Canadian Ponzi Scheme Funds Republicans

While the headline for this story emphasized the fact that there was some spurious connections with terrorism the real story is that a Christian Businessman from Canada and his American partner bilked Christian investors in a ponzi scheme that helped finance the Bush Regime. The good thing is that when he goes to jail he won't have to find Jesus.

The portly Mr. Anderson seems an unlikely financier of Islamist terror. A born-again Christian, he has actively fundraised for evangelical groups and worked at Trinity Western University until the late 1980s.

"During the time he was employed at the university, his role was in the fundraising office," said Ron Kuehl, senior vice-president of External Relations at the Christian university in B.C.'s Bible belt.

"It seemed that there was a bit of a variety of [job] titles but I would say that the function that he took at the university was clearly in the area of development."

Mr. Anderson’s troubles stem from the business ventures he launched in 2001, Frontier Assets and the Alpha Program, which securities regulators say were "Ponzi schemes" that conned investors
into handing over money that was never actually invested.

A lawsuit filed by nine people who claim they were scammed by Mr. Anderson says he deliberately sought out investors who "held strong Christian values and beliefs."

"Anderson told Plaintiffs that he was offering some very lucrative and confidential investment opportunities that would, while providing a good financial return to Plaintiffs, also benefit Christian organizations and projects throughout the world," the lawsuit says.

According to the FBI and the B.C. Securities Commission, Mr. Anderson collected at least $7-million from his backers, but the money was never invested and the investors were left empty-handed.

Mr. Anderson is tied to terror-financing allegations through his business partner Mr. Alishtari, a 53-year-old American of Moroccan origin who has donated generously to Republican election campaigns.

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Mackenzie Valley Pipeline

Back in 1980 when I worked as a custodian in the Alberta Legislature I cleaned Premier Peter Lougheeds offices which included the Sanctum Sanctorum the inner cabinet room. On the wall was a large geophysical map of Alberta and Northern Canada showing the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline project, the jewel in the Alberta Crown of Oil resource development.

It was to be the second greatest pipeline debate in Canadian history, and the second one to challenge the ruling Liberal party of the day.

Back then the Pipeline was projected to cost the same as it is today. The cost in the 1970’s was estimated at 8 billion dollars.

But it was halted at that time by Justice Berger. It was the real nail in the coffin of the NEP. Subsequently the petro-economy went through a tail spin downward in the 1980's allowing for the pipeline which was put on hold to be forgotten, and in the intervening years new deals were struck with Northern communities and peoples for self government as Berger had recommended.

With the oil boom of the 1990's the Mackenzie and Alaskan Pipelines became economically viable once again.

The proposed gas pipeline from the Beaufort Sea to markets in southern Canada and the United States was billed in the 1970s as "the biggest project in the history of free enterprise."

Mr. Justice Thomas Berger

It was up to a Canadian judge, Mr. Justice Thomas Berger of British Columbia, to examine the impact of the pipeline on the people who lived in its path. Berger took to the job so thoroughly that some said he ran off with the terms of reference that established what was formally known as The Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry, embarrassing the Liberal government that appointed him.

On May 9, 1977, Berger's report was released in Ottawa. Significantly, Berger titled his report Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland, for above all he wanted the world to know that though the Mackenzie Valley may be the route for the biggest project in the history of free enterprise, people also live there.

Berger warned that any gas pipeline would be followed by an oil pipeline, that the infrastructure supporting this "energy corridor" would be enormous - roads, airports, maintenance bases, new towns - with an impact on the people, animals and land equivalent to building a railway across Canada. Some dismissed the impact of a pipeline, saying it would be like a thread stretched across a football field. Those close to the land said the impact would be more like a razor slash across the Mona Lisa.

The hard news of May 9, 1977, was Berger's recommendation that any pipeline development along the Mackenzie River Valley be delayed 10 years, and that no pipeline ever be built across the northern Yukon. The pipeline was delayed far longer than 10 years.

In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in a gas pipeline up the Mackenzie Valley, and many of those now pushing for the pipeline were the young radicals who opposed it with such vehemence 25 years ago.

With the war in Afghanistan and Iraq reducing oil capacity, and with projected peak oil reserves waining by 2020 the new gold rush in oil was being pushed by the US. With their eyes on the prize of Alaskan Oil the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline once again became an economically viable alternative to the Alaskan Pipeline.

In 2001 the Mackenzie Valley pipeline was projected to cost between $2-3 billion. In 2002 it was estimated to cost between $3 billion and $4 Billion. In 2005 estimates for construction were double that of 2001; $5 Billion. In 2006 the total cost was expected to be $7 billion.

Basically the cost estimates jumped a $1 Billion annually then suddenly this year
it is quadruple the cost, it is estimated to cost $16.2 Billion.

New estimates of overall costs for the Mackenzie Gas Pipeline project have hit $16.2 billion, from an original $4 billion, Imperial revealed before stock markets opened early Monday.

The massive project's in-service date was also rescheduled to 2014, three years past original estimates, due to significant delays in regional permits and approval.

CALGARY/AM770CHQR - Jim Prentice, the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development says, somehow, the Mackenzie Valley pipeline will be built.
Imperial Oil says it will cost a whopping $16.2 billion.
Prentice says, however, the project is a key piece of oil and gas infrastructure.

"We'll be studying the information and I will be proceeding to cabinet to examine alternatives and options. But this is a very important piece of infrastructure that we are committed to."

And Gary Lunn, Minister of Natural Resources, echos Prentice saying the federal government will do anything it can to help support this project, within limits.
Both Lunn and Prentice were in Calgary Monday.

However this is the total cost of the pipeline operations including finding oil fields. The actual pipeline cost remains $7.8 billion.

In other words one billion more than 2006, which is in line with the annual cost increases predicted by Imperial Oil which calculated that the pipeline could cost up to $10 billion when the project first came on line.

The original opposition to the Pipeline was over Native Rights and self government, as well as its environmental impact.The first nations issue was resolved by the Berger commission and today the first nations are full partners in development.

The opposition now is by a few bands that do not have first nations status and the environmental lobby. But Berger addressed the environmental concerns in his report; . Berger sees no compelling environmental reasons why an energy transportation corridor could not be established along the Mackenzie Valley. That development is being challenged by environmental groups because they see the pristine north as wilderness, now threatened with development. They want NO development in the North.

Most Canadians have never seen it. But it is perhaps our nation’s most treasured natural feature...the Mackenzie River.

The entire Mackenzie Valley is now threatened by Canada’s biggest natural gas pipeline project ever. The Mackenzie Gas Project (MGP), likely to cost at least CDN $7 billion, includes three major natural gas production fields north of Inuvik and two underground natural gas pipelines (the longest is 1,220 km) to carry the gas south along the Mackenzie Valley to northern Alberta. Other pipelines would be built connecting other gas fields to the main pipelines.

If it proceeds, this mega-project will trigger the transformation of the Mackenzie Valley from largely intact wilderness to industrial landscape. The environmental impact would be massive. It will fragment habitat for bears, caribou and wolves. It will harm fish and fish habitat by increasing sediment deposition into the rivers and streams of the valley from constructing pipeline crossings. It will permanently damage important breeding or staging areas for millions of geese, tundra swans and other migratory birds. Read about the Kendall Island Migratory Bird Sanctuary. It will cause forests to be clear cut and heavy machinery deployed to construct the infrastructure and the new underground pipelines which would tunnel under or cross 580 rivers and streams along the way. It will trigger a rush of oil and gas development in the Mackenzie Valley, which would accelerate further damage to wildlife and ecosystems. It will increase greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels by heavy equipment and from the cutting of boreal forests, destruction of wetlands, and melting of permafrost. It will accelerate climate change in the Mackenzie Valley. Even now, thawing permafrost is collapsing roads and buildings. Warmer, drier summers are causing the worst forest fires ever. Infestations of southern insects, especially the spruce budworm, are likely. Depletion of Arctic sea ice will likely push polar bears, walrus and some seals into extinction within 50 years.

The old alliance between first nations and environmentalists is now broken, and development of the North becomes the economic life blood for Northerners especially because of climate change.

It was, in fact, just a matter of time before this modern version of the Gold Rush resumed in earnest. The prize is simply too alluring. The National Energy Board estimates there are nine trillion cubic feet of discovered natural gas reserves in the Mackenzie Delta - and at least another 55 trillion yet to be found. In sheer volume, that would amount to more than a third of the known reserves in the more traditional gas fields of Alberta. To the west of the delta, at Prudhoe Bay, there are proven gas reserves of 30 trillion cubic feet and estimated total reserves of more than 100 trillion. Northern Alaska is already a significant oil-producing area, generating over one million barrels per day, which is piped south across Alaska and then put on tanker ships.

The opening up of the arctic due to global warming means once hard to access oil, gas, coal, uranium and other mineral deposits become economically feasible.

A proposed Mackenzie Valley natural gas pipeline is still before the regulators and it's already creating massive new plans for industrial development in the Arctic.

Vancouver-based West Hawk Development (TSXV:WHD) has unveiled plans to strip-mine extensive coal reserves along the Mackenzie River and begin building $2 billion worth of coal gasification plants to tie into the pipeline within four years.

"It's a property we're feeling very comfortable with in terms of generating natural gas from coal," West Hawk president Mark Hart said Monday.

The west was opened up by the railway, the north will be opened up with pipelines and mining. The difference is that development will be ameliorated by environmental watchdogs, and by the Northerners themselves which did not exist when the railway opened the west and the great Buffalo slaughter happened.

But already development and climate change have affected the peoples of the North and development of their resource base is crucial now to their survival.

Until about seventy years ago, the native peoples of the far north relied on their skills as hunters to feed their families and were self-sufficient. With the extension of Canadian sovereignty northwards, the nomadic people were encouraged to gather in permanent settlements where they could be supplied from the south with food, education and medical care. Settlements, such as those in the Arctic Islands for instance, were often well north of natural food supplies, leaving the inhabitants dependent on a supply route from the south. While fresh food and lightweight goods can be brought in by air or by road, heavy freight such as fuel still depends on the barges that travel in the Mackenzie River during the short summer navigation season. This is a life critically dependent for the necessities of life on the continued availability of fossil fuels.

It also offers an alternative to the Alaska pipeline, one that would destroy the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve, ANWR. Which puts environmentalists in a difficult position. Unless the oppose all development of the North. Which essentially they do.

The proposed Alaska pipeline is estimated to cost roughly CDN $20 billion (US
$16.16 billion)9. This is a higher cost than the proposed Mackenzie pipeline and has a
number of stumbling blocks of its own. It also has a later estimated date for possible
completion, somewhere around 2014 by optimistic estimates10. It connects to a different set of deposits than the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline, as the Alaska line is intended to allow for shipment of the Prudhoe Bay gas. There have been suggestions that a smaller pipeline could be built between the Prudhoe Bay fields and the Mackenzie delta, to allow both deposits to be distributed through one pipeline.

Those who dream of some idyllic past for Northerners and their land, the noble savage in the pristine wilderness, fail to understand the revolutionary nature of capitalism, which is to destroy all those village traditions and replace them with dependence on development and civilization.

And they fail to understand that these people will not have a pristine wilderness to hunt and fish in given the changes happening in the Arctic thanks to global warming created by capitalism. Their survival is now to adapt to capitalism, not to hold back the development of the North. It is something they understand but Southern Environmentalists fail to. The reality of the North is that climate change is making development crucial to the survival of the peoples of the North, halting mega-projects like the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline will not stop climate change, but it will limit the survival of traditional communities now dependent on the South for food and fuel.

In the end, large construction projects are an essential part of human civilization, they just have to be done right. A genuinely useful megaproject must arise out of any public planning process, in which the citizens of the region looked at the long-term needs and options and discussed what should be done. The hype surrounding megaproject proposals also serves as a convenient way to distract the public from the more day-to-day problems of society and government. Seriously addressing our state's shameful social problems requires fundamental questions about the way our society functions, the types of questions that politicians hate being asked.

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Free Trade=Cheap Wages

The truth is in reading the fine print. Free Trade is not about trade, or sustainable markets, it is about off-shoring production and contracting out services.

India also offers Canadian companies another cheaper-wage locale besides China where they can shift production to save money and remain competitive.

This little fact will get lost in the hoopla that will be generated around a bilateral free trade agreement between Canada and India.



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Brief Cases vs Batons

Lawyers fight riot police in protest against Musharraf

The brief cases were a flying, as the batons crashed down on their powdered wigs. Barricades were built with case files as suits were stuffed to act as decoys. The real power of the State is not its laws or lawyers but who carries the baton of office.

See

Lawyers

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Nortels Chickens Roost

It takes the American SEC to actually charge the folks behind Enron North. Investors got tired of waiting for the Ontario Securities Commission to do anything. Another reason for having a single national regulator.

And Nortel has been a bigger loss for more seniors and retiree investors than the Income Trusts.

SEC files charges against former Nortel execs

The securities regulator alleges the execs at the Toronto-based telecom maker repeatedly engaged in accounting fraud "to bridge gaps between Nortel's true performance, its internal targets and Wall Street expectations." "Each of the defendants betrayed Nortel's investors and their misconduct gave rise to billions of dollars in shareholder losses," said Linda Thomsen, director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement.

In the go go world of a long bull market like we have seen, the only house rule for casino capitalism is that rules are meant to be broken. The wave of criminal fraud cases that have hit the market are a result of the politics of Greed that we saw in the eighties and before that in the seventies and early sixties.

Gekko: Greed - you mark my words - will save Teldar, and that other malfunctioning corporation, the U.S.A.

During bull markets the movers and shakers of real existing capitalism, not the Von Mises /Hayek fiction, find accomplices like Accounting firms to do their bidding, which is to hide money away from the government, and also to make as much money as quickly as possible. Both of these ends then require a means, which is fraud, pure and simple.

The use of back dated shares, accounting practices to pump up market prices, accounting practices to avoid taxes, hedged bets on mutual funds after closing, these are all business as usual until they are declared fraudulent by those who are supposed to be regulating the market.

It is the political dominance of finance in the marketplace.

Nortel is not Canada's only criminal capitalist on trial in the U.S.

Establishment-watchers eagerly await Black's trial

See

Nortel Slash & Burn

NORTEL: REDUX

NORTEL: Canada's Enron

Dalai Canuck

Criminal Capitalism

We Need a Living Wage

The Phoney Debate On Net Neutrality

CEO


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Kettle Pot Pace

Onward Christian Soldiers.

Gen. Pace Calls Homosexuality Immoral

And killing people is moral?

And it gets better;

Marine Gen. Peter Pace likened homosexuality to adultery, which he said was also immoral,

So I guess that leaves Newt out of the army. And Karl Rove.

"I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way," Pace told the newspaper in a wide-ranging interview. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Monday he considers homosexuality to be immoral and the military should not condone it by allowing gay soldiers to serve openly, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Heck I guess that means the U.S. military won't accept any divorced folks in their ranks. Nope that ain't true.

The Pentagon Thursday sought support for Defense Secretary William S. Cohen's choice to head the Joint Chiefs of Staff - a general officer who has admitted committing adultery - but the battle quickly widened into an effort to convince the public that the military was not applying a double-standard on sexual infractions. One day after the Pentagon's disclosure that Air Force Gen. Joseph W. Ralston conducted an adulterous affair more than a decade ago, officials sought to explain how in different circumstances such relationships could put some service members in jail and others in retirement while not eliminating one - Ralston - from candidacy for the armed forces' most coveted post.
Los Angeles Times June 6, 1997.

Or folks who have stolen post it notes from the office supplies.

I thought the U.S. Military swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States not the Ten Commandments. Wait a minute there is no condemnation of homosexuality in the Ten Commandments.....


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Achoo Cough Wheeze Hack Hack

I have a bad bout of bronchitis and a cold /flu so I am not blogging over the weekend. You have been warned, so I hope you don't catch it from reading this....

No,no. thats another kind of virus...I am hacking but not a hacker, well I guess I am literally a hacker if I hack hack , cough cough.....right, see what I mean I can't think straight....

In fact the inside of my head feels like this;











Some folks who read this blog would say that's how it works normally.

But then they think I am sick , and not just this weekend.

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Chrysler Made In Canada?

Since the Harpocrites love Made In Canada Solutions here's one; nationalize Chrysler through tripartite fund raising and purchase. Both levels of government; provincial and federal funding for compact and hybrid cars and trucks, with funding from CAW and Big Daddy Warbucks; Magna's Stronach confirms Chrysler interest

With CAW members along with environmental and consumer advocates on the board as worker and public representatives. This is how the German Auto Industry built itself up. An why it will cut its relationship with Chrysler.

Because Dahlmer wants to sell. And if these guys get it the will slash jobs and contracts, affecting CAW and Stronach. It is widely rumoured that private equity powerhouses Cerberus Capital Management LP and Blackstone Group LP are also considering putting Chrysler in their portfolios.

$700-million Chrysler plan at risk, union says

Potential Chrysler buyers call CAW's Hargrove

Magna chief looking at Chrysler



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From Orthodoxy to Orthodoxy

I missed the passing of this feminist and Marxist historian. It is interesting to see her make the same historic transition in her life that many classic American liberals before her did back during the Cold War. Going from toying with Marxism to becoming hardened right wingers.

ELIZABETH FOX-Genovese, a controversial figure in American feminism, passed away last week at 65. The career of this remarkable writer and scholar illustrates the complexities and challenges of 20th- and 21st-century feminism. She evolved from a left-wing Marxist feminist into a deeply conservative Catholic anti feminist, two positions that are equally alien to me. Yet she managed, along the way, to raise many important questions and offer many brilliant insights.

Fox-Genovese's journey from Marxism to Catholic traditionalism -- shared by her husband, historian Eugene Genovese -- could be seen, from a classical liberal point of view, in starkly negative terms: as a full-circle transition from one anti-individualist, antiliberal philosophy to another. Yet when it comes to women's issues, her critique of individualism contains an important kernel of truth. Reconciling women's pursuit of their new roles, freedoms, and opportunities with the needs of families and children has often been a rocky road, as several generations of feminism's daughters have found out.

The advent of the victory of the Neo-Cons in setting the political agenda after 1989 was the advent of a new Cold War against "The Cultural Left". With the phony war on Terrorism in 2001, several on the Left became self professed War Hawks such as Christopher Hitchens, just as their liberal predecessors did having been rabid anti-Stalinists they devolved into New Right anti-communists during the Viet-Nam war.

The Fox-Genovese story is just another pathetic story of two liberal intellectuals in America who embrace ideas not praxis, subsequently careerism and opportunism shatters all their ideological flirtations with Marxism.

No different then the Daniel Bell story.


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What's That Smell?

A new task force funded by the Canadian government and the province of Alberta will study ways to capture and store greenhouse gases emitted by the province's massive oil sands projects, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Thursday. The task force will be headed by Steven Snyder, chief executive of TransAlta Corp., a Calgary-based power company that operates coal-fired plants in Alberta and elsewhere.

TransAlta the historical retirement home for ex Cabinet Ministers from the Alberta Government. Like Jim Dinning.

What's that smell? Nepotism? Nope just good old Alberta politics.

After all Steve Snyder knows how important the environment is, and how crucial CO2 sequestration is cause he told folks in Seattle about it five years ago!!! Just waiting for the government to tell them to do it. And to fund it.

Environmental issues today are greater than they've been in probably the history of the industry, and particularly in the Canadian context, with Kyoto at the forefront, but regardless of the CO2 issue, knocks, socks, water issues, in this industry are out there and bigger than ever. This is -- you know, the whole Kyoto argument has become a proxy for the environment, so it's raised environmental issues on everyone's mind. So whether, you know, the U.S., whether they sign Kyoto or not, I don't think it's the point. The point is, people are more conscious of the environment than they were, you know, asking for more action, and our industry's at the forefront of that. I mean, raising capital today, we all know that is more difficult than it was three years ago, so for a capital intensive business, that's pretty -- a pretty tough equation to be in. TransAlta Corporation Investors’ Days Presentation Seattle Seattle, Washington November 25, 2002

So If Steve and the boys at TransAlta were 'at the forefront five years ago how come we are only seeing them act now on CO2 sequestration and other environmental solutions. Just waiting with their hands out. Ottawa spends $155.9M to make Alberta oil industry more green

TransAlta is Alberta's first P3.

With ties to the provincial and federal governments and the Conservative party historically. During the Socred era and later with PC's a position on the Board was practically guaranteed if you were a well connected Calgary Cabinet Minister.

The forerunner of TransAlta Utilities, Calgary Power Company, was founded by banker W. Max Aitken in 1903. Aitken, who later became Lord Beaverbrook, reorganized a number of utilities as a subsidiary of his Royal Securities Company. He was joined in this venture by his friend and mentor R. B. Bennett, who served as Canadian Prime Minister from 1930 until 1935. Some business leaders felt that Aitken and Bennett were an unlikely team, since Bennett was known as an upstanding young man, while Aitken had earned a reputation as something of a renegade. Nonetheless, the pair joined several other prominent Canadian businessmen on Calgary Power's initial board of directors. Among these board members were: A. E. Cross, one of the founders of the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede; Herbert S. Holt, a Montrealer who was later knighted; and C. B. Smith, president of Calgary Power's forerunner, Calgary Power and Transmission Company Limited. Aitken soon became Calgary Power's first president.

In 1947, two years after the war ended, Calgary Power moved its head office from Montreal--then the nation's largest city and prime business center--to Calgary, reorganized, and incorporated as Calgary Power Ltd. At that time, Calgary Power supplied the province of Alberta with 99 percent of its hydroelectric power. Also in 1947, Calgary Power built its Barrier Hydro Plant and used it to test the use of a newly developed remote-control operation system. The automation efforts worked well enough that Calgary Power soon converted all of its plants to the Barrier Plant system. A control center that could operate the company's entire system was built in Seebe in 1951. The company continued its string of innovations by testing 'mobile radio' communications in its line patrol trucks.

Although electricity had begun to spread to rural areas in the 1940s, only 5 percent of farmers in the province had electricity of any kind. The majority of farmers were hesitant to adapt until it became obvious that electric service could increase farm production as well as provide modern conveniences. The main problem for utilities in supplying farms was a financial one: at the time, it was estimated that it would cost $200 million--or twice the provincial debt--to expand service and supply all of the farms with electricity. This dilemma led to an unprecedented cooperative effort between Calgary Power, farmers, and the provincial government.

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