Saturday, January 14, 2006

Oiling the Wheels of Democracy in the Middle East

I highly reccomend that those in the blogosphere that want to get the goods on the Middle East take advantage of the variety of news sources available on the WWW and add this site to their news readers, Al-Ahram Weekly, from Egypt.
The late Edward Said was a regular contributor.

From which I found this article;

The dilemma of democracy
That true democracy in the Middle East would threaten US strategic and economic interests explains why it won't be happening soon, according to Ayman El-Amir
In the last half-century, US-Arab relations coalesced around defined common interests, not shared values. These were best exemplified by the historic meeting, on 20 February 1945, between US President Franklin D Roosevelt and King Abdul-Aziz Al-Saud aboard the cruiser USS Quincy at the Great Bitter Lake in Egypt's Suez Canal. The upshot of the congenial meeting was very simple: an exchange of guarantees ensuring free flow of oil to US and Western markets in return for securing the continuation of the Saudi ruling family. With the exception of few, short-lived revolutionary-brand regimes in the Arab world, this served as the model for US-Arab relations from then on.
Hence, these relations were unperturbed by the Arab-Israeli conflict or threatened by the brief and measured Arab oil embargo during the 1973 October War. The drama of 11 September changed the paradigm. For the US, the challenge was how to maintain and further strengthen its oil interests based on an unsustainable paradigm

From the pragmatic point of view, the US has little interest to undercut its traditional allies for the sake of democratic ideals.A new paradigm, therefore, will have to develop. Its elements will probably consist of a regional alliance against terrorism as a security threat, heavy US military presence in the region to deter Iran and guarantee the uninterrupted flow of oil, and soft-pedalling on the ambitious agenda of democratic reform. This may not be much to the liking of grassroots forces clamouring for democratic change, the rule of law and full respect for human rights. If they should rebel, armies of security forces will be at hand to control them, with an iron fist in a silk glove. What will be the US reaction? It will not be the first time the US will have abandoned the nationalist forces it once encouraged. In the meantime, autocratic regimes throughout the Arab world will bide their time and wait for Bush to pass too.
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Regressive Tory Tax Plan

In order to pay for the oh so generous 1% GST cut the Tory's plan to renege on the current personal tax cuts that were introduced by the Liberals. So what do economists have to say about this?
Tory plan to roll back low-income tax cuts worries some business

The price tags Costing Liberal, Tory and NDP promises

What do economists have to say about the veracity of Harper's financial plan

The Conservative Party's fiscal plan, a key part of its formal election platform released yesterday, counts heavily on the rollback of a tax break implemented by the Liberals to finance its spending promises.

The Tories confirmed that, if elected, they will reverse a cut of one percentage point in the tax rate for the lowest income tax bracket, and roll back an increase in the basic personal exemption to make the books balance under their spending plan.

But nowhere in the Conservative's 46-page election platform is that crucial policy spelled out, said Dale Orr, chief economist at consulting firm Global Insight (Canada).

"One would have thought they'd be a little more forthcoming," he said. "They certainly are not giving a high profile to something that is very important to a lot of Canadians."

Reversing the two tax changes -- which were part of the Liberals' November economic update -- would generate about $4.5-billion in 2006.

That money would be crucial to implement the plans in the Tory platform, Mr. Orr said. "It finances a lot of things."

In their platform, the Tories say their policies would generate about $45-billion in tax relief over five years, the biggest chunk of which would stem from reducing the goods and services tax.

Finn Poschmann, associate director of research at the C.D. Howe Institute, said restoring the higher income tax rates would carry "some political cost with it."

He noted, however, that the income tax cuts put in place through the pre-election economic update, some of which were retroactive to the start of 2005, are not actually law yet. Still, he said, it would be unpalatable for the Conservatives to roll back the retroactive portion, and it would be tough enough to kill them going forward.

And what does the Business Press have to say about the Harper Budget Platform? Horray more corporate tax cuts. Notice that the Conservatives will keep some of the Liberal promises.

Canada's Harper Pledges Tax Cuts in C$90 Bln Platform (Update1)

 The party will honor the current Liberal Party government plan to cut the corporate income tax rate by 2 percentage points to 19 percent by 2010, according to the party's platform released today. Individuals won't pay capital gains taxes if proceeds from the sale of assets are reinvested within six months, Harper said at an event in Oakville, Ontario.


And the Conservatives seem to be, as usual, getting their economic marching orders from the Fraser Institute. Cut corporate taxes to boost productivity, says Fraser Institute

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Let Sleeping Lions Lie

The Lion of Israel remains in his coma.Sharon Cannot be Awakened

The world holds its breathe thinking that this old man is the source of peace in the Middle East. What a farce. He is a terrorist by any other name.

What difference between the living obituaries written about him full of praise and those full of vile invective written when Yassar Arafat passed on.

Exalting Sharon
Collective amnesia seems the order of the day as Ariel Sharon's health takes a serious turn for the worse, writes Ramzy Baroud

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Kate the Con Artist


Kate McMillan of Small Dead Animals rants, no that's not strong enough, she literally goes off the wall over the NDP arts and culture platform.

Well of course that's because they have one and the Conservatives don't. They don't need one cause they have support of self employed artists like Kate. And besides the idea of culture for the average Conservative and the Blogging Tories is the Faux network.

You see Kate flings clay and makes pots,and is an airbrush artist (so is Maaco) and probably stuffs Small Dead Animals, and calls this art. Which she probably sells out of the back of her truck, along with the usual compulsory Black Velvet Paintings. This is of course not ART it's called homecrafts.

Kate doesn't need no stinking Canada Council Funding. She probably files her income taxes as a self employed artist, single person company, in order to avail herself of all those corporate tax breaks, soon to be increased by the Harper, that the Liberals handed out over the years. Tax breaks us poor working stiffs don't get.

Ironically Kates rant against Arts and Culture funding is published on the CBC website, the taxpayer funded CBC. Yep the voice of Canada lets this rightwhingnutbar speak about ending its existence. This is also the same Kate who demanded that the CBC censor another blogger making comments about her. Very libertarian of Kate.

Kate reminds me of Hermann Goering who once said; "When I hear the word culture I reach for my gun." She is the very spitting image of a Con (servative) Artist as her rant proves. Though it would probably be a good idea Kate to wipe the drool off your lip.

"She wouldn't know Art if it walked up and slapped her in the face", dr. DadA



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Liberal triskaidekaphobia

Fear of the number 13; triskaidekaphobia

According to Sun Political Columnist Greg Weston though the Liberals should actually fear Friday the 13. Friday 13th bad for Grits

Fear of Friday the 13 is also known as friggatriskaidekaphobia, which is why you could hear Liberals across Canada crying O' Frig as the proverbial poo hit the fan and all the wheels fell off the campaign wagon.

Friday the 13th: Paraskevidekatriaphobia rules the day

And ten days from yesterday the Liberals could be saying 23 Skiddo

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The New Liberal Leader


With the pending doom of a certain Conservative victory creating gloom in the Liberal war room, the knives are out, Some Liberals brace for the worst
and Paul Martin is already being measured for his casket.

Could this be the new Leader and the new face of the Liberal party in Canada?A Harper win could rejuvenate Liberals

On the other hand it is rumoured that Mr. Dithers might hang around smelling up the party with his political corpse.

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The War Monger

Former Conservative candidate and Canada's favorite Ex-General, now war monger, Lewis Mackenzie defended the indefensible this week. The war in Iraq. And he bitched about Canada not being involved.

Like much of the outcry around the Liberals use of military in their attack ads Mackenzie came out in defense of Harper. But he also defended the war monger apologist Liberal Leadership candidate Michael Ignatieff.(Ignatieff for Canada)

In a letter to the editor in the Toronto Star Mackenzie lies about the casualties in Iraq in order to justify the war. Not unlike that other war monger George W. Bush.

It's becoming increasingly frustrating to witness the gloating that too many Canadians are enjoying as a result of our non-official participation in the war and ongoing crisis in Iraq. In a less than complimentary association with Winston Churchill — at least for Churchill — our recently departed prime minister Jean Chrétien has even referred to his belated decision not to participate in the war as his, "finest hour."Support for the war's objectives has emerged in the current election campaign as a misguided weapon to unfairly defame such disparate candidates as Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff.

Since the allied invasion in March of 2003 almost three years ago, 30,000 Iraqis have perished as a result of the war.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: How many Iraqi citizens have died in this war? I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis. We have lost about 2,140 of our own troops in Iraq.
Several letter writers to the Star pointed out that his figures were as far off as King George's.

More Iraqis died after US invasion

Canada's position has been justified

The Lancet reported in 2004 that over 100,000 Iraqis died after the American occupation based on a study done by John Hopkins University Iraqi Civilian Deaths Increase Since War

And these are regularly available to viewers of Lou Dobbs on CNN. So why does Mackenzie use these numbers, well to justify the American occupation of course. Also see; Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq

In attempting to defend the U.S. invasion and to denounce Canada's policy of not supporting the war, the quizzling Lewis does disservice to our military, and to Canadian society. War is always the last option, as any military leader worth their salt will tell you. It is diplomacy by other means, as Clausewitz said. And in the case of Iraq that diplomacy, the UN weapons inspections, was pre-empted by the US in their haste to march on Iraq, which was their intention all along even before invading Afghanistan.

Lewis has been out of the military so long, and a wannabe politico that he forgets whose lives are being put on the line in War. He is now the very essence of an armchair general. A real general would never have sent soldiers into Iraq based on the information failures that the US and Britan used to justify their invasion.

Now compare Lewis with his British Counterparts.

Impeach Blair on Iraq, says general

· PM misled public, says UN Bosnia commander
· Invasion 'a blunder of enormous significance'

A former general has called for impeachment proceedings against Tony Blair, accusing the prime minister of misleading parliament and the public over the invasion of Iraq.

General Sir Michael Rose, commander of UN forces in Bosnia in 1994, writes in today's Guardian: "The impeachment of Mr Blair is now something I believe must happen if we are to rekindle interest in the democratic process in this country once again". Britain was led into war on false pretences, he says. "It was a war that was to unleash untold suffering on the Iraqi people and cause grave damage to the west's prospects in the wider war against global terror."

General Sir Michael Walker, chief of defence staff, has said in public only that British military presence in Iraq was a "politically-charged issue" which has affected recruitment since people saw the armed forces as "guilty by association" with Mr Blair's decision to invade the country.

General Sir Mike Jackson, head of the army, has criticised US tactics in Iraq. British commanders were told by Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, chief of defence staff at the time of the invasion, to deal with Iraqi officers and Ba'athists to help maintain law and order. That order was rescinded in May 2003 on the instructions of US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Comment
Enough of his excuses: Blair must be impeached over Iraq

 The only way parliament can regain the trust of disaffected voters is to admit that it was wrong to support the war

Michael Rose
Tuesday January 10, 2006
The Guardian

Wars are won when the people, government and army work together for a common cause in which they genuinely believe. Whereas the people may be initially uncertain about military intervention, politicians will often be the strongest advocates - blinded by the imperatives of their political views. It will invariably be military commanders who are most cautious about using force - for they understand better than most the consequences of engaging in war.

Although in a true democracy they must remain subordinate to their political masters, they have a clear responsibility to point out when political strategies are flawed or inadequately resourced. Since they might also have to ask their soldiers to sacrifice their lives, they must be assured that a war is just, legal and the last resort available. Yet three years ago this country was somehow led by the prime minister into war in Iraq where few, if any, of these requirements were met.

Most importantly a clear justification for the war in Iraq was never sufficiently made by Tony Blair - for the intelligence he presented was always embarrassingly patchy and inconsistent. What is more, his unequivocal statement to the House of Commons that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that could be used within 45 minutes was made without being properly validated - for it was decided in Washington and London to launch the invasion of Iraq early, on the basis of the flimsy evidence available. This was done without asking the UN weapons inspectors, who were actually on the ground in Iraq, to investigate this allegation. Ultimately, as the inspectors suspected and as we now all know, it turned out that there were no such weapons. Britain had been led into war on false pretences. It was a war that was to unleash untold suffering on the Iraqi people and cause grave damage to the west's prospects in the wider war against global terror.


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The War Against Women

Begins in the Womb-Cry Genocide

A study on female foeticide in India that has been published by renowned British medical journal, Lancet, states that since 1994, over 1 crore - 10 million - female foetuses have been aborted in the country.


India's 'girl deficit' deepest among educated

In 1994, India banned the use of technology to determine the sex of unborn children and the termination of pregnancies on the basis of gender.

However, research for the year 2001 showed that for every 1,000 male babies born in India, there were just 933 girls.

Leading campaigners say many of India's fertility clinics continue to offer a seemingly legitimate facade for a multi-billion pound racket and that gender determination is still big business in India.

The researchers said the "girl deficit" was more common among educated women but did not vary according to religion.

Experts in India say female foeticide is mostly linked to socio-economic factors.

It is an idea that many say carries over from the time India was a predominantly agrarian society where boys were considered an extra pair of hands on the farm.

The girl child has traditionally been considered inferior and a liability - a bride's dowry can cripple a poor family financially

India 'lost birth' study disputed BBC News

I have not seen a lot of bloggers covering this story. It appeared in the MSM one day and of course was gone the next, moving on to the next big story. The Lancet study was done by Doctors at the University of Toronto

DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(06)67930-0

Low male-to-female sex ratio of children born in India: national survey of 1·1 million households

Prabhat Jha email address a Corresponding Author Information, Rajesh Kumar b, Priya Vasa a, Neeraj Dhingra a, Deva Thiruchelvam aRahim Moineddin a and

Summary

Background

Fewer girls than boys are born in India. Various hypotheses have been proposed to explain this low sex ratio. Our aim was to ascertain the contribution of prenatal sex determination and selective abortion as measured by previous birth sex.

Methods

We analysed data obtained for the Special Fertility and Mortality Survey undertaken in 1998. Ever-married women living in 1·1 million households in 6671 nationally-representative units were asked questions about their fertility history and children born in 1997.

Findings

For the 133 738 births studied for 1997, the adjusted sex ratio for the second birth when the preceding child was a girl was 759 per 1000 males (99% CI 731–787). The adjusted sex ratio for the third child was 719 (675–762) if the previous two children were girls. By contrast, adjusted sex ratios for second or third births if the previous children were boys were about equal (1102 and 1176, respectively). Mothers with grade 10 or higher education had a significantly lower adjusted sex ratio (683, 610–756) than did illiterate mothers (869, 820–917). Stillbirths and neonatal deaths were more commonly male, and the numbers of stillbirths were fewer than the numbers of missing births, suggesting that female infanticide does not account for the difference.

Interpretation

Prenatal sex determination followed by selective abortion of female fetuses is the most plausible explanation for the low sex ratio at birth in India. Women most clearly at risk are those who already have one or two female children. Based on conservative assumptions, the practice accounts for about 0·5 million missing female births yearly, translating over the past 2 decades into the abortion of some 10 million female fetuses.

Affiliations

a Centre for Global Health Research, St Michael's Hospital, and Department of Public Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
b School of Public Health, Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India

Corresponding Author InformationCorrespondence to: Dr Prabhat Jha, Centre for Global Health Research, St Michael's Hospital, University of Toronto, 70 Richmond Street East, 2nd Floor, Toronto, Ontario M5C 1N8, Canada



The study proves Canadian born feminist theoritician Shulamith Firestone correct.

In her seminal work the Dialectic of Sex she said that as patriarchical society advances its bio-technology in medicine and reproduction (reproductive technology), women become more and more expendable. Girls are commodities in patriarchical society, ones that are valued or disposed of.

Now those on the right will immediately blame the access to abortion that women now have thanks to medical advances. And they will blame feminism;

'Gender' - a new dangerous ideology
Sunday - Catholic Weekly, Poland - 14 Dec 2005
... Shulamith Firestone in her book 'The Dialectic of Sex', published in 1970, modifying the idea of the class struggles, calls to sex-class revolution: 'In order ...

But the reality is that it is patriarchical society which values males as property owners, and devalues women and childern as property, that is the source of this war against women. A war conducted in the wombs of mothers. Not due to advances in abortion, those are ancient womens knoweldge since the dawn of time, but from the advances in the technology of the Ultrasound.

Now those who would use this information to condemn access to abortion would sound ridiculous if they demanded the end of the use of the ultrasound. So vital in the industrial world to the happiness of the middle class who get to see their children growing in moms womb. But in the newly industrialized world, with its cash value for males, this same middle class and upper class use the ultrasound for selective breeding. Abortion comes after.

This war is not isolated to India. It is a world wide phenomena. It is the reality of patriarchal 'family values'.

China faces future as land of boys 09/03/05
Editorial: Asia's Male Tilt 07/15/04






FEMALE FOETICIDE

Indians have terminated 10 million girl babies in the last 20 years. This shocking reality has been uncovered in a study done by medical journal Lancet, which also reveals that female foeticide is not a phenomenon restricted to rural India. The fact is corroborated by the 2001 census — 933 girls per 1000 boys. CNN-IBN uncovers India's age-old fascination with the boy child, which has skewed the census figures so.



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Friday, January 13, 2006

Mad Science-Flourescent Pigs

Wow file this under another useless scientific wonder. Who thinks up these things. Like the purpose of this is what....to find lost pigs in the dark? Or to have them wander around night clubs as a conversation piece?

Scientists in Taiwan say they have bred three pigs that "glow in the dark".

They claim that while other researchers have bred partly fluorescent pigs, theirs are the only pigs in the world which are green through and through.

The pigs are transgenic, created by adding genetic material from jellyfish into a normal pig embryo.

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No Suitcases At Mecca

The Saudi Government has announced that in the future all carry on luggage, bags, suitcases, backpacks, etc. will be banned from Mecca during the Haj in order to avoid incidents like this.

Stampede kills Mecca pilgrims by the hundreds
Interior Ministry spokesman Major-General Mansour al-Turki said the deaths occurred after some pilgrims began to trip over luggage that had spilled from a moving bus.


Of course this kind of news story makes Islam and Muslims look like primitive peoples You know unable to be civilized in public space, pushing shoving, throwing stones, doing strange ritualistic rites, down right tribalistic. But stampedes occur world wide, including in the west during Soccer games.

Backgrounder: Major lethal stampedes last year

 Cash and coupons lure 42 to death in Chennai

Or perhaps its just how the media in the West portray it. Do ya think. Like if there were not accidents, incidents, or attacks by terrorists there would be no news about the Haj. It's the only time the western media reports on this major religious holiday. Unlike Christmas at the Vatican.

These aren't accidents, they are preventable incidents, but the Saudi's have failed to do anything about it.

Hajj crowd-pressure must be eased to avoid tragedy New Scientist

But experts say the sheer scale of the stoning ritual makes it inherently dangerous. "There's a huge risk and potential for accidents whenever you have so many people in a tightly confined space," says Keith Still, an expert on crowd behaviour at UK company Crowd Dynamics. "There's a limit to what can be done."

In 1990, 1462 pilgrims were killed in a crush within a tunnel leading to the site and in 2004 another crush caused the death of 251 people. Similar accidents also occurred in 1997 and 1998.

Funny that. Perhaps they should hire the Engineering Firm Bin Laden to solve the problem. Nope on second thought that may not be such a good idea. Mecca hostel collapse prompts rare media criticism

MECCA, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - The death of 76 people in a Muslim pilgrims' hostel in Mecca before the annual haj prompted a rare flurry of media criticism of Saudi authorities on Saturday.

"Yet another building has collapsed, and with each one the bad management, bad supervision, and nonchalance of the concerned authorities are revealed," columnist Abdul-Rahman Al-Rashed wrote in the main Saudi daily Ashraq al-Awsat.

An Interior Ministry official, who said it was still not clear what caused the collapse, told journalists the hostel had been licensed by the Industry and Trade Ministry.

Or is it just that the statist Saudi's with their army and police can't do the responsible thing and protect public safety, looking the other way at the exploitation of the pilgrims by their own profiteers. Ah say it ain't so.

Still, a report in the daily al-Riyadh newspaper said: "The state is pumping millions into the haj and honest businessmen are sticking to rules, but some who look for quick gain embarrass the country before the international community."

I think given the choice between the luggage is to blame and the Saudi's abidcate responsibilty while cashing in on pilgrams I will chose the latter.

Saudi officials are being blamed for not having taken the necessary measures, yet they complain of “unruly” pilgrims.

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