[NON BLOG] One Homeless Person

I've read today about an unpleasant encounter that Claudia Drescher at Halfway Across the Danube had with a teenage street beggar in Bucharest.

The homeless in Ontario are much more visible than on Prince Edward Island. Even in Kingston, you can count on there being one or two hanging outside of the Shoppers Drug Mart downtown at the corner of Princess and Bagot. Venturing to Toronto back in January, and more recently this month and last month, I was surprised and saddened to see the homeless people around. (Interestingly, in January I saw quite a lot of hot dog vendors were living in their tents, huddled under blankets behind their counters at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning.)

There are homeless on Prince Edward Island, of course. At the very least, there are very poor people who beg money on the streets. A disturbingly high proportion are of native descent, perhaps on the order of a third or so of the total. (Fellow Islanders, help?) Considering that Mi'kMaq form only one half-percent of the Island's population, they're badly overrepresented.

One summer morning in 1998, as I was going into the Tim Horton's on Kent Street opposite the Confederation Court Mall, one homeless person sitting by the door asked me for money. I was vaguely aware that the man had a reputation for drinking, so I didn't give him any money. Rather, I bought him a coffee. He thanked me, and we began talking as we walked down Queen Street, onto the open area in front of the Confederation Centre Public Library.

He wasn't very coherent, I'm afraid; he had drunk too much over his lifetime, and had probably taken in too many substances of marginal drinkability, to be that. Even so, I enjoyed listening to him as he talked about his life: a brief survey of time at residential school; an anecdote about his participation in some sort of a First Nations theatrical event that was spoiled for him by his drinking, even then; his current despair. I got to work only slightly late.

I think he's dead now. It's a pity, since I enjoyed talking to him. I can't help but wonderwhat could have happened to make his life happier, and longer. At least he never showed any signs of wanting to spit in my face, though.

[BLOG-LIKE POSTING] Reunifications Deferred: North and South Korea

Korea’s a particularly tragic case of a divided country. In the case of East Germany, it was at least possible that the Democratic Republic’s government might manage to stumble upon historic Prussian and Saxon identities to build a non-German national identity; arguably, if Stalin had chosen to make the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany a Red Prussia, Berlin would be at most a binational capital, with the residents of Stettin and Breslau just now getting used to citizenship in the European Union alongside those of Prague and Warsaw.

The strong particularisms which mark German history, though, are lacking in Korea. Under the long reign of the Yi dynasty, Korea arguably became a consolidated nation-state. Under Japanese rule, all of Korea suffered from forced assimilation and brutal militarized rule even as it experienced some long-term benefits in the form of Japanese efforts at industrialization. The past half-century, though, has created huge and yawning gaps which will make reunification next to impossible. South Korea is a prosperous society, a liberal-democratic society, on the verge of acquiring First World status and perhaps even a measure of sustainable global influence; North Korea can claim none of these things. These two countries are just too far apart now on almost every front.

( What does reunification require? )

( For comparison, here’s another counterfactual, this time concerning France and Algeria. )

( What would happen with Korea? Well, we can guess. )

For South Korea and South Koreans, the best case scenario in regards to the north might be the adoption of an effective program of economic reform in the north. If North Korea liberalized sufficiently--cutting back its military spending sharply, allowing a modicum of personal if not political liberty, and perhaps most importantly engaging in Dengist economic reforms--the South could do business with it. The outsourcing of South Korean industry to countries with lower labour costs has been going on for a while; if South Korean industries had access to the compliant but well-educated Korean-speaking work force immediately to their north, both sides would benefit substantially. Eventually, at some future point, the two countries could unite, whether into a unitary structure or some sort of federation, in a situation more closely approximating the German in 1989-1990.

But this isn’t going to happen. South Korea is preoccupied with its own domestic issues, and seems to be daunted by the scale of the task of North Korean reconstruction. North Korea is completely oblivious to the question of how to modernize and liberalize, thanks to its own ideological blinders. Korean reunification might be possible at some point in a couple of decades, perhaps after a fashion in some kind of state confederation with strict border controls in order to limit the hemorrhage of North Korea’s population to a vastly better South. There’s no reason, really, for the current separation apart from the North Korean regime’s insanity, and that’s tragic.

( Counter )

[QUIZ] Quel genre de pédéblogueur êtes vous ?

Via Damelon Kimbrough:

( Allons voir. )