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Aug. 26th, 2009
Over at Demography Matters I've a post up highlighting how, in East Asia, abortion et al is producing a young generation marked by an excess of missing girls. I then go over some of the consequences of this for Vietnam's future.
While I understand the reasoning--as I type I'm listening to a Fischerspooner song on YouTube complete with fan video--but this still makes me sad. MuchMusic used to be so much more.
As MuchMusic marks its 25th anniversary this month, there will be no stylishly produced retrospectives, no neon-splashed '80s videos from the vault, and no nostalgic appearances by former VJs.
In fact, representatives from the network - which has survived by keeping a finger firmly on the pulse of young people - say they will not mark the milestone at all, arguing that their audience just doesn't care about it.
"We will be doing absolutely nothing for the 25th anniversary," said Brad Schwartz, senior vice-president and general manager of Much MTV Group.
[. . .]
Schwartz says MuchMusic was the No. 2 network for 12-to 34-year-olds last year, behind TSN. Overall ratings steadily increased until 1997 and have held steady since, despite an increasingly competitive landscape and the fact that music videos - once Much's lifeblood - are now available at the click of a mouse.
Schwartz remembers when viewers had to stay glued to their sets to watch the latest offering from their favourite artist - and even sit through videos they didn't like to get to videos they did.
"Remember, when MuchMusic was playing music videos, it was the only place to get music videos," Schwartz said.
"You couldn't get them anywhere else, so you had to tune into MuchMusic and watch the countdown. If you wanted to watch the Michael Jackson 'Thriller' video, you had to watch videos six, five, four, three, two and then finally get to it.
"Today, you don't need to do that. If you want to watch the 'Thriller' video, you go online and you watch it, you watch it 10 times in a row. ... Today's music is so on-demand that you don't need to watch a Beyonce video to get to a Britney video, you can just go straight to a Britney video."
As a result, videos have largely been pushed to the margins of the network's programming. Meanwhile, Much has found higher ratings with in-house fare such as "Video on Trial," in which comics poke fun at popular videos; reality shows including "So You Think You Can Dance" and "Pimp My Ride;" and with teen dramas including "One Tree Hill" and "Degrassi."
Much still devotes 50 per cent of its programming to music videos, as per the requirements of its CRTC licence. But once-beloved Much mainstays such as "The Wedge" and "Rap City" have been relegated to late-night airings - where the network tends to tuck much of its video-centric programming - while "The NewMusic" was cancelled outright in 2008.
This IPS article, authored by Valerie Dee, helps to highlight the huge Italian presence in South America, not only in Argentina and Uruguay but in Brazil, too.
In 1875 a handful of families from the Veneto region of northern Italy, fleeing hardship and hunger, took ship for the Empire of Brazil. Disembarking in Porto Alegre in the southeast, they hacked their way for over 100 kilometres through densely wooded country into the Serra Gaúcha hills, up to 800 metres above sea level.
Land, 25 to 50 hectares per family, was distributed free to these self-reliant pioneers in an area of the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul named Dona Isabel, after his daughter, by the emperor Dom Pedro II (1831-1889). This imperial policy, which followed the abolition of slavery in 1871, was aimed at populating the land and making it productive.
Important changes were under way in the economy of Rio Grande do Sul. Soon, railways connected the countryside to Porto Alegre, the state capital and chief port, and together with the introduction of steam ships, quicker and cheaper transport boosted exports.
The population of the state of Rio Grande do Sul doubled between 1872 and 1890, from 434,813 people to 897,455, according to records at the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). This was partly due to immigration: about 60,000 immigrants, mostly from Italy, settled in the Serra Gaúcha region during this period, and continued to arrive in large numbers in the following decades.
The descendants of Italian immigrants are estimated at 25 million in this country of 190 million, and in southern Brazil they represent around 35 percent of the population.
[. . .]
Rio Grande do Sul is the Brazilian state with the fourth highest human development index (HDI), according to the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP), after Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Santa Catarina. Brazil's overall HDI ranking places it 70th out of 177 countries worldwide.
Eleventh in size out of the 26 Brazilian states, with a population of 11 million people, Rio Grande do Sul is larger in area than the country of Uruguay, with 3.2 million people, on its southern border.
Over at the Huffington Post, Robert Amsterdam helps to take on Venezuela's authoritarian populist leader Hugo Chávez.
Go read Amsterdam's piece in its entirety.
An important aspect of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's political survival over these past ten years has been a carefully managed ignorance amongst the international community. While there may be some awareness of attacks on journalists, blacklists, political prisoners, and the occasional wielding of the authoritarian sledgehammer, Chávez and co. are counting on the majority of us to be just lazy enough not to look beyond the myths of democracy, social justice, and the general idea we prefer to hold of Venezuela as a socialist utopia.
I don't doubt that despite the unprecedented steps toward authoritarianism taken by the Chávez regime in recent months (including the shutting down of 32 radio stations, an indoctrinating education bill, and removal of political powers from democratically elected opponents), that I will continue to hear happy stories about Venezuela's peaceful and prosperous social democracy from Washington to Brasilia to Paris. It's all too often cited as an excuse why no one should act. After all, Caracas spends hundreds of millions on campaigns to make sure this happens.
One person who was decidedly not too lazy to take a closer look at the political ambiguities of Venezuela is Brian A. Nelson, a professor at Johns Hopkins University whose recent book The Silence and the Scorpion is a must read for anyone seeking to get an unbiased and comprehensive account of the two most controversial days of the Chávez presidency. Nelson's book provides an hour-by-hour breakdown of the events beginning April 11th, 2002 told through many different voices of witnesses and participants from both the pro-Chávez and opposition camps, as the two massive marches clashed violently on the avenues leading up to the presidential palace.
[. . .]
"If you believe that the opposition initiated the violence; that they placed gunmen at the head of the march and wanted to cause deaths to spark a coup, then Hugo Chávez is a victim," wrote Nelson in his email to me. "But if you believe that the Chávez government initiated the violence; that the National Guard troops and loyalists opened fire on the march to keep it from surrounding the palace, then Hugo Chávez is not the victim, he is the aggressor. (...) If this is what you believe, then Hugo Chávez has lost his legitimacy and he should, at the very least, be placed on trial."
Go read Amsterdam's piece in its entirety.
The Globe and Mail's Colin Freeze reports on the somewhat ludicrous claim in this post's subject line.
What was this man, together with the rest of the Toronto 18, planning to do?
The group was also alleged to have planned to besiege Parliament Hill in Ottawa and decapitate Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Among other things.
No, Khalid wasn't a lunatic at all: he knew exactly what he was doing. He's lucky it's only ten years.
It was a scheme to bomb downtown Toronto that even a confessed conspirator now acknowledges as "a despicable crime."
Prosecutors say the ringleaders debated whether to plant metal chips in bombs to maximize the number of people injured - and spoke of their co-ordinated explosions dwarfing the impact of the 2005 London subway bombings that killed 50 commuters.
A penitent Saad Khalid yesterday asked a Superior Court judge for clemency during sentencing.
"I acknowledge that I made a huge mistake and not a day passes by that I am not filled with regret for my role in this despicable crime," Mr. Khalid told the court.
Having already pleaded guilty to involvement in the foiled bomb plot, he became the first person arrested to speak of the crime.
"I am not a lunatic who is hell bent on destruction of Western civilization," said the 22-year-old, who explained that he was a middle-class McMaster University student from a good home. His mistake, he said, arose from a "disagreement on the issue of Canadian foreign policy, specifically Canada's involvement in Afghanistan."
[. . .]
"I know now that resorting to violence is not the way to bring about social or political change," said Mr. Khalid, wearing a dark suit and sporting a short haircut.
He also told Mr. Justice Bruce Durno that he has a better understanding of Islam since being jailed.
On a day when five co-ordinated car bombs in Kandahar killed dozens of Afghan civilians, Mr. Khalid didn't say precisely what he was thinking when he helped unload boxes of fertilizer from the backs of trucks three years ago. That was on June 2, 2006, the day that police swept across the Toronto area to arrest 18 Muslim youths.
What was this man, together with the rest of the Toronto 18, planning to do?
They are alleged to have discussed targets for fertilizer-laden U-Haul vans rigged with cellphone detonators: The Toronto Stock Exchange, the Toronto headquarters of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, and an unspecified military base along Highway 401.
The man accused of being the ringleader was allegedly spotted at public libraries in Mississauga with "a soldering iron, spools of wire and batteries," and searching on Google for terms such as "ammonium nitrate," "nitric acid" and "rocket fuel." While he is said to have given pagers and computer memory sticks to underlings to avoid police surveillance, the digital devices were intercepted.
It's alleged that the No. 2 bomb plotter was heard discussing the acquisition of chemicals, setting up delivery locations and the purchase of airline tickets to Pakistan.
The document says the two ringleaders said the plot would "screw Stephen Harper." Other times, they predicted the bombs would "result in Canadians not leaving their homes due to fear" and prompt Canada to withdraw troops from Afghanistan because "it is not tough like Britain or the United States."
The group was also alleged to have planned to besiege Parliament Hill in Ottawa and decapitate Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Among other things.
No, Khalid wasn't a lunatic at all: he knew exactly what he was doing. He's lucky it's only ten years.