I smell Stephen Harper in the kitchen with John Manley boiling 33,100,000 frogs.

Harper's Legacy: CNOOC- Nexen

We have been so conditioned to expect changes in four year political cycles, that we don't realise  we have a disability: seeing the long term pattern beyond 2015.

The Chinese, of course, don't work that way. Unlike Harper they have an energy strategy and its national oil companies spearhead that party-directed strategy. And unlike Canada’s witless Tories they also think 50 to 100 years down the road. As disciples of Sun Tzu, they typically prefer doing business with short-term fools.

Chairman Harper's Weakness

Recklessly blind to ruthless aims of China's state-owned firms, PM treats them as any free market investors.

By Andrew Nikiforuk, 13 Nov 2012, TheTyee.ca

The years 2020 to 2025 is nearly beyond everyone's thinking at this point. To give Harper his due, not to mention the influence of Tom Flanagan's Calgary School and the American Political model, he has considered this modern human flaw. For several decades he very carefully micro-managed his path to power; from the Citizens Coalition, to the Reform Party to the new Conservative Party of Canada. Like his friend Rob Ford, he has a passionate dislike for opposition who represent a majority of Canadians, and rely on voter apathy to form governments and an unwavering determination to reverse Canada's global image of "honest broker".

Harper is at least astute enough to have seen his good fortune in having avoided the worst of the financial disaster of 2008 and the survivability of the Canadian economy. This was an inspiration to be bold and diversify our need to trade our natural resources and services with other Economic zones especially the emerging economic and political powers. Since 2009 he has been courting China, India and Brazil and signing trade deals with smaller countries such as Honduras, Panama, Columbia, etc.
The current American political model is a shambles and the Euro Zone is even worse. It seems like our only viable partner is China and the energy it is going to require in the next fifteen years. But we are seeing what only Harper wants us to see in this CNOOC- Nexen deal which is very little, and even he is unclear what it means in the future. It should be interesting to see the results of China's 18th Party Congress and its new political model.

On a Friday afternoon, Dec. 7th, Harper held a press conference and announced his approval of the deal and in the statement said "These were difficult decisions and there will be more difficult decisions in the future,” referring to the overwhelming resistance to the lack of information released. Also that the terms of the new FIPA legislation will be available soon. We will need this to learn what he means by "more difficult decisions", also "net benefit" and "exceptional circumstances" that will apply to any further major Canadian business buy-outs by foreign interests. Who decides? Harper, or an informed democracy?

Kreativ Blogger Award

I am pleased to have been nominated for this Kreativ Blogger Award by Janet Koops from http://postcardfiction.com/. She has such a unique dexterity with words that her writing is insightful and reflective using so few of them. I am envious.

The rules for the Kreativ Blogger Award include:
• Display the award image on your blog.
• Acknowledge the nominator.
• List ten things about yourself that readers probably don’t know.

Pass the award along by nominating at least six other blogs you enjoy reading. Although it’s a little bit “chain letter”ish in that regard, it is a nice way to show others you appreciate and enjoy their dedicated words.

So, here are ten things you may not know about me 
1. I was born in a snow bank. Well, not actually but I was born in Canada where there used to be snow banks.

2. When I first got a guitar to impress the girls, I learned by ear the bass lick from Peter Gunn – very sexy!

3. When I was in high school, I was on the swim team in my skimpy speedos. Girls came to watch our practise.

4. Also when I was in high school, I had a reputation amongst the girls in other schools that they scored with me – totally untrue! I was a virgin until I was 19.

5. I used to be shy.

6. I have developed platonic relationships with trees.

7. I have a very special tree that adopted me.

8. I am darthcricket.

9. I have knac for being a pest.

10. My life's work is to work out "Toccata & Blues in Em".

My personal ‘best of’ blogs are:
Kai Nagata 
bored but not broken 
Postcard Fiction 
Murray Dobbin
James Laxer 
Hogtown Scribble & Daub

The Angus Effect

My daily reading consists of having several books on the go, one for assembling information that I intend to morph in the future, one to search for a particular language that will metamorphosize this information into something relatively coherent, and one to give my mind a breath of fresh humour that clears out the guck that can accumulate in the corners.

For example, I am working on a book, a photo-journal, titled From the Perspective of a Tree. I have photographed many leafy characters that, as individuals, also have a voice and something to say – thus one book to inform me of their message. At present I am reading Gaia: an Atlas of Planet Management.

I know what I have to say, and I think I know what they, the trees in this case, have to say, but the problem is in communication and the translation – therefore, at the moment, I’m reading primarily, North American Indian Reader, as what’s left of their language is far closer to the source I’m looking for than the mind-set that we invaded with 500 years ago.

So you can see that I require a mental disk cleaner and a defrag to keep the synapses in good firing order, and for this I require humourous reading. In this case I will tell you about two books that I have just finished by Terry Fallis, his first novel, The Best Laid Plans, and the second, The High Road, so much so that I have suspended all my reading just to absorb and laugh at a superbly accurate political satire which is only the surface delivery of a very crucial message for our current crises - the disease in our political and corporate institutions.

Terry Fallis doesn’t rely on cynical, political satire as fodder for the publishing industry, but more important here is a very strong, clear and urgent message to a public that is resisting to be dumbed down. I will quote from The High Road:

*Chapter two: (Lindsay, Daniel’s girlfriend) “Was it different working with Angus?”

(Daniel, Angus’ EA in the first election) “Completely different. He’s unlike any politician I’ve ever known. He has more common sense than any politician that I’ve ever known. He doesn’t care what people think. He seems congenitally programmed to do what’s right even if it costs him support. And he’s as honest as they come. He refused to play the political game. Instead, he changed the rules. And he made it work. One man against a powerful political system more than a century in the making. There are time-honoured forces at play on the Hill that Angus simply defied. One man.”

And in the last chapter:

“(Angus to his Prime Minister) Yet you sacrificed your Finance Minister and delayed the tax cuts. Why?” asked Angus.”

“In the silence and dark of night, while the city slept, I simply asked myself the  one question that seems to have guided your foray into public life. ‘What is right for the country?’ It won’t be always so easy to answer that question, but in this case, it was quite straightforward, as you know,” explained the Prime Minister.

“Aye, the course was clear, sir. I commend your decision,” replied Angus.

The standard response to any proposal of this belief, fictional or otherwise, is ‘Yes, but it takes political will!’, in other words, ‘not bloody likely’ which is purely lazy thinking and a just plain dumb response.

What I have learned from Terry Fallis’ Angus is that simply takes ‘personal will’ so we don’t have to wait for someone else to kick this donkey in the butt because we can more readily kick our own butt, saving the time and expense of going to the farm if you are rural voter, or going to the zoo if you are an urban voter.

I highly recommend this humour-coated, political meds to put right whatever ails you or to reconnect your addled brains.

*Quotes generously permitted by the Author, Terry Fallis

“Making the Scene” - A Beatnik Revival

You are invited to join the action and be the ‘Beat’ that you wished you might have been!

The Toronto Writers Co-operative are staging its 4^th “Exchanging Notes: a literary cabaret”.  The format is that musicians & writers team up for spoken word-music collaborative performance.

The Toronto Writers Co-operative are going to do their best to recreate the Kerouac/Ginsberg Era at the Allecatz Jazz Bar on Tuesday, January 24^th starting at 8 pm and going to the small hours. We are calling upon the muses of literature and music to trance the light fantastic.

It’s all happening at 2409 Yonge Street, 2.5 blocks north of Eglinton. Alleycatz features a full bar and kitchen so it will be a dinner theatre atmosphere this year!

 Best yet – there is no cover charge!

And even better, I will be doing my number on stage around 8:30 and backed up by a stand up bass and trumpet. Does this spark your curiousity?

Cheers!

John

Ps. If you know anyone else who would be interested, please feel free to invite them.