You Missed Election Day

...In Canada. Yes, the Canadians held an election yesterday, and it seems that not even they cared. It was the lowest recorded voter turnout in Canadian history, at 59% or so. It was an election without many major issues. Polls put the economy at number one, but the worst of the global crisis has mostly passed over Canada, due to tight regulations already in place for the nation's financial industry. In the end, the Conservative Party gained seats but not enough for a clean majority, with a total of 143 Stephen Harper, extremely popular in Canada, will remain the nation's Prime Minister. The once-mighty Liberal Party lost substantially once again, being reduced to only 76 seats. There are also two other major parties, the separatist Bloc Quebecois, which stayed about the same with 50 seats, and the ultra-liberal New Democrats, who continued to gain strength and now have 38 seats.

The Liberal Party governed for 12 consecutive years (1993-2006), mostly under Jean Chretien, but in recent years have been hit by the so-called "Sponsorship Scandal", revolving around corruption and political favors among party members in Quebec. Also, during the 90s, the Canadian Right was split following the near-total collapse of the "Progressive Conservatives" in 1993, when that party went from the majority to having only 2 seats, and the far-right "Reform Party" emerged but was mainly limited to the western part of the country. The Reform Party was extremely controversial in Canada for its advocacy of positions associated with the modern American Republican party. It was openly Christian, anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, and also wanted to end the Canadian policy of bilingualism. Following a few unsucessful attempts at reunification, the Reform Party, "Conservative Alliance," and the vestiges of the Progressive Conservatives merged in 2003 under the more-moderate Harper and in 2006 gained a plurality.

This was an election, as stated earlier, that really failed to get going. Stephane Dion, the Liberal leader, was painted, seemingly succesfully, by Conservatives as a weak leader, a sort of Canadian Dan Quayle, and it seems he will soon be replaced. Many criticized Conservative policies, such as a $45 million dollar arts funding cut (can you imagine how low that would be on an American election agenda?), as well as Harper's seeming to take a "wait-and-see" approach to the economy. There was also a business about them trying to bribe a dying independent with life insurance that never really caught on. Other parties, especially the Bloc and NDP, were quick to declare victory at the end of the night because the Conservatives didn't have the majority they wanted, while some criticized the election itself as a wase of money.

Other interesting bits surroundng the Canadian election:

-The Green Party made waves, increasing its national vote totals substantially to around 6%, but failed to win a single seat. By contrast, the Bloc Quebecois had 10% of the national vote, but will have 50 seats. Green Party leader Elizabeth May was seen by many as having had the strongest showing in the debates, but lost to Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay in her own Nova Scotia riding. Many felt the Green Party helped take seats away from the Liberals in this election, in addition to the usual NDP cut.

-One issue that cropped up was a 2003 speech by then-Opposition Leader Harper, in which he called for Canada to send troops to Iraq. It was recently revealed to have been directly plagiarized from a speech by Australian Prime Minister Howard that was delivered only two days earlier. The staffer who supposedly wrote the speech ended up having to resign. It's interesting to point out that, though Harper is in power, he has thought better of sending a Canadian contingent to Iraq, as such as move would certainly be wildly unpopular in Canada.

-Chris Reid, a Conservative candidate in a Toronto district, dropped out of the election after statements on his blog gained media attention. The statements? That he wanted to legalize concealed carrying of handguns. In Canada, that's apparently so far outside the mainstream as to end Reid's political career. Here in Ohio, by the way, "Conceal/Carry" is legal, with a permit. A lack of success in Toronto, where Conservatives hold zero seats out of 22, ended up being a major piece in that party's failure to win a majority.

-Then there's the case of NDP candidate Andrew McKeever from Durham, Ontario. I'll just quote Wikipedia:

announced on October 3 that he would resign from the election campaign after it
was revealed that he had posted comments on Facebook in which he called one
war activist a “fascist bitch” and threatened to beat up another person. Mr.
McKeever wrote comments peppered with expletives and calling the operators of a
war resister website “Nazis.” McKeever was also quoted as saying “I like the
part in Schindler’s List when the guard starts waxing the prisoners.” McKeever’s
decision to drop out of the race came with just over a week left in the
campaign, meaning his name would remain on the ballot. One week before the
publication of McKeever's resignation, NDP leader Jack Layton defended McKeever
and refused to make him step down.

-More NDP... Julian West, the party's candidate in Saanich, BC, dropped off the ballot after details surfaced regarding his conduct at an "environmental event" 12 years ago, where he went skinny-dipping and then asked two teenagers to bodypaint him. This may be the first bodypainting scandal I have heard of in world politics.

-Independent candidate David Popsecu, running in Sudbury, was invesitgated for "hate speech" after he responded to a debate question about gay rights with "homosexuals should be executed."

Welcome to the the Sports World, China

This summer, China was very eager to tell the world how modern and advanced it was. They welcomed the world the the 2008 Summer Olympics, spent billions and billions of dollars, and went to extreme lengths to make sure everybody stayed on-message. And China did win more gold medals than any other nation this summer. However, having a well-funded sports system is not the same thing as being a member of the moder, capitalist sports world. A news story today finally convinced me that China is ready.

Wang Hao, a two-time Olympic silver medalist in Table Tennis, was arrested thursday in Shanghai and has been ordered to get counseling. Finally, a Chinese Pacman Jones! Apparently Mr. Wang emerged, drunk, from a karaoke club and decided to urinate on the outside of the building. A security guard attempted to stop him from doing so, and the two came to blows. My favorite part is what Wang reportedly yelled while trying to punch the guard: "I am the famous Wang Hao! I am the World Champion! Who cares if I beat you?" Awesome.

Table Tennis (or "Ping Pong", as we uncultured Americans like to call it), has long been one of the most popular sports in China. Wang is a major star in the country's professional ping pong league. The coach of his club, Bayi, said that he may face additional punishment from the team, though he did not elaborate.

As China becomes more of a world economic leader, and continues to shift to a more modern, capitalist society, incidents like this will become more and more common. Chinese culture is usually described as "collectivist" rather than "individualist"... it has never been a celebrity culture. But that may be changing. This summer, the world got to see just how big athletes like basketball player Yao Ming, runner Liu Xiang, and badminton star Lin Dan are in their homeland. And it turns out that, if you have enough celebrities, some of them will have trouble dealing with fame, collectivism or no.

Another aspect of this that interests me is the punishment. He has to get counseling? Time was Wang would have simply disappeared from the scene after bringing "shame" to his country in this way, but now we don't even know if he'll miss any matches for his pro team. China likes to think of itself, increasingly, as a meritocracy, a country where, if you work hard enough, you can get ahead. This is new, but it's also different from the "American Dream" we like to talk about here. Yes, Wang is being treated differently because he is a celebrity. In China, that's not really something that's questioned. If he's famous, it's because he's better. There's none of this "all men are created equal" business. If you're as good as them, why aren't you where they are, is the question that's asked.

As we saw this summer, China's going through a period of intense change, and incidents like this are a small part of that. Anyway, I think that's about enough analysis for a "guy-pees-on-wall" story.

Can You Sexually Abuse Yourself?

According to the state of Ohio, the answer is now apparently yes. Remember my post about sex offenders and Oprah? I discussed some of the local and state laws where I live in regards to registered sex offenders. Now comes the case of a 15-year-old girl in Licking Valley, Ohio, which is in a county adjacent to my own, and is garnering national attention. I first read about the story on Salon's women's issues blog Broadsheet (get it?), and they heard about the story from ABC.

What happened, apparently, is that the girl took naked pictures of herself and sent them to a bunch of people at her high school. Stupid, certainly. Probably deserving of some sort of punishment from some authority, yes. But does it make the girl a sex offender? Ohio law seems to says it does. The girl has been charged with "illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material" and "possession of criminal tools." (i.e. her cell phone) If she is convicted, she could be kept in juvenile detention until she's 21 and be forced to register as a sex offender (because she was caught distributing child pornography) for the next 20 years. Not only that, but charges may also be filed against the people she sent the photos to, since they were in possession of child pornography... a fifth-degree felony in Ohio. If the law is followed, they may all be forced to register as a sex offender for the next ten years, simply for, essentially, receiving a text message from one of their classmates.

This is not the first time kids sending sexy pictures to each other has made front page news around here. The Columbus Dispatch has regularly featured stories about local schools having trouble controlling the spread of sexually explicit material, usually taken by students of themselves, over cell phones. This is a culture where sexual images are readily available to anyone with an internet connection, but at the same time the age of consent is 18, by which time most teens have been dating for years. This is the first time I've heard of this level of charges being filed, however.

It's debateable when teenagers are truly able to make decisions regarding their own bodies for themselves in an adult manner, and of course it will vary from person to person. Obviously in this case the girl exercised extremely bad judgment, and is probably not ready for any of that. My position is that there's only so much control parents and schools have, in the end, and if the goal is to genuinely help the kids instead of simply control them, then the best solution is widespread sex education and availability of contraceptives. But that is only my opinion.

What this case does make clear is that our laws on this subject haven't kept up with changes in technology and resultant changes in our culture. To say that our culture is more sexualized may or may not be true (sure, girls didn't send naked pics over their phone in Little House on the Prairie days, but they did marry Almanzo from the next town over at age 16), but it is certainly true that more and more parts of ourselves are becoming public, and members of the digital generation need time to learn where to draw that line just as they need time to learn everything else. If my work in the state legislature has taught me anything, it's that when you make an arbitrary rule, it will have consequences you did not foresee... and usually not good ones.

Here's One Use For Craigslist I Never Thought Of

A bizarre story came out of Washington state the other day. A man robbed an armored truck outside a Bank of America branch and then escaped... because of Craigslist. Apparently he used an ad on the popular classifieds site to "hire" a dozen or so unsuspecting drivers to act as decoys during the police pursuit. He then floated away down the Skykomish River via innertube (because it seemed like the thing to do, I guess) and has yet to be apprehended.

The robber, wearing a surgical-type respirator mask, walked up to an armored truck guard as he was transferring money from his truck to the Bank of America in Monroe, WA. He pepper sprayed the guard in the face and took the bag of money the man was carrying. He then ran with the bag about 100 yards to a nearby creek that leads into the river. But police weren't chasing him, they were chasing the decoys.

The ad he placed on Craigslist promised $28.50 an hour for workers for a road maintenance project. Those who responded were told to wear certain colored clothing (the same as the robber was wearing) and a respirator mask, and meet near the bank. But of course, there was no one there to meet them, except for confused police.

Police have no leads on the suspect, but have taken what might be his innertube "as evidence." The local PD has brought in the FBI in attempt to trace the Craigslist ad, but those attempts have as yet been unsuccessful.

I must confess, when I first hear about crimes I'm often left thinking that I could have done it better, or in a way that wouldn't have gotten myself caught. Not that I would, mind you... Anyway, refreshingly, that's not what I'm left with here. Usually people with strong planning skill such as this do not end up trying to rob armored trucks! One wonders what the real story is behind all this.

Too bad he had to pepper spray a guy in the face, though. One would think there would be a Craigslist-style way around that.

Someone Took "Advance Wars" Too Seriously

The big news from the gaming world this week wasn't the release of the latest big game. It was the real-life murder of one Matthew Pyke, a student at Nottingham Trent University in England. Pyke, age 20, was heavily involved with the community surrounding Nintendo's Advance Wars, a turn-based war tactics game for the video game company's hand-held Advance platform. Pyke ran a strategy website for the game with his girlfriend, as well as writing Advance Wars fanfiction and regularly posting to forums devoted to the game. Authorities are now saying they believe that the murder may have been because of a grudge that started in the virtual world and seeped into the real world.

According to a report from The Times of London, detectives are investigating whether this was some sort of revenge killing for events that happened while playing the game online. Among the strange events among investigation is a post by a german citizen on the Facebook page of Pyke's girlfriend, in which the poster, David Heiss, vaguely implied he was responsible for Pyke's death. A man matching the description of the Heiss was reportedly arrested by Nottinghamshire Police.

Obviously there are a lot of details about this that are still to come out, and we will try to bring you a follow-up. Many media outlets will immediately point to video gamers being somehow disconnected from reality. But, in my opinion, this is the sort of unfortunate incident that has the potential to happen in any competition that people start caring about out of proportion to its actual importance. Is this really so different from that Colombian soccer player who was tragically murdered after allowing an own goal to the USA during the '94 World Cup? Or from Tonya Harding's boyfriend hiring someone to attack Nancy Kerrigan? As video games and online interaction become important to more people, we'll see more of this sort of tragedy, not less.

In any case, my thoughts go out to Pyke's loved ones who are going through this difficult time.