Maude Barlow, and us running out of water

In this month's Walrus, my brief review of her latest book, Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water. I met Barlow in Bolivia, where she was in meetings with Bolivian and Norwegian ministers to get work on the right to water going, as well as touring an incredibly poor village on the outskirts of El Alto, where the residents had no access to clean water. As blogged here.

GreenTOpia launch this Sunday

Come out to the Gladstone on Sunday for a day-long launch of GreenTOpia: Toward a Sustainable Toronto (evening events later at Sneaky Dee's). Good times all around. David Wachsmuth and I have a piece in the book about greening our municipal tax code (very sexy) and of course there are many many other compelling arguments within.

From www.chbooks.com:

The party begins at the Gladstone Hotel at 2:00 p.m. The afternoon's events centre around two interactive panel discussions moderated by Misha Glouberman, featuring GreenTOpia contributors Eduardo Sousa, Wayne Reeves, Keith Stewart, Todd Irvine, Lorraine Johnson, Bert Archer, Catherine Naismith, John Lorinc and Graeme Stewart. Attendees are encouraged to bring their thoughts and ideas. And be sure to bring an item for the freecycle swap table. Bring something you no longer want, walk home with something you do!

Then, in the evening, make your way to Sneaky Dee's for musical performances. The Wavelength music series features a GreenTOpian lineup. Remember Toronto features the Toronto bands to today playing the best Toronto songs of all time.

GreenTOpia Book Launch
A This Is Not A Reading Series event

Afternoon panels and party
The Gladstone Hotel, 1214 Queen St. W.
Doors Open 2:00 pm
$5 cover, free with book purchase

Wavelength Music Series:
Remember Toronto: T.O. bands of today perform the best T.O. songs of all time
featuring The Two Koreas, The Blankket, the Hip-Hop Karaoke Crew, Etaoin Shrdlu with Jonny Dovercourt and many more!
WSneaky Dee's, 431 College St.
Doors Open 8:30 p.m.
pay what you can

Rambo's (blow)back

Just finished shooting (pun clearly intended) on the border of Burma, Rambo is back in the news. Already, a trailer for his new movie has been up for a while. (Tagline--when you're pushed, killing's as easy as breathing.) What I never knew until a friend mentioned it at a party, is that in Rambo III, he's fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan alongside the Mujahideen! Some choice dialogue, courtesy of IMDB:

Masoud, Afghan Mujahedeen Leader: Now you see how it is here. Somewhere in the war there's supposed to be honor. Where's the honor here? Where? Now, we're taking the survivors to the border. Are you coming?
Rambo: I'm going to the fort.
Masoud, Afghan Mujahedeen Leader: Have you not seen enough death? Go! Go while you can! This isn't your war.
Rambo: It is now.
Masoud, Afghan Mujahedeen Leader: So be it. You're a good friend.

..

Mousa: This is Afghanistan... Alexander the Great try to conquer this country... then Genghis Khan, then the British. Now Russia. But Afghan people fight hard, they never be defeated. Ancient enemy make prayer about these people... you wish to hear?
Rambo: Um-hum.
Mousa: Very good. It says, 'May God deliver us from the venom of the Cobra, teeth of the tiger, and the vengeance of the Afghan.' Understand what this means?
Rambo: That you guys don't take any shit?
Mousa: Yes... something like this.

Toronto homeless beaten, raped

Today, the Toronto Star and CBC (and likely others) covered a health survey of Toronto's homeless population. The Star buried the detail below, and the 60-second CBC news report didn't mention it (reporting substance abuse rates instead). But it strikes me as a pretty shocking detail:

...and, in the past year, one in three [homeless people] has been beaten and one in five women has been raped.

Read on.

Losing my electoral virginity...

...was a lot more confusing than I expected. (And the ballot box more claustrophobic.) I've written it up for your viewing pleasure; its 'form' is the bildungsoped, a new hybrid of the bildungsroman and the oped. (At last check, bildungsoped had not a single google hit--could be an original!)

Right... Anyway, the Walrus magazine article is about Ontario's looming--and crucial--referendum on electoral reform and is called "Blown Into Proportion." If the proposal for a proportional system--derived by a citizens' assembly--is passed, Canadian politics will be dramatically transformed.

The story begins,

They say you never forget your first time, but they usually don’t say why. For mine, not long ago, I had to climb a steep hill in the rain. I was a nervous eighteen-year-old university student living in Montreal. I entered the polling station, looked down, and felt nothing.

...

Imagine Ottawa’s metamorphosis: a small but strong Green Party; the Bloc Québécois cut almost in half ... the PMO reined in by Parliament; stable coalition governments. For much of the old guard, this would be a nightmare.

Read on.




..


In other news, I've finished my internship at The Walrus; I'm currently "writing" and also applying for various grants and programmes of higher education.

God save the King streetcar: My letter to my city councillor Gord Perks and the TTC chair Adam Giambrone

Hi Gord and Adam,

I live on Springhurst, just east of Spencer, and every morning, between 8:30 and 9:45, I try to take the King streetcar to my work at a magazine's editorial offices downtown. When it's early, the service is sometimes okay, but even in the AM peak between 8:00 and 9:00 it is deeply painful. As it gets later in the morning, the service becomes truly abominable, and tears of frustration are my new morning coffee. I usually have had to wait over ten minutes for a car ('frequent service' appears to be an Orwellian label designed to infuriate further), as well as 15, 20, 25 even 30 minutes. Astoundingly, the longer delays almost always coincide with the coldest days. If you can believe it, when the temperature is minus 10 or below, I can expect to wait at least 15 minutes. One morning, when it was minus 20, I waited for 30 minutes, and then only because I walked form Spencer to Dufferin and chanced on a short-turning car. Probably 35 or 40 minutes for those who stayed at Spencer. I wonder on those mornings why the TTC doesn't just send an operator by with axe to chop off people's toes. It's not only a sign of incredible -- even humiliating -- disrespect to strand transit users in the biting cold like this, but an outrageous health hazard. The looks on the frozen faces around me drive daggers of ice into my heart. It only adds insult to injury that all the while, going West is an unending string of empty cars that vanish over the hill never to be seen again. I can't tell you how many people I've seen flag down cabs out of desperation, because I lost count.

People take this streetcar -- which is uniformly packed to the gills on the rare occasions it saunters by, be it at 8:30 or 10:15 -- because they have absolutely no choice. I plan to bike now, to avoid buying a $100 metropass (is there anything more scandalous than the fact it costs more to buy a metropass than to take the TTC twice a day on business days?), and people with more money than me would be idiots not to drive. For other reasons, I often take the Dufferin bus, which is not the model being pursued on a grand scale because it's less efficient, but my god is it a better line, one that actually comes, actually moves fast, and doesn't make me balder.

The TTC's biggest supporters should be its users. Yet I'm pretty confident that the people who ride the King car with the eyes of an underpaid funeral photographer every day -- and let's not even get into what it's like to ride home, squished in like cattle, after 8 hours or more of work, in something resembling an acid flashback only a thousand times more grim -- are the TTC's biggest victims. I cannot tell you how demoralizing it is to start the day staring west, begging every flash of white coming over the horizon to be the top of a streetcar, only for it to be a truck. And then, fifteen minutes later, when the cars arrive, as they often do, in clumps, and you have to let one or two go by, it is so frustrating you want to stab someone, or rather yourself, in the eyes, with crochet needles. And when you have to let a stuffed car go by, and there isn't even another one in sight, well, better not to use the words that spring to mind. Finally, when you are riding at the pace of a clinically depressed snail into the downtown, you're so consumed by rage that the day before is drained of every possibility of joy. Good morning to you, TTC.

I read Steve Munro's blog, and I was touched at Gord and Steve flattering each other on getting the Transit City project up and running. And yet the majority of streetcar users, those who don't live on Spadina, aren't going to make very good shock troops for your publicity campaigns. Service on each of College, Dundas, Queen and King is dismal, each in its own special way. I do of course 'support' the Transit City plan, which I think is a wonderful idea, just as I continue to 'support' the TTC. But as the King streetcar obliterates the emotional link between what I believe to be right and what I can bear to lift my finger to support, because in fact I loathe its everyday existence with every cell in my body, I find myself -- someone who is committed to social justice and sustainability, who has knocked on doors for progressive candidates -- a pretty pathetic champion of public transit. Put the faces of the King streetcar on your publicity materials, and Torontonians will fill the ballot box with tears.

Your plan to restrict parking on King in the summer of 2008 is literally 12 months too late. Dramatic steps need to be taken right away, before your momentum, dreams and daring evaporate. Of course, I'm not the specialist in rouse public support to implement public policy. I'm just a voter and a transit user who wants to kill himself every day on his way to work.

Regards,
Daniel

Pair of popular Polish pols who appeal to the proles at the polls

I have another no-byline 'Worldbeater' (this section never has bylines; my first was about Michael Ignatieff) in the New Internationalist this month (the April issue), about Poland's leading men, Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski:

They're anti-gay and pro-Iraq War, fervent Catholics and free-market skeptics, they want to bring back the death penalty and ban abortion even for rape victims. They're the President and Prime Minister of Poland. And they're identical twins. Really.

The story won't be online for a while, so you'll have to pick the issue up on newsstands if you want to know more (without trolling the internet for hours and undermining print journalism). Also, the issue itself, with many stories about cotton, is excellent.

Here's a couple pre-power pics, child and adult.

TIME to chill out, eh?

So the March 12 TIME Canada got a little over-enthusiastic in its canuckitiness, or a little paranoid of CRTC censors, or something...



What stands out? (Yeah, I kind of spoiled the search.)

See, the thing is, when I'm on the Dufferin bus, and not next to my calculator, even if I do vaguely know that an inch is about 2.54 cm, and that 180 cm is roughly six feet, what the fuck is 170 cm supposed to mean to me in two seconds or less? Or ever? Is it tall or short? How many centimetres is Stephen Harper anyway? What kind of a headline is that? How many Canadians would actually understand what this headline is saying? I didn't! And I'm young! (And patriotic enough to spell metre just so.) And how many Canadian magazines would print a howler like that? I'm guessing none. So there you have it.

(I checked, and yes, in the American TIME, it's written right; the deck isn't given, but it's there in paragraph four. Ps, my roommate thinks the vegan mention is weird too. He had veal tonight...)

Terrorist corporate violence -- literally

Chiquita, which sells bananas and used to be called United Fruit Company (in the olden days when it helped overthrow Guatemala's democracy), just admitted to conspiring with Colombian terrorists (from the NYT wire):

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Banana company Chiquita Brands International admitted in federal court Monday that for years it paid Colombian terrorists to protect its most profitable banana-growing operation.

Read the full story. (The story equates leftist rebels with right-wing paramilitary groups, though it suggests the bulk of the payments went to the former.)

Enthusiasm in Advance

So a copy of the book -- pictured right -- came in the mail last week. Pretty slick. And the orange is arresting. For lack of anything better to do about this, I'm posting our (surprisingly?) excellent blurbs. Get ready to get this book. Here it is at the publisher's page (it's Greystone Books) and with an old cover sketch at Amazon.

Maude Barlow, Council of Canadians:

"Filled with passion, insight, pain, celebration and hope, Notes from Canada's Young Activists is proof positive that social justice in Canada is in good hands."

Wade Davis, author of One River:

"These remarkable essays, so heartfelt and rooted in experience, are the poems of our children. Honour alone demands that we listen."

Velcrow Ripper, Genie-winning director of SacredSacred and upcoming documentary Fierce Light:

"A treasure trove of possibility, offering much-needed hope in this time of global crisis. A heart expanding must-read."

...

For the record, I didn't actually write any of the stories in the book, I was just the craft kid. So this isn't completely self-promoting and boasting. I don't want to pull a Paul Wells here.

More abuse!

Given what happened yesterday -- see blog post below -- this is a little crazy. Today, a big loud knock on the door. I go downstairs and there's a teenage kid at the door, and another on the sidewalk:

Door Kid: "Hey, we wanna shovel your sidewalk."

Me: "How much do you want?"

Door Kid: "What do you think?"

Me: Pause. Thought. "I'll give you two bucks."

Sidewalk Kid: "Ten."

Me: "Look, I'm a writer. Two bucks."

Door kid: "Come on, five."

Me: "I'll give you two bucks. Look, the snow's really soft, it'll take you ten minutes, less."

Door Kid: "Give us four, two for each of us."

Me: Shrugging. "Sorry."

Sidewalk Kid: "Come on man, don't be a Jew!"

Me: "I am a Jew! You shouldn't talk like that!"

They laugh and walk away.

Welcome home (to Canada) -- my self-indulgent rant

Yesterday, the mini-plane I was on from NY to Toronto landed at Pearson, which I've heard a number of times charges the highest landing fees in the world. Waited for thirty minutes for the good people at Pearson to connect a tube from the gate to the plane. So I was in a pretty surly mood. The guy who let me back in the country must have marked me for further inspection, as the final stop on my exit from the airport was the place where they rifle through your bags to make sure you're not cheating the government of a couple hundred bucks of sales tax by exceeding your $750 spending allowance abroad. Obviously not to keep you from bringing in drugs, or they would have dogs...

Anyway, the guy assigned to me was, I would guess, of Middle-Eastern or South-Asian background. He asked me if I bought anything while I was away, and I said no emphatically and angrily. As he opened my bag, the first thing he saw was a book with its bright price sticker right on the cover. Oops. He didn't say anything. I asked him why he was searching my bag. He answered he didn't have any obligation to tell me.

"Actually, yeah, you do have to tell me why you're searching my bag."

No, he emphasized, he didn't have to tell me. "If you don't want people to look in your bags, don't travel. Do you understand my point?"

I wasn't being outwardly hostile, just sarcastic and dismissive. Anyway, a little more along those lines, and then:

"What do you do?"

"I'm a journalist."

"Oh, like that guy who got his head cut off, Daniel Pearl?"

"Yeah, actually my ambition is also to have my head cut off."

Yada yada yada. He reassured me that no one was getting his head cut off. I almost asked him for his full name and badge number, but couldn't be bothered. It seemed obvious that he was trying to show this snotty little shit what it's like to get humiliated by airport handlers. For one thing, Daniel Pearl hasn't been in the news for quite a while -- most Canadians probably wouldn't even know who he is. Given that he was beheaded in Pakistan, and that the name rolled so easily off the guy's lips, I imagine he must have either been Pakistani in origin or simply had a really good grasp of post-9-11 current affairs. (Or just a huge fan of BHL?) I also imagine it was a comment directed at me being Jewish, though I can't remember whether or not he looked at my passport or just my customs card -- ie, I'm not sure whether or not he read my name. But if it wasn't an anti-Semitic comment, what a wildly unspecific yet aggressive thing to say to a journalist! Obviously I didn't mention that I was only half-Jewish, and the wrong half at that. (Or that I was only half a journalist, and the wrong half at that.)

(Odd coincidences: I've read half of 'Who Killed Daniel Pearl?', and liked it but sometimes you don't finish books. I lent it to my Pakistani-Canadian friend Fahd, whose last name is Hussein, and who's had it a lot worse than that (!) at the airport. An Iranian-French girl I dated a couple years ago told me I looked like Daniel Pearl, within about twenty-four hours of telling me I looked like Jerry Seinfeld.)

After that, the harassment became banal, devoid of geo-political/identity-politics significance. He took my Apple laptop out of my knapsack, and moved it around with his hands.

"When did you buy this?"

"About three months ago."

"Do you have a receipt?"

"No."

"What store?"

"I bought it online."

"You know, I could hold onto this until you come back here and show me a receipt. Most people never come back with a receipt. Can you see now why we go through people's bags?"

"Look," and here OJ Simpson dangerously surfaced from my subconscious, "even if I did buy it in New York, it would cost the Canadian government about a hundred bucks in sales taxes. Who cares? People are bringing into Canada hundreds of millions of dollars of products made by six-year-olds."

A little more back-and-forth, and I was out, all luggage safely in hand. I can imagine that if he identified as a potential Daniel Pearl someone more Jewish and less self-hating, he would have gotten himself into some trouble. You know, because the wonderful anti-racist Jewish groups use such incidents of suspicion and division (and maybe resentment and even hate?) to bring people together, right? Ha ha ha.

Fittingly

Since I'm in New York visiting (about 18 hours left), I figured why go outside when I can have the superior experience of reading the New Yorker in a living room in New York? A story I read last night on Google's quest to scan all books eerily compliments Jonathan Lethem's brilliant 'collage' in this month's Harper's -- among many things a celebration of plagiarism as the motor of culture in all its forms.

Glued together, the two pieces raise the prospect something monstrous and tantalizing, of gotcha-plagiarism-hunting to a whole new level: using Google's inventory of all books -- and eventually, I imagine, magazines, then newspapers, then song lyrics, then flyers, etc -- plus perhaps another elegant algorithm or two to construct a plagiarism database, where anyone can see which revered singer/novelist/orator stole what from whom to create what.

What a democratic, leveling force! Finally, our most treasured wordsmiths subjected to the same humiliating cavity search as suspicious looking airplane travelers and hapless college kids.

iPosture

I'm in Brooklyn, here until Tuesday, and it's making me think I should move here, join the Park Slope food co-op, and write my first book: My Life as a Man: A Memella. (A memella is a fusion of memoir and novella. Obviously.) Anyway, slouching through the park today in typical imitation of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, I came up with an idea that has unlimited business potential. The iPosture. It's some thing you put on your back or neck (the details aren't important) that's connected to your iPod. Whenever you slouch, or otherwise deviate from good posture (standing or sitting), the music stops. A perfect mix of carrot, stick, and late capitalist decadence. In my humble opinion. (For the record, I don't own an mp3 player of any kind.)

Proliferation of the Person

I'm ramping up my experimental online presence, both because I think I should, and because I'm on partial vacation until I start interning at The Walrus on the fifteenth. (For example, tomorrow I'm going to NYC for a week.) I made a web site, separate from this blog, to be a kind of static resume: aldanacohen.googlepages.com. Feedback welcome.

Micro, meet Macro

James Laxer on another brick in America's looming debt wall. (Granted, such a thing might not actually exist.)

Meanwhile, individual Americans haven't saved so little for themselves since the Great Depression.

Afer the Water Revolution

A belated post of my article about Bolivians' struggles to deliver on the promises they made to themselves during two massive water revolutions in the past seven years. Hopefully, the story sheds some light on how much trouble the Evo Morales government is having meeting the needs of its constituents in the face of huge obstacles -- originating at home, and also abroad.

The privatization of Semapa was an intolerable insult. The Bechtel subsidiary got control of the municipality’s entire water system, including the city’s aquifer. Its contract contained a guaranteed profit margin of at least 15 per cent, indexed to US inflation rates. The company had intended to charge tariffs on all water consumed by everyone in Cochabamba—even if it came from neighbourhood wells built by consumer cooperatives whose construction was paid for by users and international aid. The subsidiary’s start-up capital was US$12,000—laughable, given that privatization had been sold as the only way to generate massive investments. During the few months the Bechtel subsidiary was in charge, water rates were hiked in inexplicable ways, with many users facing raises in the neighbourhood of 200 per cent.

Beyond the grotesque particulars of the Bechtel deal, the rate hikes exemplify the fundamental problem of privatization policy: it passes the cost of infrastructure expansion on to consumers who simply cannot afford it.

Read on.