Journalists are usually ready to pounce on politicians and celebrities for the least sign of hypocrisy or conspiracy. Meanwhile, some hucksters from academia are quoted verbatim.

Yes, there probably will be more tourists to Canada coming in the next five or ten years. By 2100? I'll leave that forecast to the science fiction writers. They can at least call what they write entertainment.

tags: global warming, dumb predictions, lazy journalism, Canada tourism, the experts are wrong

Cuba Libre

South Florida's Cuban exile community has got to be having mixed feelings about the benefits of modern medical science.

Cuba's celebrated miracle-worker doctors are keeping Fidel Castro from succumbing to his latest medical ailments. The octogenarian dictator has at least temporarily ceded power to his (relatively) younger brother, but it looks like those hoping for change on the isolated socialist island nation will have to keep waiting for their dreams to be fulfilled.

Lots of people out here on the left coast have their own opinions on the situation. At various parties and get togethers over the last couple of weeks, I've heard a few oddball statements about the Carribean's biggest island from people whose firsthand experience with Cuba mostly consists of 72-hour debauched booze-fests at Cuba's beach tourist resorts. "The people are happy over there! They don't want capitalism. Fidel built schools for the children and everybody has a job. They're much better off with communism."

Right. That's why the Castro regime's biggest immigration debate is about how to keep its impoverished people from sailing en masse to the shores of its greatest ideological enemy. The people in Cuba are so hopeful about their future on the island that it has a birth rate lower even than Japan's and an abortion rate higher than just about anywhere in the Western hemisphere. They're so happy about their government that the police can toss people in jail just for badmouthing it - usually on the word of family members, neighbors or associates who pass on the incriminating hearsay.

Are the people of Cuba truly happy? Hopefully, the world will be able to hear what they really think before the Castro's little brother gets too comfortable in his new office.

tags: Fidel Castro, communist island, Cuba Libre, regime change, true happiness

Western alien-nation

Vancouverites ought to feel a little affinity for the creatures of Planet UB313.

Of course, such creatures would probably consist of extreme-cold-resistant bacteria, if they even exist. Still, out on the west coast, we sometimes can be made to feel just as isolated from the centre of the action as one of the solar system's newly promoted interstellar bodies (For those who have no clue what I'm going on about, check out this article about the reordering of our solar system by astronomers with way too much time on their hands).

Much hyperbole has been uttered in recent years about Western Canadian alienation. The small but growing number of separatists in BC and Alberta are still far from commanding Quebec-style respect in Ottawa.

Still, it's hard to forget that the last federal election was already pretty much decided by the time vote counters had reached the Manitoba-Ontario border. The vote tally in BC was little more than a predictable footnote to the political event.

Like it or not, we're still on the fringe.

Of course, that's where the analogy with Planet UB313 ends. The planet with the funny name will likely never be more than an interstellar gas station for our spacefaring species on its way to greener pastures somewhere near Alpha Centaurai.

Meanwhile, Vancouver is Canada's vital gateway to the countries of the Pacific Rim. The abberant Atlantic/Eurocentric tilt of Canadian interest in the wider world has already shifted heavily towards Asia. Soon, our connections with that part of the world will rival what we have with the USA.

The shift to the Pacific will be permanent. Vancouver and its hinterland had better start getting the respect it deserves from the people back east - starting with a few more seats in the House of Commons and corresponding representation in the Senate.

And it better start happening long, long before Shell builds its first hydrocarbon refueling station on Planet UB313.

tags: Western alienation, BC Alberta, Pacific Rim, Gateway to Asia, really lame analogies