After the End of History

I’m learning that Southeast Asia has a large number of subways and railways currently under construction (I suggest zooming into the maps linked as some of the projects don’t show up properly). Here’s a roundup of the state of railway construction projects in Southeast Asia as of October 2022.

I guess the region is booming and they’re building stuff that’s been sorely needed for decades. The railways are especially impressive considering how mountainous and jungled most of the region is. And yes, they do have high-speed rail, or will shortly in a couple of months (the Jakarta to Bandung HSR is opening later this year).

Honestly, it’s startling to read about someplace that actually gives building public transit the priority it deserves. And there’s a ton of infrastructure being built: bridges, airports, hospitals, and so on and so on.

It’s strange to live in the End of History – also known as the developed world – and peek at someplace where history still happens. Here in dear old declining Canada, the political establishment seems to think that we’ve reached the final perfect society and all that remains is to keep things at a steady state. It’s of course a bullshit mindset that delays the very necessary and radical reforms that we need to get out of our downward spiral (try googling “Canada housing crisis” sometime, or “Canada cost of living”, or maybe “Canada healthcare crisis”).

But in Southeast Asia, the leaders and the people are very much aware that they need massive structural changes and are frantically doing everything that they can to push those through. And maybe they might. The region’s GDP growth rates have been ridiculously high for the past 20-30 years, ranging between 3-8 percent when 2 percent is considered booming in the Global North.

Line graph showing Annual GDP growth rate of the countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations from 2016 to 2023 with the individual country rates ranging from 3-8% minus the negative growth rates of 2020-2021
Click to enlarge

I’ll be honest, I’ve spent the last while watching Youtube videos projecting country GDPs like the one below about the Top 20 Largest World Economies. I like to keep my eye out for members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Watch for Indonesia getting on the board in 2005 then being joined by Vietnam in 2044 and the Philippines in 2048. It’s oddly relaxing to see the masters of the world like the Netherlands and Switzerland drop out of sight and get supplanted by the likes of Bangladesh and Iran.

Obviously the projections are hogwash. They’re merely current GDP growth rates taken to their mathematical endpoint. Any number of things could throw a spanner into the works: a war, another pandemic, a revolutionary new technology, a terrible climate breakdown. The projection is most believable the closer it is to the present day.

But just look at that chart in 2100. China and India are struggling for dominance, the US is at #3, then come Indonesia and the Philippines while Vietnam, Nigeria, Brazil, Pakistan, and Bangladesh fill out the top 10. Has any near-future science fiction story ever imagined this kind of world? I wish I could live long enough to see if this ever comes to pass.

Ah, what a thing it is to still be optimistic about the future. It’s a strange thing to glimpse from the other side of history.

Hurray for Brexit

How Brexit Is Boosting Canada’s Film Industry

Per The Hollywood Reporter, European filmmakers used to rely a lot on co-productions with UK partners and shooting in the UK, but with Brexit looming they’re turning more and more to Canada. Also Canada has an existing deal for filmmaking with the UK so shooting in Canada means British actors can continue to be hired by the Europeans.

I didn’t realize Canada would be getting this particular Brexit dividend since I figured we were too far, but I guess a long plane ride is worth it for tax credits and a larger pot to draw financing from. I wonder if CETA has been helping out on this as well.

Anyway, good news for the Canadian film industry, bad news for the UK one.

Je suis un espion

Nest of Spies: The Startling Truth About Foreign Agents At Work Within Canada’s Borders is, as one might expect from the subtitle, a non-fiction book about the spy scene in Canada. Its authors are a journalist and a former operative of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, so the book ends up being more descriptive than deeply analytical.

I rather wish a sociologist had been the one to write this book, as I think one could have teased out some interesting insights from the inside knowledge that the authors clearly possess. As it is, the book mostly recounts spy stories that took place in Canada and organized by the country of the perpetrators. At the very least I wish the authors had organized the book around the traditional divisions of spy work – e.g., human intelligence, signals intelligence, etc. And some deeper comparisons with other countries would have helped put things into context.

But the book is still pretty eye-opening. I’m a big spy buff, so a lot of the generalities of intelligence work are familiar to me, but I hadn’t been aware of the specifics of how the whole thing works in Canada. There are a couple of anecdotes from the Cold War (did you know that when the Soviet consulate in Montreal burned down in 1987, CSIS painstakingly sifted the ashes and exposed at least one Soviet mole in France?) and the newer free-for-all today (did you also know that French spies steal anything not nailed down from not only their enemies, but also their allies such as the UK and Canada?).

The authors clearly wish to avoid libel lawsuits by carefully avoiding naming some individuals, companies, and even entire countries in their anecdotes. This is rather to the book’s detriment, since details are scarce enough in a world as secretive as the spy’s. Quit dangling juicy tidbits if you can’t deliver. I mean, tell me you don’t want to know more about Big Pharma hitmen after reading this passage:

Then there is the tactic of eliminating the [rival company’s] researchers [as a part of industrial competition]. We wish this were a tongue-in-cheek way of suggesting they be bribed, but we are in fact talking about murdering them. The pharmaceutical research industry has a remarkable reputation for brutality. The development and marketing of a single new medication costs on average $800 million, which means that a professional killer’s $50,000-$60,000 tab is just so much small change once the competing company’s two or three lead project researchers have been identified. (p. 306)

I suppose this reticence might be attributed to the inherently guarded nature of a spy (though spies aren’t immune to the lure of Hollywood – witness how this nameless intelligence worker gushes over their organization being featured in an episode of The Good Wife).

Entwined throughout the book’s  anecdotes are the authors’ calls for Canada to up its counterintelligence game at the corporate and governmental level. It’s true that no one in Canada really gives a shit about spying. Even after finding out just how much proprietary information is stolen in Canada by friends and rivals alike, I still can’t find it in me to care too much. If it ever comes to a choice between spending money on infrastructure or increasing funding for spy work, I say build that damn Toronto to Montreal hyperloop already. Or just that high frequency rail for the Quebec City to Windsor corridor.

Anyway, this book got me started in reading more about Canada’s spying history. Did you know it’s rumoured that Ian Fleming was the sniper who killed a Japanese spy in New York when the US was still neutral in World War 2, as part of a secretive UK-Canada “corporation” operating with the tacit approval of Franklin D. Roosevelt and J. Edgar Hoover? Or that throughout the 19th and early 20th century the Canadian government hired the Pinkerton detective agency to keep tabs on Irish malcontents in the US? I didn’t, until I started down this fascinating rabbit hole. These stories were from Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peacable Kingdom.

I’ll be doing some further reading on the subject, but for the uninitiated, I’d say Nest of Spies is a fascinating introduction.

What do furries think of the Conservative party?

Yes, this was an actual question that was asked.

This weekend’s Conservative leadership convention shared space at the Toronto Congress Centre with the (much better-attended) 2017 Anime North convention. The National Post’s Maura Forrest took the opportunity to get out of the political bubble and talk to some real Canadians about their views on the issues and who they were hoping would win the leadership.

I have no words.

You’re under arrest

Police lay witchcraft charges after Toronto man billed $101,000 for evil spirit removal

So, uh, why do we still have a law against witchcraft? Couldn’t you arrest Wiccans under this law? This appears to be one of those zombie laws that are probably going to be purged from the Criminal Code, along with laws against crime comics and duelling.

Though looking into it further, the law appears to be against fraudulently practicing witchcraft, so I guess if you can actually transform a prince into a frog you’re in the clear.

The relevant part of the Criminal Code is this:

Canada Criminal Code – Part IX Offenses Against Rights of Property (False Pretences)

Pretending to practise witchcraft:

365 Every one who fraudulently
a) pretends to exercise or to use any kind of witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment or conjuration,
b) undertakes, for a consideration, to tell fortunes, or
c) pretends from his skill in or knowledge of an occult or crafty science to discover where or in what manner anything that is supposed to have stolen or lost may be found

is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.

A summary offence is apparently a minor crime so you’re not looking at a life sentence here. And if you’re wondering what a “crafty science” is as referred to in c), then according to this Washington Post article, it’s an archaic legal term for fortunetelling and spell-casting. The legal phrase itself dates back to the time of Henry VIII of England, where a specific law punishes

all . . . idle persons going about in any countries or abiding in any city borough or town, some of them using divers & subtle crafty & unlawful games & plays & some of them feigning themselves to have knowledge in physic, physiognomy, palmistry, or other crafty science whereby they bear the people in hand, that they can tell their destinies deceases & fortunes & such other like fantastical imaginations to the great deceit of the King’s Subjects . . .

However, it was used colloquially in The Canterbury Tales to refer to alchemy. Also, this isn’t just a Canada thing – the town of Joplin in Missouri has an ordinance stating that

Any person who shall advertise by display of a sign, circular or handbill, or in any newspaper, periodical, magazine or other publication, or by any other means, to tell fortunes or reveal the future, to find or restore lost or stolen property, to locate oil wells, gold or silver or other ore or metal or natural products, to restore lost love, friendship or affection, or to reunite or procure lovers, husbands, wives, lost relatives or friends, or to give advice in business affairs, or advice of any kind or nature to others for or without pay, by means of occult or psychic powers, faculties or forces, clairvoyance, psychology, psychometry, phrenology, spirits, mediumship, seership, prophecy, astrology, palmistry, necromancy or like crafty science, cards, talismans, charms, potions, magnetism or magnetized articles or substances, oriental mysteries, crystal gazing or magic of any kind or nature shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor.

Do you notice the part where being a therapist who helps patients with relationship troubles legally means you can be arrested for witchcraft in Missouri? I like that part. I gotta say, this is just such an interesting rabbit hole to fall into.

Senpai notices Edmonton

Well, more like senpai notices other senpai blew up Edmonton.

Meanwhile, Rest of Canada argues over which city is Best Girl. Thank you, Grauniad, for your Guardian Canada week focusing on cities and topics across the country.

For increased amusement, check out the comments on the Toronto article, where Canadians alternatively defend and attack the T Dot whilst simultaneously claiming they don’t care if foreigners think Toronto is a world-class city.

Although having said that, I must admit I’ve been obsessively reading each piece in the series. What can I say? I also obsess over what the world thinks of Canada.

The Non-Americans

Fascinating article from The Guardian about the US-raised children of a couple in Russia’s infamous Illegals spy program. It would of course be mind-blowing to discover as a teenager that your parents were secretly Russian deep cover spies trained by the KGB, and the article covers that in depth. Peripherally related to that issue is the fact that the TV show The Americans is very loosely based on the Illegals Program.

It’s kind of interesting to think about how the fictional kids on that show would react to the same revelation of their parents’ secret lives as enemies of the state. The real-life sons are currently trying to regain their Canadian citizenship (their parents’ cover having been that of Canadian immigrants to the US) and on reflection I think I wouldn’t mind if they became legit Canadians. As they point out, they barely know Russia and have few personal ties there. Plus they seem eager to live in and contribute to Canada, so what the hell. There’s plenty of room.

Also interesting is this video of the father in the story, Andrey Bezrukov. There is a noticeable non-native accent in his English speech, but it might be that he is no longer trying to disguise his origins or that his speech patterns have been influenced by the people around him after he has returned home – or both, probably.

I’m doing my part

I just came here to post this campaign video for an independent candidate running in the Canadian federal election in October. I keep rewinding it to watch him fist bump an alien but I also like the part where he kills a robot with his laser eyes.

Public humiliation and the schadenfreude of nationalism

I had to go to work today. Nothing ever happens on Sunday, especially on Canada Day, so my coworkers and I talked about movies and watched the Euro Cup championship online. No one was cheering for Italy mostly because if Italy won then Toronto’s Italian contingent would come out and block the streets in celebration, making it hard to get home after work. Yes, we cheer for countries based on what would inconvenience us less. That’s what happens when you divorce nationalism from international sporting championships, though some people just cheer for the country with the weaker economy.

3:07 PM: Spain just scored, yeehaw! Suck on that, Italian-Canadians.

3:31 PM: Spain scored again. How’s that taste, Italy?

Against all odds, someone called and signed up with my company, and as it happens Spain scored twice more while I had to do the thing I was being paid to do. Curses. But 4-0, there’s no arguing with that score. Ha ha, eat that Little Italy, that’s what you get for blocking the streetcar home and making me take the Dufferin bus after Italy beat Germany. A happy Canada Day to all!