Fast Away the Old Year Passes

2007 - unremarkable, but a 'doozie' nonetheless.

Canada's foreign adventures continue unabated. Much as they were at this time last year, but thankfully with less traffic on 'Heroes' Highway' - east or west. CF continues to battle the Taliban in the Panjwai district as they have for the past year and a half. On the positive side, some of the residents are now 'friendly' and receiving the development aid most Canadians were happy to sign on for. The negative side is that some of the residents are not friendlies and receive the ballistic forms of aid Canadians didn't get a chance to sign on for. Prognosis for 2008: Continued work in Panjwai.

The Native protest at Caledonia continues marked by a brouhaha in one of those non-tax 'smoke shops' the indigenous folk run. This actually wound up in police charges and the case is before the courts. That means most of the charges are against white folk, as the Natives' healing circles deal with their criminal element, and provide a nice lunch. Negotiations, I think, continue.

A ray of hope in the otherwise snowy firmament of Native affairs is the new minister of said portfolio. He's gone and cut through red tape to remove the Provincial Park signs at Ipperwash (and the watchful police), to give the Stoney Point Band back their ancestral land. Amazing what somebody can do without 'Common Sense'. Amazing, too, what the application of spurious 'common sense' by a band of doofi and dunderheads can do. 9 freakin years to sort out the sorry mess made by that fatheaded wunderkind Mike 'Blow Me' Harris, and his band of merry masturbators.

To round out the year we have the Bank of Canada forking out 3 billion dollars to help Canada's chartered Banks stay afloat in the self-inflicted scuppering by sub-prime mortgage market fiasco. This should enable the deserving to get their Christmas 'performance' bonuses. Any mistakes they made couldn't have been foreseen, as all they were trying to do was make a buck for the bank. How could they be expected to know they were buying shit? The paper was issued by the finest establishments in America and the deal was too good to pass up. It must have been a tense month waiting for one of the stockholders pipe up about lack of due diligence, make some nasty comment about fiduciary responsibility. Oh well, they can breathe easy over the cigars and sherry, their labours well-rewarded.

I wonder why the Bank of Canada wasn't so generous to the mutual stock holders who lost their shirts during the dotcom meltdown a few years back when the Banks - probably due to the foresight they lacked this time, were able to 'get out' in time to post one of their most profitable years. I guess if you lose some investors you can always get new ones. Losing a bank, on the other hand, would be like losing a Bank. Prognosis for 2008: More billions to prop up the banks - if we all don't go down some US designed toilet.

(Canadians don't 'pay' for the Bank of Canada do they???? If I thought those billions were guaranteed by those ex-Harris wankers in Ottawa, I think I might take to my bed and not getup for a fortnight.)