A modern Irish folk song, with video

Unfortunately, since it's an "aftermarket" video, the band who performs the song doesn't seem to be credited.



For all I know, this may be the only song in existence to contain the word "Semtex". The entire lyrics can be found here, along with a note that it has been performed by Éire Óg as well as The Spirit of Freedom (I'm not sure which of these groups performs the version used in this video, however). The songwriter is unknown. Other videos exist, set to the same recording, but this is a particularly striking one.

Of course, the song is now out of date, since the decommission that the singers are telling the UK to "stick" did in fact come to pass, thanks to the Good Friday agreement. That is one of the very few things for which Tony Blair may legitimately deserve credit; too bad he went and blotted his copybook with stuff like Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

And, needless to say, my posting of this video should not be seen as an endorsement of IRA methods, any more than this entry is an endorsement of Janet Greene's politics.

The broken end of the American dream

Another story to give you a feel for how the American economy is progressing:

"You feel bad, you don't want to take their wedding rings from them, that's their memories and everything," says Michael Bruce from behind a row of thick steel bars. "But they need the money and that's what we are here for."

Bruce holds out a black velvet jewelry tray, each row holds a dozen wedding rings: big diamond, little diamond, stylish or gaudy, he has dozens. "While they take the ring off their finger, they get all choked up. It's just something you got to deal with... That's just the way the economy is, it's trash."

Bruce, whom everyone here calls Junior, is the manager at a pawnshop on the outskirts of Hollywood, Florida, itself a diamond of a city set on the perfect setting of Southern Florida's Atlantic beaches. "It is easier for them to pull a ring off their finger than to bring in a lawnmower," says Bruce, who says Americans are so desperate to pay off their mortgages that they are coming to his pawnshop to sell "everything from musical equipment to the gold teeth from their mouth.

From here, via onepence in this Kitco thread.

The great debate

Well, where to begin. The format was quite well set up, with questions sent in by members of the public (selected in advance by the consortium of broadcasters), on the economy, the environment, health, the arts, Afghanistan, the issue of trust in general, and the first issue that each would tackle as PM. (On the last point, Duceppe said something to the effect of "Well, I know I'm not going to be Prime Minister, and three of you won't either. Some of you know it.")

So how did they do? Well, nobody actually crashed and burned. Harper, though, came across as sickeningly smug, with a vile grin on his face of the type that makes you want to rub his face in the cat box. Harper also had this infuriating way of talking about almost everything in terms of marketing, as if good marketing is the solution to everything. He also seemed out of touch when he said "Canadians aren't worried about losing there homes and jobs, they're worried about their portfolios". Well, Steve, maybe that's true of the people you know...

Dion? Well, he exceeded my expectations. However, I don't really have much to compare with, not being a regular watcher of TV news. I read about him on the net and hear about him on the radio a lot, but I haven't watched enough footage of him to know if (a) he's improved the way he carries himself dramatically, (b) he never was too bad, but the media just got off on portraying him that way, or (c) he's still awful, but I'm too alienated from my fellow human citizens to see how poorly his style would go over on them. He would not commit to never running a deficit, whereas most of the others did.

Layton was extremely good at explaining his ideas in a clear fashion. He seemed to interrupt the others a bit more than most, though all of them did it occasionally. He was the first of the leaders to raise the impact of the FTA and NAFTA, and advocated immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan, then getting the UN in there in place of NATO. He was not explicit, however, on whether or not Canada should be involved in the UN mission that follows. He also did a good job of pointing out the main drawbacks of the Conservatives' approach to helping business and the arts using non-refundable tax credits, namely that they have to be redeemable in order to help those who most need them (who, after all, are below the threshold for paying income taxes, and would thus not benefit from non-refundable credits). He also pointed out the folly of Harper's cherished "intensity based" emissions targets (for instance, you could produce more oil from the tar sands as long as your emissions per barrel were lower, with the result that your overall emissions could, and probably would, continue to increase). He was not as explicit as he could have been in discussing the relative merits of cap and trade over a carbon tax. On the other hand, he pointed out one of the elephants in the room, namely the fact that the Conservatives have not yet released their platform. He said that an NDP government would not run a deficit, pointing out the fact that NDP provincial governments, contrary to stereotypes, have generally been good fiscal managers (and threw in the fact that the obvious exception, Bob Rae, is now a Liberal, for good measure).

May also significantly exceeded expectations. She handled herself competently and confidently, in stark contrast to the train wreck that one is led to expect when most of one's information comes from babble. She handled economic issues well; she mentioned that Canada is in danger of experiencing "Dutch disease", though it would have helped if she'd explained what it was rather than expecting the average viewer to look it up (pity you can't put hyperlinks in speeches). She was also the only one of the leaders to mention electoral reform among the first priorities she would address as PM. As many babblers predicted, though, I can't recall seeing her attack Dion once (though it's possible that I missed something, since I had a number of interruptions while watching the broadcast).

Duceppe was very good as well. In terms of presentation, he was perhaps the best of the five. I liked the way he remarked on the irony that he was the first to advocate a "buy Canadian" policy in the course of the debate. He was also the first to bring up First Nations issues, in the context of health policy. However, health was otherwise one of his weaknesses in terms of actual policy, given that he is a big-time decentralist, to the point of objecting to federal regulation of such things as privatization of health services (he says he doesn't advocate this, but it should be up to "Quebec and the provinces" to decide these matters). Similarly, he objects to national securities laws; he thinks that this should remain a provincial matter. These are understantable in the context of a Quebec nationalist, of course, but probably bad for much of Canada.

All in all, I'm happy I watched this rather than the Biden-Palin debate. I'm sure that anything really juicy that came from that debate will show up on YouTube anyway.

A harrowing read

I just finished reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I've long been a fan of apocalyptic fiction, but The Road is among the best in the genre that I've seen in a long time. It tells the story of a father and son wandering through a landscape that has been devastated by some vast catastrophe. It's not entirely clear what the catastrophe was, but whatever it was was huge, as virtually every animal and plant seems to have died out, leaving a diminishing number of people to wander through forests of dead trees, and scrounge for any remaining canned goods they can find, some becoming bandits and cannibals. Whereas many apocalyptic novels (The Day of the Triffids, The Stand, Earth Abides, etc) read like what Ixion calls "boy's own adventure" stories in which one could easily start to envy the protagonists, nothing in The Road makes the situation seem bearable; it's not a "cozy catastrophe". It's a thoroughly devastating novel (I've heard that description applied to Philip Wylie's Triumph, but that reads more as a "cozy catastrophe" to me). There is an overwhelming sense of bleakness and futility, yet all the while the father and son carry on, struggling to survive and to retain their humanity. George Monbiot has called it "the most important environmental book I have ever read"; it drives home the message that we are utterly dependent on the biosphere. Apparently there's a movie in the works, which may be unfortunate as I'm not at all sure Hollywood will do a good job on this.

Conservative MP shows his true colours?

Sure looks that way:

A lawyer and humanitarian says Calgary West Conservative MP Rob Anders told her he believes Canadian diplomacy and humanitarian work should focus on changing foreigners' language to English and their faith to Christianity.

Donna Kennedy-Glans said Mr. Anders made the remarks to her during a private dinner in June -- although the veteran politician insists his comments are being "twisted" by someone with an agenda.

Ms. Kennedy-Glans, a Calgary West constituent, said she has come forward in the middle of the election campaign because she wants fellow voters to understand his perspective.

From here, via candle in this babble thread. Not quite as bad as Ann Coulter, who in 2001 said of the Muslim world that "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity", but shocking nonetheless. Maybe this has something to do with the curious reluctance of Conservative candidates to attend all-candidates debates:

After weeks of phone tag and buck-passing, a Winnipeg women's business group was forced to cancel a long-planned, all-candidates forum slated for Friday because no Tory was willing to attend.

"It was very eye-opening," said Audrey Wasylyshen, a member of the Manitoba branch of the Business and Professional Women's Clubs (BPW). "I always thought the political field was very open and people wanted to speak out, but obviously some people want to keep quiet.

"How do we choose our representative when we don't have all the voices heard?"

The BPW event isn't the only one the Tories have dodged. Tory candidates failed to attend two separate election forums organized by students at the University of Winnipeg and the University of Manitoba earlier this week.

In two Winnipeg ridings the Tories hope to steal -- Elmwood-Transcona and Winnipeg South Centre -- the Tory candidates there have yet to go head to head with their opponents with only two weeks left in the campaign.

You have to wonder if the orders to avoid the debates came from on high, to avoid the embarrassment of one of their candidates saying something like Anders said.

One thing I find curious is that BPW decided to cancel the entire event. Why not allow it to continue, and let the Tories face the consequences of not showing up? Perhaps the name of the organization is a clue -- "business" and "professional" bring to mind people who are likely in a high tax bracket (regardless of the fact that reelecting the Tories is not in the interest of most women).

More on the "plagiarism" scandal

Not surprisingly, the Australian media have taken an interest in this story. The Australian has this to say:

John Howard was never renowned as a great orator. Much of the time he simply spoke from dot points.

But now a speech he gave five years ago has come ricocheting back across the Pacific after causing chaos in Canada's election campaign.

Two days after Mr Howard rose to his feet in the House of Representatives in March 2003 to announce Australia's defence forces had been authorised to go into action against Saddam Hussein, Canadian Conservative leader Stephen Harper repeated much of his case for intervention in the House of Commons in Ottawa -- word for word.

Mr Harper is now Prime Minister of Canada. His Conservatives are leading in the polls, but the plagiarism claims have derailed their campaign two weeks out from the October 14 election.

To say it has "derailed their campaign" seems a bit extreme, though it's an embarrassment for them. But if it reminds enough people about how gung-ho Harper was about going into Iraq at the time, it might do some good.

What's interesting is that neither the Australian, nor the ABC, nor the Sydney Morning Herald, nor any Canadian media outlet, seems to have bothered to ask John Howard what he thinks of this episode. You'd think that would be a rather obvious thing for a journalist to do. But there is nothing -- not even anything about Howard refusing comment, which leads me to believe that no comment was requested. The Australian article notes above that Howard often "spoke from dot points"; perhaps on this occasion he was reading from a speech that came from a ready-made template -- a template also used by Stephen Harper. But perhaps it's considered improper for professional journalists to raise that issue during the campaign.

Tactical voting redux

In a previous post I linked to a site that some recommend for tactical voters. Well, a bit of browsing of babble reveals that folks more diligent than I have noticed some interesting things about that site. In particular, the site tends to recommend voting Liberal in a lot of cases where it's far from clear that this is the best option. Another site, recommended by Wilf Day in that thread, is much more cautious:

DemocraticSPACE does not endorse strategic voting (i.e. where voters cast their ballot for their second choice party to prevent a less favourable party from winning). We believe that Canada should explore options of adding an element of proportionality into our electoral system to ensure fair and accurate representation in parliament. However, strategic voting happens in Canada. DemocraticSPACE believes that it is better to make informed choices than misinformed choices. Therefore, this guide is meant to help voters who are thinking of voting strategically.

In order for a riding to qualify for strategic voting, we feel 3 conditions must be met:
1. It must be a close 2-way race (i.e. the two other parties must be within 5%)
2. The chances of third/fourth/fifth party winning riding are remote (i.e. support < ~20%) 3. Small number of votes of third/fourth/fifth party can make a difference (i.e. <>Interesting. The list of ridings is at the site, and to be even handed it also includes the ridings where Tory supporters can vote to stop Liberals. Noteworthy to my friends in Waterloo Region is the fact that while Kitchener Centre is listed, neither in Kitchener-Waterloo, Kitchener-Conestoga, nor Cambridge is it worth changing your vote in the hope of stopping a Conservative (not that I did when I lived there, but I know many people who are considering it). More surprising to me is the fact that only in Central Nova is anyone advised to vote Green, and there it's only the Liberals (who don't have a candidate anyway).

In any case, as previously discussed, the merits of voting for someone you don't really like are dubious at best. DemocraticSPACE's own attitude towards this is more one of harm reduction than anything. And the Pundits' Guide isn't keen on the practice either:

The Pundits' Guide is a non-partisan site and does not endorse any political party, and tries by the selection and application of quantifiable criteria to treat all major parties the same. I've even tried to redress the situation faced by smaller parties by starting to add in their party affiliations on riding and candidate profile pages.

However there is one issue I'm going to weigh in on during this election, and that's the advocacy of so-called "strategic voting". It's based on faulty assumptions, is frequently clumsily calculated and executed, often by people with hidden but vested interests, and most seriously: it can lead to quite perverse outcomes.

For me, the best thing about this has been that it has introduced me to the DemocraticSPACE site. The main page for this election is here, but they've covered others in the past, including the 2006 US midterm elections, and they may well cover the present US campaign as well. Stay tuned.