Along with whatever might be useful as we plunge into the abyss of our GM-AI-Driverless Technofuture:
Semences autochtones : la Tunisie en prend de la graine
Alors que les semences de blé améliorées, massivement importées dans les années 80, sont rattrapées par les maladies, les variétés traditionnelles font de la résistance.
An article fromLibération details how Tunisia has reverted to the use of heritage seeds for its staple crops, having experienced high degrees of disease and degradation with the ongoing plantings of hybrid and GM varieties adopted in the ’80s. There is particularly heightened interest in this given that Tunisia was where the Arab Spring first arose, and arise it did because of lack of food due in part to lack of funds, tied to lack of work. This appears to be a rare application of that rarest of commodities of late, common sense based on traditional knowledge.
The big announcement that Canada “is back” in the peacekeeping game rings somewhat hollow in the absence of a peace to keep. The government is sending a half-dozen helos and associated personnel, along with other troops, apparently including a significant contingent of women, to a place ill-suited to our equipment and training and where an elusive and sometimes ill-defined enemy has proven elusive in an ongoing series of clashes involving not only the local government, but a large contingent of French troops, and, it seems of late, a sprinkling of US forces.
This is a link to a series of stories from Libération, a mainstream French daily that gives some idea of the scope and duration of the conflict, easy to discern even for those who speak little or no French from the dates and the photos. What seems clear enough is that there exists more conflict that peace, and one has to wonder, given the fractured nature of the “enemy”, whether it’s possible to settle a peace accord with a single faction.
We have been witness to the heartbreak of returning peacekeepers, the physical wounds, the PTSD, the difficulty re-integrating into normal life in Canada, the unmet needs of veterans sloughed off by the military when considered redundant for whatever reason, and the general indifference of a population already dealing with marginalization, housing woes, and political fol-di-rol on a grand scale, with the exception of Don Cherry-like calls to support the troops and salute the flag. Hence, it seems something of a dubious undertaking to send valuable resources off to Mali to struggle with hostile people in a hostile environment , especially with so little prospect of a constructive outcome. The whole mission is looking increasingly like a veiled contribution to the ol’ War On Terror in which we are called upon by NATO (North AFRICAN Treaty Organization?) to keep the lid on some restless locals while the empire does its dirty business in Mali, elsewhere in Africa and in as much of the rest of the world as possible.
The question arises as to with whom one might engage in dialogue about peace, and would that include a broader geographical definition of peace. It doesn’t look as though contemplation of those questions will be moving to the forefront of global efforts.
Long ago, I came to see the following, attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes, as an axiom by which to gauge a good deal of public policy:
Taxes are the price we pay for civilized society.
Today, I ran across this in the cesspool that is Facebook, and I’m a little ashamed to admit that it was posted by a former student:
I guess it hurts to see a chunk of your paycheque disappearing into the maw of Revenue Canada to be handed out by the Trudeau Liberals to miscreants both foreign and domestic, layabouts, drug addicts, Commies, queers and Jews (to paraphrase an old line from Asshole from El Paso, Chinga Chavin, c. 1975).
There is little doubt that much of what we pay in taxes is misspent in paroxysms of waste, but the object of the ire is often the wrong target by a long shot. All the welfare fraud, even all the welfare, pales in comparison with the funds eaten up by misguided projects like the Phoenix pay system where implementation is into the hundreds of millions of dollars stretching across the mandates of two governments with no end in sight to the expenditures and no resolution to the seemingly random overpaying, underpaying or simple not paying of civil servants. The examples of this sort of waste are legion, but even this sort of malfeasance pales in comparison to the amount of cash extracted by large corporations, by foundations and by rich individuals, money taken from people such as Tommy, the former student in question, and shipped offshore to be tucked away in perfectly legal (moral? not so much) accounts in Panama, the Bahamas, the Isle of Man, and such places for future reference, but without scrutiny by Revenue Canada. Revenue Canada recently was convicted of malicious prosecution of a couple of business people in Nanaimo, apparently chosen because they didn’t have the kind of financial and legal resources at the disposal of, say, the clients that KPMG counselled to set up accounts in offshore havens. Yes, you, the hardworking individual, are subject to the yoke of taxation in a way that touches the wealthy in a proportionately gentle fashion, it would seem.
I’m an old retired guy now, but I spent a lifetime working for a living, a wage slave if there ever was one. Before I discovered the joys of a career in the classroom, I worked in commercial fishing, in logging, in hospital and hotel maintenance, in construction, in plumbing, in bookselling, in grill cooking, in gardening and hauling, in rock drilling and odd bits of this and that to fill in the gaps and pay for much of my education (I also had a really good gig for a number of years running a pool hall and bowling alley on campus, not great pay but very satisfying socially). All along, I paid taxes, and, for the most part, it was money that went away to support other people and initiatives. I obviously needed it less than those who benefited directly from government largesse. But when I hurt my back rock drilling, I actually managed to get some support from WCB, and there were no huge doctor bills or prescription worries because there were programs, supported by taxes, to take care of those items.
We don’t always get the best value for our tax dollars, and the system of taxation is far from equitable and fair (a reflection of general economic policy), but I still pay taxes on my pension and am happy to do so for the aid that some folks get when they most need it and for those services provided by all levels of government.
None of us lives insolation and we all have contributions to make to our social life. Taxes are part of it, as is the responsibility to be informed on governance and to participate in the conversations that should be leading us forward.
A report on CBC Newsworld featured David Common aboard HMCS Chicoutimi patrolling in the Pacific in proximity, apparently, to the Korean Peninsula. It seems that their rôle is not directly connected to the imminent Olympics, but rather to enforcing UN sanctions on the North Koreans. The report showed pictures, vaguely familiar from other, earlier reports, that the Koreans were breaking the blockade by transferring coal and oil from one ship to another on the high seas, then off-loading from DPRK-flagged craft in North Korean ports.
Part of their gig seems to be coming to the surface from time to time to take pictures, assuming that this will produce damning evidence of collusion on the part of, say, the Chinese or the Russians, but at the cost of blowing the sub’s cover, assuming that anyone interested hadn’t already discerned what the captain of our sub had for breakfast. The photos of the collusion that appeared in earlier reports were all taken from above, which, barring the unlikely event of Chicoutimi levitating (did she not spend a lot of time in dry dock, so being out of the water wouldn’t be entirely unfamiliar), would mean that the provenance of the photos would be either aerial reconnaissance or, most likely, satellite tracking. This scenario would obviate the need for Chicoutimi to be there at all, other than as a seemingly significant mission, to get the men some sea time and some training credits. Given the general state of our armed forced, it would also be the occasion for the issuance of a battle ribbon to adorn the chests of the brave souls intrepid enough to sail in what was purchased as a used sub and which went through two decades of the terrible twos.
Don Cherry, our Cuckaloo-in-Chief, will have fun with this, touting the prowess of “our Boys”, which brings this wandering mind to another thought following an awkward exchange with a wounded veteran at a town hall, where our PM is said to have exclaimed in frustration that vets were asking more than we can afford. Sadly, my take is that our ability to afford services and pensions for veterans is more a matter of priorities: as we keep low-balling price points on natural resources as they exit the country and the commons, as we remain deaf to the sound of fortunes exiting the country for tax havens, as we prepare to indulge all our favourite bankers and infrastructure project managers in a feast at the public trough, we might want to reconsider the plight of those who have served their country to the best of their ability. We might also want to scrutinize the mission creep that sends people off on wild goose chases where the pay off for the risk incurred is insufficient to merit going in the first place. The best way to avoid the burden of broken vets is to keep them out of any bellicose silliness unless we are directly threatened. I like Francis Bacon’s quip about marching off to war:
A post on CBC tells of a trattoria in Fort MacMurray that won’t serve BC wine because of Horgan’s rejection of KM’s TM dilbit expansion. Here is a comment I left on FB reacting to said boycott:
Fine. I won’t patronize THAT restaurant! (Little chance of being in Alberta at all in any foreseeable future). However, I don’t like the implication that we wouldn’t have any gasoline without KM, and various other whoppers being told by a plethora of politicians, some of whom (Nenshi and Notley, notably) I thought might be beyond that sort of thing. We get all our distilled petroleum product from the United States. There is no refinery for dilbit, or even for sweet crude, in BC, nor in Alberta (could be dead wrong here) whose specialty seems to be digging up the stuff and moving it elsewhere. KM sends the stuff offshore. They are, however, along with their digging friends, kind enough to leave us with the tailings ponds, sour gas and downstream pollution in several river systems. Has Rachel stashed away enough loot to deal with all that? History tells us that as soon as the profits are gone, the KM tentacles will withdraw to Houston with all the loot they’ve accumulated and disappear into a name change (Accenture comes to mind, as well as whatever Blackwater has transmogrified into). Instead of preparing a swift and just transition to renewable energy, Notley and Trudeau continue to back sunset technologies that will doom life on Earth within the lifetimes of their children, and pretending that KM went through any approval that was anything other than a sham and a rubber stamp would be laughable were it not so brazenly false and damaging. Now can someone invoke a divine presence to turn all that dilbit into wine? I think Ernest and Julio might still have a few tankers kickin’ about.
So here, you’ll find the Post Media outrage that RT gets paid to be on the cable services, as if pretty much most of the rest of the offerings aren’t mouthpieces for a toxic system of private profit and public plundering.
For a bit of perspective, here is a piece from Lee Camp who broadcasts on RT and whose work is highly critical of the bulk of media outlets. It’s eloquent, obviating the need for me to blather on.
When I last wrote, it was about the novelty of the Dear John phenomenon. This time, I fear that the intent is very much in line with the original intent of letters of this nature. Your reading of the data for and against Site C construction seems to be very different from mine, and in any case, the idea of flinging another good seven billion dollars after the bad four that was essentially down to Christy Clark and her lot is a powerful inducement to quit the project, sorta like what Dad used to say about getting out of a hole: the first step is to quit digging. You have now pretty much forever linked your name with a project conceived in greed and executed with blunt force political trauma: you have turned Christy’s nasty little quip about getting Site C to the point of no return into a self-fulfilling prophesy. You have chosen to stick with a 20th-century project that has no place in a climate care strategy in the 21st century and have therefore earned the nickname “Dead-End John”, the dead-endedness referring not only to this project, but also to the length of your mandate and to the legacy that you leave to future generations of British Columbians. You have effectively become a patsy for the former Liberal clique, all of whom must be feeling rather smug right about now. What explains the rubber-kneed capitulation that we got to witness this morning? Is your political, social, economic, and reconciliatory acumen so stunted that you were able to overlook the impending catastrophe that awaits us, both in terms of legal battles the apologies that you will be forced to issue over cost overruns and completion delays? Did some Bilderberg-like group of rich heavyweights reach out to twist some painful part of your anatomy to incite the sort of tone deafness to your constituents that produced this gawdawful abomination? Are we completely ignoring the consequences under NAFTA to control over water exports? Do we not have a willingness to explore other opportunities in terms of energy production and the kind of jobs that might go along with it?
I guess in real life there’s no chance that you’ll be back in the rotunda tomorrow to tell us that it was a bad joke, and that really, no one could be that politically blind. I think it’s very likely that the New Democratic Party of BC has seen the last contribution and the last vote from this British Columbian, and I suspect that this kind of shenanigan is likely to produce a similar effect elsewhere. When that alternate to corruption is foolhardiness, or for whatever reason produces the sort of headscratchingly blunders on the order of continuing Site C, I’m guessing that many voters are simply wishing a pox on the houses of all politicians and going off to get what they can while they can.
Sadly, there is no respect left with which to sign this missive…
Respectfully,
Dan Schubart
Previous, pre-decision note:
Dear John, (I’ve never before had the privilege of writing a Dear John Letter!)
Pull the rug out from under the Site C project, would you please? It was a political decision made by Christy Clark as a gift to her contractor friends who have already done untold damage to the province and who need to wear the blame for the, pardon me, downstream effects. Our union brothers and sisters should be looked after by an ambitious (but well thought-out) program of renewable energy infrastructure, forest and fishery remediation, and programs to encourage small-scale intensive organic farming, as well as the protection of vital water resources. The Liberal Party needs to wear the blame for this project, every aspect of it, like Coleridge’s Albatross, as they parade through the upcoming corruption inquiry (you will encourage Mr. Eby to undertake this, won’t you?), along with all the other (NOT) on-time, on-budget fiascos that characterized the Campbell and Clark tenures on the government benches.
John, er, Mr. Premier, I like your style, generally, and much of your policy platform and would like to think that I could, with a clear conscience lend both moral and financial support to your party. But a decision to maintain any part of the Site C project or to support the various pipeline fantasies would preclude support of any nature, particularly as a decision on a moral basis: I have grandchildren and I would like for them, and for all citizens of B.C. (your bailiwick), Canada and the World to have a reasonably stable planetary environment in which to grow and thrive. Site C cannot be part of that vision.
Get in front of the cameras, with or without that Weaver feller, and tell BC that the citizens are in charge, not the SNC Lavallins of the world.
In hopes that you’ll act in a way that allows me to sign this…
I don’t believe in playing down to children, either in life or in motion pictures. I didn’t treat my own youngsters like fragile flowers, and I think no parent should. Children are people, and they should have to reach to learn about things, to understand things, just as adults have to reach if they want to grow in mental stature. Life is composed of lights and shadows, and we would be untruthful, insincere, and saccharine if we tried to pretend there were no shadows. Most things are good, and they are the strongest things; but there are evil things too, and you are not doing a child a favor by trying to shield him from reality. -Walt Disney, entrepreneur and animator (5 Dec 1901-1966)
This is a lofty and worthy sentiment, completely belied by the output of Disney Studios where the happy endings in the face of overwhelming odds are legion and where the characters seem as idealized as they could be in stark contrast to the nastiness that seems to be in charge of the human universe of late. Witness that Disney has reigned over the magic kingdom as a form of refuge from the toil and turmoil of everyday life, a place where even adults can cast off the cares of life and unilaterally declare a hiatus wherein they can say, in effect, “Piss on it, enough of the serious shit. I’m gonna revert to the world of thumbsucking again for a few days!”, at least until the credit card bills come in. What?! You pay for the privilege of visiting the magic kingdom and going into the kid cocoon for whatever span of time? Oh, yeah, and you’ve already made your kids part of the conspiracy.
“Telle est la vie des hommes, quelques joies très vite éffacées par d’inoubliables chagrins. Il n’est pas nécessaire de le dire aux enfants.”
—Marcel Pagnol
Life, a few joys quickly overtaken by unforgettable pains, and no need to mention it to the children…they will see it soon enough and perhaps it’s better to monitor this and get out in front of it, letting children in on the secret of choosing a path toward some sort of fulfilment and working to make some joy with friends and family.
Along with the revelation that finance minister Bill Morneau had neglected to put his business dealings in a blind trust (and that he wasn’t the only minister to lag on that front by a long shot), the release of the Paradise Papers has a lot of Canadians hopping mad, including some on the opposition benches who, when they were in government, seemed quite content to sign deals with fiscal havens (in French, they are called Paradis Fiscaux, perhaps explaining the moniker Paradise Papers), but who have since developed and honed a sense of outrage that, of course, overlooks their own underhanded behaviour.
It can’t be worth a lot of time and resources to investigate this stuff under the current legal and fiscal statutes because, of course, it’s all perfectly legal, and therein lies the rub. This set of laws is like a get-out-of-jail-free card for those who whispered in the legislative ear to get the enabling legislation enacted. So, not a crime, but certainly this all flies in the face of any rhetoric about saving whatever social class other than those who can muster the resources to hire the legal beagles who will set up your off-shore shell companies in which you can shelter the rest of your massive fortune. Likely, this is neither thee nor me.
If you voted for either the current government or the previous government (today’s “opposition”, you are an enabler. If you didn’t vote, you are an enabler. tacit approval being much like an active imprimatur.
Let the louts in Ottawa (Victoria, Edmonton, etc.) know that you want at least a level playing field, legally, fiscally, socially. Do it starting now with a curt note to your MP and MLA, and to the likely candidates of all the opposition parties. Do be rude and bring this up at coffee and at the dinner table, and mention it to the pastor and elders in church this Sunday, as well as to your hockey team and your mother-in-law.
In the course of many extended conversations with a friend who practices law, mostly pertaining to real estate, we would touch on the essence of what a career entailed. I was a school teacher until I discovered the wonders of retirement, and Scott even went as far as to pay a visit to the small rural school where I spent five really stellar years late in my working life. I had visited his office on occasion, but it would have been somewhat awkward for me to get in any observations of his interactions with clients, so I had to take his word for his thoughts on the law, its deployment, and on how it affected the parties undertaking the legal process.
A recurring theme in our conversations was that education formed a good part of many occupations where one has to deal with human beings, and Scott thought this was very relevant to the practice of law, particularly in the process of bringing parties to an acceptable settlement without engaging the services of the court and burning through exorbitant legal fees. I had observed some of this phenomenon in my father’s architectural practice where clients had, at times, unrealistic expectations of what could be built, and especially what could be built within a realistic budget, along with considerations of light, sight lines, interior spaces, interrelationships within the building envelope and how the building related to the building site. This was a critical part of the work because it was, in essence, the intellectual and spiritual framework for construction and ensured that the client understood well in advance not only the end result, but the journey from conception to planning, to detail preparation and on to construction before final occupancy. Dad’s success as an architect rested on the number of people who would write at the end of the process to say not only that they were deeply enjoying the final project, but also that they could see how those initial consultations had set the course for both the process and the result.
Such is not the case for all practitioners, and the area where education seems to be least central to the work at hand is in politics and government, an area where a good part of the electorate is content to function on preconceived notions of ideology and/or to accept the divisions laid out in the existing political framework of parties, candidates and support groups. As in business, it would appear for secrecy and deception to be largely the norm, sometimes through societal inertia, sometimes through duplicity, sometimes through expediency. The electorate gets bombarded with waves of information, but said information has been carefully chosen to direct attention to whatever the agency deems as good and to distract from the sources of the information and, often, the possible and likely consequences of the decisions being made. Where business is entirely about generating profit for shareholders and the executive suite, there seems little impetus to ensure that we are getting the whole picture and that the profits being generated will do more good than harm. The current and ongoing shut-down of the Sears retailing establishment in Canada is an interesting case study, where layoffs and disappearing pensions are being used to fund bonuses to the executives who have taken the enterprise into bankruptcy and dissolution, where those responsible for the decisions that lead to the downfall reap large rewards and those who toiled in the trenches are stripped of benefits, both present and future.
The same hiding behind a veil of secrecy also prevails in most governing bodies, often for the benefit of small groups of people whose fortunes allows them much greater influence than the one vote to which the general populace can aspire. Where this amounts to corruption, if often goes unpunished because of that same veil of secrecy. This is a legal matter and missed opportunity to hold to account those at fault. Other times, there may be cases where policy seems distant in its origin and benefit, and the implementation seems high-handed and dictatorial. In those cases, what’s lacking in a meaningful effort on the part of those enacting that policy to ensure than all parties are armed with the data and analysis to make sense of the action. All of our elected representatives ought to be armed with the knowledge to explain their decisions and the ability to make sense of those decisions to the people who elected them. as well as those who may have made other, unfulfilled choices at election time.
As an example, the current discussions of reconciliation with First Nations certainly has both supporters and detractors. On this file, we seem to be moving slowly, but there is an ongoing stream of relevant information that needs to be put at everyone’s disposal and there needs to be time for options to be developed and time and resources allotted to First Nations to sort out what might be their idea of the desired outcomes. For those like Senator Lynn Beyak whose sense is that First Nations should just “get over it” and become Canadians, there is a chance to review the information and to show that they have a basis for their beliefs, and for the rest of us to understand that perspective, without necessarily accepting that it might be valid if we have data and analysis to bolster our own thoughts.As new material emerges, we might need to re-evaluate our positions.
There is a certain amount of anxiety in the salmon farming community at this point, where First Nations are occupying a farm and where notice of review of tenures seems to have given the idea to the companies that they are about to be unceremoniously evicted from the waterways of the province. It turns out that the reviews are scheduled and that the panic might reveal more about the outlook of Marine Harvest than about the state of the spaces they occupy. For a group that appears to have done whatever it can to squelch information relating to disease outbreaks, escapes and other negative effects on wild stocks, there might be a tendency to think that the fish farming community senses that the end of their current business mode might be coming to an end. I wonder if they are willing to put all the informational cards on the table and let the public decide in full knowledge of how the industry operates and what are the real benefits and harms involved in their operations. It i here that the government, and especially the ministers responsible, ought to have the duty and the mandate to see that all appropriate information is put at the disposal of the electorate so that, when the government decides to either renew the tenures or to let them lapse, we will all have a clear understanding of the reasoning behind that decision.
When it comes to light that local casinos have become a money laundromat, and where it comes to light that the phenomenon has been known to government for the better part of a decade, and where the knowledge has been buried because it might have a negative impact on certain “commercial” enterprises, and where those enterprises are undertaken by people whose moral, electoral and financial support props up the party that buries the report, we have the exact opposite of a desirable education quotient. This is not a simple oversight, but a fraud on the electorate, even if the law seems not to see it as punishable.
The same applies to the approval of projects that appear, on the fact of it, to contrary to the interests of Canadians as a whole, but that will be good for board rooms in Toronto, Calgary and Houston, projects whose evaluation omits large swathes of data about downstream consequences to be suffered by all of us, but whole effects will be mitigated for those who stand to gain the most.
As a voter, I am willing to revise my position on many files, but I need to see that I’m getting decisions based on the best information, which means all the information. It falls upon my representatives to convince that the revision is warranted.
