Greenspan Bitch Slaps Bush

According to the Wall Street Journal in his new biography ex Fed Chairman Greenspan, a follower of Ayn Rand, bitch slaps the Bush regime. Too bad he didn't say this when he was still Fed Chairman.

Mr. Greenspan, who calls himself a "lifelong libertarian Republican," writes that he advised the White House to veto some bills to curb "out-of-control" spending while the Republicans controlled Congress. He says President Bush's failure to do so "was a major mistake." Republicans in Congress, he writes, "swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose."

Mr. Greenspan discovered that in the Bush White House, the "political operation was far more dominant" than in Mr. Ford's. "Little value was placed on rigorous economic policy debate or the weighing of long-term consequences," he writes.

And interestingly he takes no blame for the current housing crisis sub-prime melt down that he created when he was fed chairman.

Many economists say the Fed, by cutting short-term interest rates to 1% in mid-2003 and keeping them there for a year, helped foster a housing bubble that is now bursting.

Instead he blames communism, or at least the melt down of the Soviet Union.

He attributes the housing boom to the end of communism, which he says unleashed hundreds of millions of workers on global markets, putting downward pressure on wages and prices, and thus on long-term interest rates.

So it was not the Fed that brought down interest rates, or created the global capitalist boom rather it was the devolution of the Soviet Union and the massive amount of unemployed workers available world wide to drive down wages.

The wave of migrant workers now flooding Europe, like those flooding into America, created the housing boom, by being a cheap source of construction labour and as consumers of the housing.

Mr. Greenspan returns repeatedly to the far-reaching importance of communism's collapse. He says it discredited central planning throughout the world and inspired China and later India to throw off socialist policies.

As well as cheap labour in the new fordist economies of China and India, especially the formers transformation from state capitalism to monopoly capitalism directly impacted on the American and global markets more than anything he and his monetarist pals did.

Confession is good for the soul. Ironically that confession fits classic Marxism more than it does the wacky ideology of his idol Ayn Rand.

And here is another irony that the joy expressed by the monetarists over the transformation of state capitalist economies to fordist monopoly capitalism will result in more inflation, their bugaboo.

In coming years, as the globalization process winds down, he predicts inflation will become harder to contain. Recent increases in the price of imports from China and a rise in long-term interest rates suggest "the turn may be upon us sooner rather than later."

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Cyberwar

While the Americans claim that the Chinese have hacked the Pentagon how do they know it wasn't the Russians?

Is the Chinese military responsible for recent attacks on Pentagon computers?

That's the question after numerous reports surfaced claiming that the People's Liberation Army of China hacked into a system in the office of U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates in June.

In a statement published Tuesday, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman confirmed that a system in Gates' office was hacked in June.

He declined, however, to identify the origin of the attack.

After all they crippled Estonia last spring. Though there was no evidence proving this was a state sanctioned attack.

“In information warfare, you may know your opponents, rivals, and enemies, but you do not know who is actually attacking," Evron said.

These hack-attacks may be shadows of the new cold war.

Attacks on U.S. systems have never been linked directly to state-sponsored cyberwarfare, but in 1999 Chinese hackers took down three U.S. government sites after NATO bombers mistakenly attacked the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.

The astonishing thing about last spring's alleged Russian cyberattack wasn't the crippling effect it had on Estonian's government and the lives of its citizens but the lack of serious reaction elsewhere. The European Union raised but one scolding finger, NATO sent a few experts to the Baltic nation, and the US protested mildly and briefly — then President Bush welcomed Putin to the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine. In fact, as the world witnessed the trial run of a new mode of warfare, pundits at The New York Times and other publications dismissed the digital assault on the tiny nation as much ado about nothing.

Nevertheless, despite such outcry about these attacks, Beijing and those responsible in the PLA can sleep easy. What reprisals will seriously affect them? Earlier this year, Russia launched a major cyber-attack on Estonia, taking down the Baltic state's government, banking and press websites. Estonia is a Nato country and a cyber-attack is a hostile act yet no sanctions were taken and the Kremlin used this successful defiance to escalate its rhetoric and actions even further. As far as Titan Rain, it will probably soon descend to a "Team America" moment of "we will be very angry with you ... and we will write you a letter, telling you how angry we are."

The Russian bear is back with a vengeance. But seen from Moscow, the Kremlin is simply reacting to a series of provocations by the United States and Nato as the Western alliance creeps towards Russian borders, threatening the security of the state.

The "new Cold War" has its origins in a speech made by Mr Putin last February at a security conference in Munich, in front of an audience of Western defence ministers and parliamentarians, in which he listed Moscow's grievances and accused the Bush administration of trying to establish a "unipolar" world.

"One single centre of power. One single centre of force. One single centre of decision-making. This is the world of one master, one sovereign," the President complained.

In May, Mr Putin fired off another volley against American unilateralism, obliquely comparing US policies to those of the Third Reich in a speech commemorating the 62nd anniversary of the fall of Nazi Germany.

In the same speech, he attacked Estonia, a new European Union member, for relocating a monument to the Red Army, which he said was "sowing discord and new distrust between states and people". When Estonian government websites fell victim to an unprecedented cyber attack, Nato was called in as the finger of suspicion fell on the Kremlin.

Ironically the hack attack could have been launched in the U.S. itself and re-routed through China.

Web-Hosting Terrorists

Most Americans will be surprised to learn that many Islamist hacker sites are hosted right here in the U.S.

Consider it an unmistakable and very much intended irony that these cyberjihadists are using our own domestic Internet resources against us.

Under Executive Order 13224, companies are forbidden to provide services to organizations known to support terrorism.

Technology industry leaders have also been doing their part to raise threat awareness, but greater cooperation between government and industry would go far in closing these sites down.

In some cases, sites have been shut down in the U.S. only to reappear in highly Internet-savvy countries such as Malaysia.

As one of the 9/11 terrorist planning locations, Malaysia has hosted a number of jihadist sites after authorities acted to terminate them in the U.S.

To its credit, that nation has not been deaf, dumb and blind to the problem -- quite the contrary.

In May 2006, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi announced the creation of a program called the International Multilateral Partnership Against Cyber-Terrorism, or IMPACT, to help countries work globally to fight cyberterrorists.

In one notable case, an especially worrisome jihadist hacker site first registered in Florida was shut down, but the organization behind it reconstituted operations in Badawi's country.

The Malaysian authorities took action to shut the site down. Unfortunately, it has appeared again where it originated: Tampa, Fla.

The site has grown from a membership list of only about 300 to more than 122,000 over the past few years. Skill levels are improving and technical information-sharing is taking place.

Some in the intelligence field -- and many on its fringes -- have argued that the U.S. needs to keep these jihadist sites up in order to monitor and understand their activities. True, some of this surveillance is necessary, but this is a wholly misguided attitude.

SEE:

Israel Hacker Heaven

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No Reincarnation Without Permission

Perhaps they are afraid of Chairman Mao....

China Says Tibetans Need Permission To Reincarnate

“The so-called reincarnated living Buddha without government approval is illegal and invalid,” according to the order, which comes into effect on September 1.

...returning as Chairman Meow.

One thing I did learn from His Holiness was that everything experiences reincarnation. Animals, insects, and other creatures also can be reincarnated as something else. I had thought that reincarnation was only towards human beings but I was wrong. In fact, it turns out that being an animal is one of the lowest forms of life you could come back as. I can see where that is coming from, it just never occurred to me that coming back as a dog or cat would be really that bad.
As humans, if we live a good life, we will be rewarded in our next life, but if not we will be punished; we would come back as an animal maybe? But fear not, because animals have just as much of a chance in being rewarded in their next life. Say you are a cat. You could be a really good cat, treat others kindly and live a very peaceful life, and you could be reincarnated as a human, which is a step up from being a cat.

Sacred Cat of Burma Legend

The legend also has it that when a priest dies, his soul was transmigrated into the body of the cat and upon the cats' death the priest's soul's transition into heaven had been accomplished - and according to Major Russell Gordon "But woe also to he who brings about the end of one of these marvelous beasts, even if he did not mean to. He will suffer the most cruel torments until the soul he has upset is appeased."

Cat Parasite Affects Everything We Feel and Do

Research Shows That a Certain Cat Parasite Affects Our Behavior and Mood

Kevin Lafferty is a smart, cautious, thoughtful scientist who doesn't hate cats, but he has put forth a provocative theory that suggests that a clever cat parasite may alter human cultures on a massive scale.

The parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, has been transmitted indirectly from cats to roughly half the people on the planet, and it has been shown to affect human personalities in different ways.

Research has shown that women who are infected with the parasite tend to be warm, outgoing and attentive to others, while infected men tend to be less intelligent and probably a bit boring. But both men and women who are infected are more prone to feeling guilty and insecure.

Lafferty argues in a research paper published Aug. 2 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, Biology, that aggregate personality types, or what cultures tend to be like, fit neatly with the effects that the parasite produces in individuals.

So that led to a basic question:

Can a common cat parasite account for part -- even if only a very small part -- of the cultural differences seen around the world?

If humans wiped themselves out, where would that leave religion ...

In the paws of Buddhist cats.
Cameron Davie, Springwood

Of course the real reason for the ban is that the Chinese have their own pretender to the Tibetan Throne in place.

The youngest political prisoner

By Benjamin Kang Lim

Reuters
Sunday, April 23, 2006; 11:32 PM

A Tibetan youth considered by rights groups to be the world's youngest political prisoner turns 17 on Tuesday, 11 years after disappearing from public view when he was named the Himalayan region's second-ranking religious figure.

The whereabouts of Gendun Choekyi Nyima -- who human rights watchdogs say has been living under house arrest since Tibet's exiled god-king, the Dalai Lama, appointed him the 11th Panchen Lama -- is one of China's most zealously guarded state secrets.

A Canadian official pressed for access to Nyima during a visit to Tibet this month, but it fell on deaf ears.

Chinese officials parroted their assertion that Nyima was "safe and comfortable and wishes to maintain his privacy," said the Canadian, who requested anonymity.

The Dalai Lama's unilateral announcement embarrassed and enraged China's atheist Communists, who dropped Nyima's name from a shortlist of candidates and endorsed Gyaltsen Norbu as the reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama, who died in 1989.

While Nyima languished in limbo, Norbu has studied Buddhism for years and made his debut on the world stage this month at China's first international religious forum since 1949.

"China made a huge gamble in 1995 when it decided to appoint its own Panchen Lama. It seems this has failed completely so far," said Robbie Barnett, a Tibetologist at Columbia University.

Party hardliners have sought to undermine the Dalai Lama's influence in Tibet and appear to be dragging their feet on reconciliation in the hope that the headache would disappear after the 70-year-old Dalai Lama dies.

By sticking firmly to its Panchen Lama choice, China may have deprived itself of having a say in the next Dalai Lama.

"China has lost a great opportunity to control the selection and training of the next Dalai Lama," Wang Lixiong, author of two books on Tibet that are banned in China, told Reuters.

Tibetan tradition calls for the Dalai and Panchen lamas to approve each other's reincarnations.

New Legal Measures Assert Unprecedented Control Over Tibetan Buddhist Reincarnation

The Chinese government State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA) issued legal measures on July 18, 2007, that if fully implemented could transform Tibetan Buddhism as it exists in China into a less substantial, more completely state-managed institution, and further isolate Tibetan Buddhist communities from their counterparts outside China. The "Measures on the Management of the Reincarnation of Living Buddhas in Tibetan Buddhism" (MMR) (Web site of the SARA (in Chinese), 18 July 07) take effect on September 1. The MMR (ICT translation) would empower the Chinese Communist Party and government to gradually reshape Tibetan Buddhism by controlling one of the religion’s most unique and important features—lineages of teachers that Tibetan Buddhists believe are reincarnations and that can span centuries. As elderly reincarnations pass away, the measures authorize government officials to decide whether or not a reincarnation is eligible to reincarnate, and if one is permitted, the government will supervise the search for the subsequent reincarnation, as well as religious education and training.

The MMR substantially expands the geographical reach of government oversight of reincarnation because the measures will be effective throughout China, not just in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), where less than half of China's Tibetan Buddhists live (according to official census data, 2.43 million of the 5.42 million Tibetans in China were located in the TAR). Once the measures take effect, they will apply to every reincarnated Tibetan Buddhist teacher who is recognized and seated in a monastery. Until now, the Chinese government has intervened only in the selection and installation of exceptionally important Tibetan Buddhist teachers. Most famously, China's State Council in 1995 installed a boy, Gyaltsen Norbu, as the 11th Panchen Lama after declaring the Dalai Lama’s recognition of Gedun Choekyi Nyima as the Panchen Lama to be "illegal and invalid." The government has approved only 30 Tibetan Buddhist reincarnations in the TAR in the period following 1959, when the Dalai Lama fled to India and the Party instituted "democratic reforms," according to a May 2004 State Council White Paper on "Regional Ethnic Autonomy in Tibet," (Xinhua, 23 May 04). Since it is unlikely that any of the approvals occurred until the early 1980s, when the government began to allow Tibetans (and other Chinese citizens) to resume religious activity, the number of government-approved reincarnations in the TAR appears to have averaged less than two per year.

SEE:

Same Old Olympics

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Same Old Olympics

So what else is new.

Chinese activists and intellectuals have published an open letter to "Chinese and World Leaders" on numerous dissident websites demanding that China honor its commitment to respect human rights at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

For this reason they cannot share in any “pride” in China’s glory as the Games’ host country; for them, “these glories are built on the ruins of the lives of ordinary people, on the forced removal of urban migrants, and on the sufferings of victims of brutal land grabbing, forced eviction, exploitation of labour, and arbitrary detention.”

Regardless of where they are held, urban poor are displaced, developers rule and it's all glossed over in the name of Sport.

The Olympics are the ultimate reflection of the Society of the Spectacle.



SEE:

Scabs Cause Olympic Cost Overruns

The Curse of Bruce McNall

Pro Sports and Criminal Capitalism

Criminal Capitalism-Sports-Soccer

SKYDOME: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF SPORTS

NFL IN TORONTO

As American As Apple Pie

The End Of The Leisure Society

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America's Debt Economy

America's boom economy is a debt economy, based on consumer credit thus consumer debt. Americans have financed the boom by mortgaging their homes. Even free market, gold bug, libertarians get it.

When a society is stable and prosperous, you can cast your lot along with everyone else and prosper along with your neighbours. That was the situation in the United States and Europe after WWII. Almost everyone became richer.

But since the mid-70s…it has been harder. In America, for example, hourly wages of working men have gone nowhere. And since the money in which wages are paid has been cut loose from gold, it is hard to know what anything is really worth…hard to keep track of what you have…and hard to hold onto it. The dollar, for example, lost half its purchasing power during the short time when Alan Greenspan was chairman of the Federal Reserve.

More recently, the bubble economy of the 21st century has been rewarding certain groups of elite traders and financial mavens, while punishing the average person with higher debt - personal, mortgage, and governmental. Soon, average investors will be hit hard too…and average homeowners…and average consumers.

Bill Bonner, The Daily Reckoning Australia

And gosh who is carrying America's debt? Why China of course. And if they cash in their chips well......

“China has accumulated a large sum of US dollars,” said He Fan, an official at China’s Academy for Social Sciences. He wasn’t exactly speaking for the government. But he was clearly articulating what’s on everyone’s mind. “Such a big sum,” he continued, “of which a considerable portion is in US Treasury bonds, contributes a great deal to maintaining the position of the dollar as a reserve currency.” But…?

“Russia, Switzerland, and several other countries have reduced their dollar holdings. China is unlikely to follow suit…as long as the yuan’s exchange rate is stable against the dollar. The Chinese Central bank will be forced to sell dollars once the yuan appreciated dramatically, which might lead to a mass depreciation of the dollar.”

Well then, there you have it. US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has pushed China to allow the yuan to appreciate, driven by nationalist and protectionist sentiments in the US Senate. China knows the US Congress is keen to act, and blame the foreigner in an election year for American economic woes. Its well-timed reminder of the leverage it has over the dollar is a warning to the Americans to be careful what they ask for.

Yes, it sure looks like China has announced to America what it has known all along. Its investment in US Treasuries, and the support that offers both to the American dollar and the American consumer, were always driven by what was best for China. And what’s best for China now? Well, we don’t know for sure. But buying the US dollar doesn’t seem look a good idea for anyone right now. Selling it, on the other hand, or trading it for tangible assets…that seems like a much better idea.

Will America be sent to debtors prison?

Or just face foreclosure from their global competitor and lender of first choice.


SEE:

China Burps Greenspan Farts Dow Hiccups

Wall Street Deja Vu

Housing Crash the New S&L Crisis

Turning Lead into Gold

Goldbug

Petro Dollars and U.S. Debt

Housing Bubble



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Tin Man

Gee who do you think might have been responsible for this?

In the grip of speculators, tin hits 18-year high

And has lots of cold hard cash to invest?

China

China is also one of the major tin-producing countries; the main producing area is the Gejiu complex in Yunnan which has accounted for a large proportion of the total output in China for many years.

Total mined production of tin in 1990 (as ores and concentrates) was 211,000 tonnes, with the major producing nations being Brazil, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bolivia and Thailand.

Thus an alliance that once was part of the non-aligned anti-Imperialist bloc now becomes aligned with the new Imperialist player on the block, who can throw some coin their way in the global marketplace.


SEE:

Turning Lead into Gold

China Burps Greenspan Farts Dow Hiccups

China: The Triumph of State Capitalism

China No Longer Red Nor In The Red

US vs China for Global Hegemony

Afghanistan or Africa

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Turning Lead into Gold

Alchemy has long been misinterpreted as being about turning Lead in to Gold. In fact it is a mythological allegory about the transcendence from feudalism to capitalism. In that sense the 2oth Century discovery of Nuclear power was the ultimate philosophers stone.

In post WWII America lead based paint was cheap and applied everywhere. It was banned in the seventies. Today in the Global Economy the same lead based culture is once again being revived, in China. And of course its all about making gold, that is cold hard cash.

And think of the workers who applied this paint to the toys, if the danger is there for the consumer it is even worse for the workers.

Fisher-Price recalls almost one million toys

Toy-maker Fisher-Price is recalling 83 types of toys — including the popular Big Bird, Elmo, Dora and Diego characters — because their paint contains excessive amounts of lead.

The worldwide recall being announced Thursday involves 967,000 plastic preschool toys made by a Chinese vendor and sold in the United States between May and August. It is the latest in a wave of recalls that has heightened global concern about the safety of Chinese-made products.

The recall is the first for Fisher-Price Inc. and parent company Mattel Inc. involving lead paint. It is the largest for Mattel since 1998 when Fisher-Price had to yank about 10 million Power Wheels from toy stores.

Chinese authorities are now daily rounding up companies suspected of faulty products. The safety crackdown on domestic producers has been accompanied by a public relations campaign aimed at international traders.

"The Chinese government pays great attention to addressing flaws in product quality, especially the quality of food products," Li Changjiang, minister in charge of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, said at a specially convened press conference.

The government's acknowledgement of existing problems makes a remarkable departure for a bureaucratic system prone to cover-ups.

When a pet-food ingredient produced in China was linked to the deaths of cats and dogs in North America in April, Beijing's first reaction was to deny it. "The poisoning of American pets has nothing to do with China," claimed a report in the Communist Party's flagship newspaper, the People's Daily.

Export-control officials argued that food contamination occurred both within the United States and with US exports to China. "No food-inspection system is foolproof," Li Yuanping, director general of the Import and Export Food Safety Bureau, countered at the time.

But international worries about China's exports have continued to mount with more and more reports about substandard and fake products coming to light. Since April, a slew of exports - including toothpaste, tires, seafood and toys - have been recalled or rejected around the world. What is worse, mislabeled drug ingredients in Chinese exports have been blamed for killing and injuring people in Panama and Haiti.

As a result, China has come under political pressure from the US and the European Union, where politicians are demanding assurances about the quality and safety of Chinese exports.

The decline in New York City's violent crime rate can be tied into the theory of a Fairfax, Va. economist, who believes lead poisoning accounts for most of the violent crime in the United States, according to an article in today's Washington Post.

Economist Rick Nevin has argued in a series of papers that the "New York miracle" was caused by local and federal efforts decades earlier to reduce exposure to lead poisoning.

Nevin has spent more than a decade researching and writing about the relationship between early childhood lead exposure and criminal behavior later in life. His theory offers a unifying new neurochemical explanation for fluctuations in the crime rate.

"It is stunning how strong the association is," Nevin told the Washington Post. "Sixty-five to ninety percent or more of the substantial variation in violent crime in all these countries was explained by lead."

SEE:

Criminal Capitalism: Pet Food Scandal

China Burps Greenspan Farts Dow Hiccups

China Dolphin Free

Business As Usual

Temporary Workers Exploitation

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The New Imperial Age

China's Imperialism. In Africa, the Ugly American has been replaced by the equally ugly Chinese trader.

The People's Republic has been so shameless in its wooing of other nations that it now receives the type of anti-imperialist criticisms once reserved for America. It stands accused of exploiting foreign populations for economic gain; of stacking the international political deck in its own favour; of ploughing forward with no regard for environmental sustainability.

As trade and diplomacy between China and other countries in the developing world has skyrocketed, America's relationship with poor countries has crumbled – nurtured by years of unpopular wars, military interventions and one-sided economic policies.

In East Asia, where many of China's new friends are located, the animosity toward the U.S. veers on cartoonish. In Seoul, roughly half of young people polled said their country should support North Korea in a nuclear war with America. Kurlantzick doesn't say this may have been a knee-jerk reaction to a fresh outrage – U.S. soldiers crushed two 14-year-old South Korean girls in an armoured vehicle – but the sentiment is widespread.

In Africa, a continent wooed intensely by Chinese officials, the U.S. has likewise soiled its reputation to China's benefit. America even threatened poor, famished Niger with sanctions when it tried to support the International Criminal Court, which the U.S. opposes.

As America rolls back from Africa, cutting aid, China has moved – straight into the worst neighbourhoods. China now controls about 40 per cent of Sudan's oil consortium and regularly courts mass murderers such as Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe.

But China's support of African despots is well documented. Kurlantzick is valuable because he traces, first-hand, the cutthroat romp of Chinese industry all the way to Latin America.

Kurlantzick notes, though, that China's efforts haven't been seamless: There is anger at hollow trade deals; resentment at the huge trade deficits; protests by Africans upset by Chinese firms' preference for exported Chinese labour.

SEE:

China Burps Greenspan Farts Dow Hiccups

Neo-Liberal State Capitalism In Asia

China: The Triumph of State Capitalism

US vs China for Global Hegemony

China No Longer Red Nor In The Red

Free Trade Not Aid

Bureaucratic Collectivist Capitalism

Russian Oligarchy

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Two Canadians In Afghanistan

This is a tale of two Canadians in Afghanistan, both end up in jail and the Canadian government ignores their plight. The irony is that one is there as a potential terrorist and the other a government employee employed to eradicate the opium and hashish trade who gets busted for drugs in Dubai.

In either case Foreign Affairs has remained woefully silent, as usual. Just as they remain silent on the plight of another Canadian in jail; Omar Kadhar.

When it comes to human rights the Conservative government seems to only care about Canadian prisoners in China.

It seems that our law and order Conservative government have extended their Napoleonic code to Canadians abroad. Guilty until proven innocent.

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David Dodge World Bank Nominee

Is David Dodge, the outgoing Governor of the Bank of Canada, bucking for Presidency of the World Bank? Seems like it....

Dodge, who retires in January and has said he wants half a year off after that, declined to say today if he's interested in the job.

- Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge said China's government can't be expected to let the market set its currency's foreign-exchange rate ``overnight.''

``They have to keep going, and they have to keep going pretty rapidly,'' Dodge told reporters today after a speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. ``But let's not expect everything to be done overnight.''

In his remarks, Dodge said that the world's most developed nations need to have ``some tolerance'' as long as countries such as China are making ``substantial progress'' in shifting toward flexible exchange rates. Some economies don't have financial markets that are developed enough to withstand an immediate move to prices set in markets, he said.

Dodge's remarks are more measured than those of U.S. officials, who demanded last week that China move more quickly on loosening its management of the yuan. The People's Bank of China on May 18 increased the amount that the currency can move each day. U.S. Treasury officials and lawmakers said China must use that increased flexibility to allow its exchange rate to climb.

Chinese officials ``understand that it's not to satisfy the Americans or the Europeans and Canadians, they need to do it for their own domestic growth,'' to move on the yuan, Dodge said.

In his speech, Dodge urged the Group of Seven industrialized nations, especially the U.S., to pursue changes at the International Monetary Fund so it can more effectively combat world trade imbalances.

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Fish Contamination

Not only do we have to worry about mercury in fish now we have to worry about Melamine too.

Tainted feed sent to Canadian fish farms, food agency says

And just like mercury we are assured that the melamine contamination is not harmful to humans. Yet.

Officials say risk is low from fish fed melamine-spiked food,

Once again human beings are subjected to the outrages of the primitive accumulation of capital, criminal capitalism by any other name, as China joins the world market.

China Zeroes In On Food And Drug Safety

But China is not alone, the deregulated market place in America is their model;

Food czar: Inspections flawed, lack resources

China issues draft rules for pig slaughterhouses

And you and I and our animals end up being poisoned.

The neo-con fetish for privatization,deregulation,reductions in pulic sector cleaning and housekeeping staff and contracting out, have led to major health crisis's; SARS, BSE, etc. in the past decade.

A social cost they did not anticipate in their reinventing of government.

Proving once again that capitalism is not sustainable, it is killing us.





SEE:

Criminal Capitalism: Pet Food Scandal

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Shangri-La

Well this certainly befits the Shangri-La myth.....

Paintings of Buddha dating back to the 12th century have been found in a secret cave system in a remote area of Nepal, according to a team of international researchers.

This photograph shows one of 55 panels depicting the story of Buddha's life found in a remote cave in Nepal.
(Sky Door Productions/Luigi Fieni/Associated Press)

The team of Nepalese, American and Italian archeologists, art experts and climbers said they found a mural with 55 panels portraying Buddha's life in March in Nepal's Mustang area, about 250 kilometres northwest of Kathmandu.

One of the largest panels is 7.6 metres wide while others measure 35 by 43 centimetres.

A nearby cave contained manuscripts written in Tibetan along with pre-Christian era pottery shards.

The panels and manuscripts were in a system of caves with multiple floors connected by vertical passages with rough hand and footholds, the team members said.

They had to use ice axes to break through the snow to reach the caves after being tipped off by a sheep herder.

Though others believe that Shangri-La is elsewhere in Tibet; This Way to Shangri-La

Luckily this find is not in Afghanistan.


See:

Atlantis


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Shangri-La, Buddha, Buddhism, Nepal, ice age, Tibet,