No Time Lines For Afghanistan Exit

Stephen Harper tells Canadian troops that there is no time line for their mission in
Afghanistan. No early exit for Canadian forces, Harper says Where have we heard that before?

"Still you know that the work is not complete. You know that we cannot just put down our arms and hope for peace," he said, strongly hinting that Canadian troops might remain in Afghanistan beyond the current February 2009 commitment approved by Parliament last year

SEE:

Harpers Constituency

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Iraq; The War For Oil

Forget weapons of mass destruction the war in Iraq was to make the world safe for Halliburton.

Vice President Dick Cheney was chief executive of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000. Former Halliburton unit KBR Inc. is the U.S. Pentagon's largest contractor in Iraq and has drawn scrutiny from auditors for the quality and pricing of its work for the U.S. army.

Halliburton's relocated CEO outlines major shift in focus

DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES — Halliburton will shift some 70 percent of its capital investment over the next five years to the Eastern Hemisphere, which includes oil and gas zones in the Middle East, Russia, Africa, the North Sea and East Asia, the company's chief said Tuesday from his new headquarters in Dubai.

Dave Lesar, arriving for his first week in United Arab Emirates, said Halliburton would quickly expand its Mideast operations as it targets $80 billion in new business over the next five years — 75 percent of which lies in the Eastern Hemisphere.

Dennis Kucinich: Oil was the primary reason for the invasion of Iraq

There were, of course, no weapons of mass destruction, no connection between Iraq and 911, no connection between Iraq and Al Queda's role in 911. Despite that the Bush-Cheney Administration, with the approval of a Democratic-controlled Senate and the Democratic leader of the House, supported and commenced a brutal campaign of shock and awe, of bombing, invasion and then occupation of Iraq.

It's All About Oil
Summary and Notes from Congressman Kucinich’s One Hour Speech Before the United States House of Representatives
On Administration’s Efforts to Privatize Iraq Oil

The Iraqi “Hydrocarbon Law” is an issue of critical importance, but has been seriously mischaracterized and I want to provide the House of Representatives the facts and evidence to support the concerns I have expressed. As you know, the Administration set several benchmarks for the Iraqi government, including passage of the “Hydrocarbon Law” by the Iraqi Parliament. The Administration has emphasized only a small part of this law, the “fair” distribution of oil revenues. Consider the fact that the Iraqi “Hydrocarbon Law” contains a mere three sentences that generally discusses the “fair” distribution of oil. Except for three scant lines, the entire 33 page “Hydrocarbon Law,” is about creating a complex legal structure to facilitate the privatization of Iraqi oil. As such, it in imperative that all of us carefully read the Iraqi Parliament’s bill because the Congress is on the record in promoting oil privatization. This war is about oil.


Fighting overshadows Iraq's oil law

As a result, the US Embassy in Iraq is pressuring the sectarian groups to pass the oil law as soon as possible. Still, Washington does have an agenda as to what the law should look like.

US-funded consultants had a significant role in shaping the draft oil law in Iraq. Firms such as BearingPoint were brought in to advise the Iraqi government and advocated allowing for private competition in the oil sector. It is Washington's belief that Iraq's oil sector will be most efficiently exploited and managed through the competition of private oil firms, including foreign companies. As such, Washington would like to reduce the role played by INOC in the oil sector. However, at this point passing the oil law is more important to Washington than granting rights to foreign oil companies.

US hunts for oil in Persian Gulf

Al-Sharaa underlined that Arabs know very well that the United States is in need of oil and is the world's largest oil consumer, adding that the US therefore intends to dominate the oil rich Persian Gulf region.

The Syrian Vice President went on to say that, the only reason for US navy and military maneuvers or troop deployments to the region is to monitor the smooth flow of oil to the United States.


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Oil Speculation

The reason for the gas gouging at the pump. Speculation in the oil market.

Algerian Energy Minister: shortage of oil supply does not cause prices rise According to him, doubts are surrounding oil markets; which has been used by speculators to raise the prices.


Oil mergers forcing prices up: study

Oil rises ahead of US inventory data

Oil Prices Rise After Inventory Report

Oil rises as warships enter Gulf

BP leak reduces Alaskan oil flow

Oil, gasoline futures end higher; traders weigh supply risk



ags:

gasoline, gas gouging, gas prices, big oil, petrochemical, refinery,

David Dodge World Bank Nominee

Is David Dodge, the outgoing Governor of the Bank of Canada, bucking for Presidency of the World Bank? Seems like it....

Dodge, who retires in January and has said he wants half a year off after that, declined to say today if he's interested in the job.

- Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge said China's government can't be expected to let the market set its currency's foreign-exchange rate ``overnight.''

``They have to keep going, and they have to keep going pretty rapidly,'' Dodge told reporters today after a speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. ``But let's not expect everything to be done overnight.''

In his remarks, Dodge said that the world's most developed nations need to have ``some tolerance'' as long as countries such as China are making ``substantial progress'' in shifting toward flexible exchange rates. Some economies don't have financial markets that are developed enough to withstand an immediate move to prices set in markets, he said.

Dodge's remarks are more measured than those of U.S. officials, who demanded last week that China move more quickly on loosening its management of the yuan. The People's Bank of China on May 18 increased the amount that the currency can move each day. U.S. Treasury officials and lawmakers said China must use that increased flexibility to allow its exchange rate to climb.

Chinese officials ``understand that it's not to satisfy the Americans or the Europeans and Canadians, they need to do it for their own domestic growth,'' to move on the yuan, Dodge said.

In his speech, Dodge urged the Group of Seven industrialized nations, especially the U.S., to pursue changes at the International Monetary Fund so it can more effectively combat world trade imbalances.

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Talking Taliban Blues

Canadians are backing the NDP position on Afghanistan....surprise, surprise.

Canadians still think it's a good idea to negotiate with Afghanistan's Taliban insurgents as a way to end the violence there, a poll finds.

In The Strategic Counsel poll conducted for CTV and The Globe and Mail, there was almost two-to-one support for the notion:

• Net good idea: 63 per cent
• Net bad idea: 32 per cent

The proportion of respondents saying it was a bad idea dropped by four percentage points when the same question was asked in October.

"In a way, it's a very Canadian thing to believe that nothing can't be solved by sitting across a table and talking," Peter Donolo of The Strategic Counsel told CTV.ca on Sunday.

However, Canadians might also think the mission is a morass, with no real end point in sight, he said.

Donolo said 57 per cent of Conservative Party members supported the idea of negotiations.

When NDP Leader Jack Layton called for peace talks with the Taliban last fall, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay later called the approach "naive." Some wags started calling Layton "Taliban Jack."

A Decima poll, provided exclusively to The Canadian Press, indicates that 55 per cent of those polled believe it’s likely that detainees captured by Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan wind up being tortured by Afghan authorities. And 58 per cent believe Canada has an obligation to ensure those detainees are not abused.

On that score, only 33 per cent were satisfied with the government’s confused and contradictory handling of the issue; 42 per cent were dissatisfied. Dissatisfaction was highest in Ontario (49 per cent), the province that holds the key to Tory hopes for a majority in the next election, and British Columbia (50 per cent).

And Canadians support Peacekeeping, not war making, contrary to the Conservative government and their sycophants over at the Blogging Tories.

Canadians want action on Darfur, poll finds

The Pollara poll, which surveyed 1,642 people across the country, found that 66 per cent of respondents agree that Canada should play a lead role in stopping the "genocide" in Darfur, with 27 per cent saying they strongly agree. Quebec and the Prairies led the country at 69 per cent, with B.C. at 67, Ontario at 65 and Alberta at 63.

The push to intervene was highest among people aged 18-34, with 79 per cent of men and 71 per cent of women calling on Canada to play a lead role.

"Canadians expect their government to show leadership in creating a more secure world. Africa in general, and Darfur in particular, occupy a prominent position in the humanitarian thinking of Canadians," said Vahan Kololian, chairman of the Mosaic Institute, an organization devoted to diversity, international peace and development.

See

Jack Layton

Taliban Jack

NDP

Afghanistan

Kandahar

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Harpers Constituency

It's Constituency Week and the MP's are meeting the folks that elected them. Except for the PM who is visiting his real constituents.

Harper in Afghanistan on surprise visit

Mr. Harper's office spared no effort to keep the trip under wraps. A call went out Friday afternoon telling journalists to pack for a warm climate and to show up at a military hangar on Sunday if they wanted to join Mr. Harper on a trip to an unspecified foreign location.

They were told not to breathe a word about the trip. Journalists were later warned that they could be arrested if they divulged details of the Prime Minister's travel plans.

The gnu Canadian Government; post modern fascism by any other name.

See:

Harpers War

Leo Strauss and the Calgary School

Post Modern Conservatives

Why The Conservatives Are Not Libertarians

Heil Hillier, Maintiens le droit

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Democracy Tory Style

Or Alberta style. It comes with the territory, the Federal Conservatives are true to their Alberta Conservative roots. Comes from living in a one party state and aspiring to do the same on a national basis.

Tory party fights to preserve MP's nomination

An unprecedented move by the party's national council to deny voting rights to new members in Calgary West is curtailing any potential challenges to Anders in a court-ordered second nomination battle.

"The secret, as everyone knows, to winning a nomination is to be able to sell your supporters memberships and get them out to vote," said John Knox, one of 11 disgruntled Tories who have fought the party's unwavering loyalty to Anders from courtroom to courtroom since last August.

The rule - which gives ballots only to those who were party members in the middle of August last year - contrasts with every other Tory riding in Canada, where anyone who has held a membership for more than three weeks can vote at a party nomination.

SEE:

Conservative Corruption

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Gone to Croatan

I will not be blogging for the next few days as I am off to present a paper on; The Book of Vles and Ukrainian Neo-Paganism at the Gaia Gathering; The Canadian National Pagan Conference in Winnipeg over the long weekend. This is the third year this conference has happened.

Abstract

Discovered in a Ukrainian bombed out home at the end of WWI a set of wooden boards inscribed in runes was translated in the 1950’s and transcribed into English in the 1970’s. Known as the Book of Vles (or Veles[1]) the translator purports it to be the oldest known written account of pagan pre-Christian beliefs in the Ukraine.

The pagan traditions of the Ukraine being largely undocumented meant The Book of Vles was mired in controversy. Its discovery by a White Russian officer associated with the counter-revolutionary forces of Denikens[2] White army has led critics to devalue its authenticity. More modern writers use this dubious origin in an effort to associate it with modern racialist nationalists and Anti-Semites.

With modern research being conducted in the fields of ethnography, anthropology, archaeology, religious studies, and the opening up of the Ukraine to Europe as a democratic regime, the pagan lore in the Book of Vles is being validated by new discoveries.

This paper looks at the Book of Vles in light of the information we have on pagan traditions in the Ukraine, and in light of the work of Maria Gimbutas who herself was no stranger to controversy.

---

[1] Vles or Veles refers to a particular Ukrainian pagan diety.

[2] Deniken led the White Army a counter revolutionary force against the Ukrainian Anarchist Army of Nestor Makhno and the Bolsheviks Red Army under Trotsky, another Ukrainian, in the Russian Civil War 1918-1921.

See ya next week.


Oh yeah about Croatan;

TAZ: "Gone to Croatan"

The Search For Croatan

Gone to Croatan: Origins of North American Dropout Culture

Preface to Gone to Croatan

Gone to Croatan: Origins of American Dropout Culture. - book reviews

COMIN' HOME
Defining Anarcho-Primitivism with John Moore

Interview--John Zerzan

THE TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE

Gone to Croatan


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Wolfowitz Timetable

After a month long pout of misplaced indignation, Paul Wolfowitz has declared a time table for his voluntary withdrawal from the World Bank. Now how about a time table for withdrawal from Iraq.

Staff group says Wolfowitz should leave before planned date of June 30

After all no one is claiming the World Bank would be thrown into chaos after he withdraws. Unlike the excuses for staying in Iraq; we made a bad situation worse but it might get even worse if we leave.

"This is a prescription for chaos and confusion and we must not impose it on our troops," Bush said in a nationally broadcast statement from the White House.

And then there is the irony of this.....

Meanwhile, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday that Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has offered the US Tehran’s cooperation in developing an exit strategy from Iraq.

It quoted Araghchi as saying the US and Iran had the same interests in a stable Iraq and that direct talks leading to a “face-saving withdrawal” were possible. “(The US-led) invasion was a disaster — let there not be a disastrous withdrawal,” he told the newspaper in an interview.

“Yes, immediate withdrawal could lead to chaos, civil war. No one is asking for immediate withdrawal of foreign forces. But there should be a plan,” he said.

Take it, take it just like Wolfowitz had to because it could have been much worse, sort of like the current American surge in Iraq.

Wolfowitz's negotiated departure averted what threatened to become a bitter rupture between the United States and its economic partners at an institution established after World War II. The World Bank channels $22 billion in loans and grants a year to poor countries.

By all accounts, the terms of Wolfowitz's exoneration left a bitter taste with most of the 24 board members, who represent major donor countries, as well as clusters of smaller donor and recipient countries. Most had wanted to adopt the findings of the special board committee that determined he had acted unethically on the matter of Riza.

Also angered was the bank's staff association, which had called for Wolfowitz's resignation in early April. The bank's internal blogs were filled with denunciations of the action on Thursday evening.

Late in the evening, the association issued a statement saying, "Welcome though it is, the president's resignation is not acceptable under the present arrangement," and that it "completely undermines the principles of good governance and the principles that the staff fight to uphold."

Many European officials previously indicated that they would go along with the United States' picking a successor if Wolfowitz would resign voluntarily, as he now has.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr. said Thursday that he would "consult my colleagues around the world" before recommending a choice to Bush, in what seemed to be an effort to assure allies that the United States would not repeat what happened in 2005 when Bush surprised them by selecting Wolfowitz, then a deputy secretary of defense and an architect of the Iraq war.

SEE

Criminal Capitalism: Office Romance

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Tory Boondoggle

Shades of the Liberal Gun Registry....

Cost of new tanks $1.3 billion, double initial estimate

O'Connor Lowballed War Costs

Just one more reason for the senile Minister of Defense to resign.


Hillier

" I can get you one tank for the price of 2"

O'Connor

"Can I buy a tank a year?"

Hillier;

"Sure, we have a great twenty year payment plan with options"










Also See:

Tanks For The Memories

Kandahar

Afghanistan

O'Connor





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