Letters to the editor
Send your letters to tobaneditor@umanitoba.ca or drop them off at 105 University CentreStop the seal hunt
Canada is a nihilistic, self-destructive country. Relations between the United States and Canada are already in a downward spiral. Your desire to kill and skin alive millions of baby seals (and even increase this quota) purely for “filthy lucre” has destroyed any credibility Canada may have had in the world.
Passports will now be required for travel between Canada and the United States. Your travel industry was already dead, and now its fate is sealed. You have lost millions of dollars from the successful international boycott of Canadian seafood. This boycott has been extended to all Canadian exports, not just seafood.
With the new federally-mandated labelling requirements, it is quite easy to check country of origin on all products before purchase. Your sadistic slaughter of baby seals has turned into your own masochistic desire for self-immolation.
Beverly Stayart
Demonstration misses the point
I was very glad to see the coverage of the situation in Haiti in the Manitoban (Port au vote, 08/03/2006). I am dismayed, however, that the No War Coalition, of which the University of Manitoba’s Student Union is listed as both a member and supporter, held a march this past Saturday, demanding an end to the presence of all Canadian troops in Haiti as well as Afghanistan, and an end to the occupation in Iraq. The inconsistency and hypocrisy of the University of Manitoba Student Union’s current position in supporting the No War Coalition, given the security situation there, is absolutely mind-boggling.
Natalie K Bjorklund
A failure to report critically on Haitian election
While I commend Erin Stewart’s interest in the election process in Haiti (Port au vote, 08/03/2006), her article missed several vital pieces of information. The monitoring mission mentioned actually began operating actively in September 2005. Their initial reports contained glaring omissions. There was no mention of systematic repression against the supporters of one party and political movement in particular (Lavalas), no mention of the jailing of political prisoners like the priest Father Jean-Juste, and no mention of the fact that convicted killer Jodel Chamblain was free to run for office.
Such omissions expose this mission to the obvious criticism that a “monitoring mission” overseen by Canadians like Jean-Pierre Kingsley is doomed to prejudice, given that Canada was one of the countries that illegally overthrew the last elected government. The mission’s utter failure to report concerns about the integrity or logistical operations of the Electoral Council have left it looking incredibly foolish, given the fraud that was eventually exposed. I would have thought that a report on this mission might have mentioned at least some of this.
Kevin Skerrett
Leave Sran alone
This is ridiculous! How come there is all this news about our newly-elected president coming out now? Ever since the first day of the election, his mistake in the past has been all over the newspapers, and he even made it on the late night news.
I’m just wondering, is it really that big of a deal? We all have our ups and downs and make mistakes. And I’m sure that we all want to be given a second chance, right? So why don’t we leave him alone with his past and start looking at the things he did for the students? And as his fellow students we should just try to help him get his work done. And besides, whatever he does well for students, we will all benefit from it. He also admitted that he has changed for the better and said that he “has paid his debt to the society.”
Honestly, I don’t even know the guy personally, and I’m pretty sure that the people who are making a big deal out of this don’t either. I guess what I’m trying to say is, give him a chance. I don’t know why he didn’t say anything about his past but I don’t see any reason why he should have. It’s just like applying for a job: nobody would put on his resume that he has a criminal record. I wouldn’t! Geez guys!
By the way, congratulations to those who won the election! Good luck!
Enough said,
Wenz Daniels
Starbucks has revolutionized coffee
David Cavett-Goodwin’s March 15 article, “Fair Trade sounds good,” gave a misleading image of the global coffee market, portraying Starbucks in a bad light. Starbucks has done quite a bit to benefit the coffee trade as a whole. When our parents grew up there wasn’t even an awareness that different kinds of coffee existed from a consumer point of view; coffee was coffee.
Little to no emphasis was placed on the quality of the product and few people in North America knew what good coffee was. When chains like Starbucks started up they educated consumers by giving them better types of coffee than what came in the cans at the grocery store. This awareness helped transform coffee into a specialty beverage. As a specialty beverage consumers have been willing to pay more.
Cavett-Goodwin states “they would have to sell their coffee on the world market at the New York Exchange price, which was 97.39 cents per pound.” This statement suggests that there are only two prices for coffee: “Fair Trade” and the market price in New York. The prices quoted on the New York market are for the very worst coffee in existence; this is below Starbucks standards or most other specialty coffee shops and mainly goes into the Maxwell Houses and other tinned coffees you see at the grocery store.
The advent of specialty coffee has allowed producers to get far more from their crops than they have ever received before. For example, many countries hold Cup of Excellence competitions in which coffee is cupped; the best coffees can have prices of $19,000+ for one crop — certainly far more than a Fair Trade Co-op would be willing to pay.
Personally, I roast my own coffee at home. I buy green beans over the Internet that are of the highest grade,.Even though not all of the coffees are fair trade, the farmers get far more than the base commodity price on the New York market, and even more than Starbucks is willing to pay them. By Starbucks making consumers aware there is better coffee (not that their coffee is very good), it’s helped coffee farmers as a whole.
