Canada goes all out to woo Dark Continent

Big Steve has suffered a touch of pique. Those Yankee bastards don't want the XL pipeline? Well watch this; we'll find new markets for our tar sludge, right over there in Africa!

The Harper gang sees a lot of potential in developing stronger trade ties with the Dark Continent. They've even got John Baird on the file. In fact, the Globe and Mail reports that the Canadian Foreign Minister "must have confused a lot of people on his visit to Nigeria this week..."

Hell, that's nothing to worry about. John Baird confuses a lot of people wherever he goes. But I'm confused about how we're going to expand trade between Nigeria and Canada.

Clearly they don't need our tar sands, being Africa's biggest exporter of sweet crude. Maybe it's us who want their oil? But that doesn't make sense either. Sure, if Canada had maintained it's industrial economy we could maybe trade manufactured goods for oil, but since Canada no longer manufactures goods, that option is moot.

I personally was on the verge of developing meaningful trade ties with Nigeria a few years ago. This Nigerian prince needed someone trustworthy to help him spirit 200 million US in stolen oil money out of the country. I was flattered that he chose me as an accomplice. I even checked out the story. Sure enough, practically all of the billions from Nigeria's oil industry gets looted before it finds it's way to the people, so the story had plausibility.

All he wanted in return was a Rolex watch and ten thousand dollars, which I sent after spending thirty seconds asking myself if I was willing to sell out my socialist principles for a slice of 200 million. Don't know what went wrong then, but I never heard from the guy again. Maybe I should see if Baird's office can get to the bottom of this.

Anyway, Baird and Harper have been over there for a week charming the Dashikis off the Darkies from Senegal to Nigeria to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Sadly, they have little to show in terms of results, and I think I know why. They just don't know enough about local customs. Here's what I'm talking about. Jube N-cube comes home after a tough day at the platinum mine, and the old woman puts a plate of chicken gizzards in front of him. Ya! I know you're thinking what I'm thinking... TO THE MOON, ALICE!!!

So N-cube gives his old lady a pop in the beak, and the next day he drags her sorry chicken-gobbling ass down to the village court, where, thank God, the elders do the right thing; fine the wife one chicken  and give a stern warning to NEVER cheat the man of the house out of the best chicken parts again. Then just for good measure they also fine the mother-in-law a chicken for having raised such a selfish bitch.

It's obvious that Harper and Baird will need to get better acquainted with African customs. Failing that, they might want to consider taking Dan Gertler aboard as a consultant.

He really really really understands Negroes.

Being Canadian: hewers of wood, drawers of water, pumpers of oil sludge

That's quite a spin the Harperites are putting on this pipeline scam.

In the first place we're trying to help our very best friends in the world to wean themselves off that middle-east terror-petroleum. We want to build the XL pipeline to the Gulf coast so that their refineries can add value to our oil sand sludge.

Rebuffed, we come up with plan B to wean ourselves off our dependence on our very best friends. The Northern Gateway pipeline will deliver our oil sand sludge to the west coast for delivery to refineries in Korea and China and Japan.

In both cases a mysterious cabal of tree-huggers, movie stars, and socialist billionaires conspires against the Harper plan to create millions of Canadian jobs by exporting a raw material for processing elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the multi-national construction and energy conglomerates are lobbying hard for the right to import tens of thousands of foreign workers to facilitate expansion of the oil sands, because without massive expansion there'll be nothing to put in those new pipelines.

The same politicians who claim this is all about Canadian jobs are doing next to nothing to train Canadian workers to take these jobs. Nor are they doing anything to develop the processing infrastructure that would keep downstream jobs in-country.

The oil sands themselves are owned by the usual multi-national energy giants based in Holland, Britain, France, Norway, China, and of course the USA.

But we're to believe that the anti-pipeline protesters are somehow a threat to Canadian sovereignty?