Our Ancestor?

May be the sea urchin.

"Scientists have long known that humans and sea urchins are closely related. In fact, these animals are the only invertebrates on the human branch of the evolutionary tree of life. Now that the sea urchin genome is sequenced and assembled, that genetic connection is even clearer."

Spiny creature's genome insight

"Any snorkeler who has ever marvelled at the spherical, almost otherworldly, symmetry of the sea urchin will be amazed to learn that this organism, so different in habitat and body plan from ourselves, actually shares a substantial number of the same genes and pathways," said Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) which helped fund the project.

"It turns out that the sea urchin is very much like us," said George Weinstock, the co- director of the HGSC. "You wouldn't think it to look at it. But it's closer to us than a fly," he said. The group estimates the sea urchin has 23,300 genes. For comparison, the fruit fly has about 13,600 and humans 20,000 to 25,000.

See:

Evolution

Darwinism


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Seals Threaten Fish

Here is another reason why we need to cull the seal herd. By protecting them we have created an ecological imbalance. Opps. See there are consequences to our involvement in the environment, good or bad. And good intentions have consequences and some of them turn out not to be so good. Of course the bad also has consequences, such as mass destruction of the cod stocks not by seals but by trawler fishing.

Canadian Sealers Complain About Lack of Work; 'We Ain't Allowed Where the Seals Are'

Twenty years ago, he said, most fish plant workers found only one or two wormy fish per shift. Now, he said, fish are heavily infested. The worms come from seal feces, research has shown.

The quality of finished product suffers because fillets are sometimes only fit to be packaged as fish bits after the worms are picked out of them, said Mr. Wadman.

"When we do miss a worm, we get some very significant phone calls," he said.

Grey seals are even showing up at his plant, waiting by water outflow pipes hoping to snag bits of fish, Mr. Wadman said.

DFO scientist Mike Hammill said researchers sample seal feces and analyze stomach contents and also look at fatty acids in seal tissue to determine what the grey seals are eating.

Researchers determined that seals don’t always eat a lot of cod. Quite often, he said, the seals eat species that aren’t as commercially important, such sand lance and redfish.

But the amount of cod making up a grey seal’s diet can jump to a high of 40 per cent or a low of 10 per cent, depending on the location and time of year, he said.

The grey seal population is now estimated to be 260,000-strong in Atlantic Canada, up from 20,000 in the 1970s.

See:

Seal Hunt

Fishing


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US Defends War Crimes

At the United Nations, a Security Council resolution condemning Israel's attack on the Gazan town of Beit Hanoun which killed 19 civilians this week was rejected when it was vetoed by the U.S.

And folks wonder why the Palestinians and their allies in the Middle East believe this clash of civilizations is a war against them by the State of Israel on behalf of the American Empire. Israel is not defending itself, but progelmating its colonial power in the region. In Palestine as it did in Lebanon this summer.

See:

Kristallnacht In Gaza

Israel

Lebanon

Zionism

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Our New Police State

Those who enforce the laws of the State, should have no say in the Judiciary. To do otherwise is to move towards a police state. The police are already sufficiently 'above the law', laws that apply to you or I do not apply to them in the execution of their duties.

Welcome to the new government of law and order. Friendly fascism by any other name.

Toews scolded over plan to name judges

The Harper Conservatives, refusing to back down in a fight with the country's senior judges and lawyers, said Friday they are going ahead with a contentious plan to give police a voice in screening judicial contenders to the federally appointed bench.

The plan was first reported this week in an exclusive Winnipeg Free Press story.

Justice Minister Vic Toews issued a news release confirming his plans less than an hour after Canada's lawyers joined a growing chorus of protest that the move could politicize the judiciary by "stacking the deck" in the judicial selection process.

A flagging relationship suffers another blow

Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin has never been one to play her cards carelessly or blurt out an indiscretion.

When she chose to lead the country's top judges into a very public battle with Justice Minister Vic Toews over his plan to transform the judicial appointment process, it meant only one thing: that she believed the very independence of the judiciary was at stake.

But the legal establishment was sent reeling anew yesterday when, just hours after she and the Canadian Judicial Council publicly rebuked Mr. Toews for his arbitrariness, he plowed ahead with a plan that many believe will politicize the federal bench. Without a word of apology or concession, Mr. Toews put his official stamp to a scheme that could destroy a judicial vetting process created specifically to reduce patronage and favouritism.

The most serious effect of Mr. Toews's plan is a change that could allow the government to block virtually any judicial candidate it does not favour, a dramatic change to the legal landscape that opens the door to the government packing courts with political cronies or candidates who share its ideology.

Mr. MacCarthy said that four federal nominees on the reconfigured advisory committees -- one of whom will be drawn from the police community -- could potentially be swayed by the government to operate as a sort of voting bloc to stack each vote.

The key to this scenario is that Mr. Toews's plan calls for the eighth member -- the sole judicial representative on each committee -- to be a non-voting chair. (The committees are a mélange of government, law society and bar association representatives.)

As a result, the federal bloc would emerge a 4-3 winner in any close vote. "Those people will carry the day, rather than a consensus forming," Mr. MacCarthy said.

The storm over the appointment process underlines a spreading abyss of distrust between the judges and Mr. Toews, a leading critic of the judiciary during his days as an Opposition critic.

Indeed, the controversy is merely the latest blow in a relationship that has spiralled steadily downward.

In what was perceived as a direct slap at the judiciary, the Justice Department recently refused to implement a 10.8-per-cent salary raise for federally appointed judges that had been recommended by an independent salaries commission. The government instead substituted a 7.5-per-cent raise.

Various of Mr. Toews's law-and-order bills have also sought to reduce judges' sentencing discretion, furthering his view that judges cannot be trusted


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Lest We Forget

The impact of WWI on the 20th Century.

It was birth of modern capitalism and imperialism and the death of fin de sicle 19th century. As Hobsbawm wrote the modern 20th century begins with WWI and ends with the downfall of the Soviet Union in 1989.

This was an Imperialist War. It had no purpose other than as an internecine conflict to reshape the world for the European Imperial powers. As a result it ended the age of Empires, the old colonial powers in Europe, the Ottoman Empire, all met their inglorious end with WWI.

WWI was the violent cesarian birth of modern capitalism. It aided in the rapid development of Fordist production in the United States. As result Amercia surpassed England to become the future capitalist empire replacing the old Empires of Europe.

It wiped out an entire generation, the lost generation of Fitzgerald.

As a result of this war radical movements in art formed in Europe such as Dada, Futurism, Surrealism and the whole modernist movement in Art.

The war spirit the warrior culture of WWI would create the conditions for fascism begining with the Futurist movement in art. Mussolini and Hitler both embraced the warrior kulturekampf of futurism.

It would shrink the world with the development of a mass diaspora from Europe to America resulting in the creation of Hollywood, mass media, travel literature, mass advertsing (based on the propaganda efforts used in WWI). See Gothic Capitalism Redux

The world had never experienced a world war before, and thus the creation of the global village and the preconditions for 21st Century globalization were laid out in the creation of a new politics of international relations, the League of Nations and Wilsonian inspired Nationalist movements.

That without this war there would have been no Russian Revolution. As a result of poor working conditions, war profitering and lack of veterans pensions and support WWI created the revolutionary conditions for the mass General Strikes world wide during 1919.Several of these created revolutionary situations of workers power, soviets, in Europe specifically in Russai,Italy and Germany.

The psychic devistation, as much as its physical destruction, of WWI resulted in an Occult Revival in Europe and North America, like the workers movement, this had as much to do with searching for a better world, a better future, one without war.

As result of WWI new utopian socialist movements and populist reform/revolts spread through-out Europe and North America. Including in Western Canada Social Credit, and the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, etc. Many of these movements looked towards new distributive models of sharing the wealth. Some like the IWW, Anarcho-Syndicalism and Technocracy advocated an new form of production and distribution models under workers control.

As result of WWI there was the contradiction that some of the utopian movements in art, politics, science, religion, philosophy, economics would be socialist and some would be fascist.

It resovled nothing in Europe, leading to the rise of fascism in Germany due to the economic oppression of the allies demands on the defeated nation.

WWI created the conditions for future of anti-semitism through the creation of the protocols of the Elders of Zion and the Zionist nationalist movement.

That WWI created the modern middle east. The area was divided up by the Imperialist nations, creating modern Iraq, Syria etc. This was a direct result of the discovery of oil which became the life blood of the new Fordist capitalism.

As the result of the post WWI colonization of the Middle East by the declining Imperial powers, modernist culture responded with a fascination for orientalism.

As a result of the technological advances in chemistry, etc. we moved from organic biological pharmacy to new plastic based chemistry and mass production. This was a result of the use of gas warfare. As a result it led to new advances in medicine including the need for mass public medicine as a result of the tragedy in the trenches and the Post War influenza epidemic.

New weapons of war and technology; tanks, motorcycles, planes, heavy ships, submarines,the machine gun, radar, sonar, TV, etc. were introduced during and directly as a result of WWI. The space program began as a result of rocket experimentation arising from the war.

As result of WWI the second wave of modern Feminism began lobbying for womens sufferage, birth control, sex education, the flapper became popular, women smoked cigarettes to show their liberation in popular culture.

It created the Jazz age, the short boom between 1920-1929. This included the rise of Afro-American culture in the US jazz music, blues, modern dance, etc. And its popularity in Europe especially France.

That it created an exile community of Americans abroad, writers, painters, thinkers, publishers, artists, etc. Paris became the home of a generational diaspora of Americans.

Finally it created the Canadian identity as a Nation State with our involvement in the War. A History of Canadian Wealth, 1914.


Rememberance Day Special here are articles I have done related to WWI:

Royal Newfoundlanders Died For the Seal Hunt

Draft Dodgers in Dukhbour Country

Stanway's Sombre Reflection on Somme

WWI Xmas Mutiny

Christmas in the Trenches

The Vimy Myth

Canada's First Internment Camps

Canada’s Long History of Criminalizing Dissent

Rebel Yell

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Vladimir Palaniuk RIP

You know him as Jack Palance.
But he was Ukrainian. He passed away yesterday.

Born Vladimir Palahnuik to Ukranian immigrants, he called himself Walter Jack Palance to keep from being teased. As a young man, he was a professional boxer, which explains his rippled nose. He served in the Army Air Force during World War II, and required facial reconstruction after the B-24 bomber he was flying crashed while patrolling the coast of California.

See: RIP




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Income Trust Bust

While the Liberals Income Trust leak a year ago benefited their pals on Bay Street the Tories Income Trust Halloween surprize rewarded their pal Gwyn Morgan. It is more than likely that it was Encana's plans to become an Income Trust, moreso than either Telus or BCE , that forced the Tories hand. The haste by which the Tories made the decision to smack down the Income Trusts was due to their insider knowledge courtesy of Mr. Morgan. They knew Encana's plans. They sacrificed consultation and breaking an election promise to act to benefit their insider, Gwyn Morgan. Now will the RCMP investigate this Income Trust leak as they did with the Liberals leak?

Did Gwyn Morgan win the ultimate boardroom fight?

It's certainly a theory that got some traction yesterday, as EnCana Corp. made the stunning admission that it wanted to convert about 40% of itself -- worth $20-billion -- into an income trust.

What lent credence to it is that Mr. Morgan, the founding chief executive of EnCana -- and the company's heart, mind and soul until he resigned abruptly exactly a year ago -- publicly criticized the trust model as bad for Canada even as his proud creation was on the verge of doing the deed.

Plus, there were these head-scratchers: His resignation as CEO happened two months after EnCana put in motion the trust plan, hiring legal, tax and financial advisors and seeking a tax ruling from the Canada Revenue Agency.

And despite his 30-year history with EnCana and its predecessor, Alberta Energy Co., two weeks ago Mr. Morgan stepped down from the company's board, just days before the federal government announced it would put an end to trusts in Canada.

See:

Income Trusts

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Environmentali$m

While corporate lobbies attack environmental NGO's the same corporations also fund these Green NGO's in order to; a) appear as good corporate citizens b) buy their silence c) limit their lobbying efforts on behalf of the environment.

I have made this point before in relation to the Green NGO's that use the Seal Hunt as their favorite form of fund raising.

Now lets look at the Green NGO Lobby and their relationship with Big Oil.

Saving the bathwater while throwing out the baby: the unacceptable warp of Woof

Isn't it high time that mining critics spoke out about the consequences of massive tar sands exploitation in Canada and Venezuela? After all, much of it is mining under another name, requiring the extraction of huge chunks of land by shovel-and-truck.

And when will we finally declare WWF (colloquially known as "Woof" ), or at least WWF-Canada, to be an Enemy of the People?

This week's announcement that WWF has accepted a million dollars (Canadian) over five years from Inco to "advance a number of conservation initiatives" is just the latest in a wave of corporate bribes taken by the world's largest subscription "conservation" NGO over the past twenty years, in several countries including Australia and Indonesia . Take it from the horse's mouth: "“We have a track record of engaging with companies to reduce their ecological footprint. WWF works with big industry, like mining and forestry, because it is vital to achieve our conservation goals.” That's according to Arlin Hackman, Chief Conservation Officer for WWF-Canada. “Expanding our relationship with Inco is a logical and welcome next step for us both. We are excited about what we can accomplish together.”

What they can be pretty sure to accomplish is a another fraudulent "green card" awarded to Canada's most disreputable big mining company, more sinecures for WWF staff, and further sleepless nights for peoples at the sharp and bitter end of Inco's (and some of WWF's) operations on their doorstep.

Let's return for a moment to the murky world of tar sands - because the Inco deal is only half the story behind WWF-Canada's complicity in destruction. According to researcher, Peter Cizek (writing in the July/August issue of "Canadian Dimension" magazine) ten years ago WWF and the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) got a grant from the Pew Family Trusts based in Philadelphia. The scion of the family had originally set up Suncor, a prime exploiter of tar sands, when he was backing the neo-Nazi John Birch Society and declaring war on "godless communists". Though the original business fell on the rocks, Pew still owns Sunoco, a refiner of "syncrude".

A 1999 grant of $1.8 million over two years from Pew to the WWF aand CPAWS was designed to“protect at least 20 million acres of boreal forest wilderness in the Yukon and Northwest Territories of Canada.” Declares Peter Cizek: "Even though they never came even close to this lofty objective, the Pew kept cranking the dose of crackerjack cash higher and higher, from $2.1 million per year in 2000 to $4.5 million per year in 2002-03, topping out with a mind-blowing speedball injection of $12 million — the Pew’s single biggest grant in 2004."

We all know that (to paraphase Lord Action) "money corrupts and absolute money corrupts absolutely" - and this came pretty close to absolute money, even for an already well-heeled group like WWF-Canada. Says Cizek: " Just like they do not oppose the tar sands in Alberta, WWF and CPAWS also do not oppose the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline in the Northwest Territories. After all, the new president and CEO of WWF, Mike Russill, is a former senior executive of Suncor."

So, no surprise there. And no surprise that WWF and CPAWS are only lobbying to establish a network of protected areas before the start of construction, while ignoring the impacts of tar sands extraction itself. Last year, WWF, CPAWS and another outfit, called Ducks Unlimited, squeezed an additional $9 million to conduct more studies to identify such a network under the government-approved Northwest Territories Protected Areas Strategy. This time it came from the Canadian federal goverment

According to Cizek, in 1996 WWF had threatened to sue that same federal government for approving Canada’s first diamond mine, without designating protected areas for the central arctic region. "WWF then withdrew its lawsuit in exchange for the government’s commitment to develop a Northwest Territories Protected Areas Strategy. Since this strategy was approved in 1999, WWF has not formally identified, much less established, any protected areas in the central arctic, while only two areas have received temporary protection elsewhere in the Northwest Territories under this strategy."

Buying silence

As pointed out in many postings on this site, WWF is not unique among environmental (and development) NGOs in its readiness to "sup with the devil." But it does use a shorter spoon than most. The trade-offs it makes with mining companies have potentially more serious consequences than those done by smaller organisations within other industrial, or consumer, sectors. This is not just because it's universally known and active, but because it claim to employ the best science in defending global habitats.

When an NGO ignores the impacts of a company's core operations ( mine and infrastructure), in return for a bag of corporate money to go and do its own thing elsewhere, what else can can we call it but "buying silence"? True, not all national WWF branches operate in the same way, or sing to the same songsheet. WWF-UK's work on tightening mining standards in Europe is, no doubt, commendable. WWF-India took strong issue with its parent body in Geneva after it signed up to a quasi-certification scheme for the world's largest cement manufacturer, Lafarge, in 2001.

Also See:

Peak Oil

Tar Sands



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Nuke The Tar Sands

PC Leadership hopeful Jim Dinning and the Fraser Institute both agree we need to nuke the tar sands.

As usual the purveyors of privatization really are state capitalists. The Fraser Institute report calls for more use of private nuclear power plants - with government covering insurance, risk-management and startup costs - to reduce emissions and offset the use of gas to power oilsands facilities.

Yep you and I pay for private nuke plants we take the risk we cover all the initial expenses and get nothing for it. Why not just build em ourselves. But that begs the question why do we need nuke plants in the tar sands.

Dinning says its because gas is too expensive. Yeah but nuke plants use too much water, which already is a problem with the Tar Sands. They will use steam injection to remove the tar from the sands. Such steam injection uses more water than conventional strip mining and its heat extraction processes.

Shell's process involves drilling into the shale and using electric heaters to bake the rock to 700 degrees Fahrenheit, which releases oil and gas at the molecular level so it can be pumped to the surface. The company has been researching and testing this method for 20 years and believes it could be profitable even if the price of crude oil fell to $30 a barrel. Chevron's process, so far tried only on paper, uses carbon dioxide, possibly aided by propellants and explosives, to break the rock underground and then pump in heated carbon dioxide to free up the oil. Energy Independence, Our Shale Deposits, Making OPEC Obsolete

Radioactive waste also needs to be processed. This is more of a problem than a solution. The real solution is to slow down development of the tar sands to meet the environmental and community needs of Northerners. But that won't happen in Alberta since we are governed by the interests of Dallas and Houston whose head offices are in Calgary.


Also See:

Peak Oil

Tar Sands



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Harper War Monger

In his speech at the Canadian War Museum to kick off Veterans week Stephen Harper engaged in historical revisionism par excellance. First he praised and quoted the only Quebecois to support the First World War. An Anglo compradore; Talbot Papineau.

" Twenty thousand soldiers fought in the neutral zone and captured the Village of Passchendaele.

The price paid was extremely high – 16,000 fallen, including the great Canadian patriot from Quebec, Talbot Papineau.

Papineau, a brilliant lawyer and orator - whom many expected to one day become prime minister - was one of Canada’s most eloquent champions of the cause.

In defence of Canada's participation in the First War, he wrote:

"It is true that Canada has not heard the roar of German guns, nor been struck by deadly zeppelins,

But every shot fired against Belgium or France was aimed at much as Canada's heart as at the bodies of our brave allies.""

Talbot Papineau's full letter to his cousin Henri Bourassa and Bourassas reply is here.

Harper was not just name dropping, or grasping at straws finding a Quebecois who supported the war. Instead the debate between Papineau and Bourassa is relevant to the current conflict in Afghanistan. It is an argument against the NDP and those who would oppose the current Conservative mission in Kandahar.

As Bourassa replied to his cousin, the concerns he raised sound very familiar.

As early as the month of March 1900, I pointed out the possibility of a conflict between Great Britain and Germany and the danger of laying down in South Africa a precedent, the fatal consequence of which would be to draw Canada into all the wars undertaken by the United Kingdom. Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the liberal leaders laughed at my apprehensions; against my warnings they quoted the childish safeguard of the "no precedent clause" inserted in the Order in Council of the 14th of October 1899. For many years after, till 1912, and 1913, they kept singing the praises of the Kaiser and extolling the peaceful virtues of Germany. They now try to regain time by denouncing vociferously the "barbarity" of the "Huns." To-day, as in 1900, in 1911, and always, I believe that all the nations of Europe are the victims of their own mistakes, of the complacent servility with which they submitted to the dominance of all Imperialists and traders in human flesh, who, in England as in Germany, in France as in Russia, have brought the peoples to slaughter in order to increase their reapings of cursed gold. German Imperialism and British Imperialism, French Militarism and Russian Tsarism, I hate with equal detestation; and I believe as firmly today as in 1899 that Canada, a nation of America, has a nobler mission to fulfil than to bind herself to the fate of the nations of Europe or to any spoliating Empire - whether it be the spoliators of Belgium, Alsace, or Poland, or those of Ireland or the Transvaal, of Greece or the Balkans.

Politicians of both parties, your liberal friends as well as their conservative opponents, feign to be much scandalised at my "treasonable disloyalty." I could well afford to look upon them as a pack of knaves and hypocrites. In 1896, your liberal leaders and friends stumped the whole province of Quebec with the cry "WHY SHOULD WE FIGHT FOR ENGLAND?" From 1902 to 1911, Sir Wilfrid Laurier was acclaimed by them as the indomitable champion of Canada's autonomy against British Imperialism. His resisting attitude at the Imperial Conferences of 1902 and 1907 was praised to the skies. His famous phrase on the "vortex of European militarism", and his determination to keep Canada far from it, became the party's by-word - always in the Province of Quebec, of course.

Besides Papineau's defense of Imperialist war Harper went on to praise his old pal General Stan Waters. Waters was founding member and stalwart of the Reform Party.

One of the Canadian heroes of the Second World War was one of my early mentors in politics: the late, great General Stan Waters.

He had been a member of the legendary Devil’s Brigade – and he led the victorious Allied troops into Rome.

Later he became the top commander in the Canadian Army, a successful business and community leader and the country’s first elected senator.

General Waters was an individual with an incredible courage of conviction, boundless drive and determination and the deep sense of humour of a man who believed he had cheated death more than once.

He believed in war, in the nobility of service in war, when the cause is just, when the purpose clear, and only when there is no other way.

Our military history is filled with larger-than-life characters like Talbot Papineau and Stan Waters.

And Harper, the academic, the politician but never the veteran, believes in War. He is using this November 11 and Veterans week to justify his adventurism and opportunist warmongering in sacrificing our Canadian troops in his war in Afghanistan. Shame on him.

He has forgotten the real meaning of Lest We Forget. Authentic Canadian Veterans, like the War Amps, truly understand the horror of war which is why their slogan is Never Again It is something real veterans including those now in Kandahar understand only too well. While arm chair Generals like Harper will never know the true meaning of sacrifice.

The NEVER AGAIN! logo is the "reverse arms" illustration. It is an international symbol of the tragedy of war. It represents a soldier's rifle planted into the ground with a helmet placed on top. In wartime, this traditionally marked the temporary grave of a fallen soldier until he could be given a proper burial. This powerful image is not only used on Remembrance Day, but year-round as a reminder of the horrors of war. NEVER AGAIN!

Afghanistan






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