PowerPoint: Month in review

• According to pundits, from “immaculate conception” a month ago to “useful idiot” yesterday, I am “running hard to nowhere”.
  
• I do not mind being called an “idiot”. My favorite movie is Forrest Gump (1994) where the best line is “stupid is as stupid does”.
  
• But I do have a little problem with the word “conception” as it implied that I had just invented something. I had not. What you see in me is what you get. Always.
  
• I wish you could get a better me. Unfortunately, this is what you can get for now. Just imagine: unemployed or underemployed for ten years; living in a virtual solitary confinement; neck-deep in debt; and chronically depressed. It’s almost magic that I have not fallen apart.
  
• I’ve got a good idea for you to get a better me: Simply interview me. Give me a clear question, I will give you a clear answer in return. Look, this fairly long blog entry summarizing Cecilia Zhang murder cover-up was based on my response, which was written in just one evening (after a day’s fast and protest on the Hill), to a reporter’s questions. But this long blog entry took me more than a month to do.
  
• Sometimes I hopelessly feel my writing cannot keep up with the development. Wanna help, anyone? – Of course, you need to consider the Bush factor, I understand.
  
  Misapprehension
  
• Mr. Travers’ misapprehension of my blog Summer hibernation was buried so deep in his March 14 column that it only dawned on me a couple of days later. At first I shook my head in denial. Then I got worried and I almost had an anxiety attack. Then I was angry. Then I was very depressed.
  
• Upon careful examination, the only possible misapprehension appears to be that I was suggesting a nuclear winter (and making fun of it). A nuclear winter is the result of mutually-assured destruction (a term I only learned this week). But it’s well-known that United States has a deciding advantage in term of nuclear capability. Therefore, this misapprehension was a bit far-fetched.
  
• Mea Culpa (posted October 4, 2006): My above analysis of Sino-U.S. nuclear relations is amateurish and indeed wrong. Instead, there is very likely a so-called “asymmetrical nuclear balance” that would still result in a mutually assured destruction in an all-out nuclear war between these two countries. I believe U.S. policy makers knew this fact already. My updated understanding is here.
  The right apprehension
  
• Let’s be honest: If you are “in the loop”, you know what I meant by that blog. As I wrote in a “private” email in early June 2005, oxymoron is “a very famous one [word] in Canadian politics”. I blogged here about its origin and how Mr. Jean Chretien made it famous (I believe his assistant Warren Kinsella should get the credit). Canadian mainstream media even bullied me using the word, which may have caused a bit of over-reaction on my part in that email.
  
• As I talked about in this blog, Chretienites’ strategy in dealing with the Gomery Commission was to try to lump me with Mulroneyites and to create the impression that Judge Gomery was too cozy with Mulroneyites. Their plan was to influence the media to get my story out at the right time, thus causing the fall of Martin government and derailing the Commission. As is well known, I am cheap and also rumored to be a Lefty. That’s why Mr. Kinsella created this memorable line for Mr. Chretien for his “hole-in-one” performance at the testimony: “To call them [golf balls] Westmont cheap -- it would be a oxymoron.” So, the original meaning of oxymoron in Canadian politic is the Left and the Right working together.
  
• There is also a perception that the Harper Conservatives and I were working together. This perception came about mostly because Mr. Harper had the most to gain once my story came out. Some of the Liberal verbal attacks, such as “the Conservatives getting in bed with the separatists”, had its origin in my “private” emails, too.
  
• In following my story in the media, I tried to be strictly an observer. Very rarely my tongue slipped and a piece of advice came out. But really, isn’t it a no-brainer that for any political party to succeed anywhere, it needs to hold the political center? However, my “advice” apparently made a lot of people unhappy as if I was going to change the Conservative party. For example, read Gerry Nicholls’ March 11, 2005 column on National Post.
  
  The come-about
  
• I was exhausted both physically and mentally after coming back from Ottawa in mid-June 2005. (Did I mention before that I believed that I was harassed by Ottawa Public Health?) So I took a lot of rest for the following two months.
  
• Some pundits were extremely critical of my failure to bring down the Martin government. Naturally, I did a lot of thinking. My conclusion was that in order to defeat the Liberals, the Left and the Right needed to be united. (Another no-brainer.) – I had indeed written to both parties in the fall to offer similar advice.
  
• My habit was to try to maintain some continuity in my blog if there was a big time gap. For example, see this one, and this one. And humor was my way to inform the world that although I was down, I was not out.
  
• When I tried to “activate” my blog last summer, the first word came into my mind was “hibernate”, not only because I had opportunity to use a newer version of MS Windows program after I came back (Did I mention that I only had an old laptop with one gigebyte hard drive when I was in Ottawa?), but also because I had some opportunity to catch up with some sleep. Then I realized it was summer time. Therefore, a blog entry came about that served as a sorta political principle for the next few months.
  
  Bush administration’s take
  
• Bush administration knew about the right apprehension. In a speech on October 6, 2005, Mr. Bush said: “Islamo-fascism, like the ideology of communism, contains inherent contradictions that doom it to failure.”
  
• So why did Bush administration react with [media] nuclear bombs? -- I have said many times in my blog and elsewhere that the Martin Liberals were quite nasty. What I found out lately was that Bush administration could be equally malicious. Just read former US ambassador Paul Cellucci’s strange comments directed at me. Do you find a tone of terrorism there?
  
• Another reason was that Bush administration uses a special brand of logic. It is called strategic logic, as discussed by Condoleezza Rice in this “action plan” for Canadian election, published on Washington Post on December 11, 2005. It will be the subject of my next article.
  
  
  Memos to Prime Minister Harper:
  
• Glad to see that you are setting the right tone with the US government. Now that Mr. Martin is gone, some people may think that you have to choose between Mr. Bush and me. You don’t.
  
• It’s not because I was not willing to put myself on the line that I did not (fully) participate in the last general election. I just did not think it’s fair to the Canadian people if the campaign was to become a battleground for the big powers. -- The last thing I wanted was to be seen as someone who either causes worsening of Canada-US relations, or challenges US interest on its turf, especially with the perception that Chinese government was backing me.