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Strategies & Market Trends : Winter in the Great White North -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: marcos who wrote (1507)	10/17/2001 8:24:01 PM
From: LeonardSlye	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 8273

Yeah, there are many dangers in taking even rightful actions where the objective is surgically to annihilate the enemy. As George Santayana said, “Sanity is a madness put to good uses.” Friendly fire, the ugliest oxymoron we’ve yet devised, is totally demoralizing, it also gives us an idea of what the unfriendly fire is doing. We want a big glow-in-the-dark Maple Leaf for the wheat trucks alright, with Gordie Lightfoot coming out of big speakers, or hey, maybe a Mexican Eagle and some salsa music. I didn’t hear Fox’s statement, I guess I was elsewhere. But, how’s Northern Mexico doing for wheat? Have they got a bit extra to spare? Maybe that’s how Mexico could help out if they are caught by the constitutionals. I don’t know, I’m just grasping at unreal straws. I’m for sure with Alexa on the proper naming of the action as one against terrorist criminals. We have not declared war on a country. We must obligingly give up some civil rights when we are in a war but not so much if we are fighting criminals...or is that too Machiavellian and paranoid even for me? Perhaps I too am becoming overly apprehensive, yeah, that's a better euphemism. I find the hysteria of the BC ferry to Saltspring being pulled off line for white powder and offices cleared because of doughnut residue to be on the verge of mob mentality. All we need is one good dose of guided collective effervescence aimed at the grassroots and the world could be a very changed place for free thought for a long time to come. When I see junkies getting busted and called terrorists because they were carrying a white powder, then I’ll know that we have leapt over a border. I temper the hysterical local response with a news story I remember from years ago where people in Seattle were getting into their cars in the morning and finding their windshields had been mysteriously pitted during the night. There was an alarming and snowballing number of cases of this phenomenon. In the end, it turned out that people were being implicitly instructed by the morning news to begin looking AT their windshields instead of through them. When they were told what to look for, they found it. We’ll always find what we go looking for even if it’s not there. I’m going to keep looking through the windshield and maybe check the rear view from time to time. My hope is that the present reactions don’t filter down into a sort of strangely mutated Neo-McCarthyism. Remember when, in Canada, Gordie Knott (a guy from my hometown) was kicked out of the Canadian Navy because the RCMP wrongly accused him of having a Communist uncle? The story made news across Canada. There was even a joke about it, “Did you hear about the guy who got kicked out of the Communist Party because his uncle was in the Navy?”. Gordie was an excellent Sea Cadet and all he ever talked about was joining the Navy. He was victimized and tainted. I don’t want to see those times again and I don’t think it is going to happen; but, I do see the seed for it. I’ve heard the term Anti-American used against those who would question any of America’s foreign policies and nobody is eating at “Osama’s Sandwich Shop” anymore. I also see courage in a lot of Americans, particularly with the anthrax threat. As you’ve said before, “There are more Mark Twains....”. I do sincerely hope that many of them will do their due diligence on how this came about and where it could lead. Santayana also had it right about our being condemned to repeating what we don’t understand. The bottom line is though, right now the people in Afghanistan are eating the seed for what would have been their winter wheat. We’ve got to get ours there before they finish it. It’s just common sense. They really know their wheat...and their poppies. I’d rather see them growing wheat. I'm sure they would too. Happy Trails Lenny