Archive for the ‘World News Comment’ Category

We have just gone through a provincial  election here in Nova Scotia (Tuesday the 9th of June).  Unfortunately I was picking up a load several hours away and was unable to get home before the poll closed.  Not the first time that’s happened.

This win is historical in more ways than one.  The first time the NDP (New Democratic Party) has been in power in Nova Scotia’s 142 year history.  Nova Scotia joined Confederation in 1867.  It is also the first majority government since 2003.

Anyway, for several weeks prior to the election, the polls were predicting a majority government for the NDP .  A day or two ago I was Googling for information on the up coming election, and found a few sites with public comments regarding the predictions of an NDP landslide.  I was amazed at all the negative comments of doom and gloom regarding the predicted NDP win.

Of course I’ve been around long enough to know that there will always be plenty of negativity in regard to anything that involves people.  Some people seem to thrive on negativity.  Likely many folks visiting this site and seeing the name of it, assume I too am a negative guy.  However nothing could be further from the truth.  I readily admit to being grumpy from time to time (ask my wife), but it’s usually with very good cause.  Negativity though is a not normal condition for me.

My father had a very wise credo that he lived by and I find it mostly true in my dealings with folks as well.  He said, “If you look for the worst in people, you’ll find it every time.  Look for the best in people and they with amaze you.”

I’m not naive enough to think that just voting a new party into office is going to solve all the provinces woes.  I do, however, think that a change is as good as a rest, and with the type of mud slinging that Rodney MacDonald (PC Premier) indulged in during the campaign, we are well rid of him.  I have never been a big fan of party politics and would much rather see a system where we select the man (or woman) and not the party, but I guess we have to make the best of the system we have.

Sitting in a Toronto truckstop parking lot last night I watched a documentary about the Katrina disaster in New Orleans. During the program I received an email from my buddy in Australia about the wildfire situation in that country.

Now, my wife and I had been following the developing news of the wildfires and the disastrous results for many unfortunate residents of the affected areas. We had comforted ourselves with the knowledge that our friends, who live near Perth, were not in danger, as they live in the opposite end of the country from the devastation.

However, the words in the email were somewhat chilling and sobering. Our friends have numerous friends and family members in that area and since the beginning of the disaster they have not been able to reach any of them by phone as all communication has been cut off.

Its hard to know which is worse, knowing disaster has befallen our loved ones or fearing it and no way to confirm if they’re safe or not.

Anyway, the Katrina documentary was very disturbing. It looks, to this viewer at least, like the Bush government cared more about the citizens of almost any other nation you could mention than the citizens of New Orleans. What a travesty. I only hope and pray the government of Australia will react much more quickly and decisively to this latest disaster to befall their citizens.

I’ve had my suspicions for many years, but now I’m totally convinced. People are Animals! There really is no other explanation for what happened this past Friday, November 28th.

I’m speaking of course of the tragic Black Friday sales event at a Long Island, New York Walmart store in which an employee was trampled to death and several other shoppers sent to hospital with injuries.

You can bandy about such terms as mob mentality, unfortunate accident, or rampant consumerism. Plain and simple it was a stampede, and that word best describes a herd of animals out of control.

Now when people stampede in an attempt to escape a burning or collapsing building that’s one thing, but when the only motivation is to save large sums of money on consumer goods it is shameful and totally inexcusable.

According to news reports, some people in the crowd, when asked to leave the store, refused. Kimberly Cribbs, who witnessed the stampede, said shoppers were acting like “savages…. When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling ‘I’ve been on line since yesterday morning. They kept shopping.”

That, in a nutshell demonstrates the totally self-centered attitude of many of our fellow citizens today. Just the belief that the inconvenience of waiting several hours trumps public damages, the death of another human being, and the serious injuries of others, speaks volumes about the morals surrounding us. I hope the ones involved are very proud of themselves.