This Week's Favourite Things! Monday March 27th - Sunday April 2nd, 2017

1.  Giant Valentine Tomatoes, it's tomato seed starting time and this new variety we tried last year lived up to its description. 

2. If reality is some sort of video game as previously suggested, and if you can indeed  create your reality by programming your own belief systems, I think the game I'd be playing would be called "Tower of Babel" vs "Garden of Eden". 

3. Youtube videos featuring Les Brown, motivational speaker, eg. Les Brown - How to get to know yourself  and Les Brown's top 10 rules for success, volume one and volume two

4. Responding vs. Reacting (avoid the narcissist's trap and learn a valuable life skill) Inner Integration youtube video

5. This Canadian Inflation calculator, for the years 1960 to 2017. 

6. Black Eyed Peas videos/songs:  Imma Be Rocking That Body,  Boom Boom Pow, Pump It, I Gotta Feeling,  especially as background music to Fitness Blender cardio kickboxing workouts.

7. Everything Maud Lewis, in anticipation of  the biographic film Maudie which will released soon.  

Here are some links with more information about Maud's life:

Maud Lewis: The Heart on the Door, new biography that is 'dark at every turn'.  book review, Local Xpress article April 2017.

One of Canada's Great Artists Maud Lewis, 1965: CBC Archives,  short (3 1/2 minute) youtube video from the CBC channel.   

Maud Lewis: A World Without Shadows.  10 minute Canadian National Film Board film on their youtube channel.

Ordinary Affects: Folk Art, Maud Lewis, and the Social Aesthetics of the Everyday.  Concordia University lecture by Dr. Erin Morton on youtube 

The "About Maud" page from the maudlewis.ca website.  Her fluffy black cats with yellow eyes are my favourite subject of hers.

8.  The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Artists, Blender Foundation youtube video

9. The Dash, a poem by Linda Ellis.

10.  This 2007 report by Canada's competition bureau, mentioned previously with respect to real estate agents, this time I find the bit about lawyers very interesting:

Self-Regulated Professions Balancing Competition and Regulation. 

The link above goes to a table of contents, so a person can skip ahead to the conclusion about lawyers, which warns that due to self regulation for lawyers and correspondingly high legal fees, Canada is at risk of having a justice system that only the rich can afford.

11. Articles about the Canadian real estate industry, and their comment sections:

Tricks Realtors Use To Sell Homes.  Feb 2015 MoneySense article.

Calgary Homeowner Who Says Realtor 'Misrepresented' Square Footage on MLS Cost Her Thousands.  March 2016 CBC Go Public Article

Homelife Superstars Realtor Accused of Duping Client out of $12k. January 2015 CBC Go Public article.  

One Man's $50,500 real estate commission lesson - you can still be obligated to pay commission even after your contract with an agent has expired.  June 2014 The Star article.

12.   Good news for Moose and other critters, announcements about protected habitat in Nova Scotia.   

13. Doreen Virtue who it seems has quietly started her own online church from her Hawaiian reserve for rescued animals.  This "sermon" from the week of March 27 - April 2nd on discernment and healing was nice.

14.  Alan Watts - Use Your Mind As A Mirror (youtube video)

15.  this quote that Les Brown mentioned, "The best revenge in life is massive success" - Frank Sinatra.  

Here comes a big tangent... 

This quote led me to wondering who Sinatra was looking for revenge on so I watched a documentary on youtube about his life:

Sinatra -- Dark Star -- Full Documentary.  

...and learned that Sinatra's career was largely built by the Italian mafia who used him to entertain at their casinos.  News to me but apparently this is common knowledge. 

This led me to randomly wondering if Lebanon has a mafia, based on a random comment an out of province friend made awhile back. 

So, curious, I googled "does Lebanon have a mafia?" and, this wiki page comes up: Lebanese Mafia.   

Here is a quote copied directly from the page:  

The Lebanese diaspora today is a staggering 20+ million, with only 4 million Lebanese residing in Lebanon. The advances of the Lebanese in their criminal activities throughout the world caused many governments and politicians to become corrupted and give in to their Lebanese guests due to their accumulated wealth and power. 

Now I have no idea if the information in this page is true or not, as the page doesn't references any sources to back up these allegations.  But as an aside, many big construction projects in Halifax are by this group of developers from Diman Lebanon as described in these two articles:

Call It The Diman Connection Chronicle Herald, October 2011 article. 
(Please note that Halifax Chronicle Herald reporters and other staff have been on strike since January 2016, but their writings can now be seen at Local Xpress)

and 

It Takes a Lebanese Village to Raise Halifax's Skyline ( Nov 2013 Globe and Mail article).

Moreover, a chunk of Halifax's planning department now occupies space in The Village at Bayer's Road mall, which is owned by the same Diman developer who is building the Nova Centre.  The Nova Centre is a large building built in part with public funds because it will be housing a new convention center.  This project has been met with both accolades and critique, eg:.

Halifax Convention Centre: Prosperity or Tax Burden?  April 2014 Chronicle Herald article

and:

The casualties of a downtown Halifax Megaproject, March 2017 Globe and Mail Article

To the developer's credit there is also this article indicating the large amounts of fees that have allegedly been paid back to the city: Nova Centre developer forks over $733,400 in fees to Halifax. June 2014 Chronicle Herald article.

But in any case, based on our own experience of believing we had some valuable development land in Halifax, I have been wondering for awhile now: 

Could these Diman developers described in the above articles be acting as a cartel in order to keep development land prices low, perhaps with the assistance of local real estate professionals?  

and

Do they ever bid against each other for bits of land for major projects in HRM?

From the Merriam Webster website:

"A cartel is an organization of a few independent producers for the purpose of improving the profitability of the firms involved. This usually involves some restriction of output, control of price, and allocation of market shares. Members of a cartel generally maintain their separate identities and financial independence while engaging in cooperative policies. Cartels can either be domestic or international. Because cartels restrict competition and result in higher prices for consumers, they are outlawed in some countries."    

As another aside it seems that there's a Halifax company called Banc which, while the creator is from Turkey, appears to back developments conceived by the Diman developers as well as partnering with them on other projects.  

Banc is behind the luxury building that went up quickly in people's yards with no recourse which seems to have added more density than city by laws permitted:  Neighbours Down on Highrise.  March 28, 2014 Chronicle Herald article. 

And Banc is likewise behind the recent destruction of a popular local mountain biking/hiking trail "The Whopper Dropper" despite the fact that this company, which owns the Bedford Commons among other places, presumably could have afforded to leave this popular recreation area as park land: 
Our jaws dropped: Halifax residents react as developer clears popular trail.  May 5, 2015 CTV Atlantic Article.

To this developer's credit though they did save the Exhibition Park:  Exhibition Park to get new life under private sector ownership, Global news November 2015 article.  Although after more thought, 2.5 million dollars + estimated 500k in repairs (according to the article linked above) seems like quite a low pricetag for an entire exhibition park in a major Canadian city along with 112 acres of adjacent land.  But perhaps this is something a qualified, independent, out of province appraiser would be able to comment on.

From reading all sorts of articles about real estate development and sales in Canada and elsewhere, I have this other question:  Could money laundering of proceeds of organized crime be behind real estate development and property value spikes in places like Canada and Australia?  

There are oodles of articles online regarding the money laundering via real estate topic so I won't list any.   But as an aside, The 'Call it the Diman Connection' article linked above mentions that Diman developers have also settled in Sydney Australia, which happens to have an overheated real estate market.  

As another aside I learned over the past year that some of the largest development companies in Vancouver are Italian.  While I love my old Commercial Drive neighbourhood with its Italian coffee shops, delis, and community centre now I wonder if, allegations are true about organized crime laundering money via real estate, whether mafia proceeds could be behind the transformation of Vancouver into a real estate Casino for foreign investors.  

Or, it could be there's plenty of other questionable foreign money for that, eg:
Meet the mysterious tycoon at the centre of half a billion in BC property deals.  July 2016 National Post Article. 
 
Whatever the case, all of the above is just presented as food for thought for any folks who have been interested in trying to figure out the politics of development in Halifax, and none of it is intended to defame any person or group.  In fact if that quote from the Wiki page is defamatory then maybe someone should look into that.  For my part I'll be dropping this topic and returning to my sculptures shortly.  To be honest I'm actually more interested in the following questions:  

Could the development patterns seen in certain Canadian and Australian cities, with their corresponding affordable housing crises and impacts on the environment, heritage properties, and small local businesses, be described accurately as some sort of modern day, economic colonialism? 

and if so...

Could this be evidence of the Hermetic Law of  Cause and Effect with respect to being some sort of karmic repercussion for the atrocities suffered by Aboriginal or Indigenous people of these countries?

16.  This piece of art, that randomly showed up in my browser as a Society 6 ad, thanks Google.  I love the name, as well as the piece:  Trash Polka - Female Samurai