Category Archives: News and politics

Last week, Research in Motion, the makers of the Blackberry, were allowed to continue selling their near-ubiquitous belt accessory in Saudi Arabia.  Although nobody is talking officially and on the record, the unattributed reason is that RIM caved and has agreed to put Blackberry servers in Saudi Arabia. 

The cynical may suggest that the presence of the Blackberry servers means the Saudi State Security apparatus can now examine the texts, voicemail, email and phone calls of anyone in Saudi Arabia, no matter where they’re calling.  That would be cynical and so would the assumption that all the other handset makers, including Apple and Google with their iPhone and Android respectively, have already given over the keys to the back door.

None of this especially surprising.  India, who has been making “No Blackberry here!” noises for a few months, is apparently in discussions with RIM to solve their dilemma.  The dilemma being, the Indian State Security apparatus wants to be able to read anything they want, when they want, as soon as they want, as well as listen in on calls, read texts and generally poke around.  RIM didn’t want to let them.

RIM is in a bad spot.  Their product is well known as a reasonably secure way for people to transmit email and text with a fairly good assumption of privacy and that is exactly the problem.  In North America we have a reasonable expectation that the government, if they want to read our email and tap our phones, have to go before a judge and get a time-limited warrant.  There is at least a modest assumption that our phone calls are somewhat private.  This is emphatically not the case in several dozen other countries around the world and RIM is taking it in the shorts.

So, how private is your email or phone calls on a handheld smartphone?  The answer is not even vaguely private, to the extent that you might as well post your email live on your own website and save the authorities the trouble of having to track it down.

Which comes back to the reason why?  The first reason is always “to get those evildoers of the Axis of Evil, a bearded tall man with a dialysis machine who lives in a cave, illegal file sharers, pedophiles and those who violate the copyright act.”

The second reason is straight-up economic espionage.  Sorry kids, it ain’t glamorous James Bond stuff, it’s just business intelligence.  Let us take a simple example to illustrate and we’ll hasten to add here, that this is entirely made up, out of whole cloth.

Canada is a world-leader in the production of the enzymes needed to produce ethanol from things like wheat straw, switchgrass and tree bark.  It’s called cellulostic-ethanol and it doesn’t use food to make ethanol, like the vast majority of ‘green’ fuels.  One company is very good at it.  In fact, they’re just a few kilometers away from where this is being written.

If you were (supposing here for a minute) the producer of the vast majority of Genetically Modified seed corn, who has just finished the final testing of a years-long multi-million dollar project creating the ideal corn hybrid that almost ferments itself, grows inches every day, is rot, disease and pest resistant and will make your company a sure-bet zillion dollars a year, would you be protective of your position?  Hell yeah!

So you want to know about what this cellulostic-ethanol enzyme producing bunch of a-holes is going to do to your business plan.  Of course you do.  By far, the simplest way to stop the production of that particular batch of their newest, most effective and cheapest enzyme is to have a fire suddenly erupt over a weekend and burn their joint to the ground.  Brute force always works, but let’s suggest you’re not quite ready, corporately, to engage in arson.

Could you, using a little technology, a little stealth, some simple detective work and a dose of moral ambiguity, find out exactly how well, or how poorly that competitor’s product is doing, will do, or is being received?  Hell yeah! 

Pick the right executive and have someone install a simple USB keylogger on the machine.  You can even do it with what appears to be spam email and then you’ve got the keys.  Snoop at your will.  You’ve protected your business position with your product and your bonus next year is going to be huge. 

Now expand that scope from business to business and make it country versus country.  Does Airbus Industries from France have a vested interest in Canada buying products from Airbus, instead of Boeing, in the US?  Hell yeah!  Who are the Russians talking with about Crimean oil deposits and what will that do to the price of oil?  What is the intent of the Chinese steel industry regarding scrap iron?  Are they heading towards making less steel from iron ore and coke and more from recycled scrap? 

You can go on ad infinitum and notice the thread:  It’s not the nuclear launch codes, troop dispositions, or what President Obama had for lunch.  That stuff is so 1980’s as to be laughable.  Where the real money and power is, is business espionage.

Which, coming full circle, is why business people liked the Blackberry:  It was reasonably secure. 

Does this mean that Saudi Arabia, India, China and Turkey are not actually concerned with ‘terrorist activities’?  It makes a convincing cover story, but the real issue is economic.  They want to know what the business people are doing, especially the foreign business people, who might have insights or needs that aren’t being served in the most profitable method by the government, or their appointed cronies.

RIM meanwhile, recognizes that India and China are their next biggest markets.  Only about a third of the world’s population is up for grabs.  If they have to grab their ankles to get that pie, then hang on.

Besides, their competitors have already sold out.

Yesterday the Blackberry got canned in Saudi Arabia.  Turkey hates the Blackberry while India and China are looking at the ubiquitous hip device as a candidate for control.  Why, you ask?  Is it because the product is Evil?  No.

The Blackberry format of mobile device has encryption.  Pretty good encryption actually.  The consumer models aren’t quite a strongly protected as the business models with a BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server) in the back of the house.  Blackberry doesn’t route their stuff through ‘common’ carrier servers:  Research in Motion (RIM, the lads who own Blackberry) runs the email side with their own servers.  Many of the servers are in Waterloo Ontario, not far from the RIM HQ, here in Canada.

What is causing the “Blackberry Ban” is that RIM won’t let the governments of various countries stick their noses into what the Blackberry users are saying, sending or texting.  Without a Blackberry proxy server in Turkey or Saudi Arabia for instance, the state security agency can’t monitor what the citizens are doing.  Which also explains why India and China are considering banning the Blackberry.  Heavens forbid that some citizen of those countries might have something positive to say about Pakistan or Tibet.  The World Will End!

Where the icky part comes in, is the other mobile manufacturers.  How much are they complying with the various governments.  Apple, that paragon of all goodness must be playing footsie with the Saudi government, which means there is no ban on the iPhone.  Google’s Android isn’t outlawed in Saudi.  Nor is anything running the Windows Smartphone, Palm, or any of the other manufacturers.  Only Blackberry.

The paranoid out there will suggest that Google has given access to the various governments involved.  The cynical will suggest that Steve Jobs has handed over the keys to the iPhone so Turkish State Security can monitor all the iPhone fanboys downloading the latest instalment of Twilight, or another wretched Adam Lambert video.  Of course, we are not paranoid, or cynical.

Anyone who has a ‘smartphone’ regardless of manufacturer, should have a proper mindset.  The preeminent characteristic of that mindset is that the manufacturer is watching over your shoulder, watching every website you visit, every email you send and every text you tap to every contact in your address book. 

They’re looking for keywords that describe your shopping and social habits to sell to advertisers, for money.  The big profits for any smartphone company is not in the airtime or the data plan.  The big money is in market intelligence.  Where do you go?  What do you talk about?  Who do you talk with?  What stores do you go by?  When do you sleep?  What time do you leave the house? What tunes do you listen to?  What videos do you watch on your phone?  What websites do you use?  What apps do you use most often?

Yes, all that data is readily mined from your smartphone, especially if you have a ‘mobile’ app that features GPS locating. 

Am I near a Starbucks?  Well, the app can’t know if you are, unless the app knows where you are.  How does it know where you are?  Interrogate the onboard smartphone GPS and it will tell the app, plus or minus a few meters, exactly where the phone is located, the phone conceptually being attached to you hip.  Interrogate the database of Starbucks locations to find the ones closest, then display the locations on a map. 

You can now walk the block and a half to get your double-decaf, half-caf, soymilk, lite foam, half Splenda-half sugar, cocoa-dusted with a single shake of cinnamon, triple espresso latte chillerama with medium ice, only a little caramel topping and extra napkins with two straws, one that bends and one that doesn’t.  By the way, that order makes you a complete asshat.

Which means Mindset Number One for a smartphone user is that you have been ear-tagged like a dairy cow.  Willingly.  In fact you paid for the privilege of being ear-tagged and pay every month when you pay your wireless bill.  You pay for the ‘convenience’ of those apps and you pay again when your carrier resells the aggregate market intelligence to advertisers.  Do you think those targeted text messages from sandwich shops, clothiers or other advertisers just magically appear on your smartphone as a random guess that you might be near an outlet?  The answer is No.

As for nefarious uses of smartphones, we have to define nefarious.  To the Saudi government that could mean trying to open a website that tells you about the beaches at Haifa.  Israel does not exist to Saudi Arabia.  Therefore anyone wanting to find out about the beaches at Haifa must be insane, Jewish, or drunk, three things you are not allowed to be in Saudi Arabia.  Cross-tabulate that with your smartphone GPS and we now know where to send the squad car and the guys with the nets and the leg irons.

Perhaps the important question to ask is not why the Blackberry is under scrutiny by foreign governments, but why other smartphone manufacturers are not.

In a news story Friday from the Wall Street Journal the much beloved Wal-Mart is in the first throes of putting RFID chips in your underwear.  An explanation is in order before someone goes off the deep end assuming Wal-Mart is going to monitor your butt while you ramble their megastores.

RFID means Radio Frequency IDentification and is a small plastic and metal chip that sits on anything it is attached to, waiting to hear from home.  Most RFID chips don’t contain batteries or other power sources:  They’re passive devices, not much bigger than a paper match.  Some are the size of a grain of rice, but they don’t actually do much more than one thing. 

What a RFID chip does do, is detect the presence of a specific frequency of radio broadcast signal, uses that radiated electrical energy as a power source and does the only thing it can do:  Burp up the unique number burned into the RFID tag itself as a very low power transmission. 

At the same time as the RFID scanner is broadcasting its signal, the scanner is also listening for any numbers that beep back on a slightly different frequency from the RFID chips that are within range.  Range is usually less than fifty feet.

Where the magic happens is that number that the passive RFID chip burps back.  If it is a unique number you can then look up that individual product (a pair of jeans for example) in an inventory database and see that number belongs to a pair of Wranglers, zip fly, size 36, Men’s, blue, prewashed, shipped to store 5834 on July 12th 2010. 

With a little more database work you can also see that the wholesale price was $4, shipping, stocking and overhead added $2.17 and the sale price was $17, for a tidy profit of ten bucks and change.  Then the databases in the back can also see that corporately we’re running low on size 36 Mens’ zip fly at that store, so the next shipment of clothing to store 5834 should have another dozen pairs of that size and style and then order them from the factory.

This can all happen in less than one second.  It ain’t rocket science and it ain’t new. Passive RFID chips are in your toll both device for the New York State Thruway, or eZee pay transponder, your work ID card and even your drivers’ license in some states, as well as in the newer US passports.

The question now becomes how permanent the RFID chip becomes.  Some clothing manufacturer have embedded the RFID chip in the actual clothing, hidden in a seam or pocket trim, as a permanent component of the garment.  According to the WSJ story, Benneton did just that a few years ago and caught a face full of consumer backlash. 

The problem is that the RFID tags don’t have the smarts to turn themselves off once the product is sold.  With nothing more than a handheld antenna and a transceiver, any pud with downloadable instructions can make any RFID chip broadcast back the number burned into it, if he gets in range. 

What Wal-Mart wants to do is attach a RFID chip to the sales tag, which is removed at the cash, or by the consumer when they get the jeans home.  Fair enough, the tag isn’t woven into the garment itself, so the tag doesn’t follow you around.  Wal-Mart is even being somewhat transparent about what it intends to do with the data, essentially inventory management and nothing more.

Other manufacturers?  We can only guess what they might consider and how transparent they might be regarding their use of RFID.  Would a brand-name clothing company permanently tag your favourite jacket?  It isn’t hard to do, physically, as a RFID chip could readily fit in the pull tab for a zipper.  Let us assume they’ve done exactly that:  Tagged that pretty summer-fall jacket you bought.

You enter the brand-name store and pass through the anti-theft detectors.  Unbeknownst to you, also in the anti-theft gate, there is a transmitter for the company RFID chips.  Your jacket zipper does what it can only do and pings back the unique number embedded in it.  Almost instantaneously that number is searched in the company inventory database and is found to be paired up to your Brand-Name Store Platinum Loyalty card that you used when your bought the jacket five months ago.

Now the store knows you and with a second or two more, knows your purchase history (you bought saucy underwear four months ago, as well as two tops, but have never bought their shoes or pants) over the the two and a half years of being a Platinum Loyalty customer.  Could you be greeted by name?  Quite possibly. 

Could other stores in the Brand-Name chain that sell different stuff, identify you as a potential customer?  Sure, why not?  All it takes is the sharing of the numbers in the RFID chip:  Brand-Name’s housewares stores could identify you by your jacket RFID tag and give you personalized service, even if you go to their most distant store, while on vacation in Buttcrack, Iowa. 

With a little truth management, they might even read the other tags in your clothing, to see what you bought from the competition.  That bra?  Ahh, not from us.  Sell her a Brand Name Store bra says the text message sent to a company handheld that the “sales associate” has chained to her hand.  Tell her about our shoe sale on now, just for Brand Name Store Platinum Loyalty customers, unadvertised and by invitation only.  All the sales monkey has to do is occasionally glance at the “customer assistance” handheld to see the coaching and prompts in real-time.  Your wallet, purchased from Brand Name’s affiliate, is now going to be emptied with some pretty slick sales tactics, targeted very precisely, at you, your buying habits and your history.

All of it eminently do-able.  No violations of the rules of physics involved, just some good database work and a bit of sharp programming, plus knowing that any RFID chip will burp back a number if you send it the right frequency.

In a previous post we mentioned the Ontario Eco Fee, a cash grab run by Stewardship Ontario to fund the proper recycling of various household hazardous waste products.  The high concept was that retailers would ding the consumer a fee for 22 categories of consumer products in addition to the retail price.  Again, the high concept was that fee would be passed onto Stewardship Ontario to fund the proper, sustainable recycling of those various products. 

As an example, a new home fire extinguisher would carry an Ontario Eco Fee of $6.66 above the retail price of $89.99 for a 10 pound Kidde ABC rechargeable, like the kind you might have in a basement workshop.  Then the Harmonized Sales Tax would glom its mitts into the deal topping the price out at $109.21. 

Conceptually, the retailer would forward $6.66 to Stewardship Ontario and they would use the money to fund a program that recycles old fire extinguishers.  Old fire extinguishers sometimes contain nasty stuff like Carbon Tetrachloride or Halon, neither of which are particularly good for the environment and should be disposed of properly.  Agreed and no issue there.  After properly emptying the extinguisher, the steel container can be recycled as scrap and melted down to make a blade for a shovel, or strings for a zither.  Steel is steel. 

Zinging the purchaser of a new fire extinguisher a bit to pay for a program to do it, sucks.  Then again, we can’t fund everything out of general tax revenue, either federal or provincial, so it still sucks, but at least it is a step in the right direction.  Again, at the high concept level, it’s at least an OK idea.

The final straw was Canadian Tire (Like Pep Boys in the US, but cross-bred with a Home Depot and a big hardware store) said yesterday it would not charge any of the Ontario Eco Fees as the program is utterly pooched beyond all redemption.

Today, the Ontario Minister of the Environment, John Gerretsen cancelled the Ontario Eco Fee because the whole program was so messed up as to be incomprehensible to mere mortals and applied so unfairly as to make people squirm with ugliness at the cash register.  Some places charged it, some charged it incorrectly, others ate the fees, while even more stores just threw their hands up and took mighty levels of abuse from customers as of July 1st, when the expanded fees came into effect.

The real reason the Ontario Eco Fee took a flaming-turd nosedive was the inability of Stewardship Ontario to actually communicate what the fees were for and how they were to be applied.  They skipped that little step of letting us consumers understand why and showing us what the money was going for before they stuck the fees to us. 

If you want to see who is actually responsible for Stewardship Ontario, here’s the link.  You’ll notice that the links for most of the senior management do not work.  Only the CEO, Gemma Zecchini lists her previous gigs, mostly working for the soft drink industry.  It doesn’t make her a bad person and we don’t doubt her sincerity, but the execution this time, truly did fail famously.

Again, back to high concept, the idea is sound:  We have to divert more hazardous materials from being dumped into the general landfill sites around the province, separating out the streams of ‘garbage’ into things that can be composted, things that can be recycled and things that should only go into secure, proper and controlled haz mat facilities.    

The various governments can’t/won’t pay for it, so industry, instead of having legislation inserted without the benefit of lubrication, came up with Stewardship Ontario to take on some of the responsibilities.  Imperfect, yes, right now, it isn’t quite working the way it was supposed to in the PowerPoint presentation.

So here’s a suggestion:  Dismiss the consultants who came up with the communication plan for Stewardship Ontario and start over.  In 25 words or less, explain to me, in simple language, why I have to pay a little bit more for some things and what you’re doing and going to do with the money. 

Show me those fees in action, diverting 88,000 old fire extinguishers from landfills for instance. 

Tell me the story of the company in Mississauga that takes a combination of recycled newspapers and biomass to make steam to generate electricity. 

Show me the company in Ontario that takes old rubber tires and turns them into something new, different or unusual. 

Show me the company that takes PET soft drink bottles, remelts the PET then weaves carpet underpad out of the fibers.  (We know about that one, because the underpad under our basement carpet is exactly that:  Remelted and woven PET bottles.)

In other words, make a case to the average Ontario jamoke that what you’re doing is good and will help us today, next month, next year and the next generation.  We’re reasonable people, we might grumble a bit, but we’ll go along with the Ontario Eco Fee.

If you can’t do that, then Stewardship Ontario is a sham and a con.

The television finally gave up the ghost.  It was a hulking 40 inch rear-projection Akai, about seven years old, that resided in one corner of the family room.  It was known as The Beast, as it was simply mammoth and defied all attempts to move it.  As best we could tell, it had its own gravitational field.    

From an energy efficiency standpoint, The Beast was a dinosaur.  It could do high-definition video, barely, but as a projection beam it also consumed power continually, keeping the projection tubes warm, so that when you hit the “on” button, it didn’t take five minutes to warm up and eventually give you “Jeopardy- Tourette’s Week” on the screen.  It served us well enough and after seven years, The Beast didn’t owe us anything.

A couple of weeks ago, we hit “On” and were rewarded by the sound of an electronic pop and the smell of needlessly hot electronics.  Eventually a feeble, misshapen image of Alex Trebek came to life, distorted and coloured like the beachfront at Pensacola, Florida.  Since the Magic Blue Smoke had escaped from the box, there was no real way to fix it, unless you capture all the Magic Blue Smoke and put it back in the box, we knew that the Time Had Come for The Beast.

In the seven years not being in the market for a TV, things had of course, changed.  We’re not gong to argue the merits of plasma versus LED versus LCD, versus projection, or 1080i versus 1080p on composite or HDMI.  That is the job of the geek fanboys. 

All we wanted was an equivalent-sized screen that would produce good to very good images, including HD and good sound quality.  (As both of us have worked in film and television, we’ve been spoiled with proper, calibrated displays and engineered sound environments in editing theatres.  We can tell the difference.)

Off to the Mega-Retailer we go.  One of our first decisions was manufacturer:  We like Tier1 manufacturers:  They have a reputation and warranties they actually stand behind.  Yes, the Tier1 folks are a little more expensive, but you pay for the support and warranty.  On an expensive piece of kit, that warranty is important. 

The store Extra-Special Platinum Support Finger Up Your Butt, is not.  Electronics either work out of the box or they don’t.  If it lives more than 30 days, you’re good for five to seven years, so the store warranty is an expensive add-on that buys you nothing.

Having settled on Samsung and the size (46 inch thanks for asking) we then worked our way through paying.  After listening to the pitch for the extended warranty and politely declining it, we came to an interesting additional charge:  Stewardship Ontario Recycling Charge:  $26.25, before taxes.

If you buy a new television in Ontario, you get dinged for the privilege of having your old one recycled.  Not that they’ll come to the house and get it, or pick it up at the curb on Green Box day, but a per-tax hit for the sheer pleasure of contributing to the economy by purchasing a television. 

Conceptually, the Stewardship Ontario group collect these eco fees from the retailer and this funds the proper disposal of 22 categories of household waste.  For example, a 5.5 pound fire extinguisher has an eco-fee charged by the retailer.  In this case, the fee is $6.66 over the price, before tax.  Yes, it is an unfortunate number, but that’s what it is.

Then the Feds and Province tax you on the Environmental Fee. 

We’re not annoyed at the fee.  It is important that waste that can be recycled or reused is recycled or reused.  In the not too distant past, electronic waste was shipped to fourth world countries to be “recycled”  With Stewardship Ontario, we’re reasonably certain that some five year old in Sierra Leone won’t be setting fire to The Beast to extract its few cents of copper, burning off the plastic over an open fire in the dump next door to the corrugated tin shanty called home.

When we got the new tv home, we had to get the old one out.  For those who are not familiar with the old style projection televisions, they’re huge, close to 12 cubic feet of big, plastic box with a screen:  Your fridge is probably 17 cubic feet by comparison.  The Beast didn’t weigh very much, perhaps 50 pounds, but the size of it is daunting. 

After much tugging, wiggling and sliding, we got the Beast into the back of the vehicle and drove it over to the retailer.  We politely asked for a wheeled cart of some kind to get the Beast into the store from the furthest reaches of the parking lot.  The Manager asked what was it we were bringing in, so we explained the untimely passing of the The Beast, the purchase of a new product and our current request for some help in getting The Beast into the store for proper, environmentally sustainable, eco-friendly recycling of the plastic, metal and electronics as promised by the $26.25 Eco Fee.

“We’re only obligated to take televisions up to 32 inches.” said the Manager.  After a short, but important and emphatic exchange of views, the Manger gave us the consideration of a wheeled cart to bring The Beast into the store.  He even offered to have two of his warehouse staff assist us, which was politely declined.  Our beloved niece said “I’ve got the pipes to haul it, we just need the cart.”.  So we did.

As for the successor to The Beast?  We haven’t named it yet, but it sits contentedly in the corner of the family room, the cabling, speakers and controls all integrated into one remote, providing a very pleasurable multimedia experience. 

In fact, we’re watching the British GP right now.  Not in HD though, as our cable provider does not permit their best customers to get HD unless you pay through the nose for extra HD channels.  But that is another post.

The Beast is now in the loving arms of the Stewardship Ontario program, being assessed for the plastic, metal and electronics content of the carcass.  Eventually, The Beast will return as drainage pipe, copper wire or a cat litter box, but for now it rests in state in a warehouse somewhere.

Thank you to The Beast.  You served us well.

And the Stewardship Ontario Eco Fee?  We have collected a few hundredweight of old, broken and superannuated electronics that we’re going to be dropping off at the various depots over the next few weeks. 

If you’re gong to zing me with a fee for my new television and then have the audacity to tax me federally and provincially for the willingness to make the right decision regarding electronic waste products, then be assured, I will take full advantage of the service.  I think I have some weapons-grade plutonium somewhere down in the basement that I don’t need anymore.

There are several hard drives, power supplies, laser printers, old computer chassis, hubs, routers and switches that are going to wind up in your waste stream.  If you could, please warehouse them next to The Beast.

(This is a rewrite of a Road-Dave post from July 1, 2007.  Call it a repeat if you will)

Today would be the 143th birthday of a reasonably good country that has its share of problems but seems to get along without too many cracks in the sidewalk.  Let me tell you about it.  I’ll translate for the Americans as I go.

Size:  We’ve got five time zones in this joint.  Newfoundland is actually closer to London, England, than to Vancouver, British Columbia.  I can drive on an interstate equivalent for 12 hours and only go through one province and about halfway into another.  To cross Ontario, one of the larger provinces, it takes a day and a half to drive the width of it using the Trans Canada Highway.  Smaller provinces, like Prince Edward Island can be circumnavigated in a day.

People:  34 million or so, mostly clustered along the border with the US, as the further north you go, the colder it gets.  The further north you go, the more likely it is that all your stuff came in on a bush plane, including lettuce, gasoline and Pampers. 

TV:  We have the 500 channel universe and have for decades.  Satellite for phones and communications have been around since the 70’s especially up north.  Ottawa, my home town, was a fully cable-wired city in 1967.  I have fiber backbone at the foot of my driveway if you want mammoth bandwidth.  Carleton University was one of the first wave of FreeNets using the DARPA-Net backbone for regular folks in the 80’s.

Snack Foods:  You can get Twinkies up here, as well as Fritos and Pringle’s.  But you can also get the Jos Louis, the Passion-Flakie, Old Dutch chips, as well as popcorn twists and sugar pie.  If you’re in BC go to Nanaimo, home of the Nanaimo Bar.  

Beer:  Lots and it packs a punch.  Try "Maudite" from UniBroue and wind up on your ass.  Nobody up here drinks Moosehead:  That’s an export-only beer.  Unless there is nothing else to drink, we use Moosehead to mop out portapotties.  Foster’s isn’t made in Australia for the US market.  It is made in Toronto to Foster’s recipe, sort of. 

Wine:  Lots and much of it very good.  Icewine was popularized up here.

Liquor:  Where do you think Canadian Club comes from?  If it weren’t for Canada, the US would have imploded during Prohibition.

Water:  Lots and most of it clean. 

Fishing:  Plenty of the freshwater variety.  Cod?  Not so much anymore.

Smokes:  You can find Marlboros anywhere.  I’ve found them in Ha Noi Vietnam.  Canadian smokes are not for the faint-hearted.  Try Player’s Plain or Export A Plain if you want to collapse a lung and wind up in hospital with nicotine poisoning.

Sex:  When its too cold and dark to do anything else, what the heck do you think we do?  The federal government used to pay something called the Baby Bonus in the 60’s, so mating was at one time government subsidized.  Not that we weren’t interested in doing the deed, but the playoffs were on, so a little financial encouragement was needed.

Hockey:  Too much.  Don’t ever join a pickup game of lacrosse, technically our national sport, as the injuries from playing lacrosse make battlefield trauma look like a tricycle boo-boo on a five year old.

Wars:  We’re in Afghanistan and have been since 2001. 150 of our military have paid the most horrible price and it makes us very sad.

Earthquakes:  Occasionally, but more on the West Coast, as the geologic and tectonic connections of Vancouver are directly related to Los Angles and Alaska.

Floods and Dust Storms:  Got’em. 

Drugs (Smoking Category):  The biggest export from British Columbia, aside from good lumber that irritates the US, is dope that will loosen the top of your skull and leave you babbling incoherently for a day.  Tampico ditch-weed is frowned upon here. 

Drugs (Non Smoking Category):  All of them.  We might be missing some obscure kind of horse tranquillizer mixed with lye and poppy stalks, but if you want to set your head on stun, the larger cities can set you up. 

Drugs (Real ones with prescriptions):  All of them.  I would be remiss to overlook the 222C, which is a high potency Aspirin with Codeine and it cures damn near everything that hurts.

Gasoline:  We’ve got plenty but it is expensive, as the government taxes the snot out of it.

Government:  Just as deluded, dishonest, incoherent and asshatted as the US versions.

Toronto:  The famous quote from Peter Ustinov about Toronto is it is New York run by the Swiss.  A closer truth is Atlanta run by the Dutch.  There are 198 countries in the world, each with their own cuisine.  I think we’re only missing the Burkina Faso and Tuvalu restaurants to have the whole set in Toronto.  White tablecloth to street meat smog dogs, we’ve got it.

Montreal:  Significantly better food that Toronto.  I defy you to get a bad meal in Montreal, or Quebec City.  Even if you order dog poop on a plate, it will be beautifully presented, impeccably prepared and seasoned perfectly.  Served with a nice Chardonnay and hand-made baguette toast points, you will still have a good meal. 

Oceans:  Three, if you count the Arctic, but that one is usually under ice, except with global warming.

Good Looking Men/Women:  The Boys Town area of Toronto has some of the most handsome, breathtakingly attractive men you will ever see.  Montreal has women so droolingly gorgeous that traffic stops to watch.  Unfortunately, in Boys Town, they’re almost all gay.  In Montreal, to get their attention, you have to offer a Porsche as conversational collateral.

Poor Folks:  We’ve got our share.  Try North Bay or Yarmouth if you want to see that segment of the societal scale.  The Hanson Brothers from "Slapshot" are not a caricature, a spoof or ironic.  "Trailer Park Boys" is almost a documentary of some part of Canada.

Igloos:  They do exist and a few thousand Innu elders are left who know how to make them for real.  This would be up north, past the 60th parallel and only in the depths of winter.  There are no igloos in our major cities.  We don’t eat walrus or whale meat, unless it is at a sushi bar, under very odd conditions.  The majority of Canadians have never eaten muktuk.  Don’t ask.

Olympics:  Let us not talk of our world-class, awe-inspiring performances at the Vancouver Olympics.  That would not be Canadian to toot our own horn. We’ll just avert our gaze and mutter “We did OK, eh?”

Driving:  On the right, just like the US. 

Language:  Eh? is nation-wide, except Quebec.  Eh? is an interrogative, noun, verb, adverb, adje
ctive, conjunction, gerund and even onomatopoeia on occasion.  In Quebec, use Qua?

Gitch, Gotch or Gonch:  Underwear.

Brains:  Insulin, the Zipper, Superman, the Blackberry, most of NASA in the 60’s, the telephone, Trans-Atlantic wireless, Gerald Bull, Marshal McLuhan, Leonard Cohen and David Suzuki.  Stephen Hawking is so impressed with our brains that he now works at the University of Waterloo, about an hours’ drive west of Toronto.

Talent:  Most of Hollywood.  Sorry about Celine Dion and Paul Anka.  David Frum you can keep along with Conrad Black.  Thomas Cruise Mapother used to live in Parkwood Hills in Ottawa, as a kid, for which we take no responsibility whatsoever.

Beauty:  The list is too long.

Idiots:  Mike from Canmore.  Most of the government.  Listen to talk radio for ten minutes and you’ll find we have the same kind of mouth-breathers here as in the US. 

Wide Open Spaces:  You can stand on the border between Manitoba and Saskatchewan and watch your dog run away.  For three days. 

Lump in throat moments:  The Snowbirds (431 Demonstration Squadron) on Canada Day, performing airshow acrobatics over Parliament Hill, along with 250,000 of your closest friends.  The Snowbirds are so cool, even the Blue Angels hitch rides with us to see how it’s done.

It might have problems, but it is still my Canada.  Happy Birthday!

If you watched the Canadian media yesterday, most notably the CBC, you got to watch the G20 protests in Toronto devolve during the day.  What was originally a ‘family-friendly’ protest about the G20 was hijacked by groups of very aggressive protestors who decided that violence was their tool of choice. 

Several store windows were smashed, stores trashed and a few police cruisers set on fire. So far, 480 arrests and likely a similar number of people injured, mostly with cracked heads from being on the wrong end of a police baton.

I’ll step up right now and condemn the use of violence in a protest.  There is no need to trash private property and no need for the police to bust heads.  End of sentence and no qualifiers attached either. 

The difficulty becomes with the rationalizations that seem to get made by the anonymous, violent groups.  Their argument seems to be that if they don’t get media coverage, they can’t bring the focus of the discussion to their gripes with the G20.  The only way to get media coverage is to stand out from the crowds by dressing in black and throwing things through store windows in front of the cameras.

Where the argument falls over is the followup to the violence.  They’ve got the media attention, but are not coming forward to explain the intellectual linkage between bashing in the windows of a Starbucks and the scourge of globalized corporations rapaciously stripping developing countries of their meager agricultural resources and pushing the innocent citizens into indentured servitude.  (Not a bad off the cuff linkage eh?)

This tells me the violent protestors don’t actually give a crap about globalization, geo-politics, global economic reform, the environment and so on.  That makes them poseurs of the most shallow kind.  All they want to do is trash stuff and feel all ‘underground’ without the actual risk of being anything more than mindless thugs.  We call “Bullshit”

There is a follow-on argument that by being ‘underground’ and having committed some illegal acts, the Black Bloc (one of the alleged groups) can’t come forward to make their points known, to which we also call “Bullshit” 

During the ‘troubles’ in Northern Ireland, the IRA did the dirty work, but their political arm, the Sinn Fein under Gerry Adams, leveraged the media coverage to make their points against the military occupation of Northern Ireland.  This resulted in some very convoluted press conferences with Gerry Adams condemning violence but rationalizing the behavior as essential for Sinn Fein to draw attention to their cause.

Put simply, if Gerry Adams can pull it off, why can’t the Black Bloc or any of the other ‘anarchist’ groups? 

The answer is they haven’t got the intellectual ability, communication skills, historical perspective or simply the balls to take the very real risk of arrest and come forward to draw the linkage between violent actions and the need for (state name of issue here). 

Which makes us call “Bullshit” a third time. 

You’ve got our attention, now tell us your gripes and your solutions.  Oh, that’s right, you don’t have discernable gripes, no workable solutions and no perspective beyond prancing around throwing rocks.

Poseurs who ninja-up their clothing, bust windows to feel all underground then run away without finishing the job should get back on the GO-train and go home to Mommy and Daddy in the suburbs.

Grow a set, or get off.

We’re willing to bet most of our Ontario readers didn’t know this, but as of Monday, your rights as a citizen changed dramatically.  If you are within 5 meters of the G20 Security Zone in Toronto, you are now obligated to produce legal identification on demand of a police officer as well as state the nature of your business.  The penalty is two months in the jug and/or a $500 fine, as well as being arrested.  

This is one of those encroachments on our personal freedoms that happen because the authorities say so.  The Ontario Cabinet decided that an Order-In Council was the route to go, essentially deciding to change the laws for a couple of weeks around the G20 area.

We’ve written before about the outrageous security preparations for the G8/G20 Dog and Pony Show in Huntsville and Toronto.  Most of downtown Toronto looks like a cage, businesses shut down, employees working from home and several dozen major roads blocked off.  All of this is ostensibly to keep protestors away from the G20 meetings, in the name of ‘security’.

Now we’re not saying security isn’t necessary:  Security is important, as a gathering of 20 world leaders is a target-rich environment for those with grudges, behavior issues, electrochemical imbalances, theologically-derived issue-blindness, political ignorance, the consumers of common-sense suppressants and the simply crazy.  No question at all there.

However there is also the right of citizens to protest.  Peacefully, yes, but vigorously too.  Vigorously means loud where I come from:  Whistles, drums, catcalls, chanting, bagpipes, cowbells, air horns, trombones, signs, yelling and vuvuzuelas if need be.  Protestors can use very bad language if they desire, or can hand out photocopies of chants that start with “There once was a PM name of Stevie…”

Downtown Toronto, no matter how much fence you put up, is not a sustainable security environment.  There are too many people, places and ways to circumvent a cordon of security.  The authorities have to rewrite the rules to permit dictatorial police-state powers, if only for a limited time.

The deeper question, aside from the insane costs, is what genius decided that Downtown Toronto is a good venue for the G20 in the first place?  Was there some kind of closed-head injury involved? 

If you want to host a gathering of world leaders and be security conscious, the only worse choice would be at the Apple Store in Times Square.  Invariably some G20 Finance puke from Absurdistan would accidentally cut in line and get his ass kicked by a fanboy who has been waiting for week in line to fondle the brochure for the iPhone 4.  Downtown Toronto is by far, the second-dumbest possible venue imaginable.

None of this excuses the insta-police state that has been established around the G20.  Like it or not, the G20 is an occasion for the regular folks to protest how the stinkin’ rich treat the rest of us.  That’s one of the responsibilities of democracy, you have to let protest be heard. 

At the same time, there is a responsibility placed on the protestors:  It must be peaceful.  There can be no violence, as that tips the very delicate scales of police response from merely holding station to protecting life and property.

The Ontario Federation of Labour, a largish labour organization here, is going to be protesting, with an estimated 10,000 people in what is billed as a ‘family-friendly’ protest.  The OFL is bringing their own marshalls to guide the group and members are encouraged to bring their kids, perhaps the thought being that adults with children in tow can protest the G20 loudly, but without the potential for mayhem on either side.  The police are less likely to turn on the pepper spray taps confronted with a mass of parents and children and the parents are less likely to throw things. 

That is a very wise use of the democratic right to protest.      

Ottawa got a dose of California this afternoon.  A 5.0 magnitude earthquake rolled us around this afternoon at 1:41 pm.  Yes, we’re all safe and no, there was no damage beyond a few broken windows, hideous traffic jams and some soiled undergarments. 

Californian readers are going “5.0?  Meh!  We use those to stir our lattes…”  For us however, it was a bit of a surprise.  We don’t normally get seismic events that are noticeable, even though we are in a large rift valley.  The Ottawa Valley is part of the West Quebec seismic zone.  You can actually stand on either side of the fault lines at various places around the Ottawa area, one foot on one geologic mass and one foot on another geologic mass.

Conceptually, the entire Ottawa Valley could drop a couple of feet or slip sideways a few inches and shake the whole metro area into dust, but the seismic area is reasonably stable, burping off the occasional rumble a few times a year to release the very moderate seismic pressures involved.

However, having an office building start to buck under your feet is a bit of alarming for most Ottawa inhabitants.  Working right near the Parliament one thinks of very unpleasant acts of Citizens Behaving Badly involving Ryder rental trucks, fertilizer and fuel oil.  At the same time, the Chinese President, Hu Jintao is in town and we all know how happy the Falun Gong and the Tibetans are about China. 

Meanwhile, the Ottawa Ribfest is lined up along the downtown, a couple of dozen propane and wood-fired booths dispensing ribs, pulled pork and chicken.  Most of my colleagues thought either a Ryder Rental-Cousin Timmy-Screw You Harper-G8-G20-Kiss-My-Ass blast, or one of the Ribfest rigs went “Foom!”  Earthquake was about nineteenth on the list, at least until the second rumble that went on for ten seconds.  By the fifth second, we’d settled on earthquake.

Moments later the fire alarm went off, followed a minute later with the the evacuate signal.  Grab the backpack and out we go, several thousand folks clogging the sidewalk, trying to call home and wondering what the hell just happened.  After a half-hour or so, things settle out.  Some folks go back to work, others are done for the day.

That was it.  Nothing catastrophic.  Just unusual.     

Pushing towards Day 60 of the Deepwater Horizon oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, more details keep seeping out of the hole in the ocean floor in the form of emails, text messages and general conversation.  Right up until the Deepwater Horizon rig blew up, killing 11 rig workers, the drillers, well service companies and even BP itself categorized the whole operation as a Five-Alarm, Full-Mongolian, Cluster-Fornicative Act. 

This serves to underscore the complete lack of legislative enforcement that has to be laid in a steaming lump in front of the US Government.  Yes, I am going to blame Prez O for this one.  To quote Harry Truman; “The Buck Stops Here.”  That’s the definition of the gig of President.  O-man?  Grow a set. 

Now, yes, certainly, Bill Clinton and Dubya did set the tone for the enforcement by government, which could best be summed up as “Get on your knees, shut your eyes and open your mouth.”  Having Shotgun Dick Cheney as VP didn’t help either, with his open invitation to the oil companies to write their own energy policy that he would rubber stamp, but the enforcement side can’t all be laid at his rooms at the Undisclosed Location. 

Tonight Prez O is going on the airwaves to bring the US up to date on the spill.  Herewith, my first draft of his speech:

“Thank you for letting me into your home tonight.  I want to speak to you, my fellow Americans about what your government is doing about the oil spill in the Gulf:  To clear the air and water, so to speak. 

Since the explosion at the Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico, we haven’t had the vaguest clue as to how much oil has been leaking out.  British Petroleum has been shitting us since five minutes after the fire went out. 

Their talk of safeguards, environmental protection and responsible stewardship of the seas has been nothing but unmitigated manure that we are collecting and will put on the roses in the Rose Garden.  Unfortunately the Rose Garden isn’t that big.  So we’re going to fix it for you, the American People, with our 8 point plan:

Point 1:  I have signed an Executive Order, nationalizing BP America.  As of right now, BP is our Bitch.  If BP and their stockholders want compensation, the line forms over here.  You don’t like it?  You can kiss my sweaty black Presidential ass. 

Point 2:  The BP stock dividend is now officially Zero.  If you’re a stockholder in BP and you got a beef with that, you can join the line over here to kiss my sweaty black Presidental ass.  Take a number.

Point 3:  The executive management of BP America is now in the custody of the Secret Service.  Their new job is pushing a shovel and dragging boom in Louisiana.  They did it and they’re going to clean it up, personally.  We got Sheriff Joe Arpiao from Phoenix to supervise their new workplace.  You’ll like Sheriff Joe as long as you do exactly what he says.  If he says you get lunchmeat three times a day, then you get lunchmeat three times a day.  Get used to the prison orange jumpsuits.

Point 4:  The National Guard is rolling as of one hour ago.  I signed an Executive Order mobilizing the National Guard of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida to get to the shores.  Now. 

They’re bringing shovels, sand, straw and will walk the whole shoreline mopping up until it’s spotless.  If that means 12 hours on and 12 hours off for the next 40 weeks, then that’s the deal.  We’ll pay for it out of the proceeds from selling off BP America piece by piece.  If you want to help, come on down.  It won’t be easy work, but it’s work and we’ll pay you well.

Point 5:  We’re bringing General Russell Honore back in.  He did the job in New Orleans in the days after Katrina, when FEMA was pissing around comparing pants and media coverage under Dubya Bush.  I have signed an Executive Order giving General Honore complete control, under Martial Law for everything twelve miles out, to two miles inland from the shoreline, from Texas to the Florida-Georgia border.  General Honore has my complete support to do whatever he needs to do to clean this mess up now.  If General Honore says taking a bullwhip to Tony Heyward will make it go faster, then Tony best get prepared for a whuppin.

Point 6:  The Minerals Management Service is officially gone, as of tomorrow at Noon.  I am writing a clemency order and getting a half-dozen serial rapists out of Federal jails.  Prison-crazy, sociopaths can’t do worse than you morons at MMS.  You turd tappers let the oil companies write their own safety inspection reports since 2005.  I’m getting you the hell out of the American government service.  Your severance is:  I’m not going to have you shot.

Point 7:  When we sell off BP in a few months time, you can be assured that the first in line for the cash will be the folks who have had their whole livelihoods trashed by BP.  Now, if we can use your shrimp boat and crew to work on the cleanup, we surely will.  General Honore will organize it by tomorrow afternoon and we’re payin cash.  By the way, your Federal taxes?  Fuggedaboud’em for the next five years.  You’ll need the break as we don’t know what the hell the effects of all this are going to be.

Point 8:  For the rest of you; don’t boycott BP, as it’s now your own oil company.  We own it and we can use the money right now to pay for this cleanup.  If that means y’all don’t go to Exxon or Shell, well, they just have to suck it up and take some responsibility for one of their industry buddies being king-size fcukups.  By the way, we have noticed you haven’t sent any of your techs or spill supplies to the Gulf to help out.  Thanks loads, a-holes.  We’ll remember that the next time you want a favour.

That’s all I got right now folks.  This job does surely suck some days, but when we need to, we’ll talk again.  Good night.”