[NON BLOG] An Item in The Globe and Mail today

I've always associated The Globe and Mail with Toronto, contrasting it unavoidably badly with Prince Edward Island. The good thing about living in Toronto (nay, one of the good things) is that I don't have to count on picking up editions from Halifax or St. John's at 10 o'clock; no, I can just go to the vending machine on the corner at Queen Street West and pick up a copy as early as I'd please.

Today on the front page of Section A, above the fold, was a disturbing story about a shipload of illegal immigrants intending to proceed from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico that went badly wrong, amidst mass death and cannibalism. In a comparative perspective, the shift of the Dominican Republic from a country of immigration--receiving freed American slaves after its mid-19th century independence from Haiti and Japanese immigrants after the Second World War, even now absorbing ill-treated Haitian immigrants as described in fiction by Edwidge Danticat in The Farming of Bones--to a country of mass emigration is interesting. What's particularly horrifying, though, is this paragraph in the Globe and Mail story:

"It's surprising and horrifying, but it's not something unheard of," Lt. [Eric] Willis [of the U.S. Coast Guard] said of the latest case. "We at the Greater Antilles section have heard of most of this before: the survival on breast milk, the resorting to cannibalism. They have occurred in these waters before."

You can't help but wonder what horrors have already happened without anyone knowing.

[NON BLOG] Fourth Counterfactual Threats Analysis Group Report

Due to laptop troubles, pauldrye unfortunately couldn't make it to this week's meeting. Myself, James B., and schizmatic were all in attendance, shifting by 1:30 to Volo Caffè.

• The first part of the meeting concerned largely non-uchronical matters, particularly concerning the decline of ideological hegemonies like Communism (in the Soviet Union) and radical Islam (in the Islamic Republic of Iran, perhaps soon enough to be followed by other states). Mass terror, as Ernest Gellner observes, doesn't contradict radically utopian ideologies since it makes instinctual sense to believe that great gains can come only after great sacrifices. Squalor, as in the Brezhnev-Andropov-Chernenko epoch in the Soviet Union, spoils great ideological hopes.


• Following a discussion on the superiorities of Roman law to Chinese law (particularly in terms of property), there was a general debate on how to intensify contact between the Roman Empire and Han China. A Roman coquest of Persia was generally agreed to be one way, perhaps following a successful annexation of Germania and Bohemia, providing additional manpower; another was a Trajan who engaged in an earlier conquest of Dacia. The conquest wouldn't have to be permanent, which is good since retaining Persia for more than a few generations would be impossible. If it was enough to ensure Roman contact across central Asia, though, it might be enough. Other possibilities included a Roman conquest of Yemen and the establishment of contact not through Persia but through the plains of the North Caucasus and central Asia.


• Returning to the topic of ideology decaying in squalor, there was another discussion about the consequences of a successful Soviet Third World War in Europe resulting in a conquest of West Germany specifically or of western Europe generally. Of course, thanks to Cold War-era disclosures we now know that Soviet war plans involved the use of tactical nuclear warheads from the start, and that the logic of deterrence would have quickly chained up to a full exchange of nuclear warheads between two sides that, directly and indirectly, would have killed most of the population of the Northern Hemisphere in a year's time. If, however, the nuclear-weapons usage could either be avoided altogether or could be stopped at a level short of the general decimation of western Europe, interesting things could result. Consider, for instance, how a West Germany with a GDP only slightly behind that of the entire Warsaw Pact would be dealt with, much less a western Europe taken as a whole. Most interestingly, consider how Soviet conscripts taken from the depths of Ukraine, provincial Russia, or Central Asia would react to a rich, liberal, and hedonistic West Germany (or western Europe). If you'd like to unite Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals using Soviet military force but eventually ending in West German dominance ...


• Two visions from the previous situation: The Baader-Meinhof Gang, decide to kidnap not West German industrialists for their implementation of capitalism, but rather Soviet generals for implementing a false and oppressive Communism. David Bowie, in the Berlin of this setting records his trilogy of Low, Lodger, and Heroes. ("We can be heroes/just for one day.") I would really like to write a story around this.


• Towards the end in a spare moment, I checked my E-mail via my cell phone and found this question by sharp_blue. schizmatic was of the opinion that Caesar's survival wouldn't alter things, since he himself was fairly committed to the Republic as an ideal and couldn't have overcome its legacy by himself.

[QUIZ] Nicked from pauldrye

Based on the lj interests lists of those who share my more unusual interests, the interests suggestion meme thinks I might be interested in
1. writing score: 9
2. reading score: 9
3. movies score: 8
4. art score: 8
5. books score: 7
6. photography score: 7
7. cooking score: 7
8. canada score: 6
9. beer score: 6
10. cats score: 6
11. harry potter score: 6
12. music score: 6
13. chocolate score: 6
14. rpgs score: 6
15. cheese score: 5
16. shakespeare score: 5
17. punk score: 5
18. lord of the rings score: 5
19. poetry score: 5
20. travel score: 5

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