A rchive Date
[ 16-05-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.webfin.com/en/home/columnists/unusual_items/column_detail.html/?id=7742
Unusual Items
West Nile?- Ha!
Don Sutton
Updated: 16/05/03
Why are Canadians vacationing in Egypt this summer?
To escape West Nile Virus!
What do you put on a Canadian with a mosquito bite?
A coffin lid!
I just don't know where to begin on all the economic problems we are now facing. But I have to get my West Nile jokes out of the way soon before the Thought Police come and take me away. We all know that humour in times of crisis is good for the soul and what's funnier than a head full of encephalitis?
I mean really. In China, the government is threatening to execute people for spreading rumours about SARS being out of control, which heaven knows, it isn't. China's pursuit of the true facts about SARS is to be lauded, especially when compared to Toronto where secret executions have yet to be uncovered.
China tried to minimize the impact that SARS would have on the worldwide community by ignoring the disease earlier this year. So now, no one can really blame China for executing a few gossips and rumour-mongers. In fact, totalitarian regimes do what they do best in times of stress: clamp down, torture, repress and execute indiscriminately. But would Norman Bethune approve?
But no, I want to talk about Tom Jakobek. Tom is a big fish in the small pond of Toronto. He is a long-time city politician, a current mayoralty candidate and city-council budget chief of Toronto in 1999 when (oops) the city was overcharged by tens of millions on the sale of computer equipment by a supplier. An inquiry is underway about this and poor Tom has admitted that, well, he lied about being flown to an out-of-town Toronto Maple Leaf game on a private jet by the same supplier.
Tom would be an appropriate mayor for Toronto, following in the footsteps of Mel Lastman, but I don't think he will win. But given the virulence of modern diseases in the world today, it is hard to blame him. Diseases like Ebola, SARS, West Nile, the Greed Virus - they are everywhere in the world and even bulletproof hygienic masks can't protect you.
You may not have heard of the Greed Virus. It began in the U.S. in the late nineties and resulted in a great many chief executives of important companies being infected and incapacitated. Greed led them to skim billions off the top of their companies, eventually sending shares plummeting and their workers to the unemployment line. The U.S. economy has yet to recover. Scientists are working day and night to find a cure but so far only China has come up with an effective solution.
And I don't want to be racist but there seems to be a link between Americans and greed. Discovering that there really wasn't a threat of chemical weapons in Iraq and that a multibillion-dollar war was really an exercise in securing oil supplies may shock some. But realizing that the Greed Virus is at work makes things fall into place.
And please don't be confused that chaos and destruction are the only things that the U.S. has brought to Iraq. It has brought freedom, too, and freedom, even if your cultural heritage has been plundered, is all you need in the world.
Yes, freedom is all you need and no one knows this more than the people of Cuba who are so desperate to leave their country for the U.S., the land of liberty and riches, that they risk their lives swimming to Florida.
America would like to bring freedom to Cuba, of course, but not to individual Cubans who they tow out to sea to be devoured by great white sharks. I mean, really. Cubans fleeing their home country to embrace the good life and leaving their citizens behind?
I think they are just being greedy.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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