CPC Opens Up To Canadian Media

The Communist Party of China not the Conservative Party of Canada. In order to get any information about our Prime Ministers discussions at the APEC meetings the Canadian Press corps had to rely on the Chinese Foreign Ministery and other countries to find out what was going on. They were denied access to Stephen Harper by Sandra Buckler. This from the guy who lectures other countries about freedom of the press. Do as I say not as I do seems a fitting epithat for our PM.

Harper was also asked about his accessibility at the APEC conference. And the news of his discussion with the Chinese president came by e-mail to reporters travelling with him 14 hours after the fact. It was the Chinese foreign ministry official who gave the Canadian media the first substantive description of the meeting.It was the Korean government that told Canadian reporters about the visit of a Canadian diplomat to North Korea. Harper's staff also blocked Canadian journalists from attending all but the first of Harper's public activities, even while foreign media were present or invited.

CTV's Roger Smith, travelling with the prime minister told CTV Newsnet Harper has kept an extraordinarily low media profile during the summit. In fact, on several occasions, reporters learned key details from media briefings held by other countries.

In fact, Harper's office didn't confirm that the meeting with Hu had taken place until 14 hours after it took place -- long after the Chinese had announced it had happened.

"We all found it very ironic we were getting more information, and faster, from the communist government of China than we were from the Conservative government of Canada," Smith said.

See:

PMO Spies On Cabinet Ministers

Harper Is No Statesman

Harpercrsy

Gong Show Redux

Harper




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Stephen Mulroney

The more we learn about Harper the more he seems like Mulroney. They are Conservative PM's who suffer from PM (potty mouth).

TORY! TORY! TORY!
We even get to see Harper's famed temper. (Note: F-word alert!) Writing about how the Tories ran out of steam in the home stretch of the 2004 campaign, Harper snaps at his staff: "I can't fucking believe there's no fucking script for tomorrow. I want some fucking answers. And I want a fucking script." After a pause, Harper adds: "I also want to know why nothing ever happens unless I use the word fuck."

THE SECRET MULRONEY TAPES: Peter C. Newman
Thanks to the headlines splashed across the front pages this week by the bombshell launch of The Secret Mulroney Tapes, we now know a great deal of what Brian Mulroney was thinking while he was prime minister, and a lot of it isn't pretty. He freely slags both enemies and former allies and displays a pottymouth to shame a trailer-park boy. If this book were a TV show, it would be prefaced with a coarse-language warning.

It comes as no surprise to learn that Brian Mulroney thought Pierre Trudeau was "an asshole," and we always knew he looked down on reporters - especially the Ottawa Press Gallery - as "corrupt, venal people."



See:

Stephen Mulroney Brian Harper

Canada's Real Prime Minister

Not Your Daddies Conservative Party, well...

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The Leadership Races

Lets compare the surprising similiarity between the Liberal Leadership race and the Alberta PC Leadership race.

Both Leadership races overlap each other being held on the same weekend. Both races will have to go to at least a second ballot. Both have frontrunners who have 'anybody but' campaigns forming for the second ballot. That second ballot will be held on the same weekend. The Alberta Tories go first next weekend followed by the Federal Liberals the weekend after.

Both races have progressive centerists as front runners. Both have close second place candidates.

Both have had funding scandals associated with them.

Both lack any real charismatic leader.

Both races have taked about party renewal, though that seems to be more about PR than genuine remaking of either party. An attempt to say that the parties have changed. As if.

Both have eight candidates. The difference is that the only woman running dropped out of the Tory race and there is one woman running for the Liberals.

Both frontrunners are the choice of the backroom boys.

Both campaigns have raised the issue of nationhood. The Liberals are discussing Qubec as a nation, and the PC's have Ted Morton running to create Firewall Alberta.

Both races are a snore fest. They have gone on much too long and have lost the attention of the average person and only appeal to 'true believers'.

The winner of the Alberta leadership race becomes Premier. The winner of the Liberal Leadership race hopes to become the next PM.

Both races have major implications for Canada. But one gets national media coverage while the other gets an after thought. One expects that from normal provincial political leadership races. However Alberta is not a normal province it is a one party state.

The Alberta PC leadership race has major implications for the rest of Canada at this moment in history. Forget Quebec seperatism, or the decline of Ontario, the real economic and political power in Canada is in Calgary. And who gets chosen as leader of the province is far more important that who gets elected leader of the Liberals.

So pay attention to both races because they will both have implications for the Federal Conservatives and the New Canadian government.

See:

Conservative Leadership Race

Liberal Leadership Race

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South Park Takes on Canada

The Harpocrites deserve the wrath of the South Park kids and the rest of the world community for their position on the destructive practice of bottom trawling. When it comes to the environment the Tories are bottom-feeders.

Blame Canada

Greenpeace enlists South Park boys to roast Canucks for opposing fishing ban.

Now the potty-mouthed kids from South Park are featured in an online advertisement - and their target is the Canadian government and its opposition to a ban on bottom trawling on the high seas. Greenpeace posted a video spoof online starring Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman, who slam Canada's stance on deep-sea dragging just as a six-day round of talks on sustainable fisheries began at the United Nations.

See:

Fishing

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Seperated at Birth

Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys and Roy Forbes (aka Bim) They are both folksingers

The Trailer Park Boys hosted the 2006 East Coast Music Awards as Ricky, Julian and Bubbles (in character). Bubbles performed his single "Liquor and Whores".

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Christian Cannibals

This is what happens when you deny the reality of evolution. You end up eating your relatives.

The Demise of the Great Apes of Africa
Kerry Bowman


The great apes of Africa are being pushed to extinction. Across the forest region of West and Central Africa commercial hunting, facilitated by western-owned logging operations in the area, has become the leading threat to the survival of many primates, including gorillas and chimpanzees. This is a wildlife crisis of huge proportion, with impacts on the Great Apes, African economies, ways of life, and human health.

In the utterly remote rain forest of central Africa large populations of lowland gorillas and chimpanzees have been shielded from outside disturbance since before the last Ice Age. In recent years however the drive to sell African rainforest hardwood has had a catastrophic side effect - the explosion of gorilla and chimpanzee hunting for what is known as "bushmeat'. This commerce, facilitated by new logging roads into the pristine forests of the Congo, is now a major wildlife crisis.

The depletion of west Africa's forests, where Europe traditionally bought its tropical hardwoods, has launched an influx of French, German and Middle Eastern logging companies into the more inaccessible forests of central Africa. At the same time, a regional economic crisis has only accelerated the timber boom: Local currency devaluations in the mid-1990s effectively halved the cost of hauling 800-year-old trees through hundreds of miles of forest to the parquet-flooring and furniture-making markets of Europe and Japan.

Strapped for cash because of slumping cacao exports, the central African governments have gratefully seized a multi-million dollar lifeline created by logging revenues. At the same time, the appetite for wild animal meat is strong in the teeming cities of central Africa. Forest animals including gorillas and chimpanzees, have been a staple of local villagers' diets for millennia, but Africa's swelling urban populations, nostalgic for village foods, have turned a subsistence activity into a burgeoning, multimillion-dollar industry.I learned that these people were not monstrous and selfish, purposely ignoring an environmental crisis and the suffering of a human-like endangered species; rather, they simply held a different worldview. Their views on the natural world represented a tight weave of fatalism, fundamental Christian beliefs and Animism. Generally people believed the natural world was able to replenish itself. It was God-given and well beyond human influence. People also did not see the environment or animals in finite terms. As one white-haired man put it This is the part of Africa with an abundance of forests and animals; eventually the trees grow back and the animals give birth. What most people were saying implied that people cannot affect the natural environment. A hunter put it this way. It's natural that animals are going to be eaten. People eat animals. Animals eat each other. That is the way things are. It really doesn't matter what we say or what laws we have. No one I interviewed saw the death of the great apes in moral terms, rather they saw animals as a God given food supply. As one hunter said: Gorillas are not people. Animals don't suffer the way people do. They are not the same as us. God has not given them reason and feelings. In reality, the expansion of human moral vision to include the great apes seems to occur only in Western culture, and even there is intermittent.



See:

Eating Raoul

Apes

Evolution

Primates



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Contraception Contradiction

The Bush Regime just does not give up its Faith Based, read fundamentalist Christian, politics. Here is a guy who opposes contraception in charge of giving out contraception. This will be as successful as the Bush regimes abstience program around AIDS in the developing world.

Birth Control Opponent Appointed to Chief of Federal Family Planning Department

Anti-choice, anti-birth control advocate Eric Keroack was appointed chief of family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) by President Bush yesterday. Dr. Keroack will be in charge of overseeing the distribution of Title X funding, which amounts to $283 million in grants per year, that is "designed to provide access to contraceptive supplies and information to all who want and need them with priority given to low-income persons," according to HHS, the Washington Post reports. Dr. Keroack himself is opposed to contraceptives; the group of "crisis pregnancy centers" (CPCs) of which Keoack is the medical director states on its website that the "crass commercialization and distribution" of contraception is "demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality and adverse to human health and happiness," according to the Washington Post. The program Keroack will now head is responsible for supporting 4,600 family planning clinics that help five million people each year.


Of course the right wing praises this guy who is a throw back to the dark ages. To them he is a vigilante advocate opposed to abortion. Of course to the fetus fetishists Contraception=abortion. You will never find real libertarian conservatives supporting these theocrats.

See:

Abortion


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Capitalism Endangers Orangutan

Orangutans Displaced, Killed by Indonesian Forest Fires
Intentionally lit forest fires on the island of Borneo are killing Southeast Asia's endangered orangutans, conservationists warn. The fires are lit annually to clear land for oil palm plantations and agricultural fields. Many of the blazes quickly rage out of control.

A mother orangutan and her baby rest in a tree in Gunung Palung National Park on the island of Borneo in Indonesia. Forest fires set intentionally to clear farmland have been raging on Borneo for weeks, killing about a thousand orangutans and forcing others to flee the forests. Experts say if the pace of destruction continues, the animals may be extinct within a decade.

"Fires Threaten Orangutans"
11 November 2006

Deliberate fires to clear land around the park have burned out of control and are destroying thousands of hectares of forest. Orangutans in the park have fled to the interior to escape the fires. But these interior forests are at risk. And orangutans outside the park are facing grave danger.

Orphaned orangutans are arriving in OFI's Care Center nearly every day. Your donations will help buy food, medicine and staff support to care for them.

Click here to Help Fight the Fires.

Cargill today owns and operates five palm plantations through its business unit CTP Holdings. Two are in Indonesia: one on the island of Sumatra (P.T. Hindoli) and one on the island of Borneo in Kalimantan (Harapan Sawit Lestari).

Cargill and Temasek Holdings Invest in Palm Plantations in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea

Singapore — Cargill and Temasek Holdings have acquired CDC Group plc’s palm plantation interests in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. These include a plantation in Kalimantan (Indonesia) and a majority shareholding in four other plantations in the region. One of these plantations is located in Sumatra (Indonesia), with the other three in Higaturu, Milne Bay and Poliamba (Papua New Guinea).

The new venture is registered in Singapore as CTP Holdings Pte Ltd (CTP). Cargill is the majority shareholder of CTP and will assume managerial and operational responsibilities. Cargill’s existing palm plantation in Sumatra will now become part of CTP.

Plans to create the world's largest palm oil plantation along Indonesia's mountainous border with Malaysia could have a devastating impact on the forests, wildlife and indigenous people of Borneo, warns World Wildlife Fund.

The proposed scheme, funded by China and supported by the Indonesian government, is expected to cover an area of 4.4 million acres on the island of Borneo. Most of this mountainous region, part of the "Heart of Borneo," still holds huge tracts of forests supporting endangered species like orangutans and pygmy elephants, and 14 of the island's 20 major rivers originate there. According to WWF, new species have been discovered there at a rate of three per month over the last decade, making the area one of the richest on the globe for biodiversity.

Planet Ark : Biofuel to Drive Indonesian Palm Oil Expansion

JAKARTA - Indonesia's government plans to develop 3 million hectares of palm oil plantations in the next five years to meet increasing demand for biofuel as an alternative source of energy, the agriculture minister said on Wednesday.

• Indonesia: From oil palm plantations, with repression…

• Indonesia: Oil palm plantations encroaching on communities’ traditional land

• "The Bitter Fruit of Oil Palm"
  WRM's book on the impacts of oil palm plantations. August 2001.
• Oil Palm. From Cosmetics to Biodiesel - Colonization Lives On

Indonesian Forest Fact Sheet

The forests of Indonesia, along with the thousands of animals and plants that live there, are facing grave danger as they are destroyed at an alarming rate due to massive illegal logging and clearing for palm oil plantations. These tropical forests are of global importance, ranked second in terms of size to those of Brazil and covering over 406,000 square miles. The rapid deterioration of tropical forests is causing an incalculable loss in terms of biodiversity and is pushing species such as the orangutan ever closer to extinction.

Indonesia’s Forests Are Disappearing at an Alarming Rate

Indonesia’s forests represent 10% of the world’s remaining tropical rainforests and cover about 260 million acres. According to the European League, by 2001 Indonesia has lost 99 million acres of forest in the last 32 years, which is equivalent to the combined size of Germany and the Netherlands. The current rate of forest loss is about 6.2 million acres a year, but the rate is accelerating.

Plant and Animal Populations Are Also Decreasing Rapidly

Indonesia is one of the five most species-diverse countries in the world, home to 12% of all mammal species, 16% of all reptile and amphibian species, and 17% of all bird species. It also contains 33% of insect species, 24% of fungi species, and 10% of higher plant species. Tanjung Puting National Park (TPNP), site of Camp Leakey, is home to more than 220 bird species, at least 17 reptile species, and 29 mammal species.

Poachers were killing proboscis monkeys along the river
en route to Camp Leakey until OFI began patrolling the area.
Behind Malaysia and the United States, Indonesia has the third highest number of threatened species with 772. It has the highest number of threatened mammal species, however, with 147 - an increase of seven species since the year 2000. According to a recent article in the conservation journal Oryx, 1000 orangutans are lost in Sumatra each year; in Borneo, the number is probably even higher.

Illegal Logging Largely to Blame for Forest Depletion

A study done in 2000 by the Indonesia-United Kingdom Tropical Forest Management Programme concluded that 73% of logging done in Indonesia was illegal. While Indonesia’s forest ministry official harvest figures are just under 882 million cubic feet per year, the combined log consumption capacity of plywood, sawn wood, and pulp and paper industries is 2.6 billion cubic feet per year, which means that industries obtain between one-half and two-thirds of their logs from illegal or unsustainable sources. Illegal logging produces 1.8 billion cubic feet of logs annually, resulting in state financial losses of approximately $3.37 billion. The value of timber stolen from TPNP alone is $8 million each year.

Illegal loggers working in the forest in Lamandau.

Increased Demand for Palm Oil Causes Conversion of Forests

Because of its versatility, world demand for palm oil has increased by 32% over the last five years with the advent of the rapidly expanding food and industrial manufacturing industries, growing at a rate of 7% each year. In fact, palm oil is the world’s best-selling vegetable oil, representing 40% of the total global trade in edible oils. Indonesia accounts for 31% of the world’s production of palm oil, and is expected to be responsible for 41% by 2005. The aim of the former Suharto government was to create a total of 13.5 million acres of palm oil plantations by 2000 - by 1999 the figure had reached 7.4 million, which is nearly five times the size of Bali. The sudden increase in palm oil use has led to the clearing of Indonesia's tropical forests to create monoculture palm oil plantations. Studies in Malaysia and Indonesia have shown that between 80 and 100% of the species of fauna inhabiting tropical rainforests cannot survive in oil palm monocultures (Wakker 2000). In 1999, nearly 800,000 acres of forest were converted for palm oil. Global demand is expected to increase by 50% in the next five years, primarily because palm oil profits are assured by cheap labor, low-priced land, a lack of effective environmental controls, easy availability of finance and support, and a short growth cycle.

Demand for Paper Production Increases, Leading to More Logging

As much as 40% of the wood used by Indonesian pulp producers between 1995 and 1999 came from illegal sources. Massive expansion in plywood, pulp, and paper production in the last two decades has brought demand for wood fiber to exceed the legal supply by 1.2-1.4 billion cubic feet per year. Pulp and paper subsectors have expanded by nearly 700% since 1987.

Timber and Plantation Companies Burn Forests to Clear Land

Approximately 22 million acres of land were damaged by the 1997 and 1998 fires in Indonesia largely caused by timber and palm oil plantation companies clearing land. According to Remote Sensing Solutions GMBH, the 0.80 to 2.57 billion tons of carbon released during that time was the biggest ever measured, corresponding to 13 to 40 percent of the annual global production by burning fossil fuels like oil, coal, and gas. The estimated financial consequences of the fires were over $3 billion from losses in timber, agriculture, and non-timber products, plus the loss of hydrological and soil conservation services as well as biodiversity benefits. Haze from the fires cost an additional $1.4 billion for health treatment and lost tourism revenues.

Orangutan Foundation International (OFI) Works Towards Research, Conservation, and Education

OFI is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the conservation of wild orangutans and their rainforest habitat. Founded by Dr. Biruté Mary Galdikas and Dr. Gary Shapiro in 1986, OFI operates Camp Leakey, an orangutan research area within Tanjung Puting National Park. OFI also runs the Orangutan Care Center and Quarantine Facility in Pangkalan Bun, which is home to 200 displaced orphan orangutans, and co-manages the Lamandau Nature Reserve, where rehabilitated orangutans are being released into the wild. OFI partners with the Orangutan Conservation Forum, a consortium of groups that is working to counter the primary threats to orangutan survival throughout Indonesia. Through its field programs, OFI also provides employment for over 220 local Indonesians in the vicinity of Tanjung Puting National Park and the Lamandau Nature Reserve.

"Unless extreme action is taken soon," said Dr. Galdikas, "these forests could be gone within the next five to 10 years, and wild orangutans along with them."

See:

Cargill

Borneo

Orangutan

Apes


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True Love

My condolences to Ed Broadbent and his family on the passing of his true love, Lucille Broadbent. There can be no better example of real friendship than to give up your career to care for those you love. Ed Broadbent's 'moral compass' loses battle with cancer

After an almost decade long battle with metastasized breast cancer, Lucille Broadbent died in her sleep at her Ottawa home on Friday evening. She was 71. Her husband Ed Broadbent, former leader of the New Democratic Party, was at her side. He had given up politics in May 2005 to care for his ailing wife.

"I simply cannot continue in the future with all the work expected of an MP and meet my deeply felt obligations to the person who is the love of my life," Mr. Broadbent said, at a press conference announcing his decision.

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This Is What Democracy Looks Like

In Afghanistan.

For an hour, the minister of energy and water listened in silence as his employees complained about their department's dismal image: People called them lazy, corrupt and inefficient. Customers accused them of demanding bribes for the smallest services.

Ismail Khan sat on a stage in a dank meeting hall and glowered beneath his wild white beard. His eyes were narrow slits beneath his fierce black eyebrows. At last he spoke.

"Baseless lies!" he spat out. That was the end of it.

Khan runs his ministry the way he once ruled over western Afghanistan as supreme warlord from his headquarters in Herat. His word is law.

But Khan the warlord is now also Khan the public servant. In his gleaming white robes and black-and-white headdress, he still looks like a strutting pasha. However, he works in an office adorned with ancient maps of Kabul's power grid. And he is accountable to the public for failures in what even his critics acknowledge is an impossible mission.

Afghans expected a great leap of progress after U.S. forces, aided by Northern Alliance warlords such as Khan, toppled the Taliban regime five years ago. But electrical service is as unreliable as ever, despite millions of dollars in aid and U.S. promises of a modern, developed Afghanistan. Khan's ministry is barely able to provide two hours of electricity per day to Kabul, the capital, and 90% of the rest of this ruined nation gets none. His own ministry's offices are without power several times a day.

Khan represents one of the grand experiments of the post-Taliban era: the transformation of warlords into public servants. Five years ago, President Hamid Karzai declared that Afghanistan's "era of warlordism is over."

With U.S. help, he strong-armed Khan and other major warlords into relinquishing their roles and maneuvered them into jobs as ministers and governors, asking them to deliver services for Afghanistan's first democratically elected government.

But despite Karzai's declaration, the warlords are among the most powerful forces in the country. Scores of them are as entrenched as ever in the provinces, fielding private armies, profiting from the opium trade and co-opting police officials. Those who have come to Kabul know they could easily reconstitute their militias. In the meantime, they are untouchable.

See:

Afghanistan






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