Letter

This is my dear friend Bachee from Canada, he is an Intellectual, he is retired and used to be a Professor of English. I love receiving his letters. I post him a print out of my diary and we write letters to each other.

Dear Vivienne

Thanks for keeping me on your diary/blog. It’s always of great interest, you write so engagingly, your involvement in every subject you treat is never trivial.

I am glad the Herodotus stuff I sent you is of use. Did you know there’s a bas-relief statue of him on the West façade of the Louvre? I found it in a work on Classical Mythology by Prof. Helen Morales. The statue is by the French sculptor Jean Guillaume Moitte, 1806.

On the subject of statues there is a statue by Canova, commissioned by Napoleon, No, he didn’t, Napoleon died in 1821, but was out of the picture, in exile, after the Battle of Waterloo, 1815. The statue is of the hero Theseus killing a centaur. Theseus is shown of giant size wielding an Herculean club. The Centaur is down – his horse part – seems no bigger than a pony. I don’t know where the statue is, but, maybe it’s in the Louvre, too.

What put me in mind about Centaur is the Xmas card you sent me. You created the Centaur like a figure of a handsome young fellow on it. He has some superb tattoos on his arm and has a classic face of exact symmetry, even to the dimple right in the middle of his chin! His legs are bare –  a little hairy but not enough to be horse like. His rear-end-house-part you created with some wonderfully convoluted satin-like brown fabric. Did the lad have to walk the runway? Did you put wheels on the back “leg”?

Thanks for the Paul Watson booklet. It is well and tensely written. He was warning the world in early days. Good for Greenpeace! I’ve passed the book on to my son, and he will circulate it at his place at work and at his music gigs.

I wrote a letter as you asked for Leonard Peltier. Obama will end his term as President soon. It is customary for Presidents on retirement to issue a few pardons. If you know of someone who has some influence in the US who might ask him to pardon Peltier? It might be worth a try.

I’m glad you are acting against TTIP. I’ve been trying to do my bit against it all these so-called Free Trade Treaties. Even since NAFTA they’re been written by Corporate Honchos with the subservient compliance of lickspittle, mammon-worshipping, corporate kissing goats. Their most iniquitous feature to the business tribunals who rule for “investment protection”. They are extra-legal, non-transparent and exist solely to protect profit for Big Business. It is a system of subsidy for inequality. It is accepted and paid up by business-doting gouts. The Canadian Government under its old Prime Minster Harper disaster has paid out millions principally to US Corporation, and usually without even going to appointed Tribunals. Information about it is not released but, sometimes, discovered through leaks. The Politicians pay up – why should they care it’s not their money – Business pays politicians – money for the Party and the next election which gets ever more expensive.

Why should investments be protected in a Trade Deal? Whatever happened to the “Justice of the Market Place” which rewarded good investments and impoverished bad ones, in the supposedly competitive capitalist system? Instead we are back to a feudal system where power is protected by subservient Government authority. It certainly gives new credence/authority to the old term ‘Robber Barons’. That Baronage is now Tycoons, not the old “Nobility”– what a misnomer!

Canada has signed the TTP deal but has not satisfied it. With the departure of Prime Minster Harper disaster in the last election, and with the new PM Trudean II we have hopes, and are lobbying, that it will never be satisfied.

Canada’s connection to this trans-pacific deal is an interesting one. I have learned something of it but I’m unsure how accurate it is. It’s leaked stuff. The original proponents of the deal were sworn to secrecy, even this respective Parliaments were not in the know.

Canada was not in the deal at all, at first. But our business – licking PM Harper disaster begged and cried to be let in. He was let in, but only, it is alleged, that he had to accept; and had no sight to alter, any deals within the treaty that had already been made. The deal took a long time. Leaks said that proposals were so rigorous that many countries balked, especially Australia.

I don’t know to what extent the new Canadian Parliament is tied to whatever the previous Government agreed to, but it’s a very different Parliament to one that knuckled under to Der Fuehrer Harper disaster, and a very different Prime Minster in Justin Trudeau (Pierre Trudeau, his father, was tinged with Jesuitical arrogance, but Margaret, his mother, was flaky and far out. I’m hoping her genes will help Justin keep on a progressive path). I don’t think the new Parliament will satisfy the Treaty, but all political parties, nowadays don’t want to piss-off business. Even the Leftist people need money for the next election. The usual course is not to satisfy, but neither to throw out – just leave things hanging.