The Western Enigma

Ouch

2006-05-10T23:38:00.000-07:00

I was bored at work the other day, so I started surfing through the blogs of people I know. Then I got bored with that and started surfing through the blogs of people they linked to.

Long story short, I stumbled upon the blog of someone who shall remain nameless and saw something that surprised me: my name (spelled wrong, but still) was mentioned. Mentioned, under less-than-flattering circumstances.

The gist of it was, "I saw you, but I think you're a jerk so I pretended I didn't know you." I don't care if you think I'm a jerk. That's your right.

What I would ask is that if you think this, and if you feel the need to broadcast your belief over the Internet, that you at least spell my name correctly. Some other Erik Jacobs who spells his name E-R-I-C might read it and be offended.

9 Months

2006-05-10T23:08:00.000-07:00

A sometimes crazy, always amusing, and occasionally sharply insightful man once said that on the internet, your crimes live forever.

It's been nine months since I last posted on this blog. I don't remember the last time I even looked at it. The few people who were kind enough to link to it no longer do. And yet, my crime against blogging remains.

I've been busy in those nine months. Spent a month and a half backpacking in Spain, France, the UK and Ireland. Adjudicated the 2006 World Debating Championships. Did not distinguish myself in any way, shape or form. Got back to Canada in January and went back to a shitty little town with a nice facade for the tourists. Only lasted until April before heading for the coast.

I'm currently working at the Vancouver Fim School. The job's okay so far. I don't know if it's any better than my previous jobs or if I just haven't been there long enough to come to hate it.

Hopefully, I will post again within the next nine months. To the six people who actually read this blog, my apologies for not posting more often.

Canmore Folk Fest Preview

2005-07-26T17:10:00.000-07:00

This weekend is August long weekend (actually, two of the three days are in July, but I digress). For those in the know, this is the weekend of Alberta's oldest folk music festival, The Canmore Folk Music Festival. If you are looking for something to do this weekend, I highly recommend that you come check it out. Performers will include The Arrogant Worms, Carlos del Junco, Connie Kaldor, Oscar Lopez, and Oysterband, among others. This will be my tenth Canmore Folk Fest and over all of those years, I haven't seen an act I really disliked.

In addition, it seems that they are still looking for volunteers so if you want to come but don't want to pay admission, you can get in for free in exchange for a few hours of your time. I recommend this festival to everyone.

PS. Look for a review some time next week.

Fighting Them There AND Here

2005-07-07T11:18:00.000-07:00

So I guess I would rather fight them [the terrorists] there [in Iraq] than here. I know I would rather fight them there than here, and I know would rather fight them there than in other remote parts of the world, where it may be more difficult to find them.
- US President George W. Bush on preventing future terrorist attacks on Western cities

With this logic, if we start building dirty hospitals, we can fight germs on our terms.
-A poster on a web board called "America's Debate."

I would like to take this moment to offer my condolences to those who lost loved ones in this morning's bomb attacks in London.

The latest numbers show 37 dead and over 700 injured in coordinated blasts targetting subways and a double-decker bus.

A group calling itself Secret Organization-Al Qaeda in Europe claimed responsibility for the attacks. According to the group's statement, the attacks were in response to "massacres Britain committed in Iraq and Afghanistan."

According to President Bush, the invasion of Iraq was supposed to draw the terrorists into battle. As the logic went, if we're fighting them in Iraq, they can't launch attacks on Western cities. Furthermore, it was supposed to draw terrorists to where they could be more easily fought, where they can be fought on our terms, not their's. This has been dubbed the "flypaper strategy." Not only has this strategy failed, as this morning's attacks and last March's attacks on Madrid tragically demonstrated, it now appears that Iraq has become a seasoning ground for would-be terrorists, much like Afghanistan was during the Soviet occupation. Skeptics of the strategy have always said this would happen. Now a CIA report supports their view.

So not only has fighting terrorists "there" not prevented having to fight them "here," it has given the terrorists another reason to attack Western targets, served as a recruiting tool for them, and provided them with a ready-made training ground.

Oops.

My Father

2005-06-19T16:22:00.001-07:00

Today is father's day. I'll call my dad after eight, when I have unlimited cellphone minutes.

My father, Paul Jacobs, is a native of the suburbs of New York City. He first came to Canada in 1970, at the age of eighteen. After a year as a student at McGill University, he moved west and has lived in Western Canada ever since. He doesn't talk about the circumstances under which he came to Canada very much. He says he came to go to university, but I know that, at the time, he was a strident opponent of the Vietnam War. As he returned to the US to work before he got Canadian citizenship and has never had any trouble getting across the border, I'm pretty sure he didn't dodge the draft.

Nonetheless, he seems to have mixed feelings about the country of his birth. There are times when I think he wished he had stayed. He is not a dual citizen; he gave up his US citizenship. He also married a Canadian woman.

For much of my childhood, dad was a grad student at the University of Manitoba, in Winnipeg. He recieved his Ph. D. in engineering when I was nine, but he has never worked as an engineer. He's never worked long at any one job. He dislikes institutions and bureaucracies, especially when he has to work in them. Dad can always be counted on for a snide comment about bureaucrats.

For most of my life with my parents, dad did his part to support us by running a small network support business, playing the stock market with considerable success, and investing every penny in interest-earning accounts. He has also managed to make a profit selling not one, but two houses. Indeed, had he chosen to pursue it as a career, he probably could have been a high-powered financial executive. But he didn't want that. He was never happy as someone's employee and in the almost six years he ran a business, he never hired anybody.

In elementary school, we are told to "be a leader, not a follower." Dad ignored both that advice and the default position. He doesn't lead, yet he refuses to follow. In an age where all seek to be individuals, dad is one of the few people who can truly claim to be one.

Unlike many parents, who attempt to be cool and fail miserably, dad didn't even try. He knew that, whatever he did, my sister and I would never think of him as cool. Dads aren't supposed to be cool. They aren't supposed to be their kids' buddies. Friends, especially for teenagers, come and go quite frequently. Fathers aren't supposed to, although all too often they do.

Some parents strict forbid any hint of sex or drugs in their children's lives. Others, realizing the futility of such prohibitions, refuse to take any stand on these things, but shield their children from the inevitable consequences of experimentation with sex and drugs. Dad did neither. When I was sixteen, I staggered home drunk after a party, when I had to work at seven the next morning at a summer job. Dad personally made sure I got up on time, even though it meant going to work with a massive hangover. One thing he always made clear was that choices always have consequences. You stay up late drinking before you have an early shift, you go to work hung over. End of story.

Here are a few of dad's more memorable quotes:

"If you have to ask why, the answer is probably money."

"Be good, and if you can't be good, don't get caught."

On government:
"If we're not careful, we may end up with incompetent and corrupt politicians in charge."

On his decidely unfashionable winter clothes:
"Warm beats fashion any day."

And finally:
"Even paranoids have enemies."

Happy father's day dad.

The Politics of Star Wars

2005-05-23T17:31:00.000-07:00

(Warning: Star Wars spoilers ahead).

For those of you who have been living in a cave or on a desert island, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith was released on May 19. This completes the saga of Anakin Skywalker, from slave boy, to Padawan, to Jedi, to Sith lord, to his redemption in Return of the Jedi.

As Anakin transforms, so to does the political structure of the galaxy. At the beginning of the saga, the galaxy is ruled by a democratically elected, perpetually divided and squabbling, republican senate. Over the course of the first three episodes, power increasingly shifts from the senate to Palpatine. Palpatine goes from senator, to chancellor in Episode I, and his power gradually increases until he declares himself emperor in Episode III.

The underlying question is, why did the galaxy, or more accurately its democratically elected senators, choose to give up their freedom? While the question of why people seek power is a common theme in literature and movies, the question of why people choose to give in to those who seek power is not.

Below are several links to articles further exploring the politics of Star Wars, with emphasis on the transformation from republic to empire.

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/horton.php?articleid=6041
http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?control=948
http://www.mises.org/story/1818
http://www.mises.org/story/232

My Job(s) and Musings on the Canmore Economy

2005-05-16T17:13:00.000-07:00

First of all, an apology to anyone out there who has loyally read my blog. The reason I haven't posted in a few weeks is that I haven't had Internet access at home until today.

So, I'm back in Canmore. Great town to visit, not so great to live in. My family moved here when I was ten, and I lived here full-time until 2001, when I left to attend the University of Alberta. I have always ended up returning to Canmore in the summers, despite my best efforts to find work elsewhere. My parents left town last fall, but both my sister and I returned in April.

So, I'm sharing a basement suite with a German denture technician facing the 1A. I start my real job on the 24th. Right now, I'm working in the bakery of the local Sobeys. The job sucks, but at least I'll be out soon.

I worked at the front desk of the local Howard Johnson last summer, but they weren't hiring this year. I cut through their parking lot fairly regularly (it's the shortest way from my house to downtown) and it always seems to be really empty. I think that this is partly due to the fact that tourist season hasn't really started yet and partly due to the fact that some genius built the place right next to the train tracks.

So about my new job. I just signed away my soul for the next six months to the Fairmont corporation. On May 24th (five days after the release of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith) I start work at their laundry facility in Canmore. Fortunately, I was able to get a job in the shipping and receiving/quality control department. I'd prefer not to spend the next six months feeding towels and sheets into machines.

My first weekend back in town, I visited the annual trade fair. Canmore is usually thought of as a tourist town, but there was nary a tourist business in sight at the trade fair. Almost all of the booths were for construction or home improvement materials. While I was looking around I had an epiphany. Canmore's economy is not primarily based on tourism. Sure, there are tourist businesses. But the real money is not in tourism, but in construction and real estate. So the Canmore economy should be just fine as long people continue to move here.

The problem is, that the houses that are being built aren't cheap. A one bedroom condo will cost you at least one hundred fifty grand. For a condo that you could actually fit a family into, you might be able to get away with spending three hundred grand at the barest minimum.

But, let's say you want to own the land your house is built on, not just the house itself. Buildings tend to depreciate in value over time, while the land they are built on may or may not depreciate depending on its location. To buy an actual house, you would have to spend over four hundred grand. Most nicer houses run at five or six grand, and houses selling for over a million are not uncommon.

It is possible to spend this much on a house in most cities. However, most cities also have houses that cost less than this. Canmore doesn't.

Very few Canmore residents can afford to buy a house now. High level management jobs are almost unheard of and even professional position are relatively rare. Most of the town's population works in the tourism sector, which tends not to pay very well. Many businesses find themselves compelled to provide staff accomodation, but no one in their right mind would want to spend much time living in your typical staff accomodation. They typically have two, or even three people sharing the same bedroom.

But even those at the management level cannot afford to buy. I personally know hotel and restaurant managers who rent. I'm one of the lucky ones. I managed to get a decent job. But, there is no way that I am going to be able to afford a house here. Indeed, about the only people who are able to afford houses in Canmore made a whole pile of money somewhere else. I don't know how long I'll stay here, but I don't plan on settling in Canmore for life.

Right now, the economy is relatively hot. It will only stay this way, however, if people continue to build and buy houses here. If they stop doing this, because, for example, interest rates go up, the town's economy is in deep trouble.

I'm Done... Almost

2005-04-27T23:30:00.000-07:00

Wrote my last exam today. I have one more course to complete in the spring term and then I will be the proud owner of a BA (Honours) degree. Yeah!

Now if only I had a job...

I head back to Canmore on Friday. So long Edmonton, it's been good to know ya. Seriously, Edmonton's a great city. I've enjoyed my four years less summers here and I won't stay away on purpose.

This will be my last post for awhile. My internet connection gets disconnected tomorrow and I don't know when I'll be able to go on the internet next. Hopefully soon.

When the Enemy IS the State (Warning: Sin City Spoilers)

2005-04-24T13:39:00.000-07:00

(Warning: Spoilers Ahead. If you have not seen Sin City, do so at the next possible opportunity).

John Hartigan is a good cop, one of a very select group in Basin City. Marv is an outlaw, a warrior who was born a couple millenia too late. Dwight is a murderer with a new face, literally. And these are the heroes of the Sin City universe. The enemy all three of them fight is, ultimately, the state.
Hartigan saves eleven-year-old Nancy Callahan, the only real "innocent" in the movie, from a pyschopathic pedophile, "Junior" Roark, who also happens to be the son of Senator Roark. The Senator is a power-mad megalomanic, who refuses to let anything, including his son’s evil deeds, stand in the way of his legacy.
Rather than disowning his son, he frames Hartigan for raping Nancy and sends him to prison for eight years. At the same time, he goes to absurd lengths to help his son recover from his fight with Hartigan, which left him without an ear, and arm, and his genitalia. Junior is transformed into the Yellow Bastard as a result.
Released from prison, Hartigan again finds himself needing to save Nancy, now a ninetheen-year-old stripper, from the Yellow Bastard. Although Hartigan beats the Yellow Bastard to death, he is forced to kill himself in order to thwart further retribution attempts by Senator Roark.
Like Hartigan, Marv also finds himself the victim of a frame-up, for killing a prostitute named Goldie, the one person who was ever kind to him. Marv responds by going on a killing and torturing rampage, eventually getting to Kevin, a cannibal who eats hookers. Like Junior, Kevin enjoys the protection of the state: Cardinal Roark, the brother of Senator Roark and the most powerful man in the state. Unlike the senator, who is unscathed by the action, Cardinal Roark dies at the hands of Marv. Eventually, Marv is caught and executed for his crimes and the crimes of his victims, Kevin and Cardinal Roark.
Unlike Hartigan and Marv, Dwight does not directly confront the state. His adversaries are the corrupt agents of the state, the police. Dwight saves his girlfriend from her ex-boyfriend, a "hero cop" who is also a cowardly woman- abuser and later helps thwart an attempt by the police and their mob allies to enslave the Amazon-esque hookers of Old Town.
We are taught at a young age to respect authority, even authority that does not deserve to be respected. In the Sin City universe, to not respect authority means that you will likely be killed eventually. However, if you do respect authoriy, you will either be killed immediately or you will cause serious problems for the people around you.
Hartigan is nearly killed by his partner, Detective Bob, who feared the consequences for himself if Junior were seriously hurt or killed. While Detective Bob was largely unharmed by the whole chain of events, his interference set off the chain of events which allowed Junior, as the Yellow Bastard, to continue with his ghastly deeds.
Lucille, Marv’s parole officer, is less lucky. She first finds herself imprisoned by Kevin the Cannibal, and loses her hand in the process. She is then turned into Swiss cheese by submachine gun fire when she attempts to reason with the cops who were sent to kill Marv.
Becky, a naïve young hooker, attempts to leave her life on the street, but only ends up betraying her fellow hookers to those who would enslave them. Fortunately, they are thwarted, in large part by Dwight’s heroism.
Neither Hartigan, nor Marv, nor Dwight intended to fight the state. In true film noir fashion, they are forced to fight the state by circumstances beyond their control. They do it because there is no other option. Cooperation will only make the state’s attempts to persecute them easier. All three have a choice between dying now or dying later, or perhaps surviving.
On the flip side, if the way Hartigan was treated is any indication of what happens to honest cops in Basin City, why be an honest cop? Why not use your position as a police officer for personal gain? If it is clear that you have been framed for a crime, why simply surrender? Why not kill as many of the people who framed you as possible?
The cause of Basin City’s sinful state is not the fact that there are prostitutes, criminals, and corrupt cops there. There are people like that everywhere. What really causes the sordid state of Basin City is that, not only does the state not encourage morality, it also discourages morality by its own corruption and cruelty. There is simply no incentive for most people to be moral if they see morality punished.
The state, and by extension its laws and morals, cannot be the enemy of the people. In Basin City, laws and morals are not to protect and serve all. They are to protect and serve some and in some cases they act as a club for the powerful to use against their enemies. Unless we remain vigilant, there is no reason why our laws could not come to do the same. Throughout human history, the law and morality generally being like the law and morality in Basin City has been the rule, not the exception. Sin City serves as a warning of what we can become. It is a warning that we would do well to heed.

2 Down, 1 to Go

2005-04-21T18:11:00.000-07:00

Haven't posted in the past few days because I've been too busy studying for my Political Science 315 exam and completing the take-home final in Poli Sci 477.

If anyone tries to tell you that political science is easy, point them in the direction of POL S 315. This two semester course is required for all political science honours students and has a well earned reputation as the most difficult course in the political science department. The readings for the course are:

The New Organon by Francis Bacon
Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn
Reason and History by G.W.F Hegel
The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy by Peter Winch

And -- it gets better -- a 700+ page compilation of writings.

Not to discourage any of you honours students or anything...

Anyway, it's done. So is my take home final for my POL S 477 class. Last week Qureshi told me not to pick up my term paper until I handed in the final. He said he was afraid I might get complacent if I saw my term paper. He was probably right.

Now all that's left is a short paper and a final for my philosophy of law course, both due six days from now.

Then I move to... somewhere. Don't know where yet. It is getting a little late in the game. I didn't plan it this way, honest.

On the bright side, one spring course (internet based) and I'm done forever. Well, until next degree.

Furthering Lies: The "Director's Cut"

2005-04-18T17:27:00.000-07:00

Back in January, I wrote an article for the Gateway on a talk given at the U of A by Scott Taylor, a Canadian war veteran and journalist. Due to space constraints, a significant portion had to be cut. I had hoped to get the original article published somewhere, but most media sources won't publish reviews more than a few days after the event being reviewed happened. Except blogs, that is.

So, I hereby present to you "Furthering Lies: The 'Director's Cut.'" The Gateway article can be read here: http://www.gateway.ualberta.ca/view.php?aid=3808

Furthering Lies: The "Director’s Cut"

Miscommunication and outright lies tainted the media’s coverage of both Iraq and Kosovo, argued Scott Taylor, a veteran of the Canadian military and the editor of Esprit de Corps, the magazine of the Canadian military.

Taylor, who spoke Tuesday 18 January at ETLC, made his case in a presentation entitled "From Belgrade to Baghdad: How Mistakes in the Balkans Led to Disaster in Iraq" focusing on the wars in the Balkans and Iraq, and the misinformation that followed.

"People like Madeline Albright were claiming 100 000 people were killed in Kosovo," Taylor reported.

In actuality, only about 2000 Serbs and Albanians, most of them fighters, were killed.

The effectivness of the bombing campaign was similarly exaggerated. Despite claims of massive damage to the Serbian army, relatively little damage was done in actuality.

"The Americans spent 13 billion dollars to destroy thirteen tanks. That’s 1 billion dollars a tank," Taylor said.

Taylor also sharply criticized the occupation of Kosovo after the bombing campaign.

"[Serbian refugees] were dragged from their cars and beaten while NATO troops looked on," he said of NATO’s failure to protect Serbian civilians in Kosovo.

"All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t make the Albanians and Serbs like each other."

Shifting to the post 9/11 era, Taylor described the prevailing mood in the Pentagon. "It was 50/50 in the Pentagon, they wanted to nuke Kabul," he quoted a source in the Pentagon.

"The guy who was leading the fifty percent who wanted to drop a nuke to send a statement? George W."

Taylor also accused the Americans of arrogance in their invasion of Iraq.

"They’re unrepentant, and that’s the incredible part. They think they’re protecting us," he said.

Taylor also related how the Americans ignored warnings from the international community.

"We told the Americans that if you go that way, you’re going over a cliff. They went that way, they went over the cliff, they’re burning, and they’re asking us to get in the front seat."

Taylor also dismissed the notion that the Bush administration was genuinely mistaken about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. To back up his claim, he cited former presidential speechwriter David Frum’s book "The Right Man."

"The whole ‘axis of evil’ that he came up with, he was told to do something that would include Iraq inside that parameter. That was coming from the president down to him, not coming up from the CIA." Taylor said that even before 9/11, the Bush administration intended to take out Saddam Hussein.

"Bush said, and this is from Frum’s book, that the first meeting they had after [Bush’s] inauguration, that he was going to snuff out Saddam during his first term."

The invasion of Iraq and the subsequent occupation were both plagued by poor planning and incompetence he argued.

"[The Pentagon] said we’ll be out of there in six months. That was what their war planning was based on."

Taylor also noted that morale has been slipping.

Despite the fact that the US armed forces voted four to one for the Republicans, many soldiers in Iraq are getting frustrated, especially those who had their tours extended.

Additionally, US efforts to train a new Iraqi army and police for have had little success. "Fifty percent of their police forces are unreliable. Forty percent deserted and ten percent turned their guns on the Americans. The other fifty percent didn’t see combat." Taylor also described how six heavily armed police stations in the city of Mosul were overrun with hardly a shot fired.
Taylor was highly critical of the media for not properly reporting the failures in Kosovo and Iraq.

Although outright censorship is rare, distortion is not.

Taylor related one incident in which a copy editor changed a story he had written about an atrocity committed by Albanian rebels in Macedonia.

"[The copy editor] switched it, because he knew from what he’d read about Kosovo that it was the Albanians who were the victims, so he changed it to a Macedonian atrocity."

The structure of the media itself can be a detriment to discovering the truth in a conflict, Taylor said.

"They pay the money for the air fare, they pay the person to go over there, they pay for the satellite phone at ten bucks a minute for them…. they’d better have a story," he said.

"You can’t get in there and say, ‘listen, I’m going to look around for a couple weeks, get the feel of things," he said, noting that journalists often end up repeating what other major news outlets are saying, rather than doing their own research.

Taylor stressed the necessity of learning the truth about past mistakes and failures, so that we may learn from them in the future.

"Nobody wants to go back an look at the mistake that Kosovo was," he said.

Failing this kind of self-criticism, Taylor predicted dire consequences for the US. "We may be seeing the beginning of the end of the American empire," he said.

Ultimately, it is up to the public to demand the truth.

"People have to be questioning, should be questioning, what is happening," he said.

I am Officially Online

2005-04-18T11:04:00.000-07:00

Who am I?

I'm fourth year honours political science student at the University of Alberta, a member of the U of A debate society and occasional Gateway writer. I'm also a bit of techno-phobe, hence my relatively late arrival in the blogosphere. I do, however, enjoy avoiding studying by surfing the Internet. This blog will give me another excuse to avoid studying. This is probably a bad thing at this time of year.

Got a job interview this afternoon. May post later if I have time.