Privatizing The Wheat Board

This is what happens when you privatize the Wheat Board. The Australian Wheat Board is a model that right wing looney Lorne Gunter suggested the Tories use for their new dual desk marketing scheme.

And it gets even better because BHP Billiton is also charged. They are the nice folks doing diamond mining in Canada's far north, who forced their workers to strike this summer.

Australian company paid kickbacks to Saddam

The payments were made to ensure access to the lucrative Iraqi market, where the United States and Canada were major competitors.

The commission also found that the company, AWB (formerly the state- owned Australian Wheat Board), had "deliberately and dishonestly" devised a scheme for the payments, made from 1999 until the overthrow of Saddam three years ago, that would deceive the United Nations. When the United Nations conducted an investigation in 2005, headed by Paul Volcker, AWB withheld thousands of pages of documents and its lawyers made false statements, the commission found.

THE monopoly of AWB over Australia’s A$4 billion-a-year (£1.6 billion) wheat export market was in doubt yesterday, after a judicial inquiry found that the exporter had paid Iraq US$222 million (£115 million) in bribes to secure grain sales between 1999 and 2003.

Meanwhile, 11 former AWB executives, including Trevor Flugge, the ex-chairman, and Murray Rogers, the ex-chief executive, could face criminal charges after the 11-month inquiry by Terence Cole, a retired judge.

Brendan Stewart, AWB’s present chairman, said yesterday that the exporter deeply regretted the way in which its wheat trade with Iraq had been conducted.

This week BHP Billiton, the mining giant, will release the results of its own investigation into the scandal, in which it is also implicated.

In his report, Mr Cole described Norman Davidson Kelly, the founder of Tigris Petroleum, BHP’s joint venture partner, as a “thoroughly disreputable man with no commercial morality”.

Five former and current BHP executives testified at the inquiry.

SEE:

Wheat Board



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Maritime Monday

Fred Fry does a carnival of maritime stories from across North America each Monday at Maritime Monday, I found it because he linked to one of my stories. Interesting cross section of stories with his comments.


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The Blog Is Under Harpocrite Survelliance

Gee I didn't know this until I Go0gled myself. Thanks for the heads up Werner.As they say knowing this is better late than never. Nice to know that taxpayers money is being well spent by the PMO-Paranoid PM Office. Of course this is not the first time my blog has been under survelliance.

privy council gunning for plawiuk
25 Sep 2006 by Werner Patels
the privy council seems to be gunning for fellow blogger eugene plawiuk.
according to my site stats, someone at the privy council in ottawa (a regular
visitor to my site, by the way) has done a google search specifically for eugene .

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Morton Supports Harper Quebec Motion

Ted Morton the man who wants Ralphs job has always wanted the same powers that Quebec has for Alberta. And as one of the Calgary School Morton was Harpers mentor.

On Mike Duffy Live today he told Jane Taber he supported the Quebecois motion presented by Harper in the house. Hmm I wonder how his rabid anti-Quebec, anti-bilingualism/bi-culturalism Anglophile base will react to that come next weekends vote.

Also See:

Ted Morton

Conservative Leadership Race

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Whipping Boy

Chong quits Tory cabinet over Quebec motion A three line whip has been called by the Harpocrites. That means not only must Cabinet vote in favour of the Quebecois motion but so must every caucus member and MP or absent themselves from the house.

A three-line whip is the most urgent, and every MP is expected to attend and vote with their party. An MP who fails to attend may be temporarily suspended from the party, a penalty known as ‘having the whip withdrawn’.

This from the party that called for free votes, and criticized the Liberal government when it whiped its Cabinet but allowed its MPs a free vote on Same Sex Marriage. My, my whats that saying in french; oh yeah;Plus de changement de choses, plus ils restent la même chose.

And the subtext of losing ones Intergovernmental Affairs Minister is that he WAS NOT CONSULTED, before Harper sprang his motion on the house last week. Harper talked to Liberal leader BillGraham and consulted famed constitutional expert Dr. Dion, but failed to discuss it with his Intergrovernmental Affairs minister, the guy in charge of the file.

Despite his role as the federal link between Ottawa and the provinces, Chong has had little to do with the Conservative government’s busy relations with the Quebec National Assembly. Most of those relations have been handled by Harper himself.

Harper conceived his strategy in the hope of outflanking the Bloc Quebecois and boosting sagging Conservative popularity in Quebec for the next election.

But he didn't consult Chong, the second-term MP who had been his surprise choice as intergovernmental affairs minister when the Tories formed a cabinet in February.

As it turned out, Chong rarely spoke publicly on federal-provincial issues during his 10 months in office, leaving all the key decision-making to the Prime Minister's Office.

Not consulting is a major downfall of this Harper driven government. They didn't consult the Income Trust industry, they didn't consult over the cuts to the Womens Program or Court Challenges, they didn't consult the environmentalists, and they didn't consult parliament over Afghanistan.

Harper just goes ahead and does what he wants. Bull in the China Shop. Damn the torpedos full speed ahead.

And the other point that arose from Chongs resignation and was raised by the press in the shambles of the press conference with Senator Marjorie Lebreton and Quebec MP Laurence Cannon, was what is the difference between Quebecker and Quebecois. Cannon himself slipped in the press conference and admitted that Quebecois means the founding french families, the Old Quebecois of which he is one.

"I am resigning as minister so I can abstain from the vote tonight," Chong, the former intergovernmental affairs and sport minister, said at a news conference. "While I am loyal to my party and to my leader, my first loyalty is to my country. I believe in one nation undivided called Canada."

He said voting for the motion to recognize Quebec as a nation would be supporting ethnic nationalism, something he could not bring himself to do.

But Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon responded by saying the debate over Quebec as a nation is not divisive and gives voice to Quebec’s unique identity.

Chong’s opinion that it grants Quebecers "ethnic nationalism" isn’t realistic, he said at a news conference with Senator Marjorie LeBreton.

"I certainly don’t share that point of view because this debate has been going on for close to 40 years," Cannon said.

Now some may say this is a semantic difference, however as one reporter pointed out it is more than that. Quebecker includes Anglophones and immigrants who live in Quebec as well as Francophones. Quebecois in Quebec sometimes means the founding families the pure laine. It is a term of racism and petit-bourgoise nationalism as infamously memorialized in Jacques Parizeaus speech denouncing 'foreigners in Quebec' for defeating the 1995 referendum. Foreigners, being Jews, immigrants and Anglophones. It is ethinc nationalism not just a nuanced phraseology, despite Cannon's denials. had

Mr. Chong quit his post as federal Intergovernmental Affairs Minister to protest Stephen Harper’s much-ballyhooed proposal to recognize Quebecers as a nation. His move instantly reduced his status to that of a backbencher, with the associated reductions in salary, staff and perks. “I believe in one nation, undivided, called Canada,” he said yesterday. “My first loyalty is to my country. It is for this fundamental principle that I cannot support the motion recognizing the Québécois as a nation.”

And as for the nasty results of censure for those who would oppose the bosses motion well Lebreton dismissed that too.

She denied Chong would have faced serious consequences, such as being kicked out of caucus, if he didn’t tow the party line. "There was no threats," she LeBreton said. "No one was threatened with being kicked out of caucus."

Ha, what the hell does a three line whip mean.

Theoretically at least, expulsion from the party is automatically consequent from defying a three-line whip.
Chief Whip - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

After all this is the party that just turfed Garth Turner for far less. If Chong stayed and voted against the motion well he would be sharing wall space with Garth.

See

Quebec

Harper Autocrat


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Map Of PC Votes Across Alberta

In the wake of this weekends vote for the man who would replace Klein, Greg Farries at the Politic.com has created a map of how the province voted and how Calgary and Edmonton voted. It shows overwhelming support for Morton in the old Socred ridings of the south of the province. Why am I not surprized. He has coloured Morton blue, a big blue wave that protends nothing good for Alberta or Canada.

See:

Conservative Leadership Race

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Libblogs Abandon Civilized Discourse

I wondered what had happened to the Liberal blog aggregator Libnews.ca which was covering the blog coverage of the Liberal Leadership race. Well now I know.

The death of discourse

Loyal Libnews readers will note that it has been nearly two weeks since our last post. Readers may have also noted that our posting was sporadic even before that. Some of you have even e-mailed to ask about our silence.

The explanation is simple. The Liberal blogs have turned into a partisan brawl. Before Super Weekend, people disagreed, criticized and postured, but the tone and content of posts and comments have rapidly deteriorated since delegates were chosen.

See:

Liberal Leadership Race

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Rochdale Deja Vu

Politicians demand compensation for tenants in grow-op high-rise

This reminds me of the infamous Rochdale housing complex in Toronto. Home to hippies and pot. The origin of the counter culture in TO in the seventies. It was a housing coop, home to self publishers, and an alternative educational centre.

Rochdale was part of Canada's unique counter culture history, which includes the fact that LSD was used here first before Leary and others used it in the United State.

And our counter culture was also influenced by the Vietnam War since Toronto and Vancouver were were major centres for draft dodgers.


I visited Rochdale in the seventies in its final days. It was home to grow ops as well as the Canadian Whole Earth Almanac, a back to the land, pro drug, alternative lifestyle publication. Rochdale was a unique libertarian experiment of its time in Canadian history.



MICHAEL L. WONG
I once was a first lieutenant in high school Army ROTC who believed fervently in the Army and our government leaders. Then came the real Army. My story, “Honor’s Death,” tells of my Army experience and why I turned against the Viet Nam war and deserted to Canada. The next story, “To Take a Street,” tells of one small protest.

What these stories don’t tell you is that in Toronto, Canada, I was a member of a hippie counterculture community known as Rochdale College. An Internet search will produce over 800 entries about this experiment that happened in an eighteen-story apartment building. I wrote in Maxine Hong Kingston’s Fifth Book of Peace: “We were a world unto ourselves, with our own government, a free medical clinic, a movie theater, a library, a health food restaurant, a store, a dance studio, and a host of other features of a community. We even had our own hippie ‘police force,’ Rochdale Security ... ”

A war of attrition by the Canadian government and police against Rochdale formed for me a counterpoint to the war in Viet Nam. The war hawks lost the war to control South Viet Nam. We hippies lost the war to save Rochdale College. I deserted the U.S. Army, only to serve on Rochdale Security. I never faced the guns of the Viet Cong, but I faced—unarmed—the guns of the Toronto Police Department. My closest comrade, Cindy Lei, was one of those who died for Rochdale. I was never the same.

Rochdale College Museum

TheStar.com - Rochdale: sex, drugs and tax breaks

ROCHDALE COLLEGE AND THE ‘60s COUNTER CULTURE

See:

Marijuana

drugs

Paul Goodman

New Age Libertarian Manifesto

Draft Dodgers in Dukhbour Country

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Americans Push For Clean Air Act

So the Tories Clean Air Act is actually is better than the current White House lack of action on clean air. A little bit of silver lining in an act that is more about what it is not doing about Green House Gas.

High Court to Weigh Climate Change Case

(AP) -- The Supreme Court hears arguments this week in a case that could determine whether the Bush administration must change course in how it deals with the threat of global warming.

A dozen states as well as environmental groups and large cities are trying to convince the court that the Environmental Protection Agency must regulate, as a matter of public health, the amount of carbon dioxide that comes from vehicles.

Carbon dioxide is produced when fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas are burned. It is the principal "greenhouse" gas that many scientists believe is flowing into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate, leading to a warming of the earth and widespread ecological changes. One way to reduce those emissions is to have cleaner-burning cars.

The Bush administration intends to argue before the court on Wednesday that the EPA lacks the power under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. The agency contends that even if it did have such authority, it would have discretion under the law on how to address the problem without imposing emissions controls.

The states, led by Massachusetts, and more than a dozen environmental groups insist the 1970 law makes clear that carbon dioxide is a pollutant - much like lead and smog-causing chemicals - that is subject to regulation because its poses a threat to public health.

A sharply divided federal appeals court ruled in favor of the government in 2005. But last June, the Supreme Court decided to take up the case, plunging for the first time into the politically charged debate over global warming. The ruling next year is expected to be one of the court's most important ever involving the environment.

See:

Ambrose

Envrionment

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Morton's Harpocrisy

Mr. Morton, whose platform includes less influence from Ottawa, is confident he has enough untapped support to win.

This from the guy who is supported by the Federal Conservative Party, the current New Government of Canada,his old Reform Party pals Harper, Day, Kenney, etc.

While he criticizes Dinning for representing the Calgary cabal that runs the PC's he himself benefits from that other Calgary Cabal, the Reformers who run the Federal Conservative party. It's two different Calgary visions competing for leadership of the PC's. One is a liberal corporate capitalist vision for Alberta and its place in Canada, the other is the Republican Neo-Con agenda of the NCC, Fraser Institute, and the fundamentalist Christian social conservatives.

But for the PC party, it is the begining of the end of its overwhelming power of the One Party State. No matter who wins the party is in entropy. On the way out. And that is something all Albertans and Canadians can be thankful for.

Alberta has a long history as a one-party province, where governments last decades and oppositions parties pose little threat.

But the opposition Liberals are hoping this leadership vote heralds a political sea change.

"The divisions in the Tory Party have really come to the surface now," Liberal Leader Kevin Taft said yesterday. "I think there's lots of opportunity here for the Alberta Liberals."

Mr. Taft's party has 15 seats in the 83-seat legislature, compared with 62 held by the Tories.

Prof. Brownsey said the next premier could enjoy a short-lived victory.

"They can win the battle, but they can't win the war," he said, "Their supporters don't care about the next election. They're not thinking about who's electable."

Even some long-time conservatives are worried about the future of the party, particularly if Mr. Morton becomes the next premier.

"The majority of Albertans are a little right of centre, but we are not far right," said Steve West, a former Klein cabinet minister who supports Mr. Dinning, "We have to have a social conscience. Ted's campaign sells well in some parts of rural Alberta, but I don't think it sells with 80 per cent of the people."

Mount Royal College political scientist Keith Brownsey said Morton’s hard line is going to scare a lot of Tory moderates.

He said Morton’s ability to garner 26% on the vote, just behind Dinning’s 30%, is “absolutely shocking.”

Brownsey said the Tories have reinvigorated the party with a one member-one vote formula, but that’s opened the door to the far right.

“I would argue that it’s a change that’s unpalatable to most of Alberta,” he said. “Albertans will have to ask themselves: ‘Do we want to be governed by someone so far to the right, so opposed to a national vision in this country who doesn’t represent the mainstream of Alberta society?’”

He predicted that if Morton wins next Saturday’s vote, which he said is a definite possibility, moderate Tories will flee the party.

“This party is really in danger of fraying at the edges, of spinning out of control,” he said. “The business community is absolutely apoplectic. Morton is absolutely not the person to represent their interests.”

See:

Conservative Leadership Race

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