Archive for the ‘World Politics’ Category

Mr. Harper is in heady company.

Friday, January 27th, 2012

It must be the rarefied atmosphere in Davos, so high in the Swiss Alps. It could also be the company of so many of the world’s leaders, political, industrial and academe. With his toupee firmly in place, our Prime Minister is ready to read the riot act to the World Economic Forum. He gently chides the world leaders for their economic bungling.  He tells them that in Canada, we know just what to do. Canada can penalize those who cannot fight back.

Why Mr. Harper chose such a remote forum in which to announce that he would take more money from impoverished seniors, was not clear. He was certainly safe from having enraged Canadian seniors rising up and rendering him into a crushed mass on the floor of that august stage. Not many Canadian seniors can afford the lift fees at Davos at its peak season.

But if you think Canadians back home are puzzled at Mr. Harper’s choice of topics for these world leaders, the world leaders are equally puzzled by him. He has no message of interest to them. He barely gets polite applause.

The Prime Minister and his staff seem to have no clear understanding of what the World Economic Forum in Davos is about. That breaks a cardinal rule for people giving speeches and their writers: you have to know your audience. These people have not come to hear the old conservative economic bromides. They are here to be challenged, to hear new ideas, to see if there are solutions.  They are deeply concerned about the world economic situation and have no interest in the same old conservative ideology.

The Davos participants must be shocked by the threat from Mr. Harper to force through the pipeline to Canada’s British Columbia coast from Alberta.  This twinned pipeline is to take oil-sands crude to ocean tankers for shipment to the Far East.  To threaten to ram this pipeline through the Rockies and native lands to the coast, without proper consideration or precautions, comes as a shock to any caring person.

Mr. Harper needs to look out the window of his Davos hotel suite.  He needs to see the majestic beauty of the  Alps, the challenging ski runs on the Junkerboden and the fact there is a world out there where people care about people, not ideology.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me

Posted in Federal Politics, New, World Politics | Comments Off

Mr. Harper sets the world aright.

Saturday, November 5th, 2011

It is lovely to be in Cannes at this time of year.  The heavy mugginess of summer on the French Riviera has past.  The crowds are sparse between the seasons.  Prime Minister Harper took his wife but we doubt you will find her enjoying the topless beaches.  She will probably be partaking in a cloying spouses’ program while he tells the other world leaders how they should run their countries.

That boy is just work, work, work.

He is hardly a newby after hosting last year’s fiasco in Toronto.  The French police must have used his idea to kettle the protest groups.  They are being kept 30 kilometres away from the people with whom they really want to talk.

He had a very meaningful discussion with President Barack Obama the other day.  The American President wanted to know what that red thing was on his lapel.  Stephen told Barack about poppies and Remembrance Day.

Down to business, Mr. Harper tried to tell his friends in Cannes how to straighten out the Greeks but had to admit that he did not have a clue what else could go wrong there.  He told them that the eurozone needs a tough, oppressive and conservative banking system like Canada and that would solve all their problems.  He explained that he trained as an economist and he should know.

Harper even offered his Bank of Canada guy, Mark Carney, to police world banks and make sure they run tight operations just like Canadian banks.  They jumped at the offer.

What his G20 cohorts in Europe need to understand is that if they want to be an economic zone such as Canada and the United States of America, they have to accept the responsibilities along with the benefits. Even if Harper and Obama do not admit it, there are weak economic areas in America and Canada that are compensated for in the management of the country.  It is obvious that Greece, Southern Italy,Spain and Portugal are never going to be the economic dynamo’s of the eurozone, on the scale of France and Germany.

What they do not understand is that the Greeks should not be expected to endure lengthy and vicious austerity programs until the bailout money is repaid.  That is akin to blaming the inmates for a badly run insane asylum.  The Greeks have every right to be aggrieved.  They are in the mood to tell the myopic eurozone leaders to stuff it.

If the eurozone is going to hold as an economic unit, there have to be cash transfers into those faltering economies on an ongoing basis.  Nobody should expect a payback or even gratitude.  It is reality.

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Copyright 2011 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me

Posted in World Politics | Comments Off