The Gremlin's Wings

(This is an old post that I had kicking around on a different system, and I wanted to keep this one around. If you have already read it, sorry, but if not, it is a small window into what Canadians have to deal with as a country. This was posted back in March 2009, originally… but I liked it, so I decided to put it up again.)

So, apparently I am not losing my job, so I’m not going to be having to look for another one. I have good news in that, because I am sticking around IBM… and I keep a steady paycheque, so I now move on to other concerns.

It has been a while since I have done a full-fledged rant on any particular subject, but this has been stewing in my mind for months, ever since I had heard about this first from a random blog post I had stumbled upon. I am talking about CRTC Public Hearings 2008-11 and 2008-11-1, the move for the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission to start regulating content on the Internet and promoting Canadian content, specifically with broadband video coming into play.

There are many things at stake for Canada as a country in this, which other nationalities might not understand without this paragraph. Unlike a lot of other countries in the world, Canada is right on the border of the United States, and with ten times the population and a hell of a lot more money and broadcasting power than anything in Canada, American media had almost quashed any Canadian-produced content out of existence. That’s when the CRTC stepped in and set it up so that Canadian content would occupy a certain percentage of air time for both radio and television broadcasts. This artificially created a market for Canadian-produced content, which extends to this day. Oh, and they even do something as evil as take broadcasts from Fox or NBC and, if a Canadian channel is airing that same show, switch the signal to the Canadian broadcaster so that we get local ads instead of the American ones. This, of course, peeves off a lot of Canadians, because half the fun of the Super Bowl is watching the commercials… and we don’t get that.

In ’99, the CRTC concluded a study that basically said they weren’t going to try to regulate content on the Internet. From their FAQ page:

In 1999, the CRTC studied the Internet and decided not to regulate it. Access to Internet services was competitive, and both creativity and innovation grew in an environment without regulation. While there was some broadcasting content being offered, most Internet services at the time were text based. The CRTC concluded that the Internet was meeting the objectives of the Broadcasting Act and Telecommunications Act. The CRTC periodically reviews its policies to ensure that the objectives continue to be met.

Fast forward to 2009.

The people at the CRTC have reopened this, as broadcasting on the Internet has taken an upswing and some people have gotten pissy about it, because it’s cutting off their funds. And yes, I said pissy, because that’s what they’re being.

Canadian broadcasters are arguing that the Internet has severely hurt them, in both terms of money and Canadian culture, but it seems that people are using the culture part of it to fight. Take, for example, this sample from actor/comedian Colin Mochrie:

Unlike television, when you are broadcasting through new media, the space for content is practically endless. However, being endless, content can easily get lost. So how do we make sure Canadians can find our own content? How do we make sure Canadian content is featured and given “shelf space”?

The full text of his article can be found here.

Let it be known right now that I have great respect for this man. He truly is a funny comedian, and a great actor. However, I’d also like to point out that I know of him from the American version of “Whose Line Is It Anyaway?” and “The Drew Carey Show”. Serious, that’s where I first saw him – it was before I started to regularly watch “This Hour Has 22 Minutes”, which I caught on reruns afterwards.

I’d also like to point out that I lost respect for him after I saw this quote:

Third, if the CRTC is going to create space for Canadian stories in new media, there must be stories to fill that space.

To that end, a levy should be imposed on Internet and wireless service providers to fund new media production, modelled on the levy on cable companies.

Yeah, f*** you too, Colin.

America, you’ve got it right. Most Internet video content is ad-supported, and can usually sustain itself. YouTube, for example, inserts text ads in to support its massive bandwidth fees, and is impressive for its user-driven content. If this goes through, Internet connection fees for EVERYONE in the country will skyrocket, with no real reason other than to “support Canadian content” which it is MY choice to view or not view.

This will kill Canadian web development, and send us back to 1991 for web development technologies. I will cut off my 10 Mbps cable Internet connection, down to the lowest I can find because using the Internet would be pointless if I cannot view the content that I would like to see… either that, or I’m just going to proxy around every single block that ever comes up.

You want supported content for Canadians? Create a Hulu-like service in Canada, that charges a monthly fee to watch high-quality video feeds of Canadian and foreign broadcasts.

You want Canadian content? MAKE GOOD CONTENT! I’m going to use one example, Rick Mercer, who could EASILY compete with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert if people would give him the chance. Corner Gas was pretty good, though a little too topical for people’s tastes – focusing on a small town in Saskatchewan -

Problem is, the company he’s working for, the CBC, is cutting back because of an advertisement shortfall. Since this is a mostly publicly supported company, the funds that came from the federal government were insufficient to help with this. Canadian content will further continue to suffer, as Mr. Mochrie’s arguments had said, but not because of the Internet but by the reluctance to act by the sitting federal government, and yes the economic recession which has caused advertisers to cut back. Yes, way to go Harper, throw more people on the unemployment line in the middle of an economic recession. (And yeah, I expect to be flamed for that. Come on, Conservative supporters, do your worst!)

The point is not to artificially inflate Canadian content by making ISPs charge users more to provide the same service that they have enjoyed for years, but Canadian content providers have got to start putting out competitive products that can and will do well in domestic markets, while still being marketable in foreign markets as well. The Americans did it by taking risks on shows that might have good content… and Canada must follow suit and do similar things, and promote them effectively.

That is, IF they truly care about Canadian content on the Internet, and on TV and via the radio. The way to do it is not by cutting back, it’s by increasing in tough times, and experimenting with new technologies. An on-demand CBC radio schedule would be one way of doing so, turning from the old AM broadcasts into iTunes podcasts, for example.

Start innovating. Go cutting edge. Stop living in the past, embrace the future, etc. Obviously what you’re doing isn’t working, so start coming up with a different business model, or expect to see all Canadian content go up in smoke.

- Me, Myself and I

National borders aren’t even speed bumps on the information superhighway. ~Tim May

I’ve seen a few articles around the Internet, and people going off and saying that people should pull out of Afghanistan, and I feel the need to comment on this. Why? Well, you’re on my site, right? I believe what is said here needs to be said, and needs to be said now, before someone does something stupid.

Out of all the military actions that have happened over the past few years, in my mind there has been only three I have ever supported:

• Operation Desert Storm – the first tango in Iraq was completely warranted, for many years beforehand and should have been done earlier, right after Saddam Hussein gassed his own people and then threatened to do the same to Isreal.
• The campaign against Yugoslavia – Genocide of ethnic Albanians? Yeah… no.
• Afghanistan

Why Afghanistan? Well, there’s any number of reasons that I could list; the most popular ones are routinely listed by world leaders. “Al Qaeda could still be there! The Taliban is evil!” And so forth. I, however, differ from this opinion, and I would like to go through in a few details why there should be troops in Afghanistan.

Before I do so, a small history lesson.

Back in the 80′s, when the Soviet Union was still in power, Afghanistan did some stuff that really pissed off the Soviets and they decided to do a full-scale invasion of the relatively poor country. Their campaign lasted a while, but thanks to the efforts of some very familiar names working together, the Soviets were ground to a halt and their campaign ultimately failed. Those names? Al Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, and the US government, whom supplied them with weaponry and technical training in how to fight in guerilla warfare tactics, successfully using the same strategy that defeated the US in Vietnam in the 70′s.

Afghanistan has never been a real “country” in the modern definition of the word. Rather, it was a rather loose association of tribes that fought as often as they were at peace with each other. But because world leaders said it was a country, bam, it was a country.

Sometime later, the Taliban came along, overthrew what little government was there, and began making the population follow an fundamentalist Islam teaching that basically turned back the clock on social progress in that country by about fifty years. I’m not going to get into the nitty gritty, because people have different customs and different views on religion than I do. I’m not here to dictate religious views to others on this planet, just express my opinion.

Anyway, they offered bin Laden protection, blah blah blah, WTC bombing in 2003, Clinton firing cruise missiles into the mountains, yadda yadda, 9/11 and the “war on terror”…  most of this stuff you know. Anyway, history lesson over with.

Now, we’re eight years into whatever we are doing in Afghanistan. Have we won? Sort of.

Unlike previous wars that have been fought in the area, the US and their allies did something smart that saved allied lives: they bombed the crap out of main Taliban fortifications, then let the local insurgents do the grunt work of clearing the area. Now, note I say “save allied lives” instead of “saved lives”, because the losses amongst these people are impossible to account for. Anyway, relatively quickly, the main Taliban forces were crippled, and they abandoned the government and fled for hiding, and really, this is when the conventional war stops and the guerrilla warfare starts.

Oh, look, remember that training I mentioned earlier by the US? It’s now coming back to bite them on the ass.

It is technically still a war – damn you dictionary definitions of war – but guerrilla warfare is not fought and won with conventional troops and tactics, which is something the military has forgotten. They have become reliant on technology too much to “save lives” and “reduce cost” that they forgot what type of warfare they are fighting against.

Ask any survivor of Vietnam, and they will tell you what it’s like.

Anyway, I got kind of sidetracked here. Let’s go over why I support the continued presence of troops in Afghanistan. No, the primary reason is not because my leaders tell me to, or any of the main reasons they list. Here it is:

• Opiate farming

One of the ways that the Taliban, al Qaeda and other groups have been raising money for the past few years is the illegal opiate trade. It is ironic that they wish to end Western regimes while being financed by a farm crop that they primarily sell to the Western world, albeit illegally. Yes, great way to vow to destroy your own customer base.

Opiates are used to create heroin and morphine, among other things. In my opinion, this production should be stopped, or, even better, controlled by the Afghani government (once it actually gets off its ass and controls the place) to supply the worldwide medical field with less expensive morphine and methadone than what’s available now. Hey, look, an economic base for the new government! What a twist!

• Humanitarian

I am a very firm believer in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. I believe that everyone should be granted to the same access to food and shelter that Americans, Canadians, and other countries’ citizens enjoy on a daily basis. Even those in Afghanistan should get it… if they want help from us in establishing this, that is. If they want to do it themselves, I’m OK with that. But the Afghani people deserve the right to choose how they get their basic necessities – food, water and shelter from the elements.

• Prove the propaganda wrong

Too often has the rest of the world shown the Afghani people that anyone there is in it for themselves and confirming the propaganda that they’ve heard for most of their lives: “any foreigners are evil and only wish to destroy you”. Americans and their allies are cast as devils in this play. The George W. Bush administration did nothing to help in dispelling this – in my personal point of view, he hurt the American image abroad more than any other President, including Nixon and Reagan – and right now, it should be the goal of the allied troops to not just fight the insurgency, but to also prove their rhetoric wrong.

• Get Afghanistan their own functioning government

This might sound weird, but democracy might not be right for these people in this area. Democracy in any Islamic country is a joke – as evidenced by the Iranian elections this year – and really depends deeply on religious leaders advocating for the politicians. The Taliban ruled these people for years since the Soviet Union fell, and gave everyone a strict Islamic law. Change, unfortunately, does not happen overnight, and needs to be gradual.

Unfortunately, one of those other gradual changes also means that the government has to be left alone to find out what works best for the Afghani people. Western influence kinda doesn’t help that, but I understand in this case.

• A return on investment

Speaking strictly on a business standpoint, which I am known to do every once in a while, what kind of returns have the Americans, Canadians, British, or any other force in Afghanistan received by being there? Has it stopped further terrorist actions? No. Should it? Probably not.

The returns I’m talking about are more people-based. Have the people of Afghanistan started rebuilding their infrastructure? Can they start sustaining themselves? Can this happen without their own security forces?

• Freedom

The price of freedom is not measured in dollars, but it is measured in the vigilance of men and women whom chose to defend that right for others. No amount of technology or equipment can replace that simple fact. The peacekeeping troops there aren’t guarding just our freedom, but the freedom of the Afghani people as well, whom deserve a shot at it, just as much as we do. To take away those troops is to remove their freedom again, as the Taliban will return and then we’ll have the entire situation start all over again.

(While we’re on the subject of peacekeeping, a shout out to the father of modern peacekeeping.)

I think I’ve gone on long enough. The point is, we really shouldn’t be there just to hunt for someone whom has the unnatural ability to slip away better than Cobra Commander, or for a group of religious extremists that harbored him. They will battle against conventional forces, using the resources they have: their people. Instead of hitting them directly, hit their resources: their people. You don’t do that with tanks, you do that with words and peaceful actions.

It’s the one resource that’s not as fancy as modern warfare, but it helps a lot more.

I don’t know if anyone who reads this has been following everything that’s been happening, but let me bring you up to speed:

• President Obama wants to change the health care system
• People are protesting in dramatic fashions

Wow. I just summed up the entire American system in two lines. Well, I’m outta here.

Just kidding.

Anyway, Obama wants to bring in this big health care reform for the United States. Some of the numbers are pretty staggering. Let me put up his weekly address because I know Canadians probably haven’t seen this video:

I’m going to comment on this video momentarily. I am not going to get into it right now, but I’m going to provide some resources first.

A couple of other resources I was able to find were:

• A report on health care insurance premiums
• A Wikipedia article on the difference in between Canada’s system and the US system

There’s a lot of rhetoric out there. While looking, I couldn’t find too much raw data compared to people yelling at one side and then the other side yelling back. Twitter’s trending topic of #obamacare is a source of consistent hilarity for me, because as I read down the list, the Republican’s “alternatives” are either keeping the status quo or part of the Democrat’s plan. The real question, I guess, is:

Is the system broken in the first place?

I know at least one person from America that will disagree with me. Her life was saved by experimental drugs that were only available in the United States, and given to er as part of a plan to keep her liver alive. Canada’s health care system doesn’t even have access to that drug yet – out of curiosity, I checked – and is far away from Health Canada acceptance. In one case, I’d say it was a good system. But is it right for everyone?

Is a universal system good for everyone? No, of course not. However, I’d prefer to listen in a rational voice and ask people whom have been through the health care system if they think their health care system is all right.

The way I see the health care systems of both Canada and the United States is kind of like the difference in between Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks (I’m going with Dunkin’ Donuts because most Americans have not discovered what a Tim Horton’s is, so if you’re Canadian, sub out the Dunkin’ with Timmy’s). In a Dunkin’ Donuts, if you want coffee and donuts, that’s the big-ticket items. Sure, there’s other beverages there, and if you want them, they are there, but the focus is on the staple product. With a Starbucks, the focus isn’t on coffee, its about options. Do you want a grande double-whipped no-fat macchiato, or the triple shot no-whip latte with white chocolate sprinkles? As soon as you walk in, you’re presented with 150 different ways that you can receive your a coffee that’s served to everyone. Then there’s different roasts, different flavors, different toppings, different blends… the list goes on and on and on. As a non-coffee drinker, I can’t say whether the choice and options are a good thing or not, but I hear those that can afford to have it every day enjoy it.

America is a lot like the Starbucks in my example when it comes to health care. You have choice of what coverage you have. But, like much of the world, the fine print is where the problem lies. In each plan, do you or your insurance company decide on which doctors you go to? Do they require you to get a second opinion for certain procedures? What happens when your insurance company ends your coverage plan? Is your choice a flavor that takes away the fact that you’re just drinking coffee in the first place?

Am I trying to make a point? Meh… probably. My brain is working in subtle ways today that I find to be… odd. What I would like people to do is come up with their own opinions based upon facts and not other people’s distortions of the facts. President Obama did have a point when he said that critics will try to distract you from anything to do with this subject because people who make money in the status quo want it to stay that way. Who knew that taking the people that didn’t have insurance and giving them a way to buy affordable insurance without forcing those already on insurance to quit theirs is being taken as: “You must take this plan or you go to jail.”

H-uh.

Obama’s statements about how long it’s been debated in the US is a very odd sentiment. Sixty years to try to come up with this. Wow. I guess the differences are only starting to show now, but the problem is really with propaganda. How does one get their message across when there’s ninety different messages being broadcast louder, with twice the emotion?

Is his plan good? I really couldn’t tell you. It has good points, but I’m not an expert. I would just be pointing out my opinion.

Is Canada’s system good? I would have to rate it as an A-. It’s pretty good, but there’s places it can improve as well. The only times I’ve needed hospitals, I’ve come out in better condition than I left in. I’ve had an MRI, three emergency room visits, several doctor’s clinic visits, and twice when my kids were born. (It wasn’t me getting admitted, so they get separate listings.) Ambulance response and billing for services are two big things I have a problem with… but my trifles with that are probably nowhere near an American’s.

The one thing I’d like to ask any American that yells about Obama taking away their health care, or their right to choose… all I ask is that you take a moment and look at the facts yourself. Create an informed opinion before either praising or criticizing the plan. Actually do some research. Please.

It is all I ask, and your life could depend on it.