The Hockey Sweater, Afghanada style

Pity poor Major Eric Cottenoir of the Vandoos.

A brand new hockey sweater arrived in the mail for him yesterday. But when he put it on at the hockey rink, all his friends laughed at him.

Instead of sending him the red, white and blue of the Montreal Canadiens, a big Canadian clothing chain had instead mailed the blue and white sweater of the hated Toronto Maple Leafs.

All the other players favoured les Canadiens. Nobody wanted to wear the Toronto sweater. Major Cottenoir was booed by his fellow hockey players the moment he put it on.

Full story here.

This time they've gone too far.

The Guardian hits a new low--and that's saying quite a bit.

Pickton is guilty, but imprisoning him won't solve the Downtown Eastside's problems

Robert Pickton has been found guilty of six counts of second-degree murder in the killings of six women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. He still faces an additional twenty murder charges, though British Columbia's Attorney General says that no decision has yet been made on whether or not Pickton will go to trial on these charges. He'll spend the rest of his life in prison regardless, though in the interests of justice--or at least in the interests of the friends and families of the women he's accused of killing--he probably should face the second trial.

There's something about this whole affair that makes me feel uneasy, and it has little to do with the sickening details of what exactly happened at Pickton's farm that came out in the media during the trial. I get a sense--though I've never seen it articulated--that there's a feeling that justice has been served because Pickton was arrested, stood trial, and was found guilty, as if the massive socioeconomic problems of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside were attributable to one greasy psychopath. I'm not sure where I'm getting this impression from, because the news reports I've read of the outcome of the trial have been remarkably good in highlighting the larger failures that this trial brought to light. For example, the CBC talks to the friends and families of the victims and they discuss the failure of the Vancouver Police Department to take the disappearance of these women seriously; the BBC talks with a former Vancouver Police official who highlights similar problems. Pickton is guilty, certainly, but he was only able to prey on these women for so long because of a culture within the police, and probably extending at least to the city, and likely higher than that, that treats these women as if they were invisible and not worthy of protection because they're drug addicts and prostitutes. Locking up Pickton won't solve that.

Because mass spontaneous outbreaks of violence don't happen

Allan Little on the potential of another Balkan war when Kosovo declares independence:

There was a time when a declaration of independence would have plunged this region back into full scale war.

Will it this time? Few here think so.

And here's why. Wars in the Balkans do not happen spontaneously. They have to be planned, organised, funded, resourced, armed, equipped, guided.

Milosevic threw the weight of the entire state behind the effort of the 1990s. It was a huge mobilisation.

There is no state in the Balkans ready or able to make that sacrifice now.

Karlheinz Stockhausen, 1928-2007

Karlheinz Stockhausen, the avant-garde composer and pioneer of electronic music, has died aged 79.

DaveX from Startling Moniker has an obituary here. I might try to put something together when I have a little bit of time.

Speaking of autonomous provinces

An agreement-in-principle has been signed between the governments of Canada, Quebec, and Inuit representatives to create an semi-autonomous region in the north of Quebec.

The pact "is at the heart of our desire to promote, as never before, the socio-economic development of the Inuit communities," said Quebec Premier Jean Charest.

"It aims to build an efficient government institution truly adapted to the needs of Nunavik."

The region is situated in the north of Quebec, between the 55th and 62nd N parallels and spans a territory of 660,000 sq km (255,000 sq miles) - larger than France.

Pita Aatami, president of the non-profit organization Makivik, expressed the hope for a "better Nunavik" and that the violence, suicides and drug abuse that have blighted the 14 Inuit villages in the region would be alleviated.

(Curiously, while this is front page news on the BBC website, I can't find a mention of it on the CBC's website--though they do have a photo gallery of Knut the polar bear. The CBC report is here.)

Ratcheting up tensions over Kosovo

An adviser to Serbia's prime minister has threatened war if--though it's more a matter of when--Kosovo declares independence.

Carla del Ponte has also given Serbia until Monday to hand over Ratko Mladic, and their pre-membership agreement with the EU could be blocked if he isn't apprehended. We've been here before.

Chag Sameach

Bosnia in the news

The EU and Bosnia have initialed a pre-membership agreement. The worries I expressed a few days ago about the viability of Bosnia as a state may have been alarmist pish.

Writing elsewhere

I have a post up at the Drink Soaked Trotskyite Popinjays for War on the subject of Kosovo's independence. Read it, if you are so inclined.

Mortuary

Flesh has fallen away. Trees
And buildings are summer's skeleton;
Wind has loosened, disarrayed
The separate ribs, the evidence of bone.
Dead, deposited relics
Shored up clean against a stiffened sky,
Fixed by the mortician cold
Moving his fingers over them ceaselessly;
While the snow, decently to inter,
Drifts in between the spaces, everywhere.

-Irving Layton, 1945

The so-called hunt continues

The Guardian has an excellent article by Ed Vulliamy (this appears to be the second part of it) about the, ahem, ongoing hunt for Radovan Karadzic.

That Karadzic and Mladic remain at liberty is a crushing embarrassment to the international community, studiedly impotent during the Bosnian war and now unable to perform this basic task of detection. Nearly a decade ago, the western diplomat in charge of peacekeeping in Bosnia, Carl Westendorp, told a meeting in Brussels that Karadzic would surrender 'this month'. 'How can the most powerful alliance in the world tell us that they can't find two Serbs?' pondered Jacques Klein six years ago, when he was co-ordinator of the UN mission to Bosnia.

It's difficult to avoid conspiracy theories when dealing with this kind of thing. Recently, the BBC even ran an article speculating that Karadzic has to date evaded capture because he made a deal with Richard Holbrooke, despite the lack of concrete evidence to support this claim. There's also the rumour that Karadzic was or is in the pay of MI6--though, again, I haven't seen anything concrete proving this. Whatever the case, Karadzic needs to be captured and he needs to face trial.

On being left-handed

Left-handed people may be better equipped for close range mortal combat than those who rely on their right hands, according to researchers.