Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - September 17, 2000, Winnipeg, Manitoba Sunday b4 Winnipeg for sep Tembek 2000 Freedom of Trade Liberty of religion Equality of civil rights editorial taking it to the streets British prime minister Tony Blair puffed himself up big last week and announced that his government would never allow people to dictate government policy by picket lines and truckers and taxi Drivers were shutting Down the motor fuel distribution routes in parts of the country to protest Blairs heavy taxes on the Drivers had seen the French government of prime minister Lionel Jospin buy off a similar protest movement with promises of tax Relief and they wanted a corresponding gesture from neither Jospin nor Blair had increased the taxes on but the Rise in the wholesale Price of crude Oil had produced increases in the retail taxes account for about 75 per cent of the retail Price in France and 80 per cent in the governments of the Oil producing states were not available in the streets of British cities As targets for demonstrations and their share of the retail Price in any for a Small fraction of the truckers and taxi Drivers by this curious political the Price manipulations of the Oil producers car Tel touched off a tax the corresponding tax revolt in Canada has been canadians grumbled and complained to the Gas station attendants and a few provincial premiers now and then demanded that the fed eral government do something about gasoline that was about the extent of the governments of Saskatchewan and were looking for new storage vaults in which to collect the extra revenues that were pouring in because the member states of the organization of Petroleum exporting countries open had curtailed production and driven up the Alberta Premier Ralph Klein Felt that albertan had earned the Money that was rolling it looked to people in Oil consuming provinces More like a Windfall resulting from events utterly beyond the control of the open governments and Blair were practising what Environ mentalists have Long those who seek to curb use of Fossil fuels often Call for higher prices or heavier taxes on gasoline so that Consumers will be forced to seek and adopt alternatives ride their bicycles or erect windmills in their the open Oil ministers and the British and French tax collectors have been doing their eco logical saving the planet from the thoughtless and irresponsible people who were poisoning the they were Able to do this by scooping up vast sums of Money in the name of Good environmental two weaknesses of that strategy emerged in recent the most recent atmospheric research showed that curbing emissions of Carbon dioxide would make Only a slight difference to global the Carbon dioxide Content of the atmosphere has not been increasing anywhere near As fast As the rate of Fossil fuel consumption would the key to curbing global warming lies in control of air borne particles and a few Industrial the protests in the and other parts of Europe More that there Are limits to the level of taxation the Public will Blair can refuse to let the Public Dic Tate tax policy to the government through Street demonstrations but he cannot easily resist a combination of Street logical argument and wide Public revulsion against a particular a gasoline Price in which 80 per cent of the Price is tax is not taxation in the Way it has usually been it is More like what open tries to do cornering the mar putting the Consumers Over a bar Rel and squeezing them Blairs moral As the collector of these exorbitant was scarcely better than that of the Street demonstrators he found so Mahatma Gandhi when he led nonviolent protests against the British empires Salt tax in what the american revolutionaries had shown a Century earlier that when the people decide the taxes have gone too High and decide to do something about there is no telling where events May British truckers last week had not found their Mahatma Gandhi to Lead them in a sustained Campaign of Resis Tance to government since there was no colonial Yoke to be thrown the gasoline tax revolt looked More like a moment of irritation than the Start of a it Mark the end of an illusion about the Power of governments to set taxes As High As they besides the Legal con sent that the government must win from parliament in order to impose a there is another level of the consent of the people in the streets and the merchants in their stalls in the Blair last week ran up against the Power of the streets and he recoiled from it in that raw Power can be brutal and but it is one of the checks that can be used to curb abuses of governmental White world grows Ever More colourful Whites will be a minority in Britain by the end of the would be the first time in history that a major indigenous population has voluntarily become a rather than through famine and Whites will be a minority in London by so began a frontage article in the normally Britain least sensationalist sunday news inside was a full Page Story headed the last Days of a White which led with the news that the census Bureau has just predicted that non his panic currently almost three quarters of the will drop below half Between 2055 and lets pause a moment to unpack the assumptions in the Obi is that Spanish speaking Whites Arent really this is but it really has to do with misplaced fears about Spanish becoming the unofficial second the second is that birth rates among recent immigrant groups will remain unchanged for the next 60 and not drop towards the Norm As people climb up the socioeconomic for the census Bureau to be the Prosper american grandchildren of today hispanic or asian or West Indian immigrants must have As Many children As their who May have grown up illiterate in a Village without if this is True of the United what Are we to say about the observers pre diction that Whites in Britain will become a minority by 2010 there is no comment publishable in a family newspaper that meets the Britain takes in around Immi Grants a about half of whom come from mainly nonwhite a great Many of them Settle in the with the result that fewer than half of londoners will be White 10 years from now but around 40 per cent of us Are already other and the sky Hast Paris lags a Good Deal but is heading in the same and Toronto mayor says that it will reach 50 per cent non White this year or but this is mainly a metropolitan when pseudo demographers warn us that almost All the larger countries of Western North America and Australasia will cease to have a White majority within this it is just sensationalist since it requires childbearing patterns to stay unchanged Over several and even if it were so what the kids of chinese parents in Vancouver and of somali parents in Toronto speak English with perfect englis Canadian the kids of senegalese and moroccan parents in Paris speak French with perfect parisian the kids next door to me in London have Barba Dian but they Are manifestly English kids with London attitudes and North London its called Assim and in an Era of Wal Towall mass Media it happens much faster than it used the other thing that has changed is attitudes about in the late Juras everybody knew that people of Dif Ferent races could not live comfortably but these kids never the they go around in Multi coloured and they Date and mate across what was once called the Colour line without a second in in in and increasingly in places like the nether Spain and Multi racial societies Are emerging that do not conform to the harsh patterns we have come to expect from the experience of the first developed society to go Down this the United one starts to wonder if it is because the is the Only Western country where race based slavery was a major Domestic ins Titu despite occasional exceptions like the observers Nasty Little out both governments and the general Public Are greeting this huge and rapid change with very Little As Jean Pierre French minister of the Interior until his recent Resigna Tion told a meeting of european Union ministers in july Public opinion must be told clearly that a land of will become a place where crossbreeding Metis Sage nobody seems to As columnist Yasmin Alibhai Brown wrote in the inde on the i do not observe White Lon doners creeping about Laden with deep most have never had it so Good in terms of whether one is talking about food or particularly in big embraced this diversity with uncharacteristic Gwynne Dyer is a London based Independent his column appears on Sim what was said the hew York times said in an editorial if it were a Hollywood the plight of the Mega Lex would be a tearjerker starring companies brought to ruin because they sought to bring hourly show reclining seat retractable armrests and stadium seating to every last Corner of movie theatre chains have been building massive Mega Lexes since when a 24screen theater went up in dal customers seem to love while stadium seating May con Jure up images of freezing temper hard seats and fistfights at a professional football it actually Means building theatres so As to enable All moviegoers to see the screen instead of Only the Back of someones it is the most revolutionary film exhibiting development to come along since the cup which took the Industry by storm in the Early the trouble these new facilities have been taking business away from the same operators older often located at Mere there simply Arent enough customers to go although the number of movie screens in the United states has More than doubled Over the past two decades in 1980 to in 1999 50 per cent More tickets were sold last year than in because theatres take a smaller slice of the Box office in a movies first putting the hottest movies on five screens with staggered starting hours May turn out to be a poor business insofar As it shortens a films life the casualties Are this United car Mike Cine Edwards cinemas and Silver cinemas have filed chapter 11 bankruptcy Loews Cine plex said on 25 that it might default on debt not even bags of Popcorn can Stem the tide of red Ink that resulted when these companies overbuilt to protect Market the sum Mer of Short on blockbuster proved Little with Box office receipts Down million from last once the crisis is surviving movie theatre chains will be left to confront the question haunting the 500channel Cable to universe is there enough Good material to put on All those screens political system not ready for women Christopher Dafoe As americans prepare to elect a new president this the voters find themselves As they have been so often with a Choice among a group of Middle aged men in once no major party has seen fit to place a woman on the since women make up a Large portion of the population and occupy positions of Power in almost every sphere of this tendency to keep them out of the White House seems a trifle other countries have had female leaders in recent but the Amer who Pride themselves on having the greatest and most perfect Polit ical system Ever devised by the brain of have hesitated to Call upon one of the Many Able women in Public life to take the not since Geraldine Fer Raro served As Walter Mondale running mate for the democrats in 1984 has a women been offered the Chance to be a heartbeat away from the Ferraro and Mondale were Defeated and both have since retired from Public no other woman has been Given the Opportunity to run and the pundits Are still arguing on meet the press about whether it is too soon to take a Chance on a woman the Success of various woman in Public life from Queen Elizabeth i and Cather Ine the great to Margaret Indira Ghandi and others should have convinced most people that ability has nothing to do with gender and yet one still hears people earnestly asking whether women Are ready to take in the United no woman has Ever been nominated for president by one of the big political parties according to the that innovation is still years Ameri can women have run for High office in the but almost always for political parties of the sort that Are ignored by the the electoral col lege and those organizing the presidential in for Victoria Claflin Woodhull of new York was the presidential nominee of the peo Ples although she had no vote the men re elected Ulysses the now called the equal rights nominated Belva Ann Bennett Lockwood of in both 1884 and the men elected Grover Cleveland in 1884 and Benjamin Harrison in after politically minded women were fully engaged in the Battle for the which was a Long time by the vote had been won and in that year the prohibition party chose As its Vic presidential nominee Marie Caroline Brehm of the prohibition party got but the White House went to Calvin who got in Florence Garvin of Rhode Island ran As the Vic presidential Nom Inee of the National Greenback Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the democrats was the Green Back party running behind the Republic the Union the socialist the communist the prohibition party and the socialist labor in Grace Carlson of Minnesota was the Vic presidential nominee of the socialist workers but got few in Charlotta Bass of new York ran for Vic president on the combined ticket of the progressive party and the american labor the majority liked the progressives got and so it in and Myra Tanner Weiss of new York was candidate for Vic president under the socialist worker party always Well Down the in 1956 and the socialist labor party nominated geor Gia Cozzini of Wisconsin for Vic Epresi the two socialist parties might have done better if they had formed an in Ann Marie Yezo of new Jersey was the unsuccessful Vic Epresi dental nominee of the american third there have been other female nominees Over the years and this year one of the two Reform parties has a woman running As Vic president on the ticket led by Patrick in a country that is slow to change Progress has proceeded at the Pace of a but for Over a Century there have been Brave women and innovative political formations willing to take it on the Chin in order to push the Snail on another i outstanding women have taken seats in both houses of Congress and it is Likely that one Day soon one of them will be at the right place at the right time and grab the presidential Nomina Tion of one of the main political and someday one of them will win and people will won der Why it took so mean while we have Al and George singing hymns and ready to Promise it All looks painfully Christopher is a Vancouver ;