Wednesday, October 11, 2006

NAFTA To The Rescue


For those on the left who denounce NAFTA it is always interesting to see that they use the side agreements for progressive aims. Labour has used the labour side agreement, now the environmental lobby is using the environmental side agreement. Maybe NAFTA is useful, hmmm. Thats its contradiction. It can be used by both activists and capitalists to their own ends. In this case the New Government of Canada stands to be embarassed on the global stage, and rightly so.

Canada isn't living up to its own laws meant to protect endangered species from extinction, Canadian and American environmental groups charge.

Sierra Club of Canada and Friends of the Earth, have filed a formal complain against Canada with the Commission for Environmental Cooperation for North America, an inter-governmental body with senior representatives from Mexico, Canada and the United States set up under the North American Free Trade Agreement. The commission's web site says it is investigating the complaint against Canada.



See:

Endangered Species

NAFTA



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Buy American


Propping up the American dollar economy is its Gulf Allies....not any economic policy coming from the Fed or the White House......

Consider this protection money paid to the American Empire.




Gulf oil states ‘keep faith in dollar assets’

Gulf oil producers will continue buying dollar-based assets with their windfall revenues, but not all the money will flow into the US, according to Mohsin Khan, director of the IMF’s Middle East and Central Asia department.

Gulf oil producers including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates will record current account surpluses of $239bn (€190bn, £128bn) this year, rising to $259bn in 2007, a new IMF report says.


And we thought $13 billion was a record surplus!



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Fair Share


The OECD reports that corporations are paying more in taxes now than in the 1960's. Corporate share of tax bill driven up in line with profits

However what is not reported in this news story is the relationship between corporate and personal income taxes paid to the OECD member states.

That is in Canada in the 1960's corporations paid a bigger portion of the taxes collected by the Canadian State than the portion from personal income taxes.

At the end of this story the truth is revealed while corporations pay 10 percent now personal income taxes are still 25 percent of the states income. That is down from 30% thanks to tax cuts to the rich.



SEE:

Corporate Tax





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Behind the Eight Ball


Canada, US to Implement Softwood Lumber Accord on Oct. 12

To little, too late. Thanks to the bursting of the American housing bubble.


Slumping lumber prices could see sawmills close

Abitibi shutdowns chop 680 jobs Indefinite closings at 4 sawmills. Firms says demand for products has dived because of the US housing slowdown.
Domtar Announces Closure of 4 Sawmills MSN Money

Abitibi-Consolidated cutting 700 jobs in Quebec and closing four mills
Other forestry companies including Cascades (TSX:CAS), Weyerhaeuser (TSX:WEF) and privately held Kruger have announced similar closures in Quebec and in other parts of Canada this year as the industry restructures to meet rising energy costs and lower demand for lumber and other wood products.


See

American Exceptionalism

Softwood

Free Trade



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Blaming The Victim



This is rich;Consumers to blame for botulism outbreak, juice maker says

No matter what the food faddists and vegans say there is nothing morally superior or politically correct about Organic Farming Corporations they are just like any other corporation.

Of course the facts state otherwise. But PR is all about spin not facts.

Alain Charette, a spokesman for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, said it will be some time before officials can pinpoint what precisely caused the outbreak. He also noted that the toxin can spread when a product hasn't been stored at a proper temperature, but said it must have been present in the juice in the first place.



See:

Organic Botulism



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Canada's New Groundhog

Last summer Wiatron Willie the Canadian weather groundhog died. But there is a replacement. Our MIA Environment Minister Rona Ambrose. After all she is not concerned with greehouse gases but with smog and the weather.

October is the new groundhog month that time of the year when our MIA Environment Minister appears. Last week she showed up before the house committee on the Environment, this time she appeared on CBC.

Wow twice in a week. I wonder if she saw her shadow?

Doesn't matter what she says, she lies. All we want from her is her resignation.

Ambrose defends smog plan in face of criticism
Environment Minister Rona Ambrose defended the government's environmental plan Wednesday as critics warned against setting emissions targets according to industry growth.
Ambrose defends smog plan in face of criticism

You know how to whistle don't you,
put your lips together and blow.


Prime Minister Stephen Harper's new green plan is a "hot-air" approach that would continue to accelerate the devastating effects of global warming by giving major industry polluters an easy ride, leading Canadian environmentalists said Tuesday. Tory green plan full of hot air

Of course we know who likes this plan the only folks the Conservatives have consulted.....PM's air pollution plan gets early nod from business

See;

Ambrose

Environment


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Green Pragmatism


May softens Green view of seal hunt
Elizabeth May, who was elected party leader in August, said she supports a limited hunt."I'm probably the only leader of the Green Party of Canada that has friends who are sealers, [so] I'm going to take a very different view on this," said May, a native of Cape Breton.

Well its about time considering the decision on the Seal Hunt was made by the executive committee during last election without consulting the base. As a result it meant the Green Party candidates in Newfoundland quit rather than run a sure fire losing campaign.
Green Opportunism

Besides as I have documented here the original Greenpeace Seal Hunt campaign was organized in cooperation with the sealers, aimed at a program of sustainable quotas and reductions.

Once the campaign was hijacked by Paul Watson and his Sea Sheperd society, Greenpeace abandoned working with the sealers and went on its all or nothing campaign opposing the hunt and caricaturing the sealers as neanderatals.

See:

Seal Hunt


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US War Crimes


Last month the number of Amercicans killed in Iraq exceeded those killed in the 9/11 attack.

The civilian Iraqi deaths far exceed that number. In fact the latest report shows that 1 in 40 Iraqi's have died since the American invasion.


Around 655,000 people have died in Iraq as a result of the US-led coalition invasion, according to the largest scientific analysis yet. That is 2.5% of the country's entire population.The death rate before the invasion was a fairly normal 5.5 per thousand people per year. Since March 2003, that figure has averaged 13.2, the researchers found. More worrying, the death rate has risen every year since the invasion: this year reaching 19.8 per thousand people per year, a near-fourfold increase over pre-invasion levels. Despite disruptions in sanitation and health care, death from non-violent causes do not appear to have climbed significantly.Enormous death toll of Iraq invasion revealed

Bush's wish to fight terrorism in Iraq rather than at home in America has meant that 220.31 Iraqi civilians have died for every person who died on 9/11.


This is more than those killed by Sadam Hussein who is on trial for war crimes.

The Bush Regime should be tried by the same standards.

Today in his press conference, President Bush applauded the courage of Iraqis, stating that he is “amazed that this is a society which so wants to be free that they’re willing to — you know, that there’s a level of violence that they tolerate.”


Of course there are always quizzlings willing to apologize for Amerika's war crimes.

RFE/RL: The top UN rights envoy on torture, Manfred Nowak, speaking a few weeks ago, said that torture may be worse now in Iraq than under Saddam Hussein. What do you make of this, as someone who is very well known for documenting the abuses of the Hussein era?

Kanan Makiya: Well, human rights abuses are widely, widely prevalent, if not the norm, in Iraq. The difference between the two situations is that one was officially sanctioned. Torture was the pinnacle of a system for whom that was almost a desirable form of punishment for breaking the rules during the Saddam Hussein state. Whereas now, torture is occurring because of a general breakdown of authority, left, right, and center, because of the inability of the state to essentially exercise control, to exercise law and order.





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Why We Fight Redux

This past weekend was the fifth anniversary of the American led invasion of Afghanistan. And in a stunning report from Sarah Chayes; who is one of the few American Journalists to have stayed in Afghanistan for the whole time, comes this story of why we are fighting in Kandahar. Not because of the Taliban, but because American political machinations that failed. It is a tale of Americans undermining the Karzai government for their own ends. Which end up with Canadian troops having to clean up their mess at a cost of our soldiers lives.

Sarah Chayes, former NPR correspondent who covered the US invasion of Afghanistan. She left journalism in 2002 to run an aid organization in Kandahar called Afghans for Civil Society. Sarah’s new book is "The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban." She now runs a cooperative called Arghand that sells hand crafted products in Afghanistan.

AMY GOODMAN: You, very early on in your book, talk about a report you couldn’t do or didn’t get in onto NPR. What was that story?

SARAH CHAYES: It was really this story. It was, I watched -- there were U.S. Special Forces that were embedded in a group, a kind of tribal militia, which was directed to put pressure on Kandahar from the south. President Karzai also had U.S. Special Forces with him. He was coming down toward Kandahar from the north. The Taliban surrendered to him. They left. Al-Qaeda left the city. The city was in the hands of President Karzai and his chosen representative, and then these U.S. Special Forces urged this warlord to take the city by force from President Karzai.

AMY GOODMAN: Wait, now, explain how this went down and how you understood what was happening. You were on the border with this --?

SARAH CHAYES: I was on the border. I was not with this group, but I was on the border, and I was listening to the radio, where a lot of this played out, and I was speaking to people who were coming back across the border, and I knew that President Karzai had designated a certain person whose name is Mullah Naqib to be governor of Kandahar. And then, suddenly this warlord is in the city. And then, there’s this huge and angry standoff, which is being played out on the airwaves of the BBC actually, of their Pashto Service, and this warlord is saying, “No, I’m going to be governor of Kandahar.” And I knew there was something strange. And eventually that’s what happened. And Mullah Naqib basically pled old age and said, “Oh, I’m too old.” And I thought, “That’s not right.” You know.

AMY GOODMAN: The Karzai appointee for governor.

SARAH CHAYES: The Karzai appointee, that’s right, said, “Okay, this other guy is going to be governor. I’m too old to be governor.” And I knew that something had happened. And then I rode into the city maybe two days after this with somebody who had been with this warlord, so I asked him, “Well, how did it go? How did you guys happen to go and take Kandahar?” And He was a very young kid, you know, so he’s kind of all excited and enthusiastic. You know -- Speed! Speed! -- we went up the road, you know. And then I said, “Well, what about the Americans who were with you?” He said, “The Americans? They told us to do it.” I thought, “You have to be kidding me.”

And that, I thought, was a really emblematic story to tell that would help show us the direction this thing was going in, because it seemed to me -- remember, this was before Iraq, Afghanistan was it -- and I saw the eyes of the world riveted on how we were going to operate in Afghanistan, how Afghanistan was going to turn out, was going to be crucial to what happened in the next decade or the next half-century even, you know.

AMY GOODMAN: So, he’s saying the U.S. Special Forces had put this other warlord up against the U.S.-backed Hamid Karzai.

SARAH CHAYES: Right, exactly. So the United States was working at cross purposes with itself, number one. Number two, you’re already constraining the power of the person that you have designated to be president. You’re saying, “Okay, you can be president, but you can’t name -- you don’t have the power to name your own governor.” And this dogged President Karzai for the first two years of his administration, when he was trying to limit the powers of some of these warlord governors that we had brought, we had allied with them.

AMY GOODMAN: The U.S. government had.

SARAH CHAYES: The U.S. government, that’s right, had allied with these guys, supposedly in the interest of the war on terror, and President Karzai was trying to limit their power and constrain them or even remove them, and he was told repeatedly that he couldn’t do that. And so, now he’s pretty much given up trying.



Also See:

Afghanistan



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Chickens and Super Bugs


Another reason to challenge capitalist factory farming and the use of antibiotics as growth hormones , whose only purpose is to increase the profitability and surplus value of the end product. They result in superbugs.

Poultry consumption a risk factor for antibiotic resistance in humans
Antibiotic use as a livestock growth promoter increases the risk of human antibiotic resistance, a Marshfield Clinic researcher and his colleagues have found.

"We need to have drugs to treat sick animals but we should not be using antibiotics to promote growth."

"We've known for a long time that resistant bacteria can be found on retail poultry products, but our study is one of the first to show an association between human carriage of antibiotic resistance genes and eating poultry or handling raw poultry. "



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Fear Of Women

Here is a revealing statement from Japan in response to the growing social equality between men and women. A concept that of course challenges the very basis of the social construct of masculinity. Is it any wonder that fascism is not just a political economic system but a psycho-social construct to defend the fragile male ego and its artifical gender construct. To define a relationship of equality as masochism, says much about the fragility of the masculine construct. It is the little man complex.

Japan's concept of free love lost in translation

Japan has also been swept up in the whirlwind of a "pure," or true love boom, the weekly says, adding that it's probably the result of more guys obeying whatever women tell them to do.

"Recently, there have been more guys who make masochistic statements. Actions that would once have been regarded as girly are common and men find life easier if they do what women want," columnist Asato Izumi tells Weekly Playboy. "We're living in an age where it's better off for men if they choose to live like masochists."


To reassert the little mans male authority, fascism, demands dominance over and the deeming of the other (women and girls) by making them the object and subject of the male warriors power. War is rape after all. And all other relationships of course would only belittle the power of the little man, making him a masochist.

Ex-Fukuoka TV reporter given 40-month prison term for gang rape



Wooden frieze carved into the side of the pulpit depicting Jesus standing next to a helmeted German soldier and Aryan women and children.

See:

Rushton Is A Fascist

Life Is A Video Game

Nazi Gay Killer Wanted to be a Cop

SOME REMARKS ON WAR SPIRIT

Feminism



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Burma Shave



So much for caring about the moral economy, the IMF (under the control of the U.S., which says it is all about promoting democracy and capitalism) has this to say to the military autarky/ dictatorship in Burma;

IMF warns Burma on high inflation

Call it a Burma Shave. The IMP wants Burma to shave a few points off inflation, who cares about the exploitation and oppression of the Burmese people. Yes I know it's now called Myanmar, but that was the headline.






See:

Burma


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Send Fentie To Negotiate With the Taliban

The Yukon has re-elected Canada's only sitting Narco Premier. Yukon Party gets majority

It shows Canadian values are not Conservative values. They want a war on drugs, we reward drug dealers by electing them as politicians.


Dennis Fentie, who began his career in crime, which is the origin of all primitive accumulation of capital,
had been convicted and spent time in prison for heroin trafficking in 1974

Of course as a smart pusher he didn't use. He
went on to to use his wheeling and dealing skills in Construction, another business that is part of the under the table/ underground economy. And his natural instinct for opportunism, going from the NDP to the Yukon Party to Premier, makes him perfect for the job.

So lets get him to negotiate with the poppy growers in Afghanistan.


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