Wednesday-Night

Forget for the moment the upcoming Summit of the Americas and the new Cuba policy announced in advance of the meeting; the crisis in Thailand and cancellation of the ASEAN meeting by Protests in that country. Pay no attention to the the Conservatives’ battle over whether Mr. Mulroney is a member of the Party,  or anything else, except, maybe, the rescue of  Richard Phillips and what can be done about Somali piracy, which is hardly a new threat . Next week, perhaps Kimon Valaskakis will shed some light on how to deal with the pirates. Another good article is The Pirate Economy.

The news of the week - or at least the holiday weekend is Bo, the new White House puppy. As the National Post put it:” What’s the buzz of the day from Washington, D.C. as President Barack Obama sanctions snipers to take down Somali pirates, and works out a strategy to fight cyberterrorism, solve the war in Iraq, bail out the big auto companies and boost the sagging economy? None of the above. No, not today. Washington is all ears over the Obama family’s new pet, Bo, a six-month-old Portuguese Water Dog.” And why not, he’s much cuter than most of the people we have to look at! The media have been having fun with all that President Obama has been juggling, while getting ready to welcome Bo; none has done a better job than Gail Collins in her delightful column The Obama Holiday Tour - Thank you, Tony Deutsch.

Now that we have unleashed that topic, there are many others to consider - and not all as gloomy as the possibility of GM in bakruptcy.

We are intrigued by Diane Francis’ column on a CN proposal to ship oil from the tar sands by train rather than pipeline. Leaving aside the environmental considerations (which she brushes aside with the statement that “the oil sands is [sic] absolutely essential to maintaining the future living standards of Canadians. They should not be stopped, but perhaps the environmental challenges could become another opportunity.”), the idea is cost effective, rapidly implemented, and gives Canadian oil producers the ability to shift quickly from one market to another. This is not to say that we agree with her assertion that the age of oil is decades away from ending, but we are happy to see rail transport back on the public agenda.

David Kilgour (who unfortunately will not be with us) has forwarded a Toronto Star article, Fears grow over Chinese lawyer’s disappearance, reminding us of the connection - if not contradiction - between Stockwell Day’s trade mission to China this week and the plight of Gao Zhisheng, pioneering Chinese human-rights lawyer, who has been missing for nearly two months (and whose family successfully escaped to New York) . For those unfamiliar with the story,  The New Yorker gives an excellent summary

On the economy: oh, yes, we have to go there, Ofer Avital has sent along Barron’s interview with William Black, who was a deputy director at the former Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corp. during the 1980s S&L crisis. Mr. Black, incidentally, would be James K. Galbraith’s choice for Secretary of the Treasury - we would have to go along with that on the basis of the title of his book “The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One.” [ Tony Philbin notes that: William Black was also on Bill Moyers a couple of weeks back. The full interview (30 minutes or so) and transcript.

Turning to Canada and one of WN’s favorite topics, we are pleased to learn that our MP, Marc Garneau, is off on a cross-country tour to consult Canadians (industry, academics, researchers) on how to revitalize Canada’s scientific industries, and to discuss the importance of research and innovation in creating the jobs of tomorrow. This,we hope, may produce concrete answers to the issues raised by Heather Munroe -Blum in her recent address to the Canadian Club of Toronto [thank you, Gerald Ratzer] “The issue we need to confront is our stubbornly poor performance in building the economy of the future: the Innovation Economy — the creation and marketing of ground-breaking knowledge, and value-added goods and services … our old ‘I think I can’ optimism is no longer enough. It can be done. But only through strategic, concerted and coordinated action. We need a coherent plan, a coherent vision — and we lack one currently.” - If you only read one link of this invitation, please read this one, of which Guy Stanley says “HMB’s energizing and thoughtful overview of Canada’s innovation issues. So gratifying to see that someone in her position actually has the clues on this file.”

A final offering: Judith Warner’s This I Believe, reflections on “celebrating Passover with our motley Jewish-Catholic-Episcopalian crew, commemorating events we don’t believe in, confirming an identity that doesn’t quite fit, united in the love of one another.” We would suggest that a healthy dose of this philosophy would go a long way to curing the world’s ills. Our irrepressible Tony replies:”It is a wonderful self-description of my image of the typical NYT reader.” [or possibly a Wednesday Nighter?] He continues in a more serious vein to suggest a thoughtful topic for WN - and one which Kimon might care to address: … “we could speculate about the role of religion in societies where it does not function as a social control mechanism. Perhaps one of the outstanding attractions of Jeffersonian democracy is its specific designation of denomination-based religion as a personal matter, and the numerous attempts in American history to negate the idea ever since in practice, particularly on the level of the small community. Monarchies of all kinds require an active God to endow the king with the authority flowing from above, and while the US got by without all this for more than two centuries, neither Cromwell nor the French revolution managed to last long without it. Contemporary Russia is well on its way back to 1916 in this respect: watch Putin trying to get close to the Orthodox Church.”
On that pensive note, we encourage you to join us this week.