I keep reading about how insensitive Canada is in refusing to remove or reduce duties on farm produce from other countries.
Over there:
You get the impression that we are keeping poor developing world farmers in poverty.
I wonder, though, whether Africans are better off subsistence farming their own land. Seems to me the ones who will prosper are big African landowners or foreign agribusinesses who will push peasants off their land in order to grow high-tech crops for sale overseas. Starvation is the likely result of the wrong trade practices.
Over here:
Removing duty on manufactured imports has ensured that we cannot now avoid buying Chinese-made stuff. Given what I read about crops in China being watered with industrial waste water full of heavy metals on poisoned land, I shudder to think of what it would be like to have the same lack of choice with food.
And of course we see small farmers in Canada now are an endangered species. At least we still grow food here. We must continue to grow our own food and more and more of this should be done on smaller, organic farms. My main concern is how do we achieve THAT?
From this morning’s Globe & Mail (It’s enough to put one off his coffee…):
LAHORE, PAKISTAN — Massive suicide bombs ripped through a seven-story police headquarters and a house in Lahore on Tuesday, killing at least 20 people and wounding more than 150, deepening Pakistan’s security crisis as a wave of Islamic militancy sweeps the country.
And, a little further…
“It is the deadliest attack I ever saw,” Chief Iqbal said.
The second explosion shattered the office of an advertising agency in a residential neighbourhood, about 25 kilometres away. Mohammed Afzal, another city police official, said three people were killed there, including two children of a gardener.
Chief Iqbal said both blasts were suicide attacks.
The blasts come amid a spate of violence that authorities are blaming on Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked militants
Considering the Taliban and Osama were immeasurably strengthened by the U.S. to get at Russia in the 1980’s, and that there was no Al Qaeda in Iraq until Bush invaded, and that things are getting so much worse, could it be that George got his preposition wrong?
Seriously, how do we, as a world, move on up from this horrible, terrible place?
Maybe Bob Dillon’s prophetic words should be applied to his native country:
Your old role is rapidly aging
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend a hand
For the times they are a changing
My friend, Bill, sent me a very entertaining youtube of Trinidadian calypsonian emeritus, The Mighty Sparrow, singing a song in fervent praise of Barack Obama.
Sparrow’s effusive praise really helped highlight the naiveté of the world about American politics. Obama has caught on huge in Kenya, where half his DNA came from. He’s interviewed and writes there regularly. You can’t argue with his oratory and charisma. Reminds me of when I was out in BC and Trudeaumania was sweeping the country. I remember being slightly offended when an Irish PHD candidate in Chemistry whom I knew at UBC said, knowingly, that Canadians were having the wool pulled over their eyes. I admire Trudeau and really believe that he cared and tried (I think he’s the last PM that put people ahead of the economy god), but the Corporations sent his National Energy Policy running with its tail curled under its balls. If we had a NEP today the oil sands issues would be easier to manage (if the Yanks allowed us to…). So even charisma plus political foresight and huge intellect didn’t work for us.
Rick Salutin in yesterday’s Globe likened Obama to a placebo. People think that major change will happen, and that will make them feel good for a while, but the Carlyle Group will keep on running things according to plan – messing up the world to keep all the planet’s goodies for Americans (particularly rich Americans) as long as they can, which may not be much longer. Obama and Clinton both are threatening to re-write NAFTA in Uncle Sam’s favour. Imagine what we might give away if Harper gets a majority (go Dona Cadman!).
NAFTA aside, things are going to get much uglier as the U.S. goes down. This superpower will not go gently, as Britain did, methinks. We’ll need that old oxymoron, a Strong Canadian Government, when the time comes. There will indeed be weeping and gnashing of dentures.
While the Cheneys of this world might be the Antichrist, it helps to put on a good show. At least we’ll get that for a while if Barack gets the presidency. And we’re back to entertainment – where we started.
For the budding 11 year old editorialist out there who happens to like statistics, here is a great “math” problem!!!
This is from page 28 of the Grade 6 Workbook: Nelson Mathematics 6. The little guy who slaved over this, no doubt egged on my his dutiful adult helper, laboriously printed another excruciating 7 lines beyond what you see here.
Now it might just be me, but number 7 below (from page 48) seems like simple algebra converted into difficult arithmetic and number 8 seems to force a little 11 year old to twig on to the point that a regular pentagon has all sides equal and that “side length” therefore applies to all 5 sides before doing the simple arithmetic. This seems to assume the kid has excellent reading comprehension skills and sophisticated logical ability, and would not like to get his/her homework done in time to watch American Idol or some other crap on TV. I can just see the glazed veil coming down over this unfortunate future PHD candidate’s young face
More absurd still.. In this third example it is assumed that the miserable victim is keen to be a math textbook writer him/herself! This is the apogee of hubris. The author seems to assume that these 6th graders are real little keeners. Wait a minute… Perhaps an 11 year old might do a better job of writing the book! At least the author might have been wise to hire a few 6th graders as consultants or set up a focus group before designing some of these questions. As a form of torture, waterboarding has nothing on this! Furthermore, after creating this problem our budding writer is asked to explain the solution using a Communication Checklist, and cautioned to check whether he/she has, ahem, included enough detail - something more for the conscientious little wiener to agonize over.
After watching TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin last night, where he interviewed Barrie Zwicker, one of my long-time heroes, and then chaired a panel sans Zwicker that basically talked about the (obviously regretful to them) ascendancy of mistrust of authorities manifesting itself as conspiracy theories, I ended up penning the following to TVO:
It really bugged me to watch Steve’s synoptic panel group psychoanalyze those who think that 911 didn’t quite happen as the authorities would have us believe.
Why was Zwicker not included in the panel to provide some real debate?
Why was no attempt made to debunk some of the claims Zeitgeist makes instead of starting off with the assumption that it is nothing but a slick piece of propaganda?
To highlight blacks as being particularly deluded and paranoiac added nothing except negativity to the evening.
Kudos to Zwicker for pointing out politely at the end that Paikin was controlling the whole interview and that he was not to be part of the panel. Zwicker was asking brilliant questions on the CBC when Steve was still wetting his diaper.
More and more am I coming to believe that The Agenda should really be called Steve’s Agenda. Is this merely another wacky conspiracy theory?
Sadly, it’s getting harder and harder to find material that challenges the status quo on the CBC or on TVO. Certainly the public benefit of media truth has been hijacked by the powerful in the last several years. The chill is in. There is only the Internet left. Murdoch, Asper and their ilk control everything else.
My friend, Bill, is going to visit the Salt Flats somewhere in the U.S.
I’m going to wait until the Athabaska River dries up after supplying all that fresh water to the Oil Sands before I visit what will then be the Canadian Salad Dressing Flats. (Just add a little vinegar to the oil and the salt.)
It takes 3 barrels of fresh water now to get one barrel of oil, and the ratio will get higher as the deposits get less rich.
The tourism that this new, wondrous, human-made phenomena will draw might be one of those touted “adjustments” to climate change that are all the latest rage amongst the hard-boiled CO2 belchers. The Yang that goes with the Yin.
The Toronto District School Board, rather than admit that its sausage machine approach to education is failing the majority of all students of all races, rather lazily caved and approved one black-focused school this week. This landmark decision puts a band-aid on a huge wound, but it might, if sufficient scope for adjustment of the curriculum is allowed, point to ways in which the Ontario curriculum might be fixed for everybody. Read the rest of this entry
A couple of pictures taken on our monster trip: From Ha Long Bay, Viet Nam and from Xi’an, China, where we are visiting with our daughter, Lisa. 
