Chan's Personal Blog

Last week, Prime Minister Paul Martin made a rare address to the nation. Unlike the American system where the President gives a state of the union every year, Canada doesn't normally have addresses to the nation. The entire transcript of his speech is found here.

In either case, when I read in the paper that Paul Martin was going to give a prime time speech at 7pm, I thought... great, I'm going to get home from work and hear what he says. By the time I'm home, and I turn on the TV, I flip to the CBC, and notice that they're showing short clips of the speech. What the? It looks like Mr.Martin gave his speech at 7pm eastern time, 4pm pacific time. This was a freakin re-run. I was a bit ticked that the prime minister didn't even bother waiting for the citizens of the Western provinces to get home before giving the address. A lot of the analysis I heard afterwards was that strategically, the Western provinces didn't matter to the Federal Liberal party, and the message was geared towards Ontario and Quebec. Strategically, I guess it makes sense. British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba combined has 20 Liberal seats. Ontario and Quebec has 96 Liberal seats. British Columbia also has a way of completely destroying parties that are corrupt. Remember what we did to the BC NDP party last election? They were left with 2 seats while the BC Liberal party had 77 seats.

Anyways, I watched portions of the speech, and watched the CBC coverage and analysis of the Prime Minister's speech which was interesting. Normally the CBC is fairly left-wing and pro-Liberal, but they didn't like what the Prime Minister said. I was kind of surprised.

The first point they really didn't like was the fact that the Prime Minister even addressed the nation. As mentioned above, an address to the nation is very rare, and only happens when there is a national crisis. For example, when Quebec was having their referendum on separating from Canada in 1995, or the FLQ Terrorist crisis in 1970. Many people argued that the current Liberal scandal is not a national crisis, it is a Liberal party crisis, and it may be the first time in 12 years that they do not lead government. Therefore, buying up a prime time television slot was inappropriate, as it was pretty much a campaign message for the inevitable election. The other opposition leaders were not given the same amount of air time.

Another point that the analysts attacked was the fact that Paul Martin kept pushing that there shouldn't be an election until the Gomery inquiry is finished. The analysts said that this was hypocritical because last year when the scandal news broke out about the Liberals misspending $250 million, Paul Martin said he wouldn't call an election until the Gomery inquiry finished. He called an election in 2004 anyways, before the inquiry finished.

In my opinion, I think the Prime Minister's address to the nation was a desperate political move. He did not have to interrupt prime time to get his message out because we are NOT in a national crisis, it's not our fault that your party is corrupt. This could have been a plea made in the house of commons, as that is televised as well. I think Paul Martin is just trying to appeal to the public and he's basically saying.... oohhh... the opposition isn't playing nice with us anymore... please make them play with us. Currently nothing's getting done in parliament because none of the opposition trusts the Liberal government. A lot of people don't want an election right now, but quite frankly, a government that isn't even getting anything done is a big waste of taxpayer money. If nothing is getting done, then call for a no-confidence motion and bring down the government, that's what the no-confidence motion is for! The government was designed this way so that deadlocks could be broken.

On a side note, I think it's interesting how minority governments never seem to work in North America. They tend to have a very short lifecycle. Meanwhile, in other places like Europe, they're able to govern just fine with minority governments, and they get a lot done. I wonder why that is.

In either case, I think it's quite ironic that the $250 million that the Liberals used inappropriately was intended to keep Canada unified by brainwashing (via advertisements) Quebecers to vote no on separation. This scandal could be the catalyst that rips Canada apart ironically. The news says that Quebecers are offended that the Liberals thought they could be bought out by money. Furthermore, they're finding out from the Gomery inquiry that the Liberals essentially cheated on the 1995 Quebec referendum. For example, they say that the Liberal government moved 15,000 immigrants quickly through the immigration process, and made them into Canadian citizens who could vote. The rationale was that immigrants tended to vote no for separation. I did a quick calculation, and 15,000 immigrants voting no, equals 0.29% of the vote. That's not a lot, but considering that the 1995 Quebec referendum results were 49.42% YES, 50.58% NO, that could have made the difference. Anyways, with this news, the separatists are gaining strength again in Quebec, and this could be the thing that rips Canada apart.

Paul Martin is also getting flak from U2's Bono. Bono is mad because Paul Martin promised to raise Canada's foreign to 0.7% of our GDP, and Paul Martin has broken that promise.

So much good news for the Federal Liberal Party these days . (Note they should not be mistaken for the Provincial BC Liberal Party.)

A casual glance at the news channels these days reveal that the Vatican will be starting its conclave on Monday, where the next Pope will be elected. The entire conclave election process is one of the most secretive meetings ever. The cardinals that will be voting will be completely cut off from the rest of the world during the meeting. In addition, they want to cut the rest of the world out of their affairs.

The risk of espionage is high as many countries have interests in who becomes the next Pope. This is why the Vatican is preparing for its own counter-espionage operation.

From the article:


Wired Magazine is also running a more detailed article on this topic.

I've heard elsewhere that they might set up a sound proof glass box inside the Sistine Chapel, to further minimize the risk of eavesdropping.

In either case, I thought this was pretty cool. They should make this scenario a mission for Splinter Cell, where one side plays the spies and is trying to infiltrate and eavesdrop on the conclave, while another side plays the Swiss Guard who is trying to protect the conclave.

This is my 100th blog entry, horray!

I'm going to rant a bit before I actually discuss the Pope's funeral. A number of interesting events did emerge during this historical moment in time. Firstly, apparently a bunch of people in France are mad at the government because they lowered their flags to half-mast in a sign of mourning for the Pope. They felt that this was a breach of seperation of church and state. My opinion is.... COME ON! Give me a break. I seriously doubt anyone is going to convert to Christ because a flag isn't up all the way up. In addition, the French should appreciate the things the Pope has done, in particular helping defeat the communists. Western Europe had always feared communist expansion westward, and they knew in a war, they would never be able to hold out because the Soviet Union had far more tanks than NATO had. People in France were also complaining how there was too much TV coverage of the funeral on public television stations. Again, come on! Cuba, a godless communist nation declared three days of mourning for the Pope, and gave tons of coverage to the funeral.

China also decided to snub the Vatican by not sending an envoy to the funeral. Their reason was that Taiwan had a delegation at the funeral. Also, China doesn't like countries that recognize Taiwan as a nation (which the Vatican does). It's funny how childish countries can be. China, you could learn something from Israel, their delegation sat next to the Syrian delegation, and they shook hands in peace. I believe they also talked with arch-nemesis Iran as well.

Anyways, on to the serious stuff. On Friday I watched a re-run of the Pope's Funeral. I caught the last half hour of it or so? The entire thing seemed very epic, and it was filled with imagery and symbolism in many of the things they did. The cameras showed some of the amazing statues of Christ that the Vatican had, and they were awe inspiring. I don't think I'm going to forget the images of today's events any time soon.

The most emotional part of the funeral was probably the end when the pallbearers presented the Pope's casket one last time to the public. It was both very sad and happy at the same time if that makes any sense. The audience was applauding the Pope as if he had finished the show or the performance, and he was leaving the stage.

The following Bible verse came into my mind:

The imagery of the final verse was amazing.... I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. I think that described the Pope very well.

Tomorrow, the Vatican will be hosting an epic funeral for the late John Paul II. More than a million mourners, and over two hundred world leaders will attend the funeral. This has created a security nightmare however, as securing that many people is a tricky business.

From this article, "Papal Funeral Prompts Unprecedented Security" it states:


In addition to that, 15,000 military/police will be on duty. Bomb squads are combing areas. A warship is patroling the seas near the city. Many controversial world leaders will also be attending the funeral, including Mr.Axis of Evil himself, President Mohammad Khatami of Iran. More details about the security arrangements found here.

I think it is ironic that the funeral for the man that was a peacemaker has an iron gauntlet of military forces around it. The church is very much about peace. I guess they have to take every percaution in this age of terrorism. It's kind of a sad state. What kind of sicko would want to disrupt something so sacred as this? Have they no shame?

Today marks a historical day; Pope John Paul II has passed away at the age of 84. A quickly channel surfed this afternoon, and I think at least a dozen channels were doing dedicated news coverages of this event. Shortly before the Pope died, news reporters said that there were about 70,000 people around the Vatican, 50,000 of them being young people.

The following picture is what I kept seeing on the news, pictures of the Pope's apartment. They left his lights on the whole night, and told the public that they would turn off the lights when the Pope passed away. CTV has a few good photos of what I saw on the news.



After he died, the crowds almost doubled. There were around 150,000 people gathered. Reuters has a pretty good article that documents the day's events.

The events are interesting because my boss at work has been reading a book by Dan Brown called Angels and Demons, which is a fictional story that revolves around The Vatican and The Illumnati. The book kind of portrays The Vatican as this great world superpower. I never saw the church in that perspective before, but after watching all this special coverage and history about the Catholic church..... I think they might be right. This was a man that was the spiritual leader of over 1 billion Catholics around the world.

I think one of the greatest and profound examples of God's power on earth was the Pope's epic battle against communism. Fox News has an article called "Pope Helped Defeat Communism." This was fascinating to me, because this is another one of those world changing historical events that happened during my lifetime, but I was too young to understand or remember what it was about.

The article states:


I think the illustration is quite profound. Here we have Stalin, the communist leader mocking the church that it has no soldiers. Yet, the Pope was able to mobilize an entire nation against communism in a peaceful manner. His soldiers marched against the communists, without weapons, and they were able to change the world. This led to the liberation of Poland, and it started a chain-reaction that ultimately destroyed communism. I heard on the news that someone described the Pope as the rock the started the avalanche against the communists. It shows that God's kingdom operates in a very different way than the kingdoms of man. Ironic that the church was one of the West's most devastating weapons against communism.... the cold war wasn't won by nuclear weapons, or massive armies.

Although I do not agree with many things in Catholicism, you can't help but to admire some of the great things that the our brothers have accomplished.

Dear God, please liberate China from communism.