Klein Kills Homeless

Relentless sub-zero temperatures are now being blamed for contributing to the deaths of four people in Alberta who were either living on the street or didn't have appropriate permanent shelter.

Man dies trying to keep warm in camper trailer

The grandstand building on Calgary's Stampede grounds has been open since Friday night to provide a temporary emergency warming shelter for up to 300 homeless people because all of the regular shelters were full.

Not satisfied with a drunken brawl in a homeless shelter in Edmonton several years ago now King Ralph can take responsibility for further deaths of the homeless in Oil Rich Alberta.

Well where else do you lay the blame. Remember this is the guy that admited he 'had no plan' to deal with the boomtimes. He was only good at cutting funding to things like homeless shelter programs.

And when the Mayor of Calgary recently complained about not enough municipal funding from the province for progams like homeless shelters, Klein told him to stuff it.

When you are King you are responsible for your people. The bucks stop with Ralph.

Baby It's Cold Outside

See:

Drunk Holds Court

Klein Steals From The Poor And Disabled

Klein Outta Control

Killer Klein

Severely Normal Albertans Go Bye Bye

Ralph Klein

King Ralph


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Left Wing Pragmatism III

Ecuador

It's oil that gives the Left it's power in Latin America. And Ecuador has lots of it.Ecuador to seek to rejoin OPEC: Correa And Canadian Petrocompanies are major investors, though they have sullied reputations having been implicated in the destruction of Ecuadors rainforests.

Kapawi Journal; Ecuador Indians Fend Off Oil Companies With Eco Tourism

But while many ecology-friendly getaways are operated by big tour companies or foreign entrepreneurs, the Kapawi Ecolodge and Reserve is run with the participation of the Achuar, the region's dominant Indian tribe.For the Achuar people, Kapawi is becoming an increasingly important symbol of their independence as they try to resist oil companies that want to drill here. The idea, indigenous leaders say, is to demonstrate options to oil exploration.

People and Forest of Intag…the forests of western Ecuador are among the hottest of the hot spots of the world, meaning that they are among the most endangered ecosystems—down to less than 10 percent of their original extent, mostly destroyed in the past 40 years—and also contain exceptionally large numbers of plant and animal species found nowhere else in the world. The extraordinary value of the Ecuadorian western forests, including the largest remaining remnant that includes Intag, is well known to biologists around the world and often cited in the scientific literature…

Now China and India the new Asian Dragons are investing in Ecuador.Which is real Free Trade but not the kind the Americans want.

China's two largest oil companies will link up to buy assets of EnCana Corp. in Ecuador for $1.42 billion, the second time in a month that Chinese producers won a bidding contest for overseas oilfields against India.China Petrochemical Corp. and China National Petroleum Corp. ``are partners in this venture,'' Liu Weijiang, a spokesman at China National Petroleum, said in Beijing today. Oil & Natural Gas Corp.'s bid may have been rejected because EnCana wouldn't agree to a term guaranteeing that Ecuador honor the sale, an official at the Indian company said.

In capitalist terms the oil companies have nothing to fear from a stable left government in Ecuador. Or they would be pulling out. But of course being pragmatic capitalists they won't. And they will pay the price to stay and profit from Ecuador's rich oil fields. Which includes their social responsibilities to the people and rainforests of Ecuador. The price of oil: how we live and die in the Amazon

Correa may default on Ecuadors debt however that has been done before, and not by a left government but by puppets of US Imperialism. So whats the beef. Nothing. Correa keeps the Ecuador dollar on par with the U.S. and uses oil profits for social programs.

If Venezuela is the example then consumers and workers benefit as more money in their hands means more money bouying up the local economies. Something any good neo-con understands. That's why the keep calling for tax cuts; to put money in the hands of the people. Which is where Ecuadors petrodollars will go with Correa.

Hugo Chavez Gains An Ecuadoran Ally

Ecuadorans voted for populist economist and self-styled "humanist, leftist Christian" candidate Rafael Correa who promised big changes in another Latin American country ruled up to now by and for the interests of capital and against the public welfare.

Correa will face huge challenges ahead when he takes office on January 15 in a country of 13 million, over 70% of whom live in poverty and who supported a man promising to help them with the kinds of social programs Hugo Chavez instituted in Venezuela. Correa sounded a positive tone last night at his campaign headquarters as the early returns showed him to be the likely winner. He told his supporters "It won't be Rafael Correa who assumes power in January; it will be the people." He'll be Ecuador's eighth president in the last decade including three of them driven from office by mass street protests against their misrule. In Mr. Correa, Ecuadorans expect something much different, and he promised to deliver it for them.

Correa said he'll deliver a "citizens' revolution" and supports beginning it by calling for a constituent assembly to write a new constitution, a pattern similar to the one Hugo Chavez followed after his election as Venezuela's president in 1998. He called for renegotiating the country's $16 billion foreign debt and hasn't ruled out an Argentine-style default to free up money for vitally needed social programs that include 100,000 low-cost homes, doubling the $36 "poverty bonus" 1.2 million poor Ecuadorans receive each month and raising the minimum wage.

Debt Restructuring

Correa, who has taught economics at San Francisco University in Quito, said during his four months as finance minister last year that he favored restructuring the nation's $11 billion of foreign bonds. During his campaign Correa said he wouldn't rule out an Argentine-style default. Argentina stopped payments on $95 billion of bonds in late 2001, the biggest sovereign default ever, two years after Ecuador defaulted on its own debt.

Born in Guayaquil, on the Pacific coast of Ecuador, Correa studied economics in Belgium and later at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Correa was appointed finance minister in April 2005 by President Alfredo Palacio. El Comercio reported he was fired four months later for fighting with the World Bank and arranging to sell bonds to Venezuela without providing details to the president.

Ecuador's economy recovered from recession after the government defaulted on $6.5 billion of debt in 1999 and adopted the use of the dollar as its official currency in 2000. The IMF forecasts Ecuador's economy will expand 4.4 percent this year, buoyed by the rally in oil, the country's biggest export, after growing 3.9 percent in 2005.

Last night, Correa reiterated he may default on the country's debt and said Ecuador doesn't need a free trade agreement with the U.S. He also said he would maintain the dollar as Ecuador's currency, replace congress with a constituent assembly and try to ensure Ecuador, South America's fifth-largest oil producer, rejoins the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries after leaving it in 1992.

The switch to the dollar attracted investors, revived an insolvent banking system and helped reduce the inflation rate to 2.1 percent last year from 108 percent in 2000. In 2005, the economy expanded 4.7 percent, according to Standard & Poor's.

Correa's opposition comes from the United States in particular the agribusiness giant Dole Fruit company which benefits from its banana monopoly in Ecuador. This is what is meant by Free Trade, allowing American agribusinesses to maintain their colonial style monopolies in Latin Amercia. While European competitors find their African based markets undercut by companies like Dole. Dole Fruit company bought out the Chiquita Company which was part of the CIA backed United Fruit Company that maintained a monopoly in the region over the past fifty years.

Correa's opponent is the richest man in Ecuador who is the countries coffee, construction and Banana magnate. And a fruit cake.

Banana Magnate

Noboa, Ecuador's richest businessman and a proponent of free trade and foreign investment, may have scared some voters by his references to God and by falling to his knees at campaign rallies to pray for victory, said Daniel Linsker, an analyst at London- based Control Risks Group, a political risk consulting company. ``Noboa was an embarrassment,'' said Esperanza del Castillo, 61, who owns a gift store in San Antonio de Pichincha. ``Correa is an economist, he is academically capable of managing the economy and I like that.''

See

Left Wing Pragmatism II

Left Wing Pragmatism

Politics is Pragmatic

Ortega

Oaxaca Mexican Revolution Continues

State Capitalism

Globalization

Latin America

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Left Wing Pragmatism II

Venezuela

The new evil empire for America is Venezuela and its leader Hugo Chavez. Right after Cuba and Fidel Castro. The American media and politicians liberal and right wing go into spasms of red baiting when one utters two little words; Hugo Chavez.

They deliberately refer to him as a Tyrant and Dictator, smearing him in the headlines and op ed pieces while in footnotes reminding their readers or listners that he yes he was democratically elected. And he will be elected again.
Venezuela's Chavez confident of re-election

What they fail to see is that Chavez for all his rhetoric and bluster is no more and no less a dictator than Ralph Klein, who ruled North Americas only One Party State, and technically still does, of Alberta.

The American media complain that Chavez has increased the state bueracracy, the public sector, well gosh darn so has Klein. Venezuela government payroll balloons

And Alberta and Venezuela have much in common. Really. Not just both our oil and oil sands but a booming economy. And a booming economy is what will get Chavez relected next Sunday.With a population the equivalen of Canada, the oil boom has made Venezuela that 'other petro-economy' like Canada. The boom is benefiting not just the poor but the middle class. And the middle class always votes with its pocket-book.

And while complaining about Venezuela American capitalism thrives in the country, in consumer products. What the Americans are failing to do is invest. Thus Venezuela is partnering with other countries, China,Russia, Iran, etc. who have excess capital for investment.

Venezuelans hit the malls with revolutionary zeal

MARINA JIMÉNEZ

Print Edition 27/11/06 Page A1

Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's President and the man headed for an easy victory in next Sunday's election, may be spreading the Bolivarian socialist model, but at the airy Sambil shopping centre, there are few revolutionaries. Only shoppers. "Venezuela is the second biggest market for plasma televisions in Latin America," says Amilcar Marcos, manager of the mall's LG store.

Outside the mall yesterday, thousands of Chavez supporters in red ball caps and T-shirts filled the streets for a massive closing rally downtown in support of the President, who is ahead of his main rival in opinion polls by as much as 30 percentage points.

With the price of oil now hovering around $60 (U.S.) a barrel, the economy in Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil producer, has thrived in recent years.

Mr. Chavez, whose efforts to change Venezuela's economic and social structures are named for independence hero Simon Bolivar, has put an estimated $20-billion into social programs in the past three years. He has funnelled petro-dollars into missions that offer everything from literacy classes and free health care in the poor barrios to preferential contracts for 100,000 newly formed co-operatives. Thousands of Venezuelans have been added to the state payroll. This month, the government handed out its annual Christmas bonuses early, paying about one million government workers the equivalent of three months salary, about $3-billion (U.S.).

In the first five months of this year, consumer spending increased by 30 per cent, compared to the same period last year, according to an AC Nielsen audit of Venezuelan store sales. Sales of Scotch increased 55 per cent last year to 2.6-million boxes of imported and domestic whisky, making Venezuelans among the top 10 consumers of Scotch in the world.

Car sales are expected to reach 300,000 this year, compared to just 84,000 in 2004. Demand for new vehicles is so intense there is a now a four-month wait at dealerships, in a country where a litre of gas costs about 15 cents. Iran backs Venezuela car factory

This consumer boom underscores a key paradox: While Mr. Chavez is ahead in the polls and Venezuelans approve of his leadership, they have no desire to transform their oil economy into a socialist one.

Despite their President's close relationship with Cuba's Fidel Castro, 84 per cent of Venezuelans -- including Chavistas -- do not support the Cuban model, according to a recent poll by AP-Ipsos. A survey by Datanalysis shows that 81 per cent don't support the expropriation of private property, and only 7 per cent agree with a recent statement by Mr. Chavez that being rich was a bad thing.

"There is a great divide between the ideology in Chavez speeches and the people who follow Chavez. They don't actually want to live in a Cuba," notes Cristina Marcano, co-author of the biography Chavez Sin Uniforme.

Even if they are lukewarm on Mr. Castro, Mr. Chavez's message of social justice and the need to include the poor majority -- for years excluded by the corrupt ruling elite from the country's oil largesse -- clearly resonates. It has permanently altered Venezuela's political landscape.

Venezuelans live poor in an oil-rich country

- In Venezuela, the revolution is everywhere, even on the packaging for beans, margarine and cooking oil on the shelves of the state-run supermarkets. Images of independence heroes on horseback gallop across packages of pasta. Socialist slogans decorate bags of flour, all sold at deep discount at the 15,000 Mercal shops -- non-profit grocery stores the government has opened across the country.

"For a Venezuela without illiteracy," reads a bag of rice, with a lengthy reference to the constitutional rights of the people. A one-kilo bag costs 50 cents, half the price charged in the "capitalist" store down the street.

"We lived a lot worse before Hugo Chavez came along," said Noris Palma, 29, one of a dozen customers at the Mercal outlet in Parroquia El Valle, a poor neighbourhood at the city's western edge, which is also home to a government-run soup kitchen and a free medical clinic. "Now there are more opportunities for the poor -- to go to university, maybe to get a house. I have asked the government to help build one for me and my fiancé."

Mr. Chavez, Venezuela's mercurial President, is best known on the world stage for his virulent anti-American rhetoric, his cozying up to pariah nations such as Iran and Libya, his oil diplomacy and attempts to export socialism.

But here at home, the 52-year-old twice-divorced former paratrooper remains a wildly popular, if divisive, figure. Mr. Chavez is expected to easily win the Dec. 3 presidential election, with a 20- to 30-point lead over his closest rival. The charismatic populist, first elected to office in 1998, is busy overseeing oil-financed social programs called "missions" that have reached an almost surreal level. This week, for example, he announced the construction of 50 new universities and pledged to distribute 52 million energy-efficient light bulbs.

The leftist tide that appeared to be sweeping the Americas earlier this year has given way to leaders with a more moderate vision, including the new presidents of Mexico and Costa Rica. At one time a notorious leftist, Alan Garcia regained the presidency in Peru by embracing free trade and open markets. Even Nicaragua's president-elect, former Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, campaigned on a platform of stability and moderation, using John Lennon's Give Peace a Chance as his theme song.

See;

Chavez

Left Wing Pragmatism

Politics is Pragmatic

Ortega

Oaxaca Mexican Revolution Continues

New Asian Dragon

State Capitalism

Globalization

Latin America

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Baby It's Cold Outside

Listening to CKUA they just played Baby It's Cold Outside with Louis Armstrong and Velma Middleton And it is. Brrrrr. And just think it is still Fall, twenty three days till it is officially winter. Brrrrrrrr

lyrics - baby, it's cold ou ...

Wind chill warning for:
City of Edmonton-St. Albert-Sherwood Park

EXTREME WIND CHILL VALUES EXPECTED OVERNIGHT.

CLEARING SKIES AND NORTHERLY WINDS OF 20 KM/H WILL PRODUCE EXTREME WIND CHILL VALUES OF -40 OR LESS. EXTREME WIND CHILL VALUES WILL DIMINISH LATER THIS MORNING AS THE WINDS GRADUALLY DIMINISH.

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Green Capitalists

Wait till they find out about how the Tories are denying them access to the lucrative carbon trading market. Then they will be really pissed.

Going for the green

Is there a secret cell of environmentalists in the business community? You might think so, given that 7 per cent of executives (11 per cent in the resource sector) support the Green Party, or that Stéphane Dion gets his highest level of support from resource sector executives. Support for strong climate change policies, however, is even more widespread in the business community than that. In the C-Suite survey last May we reported that executives were not enthusiastic about Canada withdrawing from Kyoto. In fact, 40 per cent were opposed, and another 30 per cent felt it should be a low priority. And it appears to matter politically in this group. In the survey just completed, executives were asked if the Conservative decision to replace previous environmental plans based on Kyoto with the new Clean Air Act made them more or less likely to vote Conservative: Thirty-five per cent said it made them less likely and only half as many said it made them more likely. There are five times as many executives in Central Canada less likely to vote Conservative as a result of the Clean Air Act than those more likely.

See:

Green Capitalism

Ambrose

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Your Pension Dollars At Work

As I said here the new P3 model in Canada is not private public partnerships but Public Pension Partnerships that bailout the Government. But it is still taxpayers money at work.

Water is the new oil: CIBC

In Canada, there are few ways for investors to directly invest in H2O. However, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board recently launched a bid for a British water utility.

The colossal cost of fixing crumbling water infrastructure in the developed world has opened the door to government privatization.

Water delivery systems in the industrial world are in “dire need” of repair, says a report released Monday by CIBC World Markets Inc. At least one-fifth of America's municipal wastewater treatment facilities do not comply with federal regulations and in some U.S. cities, more than half of the water headed to consumers is lost along the way.

CIBC economist Benjamin Tal, author of the “Tapping into Water” report, estimates it will take “hundreds of billions of dollars” to fix dated water infrastructure in North America and Europe.

Federal governments are not rushing to fix the infrastructure and municipalities lack the means to do so. “As a result, governments are now much more open to the notion of privatizing their water infrastructure which, in turn, is providing a substantial boost to the private water industry,” Mr. Tal said.

See

P3

CPP

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Kill Em All

In a Globe and Mail Special reporter Grahame Smith interviews two Taliban fighters. They explain the difference between the American and Canadian military operations against them.

"There is a big difference between Canada and the United States," Mr. Azizullah said, tapping his fingertips together in a pensive gesture. "If we attack the Canadians, they call for aircraft and bomb everything in the area. The U.S. only tried to kill the Taliban. The Canadians try to kill everybody."

Makes ya proud don't it. Yep winning the hearts and minds. Not. It's called total war.

Oh and for all those pro-war folks who keep refering to NDP leader Layton as Taliban Jack for calling for withdrawing our troops to Kabul and promoting peace negotiations well.....

Mr. Azizullah made clear that he watches Afghanistan's political scene carefully. He gave a current example: Burhanuddin Rabbani, Afghanistan's former president and a prominent warlord who now serves as a member of parliament in Kabul, recently told Afghan journalists that his associates are talking to the Taliban, but he didn't give details about the negotiations. Most of the Taliban are ethnic Pashtuns from the country's south and east, and the upsurge of violence this year has been concentrated in those regions, although the Taliban have been searching for ways of opening new fronts in the north. Mr. Rabbani, of the northern Tajik ethnic group, lost his presidency to a Taliban assault a decade ago, but Mr. Azizullah suggested the old commander might now be willing to switch sides."Rabbani is talking about an alliance with the Taliban," he said. "This could help us greatly, give us power in the north."

Also See:

Afghanistan






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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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