Tag: News, Politics, Events

How Not to Lie

I find this story as reported in today’s Toronto Star interesting:

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Clark told CBS’
Lesley Stahl, “The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other
people, shut the door, and said, `I want you to find whether Iraq did this.’

“Now he never said, `Make it up.’ But the entire conversation left me in
absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that
said Iraq did this.

“I said, `Mr. President. … We have been looking at this. … There’s no
connection.’

“He came back at me and said, `Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there’s a
connection.’ And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back
with that answer.

“We wrote a report.” Clarke continued, “We got together all the FBI experts,
all the CIA experts. … And we sent it up to the president and it got bounced
by the national security adviser or deputy. (It was) sent back saying, `Wrong
answer. Do it again.’

If you are going to lie, I would think it
is not a good idea to fill the lie up with a whole bunch of other people whose
jobs depend on not supporting your lie. It is so utterly contrary to the authorized,
evangelized version of the workings of the White House yet so in line with
what another
high official in the government has recently written…and another resonably
placed observer as well.

Keeping in mind that neither I nor any of you reading this have any knowledge
about what happened and form our opinions out of belief, advertised material and
how much sleep we got last night, isn’t it kind of weird to think that morons
might actually be in charge of what used to be called the phone to Moscow, the
suitcase with the codes.

Scandal Solved

This movie was really just for Jon and Wally – a VIA intercity train leaving Kingston Station. A real hog of a file at 12.5 Mbs.

Then I realized I had hit upon something. I found the sponsorship money! At 50 million a “Canada” sign or Canadian flag – surely that is market value – it’s all there. Money well spent. If the Federal Liberals had not ensured trains had the name and flag of my country on it, I can only imagine I would have confused myself for an Albanian one day.

The Size of Places

I remember during the Bosnian war in the mid-90’s being amazed at the small scale of the places involved in our news. I would listen at 7:00 pm to Hrvatska Radio from Croatia on the shortwave and try to follow where Canadian troops from my then neighbouring base CFB Petawawa, some my clients, were involved. Bosnia and Herzegovina has an area of just over 50,000 square kilometres or 5/7ths the size of New Brunswick.

Today, I read about more deaths in Gaza as I have heard about for much of my life in the news and wondered how large it was. Just 360 square kilometres according to Wikipedia. The Population Resource Centre in error has it as slightly larger than Delaware [which actually has a land mass of around 5,000 square kilometres]. Al Jazerra is in agreement with wikipedia as is the Guardian Unlimited. It is about half the size of my City with over ten times the population.

At 9,984,670 square km, Canada could hold 28,527 Gaza strips or around 200 Bosnia and Herzegovinas.   PEI could hold 16 Gaza strips.

Canada’s Spying

The Toronto Star has an unlinkable but
interesting article on the high-tech Echelon surveillance system operated by
five nations known as the UKUSA alliance: the United States, Britain, Canada,
Australia and New Zealand. Apparently Canada spied for Thatcher on two of her
cabinet collegues under part of the agreement that allows effectively for
internal spying by a friendly nation within the circle. So who is spying on
Canadians on the request of our government? And for what?

Fewer Studying Computer Science

This New York Times article is interesting – apparently computer science students are losing interest:

The Computing Research Association’s annual survey of more than 200 universities in the United States and Canada found that undergraduate enrollments in computer science and computer engineering programs were down 23 percent this year.

It could just mean that fewer feel they need the degree to get into the game but I buy this argument:

Enrollments are down at the best computer science schools, where the potential stars of technology’s future are groomed. Professors say there is less enthusiasm for the discipline among students, and they worry it may be more than a lingering disenchantment after the dot-com bubble burst.

Having gone through one economic down-turn in my trade and acting when I saw another on the horizon meant two big dislocations for me and my family. If I knew that there were other countries gearing up to provide my services to the globe for a fraction of the cost, why would I dedicate my life to that trade? Better to study Arabic.

Call Centres At Risk

With all the other news last week, one that may affect the Maritimes as much as the US ban on beef imports is the proposed effective ban on US firms using call centres located in other countries. In the heady 90’s many politicians in the East lunched out on the concept that call centres were IT jobs…something akin to pumping gas being part of either the oil or auto parts industry sector.

Still, a job is a job and export dolalrs are better than local ones if you want economic growth.   Ruk had a great thread about the issues surrounding these employers a few weeks ago.   Here is a list of the Nova Scotian call centres. How many depend on the profit margin from US work to stay open?

Futurist Nut Bars

So why is Tod Maffin so smart? I was driving along on Saturday afternoon not really listening to DNTO and – WHAMMO – Sook Yin Lee says Tod’s going to tell us that blogs are dead already. Here is the promo for the piece:

And Tod Maffin dives into the world of blogging. Like everything on the web, what began as a grassroots movement it’s suddenly become corporate. Is this the end for web diaries as we know it?

Isn’t there a rule that anyone who calls himself a futurist isn’t? Or at least goes somewhat nuts. But then today there is Dave3, also a smartie pants, saying, to get the news, he is going to give up reading everything but blogs. [Maybe he’s on an all rice crispy diet.]

I am confused. In the days before the future, when I was a kid, the characteristics of the future where unlike today – food would be in tubes, we’d use personal jet packs and clothes would be all silvery. I sure as hell didn’t expect that I would have to rely on self-appointed wackos with bandwidth for the news any more than I thought 13 factories would supply all the meat for the vast majority of prople in the USA [a frightful fact I heard on talk radio last night] or that most food in the store would rely on killer transfats. It is starting to look like eating real food and relying on good new sources are the kinds of things that will make you an outcast in the new next future.

I tire of this. Why don’t futurists tell stories like

around 2012 people will get sick and tired of self-appointed gurus consulting to government on untendered contracts [supported by 25% finder fees] advising upon which leaders and stakeholders needed input…and will kick the bums out.

Though its unlikely as 98% of cheques to futurists are sign by the bums, that’s a future I’d like to see. Then, again, now that I think of it…maybe it’s happening now in Ottawa in 2004. The wheels may be coming off of one guy’s particular future as we watch right now.