Blogging Iraq

A great news aggregator blog on Iraq is Today in Iraq. And no there are no planted Pentagon stories.


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In Defense of Migration

Two thoughtful articles on migration and the current white whing wascist hysteria in the U.S. about 'illegal aliens' appear on the Thomas Paine's Corner blog. Well worth the read.

Your Huddled Masses are my Wretched Refuse:

African-Americans, Economic Well-Being, and Immigration



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Bank Charges

Here is a good news story for banking customers for once; CIBC to refund $27M to clients who were overcharged

However one has to ask why we pay service charges period.

Especially when this happens;Citing more than 1,000 mistakes a day in preauthorized bank debits across Canada, a coalition of consumers' groups is calling on Ottawa for consumer protection legislation on electronic payments.

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Ashamed of Being A Tory

This nutbar is ashamed of being a blogging Tory....except he has also been a Liberal and a Green blogger.

Of course the Blogging Tories have never heard of him as he is not on their roll.Which is a shame since he tries so hard to be one of them.

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No Rae Days For Liberals

This is why Bob Rae will not be elected Leader of the Federal Liberals; "Former Ontario NDP premier".

This appelation will follow him where ever he goes, and in any stories about him.

Despite being the Chretienite/Demarais/Power Corporation candidate . Barely out of the gate and he got La Presse's editorial endorsement, the voice of the Power Corp and his inlaws.

But not all the criticism will be from the right, nope there is a good left hook out there with elder NDP statesman Ed Broadbent's latest column in the Globe and Mail.Mr. Rae and the Grits deserve each other

And not to be outdone Ontario MPP Peter Kormos gets in a couple of shots;
"He began his political career as a Liberal and Bob Rae is going to finish it as a Liberal. And, as far as I'm concerned, there was no hiatus in the interim. He was the best Liberal premier this province ever had."

Bob has baggage alright but not just his past as Premier of Ontario. He has more recent baggage, that of screwing post secondary students.

Student-loans Catch-22 lurks

In 1994, Manning introduced a motion in Parliament calling for the creation of an “income contingent loan repayment system”. Manning claimed that this would reduce costs for taxpayers and ensure postsecondary institutions generated enough funding to maintain quality. He made no mention of the potential impact on tuition.

Just over 10 years later, Rae submitted a report to the Ontario government on postsecondary education that also called for an income-contingent student-loan-repayment plan. He suggested that this could come in the form of payroll deductions.

“In the Canadian context, such a system will take time to establish because of the need for federal- provincial consensus,” Rae wrote in his report. He added that governments would also “necessarily involve the future of tuition tax credits, and other tax expenditures”.

Payne said that Ontario students have opposed Rae’s proposal for that province. “I think that myself and students across the country are concerned about Bob Rae potentially becoming the leader of the Liberal party,” Payne said.

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Atlantis Discovered

Is this the discovery of Plato's Atlantis?

Volcanologist says past blast wiped out Plato's Atlantis

Olive tree rewrites classical history

Scientists have detected ash from the explosion as far away as Greenland, the Black Sea and Egypt. They have also discovered signs of frost damage caused by the volcano on preserved plant material excavated in Ireland and California.

That means that many of the cultures that researchers once assumed were trading with each other, may have existed at completely different times. In particular, researchers have generally thought that the civilisations on the islands of Crete, Cyprus and in Greece had many ties to Egypt.

But, the new timeline indicates that these civilisations may have been more tightly linked with cultures of the Levant, which today includes Israel, Lebanon and Syria. The cultures were contemporaneous with Egypt's Second Intermediate Period - when northern Egypt was controlled by a Canaanite dynasty with links to the Levant - instead of the subsequent New Kingdom.

It could also explain some anomalies that have long puzzled historians. For example, it's been speculated that there is a connection between Anat, a virgin goddess of war worshipped in the Levant, and Athena, one of the most important goddesses in Greek culture. Olive Branch Buried by Volcano Revises History

Of course there are other contenders as well, Cyprus and Ireland.

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Telcos Limit Internet Freedom

This is a damn good reason why the United States should not have proprietary control over the Internet.Faced with the challenge by the big Telcos, AT&T has returned like the ghost of Trusts past, net neutrality has been shot down in favour of the corporate Telco oligopolies. Suddenly the concerns raised by the EU and others about the US control over the Internet seem less chicken little than prescient.

A host of tech outfits, from Google to Intel, suffered a setback in a battle over access to the Internet on Apr. 26. At issue is whether telcos like AT&T and cable operators such as Comcast, which maintain the country's vast broadband networks, can favor one provider's Web traffic over another's. A measure that would bar the practice was shot down by a Congressional committee. Tech Giants' Internet Battles

And wouldn't you know it but the guy who is responsible for this travesty is none other than Colin Powell's little boy Michael. You know the guy who got upset over a nipple being shown during the Superbowl. Who then pushed for 'decency' regulations over both non cable and cable networks in the US. Censorship by any other name.

The version of the bill passed on Wednesday includes four "principles" put forward by Michael Powell, former chairman of the FCC, the communications regulator. It would allow the FCC to take action against service providers if they block subscribers' access to legal websites or services but does not prevent price differentiation. Telecoms groups win 'net neutrality' battle in Congress

And if you don't think that the issue of 'decency', affects you well check this out;

Wireless Carriers Set Strict Decency Standards for Content

As music and video programming becomes widely available for cellphones, major U.S. wireless carriers are quietly setting strict decency standards for their content partners in an effort to stave off criticism from customers and regulators. Many of the rules go far beyond those set by federal regulators for television and radio.

The rules, which bar sexually explicit or graphic content, have sparked concern among media providers. Some have already been forced to alter or remove hip-hop ringtones, video clips or other material that wireless operators considered offensive, people familiar with the situation say. The wireless industry trade group, CTIA-The Wireless Association, issued broad content guidelines in November, but largely left it to the carriers to implement their own policies.

As we all know decency is just the excuse to limit free speech period. And the worst offender is not the State, but the corporations themsleves as they self censor. Now the Telcos will be able to limit access to the Internet, censor it and charge you more for it. Oh joy.

According to the watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, "large corporations are a more common source of censorship than governments ... The most frequent form of censorship is self-censorship." Revealing images contrary to the official narrative often end up on the cutting room floor. Hustler Magazine's editorial director, Bruce David, asserts: "The job of the media is to keep the American people calm. It won't show them anything that threatens the ruling elite. It'll show eating bugs on `Survivor' because it doesn't threaten the system. But it won't show casualties of war and flag-draped coffins, because they look at that as a dagger at the heart of the system the corporate media protects."Anything goes today, or does it?

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Left Wing Engineer

Will wonders never cease. A Left Wing Engineer with a blog.

A Left Wing Engineer. And an Engineering Prof at that.

Most Engineers I've met tend to wander into the world of Ayn Rand Objectivism. Being such linear thinkers, it's the trade you see, they think that Ayn is both a great philospopher and a great novelist. Ah poor deluded Engineers, but then again the slogan of Engineering school is 'Geers Rule the World, to which my reply has been; No wonder it's so messed up.

The old left wing Engineers tended to read Veblen and join Technocracy, so it's interesting to see a 'new left' in Engineering. And about time too.

Anyways our good Herr Doctor Professor Filippo A. Salustri has great little Atheist Workbook and a guide to the falacies of Intelligent Design.



Ya gotta like a guy who quotes Marx on his Ryerson home page;

"Je ne suis pas Marxiste."
--Karl Marx, 1818-1883

To which I can only reply; Oui, oui.




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Blogging Medicine Hat

For an overview of the reaction of this little corner of the blogoshpere to the triple murders in Medicine Hat click here.






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Work Creates Addiction

Once again another study puts the cart before the horse.

Addictions bleed nearly $40Ba year from economy: study
The Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse said that figure, based on data from 2002, includes the cost of providing health care, losing millions of days of productivity, and handling court cases and jail sentences.

The reality is that our wage slavery under capitalism alienates us from our productive labour, for we are selling our time, our lives for x hours per day, working at drudgery. In order to overcome our alienation we escape in drugs, legal or no. Such has always been the case of the slave.

Coke was used to ease the burden of the Indians oppressed in the mines by the Spainish Conquistadores, later opium was used by the British to enslave the Chinese. Vodka was the drug of choice of workers in the USSR who faced the drudgery of Stankovism.

Today alcholol and drug use in Northern Alberta by construction workers is seen as a major work issue by the government, employers and building trades unions. What does this tell us? Our lives are empty of meaning. Our work is not productive self fullfilling expressions of our lives but enslavement to the capitalist machine, to the production of profit, not real human needs and values.

Addiction is the direct result of capitalism and its labour relations. It should be seen as a cost of doing business rather than as a 'social problem' which then calls for more taxpayer (addicts) funding, or moral rules (laws against the victims of addiction) as such business should give workers more pay, more time off, and more varied work, including more time for being with their families.

Heck we should only work a four hour day four days a week, and then you would see addictions decline. Of course that will only happen when we have a self-managed society not a capitalist one.




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