It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Douglas Porter Chief Economist at the Royal Bank was talking about Canada's Petrodollar.
Mr. Porter contends, in fact, that the loonie can now aspire to the role so long played by the Swiss franc as the "go-to currency in times of global turmoil . . . the ultimate safe-haven currency." This is especially because of Canada's status as an energy exporting industrial country at a time when much of the current geopolitical risk involves oil, he says, noting that the loonie also has risen by more than 20 per cent against the Swiss franc in the past year. He acknowledges that Canada will likely need to become a net international creditor country before it can claim "full-fledged standing as a safe haven." But this appears to be "only a matter of time," he adds, noting that Canada's net foreign liabilities have been slashed to 12 per cent of GDP from more than 44 per cent in 1994.
But wait there are some drawbacks to being compared to Switzerland. Harry Lime:"In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock ..."
Free Trade Canadian style. Private family fortunes made on taking over state monopolies to become private monopolies. This is the success story of the most powerful capitalist family in Canada and as their company name says the real Power behind Ottawa's political elite. Paul Desmarais Power Corporation is now taking over the French national gas company.
How to spell shrewd? Try Desmarais Globe and Mail -21 hours ago MONTREAL - The French expression rire dans sa barbe -- literally, to laugh in one's beard -- pretty much sums up what the Desmarais family, Canada's most accomplished international deal makers, must be doing this week.
For the Desmarais family, the deal is a beauty. Paul Desmarais Jr., 51, and Gérald Frère, 54, have strived to consolidate their families' joint holdings into a few major investments (Suez, Total SA, Bertelsmann AG), where they can wield real influence. Post-merger, GBL may end up with a smaller equity stake, but more de facto control over a power powerhouse, since the 34 per cent held by France will likely be in GBL's camp, too.
There are a few small shareholders in Suez -- the current incarnation of the company that built the Suez Canal in 1869 -- who will balk. But they can't block a deal.
Before long, Suez might even be doing business on the Desmarais's home turf. Gaz de France is a partner with Montreal-based Gaz Métro and Calgary's Enbridge Inc. in a proposed $660-million LNG (liquefied natural gas) terminal near Quebec City.
To think Google is just a giant collection of classified ads on line. Worth billions on speculation and gouging. Until entropy sets in, or it becomes too big for its britches. That is a virtual as well as real monopoly. Thousands of us are still waiting for our checks from Google for posting their classifieds on our pages. While their clients who pay to post here watch as their costs for doing business with Google increase. For no other good reason than greed and the bottom line. Wired, Virtual, Online Capitalism is still Capitalism.
Google has famously turned itself into a $US111.5 billion company, from humble beginnings as a Stanford University project, on the back of online classified advertising.
Forget fancy innovations such as Google Earth or the recently announced blogging software. About 97 per cent of the company's revenues come from the four-line text ads that appear with Google search results.
Last year, that spelled $6 billion for the company's revenues, a figure that has impressively doubled for each of the past two years, as Google made investments that brought in new browsers and allowed it to explore ad formats other than its core click-on mode.
But in the startling words of its own chief financial officer George Reyes on Tuesday: "We are getting to the point where the law of large numbers starts to take root."
Mr Reyes' observation that it was inevitable that growth would slow caused pandemonium on the market as investors dumped the stock, fearing the company had reached the limits of its potential.
The possibility of slowing growth had already prompted several major investment banks to begin selling Google shares in the month before Mr Reyes' statement. The influential Barrons newspaper went as far as to suggest Google shares were worth as little as $188.
These bearish predictions are based on fears over how much Google will be able to ask from advertisers in the future, a key issue in the overall struggle by investors to properly price Internet stock following the dot.com bust.
Last year, retailers reported that the cost of advertising certain items, such as jewellery, on Google's keyword searches had jumped as much as 80 per cent as larger companies were willing to sacrifice some of their traditional advertising budgets to try the online format.
Higher prices, industry watchers reported, had prompted some of Google's traditional bread-and-butter clients - small companies - to be priced out of the search engine, leading some to speculate that pricing had begun to hit its limit.
PALO ALTO, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Google Inc. (GOOG) Chief Executive Eric Schmidt described his company's decision to enter the Chinese market by agreeing to censor certain Internet sites as an extremely difficult one.
The Silicon Valley search giant wanted to be part of the growth that will make China a dominant force in the world for the next 100 years, he said. But "we had to abide by the laws" that make certain topics off limits in the emerging Asian country, Schmidt said during a wide-ranging discussion at the Siepr Economic Summit here. "It was a very difficult decision."
The breakthrough came when co-founder Sergey Brin spoke to friends of his in Russia, Schmidt said. The company decided it couldn't stand by its mission to bring information to people if it didn't serve all people everywhere, he said.
Still, it is difficult to legislate morality, he said referring to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that he noted cost companies like Google $2 million to comply with.
Schmidt, during a question-and-answer session, defended the concept of Net neutrality, a regulation keeping Internet service providers from favoring their own content over the content of others by charging companies like Google an access fee. Google, and other major Internet companies, have the money to pay, but what about the next new startups conceived by two graduate students from Stanford University, he asked.
Abandoning Net neutrality would slow down the adoption of new technologies, Schmidt said.
Schmidt added that he felt confident about his company's legal stand against book publishers who hope to stop Google from putting copies of their books online. "We're in the process of testing" the Fair Use Doctrine, he said. "We think this is pretty high ground we are standing on."
He also defended the company's use of pro forma earnings in its quarterly reports. The company backs out charges for stock compensation. Analysts who cover the company do the same thing. "They delete that charge," Schmidt said. "I can think of no better explanation" for the use of pro forma.
The pc thought police on the right are at it again, over at the Canadian Medical Association. I have waited to see why they decided to fire their world famous editors at the CMA Journal before commenting on this controversy. And now the Lancet has revealed it. The editors were critical of the new Federal Minister of Health and the Tories plans to privatize healthcare in Canada. Political Correctness that bugaboo of the right in their culture war against pluralistic secular society now comes back to bite them on the ass. This is a case of conservative PC censorship.
In this week's issue of the British journal The Lancet, author Paul Webster notes the firings followed a series of controversial articles on health politics. He places particular emphasis on an online CMAJ article critical of federal Conservative Health Minister Tony Clement, pointing out that the CMA "advocates reforms to the Canadian medical system including the expansion of private delivery of health-care services." The article was later replaced "with praise for the new minister in the revised version."
While folks in Mayerthorpe, and around the country,remember the four RCMP killed in their community a year ago we have to ask why are the RCMP covering up the reasons for their deaths.
For now, the RCMP are largely silent on the investigation. They have not released any new details since March 31, 2005. "We know that the Canadian public wants to know what happened," says spokesman Cpl. Wayne Oakes. "We want to know what happened."
Of course these emotional appeals help promote more draconian laws that would give the cops more powers over us citizens. We love to give up our freedom for the security of the State and its armed force. But the real reason these cops died is still not being covered in all these memorials, testimonies, and flights from reason to emotion.
Lost in all this bouha is the allegation that these cops were contracted out to work overtime as repo men, they were collecting a vehicle from the site which had an outstanding loan. The opening act in a tragedy that has shocked the nation began Wednesday, when police arrived at the farm to assist in the court-ordered seizure of some property and found stolen goods and a marijuana grow operation.
The news immediately after focused on the fact that this was a dangerous marijuana grow op, and again emotion trumped reason with calls for tougher grow op laws etc. etc. But a grow op it wasn't. There were a few marijuana plants being grown, as happens all around the country. But again emotion and political agenda's trumped reason.
The RCMP officers who died were allegedly not informed by dispatch thatJames Roszko was dangerous, armed and known to be a cop hater. And they were not from around Mayerthorpe so how would they know.
Just because of the uniform? These workers are armed and know they face potential life threatening confrontations, its part of the job. But workers who do not expect to die on the job and do are treated with far less fanfare, and deserve memorials too.
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Really can you blame Iran for wanting to become a nuclear power when everyone else around it is, the map does not show American nuclear missles in Turkey etc., and then the Americans do this.....Bush defends controversial nuclear pact with India
Socialist Swine and Dadahead have been going at tooth and tong over who was the greatest (English) philosopher Kant or Hume. I had to take issue with them for forgetting Hegel, which of course Monty Python didn't. But then they were Cambridge English School Boys after all, the buggers. None the less everyone forgets Spinoza, which is what happens when you drink too much Ne Plus Ultra.
Gary L. Hardcastle Department of Philosophy University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point Stevens Point, WI U.S.A.
My aim in this talk is to present a comprehensive overview of each and every one of the main themes endured by analytic philosophy in the last sixty years or so, and to argue the bold historical claim that the whole lot is well represented-indeed, often best represented-in the work of Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin, collectively and henceforth referred to as "Monty Python." Since I have all of fifty minutes to make my case, I expect we'll have time for a song at the end. So let's get to it.
Poor Colleen, poor Alberta. We both have to put up with an abusive, tyrannical drunk.
And its not like the media didn't know about Ralph's temper and his intemperance, they just have laughed it off and helped cover it up. Afraid of his wrath just like Colleen.
The King is in his counting house laughing like a maniac......
On Monday, Klein's handlers were left to clean up after the premier said - inaccurately - that Prime Minister Stephen Harper had promised to hold Senate elections in the fall.
A few days earlier, he had been confused during question period about the amount of money health authorities had requested from the province, pegging it first at $100.6 billion and then at $10.6 billion. Only later, outside the house, did he concede that he had truly bollixed the math - and the Hansard record - because the correct figure was $1.6 billion.
Then came Wednesday's incident. During a heated question period exchange over his plans for health-care reform, the Liberals sent their policy booklet to the premier though a legislative page.
"I don't need this crap," snorted Klein, tossing the booklet over his shoulder. There were conflicting reports as to whether it actually hit 17-year-old Jennifer Huygen, since the chamber camera didn't record the incident and press gallery reporters, who listen to question period from their offices, didn't see it.
Keith Brownsey, a political scientist at Mount Royal College in Calgary, said there's nothing new in Klein's behaviour and it probably won't hurt him when his party reviews his leadership later this month. "This has been his standard operating procedure since Day 1," said Brownsey. "It ranks up there with the confrontation with the homeless . . . back in 2001. This is a shameful display, a complete disregard for the position of the Opposition and the decorum of our parliamentary system. "But he's always been like this. The attitude, generally speaking, in Alberta is, 'Oh, it's just Ralph,' and he's forgiven." Brownsey compared Klein's rule to that of an autocratic kingdom like Brunei.
