Food for Thought 4

- Sheik Mansour bin Zayed Al Nnahyan, owner of Manchester City football Club, offered Milan $250 million for the services of player, Kaka, and one million per week in pay for the latter. Sounds like a lot until you learn that the Sheik’s family’s worth is estimated at one trillion dollars, so 250 million is less than one day’s interest (assuming 10% accumulationrate). How hard it must be spending that much every day!

Charities are experiencing hard times, right? No so the Toronto Sick Kids’ Hospital in Toronto. In an article telling us that its top fund raisers are leaving (Toronto Star, 9/Jan/09), it is revealed that the top guy, hired in the US, is paid over $600 000/year and its top ten officials shared $2.8 million, up 35% from the previous year. A spokesperson for the hospital commented, “Our philosophy is we hire for excellence in fundraising and marketing.” Of course, most people who do all the leg-work and phone work, do it for nothing as volunteers.

In the military sphere, the 108th. Canadian soldier died recently. For what? You may well ask. In “Everything for Sale in Land of Graft”, Dexter Filkins (Toronto Star, 2/Jan/09) tells us that, “Kept afloat by billions of dollars in American and other foreign aid, the government of Afghanistan is shot through with corruption and graft. From the lowliest traffic cop to the family of President Hamid Karzai himself, the state built on the ruins of the Taliban regime seven years ago now often seems to exist for little more than the enrichment of those who run it”.

Canadians are waiting to hear, in the light of the imminent closing of Guantanamo torture camp, the fate of Omar Khadr, who was 15 years old when attacked by American insurgents and had the audacity to fight for his life by allegedly (a lot of doubt and strange cover up on the facts) lobbing a grenade and killing an American medic while he (Khadr) was shot in thechest. Now 22, he is incredibly charged with “murder in violation of the laws of war”. Figure that one out!
John Ayers