Depression thoughts

Wasn’t it soul-destroying reading the Toronto Star, privately owned as it is and in a privately-regulated industry, singing the praises of continued regulation of our television broadcasting in their article in which it was reported that the CanCon crowd was trying to make us believe that 75% of us really believe that we will have less Canadian choice in our programming if our broadcasting is deregulated. I’d love to see what the number of respondents and the other raw data was for that poll.
Turn on the TV. If you’re worried that the Americans are coming, don’t. They’re already here.
You notice too than when CanCon supporters talk about US programming (never British or Japanese) that the regulations do what Friedman said they would do: benefiting not the public but the company that regulates the industry. Between the CRTC, the companies and the CanCon supporters, they all work together to provide each other with a raison d’être. They want to advance their ridiculous belief that Canadian sovereignty will fall apart if we watch one more episode of On The Buses on Vision TV. The companies that the CRTC purports to regulate go along with this scam and make millions and don’t have to compete with their real rivals in the US.
It’s a scam. What would the Toronto Star would think if someday someone would call for their to be a Canadian newspapers commission that would make sure that newspapers had a certain amount of content? What about sports? Even the hockey section is almost 90% American. And the arts section.
Two important forces support this scam: the fear of capitalism (as opposed to deregulation and the forces of the private sector) and the fear that the Americans are coming.
Every good program ever made since the beginning of time have been produced by the private sector.
Let the police figure out of something is obscene. Get the bureaucrats out of programming and let our companies run themselves like every other company in every other industry: rationally according to what the market demands.
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The Economist just referred to the Al-Kassem brigades as master suicide bombers for the Hamas movement in Palestine. I ask you: how in goodness’ sake do you become a master suicide bomber?
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A depressing fact: the GDP to debt ratio is now 35%. In 1975 it was 15%.
I don’t agree with the Economist’s assessment that the next president will largely have to concentrate in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Israel/Palestine and not make a wholesale shift in the direction of his energies towards Russia and China. I think it’s a false choice and a false dichotomy. There is no reason he will have to beggar on to satisfy the other.
It is urgent that more energy be poured into the Chinese and Russian questions. There should be plenty of room in the agenda for doing that. The Middle Eastern problems should also be dealt with. This is the US after all. It’s not like the President doesn’t have enough advisors and staff to help carry out his policy and agenda. Any president that goes into the next term not thinking about Russia and China as much as he is thinking about the Middle East will probably be beggaring them at least in the end as well. Those two countries, as the Economist itself pointed out, are at least indirectly and in some cases specifically behind the problems that the US has in the Middle East.
For instance, Russia has set up alliances with central Asian countries hostile to the US. China is a block to the Sudanese situation. Russia supplies arms to both Iran and Syria as well as Venezuela.
Ignore the Western Hemisphere at your peril if you’re president of the US. Latin America has to become an important priority as well.
Busy agenda? Yes. That’s what happens when you’re the sole superpower and you’re the president of the US. Get used to it.
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Who’s spinmeister for China now? CTV referred to Tibetan activitsts who were arrested by the police as terrorists, even CTV and CBC insist that it is their journalistic integrity at stake if they call a bus bomber in Tel Aviv or London a terrorist.
Spin is the domain of the likes of Tony Blair or Lee Steinberg. Not that of thugs and gangsters, which is what the Chinese government is. There should be a qualifier every time they get news from the propaganda machine known as the People’s Republic, making it clear that it is indeed propaganda.