Support Our PeaceMakers

This post is not about the Canadian Troops now doing 'police' work in Afghanistan for the Americans in their failed War on Terrorism. Supposedly acting as "Peace Makers" instead of Peace Keepers.

This is about the four Christian PeaceMakers who are still held hostage in Iraq. They are the real PeaceMakers. Two of which are Canadian who have been abandoned by the government to their fate. Former hostage Waite offers help to families of abducted Canadians

Outside of a blundered statement made by Foreign Minister MacKay,MacKay apologizes for raising hopes of hostages' families their plight has been kept in the news by their families.Loney's family makes another appeal for his release

Vigils to Mark 100 Days Since Peacemakers’ Abduction

Saturday, Mar. 4, 2006 Posted: 5:20:30PM EST

Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) has made a worldwide appeal to churches to hold a candlelight vigil on the first Sunday of Lent with 100 candles marking the days since the four western peace activists were kidnapped in Baghdad.

Is it because they are pacifists, witnesses for the oppressed or because they are anarchists?

James Loney one of the hostages was once a member of the Catholic Workers League, which despite its religious name was anything but Catholic.

In attempting to describe Casa Juan Diego, Mark talked about Catholic Worker values of voluntary poverty and pacifism, but made an egregious error by mentioning that a core value of the Catholic Worker was anarchism. People gasped! The Catholic representative who supported our getting the money fell off his chair!

The founders of the Catholic Worker movement preferred to use the word personalism instead of anarchism because of the confusion of the word anarchy with chaos.

By 1913 Dorothy Day, still a teenager, had read Kropotkin. She and Maurin were twenty years away from their first meeting, and she had no explicit religious faith. Yet, like Maurin, she was drawn to Kropotkin's vision of how society could be reorganized so as to eliminate the injustice of wage slavery. She describes Kropotkin's influence on her in her autobiography, The Long Loneliness:

"Kropotkin especially brought to my mind the plight of the poor, the workers, and though my only experience of the destitute was in books, the very fact that The Jungle (by Upton Sinclair) was about Chicago where I live, whose streets I walked, made me feel that from then on my life was to be linked with theirs, their interests were to be mine; I had received a call, a vocation, a direction to my life." Roots of the Catholic Worker Movement: Peter Kropotkin inspired inspired Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day

The Christian Peacekeppers Movement is non-demoninational, but is supported in Canada by the Mennonite church and the Mennonite movement. The Mennonites are Anabaptists, like the Amish, Hutterites and Dukuhebours. The Anabaptists were perescuted in Europe from the late 19th Century through WWI because of their refusal to fight in the internecine imperialist wars of that time.

The next historical outbreak in which one finds Anarchist theories conspicuous, was that of the Adamites, who appeared in Bohemia and Moravia late in the fifteenth century' and whom Ziska eventually attacked and almost annihilated. A more notable sect, however, was that of the German Anabaptists, who arose early in the sixteenth century. Apart from all religious questions such as that of re-baptism, various political and social matters were prominent features of the programme of the Anabaptist sect. When the peasantry of Franconia and Swabia rose in 1525, Munzer, Carlstadt, and in particular Nicholas Storck, a disciple of Luther's, preached not only the doctrine of absolute equality, but independence of all civil authority as well. Like John Ball, moreover they denounced all laws and all lawyers, whilst with respect to property their doctrine was simply Communism. At Munster, under Bockhold the Dutchman, better known as John of Leyden, they ultimately practiced polygamy and free-love. Virtually the only difference between the modern Anarchist and the German Anabaptist of those times, is that the former (unless he be of the Tolstoyan school) entirely rejects religion.

Ernest Alfred Vizetelly. The Anarchists: Their Faith and Their Record. Turnbull and Spears Printers, Edingurgh, 1911.

Again the anarchist Peter Kropotkin is linked to these movements in that he promoted their immigration to Canada and the United States to avoid further persecution. He reccomened the Canadian prairies for the Slavic Anabaptists and Russian Duhkbours .

All those who hold the idea of a free church and freedom of religion (sometimes called separation of church and state) are greatly indebted to the Anabaptists. When it was introduced by the Anabaptists in the 15th and 16th centuries, religious freedom independent of the state was a radical idea, and unthinkable to both clerical and governmental leaders. Religious liberty was equated with anarchy and Peter Kropotkin traces the birth of anarchist thought in Europe to these early Anabaptist communities. ("Anarchism" from The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1910 By Peter Kropotkin)

The Catholic Workers and CPM practice of non-violent Direct Action are rooted in Anarchism. Ghandi and Tolstoy both promoted the idea of non-violent civil disobedience and direct action.

Today Direct Action is mistaken by many to be the idea of dressing in black clothing and smashing windows during demonstrations. This is far from the truth and is a media distortion embraced by some wanna be anarchists.

Direct Action is disobediance to authority, it is taking power and action into your own hands and doing something. It is the sit down strike, the spontaneous protest or picket. It is the refusal to work, the boycott, the buycott, the protest fast, all the weapons in the hands of the people when they face exploitation, opression and repression.

Direct Actions are the mobilizations of people to take action, not to sign petitions or make demands upon the State or its representatives. It is to take action.

To witness the abuse of innocents to be able to testify on their behalf, to intervene on their behalf to halt their punishment by the cops or agents of the State or the bosses.

This is not pacificism as the media would portray it, or those apologists for armed struggle would dismiss out of hand as useless.

It may mean sabotage, or destruction of property in some cases. But those decisions have to be made by the collective, by those directly involved in confronting their oppressors. And it may mean an individual act such as fasting in protest, as Ceaser Chavez did.

It often means putting oneself in the way of danger to protect others. And it could lead to injury or death.

The comrades in the CPM knew this when they took up the challenge in Palestine to defend the people against their Israeli oppressors. They knew it in Iraq. And the people know it which is why there has been such and outpouring of support for them.

And which is why their continued imprisonment and abuse at the hands of their captors is vile act of no political consequence, but to further misdirect attention from the plight of the people of Iraq to the sectarian disputes dominating that nations current political chaos.

Free Our PeaceMakers Now!

Canadian Troops Out Of Afghanistan!

End the Occupation Of Iraq and Palestine!


Join the Anti-War Demonstrations March 18!



Free the Captives Now. www.freethecaptivesnow.org


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The End of State Monopoly Internet

Its ironic that State Capitalist China is the first country to really challenge the State Capitalist Monopoly of ICANN over the Internet. And predictably the monopolizers who want to keep it under American hegemony were crying the sky is falling.China to split the Internet

Inaccurate Report Sparks Fears China May Split Net

News report that said China was creating its own domain names was incorrect.

Sumner Lemon, IDG News Service

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Chinese walls

Mar 2nd 2006 | SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist print edition

China threatens to fracture the internet

The internet is managed by a private-sector body, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), operating under the authority of the American government. Many countries oppose this, and argue that the internet should be managed internationally, as is the telephone system. Indeed, China's Ministry of Information Industries, via the People's Daily, trumpeted the new scheme as a way to bypass ICANN.


Which is why Kropotkin championed the Postal System as an example of Federalist Anarchism. And the phone system modeled itself on the Postal Agreements.

Anarchists often point out the success of the postal system, which despite being hierarchically organized with a boss, has no central postal leader, simply various autonomous postal outposts. Federations and networks of doctors and other workers could follow this method as well, and apply anarchist principles to its organizational structure. Anarchism at AllExperts

The same could be said of the Internet and its assigned names. These need to be operated under international agreements not beholden to private companies that are arms of the state, especially the American Empire.

It's ironic that the anarchistic nature of the net is being crushed by its success as a new model of corportate infrastructure and geo-political cyberwarfare. Those that support America's hegemony over the net do so for all the bad old reactionary Cold War reasons.
Whereas the internet provides an excellent vehicle for production, distribution, exchange and communication in a complex manner that would be perfectly adaptable to the ideas of anarchist organization of society.

Faced with the objection that even though it can be shown that autonomous groups can organise themselves on a large scale and for complex tasks, it has not been shown that they can successfully co-ordinate, we resort once again to the federative principle. There is nothing outlandish about the idea that large numbers of autonomous industrial units can federate and co-ordinate their activities. If you travel across Europe you go over the lines of a dozen railway systems - capitalist and communist - co-ordinated by freely arrived at agreement between the various undertakings, with no central authority. You can post a letter to anywhere in the world, but there is no world postal authority, - representatives of different postal authorities simply have a congress every five years or so. Colin Ward: Anarchism as a Theory of Organization (1966)


Anarchists see the need for international agreements,not State control of the internet, and Kropotkin gives us a good explanation of why.

As to parliamentary rule and representative government altogether, they are rapidly falling into decay. The few philosophers who already have shown their defects have only timidly summed up the growing public discontent. It is becoming evident that it is merely stupid to elect a few men and to entrust them with the task of making laws on all possible subjects, of which subjects most of them are utterly ignorant. It is becoming understood that majority rule is as defective as any other kind of rule; and humanity searches and finds new channels for resolving the pending questions. The Postal Union did not elect an international postal parliament in order to make laws for all postal organisations adherent to the Union. The railways of Europe did not elect an international railway parliament in order to regulate the running of the trains and the partition of the income of international traffic. And the Meteorological and Geological Societies of Europe did not elect either meteorological or geological parliaments to plan polar stations, or to establish a uniform subdivision of geological formations and a uniform coloration of geological maps. They proceeded by means of agreement. To agree together they resorted to congresses; but, while sending delegates to their congresses they did not say to them, “Vote about everything you like - we shall obey.” They put forward questions and discussed them first themselves; then they sent delegates acquainted with the special question to be discussed at the congress, and they sent delegates - not rulers. Their delegates returned from the congress with no laws in their pockets, but with proposals of agreements. Such is the way assumed now (the very old way, too) for dealing with questions of public interest - not the way of law making by means of a representative government.
Anarchist Communism: Its Basis and Principles - Peter Kropotkin

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Melt Down

North Pole Meets South Pole: Earth Is Melting at Both Ends

And if they meet in the middle this happens..............



Which is why this is a good time to review the real meaning of Peak Oil.

THE END OF SUBURBIA: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream

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Octavia Butler RIP

I had not heard of Octavia Butler till today when I came across obituaries about her death. She was a West Coast U.S. science fiction writer, a woman and an Afro-American, which is probably why I hadn't heard of her.

The publishing business which dominates SF today moreso than ever in the past, has failed to publicize writers of colour as writers of colour. Thats because in the new world of mass SF and Fantasy publishing the only colour that counts is green.

While SF and the SF community can be progressive to a fault it can also be inbred and self ghettoized, but at least in the past being fan based one would hear of writers who were different or ground breaking. Such is not the case today with the truimph of commercialization the old SF Fan community has been replaced with the mass culture of SF and Fantasy consumers.

Though Octavia was not the first Black science fiction author, that was Samuel R. (Chip) Delaney. Who was also the first gay SF author. Though again both these facts were officially overlooked, not mentioned, for much of the Sixties and Seventies when he was writing.

Nor was she the first woman writer, many of those who wrote in the Golden Age of SF in the forties, fifties and right through the sixties, had to hide their identities behind male psuedonyms in order to get published by sexist editors. So as usual Octavia like Delaney faced a dual discrimination.

She died far too young. And I will be checking out her books.

Octavia Butler, brilliant master of sci-fi, dies at 58

Octavia E. Butler: Home Page

Octavia Butler: The outsider who changed science fiction,

Voices from the Gaps: Octavia Estelle Butler;

Essay on Racism
A Science-Fiction Writer Shares her View of Intolerance

Octavia Butler - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Octavia E. Butler

22 June 1947 - 25 February 2006

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I'll Be Right Back

How gullible can ya get? Fugitive dad leaves sick son on dialysis And of course this guy is white. If he had been Afro-American this would never have happened. Cause Afro-Americans and Latinos face more three strikes laws than white Americans. This reminds me of another fugitive who walked out of a Texas jail. And he was white too.

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (CNN) -- A Kentucky prisoner who duped authorities and his family into believing he intended to donate a kidney to his ailing son may have escaped to Mexico with his girlfriend, federal authorities said.

In January, a judge allowed Perkins to leave jail, where he'd been awaiting sentencing for a gun and drug conviction, for medical tests before his son's surgery. Perkins' conviction carries a minimum jail term of 25 years.

Izgarjan, who was in the courtroom when Perkins asked to be released, said he had convinced everyone of his sincerity.

"He was crying. He was just literally begging the judge," Izgarjan said. "He told the judge, 'My son is going to die if I don't give him this kidney. He's so sick right now.' "

Perkins, who had served seven years for bank robbery, even left behind a letter promising he would "come through" for his son Destin, 16, who needs dialysis.

The judge approved the release on a $10,000 unsecured bond, which did not require Perkins to put up any money.

Perkins was allowed to stay at his mother's house and report to a probation officer.

Aww Shucks hyuck,hyuck, we never would have thought he was that dishonest.......But it gets better.........He did not report back to authorities and has been missing for more than a month. Yep just another Redneck on the Run.


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Another Example of Mutual Aid

So much for Ayn Rand's selfish individualism. Or the nutbars that believe capitalism is natural, and ordained by G*D.

Studies Show Chimps to Be Collaborative and Altruistic

In the wild, chimpanzees have been known to hunt together, particularly when conditions dictate that a solo hunter will not be successful. Yet this does not prove that our nearest living relatives understand cooperation the same way that we do: such group hunts may simply be the product of independent and simultaneous actions by many individuals with little comprehension of the need for coordinated action to ensure success. A new study, however, shows for the first time that chimpanzees understand when cooperation is needed and how to go about securing it effectively. And another study shows they might even be willing to cooperate without hope of reward


Altruism 'in-built' in humans

Infants as young as 18 months show altruistic behaviour, suggesting humans have a natural tendency to be helpful, German researchers have discovered.

"The results were astonishing because these children are so young – they still wear diapers and are barely able to use language," said psychology researcher Felix Warneken of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, "But they already show helping behaviour."

Which provides further proof of Kropotkins theory of Mutual Aid: Symbiotic Evolution, i.e., evolution through the establishment of cooperative [rather than competitive] relationships among organisms.

Moreover, it is evident that life in societies would be utterly impossible without a corresponding development of social feelings, and, especially, of a certain collective sense of justice growing to become a habit. If every individual were constantly abusing its personal advantages without the others interfering in favour of the wronged, no society -- life would be possible. And feelings of justice develop, more or less, with all gregarious animals...Compassion is a necessary outcome of social life. But compassion also means a considerable advance in general intelligence and sensibility. It is the first step towards the development of higher moral sentiments. It is, in its turn, a powerful factor of further evolution. Peter Kroptkin, Mutual Aid

XXXIII. Cooperation a Natural Law

When Kropotkin observed mutual aid among animals, he was not inventing anything; he was discovering what existed. When Sumner studied and described folk ways, he was dealing with ancient facts.

Within this fluid mass of human society, the natural laws which govern its conduct are poorly understood. But out of the laboratory of trial and error in human affairs a few of the laws of society are emerging. Here are some of these laws which I make bold to formulate:--

1. Man best succeeds in getting what he wants when he has the assistance of other men whom he in turn helps to get what they want.

2. Man best protects himself against forces that would do him harm when he has the assistance of other men who likewise need similar protection and whom he helps as they help him.

3. Where production in abundance for all is possible, prosperity and happiness of the largest number of people are best promoted when the economic ideal is equality of opportunity and of access to things, rather than when a few have the better access and when they acquire the most, while others are in want.

These are social laws and they are specifically the laws of cooperation. They constitute the fundamentals of the consumer cooperative movement in action. They pertain especially to the direct getting of things and services needed for life rather than getting money.

See: Mutual Aid


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Spam You

Global Guerrilla John Robb writes:

Let's put connectivity into perspective: how many times in your life, before the Internet connected you to the world, were you confronted by people intent on defrauding you of your net worth? For me, that is a couple a dozen times at most (and mostly from venture capitalists and investment bankers, ;->). Since then, we all are approached via our e-mail inbox and through the Web by frauds at least a couple of times a day. Phishing, catapulted by bot networks, worms, spam, keylogging, malware, and other technologies has enabled men from Nigeria, Russia and other garden spots to reach into your home and place of work without restriction. Who provides the bulk of your personal security relative to these threats? You do, with the help of leverage provided corporate software companies. The future is here already, don't look to the government for solutions...


Yep which is why I reccomend the following FREE software for protecting yourself from the STD's of cyberspace. I post this notice monthly on the listserves I run.

Free Ware or Share Ware that will give you protection when on-line

eugeneAT NOSPAMunion dot org dot za

Notice the email address this is the way you should be posting your email on your web page, blogs, or in postings on the web where you ask someone to reply to you. This prevents spamware from stripping your email and using it to spam you.

My partner built me a new computer for my birthday/Xmas present (every family should have their own computer geek), and I am updating this notice I send out about free ware/shareware programs I use that I think are essential for working on your computer cleaning up spam, spy ware, file cleanup etc.

This is not spam, I am not being paid or given web credits for doing this. These are programs I use on my computer that I have found to be easy to use, effective, and FREE or relatively cheap if they are shareware.

I found these really useful when we had a dial up connection, now we have TELUS high speed and if I want a Fire wall/Anti virus/Ad/Spam killer, protection I HAVE TO PAY EXTRA! As Tony Soprano would say; "Forget about it!"
I use these programs and they protect my computer without having to pay extra for them.

The Internet is like having anonymous sex use protection to keep your computer free of computer STD's.

I prepared this email in a wonderful text editor EDIT PAD that works better than Notebook or Word pad, you can download it for FREE here.


BROWSER:
The latest browser I have tested and reccomend highly is FIREFOX from Mozilla. It's FREE and it does much more than IE without crashing as frequently. It will adopt your IE bookmarks, protocols etc. and transfer them automatically. It is a cleaner and more SECURE browser than IE. Did I mention it's FREE?!


ZONE ALARM FIRE WALL
In this day and age of hackers attacking with worms and viruses everyone should have a home fire wall. Regardless of your ISP whether you are dial up DSL or cable linked your ISP does not give you enough protection. SHAW and TELUS do not give you a fire wall for free, you must buy it from them. I recommend Zone Alarm which I have been using for years, its better than Norton or McAfee Fire walls and it is FREE. It is interactive asking you if you want a program to access the Internet, it protects you on-line from hackers and it has virus protection for your email. And it's FREE.

If you want to you can pay to upgrade to their higher end products which includes a very good pest killer: PEST PATROL

AVG-ANTI VIRUS PROGRAM
Of course you have anti virus protection on your computer...well you do don't you?! Great but they cost $$$ and you have to subscribe annually for updates, costing you more $$$$. A GREAT FREE anti-virus program as powerful as the commercial ones put out by Norton and McAfee is:

AVG Anti virus software from Grisoft-

It automatically updates itself every ten days!!! For free and you can set it contact your computer automatically and upgrade itself! Oh did I mention IT IS BETTER THAN NORTON OR McAFEE.

ANTI-HACK UTILITIES
And while we are at it you need to use anti-hacker utilities that finds and eliminates hacker tools, spy ware, cookies and Trojans from your personal computer. Even if you are using anti virus programs you should download these FREE programs. They cover different hacker tools so its good to use all of them:

AD AWARE - The original FREE ad ware killer from Europe,

SPYBOT - checks and cleans your registry and checks for hot key changes

SPYWAREBLASTER doesn't scan and clean for spy ware,it prevents it from ever being installed you set it up and it runs in the background.

WEB WASHER
Ok now you are protected on-line what about when you leave the Internet? Then you need to clean up all that crap that has been loaded into your Windows system from surfing. A program to clean up the remains of your cache, the stuff even Norton Utilities like Clean Sweep MAY miss then you need to use another great program: WINDOW WASHER it is free to try and then see if you want to buy it. I found it worth the investment. Even after using the clean sweep utility in my Norton utilities program Window Washer still found hidden files to be cleaned.

MAIL WASHER
It's FREE and easy to download and use, so do it now! Just click on the link:

MAIL WASHER is a program designed to keep out unsolicited commercial email(otherwise known as spam) and email viruses from your computer.

It also allows you to preview and delete emails before you download them,like emails with large attachments or viruses. So you never have to download bad emails again.

Plus a really handy feature allows you to bounce emails back to people so it looks like your address doesn't exist. So if you're getting a lot of unsolicited email or you gave your email address to the wrong person you can now bounce it back to them so they can take your name off their list.

If you have more than one email address you will need to use MAIL WASHER PRO which is a shareware program but like the free version is well worth the price. go to http://www.mailwasher.net/ to find out more information about it.

SPAM POISON for your Blog or Website

WWW Robots (also called wanderers or spiders) are programs that traverse pages in the Web by recursively retrieving linked pages. When a spammer's robot visits your website, blog, discussion forum, etc, they will check all the pages that you link to for email addresses.

Now you can fight back against their robots!

All you have to do is link to this page so that whenever a spammer's robot scans your page, they will be sucked into this one.E-mail collecting robots will be sent in an infinite loop and will get dynamically generated fake e-mail addresses, adding enormous quantities of bogus data to the databases of the spammers, thus poisoning those files so badly that they become essentially usele

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Muslims Discovered America

I found this article linked at a wonderful wacky weird news site, but since this is a BBC story it has to be true.....well it is actually because I blogged about this before. The contention was that the Chinese had discovered North America.
A book making that claim was published back in 2003.

Jan. 7, 2003 | On March 15, 2002, Gavin Menzies, a retired Royal Navy submarine commanding officer, made a speech at the Royal Geographical Society in London that tipped a number of sacred cows. Menzies declared that the Chinese -- traveling on a fleet of ships under the auspices of Emperor Zhu Di -- had reached America 70 years before Columbus. They had also, he posited, seen Australia 350 years before Captain Cook and explored the Magellan Straits 60 years before Magellan was born. In fact, our long-mythologized European explorers, Menzies said, relied on maps provided by the Chinese. In other words, the heroes of the West were slowpokes and copycats.

And back last summer this controversy got added fuel from a Canadian angle.

Of course there are several other claims about who discovered North America, the Vikings, St. Brendan, and of course the Knights Templars.

Three years later and no less an establishment publication than the Economist revives the Chinese discovered America claim. But wait it gets better because the actual discovery was supposedly made by a Chinese Muslim, Zung He.

It seems more likely that the world and all its continents were discovered by a Chinese admiral named Zheng He, whose fleets roamed the oceans between 1405 and 1435. His exploits, which are well documented in Chinese historical records, were written about in a book which appeared in China around 1418 called “The Marvellous Visions of the Star Raft”.

Now we know why the Bush regime is whipping up Anti-Muslim Hysteria they don't want folks to know that Muslims discovered America before the Mormons ancestors.

I mean the U.S. is already in debt to both China and the Suadi's imagine if they also claimed property rights to the U.S.A. Then they would have to change their motto to In Allah We Trust.

China map lays claim to Americas

BBC News January 15, 2006

The map clearly shows the Americas and Africa Photo:The Economist/PA Enlarge Image

A map due to be unveiled in Beijing and London next week may lend weight to a theory a Chinese admiral discovered America before Christopher Columbus.

The map, which shows North and South America, apparently states that it is a 1763 copy of another map made in 1418.

If true, it could imply Chinese mariners discovered and mapped America decades before Columbus' 1492 arrival.

The map, which is being dated to check it was made in 1763, faces a lot of scepticism from experts.

Chinese characters written beside the map say it was drawn by Mo Yi Tong and copied from a map made in the 16th year of the Emperor Yongle, or 1418.

It clearly shows Africa and Australia.

The British Isles, however, are not marked.

Controversial claim

The map was bought for about $500 from a Shanghai dealer in 2001 by a Chinese lawyer and collector, Liu Gang.

According to the Economist magazine, Mr Liu only became aware of the map's potential significance after he read a book by British author Gavin Menzies.

The book, 1421: The Year China discovered the World, made the controversial claim that a Chinese admiral and eunuch, Zheng He, sailed around the world and discovered America on the way.

Zheng He, a Muslim mariner and explorer, is widely thought to have sailed around South East Asia and India, but the claim he visited America is hotly disputed.

The map is now being tested to check the age of its paper and ink, with the results due to be known in February.

Even if it does prove to have been drawn in 1763, sceptics will point out that we still only have the mapmaker's word that he copied if from a 1418 map, rather than from a more recent one.

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Cuckoo Clock Economics

Canada looking like Switzerland, economist says

Sure Dr. Hoffman the Swiss chemist discovered LSD and Canadian Doctors experimented with it.

Opps thats not what he was talking about.

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 ..."

The Third Man (1949)






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Capitalisms Aristocracy

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.

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