Re: OT - yet another OT thread

LX-i wrote: 
James J. Gavan wrote:

<snip>

Jeepers ! I'll ignore the previous, your optimism about EVENTUALLY finding WMDs and cracks at tree-huggers and environmentalists. Let's just concentrate on the following.

Haven't seen it reported yet, but there have to be some Canucks taking up 'Chinese as a Second Language'. The PRC are already aggressively negotiating with us on two contracts, shipping the stuff from the north, down below Edmonton and then piped across to the western coast, where it can be loaded into Chinese junks ! 


Free enterprise and capitalism in its purest form - ain't it great!  :)

I don't spend endless hours researching politics, foreign policy, environmentalism or even the oil patch. Most I pick up from a casual read of the daily paper. First part that gets dumped on the floor is the Sports Section - I couldn't care less ! (Besides which CBC has been putting on some excellent movies in lieu of hockey as a result of the players' strike).

As to the oil-patch, being based in an oil-town, naturally it gets a lot of coverage. But I'll be damned if I'm going to read that assiduously from cover to cover in the Business Section. My eye glances over interesting topic titles, sometimes accompanied by meaningful graphs and statistics - and it is from that, that I quote.

In your obliviousness, you don't appear to be getting the message I was illustrating above, although I have referred to it before. Roughly two weeks back, an article from an Indian correspondent (East Indian to you), conveyed that India was starting to feel its muscles which led him to the tack that a triumvirate could be formed from modern Russia, India and China. Did the following not show up as even a small item on US TV coverage - lo and behold about some five days after his article was published, the BBC showed shots of the Indian and Chinese PMs meeting in India, to establish an Asian economic pact. So that's Step 1. Step 2 - that ex-KGB guy in Moscow has to be interested in becoming a partner, rather like he is trying to hone the Russian image in the Middle East at the moment. Our comrades still feel bruised from the failure of Soviet Communism to retain its threat as a world power.

Think of the implications of such a tripartite pact on US foreign policy. Not only the Chinese are direct competitors thirsting for oil, but the newcomer is also India.

Sure the Chinese are happily entering the capitalist game to pick up oil wherever they can. Me, I don't mind either. Probably doesn't even warrant a footnote in your news, but you, (the political entity called the U.S.A.), have screwed us for so long over lumber, wheat and BSE (mad cow disease - one miserable cow back in 2003), that I personally welcome an alternative buyer for our oil.

NAFTA - Hah ! Good job I'm not Canadian PM. This is how I would play it. "OK, Uncle Sam, want to trade with us. Let's have a bi-annual meet, topics on the table - (a) You want our oil and (b) what about our wheat, lumber and beef that you manage to keep out - even when we score points in the WTO. (c) Your President wants Canadian beef back in, as does the USDA, and your meat packers who are suffering from the shortfall - all clipped by some short-sighted and parochial bunch called R-CALF in Montana.

Trade-wise, regrettably, I find myself becoming anti-American. Just think if a fair percentage of Canucks arrived at the same thought process.

PS: One of those tidbits from the paper to-day. Some financial investor has just bought some 10% of Wendy's stock, (which now includes the Canadian Tim Hortons doughnut/coffeeshops). The buyer, as a result of owning 10%, wants a say in how Wendys will be run - stay tuned, the outcome might be interesting.

Jimmy
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