The Podium

Hate On The Internet

2009-01-14T06:31:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on Jan 1, 2002, with the tag line, "A coloured writer goes "undercover" into the seamy world of online white supremacy." It had originally appeared in the Toronto Star on May 2, 1995, under the title, "Up To Individuals Not State Censors To Police Internet" . The original Podium version carried the following caveat:

Note that much of this article's content is outdated, since the world wide web was still in its infancy in 1995. The article was completed after months of "undercover" activity in white supremacist newsgroups. Interestingly, some of the nefarious figures encountered have since risen to prominence in the neo-nazi world, and have just as quickly plummetted from bigoted "grace".

by Raywat Deonandan

With public obsession with the Internet --the global computer communications network-- at an all-time high, it's not surprising that Time Magazine recently released a special issue dedicated to its navigation. What is surprising is that the B'Nai Brith, the Jewish anti-defamation league, recently declared that the Internet is being increasingly exploited by hate groups.

A quick scan of the available newsgroups would tend to confirm this observation. A newsgroup is an area of the Internet dedicated to discussions on a designated topic. Subscribers may read postings, submit their own comments or respond to the comments of others. Topics have traditionally ranged from entertainment ("alt.startrek", for example) and levity ("rec.humor.funny") to commerce and society ("tor.forsale" and "soc.culture.australian").

Recently, however, the numbers subscribing to such renegade newsgroups as "alt.revisionism" and "alt.politics.white-power" have increased dramatically. Postings on these groups can be inane ravings about how ZOG (the "Zionist Occupational Government") have suppressed U.F.O. data --don't laugh, this one's not made up-- to the more dangerous advertisements for private video and book sales. Banter is often of the locker room variety, or feeble attempts to argue logically from a dubious fact base. But there is also the unspoken underlying potential for real organization.

The establishment of the Internet has been likened to the invention of the printing press. And, in much the same way as that earlier information revolution, the flow and dissemination of opinions can no longer be controlled or edited. Indeed, some hate-mongers have compared their activities with Martin Luther's campaign of public religious education.

The explosion of disinformation has been fuelled by the arrival of public Internet providers, companies that furnish computer accounts to anyone willing to pay the minimal monthly fee. The bigger ones are America Online and Netcom in the USA, Internex Online and various Freenets in Canada, and the Hong Kong Supernet in South Asia. While these servers have taken the Internet out of the hands of the educational elite --the universities, military and research institutions-- they have also made it vulnerable to those with invalid credentials and questionable agendas.

Indeed, the majority of hateful posters seem to originate from these public servers, sometimes choosing derogatory and racist user names like "dummcoon". Some of the more spirited and libelous comments arise from anonymous servers, such as "anon.penet.fi" in Finland. These posters are nothing more than cowardly, throwing their stones from behind the wall of anonymity.

What is still unknown is the complement and demographics of the "lurkers", people who read the postings but never respond. One can hope that they are merely the curious or entertained, and not the silent and converted.

This issue has stoked the debate of censorship. Should the Internet, humanity's greatest reservoir of free uncontrolled information, be subject to official censure? Some providers claim to monitor their users to ensure that certain standards of conduct are maintained. Recently, Netcom revoked the account of an individual who was posting rabid antisemitic propaganda. The story was carried on CBC Prime Time News. But the official reasons for the closure of the account had nothing to do with any objections to the contents of the offending articles, but with the method of the posting: the fellow was cross-posting to too many newsgroups simultaneously, and was thus in reach of his contract with Netcom.

Internet providers are very wary of being seen to censor or moderate their users. The argument against moderation is that the 'Net is self-regulating; users objecting to a posting feel a moral obligation to rebut and refute it. But there are so many niches in Cyberspace that a group wishing to develop its agenda can do so with relative privacy. Eventually, detractors tire of discrediting every outrageous statement, and the group continues its activities unabated.

In any case, it seems unlikely that, this far into its evolution, some comprehensive and fair form of censorship could be imposed on this juggernaut. It remains to each of us to play an active role in challenging every germ of hate and ignorance that could infect humanity's greatest forum.

Why I Love Professional Wrestling

2009-01-14T06:27:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on Dec 17, 2001, with the tag line, "Why a supposedly intelligent person would watch professional wrestling." It had first appeared on the website of The Pro Wrestling Torch on Dec. 14, 2001, and later appeared as a chapter in the textbook, Opposing Viewpoints: Popular Culture (Greenhaven Press, 2005, ISBN: 0737731052) in 2005.

by Raywat Deonandan

Sometimes I think I’d be more comfortable admitting to a criminal conviction or a sexual deviancy. Certainly, to some minds, my dirty little secret could be put in the same category. It’s a private shame that I try to avow early in any relationship, bringing it to the forefront to be discussed and laughed about, the theory being that ad hoc truthfulness vitiates the foul deed. Yet despite my outward comfort ---nay pride-- in this particular deviant taste, I must confess to a daily struggle to explain to the unbelievers why, oh why, I so love the “sport” of professional wrestling.

The look of horror on the faces of those to whom I have offered this confession is a universal. Since wrestling’s recent explosion into the true mainstream, courtesy mostly of The Rock’s bellicose pop culture appeal, that look has become hidden behind stolid faces of straining nonjudgmentalism. But it lingers still, a silent scream of disgust and pity, its unspoken (and sometimes loudly spoken) plea one of tiresome redundance to my sighing ear: “How can someone so educated and intelligent watch such crap?”

Usually, I then launch into my practiced lecture about the ancient and pure nature of wrestling, its timbre resonating with that of Greek theatre, its core morality play identical to history’s finest examples of good drama. While few ever buy the argument, they are usually sufficiently impressed by my liberal use of big words to gather that I’ve at least given the issue some thought --more so, dare I say it, than do people who watch supposedly “high brow” television, like *cough hack* Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect or Law & Order, which are as equally exploitative but rarely vilified.

You see, I do not enjoy watching real sports. I don’t believe in glorifying the questionable accomplishments of thin-brained 20-year olds whose incomes criminally exceed the economies of many small nations. I particularly question the permissability of fighting in ice hockey, scenarios in which genuinely angry grown men try to physically harm one another. At least in wrestling, the violence is fake and the wrestlers strenuously work to avoid injuring one another.

Detractors invariably point out that the fans don’t know that it’s fake, and so wrestling shows simply stoke a public bloodthirst. To such critics, I can only sigh, their ignorance being a blight upon all good sense. I don’t think I’ll be crushing any dreams when I say here, in print, that everyone knows that wrestling outcomes are predetermined, and that everyone knows that most of the brutality is illusory. Yes, even many of the children. To my thinking, such detractors expose their own poor understanding and poor faith in the thrum of modern society.

Moreover, the enjoyableness of professional wrestling is not related to that of a genuine gladiatorial contest. On the whole, fans do not seek brutality as the outcome. Instead, we simply seek a well told story set in a weird world of supermen and thin egos. Therein lies the secret power of this genre. We don’t watch Monday Night Raw looking for a kind of realistic Ali-Foreman contest. No, we watch it hoping for a Rocky-Apollo Creed finale: a staged movie payoff to a well crafted preceding drama.

In the wrestling world, Evil invariably faces off against Good, with Good always coming out on top. In the interim, Evil only wins when Evil cheats, but will always get its just desserts in the end. What other form of entertainment offers such a pure and timeless theme, complete with sing-along catchphrases and comic book personas? The stories told in the modern era are wonders to behold. Brother against brother, marital betrayal, love, tragedy, returns from the dead, behind-the-scenes politicking, teams torn asunder by misunderstanding or greed ---all these stories eventually lead to a physical contest inside the fabled “squared circle”, and all must be told simultaneously to a live audience of tens of thousands and to a television audience of millions. When Stone Cold Steve Austin drinks a beer at the end of his match, his practiced flourishes must be as well seen by those in the back row of the arena as by those watching close-up on the TV screen, testament both to Austin’s unique acting ability and to the need to keep every single audience member engaged. Unlike other TV offerings, wrestling is tweaked day to day to respond to audience reaction. Storylines are radically rewritten or abandoned in mid-stride if fans respond unfavourably. No other entertainment genre offers such interactivity and complexity of performance.

Admittedly, there are elements to this entertainment genre which are disturbing, its occasional sexism and racism being obvious examples. At present, the WWF in particular suffers not from excessive offensiveness, but simply from lackadaisical writing. I have thus questioned if the present lacklustre product has stifled my innate love for the “sport.” I have searched for an image or moment which could rekindle the flame of my fandom. I found it in a recent match between The Rock and Chris Jericho.

Jericho, a well-liked underdog, had just beaten ultimate fan-favourite The Rock for the WCW Championship, but had resorted to an illegal chair-shot to do so. In the post-match showdown, Jericho clutched his uncleanly won belt with ambiguous joy as The Rock approached him with the steel chair cocked to deliver a retributive blow. No words were spoken. Instead of delivering the expected blow, however, The Rock just handed Jericho the chair and marched out of the ring, leaving the new champion to his tainted celebration. It was the look on Jericho’s face that sold the moment to me. Without speaking a word or raising a fist, he communicated that he had criminally bloodied his hands to attain his goal, commencing on a hubris-strewn path of tragedy which would eventually lead to his downfall. His shame was palpable, but subtle. It was a MacBeth moment that calls to the heart of good drama, and which encourages me to declare yet again that I am a proud fan of professional wrestling.

My Problem With Space Tourism

2009-01-14T06:25:00.001-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on Dec 8, 2001, with the tag line, " Space tourism is great... until it becomes a Hollywood playground." It was then reproduced on Dooney's Cafe in January of 2002.

by Raywat Deonandan

It's certainly a dream many of us have shared, to rocket into the heavens and return safely to Earth. Since the heady days of Sputnik, Yuri Gagarin and John Glenn, generations of children have fantasized about stepping onto the surfaces of the Moon or Mars, and about simply floating in weightless microgravity, miles above the spinning blue Earth. Myself, I often gaze with longing upon the framed letter hanging in my kitchen, the one notifying me that I've not been selected for the Canadian Space Agency's astronaut corps. I was 25 and in graduate school when I'd applied.

While I am disappointed that I was not selected for the corps, the fact that the recruitment process was a truly democratic one is nevertheless reassuring. That one can simply send off a resume to the Space Agency (albeit the Canadian one) is a grand leap forward from the days of internal military recruitment, so well documented in Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff". Hence that letter,despite its personal bad news, offers hope hope that us commoners will one day find our way into the great boundless blackness.

These are indeed revolutionary times with respect to the changing accessibility of space. For we who have ranked Neil Armstrong among the champions of human exploration and expansion (alongside the likes of Columbus and Magellan, colonial motivations notwithstanding), the recent policy directions of the Russian space agency are of particular interest. Courtesy of the cash-strapped Russian program, American tycoon Dennis Tito became humanity's very first "space tourist," having forked over a reported $20 million for a week long stay aboard the International Space Station.

Tito's expedition was notable for a variety of reasons. It signaled that the global space program had evolved to the point of sufficient safety for an untrained individual to take part, and convincingly demonstrated the existence of a space tourism market. From now on, you don't need to be a PhD scientist or a former fighter pilot with Olympic-calibre fitness to make it into space. All you need is $20 million.

The feat has cleared the way for further attempts to cultivate the space tourism market, most actively by private enterprise. The second man on the moon, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, is among the most high profile of this entrepreneurial army. Dennis Tito himself has committed his money and business expertise to whittling the price of future tourist missions to a "mere" one or two million dollars. And the "X-prize", a $10 million bounty cast in the model of the prizes which launched the adventures of the Wright brothers and Charles Lindbergh, is up for grabs to any private company that can put three individuals into space and bring them back to Earth safely two times in two weeks. The intent of the X-prize is to jump-start the commercialization of space, to take access to the heavens out of the hands of monolithic and agenda-ridden governments and genuinely into the hands of small to medium businesses.

All this tourism activity bodes well for we who have long sought freedom from Earth's gravity. There will no doubt come a day within the next few decades when, for the present price of a decadent African safari, a moderately affluent individual will be able to purchase a ticket into orbit ...and maybe beyond. This is the true price scale and timeline being bandied about by the experts.

Therein lies my purist concern. While access by the masses is critical for the long-term development of outer space and its related resources, it bodes ill for the ambience, reverence and magic that, ironically, are the factors that attract both vulgar tourists and dreamers alike. Since only the affluent, or indeed the ridiculously rich, will be able to afford it, will outer space be the ultimate class-restricted club? The Monaco or Montserrat of the heavens? How long before recovering Hollywood bad boys seek the age-reducing effects of microgravity? I cringe at the thought of a Charlie Sheen, Paula Poundstone or Sean "Puff Daddy/P-Diddy/Puffy" Combs drunkenly defacing Neil Armstrong's lunar landing site. I have no doubt that it will one day happen, but I hope I'm not around to hear tell of it.

Already, Radio Shack and Pizza Hut have filmed frivolous commercials aboard the international space station. A European designer is planning the first orbital fashion show. And Mark Burnett, creator of television's Survivor, is actively seeking a launch service to enable the production of "Survivor in Space". Do we really need the likes of naked Richard Hatch and screech-voiced Jerri Manthey in our skies?

In terms of its potential for exploration and exploitation, outer space truly is the last great physical frontier. More than that, it may be humanity's salvation, as it represents room to expand, resources to exploit, mysteries to uncover and challenges to unite us. Undoubtedly, the path to realizing its promise involves ultimately making this frontier accessible to non-governmental astronauts and even casual visitors. But let's hope that our heavens do not become or remain the exclusive domain of the affluent and frivolous.

Survey This!

2009-01-14T06:21:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on Dec 1, 2001, with the tag line, "A critique of the practice of Internet or web-based surveying."

by Raywat Deonandan

Back in 1997, Microsoft Canada garnered a lot of media attention for it's ballyhooed 24-hour on-line Internet poll. Internet users were asked to visit the Microsoft web site and answer the nine questions posted there by that champion of Canadian surveyors, the Decima Corporation. Fifty-five thousand Canadians responded, half of whom were from Ontario. According to the Microsoft press release, it was a "demonstration of the power of Internet technology."

And how was this power used? It was used to answer such gripping questions as "If the Earth's axis shifted and lengthened the day by one hour, how would you spend the extra time?" and "Which of the following famous T.V. bosses reminds you most of your own boss?" More precisely, it was a demonstration of the power of Microsoft's marketing team.

Admittedly, the survey did garner interesting information about Internet usage, such as the insights gleaned from the survey question, "What is the single most important function that the Internet serves for you at work?" But that seems to be the only useful result of such an endeavour, at least for now, because a sample of people who use the Internet is only representative of other people who use the Internet.

In other words, one still cannot use the Internet as a survey tool to make inferences about the great unwashed masses. Despite what marketers tell us, most people, even here in Canada, remain unwired.

Luckily, the majority of on-line pollsters are sophisticated enough to realize this, and have directed all their survey questions toward an electronic end. For example, Dr. Kimberly Young of the University of Pittsburgh maintains a very long on-line questionnaire that attempts to detail a psychological profile of each respondent. Her actual research question, however, has to do with the phenomenon known as "Internet addiction," so she has probably targeted the right audience. In fact, in order to spend so much on-line time completing her survey, one would have to be addicted to the Internet.

Another truism of surveying is that you usually attract a certain kind of person, whether intentionally or accidentally. For example, Microsoft wanted to sample Canadian Internet users, but the very language of the survey --English-- excluded every francophone Canadian.

A company called Easyscopes runs a regular monthly survey from its website and has found a typical proportion of female respondents to be around 80%! This, of course, greatly exceeds what one might expect, especially when the Microsoft data suggested a 1997 female on-line presence of 20%. But then one must realize that the Easyscopes site is where many people go to read their horoscopes, supposedly a predominantly female pastime.

One must therefore consider a respondent's motivation for being at the website to begin with. In the case of Microsoft, a total prize package of $500,000 was the bait for completing their survey. Other on-line surveyors offer cheaper but more subtle incentives. The inevitable and somewhat ubiquitous sex surveys tempt one to completion by letting each respondent view the cumulative results immediately upon completion of each survey. It's a temptation that's hard to resist, especially if --as the polls would suggest-- you're a middle-aged middle-class unmarried heterosexual man who gets most of his social interaction through a computer screen.

The more academic investigators are definitely at a loss in this compensatory sense. And there are quite a few of them out there, including a University of Brighton graduate student who is investigating the effects of the Internet on users' quality of life. But few graduate students have sufficient funds to offer half a million dollars in prize money, or a research topic sexy enough to lure respondents who are otherwise beckoned by the luridness of explicit sex surveys and the deep pockets of billionaire software magnates.

So if even academics can't make effective use of the "power of Internet technology," Microsoft's claims start to sound a little hollow. However, one final benefit may yet be wrought from the growing trend of Internet surveying. It may, someday soon, noticeably reduce the number of annoying telephone polls.

Virtual Medicine

2009-01-14T06:18:00.001-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on Dec 1, 2001, with the tag line, "A description of the state on online education for medical professionals." It first appeared in Family Practice Magazine on Sep. 15, 1997, written for an audience of "non-wired doctors".

by Raywat Deonandan

James Ryan, a vice-president at Pennsylvania State University, calls the explosion of on-line Internet courses “the hottest and most sweeping development” he’s ever seen. With the Internet’s maturation from a plain text medium to a textured cacophony of video and sound, an obvious evolution was the advent of high-tech distance education. Lately, the explosion has begun to serve the educational needs of family physicians.

Distance education has long been a dry but valuable option for physicians and other professionals living in remote areas, or for individuals whose busy schedules do not permit participation in rigidly structured classroom courses. Until recently, the path of “remote learning” involved mail-in exams, standard textbooks and an occasional phone call to a professor.

The Internet, however, offers several advantages over its low-tech forebear, the correspondence course. E-mail allows almost instantaneous two-way communication without the interference of an often unreliable postal service. The World Wide Web allows anyone with access to a connected computer to view images such as diagrams, graphs and photographs which can be updated instantaneously. Advances in multimedia permit audio lectures to be acquired over the Internet in “real-time” formats such as “Real Audio.” And the proliferation of Java-enabled browsers and Shockwave-equipped websites have made interactivity a meaningful everyday word. Education need no longer be limited to the reading of textbooks.

For the family physician, these developments can be particularly advantageous. A number of electronic medical courses have surfaced in recent months, some even striving to offer CME and CFPC certification.

To determine the efficacy of the medium for the continuing education of physicians in remote areas in Ontario, a pilot study was conducted by Dr. Truls Ostbye of the University of Western Ontario’s Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics. Dr. Ostbye and his associates modelled an electronic clinical trials course after an existing graduate-level classroom course, and taught it in text modules via E-mail. None of the fancy Internet bells and whistles, like audio and graphics, were used.

“The idea was to keep it low-tech,” Dr. Ostbye says, “so that a minimum of computer expertise was required by the students.” What he found was that the course appealed to medical professionals around the world, not just in Ontario. Clinicians working in the Australian desert and in a small African community suddenly had educational access to a major Canadian university.

Students responded favourably to the anonymity of E-mail, and to being able to interact when and how often they chose. The design and administration of clinical trials, it seems, was a topic that diverse medical professionals were thirsting to know more about. No doubt, there are other topics that could benefit from this approach.

Even though Ostbye’s course was delivered without profit as a consideration, the tuition was still over $500 per student, just to cover expenses. The materials may be virtual, but the cost is still real. However, this cost is comparable to that of popular postal correspondence courses, such as those of the Canadian Securities Institute.

A more ambitious undertaking is the on-line public health course offered by the University of North Carolina. Covering all the major aspects of public health theory and practice, such as the evaluation of drinking water and the assessment of community disease outbreaks, this course seems tailor-made for the curious family physician. Further underlining the electronic medium’s global appeal, the course’s teaching assistant, Nicole Walker, created a minor media sensation by continuing to teach on-line while away in Portugal, her students never aware that she had moved.

This course is quite impressive in the variety of media it employs: streaming audio lectures in Real Audio format; powerpoint slides rendering excellent graphics; chat rooms so students can interact privately and synchronously; and bulletin boards for asynchronous communication.

Of course, North Carolina’s course’s greater complexity requires a prospective student to have more computer expertise and better equipment than the students of Dr. Ostbye’s clinical trials course. The University of North Carolina therefore requires students to complete an on-line skills test to ensure that everyone is comfortable with the computer medium.

Closer to home, Dalhousie University has stepped up its on-line offerings. Among its courses is one developed and administered by Dr. Anna Mary Burditt. Like Dr. Ostbye’s clinical trials course, Dr. Burditt modelled her course on an existing classroom offering: a second year family medicine course she had been teaching for 10 years. Titled “Alcohol Problems: A Family Medicine Approach,” the course is geared toward practising family physicians wishing to use the case method to learn more about treating alcoholism. Burditt stresses the interactivity of the medium, and has designed the course to take full advantage of the World Wide Web’s imaging abilities and asynchronous bulletin boards.

Burditt has applied for accreditation from the CFPC. Hopefully, from a certification point of view, the Internet medium will soon be ranked on par with live classroom courses.

Many of the larger American universities are enthusiastically developing profit-making Internet courses on a variety of topics. The University of Minnesota website offers a list of a variety of on-line science courses. And Gregory Allen, a medical undergraduate at California’s Loma Linda University, maintains a list of electronic medical courses and textbooks on his personal website.

Certainly, for medical professionals of all types, there now exists a host of educational opportunities to fit anyone’s schedule. All you need is a computer.

SELECTED WEBSITES AND CONTACT INFORMATION

Dalhousie University’s “Alcohol Problems: A Family Medicine Approach”. Contact Dr. Anna Mary Burditt.

University of Minnesota’s list of on-line science courses.

Science’s Interdependent Relationship with Science Fiction

2009-01-14T06:08:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on Nov 5, 2001, with the tag line, "Transcript of a presentation given about science's relationship with science-fiction." It was produced from a presentation given by Dr. Deonandan at the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Symposium, held at the University of Ottawa on May 5, 2001. It appears in the academic anthology, Worlds of Wonder: Readings in Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature (University of Toronto Press, 2004) with the title, "A Scientist's Relationship with Science Fiction" (pages 131-139). It has since been reproduced at Skiffy.ca

by Raywat Deonandan

INTRODUCTION

Science fiction as a genre of literature, film and television has evolved from fantastical explorations of imagined worlds and technologies to dire sociological predictions about the ways in which human modes can be transformed by changing scientific ethics. With this evolution has come a shift in audience demographics, and a change in the attitude of the mainstream toward those who enjoy this genre. There is some evidence that the art itself has served to influence changes seen in the foci and timbre of research scientists over the past century, reflecting and perhaps initiating the evolution of Western science from its Newtonian and Darwinian observational origins to its modern mosaic of metaphysical concerns, quantum imprecisions, chaotic systems and psychophysics, etching a spidery spread of the scientific ethic to embrace the previously unrelated fields of economics, politics and philosophy. The history of science fiction is one of necessary dependence upon science, causing it to evolve into a kind of analytical tool, and potentiating a stronger influence on greater society.

SCIENCE FICTION PRODUCES ITS OWN AUDIENCE

Science fiction has certainly inspired many members of the present generation of Western research scientists to pursue their calling. The increasingly scientifically literate audience has, in turn, compelled the genre to evolve. This synergy has spurred some interesting developments, such as the rise of so-called “hard” science fiction, a genre appealing to technological sticklers. The response of the mainstream has been to sometimes ridicule those who enjoy this genre, though that ridicule is clearly tinged with respect for the stereotype of those with presumed technical proficiency, the fabled “science nerd.” The relationship between modern scientists and science fiction is therefore a complex one embodying both pride and embarrassment, inspiration and dismissal.

Within the context of science fiction, the synergy between product and consumer is a fascinating one. The so-called “Golden Age” of science-fiction, presided over by the domineering figure of John W. Campbell in the 1950s, saw the arrival of authors who would one day boast the title of Grandmaster: Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. This era benefited from a growing public awareness of science and technology, spurred by the recent “triumph” of the atomic bomb and by the first steps into space, courtesy of the Soviets’ Sputnik probe. Readers in this era had a cursory knowledge of science. They knew, for example, that Mars is another plant that orbits the sun, and that one requires a rocketship to get there. Hence, a classic like Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles could be readily contextualized by the masses; its exotic locale on Martian surface was considered only mildly fanciful, its happenstance fully imaginable given the impressive technological achievements of the time.

But Bradbury was able to take great liberties with his novel, his own scientific illiteracy notwithstanding. At the time of the book’s writing, it was already well known to astronomers that Mars did not have a breathable atmosphere, that the Martian surface was much too cold and inhospitable to support human life, and that the fabled Martian “canals” imagined by astronomer Percival Lowell in the previous century did not truly exist. Yet The Martian Chronicles was not to be slowed by mere fact.

There is no denying, however, that simply having situated his novel on Mars allowed Bradbury to inspire within the hearts of his legion of mostly male, prepubescent readers a strong yearning for things Martian, much like how the wild west stories of a previous generation inspired an identical demographic. Bradbury’s tale is a simple pioneer frontier story; it was its otherworldliness that made it a best-seller.

As the 1950s drew to a close, the vision of Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Johannes Kepler was becoming reality: humankind was venturing into outer space. The content of novels by Bradbury, Heinlein and Asimov was no longer fanciful musing, but was newsworthy fact. President Kennedy proclaimed that the American people would “do the other thing” and send a man to the moon, ushering in an era in which the previous generation’s fictional flights of fancy became anchored in realpolitik. Greater awareness of scientific issues necessitated a growing sophistication of the population.

From this maturation came a generation of writers for whom the “otherworldliness” of Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles was insufficient. Engagement of this new audience required finer subtleties of storytelling, and grander ideas to explore. The twisted realities of Phillip K. Dick are among the children of this era, made possible by the deeper education of the audience. As the 1970s dawned, Western society was knee-deep in the language of science, with popular science magazines like Omni enjoying the cross-genre fruits of the marketing machinery of the Penthouse corporation, belying the growing sexiness of technology. Science sophistication was sufficiently advanced among thegeneral readership that the “hardest” of science fiction writers felt free to evoke images of dizzying technical grandeur and precision.

Larry Niven is a fine example of this breed. Niven’s classic Ringworld describes the construction of a massive ring around a sun-like star. The ring’s trillions of inhabitants exist on the inner edge of the ring, providing a infinitely diverse set of loci for scripting adventure. Such a novel could not have been written before this era. While admittedly niche-marketed to a specialized scientifically literate audience, the very existence of that ready-made audience allowed Niven to bypass the minutiae of space construction issues. He did not have to explain that planets orbit stars, or that the ring must revolve in order to simulate gravity, to list but two minor points; such information was already in the public domain.

With the close of the twentieth century came unparalleled audience sophistication. Science education had become a mantra of social need, the necessary path for every student to achieve full participation in modern society. Within the generally more literate milieu had arisen a sub-population of intensely scientifically literate individuals, made so in large part by the hard writing of the previous generation. Young physics students are known to read the science fiction classics of the previous decades, such as Ringworld, Neuromancer and the many on-going works of Arthur C. Clarke – the work inspires future science professionals, in essence creating and educating its own audience, enabling an increasingly sublime, glib and technically evocative body of science fiction work.

Perhaps the best example of this trend is the award-winning Mars Trilogy of Kim Stanley Robinson. The following selection is from the second tome of the trilogy, Green Mars:

"Perhaps, he thought, they had gone polyploidal, not as individuals but culturally –an international array, arriving here and effectively quadrupling the meme strands, providing the adaptability to survive in this alien terrain despite all the stress-induced mutations..."

The books were New York Times best-sellers, clearly reaching an audience larger than the traditional niche science fiction crowd. Yet, Robinson did not bother to explain genetic terminology, such as “polyploidal” or “meme strands”. Nor did he need to name the moons of Mars –Phobos and Deimos– or define “regolith,” the astrophysical term he frequently uses which describes the nature of surface rock on many intrasolar bodies. That Robinson could wield a complex scientific vocabulary so unapologetically is testament to his understanding of the audience that science fiction had wrought: a very large population intimately familiar with the touchstones of the genre -- space travel, genetics and even many of the more obscure and atypical nuances of speculative science.

SCIENCE FICTION AS SCIENCE ANALYSIS

The intimate relationship between science and science fiction is often characterized by the latter’s history of having predicted developments in the former. The novels of Jules Verne, for example, adequately described advances in undersea exploration and air travel years before such things were actualized. Without question, this tendency is not true prescience, but rather a fanciful interpretation of the prevailing thought of the time. While the science of Verne’s era could describe, but not build, submarines the likes of his “Nautilus,” Verne was nonetheless able to construct the machine within his virtual fictional world and run it through adventurous applications and simulations. In this way, literature provides a convenient venue for the safe exploration of extant theory. Many stories can be considered a coalescence of pure scientific thought into a contextualized semi-reality.

Johannes Kepler is thought by some to have written the first science fiction story in the 17th century. In it, he described a dream in which he flew to the moon and observed astrophysical phenomena about which he, as an astronomer, could only theorize. The art form provided him with an instrument for understanding his science in a more passionate and less analytical mode.

In a similar way, Arthur Conan Doyle’s legendary adventures of Sherlock Holmes are fine examples of fiction used to push the functional bounds of scientific analysis. These tales are not typically lumped into the science fiction category. But if one accepts a definition of the genre as fictional narrative in which the core events of said narrative are dependent upon the existence of science or technology that does not (yet) exist, then the tales of Sherlock Holmes belong alongside those of Conan Doyle’s contemporaries, Jules Verne and H.G. Well, as well as those of the Grandmasters Asimov and Clarke. As a medical doctor, Conan Doyle was able to entertain developments at the cusp of medical technology to empower his super-sleuth with analytical techniques that were not yet in employ by the police of the time.

Similarly, it is not surprising that the man often credited with having “invented” the communications satellite is Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote about the concept in a 1945 letter to Wireless World magazine, thirteen years before the first artificial satellite was actually launched. Clarke’s abilities and experiences as a science fiction writer enabled him to “think outside of the box,” to consider scientific possibilities that were minutely beyond the technological capabilities of the day. Like Kepler, Clarke’s unique position astraddle the worlds of both literature and science afforded him the necessary perspective to not only consider a technological possibility, but to run through fictionalized simulations of how the potential technology would affect larger society –a thought experiment rarely engendered upon by scientists of the day.

However, in the world of strict science, simply exploring an idea or technological precept does not qualify as analysis, but merely as the initial phase of the fabled scientific method. Two remaining elements must be incorporated: a controlled experimental environment and the reproducibility of results. The former is easily achieved in literature (more so than in actual laboratory conditions, to be sure); variables in a virtual fictional experiment can be instantly constrained by simply defining the environment a priori. The issue of reproducibility is more problematic, as it requires independent researchers (writers) to obtain the same solutions to reasonably identical problems.

The constraint of extraneous and spurious variables was notable in the responses to a foolhardy decree by John W. Campbell. The guru of the Golden Age of science fiction had declared that a science fiction detective story could never be written, since in fantastical worlds an assailant could always “death wish” his victim from behind a locked door. Through this statement, Campbell betrayed his lack of familiarity with the laboratory scientific method. The obvious solution, expounded with gusto by the likes of Harry Harrison and Larry Niven, was that an author could preclude the possibility of “death wishing” and other problematic elements by simply defining the extent of his fictional world a priori. Harrison’s various novels and anthologies concerning his character, the “Stainless Steel Rat”, and Niven’s The Long Arm of Gil Hamilton are but two examples of science fiction crime stories made possible by the constraining of spurious variables through the construction of thick, detailed fictional worlds whose social rules, physical laws and technological levels remain internally consistent.

In contrast, the reproduction of results is not a traditional goal of literature. Indeed, writers strive to explore new worlds, scenarios and situations, preferring not to tread the same ground travelled by others. One example, though, is of the concept of the “space elevator” or “orbital tether.” Originally conceptualized in the early 20th century by the legendary Russian physicist Tsiolkovsky, an orbital tether is a device that extends from the surface of a planet outward to a geostationary satellite, providing a cheap and efficient means of transporting people and goods to and from orbit. It goes without saying that such a device cannot be constructed in today’s economic and technological climate: the materials, expertise and wealth do not yet exist to enable its erection. Indeed, a functional orbital tether is likely to be at least a century away. Yet it has proven to be an attractive topic for several science fiction writers.

The most thorough treatment of the tether was given by Arthur C. Clarke in The Fountains of Paradise (1978). Clarke would revisit the concept in 3001: Final Odyssey two decades later. In Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy (1993, 1994, 1996), an orbital tether was erected in Martian orbit. Larry Niven would reproduce the device on both Earth and Mars in his Rainbow Mars (1997).

The differences in approaches to constructing the tether are interesting. Clarke described a traditional bottom-top engineering project, while Robinson suggested converting an asteroid into a self-replicating titanium cable that is dropped down from orbit. Niven, meanwhile, gave his space elevator life, making it an enormous alien tree that is grown simultaneously top-bottom and bottom-top. All of the writers foresaw the unique stressors to such a structure, and strove to suggest solutions in the context of fictional narrative. Both Niven and Robinson had the foresight to realize that Mars’ secondary moon Phobos would prove a navigational menace to a tether. Both writers struck upon the same solution, to oscillate the tether in sync with Phobos’ orbital period. These elements of problem solving, technical precision and fine detail are quite appealing to professional scientists, hence these novels have proven to be particularly popular among that technical subsector of the population.

Of course, both Niven and Robinson were inspired both by Clarke’s landmark work and by Tsiolkovsky’s initial theorems. Moreover, Niven credits Robinson for having first explored the Martian tether idea. These “experiments” are therefore not independent statistical events, and as such cannot be considered true scientific investigations. But neither are they mere fictional tales to be consumed without technological context or a nod to potential impact. Because of their unique nature, their preferred position between the planes of art and science, they must be considered a sort of “meta-experiment” in which analyses can be reproducible but not unique or independent. This in no way diminishes their value, but rather accentuates their important role in the hypothesis-generation phase of the formal scientific method.

CONCLUSION

The relationship between scientists and science fiction is a unique one in the literary world. The art reflects the activities of its audience while simultaneously inspiring that same audience to further its explorations. In engineering, this is called a feedback loop; in psychology, mutual dependence. This intertwining of interests has repercussions for wider society, increasingly so as Western civilization evolves into a genuine technocracy. How we will sustain ourselves in a world jolted by genetic engineering, for example, has already been examined in the realm of science fiction, while the treatment of the topic in such books as Brave New World no doubt informed and inspired the scientists who initially developed the technology. Moreover, our many possible responses to contact with alien civilizations have also been lain out and dissected in the pages of this unique genre, potentially providing a behavioural template for the real event. Since we are rapidly becoming aware that the projection of technological developments is vital for the effective preparation of public policy, the role of science fiction writers becomes heightened in the public eye.

In the novel Flying to Valhalla, scientist cum science fiction writer Charles Pellegrino succinctly presents the laws which would dictate present concerns regarding contact with an alien species:

The dominant species of any world, like humanity, is necessarily ruthless and predatory;
In any disagreement, an alien species will consider its own needs above ours; and
An alien species will assume that these same laws apply to us.

Using these laws, Pellegrino defies the optimistic and dogmatic outlook of Carl Sagan, predicting that any interstellar contact would necessarily become violent. Pellegrino’s ideas have spurred much debate in the world of speculative science, and may yet influence formal governmental policy with regard to space transmissions and exploration.

Without a doubt, the aforementioned relationship between genre and readership grows in its intimacy and potency. With the ever accelerating scientific sophistication of the general public, this relationship expands to meet those individuals previously uninterested in science fiction. This will likely lead to a growing mainstream acceptance of the genre, allowing both its spirited vision and its analytical precision to touch and affect an expanding population of scientifically literate fans.

The Magic of India

2009-01-14T06:05:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on Nov 5, 2001. A version had appeared in both India Currents Magazine (in December of 1996) and The Victoria College Alumni News in May of 1998, the latter under the title, "A Living Paradox: A Letter From India."

by Raywat Deonandan

Despite being of Indian origin, admittedly two centuries removed from my ancestors' arrival in Guyana, I've always clung to the romanticized Western ideal of the subcontinent. As a youth, I devoured Kipling and Forster, convinced that within every Indian forest could be heard the distant thumpings of tabla and the melancholy twang of the sitar, having been primed for this by the soundtracks of David Lean movies.

Surely, academic erudition, starving Indian children on Sunday night infomercials and such modern literary maestros as Rushdie and Seth would have cured me of such romanticism. But realism only served to flavour the romance, adding contradictory spicing to my impression of a place typically described as diverse and self-contradictory. Indeed, Rushdie's generation of writers built upon earlier generations' depiction of India as a fairy tale land, adding childish magic that masqueraded as "magic realism" and other "advanced" literary devices.

And so it was with great trepidation and excitement that I visited India, my ancestral motherland, for the first time. The fortunate recipient of a fellowship from the Canadian government, I and fourteen other Canadians studied development sites from the Himalayas in the extreme north to Kanyakumari in the extreme south. I had travelled through other parts of Asia before, and was reasonably well versed in regional Indian history, folklore, politics and economics. And yet I knew that this experience would be surprising in many, unexpected ways.

When friends ask me to sum up India with a simple observation or anecdote, a grisly example first comes to mind. I was staying at the India International Centre in New Delhi: ambassadorial splendour cached within the illusory Kipling-esque fairyland of Lodi Gardens, the old Islamic tomb complex. I awoke daily to Raj-like service with an opulent breakfast and bed tea, all while ten million Indians conducted life and business in the hidden metropolis beyond the vine-ridden walls. And on page six of the Times of India that first morning --typical of every subsequent morning-- was a story nine or ten lines long, hidden in the top left corner; it's title: "Twelve Congressmen Hacked To Death In Andrah Pradesh."

"Only in India," was the thought that came to my waking mind. It was a thought whose sentiment would return again and again. Only in a place that valued its democracy so passionately, yet tended to neglect its individual citizens shamelessly, would tales of political violence be relegated to the back pages, while ubiquitous and tiresome tales of scandal or Indo-Pakistani sports rivalries continually usurp the headlines.

The sentiment returned months later in the communist state of Kerala where I observed a storefront proudly displaying three adjacent posters: one of a pretty Indian model, another of religious leader Sai Baba and a third of Josef Stalin. Only in India would these three find common ground in someone's heart.

Only in India is the English language regularly risen to its intended level of artistry, though archaic in its application: "Urea Scandal May Prove Rao's Waterloo" (Times of India). And only in India are condoms donated by Western countries to help control the AIDS epidemic converted to children's balloons for commercial sale.

The magic I naively sought was cached beneath metres of commercial vulturism. In this land of my ancestors I grew more White by the hour for I could not speak any of the local languages, nor could I understand or mimic the local body language. The India that I perceived through Victorian novels and David Lean films was the India of British perception, and it is to that pole that I gravitated, not to the pole of reintegration with heritage betrayed by my skin colour.

The vagaries of my situation intrigued me endlessly. I sat in scholastic recline in a snooty restaurant, dressed as a purple Thai prince but with skin of pure Indian brown. The waiters smiled and winked at me as if they knew that I'd fooled the rest: I was a coolie masquerading as a sahib.

Yet magical things do happen in India. Dinner orders are juggled via what I'd begun to call the "wallah system" in which several men do the job that would be performed by a solitary man in West: a result of both immense unemployment and a deeply ingrained hierarchical system. Phone calls are placed by the operator to the Czech Republic instead of to Canada. And letters from different parts of the globe all arrive safely ...in the same envelope.

This kind of questionable sorcery is interspersed with magic of a more striking nature. In northern Uttar Pradesh, the probable origin of my family, the dawn brings an eerie vision of mist receding from a crater-like valley whose surrounding mountains scrape the sky. This is Kailasa, the Hindu Olympus, home of the gods. A gut-wrenching trek through the thin-aired Himalayan foothills, beneath the beating sun while our intestinal flora waged war with invading local strains, was rewarded with an eye-opening arrival at a gorgeous village of five hundred people.

My thoughts while travelling are eternally driven by film and literary references, and this experience was unavoidably linked to the classic fairy tale of American cinema: The Lost Horizon. Like the protagonist of that celluloid adventure amidst the Himalayas, I was touched by the pure physical beauty of the villagers who, though impoverished by our standards, were somehow enriched and superior for their seeming veracity of character and strength of community. Yet this was no Shangri-La, no undiscovered valley of heightened spirituality and toil-free existence devoid of desire and suffering. Life here was no doubt difficult at times, soured by problems common to rural communities in India: lack of water, food, capital, infrastructure and access to services.

Unavoidably, I considered the rural life that was denied me by my family's exodus first from this place, and then from rural Guyana to Canada. One of these lovely teenage girls could have been my wife. I could have been a farmer, poor and uneducated, with perhaps none of my burning questions answered, but with a measurable, tangible organic substance of life that no book, movie or career could offer.

Thus is the true nature of India's magic: a compulsion to consider what might have been, spurred perhaps by the surrounding cacophony of human existence in all its extremes. Yet, on the rooftop one night in suburban Bangalore, I listened to the monkeys in the distant treetops, watched the bats hunt in the low canopy and heard the dogs and cows competing for aural mastery of the night air. At that time, I was able to blind myself to the realities of modern India, and touch again the romance of Kipling's colonial melange.

And in Delhi again, I liked the look of the storm clouds on the horizon, the leading edge of the coming monsoon. The coconut tree before me was whipped into a frenzy while the surrounding deciduous leaves were in tropical tranquility. There was an odd juxtaposition of circling vultures against that ominous sky, one in which clouds hung like De Mille's cinematic angel of death.

The subconscious is an odd tool, I decided, one that allows a traveller to cope with a barrage of sensations and emotions by linking memory and observation with art and compassion. A final conclusion regarding India is then stumbled upon, that in the end it forces one to a mode of selfishness, to consider oneself, one's family and one's predicament to the exclusion of all other conscious thought. Perhaps that, too, is an aspect of her magic.

What Are You Prepared To Do About Terrorism?

2009-01-14T06:03:00.001-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on Oct 26, 2001, with the tag line, "A comparison between the September 11 terrorist attacks with experiences in Ireland." A further Editor's note was also added: this article was written and submitted on Sep. 15, 2001, just days after the Sep. 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington. Due to an email foul-up resulting from our relocation to Washington, the article was not received by The Podium until late October."

by Rodney Porter

Terrorist attacks-- killing and maiming were something I grew up with in Belfast, Northern Ireland. I became numb to it after a while, especially as a reporter. The magnitude of the incident in America is incomparable. Yet spare a thought for US action before joing the band of followers.

Firstly, the US has been involved, I claim interfered, in overseas terrorism, in Northern Ireland for years, appointing the American George Mitchell as the independent negotiator. The Clinton, Bush and Reagan administrations were also happy to get involved without invitation. When a Catholic was bombed by a Protestant, or vice versa, he appealed for discussion, encouraging talks rather than retribution or retaliation.

Yet now Bush declares retaliation will be taken on the perpetrators. How many people need to be killed in a terrorist attack for action to be taken? Two or two thousand?

Secondly, when Bush declared that terrorism would not be tolerated, did he really mean countries where votes would not be affected or the US Senate would not be irritated? How many Arab-Americans sit there compared to Irish-Americans? What about the Republican and Loyalist terrorist groups who are responsible for the deaths of men, women and children?

Will Bush help annihilate all terrorists or just those that bomb America? What about other democratic, peace loving countries? Also, remember yesterday’s terrorist, today’s president – just look to South Africa.

State funded terrorism? How many fund raising trips in America does Sinn Fein go on before people wake up? Americans are not used to terrorism on their own doorstep. America is a modern ‘Roman Empire’.

My heart is heavy, my mind is numb. For others who also lost a friend or family member in the attack, my heart goes out to you. Terrorism is not new. Many people have felt the toll of the terrorist bullet and bomb before. I have heard empty rhetoric many times and seen votes; money and power get in the way.

What are you prepared to do?

Current events

2009-01-14T06:00:00.001-08:00

This poem was published in the original Podium on Sep 26, 2001, with the tag line "Further poetic observations of New York City as the war on terror rages on."

by Anonymous-AL (Name removed by request of the author)

incompleted mourning supersaturated deaths
vigils by the living awaiting definitions of breath
posters of her father his wife and their best friend
sentries of candle sticks burned to their ends

She was in the height of her life and He was father of five
They received death's salute unimagined by our minds
stolen from a Lover erased from a Son's life
killing a graduation, a yet to be wife

You've got to move on ya know get on with being alive
do your hellos, chats and coffees, dining, taxi rides
see the dow betray you wave your flag proudly by
enact daily democracy our most civilized disguise

Watch the burning of old glory in islamabad
listen to the deafening rhetoric of defunct dialog
get your gas masks ready
adorn masks of supremacy
see freedoms stutter
and refugees flee

The author s a doctor living and working in New York city.

Poem

2009-01-14T05:58:00.001-08:00

This poem was published in the original Podium magazine on Sep 23, 2001, with the tag line, "A Doctor/poet comments on New York in the wake of September 11."

by Anonymous-AL (Name removed by request of the author)

i haven't cried in a long time
until i saw life undermined
by soaring jets of hijacked lives
innocence trapped by bloody knives

these daggers to democracy
delivered death immediately
to future friends i cannot meet
to families drowning in defeat

numb to the contents of these days
drunk on nauseating dismay
i sit here wonder wander why
among the smokey manhattan sky

america's borders battered / reviled
her way of life now revised
a million doubts and tears she doth possess
but here me now she cannot rest

watch out for the shadows of the new terror
as it lurks to spit out more bloody horrors
marking each human life inherently unsafe
vigilance i know must not wait

The author is a doctor living in Manhattan. This poem was an email sent to his sister on the day after the terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center.

Open The Airports!

2009-01-14T05:56:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on September 15, 2001, with thw tag line, "Why we cannot submit to fear in the wake of September 11."

by Raywat Deonandan

An obsession with terrorism infects the Western world this week, with no sign of letting up anytime soon. Much saber-rattling ensues, with calls across America for instant retaliation against the Taliban or other groups who might be harbouring Usama bin Laden. The frequent allusions to Pearl Harbor are understandable, but are becoming nauseating in their mounting irrationality. The famous quote about Pearl Habor having “waked a sleeping giant and filled him with resolve” has been paraphrased by every well-meaning American politician struggling to say something important during his few allotted minutes of television time.

As a Canadian, my perspective is more detached and, some would argue, less valid than that of Americans closer to Ground Zero. But as a young professional about to relocate to Washington DC, my opinion takes on a definitive personal resonance flavoured with nervousness and apprehension. And as a man of colour, specifically a man of brown skin and South Asian descent, I grow wary of the inevitable backlash against all things vaguely Arab and all things that are unlike the mainstream American stereotype of white-skinned Christianity.

I therefore couch my arguments with apologetic caveats, betraying my fearful awareness of the violent emotional core that lies within the heart of present American grief and outrage. In Canada, Islamic mosques have suffered gunfire and a Hindu temple has been firebombed. In Australia, Muslim children have been beaten by their Christian compatriots. And in the USA, Muslim shopkeepers have been taunted and abused, and a Sikh cabdriver pulled from his vehicle and assaulted. It cannot be stressed enough that the attacks on the World Trade Center and on the Pentagon were perpetrated for political purpose by individuals who use religion as an afterthought of rationalization. But the American psyche, born of Revolution, requires a nation or a people on which to heap retribution. Hence all brown-skinned people are now at risk.

Much of the rhetoric being put forward by American leaders, consumed with fervour by the American public, concerns a “war on terrorism” that will result in the elimination of such activities from the world stage. Let us be clear: terrorism has existed for centuries, and will never go away. American military action can be applied to bring bin Laden to justice and to eliminate the machinery of his organization. It cannot remove the philosophical core from which suicide bombings originate.

That core exists because of the marginalisation of communities around the world. Whether or not that marginalisation resulted from the policies of the USA and its allies is irrelevant; the populations of such communities will always identify the world’s biggest power brokers as being the indirect cause of their distress. To truly minimize terrorism in coming years, our attention should be applied to areas outside of military action and security. Yes, the present generation of fanatics are probably beyond the call of rational negotiation. Hence, their machinery to make war against innocent targets must be excised without hesitation. But a long-term solution can only be achieved through more compassionate and responsible policies with regard to Western influence in potentially unstable regions, lest we continue to generate future generations of suicide bombers.

As I write this, I await confirmation from my new employers in DC that I’m still on schedule to begin working there on October 1st. Unfortunately, Reagan National Airport, the central airport of the city, remains closed. There is grumbling that they may never re-open it, due to its proximity to both the Pentagon and the White House. The airport was one of the city’s selling points to me, as it represents an easy way to back to Toronto quickly and with minimal fuss. I’m frustrated that this wave of paranoia may result in the airport’s closing, as this will in no way make the city safer. Let’s face it, if a lunatic is truly intent on destroying the White House, all he needs do is load up an ultra-light with TNT, launch it from his front lawn and crash it into the building –no hijacking necessary. The closing of airports just feeds the growing sentiment of reactionism, racism and anger, and plays directly into the hands of those who wish us nothing but terror.

The Smoking Debate

2009-01-14T05:52:00.001-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on August 20, 2001, with the tag line, "No-smoking laws might be reasonable, or they might be the product of blind ideology." It was later reproduced on Dooney's Cafe in December of 2001.

by Raywat Deonandan

Many North American cities, including Toronto, have adopted a universal no-smoking policy in all public places. The debate thus ensues between public health enthusiasts and those who would use totalitarian allusions to characterize the imposition, major newspapers and civil liberties activists among them.

As an epidemiologist, I feel my position to be based as much on hard data as on ideology: cigarette smoke is a health hazard that cannot be contained in a public eating venue. All citizens, the public health platform goes, have the right to a healthy environment, and smoking violates that right for both smokers and non-smokers alike. Whether my insistence is founded upon a sincere belief in the health statistics, blind loyalty to my profession, a personal dislike of second-hand smoke or indeed upon a misguided sense of totalitarian liberal ideology is admittedly uncertain.

Perhaps an over-familiarity with lung cancer rates and other tobacco-mediated disorders compels me to accept an Orwellian government intrusion where one is not necessitated. In a society rife with rumours of conspiracy, both governmental and corporate, there is a natural fear of both the powers of tobacco lobbyists and of the Machiavellian designs of an overly paternal state. The balance to be struck is often determined by one's profession and by anecdotal personal experience. As a member of a health-based profession, then, am I blinded to the dangers of restricting an otherwise legal substance?

The opposing argument has tended to be one of practicality pitted against this perceived policy of "liberal ideology gone mad." The financial plight of the poor restaurateur, forced into receivership by the absence of cash-dispensing smokers, is the favourite example oft quoted. Furthermore, there is no doubt that tobacco represents a major economic foundation of Ontario: its farmers dominate the southwestern agricultural belt; its marketers provide substantial remuneration to other industries via advertising and sponsorship, and its taxation pays for many important social pillars, such as education and even health care. Such an argument is further spiced with an abhorrence of any government control over our bodies, and a subsequent indignance over draconian measures to control the usage of any legal substance.

"If it's a legally sanctioned product," the detractors contend, "why can't we use it publicly? And why must the government insist on protecting us from ourselves?”

As a society, however, we have accepted that it's possible to legitimize the manufacture, sale and use of a substance, yet restrict its pattern of use. Codeine is an accepted pain killer, for example, yet it is an actionable offence to operate certain machinery while under the drug's influence. Alcohol is an obvious example, advertised ad nauseam but sold only to adults at licenced venues. And a slew of prescription drugs are legally and socially acceptable, but require a doctor's note to obtain.

Why should tobacco incite such passion and, dare I say it, vitriol? A clichéd answer is that the tobacco industry has subtly influenced us into believing the cigarette to be a lifestyle choice, maybe even a personal declaration of independence from the external authority that now attempts to eliminate it. Indeed, a corollary to the anti-control argument is a refusal to let the bureaucratic machine dictate the internal goings-on of our bodies.

But the government already exercises subtle control over our bodies, and we, as a society, applaud that control. It is illegal, for example, to inject heroin into our veins, to commit suicide and to sell our internal organs. Few would argue that these laws are without merit. A civil liberties argument against the smoking ban is therefore purist ideology, not necessarily born of pragmatism. And when disagreements are founded upon elementally conflicting doctrines or ideologies, no amount of arguing or debate will result in reconciliation.

What is needed, then, is hard data. No one, except maybe tobacco lobbyists, can doubt the deleterious effects of cigarette smoke on personal and public health. But any conjecture on the economic or public morale implications of the smoking ban is mere speculation, not founded upon available facts. When passions are incensed by ideological and professional conflict, prudence and science are perhaps not the most emotionally satisfying of solutions.

When My Father Closed His Eyes

2009-01-14T05:47:00.001-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on August 1, 2001, with the tag line, "A young man's father dies after more than two year's battle against leukemia."

by Rodney Porter

Today is August 1, 2001. It is a month since my dad died. He had acute myeloid leukemia for two years and five months. It had been diagnosed as terminal for around six weeks.

Nevin Porter

To me, the greatest tragedy is that he was only 54 years old and regarded his retirement from the Northern Ireland civil service as the light at the end of the tunnel. He never saw it. He was never free of the shackles of his job. He was robbed in one way, much like I sometimes feel I was robbed of a father.

Finally, things are falling back into a routine again and life is starting to gain a sense of normality. But it will never be the same for anyone in my family.

I feel like I’ve joined an exclusive club, membership gained only by having a dead parent. Much like when I got divorced, I developed a circle of male friends who were also separated and divorced. We could share secrets, feelings and thoughts that we knew no one else could ever understand.

What do you say to someone whose parent dies of cancer? Sorry to hear about your loss. Never say, “I know how you feel,” unless you really do, and you never will. It is unique in its ugliness.

The journey from when my father was told the cancer was terminal to his death was not unexpected. It resulted in my brother bringing forward his wedding to September. Still, too late. I was the first person my father told since I was living in Canada. I was off work and got the call at 11 a.m. on a Friday morning. After the call, I remember buying a packet of small cigars, a six-pack of beer and a pickaxe. I then dug up my garden and landscaped it. I needed the distraction and a channel for my emotions.

Questions that raged were: How long do you have? What was the point of chemotherapy or radiotherapy? Where is your god now? What will mum do? Do I move back to the UK? None of these questions were answered.

In the weeks that followed, I planned to move back to Northern Ireland temporarily for two months for August and September. Work had made some suggestions and I intended to do off-site work part-time. It seemed like a great idea at the time. Again, these plans never materialized.

Death is something no one can prepare for. No matter how much you expect it, it’s arrival will still shock you. I was house-sitting for a friend in north Toronto when my cell phone rang on Sunday, July 1. It was a nurse calling to tell me that my dad was in hospital.

“Rodney,” said the nurse, “I’m calling from the Royal Victoria Hospital. Your dad was brought in to us last night. It’s quite serious.”

“Should I come home?” was my instant response. I remember hoping the answer would be no.

“Yes, you should,” was her reply. “Would you like to speak to your mum?”

July 1 is Canada Day. And it was a Sunday morning. Buying a ticket was a daunting mission. I got friends to help me, to call around and just find a ticket agent who was open. I eventually got hold of United Airlines who could fly me out on a 3 p.m. flight that day via Chicago and London. The ticket was $2,000, but the cost was immaterial.

Sometimes concerns about other things fall into perspective.

Like my father’s comment about derogatory remarks we had made about fat people. He turned to us and, with a frown, said he give anything to be overweight. Being so frail and thin was an outer sign of the toll of the cancer. When he was once charged a pensioner’s rate for a haircut, my 54-year-old father, a former giant of a man, realized he had been reduced to looking like a tired old man because of the cancer treatment. It hurt him along with the stares he felt people gave him.

After I booked my flight, just after 11:30 EST the phone rang. My brother’s weeping was all I needed to hear as he uttered the words, “Daddy’s closed his eyes.” I didn’t cry outwardly. My tears would come later. After I got home then I could cry. It struck hard at my chest, and then I felt numb as I waited for the taxi to the airport.

The next morning I waited for my brother to pick me up at the airport in Belfast. On the flight home I remembered every aspect of my dad’s life. He was a good man, but also a human being. He had faults, weaknesses, and a bad side just like the rest of us. But most of all, I remember the last time I saw him. It was in April when I last hugged him goodbye at the airport and we said that we loved each other.

I believe he knew he was dying even then and that he had an idea of how long he had. I believe he chose to hide it deliberately. He wanted things to be normal. He didn’t want anyone to pity him, or to change their lives because of him.

The week of the funeral was a blur. Shoveling the dirt into the grave symbolized the end. My dad was dead. His life was finally over. It was then that I understood what my mum meant when she said that it felt like he was still in the house when the open casket sat in the living room.

My mother loaned me his diaries, which were so private, and confidential that reading them was difficult. It was evident from reading the diaries that my father’s Christian faith had remained constant throughout his illness. He even talked about having testified when the medical students came to examine him, poking and prodding at the living disease they wished to study.

What would I give up or sacrifice to bring him back? Anything and nothing both come to mind. While I would love to have him back, I would not wish cancer on anyone. I also believe that he was ready. He knew that death imminent and he had accepted this.

Someone once said I was being brave. No, I am not. Quite the opposite. My approach is much like my father’s view of life. I am pragmatic and realistic. I do not have a brave face, I just have an honest one.

A lot of people think my attitude is one of denial. Yes, it hurts. I miss my father a lot but I know that he will never leave me nor forsake me. He was a big man in many ways and he was generous in sharing his life with us.

I used to read about the latest drug treatments. I used to talk with his doctors about cancer, its causes and how he was progressing. But I stopped because it did no good. It got to the point where acute myeloid leukemia was becoming bigger than my father.

Quite simply, I wanted to enjoy my dad while I still had him. When I called home each day we seldom mentioned the cancer. It bored him and it was not the leukemia I was interested in but the man. He had fought so hard. And now there was nothing left to fight for. So I adopted his approach. His condition was openly acknowledged with his numerous weekly trips up to the clinic at the hospital for transfusions and check-ups.

How did he actually die? How do you die of leukemia? On his death certificate the cause of death is listed as acute myeloid leukemia and haematemesis.

On the Saturday before he died my mum tells me he was disconcerted. At one time in the day he turned to her and said, “Does Rodney know that Matthew is home?” I live in Toronto; my brother, Matthew, still lives at home.

He was confused, most likely due to a brain hemorrhage.

His confusion worsened. Later, on Saturday night, he neither knew where he was nor what he was saying. Even now, one month later, it makes me close my eyes in sorrow as I think of this chain of events. He vomited blood then slipped out of the bed, banging his head on the nightstand. An ambulance was called. He threw up more blood on the way to the hospital. He died on Sunday, July 1 at 3.35 p.m. in hospital surrounded by his wife, his son and daughter.

I wish I could have been there. But what use would that have been? My last physical memory is not of a sick man with sores, fighting for his last breath. Instead, it is of a man who drove me to the airport in Belfast, hugged me, told me he loved me and waved farewell. Later I learnt he was depressed after I left and confided in my mother, “I never knew how close I was to Rodney.”

Even my last phone call was normal. We talked of my life in Toronto, my brother’s upcoming wedding and about the best way to rid a lawn of overgrown cherry trees.

Do not remember the leukemia. Nor the pain. Or the sheer misery it caused both my father and my family. Rather, remember the man who was quite simply my dad.

Rodney Porter is an accomplished medical journalist and the Editor of The Ontario Fire Service Messenger. His personal website can be found at www.rodneyporter.com

To Heck With Moon Rocks, There's Luke Skywalker

2009-01-14T05:40:00.000-08:00

A longer version of this article was published in the original Podium magazine on July 13, 2001, with the tag line, "How the entertainment industry has diluted history and learning", and reproduced on Dooney's Cafe in December of 2001. This shorter version was published in The Ottawa Citizen newspaper on May 19, 2002.

by Raywat Deonandan

Description of article's appearance in The Ottawa Citizen: Subhead: Cousteau is gone. Sagan is gone. We've reached the 'end of science.' What's a PhD to do these days? Image: portrait of Stephen Hawking. Caption: The Thinker: British physicist Stephen Hawking, who hit the best-seller lists with his book A Brief History of Time and has even portrayed himself on an episode of The Simpsons, is the last of the popular scientists.

A recent trip to the Smithsonian reminded me of the glories to which museums can aspire. The Smithsonian truly is a wonder. Its very existence, its free admission and its crowdedness are heartwarming. That so many people would visit a museum warmly reminds me that science, history and learning are still valued in the world.

However, a disturbing observation shook me from my self-satisfied reverie, filling me once more with concern for our society's long-term educational wherewithal.

The Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum boasts many treasures, including mock-ups of lunar landers and space shuttles, and the original Spirit of St. Louis, preserved decades after Lindbergh's death.

Providing a nucleus around which papier-mache models and space-suited mannequins seemed to orbit was an actual moon rock, brought to Earth by one of the Apollo missions of the early 1970s. Apollo moon rocks are rare enough, but this one was special: It was exposed to the air and made available for visitors to touch, caress and poeticize. This was an incredible sight: one of humanity's priceless artifacts presented for all to see and feel. It represented a culmination of millennia of human dreams: We can all now touch the moon.

Most Apollo moon rocks remain sealed in depressurized units filled with inert gases. That this one was exposed to the Washington air and to the touch of the people was indicative of the democratic tradition, and its resulting affluence, which made the Apollo missions possible.

Yet no one seemed to care.

The line-ups for the model aircraft were quite long. The dense clusters of people occupied with mannequins and hand-drawn lunar landscapes were loud and engaged. But I remained alone with an actual moon rock for half an hour, frustratingly cognizant of its glowing veracity in this menagerie of fraudulence.

Of course, a rock is not as much fun as something that looks like a big toy. It is children's duty to seek multicolored things upon which they can climb. But the inability of an entire generation of adults to appreciate the intrinsic value and enormous financial cost of that one rock was saddening.

I fear this is a reflection of the West's growing obsession with the theatrical in place of the demonstrable. As we increasingly glorify actors and entertainers more so than thinkers and leaders, we are drawn more to renditions of history than to history itself.

We are a society that learns its history from Hollywood versions of events rather than from factual accounts. In a given week of A&E Biography, one learns the life stories of four contemporary entertainers and one truly historical figure. Prior to the current war, entertainers would often equal or surpass actual analysts on political talk shows.

In an episode of The Simpsons, a science-fiction convention brings out characters from Star Wars, The X-Files and Star Trek, and one real-life astronaut, Neil Armstrong. Guess whose exhibit is the least popular? "People," Armstrong's publicist shouts, "this man has actually been to outer space!" But no one cares because Mark Hamill is waving his fake light saber.

If a major motion picture were made about the Apollo 11 moon landing, the actor who plays Neil Armstrong would draw a bigger crowd than would Neil Armstrong himself.

The forces of entertainment have done a splendid job of popularizing some historical and scientific events that would otherwise be difficult to make meaningful to a distrustful generation struggling to see the relevance of much of the orthodoxy. But those same forces now threaten to usurp the truth, and to draw the communal imagination away from the glories of the real thing.

The Theatre of Learning

2009-01-14T05:36:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on July 13, 2001, with the tag line, "How the entertainment industry has diluted history and learning." It was later re-published on Dooney's Cafe in December of 2001. A shorter version was later published in The Ottawa Citizen under the title, "To heck with moon rocks, there's Luke Skywalker", on May 19, 2002.

by Raywat Deonandan

A recent trip to Washington's fabled Smithsonian Institute reminded me of the glories to which museums can aspire. While I am a diehard supporter and lifetime member of Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum, the ROM would fit nicely into a tiny corner of the Smithsonian, and could never challenge the larger institution's scope, content or legacy. The Smithsonian truly is a wonder of the modern world. Its very existence, price of admission (free!) and its crowdedness are heartwarming. That so many people would visit a museum warmly reminds me that science, history and learning are still valued in the world.

However, a rather disturbing observation shook me from my self-satisfied hopeful reverie, and I was once more filled with concern for our society's long-term educational wherewithal.

The Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum boasts a great many treasures, including mock-ups of lunar landers and space shuttles, and the original Spirit of St. Louis, preserved decades after Lindbergh's death. Providing a nucleus about which papier-mache models and space-suited mannequins seemed to orbit was an actual moon rock brought back to Earth by one of the Apollo missions of the early 1970's. Apollo moon rocks are rare enough, but this one was quite special: it was exposed to the air and made available for any visitor to touch, caress, poeticize or otherwise inspect. Armed guards accompanied the rock, of course. But this was still an incredible sight: one of humanity's priceless artifacts presented for all to see and feel. It represented a culmination of millenia of human dreams... we can all now touch the moon.

Most Apollo moon rocks remain sealed in depressurized units filled with inert gases. That this one was exposed to the Washington air --to allow taxpayers to experience some of the glory of their space program-- was in some ways indicative of the democratic tradition whose resulting affluence made the Apollo missions affordable in the first place. Yet no one seemed to care. The line-ups for the papier-mache models were quite long. The dense bursts of people occupied with space-suited mannequins and hand-drawn lunar landscapes were loud and engaged. But I remained alone with an actual moon rock for half an hour or more, all the time frustratingly cognizant of its glowing veracity in this menagerie of fraudulence.

I am aware, of course, that a rock is not as much fun as something that looks like a big toy. My annoyance is not with the children, for it is their duty to be drawn to multicoloured things upon which they can climb. But the inability of an entire generation of adults to appreciate both the intrinsic value and enormous financial cost of that one rock was saddening.

I do not pretend that this is a uniquely American tendency. I fear it is a reflection of the entire Western world's growing obsession with the theatrical in place of the demonstrable. As we increasingly glorify actors and entertainers moreso than thinkers and leaders, it is no wonder we are drawn more to renditions of history than to history itself.

We are a society that learns its history from Hollywood versions of events rather than from factual accounts. In a given week of A&E biography episodes, one is treated to the life stories of four contemporary entertainers and only one truly historical figure. Prior to the present state of war, the number of entertainers on political talk shows would often equal or surpass the number of actual analysts.

My own memories of history, it seems, are anchored and contextualized by entertainment events. I am reminded of an episode of The Simpsons in which a science-fiction convention brings out characters from Star Wars, The X-Files and Star Trek and one real-life astronaut, Neil Armstrong. Guess whose exhibit was the least popular? "People," Armstrong's publicist shouted, "this man has actually been to outer space!" But no one cared because Mark Hamill was waving his fake light-sabre.

I have no doubt that if a major motion picture were made about the Apollo 11 moon landing, the actor who plays Neil Armstrong would draw a bigger crowd than would Neil Armstrong himself. Indeed, maybe the Smithsonian should have had Armstrong himself available for close-up inspection, and sent the moon rock back to the scientists who could truly appreciate it.

The forces of entertainment have done a splendid job of popularizing some historical and scientific events that would otherwise be difficult to make meaningful to a distrustful generation struggling to see the relevance of much of the orthodoxy. But those same forces now threaten to usurp the truth, and to draw the communal imagination away from the glories of the real thing.

Eminem's Brilliance

2009-01-14T05:32:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on April 18, 2001, with the tag line, "The white rapper seems to be rewarded for being offensive."

by Thayne Ross Rigby

The supporters of white rapper Eminem have now gone so far as to suggest that he is brilliant. I suppose that they are referring to his brilliant "talent" for rhyme and rhythm. He is especially skilled in the lyrically demanding genre of poetic misogynistic homophobia. I'll give him that. But that's not all. The controversy surrounding Eminem has brilliantly proven the illegitimacy of hate crimes legislation, as well. (And you thought he was just some punk rapper with a bad attitude and a habit of flipping the bird.)

Hate crimes legislation is quite simply an attempt to base the sentencing of lawbreakers on evidence that can never be fully obtained. Or, in other words, to punish criminals based not just upon the severity of one's crime, but on the supposition of one's motive. Even after gathering as much anecdotal and circumstantial evidence as is available, even if we are told by the perpetrator himself what the motive was, we are still left with a decision: to either believe what he says or reject it; to believe what the evidence points to or not. We can never definitively "know" what the true motive was at that time the crime was committed.

Enter the beautiful and talented Eminem. No one questions whether his message is filled with hate and anger. There is no ambiguity in his lyrics. He raps of rape. He raps of murder. He raps of all manner of violence and assault and death and destruction. And his favorite targets are women (including his own mother and wife) and, lest we forget, gays. So why is Eminem not the poster boy for federal hate crimes legislation? If ever there was proof that hate exists, and that it is marketable to the masses if packaged correctly, it is the startling success of Eminem's album, The Mis-Education of Marshall Mathers, which has sold more than a million copies so far. But instead of furthering the cause of hate crimes legislation, the controversy wrought by Eminem's album has instead shown the impotence of such legislation.

At the recent Grammy award show, Elton John, long-time openly gay musician and activist, first performed with and then held up the hand of Eminem on stage in a twisted, confusing and (for the gay rights activists picketing outside) infuriating show of solidarity. Ironically, many were wondering just what Elton John's "motivation" was for interjecting himself into the Eminem saga at all. Was he attempting to protect the artist's first amendment right to think up, write down, and then perform lyrics depicting the beating of innocent people based upon their gender or sexual orientation? If so, I don't remember him raising the hand of Dr. Laura. Her bible-based orthodoxy was universally denounced as evil by the whole of the homosexual community, though she simply articulated age-old biblical teachings and never even hinted at violence or intolerance at all.

Or was Elton John, along with many other Hollywood leftists, showing support for Eminem simply because they think that he doesn't mean it. They believe Eminem when he says that his motivation is not hate. Fame, maybe. Money, certainly. But hate, no. But what of the gay rights picketers outside the show? They don't seem to believe him. Or are they simply against his right to free speech at all, if it means the professing of an uncomplimentary opinion of the homosexual lifestyle?

In the end, though Elton John and his ilk and the gay rights picketers are in total disagreement where Eminem is concerned, both groups can claim intellectual consistency within the bounds of their respective lunacy. For both groups base their support --or lack thereof-- on the supposition of Eminem's "motive". But, through their disagreement, they unwittingly prove the illegitimacy and utter unfeasibility of creating a criminal hierarchy of motivation. If gay rights activists themselves cannot agree whether Eminem is motivated by hate --when he explicitly promotes such in his lyrics, when he involves himself in violent behavior in real life, when all evidence points in that direction-- how can they suggest, with any credibility at all, that such subjectivity and conjecture should be taken into serious consideration during the sentencing of actual crimes? They can't. Thanks to the brilliance of white rapper and moral philosopher, Eminem.

Thayne Rigby is finishing a degree in Political Science & Philosophy at Boise State University, and is considering a career in broadcast journalism.

Guyana

2009-01-14T05:18:00.000-08:00

This article was originally published in India Currents Magazine in June of 2001, after a shorter version appeared in The Globe and Mail on March 14, 2001. It was published in the original Podium magazine in June of 2001.

by Raywat Deonandan

"Born in the land of the mighty Roraima
Land of great rivers and far stretching sea "

are words sung in drunken glee by relatives of my parents' generation. The song tells of the land of my birth, Guyana, a place called "back home" by my elders, but which to me had always been merely a source of relatives' funny accents and the occasional bawdy provincial story; a place lost entirely in the immaturity of infantile memory, and remade incompletely through the borrowed memories of others.

The courthouse in Georgetown

But all that changed as I return to Guyana, unexpectedly and unprepared, 31 years after leaving as a baby. "Born in the land where men sought El Dorado/Land of the diamond and bright shining gold," the song goes, boasting of the land's natural wealth, and hinting at the plight of those who had sought it. I return as a recipient of one of Guyana's national arts awards, undeserving because I am heretofore unable to find a connection to the ancestral land, which now honors me. That would change as the assault of sights and scents, and the camaraderie of locals, conspire to force my acknowledging of that buried organic thread of belonging.

Despite the song's promises, I see no gold or diamonds, nor do I find the time to explore the great rivers or far stretching sea. But I do taste the sweetness of Guyana's fruit, remark on the comeliness of her women, the brightness of her tropical sun and the seeming timelessness of her stitch within the fabric of colonial history. This is a place beaten by its history, existing at the rare conflux of a dozen trading nations, yet striving valiantly to pull itself from the status of Third World indigent to modern Caribbean power broker.

Deonandan with former President and living legend Janet Jagan

Guyana is a frequently misplaced and mispronounced nation in the Canadian travel vocabulary. Formerly called British Guiana, it is nestled longitudinally between Brazil and the Caribbean ocean, and horizontally between Venezuela and Suriname (formerly Dutch Guyana). A democracy, she remains the only officially English-speaking country in South America, and one of Canada's most effusive sources of Caribbean emigration.

At the time of Columbus, the region was inhabited by the Arawak and Carib aboriginal tribes whose legacy is the word guiana. It means "land of waters," testament to the region's multitude of waterways streaming to and from the Amazon basin. The three Guyanas of history, Dutch, French and British, were a trading and farming delta operated by European powers for the past two centuries. The land was valuable for its rugged frontier against the rich South American jungle, its navigable river system, its potential for a plantation-style economy, and its position on the shore of the lucrative Caribbean shipping lanes.

When the aboriginal tribes were pushed back into the rainforest, African slaves were brought in to work the sugar plantations. With the transition to British rule in 1786, the labor structure, punctuated by violent slave revolt decades earlier, fell under the auspices of British imperial law. Hence, the abolition of slavery in the British Empire 21 years later led to a critical need for cheap plantation labor. That labor was found via the indentured servitude system wherein subjects of the empire, mostly East Indian and some Chinese, were shipped in to work on a supposedly contractual basis. The colorful songs do not tell of this history. That task is left to the pockets of angry subversive writers scattered throughout the diaspora.

Most historians agree that the British violated the service contracts and refused the indentured laborers their promised passage home. The result was generations of large numbers of people, mostly Indians, stranded in a country to which they never truly intended to emigrate. In the twentieth century, with the dissolution of British rule in favor of a fractious parliamentary system, Guyana remains a nation of essentially two races: African and Indian. This racial duality is a persistent social and political theme, occasionally sinking to riotous violence, and sometimes rising to philosophical elegance, as in the establishment of the multi-racial socialist government of the late President Cheddi Jagan, Guyana's most beloved fallen hero.

Jagan is often called the father of the modern Guyanese nation. His 80-year old widow Janet, also a former President, remains an honored national figure who hearkens to a bygone era of Gandhi/Mandela styled social protest and political sacrifice. Even their 1943 interracial marriage (he was Indian, she a Jew from Illinois) was a daring feat, a template for a coming age.

Despite the Jagans' heroism, Guyana's story in the twentieth century is one of corruption and lost opportunity. As the song describes so proudly, it is a nation rich in mineral and biological wealth, devoid of the population pressures of other developing nations (there are fewer than a million permanent residents). Its rugged beauty inspired the likes of Arthur Conan Doyle who fashioned his 1912 novel "The Lost World" after Guyana's unspoiled jungle primacy, specifically the misty Mount Roraima upon whose Paleolithic peak Conan Doyle envisioned Victorian dinosaur hunters and lost prehistoric tribes.

Guyana's enviable position as an English-speaking literate nation whose expatriate vim offers access to the resources of the West should have propelled Guyana into the role of Southern leader. Yet, the nation has languished economically by virtue of recent dictatorial corruption and mismanagement. High inflation, elevated rates of maternal and child morbidity, increased street crime and official corruption, and residents' poor access to infrastructure the textbook signatures of Third World status have been typical of Guyana up to and including the 1980s.
This was the ominous data I weighed while considering whether to undertake the visit to the land of my birth. I was taken from Guyana at the age of 2, and returned once more for a summer visit 20 years ago. I had joined the great soup of immigrants in Toronto, multicolored, multicultural, and undeniably Canadian. Despite the thickening density of Guyanese expatriates filling the Toronto-New York corridor, I had no conscious desire to return to my motherland.

All the cars have names!

However, my book of short stories titled "Sweet Like Saltwater" ostensibly about the Indo-Caribbean diaspora, surprisingly won the 2000 Guyana Prize for Best First Book. Just like that, I was on my way back to this lonely tropical way station.

The existence of the Guyana Prize is itself a window into the psyche of a nation making great strides to re-position itself as a trade-and tourism-worthy modern democracy. It is one of the English-speaking world's most prestigious literary awards, and the only national book award offered by a Caribbean country other than Cuba.

Though the official literacy rate hovers about 98 percent, the country only produces a handful of books each year. But in many Southern societies, the written word retains both power and prestige, regardless of the official rate of book production and consumption. The literary legacy left to Guyana from its most culturally influential ancestral places India, West Africa and Englandis one that seemingly demands the recognition of communicative excellence, evident in the oratorical skills of local leaders and in the impressive feats of poetic recitation required from schoolchildren. Given the poor rate of domestic book production, due in part to a hobbled publishing industry, it is not surprising that the nation glories in the artistic achievements of its expatriate children. London's Pauline Melville and Fred D' Aguiar of Florida are but two such non-resident writers oft honored in Guyana.

Arriving in the capital city, Georgetown, I am filled with trepidation. One guidebook describes the place as "the second most violent capital city in South America, after Bogota." It further warns: "under no circumstances go out at night, and avoid doing so in the daytime, too." Wariness of violent street crime was the mantra preached to me by friends and relatives, none of whom had been to Georgetown in many years.

But the city is surprisingly pleasant. Nestled against the Atlantic shore, it nonetheless considers itself a Caribbean metropolis, yet its official population of 200,000 would make it merely a large town by North American standards. It was once a colonial gem, still proudly bearing its traditional moniker of "the garden city," though decades of infrastructure neglect have tarnished its floral vigor. Whitewashed wooden buildings with thatched multicolored roofs still provide a fair amount of charm and elegance, and rebuilt roads encourage the recent inundation of American sports cars and utility vehicles. All about, the signs of an economic renaissance abound.

One is struck by a distinct odor that, to me at least, is ubiquitous across all tropical domains: the scent of damp fabrics, unseen fungal growths and hot, wet sea air. Not necessarily unpleasant, it is womb-like in its familiarity. Eager surveillance from the window of a cramped Guyana Airways plane revealed dazzling green arteries of water that pulse with life, giving truth to the aboriginal name for the place. The odor and the greenery seem complementary, and one is made less aware of the urban concrete, and more sensitive to the nearby ocean and strategically planted foliage.

The streets and highways are cluttered with autos, muscular and loud. The car is a symbol of machismo here, and owners have taken to emblazoning their vehicles with personalized names. My driver has named his for the Backstreet Boys, and gestures to the photo of the cover girl on his dashboard: "That's the backstreet girl," he jokes.

Minibuses plow by. Lynn Mangru, a local sitcom actress and my guide for the morning, tells me that the buses are privately owned with fares set by the government. "People choose which bus to ride by the music the driver is playing," she says. I decide that my favorite bus is one named "Sweetness" driven by a sloppy, big-bellied, very un-sweet man. On the bus's back, the driver has written the explanation: "Your sweetness is my weakness."

Crowds of people gather in every public locale in Georgetown. The roars of rancorous Creole, English-based and similar to Jamaican patwa but spiced with elements of French, Dutch, Senegalese, Hindi, Spanish, and Portuguese, assault the ear in torrents of musical speech, sometimes joyous and sometimes angry the sounds of street commerce common around the world. The Creole of Guyana is a trademark of the place. It was the language of my youth, usually summoned from my subconscious only with the aid of alcohol or family prodding, embarrassing for its foreignness and inapplicability to Canadian life. Here it is refreshingly familiar, heard at last as a living language for an entire people, and not, as the locals would describe it, as simply "poor English."

Teenage boys, both brown and black, strut along the roadways with New York ghetto attitude. Basketball shoes, fake jewelry and hip-hop mannerisms are common. Judging from fashion choices and the plethora of cheap low-quality consumer products, this could be any American inner city except that, alongside these thrusts into the banal continuum of the world economy, there are unmistakable nods to both tropical wherewithal and a recent colonial legacy.

Indeed, while modern autos screech through crowded roads, many side streets are the exclusive domain of horses and horse-drawn vehicles. The preferred mode of transport of many goods, particularly construction materials, appears to be via animal sweat. Time does not allow me a foray into the rural countryside to visit the rice-farming village of my infancy, or to the rugged interior; it would have been interesting to see whether supreme reliance is still made upon beasts of burden for all physical tasks too challenging for mere human muscle. It is quixotically ironic, this superposition of agrarian methods against an urban backdrop of somewhat modern buildings, Western outlook and new American automobiles.

More irony befalls me as I check into the Hotel Tower, supposedly one of Georgetown's top hotels. Half a century ago, my father worked here as a waiter and had alerted the industry minister to the hotel's unfair treatment of workers; the pro-labor socialist sentiment runs strong in Guyanese of his generation, those touched by the crusades of Cheddi and Janet Jagan. Today, after decades of decline, the Hotel Tower has remade itself into a gateway for adventure tourism, offering "romantic" rainforest tours to mostly foreign couples. Indeed, eco-tourism is the buzzword across the nation. Industrial forces are arrayed to parcel off Guyana's pristine jungle ecology in the name of debt reduction, and ventures within the city are positioning themselves to provide the necessary support for such activities.

The city's center is dominated by the clock tower-crowned Stabroek market, a grand old Dutch structure whose contents today can be compared to rural flea markets in Canada. It is probably the oldest building in the country, and an enduring democratic structure in which everyone, rich or poor, shops. Some say it was intended as a railway station for another colony, but ended up in Guyana by accident. Pierre Trudeau once called it a "bizarre bazaar." Whatever the colorful anecdote, the market is a beloved sprawl of simple commercial reciprocity where anything that can be carried by hand is sold.

In addition to the basic supplies and knick-knacks sold here are the fresh produce brought in from farmers outside the city. The fruits are glorious in their ripeness, and I gladly indulge in a wide array of tropical nectars. Tourists are ill-advised to wander about the market unescorted, so I was pleased to find manning some of the vending stalls relatives whom I had never before met in person: an aunt, a great uncle and several cousins.

The place had evolved since my family's exodus, I was informed. No longer the refuge of impoverished rural agrarians desperate to hawk their undervalued goods, it is now a locus for lucrative high commerce. A vegetable stall like that owned by my aunt would be sold for the equivalent of tens of thousands of American dollars.

Deonandan's cousins at Starbroek Market

That night is the televised ceremony for conferring the Guyana Prizes for Literature; my reason for being in the country. Professor David Dabydeen of England takes top honors for his novel "A Harlot's Progress"the trend of rewarding expatriates continues. Harvard student and proud Guyanese native, Paloma Mohamed receives the award for best drama; her rousing patriotic speech would bring the crowd to its feet. While I nervously wait to make my acceptance speech for my Best First Book prize, an elderly woman strikes up a conversation with me about her grandchildren in Canada. It takes a few minutes for me to recognize Janet Jagan, former President and figure of lore. It is surreal to be making disposable small talk with a woman whose name is spoken with quiet reverence in most Guyanese households, my parents' included. I decide that this is indicative of the informality of the place, where grand historical figures are simply citizens on about their business.

It is therefore not surprising that the sitting President of the country, Bharrat Jagdeo, proves eminently approachable. His mind is understandably elsewhere as a national election looms close. But his popularity almost assures a victory for his People's Progressive Party, the political party founded by the Jagans. Government stability is an encouraging sign for sustained development and wealth production.

"My job is to pull government into the background and let creative people run with their innovations," he says, sounding vaguely Ontarian in his politics. He further laments the limited experiences of many visitors to Guyana, wishing more would choose to step beyond Georgetown to see the beauty of the unspoiled interior. "Just a few hours travel and you can meet AmerIndian children who must take canoes to get to school." Again, there is that ubiquitous dichotomy of the modern alongside the pastoral and ancient. His words remind me that despite Guyana's bold forays into aggressive world commerce and the increasing affluence of many of Georgetown's more visible citizens, this is still a country struggling to find its role in the globalized Caribbean milieu.

I recall the growing links between Guyana and Canada: the 1997 flirtation of Saskatechewan's SaskPower with acquiring the Guyanese electrical infrastructure; the public health program offered by the medical school of Kingston's Queen's University to allow their graduates exposure to the truly impoverished in Guyana's interior; and recent rumblings about debt forgiveness and other sorts of aid. Yet, despite its rural poverty and tiny population, this is a nation with, astonishingly, 23 television stations.

"Anyone can put up a TV transmitter from their front porch," says John Mair, a BBC producer who moonlights in Guyana as an election consultant for Mr. Jagdeo, and who also writes a popular political satire column for a national newspaper under the pen name of Bill Cotton. The television medium tends to be so unregulated and unprofessional, Mair says, that "if you watch the Berbice news, you can hear the dogs barking on the broadcaster's front lawn!"

Guyana is a nation much like other Southern countries in this new age, traveling simultaneous paths of spiraling rural poverty and rapid modernization. The vivacity and robustness of Georgetown is promising, though, as is the seeming genuineness of the current government. But one young entrepreneur, the owner of a rice mill, is keeping his enterprise off-line until after the coming election. When asked what difference it makes which party wins, he answers, "I need to know whether they prefer their bribe as a percentage or as a lump sum."

The chorus of that inescapable Guyanese song seems particularly poignant to me then, testament to a people's penchant for adaptation and renewal:

"Onward, upward, may we ever go
Day by day in strength and beauty grow
Till at length we each of us may show
What Guyana's sons and daughters can be."

Home To Guyana

2009-01-14T05:16:00.000-08:00

This article was originally published in The Globe & Mail on March 14, 2001. It was published in the original Podium magazine the same day, with the tag line, "After 20 years away, an author returns to Guyana to receive one of her top literary prizes. " A longer version appeared in India Currents Magazine in June of 2001.

After 20 years away, Canadian author RAYWAT DEONANDAN returns to receive one of Guyana's top literary prizes. Despite his reservations, he is surprised by what he learns, about his homeland, and himself

by Raywat Deonandan

GEORGETOWN, GUYANA -- 'Born in the land of the mighty Roraima / Land of great rivers and far stretching sea . . . " are words sung in drunken glee by relatives of my parents' generation. The song tells of the land of my birth, Guyana, a place called "back home" by my elders, but which to me has always been merely a source of relatives' funny accents and the occasional bawdy provincial story -- a place lost entirely in the immaturity of infantile memory, and remade incompletely through the borrowed memories of others.

But that all changes as I return to Guyana, unexpectedly and unprepared, 31 years after leaving as a baby. "Born in the land where men sought El Dorado / Land of the diamond and bright shining gold," the song goes, boasting of the land's natural wealth, and hinting at the plight of those who had sought that wealth. I return as a recipient of one of Guyana's national arts awards, undeserving because I still have no connection to the ancestral land which now honours me. That changes as the assault of sights and scents, and the camaraderie of locals, conspire to force me to acknowledge that buried organic thread of belonging.

Despite the song's promises, I see no gold or diamonds, nor do I find the time to explore the great rivers or far-stretching sea.

But I do taste the sweetness of Guyana's fruit, remark on the comeliness of her women, the brightness of her tropical sun and the seeming timelessness of her stitch within the fabric of colonial history. This is a place beaten by its history, existing at the rare conflux of a dozen trading nations, yet striving to pull itself from the status of Third World indigent to modern Caribbean power broker.

Guyana (pron. guy-anna) is a frequently misplaced and mispronounced nation in the Canadian travel vocabulary. Formerly called British Guiana, it is nestled between Brazil, the Caribbean ocean, Venezuela and Suriname (formerly Dutch Guyana). A democracy, she remains the only officially English-speaking country in South America, and one of Canada's most effusive sources of Caribbean emigration.

Guyana's history parallels most Caribbean nations. At the time of Columbus, the region was inhabited by the Arawak and Carib aboriginal tribes whose legacy is the word guiana. When the aboriginal tribes were pushed back into the rain forest, African slaves were brought in to work the sugar plantations.

The transition to British rule in 1786 and the abolition of slavery in the British empire 21 years later led to indentured servants, mostly East Indian and some Chinese, being shipped in to work on a supposedly contractual basis. Trade, the rationale behind both slavery and indentured service, remains Guyana's mantra.

With the dissolution of British rule in favour of a fractious parliamentary system, Guyana's population consists mostly of two races: African and Indian. This racial duality occasionally sinks to riotous violence, and sometimes rises to philosophical elegance, as in the establishment of the multiracial socialist government of the late President Cheddi Jagan, Guyana's most beloved fallen hero.

Institutes, organizations and even the airport bear Jagan's name. He is often called the father of the modern Guyanese nation. His 80-year-old widow Janet, also a former president, remains an honoured national figure who hearkens to a bygone era of Gandhi/Mandela styled social protest and political sacrifice. Even their 1943 interracial marriage (he was Indian, she a Jew from Illinois) was a daring feat, a template for a coming age.

Despite the Jagans' heroism, Guyana's story in the 20th century is one of corruption and lost opportunity. As the song describes so proudly, it is a nation rich in mineral and biological wealth, devoid of the population pressures of other developing nations (there are fewer than a million permanent residents). Its rugged beauty inspired Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 novel The Lost World.

As an English-speaking literate nation whose expatriate vim offers access to the resources of the West, Guyana should have been propelled into the role of Southern leader. Yet the nation has languished economically by virtue of recent dictatorial corruption and mismanagement. High inflation, elevated rates of maternal and child morbidity, increased street crime and official corruption, and residents' poor access to infrastructure -- the textbook signatures of Third World status -- have been typical of Guyana up to and including the 1980s. Corruption is perhaps the most insidious problem. One young entrepreneur, the owner of a rice mill, was keeping his enterprise off-line until after the coming national election. When asked what difference it makes which party wins, he answers, "I need to know whether they prefer their bribe as a percentage or as a lump sum."

This was the ominous data I had weighed while considering whether to undertake the visit to the land of my birth. My family and I emigrated from Guyana when I was two years old, returning once more for a summer visit 20 years ago. I had joined the great soup of immigrants in Toronto, multicoloured, multicultured and undeniably Canadian; I had no conscious desire to return to my motherland.

However, my book of short stories titled Sweet Like Saltwater, ostensibly about the Indo-Caribbean diaspora, surprisingly won the 2000 Guyana Prize for Best First Book. Just like that, I found myself returning to this lonely tropical waystation.

Arriving in the capital city, Georgetown, I am filled with trepidation. One guidebook describes the place as "the second most violent capital city in South America, after Bogota." It further warns: "under no circumstances go out at night, and avoid doing so in the daytime, too." Wariness of violent street crime was the mantra preached to me by friends and relatives in North America, none of whom had been to Georgetown in many years.

But the city is surprisingly pleasant. Nestled against the Atlantic shore, it considers itself a Caribbean metropolis, yet its official population of 200,000 would make it merely a large town by North American standards. It was once a colonial gem, still proudly bearing its traditional monicker of "the garden city," though decades of infrastructure neglect have tarnished its floral vigour. Whitewashed wooden buildings with thatched muticoloured roofs still provide a fair amount of charm and elegance, and rebuilt roads encourage the recent inundation of American sports cars and utility vehicles. All about, the signs of an economic renaissance abound.

When wandering the streets, one is struck by a distinct odour that is ubiquitous across all tropical domains: the scent of damp fabrics, unseen fungal growths and hot, wet sea air. Not necessarily unpleasant, it is womb-like in its familiarity. The odour and the greenery seem complementary, and one is made less aware of the urban concrete, and more sensitive to the nearby ocean and strategically planted foliage.

The streets and highways are cluttered with autos, muscular and loud. The car is a symbol of machismo here, and owners have taken to emblazoning their vehicles with personalized names. My driver has named his for the Backstreet Boys, and gestures to the photo of the covergirl on his dashboard: "That's the backstreet girl," he jokes. Minibuses plow by.

Lynn Mangru, a local sitcom actress and my guide for the morning, tells me that the buses are privately owned with fares set by the government.

"People choose which bus to ride by the music the driver is playing," she says. I decide that my favourite bus is one named "Sweetness" driven by a sloppy, big-bellied, very un-sweet man. On the bus's back, the driver has written the explanation: "Your sweetness is my weakness."

Crowds of people gather in every public locale in Georgetown. The roars of rancorous creole, English-based and similar to Jamaican patois but spiced with elements of French, Dutch, Senegalese, Hindi, Spanish and Portuguese, assault the ear in torrents of musical speech, sometimes joyous and sometimes angry. The creole of Guyana was the language of my youth, usually summoned from my subconscious only with the aid of alcohol or family prodding, embarrassing for its foreignness and inapplicability to Canadian life. Here it is refreshingly familiar, heard at last as a living language for an entire people.

Irony befalls me as I check into the Hotel Tower, supposedly one of Georgetown's top hotels. Half a century ago, my father worked here as a waiter and had alerted the industry minister to the hotel's unfair treatment of workers; the pro-labour socialist sentiment runs strong in Guyanese of his generation, those touched by the crusades of Cheddi and Janet Jagan. Today, after decades of decline, the Hotel Tower has remade itself into a gateway for adventure tourism, offering "romantic" rain-forest tours" to mostly foreign couples.

The city's centre is dominated by the clocktower-crowned Stabroek market, a grand old Dutch structure whose contents today can be compared to rural flea markets in Canada. It is probably the oldest building in the country, and an enduring democratic structure in which everyone, rich or poor, shops.

Tourists are ill-advised to wander about the market unescorted, so I was pleased to find, manning some of the vending stalls, relatives whom I had never before met in person: an aunt, a great uncle and several cousins. The place had evolved since my family's exodus, I was informed. No longer the refuge of impoverished rural farmers trying to hawk their goods, it is now a locus for high commerce. A vegetable stall like that owned by my aunt would be sold for the equivalent of tens of thousands of American dollars.

That night is the televised ceremony for conferring the Guyana Prizes for Literature; my reason for being in the country. David Dabydeen of England takes top honours for his novel A Harlot's Progress: the trend of rewarding expatriates continues. While I nervously wait to make my acceptance speech for my Best First Book prize, an elderly woman strikes up an innocent conversation with me about her grandchildren in Canada. It takes a few minutes for me to recognize Janet Jagan, former president and figure of lore. It is surreal to be making disposable small talk with a woman whose name is spoken with quiet reverence in most Guyanese households, my parents' included. I decide that this is indicative of the informality of the place.

It is therefore not surprising that the sitting president of the country, Bharrat Jagdeo, proves eminently approachable. His mind is understandably elsewhere as a national election -- slated for March 19 -- looms close. But his popularity almost assures a victory for his People's Progressive Party, the political party founded by the Jagans. Government stability is an encouraging sign for sustained development and wealth production.

This may explain why, despite its rural poverty and tiny population, this is a nation with, astonishingly, 23 television stations.

"Anyone can put up a TV transmitter from their front porch," says John Mair, a BBC producer who moonlights in Guyana as an election consultant for Jagdeo, and who also writes a popular political satire column for a national newspaper under the pen name of Bill Cotton. The television medium tends to be so unregulated and unprofessional, Mair says, that "if you watch the Berbice news, you can hear the dogs barking on the broadcaster's front lawn!"

The chorus of that inescapable Guyanese folk song seems particularly poignant to me then -- testament to a people's penchant for adaptation and renewal: "Onward, upward, may we ever go / Day by day in strength and beauty grow / Till at length we each of us may show / What Guyana's sons and daughters can be."

When writing Sweet Like Saltwater, it had not been my intent to forge a reconnection with the land of my birth. Yet, by virtue of the travel opportunity wrought by the book, that is what happened. I cannot deny the comfort of finding an entire country of familiarity, a land whose rural and urban scents and ancestral tones resonate with frequencies long buried in my memories. I cannot help but make idle plans for an eventual return, to one day experience the primal forested Guyana beyond the city, to travel even further back in time.

The Future of Bioinformatics

2009-01-10T20:23:00.001-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on Nov 5, 2001, with the tag line, "A biotech presentation explores the role of the new science of bioinformatics." It originally appeared in Bioscan, the newsletter of the Toronto Biotechnology Initiative in the Fall of 1999.

by Raywat Deonandan

Bioinformatics is the science of "understanding living systems through computation," according to Dr. Jamie Cuticchia of the Hospital for Sick Children's supercomputing facility. "But hearing someone talk about it is like being in a car crash. First, you're dazed and confused, then angered, then happy to just get up and walk away." Dr. Cuttichia was the first of two presenters at TBI's first breakfast meeting of the season. He was followed by Dr. Shane Climie of Ocata Proteomics, a nascent company run out of Mount Sinai Hospital.

Both men presented compelling examples of the challenges facing bioinformatics professionals, especially in light of recent and projected explosions in the quantity of biological data available to researchers. "More scientific data will be released this year than has ever been released before in the history of the world," Dr. Cuticchia proclaimed, underlining the preponderant role of information technology in mediating the interplay between data and investigator. He also spoke of how Moore's Law, the electronic paradigm in which transistor evolution constantly outstrips the complexity of society's computational needs, will imminently be violated by astounding increases in available biological data in need of processing.

Ocata Proteomics' focus on proteome structure, referred to by Dr. Climie as "the ultimate realization of the genetic sequence," is a prime example of the type of hurdle faced by the bioinformatician, and indicative of the science's growing role in the $45 billion global pharmaceutical R&D industry.

"Drug discovery IS bioinformatics," confirmed Dr. Cuttichia, showing how his science is critical in three critical phases of pharmaceutical research: target identification through linkage mapping, screening via combinational chemistry, and clinical trials through patient selection.

The true power of bioinformatics is yet to be tapped, as developments in complete genome mapping and in individualized medicine via pharmacogenomics are just around the corner.

Kali for Women: Feminist Publishing in India

2009-01-10T01:54:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on Oct 17, 2000, with the tag line, "Deonandan's oft-cited article about the Indian feminist publishing company Kali For Women." A version originally appeared on IndiaStar.Com in January of 1998.

by Raywat Deonandan

Writers in India face hurdles that are almost unknown, or at least more subtle, here in the West. Barriers of sex, class, race, geography, religion and language are flagrant and sometimes officially sanctioned in India. It is no surprise that the well-known subcontinental names are from elite families, from specific ethnic and linguistic groups, British educated, and are most often male. The struggle of publishing in India is to uplift the disadvantaged groups to a position where all voices may be heard.

Still, a writer who is of a lower caste, female and not a Hindi or English speaker, has a difficult time finding a sympathetic publisher.

Into that struggle has arisen Kali For Women, Asia's first feminist publishing company. Founded in 1984 by Ritu Menon and Urvashi Boutalia, and bankrolled by a $100 investment, Kali's first two books set the stage for its favoured themes: one on Asian women and media, and another on the Indian women's movement. Now, the house produces 12 titles a year, evenly distributed between women's studies, general interest nonfiction, fiction, biographies and memoirs and a range of primers, handbooks and monographs for activists.

"Women's work was not being published," co-founder Ritu Menon declared when we met in Kali's New Delhi office. "There was some of it in the social sciences, but little elsewhere. We wanted to cover the totality of writing with a gender perspective."

Today, Kali is well respected as a producer of high quality fiction, historical and academic text. The house has helped to develop names that are now worthy of marquee status in some circles: Gita Sen, in feminist social theory, and Nayantara Sahgal, a popular fiction writer and a member of the Nehru family.

Kali's most successful book thus far, however, has been Vandana Shiva's Staying Alive which is in its 5th edition in India, and in multiple editions in the U.K. and U.S., plus translations into 6 other languages. Kali co-founder Urvashi Boutalia recalled how Shiva had balked at the idea of writing a book.

"She said, 'I'm not a writer, I'm an activist!' and I replied, 'writing is a subversive activity, too, you know.'"

Shiva has since written a book every year for Kali.

The concept of a feminist publisher is a difficult one for mainstream India to digest. Since Kali is also the name of a Hindu goddess, the Delhi office still receives calls from families believing the house to be a religious centre or a marriage registration service. Calls are also received from women believing Kali to be a counselling centre; such callers are distressed, depressed, and sometimes face domestic violence or suicide.

This led to one of Kali's early achievements, The Kali Diary, now famous in development circles, which provides a list of women's organizations, something difficult to find in a society short on organized information.

It is no surprise, then, that Kali benefits from a loyal audience of activist women. However, according to Boutalia, "no book publisher in India knows who their audience is, except for maybe the textbook publishers." This is because India lacks the information infrastructure that facilitates business in the West. There is no systematic survey of Indian book-buying, no reliable market research.

Lacking such hard evidence, the two founders disagree on where in India their major markets lie. But both seem to believe that the so-called "Hindi Belt" of northern states is where most of their books end up, primarily because it is to that population that most of India's media products are directed. Kali is making a conscious effort, however, to publish more writers from less vociferous linguistic groups like Bengali and Tamil.

While the Indian female literacy rate hovers around 40%, Boutalia does not believe this to be the major obstacle to her books' degree of penetration into Indian society. "Physical distribution is the real issue," she said. "In the state of Kerala, the literacy rate is believed to be almost 100%. Yet women there are published the least and are read the least."

There is no question that Indian feminist activism is alive and vocal, but where Western feminist organizations have suffered some degree of derision arising from an inability to coordinate a cohesive vision, the Indian feminist conception is one of a battle fought on several well-defined and separate fronts. In comparing Western to Indian feminism, Menon observed, "the perspectives are different, but the issues are often the same." The Indian feminist issues of current fashion involve the environment and globalization, not surprisingly mirroring trends in development work. Kali books reflect these concerns.

Perusing the shelves of the Kali main office, I catch two titles: Courtyards Of My Childhood, by octagenarian Romola Chatterjee, which tells of Chatterjee's childhood in the British Raj, and assumes to embody "oral tradition in print"; and Hot Death, Cold Soup, an anthology of short stories by Manjula Padmanabhan, which reads as well as any Vikram Seth opus. But Boutalia declares that it's unlikely that the book will make it to North American stores. The penetration of Western markets has never been a priority for Kali.

Award-winning author Moyez Vassanji (The Gunny Sack and The Book of Secrets) once told me that India produces great writers because their oral traditions compel Indians to collect stories in their heads. Sri Lankan-Canadian writer Shyam Selvadurai (Funny Boy) went further to imply that Indians simply write well, perhaps testament to a classical education system. Kali For Women builds on the strengths inherent in the Indian writing tradition and adds a spirit of social urgency. In a nation struggling with political, ecological and economic concerns that dwarf our petty worries, it can be inspiring to hear of such a niche-marketed venture that continues to thrive despite its altruistic motivation.

Are There Environmental Risks Associated With Genetically Engineered Field Crops?

2009-01-10T01:52:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on Oct 17, 2000, with the tag line, " A debate over the risks of GM foods." A version originally appeared in Bioscan, the newsletter of the Toronto Biotechnology Initiative, in September of 1999.

by Raywat Deonandan

"What's best for industry is not necessarily what's best for society," declared the University of Guelph's Professor Ann Clark at the April 15th TBI (Toronto Biotechnology Initiative) breakfast meeting. Clark assumed a politically charged stance against the proliferation of agricultural genetic engineering technology, and found herself pitted against two other panellists: fellow Guelph professor Mark Sears and London's Dr. Jim Brandle.

Drs. Brandle and Sears each gave detailed presentations on the technical benefits of molecular farming and other methods of altering crop genes. Since molecular farming technology allows cheaper and more rapid production of such useful products as vaccines, haemoglobin, antibodies, biodegradable plastics and industrial pharmaceuticals, Brandle argued, its benefits far outweigh its potential ecological and economic risks. Among those risks are the possibility that an altered species will escape into the food chain; that unanticipated toxins will be produced; that there might be accidental admixture of transgenes with food crops; or indeed that the actual transgenes themselves would slip out of labs and be taken up from the soil by opportunistic organisms such as bacteria.

While insisting that the possible mixture of altered with natural crops is incredibly unlikely, Dr. Brandle nevertheless commented, "If you want to blow up your $9 billion canola business, this is the way."

Dr. Sears' research into the creation of pest-resistant strains of common crops, such as canola, potatoes and soybean, lead him to conclude that it is the responsibility of Canada's biotech community to ensure that this technology become available to all who might benefit from it, including developing countries who desperately seek to increase their food yield. It was his contention that fears concerning the outcrossing of transgenic genes, and the threat of destroying insect populations via the introduction of resistant plant strains, are not founded upon strong evidence. In direct contradiction to one of Dr. Clark's points, Dr. Sears further stated that the transfer to organisms of extracellular DNA left in the soil does not pose a significant threat.

The ensuing debate between the three panellists was quite heated, with Dr. Clark making a strong plea for more dollars to be spent on risk assessment, and more power transferred to the true stake-holders, the citizens. The opposing arguments focused on the overwhelming potential benefits of the technology: the reduction of the use of broad-spectrum insecticides, the simplification of pest management, the increased affordability of living bioreactors, and the undeniable increase in crop yield. Dr. Sears made the bold prediction that, "genetic engineering will sustain us for the next 50 years."

In many ways, however, Dr. Clark's main thesis was demonstrated by her colleagues' presentations: that professions tend to view issues from the narrow perspective of their professional training, with limited regard for the larger economic, social and ethical picture. Her impassioned call for a greater role of risk assessors, and for the intervention of government and citizen groups to help dictate regulations for applying genetic technology to food crops, found a chord of sympathy among the multidisciplinary audience. All three panellists did agree that more research dollars need to be spent, and that Canada has been particularly negligent in commissioning risk assessment and impact studies.

When I Was 12, I Met Pierre Trudeau

2009-01-10T01:47:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on Oct 4, 2000, with the tag line, "A young boy meets Pierre Trudeau, forever changed by the event." It is expanded from a letter to the National Post, which is included at the bottom.

by Raywat Deonandan

When I was 12 years old, I met Pierre Trudeau.

I think it was 1979 and my junior highschool was visiting Ottawa for all the typical reasons that school kids visit their nation’s capital: to stroll through dreary museums, read the captions of historic paintings and sculptures, and to suffer the lectures of local scholar/entertainers dressed as town criers and Indian chiefs.

But I and two friends, assisted by a particular far-thinking teacher, escaped from our 8:pm curfew one evening to commit the ultimate uncool act. We gave up sleep and the juvenile joys of our parent-less hotel room to attend a rare night session of Parliament. That evening, our federal representatives were to decide upon the issue of capital punishment. While our friends were no doubt looking for ways to watch cable TV and to steal hotel towels, we were to observe history in the making!

Of course, as I recall it, the MP’s voted not to decide, and the evening was over rather prematurely and anticlimactically. But as we youngsters idled in the lobby, putting off our return to hotel imprisonment, the Prime Minister himself emerged from the House, radiating a magnificent presence that I can now only describe as Jesuitical in its meditative genius.

Mr. Trudeau waved the media aside and walked straight up to us three pipsqueaks, bending low his seemingly lofty 5'5" frame to shake our little hands. I did not know that he was considered a short man, or, for that matter, that his marriage was dissolving at that time, or that he was about to lose an election for the first time ever. All I knew was that this man was a hero to me and my family, a figure that demanded respect and deference.

His image is thus etched into our memories, framed about obsidian eyes that shone with a lively and genuine joy. He muttered to me a very friendly greeting and something about the political process. But our attention was absorbed by the intoxicating ephemera of his celebrity, and then snatched by another source of unexpected joy for 12-year old boys: Trudeau’s female chauffeur.

After his departure, followed closely by the obligatory crowd of journalists and unnamed pursuers, political mainstay David Crombie (at that time a sitting Conservative MP) approached us to help explain the Parliamentary event we had earlier witnessed. But, rudely, our juvenile eyes remained fixed on the receding limousine, each of us fully aware that we had brushed close to a great historical figure, our lives perhaps changed for the better.

Those were exciting days for a young citizen to be first exposed to the Canadian political process, capped by the graceful greeting of my generation’s brightest national figure. I’m often saddened that the youth of today are unable to access that brand of optimistic statesmanship, that the casual profundity of a Pierre Trudeau will be forever denied our children. I wept when I learned of his death, and absorbed every media report of our nation’s communal grief, feeling a very honest and profound loss for the secondary father figure that had been taken from us.

It’s a difficult thing to explain to some of my friends who, for whatever reason, see Mr. Trudeau as just another dead politician. Some of those friends are not from this country, so cannot understand his prominence in our lives. Some are too young to recall the air of excitement that Canadian government was able to generate in those days. Others are simply politically unaware. And others lack the very particular perspective of a whole generation of fresh immigrants.

Canada in the early-to-mid 1970s was a place hostile to anything that was not white, English or otherwise mainstream. As new immigrants, many of us endured the vocal and sometimes physical disdain of others on an almost daily basis. I can only imagine that many Canada-born francophones felt the same hostility or foreignness when they ventured beyond their safe environs. To have had the leader of the country, the most powerful voice in our society, declare his unwavering support for our rights and for our access to opportunities was a contribution as valuable as any budget or constitution. He validated us, allowed us to share his dignity. To us, he was a hero....

...And, dare I say it, a national father. It has been said by others that Trudeau is the progenitor of modern Canada. Our multicultural, free-thinking, somewhat just and fair society sprang directly from his vision. These things sound commonplace and obvious now. But they were revolutionary when first introduced. Much like losing a true parent, one is struck by the hollow horror of having to continue on without the deceased’s wisdom, his standard. Only now do we appreciate how much of him we took for granted.

I once wrote that my generation has thus far lacked the newsworthy milestones that serve to link a people to the grand trunk of humanity. I was very wrong. There have been many such instances, I realize now. And, regrettably, the death of this great man is yet one more.

It has been my very great honour to have met some truly gargantuan figures in human history. Among them, Nelson Mandela, the current Dalai Lama and a slew of Canadian political leaders. Of them all, it is Pierre Trudeau, whose hand I shook 21 years ago as a delinquent schoolboy, who most decidedly imprinted himself onto my life. I don’t weep for him anymore, but for the rest of us who must continue without his clarity and profundity.

Letters in response to this article:

1. Your Meeting With Pierre Trudeau A letter from Sejal Patel October 7, 2000 I just read your article about your initial meeting with Pierre Trudeau. It moved me. While I cannot claim to understand exactly what he meant to you and your countrymen, I can understand that he was a very powerful force and impact for you personally and for the Canadian state. [You stood] in the presence of a truly great man. While I have had brushes with famed and powerful figures, I do not believe they have had as much of the impact as [did Trudeau on] that young boy, two school friends and their teacher. It amazed me to read about your encounter. Sejal Patel Somewhere in Massachusetts, USA
2. The National Post on September 30, 2000, page B12 When I was 12 years old, I met Pierre Trudeau.
It was 1979 and my junior high school was visiting Ottawa for all the typical reasons school kids visit their nation's capital: to stroll through museums, read the captions of historic paintings and sculptures and to suffer the lectures of local scholar/entertainers dressed as town criers and Indian chiefs.
But I and two friends escaped from our curfew one night to attend a rare night session of Parliament. As we idled in front of the building, putting off our return to the hotel, the prime minister himself emerged from the House, emanating a magnificent presence.
Mr. Trudeau waved the media aside and walked straight up to us, bending low to shake our little hands. His image is thus etched into my memory, framed about obsidian eyes that radiated a lively and genuine joy. He gave us a few friendly greetings, but our attention was completely absorbed by his intoxicating presence.
Raywat Deonandan, Toronto

New Administrative Fee is a Discriminatory Head Tax

2009-01-10T01:44:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on Oct 4, 2000, with the tag line, "An inciting take on Canadian immigration policy. " A version first appeared in The Toronto Star on April 18, 1995.

by Raywat Deonandan

To those of us in the industrialized north, 975 dollars can pay for rent for a month or two. It can be a down-payment on a used automobile or tuition for half a term at a local university.

It is also the price of an immigration application to Canada, as declared in Paul Martin's landmark budget. And to applicants in the developing world, $975 can be an unattainable fortune. In India, for example, this amount of money is about the same as an individual's annual income.

Anyone who can save that much money, it can be argued, has no need to come to Canada. Without marginalizing their large ethnic constituency, the federal Liberals have succeeded, with this enormous application fee, in satisfying the conservative voices who have been demanding immigration decreases for several years now.

With this policy change comes a more direct affirmation, that the kind of immigrants Canada wants are wealthy. This is nothing new, of course. Over- staffed Canadian consulates in Hong Kong, for example, have long been known to list bank balances above other immigration criteria, including language abilities, work ethic, age and socialization.

But is this the direction we need to be taking? Admittedly, there is an unfounded perception of immigrants as being burdens to Canadian finances, and over-represented contributors to Canadian crime. No amount of contrary data will alter that perception in the short run, as it is based largely on a population's need for a scapegoat. The more immediate danger, however, is that Canada's real immigration needs will be overlooked because of this misperception.

Canada does not need wealthier --and therefore older-- newcomers. It needs a vital infusion of young reproductive stock. The Canadian pension plan will be bankrupt by 2015 as the number of old people receiving pensions increases relative to those contributing to the plan. Unless Canadians start multiplying like rabbits or we begin to import young people from other countries, our debt crisis will continue to be exacerbated. No amount of cost-cutting or revenue enhancement, like the application fee, will prevent the impending need to borrow money to maintain old age pensions.

Debt relief is best achieved through a continued economic prosperity that flows from balanced productivity. And productivity among families is most efficient when the family is unified. There is no word yet on how the $975 application fee will affect the family reunification process, at present the most popular avenue of immigration to this country. For many cultures, the family is a single economic unit; to deny its wholeness is to denigrate the very idea of fiscal responsibility that the budget is intended to uphold. If it is too expensive to allow a grandmother entry, for example, who will baby-sit the kids while the parents work and contribute to the economy?

The issue of federal fiscal responsibility cannot be resolved with mediocre short-term measures. The $975 immigration fee is such a measure. Not only does it serve to appease a right-wing fringe wishing to establish an economic scapegoat, but it lessens the potential for immigration to truly contribute to Canada's pecuniary recovery.

Letters in response to this article:

1. Toronto Star. Toronto, Ont.: Apr 26, 1995. pg. A.18

Ray Deonandan should re-examine the second last paragraph of his ``Talking Point'' article, New administrative fee is a discriminatory head tax (April 18). In it he states, ``There is no word yet on how the $975 application fee will affect the family reunification process, at present the most popular avenue of immigration to this country.''

My understanding is that family members need to be sponsored, and that the sponsor has to demonstrate they are in a financial position to maintain the immigrant family member upon arrival.

Would Deonandan begrudge paying the $975 fee on his grandmother's behalf, so that she could arrive and, as he puts it, ``baby-sit the kids while the parents work''? The fee would be recouped in less than one month.

When I read in another part of The Star that 40,000 sponsored immigrants receive social assistance payments in Ontario, it tells me that the so-called ``head tax'' acts as a gentle reminder to sponsors that they should not assume the onus of sponsorship in a frivolous manner.

Frank H. E. Furze Guelph

2. Toronto Star. Toronto, Ont.: Apr 26, 1995. pg. A.18
Re Immigrants sue over welfare cuts (April 18). Raj Anand, a human rights lawyer, has filed a class action suit for sponsored immigrants on welfare, whose welfare payments have been reduced automatically by $100 a month.
Anand, rather than wasting more taxpayer funds, should be chasing down the so-called sponsors of these poor immigrants.
Why are they not being helped by the people and families who sponsored them, instead of milking our social security system?
In the same edition, the ``Talking Point'' column by Ray Deonandan, is more whining about the new $975 fee to be imposed on refugees and immigrants entering Canada.
This fee is a bargain. If the individual cannot pay it, surely the immediate family members sponsoring the individual can scrape up this miserly amount.
I emigrated to Ecuador. Processing my landed immigrant papers to a Third World country was time-consuming, frustrating and cost me a lot more than the $975 it costs to come to Canada.
During my 15 years as a resident in Ecuador, I paid a lot of taxes, yet got little in return. Ecuador did not provide me with free medical care, free schooling or training, nor did I qualify for low-cost housing, day care, and pensions.
And when I finally left Ecuador, I had to pay for a permiso de salida, a special tax that all residents and Ecuadorians have to pay because they are not at home contributing to the local economy. I also had to pay a 40 per cent capital gains tax when I sold my principal residence.
Canada does need immigrants, and lots of them so we can continue to enjoy our high standard of living. We do not need other countries' criminals, and savvy folks who milk our system then whine about how badly they are being treated.
Immigrants, sponsored or not, should not get welfare. If they are old or infirm, they must be supported by their sponsors.
Ingrid Versteeg, Toronto

The Toronto Bicycle Wars

2009-01-10T01:42:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on May 28, 2000, with the tag line, "How can bikes and cars co-exist?" A version first appeared in The Toronto Star on May 20, 1997, under the title, "Time To Call A Truce Between Bikes And Cars."

by Raywat Deonandan

Last autumn, I'd just returned from India --a land boasting one of the world's highest per capita rates of traffic casualties and bicycle usage-- and discovered, with great dismay, that my beloved Toronto was poised on the brink of war between its motorists and cyclists. As we suffer from neither India's overpopulation nor its great poverty, we truly have no excuse for our ineptitude in this matter.

And as the cycling season is once more upon us, it is my most earnest desire that a resumption of this war be avoided.

One of the joys of Toronto has always been its relative ease of navigation, given its size and complexity. Gradually, but steadily, the city has become more cycle friendly, and is generally considered one of the best places in North America to own a bike. Compared with India and other older nations, whose road conditions are horrific and whose traffic rules are variable at best, the harmony of vehicles on Toronto roads is truly inspiring.

But last summer, three senseless cyclist deaths sparked an unpredicted powderkeg of consternation among cyclists, and just a few days of pedaling my knobby-tired machine through the downtown core was sufficient to show me why. There is a decided lack of empathy between the two groups, exacerbated by the preponderance of cyclists who have never driven a car, and of motorists who've never cycled for more than just recreational reasons.

As a result, sadly, rhetoric and vitriol tend to prevail. When armed with frightening tonnes of automotive glass and steel hurtling down a street, one cannot let emotion guide one's actions. I am reminded of a comment made by a disgruntled motorist on one of those television phone-in shows: "Cycling is a privilege, not a right! They should make way for the cars!" In truth, the caller must realize, all legal vehicles have a right to be used, but all individuals pilot their vehicles --car or cycle-- by reason of privilege. The problem is not the supercedence of one vehicle's rights over the other, but a lack of empathy by both parties, and an ignorance of the law.

Motorists must realize that even when they are in the right lane about to make a right turn, there still might be another vehicle in their right blindspot --a bicycle! So check that blindspot! Cyclists, on the other hand, must remember to try to stay out of that blindspot if possible. Countless accidents and fistfights have erupted from such a scenario, one easily avoided by a touch of common sense.

Motorists must also remember that, as a legal vehicle, a bicycle is often entitled to an entire lane. Don't be surprised, then, when that bicycle in front of you refuses to brush alongside the dangerous parked cars! And cyclists must bear in mind that they usually don't need an entire lane. A little courtesy goes a long way. Most importantly, both parties must realize that an adult bicycle is not a toy or a hybrid between a car and a pedestrian, but a vehicle that, in most parts of the world, is used to efficiently transport passengers and freight over great distances.

A bit of perspective goes a long way. When automobile meets cycle, the car driver is risking his paint job. The cyclist, on the other hand, is risking his life. It's not just incumbent upon the cyclist to protect his health --that comes naturally!-- but upon the motorist to avoid being a killer. And when this little war is finally put to bed, we can tackle the next level of conflict: the roller-bladers!

Plans for Parallel Conference of the OAS

2009-01-10T01:40:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on May 28, 2000, with the tag line, "One of the Podium's most popular articles, the story of a social justice meeting."

by Prema Oza

Various social justice groups from Ottawa, Toronto, Windsor and Detroit are busy making last minute preparations for alternative events and counter strategies in response to the preparatory meeting of First Minister's of nations belonging to the Organization of American States (OAS). While some groups are busy planning a parallel conference, other groups merely want to shut down the OAS event.

The OAS is a governing body similar to the United Nations. It holds an annual General Assembly with lower level First Minister's to discuss policy formulation and implementation to be followed by a Summit meeting of heads of state to develop implementation strategies. It touts itself as "the western hemisphere's principal forum for political, social, and economic dialogue." Currently, there are 35 members that comprise the OAS, including such economically and culturally diverse countries as: Canada, Ecuador, Haiti, Spain and Panama.

According to the international organization's website, it's mandate is to work collectively to safeguard democracy, human rights, peace and security while "expanding trade and tackling complex problems caused by poverty, drugs and corruption." In addition, the OAS claims to have made a commitment to a "focus on education [and] justice...."

While social justice groups may differ on approach, both sides agree that the OAS is not living up to its lauded mandate.

"Human rights, social and cultural rights and environmental sustainability need to be treated as superior to corporate rights," said Jim Porter, one of the meeting organizers.

While some groups want to shut down the meeting altogether, others merely want to enhance dialogue, etc., and have organized a parallel conference to take place around the OAS meetings themselves.

Historically, parallel conferences to international meetings of such bodies as the UN and IMF are seen as an ideal venue for social justice groups, also known as non-governmental organizations or NGOs, to raise awareness among both citizenry and the media. They are viewed as a an alternative source for grassroots knowledge that often gets pushed aside in the hustle-and-bustle of high and mid level meetings among politicos.

Vito Signorelli, a member of the MAI Coalition, appeared to echo many of the sentiments of those in attendance when he said, "I don't wanna shut it down, I wanna kick it in the ass. We should be drawing attention to the fact that they're not doing their job."

Regardless of the movement's intent, local law enforcement officials are taking no chances, and are stepping up security precautions to avoid what the media is hyping as another potential "battle in Seattle."

Social activists argue that the OAS has ignored its own mandate by becoming a rubber-stamping organization that pays mere lip service to the countless lives it is supposed to be protecting. The OAS, similar to the UN, lacks enforcement abilities. Detractors claim that it also suffers from social myopia where corporate greed often supercedes individual and collective rights and freedoms.

Angela Ventura of the Salvadorean Association of Windsor encouraged the meeting to engage in dialogue with the OAS in the hopes of working together.

"We need to work closely with the agenda of the OAS," she said. "We should request the OAS to be part of the agenda of the (parallel) conference."

There were some well-placed concerns over preaching to the converted with regard to the agenda of the parallel conference. The steering committee will look at a platform for a debate of issues and not just an opportunity to hear speeches and declarations.

The parallel conference has garnered some pretty major support in leading labour and social justice circles. Among the tentative list of speakers are Maude Barlow of the Canadian Labour Congress. In addition, the conference itself is largely being coordinated by the Montreal-based International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development (ICHRDD) - the brainchild of former NDP federal leader Ed Broadbent.

One can assume that the parallel conference will be large in scope and attendance, atracting a number of NGOs from across Canada and the world, as well as dignitaries and the press.

Concerns over representation were raised by Refugee committee member, Sungee John, who said that the organizing should be reflective of the nations being represented.

The goals of the parallel conference are simple, its task enormous. How do you make a bunch of stuffed shirts see that any and all trade agreements and social policies must comply with human rights laws? According to the ICHRDD's current president, Warren Allmand, "Canada can and must exercise its leadership. Human rights should not be viewed as a 'trickle-down' effect of international trade."

Among the tentative events that will comprise the parallel conference are various guest speakers from Canadian and Latin American labour and social justice groups, debates on current concerns of OAS member countries, awareness raising events in the preceding days of the actual meeting (dubbed the International Days of Action), a rally at Dieppe Gardens, a peace concert and an Earth Day gathering.

The actual First Minister's meeting of the OAS will be a Windsor first in terms of scale, and is set to take place here June 4-6th. The location of Windsor is no coincidence due largely to the political pull of our Deputy Prime Minister, the Honorable Herb Gray, who lobbied to have the conference held in his home riding. According to the organization's protocol, the June meeting will yield various policy initiatives which will then be ratified by the actual OAS meeting of world leaders in Montreal next year ---where yet another international protest is more than likely.

Prema Oza is a Canadian print journalist and radio personality who has appeared in or on various newspapers, magazines and call letters in Winnipeg, Ottawa, Toronto, Windsor and Detroit, Michigan. She is currently pursuing a degree in Political Science at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.

Injustice In The Penal System

2009-01-10T01:36:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on April 18, 2000, with the tag line, "Angela Davis speaks in Windsor/Detroit." Ms. Davis had spoken at Wayne State University on February 11, 2000.

by Prema Oza

'Teacher,' writer, strong, black woman, activist, leader, wrongfully imprisoned prisoner - all labels used to describe Angela Davis, past and present. Of them all, perhaps activist is the most appropriate, as is witnessed by her life of struggle, injustice, and by her ardent desire to help others. In an era with few worthy icons, she stands virtually alone.

Davis was in Detroit in February, speaking at Wayne State University on behalf of various campus groups. In a stirring lecture titled, "Beyond the Prison Industrial Complex," she painstakingly outlined the long and sordid past of prison systems in the United States. To the average, informed Canadian, it is clear that these conditions sadly mirror our own system. Or, at the very least, the US scenario is where we could be headed pretty damn soon, as we as a nation begin to toy with the idea of privatization.

"Privatization of health care, education and punishment" go hand-in-hand for state legislators and lawmakers, according to Davis. Other similarities exist, such as the growing rate of aboriginal, non-white, and other socially stratified men and women. Another alarming similarity is the rise in drug-related sentencing in Canada. According to Davis, "the US imprisons more citizens proportionately than any other country in the world. By February 15, two million people will be incarcerated in federal, state, and county jails."

The over-capacity audience was led through an intricate and unscrupulous maze of covert prison ideology and the skewed priorities of correctional facilities in the United States: "confinement," "containment," dehumanization and rehabilitation according to "societal norms", rather than education, actual rehabilitation and eventual release for non-dangerous offenders. As a frequent visitor to correctional facilities to do outreach with inmates, she also highlighted what she has seen firsthand: the gender component of incarceration, that the numbers for women in prison "are increasing at a rate higher than men."

Davis knows all too well the stark reality of life inside the American corrections establishment. As a member of the Black Panther Party, she was falsely accused and imprisoned on charges of murder and conspiracy, only to win an eventual acquittal and release after public protest in 1972.

Incarceration wasn't always the American way when it came to criminal deterrence. As the economy became further de-industrialized, Davis says, the economy adjusted itself accordingly, and government saw less of a need to preoccupy itself with matters of low political relevance, such as social spending, and more with issues like corporate investment, structural adjustment programs (SAP) and trade negotiations with equally suspect nations.

In the post civil war era, "the criminal legal system developed along the side of segregation; and the reservation system; and the development of the industrial proletariat and rising immigration. The US annexed Hawai'i [and] Puerto Rico, and thwarted Cuban independence." In the spirit of "Reagonomics" during the latter half of the 1990's, a so-called "war on drugs" took place, and prisons in America burgeoned under the strain.

In this new era of global capitalism, Davis made a strong argument for the virtual cottage industries thriving inside prisons in North America. Such industries are "extremely profitable" and "analogous to Asian sweatshops". Today, prison industries are "more profitable than unionized labor" in a way that moving production south was cheaper for multinational corporations. Indeed, Davis is correct in assuming that as long as corporate might is right in North America, "the power of corporations will rise to be an unbridling power."

To further exemplify the state view of women, Davis outlines how, historically, women in prisons were women who did not conform to societal norms, as was illustrated in the recent fact based Hollywood film, Girl Interrupted. Unlike men, women were seen as restorative. They were fallen women with a remote possibility of being reprogrammed into being good wives and mothers. Many of their crimes were considered to be of a sexual or moral nature, such as premarital or biracial sex and drunkenness. Now the tendency has become more standardized - confinement and containment of the general female population also, argues Davis.

Davis uses the example of welfare mothers as a further example of abject vilification of this segment of society. "The campaign against welfare mothers is about a minute part of the federal budget, and [yet] became a subject of debate. How is it that black [and] Latina women are responsible for all sorts of things, like crime? So the welfare system was destablized. And this corresponds with women in prisons because women with families, with jobs earning minimum wage [without adequate] child care, are more likely to work within illegal economies like drugs or sex services."

The majority of women incarcerated during the Reagan era were convicted on drug-related charges. Why? They had not hurt anyone? Answer: unlike their dealing partners, they had no one to "give up" to prosecutors, and subsequently served the full extent of their time, according to Davis, while the men who offered up everyone they knew and generally got out earlier.

Davis also categorically slammed the death penalty policies of a few determined yet clueless states in the US, including that of Presidential hopeful George Bush Jr. Some states have, however, called for a moratorium on executions as there have been cases of wrongful deaths of innocent inmates.

"After executions, it was a big story of one person. Now we have an assembly line of death," said Davis, "women are being executed. I really hope in the year 2000 we can save Mumia Abu Jamal," she added. The audience responded with applause.

Davis foresees the mass, cross-sector demonstration in Seattle as "a big new era in activism. What I'm asking you to do is look at the present as history. When I began to look at the history of prisons in the US, and [at] women, it made me look clearly at what's happening today. It wasn't until the late 18th, early 19th century that prisons began to take shape as the dominant mode of punishment. Now we can't think about crime except in relation to prisons, or punishment except in relation to crime."

An example of extremist perceptions of punishment would be the growing trend toward "super max" institutions, Davis said, where solitary confinement is a reality for the general population -- sort of a "recapitulation of solitary time". It does not rehabilitate the prisoner, it serves no real purpose other than to drive the prisoner "insane", thereby further irrevocably cutting himm off from society; "and yet it is a [viable] punishment strategy." No doubt because, among other things, recruitment of correctional personnel is at an all time low for obvious reasons.

"Our communities are being devoured by systems that [are] profiting from oppression, " Davis said, "profiting under an expanding prison industrialization. " She wondered out loud why there has been no enormous mass uprising.

Prema Oza is a Canadian print journalist and radio personality who has appeared in or on various newspapers, magazines and call letters in Winnipeg, Ottawa, Toronto, Windsor and Detroit, Michigan. She is currently pursuing a degree in Political Science at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.

Complexion Is Far More Complex Than Many Pinks Think

2009-01-10T01:24:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on April 13, 2000, with the tag line, "How ridiculous are racial labels?" A version first appeared in The Toronto Star on April 18, 1994. An altered version then appeared in India Currents Magazine in February, 1995, under the title, "Rainbow of Races."

by Raywat Deonandan

I'm a brown guy. Not an Indian or an Indo-Canadian or a Canadian-Asian or - God forbid! - a "person of colour." I'm basically brown, and other brown guys nod to me in a show of solidarity when they pass me on the street.

No, this isn't some hitherto unreported ethnic conspiracy. So calm down.

It's like when you encounter another Westerner while traveling in an exotic land; you say hello because you've found someone who is different in much the same way that you are different. And no, we don't have midnight basement meetings and plot the overthrow of the white patriarchy. We're much too busy paying off mortgages and student loans.

But this ubiquitous need to belong to a club, even something as flimsy as a bunch of people who nod to each other because of an arbitrary shared characteristic, does remind us of one thing: that the penchant for exclusivity, the epiphany of racism, is not restricted to the white race alone.

That thing stupidly called "reverse racism" is all too possible. What is it? It's when "people of colour" (a despicable term) act in an exclusive manner against "whites".

What poorly read activist fool invented this abhorrent term, anyway? "Reverse racism" implies that regular racism, its obvious converse, must be that which occurs in cases where white people discriminate against non-whites. What do you call it, then, if a black man shouts racial slurs at a Chinese man, or vice versa? "Lateral racism?"

And how about this "white" thing? Those who call themselves "white" are actually sort of pink, which makes them "people of colour" too. (Not to be confused with "coloured people." That's a whole other kettle of multicoloured fish, my friend.)

What on Earth is a "person of colour"? There are the "blacks" of course. But blacks actually come in a variety of shades from mildly tanned to dark brown. Why then is there only one word for them? And why is that word always changing with the political climate?

Then there are we lighter brown folk. No one ever knows what to call us. (Indians? Indo-Pakistanis? South Asians?) And we never make a fuss about it, so no one ever really gets around to calling us anything. Most of the time.

Most of us have long lumped Oriental faces into the patronizing grand pool of "people of colour" even though, technically, they are the only true white people on this planet. But for some unknown reason, Westerners refer to them as "yellow."

Furthermore, the typical lug on the street will call any white-skinned Asian with epicanthic eye folds "Chinese," though he may in fact be of Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese or Indonesian strain.

This reminds me of a survey taken a couple years ago of students at Queen's University in Kingston - long a bastion of cosmopolitan multiculturalism, let me tell you. Respondents were asked to tick off their ethnic/racial origin. Listed were Irish/Gaelic, Scottish, Scandinavian, Saxon, Slavic, Greek, African, South Asian and Oriental.

Okay, maybe I've bastardized the survey a bit, but the point is manifest: We continually recognize a few hundred different kinds of white people, and lump everyone else into their continental groupings. To an outside observer, differentiating between a Gael and a Scot is like separating an Indian from a Pakistani: in the grand scheme of things, they ain't that much different.

The languages are both foreign enough to be beyond comparison; the manners of dress are indistinguishable from one another, and the foods, customs and religions are more similar than different. It seems, then, that to a suitably objective observer, the differences between the pair are more political than anything else.

It's much the same as we North Americans trying to figure out what the heck all the fighting is about in the former Yugoslavia. This is an ethnic war? They all look and sound the same to me!

We can get so caught up in what to call ourselves - or what we'd like others to call us - that discourse on this matter often gets bogged down in lexicology. Sometimes I think we all just need a good slap.

The Reluctant Sheriff

2009-01-10T01:22:00.001-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on April 12, 2000, with the tag line, "US foreign policy resembles that of a sheriff of the old west."

by Sejal Patel

The United States has emerged as the most influential superpower since the Cold War. To call the United States “the Reluctant Sheriff” is an understatement, as it has usually only dipped its hands in waters where its own interests are furthered and concerned. As the United States has imposed sanctions against rogue states such as Libya, Iran, Iraq, Cuba, and North Korea, it has not only hindered U.S. interests economically and politically, but those of other countries as well.

What gives the U.S. the right to subjugate its own elusively guarded diplomacy measures upon third-party states? It must not maintain the same stance as it did during the Cold War, that of “if you are not with us, you are against us.” As the U.S. stresses the need for a more unified and egalitarian world, it must check itself for the hypocrisy of its actions. It values its relations with China, for example, yet lambastes that country for its human rights violations.

Richard Haass points out that the international arena has seen a plethora of activity economically, politically, and socially since the end of the Cold War, as it makes its way towards achieving multipolarity. While other countries, institutions, and groups become more dynamic on the international stage, the United States needs to downplay its supposed hegemony in order to remain a superpower.

While “progress” and capitalistic changes are being effected in the post-Cold War era, one must ask what the world has achieved --or is turning into. In its quest to define itself within the realm of international relations after the cessation of the Cold War, the U.S. has reflected on many contending theories and paradigms to assess its role. Samuel Huntington sees the world fragmented into large pieces characterized by commonalities of civilization, such as similar religious and cultural backgrounds. On the opposite sphere is a theory offered by Robert Kaplan, which states the world is falling into smaller fragments of nation-states, such as those found within the former Yugoslavia, representing a meltdown of civilizations and society. Francis Fukuyama offers a brighter outlook on the direction of the world in the post-Cold War era. Fukuyama states that the end of the Cold War has victoriously brought liberalization of political and economic ideas in which state relations are consonant.

(Wilsonianism takes Fukuyama’s theory a bit further, in which promotion of democracy will make the world a more prosperous, stable, peaceful and better place. While idealistic, one wonders if these two similar theories will ever truly be achieved, since the world will always have some form of dissent.)

John Mearsheimer’s view that present day Europe, without two nuclear superpowers with similar military force, may lead to “hypernationalistic violence” is quite pessimistic and perhaps archaic with formal institutions such as the EU and NATO trying to integrate Europe. Charles Krauthammer theorizes that the post-Cold War era is unipolar, with the United States as that unipolar power. Another theory holds that the world in the post-Cold War era is multipolar, and that the balance of power, for the most part, is stable. Benjamin Barber and John Lewis Gaddis offer a theory that the world is integrating and fragmenting (what a contradiction) at the same time. While all of these theories offer merit, they also suffer from many gaping flaws.

Since the world is not an inherently stable place (governments and institutions are known to disintegrate, as seen in the U.S.S.R.’s downfall in 1989), the best approaches to follow are the ones that offer the most realistic and pragmatic views to the post-Cold War world. The world has adopted a multipolar stance in recent years, evidenced by the interconnectedness of global economies. Also, along with the integration of multiple economies, there is a growing movement towards democracy (since the strongest economies seem to be placed in democratic countries that favor the ideologies of capitalism). Barber and Gaddis’ theory of ambiguous contradictions also offers a more pragmatic and realistic outlook within the current time.

The emerging world is a color of contrast, and not as black-and-white as it was in the Cold War era when the dominating forces were the United States and the U.S.S.R. Today’s world is less structured, as communications and technologies have run rampant, and information has exploded at such a rate that governments cannot regulate (and wonder if they should) the changes fast enough. In the Cold War era, the psychological war between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. was regulated by the governments, as Haass points out. The media (television, radio, press) were controlled nationally, telephone communication lines being run by operators; and direct confrontation and intervention were through the government institutions. Today, communications and technologies, such as the Internet, offer far more information than ever before. (In minutes or seconds, people can actually access blueprints of how to make weapons, and privileged government documents.) This could be quite dangerous since the threat posed to the security of governments and formal institutions is broader than before. One wonders if the plethora of accessible knowledge, due to the advancement of communications and technologies, offers any form of stability in a potentially unstable world. As Haas points out, in order for any system to enjoy stability, there are two criteria that need to be achieved: a balance of strength (similar to a balance of power), and a consensus (direction) of change by all.

Since the United States would like to remain an actor on the world stage, it must also give in gracefully to balancing its strength with other actors. The most beneficial changes for the good of humanity come from the diffusion of power, where there is an emergence of new centers of decision. Indeed, the United States must ask itself whether it wants to maintain a stance of unilateralism or multilateralism in international relations. Forcing sanctions upon any one country, such as Cuba or Iraq, also unfairly forces other countries between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Sanctions do not resolve any problems, and persuasive diplomacy takes a further step backwards as external (third) parties view the United States as the aggressor in the situation by hindering trade and humanitarian progress. While it is true that an advantage of unilateral behavior is the essence of time (the ability to act within a certain amount of time), a major disadvantage that occurs is whether the decision to act rationally was achieved. Similarly, the major disadvantage of multilateralism is the essence of time, yet an advantage of that is the ability to present a rational and worthwhile change. The situation with Bosnia --too little done too late-- was an act of indecisiveness on the international community’s part. If the United States wants to act as a sheriff of the international community, it should also be consistent within its agenda.

The United States cannot hide in isolationism as it did before WWI. If it retreats back into such a state, it will only hinder its own self interests. As a country that promotes “globalization” efforts in the world economy, the United States would suffer dramatically if it tended toward isolationist behavior. If the United States wants to remain a superpower, it cannot give in to the obsolete whim of isolationism. The citizens of the United States need to take a more active hand internally, as many of them remain apathetic to international affairs unless such issues concern them directly. Change begins at home. If the American public does not get involved with its own politics (the last presidential voter turnout in 1996 was less than 44%), then the politicians will tout their own agendas abroad (take, for example, the illustrious Senator Jesse Helms) at the American public’s expense. I am frightened that the presidential candidate from Texas, George W. Bush, might find himself in the executive seat of power when he hasn’t an inkling of who the other heads of state are in some politically unstable countries.

The United States has also had a topsy-turvy view on the environment. While it claims the importance of preserving biodiversity and etching environmental concerns in the international community, the citizens of the United States consume more than a third of the world’s energy and fuel. Actions speak louder than words, and if the United States believes in environmental causes, maybe it should take a page from the famed Greenpeace slogan “think globally, act locally.” The U.S. government’s actions remain inconsistent with the causes in which it claims to believe.

If the United States wants to remain the international community’s sheriff, maybe it should practice the art of empathy. It should not play sheriff unless it knows exactly what the job description calls for. Partiality and favors are always made --have always been made-- by the United States. Perhaps the United States should redefine its goals and stick to them. It has already lost face with the international community through its reluctance to help in certain situations when it could have made a difference for the better. If the United States touts itself as sheriff, it should clearly define its goals and assert itself: that its own self-interests economically are far more important than those of humanitarian and environmental change. While this may be a dark view on American foreign policy, it is a pragmatic and realistic view.

Unfortunately, I am an idealist at heart concerning changes in the international arena. This paper is a reflection I had after reading The Reluctant Sheriff by Richard Haas and was written to spark some comment from others.

Sejal Patel has an all-encompassing fascination with international relations (since it was her major in college). In her spare time she likes reading Henry Kissinger's memoirs, gardening, and dreaming up idealistic solutions for a utopian future.

AIDS In India

2009-01-10T01:15:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on April 3, 2000, with the tag line, "A heroic NGO does AIDS outreach work on the streets of New Delhi." A version had appeared in Family Practice magazine on Feb 10, 1997, under the title, "Naz Project Tackles India's AIDS Epidemic."

by Raywat Deonandan

The words "AIDS epidemic" have become part of our everyday North American lexicon, so much so that it's easy to let their meaning slip from conscious thought. But the HIV/AIDS problem here pales to that in India where, by WHO estimates, the prevalence of HIV has reached 2 million adult cases --the highest in the world. By 2020, the region will see more HIV/AIDS cases than the rest of the world combined. Given India's other pressing concerns --its poverty, overpopulation, ecological and security crises-- the addressing of its HIV/AIDS epidemic takes on dimensions unseen in the West.

Into this milieu has risen a certain non-governmental organization (NGO) called The Naz Project. Spawned philosophically from a group by the same name in England, Naz is a small organization of 9-13 counselors and volunteers working out of the New Delhi home of founder Anjali Gopalan.

"Our strength is that we work with groups off the beaten path, groups that other organizations tend to neglect," explains Pamela Dorrel, an American development worker who has been working in India for the past four years. Naz primarily targets street children for its safe sex counseling, and prides itself in seeking out the lowest possible income groups.

But Naz counselors will speak to anyone who needs their information. They are sometimes invited to present workshops at college campuses, supposed niches of almost Victorian prudishness. Information about sex, it seems, is a rare and precious thing in a place as conservative as India. Not surprisingly, Naz's sexuality hotline is overwhelmed by all kinds of callers. One man even phoned to ask how to tell if his new bride is a virgin.

"Middle class students are hungry for information about sex," says Naz counselor Vijay Rajkumar. "They are very open about their personal experiences and gaps in their knowledge, more than people in the West --or other Indians-- would expect."

The expectations of conservative Indians is very important to Naz workers. They are eager that the middle class world of government and media comes to accept that homosexual, pre-marital and extra-marital sex are rampant at all levels of Indian society. Indeed, 8 out of every 9 HIV cases in India are contracted through sex, not through other avenues common in the West, such as intravenous drug use.

AIDS in South Asia has typically been described as a heterosexual phenomenon. It's possible, however, that a very large homosexual population has been under-sampled. India's huge population of slum-dwellers (measured in the millions in each city) tends not to be captured in clinical HIV/AIDS surveys, and tends to include a large number of street boys furiously engaging in sex.

Just like in large American cities, these children are often runaways from all over the country, or from neighbouring countries like Nepal and Bangladesh, who find their way to the New Delhi bus station. There, they are instantly preyed upon by pimps and abusers.

Rajkumar claims that street boys are sexually active at 9 years of age, and are often sexually abused at age 7 or younger. Even though these boys are usually involved in the sex trade, a large part of their sexual activity is with other street kids, leading Naz to make one of its most controversial recommendations. "We don't try to discourage sex," says Rajkumar. "We want to make it safer. That's why we've recommended to the government that they provide child-sized condoms for the street kids."

Part of Naz's mandate is to provide services for "men who have sex with men." This euphemism for homosexuality is necessary because of the way homosexuality and AIDS are perceived in India. Since anti-AIDS ad campaigns typically depict photos of a man and a woman, such as those common on condom packages, many people believe that AIDS can only be contracted through heterosexual activity. Men therefore seek out other males as sex partners, even though they would not identify themselves as homosexuals. Homosexual activity is accordingly more widespread than more superficial examinations would reveal.

"The man doing the penetrating considers himself to be heterosexual," Rajkumar explains, "while the man being penetrated may consider himself to be gay, but would tend not to identify himself as such." In short, the terms "homosexual" and "heterosexual" may not have the same meaning in South Asia as they do in the West.

Because of this, Naz believes that no one is scared away from their counseling centre by any homosexual stigma. "Only the upper class who may have read foreign newspapers would ever think that there's a connection between AIDS and homosexuality," Dorrel says.

The treatment of HIV/AIDS is culturally laden, and strategies common in the West cannot be considered in Asia. "Sometimes we must go beyond informed consent," Rajkumar declares, "even though you may consider this unethical." India is a society in which an expert, such as a doctor, has the moral authority to command certain behaviours. Naz members follow this thread in that they will order individuals to seek medical help, to be tested, or sometimes to contact former sex partners.

The responsibilities concerning AIDS testing prior to an arranged marriage, or whether homosexual activity constitutes infidelity, are further cultural considerations that complicate AIDS outreach work in India.

Some epidemiological models estimate that the actual Indian HIV/AIDS prevalence level can be 36 times greater than that actually reported. Given this staggering figure, the work of a lone organization like Naz can almost be considered heroic.

Don't Believe The Hype!

2009-01-10T01:11:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on March 21, 2000, with the tag line, "One take on the hype surrounding e-commerce" It had originally appeared on Mr. Hui's personal website on Dec 24, 1999.

by Andrew Hui

I was watching some financial show with Garth Turner where he was interviewing this 20-something yahoo about e-retailing. This num-nut had no idea what the hell he was talking about. He kept blathering on about how e-retailing would save money by reducing rent and staffing costs. As the old (and wrong) argument goes, since a company that sells on-line uses a web site, it doesn't need a storefront or people in the store. Therefore, it saves money and can sell for less.

Bollocks! I've never heard such a pile of crap. Ok, wait a second, I should be fair. I did believe it myself, but, after thinking about it, I realised that e-retailing is going to do very little. In fact, I wrote a paper about it. You can check it out at http://www.geocities.com/ahui.geo/other/essays.htm. It's called: "Will the Internet mean the end for intermediaries?"

Basically, there are 4 reasons for why e-retailing isn't going to make a big dent:

1. The "savings" aren't real.

Sure you don't need the store and the sales staff, but you do need a big warehouse and staff to take care of inventory. The advantage with retailing is that your staff act as sales people and inventory people. With e-retailing, you just have inventory staff. So basically, the staffing changes and rental changes are not significant.

Also, it goes down to very basic economics. It is often cheaper to ship 1000 goods to 1 location that it is to ship 1 good to 1000 locations. With the Internet, your distribution system is the latter and therefore, it is more expensive for the e-retailer to get the goods to the customer. Furthermore, since the onus is on the consumer to buy the good, the cost will be paid, in full, by the customer. That's why most e-retailers such as Chapters Online have a $10 shipping fee.

Some argue though that I should have included the travel time and the line-ups as part of the equation in that they represent a cost savings. I would argue that the amount is so little and the expense is so hidden that it doesn't really factor into the equation. I mean, does anyone know (or care) how much it costs to drive to the corner store?

2. The advertising factor

If a tree falls in a forest does it make a sound? That's the kind of idea for e-retailing. The Internet is just so big, and competition is so fierce that it is impossible for a startup retailer to generate enough buzz to generate enough traffic. I mean, even "successful" e-retailers such as Amazon.com have yet to make a profit!

Regular stores are useful because they let people go to one place and browse. With the Internet, there aren't enough central locations for people to go. And when there are, they will either be too big (i.e. too many affiliated retailers listed) or too expensive (the site charges too much "virtual" rent).

3. The human factor

Shopping is such an engrained tradition among citizens of most Western societies. Marketers have long recognized this as part of the buying process. Simply said: people like to go out and be with other people. E-retailing negates this. This is not to say that no one will be attracted to e-retailing because they don't go out, just that there are not enough of these people right now to make it profitable.

4. Some goods can't be sold on-line

Can you imagine test-driving a car on-line? Or maybe buying an engagement ring online? Generally, unless you have more money that Bill Gates, these goods need to be tested and touched before a sale is made. Commodities, on the other hand, such as pop and toilet paper, can be sold this way since they are fairly generic and low risk. But therein lies the problem. Competition will be fierce for these products, and the value-to-volume ratio is just too low to justify selling it online. Basically, there is almost no money to be made selling commoditized goods.

Anyway, I've bored you all enough. Those four reasons are basically why e-retailing isn't going to revolutionize anything. As per usual, if you think I'm off the deep-end, let me know!

Andrew Hui is a 4th year Commerce student at the University of Toronto. In the future, he hopes to be one of those annoyingly young and rich owners of a dot.com business. In the meanwhile, he enjoys writing controversial and revealing rants, and sharing them with his friends in an effort to spur some intellectual or, in many cases, pseudo-intellectual discussion about a variety of topics. His objective with the rants is not to engage in serious discussion, but to spur thought and encourage people to frame their ideas and opinions in writing.

A Question of Voice?

2009-01-10T01:08:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on Feb 27, 2000, with the tag line, "Who speaks for whom? A discussion of diaspora and cultural identity."

by Loreli C. Buenaventura

The other day as I grabbed a jar of curry paste from the fridge to add to chickpeas heating on the stove, I was met by a look of puzzlement on my roommate's face. She, an international student from Delhi, explained to me that she does not buy packaged curry in India, be it paste, spice or powder. What I refer to as curry is her equivalent of cooking with cumin, turmeric, ginger, garlic and onions. As she is speaking, I stare at her in amazement, my mind wandering to how the developing world is represented in the West. The next day, as I watch my roommate swirl cumin seeds in hot oil with a soft brush of her long handled spoon, and as the aroma meets my nose, I realize how her curry cooking cannot be captured in a Western jar of curry paste. So much is lost in the "translation" and I can sense a gulf between her and I because of this experience.

In one of my Sociology classes the following week, a parallel occurrence takes place. Our class is studying the conceptualization of nationhood and the spread of nationalism. Though I find interesting how print capitalism coincided with the rise of nationalism and imagined communities, an element in the discussion prevents me from being fully engaged. From my perspective, the classroom and textual discourse cannot grasp the passion behind why people die for their country, especially in the developing world. As in my realization the week before of how curry cannot be represented fully in the Western world, our discussion on nationalism cannot be communicated with full integrity. The courage and resilience of thousands of people who fought against colonialism in the name of freedom seem lost in this academic discourse, as is the impact of brutal violence inflicted on the colonized by colonizers. I am under the impression that we are studying what Filipino nationalist scholar Renato Constantino calls "history without tears." As the discussion on imperalism and colonized societies continues, I find another element missing - the complex heterogeneity of experience that exists among the colonized, especially based on gender and sexuality. What happens to these voices when they are not represented in text?

In Writing Diaspora (1993), Rey Chow distinguishes the discourses of the colonizer from the colonized, relegating the act of "speaking" to a well-defined structure and history of domination. According to Chow, there is a chasm between the two discourses because of the "essential intranslatability" from one to the other. In other words, the colonized cannot be represented fully in imperialist discourse because of what is lost in the translation. In Thinking Through (1995), Himani Bannerji broadens this discussion when she speaks of the difficulties with regard to centring "Third World" voices in Western cultural production - when such voices are present, they are usually out of step with the rest of the expressive enterprises.

Bannerji's words resonate with me as I recall my sense of frustration when sitting through studies of nationalism in a Western classroom. I first learned about nationalism through the performing arts. For ten years, I studied under my late uncle, a political activist in the Philippines who formed a popular theatre group when he immigrated to Winnipeg. His signature piece, Walang Takbuhan (No Running Away) comprised a cast of twelve who enacted the real lives of activists with whom he worked alongside in solidarity. In assuming these roles, we knew each of their names and their history of resistance. My uncle impressed upon us the seriousness of who and what we represented. And what I learned about nationalism through song, dance, storytelling, improvisation and movement could never be grasped in talks taking place within graduate studies seminars. I understand now that Western academic texts can never capture what is communicated through a clenched fist, the circular composition and dispersion of bodies on stage or the slight rise in my grandmother's voice when speaking of surviving Japanese occupation in the Philippines.

As we traveled across Canadian and US cities to perform Walang Takbuhan, I sensed the pain my uncle experienced each night in watching pastiches of his life performed on stage. This was not a study of history without tears. Instead, we learned about Philippine history through a lot of tears - a lot of anger, frustration, pride and joy, too. And through it all, I learned not to be detached from this history of revolution passed on to me from previous generations.

As these thoughts run through my mind, I am more and more waging a struggle in the classroom. In discussing nationalism in a Western academic context, I feel forced to compartmentalize my intellect from my feelings. I want so much to approach the subject matter more holistically, to be a full-embodied being in the classroom, to be present, to be visible… But in this moment I sense a divide that separates me from everyone else in the room because the information I want to share about nationalism cannot be translated entirely to Western academic and imperialist discourse. I can only communicate such knowledge through a forceful kick in the air, a pirouette in lightly lit space and the outstretch of a hand. I realize then that the question is no longer who can speak. Instead I ask, who can hear and who will listen?

Loreli C. Buenaventura is the Arts Editor of Pagitica magazine.

Why Feminism is Evil

2009-01-10T01:04:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on Feb 10, 2000, with the tag line, "Mr. Hui gives his take on modern feminism." A version had first appeared on Mr. Hui's personal website on Nov 27, 1996.

by Andrew Hui

Here is my anti-feminism rant that you have all been:

eagerly
nervously
curiously
not

awaiting.

Feminism is evil. Now before any of you brand me an ignorant male chauvinist pig, read on to understand my arguments. But first my thesis: present day feminism is an antiquated belief who's leaders consists of those women who have failed in life, and who require someone to blame for their failure. It is an ideology that promotes discrimination, restricts the freedom of women, and supports a fallacious belief in an aspect of society that exists on such a minute scale that it is no longer relevant.

First, what is a feminist? Feminists are women who believe that the female gender is superior to the male gender. Now, I know some of you who are reading this are saying, "What a fool, he has no idea what feminism is. Feminism is about achieving equality for both genders." Well, I submit that those who are thinking, saying, yelling, cursing this in fact do not know what feminism is.

The gender equality ideal belongs to a philosophy which I have dubbed, "Egalitarianism". Like the name suggests, this philosophy believes that all human beings are created equal, and that it is wrong and foolish to discriminate with respect to gender, race, religious/political beliefs, sexual preference, etc.

So in fact, most "feminists" are indeed egalitarians. But don't tell the core feminists that. They know this is true, but how else would they give the impression that their political and social minority is a significant force? So, feminists are those who believe in the superiority of the female gender, while egalitarians believe in the equality of all human beings with respect to each other.

Now that that little issue is clear, let me proceed to explain why feminism is so bad.

Feminism promotes discrimination. For the simple fact that feminists believe that women are superior to men, it becomes clear that they are biased against men. They believe that, because women are superior to men, they should be granted special rights. For example, hiring quotas. Just because there are more men in some fields than women, it is immediately assumed that women are being discriminated against and therefore must be given a more equal opportunity for jobs. Well, this "more equal opportunity" has manifested itself as affirmative action. Well let me just tell you this: quotas are nothing more than legalized discrimination. By the very nature of a quota, some people are excluded with respect to their physical attributes, while others are not. This is called DISCRIMINATION. Since feminism supports quotas, it supports discrimination.

Just as a note, I don't understand why anyone would want to play the "minority card" when getting employment. But, then again, maybe they aren't good enough for the position in the first place, so they need to use this dirty trick.

Also, quotas are no good for all parties involved. People who get in via quota lack legitimacy. (i.e. "You only got in because of the quota.") This creates unnecessary tension between rival groups, which, in the long run, can bolster the forces of discrimination. So this is another way that feminism promotes discrimination. Also, this inevitable situation will hurt those "minorities" who got in without the quotas. Although they are competent, they will be regarded as just another beneficiary of the quotas.

Feminism restricts the freedom of women to choose their own way of life. Unfortunately, many women who currently choose to stay home with the children are seen as opponents to women's rights. They are viewed with contempt and seen as inferior to those women who choose a career. I know this because of a certain eavesdropping operation on a group of unsuspecting women.

This attitude that women who stay home are inferior to those who choose a career is just wrong. First of all, it is none of anyone's business whether or not a woman chooses to stay home or not. Secondly, maintaining house and family is an extremely tedious and difficult job definitely not for the weak of heart.

So, as I have shown, feminism limits the choices of women to determine their own destiny.

Feminism creates the false impression that women are a disadvantaged group and therefore implants a "Oh well, who cares, I'm not supposed to succeed" (defeatist) attitude in women.

By continuously spouting their "Boo hoo, women are the victims" propaganda, feminists have created a situation in which young women are taught that they are the underdogs and are not very likely to succeed. The same thing happens to many African Americans (especially those from low income families) in the USA. They were constantly told that they are victims, and now believe it. The result has been the propagation of despair: the idea that there is no use trying because you won't succeed. (This attitude is reflected in most of Spike Lee's films.) Feminists have consciously or subconsciously --it doesn't really matter which-- created the same idea for women.

Well, let me just say that this is just wrong. Women are not at a disadvantage. Discrimination died in the late 80's and early 90's; well, it has diminished to the status of a "non-factor". The irresponsible propagation of this idea is not only deceiving, but threatens to reduce women's hopes and aspirations to rubble.

Feminism is an outdated belief of the past. Like I said before, discrimination is a non-factor now. Diehard feminists are using the victim card to simply further their personal and political gains.

Women would not rule the world better than men. Let there be no doubt, women are just as violent as men. They always have been and they always will be. Just see the matriarchal tribes of Africa and the rise in female crime for proof. Women and men are equal and neither would rule the world better than the other.

So basically, to sum it all up:

There are fewer feminists than you might think. Most people are egalitarians.
Feminism is a retroactive philosophy which serves to stagnate the process of final equalization between men and women.
Feminism is a self-serving, discriminatory action that has potential to be one of the great "isms".

So long live light of egalitarian rule. Down with the darkness that calls itself feminism.

Andrew Hui is a 4th year Commerce student at the University of Toronto. In the future, he hopes to be one of those annoyingly young and rich owners of a dot.com business. In the meanwhile, he enjoys writing controversial and revealing rants, and sharing them with his friends in an effort to spur some intellectual or, in many cases, pseudo-intellectual discussion about a variety of topics. His objective with the rants is not to engage in serious discussion, but to spur thought and encourage people to frame their ideas and opinions in writing.

The 20th Century's Media Moments

2009-01-10T00:56:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on Dec 7, 1999, after an on-line poll, with the tag line, "The results of The Podium's poll on the century's most memorable moments."

by Podium readers

The results of The Podium's second poll are complete. The question was, "name the three most memorable media moments of this century."

This time we received a whopping 11 responses (2 fewer than last time). Statistically, of course, this is an inconsequential sample size. However, this is not a scientific enterprise, but rather an opportunity to think about the events of our century, so sample size is irrelevant.

The limitations of this question are fairly obvious. We are most closely touched by those events that are within living memory, and by those events which the media has chosen to repeat ad infinitum. I'm therefore surprised more entertainment moments weren't chosen.

The Results

1. First Place (a 2-way tie)

The Zapruder film of JFK's assassination (5 votes)

Abraham Zapruder serendipitously pointed his home movie camera at one of the most devastating scenes in American history, capturing the very moment that President John F. Kennedy was shot to death, supposedly by lone gunman Oswald.

No other event in the modern era has spawned more conspiracy theories, or has better exemplified the growing distrust of Western societies for our elected leaders.

The Zapruder film was obtained by an enterprising Southern district attorney who brought to court the only trial of perpetrators accused of JFK's murder. Both the film and that trial were immortalised in Oliver Stone's feature movie JFK.

Paul Henderson's winning goal in the 1972 hockey series between Canada and the USSR (5 votes)

It is interesting that a sports event would rank as highly as the assassination of the so-called leader of the free world. But this event transcended sports and touched upon geopolitics. At the height of the Cold War, an era whose tone and timbre are barely imaginable by the youth of today, the conflict that we all feared was instead played out on ice between the national hockey teams of Canada and the Soviet Union.

After games in Canada and Russia, punctuated by hotel room buggings and threats of incarceration, the final game was played in Moscow and decided by a timely overtime goal by Canadian Paul Henderson.

Simply watching videos of the game is insufficient to appreciate the tension of the moment. One must also consider the international scenario that made such a game compelling in the first place... a far cry from today's almost border-less international NHL.

2. Second Place (a 3-way tie)

Images from the Gulf War (4 votes)

The most televised U.S.-involved conflict since the Vietnam War, the Gulf War was seen as an opportunity to "do it right". With carefully controlled public access to footage, the Pentagon crafted a marvelous media collage of faultless weaponry and bloodless battle.

Most memorable were the on-board cameras' views of missile impacts onto Iraqi targets, providing wonderful advertising material for arms dealers worldwide.

The War lifted CNN into the position it presently enjoys, as the leading news source for the planet, and made stars of reporters like Arthur Kent, the "scud stud."

Less discussed is the footage of the bombardment of the city of Baghdad, surreal in its science-fiction lighting.

Neil Armstrong walking on the moon (4 votes)

There are many people, myself among them, who believe that 1000 years from now, this century will be remembered for only two things, one of them being the birth of space travel (the other being nuclear power). Humanity's trip to the moon, 30 years later, still represents the pinnacle of technology.

For tens of thousands of years, the moon has been the realm of mythology, a disc of light pinned to the sky by giants or gods. When Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, humanity was forced to mature, to pull ourselves out of the mire of mythology. The event remains a landmark of our modern era in which science equals, and perhaps surpasses, religion in the hearts of many.

The explosion of the Challenger space shuttle (4 votes)

It's interesting that this event would equal the moon landing in prominence in our memories. Perhaps there is a lesson here: that we must accept the triumphs of our courage and cleverness along with the tragedies and failures that will unerringly accompany them.

The explosion of Challenger is doubly tragic since it was to represent the first instance of a private citizen going into space. The mission's failure was a reminder to many that space remains an untamed frontier fraught with dangers unimaginable to we gravity-bound denizens.

3. Third Place (a 4-way tie)

JFK Jr saluting at his father's funeral (2 votes)

This image is even more memorable for the death of John-John himself earlier this year. More probably, we remember this portrait for its representation of the end of the golden era of Camelot, a realization poisoned with uncertainty but tempered by the hope of youth.

Photos and film footage of WWII concentration camps (2 votes)

Socio-politically one of the most important events of the century, the discovery of these camps and the skeletal remains of their victims would have dwindled in public memory and impact had it not been for the presence of cameras. Because of the immortality of images, these horrors will never be forgotten.

Terry Fox running across Canada (2 votes)

The heroes of other lands tend to be great leaders or warriors. It is indicative of the Canadian stereotype that our hero is a soft-spoken one-legged man running across the country to raise money for cancer research. I encourage everyone to consult Joseph Campbell's hero motif and apply his criteria to Terry Fox... you will find that, despite his lack of a booming voice and fiery sword, Terry is a hero in the finest mythic tradition.

Kim Phuc running from her village in Vietnam after napalm had burned the clothes from her body (2 votes)

Her name has only recently become widely known, largely through Denise Chong's book The Girl In The Picture. Presently a grown woman living in Canada, Kim Phuc retains the physical scars of the napalm attack. Her photo was one of the most vivid messages to North Americans that the Vietnam War had a human face that was all too innocent.

4. One Vote Each

Jacques Parizeau blaming "l'argent et des votes ethniques" in a drunken outburst on referendum night, 1995
O.J. Simpson's White Bronco chase
Female student crying over slain compatriot at Kent State University
Footage of first atomic bomb explosion in New Mexico
Pierre Trudeau flipping the bird to the good people of Salmon Arm, BC. during his final election bid
Marilyn Monroe's billowing skirt
Raquel Welch in Barbarella (I think this respondent meant Jane Fonda)
Announcement of the killing of 14 female students at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique
Photos of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster
Evil Knieval jumping Snake River canyon
Any photos of Mother Theresa
Band-Aid video for African famine
Mohammed Ali lighting Atlanta flame
Photos of Hiroshima/Nagasaki after the bombing
Chimney smoke at the Vatican signaling that a new pope had been chosen
Ben Johnson winning the gold medal at Seoul
The Hindenburg explosion

Science Is A Dead End Career

2009-01-10T00:52:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on Nov 26, 1999, with the tag line, "Society pushes for more science grads, but where are the jobs?" A version was later published in The Ottawa Citizen newspaper under the title, "Last of the Red Hot Nerds", on March 23, 2002.

by Raywat Deonandan

A career in science is a dead end. This is the terse opinion voiced by Alan Hale at highschool career days, on Internet discussion groups and on public radio. Understandably, Hale's declaration has proven to be a source of consternation for educators, and perhaps a needed slap in the face for we who have ventured down the uncertain road of professional science.

Hale is the astronomer who gained instant fame as the co-discoverer and partial namesake of the Hale-Bop comet. His comments come at an already uncertain time for career scientists. With the deaths of media stalwarts Jacques Cousteau and Carl Sagan, only physicist Stephen Hawking remains as a living household name who bridges both popular culture and real scientific research. The dearth of such names is a real indication of the growing alienation many scientists feel from the institutions of society: media, business and government. The love affair between society and nerds, which peaked during the days of Einstein and Oppenheimer, is apparently over.

Further symptomatic of the malaise that has befallen this formerly tight relationship is the media attention given to John Horgan's book, The End of Science. Horgan, a senior writer for the popular lay magazine Scientific American, contends that all the great empirical scientific discoveries have already been made. All that remains is the mundane refinement of existing knowledge. Engineers, computer developers and various technical professions are growing in number, power and prestige because they are involved in this important latter task: the polishing of existing technologies.

If Horgan's premise is true, that groundbreaking new sciences are unlikely, then society's devaluing of experimental scientists is almost understandable, and Alan Hale may be on to something.

Hale points out, quite correctly, that recent science graduates with Ph.D.'s can expect to linger in low-paying support jobs until they are lucky enough to find a university appointment. In some basic science fields, a job advertisement for an assistant professor can expect to receive thousands of applications. Unless they are directly specialized in an area of immediate commercial importance, such as gene therapy or medical imaging, a young Ph.D. scientist can expect to find very few inroads into industry, and a long line-up to get into the university's ivory tower.

With the excellent job prospects open to graduates of any MBA or law program, society's values are clearly demonstrated: the production of new knowledge is not as important as the management of old knowledge.

It's not surprising that many scientists are frantically jumping ship, looking for innovative ways to sell their unique skills to a corporate world that doesn't know how to evaluate them. Some are returning to school for yet another university degree, often in medicine, business or law, to cash in on the growing opportunities in health care, equities research and patent agency. Others are stretching their resumes to grasp for positions in management, business development or even sales. Not surprisingly, there exists a website called Science's Nextwave, registering hundreds of hits daily, which is dedicated to getting science students out of pure science.

When competing with those who have more specialized credentials, a pure scientists' chances in the corporate world are not good. And yet career counselors and public service announcements continue to tell students that post-graduate work in science will allow them to apply their creativity to answering the big questions in nature. No mention is ever made of the years or decades to be spent as an over-trained and underpaid lab assistant.

If Alan Hale's position is an indication of the future, we are soon to suffer a deluge of highly educated and highly skilled newcomers to the welfare rolls. Of course, in the wake of his new fame, Hale has risen from the ranks of the impoverished, and is now Director of New Mexico's Southwest Institute for Space Research. In his case at least, an education in science appears to have been a sound investment.

Black Trenchcoats After Columbine

2009-01-10T00:40:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on Nov 23, 1999, with the tag line, "Reactionaries lash out at fashion and artistic choices."

by Raywat Deonandan

This article was written immediately after the massacre at Columbine high school in Colorado. (It was originally intended as a freelance piece for The Toronto Star, but I never got around to submitting it, fool that I am). Thus, a couple of the refences may be outdated, such as professional wrestlers Sting and The Undertaker toting trademark trenchcoats.

Mass media and higher education are supposed to have made us a more reasonable, logical and pluralistic society. We’ve grown beyond the book-burning ignorant days of the Cold War, haven’t we? Back then, for example, simply suggesting a relationship with communism was sure to bring the wrath of the mob down upon any disliked individual.

We aren’t so ignorant anymore, no longer so ruled by a knee-jerk scape-goating reflex. Or so I had hoped, until recent developments in the wake of the Colorado shootings shattered my hopes.

In Colorado, two gunmen in black trenchcoats, purportedly individuals who enjoyed a so-called "Gothic" lifestyle, murdered many innocent victims. The Star, to its credit, was quick to print a large feature redeeming Goth culture, rightly concerned that the mob would turn its fickle finger of blame to point squarely at anything seemingly "dark" and otherworldly.

In the same week, The Star reported that a Toronto pre-teen was suspended from school for having come to class bedecked in a black trenchcoat. Admittedly, the foolish boy had been uttering Colorado-esque threats, so undeniably deserved severe punishment. But one has to wonder how much of the reaction he provoked was due to his black trenchcoat alone.

Indeed, the brother of a friend of mine was recently chastised by his mother for having brought home a magazine whose cover photo was from the movie The Matrix: gun-toting Keanu Reeves wearing a black trenchcoat. And the distributor of The Basketball Diaries, a film about the life story of poet James Carroll, pulled copies of the movie from video stores across the U.S because of a scene featuring a gunman in a black trenchcoat.

Furthermore, in the world of professional wrestling this week, the two largest federations featured performers Sting and The Undertaker conspicuously without their trademark black trenchcoats. And the Washington performance of the a capella singing group called "The Trenchcoats" has been canceled, even though no one in the group actually wears trenchcoats.

As the owner of a black trenchcoat, I’m reticent to wear mine in public these days. This hesitancy has little to do with my genuine respect for the memory of those who were murdered, and more to do with a fear of mob revulsion. This is a new kind of compelled political correctness, I fear, one that benefits from the highest form of spurious justification: that aesthetic choices may represent not only questionable values but actual violent behaviour.

60 Minutes reported this week that the family members of a murder victim are pursuing legal action against the makers of The Basketball Diaries, claiming that the gunman scene inspired a real life killer. One is reminded that the murderer of John Lennon claimed to have been driven to his crime by reading J.D.’s Salinger’s Catcher In The Rye. One is also sadly reminded of the short-lived movement thereafter to ban that classic novel from American schools.

We cannot allow the potential psychopathic sensitivities of a few to deny us the richness of a diverse and cultured society. Legal proceedings such as the aforementioned are less inspired by a desire to create a safe society than by a reflexive fear of any behaviour or image that strays too far from the conventional. I fear that a homeostatic dogmatic agenda belies this new conservative attitude, and find it interesting that no one has ever tried to ban the Bible for its depictions of torture, murder, rape and incest.

It is, of course, understandable for a traumatized people to seek someone to blame for such mindless violence; we all turn first to our primal instincts for emotional comfort, not to our logical forebrains. But the provision of convenient scapegoats --whether fashion choices, sub-cultures, music, books, movies or ethnic groups-- is not only unfair, but serves to tarnish the search for a genuine cause.

Letters in response to this article:

A letter from "The Lone Zoogy" September, 2000 Hello, I just stumbled upon your article addressing the now-always-referenced Columbine massacre/trenchcoat issue, and I must say that I wholly agree with you. I myself have liked trenchcoats (especially black, since they look so much better) well BEFORE the incident, but it's still considered a "bad thing" to wear, even after more than a year since the shooting. A few months ago I wore one to school, and went through about a dozen or so comments like "Hey, Mr. Columbine" or "Look! It's the trenchcoat mafia!". Probably what I find most interesting about the subject is that the two individuals who killed the students were NOT affiliated with the Trenchcoat Mafia (which isn't even a violent group), but instead just decided to wear long coats which could conceal weaponry. This is certainly NOT the first time this has happened! There have been several cases in movies and in real life where people have used trenchcoats to conceal a variety of things, yet we choose to bring it up now. It's disgusting that, as we now approach the year and a half anniversary, we still can't give up this hatred against a fashion statement. To cite an example, www.trenchcoat.com, a site simply for selling the coats, was banned after the incident. The person who ran it took it down, but he did leave all the hate mail or "join applications" that he received. Truly terrifying how ignorant people can be. Well, sorry if that was a long spiel. I just really did agree with you. The Zoogy Somewhere in California

Variety On The Political Menu

2009-01-10T00:38:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on Nov 22, 1999, under the tag line, "Why do all politicians look and sound the same?"

by Raywat Deonandan

This article was actually written during the last Canadian federal elections in 1997. Some of the references may be a bit outdated, and some of the descriptions of particular public figures may seem a tad unfair today. But I think the message is still sound.

Collapsing moderators on TV debates notwithstanding, a certain malaise has befallen Canada's latest federal election campaign. Not that Chretien, Manning, Charest, McDonough and their ilk aren't caricable figures loved by editorial cartoonists and stand-up comedians alike, but somehow there is nothing more to set them apart from each other, nor indeed from ourselves, than overpriced haircuts and outrageous accents.

And, yes, we do want them to be different, not only to provide us with a varied political selection menu, but also to give us some much-needed confidence that our elected leaders are indeed better, smarter and more capable than our neighbours, co-workers, pizza guys and younger siblings.

So why is this year's crop so lacking? Where are the Trudeaus and Broadbents of yesteryear, the Rene Bouchards and, yes, the Brian Mulroneys of elections past? As despicable (and, sometimes, as loved) as those men were to various constituencies across the country, they stood out as strong independently-minded individuals who could run faster, jump higher and dodge innuendos more adeptly than the typical Bay street boob.

The answer lies among the ranks of the favourite white collar profession of the 90's: consultancy. Every candidate employs the services of an army of consultants --style consultants, voice and acting coaches, media savvy specialists, body language fixers and even hair and fashion consultants. It is no surprise, then, that they all come across more as products than as people.

This, ordinarily, would not be a problem for we consumer-minded peons of the Nike era. Daily, we delude ourselves that our panoply of lifestyle choices are real and not illusory. We convince ourselves that our dining, fashion and entertainment choices are not, in fact, dictated and decided by market forces and subtle advertising influences.

We have accepted this out of fatigue and apathy, and from an understanding that, in the grand scheme of things, fashion and entertainment choices probably ain't that important. The ilk of media consultancy has strong-armed our minds and bodies in all other arenas of personal decision-making, why not in politics, as well?

It has become a concern, however, because the armies of politicians' stylists and coaches have failed to differentiate their products from the competitor's. Each candidate sounds the same, dresses the same, and contorts his or her facial muscles in exactly the same way when uttering that detestably manipulative (yet oh so media savvy) clause: "My fellow Canadians..."

The work of style consultants in the political arena is poor and transparent, and perhaps that is what makes the trend so offensive. Alexa McDonough does a very shoddy Meryl Streep imitation in one of her election commercials; one can almost see the acting coach egging her on from the sidelines. Jean Charest out-suaves American self-help guru Tony Robbins in one of his youth-oriented infomercials. Preston Manning is just plain goofy-looking in his new haircut and ensemble. And perhaps the wisest and most effective media team is that of the Prime Minister who have apparently instructed him to "just lay low and stay out of trouble."

We don't ask for much. We've abandoned all hope of getting party leaders whose platforms are based on truth and fairness. We know we're being manipulated by spin doctors and pollsters. And we know that the self-declared "leaders" of our society are committee-formed products, not so far removed from the various indistinguishable sandwiches available at McDonald's. These days, however, all we ask for is a little variety in the menu.

How Real is Television's E.R.?

2009-01-10T00:35:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on Nov 22, 1999, under the tag line, "TV's ER is compared to true hospital stats, and comes out looking fine."

by Raywat Deonandan

Television shows are increasingly striving to package reality as entertainment. Cops continues to show real shirtless men being chased down by the law. Real TV brings us fuzzy video snippets from amateur videographers around the continent. And, of course, Jerry Springer and Professional wrestling continue to further blur that already obfuscated line between theatre and reality.

In the coveted prime-time slot, this trend toward realism is championed by the most successful of modern TV dramas, E.R. Created by non-practising medical doctor Michael Crichton, E.R. remains top-rated and highly praised for its supposedly realistic portrayal of events within a hospital emergency room.

But how realistic has E.R.'s portrayal been? Like its weaker medical predecessors Emergency!, Doctor Kildare, Trapper John, MD and their ilk, has E.R. compromised any claim to an accurate depiction of a real emergency room in the name of character and plot development?

Professors Bill Miller and Truls Ostbye of the University of Western Ontario have compiled the demographic and treatment profiles of a season's worth of E.R. patients as part of a graduate course taught by Dr. Ostbye, and have compared this compilation to real data from the U.S. National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS). Obviously, the NAMCS doesn't reflect the Canadian situation, but one should, in all fairness, compare E.R. patients to real patients in comparably sized U.S. hospitals, and not to medicare-supported Canadian hospitals.

The results of the comparison are somewhat surprising, particularly where racial demographics are concerned. Where one would expect the television show to disproportionately present white patients, as have its predecessor shows, E.R.'s white patients constituted a mere 4% more than the NAMCS data lead us to expect; 78.5% of NAMCS patients were reported as white.

Similarly, ER accurately showed that the majority of patients are below the age of 50, something at which many media gurus would have balked considering the much-hyped demographic trend of "population ageing."

The television show did, however, dramatize most of its patients (57.6%) as having arrived because of injury, while the NAMCS survey states that the majority of ER visits (58.5%) are due to illness or disease. Perhaps the treatment of broken bones and skull fractures, rather than of diarrhea or scabies, presents more potential for romantic drama and visual heroism.

Interestingly, where the E.R. television show deviates the most from reality is in its depiction of the gender split in the patient population. On television, just over 61% of the patients are male, while NAMCS reality dictates an almost even representation by both sexes. Back in the days of Emergency! and Trapper John, MD one might have expected a larger number of females, if only to provide romantic possibilities for those shows' mostly male cast. But in modern times in which gang violence brings in ratings, it helps to have gurneys laden with young male gunshot victims.

In short, E.R. seems to have passed snuff. Even its more nagging elements appear to be supported by reality: most visits to an ER are indeed made between 8am and 5pm on weekdays, and there is an increasing trend of usage among higher socio-economic groups.

Still, most real ER visitors tend to be poor and ill. And being of an ethnic minority group is still a strong predictor of ER usage. Some entertainment moguls no doubt believe that these factors persist as barriers to good ratings. Whether the seeming chaos and hourly crisis of television's E.R. is typical of a real emergency room is yet another issue, one that will surely depend on the city or town one chooses to examine.

But in this one case, in at least a few ways, it seems that art has chosen to imitate life.

Figures of the Last Millennium

2009-01-10T00:32:00.000-08:00

The article was first published in the original Podium magazine on Nov 19, 1999, in response to an online poll, under the tag line, "The results to The Podium's poll of most important people of the last 1000 years."

by Podium readers

I've finally compiled the data from the first poll, that which asked for your list of the most influential figures of the last 1000 years.

Sadly, only 13 people responded (including me!), but that won't stop me from listing the results.

I did not take into account each respondent's ranking of his or her nominees. Instead, I gave a point to each historical figure for every time his or her name was mentioned.

Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly), the runaway "winner" was Adolf Hitler. Perhaps this is indicative of the tendency of our times to mark the passage of history by traumatic events --wars, tragedies and disasters-- rather than by discoveries, inventions or ideas.

Let us not dwell too long on the obvious failings of any listing procedure such as this one. We each define "influential" according to our own biases, informed by media and by the values of our times.

Furthermore, we can only list the names of those that history has chosen to remember, whether deservedly so or not. These individuals may not in fact be the most "influential", only the most remembered. But that is a failing that none of us can remedy. This is not, after all, necessarily a forum for the promotion of social justice. Rather, this poll is simply a thought-provoking exercise intended to encourage us each to ask ourselves what we consider to be most prevalent, prominent and/or important in societies past and present.

So, in order of most mentioned to least mentioned:

1. Adolf Hitler (6 points)
2. Johannes Gutenberg (4 points)
3. Isaac Newton (4 poins)
4. Christopher Columbus (3 points)
5. Josef Stalin (3 points)
6. Albert Einstein (3 points)
7. Charles Darwin (3 points)
8. Nicolai Copernicus (3 points)
9. Genghis Khan (2 points)
10. Karl Marx (2 points)
11. Mahatma Gandhi (2 points)
12. Leonardo Da Vinci (2 points)
13. Napoleon Bonaparte (2 points)

The following names each received one vote:

* Sigmund Freud
* Martin Luther
* Leonard Cohen (yes, that Leonard Cohen)
* Immanuel Kant
* The Wright Brothers
* Thomas Edison
* Henry Ford
* Martin Luther King
* Rachel Silver (one respondent's wife)
* Bill Gates
* David Ben Gurion
* Pablo Picasso
* Igor Stravinsky
* Michel Foucault
* Ernest Rutherford
* Desiderius Erasmus

Women's Boxing: One Male's Perspective

2009-01-10T00:26:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on Oct 1, 1999, with the tag line, "Will men ever take women's boxing seriously?"

by Kevin Hilditch

On September 18, 1999, I had my first opportunity to view a professional women’s boxing match. It was for the Featherweight title. The competitors were Mia St. John (the champ) and Kelley Downey. This was all part of the lineup at an HBO boxing event in Las Vegas featuring Oscar De La Hoya vs. Felix Trinidad. I was very interested in seeing this match because I had heard that women’s boxing was much more aggressive than men’s boxing. I was very disappointed. Not by the boxing, although it appeared that the women may have lacked in training (perhaps from a lack of sponsors?), but by a number of other elements that I had not bargained for.

Firstly, the commentators, in their pre-fight and round-by-round commentary, focused more on the fighters’ physical appearance, and generally treated the fight as if it were no more than a ‘catfight’. Except for George Foreman, who treated the event as a boxing match and not just two women fighting, the commentators were completely unprofessional and disrespectful to the fighters and their abilities. Comments such as "She doesn’t want to mess up that pretty face of hers" does not seem to me to be professional round-by-round commentary. What if a commentator in the De La Hoya fight had said "With a great ass like that he can’t possibly lose this match!" I think you get my meaning.

Secondly, the match was only four rounds. The only other match that was that length was the purely entertainment showcase featuring the "Super Heavyweight" Butterbean. I’m not sure of the reasons for this, but my impression was that the coordinators of the match did not feel that the two women had the endurance or perhaps strength to last the full 12-round fight.

Finally, a match of this calibre, in a pay-per-view event with the highest amount of viewers outside of heavyweight bouts, failed to support the fighters, and instead chose to belittle the women’s event. This must be more than frustrating to the boxers, trainers, sponsors, etc., who are all trying to promote a sport that they take very seriously.

Unfortunately, Mia St. John also chose to pose for Playboy Magazine. In my opinion, this is not a way to gain respect for herself as a professional boxer, and not the most intelligent move for her career. This just furthers a perception of women in sport as objects rather than athletes.

My motivation for writing this article? In the Toronto Star newspaper’s Sept. 30th edition, there is an article about Muhammed Ali’s daughter Laila going into boxing. What was the headline? - "Ali’s daughter a knockout." [see below.] For a legend like Ali, having his daughter entering the fray is an incredible event and an opportunity for the legacy to continue... but not with the papers touting it as simply, and in every sense of the word, a spectacle.

This is just another example of the media choosing to condescend rather than to support women entering the male-dominated sport of boxing. It seems to me that the male boxers, commentators, promoters, etc., are either threatened by the possibility of women being equal to the task of boxing in strength, endurance and ability, or they feel that the only way to sell women in the sport is to portray them in a sexual manner. Or both. This makes me believe and understand that it must be very difficult for women in any sport to be recognized and respected. This is unfortunate and unnecessary.

So here’s to George Foreman and anyone who supports these women in their fight to gain the proper recognition they deserve --in this sport and any other. To all others, it is time to overcome your egos and ignorance, and to allow these women their due right to participate.

Kevin Hilditch is a Shiatsu massage therapist in Toronto. He lost $10 on the De La Hoya fight.

My Father Has Leukaemia

2009-01-10T00:24:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on September 6, 1999, with the tag line, "The touching story of a son's discovery of his father's terminal illness."

by Rodney Porter

When I laid eyes upon my father lying motionless on his hospital bed, his face covered in red sores, bruised eyes and lips swollen with coldsores, I burst into tears. Sobbing on my mother's shoulder, all she said was: "I guess it's a shock to see your dad like this."

To be honest, it was a bigger shock than when my mother had first telephoned me in London to tell me my father had been admitted to the Ulster Hospital, diagnosed with leukaemia.

Four weeks prior, on a Monday morning my father had gone to see his GP about a red rash on his ankles and lower neck. By the end of the day he was in a hospital bed. He was transferred a couple of days later to the Royal Victoria Hospital and by Friday he started chemotherapy to kill the cancerous cells in his blood. It was on this day that I first visited him.

My father was sitting up and talking quite amiably, although he seemed to still be coming to grips with the news of his leukaemia. Also, the effects of the chemotherapy were starting with the onset of nausea.

When I first heard that my father had leukaemia I was gobsmacked. Here was a man in his early fifties who did not drink alcohol, never smoked, watched his diet and exercised regularly. In fact, when the GP attempted to contact him, it was through my mother who had to call him at the YMCA's gym in Belfast. It certainly did not seem fair.

What I knew about leukaemia then could have been written on the back of a postage stamp. I searched the internet for information and printed off some brochures from the London based organisation, the Leukaemia Research Fund. Nothing seemed to make much sense, except that his condition was serious. But one thing that stood out, was that I could not find the word 'cure' anywhere. It turned out that this is the one word that the doctors are reluctant to use with leukaemia. Only around one in every thousand adults will at some time develop a form of leukaemia and very little is known about it. The Royal Victoria Hospital deals with about 10 cases a year and the City Hospital sees only two or three. Childhood leukaemia has a higher incidence.

Put simply, leukaemia is a malignant disorder of white blood cells, a cancer of the blood which can kill - in my father's case, in a matter of weeks unless treated.

His diagnosis of acute myleoid leukaemia sounded terrible. It is one of the most common types alongside chronic leukaemia. The terms acute and chronic refer not to the severity but to the speed of the onset of the disease. Acute is swift and needs urgent medical attention, whereas chronic is slow and may never be detected.

I got to a point where reading the piles of literature and talking to the doctors and nurses no longer helped. I stopped caring about leukaemia or previous victims of the disease. All I cared about was my dad and whether or not be would live.

It became so frustrating not to know his prognosis. Would he live for the next five years, or would he even see the new millenium? There was no simple answer because no-one honestly knew.

The chemotherapy consisted of drug trials - variations of different drugs to see which worked best. However, it wasn't this treatment that resulted in his poor physical state. Sure, it made him feel sick and knocked him for six but it was an infection after his first 10 day course of treatment that really put his life on the line. With no natural immunity, he was given anti-biotics. So many various liquids - blood, white blood cells, nutrients, chemotherapy and anti-biotics - were being fed into his body that a Hickman Line was surgically inserted into his chest.

As a result of the infection, my father found it a great effort to do anything, never mind talk. What he did manage to say was: "It just takes so much effort to do anything." He lay silently in his hospital bed, his face jaundiced, bruised and battered as tubes pumped fluids into him. It felt so alien to look at this man who was my father.

The infection has left him weak but things are starting to improve slowly. But with the results of a bone marrow biopsy due soon and around four more courses of chemotherapy to come, he is not out of the woods yet.

Like many illnesses, it has affected my whole family with my mother having to bear the brunt of the burden. The first few days were traumatic but now everyone seems to be coping a little bit better with new routines and a constant bedside presence.

I have had to accept that things must be taken on a day to day basis. One haemotologist I spoke to explained it with more clarity: don't blow the family fortune on one big final party, but at the same time don't leave anything unsaid or undone.

My father has a tremendous physical strength and a formidible spirit and is also a devout Christian. I believe he is fighting the disease with all his might. Of course, I want my dad to live and to enjoy a good quality of life. I want him to retire and pester my mother. I also want him to become a grandfather. But most of all I want to see an end to his pain and desperation.

Rodney Porter is an accomplished medical journalist and the new Marketing Editor of Mediconsult.Com

Alternative or Complementary Therapies

2009-01-06T04:37:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on Aug 25, 1999, with the tag line, "How can we best assess the wealth of alternative medicine options now available to us?"

by Kevin Hilditch

*This article is written to address certain issues, positive and negative, about the field of complementary therapies and its relationship to Western medical practice.*

There are a wide variety of therapies available to the consumer: Massage therapy, Shiatsu, Reflexology, Rolfing, Therapeutic Touch, Craniosacral, Polarity, LomiLomi, Reiki, Accupuncture. And the list goes on and on and on.

Over the last few years, there has been a great interest in these types of therapies. The reasons for this are varied, but the consensus of most is that the public's fascination is due to a lack of support from the Alopathic field of "Western" medicine. More simply put, either emotionally or physically, people are looking beyond the usual scope of medical practice for answers to their problems.

Unfortunately, for the most part, there is a lack of empirical or scientific evidence supporting most of the complementary therapies. Funding for mainstream medical research is almost always backed by, or on behalf of, pharmaceutical companies or certain government bodies. Holistic therapies pose a threat to these companies by their very nature; the focus is being taken away from medication and put onto other means of healing. The lack of scientific evidence is therefore self-explanatory.

The irony in all of this is that, in order to be accepted by the public, the unexplained mysteries of each therapy generally require some sort of scientific explanation. Also, because of therapy costs, insurance companies tend to back only those therapies that they feel pose as little risk as possible. To determine such degrees of risk requires research. Unless the individual has the funds to continue treatments on an ongoing basis, which is the usual prescription to recovery, he or she needs to rely upon insurance companies for support.

Due to these reasons, the therapist and his practice are limited to faith, and faith alone, for empirical support. People are looking for explanations beyond their physician, but still tend to require medical explanations to commit to something outside of the Alopathic realm to which they are accustomed.

The problems stem from the fact that the practices of most of the complementary therapies have little alopathic evidence to support their various claims. In addition, the knowledge and practical experience required to treat tends to be limited. Furthermore, without official recognition by the government in the form of a standard registration or certification process, there is no system in place to keep their practices in check.

Granted, the medical establishment has a long way to go before the human body and its various pathologies are fully understood. But, the mainstream knowledge already accumulated is necessary to complement and support the findings of the "alternative" therapies. Without it, claims can be made, and have been made, which may not be true.

Titles, unless already registered, can also be used to make the practitioner appear to be more professional. For example, a made up title such as Master Herbologist or M.H., offers the appearance of credibility. A better example would be someone who has attained a 4-year degree and acquired a title such as a Nutritionist as opposed to someone who has taken a weekend course and calls themselves a Nutritional Practitioner (NP); the layperson may not be able to distinguish between the two titles and be treated for a condition which the latter therapist would not be able to fully comprehend or effectively treat.

This leads me to a more specific issue. There has been some significant research done on the connection between the mind and the body in relation to various disorders and conditions - the most common and widely known being stress. In other words, human emotions and the physical response to them.

Complementary therapies tend to accept the emotional and its accumulating affect on certain conditions more so than the mainstream medical establishment. Some believe that a number of conditions may even be directly related to the emotional state of the individual, or due to certain traumatic events in the patients' lives. The challenge to the therapist is to treat the emotional as well as the physical. In my own experience, clients have wanted to express specific emotional issues in their lives. This is sometimes easier to do with someone with an objective viewpoint, such as an "alternative healer", rather than with a friend or family member, and can therefore be therapeutic for the client.

The danger is in treating the emotional to a degree that is beyond your scope of practice. Or, to believe that a problem rests purely in the emotional; i.e., the only reason there is no improvement is that the person is not willing to " let go" , is "blocking" or does not have enough faith in the treatment. This, I believe, can be a way to explain something medical that the therapist does not fully understand. Therein lies the danger. The job of the therapist is not to diagnose but to treat according to a physician's assessment; to complement their decisions.

In conclusion, it is important for a complementary therapist or practitioner to understand our limitations. We are taught only a limited amount of knowledge. What we learn may give new insight into a condition, and give credence to something that may not have been previously believed to be a treatable or workable method to recovery. ( Or not.) These insights may not be an accepted standard of mainstream medical knowledge, but may be just as valid a form of treatment. Yet, in order to be accepted by the general public, it is also necessary to complement homeopathic, naturopathic, and holistic research and therapy with alopathic research and practice.

The consumer should consider these things. Documentation attesting to the education, experience, and type of practice of the therapist should be made available to the patient. Also, one treatment or therapist may not hold all the answers to regaining good health. Each individual is different and may require different forms of treatment. Unfortunately, governments and insurance companies seem to set the standard for what is considered "valid" forms of treatment.

On the other hand, in order to practice in North America and to be accepted on a wide scale, these standards must be embraced. The truth of the matter is that alternative treatment must truly be complementary, and not an alternative to mainstream medicine at all, but each as a specialty and a complement to each other.

Kevin Hilditch is a Certified Shiatsu Practitioner and a big fan of Ray Deonandan's hair.

Bestiality, BDSM, Bondage, Fetish, Naked Teens

2009-01-06T04:32:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on Aug 24, 1999, with the tag line, "The famed Canadian comedy duo takes a long, hard look at pornography."

The Devils Advocates take a long hard look at pornography...

by The Devils Advocates

Welcome to our oddly-titled article! You were maybe looking for naked women, schoolgirls, sheep? We thought so... And we fooled ya! This is an article about pornography. By placing pornography buzzwords in the title this article comes (no pun intended) up a lot more often on search engines all over the world! And now that we've got you, why not stay awhile? Don't worry, the naked ladies aren't going anywhere. They'll be waiting for you when you're done.

Let's start with a definition of pornography, from the Mirriam-Webster Online Dictionary:

por-nog-ra-phy
Function: noun
Etymology: Greek pornographos (adjective) writing about prostitutes,
from porn (prostitute) + graphein (to write)
Date: circa 1864
1 : the depiction of erotic behavior (films, pictures, videos, writing)
intended to cause sexual excitement
2 : material (films, pictures, videos, writing) containing depictions of erotic behavior intending to cause sexual excitement
3 : the reason for adolescent boys to spend prolonged periods of time in the bathroom alone, and for adolescent girls to spend prolonged periods of time riding horses

Nothing inspires humankind like pornography. Paintings, literature, technology... Pornography, or "porno" is at the forefront of all of them. Why the Gutenburg Press? So we could all subscribe to Playboy, of course. Why the industrial revolution? So the new middle class could have more time to wank. Why the race for space? So we could have orbiting satellites delivering 61 channels of Swedish Erotica!

Just as our civilization has been shaped by porno, so too have our individual lives. Every young man remembers the excitement of discovering his dad's stroke book stash, entering a new, forbidden world where cheerleaders don't wear underwear, artists paint in the nude, and dental hygienists hanglide topless. As for young women... Well, we don't know. We're guessing, maybe, Judy Bloom books?

For young people, the only danger in "the left-handed read" is getting caught, a fear that can shape the performance of a man in bed for years to come -- "There's no time for foreplay, my mom might catch us!".

The Law of Averages dictates you do get caught eventually; hey, it happens to everybody. Girls can rest with assurance that their fathers won't call them on it; after all, people who live in glass houses... Even at the very worst, they can justify their stroke books as erotica. But boys don't have it so good. When their mothers ask "Do you like looking at pictures of naked ladies?", don't bother saying anything. There is no correct answer.

Eventually as we grow up we evolve from faded, dog-eared magazine pages to the wonderful world of video! Thanks to the arrival of the VCR, not only can you turn your living room into a home movie theatre, but into your own private peep show booth too, and without the annoying need for pocketfuls of loose change. Just walk through the swinging doors or maze-like entrance into the "Adults Only" section of your local video store, and gaze at the Cornucopia of Creativity on display -- The movie titles, not the plots.

Diddler on the Roof, Field of Reams, Dun Her, On Golden Blonde, Position Impossible, Poke-A-Hot-Ass, The Littlest Furmaid, Cockman and Throbbin, For Your Thighs Only, Bang The Bum Slowly, Forrest Hump, Vaginatown, WETness, and Free Willy. Clever puns on famous movie titles mask the endless repetition of the same plot: Guy meets girl, girl bends over, girl not wearing underwear, guy goes with it. To give the auteurs of this fine work credit, there are only so many variations on this theme.

Though the theme stays the same, at least the faces - well, not faces per se, but you know what we mean - give these erotic opi (i.e. sex films) some variety. So many young starlets head to Hollywood to seek fame and fortune, then wind up in some guy's back room trying to act on six-inch heels. And if they can't, no matter: There's usually a sticky couch well within falling distance.

If you tire of mechanical sameness or take exception to extreme close-ups of human anatomy, perhaps the hardcore porn of San Fernando valley isn't for you. Instead you can fire up your local foreign language channel and catch the best of European Erotica. Twenty minutes of gibberish, two minutes of moaning, and maybe a breast, probably a man's...

And if that's too much for your weak heart, there's always those "How to Make Love Gooder" tapes. You don't need to stuff these babies into your trenchcoat; you can carry them with dignity out the door of your local video rental joint: "I'm no dirty old man... I'm saving my marriage! And if that means looking at greased-up Playmates simulating intercourse then so be it!". Even the fundamental folk at Blockbuster Video, the type of people who would censor Bambi, carry this flavourless pornographic tapioca. You'll find out "How Candles Create The Mood", but you'll likely wish for better lighting so you could actually see something.

If you're too embarrassed to have the high-school dropout at the video store think poorly of you (we're guessing he's viewed the same titles as you, many times over) don't fear: Technology will come to your rescue! You don't have to pass your ID over the counter with a shaky hand, you can surf the 'net, as if you didn't already know... Instantaneous worldwide communication? A free public forum for the sharing of ideas? A new electronic medium of expression? How about free porn and plenty of it!

Every possible fetish can be satisfied in cyberspace. Want nudie pics of Drew Barrymore? Visit alt.pictures.erotica.drew-barrymore. Want nudie pics of Drew Barrymore with a lemur? Go to alt.pictures.drew-barrymore.lemur. Want to talk about what you saw? Check out alt.pictures.drew-barrymore.lemur.discussion. Want to see Teri Hatcher with a lemur? You figure it out!

But be forewarned: There is no such thing as free porn. How do you think America Online stays in business? It can hurt you in other ways too; you can lose precious brownie points when the girl of your dreams finds the Big Buttz website bookmarked on your browser.

The biggest cost of all is time. Sitting around waiting to log on, sitting around waiting for confirmation that yes, you are indeed twenty-one, then sitting around waiting for the objects of your desire to download to your screen, then to your computer. Suddenly, dinner and a movie doesn't seem like such an ordeal. Porn is a waste of time. You waste time getting it, you waste time using it, you've wasted time reading this and we've wasted time writing it.

The Devils Advocates' Improv Heaven & Hell airs on The Comedy Network every weekend. Check your local listings!

Line-Ups

2009-01-06T04:28:00.000-08:00

A version of this article first appeared in The Newspaper, a publication of the University of Toronto, on Sep. 6, 1995, under the name, "Lines Are Ohhhhh Soooo Lonnng." This article was published in the original Podium magazine on Aug 24, 1999, with the tag line, "F@$%ing line-ups really get on my f#$%ing nerves."

by Raywat Deonandan

A study done by some think-tank a while back reported that many of us will have spent several years in line by the end of our lifetimes. This is comparable to some other useless figures: if we live to be 90, we'll have spent 30 years asleep and four years in the bathroom. (Jay Leno once said that most men will have spent two minutes in an actual fist fight and 12.6 years pushing one another and saying, "Oh yeah?!")

But sleeping, going to the can and, some might argue, macho posturing are all aspects of life over which we as a society have little control. Line-ups, on the other hand, are a self-administered bane to happy human co-existence brought upon this Earth by infernal forces indeed!

Scene one: trapped in the ticket-buyers line at the local railway station, my train about to leave. The old lady in front of me insists on comparing the menus for all available voyages before deciding to which city she wishes to travel.

I missed my train.

Scene two: entangled within the check-out line at the local Value-Mart, three shoppers deep in the so-called "express" lane. The problem? The lonely (or lecherous) fellow in front is chatting up the check-out girl. Memories of Apu's advice to Marge Simpson flood over me then; "Express lane is not always fastest, Mrs. Simpson," the Wise One had decreed, pushing his cart to the longer line. "Look here! All pathetic single men --always pay in cash, no chit-chat."

Scene three: waiting to use the bank machine, my lunch hour having dwindled to mere minutes. Quick and easy, right? Put the card in, type some stuff, grab the dough and scram. Except that, without fail, I always end up behind the one guy who's trying to engineer a corporate take-over through the ATM.

Either that, or some timid technophobe has decided to venture forth into the universe of automated banking, having ineptly chosen the weekday noon-hour as his time of self-education. Ass-wipe.

Scene four: pick one --registration at the post-secondary institution of your choice, an attempt to view that oh-so-popular movie everyone's talking about, waiting to get onto a bus on the slushiest winter morning on record, or foolishly lining up to get into a night club that probably won't let your ugly ass in anyway. These scenarios have one common element besides the obvious linear formation of the individuals involved: predation.

Being in a line-up is like wandering the savannah with a herd of dumb herbivores. Eventually the hyenas are going to come looking for prey, and the best you can do is avert your eyes and hope that they get the dull wildebeest next to you. In a line-up scenario, the predators are usually people asking for your money in return for various services: signing up for yet another credit card, donating to the [insert wretched underdeveloped country name here] relief fund, listening to yet one more talentless John Cougar Mellencamp wannabe. And sometimes, thankfully, they ask for your money in exchange for nothing more than their quiet departure.

Sure, the situation here isn't nearly as bad as in other parts of the world where people join line-ups instinctively, without even asking what they're lining up for. But if things moved better and faster, think of all the more time you could spend sleeping, using the can or getting into fist fights.

Toy Time - Required Reading for the Gadget-Obsessed

2009-01-06T04:23:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on Aug 6, 1999, with the tag line, "What a minor Canadian cable celebrity does with a little money and a lot of free time."

by Andrew Currie

DISCLAIMER:

Any endorsements of, or complaints with, products mentioned in this article are based solely upon the author's personal experience...

MY WEEKEND WITH A SMART PHONE

or

GADGET-BUYING STRATEGIES FOR THE 21st CENTURY

I recently traveled to Montreal to experience my first JUST FOR LAUGHS festival. Feeling a little humbled that I was there to observe rather than to perform, I decided to take along a gadget sure to impress every Hollywood bigshot I'd meet -- a state of the art PCS phone, nay, a smart phone, with the ability to receive email forwarded from my ISP. A toy like that would surely go further toward getting me a big development deal than any public display of talent ever could.

What happened instead was that I spent much of the weekend wasting time, money and alienating my friends, because my smart phone didn't work. Inconceivable as it may seem, the impossible was true: technology had let me down! In my own little world I had experienced firsthand a meltdown of Y2K proportions. I'm not necessarily pointing any fingers toward the wireless carrier that sold me this phone, though I will say that their name rhymes with "hell" and that their website is here.

But I am asking myself "Did I really need to have email forwarded to my PCS phone?".

Here's another clue that will steer you in the direction of my obvious premise...

Like thousands of others, a buddy and I scammed a couple of free tickets to the recent COMDEX show in Toronto. I walked into our downtown convention centre eager to see the crème da la crème of smart phones, the Qualcomm pdQ, a phone so damn... smart that a PalmPilot hides within it.

I headed straight for the booth of the only Canadian carrier to support this amazing new device (care to guess who that might be?), only to find out that the folks there couldn't give me a demo because of a fire that had screwed up their wireless network.

As I held the lifeless pdQ in my hands, I asked someone how much a working model would cost. Time suddenly stood still when I was answered with the words "... About a thousand bucks".

Did I really need a phone with a PalmPilot hiding within it?

I decided that I didn't, and opted instead to fork over $200 for an older Palm and $150 for a non-emailable PCS phone. I'm using the other $650 for rent. My PalmPilot Pro was state of the art two years ago, and works great with my two-year old Macintosh. My Clearnet Nokia phone is a brand-new model, but is cheap enough to replace in the event that I lose it, or if someone reading this article decides to rob me. And if I'm pining for forwarded email I can always substitute good ol' fashioned text messaging, itself a technology two years old.

If you're going to buy new gadgets, you might as well do it on the cheap, because there will always be something fancier coming down the hype pipe. This can be done in one of two ways. You can go for hardware of the disposable kind, usually identified by funky colours or a small "i" in front of its name. Or you can take to the "previously cared for" market, and join the fuddy-duddy set, sitting on your porch in your rocking chair rambling on about how much better gadgets were in the old days. Chances are, you can still get those "old days" gadgets brand-new!

- AC

Andrew Currie is a Toronto-based actor, writer and comedian. His television show, Improv Heaven & Hell, can be seen in Canada on the Comedy Network.

Restaurant Etiquette, Part II

2009-01-06T04:18:00.001-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on Aug 4, 1999, with the tag line, "From a man who should know, how to be a good customer. Second part of a two-part series."

by Kevin Hilditch.

Part II - The Customer Is Always Right - How to get the service you deserve

(Have you read Part I?)

Reservations.

One way to guarantee a table in almost any restaurant is to phone ahead for reservations. You may be surprised at how many establishments do encourage this. In some very busy places you may be able convince them to squeeze you in between reservations (i.e. "We can be out in half an hour.") Making reservations also allows you the freedom to get ready at a leisurely pace, avoid long line-ups and to sit at a window seat or a booth by the fireplace. An afterthought would be to gently suggest that the seating be away from the kitchen and the washroom. Unless the noises and smells of either are something you enjoy.

Without a Reservation. (impromptu)

If you are in the unfortunate position of having to wait for a table there are a few ways to make the wait easier. Firstly, ask how long the wait is for a table. More importantly, if at all possible, get your name on a waiting list and request an approximate (or ideally specific) time as to when your table will be ready. Instead of spending your time in the lineup, you will then be able to leave and come back without the worry of losing your place. If there is no place to which to wander off, ask if there is a lounge or bar in which the time can be spent. Sometimes there will be an appetizer menu or, if the wait is too long, some restaurants make the full menu available in such lounges. Make sure you tell the host/hostess where you are and to call you when the table is set. This is not an imposition. If they want your business they will accommodate you.

Note: Do not point at a dirty table and ask to sit there. Do not seat yourself. This is not only impolite to others in line, but the server will be less than receptive to your dining needs.

Service.

Good drinks, good food and good service are your higher- power- given rights! Anything less should be addressed to either the server or, as a last result, the manager. The food and drinks should be the way they are described on the menu. The food should be cooked the way that you want it. The server should be readily available for any further requests (condiments, water, more coffee, etc.) If this is not the case, politely bring it to their attention and expect them to remedy it. Sending back food or a drink will not hurt their feelings, chances are they are not the ones who made them. They can easily void the item from the bill and replace it with something else, or have the cost of the item removed from the final total. A gift certificate towards the next visit may also be a possibility. If the servers do take it personally, then they are in the wrong business. The tip can reflect such a poor attitude. The customer should be made to feel that he or she matters. After all, by paying for the bill you are paying their salary, and the tip will help pay their rent.

Ultimately, if you feel that any problems were not resolved to your satisfaction, and communication between you and the server is less than satisfactory, you should ask to see the manager. If you would like to avoid a confrontation, quietly ask for the manager on your way out and explain the situation. Chances are you are not the first to complain about either the service or the quality of the food. It is not your fault, the waiter will not hate you (chances are they wonÆt even remember who you are, should you choose to return) and you may actually make a difference for the next patron.

The Bill.

Check the bill carefully. Waiters /waitresses and machines can make mistakes. If you feel the prices are not the same as those listed on the menu, do not be afraid to check. Sometimes you may be overcharged or charged for something you did not consume.

Then it is time to decide about the tip. As discussed in Part I, 10% should be the standard unless the servers have been rude or condescending. In this case, it is okay to show your disappointment by stiffing them (leave them nothing or less than 10%). Do not stiff them based upon food or drink quality, or upon the time a meal took to prepare. This is not their fault.

Lastly, check your change. This is an important point because sometimes servers (especially if they feel they they will be tipped poorly) may take it upon themselves to take the tip they feel they deserve before they return the change. This happens! If it does , ask to have the correct amount of change returned and tip accordingly. This is especially true in nightclubs and bars. Beware.

The Rules.

Expect to get what you pay for and more! The employees of a restaurant or bar are there to please you in the hopes that you will bring return business and possibly recommend the place to others; their eager attitude is not just for the sake of tips. That is how a place becomes and stays successful. In order to be successful, an establishment must cater to the needs and expectations of anyone who steps through the door.

Keeping this in mind, the strongest statement you can make in a negative situation is to express yourself clearly to the manager or owner and take your business elsewhere.

Kevin Hilditch is a bartender in downtown Toronto. He is also a registered Shiatsu massage therapist and has never starred in a syndicated sit-com.

Restaurant Etiquette, Part I

2009-01-06T04:15:00.000-08:00

This article was published in the original Podium magazine on Aug 2, 1999, with the tag line, "How can we learn to be good restaurant goers? Part one of a two-part series. "

by Kevin Hilditch

Part I - The truth about how wait staff view the clientele and some tips on proper behaviour.

TIPS - To Insure Proper Service

The accepted standard of gratuities is 15 %. In Canada, most servers are paid less than minimum wage because tips are a substantial part of their income. Therefore, they rely heavily on the kindness of their customers. Service, as a gauge for gratuity, should centre around this amount.

Poor service is not always a reflection upon the server. Other extenuating circumstances to take into account are the efficiency of the kitchen staff (how fast you get your order depends on how fast they can get the food ready ), how busy the restaurant is at a given time, whether the menu is poorly designed (length of preparation time required by selected foods or drinks), and how many tables (customers) a server may have to deal with at one time.

For these reasons, unless the service is terrible, 10% should be the absolute minimum tip. If the service is exceptional, then that extra effort should be reflected in the tip. As a rule, if you can’t afford to tip then you can’t afford to go out.

The Unfortunate Truth About Tips

Sadly, there are quite a few stereotypes in every establishment, albeit some justified, that are prejudgments of culture, age, dress, and sex. The second you walk through the door you may have already been assessed as to how you will tip, thus you may see the service lacking as a result of this pre-assessment.

Business People (Suits ) - can tip well but are demanding.
Children and Teenagers - do not know how to tip (yet?)
Women - do not generally tip well and are demanding.
Suburban or Rural Customers (Hicks or Skids) - not as intelligent. Therefore, they either do not know how to tip and /or may tip poorly.
Asian (usually considered to be Chinese) - probably no tip.
African Canadian (Jamaican, Trinidadian, etc.) - demanding, poor tips can be expected.
British / German - no tip.
Mixed Race Couples - low tips.
Americans (Especially with an accent) - rude, demanding and do not tip well (even with the favourable exchange rate)

..................................... and the list goes on and on.

The Establishment

The expectations of the clientele should reflect the nature of the restaurant / bar. General Rule: You get what you pay for. Upper scale establishments should kiss your ass. Large family restaurants are generally one step up from Fast Food (East Side Marios, Mr. Greenjeans, Red Lobster, etc.) Fast food joints are at the bottom of the list.

With this in mind, quick service does not mean 30 seconds. If you cannot stand to wait longer than this, then restaurants that would cater to your needs are most likely Taco Bell or Mcdonald’s. Food has to cook first before being served.

The Food

Waiters and waitresses do not generally spit or urinate on your food if you piss them off. But it has happened. Other sources of contamination include: food being served after being dropped on the floor; hands not being washed after cooks or servers finish their "business"; bugs and hair, as well as other foreign objects (even glass), being found in food; post-due date food or food that has sat out a little too long; dirty glasses and dishes; undercooked, overcooked; the-soup-from-the-day-before, and on and on and on. The best way to avoid these hazards is to treat the employees nicely or stay home.

Sitting at a Dirty Table

Don’t do it! Wait until the server has cleared and set the table first or simply ask. This may affect your service and especially the time you wait until you are served. This is called a penalty. The time allotted to a penalty can last for as long as twenty minutes. (A penalty can also be called for bad behaviour.)

Children

No matter how cute they are they should not be running around the restaurant. The staff are not baby-sitters and it is seen as bad parenting.

Dine-and-dash

Guess who has to pay the tab for people that run out on a bill. The restaurant or bar? No. The server has to foot the bill and tip the buser, bartender and house on the non-existent money. This is the absolute worst offense. Think twice before executing this move. Bouncers, security and the wait staff will be happy to hunt you down.

Servers

Servers are not sub-servient. They are not there to wait on you hand-and-foot. Not for $5.95 an hour. Unless of course, the tips reflect the work.

Stay tuned for Part 2...Kevin Hilditch is a bartender in a downtown Toronto bar/restaurant. He is also a registered Shiatsu massage therapist and a dead ringer for Paul Reiser.

Letters in response to this article

1. Restaurant Stereotypes Unfounded

A letter from J. Charles Victor August 14, 1999 This letter is in response to the article titled Restaurant Etiquette -Part 1 (Aug. 2). Although I am not normally one to promote the use of stereotypes, Mr. Hilditch has opened the proverbial can of worms, and used them for bait. Well... I will bite. I disagree with many of the pejorative impressions Mr. Hilditch has created regarding his clients and their tipping habits. I spent four years as both a server and wine steward. Although this clearly does not make me an expert on the hospitality industry, I do agree that there exist "tipping stereotypes". However, these stereotypes, in my experience, are not as 'unfortunate' as Mr. Hilditch would have one believe. Of the stereotypes presented, three stand out as particularly unfounded. Women: Although it is true that women may not be willing to part with their hard-earned money as easily as men, the key words are "as easily". I have found that, provided the server actually demonstrates concern for their dining experience, women are quite generous. British/German/Asians: You may also include the French (both European and Canadian). Again this stereotype may be true for the server that does not know how to deal with the situation. In most European establishments the gratuity is included in the bill. It has been my experience (of which I have a lot - I worked in a HOTEL restaurant) that if the client is told in a non-offensive manner, such as a discrete reminder on the bill in their language, Europeans too are generous tippers. On many occasions I have even been thanked for informing them of our customs, and have never had a upset client because of this. As for French-Canadians, provide them with separate bills without asking - this is often how it is done in Québec and they expect it to be done everywhere, no matter how long they have been 'expatriated'. (I know, I am married to one). Americans: Mr. Hilditch is way off the mark. The Americans, accent or not, are by far the most generous tippers - anywhere from 20 to 200 % after tax. Often they will leave a small amount on the credit card slip, and a large amount with a handshake as they leave. They often believe that we will be taxed on anything traceable. Again, I must stress, the server must adjust to his/her client - Americans love to have fun, so be just as boisterous as they are (I can't count the number of photographs I have had taken of me by a pleased group of American diners). In short, Mr. Hilditch should learn a little about his clients - a "hello" in each of their languages, and certainly how to say "the tip is not included". Most of all, care for their well-being and have fun with them no matter how busy you are and you will be rich. Finally, laugh and don't complain about the occasional stiff. If left to its own devices, aggravation will only hinder your serving abilities. Remember: servers/bartenders make very good "coin", hundreds of tax free money each evening, complaining about stereotypes not only makes you sound prejudicial, but also spoiled. J. Charles Victor Oakville, Ontario

2. In Response to Mr Charles Victor

Response from Kevin Hilditch August 17, 2009 I am pleased that I am getting such impassionate responses such as the letter from Mr. Victor. My intention was just that. The article was intended as controversial. My beliefs are not spelt out in this article, the information provided are the "truths" of the restaurant business from my own viewpoint. It was not intended to offend but to provoke opinion and perhaps action. My experience is based upon 12 years as a bartender in a number of restaurants which were and are mainly family oriented or middle-of-the-road establishments. The information in the article is based upon stereotypes and prejudices that I have encountered as a server. I do not or, more aptly put, try not succumb to them. I was hoping to make those of us who were not aware of the "backstage" of the service industry aware of the actions, intentions and judgements of a number of the restaurant employees I have encountered. I was also hoping to spur reactions and shared experiences of other servers such as Mr. Victor. The uncomfortable truth is that the servers bring to the job their own prejudices as to race, sex, gender, etc. These prejudices can sometimes find shared beliefs with other employees and become stereotypes. Service that is a reflection of these beliefs is what I am trying to bring to light. On a more noble note, perhaps the awareness stimulated by myself and servers such as Mr. Victor will act to dispell the myth of generalized traits of patrons due to their culture or sex or age. My opinion: To servers - what you give out is what you get back! To patrons - Be aware. Be vocal. The customer is ALWAYS right! You pay the money , you should expect the service no matter who you are. (see Part II) To other servers and patrons: I would love to read other letters whether good or bad about your experiences either working or dining at a restaurant. Sincerely, Kevin Hilditch Toronto, Ontario

The Role of Government

2009-01-06T04:14:00.000-08:00

The original version of this article first appeared in The Newspaper of the University of Toronto on Sep. 27, 1995. The present version was later published in The Innovation Journal under the title, "Should Government Be A Tool of Enterprise?" on November 2, 1999. It was published in the original Podium magazine on Aug 2, 1999.

by Raywat Deonandan

In Ontario during the early 1990's, the socialist provincial government instituted a system of compelled unpaid days for all public employees. This was an attempt to reduce the payrolls and avoid layoffs. A failed experiment that helped sow the seeds for a subsequent hard-right government, this flirtation with voluntary salary restraint inadvertently allowed some perspective into a larger concern: the public perception of the role of government.

A struggling student during that time, I was working as a receptionist for a government office. As the bureaucracy was still adjusting to the effects of this novel legislation, certain days saw the absence of key employees who were availing themselves of an unpaid day of leisure. On one of those poorly-staffed days, an irate caller was dismayed that the appropriate staff were unavailable to address his particular bureaucratic concerns.

"If I ran my business like you guys run the government," he said, "I wouldn't have a business anymore!"

His point is well taken, and probably quite valid: this fractured staffing policy would be poorly served in a commercial environment, possibly disastrously so. Why, however, does he assume that a government should be run like a business?

North American governments suffer from a preponderance of two types of individuals: lawyers and business people. Hence the major governmental concerns tend to be legislative or commercial -- constitutional debates and free trade agreements are good examples -- to the exclusion of other important issues, such as environmental and health concerns. The latter two issues crop up in formal debate only when they intersect with financial or business concerns.

Government and news media often assume that law and commerce are the matters that most concern the average citizen. There is a compelling argument against this assumption. The vicissitudes of the stock market, for example, make up a good third of a given prime-time news broadcast, but perhaps fewer than 10 percent of the general population has ever invested directly in stocks. The media may be forgiven for this imbalance in coverage because they must cater to their specific audiences. Perhaps their market research shows that the wealthy and the business-minded watch disproportionately more prime time news.

However, a problem arises when governing bodies mistake the market research of news bodies for an accurate poll of voters' interests. The imposing monolith of media appears to be working synergistically with a growing trend to administer all bodies and functions from the briefcase of a corporate lawyer. CNN's obsession with lawyers may rival America's unexplainable acceptance of entertainers as political commentators, but it also threatens to force a public embracing of corporate and legalistic reckoning upon all levels of human interaction.

Despite our society's image as overly litigious and wealth-driven, we expect our governance to embrace principles that transcend legalistic point-mongering and pecuniary singlemindedness. Yet North American governments increasingly pursue agendas relevant to the privileged business class.

The post-Cold War shift to the Right has forced this misperception of a commercial role of government into a further extreme. Not surprisingly, choice ambassadorial positions in both government and academia are now being awarded to successful businesspeople, giving them the status previously afforded only to philanthropists and intellectuals. By virtue of wealth alone, one can aspire to the honoured position of statesman. Why do we continue to deem this acceptable?

Many business people, when asked what the role of government should be, would consider the dictation of monetary policy and the nurturing of a commerce-friendly environment to be of paramount concern. Few would place social or environmental issues before matters of economic amelioration. Yet a governing body has a mandate to administer all aspects of human interaction, not just a jurisdiction's commercial dynamic. We continue to equate "captain of industry" with "community leader" when, in fact, these two aspirations have little in common.

Why is there an obsession with government as an instrument of business concerns? Government's role is not to make a profit, nor to garner a clientele or develop a product. As the single largest employer in many jurisdictions, governments cannot afford to espouse basic business principles of competition or efficiency at all costs. Their primary concern must be the well-being of each citizen that they claim to represent, regardless of whether this service contributes to the government's financial improvement.

"Downsizing" for the sake of competitiveness, as is still popular among businesses, cannot therefore be an option for a government unless serious budgetary consequences are predicted.

As conservative influences press for the introduction of "zero debt" legislation, we may see the last vestiges of a noncommercial government extinguished. The incursion of debt is considered a mechanism that allows governments some influence over their economies. When this ability is removed by an ideology espousing corporate-style streamlining and immoderate self-sufficiency, a government is nothing more that a large inefficient corporation with no loyalties greater than the bottom line.

A more appropriate view of government, one voiced by Canadian writer Michael Ignatieff, is of an umbrella under which fair treatment and resource disbursement may be sought regardless of sex, creed or race. When the universality and balance of this umbrella are compromised, societies revert to their base impulses, as was observed in the former Yugoslavia. This is admittedly somewhat of a legal model, but one in which commerce is not the overriding principle. This ideal would be greatly compromised by --if not anathema to-- a corporate government whose paramount concern is always a balanced budget and a businesslike demeanour.

And so, to that gentleman who phoned our office many years ago, I reply: "Yes, sir. That's why you work in a business and we work in a government."

Milestones

2009-01-06T04:06:00.001-08:00

This article was originally published Aug 2, 1999. It is an early naive take on the lack of significant events in recent years... an article which is greatly regretted. It was later reprinted on the Chowk.com in December of 2000.

by Raywat Deonandan

My parents often reminisce about standing around New York's Central Park on a warm July night back in 1969. They dreamily recall a big-screen television set from which other-worldly scenes were broadcast upon the amassed onlookers. They were, of course, watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon, and will always remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when it happened.

In a similar way, they associate events in their own lives with more dramatic happenings on the world stage. They remember, for example, their new apartment when President Kennedy was assassinated; or someone's pregnancy when Nixon was caught red-handed at Watergate; or someone's uncle's career change during the waning days of the Vietnam war; or the colour of the living room wallpaper at the time of the Olympic terrorist attack at Munich.

Every generation has had a penchant for denoting the transitions in one's own personal ontogeny by associating them with grander events in global history. It's a natural tendency, perhaps, to want to link one's own piddling existence to supposed milestones of human travail. It provides us with a certain continuity in human experience, tethers us all to the grand trunk of history.

For those of us who weren't yet fully sentient at the time of Watergate, I suspect that there have been few such events to stand as milestones in our lives, not because history has not given us events of importance, but because media and other institutions have failed to inculcate those events into individuals’ impressions of personal importance. What have we who were born since Kennedy's death had to mark the passage of our lives?

There was the marriage of Prince Charles to Lady Diana, of course. That promised to be a momentous occasion by which epochs and eras could be marked and assessed. But that memory soured early on, indicative of a grander trend in the changing aspects of inter-gender relationships, and has been completely overshadowed by Diana’s death. The latter event, while historically less important than the initial wedding, is the one our society has chosen to revisit.

There was the Iranian Hostage Crisis --two full years of ongoing historic milestone. Thankfully, the hostages returned unharmed, but we as voyeurs were denied the drama and spectacle that characterized the Munich affair. There was no Raid on Entebbe, no unified voice of outrage, and no decisive finale that brought the perpetrators to justice. There was no obvious lesson made, no simple moral to carry through our lives.

There was, of course, the Gulf War. I certainly remember where I was when Desert Storm was declared: in a repertory cinema, watching a pretentious French film, blissfully unaware that thousands were about to die. But despite the searing of flesh, the maturation of CNN, the ascent of journalist Arthur Kent and the "Scud Studs", the triumph of the West and the lingering effects of Gulf War Syndrome, Desert Storm was more of a prolonged military ad campaign than the profound human struggle that typically illustrates war. The social tumult fuelled by Vietnam, the face of that particular conflict that truly stokes our memories, was missing in Kuwait.

Even a thing as centrally disgusting and life-focussing as war has been tainted by the video generation, its horrors and social implications --its ability to truly anchor itself in our memories and thus affect the evolution of our society-- diluted by a blatant consumerism and rampant superficiality.

What about space travel? In the past, North Americans revelled in the triumphs of the Cold War: the flights of Alan Sheppard and John Glenn, Neil Armstrong's small step for a man, and even a dramatic deep space rescue of three stranded Apollo 13 astronauts.

We of the latter decades, on the other hand, have suffered through the disgrace of the Challenger disaster --a few seconds of heart-breaking tragedy, and two years of meaningless investigation. And what else? Well, we've experienced Glenn’s return to space, Sojourner’s P.R. campaign on the surface of Mars, a conspicuously under-exposed international space station, and the loss of the Mars Observer. It seems the mix does not include adventure anymore, but rather questionable science and public relations opportunities.

What about shamed sprinter Ben Johnson? I was in love and at Toronto's Black Bull bar when good ol' Ben left Carl Lewis in the dust, and forevermore those emotions will be mixed in my temporal lobes: Ben's victory, the nauseating odours of spilled beer and the soft touch of my doting girlfriend. Surely, then, this is one event that inspires personal importance by virtue of its emotional appeal.

But does one man's brief athletic glory compare to, say, a civilization's thrust to the Moon, or the assassination of a beloved president? Johnson's subsequent fall from grace was equally as disappointing, though not as much for the magnitude of the event as for the boundless layers of mind-dulling bureaucracy that Canadians seem able to load upon any process.

Western media, it appears, has perfected a method of rendering ardent landmarks into lifeless procedure, and of raising the pitifully titillating to the heights of the celestially important. For example: O.J. Simpson, John Wayne Bobbitt, Michael Jackson, the Royal Family and Tonya Harding.

Many have chosen to describe "Generation X" as individuals terrorized by the success of their predecessors, marginalized by a dwindling share of the social resource pie. Instead, I think, this generation is one tragically separated from the grand trunk of human continuity. The death of JFK Jr. was reported by American media outlets as an event that shocked and united a nation because of the poor fellow’s stature in the public consciousness. In truth, Camelot was of our parents’ generation; John-John’s death is no more tragic to us than anyone else’s untimely demise. We, I fear, are more affected by Jesse Ventura’s rise to Minnesota’s highest office than we are by the passing of one of history’s most prominent scions.

With a few promising exceptions --the handshake between Rabin and Arafat, the fall of the Berlin Wall or the tanks of Tianneman Square-- the decades thus far of this generation's sentience have been devoid of milestones of historic consequence, inasmuch as such things are determined by media’s ability to link them with events in our personal lives.

Shared global tragedies and triumphs have traditionally served to unite a people, if not in mind then at least in mood. As our world relies increasingly on infernal marketing forces to taint all events that we perceive, the most important things in our lives will increasingly be pop music, sports and the meaningless lives of celebrities.

Truth In Space History

2009-01-06T04:04:00.000-08:00

This article was originally written on August 2, 1999, with the tagline, "How American media consistently forgets the Russians when discussing the glories of space exploration. "

by Raywat Deonandan

John Glenn’s recent triumphant return to space sparked a renewed media interest in the history of manned space flight. This is rightly so, for space technology is indeed one of this century’s greatest achievements, and John Glenn’s individual contributions are doubtless heroic. However, the inaccuracies in reporting the facts of such a rich history are disappointing, especially given that many of the landmark events, including Senator Glenn’s first flight thirty-seven years ago, are within living memory to many.

In the weeks before and subsequent to his second flight, as the media hustled to capitalize on the public’s excitement over this ripe story, many mentions were made of Glenn having been "the first man in space" or "the first American in space" or, as was the case of the teaser for Glenn’s biography on the Arts & Entertainment Network (A&E), "the first man to orbit the Earth."

None of these claims is true, of course, and all serve to denude the heroism of the men to whom those accolades truly belong. Soviet pilot Yuri Gagarin was the first human being to both leave the atmosphere and to orbit the Earth, and he did so a whole year before Glenn’s first flight. Yet Gagarin’s name is rarely mentioned when Western media discuss the pioneers of space exploration; the history, it seems, begins with Glenn.

The American media juggernaut is clearly to blame here, as it still suffers from a factual hangover from the heady days of Cold War propaganda; the American space program itself was but a manifestation of that War. The need to diminish Soviet accomplishments was perhaps justified back then, but we should not suffer the same selective blindness in our modern retrospection. If we can make use of Russian space stations, technology, personnel and funds to help build the new permanent international space station, then we can certainly accord the Russians their historical due.

Proclamations of Sally Ride as the first woman in space are, of course, equally as misdirected. Female cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova claimed that title in 1963, decades before Ride, in an era when Soviet gender parity put America’s to shame.

What is more difficult to understand is the Western media’s unwillingness to accord honour to America’s real first man in space, Alan Shepard, Jr., who was also the fifth man to walk on the moon. Shepard’s recent death was reported by only a handful of media outlets, and even that educational stalwart, A&E, failed to offer for him a Biography of the Week.

One can attribute such omissions to ignorance or to carelessness, something of which we are all guilty. A major Canadian newspaper recently reported twice in one article ("Annie Glenn Says Goodbye Once Again"; by Kathleen Kenna; Toronto Star; Oct. 29 ) that John Glenn was one of the "Friendship 7 astronauts". Actually, it was his capsule that was thus named, but the men were called the Mercury 7 astronauts. One can only assume that the author made poor choices of research sources, perhaps even referencing a few amateur websites.

For the sake of preserving factual history, especially in matters where accurate documentation is readily available, we must endeavour to discard anecdotal and non-authoritative knowledge, and to prevent the political biases of our own and other nations from tainting our understanding and appreciation of past events.