Harpers P3 Scandal

This is rich. Two newly appointed Harper bueraucrats, who come from the private sector, in charge of selling off or leasing out Government buildings, went to England to investigate the success (sic) of their Public Private Partnerships (p3's)

Of course the many cases of the failure of P3s was never on their agenda. And apparently neither was actually talking to anybody, it seems that their draft report came from pro-privatization websites.

They took a vacation in England with their wives. Nice job if you can get it......now what was that about transparency, accountability....sounds like the same old pork to me.

And like the Liberals its business as usual with our reinventing Government Harpocrites who are pushing privatization and Public Private Partnerships.

And thanks to these guys greed and stupidity this backroom P3 plan may never have been publicly revealed. Instead their report would be issued justifying the governments move to privatize goverment buildings, as if it was factual.

Apologies over advisers' trip an 'embarrassment'

When two-high ranking federal advisers left for London in June, the stated purpose was to learn about British experiments in public-private partnerships. In particular, the trip by Public Works advisers David Rotor and Douglas Tipple was marred by a series of cancelled meetings, forcing Canadian diplomats and senior officials to send six letters of apology to their British counterparts.

Mr. Rotor and Mr. Tipple arrived in London with good credentials, having been hired to overhaul Ottawa's procurement and real-estate businesses through a head-hunting firm that was paid $230,000 for its services.

And while their salaries are confidential, they are each paid more than $100,000 a year, in line with salaries in the private sector.

Upon their return to Canada, Mr. Rotor and Mr. Tipple prepared a 10-page document under the heading "U.K. Trip Notes — June 2006," which has started circulating throughout the government.

The 4,500-word document provides a summary of the information gathered overseas by the two special advisers. About 1,800 words of the document – or 40 per cent of the total trip report – consists of direct and edited excerpts from outside reports available at two British websites: www.amaresearch.co.uk and www.adamsmith.org.

However, there is no indication in the report that some of the material comes directly from either website.

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A Footnote

Canada's federal statistics-gathering agency admitted Tuesday it mistakenly understated the country's inflation rate over the past five years.
economists were taken aback by the glitch, reported by Bloomberg News yesterday and which first surfaced as a footnote in Statscan's June price inflation, released July 21.

An opps hidden as a footnote. This is like polling, now the inflation rate will have to be stated as "give or take a tenth of a percent".

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The Mulroney Legacy

The reason that Canada cannot produce or distribute generic AIDS drugs falls directly in the lap of the Conservative government. The government of Brian Mulroney that is. It was his government that passed legislation allowing the big Pharmaceutical oligopolies to hold exclusive patents for twenty years, which puts a strangle hold on generic drug manufacturers.

The Mulroney legacy of free-trade denies a free market.

The Mulroney government brought in three pro-big pharma laws. In 1987, Bill C-22 was enacted which weakened the government's ability to use licensing arrangements to allow the public greater access to cheaper, Canadian-made generic drugs. In 1993, Bill C-91 was passed, allowing the big pharmaceutical companies, largely based in the U.S., to extend their brand name patent protection from 17 to 20 years. Also, in 1993, amendments were made to the Patent Medicines Regulations Act, giving Health Canada more tools for rejecting generic drug approval besides simply allegations of patent infringement.Big Pharma's Healthcare Fix

From a public policy perspective, the most important and relevant question regarding the pharmaceutical patent regime is whether or not it is serving the interests of Canadians.

Nearly 20 years after the introduction of Bill C-22, which gave brand-name drug companies longer periods of market monopoly, and more than 10 years after the introduction of the Patented Medicines (Notice of Compliance) Regulations of Canada’s Patent Act, it is evident that the shift in Canada’s pharmaceutical policy in favour of brand-name drug companies has been a failure in virtually every measurable outcome.

It is clear that nearly 20-years of concessions to the multi-national brand-name pharmaceutical industry by the Government of Canada has not served the interests of Canadians

The Real Story Behind Big Pharma’s R&D Spending in Canada

Also See

AIDS


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Makhno The Mini Series

A new TV series in Russia to be released this year is about the Ukrainian Anarchist/ libertarian-communist; Nestor Makhno.

The Nine Lives of Nestor Makhno
12 part series; filming in 2005; to be released: late 2006. Directed by Mukola (Nikolai) Kaptan. Ukraine & Russia. To be broadcast internationally on RTVi (Russian cable/satellite channel)

The flag says: "Liberty or Death"-skull-"Black Guards"

Also see:

Anarchism and Authority

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American Exceptionalism

I left this comment at 1337hax0r blog about the latest WTO ruling in favour of Canada's soft wood indutstry.

The Americans, regardless of party in power, only obey laws they have made.It’s called American exceptionalism; we obey the laws/agreements we have signed except if we don’t want too.

Let me count the ways; the Geneva Convention, the International Court of Justice, the ICC, the law of the sea, etc. etc. ad nauseaum.

As I said both the conservatives and the liberals in the U.S. adhere to American Exceptionalism, see the lastest Slate article about the softwood dispute;
The Outsourcing of American Law
Who needs federal judges when you have Canadians?

The streets of Washington, D.C., and Seattle may have been controlled last spring and fall by a new breed of antiglobalization progressives, but the old-fashioned, conservative anti-internationalists continue to hold sway among American policymakers. Although the United States has accepted the North American Free Trade Agreement and participation in the World Trade Organization, it has spurned important multilateral regimes relating to arms control, the environment, war crimes, human rights, and other emerging global issues.

This brand of anti-internationalism runs deep in the American political tradition, as any casual student of history knows, and its persistence is to be expected. More surprising is the respectability that the movement is winning among academics and policy analysts. During the Cold War, it was too closely identified with crude conspiracy theories and the isolationist legacy of the Versailles Treaty to attract serious support among policy elites. That has now changed: anti-internationalism claims a growing intellectual following. This group of academics -- many of whom are highly credentialed and attached to prestigious institutions or conservative Washington think tanks -- has developed a coherent blueprint for defending American institutions against the alleged encroachment of international ones. This school does not oppose international engagement per se and thus cannot be classified simply as isolationist. Rather, it holds that the United States can pick and choose the international conventions and laws that serve its purpose and reject those that do not. Call it international law ? la carte. Foreign Affairs - The New Sovereigntists: American Exceptionalism ...

The picture of America as a shining city on a hill, standing virtually outside of history, still retains a powerful cultural appeal, but in this era of globization, powered by American corporate might, this positive impression increasingly has it's mirror oppositie, fueled by a wide perception that if there is an American exceptionalism, it definitely has a darker side as well. Especially in the era of the Bush Adminstration's Pre-emptive Strike Doctrine, and the sorting out of the aftermath if the Iraq War, scholars will inevitably consider the question of an American exceptionalism a useful entryway into larger problems of United States and world history. At the moment, concludes, Sean Wilentz, "the whole matter would seem to be more important as a myth that needs analysis than as a fixed historical reality requiring some global explanatory theory." american exceptionalism

Mr Bush's own family embodies the shift away from Euro-centrism. His grandfather was a senator from Connecticut, an internationalist and a scion of Brown Brothers Harriman, bluest of blue-blooded Wall Street investment banks. His father epitomised the transatlantic generation. Despite his Yale education, he himself is most at home on his Texas ranch. Looked at this way, the Bush administration's policies are not only responses to specific problems, or to demands made by interest groups. They reflect a certain way of looking at America and the world. They embody American exceptionalism. A nation apart | Economist.com

Americans have long embraced a notion of superiority, claims Howard Zinn. Governor Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony described establishing “a city on a hill,” to serve the world as a beacon of liberty. So far, so good. But driving this sense of destiny, says Zinn, was an assumption of divine agency—“an association between what the government does and what God approves of.” And too frequently, continues Zinn, Americans have invoked God to expand “into someone else’s territory, occupying and dealing harshly with people who resist occupation.” Zinn offers numerous examples of how the American government has used “divine ordination” and rationales of spreading civilization and freedom to justify its most dastardly actions: the extermination of Native Americans and takeover of their land; the annexation of Texas and war with Mexico; war against the Philippines; U.S. involvement in coups in Latin America; bloody efforts to expand U.S. influence in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. The battle against Communism, often bolstered by arguments of America’s divine mission in the world, was merely a convenient excuse to maintain U.S. economic and military interests in key regions. Today, says Zinn, we have a president, who more than any before him, claims a special relationship with God. Zinn worries about an administration that deploys Christian zealotry to justify a war against terrorism, a war that in reality seems more about establishing a new beachhead in the oil-rich Middle East. He also sees great danger in Bush’s doctrines of unilateralism and pre-emptive war, which mark a great leap away from international standards of morality.MIT World » : The Myth of American Exceptionalism

Also See: Softwood

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Spot the Contradiction

Tories consider lowering age of criminal responsibly
ST. JOHN'S — Children under the age of 12 who have had brushes with the law should be dealt with under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, Canada's justice minister said yesterday. Toews says courts can handle kids as young as 10



“Toward a More Effective Justice System”
Speech for the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada
And finally, we introduced legislative proposals that would raise the age at which youth can consent to sexual activity from 14 to 16 years.

There is no consent when you get raped in jail.


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Not MacArthurs Republican Party

The Republican Party policy committee paper anticipating a North Korean test put it this way: "Essentially, the United States must demand that the PRC [People's Republic of China] make a choice: either help out or face the possibility of other nuclear neighbors." The implication was that Washington would tolerate or even encourage a Japan armed with nuclear weapons. Why Japan will never go nuclear

How quickly they forget....it was Republican candidate for President, General Douglas MacArthur who instituted the democratic constitution of Japan which included the clause that Japan would never be a nuclear power nor have a standing army which it could use against its enemies. He was a REAL conservative not an authoritarian neo-con warmonger like the Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld gang.

Foremost of its provisions is that which, abolishing war as a sovereign right of the nation, forever renounces the threat or use of force as a means for settling disputes with any other nation and forbids in future the authorization of any army, navy, air force or other war potential or assumption of rights of belligerency by the state. By this undertaking and commitment Japan surrenders rights inherent in her own sovereignty and renders her future security and very survival subject to the good faith and justice of the peace loving peoples of the world. By it does a nation, recognizing the futility of war as an arbiter of international issues, chart a new course oriented to faith in the justice, tolerance and understanding of mankind.General MacArthur's announcement of a new Constitution for Japan


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Intolerant Blogging Tories

The bigots at the Blogging Tories are trying to justify the unjustifiable, defending the indefensible, and being their usual intolerant selves, in support of King Stephens political-homophobia.

I thought of commenting on these stupid remarks but thought better of it, let them speak for themselves they do it so well....hoisting themselves on their own petards so to speak....

International AIDS Conference
OK, so the International AIDS Conference is being held in Toronto. Apparently, Stephen Harper wasn't in attendance. Of course, the Libs and the NDP jumped right on the chance to bash our PM for his absence. My question is SO THE F*** WHAT? Do the NDP and Liberal leaders go to world conferences for other diseases: breast cancer? lung cancer? colon cancer? heart disease?


Get over it already!
P.M. Stephen Harper is not showing up at the AID's conference. Period. Deal with it.Surely all the time and effort spent weeping and lamenting over this turn of events could be put to better use. But of course we know the real reason behind the furor - political capital.Certain advocacy groups seem to be trying to send out a message via sympathetic MSM that our PM does not care because he is no...

Pediatric Shakespeare Scholars for Global Peace ...

...Stephen Harper hates you too.Yesterday in front of cheering crowds, Dr. Mark Wainberg, co-chair of the international AIDS conference currently underway in Toronto, lambasted Stephen Harper for not attending. The implication was that Harper doesn't care about the disease or its victims.For those of you who want to get a jump start on your protest organization and start making your "Harper hat...

Disarm the Flags! and local news

There's a big AIDS conference going on in Toronto, Gian Gomeshi produced a little spoken word piece with appropriately haunting brit-pop background. Like you, I love spoken word pieces and Gian/Xian makes them rhyme, which to me, is much classier. Later in the day, the CBC asked its audience: should the Prime Minister not be at the AIDS conference? The issue is so important that he needs to be there to call attention to it. In a funny way, the fuss does the job of creating media buzz, giving the conference all it would get from his appearance in the first place. Besides, I doubt Bill Clinton and Bill Gates need any help in boosting an event's profile.

Also See

AIDS


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Cheeky Headline

The leader of the PQ is gay. So the headline says.....Boisclair cruises to victory

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Fighting The Good Fight

Sometimes blogging is not all its cracked up to be. It is a hobby, a way of expressing oneself, of communicating with others in our alienated isolation in front of our computer screens. And then shit happens like this....which brings it all back home that every day is a struggle to live life to the fullest.

Good luck Doc and Marriane.....

Dawg's Blawg

Goodbye for a while

Dear friends and/or sparring partners,

I shall be taking my leave from the blogosphere for a period, and may return only sporadically for the foreseeable future. My dear partner Marianne has just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which is not one of the better ones to have. Every moment with her has become infinitely precious, while the world outside now seems both monstrous and trivial at once.

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