Letters, Sept 15

Building for the future

It’s hard to argue with Tom Brodbeck’s column Carney cashes in standing to U.S. bully, Free Press, Sept. 12, because everything in the article makes sense.

But I think Canada is cashing in as well.

The rather depressing environment created by Trump has given impetus to an aggressive slate of policies promulgated by Prime Minister Mark Carney that with a little luck (that’s code for preparation, opportunity and hard work) will position Canada for a much brighter future once the tin-pot dictator is gone.

Canadians are resilient. We’ll gut it out, and we’ll help those that need help through the transition.

Tom Pearson

Victoria, B.C.

Don’t forget root causes

Twenty-five years later, too many official remembrances still treat September 11, 2001 as a vague national trauma — “an attack,” “a historic event,” a day of loss without a named cause. That is not honesty. It was an Islamic terrorist attack.

Nineteen men, acting in the name of a jihadist ideology and directed by al-Qaeda, murdered nearly 3,000 people. They were not confused tourists. They were not generic “extremists.” They were jihadists who believed mass murder of civilians was a religious duty.

That fact has not expired. For the last three years the same current has been visible again: Hamas’s massacre of Oct. 7, 2023; celebrations and apologetics that followed it; plots and attacks inspired by the same doctrine of holy war against Jews, Americans, and anyone judged an infidel or apostate. The pattern is not mysterious. What is remarkable is how often media, campus officials, and political leaders refuse to describe it plainly.

They reach for “cycle of violence,” “root causes,” or “Islamophobia” before they will say jihadist radicalism.

Euphemism does not honor the dead. It protects an ideology from scrutiny. We can oppose collective blame of ordinary Muslims and still tell the truth about the movement that flew the planes, that still recruits, and that still treats civilian slaughter as piety. A free society that will not name its enemies will not defeat them.

If September 11 is only a ceremony, it will be forgotten as a warning. It should be remembered as what it was: jihadist mass murder on American soil — and a reminder that looking the other way is not compassion. It is negligence.

Hartley Macklin

Winnipeg

A service worth seeing

I attended the Candlelight Service at Brookside Cemetery Sept. 10 along with a small group of others. I was disappointed that there was no mention of this event in your paper.

The grounds were illuminated with approximately 10,000 candles placed on every military headstone throughout the whole grounds. Brookside has the largest military presence in all of Canada The service itself was respectful and honoured the services of our military over the many conflicts Canadians have participated in over the past several decades.

I have been visiting this section of the cemetery for over 75 years and was not aware of this service as an annual event until I saw a random Facebook post.

It was an honour to attend on behalf of my father and all others who served in the military.

Lucille Rybuck

Winnipeg

Cyberattacks and accountability

RE: Transparency paramount after cyberattacks to prevent future breaches: tech expert, Sept 10

Pick a random large technology company. I can guarantee the following: they have a way for members of the public to privately disclose vulnerabilities, and a process for sharing details of the vulnerability with the public once it is fixed.

They have a blog which details how they write, deploy, and host their code.

They publish at least some of the code they develop, and contribute back to open source projects they (like all software projects) rely on.

The keys to building and running successful software are transparency and collaboration. These allow for better product feedback, and lets others iterate and improve on ideas to create a stronger overall ecosystem everyone benefits from.

Now, pick a Canadian public institution, be it a government department, Crown corporation, municipality, etc. It might do one of those three things, it almost certainly doesn’t do all three.

Our public institutions are responsible for collecting, using, and protecting a massive volume of sensitive data, as well as providing a broad range of services to large audiences. This will inevitably require large IT departments.

However our public institutions’ IT departments do not operate like successful IT companies do.

Instead, they are less open and less collaborative than some of the greediest, most selfish companies today, when they should be the most open and most collaborative.

Christian Le Breton

Headingley

Another economic view

Re: Big numbers, Letters to the editor, Sept. 12.

Yog Rahi Gupta proposes that the NDP government is burdening citizens with high interest costs. He states that this lack of accountability will result in reduced services.

He also believes that the province should reduce its dependance on federal transfers, and that private investment is required for job creation.

Empirical evidence, history, and economics refutes this claim.

The federal government uses the power of the currency to direct the resources of the country. Provincial governments do not have this luxury. Interest costs for a federal government with a fiat currency are never a burden restricting expenditures.

This is why provincial governments need more transfer agreements rather than less. Otherwise, we create an artificial scarcity that benefits the one per cent, slows growth, impoverishes citizens, and undermines democracy.

The past 50 years of stagnated real wages, absurd inequality, inflated asset prices, slower GDP growth and precarious financial security have proven that we must reverse the course from tax breaks and privatization.

In fact, the latest provincial budget actually benefits Manitobans by attempting to create real value for families rather than financial value for markets.

Brent Bjorklund

Hadashville

Other shipping options

I agree with Saturday’s editorial (The port of Churchill — but done right, Sept. 12).

One of the overlooked potential export cargoes is Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG) delivered by rail tank car. Large volumes of LPG are presently exported from the Port of Prince Rupert after delivery by CN Rail. Also, LPG used in Manitoba is delivered by rail to a storage facilities in Churchill, Winnipeg, Thompson and other locations.

The rail shipment of LPG boosts the Hudson Bay Railroad and avoids the need for a pipeline. A scaled up storage facility similar to Prince Rupert’s would be required.

Robert Fenton

Winnipeg

Worth reading

Re: Dark money drags democracy toward the abyss, Sept. 12

In his Saturday column, Russell Wangersky summarizes a study called Automation and Repression from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This piece should be required reading for anyone who is still naive enough to believe that unbridled, run-amok capitalism and democracy go together.

“Take political action while we still can, or reap the whirlwind,” concludes Wangersky.

Somehow, we must curb the power of the tech bros who are wrecking civil society and wrecking the planet.

Charles Kroeker

Winnipeg