Four-twenty for a Globe and Mail?

The paper keeps getting thinner but today the Korean Extortionist hit me up for $4.20. The brain trust on Front Street is seriously infatuated with all things 420.

And not only does the paper keep getting thinner; what's left is less and less the product of staff writers. Instead, we get more and more freelancers. When that's an erudite writer and experienced news guy like David Shribman, it's somewhat tolerable.

When it's a hysterical know-nothing, obviously flogging their own brand, like Sarah Kendzior, I think my Korean friend owes me at least a partial refund.

The view from the top of the hill

Interesting contrast in the two stories on the front page of the Globe's Opinion section today. Neocon David Frum gets the top half of the page and uses it to give us a nostalgia bath in America's golden age - the "before Trump" era; ie before Trump started "sabotaging the institutions and agencies that protect the United States and sustain the peace of the world."

Yup, that's what America's been up to; sustaining the peace of the world.

In North Korea from 1950 on.

In Vietnam.

In Laos.

In Cambodia.

In Grenada and Panama and Iraq and Afghanistan and so many other places...

Sustaining the peace in the world?

I marvel at how far one must have one's head up one's arse to make such a statement.

Yanis Varoufakis gets the bottom half of the page for what is essentially a eulogy for the same neoliberal order that brought us all that peace that Frum laments the passing of.

Perhaps they're both right.


Strapped on the snowshoes and made my way to the top of the hill this afternoon, just me and the hounds. Bought a pair of those newfangled metal and plastic jobs at Crappy Tire recently because they were on sale. I was an old-school wood and leather guy till last winter, when I blew a binding on a hike around Bass Lake. Took fifteen minutes to get in and an hour and a half to get out.

From the top of our hill I can see the Meaford Tank Range, aka the "4th Division Training Centre Meaford," a good twenty or thirty miles distant. As much as we revel in being out of harm's way, I can't help but wonder if that might become a target in a worst case scenario.

Another reason to say bye-bye to the NATO gang and forge a future as a neutral nation as far as I'm concerned.


Elsewhere in the Globe you'll find a huge thumbs-up from David Shribman for Frum's latest book. Shribman shows up a lot in the pages of the Globe & Mail these days. I know it's hard times in the newspaper biz, and maybe they don't actually pay a real salary in Pittsburgh any more and he pays his bills with this free-lance stuff we see in the Globe.

According to Shribman, Frum's book is "a masterful diatribe against Trump's presidency." Shribman is another guy who believes America's golden age ended last January. Nothing like fobbing off a book review to someone who is on the same page of the hymnal as the guy whose book you're reviewing.

I enjoyed how he pegs Frum as "Canadian royalty." Interesting to see ourselves through the eyes of an outsider. What is Canadian royalty? Why, you're Canadian royalty when mom was a marquis name at the CBC and your sister is in the senate. Shribman forgot to mention that Papa Frum's mega millions helped that other stuff happen.

But maybe I'm being too cynical. I always had the highest regard for Barbara Frum's journalism, and while Murray Frum may not have invented the strip mall, anybody who can build a fortune out of such a pedestrian concept has my undying respect.

Finally, I have to admit to being alarmed by something Jeremy Freed wrote in what used to be called the "Style" section of the paper before all those high-priced consultants prevailed in the G & M makeover battles. Apparently ugly fashion is in! Yup, serious people who know the latest trends are looking at folks who dress like me and asking "are they really cool or is that just an ugly outfit?"

So if you see an old geezer in baffed out SAS shuffleboard shoes and baggy jeans loitering about the U of T campus, it's just me visiting. Say hello if you want, but trust me; I'm NOT cool.


Once I got them on and properly adjusted, the new snowshoes worked out OK. The problem is it took a good twenty minutes for the "adjustment" part of the process. That's because the plastic bindings are wonderfully pliable in the store at room temperature, but virtually impossible to manipulate in the cold.

I would consider that a major shortcoming in snowshoes.

Democracy Canadian style; an exemplar for the world

Doug Saunders got a lot of column inches in the Globe and Mail opinion section today, mainly because Shribman and Kendzior weren't in it. That left some blank space to fill.

Doug was happy to fill it.

Since I've been bemoaning the presence of those Yankee interlopers for some time, you'd think I'd be happy about this.

I'm not.

Dear Doug devotes his three or four pages to lobbying for more Canadian interference in the electoral process in other countries. After all, that's what we used to do when we used to be great, at least according to Doug.

Doug cites our interference in Ukraine as an example of the good things that could happen when we interfere in other countries. He posits that as an example, and then leaves us hanging.

Maybe he lost his train of thought...

OK Doug; by what metric is Ukraine better off today than it was before we, the purveyors of democracy, pushed for the demise of the democratically elected government of Ukraine?


Sorry Doug, you're just peddling bullshit again.



Dear G&M management,

Please bring back Shribman and Kendzior and stop giving that idiot Saunders all those column inches.

Thanks!

The magical disappearing Globe and Mail

It's disappeared from the Maritimes altogether.

That's not a good thing when you're the "national newspaper of record."

Here it's not disappeared yet, but by God it's getting vanishingly thin.

I now get, after a few days of hindsight, why the G & M brain trust decided to drop the "new look" on a Saturday; because the Saturday Globe is always a little thicker, and while the Saturday edition retained its usual heft, relatively speaking, it wasn't till Monday that we found out what the new look was gonna look like during the week.

It's looking a lot thinner is what it looks like.

Yup, your everyday Globe and Mail is down to two sections. The Business Section has been amalgamated with the Sports Section, and everything else has joined the front part. Indeed!

I picked up a two-section Globe at a variety store in Owen Sound today for $3.70. It was $3.60 last week, at three or four sections.

Ten cents more for less Globe and Mail?

And not only is the paper thinner, there's been a trend to filling it with more syndicated stuff from the likes of David Shribman and Sarah Kendzior. Whatever the merits of these American writers, I don't shell out top dollar for Canada's newspaper of record to read syndicated foreigners.

But I guess it's trying times in the biz.

Maybe they should try giving us more Canadian news and more Canadian writers.

Neo-colonialist Bernard-Henri Levi gets Globe & Mail platform to spew his neo-colonialist rubbish

The Globe's opinion page has been invaded by foreign prognosticators, which I suspect has more to do with Globe management cutting costs than anything else. After all, we've got plenty of competent pro-capitalist, pro-empire prognosticators right here at home.

But they generally want to be paid a living wage. Printing stuff from outside sources is a neat way around that.

Which might explain why the widely esteemed asshole BHL got a slot in today's paper. Maybe David Shribman is on vacation or something.

The gist of BHL's missive in the Globe today is that "we," meaning the Nations of Virtue, should be all in for granting the Kurds their own statelet in the Middle East, to be carved out of the countries we've been bombing to ratshit for the last twenty years or longer.

After all, the Israelis absolutely love the Kurds.

If the apartheid state of Israel is on board, we should be too, goes the conventional reasoning.

I'm not so sure.

Ya, they might hate Arabs, but check out this site re: female genital mutilation in Kurdistan.

Aside from hating Arabs, do we really have any common ground with the Kurds?

I think not so much.

How is it the responsibility of we in the West to meddle in the Middle East even more than we already have to ensure that a greater Kurdistan becomes a reality?

Haven't we caused enough damage?