World Politics – Page 2 – Babel-on-the-Bay

While the World Burns.

July 6, 2021July 6, 2021 by Peter Lowry

It’s a puzzle that there are so many people who do not care or do not recognize the trouble in which our world struggles. To deny that climate change is happening is ludicrous. To not care is even more serious. There might not be an app for that on their cell phones but caring is a critical step towards possibly alleviating the problems.

Wild fires are destroying the west coast of North America. And those trees are not falling just in the forests. The fires are attacking our towns and homes and businesses. We are just starting to realize the costs of protecting our people.

And the pain is moving across the continent. If you are not being burnt, you are being flooded. The tornado season is extending. The hurricane season is reaching. The long-frozen poles of the earth are melting.

And, oh, what fools we mortals be!

Talk to people and learn. A mother of young children shrugs when asked about her children’s future. “That is their problem,” is the answer. A young person, tripping on some mind-altering potion, tells you “Who cares?” A politician tells you that only smaller government and lower taxes can help. The homeless person cuts off your concern with “Great, but have you got any spare change?”

We have not even begun to penetrate the conscience of many. They are too busy putting food on the table for their family. They have a plane to catch to take them to a new adventure. They are heading to another protest. There is free meatloaf tonight over at the mission. They have business meetings to attend. Projects need to be completed. There is a new movie to see. There is a new app to try on their phone.

And are we paying blackmail to cyber thieves? Are we too busy pulling down the statues of the past? Are we digging at the graves of those who have already returned to dust?

And all the time, people are crying out for newer and better leadership. Leaders who can respond to 100-year events. We’ll do better with the next pandemic?

Oh, will we?

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In the Orthodoxy of the Right.

June 22, 2021June 21, 2021 by Peter Lowry

Have our politicians really dismissed the orthodoxy of the right? Have we realized the dismal future of countries ruled by the cult of American president Ronald Reagan and British prime minister Margaret Thatcher? It comes as a surprise to those of us that lived through the 1980s of Reagan and Thatcher’s reigns that an actor and a chemist could have had the impact they did on economic theory.

Nobody ever accused either leader of deep thinking. Reagan’s departure from the White House was accompanied by his mind dipping deeper into the mists of stages of Alzheimer’s. Thatcher spent her last years as prime minister fending off revolts from within her own political party. And yet their legacies live after them.

Today, Reagan is still an icon for republicans in the U.S.A. They call it Reaganomics. Many still believe that his slashing of taxes while building up the military was the right approach for the times. All he really accomplished was larger deficits

Thatcher was also a militarist but her tax cuts were less effective and she put too much effort in trying to bend U.K. unions to her will.

Where their economics did not work well was in Canada. While their friend Brian Mulroney was prime minister of Canada for the last half of the 1980s, his regime was reviled and decimated in the liberal return under Jean Chrétien in 1993.

But Reaganomics lived on in Canada under Chrétien’s finance minister Paul Martin. Shipping magnate Martin and Chrétien were not friends and the enmity between them sent many mixed messages to Canadians. It was not until Martin got his chance to become prime minister that Canadians could reject him at the polls. It was as though, if you were going to have to conservatives in power, why not opt for the real ones?

Canadians were inflicted with conservative economics for the next twelve years and were offered sunny days again in 2015 by Justin Trudeau and the liberals. They are still waiting for those sunny days to materialize.

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Politicizing the Pandemic.

May 15, 2021May 26, 2021 by Peter Lowry

There is nothing political about the Coronavirus and the pandemic. Each country, in its own manner, has had to deal with the spread of the virus, the sickness and the deaths. Yet it was the politicians, the democratically elected and the dictators, the leaders who showed their stuff. The comparisons were dramatic.

Take China for example, the canary state in our coal mine. The world should have paid more attention to the lock downs, the barriers to travel and the terrible lack of information provided from behind the barricades. Think of the difference if we had understood earlier.

Think of the difference in a country that poses as the heart of democracy such as the United States of America. In the time of the Trump, all we got was denial, ignorance, false info and lethargy. It was an invitation for the deaths of millions. With the arrival of the Biden administration, we saw an America-first attitude for the American-made vaccines.

Great Britain also had locally produced vaccines but also ordered large quantities of other brands in case of production or efficacy problems. That elected leader, so desperately in need of a good barber, did a good job of getting every one to queue up for their shots The Brits are famous for their ability to form an orderly queue.

Canadians, not so much. Our problem was that we had let earlier politicians sell off our vaccine producing company. We had no experienced local supplier. We ordered large quantities from the potential winners—and had no control over their delays in production or export permits.

But Israel also lacked production capabilities. It solved the dilemma by bribing the vaccine supplier—doubling the price. It is too bad Israel’s right-wing leader, who might not last as leader much longer, did not share with his neighbours. It would have helped prevent a war.

The time of the pandemic of covid-19 has become a time of tensions, political unrest and discontent. Change is in the air, everywhere.

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Do we really understand China?

March 27, 2021 by Peter Lowry

They are known to most Canadians as ‘the Two Michaels.’ They have been in prison in China since before the pandemic. Michael Kovrig, a former diplomat, and Michael Spavor, a businessman, were arrested in China just days after the RCMP arrested Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Huawei, in Vancouver on a warrant from U.S. authorities. Many Canadians think we should get tougher on China but if we do, we might get both of the Michaels executed.

It all comes down to the quaint Oriental custom of saving face. During the 1970s and early 1980s an interesting aspect of my job with a computer company was hosting delegations from countries around the world. These delegations came to better understand the large-scale computers we were manufacturing in Mississauga at the time. Many of them were from the Peoples’ Republic of China.

The Chinese usually came in groups of four or five. It did not take long to figure out who was the party cadre and who were the technical experts. The party person was usually the official interpreter despite some of the technical people being quite fluent in English. When the groups were larger, we would often have an additional interpreter from the Canadian government.

And these visits produced millions of dollars in sales—mainly in support of seismic analysis for China’s oil industry. And there was never any direct selling involved. We treated these visits as information exchanges and no sales pressure was used.

As the sales indicated, the technique worked well with the Chinese. I also found that it led to invitations to functions at the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa and when there was an important delegation coming to Toronto.

I remember one time I was at a function in the Royal Bank board room high up in that gold-colored building in downtown Toronto. I was standing looking out a window during a washroom break and the head of the Chinese delegation came over and joined me. He was just as bored with the proceedings as was I. He was quite intrigued as I pointed out the different parts of Toronto around the Hearn Generating Station—with its towering smokestack. He asked about the fact it was not emitting smoke and I explained that it had recently been decommissioned to improve the air quality in the city. He thought that would be a good idea for Beijing. I only mention this because he looked very much like a younger version of Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

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Does Singh know why O’Toole’s nice to him?

February 15, 2021 by Peter Lowry

It might have been the annual event celebrating Saint Valentine, but Jagmeet Singh of the new democrats should be suspicious of all the cards he received from conservative MPs. The rationale for all this lovey-dovey, kuchi-koo business from the conservatives could only be that they need Jagmeet and his NDP caucus to support them if they call for an election in the spring.

The Bloc Québécois have already blown them off. The Bloc are hardly likely to encourage an election when Trudeau and his liberals are riding high. And that would probably include the greens and independent MPs.

The election, that could happen in June, could be a desperate attempt by conservative leader Erin O’Toole to save his neck and that of his party before the liberals get too high in the polls.

It could happen. Was it not Trudeau who did the end-run and ask his friend Narendra Modi, prime minister of India, to facilitate getting some life-saving vaccines from India? After all, when India needs to vaccinate 1.3 billion people, you can always slip 20 million or so doses to your buddy in Canada.

The Serum Institute in India is already licensed to produce a billion doses of the U.K.’s AstraZeneca vaccine, developed in cooperation with Oxford University. They are committed to use half of those billion doses in India and the other half to be supplied to low-income countries without the funds to acquire vaccines. There are two other vaccine producing operations in India, so, technically, the doses sent to Canada could come from these producers.

The only problem is that the AstraZeneca vaccine has yet to be approved in Canada. What counts most though is the needles in arms in time for an election and the end of these lock-downs.

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We are coming back.

January 7, 2021 by Peter Lowry

Yes, we are starting to get the urge to write. It has been a longer hiatus than intended. Today we are just doing a test with one of our favourite commentaries from 2016. I expect the discouragement in writing political commentaries is the short life of many of the comments. Occasionally one has a long life—an excellent example is the following which was written in response to one of our less complimentary comments about the U.K.

While Babel-on-the-Bay was urged to produce a morning line on the Brexit vote, the decision was made that it was far too close to forecast. And it was. Along with the disappointment of the morning after, the in-box contained a 1900-word diatribe on our ‘pompous’ Brexit commentary. Never has 400 or so words of comment produced so much vitriol.

It is freely admitted that the Brexit commentary was far too casually handled and poorly edited. We all need a good editor. And it is also admitted that this ignorant colonial can never get the names of Great Britain, the United Kingdom and its various subjects and components right but who cares that much? Canadians learn all that stuff in grade school and quickly forget about it. You have to also swear allegiance to the Queen when you join the Canadian military but you forget about it after you leave.

We were also accused of taking liberties in using the royal ‘we.’ In years of teaching writing to business people, the point was always made that only a child writing to Mommy from camp starts sentences with ‘I.’ The point is that Mommy cares about you; people receiving a business letter from you do not. If you write about what others care about, you will get their attention.

Obviously, we did that with this gentleman. He told us he was annoyed as hell. He disagreed with our opinion. Oddly enough, that is also our objective. While reasonably confident in our opinion, we do like to receive comment from readers to keep us on our toes. This gentleman showed us how angry older men can get. He wanted to put a trapdoor under our toes and a noose around our neck.

He sees corporatism as the problem and the neoliberalism of the politicians as the support structure that maintains the corporatism. A former Brit, he sees his adopted country of Canada as being ruled by foreign corporations and decries our politicians’ desire for mounting numbers of free trade pacts. He just does not recognize that the problem is more about political laziness and carelessness than plotting.

The writer sees Babel-on-the-Bay’s ‘lordly’ take on Brexit and the Brits as an example of our failure to understand that everything was going down the drain for the average person in the UK. Frankly we also read a lot of bigotry and ignorance in the scenario. The entire fiasco could not have been better directed by England’s famed Boulting Brothers.

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UK Teeters at the Precipice.

December 14, 2020 by Peter Lowry

It seems like a long time since the United Kingdom has had any real leadership. This Brexit business is a dog’s breakfast. Every subsequent leadership aspirant has made a bigger mess of it. Now we are down to the wire with that pathetic guy who looks like he chops at his own hair with the garden clippers. He is called Boris. If it was not for the hair, he would be boring.

If anyone ever needed a Boswell, it is this particular Johnson. He thinks of himself as a stuntman rather than a prime minister. He is an allegory of a politician rather than a real one. He is hardly a popular populist.

And he has a short time left to exit the EU with his pants. Johnson plays with fire as he tries to play partner to the Union while accepting none of the responsibilities. He thinks he can fish in their pond but nobody can fish in his pond. He has never heard of ‘quid pro quo.’

In the UK, they call it a hard Brexit. It is what the Brits deserve for their bigoted, irresponsible, close-minded, ‘I’m alright Jack’ vote to leave the European Union. It is hardly what the Scots and Northern Irish had bargained for and they will probably jump from the U.K. back to the EU at their earliest opportunity.

It is a sad ending to the glories of the once-great British Empire. It must have been for old times sake that Canada has signed a trade deal with the U.K. It just shows how important it was that we forgot to pass it into law before parliament broke for the Christmas holidays recess. (I guess we will get around to making it official sometime next year.)

But it is embarrassing that we have a better considered deal with the rest of Europe than we have with the U.K. Oh well, we are still part of the old Commonwealth you know.

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Pondering the politics of the potty.

December 13, 2020 by Peter Lowry

There are issues that people will step up to and there are issues that cause them to smirk and back away. I was reading a very intelligent story the other day about the politics of the toilet and the need for our politicians to grow backbones. To quote a current television commercial about toilet paper: “Everybody does it.” And our politicians have to recognize it.

But it happens at the most elemental level of politics that people are unwilling to face the issue. I took a problem to my city’s mayor over two years ago and it still has not been fixed. I worked hard to get that guy elected ten years ago and he is in the middle of his third term in the mayor’s chair. And yet, he cannot handle the need for public toilets in a city of around 150,000 and summer visitors in the tens of thousands.

I have checked out venues around the world for people to meet, to congregate, to be entertained and to enjoy food and I have always walked away from facilities with inadequate or inconvenient washroom facilities for the numbers expected. It is part of looking after your guests.

Well, I can tell you now: Do not come to Barrie, Ontario if you cannot say no to your basic human need to go to the toilet.

I told the mayor that my barber was frequently requested to provide toilet facilities to desperate people from across the street at the GO Train terminus. Since there are no Go Train employees working in that location, they think that toilets are unnecessary. The provincially run commuter train and bus service expects people to wait for trains and busses but there are no toilets at that terminal. They have a ghost station on the property, the historic Allandale Station, that cost the citizens of Barrie considerable money to restore, but nobody has ever thought to restore its old washrooms or use it for any other purpose.

Frankly, the mayor and council in Barrie have shown no backbone at all. They pretend they do not pee or poop like anybody else!

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Blame stupidity and short-sightedness.

November 28, 2020 by Peter Lowry

We used to have some control in Canada about who bought and sold our industry. If you are smart enough to realize that you might be desperate for a vaccine to cure a new coronavirus some day. You would have kept Connaught Laboratories in Toronto working on vaccines and other products such as insulin, for Canadians and world markets. As it is, we are waiting for initial shipments of covid-19 vaccines from companies in the U.S. and Britain.

A week ago, conservative health critic MP Michelle Rempel Garner criticized the Trudeau government saying “This is gross incompetence that’s going to cost Canadians their lives and their jobs.”

The only problem with this complaint was that Connaught Laboratory and it’s vaccine production capabilities were sold to a French company under a privatization program initiated by the conservative government of Brian Mulroney in the 1980s. Production of insulin and other products of Connaught were then shifted to Europe. That leaves two European companies and one American company producing insulin that was invented in Canada.

Connaught Laboratories was created by a famous Canadian, Dr. John G. Fitzgerald. It was originally opened to produce antitoxin for diphtheria and then gained more notoriety producing Banting and Best’s insulin. Fitzgerald eventually sold a successful Connaught to the University of Toronto for one dollar. The university took the gift ,that was given to them in good faith, and later sold it to the Canadian government for $29 million.

In addition to not having vaccine production ready for the covid-19 pandemic, Canada is hardly first in line for the vaccines now being produced in the United States and Great Britain.

On a personal note, I remember buying insulin for my diabetic son before the Mulroney sale of the former Connaught Labs. Two vials lasted him almost a month and cost about $10 each. Today, American-made insulin is costing him $30 per vial. He figures he cannot complain. If he was in the United States, he could be charged closer to $300 per vial.

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Searching for the real Canada.

November 18, 2020 by Peter Lowry

There is a Canada out there somewhere that we want to build on. It is a Canada led by those who can really lead. It is a Canada created willingly by our collective inspiration. It is a Canada built on equality and freedoms.

It is a country that inspires. It is leadership that you trust. It rejects the elitism and naiveté of a Justin Trudeau. It laughs at the conservative sham of Erin O’Toole, the desperate search for rationale of the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh and the foolishness of the Bloc’s Yves-François Blanchet. Real leaders mirror the aspirations of their followers. They present a path that we can follow.

It is not a country that ties itself to the concerns of 150 years ago. It is a country that concerns itself with a strong future. At the present, we have no leadership that can handle the changes that are needed. We are locked in the sham of royalty. We are appointing elites to positions of power. We are borrowing our security from the vagaries of the United States of America. We are living a fiction.

Instead of our industry working for us, it wants to reign over us. We sell it off to the highest bidder and think the wealth gained gives us strength. We are bought and paid for by the one per cent—the self-absorbed, who suck our blood, who seek to dictate an unequal future.

Instead of realizing a collective future, we are building walls between urban and rural. We are divided on religions, separated by skin colour, labelled by education, clinging to possessions, marked by professions, separating on languages, in wonder of wealth and defining ourselves by east and west.

Can we not understand that just being Canadian is a gift of immeasurable proportion? Tell that to the downtrodden of Africa. Tell that to the war-torn of the Middle East. Tell that to those torn by the religious turmoil of the subcontinent. Tell that to the down-trodden masses of Asia.

Yes, we need to bring our own house to order before we can address the rest of the world. The solutions are not in political ideology. They are in our humanity.

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