Wal-Mart A Toxic Success

NEWZ FLASH!

This just in the products you buy from Wal-Mart may be contaminated with toxic waste.

Wal-Mart is target of criminal probe over waste
According to the Wal-Mart, the government is looking into whether the company improperly used its own trucks to transport material deemed hazardous to centralized facilities, rather than using certified hazardous waste carriers to ship that material directly to designated disposal sites.

Yep that means all those low cost deals you got, well they may be low cause you spent your bucks on contaminated goods. But it gets better, you see Americas #1 Corporation is also Americas #1 Corporate Criminal.

The investigation is the latest in a series of legal troubles for Wal-Mart, which is also defending the largest-ever class-action lawsuit, which charges it with discriminating against women in pay and promotions.

Wal-Mart faces dozens of lawsuits accusing it of violating wage-and-hour laws, and earlier this year settled a federal investigation into the use of illegal immigrants to clean its stores.

Wal-Mart spokeswoman Sarah Clark said a number of goods, including hair spray, paint, aerosol cans and charcoal, are classified as hazardous.

All corporations repeat the history of capitalism itself., They replicate that through the primitive accumulation of capital, capitalisms origin in piracy and theft of property from the commons, as they grow into monopolies they become more 'legitimate', because in the process they create the State; pro business regulations and laws that they need for expansion locally, nationalionaly and internationally like the WTO. Contrary to the Right Wing view that somehow the State is seperate from the market, the State is the creature and creation of capitalism.

Wal-Mart Hopes WTO Will Help It Open a Door

Big retailers will seek to alter a services pact. Local officials fear a loss of power to limit firms.

Retailers will head to Hong Kong to try to persuade negotiators to fashion a trade pact that would make it more difficult for governments to restrict foreign-owned stores, banks and telecommunications companies. But critics, who include state Sen. Liz Figueroa (D-Fremont) and Los Angeles City Councilman Eric Garcetti, call the move a stealth attack on grass-roots democracy. They fear that the proposals to change the WTO's 1994 General Agreement on Trade in Services would make it easier to attack dozens of U.S. laws designed to restrict the growth of big-box retailers. That agreement was designed to open up trade in services such as retailing, accounting, medicine and entertainment that weren't covered under previous trade pacts. Under the WTO, only governments can challenge other countries' laws. So firms that believe they are being treated unfairly must persuade their governments to take up their case. Dismantling trade and investment barriers is a key concern of Wal-Mart, which has become a leading target of globalization critics around the world. The fiercest battles have been in the U.S., where dozens of municipalities have passed laws aimed at limiting the retailer's expansion. But the company has also seen its growth slowed by government restrictions in Canada, China, Britain, Germany and Japan.

Is There a Silver Lining to the WTO Talks? No

Well frankly no. The agreement on services that passed this weekend opens up the global market place for more privatization of public services including Water. And the limited restriction on agricultural subsidies passed today is a pyrhic victory for the poorest nations of the world, they have been sacrificed once again but not by the US or EU but by their allies like China, India and Brazil!

This time, the developing countries came determined to make their voices heard and make a strong case for their interests. They made it. (China Daily)

Considering that both the EU and US are more interested in their global agribusiness giants than small farmers, the real outcome of these talks are on the folks who till the land they have been sacrificed for the long term interests of corporate Europe and America and the interests of the newly industrialized economies.

Mainland farmers `neglected' in reforms

Chinese academics said Friday that the mainland government has neglected farmers' interests in the country's rush for World Trade Organization membership, although they have no detailed proposals to improve the farmers' lot.

Guang Xia, a schoolteacher from Guangxi province doing research on agriculture, said China's heritage of tiny farm plots has made it hard for products such as grain and cotton to compete with imported goods produced by foreign agribusiness concerns.

Farmers, he said, were used to obeying government orders on what to plant. "They are slow to respond to international market changes. Plus, the government provides little support to farmers, compared with the European Union and the US."

The government, headed by President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, has sought to solve rural problems by reducing taxes and introducing other measures, Tang said, "But that's not enough. They could provide more subsidies and give more support to farmers, or it will bring turbulence to the society."

And while the trade agreement on agriculture was a partial success more liberalization of trade has been left for yet another round of bargaining. One that will determine how much of the newly industrialized world and developing nations must open up to Transnational Corporations from the U.S. and E.U.

Agreement leaves toughest trade issues unsolved

The most tangible outcome was a promise by the WTO’s wealthiest members to end tariffs on imports from 32 of the world’s poorest nations, such as Bangladesh and Rwanda. While symbolically important, the pledge contains room for exemptions for the most sensitive products, such as clothing and sugar. US lawmakers and corporate lobbyists complained that a problematic trend is emerging where the US is being forced to make concession after concession, while large developing nations such as India and Brazil offer nothing. Montana’s Max Baucus, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement. ‘‘ And to be frank, the deal in Hong Kong does very little to advance key US interests.”

Ah cry me a river, you know something has come out of this that advantages Americas real competitors, the G20 newly Industrialized countries, when the US whines. However we should be cautious, for the competing capitals in the world of global capitali, are interested in profit and exchange value not the survival of human beings and authentic human sustainable development. They are interested in the creation of the Market State. As an editorial in the Arab News from Saui Arabia suggests;

For all the political posturing in Hong Kong, the nature of the problem is clear and neither the Americans nor the Europeans denied it. Their promise to end export subsidies by 2013 is hedged with conditions and is not satisfactory. However, by conceding that date, they have also conceded the principle. Now it is up to them to sell the deal to their constituencies who will, in fact, benefit from cheaper food. The real champions of subsidies are of course the producers, be it of steel or soya beans. It is time that lobbyists were shown the door because there is a greater worldwide benefit at stake. Subsidies not only cost local taxpayers, they cost the people in the countries that could compete more cheaply, if only the market were not distorted and protected by politically motivated government handouts.

Media coverage of the negotiations in Hong Kong was remarkable for the fact that it missed one crucial point. What everyone was actually talking about was business. Any businessman worth his salt knows that everything is negotiable. Commerce is in the end all about price. Politicians and bureaucrats tend to make the worst of businessmen. They are long on economic theories and short on the sort of practical knowledge you would expect to find in the humblest souq. Therefore they are perhaps not the best people to be talking about trade. But if the WTO did not exist, we would have to invent it, because the world’s businessmen have to operate within rules and regulations to ensure that deals are honest and fair.

If producing goods for export are not matched with a local sustainable agricultural base, a local market for use rather than export, then we will simply face the same conditions we currently do in the poorest nations of the world, famine, death and disease. And the WTO trade agreements do not focus on this problem, rather they focus on the trade in goods. The preconditions for such trade of course is the further privatization and expansion of capital investment opportunities for the Transnational corporations such as ADM.

Where a local village grows and processs maize for export through a cooperative, they are being supplanted by investor run corporations competing for the same export contract. In African countries where this has occured the corporation model has failed, but the impact on the village has led to disaster and can lead to famine, and ruination of crop cycles, especially if the corporate model introduced fertilizers for faster growth production for export.

Gains at HK trade talks "limited": UN chief

"He recalls that trade is no less important than aid for successful development, and that without open markets and fair competition few countries will have a real chance of meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015," the spokesman said. The MDGs are a series of targets for reducing extreme poverty and other ills set at the 2000 UN summit.

This round of talks has been a matter of the interests of competing capitals within the global capitalist market place. Their interests are not international solidarity with the less advantaged nations that they leave behind, they are seeking their own advantage within the global capitalist marketplace. If that means sacrificing the least able to negotiate so be it. Welcome to the world of bargaining in the era of Imperialism.

SMOKE AND MIRRORS

The text included a deadlock-breaking pledge from the EU to end farm export subsidies -- the top demand of developing countries -- by 2011. But development campaigners dismissed this as "smoke and mirrors".

The deal was cooked up by an "unholy alliance" of the United States, the European Union and WTO head Pascal Lamy, a former EU trade chief, said the Asia-based Focus on the Global South.

But the grouping, head by Philippine economist Walden Bello, also attacked India and Brazil, leaders of the G20 developing country group that emerged at a failed WTO conference in 2003, for their role in Hong Kong.

"India and Brazil have led the developing countries down the garden path in exchange for some market access in agriculture for Brazil, and services outsourcing for India," said the grouping's spokesperson Aileen Kwa.

"This text is a recipe for disaster, and many developing countries will not be able to convince people back home that they have come back with a good deal," Bello said.

Brazil's Foreign Minister Celso Amorim and India's Trade Minister Kamal Nath -- who represented the G20 in talks with the EU and the United States before and during the conference -- were swapping compliments about what they had achieved "to cover up the fact that they have agreed to a disaster," he said.

This was another clear barb at India and Brazil, accused by some in the EU -- and echoed by the Global South's Bello -- of primarily pursuing their own interests as large, middle-income trading powers at the expense of really poor nations.

In fact India wanted to see the services agreement passed, an agreement that will impact harshly on the devloping world because it will result in further privatization of Water ,because they want to see further expansion of outsourcing of IT services to their country. In order to pass that agreement at this round of the WTO they also had to pass a begining agreement on reducing agricultural subsidies.

China, Brazil and India, the newest of the developing industrialized countries are now pushing their weight as capitalist states against the US and EU. And like all competing capitals, they are no more interested in sustainable development than their larger Imperialist competititors. As China has shown with its whipsawing of the African Textile industry.

China used the WTO restrictions on its marketing of textiles to expand its factories offshore in Africa. When the WTO regulations ended last January, their factory owners shut up shop in various African countries and went back home. China wants to replace all other developing countries as the cheap source of manufactured goods in the world. China set to become world's sweatshop, report warns - Andrew Taylor

Also see: WTO Who Cares?


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Religion Threatens Human Life

Evidence shows that the cuts in cleaning staff in hospitals in the ninties, as well as the contracting out of that work, has resulted in more and more opportunistic diseases in hospitals. Including killer Staphylococcus infections, and it impacted on the rapid spread of SARS.

As a result health organizations around the world are promoting the use of alcohol based hand cleaners as well as regular hand washing.

Since the middle ages there have been religious strictures and taboos around cleaning and cleanliness, it wasn't always beleived that cleanliness was next to godliness. In fact the plague was spread as rapidly as it was due to the filth that early Christendom lived in.

It now appears that once againreligious superstitions and dogmas threaten human life on planet earth.

Staff in hospitals around the world are spreading germs and diseases by not washing their hands enough and religion is one of the factors in the problem, an international conference has been told.

"Every year the treatment and care of hundreds of millions of patients worldwide is complicated by infections acquired during health care in hospitals," said Benedetta Allegranzi, a World Health Organisation (WHO) consultant from the University of Verona in Italy.

Allegranzi told the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy that too few doctors, nurses and other hospital workers follow hygiene rules.

Cultural and religious factors "strongly influence" the lack of hand washing, she added.

Anti-Abortion Movement Calls This Success

In the U.S.legislative changes (parental notification) and lobbying by the Anti-Abortion movement, the physical and deadly attacks on abortion clinics and doctors by religious terrorists, along with the neo-con welfare reforms introduced by Clinton aimed a single mothers, has resulted in this...... Survey Shows Unwanted Births Up

More American women are having babies they didn't want, a survey indicates.

U.S. women of childbearing age who were surveyed in 2002 revealed that 14 percent of their recent births were unwanted at the time of conception, federal researchers said Monday.

In a similar 1995 survey, only 9 percent were unwanted at the time of conception.

The latest findings are consistent with the falling rate of abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a New York-based nonprofit group that researches reproductive health issues.

Finer suggested the shift may reflect not only a diminishing demand for abortions, but also a decline in abortion providers, Finer said.

The number of U.S. abortion providers fell steadily in the last decade, from 2,400 in 1992 to 1,800 in 2000. The reason is not clearly known, although increasing government restrictions of abortions have made it increasingly difficult to provide the procedure, Finer said.

The proportion of unwanted births at time of conceptions was highest among girls under 18 — 25.4 percent. It was lowest among women 30 to 44 — 10.4 percent.

The proportion was higher for black women (26.2 percent) than for Hispanics (16.8 percent) and whites (10.7 percent).

More information: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs

The Blue Origin of the Red States

A lot is made of how the U.S. Democratic party needs to restore its connection with the South. How it has to win over the Red States, and win back its Dixiecrat base. Well once upon a time, waaay back during the American Civil War, the Republican Party of Lincoln, not Bush, was anti-slavery pro union (as in labour unions), pro-sufferage for blacks, workers and women and federalist. The Democrats were the party of corruption and white supremacy as this news story shows. My how times have changed.

Report Calls 1898 N.C. Riot an Insurrection

WILMINGTON, N.C. - Violence in 1898 that resulted in the only known forceful overthrow of a city government in U.S. history has historically been called a race riot but actually was an insurrection that white supremacists had planned for months, a state commission concludes.

The violence in Wilmington, which resulted in the deaths of an unknown number of black people, "was part of a statewide effort to put white supremacist Democrats in office and stem the political advances of black citizens," the 1898 Wilmington Riot Commission concludes in a draft report.

Afterward, white supremacists in state office passed laws that disfranchised blacks until the civil rights movement and Voting Rights Act of the 1960s.

The irony in this story is that the researcher for this project is Jeffery Crow and the White Supremacist laws that he was researching are called Jim Crow.

It took the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act to restore blacks' voting rights, Jeffrey Crow said. But he noted that Congress argues about the Voting Rights Act every time it comes up for renewal.

"More than a hundred years later, we're still trying to resolve the issues," Crow said. "It's extremely important that people understand history."

On the Net:

Riot Commission:

http://www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/1898-wrrc/

Scott all is forgiven

Well here's a quote from WonderWoman over at Canaukistan Chronicles literally oozing with vile contempt for humanity with several good ol' stereotypes thrown in courtesy of watching too much Law and Order. Instead of Beer and Popcorn we get Crack and Day-Care. Go figure.

This certainly shows that its not just Scott Reid who can stick his foot in the prairie cow pie. Mind you WW doesn't work for the Conservatives, she is just a cheerleader from the sidelines.

They call us moonbats, well that is the kettle calling the pot black since clearly WW and CC are the lunatic fringe, period.

12/17/2005

Clarifying the debate

Layton and the real socialists don't have anything new, either. With them, the menu offers nothing but tax and spend, with a fresh helping of national guilt for anyone who balks at allowing crack-head welfare moms to shoot-up in the safety of a taxpayer-funded safe-injection site - and probably a taxpayer-funded universal daycare slot to stash the kiddies in, while mommy visits the dealer.

Why do I read this shite anyways? Just curious as to how low certain so called human life forms can stoop, I guess. And we all know what happened to dat cat.
He got pissed off...which keeps these nutbars happy.....Remember kids, if the MoonBats aren't pissed, you aren't doing it right!

The Red Green Show

Yep Jim Harris Red Tory ,as the Blogging Tory's call him, and his inner ciricle have hijacked the Green Party, as I have blogged here before. Along with announcing support for policies not passed by the members, the cabal around Jim are now in a fix with Elections Canada. Le Scandale nes pas. And as usual with Jims ego, they are more Tory than sorry.

Macleans the New Alberta Report

Welcome to Ken Whytes world one of numerous ex Alberta Report employees and owners currently writing for the MSM (Lorne Gunter, the Byfields, etc.) has now taken Macleans to ever new lows, once associated with the rightwhingnut scandal rag from Alberta the Report.

Yep once the prestigious editor of the National Post hired by alleged racketeering crook Lord Black, Whyte now edits Macleans. In a toff to his old boss he has Mrs. Lord Black (Barbara Amiel) on staff as a columnist. She who allegedly drove her husband into a life of crime to keep her in the lifestyle she felt she was suited too. Mrs. Lord Black is long time fop for the rightwhingnuts and board member of the rightwhing thunk tank the Fraser Institute.

But this weeks issue exposes Macleans as just another issue of the Alberta Report little Kenny used to edit. Change the banner logo with the Report and the headline sez it all. "Let's Send Svend Packing". Humourous, no? No. Its a homophobic attack on Svend, cleaned up of the Mark Steyn prejorative of calling Svend a gay kleptocrat, (from his safe haven in exile in the U.S. where he can't be touched by Canada's hate laws) but saying the same thing.

But we are wholly unconvinced that Robinson is a changed man, or that his return to Ottawa is in the best interests of Canadian voters.

Of course he has not changed, despite Kens litany of supposed crimes committed by Svend the real issue is that he is still gay and a gay advocate. And interesting while focusing on his attempt to get the word 'god' struck from the Constitution, Ken fails to mention what really got his rightwhing pals in a tizzy; his success in getting sexual orientation included in the hate literature law. Yep Ken is careful not to out Svend and face his rath. Rather he cleverly skirts the issue.

The Editorial written by Whyte comes from the Alberta Report school of journalism, huffy puffy self righteous indignation and psuedo outrage. Full of vile rancour dripping off the page cause Svend is a ho-mo-sex-ual. Its not really about the fact he stole anything, or that he is an NDP politician, nope its cause he is a ho-mo-sex-ual. Ken Whyte has something personal against Svend.Like the rest of his ilk at Alberta Report they have always had this thing about being manly men, no homo-sex here please, we are from St. Johns.

You see the magazine was orginally funded by the private St. Johns Boys School, a protestant religious school which Ted Byfield was an influential member of.
And well, only manly men go out and teach boys how to mountain climb, shoot white water, and if they get up to no good, well a good paddling on the bottom will straighten them out. Manly men. No homos or queers here.

Yep and lets not even get into the subject of feminism, well its ok if you are a feminist like say Mrs. Lord Black or even housefau columnists like Margret Wente and Diane Francis, ex Americans come to lecture Canadian ladies on why they should stay home and enjoy the good life like Mrs. Lord Black does. Cause if you don't you will become a lesbian.

Yep sex was always on the minds of folks at Alberta Report. You could say it was their obsession. They weren't pro life, heavens no bring back the death penalty, they were anti abortion, cause that was what happens when you have sex out of wedlock. Yep there's that sex thingee again.

The magazine itself was a roaring succcess in Alberta, every dentist office had a copy. Mind you the magazine went bankrupt three times, and was bailed out by Alberta Taxpayers at least once through the Alberta Venture Capital fund. Funny that, sorta like the Fraser Institute being a charity so its elite members can write off their donations for tax credits.

Anyways the sorid little tale of Alberta Report is that it was the first real Canadian Conservative redneck rightwhing weekly. And even the new Western Standard and the psuedo Report (aka Canada Report) pale in comparison for the really off the wall pronouncements made by the Byfields and their edotroial syncophants.

It appears that Macleans is another attempt by Ken Whyte to shape a publication into his old familar home, Alberta Report. The attack on Svend is a clarion call that the new Macleans is the Voice of the rightwhing in Canada. Even though the real crime story in Canada this week was all about Lord Black, but after all his little woman writes for Ken. Well you can expect Macleans under Ken to end up like Alberta Report, in your local dentists office.

MEDIA WATCH: THE ELECTION

It's just news, not brainwashing

By CHRISTOPHER DORNAN

Saturday, December 17, 2005

Globe and Mail

The thing about the networks, though, is that they all insist they have no partisan agenda. On that score, if nothing else, you have to admire the honesty of the new Maclean's magazine under publisher-editor Ken Whyte. It makes no secret of where its preferences lie. The current issue features a cover shot of NDP candidate Svend Robinson and the headline "Svend him packing." A subhead urges Vancouver Centre voters to "please do the rest of Canada a favour."

"Svend him packing" is a brilliant headline, and if you're of that cast of mind, the new Maclean's will drop into your lap as though the national media have finally come to their senses. If you're not of that cast of mind, you will be repelled by it. It's too personal, too abrasive. You will not be inclined to buy a magazine with that kind of attitude. You might not be inclined to work there either.

So Maclean's, I guess, has decided to stake its future on a core readership of worked-up right wingers, convinced that a right-good read is key to growing that constituency. Good luck to them. Maybe it will work this time. As a business strategy, it didn't work at the last three publications where Ken Whyte had a guiding hand: the National Post, Saturday Night magazine and Alberta Report.

But, then, Ken Whyte is fighting for his life, no less than any candidate on the hustings. And his poll numbers aren't looking good. In the Decima-Carleton survey, when asked where they turn for election news, respondents mentioned everything from their local dailies to Internet blogs. National weekly newsmagazines weren't even a blip.

Christopher Dornan is the director of the Carleton University School of Journalism and Communication. The Decima-Carleton poll results can be found at

http://decima.ca/en/lab/election2006/

and http://www.carleton.ca/sjc

Is Haiti a Canadian Colony

Foreign Affairs is getting short shrift this election being focused mainly on what Tweedledee Martin and Tweedledum Harper said about the Iraq war. We at least know the NDP opposed it from the begining. Thats a given. So lets move on to something more important and less well discussed.

A subject so touchy with the Liberal government that it got a Martin heckler arrested and jailed in Halifax. The heckler was author and film maker, Yves Engler, a member of the Canada Haiti Action Network who has documented UN and Canadian abuses of civilians in Haiti.

It's the Ugly Canadian news story that is buried in the back pages of the Canadian Press. Now why might that be? After all we went into Haiti at the request of the UN and Americans to help those poor people under the horrible democratically elected government of Aristide. Or did we?

Ecuador's New Canadian Ambassador Helped Plan Haiti Coup

Christian Lapointe helped co-ordinate and attended the meeting, as did future (and present) Ambassador to Haiti Claude Boucher, who is known to be close to elements within the elite Group of 184 political opposition to Lavalas and is virulently anti-Aristide.

Documents obtained via Canada's Access to Information Act reveal that Lapointe was in on key high-level deliberations that may have involved the topic of Haiti's regime change. Lapointe himself may have censored the portions of these documents that could prove the international community's plans to overthrow the government of Jean Bertrand Aristide more than one year before the regime change took place. According to an officer within the Department of Foreign Affairs Access to Information and Privacy division, Lapointe was the final person through which the Ottawa Initiative on Haiti documents had to pass prior to being released. Another officer referred to approximately 1,000 pages pertaining to the Ottawa Initiative on Haiti meeting. Only 67 pages were released.

Montreal has a huge and influential Haitian community, largest probably in North America. The Canadian government announced its first woman of colour as GG and she too is Haitian. What did this signal to Haitians in Canada and in Haiti?

Gildan the worlds number two T shirt manufacturer is located in Montreal but offshores its production to the caribbean. Recently found to be using sweat shops in these regions, it was given a clean bill of health by Anti Sweat Shop campaigns.
Except that it has now reduced production in those plants and expanded its operations in Haiti with no anti-sweat shop vigilance.

The Canadian Corporate/State Nexus In Haiti by Anthony Fenton

Haiti's de facto government will soon announce the appointment of Robert Tippenhauer as its new ambassador to Canada. Previously, Tippenhauer was the President of the first-ever Haitian-Canadian Chamber of Commerce. He says he will be arriving in Canada shortly after the early June visit to Haiti of Quebec Premier Jean Charest. Should the Canadian government accept Tippenhauer's credentials, it will mark Canada's clearest official alignment with Haiti's right-wing elites.

Of the many reconstruction projects that are being created, Tippenhauer feels that "considering the active role that Canada is playing with their lead role in the transition, Canadian firms should have a first look at these projects." On Canada's leadership role, Tippenhauer made the point that Canada had "one the most active ambassadors here." Tippenhauer further lauded Canada's "constant interest in Haiti," stating "the mere presence of these officials is good for us."

Some of the incentives offered to companies like SNC, and Gildan Activewear, who Tippenhauer estimates employ 5,000 people between their independent factory (which is next to Tippenhauer's Dollar Rent-a-Car) and Andy Apaid's factories; Apaid has been Gildan's primary subcontractor in Haiti for many years, according to a Gildan spokesperson.

Is Haiti Canada's new colony, and in reality are we her Imperial master. Turning a blind eye to Canadian war crimes in Haiti.Were we really invited into Haiti as part of a coalition or did we actually mastermind the whole thing. Inquirying minds want to know, and the evidence is piling up that Haiti is a Canadian Colony. That the Liberal Government was off the hook in Iraq because we had our own little coup de dat to run in Haiti.

Canada in Haiti: Considering the 3-D Approach. November 3-4 2005
Waterloo, Ontario The second half of the conference title – “Considering the 3-D Approach” – is a direct reference to the Canadian government’s 2005 International Policy Statement (IPS), which advocates a three-pronged strategy to Canadian involvement in Canada in Haiti: that blends Canada’s diplomatic, defence and development presence in order to form a coordinated engagement

A Tip o' the Blog to Greg Farrants who has been doing exemplar work around Solidarity with Haiti both in Redmonton and across Canada.

And a tip o' the blog to Lazylafargue.

There is currently circulating a letter to condemn the political detentions in Haiti, and the detention of AI "Prisoner of Conscience" Father Jean-Juste in particular. It is addressed to Jack Layton, of the NDP you can forward your own copy to Jack . While the original focus of this letter was to get Haiti mentioned in last weeks debates there are still two more debate coming up.

Haiti: The Liberals' Untold Scandal

For the people of Haiti, all of this has meant a return to conditions reminiscent of the years of military dictatorship. Haitian Police routinely conduct deadly raids within the poorest neighborhoods, shooting scores of civilians and Aristide sympathizers. According to the Catholic Peace and Justice Commission, over 700 political prisoners fill Haiti’s jails, including catholic priest Father Gerard Jean-Juste, deemed a “prisoner of conscience” by Amnesty International. Jean-Juste was barred from running in Haiti’s upcoming Presidential elections due to his imprisonment.

Meanwhile, Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew has referred to reports of such abuses as “propaganda,” while Paul Martin has publicly stated that “there are no political prisoners in Haiti.”

Unlike the Gomery Inquiry, the Liberal scandal in Haiti has cost perhaps thousands of lives. Why, then, has it been left completely off of the political radar of these elections?

From Gaza to Cold Lake AB

A tip o the blog to lazylafargue who had excerpts of this article up on their website. It was recently published in the December issue of Briarpatch magazine and is posted on-line here.

Out of two hundred warplanes that took part in Exercise Maple Flag 2005 in Cold Lake, Alberta in May, only ten were Israeli F-16s. It would be easy to miss their significance. Yet, when Canadian forces extended an invitation to the Israeli Air Force for the first time in thirty-eight meetings of the Maple Flag war games, it signalled, according to military planners, a marked shift in Canadian military and political policy in the twenty-first century: good night Battle of Britain, good morning Gaza.

What is also significant is that once again First Nations people were displaced under the Federal Government, to expand the use of this 'empty frontier' by the Department of Defense. It was the Cold War and the era of the Dew Line, and the expansion of NATO literally cold war excercises in Northern Canada, both in Goosebay Labrador and Cold Lake, Alberta. Lands of the Dene and Cree.

The dense forest and running streams tamed by this feat of engineering were the prodigious trapping, hunting and fishing lands of the Dene Suline, now known under the federal government's band council system as the Cold Lake First Nations. In 1952, the Dene were cut off from their traditional lands and the population ultimately expelled. The nearby Canoe Lake Cree Nation faired little better, losing seventy-five percent of their homelands to the weapons range.

Some fifty years after the land grab, the Canadian government settled claim with the Cold Lake First Nations, paying out a total of $2500 to each band member and $7000 to each elder, with an additional twenty million dollars put in a development trust fund. That settlement amounts to about nine dollars per acre (roughly $22 a hectare), and not more than $150 per person for each year of their displacement. Such is the stage for Exercise Maple Flag, a six-week set of war games designed to provide training in the context of hyper-realistic simulations of aerial combat operations abroad.

What is ironic is that our treatment of First Nations peoples historically is the model used by South Africa for its Aparthied regime and that Israel uses for its model for Occupied Palistine. So I guess the Isreali airforce felt right at home at Cold Lake.