Making ethanol from food is hurting poor families

See this article...



BBC NEWS | Americas | Mexico leader in tortilla pledge



Most interesting part:

The price of tortillas, the main source of calories for many of Mexico's poor, rose by more than 10% last year.

Mr Calderon said the government would clamp down on speculators and search for cheaper providers of corn.

Under the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, Mexico used to get cheap corn imports from the US, but Mexico's Economy Minister Eduardo Sojo said that with more US corn being diverted into ethanol production, supply was dwindling.

So the question is, is making fuel from corn a good idea? I think this story makes that obvious...

Finally someone in Europe who understands

This is good news - now let's hope the forces of "political correctness" don't destroy this effort...



BBC NEWS | Europe | Germany pushes Muslim integration

The private sector should be doing this...

The City of Calgary is considering how to meet the demand for more ice sheets for people to play hockey, figure skate, etc. The existing rinks are overloaded due to the rapid population growth, and as most city rinks are owned and operated by the City, they seem to think the solution is more city owned rinks...

I don't know how the city rinks work, but I suspect that tax dollars subsidize the operation, thus subsidizing those people who choose to use them. This is government performing services that would be better served by the private sector, with competition.

Therefore, the city should simply simplify zoning requirements and let the private sector step up to the plate. In Calgary, there should be no shortage of entrepreneurs willing to invest in rinks, unless of course they would have to compete with taxpayer subsidized rinks. If that is the case, the proper solution is for the City to privatize the existing rinks and get out of the business altogether.

Islam and Freedom of Speech

There is an interesting an fascinating comparison of the difference between Islamic countries and free ones this week.

This story shows one of the fundamental conflicts that exists between the West and the Islamic world. These journalists are on trial, and their publication banned, due to publishing jokes deemed insulting to Islam in an article entitled "Jokes: How Moroccans laugh at religion, sex and politics?". If Muslims are unwilling to accept that making fun of their religion is acceptable, then freedom of speech and the press will never be acceptable to them. And in the West, the freedom we all enjoy, and often take for granted, is primarily due to freedom of expression.

What should happen in Morocco is that the King intervene to ensure freedom of the press, even if they choose to "insult" the state religion. If he wants his country and people to advance, freedom of expression is critical.

In Canada on the other hand, we have a television comedy, Little Mosque on the Prairie. When you first go to the website it declares "Muslims around the world are known for their sense of humour". I watched Little Mosque and found it entertaining - and there were even jokes that made light of certain aspects of Islamic faith and practice.

Interesting that both events revolve around jokes told by Muslims (Little Mosque is the invention of a Muslim). But in one country the government wants to imprison the publishers, while in the other the government is the publisher...

Making the Courts more public

It is generally accepted that anything that goes on in a court of law in Canada is public, unless the judge has ruled there is some good reason to limit access to the details of the court, usually for the protection of one or more parties.

The problem in Canada is that getting easy access to the documents associated with the courts is not easy. There is a simple solution. Canada (and the provinces) need a system like PACER. This allows anyone to review the filings, arguments, and decisions of the US Federal Courts, for a small fee.

This would allow easier access by the public to the goings on in the courts. It should not be horribly expensive (although the government has been known to waste vast sums in IT projects - ie. the Gun Registry) to implement for the federal and provincial courts. It could even be linked to the system by which litigants could file their documents with the courts, electronically.

This would make a lot of sense... and would probably reduce costs for the legal profession in searching documentation.