Category Archives: Society

Canada, Conservative Party of Canada, Democracy, Liberal Party of Canada, Morality, Society, Vancouver

Wendy Yuan: The Next David Emerson for Vancouver-Kingsway

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So it turns out that in the tradition of Liberal candidates in Vancouver-Kingsway, like David Emerson’s lack of commitment to the riding, the new Liberal candidate, Wendy Yuan, does not live in the riding, though her campaign claims she does.

Perhaps it was an error by anonymous correspondent on her campaign team to email me [above] with confirmation that she lives in the riding. Or maybe she’s just another inauthentic constituency “representative.”

NDP candidate Don Davies reported yesterday that she lives in Richmond and has not denied his repeated claims that she does not live in the riding:

Davies said that although Wendy Yuan, a long-time resident of Richmond, last year claimed that it’s not important for an MP to live in the riding, the Yuan campaign office now says she is a resident of Vancouver Kingsway.

According to land title records as of February 1, 2008, Ms Yuan and her husband are the registered owners of a home in Richmond. Documents further show that Ms Yuan re-mortgaged this property in April, 2007. As of February 6, 2008, there is no record that they own a home in Vancouver.

“We also searched on-line telephone and address directories. We can find no record of any residence attributed to Ms Yuan in the riding,” said Davies.

“I think Ms Yuan has some explaining to do: where does she live? Does she live in Vancouver Kingsway or not? If so, why has she kept her residence in Richmond?” Davies asked.

“Before [the last election], Ms Yuan stepped aside so Paul Martin could appoint Mr. Emerson as the candidate. Her personal reward was an appointment by the former prime minister as a representative on trade issues in Asia,” said Davies.

“[She and Emerson] both came out ahead personally, while voters who cast – or wanted to cast – their ballots in good faith were betrayed.

“Now, we see Ms Yuan trying to fool the voters into thinking she lives in Vancouver Kingsway – which is either directly untrue, or without telling them she retains her main residence in Richmond.

Meanwhile on Wendy Yuan’s website we read all sorts of feel-good statements about representative democracy.

As a Chinese Canadian woman and as an immigrant who came to Canada twenty-three years ago, I feel that Canada has given me so much and it’s high time for me to give something back to this great country of ours by serving the people and making a difference. And a great way to do this of course is to work with all of you and the residents of Vancouver Kingsway so that together we can build a more just, a more prosperous and a greener Canada.

“All of you and the residents of Vancouver Kingsway,” not all of “us.”

Yes, I am relatively new to politics, but I am ready to bring a fresh approach to the residents of Vancouver Kingsway.

Again, no mention of belonging to the community, just a group of people she will service. And it’s not that fresh approach if her style of honesty and full disclosure is similar to Emerson’s–that’s just cynical.

I am ready to listen to you and deal with the real issues and I want to prove to you that we as Liberals are here for the long haul. I believe that the Liberal Party’s principles, its core values and its vision are the means to build a stronger community in Vancouver Kingsway and indeed, a stronger Canada.

It’s too bad that the Liberals define long haul by sending in a candidate from another city. Are there no quality Liberal candidates who actually live in our riding?


My first responsibility will be to represent you and all the residents in this constituency. I will keep my promises to you and I will hold myself accountable if given the honour to work for the people of Vancouver Kingsway. As we get ready for the next election I will continue to knock on doors, engage with people, and learn more about how we can work together to address our concerns and aspirations.

Again, “this” constituency, not “our.” “Our” concerns and aspirations? Would those be the concerns of Richmond residents?

I will use my skills in international business to contribute to Canada’s success in the Pacific Rim and my experience as a working parent, an immigrant and a woman to address the issues and challenges that we face in our riding.

Well, now it’s “our” riding. Unless she can demonstrates that she lives in our riding, this is an unacceptable word.

Before I ask you for your support and for your vote, I say let me earn it first. I invite you to engage with me in our democratic process, to participate in discussions and concrete actions that will help turn a new page in Vancouver Kingsway’s diverse and growing neighbourhoods and communities.

Well, I engaged with her by asking if she lives in the riding. She says she does, but the evidence contradicts that.

When her campaign office calls me back to explain their email to me from December and try to prove to me that she lives in the riding, I’ll update this post.

And here’s the update. An email came in with an attached pdf of her Hydro bill. Her personal information was blacked out at the source. I purpled out her account number and meter number, which are none of anyone’s business anyway:

Gender Issues, Health, Identity, Media, Morality, Psychology, Society

Society’s Celebrity Bloodlust Complex and Britney Spears: Part 2

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In Part one I compared society’s fascination with Britney Spears to the new movie Untraceable where people visit a website to accelerate the murder of a prone victim. Now that she’s out of the psych ward, there seems to be a new level of intimacy between Britney and the “journalists” out to get the best shots of her. It’s almost as if whatever pretense there had recently been about not literally swarming and stalking her has evaporated.

These two stills from CNN video are courtesy of a media helicopter that followed her car away from the hospital. It was stopped at least twice on the road for the swarmings.

It’s hard to imagine how much of this a person can take. If she “snaps” we would get to say, “yeah, that figures” but how much of a chance does this woman have to be able to regain mental health.

It reminds me of a tunnel in Paris in the late 1990s, except this time it’s not taking place in one evening of speeding drivers, but stretched out slow motion over weeks and months, almost as if someone is storyboarding it for maximum extraction of images during her whole descent into madness.

On one level she has merely drifted from one entertainment sector to another: pop music to tabloid spectacle. Once a Disney prop, she’s now a media character. I wonder if she’s ever had much time to be a self-contained individual.

Gender Issues, Health, Identity, Media, Morality, Psychology, Society

Society’s Celebrity Bloodlust Complex and Britney Spears

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Last Saturday, I sadly missed a special presentation of something called “The Fall of Britney Spears” or something like that on E! Channel, a sad commentary on our society that used to be Vancouver Island’s TV station.

I don’t like Britney Spears’ music or PR thing very much at all, but we are both parents of two children so suddenly I have a good degree of empathy for her. I’ve also always been rather concerned about celebrity microscope effect, long before the death of Princess Diana.

But this show on E! Channel was about reviewing recent events detailing Britney’s “fall.”

Though I missed the show, I thought about it every time I saw the trailer for the film Untraceable. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but it seems that one of the plot elements of the movie is that some killer fellow has set up some sort of murder machine that will kill someone at some point, a point which accelerates closer when a greater number of people visit some website. So people’s participation in the spectacle makes them complicit in a murder.

You can even try out http://www.killwithme.com and take part in the movie/murder/complicity spectacle on your own in an ironic, self-reflexive nod to the plot device.

It seems to me that everyone who watched that Britney Spears show on E! Channel last week [and every other act of celebrity obsession] is complicit in the struggles she is now enduring. And while we can callously wipe it all away by saying she voluntarily chose to become a celebrity, that is insufficient to excuse what truly appears to be a celebrity bloodlust complex. We like to build up people to be larger than life, but at the same time we are always looking for excuses to bring them back down to earth to make sure they aren’t better than us.

I expect sociologists have much more to say on this, and those who have seen Untraceable will be able to confirm how much this observer complicity is significant in the movie, but in the end, the movie may be a strong metaphor for our role in Britney Spears’ tribulations.

Activism, Canada, Class War, Cuba, Cubazuela, Democracy, Imperialism, Justice, Media, Poverty, Society, USA, Venezuela

Why I’d Rather Cast a Ballot in Venezuela than Canada or the USA

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With Canada’s 19th-century first past the post electoral system and the USA’s rampant electoral fraud and conflicts of interest, voting in Venezuela seems like a tonic.

And in Venezuela’s recent referendum on political change that failed by roughly the same infinitesimal vote as Quebec’s referendum failed a decade or so ago, the North American media cabal is decrying it a triumphant victory for freedom fighters.

Despite that hyperbole, Venezuela’s democracy receives most of my envy. Why?

Here’s why:

Venezuela is Not Florida

By Mark Weisbrot

December 5, 2007, McClatchy Tribune Information Services

Last Monday, with less than 90 percent of the vote counted and the opposition leading by just 50.7 percent to 49.3 percent, President Chavez congratulated his opponents on their victory. They had defeated his proposed constitutional reforms, including the abolition of term limits for the presidency.

No one should have been surprised by Chavez’s immediate concession: Venezuela is a constitutional democracy, and its government has stuck to the democratic rules of the game since he was first elected in 1998. Despite the non-renewal of the broadcast license for a major TV station in May – one that wouldn’t have gotten a license in any democratic country – Venezuela still has the most oppositional media in the hemisphere. But the U.S. media has managed to convey the impression to most Americans that Venezuela is some sort of dictatorship or near-dictatorship.

Some of this disinformation takes place through mere repetition and association (e.g. “communist Cuba” appearing in thousands of news reports) — just as 70 percent of Americans were convinced, prior to the Iraq war, that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the massacres of September 11. In that case, the major media didn’t even believe the message, but somehow it got across and provided justification for the war.

In the case of Venezuela, the media is more pro-active, with lots of grossly exaggerated editorials and op-eds, news articles that sometimes read like editorials, and a general lack of balance in sources and subject matter.

But Venezuela is not Pakistan. In fact, it’s not Florida or Ohio either. One reason that Chavez could be confident of the vote count is that Venezuela has a very secure voting system. This is very different from the United States, where millions of citizens cast electronic votes with no paper record. Venezuelan voters mark their choice on a touch-screen machine, which then records the vote and prints out a paper receipt for the voter. The voter then deposits the vote in a ballot box. An extremely large random sample – about 54 percent – of the paper ballots are counted and compared with the electronic tally.

If the two counts match, then that is a pretty solid guarantee against electronic fraud. Any such fraud would have to rig the machines and stuff the ballot boxes to match them – a trick that strains the imagination.

In 2007, Venezuelans once again came in second for all of Latin America in the percentage of citizens who are satisfied or very satisfied with their democracy, according to the prestigious Chilean polling firm Latinobarometro – 59 percent, far above the Latin American average of 37 percent.

It is not only the secure elections that are responsible for this result – it is also that the government has delivered on its promises to share the nation’s oil wealth with the poor and the majority. For most people – unlike the pundits here – voting for something and actually getting what you voted for are also an important part of democracy.

The Bush Administration has consistently sought regime change in Venezuela, even before Chavez began regularly denouncing “the Empire.” According to the U.S. State Department, Washington funded leaders and organizations involved in the coup which briefly overthrew Chavez’s democratically elected government in April 2002. The Washington Post reported this week that the Bush Administration has been funding unnamed student groups, presumably opposition, up to and including this year.

Venezuela must be seen as undemocratic, and Chavez as the aggressor against the United States, in order to justify the Bush Administration’s objective of regime change. As in the run-up to the Iraq war, most of the major media are advancing the Administration’s goals, regardless of the intentions of individual journalists.

Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan. He is co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: The Phony Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2000), and has written numerous research papers on economic policy. He is also president of Just Foreign Policy.

Canada, Conservative Party of Canada, Economics, Equality, Family, Justice, Liberal Party of Canada, Neoliberal Economics, Poverty, Society, Work

Canada: "Economic Injustice for the Poor!"[tm]

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Just to start off, any country that spends the post-Cold War period eroding its progressive tax system so that the richest 1% of families pay a lower tax rate than the poorest 10% of families is just offensive. And I don’t care about the relative dollar value of tax paid by these two groups. The principle itself is regressive and abhorrent.

Welcome to Canada!

Welcome also to the reality of federal Liberal and Conservative governments. It doesn’t matter which is in, the rich get a windfall and the poor subsidize it.

The latest CCPA study is full of shock and further offense:

  • Provincial tax cuts are the key culprit for the increasingly regressive nature of Canada’s tax system but the problem has been exacerbated at the federal level with billions of dollars worth of post-2000 tax cuts.
  • The richest one percent of taxpayers saw their tax rate drop by four percentage points between 1990 and 2005.
  • Most Canadians saw their tax rate fall by two percentage points of income, but not so for the poorest 20 percent of taxpayers, who pay three to five percentage points more in taxes.
  • Middle-income families pay about six percentage points more in total taxes than a family in the top 1 percent.

Activism, British Columbia, Colonialism, First Nations, Gender Issues, Identity, Morality, Racism, Society

Sassy Indian Squaw: Imagine, Create, Transform?

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“This sexy indian costume comes with suede corsetted dress with leather fringe and matching anklet.”

It’s the “Sassy Indian Squaw” Halloween costume and shock of shocks, it is going around the internet as a symbol of offense to all sorts of people. A few ironies lurk in the background, particularly in BC.

1. Halloween Mart’s website boasts Imagine, Create and Transform as their motto. It’s hard to see how this costume accomplishes any of that.

2. For the second time this year, a local First Nation has voted to ratify a treaty with the Crown. Regardless of where you stand on the content/process of these treaties this year, the Maa-Nulth have voted to imagine, create and transform.

At least some are able to move past the past. Too bad we all can’t.

You can contact Halloween Mart here to let them know what you think of their sexy Indian squaw and her matching anklet.

9/11, Activism, Class War, Colonialism, Corporations, Democracy, Economics, Imperialism, Justice, Morality, Neoliberal Economics, Poverty, Privatization, Psychology, Society, Soft Fascism, Work

Note to TransLink: Your Riders Are Not Customers

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I went to the TransLink website just now to search for the word “customer”. I found 376 references.

I also have noticed that in recent days a canned announcement pops onto Skytrains regularly asking “Skytrain customers” to not leave their lame faux-news free daily newspapers [Metro, 24] lying all over the trains cluttering them up and creating a slipping hazard for most everyone.

As part of the large trend to commodify all things public and common, riders are no longer riders, we are customers purchasing a service: mass transit. As customers we are told the class of our existence on what used to be public transit.

Now the new TransLink board is being appointed by a gang of mostly business-folk, a board not accountable to the token Council of Mayors who will be “consulted” on decisions. Public money spent by unaccountable directors appointed by mostly business interests.

If you resent being classed as a “public” transit customer instead of a co-owner of a commonly held public “public” transit system, you had better start paying more attention to the Campbell neoLiberal government’s agenda to sell us [and everything held in common] down the river.

And it would help to read Naomi Klein’s new book to get a primer on the last few decades of rationale behind the premier’s manifestation of neoliberal cancer. And if you don’t have time to read it all, you can get the 6 minute primer here.

And a few facts to make you wonder just what price we pay for a privatized, deregulated world.

Canada, CanWest, Corporations, Democracy, Media, Society

Global TV: Thoroughly Free of Irony

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It’s one thing to criticize Global for being the brunt of the corporate concentrated media nonsense that pretends to be a free press in this country.

It’s another thing to watch them physically concentrate their media [see below] with the plan to create new monster broadcast facilities in four locations in the country allowing them to drop 250 jobs while adding 50.

Not to be too cynical, but why don’t they just run with one office in Toronto and stop the pretense of actually providing local news. With the new internet machine, they can probably skip reporters all together.

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Global Television is cutting 200 jobs across Canada as it develops new “state of the art” broadcast centres in four cities, CanWest announced on Thursday.

The company said the centres, to be located in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary and Toronto, will use the latest in broadcast technology. It will also mean local news programs can immediately begin the transition to high definition, CanWest MediaWorks Inc. said.

Although CanWest is adding 50 positions as part of the process, it will lose 250 jobs, meaning a net loss of 200.

Across the Maritimes, 30 positions in Halifax and 11 in New Brunswick are being cut.

Network employees in Halifax said they were shocked by the news.

“It came as a complete surprise. There was no warning,” said Paul Saulnier, a union leader with the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers and a technical director who’s losing his job.

The layoffs take effect next spring around the time the first centre is planned to be opened in Vancouver. The other three are expected to be operational over the next 18 months.

Activism, Class War, Democracy, Economics, Equality, Family, Health, Journalism, Media, Neoliberal Economics, Poverty, Society, Soft Fascism

Unspinning the Bush Veto Spin

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Not that Bush needs to veto much. He simply issues signing statements indicating the executive branch will not abide by this or that of the legislation he’s signing. Soft Fascism ‘R Us.

But now the folks at the radically right Media Research Center have spun coverage of this nasty veto thusly:

Again exploiting children and mothers to advance the goal of expanding federal spending and dependency, ABC’s World News led Wednesday night by giving voice to the media-political establishment’s astonishment that President Bush would veto a bill to provide health insurance “for children.”

It’s hard to reply to this other than to say that the very first clause has simply been spun backwards. Poor children cannot depend on private insurers, so they depend on the government to keep them from illness and death. Bastards, eh!

And black is white, war is peace…

So after 4 decades of socialized medicine in Canada, it turns out that all progressives do is look for excuses to increase government budgets, not the other way around.