Trivial capitalist thoughts of the day (oh, and why Canadians voted for Harper).

Today, on the same day Harper's approval rates are reported to be at 70% (70%!) in Québec, a Tim Hortons© is announced to open in Afghanistan.

(See http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2006/200605/20060508.html for the Québec poll, and http://www.timhortons.com/fr/news/news_archive_2006b.html for the news in Afghanistan.)

This is the first conservative hurrah in Québec in about 25 years, and it's the first ever public appearance of North American café capital in Kandahar.

More on Québec later. Timmy time first:

It was / is to bolster and boosten the Canadian troopsters' resolves, They say.

Perhaps because I have recently transplanted my roots to the Niagara region (from Québec, no less) where there are, incidentally, the most Tim Hortons© stores per capita in all of North America (http://wiki.pastiche.org/display/OURPLACE/HamiltonOntario), my heart felt a little bit fuzzy and fier and altogether right-wing that Tim Hortons was the first to break virgin Afghanistan terrain: Beat those Americans. Ha HAH. Better than Starbucks®. Even if I do have a fondness for the Seattle-born version of all things masala.

Which launched my idle internet fingers to Google™search the links for the question: Which has loftier loins, Starbucks® or Tim's©?

Starbucks®, of course. Tim's© has merely North American presence, with the apparent exception of Afghanistan's impregnation I heard announced today.

But I did discover that there are eight Starbucks® locations in (of all places?) Quatar. From the list (http://www.starbucks.com/retail/locator/default.aspx), probably the country with the smallest Starbucks® per capita. Alas.

But the Philippines. Now there's something: 85. Not bad for 7107 islands, 76.5 million people (http://www.tourism.gov.ph/), a public debt rate of 77.4% of its GDP (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/rp.html), and where one Starbucks white hot chocolate® in Canadian terms costs approximately the equivalent of an average servant's daily wages, plus a mango for lunch, in the Province.

But all this to bring me to my case. Nothing relating to the competition of North American soils:

Why not open up a Tim's© in Iran?. There are increasing numbers of Canadian mercenaries poised on its borders, and probably troops on the way, thanks to the new Conservative government prioritising the reappropriation of our income tax dollars to more appropriate fiscal imbalances. And they, too, will be in need of boosting their troop-y morale.

But I vote IRAN because opening up a Tim's© in Iran can, in addition to boosting up said morale, open the door for women to expand and / or ritualise the April 30th, 2006 decree (see AP http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4938912.stm) that "allows" women the right to congregate in public places. Or at least, starting with public sporting stadium events.

This decree is / was the first of its like kind since about the last Québec conservative hurrah. With this pomp comes the circumstance of a newly-emergent Tim's©. But now that we are more fully capitally, culturally, and conservatively aligned: Capital does colonise -- we're now bringing freshness and presence from the Freeworlded-loaders, promoting caffeinated choice the Freeworld way.

I'm not suggesting we retrace any giant steps, for I am not a reactionary. . . I simply want to connect our capital dots. What responsibility do we take with us to the capitalisitically colonised? In this increasingly global economy -- and I am hardly an expert at the exact figures behind any of it -- we've got to realise that we are going to have to start accounting for dollars as well as capital sense. To cliché.

'The axis of this newly emerging consciousness, and at the same time, the thing to be cultivated, encouraged and expanded, is a new type of human responsibility for the world. Along with all its natural responsibilities - by which I mean responsibility for family, community, national or cultural society, for company or country - humanity, which is to say every individual, should become increasingly aware that it bears a responsibility for the whole world. All the other responsibilities, which are naturally closer to us as individuals, yet only partial responsibilities all the same, must be reflected against this wider background. '
-Václav Havel, Chulalungkorn University, Bangkok, February 12, 1994

So: Those are my thoughts. What are yours?