27.2.02

Double gold

Celebrating hockey gold



The Canadian flag



As it happens

aih@toronto.cbc.ca


Dear Team AIH


I happened to hear some comments on your talk back line this morning about the appropriate way of celebrating the double Canadian ice hockey gold in Salt Lake olympics. (It is early morning in this part of the World when you go on the air.) It seems that the Canadians appreciate this great acchievment and why not. Winning the olympic ice hockey tournamnet once is great, winning it twice at the same games is superior.

May I nevertheless remind you that the Canadian public did not appreciate the olympic hockey tournament that much for four years ago in Nagano when Finland beat team Canada in the bronze game. The local hotel employees in Nagano remember very well how the Canadian players showed their appriciation towards the then fourth place in the tournament by smashing the entire hotel interior decorations. With this I want to say that olympic succes is something to come and go but hockey is always a great sport. And the Canadians deserve indeed to celebrate their most reacent succes.

One of your listeners made a suggestion to bring the olympic heros back to Canada from the United States by establishing new NHL teams in the north. I find this to be an exellent idea and a step in the right direction. Another and perhaps even more essential step would be to make it possible for the very best players in all national teams to participate in the World Championship tournament each year.

Salt Lake was the second olympic tournament where the NHL players in all teams could participate. Hence the succesful teams in both Nagano and Salt Lake City can appreciate their acchievements and consider them more valuable than ever before. Unfortunately the International Ice Hockey Federation and the NHL have so far failed to agree on similar arrangements for the annual World Championship.

The basic problem seams to be that the national leagues in Europe are finished earlier in the spring than the NHL. This problem could be sorted out in the fair spirit of little give and take. The NHL could finish a little bit earlier and the Europeans could stretch their season a little bit longer. In the long run everybody would gain from such an arrangement. And the ultimate winners would be the best players in the World and the appreciative hockey fans all over the Globe.

I repeat once more that the double olympic gold for both Canadian teams is something to celebrate and be proud of. Please accept my humble congratulations. May I however remind that there will be another olympic hockey tournament in 2006 in Turin Italy. And there will be a number of other pretenders to the hockey trophy by that time.


Wishing you all the best


Larko


26.2.02

Bye VOA


VOA and me - shall we go apart?



Right Honorable Radio Friend,

Dear Dr Kim Andrew Elliott,

cw@voa.gov



The first time I discovered that there was such a thing as the short wave band was way back in 1970, that is for 32 years ago. One of the first international short wave broadcasters I heard was the Voice of America which made an effort to beat the BBC in competition to teach me to pronounce English one or the other way. I was only 13 at the time, hence it did make a difference.

As my linguistic skills increased, I started gradually to pay more and more attention to the contents of the transmissons. Both VOA and BBC have ever since had a firm position as a source of news and information that I have learned to trust. That was essential those days when lie factories such as Radio Moscow and their affiliates made their utmost to pollute the minds of young people.

At the age of 44, I am today in the position of forwarding my views on the news by delivering my own commentaries through the World wide web. I do it every day in four different languages. Of course I want my positions to be based on balanced information from a number of independent sources, VOA included of course.

Refering to above I am sorry to say that after 32 years of partnership I now may have to give up the Voice of America as one of my trusted sources. The obvious reason to that is the fact that VOA has decided to discontinue the Communications World. I find that the only way to force the best DX and IT programme in English back to air is a comprehensive listener boycott.

I will not listen to VOA transmissions untill CW has returned to air. Nor will I forward any information from VOA on any of my web sites or refer to VOA as a source or otherwise. I will also call upon my readers to join the boycott.

In your capacity of audience research officer you will no doubt understand that this kind of web publicity is the last thing that VOA needs at this day and age of war against terrorism. My boycott is by no means directed against the US government or the alliance against terrorism. It is directed against bureaucracy and officials who do not understand the actual effects of their decisions.

I will of course start to propagate the listener boycott on my sites in all four languages A S A P. I shall explain the reasons as to why listening to the VOA is not the right thing to do at the moment. I will however declare that anybody choosing not to join the boycott will nevertheless receive accurate information on the global events through your transmissions. In fact I am asking people temporarily to give up the access to your accurate info.

I hope that this will be the first and last time in my life to voluntarily give up access to VOA. I also hope that this intermediate state of affairs will not last longer than a given number of weeks. I trust to be able to give up this nonsense very soon as the Communications World returns to air.


Sincerely yours,

Larko