For the next three weeks, I’ll be at my friends, Steve and Ruta Muhlberg­er, mind­ing their farm while they’re away. A pleas­ant atmos­phere, and not much work involved, as there are only three hors­es, two dogs and some cats to care for, nowa­days. And the fields are so lush from rain that the hors­es can pret­ty much fend for them­selves. There is also an infi­nite sup­ply of blue­ber­ries and rasp­ber­ries, unless the bears vac­u­um them up before I can pick them. Fresh berries, fresh eggs, milk straight from the cow. Sun­light, star­ry skies, crisp clean air. Boy, do I ever need a dose of this stuff. I have a small amount of con­trac­tu­al work to do, while I’m here, but for the most part I’ll be work­ing on my own stuff ― a rare and blessed lux­u­ry. Read more »

Cana­di­ans are notic­ing a dra­mat­ic rise in food prices. The price of rice has dou­bled in a few months, and prod­ucts made of wheat are about fifty per­cent more expen­sive. I live on a very tight bud­get, so it affects me direct­ly. Not as direct­ly, of course, as the mil­lions in unluck­i­er coun­tries who will expe­ri­ence food shortages.

My par­tic­u­lar sur­vival strat­e­gy depends on cir­cum­vent­ing glob­al state-cor­po­rate agribusi­ness. Instead of serv­ing my stews, chilis, and veg­eta­bles on rice, I am reg­u­lar­ly buy­ing njeera (or injera, enji­ra, etc.) at the local Ethiopian/Somali shops. There are sev­er­al bak­eries in Toron­to that pro­duce the deli­cious East African sta­ple food, which, since it lies out­side of the con­trol of glob­al agri­cul­tur­al col­lec­tivism, has not sig­nif­i­cant­ly risen in price. Not only does it taste delight­ful, but it is high­ly nutri­tious. And the dish­es I put on the njeera? They are made, as much as I can man­age, from sea­son­al local pro­duce. Giv­en a choice between pay­ing mon­ey to an hon­est Cana­di­an farmer and pay­ing mon­ey to some loath­some glob­al gang­ster who hires death squads to ter­ror­ize serfs, I know what choice is both moral and patri­ot­ic. Read more »

In a speech, today, Canada’s Prime Min­is­ter, Stephen Harp­er out­lined his plan to force our coun­try down the same path to bank­rupt­cy and self-destruc­tion that the Unit­ed States has relent­less­ly pur­sued over the last gen­er­a­tion. It’s first pur­pose is to destroy our domes­tic indus­try (espe­cial­ly in Ontario) and reduce us to abject sub­mis­sion to “Big Ener­gy”, the glob­al com­mu­nism of oil sheiks, dic­ta­tors and multi­na­tion­al gang­sters. It’s sec­ondary pur­pose is to esca­late eco­nom­i­cal­ly par­a­lyz­ing mil­i­tary spend­ing, and make us even more avail­able as mer­ce­nary canon fod­der to our glob­al mas­ters. Canada’s indus­tri­al base is rapid­ly dis­in­te­grat­ing. Just today, the clo­sure of anoth­er major indus­tri­al facil­i­ty in Ontario was announced. Canada’s cur­rent­ly “strong” econ­o­my is being propped up by oil and gas pro­duc­tion, and pros­per­i­ty is con­fined to the exportable resource regions. Oil, gas, min­ing. The Con­ser­v­a­tive regime is forc­ing us back into the pathet­ic “hew­ers of wood and draw­ers of water” sta­tus that it took us a cen­tu­ry of strug­gle to free our­selves from. The decade of bal­anced bud­gets and sur­plus­es gen­er­at­ed by Lib­er­al gov­ern­ments has been can­celed out ― pil­laged by the Con­ser­v­a­tive regime ― and we will soon be plung­ing into debt. This is the result of import­ing the obnox­ious, free­dom-hat­ing Con­ser­v­a­tive ide­ol­o­gy that has crip­pled and dis­hon­oured the Unit­ed States ― an ide­ol­o­gy that would far more accu­rate­ly be named “Neo-Com­mu­nism”. Read more »

Those Cana­di­ans who imag­ine that Canada’s role in glob­al pol­i­tics is both impor­tant and suc­cess­ful need to have some of their bal­loons punctured.

Our politi­cians are con­stant­ly repeat­ing to us how much the world admires us for our “peace keep­ing tra­di­tion”, and how impor­tant our inter­na­tion­al com­mit­ments are. The truth is that almost nobody out­side of Cana­da has heard about them, and even few­er care. I once checked out a pub­lished his­to­ry of U.N. peace­keep­ing. It con­tained no ref­er­ence to the activ­i­ties of any Cana­di­an forces at all. Out­side of Cana­da, I have nev­er encoun­tered any press or per­son­al dis­cus­sion by any­one about Canada’s sup­pos­ed­ly famous peace-keep­ing activ­i­ties, or of any Cana­di­an mil­i­tary actions or com­mit­ments. Even in coun­tries where we are, in fact, doing peace­keep­ing work, only the blue U.N. uni­forms are rec­og­nized by the local bel­liger­ents, and they don’t care whether we are Cana­di­ans or Mar­tians. Far from car­ing about what Cana­da does on the glob­al mil­i­tary scene, few peo­ple out­side of Cana­da know that we have an army at all. If we are fight­ing any­where near Amer­i­cans, it is tak­en for grant­ed that we are Amer­i­cans, or that, if we are not, the dis­tinc­tion is of no impor­tance. I hate to break it to misty-eyed fans of our glo­ri­ous mil­i­tary, but this is espe­cial­ly true in Afghanistan, where we are engaged in our largest mil­i­tary project since the Kore­an War. Read more »

There is a con­sis­tent pat­tern, among those who describe soci­eties and economies, past and present, to reverse cause and effect in sig­nif­i­cant events. I would like to dub this the Emper­or Josef Wrote Don Gio­van­ni Syn­drome. This is the ten­den­cy to shift atten­tion from those who cre­ate to those who rule, some­times blunt­ly, some­times sub­tly, until one has the vague impres­sion that those who rule are the ones who create.

This, of course, begins at the crud­est lev­el when his­to­ri­ans casu­al­ly assert that some­thing that hap­pened to come into exis­tence dur­ing the reign of a king, or an emper­or, or a pharaoh was “made” by them or “built” by them. The his­to­ri­an may retreat to the excuse that this is a con­ven­tion­al form, under­stood by all to mean its oppo­site, but this leaves unex­plained why there should be any need to have a for­mu­la­ic phras­ing so mis­lead­ing and per­verse. In fact, it is usu­al­ly easy enough to tell from the con­text that the author does not real­ly con­tra­dict or qual­i­fy, in his mind, the con­ven­tion­al phrase, and real­ly does believe that a ruler is the cre­ative force, in every sense, behind what­ev­er admirable achieve­ments hap­pen to be known from his reign. The more dis­tant the events are in time, the more this pre­vails. No his­to­ri­an can get away with claim­ing that the Emper­or Joseph II was the com­pos­er of Don Gio­van­ni, but that is because the events are recent, and approach­ing the time when com­posers were begin­ning to be be per­ceived as impor­tant peo­ple. How­ev­er, those who know Mozart know that it was a close call. He was a celebri­ty as a child, because of his pre­coc­i­ty, but any­one who under­stands the era knows that the aris­toc­ra­cy of the Aus­tro-Hun­gar­i­an empire thought of him as noth­ing more impor­tant than a ser­vant, and when he left their brief atten­tion span, he died in pover­ty. His body van­ished into an anony­mous pauper’s grave. If his rep­u­ta­tion had not been relent­less­ly cham­pi­oned by musi­cians who knew him, his named would have been for­got­ten. Read more »