Foreign Intelligence Briefing #394: Canada Officially Enters US Presidential Election…

After looking at the field of candidates and without our permission, Vancouverite Brian Calvert has officially entered our nation into the US Presidential race.

Foreign Intelligence Briefing #393: Which Nations Give Employees The Most Time Off?

That’s us at the bottom, via The Economist. Ouch. Shed a tear and then get the fuck back to work!

Foreign Intelligence Briefing #392: A Daily Beast Op-Vid On The Word “Occupation”

With the #Occupy movement having dominated airwaves for the past three months (for better or for worse), the word “occupation” has gotten next to no love. Here’s a novel refresher with handy animations, courtesy of Christopher Dickey, the Middle East Editor at Newsweek & TDB. (via)

Foreign Intelligence Briefing #391: World’s Editions Of “TIME” Different Than In The US

Same news, different covers. Heads in the sand. Nothing to see here. Move along. (VIA)

Foreign Intelligence Briefing #390: Cop Glories In The Pepper Spraying Of Students

This ugly scene went down on the UC Davis campus yesterday, where some 50 students were holding down the #occupy fort. Pepper-spraying kids peaceful protestors is a pretty dick move in and of itself, but what do you call it when a cop waves the bottle in the air first so as to get an audience? Ugh. In another video taken from a different angle (below, language NSFW), you can see the same cop waving the canister around and hear students advising eachother to take their contacts out. Just…wow.

Foreign Intelligence Briefing #389: Sinatra Croons To Uplift Savaged #Occupy Spirits

Here’s Sinatra singing New York, New York for the #OWS folks during the raids of the 15th. They could use a song after the shit they’ve been through, as could their brethren here in Vancouver, where it’s cold – half-snowing, half-raining. After a promising start that enjoyed broad civic support, a lot of Vancouverites have turned against #OccupyVancouver. On account of their woeful communication skills and the media instincts of sick badgers, the local chapter has sort of let the global side down a bit, allowing the press to paint them – day after day after day – as expensive idiots, irresponsible drug addicts, homeless opportunists and professional protestors. But still they’ve held, and we should all be proud of them. It takes a lot of courage to stand by one’s convictions. It’s made a little easier when you’re right, but not by much. What is the #Occupy movement wrong about? The banks suck, the financial system is broken, the world is getting meaner than it needs to be, and the #RobinHood tax is a very good idea. I think everybody agrees with those points, except the 1%. So the next time a local paper details how #OccupyVancouver has ruined the Christmas parade (really?), reveals that the VAG suddenly smells like weed (no!), or discovers that there just might be a little issue with heroin in our city (never!), don’t forget that grassroots aren’t roses, and that those who are paid to inform us aren’t doing their jobs. Sing it Frank! “These little town blues…”

Foreign Intelligence Briefing #388: How BC Veterans Roll In Apeldoorn, The Netherlands

A parade by the British Columbia Regiment Band and veteran contingent in Holland, where 7,600 Canadians were killed and wounded in the last year of World War II. Lest we forget. Others won’t.

Foreign Intelligence Briefing #387: Thinking Of Afghanistan With Beauty And Humanity

I like this short film by Lukas and Salome Augustin because it reminds me of how beauty and humanity co-exist in a place that we’ve been relentlessly conditioned to negate the existence of both. Societies tend to dehumanize their adversaries in times of war. We do it in order to make the killing easier to shrug off. In the case of Afghanistan, we’ve long made a habit it, going back to the British Raj (remember your Kipling: “When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your God like a soldier”). If we succumbed to our media’s treatment of the decade-old conflict today, we’d all share a vision of a brown, war-torn shit-hole; a 15th century den reserved for heroin-making, intolerant, terrorist-enabling fanatics who’d sooner blow up an ancient statue of Buddha than play a round of golf. But it’s never that simple. Despite our society’s seemingly perennial effort to de-sensitize us to the destruction of these people (in the name of their country’s salvation), they are clearly as human and beautiful as we are. What a tremendous shame it is that we were ever meant to doubt it.

Foreign Intelligence Briefing #386: On Bond Predictability & Thailand’s Wet Hard Drives

Freedom of expression is alive and well in Miami (above).

The name of the new James Bond film starring Daniel Craig and Javier Bardem is Skyfall. The synopsis: Bond’s loyalty to M – blah blah – past comes back to haunt her – blah blah – sex scene – MI6 comes under attack – blah blah – 007 broods – blah blah – destroys everything – blah blah – lives.

After intimating otherwise for the past couple of days, the computer nerd hacktivists of Anonymous say that they are indeed going toe to toe with Mexico’s machete-loving Los Zeta drug cartel. This will end well.

Hey mister! That’s great that you want to share your love of God and all. It’s just that you don’t have to be such a total jerk about it.

Groupon prices their I.P.O. at $20 a share, valuing the company at $12.65 billion.

The New Yorker asks, “What Now, Occupiers?”

The decline of the United States, explained.

When you see the John Muir Trail, you’ll want to walk it.

The headline of the day comes via Boing Boing: “Thailand is 20% underwater, and is the second-biggest hard drive producer after China. Now do you care about the floods?”

The Brazilian Federal Police are total BAMFs whenever they take out airplanes with their cars.

Bonus: the perfect plate for food photoblog nerds.

Foreign Intelligence Briefing #385: Asteroid To Get Uncomfortably Close On November 8

There are plenty of asteroids out there – literally millions – so why is this one so special? Well, seldom does a space rock the size of a dozen cruise ships come between the earth and the moon, and this one – gulp – will (the last time was in 1976, and we didn’t even know about it until after the fact). 2005 YU55 – which I’m nicknaming “please don’t, sweetheart” – is going to hopefully pass inside the moon’s orbit of our planet in a little under a week. Scientists are saying that there’s no cause for alarm, so…thanks. Freak nasty NASA animation after the leap… Read more

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