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Otago Daily Times
23-04-2025
- General
- Otago Daily Times
Little choice in a barrel of rotten apples
A see-saw consists of opposing halves, one up, one down. So does this column. And just as a see-saw has a single point that acts as a fulcrum, so this column has a single word. It is a word of one syllable, a word that you will find in every language, a word without which things wouldn't work. It's the word that rules the world. On this page, two months ago, I was the king in his counting house, counting out his money. I rubbed my fat little hands together and I gloated. I cackled over my wealth. I was Dives. I was Croesus. I was every rich man ever. Because I had apples. For the first time in years I had a tree full of them, which I'd protected from the ravages of possums by means of a mass of netting held together with cable ties. Houdini couldn't have got through it. The only apples the possums could get to were fruit that hung hard up against the netting. These they grasped with their little paws and nibbled at unsatisfactorily through the mesh. To drum home the fact of their exclusion, I baited a trap nearby with apple, and the possums fell for the irony by the dozen. I would wake most mornings to find one stiff and dead. Smugly I quoted Keats and the Bible on the subject of apples. I reminded the world what an apple a day did for medical expenses. In short I revelled in my apples: sweet, plump, globular, free and mine all mine. To the orchardist the spoils. But ... and there you have it: the fulcrum of the seesaw. You sensed it coming, and you were right to do so. For few things can be so utterly relied on in this world as the word "but". But is the leveller. It smooths out the excesses. It dampens joy but (you see) it also soothes misery. In all things there is always a but. The but is built in. The biggest but of all, the buttest of buts, is death. It undercuts every triumph, but (yes yes) it ends all suffering as well. Imagine a world in which Trump didn't die, a world where he just went on going on. All griefs fade, but (there we go again) so do all joys. But embodies a notion older than any religion. It is the wheel of fortune, the most ancient and enduring philosophy of mankind, not as a television game show with a grinning fraud of a presenter, but as an observation of life's mutability. The wheel is always turning. And the best place to be is at the bottom, because from there you can only go up. "Fortune good night," Kent says in King Lear when he has been unjustly put in the stocks. "Smile once more. Turn thy wheel." And it did. Correspondingly the worst place to be is at the top of the wheel, gloating over a crop of apples. They grew huge. The largest is the size of a Labrador's skull. I don't know when you last ate a Labrador's skull, but I've been doing at least one a day for the last month or so. I'm sick of them. And I still have hundreds. And those hundreds are ageing and softening and becoming floury. The obvious solution is to give them away, to feel the joys of generosity. But that has proved harder than you might think. People have trees of their own. Or they see the Lab-skull size and they say they'll take one. Worse, they have crops of their own that they want to palm off. They foist their wasp-hollowed plums on me, their pears like cricket balls. I seek less fruit not more. The other solution would be to preserve. This time of the year my mother would make jar upon jar of blackberry and apple, that would reappear in midwinter as a crumble or a pie. But the process of preservation involved pans, jars, skill and patience that I haven't got and have no plans to acquire. The same is true of jam-making. It all serves to remind me that I am poorly equipped for the reality of this world, hopelessly dependent on supermarkets and other people. And thus my crop lies rotting, my smugness with it. The see has sawn. But rules the world. • Joe Bennett is a Lyttelton writer.
Associated Press
21-02-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
Croesus appoints Jean Lavigueur to its Board of Directors
MONTRÉAL, Feb. 21, 2025 /CNW/ - Croesus announced today the appointment of Jean Lavigueur as a new member of its Board of Directors. Mr. Lavigueur will join the current team and contribute his extensive experience in business and high technology to the company. Before joining the Board of Directors at Croesus, Jean Lavigueur served as the Chief Financial Officer of Coveo Solutions (TSX: CVO) for seventeen years, where he currently remains a senior advisor. Prior to his time at Coveo, he co-founded Taleo (NASD: TLEO) and acted as its Chief Financial Officer for seven years. Lavigueur was also the Chief Financial Officer at Baan SCS (NASD: BAANF) and Groupe Berclain, each for seven years. Additionally, he spent seven years as an auditor and tax specialist at Coopers & Lybrand. Throughout his career, Lavigueur has been involved with several boards of directors, including those of Cossette Communications (TSX: KOS), Opsens (TSX: OPS), Vention, and Petal Health. With a passion for business, Jean Lavigueur leverages his expertise and vision to support companies with ambitious growth plans. 'We are honoured to welcome Jean Lavigueur to our Board of Directors,' said Rémy Therrien, founder and executive chairman. 'His addition aligns perfectly with Croesus's growth strategy, which is focused on developing new products to provide our clients with increasingly effective solutions.' 'I am thrilled to join the Board of Directors at Croesus and contribute to the growth of this leading FinTech company,' said Lavigueur. 'I am excited to work with such an experienced and passionate team, and I look forward to collaborating with each member,' he added. 'We are delighted to welcome Jean to our Board of Directors,' said Vincent Fraser, President and CEO of Croesus. 'His extensive experience in business management and high technology will enhance our already experienced team. Croesus aims to solidify its status as a leader in wealth management technologies, and Jean's addition will greatly contribute to achieving this vision.' About Croesus Croesus provides innovative, high-performance, and secure wealth management solutions that include portfolio management systems, portfolio rebalancing tools, and application programming interfaces (APIs). These solutions empower wealth management professionals to improve their productivity, enhance their client relationships, make informed decisions, and maximize the management of their assets under management. Croesus's mission is to provide a superior experience to its clients, users, partners, and employees and to positively impact the community. With more than 200 employees in its Montréal, Toronto, and Geneva offices, Croesus has won several industry awards for being a high-quality solution provider and an outstanding employer.
Yahoo
07-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump and Musk Take a Hammer to America's Reputation
A 'SPECIAL GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE' wealthy beyond the dreams of Croesus, chose as his first target the poorest and most vulnerable people on Earth. On Sunday evening, Elon Musk and his peach-fuzz adjutants locked employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development out of their email accounts, shut down the agency website, announced that nearly everyone would be fired, and crowed that USAID had been fed into a 'wood chipper.' President Onlooker muttered approvingly that the agency had it coming because it was dominated by 'radical left lunatics.' Musk called them criminals. USAID is a duly constituted government agency created by Congress and the president. By law, it can be shut down only by Congress and the president. The attempt to close it by the whim of a ketamine-popping oligarch is flagrantly illegal, and will eventually, one assumes, be reversed by the courts. But that could take months (and there's a sting in the tail, which I'll come to in a minute). Meanwhile, Americans who work for the agency, most of them overseas, have been thrown into chaos, and the people who benefit from the assistance have been left in the lurch. That includes people on the verge of starvation in Yemen; AIDS patients in sub-Saharan Africa; people clearing landmines in Cambodia; medical workers treating people with malaria, cholera, and measles in Sudan; and those providing medicine, housing, food, and other assistance to Ukraine, among millions of others worldwide. Until last week, USAID was the largest distributor of humanitarian assistance on Earth. Today, by abruptly pulling the plug, the world's greatest humanitarian country has become one of its least, raising a huge middle finger to those facing hunger, disease, war, and oppression. The only way we're going to get through this is together. Become a Bulwark+ member today to join our community. Silicon Valley types like to move fast and break things. I guess that's fine if the only thing you break is your own bank account, but applying that spirit to foreign assistance (again, without a shred of legal authority) means breaking human beings. And it means criminal waste. Wasn't Musk supposed to be seeking to limit waste? According to two sources with knowledge of foreign assistance activities at the Department of State and USAID, more than 475,000 metric tons of American food commodities (purchased from farmers in Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa) have already been ordered and are now at risk of rotting at railroad sidings or ports. Another 29,000 metric tons, valued at $30 million, are reportedly sitting in a Texas warehouse and cannot be shipped to needy people. Most of the 10,000 people who work for USAID have no idea if they will ever see another paycheck. Those in conflict zones like Ukraine are unsure whether they retain diplomatic status. They've been told to come home but they have no guidance about how or whether the government will pay for their transportation. They've been locked out of their phones and their computers and feel anxious and isolated. Like any agency or, frankly, any human organization, USAID has faults. Some of its programs could be streamlined, one employee told me, but 'we respond to earthquakes and wars—don't smash everything because 2 percent have problems!' The people drawn to work in humanitarian assistance are the polar opposite of Musk. Some were refugees or other recipients of aid when they were young and want to pay it forward. These and others from various backgrounds are nature's noblemen, drawn from across the country and including doctors, public health specialists, nurses, teachers, truck drivers, and many, many former military members. Most could make much better salaries in the private sector but feel called to help the most vulnerable people in the world. Many accept long separations from their families and endure uncomfortable and often dangerous postings in places that Silicon Valley types don't frequent. They stand ready, with bags packed, to receive a midnight call. 'When there was an Ebola outbreak in 2013,' one USAID employee told me, 'doctors with USAID rushed to Uganda to stop the spread. They put their own lives at risk. No one knows about it because they succeeded and Ebola never spread to the [United States]. So much of what we do is unseen, but that doesn't make it unimportant.' Now, they are afraid to speak freely. They sound more like dissidents in places like China or Russia than like Americans. They fear they are being monitored and targeted for God-only-knows what kind of accusation or retribution. FOREIGN AID NEVER POLLS WELL. Many Americans imagine that we spend 25 percent of our budget supporting humanitarian needs in far-flung places. When asked how much would be about right, they suggest about 10 percent. The true figure is less than 1 percent, though our presence—and our bags of grain labeled prominently with the words 'From the American People'—is felt in scores of nations around the globe. Even if they were preaching gender ideology with every shot of penicillin (and they're not) it would still be worth doing. We should give to the poor both for its own sake—it is basic morality after all—and for the reputation and standing of the United States. Now for the sting in the tail. The courts will take up Musk's attack on American benevolence in due course, and while one cannot predict with certainty how they will rule, it's a reasonably safe bet that they will find that the Trump/Musk demolition project was illegal. Then comes the moment of truth. It remains an open question whether Trump will obey the court. If he does, we will still have a republic. If not, we've turned the page. Share
