At a Glance

Meet the man Harper appointed to guard your privacy

/ Anthony Matijas / Leave a comment

The good people at Provocative Penguin have published my latest piece on Canada’s new privacy commissioner, and what his appointment says about the Harper government.

In appointing Daniel Therrien as Canada’s new Privacy Commissioner, the government could not have shown more contempt for the issue of privacy had Stephen Harper walked into a press scrum and proceeded to read aloud pages from his daughter’s diary.

Which is not to criticize Therrien the man. For all anybody knows, he may turn out to be an exemplary commissioner, willing to step up to the properly adversarial role one would expect of any watchdog. The selection of a candidate unknown to privacy experts amidst growing unease over government surveillance, however, suggests that the Harper government lacks the stomach for criticism, and is unwilling to address privacy concerns.

(continues at Provocative Penguin)

An Election Day Romantic Comedy in One Act

/ Anthony Matijas / Leave a comment

(HER walks through the door of the apartment located in the kitchen balancing a handbag and two chicken shawarmas in her hand.  HIM is reclining on a sofa in the adjoining living room in a ratty bathrobe, legs elevated by a stack of magazines upon the coffee table, video game controller in hand.  Her stares at Him in disbelief, the door swinging all the way open, keys still in the lock.)

(Him’s attention does not break away from the television screen.  The conversation is punctuated by the bleeps and bloops of the video game.)

HER: You’re still in your bathrobe.

HIM: Let’s order pizza, I’m hungry.  Where were you?

HER: I stopped on the way to vote.  You’re still in your bathrobe?

HIM: I’m in my bathrobe again.

HER: Did you at least remember to vote?

(Her walks to the kitchen counter which is covered in a thin layer of dirty dishes and empty pizza boxes.  With her free hand she moves some of detritus about, making a small clearing in front of her.)

HIM: I remembered. Didn’t vote, though.

HER: Why didn’t you vote? You have to vote!

HIM: Well, I was going to vote, so I left for the place, but I had plenty of time so I stopped for a beer.  For the first few, I drank and I didn’t vote.  After that, I couldn’t vote.  They don’t let you vote drunk.

(Her shakes her head and opens the cupboard, only to find one clean plate.)

HIM:  Is that shawarma?

(Her places one shawarma on a plate in front of her and tosses the other at him.)

HER: –It’s your civic duty!

HIM:  I shirk my duties all the time, you know that.  Look (pointing toward the sink), I said I’d do the dishes, and I didn’t do that either. (Looking away from the television screen for the first time, at her.)…Love you!

HER: What happens if that bastard wins?

HIM: Not in this riding. Everybody’s voting for the other one.  We’ll be fine.

HER: I can’t believe you didn’t vote.  It’s only, like, the most important thing you can do in a democracy.

(The game music speeds up.  Him stands up and leans toward the television, game controller held up close to his face, eyes staring intensely ahead while his fingers hammer at the buttons.)

HIM: Come on, it doesn’t matter.  One vote wouldn’t have changed anything.  It’s not like they needed a tie-breaker.

HER: What?  What if everybody thought like that? What if nobody voted?

(The game noises erupt into an epic victory-jingle akin to the 8-bit era.  Him raises his arms in a V, performs a celebratory hop, and puts the controller down on the sofa.)

HIM:  Oh, then I would vote.  Think of the power!

Ukrainian Sex Strike

/ Anthony Matijas / Leave a comment

Don't Give it to a RussianThe Don’t Give It To A Russian campaign in Ukraine is calling for the women of the beleaguered state to deny sex to Russian men as a response to the Russian Federation’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula.  While at first glance, this may seem like an ineffective and gimmicky approach to social activism, anyone who has ever met a Ukrainian woman should know that such sanctions, if enforced, would sting far worse than any economic embargoes the United States or the European Union could cobble together.

The concept is not a new one.  Lysistrata, penned by Aristophanes in the 5th century BCE introduced the world to the first plucky band of celibate activists. The main difference being that, in the Greek comedy, the women were denying sex to their own husbands for the sake of peace during the Peloponnesian War.  Of course, it being the olden days, the men would probably go and wage war anyway, and rape the women of their vanquished foes; but the Ancient Greeks– though they can be properly credited with many great inventions such as Democracy, Socially Acceptable Sodomy, and Gyros–cannot, amidst these great innovations, count the discovery of Plot Holes amongst them.

The unfortunate thing about this more modern incarnation of the political sex-strike is that Vladimir Putin continuously points to the small but visible minority of far-right nationalist extremists within Ukrainian politics when he attempts to justify his aggression as an effort to defend ethnic Russians, and there is no denying the anti-Russian sentiment that is present here.  A provocative blue-balling campaign, if successful, would only reinforce a backward 20th-century conception of collective blame, and further the ethnic divisions within Ukraine.  After all, the former KGB autocrat’s doomed salvage operation of Moskovite imperialism in the face of the continuous NATO and EU expansion is not the fault of your average Russian Romeo.

In the opinion of Gods & Services, this campaign accomplishes little more than keeping young people from finding love, and supplying a minutia of credibility to Vladimir Putin’s otherwise bankrupt arguments.

The PQ wants their own country, even if that country sucks.

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THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes

Polls in Quebec show the provincial Liberals rising in popularity since media tycoon Pierre Karl Péladeau was recruited into the Parti Québécois and turned election talk away from the economy, toward the largely unpopular prospect of another referendum on Quebec sovereignty.  One has to wonder if Péladeau’s talk of separatism, which accompanied his announced debut in politics, was part of a misguided party strategy, or a gaffe on the part of the inexperienced politician.

In any event, Quebec voters aren’t having any of it, it seems, with most believing (polls show) that a PQ win would not give them a mandate to hold a referendum on sovereignty, but that a majority PQ government would most likely hold one anyways (and lose, according to some of the same polls).   PQ leader Pauline Marois may be wiser to steer talk back to the economy, but with the anti-labour pedigree of Péladeau, who now presumptively occupies the party’s number 2 slot, it remains an open question as to how their economic platform will appeal to their labour base.  Péladeau, owner of the right-wing Sun Media empire among other media assets, is a crude fit for the left-of-centre separatist party, and his inclusion seems to send a very clear message as to the character of the new country the PQ hopes to create.

Right-left divides and political principles are, to this party of misfits and moguls, of secondary importance to the cause of nationalism.  Recruiting an oligarch like Péladeau makes perfect sense for a party mired in a 19th century conception of nationhood that the rest of the world is slowly growing too old for.  Péladeau and Marois share the same anachronistic worldview and irrationality of Vladimir Putin, though they lack his nuclear arsenal and brutality.  But their vision of an independent nation is not too dissimilar from a dysfunctional state such as Russia: a country ruled by a close collaboration of the state and captains of industry, intolerant of immigrants who do not assimilate quickly enough, and a media unambiguously in service to the state.  A nation united, if not in a shared vision of political or economic ideals, then by a common hatred and envy for that which lies west, which in Quebec’s case is Ottawa and all things English.

Historic agreement between US and China promises to not make history

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REUTERS/Jacquelyn Martin/Pool

REUTERS/Jacquelyn Martin/Pool

In what has been described as “a unique, cooperative effort between China and the United States,” by American Secretary of State John Kerry, the United States and China have agreed to work together on climate change.  The historic agreement, which was announced in a joint statement issued at the end of Kerry’s tour of China, promises that the two nations will “collaborate through enhanced policy dialogue, including the sharing of information regarding their respective post-2020 plans to limit greenhouse gas emissions.”

What makes these noncommittal and inspiring words so significant, is that China and the United States are not only the two dirtiest carbon-spewing nations in the world, they also habitually portray the other as the chief obstacle to international action on global warming.  China has long argued that it is the legacy of western industrialization that is most responsible for climate change, and it should be able to continue to burn as much fossil fuel as it can to become as rich as it desires because the US and others did so already.  In the meantime, it should be up to the rest of the world to cut down on their carbon emissions, preferably by purchasing solar panels and windmills made in China.

The Americans, for their part, have chosen to ignore the fact that allowing developing nations more leeway to pollute while crafting an international agreement on reducing those same pollutants actually succeeded in lowering CFC emissions with the Montreal Protocol of 1987.  They insist that China must be subject to the same limitations on greenhouse gases as the US, if they are to agree to anything.  The logic being, apparently, that global warming is too serious an issue for the world to wait for China to catch up, but not too serious an issue that it can’t wait for two rival nations with incompatible economic systems and ideologies to come to an agreement.

Of course, things will be different now that China and the US have opened a dialogue.  With a little bit of luck, their agreement to start talking about maybe eventually doing something about this global warming thing will lead to a further agreement to definitely start doing something soon probably.

One day, after a future Republican administration, motivated by the fact that global warming is a hoax perpetuated by aborition-addict hippy chicks and socialist jihadi atheists, scraps every environmental policy, every empty gesture, token agreement, and half-measure made under Obama; and after the Chinese government, fully aware of the extent to which the West is simultaneously terrified of its success and nervous that its economy will falter, decides to abandon any agreement which it finds inconvenient just because it can; after some, but perhaps not all, of the worst predictions of climate scientists have befallen us; we can look back at this day as an unforgettable, historic moment when nothing really happened.