September 5, 2007
Caracas Journal
A Culture of Naming That Even a Law May Not Tame
By SIMON ROMERO
CARACAS, Venezuela, Sept. 4 — Goodbye, Tutankamen del Sol.
So long, Hengelberth, Maolenin, Kerbert Krishnamerk, Githanjaly, Yornaichel, Nixon and Yurbiladyberth. The prolifically inventive world of Venezuelan baby names may be coming to an end.
If electoral officials here get their way, a bill introduced last week would prohibit Venezuelan parents from bestowing those names — and many, many others — on their children.
The measure would not be retroactive. But it would limit parents of newborns to a list of 100 names established by the government, with exemptions for Indians and foreigners, and it is already facing skepticism in the halls of the National Assembly.
“I need to know how they would define those 100 names,” said Jhonny Owee Milano Rodríguez, a congressman representing Cojedes State. “For example, why not 120? This seems arbitrary to me.”
Mr. Milano, 55, said his first name, Jhonny, spelled as such, was inspired by the international ambience of the oil town in eastern Venezuela where he was born. Owee, he said, was erroneously entered in the birth registry instead of Oved.
The bill’s ambition, according to a draft submitted to municipal offices here for review, is to “preserve the equilibrium and integral development of the child” by preventing parents from giving newborns names that expose them to ridicule or are “extravagant or hard to pronounce in the official language,” Spanish.
The bill also aims to prevent names that “generate doubts” about the bearer’s gender.
Some of Mr. Milano’s colleagues in the National Assembly, which is controlled by supporters of President Hugo Chávez, include Iroshima Jennifer Bravo Quevedo, Earle José Herrera Silva and Grace Nagarith Lucena Rosendy. Legislators need to approve the bill before it becomes law.
Whimsical names can also be found in other Latin American countries. Honduras has first names like Ronald Reagan, Transfiguración and Compañía Holandesa (Dutch Company), according to the newspaper El Heraldo. In Panama, local news media this year reported name-change efforts by an Esthewoldo, a Kairovan and a Max Donald.
But Venezuela’s naming tradition rivals or exceeds that of its neighbors, many people here say. Some first names in Venezuela include Haynhect, Olmelibey, Yan Karll and Udemixon, according to a list compiled by the novelist Roberto Echeto.
Other names here easily roll off the tongue in English, like Kennedy or John Wayne, or in Russian, like Pavel or Ilich, reflecting influences from the cold war era.
Municipal clerks’ offices, where parents register their children, have become forums for debating the possible restrictions.
“The children of my cousins are named Keiserlin, Jeiserlin, Keifel, Yurubi, Arol Kiling,” said Leidy Marrero, 29, a budget analyst. Ms. Marrero named her newborn daughter Mariángela, combining María and Ángela.
“It’s a question of taste,” she said in an interview at the clerk’s office in the San Bernardino district of Caracas, explaining her opposition to the measure. “It is a parent’s right.”
Some parents exercise that right more liberally than others.
Software searches of the voter registry find more than 60 people of voting age with the first name Hitler, including Hitler Adonys Rodríguez Crespo; eight Hochiminhs, among them Hochiminh Jesús Delgado Sierra; and six Eisenhowers, including Dwight Eisenhower Rojas Barboza.
Unusual names in Venezuela are often grist for awe or humor, but the issue is also politicized, given President Chávez’s gusto for renaming things, with critics of the bill claiming it would enhance his government’s naming authority in a realm where the fancy of parents still holds sway.
One of the president’s first moves was to change the country’s name from Republic of Venezuela to Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Part of Avenida Páez here has been renamed Avenida Teheran in a nod to Iran. The currency, the bolívar, is to be called the “bolívar fuerte,” or strong bolívar, starting next year.
In an editorial, the newspaper El Nacional described the measure as “malicious.”
The authorities may yet bend to public will. Germán Yépez, an official with the National Electoral Council, said the measure originated after children were given names like Superman and Batman. Still, he said in comments broadcast on radio, he welcomed “this type of positive reaction and suggestions.”
Not everyone denounces the bill. Temutchin del Espíritu Santo Rojas Fernández, 25, a computer programmer, explained that his first name was inspired by the birth name of Genghis Khan, often spelled Temujin in English. He said he frequently had to correct the spelling of his name on official documents.
And in Venezuela, where the tax authorities require name and national identity number for every purchase needing a receipt, pronouncing and spelling out Temutchin del Espíritu Santo can get tiring, Mr. Rojas Fernández said. “With a name this complicated, you lose time,” he said.
“It also creates social problems,” he continued. “When interacting with others, not everyone can pronounce your name. I have to pronounce my name five times and spell it twice.”
José Orozco contributed reporting.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
When the revolution starts to go off the rails
Veil removal not required for fed vote
Thu, 2007-09-06 01:36.
(Reporting by Brian Lilley, CFRB Ottawa Bureau Chief)It was an explosive issue during the last provincial election in Quebec, now it is back. Elections Canada is ruling that Muslim women will not have to remove their veils in order to vote during the September 17th by-elections in Quebec.
A new federal law, which received royal assent in June of this year, will require Canadians to prove their identity before casting a ballot. Voters will be asked for government issued photo-id before being allowed to vote. Those without the required id can provide two other pieces of acceptable identification or have another voter in the district vouch for them.
While Muslim women will be asked for photo-id such as a driver's license, they will not be required to remove their veil. A spokesman for Elections Canada tells CFRB that women may choose to remove the veil but if they opt not to, they can simply provide a second piece of identification in addition to the driver's license. Women who choose not to unveil will also be given the opportunity to swear an oath and have another voter vouch for them, but Elections Canada says two veiled individuals will not be allowed to vouch for each other.
| PUBLICATION: | The Ottawa Sun |
| DATE: | 2007.04.10 |
| EDITION: | Final |
| SECTION: | News |
| PAGE: | 6 |
| BYLINE: | JORGE BARRERA, NATIONAL BUREAU |
| WORD COUNT: | 274 |
Muslims face unveiling Tory bill in Senate would require voters to show government-issued ID
Veiled Muslim women might be forced to show their faces at the voting booth if a government bill quietly making its way through the Senate becomes law, says Canada's new chief electoral officer.
The bill, which has passed through the House and is being studied by a Senate committee, would require voters to show government-issued photo ID at the polls.
ALTERNATIVE ID
Marc Mayrand says the bill, if passed, would plop the controversial issue of the veil, which created a stir during the recent Quebec election, on the lap of Elections Canada.
"If it passes, it will have to be addressed," Mayrand tells Sun Media. "We have to review the situation."
The bill also allows for alternative identification authorized by Elections Canada. Those without identification can have someone else registered in the same polling division vouch for them by swearing an oath.
The Muslim Canadian Congress sees no problem with the bill.
"We believe that no one who covers their face should be allowed to vote," says congress founder Tarek Fatah.
"If men came up wearing masks, they would not be allowed to vote, so why should women covering their faces be allowed to vote?" he asks.
Fatah says Muslim groups causing a stir over the issue of veils at the voting booth want to increase hostilities between the Muslim community and the rest of Canada.
The NDP has opposed the legislation, dubbing it "a Big Brother bill" because it promises to hand personal information over to political parties and candidates.
Public outrage forced Quebec's electoral officer to reverse a decision that allowed Muslim women to wear the niqab at the voting booth.
MASKED THREATS
Marcel Blanchet received calls from voters threatening to disrupt the election by wearing masks and Halloween costumes to polling stations.
Mayrand says Blanchet faced an "exceptional situation" that could have spun "out of control."
Voters are currently not required to show photo ID during federal elections.
Under the bill, Elections Canada would be required to create lifetime identifying numbers for the more than 22 million voters. Birth dates would also be included on permanent voters' lists, updated yearly and available to parties and candidates.
Federal Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddard has raised concerns about including birth dates on voters' lists
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
On the Road turns 50
Today is the 50th anniversary of On the Road
...
The purity of the road. The white line in the middle of the highway unrolled and hugged our left front tire as if glued to our groove.
...
In no time at all we were back on the main highway and that night I saw the entire state of Nebraska unroll before my eyes. A hundred and ten miles an hour straight through, an arrow road, sleeping towns, no traffic, and the Union Pacific streamliner falling behind us in the moonlight. I wasn't frightened at all that night; it was perfectly legitimate to go 110 and talk and have all the Nebraska towns--Ogallala, Gotehnburg, Kearney, Grand Island, Columbus--unroll with dreamlike rapidity as we roared ahead and talked. It was a magnificent car; it could hold the road like a boat holds on water. Gradual curves were its singing ease. 'Ah, man, what a dreamboat,' sighed Dean. 'Think if you and I had a car like this what we could do. Do you know there's a road that goes down Mexico and all the way to Panama?--and maybe all the way to the bottom of South America where the Indians are seven feet tall and eat cocaine on the mountainside? Yes! You and I, Sal, we'd dig the whole world with a car like this because, man, the road must eventually lead to the whole world. Ain't nowhere else it can go--right? Oh, and are we going to cut around old Chi with this thing! Think of it, Sal, I've never been to Chicago in all my life, never stopped.'
'We'd come in there like gangsters in this Cadillac!'
...
So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.
-30-
When I killed a seagull in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut
The trigger pulled and nothing happened but the guy I was with laughed and said I had to cock it, like in the movies, and then I felt the power. The gun exploded in my arms. The seagulls continued to circle char snared on nets left bare by the
Nunavut falling apart
A former colleague at Sun Media has an interesting story today that quotes from an internal Indian Affairs document that says Nunavut is falling apart:
"Nunavut faces a particular governance and human capacity challenge," the report reads. "Urgent social issues threaten to seriously hinder development and governance and to leave a generation behind."
Sounds a bit alarming, but then Nunavut has been on financial life support from the beginning and its well-known social problems are legion. But are things seriously coming apart? Inuit were relocated to the far north, as in the case of Resolute in 1955, to assert Canadian sovereignty so it is still in the interest of Ottawa to ensure Nunavut thrives.
The story also says that: "Enhanced surveillance with space-based satellites, new measures to drive economic development and fast-tracked settlements of Native land claims are included in a sweeping Arctic sovereignty plan that could be launched with a "major reference" in this fall's Speech from the Throne."
I wonder what Native land claims the government is referring to? Nunavut was the product of a massive land claim deal.
This don't look so hot for Harper and co.
So the Naumetz and Mcgregor hit parade continues....
Fine print made ads legitimate, Tories say
National party commercials tagged as candidate messages
Tim Naumetz and Glen Mcgregor
The Ottawa Citizen
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
The federal Conservative party presented television commercials produced for its national campaign in the 2006 election as advertising for local candidates by tacking fine-print lists of candidates and ridings to the end of the ads.
The costs of the ads, broadcast in Quebec and Ontario, are part of the $1.2 million worth of advertising that has sparked a court battle between Elections Canada and the Conservative party and led to a brewing political storm over allegations the party exceeded its total campaign spending limit.
The ads, some of which invoked the Liberal sponsorship scandal by stating they were paid for with "clean money," are also the subject of an examination by federal Elections Commissioner William Corbett. His investigators began looking into the spending after Conservative candidates attempted to claim reimbursements for the costs as part of their local campaigns.
One commercial, among eight TV ads and two radio spots obtained by the Citizen from Elections Canada, features a group of Canadians in a diner watching a TV with images of Paul Martin, Justice John Gomery and former public works minister David Dingwall. The ad became familiar to voters across the country and featured Judge Gomery's quote about a "culture of entitlement" in the sponsorship scandal.
The ad also features Mr. Dingwall's equally-infamous quote, "I'm entitled to my entitlements," made during a Commons inquiry into his expense account as president of the Royal Canadian Mint.
The only reference to local Conservative candidates comes at the end of the ad, which says, in small lettering, that it was authorized and paid for by the official agents in seven electoral districts in the Greater Toronto Area. The candidates are not named. The name of one of the ridings, Vaughan, is misspelled as "Vaughn."
The dispute between Elections Canada and the party hinges on whether the ads were intended to promote local candidates, or whether they were part of the national campaign.
A Citizen review of campaign spending for all parties in the election found that the Conservative party transferred large sums of money, up to $50,000, to more than 50 candidate campaigns, primarily in Quebec and Ontario.
The Tories set up an intricate system for the candidates to use the money to pay the party for radio, TV and other advertising. Under orders from party headquarters, official agents for the candidates involved were required to fax signed copies of bank transfer instructions to the party, which a party financial officer later used to instruct the candidates' banks to forward payments for the ads.
Several candidates told the Citizen the process was intended to allow them to claim 60 per cent of the advertising expenses in rebates from Elections Canada.
The scheme also might have allowed the party to spend money on advertising outside its $18.3-million overall campaign limit by channelling the costs through the ridings. The party ended the campaign $270,000 under its legal limit.
Elections Canada has rejected the rebate claims from candidates, saying they have produced no evidence they actually contracted the advertising themselves and that local ads are intended to benefit individual candidates.
The party says the ads are legitimate expenses incurred by their candidates because they carry the fine print identifying the official agents of the campaigns that the party says funded them.
"Our tag lines are clearly identified," said Conservative party spokesman Ryan Sparrow. "These ads were paid for by local campaigns, and that's our party's position."
But Elections Canada says the tag lines listing the official agents are "not relevant" in determining whether the ads are legitimate expenses for the candidates.
"Under the Canada Elections Act, for costs to be claimed as an election expense by a candidate, the property or service for which the cost was incurred must be used to directly promote or oppose a candidate during an election period," said Elections Canada spokesman Serge Fleylel.
