HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1992-09-30, Page 5Arthur Black
THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30,1992. PAGE 5.
Man of Steel
headed for
the slag heap
Faster than a speeding bullet
More powerful than a locomotive
Able to leap tall buildings in a
single bound
It's a bird, it's a plane, it’s . . .
All over folks. As of next month the guy
in the blue leotards and flowing red cap is
history. The Man of Steel is headed for the
slag heap. Superman is about to die.
My comic book spies tell me it will
happen in DC Superman issue #75, which is
scheduled to hit the streets about three weeks
from today. In that issue, I am told,
Superman runs afoul of an intergalactic
maniac by the name of Doomsday, a chap
who's on unsupervised leave from a cosmic
lunatic asylum. Rumour has it that Mister
Doomsday has huge muscles, magic powers
and a bad attitude towards authority.
Heck, that doesn't sound like anything the
most famous son of Krypton couldn't handle.
Over the years, he's put the boots to
hundreds of terrorists, tyrants and thugs -
home-grown and extraterrestrial.
But not this time. The fellows with the
- International Scene
By Raymond Canon
NAFTA —
old soap in
new bottles
The famous philosopher, Bertrand
Russell, once said the degree of one's
emotions varied inversely with one's
knowledge of the facts - the less you know,
the hotter you get. This goes a long way, I
would imagine, to explain the explosion of
sentiments which greeted the news that the
Canadians and the Americans had signed a
free trade agreement. While most people
never took the trouble to study the
agreement, just about everybody looked at it
as either the work of the devil or else
something created in economic heaven. The
truth, as in most other cases, lies somewhere
in between and much closer to the centre
than to the extremes.
Well, we now have NAFTA, an agreement
between Canada, the United States and
Mexico. It took 14 months of negotiations
but it did not take too long before the likes
of Bob White and his followers were playing
the same broken record they used so
frequently in the previous agreement. Mike
Wilson, our Minister of International Trade,
was telling any Canadian who would listen
just how advantageous it would be for this
country, but again what could you expect
Mr. Wilson to say. He was the one who
spent the 14 months at the bargaining table
and is not about to throw out the baby with
the bath water.
Now that I have all that off my chest, let's
take a look at NAFTA from as objective a
viewpoint as possible. I have already written
that, while I believe implicitly in trade
liberalization, I was not really anxious to see
\
flow charts at DC's executive offices have
decreed that it is time for the caped crusader
to take the one-way trip to Superhero
Heaven.
It's going to leave a big cavity in the
fantasy world of comic lowers. Oh, there are
still lots of superheros to choose from. They
run the gamut from Spiderman and Captain
Marvel to Electra and the Silver Surfer. But
Superman was the original. He was the
character that spawned the whole galaxy of
flashy, overpowered imitators.
Legend has it that Superman was bom on
the dying planet Krypton, but that's not true.
Superman was in fact, bom on the back of a
piece of left-over wallpaper in an apartment
in downtown Toronto. It happened in the
depths of the Great Depression (no, Brian -
the one before this one). Superman was the
brainchild of a Toronto artist by the name of
Joe Shuster. In 1938, Shuster doodled the
first images of Superman, showed them to
his pal, Jerry Seigel, and together they
pitched DC Comics on the idea of a new
comic book hero.
The tycoons at DC liked the concept. They
wined and dined the boys and then sweet-
talked them into the biggest blunder of their
lives. Joe Shuster and Jerry Seigel sold all
the Superman rights to DC.
For $180 U.S.
Pretty soon, Superman was an inter
national star and Jerry Joe were still
grubbing along as graphic artists for DC.
They sued the company for more money.
the Mexicans involved at this time. Right
now they are not in the same league as either
the Americans or the Canadians and so it is
not really a level playing field. Mexico had a
lot more to gain than the other two and they
seemed to have gained a considerable
amount. For us and the Americans, the pay
off will take considerably longer to
ascertain.
I really wish people would get away from
using the expression “Free Trade.” It is a
misnomer if I ever saw one. The correct
word is “trade liberalization.” We do not
have free trade with the United States and it
will be a good many years, if ever, before we
do. What we have done to date is liberalize
our trade with each other - to a considerable
degree with tariff barriers and to a far less
degree with non-tariff barriers. You have
only to look at how often the Americans
have hammered us on one item or another to
see how far we really are from all alleged
free trade agreement. Let's start by using the
correct expression and perhaps we will get a
better picture of what is going on.
Furthermore, I would suspect that the
Canadian government went into the
negotiations with Mexico and the U.S. since
staying out would mean that we would not
be in a position to protect what gains we had
made under the 1989 agreement with the
U.S. In short, our chief motive was a
defensive one, but one that was important
enough to justify our participation from Day
One. From what I can see of the agreement
just hammered out, we did not do too badly
in defending our position vis a vis the
Americans; we may have even strengthened
it somewhat, especially the mechanism for
settling disputes, a mechanism which, by the
way, has benefitted us to date more than it
has the Americans.
As for what industries will benefit from
the new agreement, one of them has to be
telecommunications where we are very
The company responded by firing them on
the spot.
Over the next 25 years the two originators
sued again and again - and always lost.
Finally, a few years back the papers got
wind of the story. The public wasn't too
pleased to hear about the chintzy treatment
Superman's creators were receiving.
Embarrassed, the company awarded Seigel
and Shuster lifetime pensions of $20,000
apiece.
Meanwhile, Superman had left his
wallpaper origins far behind for the celluloid
glory of Hollywood. The Superman films
were box office smashes and brought in
hundreds of millions each year for the
company. In appreciation, the company
moguls bumped the Seigel and Shuster
pensions up another ten grand each.
“Victory” was rather academic at this
point for Joe Shuster. He was in his 70's,
blind and unable to draw.
Oh well, time eventually blindsides all of
us - even the Man of Steel. Ironically it
won't be Kryptonite or Lex Luther or any of
the regular arch-fiends that do in Superman.
It won't even really be Mister Doomsday.
It'll be the bean-counters at DC. The
bottom-line boys have decided that people
aren't buying enough Superman comics any
more. Ergo, cut your losses. Kill him off.
At least they won't have to explain the
decision to the man who gave us Superman
in the first place.
Joe Shuster died in Los Angeles on July
30. „ __
strong internationally. Another will be health
care, oil technology, aircraft, fishing and
project management. I doubt there will be
any great migration to Mexico to take
advantage of their low-cost labour; as I have
already reported, some of the Canadian firms
which went there have opted to close up
shop and come back home. They may work
more cheaply there; they certainly do not
work as efficiently.
When you are looking at any trade
agreement such as the one we signed with
the Americans in 1989 and the recent
NAFTA settlement, you have to realize that
the pros and cons do not come out
immediately. For what it is worth, I would
suggest that it will take the best part of a
decade to get a handle on it. There is still a
great deal of validity in the famous
economic law, formulated by the English
economist David Ricardo, called the law of
comparative advantage which says in effect
that each country concentrates on what it
does relatively better; as a result both
countries benefit in the long run. Certainly
the history of international trade since the
end of the World War II bears that out in no
uncertain terms.
Some people might even change their
minds about the negative aspects of such
agreements. Don't forget, when the Auto
Pact was formulated in 1965, the unions
were adamantly opposed to it. It was going
to lead us to economic ruin. (How often have
I heard that before!). Now the same unions
don't want to touch it; it is, as they made it
very plain during the negotiations with the
Americans, fine as it is.
If I had my druthers, I would rather see
progress made with the GATT mechanism
rather than have the world divide itself up
trading blocks under the guise of free trade
agreements. GATT is where we have made
the most progress and there is no reason to
believe that the situation has changed.
The
Short
of it
By Bonnie Gropp
Birthdays —
milk them
to the max!
I can talk about it now; it's over.
It's not that I'm one of those people who
for reasons of their own don't like to
remember they're getting older. Quite
frankly I love people making a big deal out
of my birthday. As a matter of fact — ask
my husband and kids — I insist. I frequently
pass some not-so-subtle hints that they'd do
well to heed, because forgetting my big day
is tantamount to cutting out my heart. After
all, you maybe can't live with birthdays, but
you sure can't live without them either, so I
give my big day all the attention I can.
Usually with people who are not my
intimates, I do try to keep it quiet, but being
past now, I figure I can take this opportunity
to discuss getting one year older.
Age is a funny thing. Adorning the top of
this 38-year-old body is a head that still
thinks it's 15. The other day, my teenage
daughter told me to act my age, which puts
me in a bit of a bind, because I'm not really
sure how to do that. After all I don't think
there is a book outlining the various ages of
our lives and exactly what kind of behaviour
one can expect from a person nearing 40,
however, going by her reaction dancing
around the kitchen is obviously not for the
over 30s.
Acting one's age, when you think of it is a
fairly vague thing. I have seen young people
so serious they are older in mind than many
of the next generation, and seniors with a
zest for life that can't be rivalled by any
youth. It's also transitory. Somedays I wake
up and all is right with the world and with
my degenerating anatomy. I know there is
nothing I can't do. I feel vital enough to be a
little carried away and silly enough to act it.
Then the next day, I try to get out of bed
only to discover that every bone in my body
aches. There are bills to pay, demands to
meet and I suddenly would be grateful to
feel just 38.
While my son may remind me that legs
should be achy after walking around on
them for almost four decades, I know a
young mind and heart more than
compensates for the nasty things time does
to your physical being. Then I see a picture
of Jane Fonda, further proving that age
really has very little to do with the sort of
person we are.
That's why I enjoy birthdays so much.
Though none of us like to think of time
hastening past, I really seldom think of my
birthday in that way. To me it's one day a
year when every person has a chance to be
guest of honour. Actually, don't you think it
would be a great idea for every person
working to get their birthday off?
Though some may argue to the contrary,
to me a person’s birthday is not just another
day, it's a celebration of that person's life and
should be an occasion. If it weren't for our
birthday none of us would be here and I
hopefully, will get to milk mine to the max
for another 40 years.