Meancouver

I’ve already booked my summer vacation!

What?  CBC is going to air Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune?  How lame is that.

Now I’ve enjoyed both shows on occasion but is CBC really that idea deprived that their just going to buy American game shows now?  I mean, sure they have Canadian hosts (if you still count as Canadian after 30 years or so in America) and they are the aristocracy of game show hosts (though Bob Barker still is king!) but it just sticks in my throat for some reason.

The shows can’t be cheap either, they are well established with decided followings, hell, they are television institutions, so we somehow have the money to buy game shows from down south but we had to drop our hockey night theme song.

Or maybe they are a deal, but couldn’t we at least use that money to make something Canadian?  Something is seriously wrong with our cultural system if we cannot create broadcast alternatives to Jeopardy or wheel of fortune. CBC is doing shithole work lately, all its slick, obviously well budgeted projects are flopping like fish in a boat waiting to get their heads bashed in.  Canada should not be doing slick, or big budget, or any of that shit.

Look to the golden age of Canadian television, in the 70’s and into the early 80’s Canada made some intriguing television.  It was all cheap and quick and much of it was amaturish but it had heart and charm and by trying lots of new and different and questionable things we were able to form an identitity and to let Canadians of all stripes give it a go.

Now the only people with access to broadcast television are rich hack fucks who go through the expensive and bland indoctrination factory process of TV/film school. Sure they make it slick and glossy but shit is shit even if it has a sheen to it.  Just look at jpod, mvp, that show about that woman who’s name I can’t remember but her name is the title of the series.  They all sure look professional but remain unwatchable.

Good television is not about production value, its about creativity, about engaging an audience.  In many ways budgets are a hinderance.  Make shift solutions and inginuity in the face of limitations are where creativity, and Canadians in particular, shine.  Do you think Beach Combers had a factory made commitee create it? No, it was probably just a bunch of people who had some boats, a diner, a greek guy and a desire to make some TV.

SCTV is infamous for not only working around tight budgets but working it into their show and making it their strength. Do you think SCTV would have been made if they had a budget? No way, it was to risky and to advanced.  (look at the fate of Police Squad, where it was canceled half way through the first season because TV execs said it was “too smart for audiences”)  For as the few contemporary example, watch Trailer Park Boys, and Kenny Vs. Spenny.

Accessible, low budget television may make some awful (yet historically hilarious) shows but it also makes unique and groundbreaking stuff.  But we don’t get that anymore. Instead we get hipster diarhea with a bow on it, and when we don’t want to swallow that we get a couple American game shows to make it all better.

Lame.

The money men have always had their voices raised in a chorus of whinny indignation at how regulations, public ownership and sensible policy interfere with their God given right to make more money. They always will too, but unfortunately right now Canada and many other countries have in place governments that are receptive to their self involved bellyaching. So in order that obsolete commercial systems can squeeze more money out of a marketplace they have mercilessly milked for centuries, our governments are ready to sell out the privacy and civil rights of their citizens.

The money men are taking every advantage of that fact. They have begun to push to have Copyright and Trade Mark infringement be viewed of not as a commercial issue that can be settled through fines, penalties, lawsuits and other commercial legal tools but as a criminal issue that can, nay SHOULD result in hard time.

This is most elegantly seen in the creepy and secretive Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which the G-8 is now negotiating super-villain like, behind closed doors while they stroke hairless cats and admire the lasers shooting from the heads of the sharks swimming in their large symbolically shaped pools, most likely resembling a Dollar (Yen, Euro, Peso) sign or perhaps a sexy naked woman armed with a harpoon gun.

This mysterious agreement deals with the electronic information sector and seeks to officially criminalize Copyright Infringement. In order to carry out this diabolical mission an organization shall be formed. They shell be self-governing and work outside the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) or the United Nations (UN). Thus they shall embody the mission of ACTA and serve the interests of those who have forged it: The League of Evil and Money Mongering International Neofeudalist Goobers or (L.E.M.M.I.N.G.s) MwaAHahAhaHAAAaaaaaa…ahem.

ACTA would give border guards the power (and probably the expectation to) search people arbitrarily, going through laptops, MP3 players, cell phones, etc., for any evidence that you have a copy of something. Besides having your privacy violated, fines and confiscations are proscribed to follow, and if they keep pushing the issue I’m sure jail time and unreasonable fines are not far behind.

To help them in this quest for profi…I mean justice, ACTA will also forc…I mean facilitate Internet Service Providers (ISP) to provide not just internet service but also information about those who use those services, and all without all the muss and fuss of a warrant. You know, that piece of paper that a Judge gives law enforcement as a proof that they have a pretty good reason to be invading your privacy and violating your rights. Apparently they don’t need a good reason for that sort of thing anymore. Post 9-11 you know.

Yes, I know its post 9-11 bitch! Yet somehow your squeezing money from the peasants is more important then actual border and security issues. You want to bog down and distract guards away from finding bombs or weapons or maybe even invasive plants, or contaminated livestock or maybe helping a lost and confused visitor from another country find his family before the RCMP comes, assaults him with multiple taser blasts, piles onto his convulsing body, kneels on his neck and kills him. Maybe those things should be on the minds of guards and security personnel. Just a suggestion.

The other thing you do not want to do is give more arbitrary power to border guards. They can be hard enough to deal with as it is, all we need is them being able to search our electronics on a whim and then confiscate it if it catches their fancy.

And in the realm of pushing the criminalization aspect we have a move from another front. Motivated by the gold rush cry of Olympian profit in Vancouver, money men are calling for a crack down on counterfeit merchandise.

They are putting it this way, “…Let me put it this way, there has yet to be someone to due hard time for Trademark or Copyright infringement.”

The way they are putting it is making me think that by noticing so casually that nobody goes to jail for Copyright and Trademark infringements they are suggesting that perhaps people should go to jail for Copyright and Trademark infringements. (Is that enough keywords yet? God I hope so.)

Most of this has to due with the cheap Chinese knockoffs that are flooding the market as apparently over 60% of the world counterfeit comes from China. Vancouver’s port has strong trade ties with China, thus we have a lot of Chinese knock offs floating around. The Greater Vancouver Area has already had several sweeps through night markets, China Town and other, often Chinese related market places.

In fact they are taking it so far as to sue a small business named Olympic Pizza to remove the Olympic rings it has on its awning even though they have been there for over thirty years, which I believe is slightly before Vancouver had won the Olympic bid. I understand trying to stop everything in the city from becoming Olympic themed but come on guys.

Ironically, the money men whining about all the counterfeit are the same bastards who sold out our domestic manufacturing and national industrial capacity to the Chinese in the first place. The official stuff is all made in China, perhaps in the same factories as the knock offs, or at least next door since China likes to arrange everything into districts. (Maybe there is even an officially designated Olympic Counterfeit Factory District. Could be.)

This is how the “China as the world’s factory’ model of the world economy works guys. The Chinese have always been the bootleg kings and have a very different cultural perception of intellectual property, you really shouldn’t be surprised.

Oddly China’s attitude has both ancient and cutting edge aspects, ones that are slow to develop in the G-8 world where the internet’s information revolution is being fought tooth and nail by the corrupt old goliaths of rigid ownership.

South East Asia has long embraced the Accessible Copy Promotion Model, especially when it comes to pop music. Spread as many free copies of your music around and make your money on sponsorships, official tour merchandise and massive spectacle concerts. Work with the fans and their urge to share their love for you. Everybody wins. Yay!

Here in the G-8 we cling to the old models, by force if necessary. Between ACTA and criminalization we should have our jails full of Chinese merchandise importers, casual computer users as well as your cousin Sam all at the tax payers expense. Meanwhile our cops will be busting up the notorious sewing machine rings of designer counterfeiters as security guards browse through the porn, financial records, love letters and family video of your laptop just in case you have a copy of Britney’s Slave For You on your hard drive and don’t have a signed and notarized certificate of ‘I sure did pay for this officer, I swear.’

The new information economy hasn’t worked itself out quite yet but these recent policies and trade negotiations only hinder a process to create a new and flexible way to both enrich creators as well as make ideas and material accessible to all, including those that do not have massive studio budgets or a vast money reserve to buy catalogues from a shady industrialized system that has left countless creators broken and penniless.

The time has come for change. Do or die buddy.

Far As the Eye Can See!

Dion’s proposed carbon tax has everyone in a tizzy. Its not a bad idea in and off itself, the only problem is its about twenty years to late.

The point of a carbon tax would be to ween society off of fossil fuels by making other options more economical. Also, proceeds would go to create a new sustainable infrastructures that people could switch too. Thing is, to really work it has to be in place BEFORE oil prices skyrocket. You know, ease the blow, create a smooth transition of rising cost rather then smack people with a sudden skyrocketing and no well established alternative to turn too.

To put an extra cost burden on fuel, even if it is compensated for with other tax adjustments, makes living and doing business in Canada that much more difficult. You may know that your getting a tax break elsewhere but people still need to save money, and cutting back on fuel will become a significant way to do so. This may be the whole point of a carbon tax but putting it in at this late a date presents some problems.

Adding extra cost for people to buy fuel on top of the record high prices is ludicrous, especially for the poor and working class who are stuck in an oil based system and have no choice but to forgo other expenses in order to meet essential fuel needs.

Canadians have large essential fuel needs. We’re cold so we need heating, we have an increasing amount of snow to plow, we’re fucking huge geographically and spread out very thin so we need to drive and fly around more then probably anyone else in the world. Also, due to gentrification many working class people are forced to live outside of the city they work in and have to commute. Many small business owners also have no choice but to drive trucks and van’s and other fuel guzzlers. You cannot blame them, or tax them, for not being able to afford a million dollar condo and a brand new hybrid.

An increasing number of people are living with increasingly tight budgets thanks to our selling out of good paying manufacturing jobs for the shitty serve the rich jobs that are replacing them. These people will likely benefit little from other tax adjustments but will still need to buy fuel to live and so have to pay into the carbon tax while not being able to afford the luxury of low fuel consumption. As well, a fuel tax would affect food, clothes, tools and other essentials which will again hit the poor harder then the rich.

Your barren waste land or mine?

What we need is something other then a consumer oil tax. We need a producer oil tax.

Major producers of Carbon emmissions should indeed be penalized, but we also need a tax on the production of carbon based fuel. They should be paying for the flooding of our markets with cheap dirty fuel. The oil bums may bitch and moan but can you really take them seriously when oil companies have record breaking levels of profit, and not just industry based profit records but records in entire history of profit, records that they re-break every year. (To think that they could beat out the East India Company or the Spanish crown’s rape of South America!)

Yummy!

They are rolling in retarded amount of cash as the cost to produce oil remains the same yet the price per barrel continually rises. So they should pay for the carbon producing product, bare the burden of the filth they put out on the market, not the consumer who as yet has little choice whither to buy fossil fuel or not.
On top of this there should also be a water tax. This is not for water use so much as for stressing water.

For too long we have had a pretty lackadaisical approach to water use. If someone breaks an environmental law involving water, they first have to get caught by an underfunded and often neutered enforcement agency and then maybe they get fined but that’s okay because the money made from contaminating the water is much more then the little fine that had to be paid. Besides, the company can just go defunct and leave that huge expensive mess for the tax payer to clean up.

But what if we we’re to put this into our tax structure. Not paying taxes or cooking the books is taken a lot more seriously then slap on the hand environmental fines.

Major users of water would have to keep accounts of everything their water is subjected to, everything put in, taken out, where it came from, where its going. Then an accounting system would tally water taxes far all the stress and damage to our water or water systems.

Proceeds could then go to protecting, cleaning and managing our water which is central to the well being of every living thing in every eco-system in the known universe, including us.

Permanently toxifying water would involve astronomical taxes, as would damaging water sheds, head waters, or wet lands. Not that these shouldn’t be protected by sever limitations and steadfast regulation but we will always need to use some water and right now companies are doing these things with little thought or repercussion.

Water use would then have the funding and the clout of tax authorities who could audit water use, see if it is breaking water use regulations or if water use is being properly recorded and paid for. Also, politicians may gut our environmental regulators but no government is going to cripple its tax collectors. Also, the environmental issues become more integrated into doing business and less an afterthought.

I’m no expert on these things and could be entirely wrong but where are our politicians with effective and timely solutions? Something needs to be done soon. Once these resources are destroyed they are gone for good. We will never get back those lakes after the mining companies are through with them and Alberta will likely have no potable water left at all if the tar sands has its way. These things cannot be undone. Its about time our politicians got off their asses and started to confront these things before its too late.

Tar Money:

Money made by True Canadians (ie Albertans) from the extraction of oil from the so totally green tar sands. Really it’s Green. Really!

aka Tory campaign financing