Recently, the Ottawa government announced a large donation (loan to be taxed back from all Canadians to go for civic improvement in Moncton.
By coincidence, at the same time the New Brunswick government offered a large donation (loan to be taxed back from NBers) bringing the total to 50,000,000.
In another amazing coincidence the city of Moncton voted another 30,000,000 to bring it to a total of 80,000,000.
A few weeks ago, our news media carried many stories about the election in Iran and about the protests that followed. Much of that information came from twitter messages coming out of Iran.\, apparently thousand of them, and most of them critical of the government.
Predictably, that led to a lot of speculation that a new age of communication was upon us. No longer could oppressive governments control the news. The people, with twitter, are now in touch with each other, and the truth will out.
But dont you see the way that popular culture has taken the people's focus from issues that are relevent to their lives, to trends, celebrities, and generally keeping up with a constant cultural revolution?
I found myself in strong disagreement with others on radio this morning - a disagreement that went beyond simply disagreeing to seeing the question itself in different ways.
The topic was the tightening of border and flight safety, coupled with the US director of homeland security's assertion that the 9/11 attackers came in through Canada.
I don't think her statement was due to ignorance. I don't think airline and border safety have anything to do with the tightening measures. I think the reality is much scarier - and it's not new.
