Alberta Lowers Voting Age

They're off! Fight begins to replace Ralph
Anyone 16 years of age and older who purchases a $5 membership in the party is entitled to vote for their choice of leader at polling booths which will be set up in all 83 constituencies on a yet-to-be announced date, likely at the end of November.

Ironic eh. Since the next Leader of the Party will become the Leader of the One Party State in Alberta effectively giving 16 year olds the vote.

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Alberta




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If The Shoe Fits

Jim Dinning has fired back at rivals who claim he's backed by Ralph Klein's "Calgary mafia" who will continue the status quo of government in Alberta. He launched his counter-attack yesterday with a vow to introduce tough new rules to ensure Tory governments are ethical and democratic. "There's a perception that decisions get made behind closed doors by the same people with the same influencers sitting by their sides," he told more than 100 Tory party members at a Royal Glenora Club luncheon. "I've heard it in spades and I've heard it directed at my own campaign."

Because it's true.

Love that eh after 35 years in power now Jim Dinning the man who wants to be Alberta's CEO will make sure that the Tory governments are ethical and democratic. So for 35 years they haven't been?

You bet thats why we have a deficit in Alberta a democratic deficit. And being the Party of Calgary's fair haired boy it ain't going to change under Dinning. Cause who was he talking to? Tories. Where? The expensive, elitist, exclusive Royal Glenora Club.

And speaking of making promises after the horse has left the barn there is Leadership rival Lyle Oberg who when he was Minister of Infrastructure could have done all this over the past three years. More money for schools and recreation centres for Alberta green spaces are on the agenda for leadership contender Lyle Oberg if he becomes premier.

But then again the Tories didn't have a plan.


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Alberta




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Lies the White House Tells

Afghan war will be won, Rice says

If wishes were horses beggars would ride as my mother says.

The reality is that Afghanistan is NATO's quagmire with no end in sight. No plausible victory except in the teeny tiny minds of right wing warmongers.

Many Nato countries have been directly involved in the US-led war on terror for the past five years. Fatigue is setting in. Forces are overstretched. The conflict shows no signs of ending any time soon. There is a growing perception among the public in Europe that the Bush Administration has mishandled the conduct of the conflict and that Iraq, and now possibly Afghanistan, may defeat the cream of the Western military. Those fears are reflected in the conduct of the war in southern Afghanistan, which was meant to be a Nato peacekeeping mission but instead has turned into a deadly counter-insurgency war. But the crisis does not bode well for future operations. By most accounts the war in Afghanistan is likely to continue for years to come.

NATO is now uping the amount of troops it needs...from 1000 to 2000 now to 2500...this despite the increased Canadian forces that have been sent there.

A NATO military chief asked yesterday for another 2,500 troops to be sent to southern Afghanistan to reinforce the Canadian and British battlegroups that have been under fierce attack by the Taleban for the past two months.

NATO officials -- and Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor -- are calling for more troops and equipment to bolster the forces already in Afghanistan. Canada is now sending as many as 20 Leopard tanks and 300 additional personnel to Kandahar to provide additional protection for its troops.

The NATO meeting today got no new committments for troops.

NATO failed Wednesday to win new troop commitments urgently needed for its Afghanistan campaign, but the alliance said a 10-day offensive to dislodge Taliban fighters from their southern strongholds was achieving its goals despite the shortage of troops."No formal offers were made at the table," NATO spokesman James Appathurai said after an emergency gathering aimed at finding contributions for an expanded force.

The reluctance of Nato members to meet their commitments is partly due to the demands made on major nations for international operations elsewhere and wariness about getting sucked in to an open-ended conflict.

And the humanitarian situation in the failed state of Afghanistan only gets worse....

While international focus concentrates on the south of Afghanistan, a report released today indicates that millions of Afghans in the north and west of the country face starvation after drought destroyed much of the harvest. Christian Aid, which issued the report, will call today on the British government and international donors to give money to the country’s emergency drought appeal, which requires £41 million.

Also See:Afghanistan

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Wedding Bells?

Can wedding bells be far behind? I mean she has met his family all that is wanting is for the date to be set. A strong signal has been sent that the cougar has got her boy.


Rice, 51, remarked "And so, Peter, thank you very much also for letting me share some time with your family."

During a spring visit with Rice in Washington, MacKay, who turns 41 two weeks from today, had gushed that the two shared a "chemistry" and conceded he had always been a "fan."

But it was obvious he was smitten with one of the world's most powerful women as they exchanged a handshake and double-cheek kiss. The feeling appeared mutual.

Rice, who has never married, repeatedly called MacKay by his first name and seemed in no rush to finish up her morning agenda.

"This has been a lovely trip, Peter," she told him.

U.S. State Department officials played up the amount of time MacKay spent with Rice, saying few get so much attention."You don't get four hours of the secretary of state's time even if you're the Queen of England," said one American official."It's quite a strong signal."

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Peter McKay



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Third Way Camp Grows

War or appeasement is the rhetoric on the right. But there is a third way, as NATO members are showing by their reluctance to pony up in Afghanistan. They are voting with their feet. Cold feet indeed, over Bush/Blair/Harper/Howards hot wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

What is the third way? NATO defines a new mission. One that is about diplomacy and development, which are the real keys to security. And self reliance. Actual training of security forces that are indidgenous to the conflict regions. Hey I am not saying this a British Lord is..... A Conservative British Lord.

That third way is what Jack, Alexa and the NDP are advocating, ironic eh.


Bush creating a more dangerous world

It may now be time to start pulling together a new partnership of like-minded nations to whom an America that has patently lost its way might at last listen. Nations such as India, Japan, Australia, Canada, and some from "New Europe," such as Poland, the Czech Republic and the lively Baltic three, come to mind.

There are undoubtedly plenty of countries that are by no means anti-American but are prepared to speak with candor and force to the present administration in Washington, to urge a change of strategy and direction -- not to appease terror and extremism but to encourage skilled and firm diplomatic engagement with every state, including Syria and Iran, which in the end are just as much threatened by nonstate terror and anarchy as anybody else.

This would be a big step out of the present morass. But will it be taken? Both Blair and Bush are irredeemably committed to the existing path, with its immensely damaging consequences for the interests of both the U.S. and its chief allies. A fresh start of this kind is probably not on the cards until both these figures leave the stage.

Only then will there be a chance to bring to an end this dismal period of folly since that dreadful morning that changed the world five years ago.

David Howell is a former British Cabinet minister and former chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. He is now a member of the House of Lords

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Conservative Leader Blasts Bush

Afghanistan

Iraq





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Conservative Leader Blasts Bush

and Blair....and it ain't Bush's handpuppet Stephen Harper. Nope its the Leader of the British Conservative Party; Duncan Cameron....given the propensity for the Blogging Tories to froth at the mouth over such statements I expect them to label him Taliban Cameron.....

On Monday the Tory leader, David Cameron, lectured Bush, Blair and his putative successor, Gordon Brown, on moderation. He deplored the naive language of counter-terror and pleaded for more humility and patience in dealing with Muslim states. For an advocate of the Iraq war this is something of a U-turn. Cameron declared himself a born-again "libcon", a sanitised, semi-demilitarised neocon. Does Cameron really mean to revert to Blair's Chicago 1999 speech and pragmatic humanitarianism as the lodestar of Tory policy? If so, it means withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan and fighting instead in Darfur and Congo. It means cancelling Eurofighters and Trident submarines and investing in infantry and field armour. It means engaging with Iran rather than threatening to bomb it.

Even so, a Tory leader is searching for a new language of foreign affairs and using such words as humility. This is encouraging. Western diplomacy must soon move on from the present rant to treat with those whose lives and lands it has grievously harmed these past five years. Cameron's language suggests a refreshing optimism. Western civilisation is not vulnerable to jihadism, only to its own fears, insecurities and cowardice. It is that vulnerability against which "libcons" should be on their guard. The greatest threat to any democracy has always been from its own chosen rulers.

The present lunacy will pass. The west will get another bloody nose, withdraw and concentrate its proselytising zeal on aid and example rather than on bombs and bullets. The much-vaunted neocon agenda, as Cameron said, had noble ambitions but was fatally short on realism. Its wars show why democracies must keep their leaders and their armies on a short rein. The wrong assessment of Saddam's weaponry was followed by a far greater intelligence failure, that Iraqis and Afghans would welcome western occupation. They never did and never will.

Nato's impending failure in Afghanistan will run alongside the November elections in America, Blair's departure from office and Cameron's new-found enlightenment. All suggest a worm starting to turn. The stupid party in foreign policy is in retreat. Perhaps, at last, the intelligent party is returning to power.

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Afghanistan






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Good Deal

See Fair Trade Works......between socialists.....

Fuel for us, clean-up for Caracas President Chávez seals extraordinary deal with Ken Livingstone.

that would see Caracas benefit from the capital's expertise in policing, tourism, transport, housing and waste disposal.London, meanwhile, would gain the most obvious asset the Venezuelans have to give: cheap oil. Possibly more than a million barrels of the stuff. South American diesel would be supplied by Venezuela - the world's fifth-largest oil exporter - as fuel for some of the capital's 8,000 buses, particularly those services most utilised by the poor.

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Chavez

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Aspen Mystery

So why are Colorado's Aspen stands dying off? No one seems to know. A combination of factors seems to be at play here. Ranching, urban development, and finally local drought. Add to that opportunistic insects and disease and you have the perfect mix for a wipe out of Aspen forest. Of course as everyone scratches their heads about this they forget two little words; Global Warming.

In Alberta a major portion of our Boreal forest is Aspen and NASA's Earth Observatory has noted the same phenomena.

The Future of the Boreal Forest

In Western Canada, some scientists are already concerned that the expected warming and drying of the climate will drastically reduce the abundance of aspen, the primary commercial hardwood species in the southern boreal forest. Insufficient moisture could produce an open aspen parkland, where stunted aspen cluster along water courses, with grasslands in between.

Where forests will gain or lose ground depends on the regional characteristics of their environment, including water availability and temperature, and one other crucial factor—how fast the species can migrate. This lag time between climate change and species adaptation is something many models don’t take into account.

Folks in Colorado where this is happening have every reason to become tree huggers now. Residents of Mancos feel the pain of trees' deathThe Aspen are key to their bio-political-economy as they are Alberta's . Which should remind us all that The Word For World Is Forest.

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Environment

Green Plan

Kyoto

Climate Change

Global Warming



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Even Brits Get It

One of the top ranking British Capitalists understands that America is no friend of Free Trade....a message that hits home with Canadians.

Especially after Harpers Softwood lumber sell out.

Now imagine Thomas d'Aquino, president and CEO of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives saying something like this....


Digby Jones, the former head of the CBI, will tonight use his first speech since leaving the employers' organisation to attack Britain's special relationship with a "bullying, protectionist" United States.

Addressing the Institute of Directors in Birmingham, Sir Digby will call for the UK to recover its independence not just from Brussels but from Washington.

"One of the most shocking and worrying aspects of loss of independence has been a refusal to stand up to the United States in so many areas," he will argue in a speech called "I want my country back".

Sir Digby will say he is not talking about Iran, Afghanistan or Lebanon, but about areas where "our country could have and should have stood up and fought a protectionist, bullying America - in the fields of trade, investment and the rule of law"

Nope neither can I.

Thoms d'Aquino and the CCCE are integrationists, a quizzling class of capitalist compradors. The FTA and NAFTA were never about Free Trade but an intergrated market in North America, the Contientalist dream of Bay Street.

An example of this contientalism is TD PriceWaterhouse.Whose ads in America are for its investment banking business Price Waterhouse that was bought out by Canada's TD bank. In Canada the TD Bank, formerly the Toronto Domion, now includes TD Price Waterhouse, the former Canada Trust and TDNorthBank an American bank.

The reason the banks want the ability to merge in Canada is for market capitalization that would allow them to buy into the American market even more.

And this is the whole short coming of the CCCE they want our poilitcal economy to look like their intergrated North American boardrooms. The shortsightedness of the Contientalists produced Harpers softwood deal.

But capitalism is global in reach. And this is anathema to the conservative continetalists. They do want a steady state capitalist economy, one that shuts out the world and locks us into Fortress North America. But as always the wiff and poof of capitalism gets in the way.

When the big Canadian Resource companies Teck-Caminco, Inco, Falconbridge began trying to buy each other out to create the ultimate Resource monopoly, they left themselves open to take over by equally voracious global capitalists from abroad.

Their failure was to look abroad for investment opportunities. They really were risk averse to playing in the global marketplace. They only looked as far as their back yard. Unlike Indias Mittal Steel which invests globally and owns major steel companies in the U.S. and now owns Defasco.

Contientalism in Canada has been tried before its called the Auto Pact, and today as the Big 3 American auto companies collapse before the onslaught of global competition, we find ourselves bailing them out, while Toyota, Honda, and their global competitiors invest in Canada.

Free Trade means you are willing to play in the global marketplace not just stay at home buying up each others businesses. Genuine Free Trade is not contientalism, it is in essence Fair Trade globally.

While the economies of rich countries will continue to grow, "a key policy issue should be to find ways to distribute that growth beyond the super-wealthy who have benefited the most for the past two or so decades of growth."An interesting exercise is now underway in the United States to deal with these challenges. It is called The Hamilton Project, and its leaders include Robert Rubin, former U.S. Secretary the Treasury and now chairman of the executive committee at Citigroup Inc. We don't have anything like this in Canada.A recent discussion paper for The Hamilton Project argued that "achieving an equitable distribution of the benefits and costs of trade will require strong, effective government policies," adding that "the need for such policies will only grow more important, as nations like China and India become increasingly dominant forces in the world economy."

Also See

Softwood

Free Trade

Fordism

GM

Free Market

AFRICA

Free Trade; Hong Kong & Somalia

Libertarian Economics

Monoop

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Watch How You Dress

Another example of Christian tolerance in action....this is no different those who would tell women that their provcative dress incite men to lust......

Rwanda: Skimpily Dressed Woman Escapes Lynching There was drama last week in Rwamagana town as students from the Rwamagana Mission School mobbed a skimpily-dressed, leaving her half naked. According to an eye-witness, the youthful woman's woes began when she tried to resist intimidation by over one hundred rowdy students.

The students were male of course.Perhaps they wanted her to wear a nuns outfit which is the Christian equivalent of the Burka.

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More Christian Abuse

Christianity Is Child Abuse

Christian Killers and Rapists

Private Day Care Abuse

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