speaker

on another forum there was a subject dealing with a similar award going to George Bush and at first I thought this is just absurd. Then I realized that it had been initiated on April 1st. So when I saw this one I just assumed that this was a continuation of a theme. The fact that it was serious in a way makes it even funnier. The only american prime minister of Canada who gave us lock stock and barrel of water to the makers of the yankee dollah via the "free trade deal" is a hero of Canadian environment? some of the pastries involved in the free lunch for the jury must have been brownies.

flowers and mountains, deer and rivers, lakes and trees, swamps and bananas, even mosquitoes and grizzlies, hills and people, sunlight and mushrooms, soil and bacteria, grasshoppers and goats.

CoachCartman, It would be reasonable for the tailings from the ethanol process to be high in food value, but I think by the time most of the energy has been taken out of the grain there would be proportionally less total feed available for livestock feed. I would worry that as fossil fuels go down the carburator there would be an increased demand for grain for more fuel at the same time as food prices start to rise because we aren't able to pour the fertilizers and herbicides, (fossil fuel derived at least) to our crops. I think as Black Dog points out the misuse of agricultural lands is going to further exacerbate the situation and we should be looking for solutions like better development models, own production hydrogen or electricity from renewable means, and leaving as much of the crop residue in the soil as possible for future food production and for carbon sequestration. Perhaps a branch of the Wheat Board could be established which would deal with Canadian needs, if such isn't already the case.

CoachCartman, Since the wheat in your calculation is feed wheat, it would eventually enter the human feed chain. The fact that another farmer gets a bigger share of the value of the grain than the producer doesn't take away from that. If the cattleman or hog grower has to compete with biofuel plants, it would just make for another broke farmer. The alternative is to try to organize an effort to get higher returns from the value spent for food in the supermarkets. That is my impression of what the Wheat Board is trying to do. More of the same would be a good step. Did the Sask Government give a reason why they couldn't give tax breaks to a bio-fuel plant? Perhaps they like a lot of us are fed up with subsidizing the big companies that turn around and gnaw on the hands that are feeding them. Farmers should pay attention to the companies that have gotten tax breaks to establish themselves in rural communities over the years, particularily in agriculture and forestry related industries. It seems like once the tax breaks run out so do the entrepreneurs. I sympathize with your frustration at your return on your load. The railroad company makes as much money for hauling your load in a freight car with other farmers grain as you get for growing it. The elevation etc charges from the elevator were pretty close to that. So much for the idea that not owning our own elevators would be a good thing for us eh? The worst part is that the flour mills, breakfast cereal makers, meat packers, retailers wholesalers etc. are making record profits selling our food to consumers. I don't think that adding another market to the mix is going to help until that imbalance is corrected.

Actually it is probably more along the lines of putting the visiting team off their game. Most of the people there are sports fans not political junkies, the same as the Americans who flew the Canadian flag upside down at a ball game a few years back. More of an unintended compliment to a worthy opponent. Collective America is out of touch with reality, and being, to put it mildly overbearing, in it's relations with most of the other nations on the planet. Other empires have achieved that status in the past. Hate might be too strong a word for it but disgust mixed with despair for the future can look awfully similar.

Quinton, being just a little facetious here, : so you figure we should stop immigration to the world? Okay, I understand that you mean into your country. Canada being the least populated country on the planet and one of the wealthiest is going to be hard pressed to justify stopping immigration. That said I think that population growth has to stop, I don't know if you have created any kids but the thing that was farthest from my mind at the time was how much extra taxes I was going to have to pay. I think our only option is education, as you're doing, about the dire straits we're in. Consumption taxes on goods that aren't necessary, and depletion taxes on goods that remove from the planets resource stock, to ensure complete restoration. Local self reliance whenever possible, balcony gardens, providing land to the people who stand a chance of making it as farmers, or foresters, and who understand that such occupations have to be sustainable for the people of earth to survive. Hardships are going on now. A whale of a lot more serious than any Canadians are feeling. It would be really nice if we could achieve a steady state without more, but we will achieve a level spot whether we are willing to sacrifice some or not. My hope is that we do it soon enough that the level spot isn't at the top of a long and painful downhill slide. Education. for the most insulated people, the business people, the urban poor, the politicians and upper level bureaucrats.

Indeed. A Fort MacLeod native so I understand. I would agree that slavery is oppression, in the sense that it is theft. A slave had no choices, and lacked even the choice of saying no.This past January, I was in South Carolina for the first time in my life and I had the chance to see a plantation, including the huts of slaves. (You can see them here.) Walking around the plantation, I was struck by the sense of servitude. Men were separated from women, and children from their parents. They were treated as farm animals. I'll note too that slavery was enforced by the State. There is a huge difference between slavery and export-zone factories operating in Vietnam. Critically, workers volunteer to work in these factories, and the factories increase the choices of these workers. Poverty is the lack of choices, and oppression must be forbidding a choice, otherwise available. Slaves could have been free, but they weren't. If you have some way to improve the choices of workers in Vietnam, please let the world know. You will become wealthy in the process. As to "profit", it is just a way to know whether co-operation is truly beneficial to both sides. You make a "profit" when you buy coffee because you pay less than what you would be prepared to pay. If both sides profit, there cannot be oppression. That's a good way of looking at environmental protection. By our activities now, we may be limiting the choices of future generations. We are exploiting them.This is relevant because most of us have children, and grandchildren, and devote alot of effort to ensure their well-being. Does it make sense for us to oppress them by destroying their environment? That may be true if you only conduct one transaction with a person - and even then. If you know that you will have repeated dealings, then your viewpoint is wrong. In fact, I would argue that countries are rich and poor on that point alone. What a strange world you inhabit, Thelonious. The price mechanism is anonymous and it admirably turns competition into co-operation. In case you haven't noticed, the law of the market replaced the law of the jungle a long time ago. Whatever. August 1991, you are right. I was reacting with a small level of hyperbole. But I didn't go quite so far as to say that the sweat shops in Viet Nam and numerous other countries around the world are slavery. But I think that they are close enough that choice is a minor irritant for people in that situation. In this situation just because the theft and therefore oppression, is not 100% does not make it not theft. I'm pretty sure I saw somewhere that Nikes workers in Viet Nam at the time were getting approximately 17 cents for each pair of shoes produced. At the time I think the average Nikes were selling for around $80. More than this though, and that's bad enough, Nike et al are also oppressing the people of Viet Nam in general. As soon as it was realized that it could be business as usual despite having lost the war for the control of the actual physical property, the west lent money to Viet Nam to put big tracts of Agricultural land into Rubber. Coincidentally causing a surplus of rubber driving prices down. That hasn't been a bad thing for the west because now in an effort to repay those loans farm workers are in the same boat as the factory workers, and the land is being bled like a rubber tree.

Well, we've known about the cheaper land, lower reource costs, lower medical care costs, cheaper electricity, I'm a little surprised by the lower labour costs, but maybe when you factor in the medical it makes sense, the lower taxes is a surprise. I suppose American business is being asked to pick up some share of the military expenditure. I wonder if you could separate out the companies that are doing so well from the conflict and determine whether they are paying higher taxes.

Geoffrey, you're the one that brought the Fraser Institute into this topic, I'm merely responding concerning their validity in terms of our overall happiness with the "economic" news. Perhaps it's just a difference in understanding of the word economic, I would say that the Fraser Institue is focused on Financial policy because economic policy implies that ecologics have been involved. For people who present themselves under a banner of intellectual authority they have a misguided lack of interest in the environment and sustainability. I'm not an informed person with respect to the cleanliness of the new coal technology, I hope you can surprise me with some good news there, particularily about carbon emissions. As a wind energy advocate I am very happy that Alberta is taking steps towards using the force in the wind along the mountain passes. What I have suggested in the past is that our governments should be taxing resource removal enough to compensate us with alternatives, in energy, with clean air and stable soils, in agriculture and forestry, with improved fish stocks along the coasts, and biological diversity everywhere we have had it. If we have those things then we have a shot at sustainability. If we run out of them at the same time we run out of oil and gas we will be poor whether we have clean coal or not.

It may be irrelevant for the purposes of the discussion, but it's not in reality. People who gravitate towards and are selected by their superiors for this kind of "job" have the inclination.

There is a tendancy to shoot the messanger when it's bad news, or when news is warped to give everyone happy feelings. Or at least, if not shoot them, examine the motives. Is it good news for just you? For residents of the western provinces, humanity in general? How about for the environment, or the next generation? When a "think tank" with the amount of money that the Fraser Institute has to invest in studies can't see it's way clear to examine the somewhat more complex issues facing Canadians, I start to wonder why.

JerrySeinfeld, You're a natural kid, with that look of good natured naivity and lines like those you'll go far, you'll go far. geoffrey, I think you're right, you know, as far as you've stated. Welfarists have been getting way too much out of our pockets for so long they believe they have a right and to top it off have convinced a goodly percentage of us that they are right. The multinational forestry companies, energy developers, fisheries conglomerates, etc. have been giving us the shaft with their tax-breaks, undervalued energy, and development grants for years, The question is, how do we stop this particular rape, as Thelonius fleabag so artfully described situations like this, before our means of redress are all gone.

I can't believe that this debate is still going on. I guess some people are just really sick. Torture is wrong. For all the reasons given above. Anybody having trouble understanding this please get yourself to a psychiatric clinic. Seriously.

Pretty much anytime a group takes in the kind of money that the Fraser institute takes in from donations, you have to think that the money is coming from organizations that really want to hear more of what they are saying. Any time that much money is coming in to a Canadian Institute that is a registered non profit organization on the American tax system and the Canadian, I get suspicious that the institute will put out more of what it's donators want. But beyond that the Fraser Institute does not take into account the real world in it's studies and bafflegab. Therefore it has no credibility.

To me class is defined by someone with the attitude of Joni Mitchell who I think tried to look at both sides now, from up and down and still somehow it's lifes illusions I recall. One of our most popular illusions seems to be that we are, and our economy is separate from the rest of reality. For example the profit made in a deal between industrial or retail giants and Vietnam isn't just a good deal it's also a brand of slavery and oppression like cotton growing in the southern states up to a short time a go. Another example is our governments giving tax breaks and lowered environmental standards to oil and gas exploration and exploitation companies. This isn't just a great deal for the companies and the governments, and incidentally a heck of a lot of us, it is also theft from generations to come and oppression on people who haven't got any say in the deal at all. Fourty years from now there may be deals cut between courts and lawyers in which only the top decision makers in each case are found guilty of crimes against humanity or crimes against the environment.

scriblett, are you able to tell us who is running the Fraser institute? is there any chance the people running it are the people who provide it with its funding?

I don't think that an army really wants mindless idiots in it's ranks, well not all the time anyway. The hero is the one who can see himself/herself around a problem. Doesn't have much to do with politics though except that the more totalitarian governments believe they have the right to control people; body, mind, and soul. I don't know that we aren't benefitting from army escapees, I would rather have them than the mindless ones. When they come they can contribute to our society, and do. Taking our women? Is this a personal thing, if so life's tough sometimes. Try to rise above it. Perhaps some of the American women will avoid army services and even out the imbalance.

Don't worry, be happy, lalalalala , I am more than content with my life on the fringes of the Alberta fossil fuel boom II. I am somewhat less happy with the possibilities of the future and largely because governments pay to much attention to groups like the unthinking think tanks. They persist in a naive belief that so long as we have enough money today tomorrow will take care of itself, or they don't have an understanding that if you use up the capital resources we have then they aren't available later. Quite a few years ago it was pointed out that residents of Tokyo were signing multigenerational mortgages to buy a house. We're doing the same with our environment and resources in order to buy consumables. My grandkids are going to be pissed.

I think a really crazymf would understand that one of the duties and obligations of a free person in a free society or any society for that matter is to determine for themselves whether a war is a just war and to react to governmental decisions with that in mind. I suspect that if it's okay for one to make up ones own mind then it is also okay to change ones mind.

so Geoffrey, you announce this as being good news for Albertans, British Columbians, and then suggest we not talk about the aspects of our pro business government decisions to give business the right to plunder, without appropriate environmental regulation, fair labour codes, equity in taxation structure, or policies regarding resource depletion, human welfare, etc. OK by me.

How about this one. I hereby swear to have tolerance for all cultures, religions, political leanings, even this crazy one that Canada has adopted just recently. I think this would have been good for anytime in the last 140 years.

Like a rolling stone, that's the one, Thanks. I remember Janis' song but I don't think that the mood fits what I was thinking at the time. Good though it was. I'm too old for gwar but the sentiment is precisely the one I was looking for. Thanks again

Thanks Canuck E Stan, It's not the one I was thinking of but I'll look it up. The one I was thinking of may have been a song or maybe just an old line that went If you got nothing you got nothing left to lose. I can't remember who from or where I heard it first.

I agree with August 1991 about the unfortunate case of a PM visiting a country like Afghanistan in the train of officialdom and militarism. I suppose that someone with Harpers views over the last twenty years wouldn't have noticed the difference between what's happening there now compared to what was going on there 20 years ago. Even leaving off with the various positions of the military forces arrayed in the country, would he have noticed the difference in the infrastructure, or the socio-economic base? I don't wish him harm, so I hope no one tries to take a shot at him, but I hope it sinks in in some other way that the country has little left to lose, because when you got nothing left to lose... how does that old saw go again?

How do I know that we are overusing resources? Not really magical. We are reaching a peak of oil production, and worse our usage rates are still going up which means that the peak is going to have a very steep downhill side. Our soils are being eroded through overuse and contamination. Forests are being stripped at rates that are intensifying global warming rather than having forests that will ameliorate it. Fishstocks are disappearing at a really alarming rate. There are all the species problems Quinton has been pointing out to us, being used up with their habitats. The air, atmosphere, our planets thin skim of gases that protect us, is not able to handle the pollution from our excessive burning of oil and gas and coal and wood and dung. There are definitely some clues out there if you look for them.