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Path: utzoo!watmath!ubc-vision!ubc-cs!andrews
From: andrews@ubc-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: 'Free' Trade?
Message-ID: <828@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 11-Feb-87 12:47:26 EST
Article-I.D.: ubc-cs.828
Posted: Wed Feb 11 12:47:26 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 12-Feb-87 04:10:12 EST
References: <12419@watnot.UUCP> <1469@hcrvx1.UUCP> <827@ubc-cs.UUCP> <215@pembina.alberta.UUCP>
Reply-To: andrews@ubc-cs.UUCP (Jamie Andrews)
Distribution: can
Organization: UBC Department of Computer Science, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Lines: 47

In article <215@pembina.alberta.UUCP> bjorn@alberta.UUCP (Bjorn R. Bjornsson) writes:
>      ...  I have this sneaky suspicion that you would like to
>define for others how they should be catered to.  You don't have
>to watch US tv and you don't have to read US rags....

     Your argument would make sense if Canadians and Americans
were competing on equal footing.  They're not, and as I said,
the massively more powerful American media is not about to put
anything in their programming making it more relevant to Canadians.
Look at TIME magazine:  the only time they had proportionate
Canadian coverage was when they had a Canadian edition, that they
could hawk to the Canadians while keeping it out of their American
editions.

     I wouldn't watch US TV, but would (say) my children be able
to make the same choice intelligently?  How would I feel if 20
years from now I had kids who talked like Americans and thought
that the first Prime Minister was George Washington?

>                                               ...  Cultural
>control in the form of a force fed "approved" diet coupled with
>restricted access to, and censorship of "non-approved" material
>I find rather odious....

     There's that word again!!  Why is it that whenever anyone
suggests that maybe something people see has a negative influence
on the society, someone screams "Censorship!!"?

>                  ...  What I'm seeing is `cultural nationalism'
>and an inferiority complex....

     Canadians have an inferiority complex because everyone else
thinks we're inferior.  A possible exception is Africa, the only
region of the world in which we're taken seriously, largely
because of our financial aid there.

>                        ...  A common phenomenon in some countries,
>usually directed at the US.  I do speak from experience.

     What country did you gain that experience in?  Iceland?
Norway?  Sweden?  All countries with a unique language, a solid
base of cultural tradition, and very little possibility of being
totally bombarded with US media images.

--Jamie.
...!ubc-vision!ubc-cs!andrews
"Mayan skies sleeptalk with voices of lovers"