I’ve been reading the Manley Report on Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan.

The report has a number of themes that I found striking: I’ll limit this post to the mission’s lack of measurable progress.

Measurable Progress

The indications of progress included in the report are:

• The Afghan economy as grown at 10% annually.
• The number of children attending schools is currently at six million (although we aren’t told what that number was back in August ‘01, I assume it’s higher now).
• Afghanistan lingers near the bottom of the UN Human Development Index (174 out of 178, as of 2007).
• Per-capita income has doubled since 2001.
• 6.6 million Afghans don’t have enough food.
• 87% of Afghan women are illiterate, as are 57% of men.
• Five million Afghan refugees have returned home (presumably from other countries).

The report states that “living conditions in Afghanistan have seen measurable, even significant improvement,” (p. 3) it offers no measurements other than these. As far as I can tell, no source is offered for any of these statistics (other than the HDI, natch).

Most of these statistics aren’t progressive. They don’t compare progress against time. These statistics aren’t directly attributable to Canadian involvement.

So how do we know it’s all worth it? I assume that we’re doing good over there, but there’s no way of telling if we can do a better job, or even if our government officials are doing their jobs.

Canada is part of the Afghanistan Compact, which is a series of timelines and targets agreed upon by the Afghan government and donor countries. The report stats that “its targets have proved more formal than real, and performance assessments have been flimsy” (p. 19). And reading the terms (p. 78), one can understand that description: aside from target benchmarks for number of teachers, soldiers, and households with electricity, there is little or nothing that can be used to gauge our efforts.

In the recommendations, Manley et al. state that:

4. The Government should systematically assess the effectiveness of Canadian contributions and the extent to which the benchmarks and timelines of the Afghanistan Compact have been met. Future commitments should be based on those assessments.

5. The Government should provide the public with franker and more frequent reporting on events in Afghanistan, offering more assessments of Canada’s role and giving greater emphasis to the diplomatic and reconstruction efforts as well as those of the military.

I would hope that the Government goes further, offering regular quantitative reports on Canada’s non-military effect in Afghanistan. As it is, the only definite progress we can point to is a body count and a bill for close to seven billion dollars.

Lack of Coherent Leadership

The report states that there is no civilian leader

I woke up this morning to a story on CBC about the (re)arrest of Mohamed Harkat. Rage is a lousy way to start the day.

For those who don’t know, Mohamad Harkat was arrested in Ottawa in December 2002. Without being charged, he was incarcerated until June 2006, when he finally won bail. Under conditions of his bail, he can’t leave his house, he must wear an electronic monitoring device, and must remain under the supervision of his wife or mother-in-law. Last February, the Supreme Court ruled that the “security certificate” that Harkat was held under was unconstitutional.

This guy has been held, in one way or another, for over five years. CSIS, the organization that destroyed evidence against the Air India bombers and lost laptops containing top secret documents at a hockey game, is being trusted to provide evidence to a judge in closed hearings that Harkat poses a danger to Canadian security.

This situation is ridiculous. I find it hard to believe that there is an ongoing plot that is so dangerous that Harkat must be imprisoned, but the evidence is so sensitive that his lawyers can’t be told what it is. CSIS either has to shit or get off the pot: charge the poor guy with a crime, or let him go.

Sadly, the JusticeForHarkat.com website doesn’t list any upcoming events that I can take part in.

I’ve been reading the Manley Report on Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan.

Something I’ve wondered about (since 2002ish) is why our troops are there. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be, I’m just curious what the mandate is. What are the goals the Canadian government wishes to achieve? The question isn’t as facetious as it sounds. We can’t decide if the mission is complete until we know what we’re supposed to accomplish while we’re there.

Manley et al. never provide an “official” (ie, government endorsed) answer to this question. Instead, they provide us with the following reasons:

1. It “concerns” global and Canadian security (p. 3, p. 20)
2. we need to maintain Canada’s international reputation (p. 3)
3. we need to help “impoverished and vulnerable” people (p. 3, p. 8 )
4. a lot of Canadians have already died there (p. 3)
5. to engage the international community in future peace keeping/making efforts (p. 8, p. 22)
6. the UN mandated a mission (p. 21)
7. NATO mandated a mission (p. 21)
8. we are there at the behest of the Afghan government (p. ???)

The cynic in me suspects that Canadian involvement in this mission was okayed for diplomatic reasons (ie, appeasing Washington) before a public justification was formulated. Interestingly the reasons provided on the DnD website are much more specific than the those listed by Manley et al.

For the past few years I’ve resisted posting about Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan. With the release of the Manley Report¹ that situation has changed. Here we have a report by a (supposedly ) disinterested panel that has had time and resources to explore the issue thoroughly.

The post will provide background, as described by the report.

Here’s the background: In 2001 western forces invaded Afghanistan, toppling the repressive Taliban government. The UN and NATO pass resolutions condoning the action. Since then, the Afghan Compact has been signed (in 2006), and a fairly diverse grouping of nations has, at the request of the Afghan government, been supporting the fledgling Afghan military’s efforts to establish something approaching a national government.

In the seven years since 2001, the Afghan economy as grown at 10% annually. The number of children attending schools is currently at six million (although we aren’t told what that number was back in August ‘01, I assume it’s higher now). Afghanistan lingers near the bottom of the UN Human Development Index. Although the report states that “living conditions in Afghanistan have seen measurable, even significant improvement,” (p. 3) it offers no measurements other than these.

Canada currently has 2500ish troops in Afghanistan and nearly 50 civilians in the country (representing CIDA, the RCMP, Correctional Services, and Foreign Affairs)². Our current number of casualties is close to 80 Canadians. We have the highest number of per-capita casualties of the international force.

1. More correctly named “REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT PANEL ON CANADA’S FUTURE ROLE IN AFGHANISTAN, according to their website. (back)
2. The report does not state how many civilians represent the various government departments, so I’m reading between the lines, using information provided on pages 23 and 28 of the report. (back)

Molleindustria has put together a fantastic ripoff of Street Fighter: Faith Fighter. Pick one of six quasi-deities, and whup the asses of others. Each deity has its own power moves. Beat the other five gods and you can take on Xenu (the Scientology guy).

Personal fav: Ganesha, with his axe, mouse attack, and lasso.

Via Art Threat.

A little before Christmas, I started to notice that the IPod Touch had become the fetish object of the season. My fellow Ottawa denizens were wandering around lovingly stroking the screens of their Touches. In the winter. In the cold. Outside. Without gloves. Like idiots.

But it isn’t really their fault, is it? The Touch was developed in Cupertino, California, where the average temperature in January bubbles around 4°C and 15°C. Canadian fetish objects are pretty much the same as those in the United States, but we have a reality that our southern cousins don’t: winter.

Winter plays a huge part of our identity. Canadians snowshow, snowboard, ski, skate, and skidoo. We invented hockey. We dominate the sport of curling. We essentially invented the modern ski resort. In the temperate south of the country, we endure subzero temperatures five to six months of the year.

But our consumer goods, our clothing styles, architectural styles, and fetish objects are designed elsewhere. We use stuff designed in climates where zero is considered cold, and a light dusting of snow will close a city.

Imagine what gadgets would look like if they were designed with winter in mind. When it gets below minus five(ish), you don’t want to expose your skin to the elements for more than a minute or two. If MP3 players were designed by Canadians, they would be easy to control inside a pocket or mitten. They would have controls that are easy to manipulate without being seen. Alternatively, they would have buttons large enough that users would be able to control the volume or navigate tracks without having to remove their frostbite preventing gloves.

When you start to consider the realities of winter, more and more of our society seems like a cargo cult. We’ve imported styles that were created for much warmer places. When you see people walking around in winter, how many people do you see wearing long coats? I don’t mean coats that cover their hips, I mean coats that go to their ankles. When you’re wandering around Ottawa in -20°C weather, wearing a coat that goes to your waist is silly. It means your legs freeze, or you have to wear long-johns¹. But do Canadians wear long coats? No. Because we’re suckers and we import our ideas of style from the south.

The realities of winter hit architecture hard as well. When six months of the year necessitate heavy clothing and heavy boots, our buildings should respect that and provide somewhere to store our sweaters and jackets when inside. Do they? For the most part, no. Malls, libraries, movie theaters, hospitals, and office buildings require us to carry our surplus duds around with us. The few buildings that do feature a coat check tend to be bars or clubs, where being seen is part of the experience.

It would be wonderful if Canadian designers and architects could reverse our fixation on southern climates. Well made Canadian goods that were attractive and designed for our climate would be wonderful. But they seem unlikely to catch on. Too much of our media comes from southern climes, where gloves are a fashion statement, and open air dining is an option year round.

Note: I didn’t notice our tom-foolery myself. It took the first 60 pages of John Ralston Saul’s Refliections of a Siamese Twin to wake me up to our national fixations on warmer climates. Perhaps a solution to our cargo-cultish behaviour was contained in the rest of the book, but JRS didn’t manage to keep my attention past page 61.

1. Woe betide the individual wearing long-johns during their morning commute. When they get to work, that toasty long underwear will be too hot, and they’ll have to find a bathroom for a quick change. (back)

It’s unclear to me who Gary Coleman is. Or why he’s famous. But googling his name results in three very funny pictures. Whoever he is, he’s one lucky (if short) individual.

In late October I started playing Eve Online. It’s a massively multiplayer online game set in space. I’d opted for Eve over other games because of some favourable reviews I’d seen floating around the intartubes. I was looking for something I could play with friends that would be easy to pick up and put down.

The Eve concept is pretty simple. You’re a pilot in a large universe. As a pilot, you get to do stuff: accept missions from agents (transport stuff from point A to point B, kill pirates, mine), hunt other players, mine asteroids, or explore. You can also join other pilots in a corporation for mutual aid. If you’ve ever played Homeworld, you have a good feeling for what this game looks like.

The Good

Some parts of Eve are really good. The game looks great, and it sounds even better. The skill system is also good. It’s biased to help occasional players: skills are earned by time training – if you want to learn the Salvage skill, it’ll take three days realtime, regardless of how much time you spend in game.

The Bad

Sadly, music and pretty pictures does not a good game make.

My first few hours playing Eve were great, if only because of the in-game atmosphere. It feels big, empty, and quiet. But after the novelty wore off, the game got boring.

One of the guiding principles in the design of Eve is that players should have to mindlessly repeat mundane tasks. Combat consists of the following loop:

1 – Enter unfriendly space
2 – Lock onto enemies
3 – Select one enemy
4 – Turn on your appropriate weapons
5 – Wait for the enemy to explode (if the enemy starts whupping your ass, warp away)
6 – While enemies persist, Goto 3

If you tire of that loop, you can try mixing it up by turning on and off support services in your ship (shield boosters, damage control, sensor boosters, etc). Whee!

After you kill some baddies and loot their wrecks, you can take their goodies back to a station and sell it. Even that is a painful process, as the UI doesn’t provide a “sell all this crap” gesture. Instead the user must select every individual looted item and sell it off singly.

If you’re fighting baddies in missions, or looking for random combat encounters then you’re fighting the game’s AI. Which was terrible. The sole strategy the AI uses during combat is “swarming.” All of the enemy ships fly toward you, firing whatever they have. They don’t seem to use any kinds of strategy or tactics. If a fight gets too hairy, you can always warp to the nearest base, repair yourself, buy some new weapons, and fly back. The baddies will obligingly wait in the same positions you left them in.

When I signed up, I had been looking forward to player-versus-player (PvP) combat. But my interest in that quickly soured. Why? Because there’s too much to lose. Ships are expensive, and money is hard enough to get that I don’t want to risk a few hours worth of work (and earning money really does feel like work) on a quick mano et mano battle.

The few times I did enter combat with other humans, it felt like the outcome was determined by the equipment that had been brought into battle. If my enemy had a more expensive ship with better equipment, he would win. If my enemy had a crappier ship, I would win (or at least that was my theory – the expensive ships took too much effort to get).

The Conclusion

It’s a pity that the game reduced to so much grinding. The interface is enjoyably atmospheric, but the game degraded quickly from “fun” to “work.” If you’re looking to spend $20 on some mindless enjoyment, buy yourself some second hand “Choose your own adventure” books: they’re boring and repetitive, but at least they don’t have a monthly fee.

I was considering heading out to Nevada this year for Burning Man. Then I looked at their theme for this year: the American Dream. I have nothing against our neighbours to the south, but the blurb makes the whole idea sound awful:

What has America achieved that you admire? What has it done or failed to do that fills you with dismay? What is laudatory? What is ludicrous? Put blame aside, let humor thrive, and dare to contemplate a larger question: What can America, this stumbling, roused, half-conscious giant, still contribute to the world?

I really don’t care about the national identity of the most self-obsessed country on the planet. I don’t go to Burning Man to worshop american self-adulation, I go their to spend time with some phenominally creative people, and see what people can do when they do what they love. In my mind, that transcends national identity.

2008 was going to be my last pilgramage to the Playa for a few years. I wanted another visit before embarking on the more adult (and cash-hungry) part of my life. But the theme really puts me off. Bastards.

Other years have had fun themes: the Floating World, Psyche, the Seven Ages. Why do they have to pick 2008 to say “Forget creativity for creativity’s sake, we’re hopping onto election year hype and making Burning Man more mainstream”?

The MetaBall magazine has put together something they call Measure of Progress, which is essentially a system for tracking responses to email queries from MPs.

The idea is elegent: when you want to make correspondence between you and an MP public, you CC democracy@metaball.ca. The emails (and any response CCing the MetaBall people) are indexed by MP and made public on their website.

It’s a pretty nifty idea.