Kicks are for trids

Honesty test

This test only has one question, but it's a very important one.

By giving an honest answer, you will discover where you stand morally.

The test features an unlikely, completely fictional situation in which you will have to make a decision.

Remember that your answer needs to be honest, yet spontaneous.

Please scroll down slowly and give due consideration to each line.

THE SITUATION:

You are in southern Ontario.

There is chaos all around you caused by a hurricane with severe flooding.

This is a flood of biblical proportions.

You are a photo-journalist working for a major newspaper, and you're caught in the middle of this epic disaster. The situation is nearly hopeless.

You're trying to shoot career-making photos.

There are houses and people swirling around you, some disappearing into the water.

Nature is unleashing all of its destructive fury.

THE TEST:

Suddenly, you see a man in the water.

He is fighting for his life, trying not to be taken down with the debris.

You move closer... Somehow, the man looks familiar...

You suddenly realize who it is... It's Stephen Harper! You notice that the raging waters are about to take him under forever. You
have two options:

You can save the life of Stephen Harper or you can shoot a dramatic, National Newspaper Award-winning photo, documenting the death of one of the country's most powerful men!

THE QUESTION:

Here's the question, and please give an honest answer...

Would you select high-contrast color film, or would you go with the classic simplicity of black and white?

My Canada

On the eve of this 141st anniversary of the founding of our great nation, I offer the following thoughts on what it means to be a Canadian:

• Being Canadian means always having to say you're sorry
• Being Canadian means living in the largest metropolis in the country, and counting the gaps in national sporting victory in generations
• Being Canadian means continuing to believe that Tim Horton's is a national institution
• Being Canadian means being able to fill any elevator ride, no matter how many floors, with talk about the weather
• Being Canadian means having children who are as likely to be reared on roti and spanakopita as milk and cookies
• Being Canadian means not only constantly comparing yourself to Americans, but worrying that you spend too much time doing so
• Being Canadian means cross-border shopping, and pretending to feel guilty about it
• Being Canadian means living in a city, and bemoaning the vanishing countryside
• Being Canadian means telling everyone you know that you plan to vote Green in the next election - but secretly knowing you'll never actually do it
• Being Canadian means believing that you know how many words the Inuit have for snow
• Being Canadian means that you pay too much for gas, cable and other utilities - but somehow chalking that up to a stronger social fabric
• Being Canadian means having an inferiority complex that compels you to point out all the Canadian-born performers you see
• Being Canadian means peace, order and good government instead of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

No noose = good news?

Like many people on the Friday before the New Year's weekend, I found myself oddly transfixed by news coverage of the impending execution of former Iraqi brutalitarian Saddam Hussein. While I have no doubt that it will remain forever one of those seminal, "do remember where you were when" moments, what troubles me most about it is that I watched it all.

The near-breathless coverage of it was almost like a play-by-play of pornography. Ooh, watch as he gets his red card. Then note how dapper is his choice of attire. And note, with increasingly shallow respiration, every last nuance, facial expression and then - the release.

I felt dirty. But I didn't turn away. And now, I am perplexed.

Since my university days, when I was inculcated in the good left-liberal mindset of the day, I have been a staunch and unswerving opponent of the death penalty. I am appalled, as are most decent-minded people, that the U.S. remains virtually the only developed nation on earth that continues to kill people as a form of "justice."

In fact, it is not justice - ever - but merely retribution.

The statistics on recidivism are well known. And they are likely persuasive - and correct. Given those facts, capital punishment cannot be the deterrent that its supporters claim. It is simply a way of meting out the ultimate punishment for the most heinous of crimes. That is, again, vengeance not justice.

And yet...

I found myself thinking, if anyone ever deserved to die for his crimes, it was this madman. He gassed his own people by the hundreds of thousands. Even though he didn't have weapons of mass destruction, there can be no doubt that his heart held hate, pure and simple. Given the chance, he would have wrought catastrophe on a global scale.

So I do not mourn his passing. I do not believe the world will suffer for his death (although his homeland may be a different story). But does that make it right that he was murdered by the state, as his state had done so many times to so many different people?

I don't think so.

Like the toppling of his statue in Baghdad after the American invasion, this execution was artfully planned and delivered for the benefit of American television audiences. Its images will be used, in years to come, as a reminder of the struggle glorious that American forces endured - and the victory they eventually gained - in Iraq.

In short, it will be used to rewrite history. We got in there, we got the bad guy out, and then we swung him good.

There will clearly be some benefits for some of his countrymen, people whose families and loved ones suffered and died merciless deaths at his hands. There is, for many, a sense of balance - rightness with the universe - in seeing him fall victim to the same fate as befell so many before.

But capital punishment is not about balance. It is about doing to others what they have done to us. That is the antithesis of most religious dogma - remember, the expression is, "Do unto others as you would have done unto you." Not get 'em back as good as they got you in the first place.

Retribution has no place in justice. Justice is about balance. It is about facts, and evidence, and fair outcomes.

The visceral needs of victims - how ever emotionally persuasive - should not determine the outcome.

Update (Jan 3.): Ok, this? Is why he's one of my favourite columnists. Always good for the "you're an ignorant slut" response.

Yelling fire

The blogosphere - in Canada, anyway - is alive with derision/angst/disillusionment over Stephen Harper's new cabinet.

At risk of being overshadowed by his two idiotic decisions - here and here - is this, a much bigger story.

Why is the second one a bigger deal than the first? Quite simply, the first - to the utter dismay of many, including staunch supporters - reflects the distressing but not-unexpected resurfacing of politics as usual. Harper may be banking on voters having short memories, or being seen as creating a bigger tent, or whatever. But the bottom line is: He's no different than any of his 21 predecessors (although he did prove it on the very first day, which must be something of a land speed record).

But the escalating furore over the anti-Muslim cartoons represents something of a sea change. Although it may or may not have been the first to do so, a Danish newspaper decided last week to cloak itself in the protective shroud of free speech by publishing a series of cartoons that have enraged Muslims all over the world.

It is a myth - and a disingenuous one, at best - to pretend that freedom of speech is an unlimited right. It is not.

The real question is this: How does deliberately provoking an entire religion - poking it in the collective eye, as it were - help the cause of free speech? Or discourse in general?

Again: it does not.

This is contempt, pure and simple. It is intended to humiliate Muslims by pandering to the worst post-911 stereotypes of them as wild-eyed, Kalashnikov-toting, hot-headed, ululating lunatics.

The extremists in this otherwise peaceful faith, like extremists of any stripe, make the most noise and therefore command media attention far out of proportion to their actual numbers. But in paying all this attention to them, the media also serve to elevate the extremists' profile - which is exactly what they want.

A very thoughtful, well-spoken representative of moderate Muslims in Britain appeared this morning on CBC Radio. He made the point that although he was "incandescent" with rage (in his own well-chosen words) at the publication of these images of the Prophet Mohammed, he equally rejected the violent demonstations that have claimed a number of lives.

Muslims are no more an acceptable target for derision than fat people. And yet, it remains perfectly ok - in many people's minds - to continue targeting these groups because they don't look like us.

Some commentators have clucked that the very countries where these protests are loudest are among the first to deny rights to their own citizens.

But this misses the point, true though it may be.

Western definitions of freedom do not neatly translate to other countries and cultures. The quintessentially American hubris that assumes otherwise - not publication of the pictures themselves - is what's at the root of this issue.

Clearly, some of the protests are being organized by unseen forces - some of them legitimate, and some with ulterior motives. But - as I try to teach my kids every day - violence is violence, whether you do it with guns and bombs or words and pictures.

The outrage of the offended communities is perfectly understandable. Their murderous rage is not. Still, as my mother always says, you can't tell someone how hard to hit back.