Author Archives: Phil Paine

FILMSJANUARY 2025

(Mac­Naughton 1975) Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail
(Win­ner 1988) Appoint­ment with Death
(Leifer 2019) Plebs: Ep.1 ― The Orgy
(Jones 1979) Mon­ty Python’s Life of Brian
(Delacroix 1952) Le rossig­nol et les cloches
(Hall 1941) Here Comes Mr. Jordan
(Lewin 1959) Jour­ney to the Cen­ter of the Earth
(Teuschl 2017) High­way to the Arc­tic [High­way zum Polarmeer: Kanadas Eisstraßen]

First-time listening for JANUARY 2025

26818. (Irv­ing Berlin) “Putin’ On the Ritz”
Grosse Point Blank Soundtrack:
. . . . 26819. (Vio­lent Femmes) “Blis­ter in the Sun”
. . . . [781] (Clash) “Rudie Can’t Fail”
. . . . 26820. (Eng­lish Beat) “Mir­ror in the Bathroom”
. . . . [14894] (David Bowie & Queen) “Under Pressure”
. . . . 26821. (John­ny Nash) “I Can See Clear­ly Now”
. . . . 26822. (Guns N’ Ros­es) “Live & Let Die”
. . . . 26823. (Faith No More) “We Care a Lot”
. . . . 26824. (Spe­cials) “Pres­sure Drop”
. . . . 26825. (Jam) “Absolute Beginners”
. . . . 26826. (Clash) “Armagideon Time”
. . . . 26827. (Fab­u­losos Cadil­lacs) “El Matador”
. . . . 26828. (Pete Town­shend) “Let My Love Open the Door” [E. Cola mix]
. . . . 26829. (Vio­lent Femmes) “Blis­ter 2000”
26830. (Gérard Bar­beau) “La mer”
26831. (Gérard Bar­beau) “Vil­lanelle”
26832. (Gérard Bar­beau) “Séré­nade”
26833. (Gérard Bar­beau) “Maman”
26834. (Gérard Bar­beau) “Sainte nuit”
26835. (Gérard Bar­beau) “Adeste fideles”
26836. (Gérard Bar­beau) “Ave Maria”
26837. (Gérard Bar­beau) “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling”
26838. (Gérard Bar­beau) “Tristesse [Tout est fini]”

READINGJANUARY 2025

25358. (Allen Hodges Lind­ley-French) Future War and the Defence of Europe
25359. (Jared Yates Sex­ton) The Mid­night King­dom ― A His­to­ry of Pow­er, Para­noia, and the Coming 
. . . . . Crisis
25360. (Magdeli­na Kitano­va) Youth Polit­i­cal Par­tic­i­pa­tion in the EU: Evi­dence from a Cross-national 
. . . . . Analy­sis [arti­cle]
25361. (T. Man­nar­i­ni, M. Legit­ti­mo & C. Talò) Deter­mi­nants of Social and Polit­i­cal Participation 
. . . . . Among Youth [arti­cle]
25362. (Ted Antho­ny) Chas­ing the Ris­ing Sun ― The Jour­ney of an Amer­i­can Song 
25363. (Clif­ford C. Richey) Ancient Fish Depic­tions [arti­cle]
25364. (Anne Apple­baum) Autoc­ra­cy, Inc. ― The Dic­ta­tors Who Want to Run the World
25365. (Agniesz­ka Szym­czak) Qumayrah Val­ley, North­ern Haj­jar Moun­tains, Oman: Late Islam­ic Period 
. . . . . Remains in the Archae­o­log­i­cal Record [arti­cle]
25366. (Hen­ry A. Giroux) Democracy’s Promise and Education’s Chal­lenge [arti­cle]
25366. (Christi­na Sun­ley) The Trick­ing of Freya
25367. (Elle Reeve) Black Pill ― How I Wit­nessed the Dark Cor­ners of the Inter­net Come to Life, 
. . . . . Poi­son Soci­ety, and Cap­ture Amer­i­can Politics

Churches Should Pay to House the Homeless

It’s esti­mat­ed that church­es in Cana­da own approx­i­mate­ly $26,406,700,000 in land and build­ings that they pay lit­tle or no tax­es on. In 2018 alone, they were exempt­ed from $881,838,422 in munic­i­pal tax­es, and that is a typ­i­cal year­ly fig­ure [source: Cen­tre for Inquiry Cana­da report for 2021]. In order to main­tain their ridicu­lous priv­i­leged sta­tus, every church should be required to pay for the hous­ing and care for an appro­pri­ate num­ber of home­less peo­ple —- and this should be car­ried out by sec­u­lar offi­cials so that they don’t use this as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to impose their reli­gion on help­less peo­ple. This is sim­ple jus­tice. Any reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion that oppos­es such a mea­sure would only reveal that their reli­gion is pho­ny, and that their oper­a­tions are a scam. If they do not agree to this, they should be treat­ed as the com­mer­cial enter­pris­es that they real­ly are.

Image of the Month — JANUARY 2025

FILMSDECEMBER 2024

(Kauf­man 1978) Inva­sion of the Body Snatchers
(Hoop­er 1986) Invaders from Mars
(Young 1956) Zarak
(Lan­dis 1980) The Blues Brothers
(Capra 1946) It’s a Won­der­ful Life
(Hitch­cock 1963) The Birds
(Ian­nuc­ci 2017) The Death of Stalin
(Ches­lick 2022) Hun­dreds of Beavers
(Pow­ell 1941) The 49th Parallel

First-time listening for December 2024

26800. (Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach) Can­ta­ta #109 “Ich glaube, lieber Herr, hilf meinem Unglauben”, bwv.109
26801. (Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach) Can­ta­ta #110 “Unser Mund sei voll Lachens”, bwv.110
26802. (Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach) Can­ta­ta #111 “Was mein Gott will, das g’scheh allzeit“, bwv.111
26803. (Arro­gant Worms) Gift Wrapped
26804. (Swin­dle) Long Live Jazz
26805. (Black­pink) The Album
26806. (Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach) Can­ta­ta #112 “Der Herr ist mein getreuer Hirt”, bwv.112
Read more »

READINGDECEMBER 2024

25347. (Elwin W. Midgett) An Account­ing Primer
25348. (Jared Yates Sex­ton) Amer­i­can Rule ― How a Nation Con­quered the World
25349. (David Gilmartin) Towards a Glob­al His­to­ry of Vot­ing: Sov­er­eign­ty, the Dif­fu­sion of 
. . . . . Ideas, and the Enchant­ed Indi­vid­ual [arti­cle]
25350. (Rick Mer­cer) Rick Mer­cer Report ― The Paper­back Book
25351. (Fil­ip­po Zim­maro, et al) Emer­gence of Coop­er­a­tion in the One-shot Prisoner’s Dilemma 
. . . . . through Dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and Samar­i­tan AIs [arti­cle]
Read more »

On the Death of Jimmy Carter

I’m a Cana­di­an. You know, from that coun­try just to the north of the U.S. which Don­ald Trump has been loud­ly threat­en­ing and snig­ger­ing at. The U.S. has had a lot of Pres­i­dents in my life­time, all of whom Cana­di­ans have had to deal with. It has been a bumpy ride. One of them, Jim­my Carter, died today, at the age of 100. Most Cana­di­ans have formed a good opin­ion of Carter.

But when I trav­elled in the U.S. in the 1980s, I was shocked by the way peo­ple talked con­temp­tu­ous­ly about Jim­my Carter. Oh, how they sneered at him! I couldn’t under­stand it. Back in 1952, an exper­i­men­tal nuclear reac­tor in Cana­da suf­fered a dan­ger­ous melt­down. This was very ear­ly in the devel­op­ment of nuclear pow­er, and it was in fact the first pub­licly known nuclear acci­dent. Cana­da asked for help from the small num­ber of experts in the field to deal with it. Young Jim­my Carter was then a U.S. Navy lieu­tenant who was work­ing on a nuclear sub­ma­rine project in Sch­enec­tady, N.Y., not too far away. Carter took a team up to Chalk Riv­er, Ontario to help the men shut­ting down the reac­tor. This was an incred­i­bly dan­ger­ous job that required him and oth­ers to be low­ered into the reac­tor room on a rope and turn bolts while being bom­bard­ed with dead­ly radi­a­tion —- a task that had to be per­formed in less than 90 sec­onds for each turn. Carter was warned that he might nev­er have chil­dren from the expo­sure. But he was a brave young man.

Chalk Riv­er Nuclear Reactor

It aston­ished me that there was so much hos­til­i­ty toward a Pres­i­dent who had unflinch­ing­ly cham­pi­oned human rights and democ­ra­cy — but who was dri­ven out of office by oil prices which he had no con­trol over, and a hostage cri­sis that Ronald Rea­gan had secret­ly paid off the Ira­ni­ans to keep going until he could get into office. The trea­so­nous Rea­gan deal was well-known to any­one who cared to know. Final­ly, the rea­son dawned on me. Carter was gen­uine­ly a coura­geous man, and there’s noth­ing Amer­i­cans hate more than courage. They pre­fer infan­tile macho pos­tur­ing. Carter was an intel­li­gent man with an under­stand­ing of sci­ence. Amer­i­cans REALLY hate that. Carter was prin­ci­pled and hon­est. Amer­i­cans avoid such peo­ple like the plague. Carter was com­mit­ted to human rights. That’s anoth­er no-no for Amer­i­cans. Carter had real-world mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence and under­stood the mil­i­tary. Amer­i­cans much pre­fer frauds like Rea­gan, who fought WW2 from the Hol­ly­wood Can­teen, or, in our time, Pres­i­dent Bone­spurs. Carter was a sin­cere Chris­t­ian, attempt­ing through­out his life to fol­low the best teach­ings of Jesus. That’s some­thing Amer­i­cans also despise — they pre­fer a reli­gion of greed, cru­el­ty and pet­ty spite. Carter was the gen­uine arti­cle, a real man —- and Amer­i­cans hate that more than any­thing on Earth. They will time and again pre­fer a pho­ny, a fraud, a weasel, or a con-artist.

This was my harsh assess­ment at the time, and I’m afraid that the decades that fol­lowed more than con­firmed my opinion.

The Price of Eggs Here and There

[pho­to — 4H Ontario]

I worked on a cou­ple of chick­en farms when I was a teenag­er, so I’ve always kept an eye on the busi­ness. Egg prices have gone up some­what in Cana­da, but not even close to the price ris­es in the U.S. over the same peri­od. They are 16.5% high­er now than they were one year ago — and there is no short­age of them. Canada’s eggs are most­ly pro­duced by fam­i­ly oper­a­tions, while the U.S. is dom­i­nat­ed by large cor­po­ra­tions. The aver­age egg farm in Cana­da has about 25,000 lay­ing hens, while the aver­age “farm” in the U.S. has about two mil­lion. In Cana­da, avian flu has affect­ed %6 of pro­duc­tion, which is less than half of the dis­ease rate in the U.S., most­ly because of the absence of giant cor­po­rate fac­to­ry “farms.” Amer­i­cans pay an arm and a leg for an egg. Cal-Maine Foods is the largest pro­duc­er and dis­trib­u­tor of shell eggs in the U.S., with a total flock of about 42 mil­lion lay­ers. It is trad­ed on the Nas­daq, and has seen its share price soar %45 over the past year. As a rule, things tend to cost more in Cana­da than in the U.S., because the coun­try is huge and thin­ly pop­u­lat­ed, with greater ship­ping dis­tances and high­er costs, so the fact that we aren’t suf­fer­ing short­ages or ridicu­lous price hikes looks to me to have a dif­fer­ent expla­na­tion. I see it as a dif­fer­ence between unchecked cor­po­rate greed and inef­fi­cien­cy in the U.S, com­pared to a pro­duc­er-to-cus­tomer ori­ent­ed mar­ket here. The U.S. agri­cul­tur­al sys­tem now much more close­ly resem­bles the col­lec­tivist sys­tem of the old Sovi­et Union than it does any­thing like a “free mar­ket.’ The real eco­nom­ic sys­tem that dom­i­nates the U.S, is best described as “Cor­po­rate Com­mu­nism.” With Trump in the White House, you can expect it to go Full Stalin.