Some holier than thou Canajuns love to crawl on our bellies for US dollars

Image via Wikipedia

Our latest is the dirtiest Energy Project in the world – the Tar Sands processing in Alberta. Here’s a tacky image of it:

Our PM True Blue Steve H loves to wax dull about the Tar Sands and what it means for Canada US trade. But that thoroughly messy blight on our Albertan landscape is very unnice.

Here’s what the Rainforest Action Network says about it:

There’s a 70-foot banner and activists dangling over the observation tower at Niagara Falls. Before dawn this morning, a small team of climate advocates with the Rainforest Action Network rappelled hundreds of feet above the ground, to offer special welcome message to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper ahead of his first official visit to the White House to push dirty Tar Sands oil.

Not that he’s feeling so welcome anyway. Obama limited the meeting to just one hour. While some have called it a slap in the face, aides say Harper will turn the other cheek. “The economy, and the clean-energy dialogue will dominate the discussions,” one aid told the Globe and Mail. Obama needed to dodge controversy over oil imports from Canada’s tar sands in the midst of the climate legislation debate. Harper needed a story to go with his photo-op.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Greenpeace protesters seize equipment at oilsands site (nationalpost.com)
• Greenpeace blocks truck at Alberta oilsands site (cbc.ca)

The seamier side of Canadian Conservative politics

Image via Wikipedia

I well remember the belligerent words of Brian Mulroney, when he was a Conservative in the Opposition to the Trudeau Government, commenting on the appointment of an old Quebec Liberal and Canadian-Irish pol to the chairmanship of the then government owned Air Canada. Bryce Mackasay had been a very successful Liberal House member and Minister from Verdun, sort of the down-class of Montreal. At that time Mr. Mulroney said of Mackasay’s appointment by the Trudeau govt, “There is no whore like an old whore”. The sort of put down that a resident of upper class Westmount might say in undertone, but Mulroney chose to say in the full light of day and for the public media in Canada.

This morning CBC.ca reports:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper will publicly reach out to Brian Mulroney, and by extension his Tory predecessor’s powerful sphere of influence, in a video to be shown this week at a gala in Montreal.

Sources have told The Canadian Press that Harper recorded a congratulatory message that will be aired Thursday at the celebration of Mulroney’s historic 1984 electoral victory at the helm of the Progressive Conservative party.

The video will represent the prime minister’s first gesture of solidarity with Mulroney in two years.

No doubt the memories of Mulroney’s words of that bygone era will have no place in that congratulatory message from the current PM. But the echos ring in my ears especially because Mulroney continues to practice the retail politics of Canadian-Irish blarney and bluster to offset his unhappy connections with Schreiber, a tax cheat and arms dealer from Germany. Who’s the whore now?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Stephen Harper aims to heal rift with Brian Mulroney (thestar.com)
• Harper to send Mulroney ice-breaker by video (ctv.ca)
• Mulroney to testify Tuesday at lobbying inquiry (cbc.ca)

To answer why psychology became the subject he wanted most to study …

Steven Pinker has written this in NY Times Sunday Magazine:

The very fact that I had to think so hard brought home what scholars of autobiography and memoir have long recognized. None of us know what made us what we are, and when we have to say something, we make up a good story.

Image via Wikipedia

An obvious candidate for the real answer is that we are shaped by our genes in ways that none of us can directly know. Of course genes can’t pull the levers of our behavior directly. But they affect the wiring and workings of the brain, and the brain is the seat of our drives, temperaments and patterns of thought. Each of us is dealt a unique hand of tastes and aptitudes, like curiosity, ambition, empathy, a thirst for novelty or for security, a comfort level with the social or the mechanical or the abstract. Some opportunities we come across click with our constitutions and set us along a path in life.

Given the story of where I was born, Barcelona, Spain, and of how I got to live in Canada – my parents were born on Ile Madame next to Cape Breton Island – beginning in mid-July 1940, I have been messing around with the notion of writing the story of my “path in life” to this point.

I am 73some now and in 4 days I fly off to live and work in China, Dalian in Liaoning Province next to the Yellow Sea. So my “path in life” is going to take on a whole new orientation. And there is no doubt that I will blog post about the quirks and turns of that “path in life”.

Image via Wikipedia

So writing that memoir, whether it will be semi-fictional and how semi-, takes on a new life.

But it occurs to me that not the least important fact today is that I feel that I have reached a milestone as an “aspiring writer“. In the last week I have wakened, with the help of a continuing conversation about why I write, to the sense that I am now a learning writer and I won’t refer to being an “aspiring writer” any more.

I feel in my gut that that means I have given myself permission to write that memoir in a more deliberate way than I have been doing since I began messing around with it about 12 years ago.

Now I accept that I have to write my way into a way of telling that memoir story in way that compels my interest to write it and then get a sense of it’s value to me most of all, once I have finished the writing of it. If I can do that then I will have a better chance that my completed memoir will have some redeeming interest to my own children and grandchildren, who are the primary audience I am aiming at.

If you stick to your passion long enuff, u 2 could be a world champion

Image via Wikipedia

Lorne Main, a 76 yr old Canadian singles tennis world champ, is a legend in his own time and it’s now!

There he is behind the wheel of his convertible that he uses to criss-cross Canada in search of the next over 75 tournament. Wow, I vaguely remembered his name and was astounded to hear his story on CBC Sunday Night. A real story of tennis success in Canada!

And here is the link to the canada.com version of his story!

Lorne, I’m sure you don’t have the time to read my blog, but let me say for the record that envy you a ton and I’m 73. Just a great story!

Gov. Sarah Palin’s “bad week”, or same old, same …

Image via Wikipedia

Now it’s a top McCain national security adviser:

Lawrence Eagleburger, who served as Secretary of State under George H.W. Bush and whose endorsement is often trumpeted by McCain, said on Thursday that the Alaska governor is not only unprepared to take over the job on a moment’s notice but, even after some time in office, would only amount to an “adequate” commander in chief.

“And I devoutly hope that [she] would never be tested,” he added for good measure — referring both to Palin’s policy dexterity and the idea of McCain not making it through his time in office.

Oh well what does he know anyway!

But the NY Times adds this sour note about La Palin:

A growing number of voters have concluded that Senator John McCain’s running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, is not qualified to be vice president, weighing down the Republican ticket in the last days of the campaign, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

Here in Canada our Conservative PM just appointed a 41 yr old woman to be Minister of Health, the biggest budget in this government. I read this morning that she is from the north, Nunavut Territory, ambitious and “tough”.

Does this mean that we may have our own Inuit version of La Palin? Who needs that?

Voter registration & voting in Canada and the US

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

My wife, a Chinese citizen and legal immigrant living in Canada, is firmly convinced that most things are better and much cheaper in the US than Canada. Some of what she believes may be true but voter registration and voting is manifestly much better and fairer in Canada than in the US.

I went to vote yesterday in our federal election here in Vancouver. The lineups for voting were completely non-existent. Using conventional hard copy voting slips we have no lineups and our vote counting is completed within hours of vote closure times.

Every time I read or see a video about voter registration and voting in the US, I hear about registration irregularities. On most if not all videos, I see long and I mean super long lineups to vote. There are seemingly never ending legal procedures related to registration, voter list purging et al.

What the F… is going in the US, that world super power. More and more it seems they can’t even organize the most basic democratic process in their own country!

I firmly believe that ideological issues are the fundamental difference between the US and Canada. And that is the main reason I will never live in the US. Ideology trumps most basic political issues in the US. Ideology is destructive and disruptive. I pray that will never be the case here in Canada.

We are so close and yet so far from the US in this very basic way as well as in other important social values. Let’s keep it that way!

UPDATE: Michael Moore thinks the Canadian electoral system is clean, clear, cheap and great quite unlike the frenetic and sometimes fatally unreliable US electoral system. He talked about it on Democracy Now and on Countdown with Keith O.

Related articles by Zemanta

• The GOP’s Fraudulent Claims about Vote Fraud
• ACORN Spawns Big Voter Controversy
• Does Voter Fraud From This ACORN Grow?
• Fixing The Process, Take 2
• Thousands Of Coloradoans Win Back Vote

M/S Batory carried me and my family from Greenock Scotland to Halifax

Image via Wikipedia

on July 7 1940.A picture of it is posted below.

According to Royal Navy archives on the July 5th, battleship REVENGE met anti-aircraft cruiser BONAVENTURE (Captain H. J. Egerton) and troopships MONARCH OF BERMUDA (22,424grt), SOBIESKI (11,030grt), and BATORY (14,287grt). These five ships, which carried $1,750,000,000 in gold and securities from the Bank of England for safekeeping in Canada, departed Greenock at 0545 on the 5th escorted by destroyer GARTH.

The British ships arrived safely at Halifax on the 12th. Troopship BATORY with engine room defects was detached to St Johns escorted by anti-aircraft cruiser BONAVENTURE which then continued on to Halifax. Troopship BATORY arrived at Halifax on the 13th.

We disembarked in Halifax on July 13, 1940.

They say that elder political whores have little shame and …

Image via Wikipedia

this week in a crass effort to hype sales of his own political memoir, it seems that that elder person of CanPolitics, B. Mulroney just can’t keep his Big Chin from wagging.

What else is he going to say? He will be wined and dined by his “employer”, his rich friends and hangers-on, so why does he feel the need to pee verbally over some of his former political opponents. It can’t be a special version of the Seven Year Itch, or can it?

I was despairing about the Front Page treatment that leader of CanMSM was giving his verbal affliction, until I read this editorial this morning:

Globe editorial
But will it sell books?
FROM FRIDAY’S GLOBE AND MAIL
SEPTEMBER 7, 2007 AT 7:14 AM EDT
Brian Mulroney has every right to question the often inflexible constitutional opinions of his long-time nemesis, Pierre Trudeau. But Mr. Mulroney has gone too far when he suggests that Mr. Trudeau, who died in 2000, was morally unfit for leadership because of mistakes of his youth. The personal attack is an unwarranted assault on a politician whose entire later career tacitly repudiated his earlier beliefs. It is unworthy of a former prime minister.

In an interview with CTV News this week to promote his upcoming memoirs, Mr. Mulroney was asked about Mr. Trudeau’s opposition to his government’s Meech Lake constitutional accord. It was an apt question, given Mr. Trudeau’s highly partisan and inflammatory objections to the accord and his significant role in its 1990 defeat. Instead of confining himself to the question, Mr. Mulroney savaged Mr. Trudeau’s reputation.

He evoked his opposition to the Allied cause during the Second World War, noting that so many other young men had enlisted to fight the Nazis. “Pierre Trudeau was not among them,” Mr. Mulroney continued. “That’s a decision he made. He’s entitled to make that kind of decision. But it doesn’t qualify him for any position of moral leadership in our society.” He added that Mr. Trudeau was “far from a perfect man.”

Recent intellectual histories of Mr. Trudeau depict a youth who was very far from perfect. As scholars Max and Monique Nemni chronicled in Young Trudeau: 1919-1944, Mr. Trudeau was then a captive of the nationalist cant prevalent among Roman Catholic intellectuals in Quebec during the 1930s. He espoused chauvinist francophone nationalism. There was a whiff of anti-Semitism. In 1942, he was a member of a secret organization that advocated revolution to establish an authoritarian regime. He was a creature of his very limited place and time.

Then he grew up, and atoned. In the 1950s, he defied insular Quebec premier Maurice Duplessis, defending the rights of workers and the need for a secular state. As prime minister, he denounced narrow ethnic nationalism. He fought for the inclusion of a Canadian Charter of Rights in the Constitution. He embraced and officially recognized multiculturalism. He defended bilingualism and biculturalism. He fostered the careers of Jewish Canadians. He defended the idea of a strong central government. It was an estimable, if controversial, life. And Mr. Mulroney has trashed it.

In many democracies, former political leaders practise a tradition of statesmanship. After a lifetime of bitter partisanship, they are permitted to rise above it, to treat former political enemies with respect. They may criticize each other’s ideas, but not their moral aptitude for office. Were he alive, Mr. Trudeau would have relished a constitutional debate. He would not have answered an intellectual challenge with the observation that his opponent was morally unfit for leadership. Mr. Mulroney has damaged only himself.

I guess I can say in all quietude, I couldn’t have said it better. For shame Big Jaw!

Image of peaceful Canada

Image via Wikipedia

Toronto the Good or so the saying goes. In the middle of University Ave. is Queen’s Park, the central building of the Government of Ontario. If you click on the link in the previous sentence, you will see an image of peaceful Canada, tulips, grass and Art Deco government buildings. The tulips are a windfall gift from the Juliana, the then Queen of the Netherlands. She gave Canada many tulip bulbs when she returned to Holland in 1945 after living in Canada during WW II.

In fact, the Canadian Army spent much of the blood of its infantry in driving the Wehrmact out of Holland especially the Walcheren Peninsula/Islands. Hardly a peaceful picture, but the image of Queen’s Park’s tulips is a peaceful, deceptive albeit!

And if that’s not enough, here is another image that evokes peacefulness but not necessarily Ontario

Happiest countries in the world

Image via Wikipedia

The U of Leicester in the UK has published an article that includes this interesting map:

First Ever World Map of Happiness Produced

And here is the list of the “happiest countries”

Top index marks

273 -  Denmark – Switzerland

260 – Austria – Iceland

257 – The Bahamas – Finland – Sweden

253 – Bhutan – Brunei – Canada – Ireland

The three least happy countries were:

110 – Democratic Republic of the Congo

110 – Zimbabwe

100 – Burundi

Source: University of Leicester

This raises the question for me: Would I rather live in a country in the top 10 of this list, or in the richest most powerful nation in the world?

Those Brits are something though! They will look into anything and everything and look at it unblinkingly. Could this kind of research have been published in the US?

Looking at this list again I am amazed that Malaysia, a Muslim country with strong Islamist elements, is in the top 20 and perplexed that Japan scores so low, #90! But I am not surprised that a survey done by a middle rank UK University rates the US towards the end of the top 40 countries.

A broader conception of happy lives is offered in this Wikipedia post!

It is noteworthy that Denmark is at the top of this list. It has been at the top of most Euro-based surveys of happiest countries/people for the last 30some years. It was suggested in an NY Times article that Danes do a better job of managing their own expectations from life in Denmark than most other peoples do. Americans and Canadians come to mind here!

Related articles by Zemanta

• New Zealand rated safest in world (americablog.com)
• Move over, Iceland – New Zealand is now the safest country in the world (guardian.co.uk)