Welfare for Millionaires

Gee wonder why the Conservatives just don't tell these folks about how their tax breaks are going to help them down on the farm. You know 5% is a Canadian Value. Ingrates.

So when in doubt sign over more welfare checks to farmers while you try and shut down the Wheat Board. Makes sense eh.

Note that the Ontario farmers protesting are demanding a protectionist market and subsidies like the US grants its agribusiness. Not exactly Tory farm policy.....Strahl doesn't mention market-solutions for protesting Farmers

Now imagine the crisis on the farm if we had a free and open market with no Wheat Board or other producer run cooperatives or marketing boards. It would be the end of the so called 'family farm'. Which is long in the tooth and almost non-existant in Canada now.

Strahl promises better relief for struggling farmers
CTV.ca - 9 hours ago
As thousands of farmers converge on Parliament Hill for a massive rally, Federal Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl is promising better relief for cash-strapped producers.
Provinces have to help, Strahl tells farmers Globe and Mail
Harper promises money for farmers Toronto Star
Brandon Sun - Reuters Canada - CBC Manitoba - 580 CFRA Radio -

Yep these guys would all be gone and all that would be left would be big Agribusiness corporations. Who would then demand subsidies like they do in the US.

Its the battle between the farmer Millionaires versus the Corporate Agri-Billionaires.

And the irony is that these guys are the right wing backbone of the Tories, who demand they kick folks off welfare.



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Duh' Oh

Motive unclear in brazen kidnapping
Police said on Wednesday they do not know the motive of kidnappers who abducted the son of a wealthy Vancouver family from his car in one of the western Canadian city's most exclusive neighborhoods.

He is the son of a multi-millionare, might that have something to do with it?
Do ya think? Duh' Oh. Back to Timmies for more donuts.




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Nuclear Paradox

Today the US Senate held hearings on why it should be allowed to sell nuclear resources to India, a country which has tested several atomic bombs and is not a member of the Non Proliferation Treaty.

Senate grills Rice on nuclear deal with India

'The Agreement And Its Implications'

Unlike Iran which has no bombs, has not tested a bomb and is a member of the NPT.

The controversy over Iran's peaceful nuclear program has obscured one point in particular: There need not be a crisis. A solution to the situation is possible and eminently within reach.

Lost amid the rhetoric is this: Iran has a strong interest in enhancing the integrity and authority of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. It has been in the forefront of efforts to ensure the treaty's universality. Iran's reliance on the nonproliferation regime is based on legal commitments, sober strategic calculations and spiritual and ideological doctrine.
We in Iran don't need this quarrel

Pakistan and India are still vying over the issue of Kashmir which set off their last round of nuclear show down. Both countries have deals with Iran and its military.

US concerned over India-Iran ties: Rice

India-Iran gas pipeline might go ahead: Rice


So who is the real nuclear threat in the region? Iran poses no threat: Doha Debates

Why the US of course and its attempt to play nuclear geopolitics.




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Development Versus Population Growth

Juhn Murney picked up on this story as well; Malthus Redux

He says;" Pianka's point has been lost. There are too many people on the planet;". True and the majority of them are poor.

Thus the record number of famines we are having thanks to Global Warming and due to capitalist production for export.

Lack of development opportunities based on sustainable farming and small scale industrial growth is the problem. Whether the issue is population growth, which is always based on labour needs for the family farm, or mass migration (aka illegal immigration) the real solution is to have regional development that creates real industries and self sufficiency.

Europes concern with growing illegal migration from Africa, due to impovershment or America's concern with illegal migrants from not only Mexico but now also Central America, is based on this simple fact. These countries have no sustainable development. If they did then their would be no migration. Development is the only solution to illegal immigration.

Ironically such development needs to be based on womens liberation. Where it has been successful it has focused on women in the community. When this is done, education plus regional based development funded by micro-loans, women begin to reduce the number of children they have and begin to modify the social conditions under which they live, challenging the remnants of fuedal patriarchical cultures that have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st Century.

Where local sustainable development has been aimed at women we see positive results. Lower birth rates, higher education rates, less migration. Technological solutions for resource developments such as localized rational irrigation based on a harmonious merger of technology and local engineering/environmental development are preferable to the capitalist industrial model.

Not all development has to be based on large scale corporate manufacturing. In fact in Africa in several areas now suffering famines, the most successful village market businesses have remained the collective farms and tertiary production of maize. Large scale corporate models have collapsed due to being inefficient in the global marketplace. While the village collective model, run by women, has succeeded.

Ideals of Fair Trade, the idea of promoting organic farming and collective production of products for export, rather than the hacienda production favoured by large scale Multinational Corporations like United Fruit and Dole, help communities achieve sustainable development, which then allows them to leave the culture of poverty which is what creates unsustainable population growth.

Also See:

IWD Economic Freedom for Women

Water War



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Malthus Redux

Ebola virus best way to kill billions and save world: ecologist
A respected Texas scientist says the best way to kill 90 per cent of the people on the planet and save the world is the Ebola virus

Respected by who? Captain Paul Watson of Sea Shepperd probably......Save the Seals kill off the humans is the subtext of the Vegan moralist ideology.

Which begs the question of these species chauvinists....do they think we will destroy the world or is it that we will destroy ourselves and the World will repair itself as it has with other historical extinctions of species.....while we are certainly doing massive damage to the planet and its life forms, we are doing so with the constant possibility of wiping ourselves out thank you very much.....which is the crisis of the decadence of capitalism.

This ideology that the solution to the capitalist crisis of the environment is that we are expendable for the good of the planet is the very ethos of Protestantism gone wild....it's Gnosticism not science.


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Mr. Turkey To You

Once upon a time Benjamin Franklin suggested that the official bird for the United States should be the Turkey. He was prescient in his arguement for this North American native.

Every Thanksgiving the President of the US pardons a turkey from the ceremonial fate that turkeys suffer for the founding of that nation.

President Bush holds a platter at Baghdad airport on Thanksgiving. The turkey had been primped to adorn the buffet line, while the 600 soldiers were served from steam trays

Now if this turkey had been around the tables may have been turned.

Even on old Ben...Benjamin Franklin Tries to Electrocute a Turkey

Scientists Discover New Dinosaur in Utah

New Dinosaur Resembles Large Turkey

By BROCK VERGAKIS

The Associated Press
Tuesday, April 4, 2006; 11:07 PM

SALT LAKE CITY -- Fossils discovered in southern Utah are from a new species of birdlike dinosaur that resembled a 7-foot-tall brightly colored turkey and could run up to 25 mph, scientists said Tuesday.

Giant dinosaur raptor unveiled
Fossils found in 2001 in national monument

What's 7 feet tall, 13 feet long, armed with sickle-like claws and covered with feathers? Hagryphus giganteus, the new raptor dinosaur

Benjamin Franklin's Letter Comparing the Eagle and the Turkey

"For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead Tree near the River, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the Labour of the Fishing Hawk; and when that diligent Bird has at length taken a Fish, and is bearing it to his Nest for the Support of his Mate and young Ones, the Bald Eagle pursues him and takes it from him.

"With all this Injustice, he is never in good Case but like those among Men who live by Sharping & Robbing he is generally poor and often very lousy. Besides he is a rank Coward: The little King Bird not bigger than a Sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the District. He is therefore by no means a proper Emblem for the brave and honest Cincinnati of America who have driven all the King birds from our Country . . .

"I am on this account not displeased that the Figure is not known as a Bald Eagle, but looks more like a Turkey. For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America . . . He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on."

More On Dinosaurs

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A Real Chicken Hawk

In a preverse form of poetic justice the Chicken Hawk advocates of spying on American citizens have attempted to use Child Porn as the basis for expanding their spying operations. They have of course gotten cooperation from most search engines except Google.

Now the chickens have come to roost. Or in this case Chicken Hawks.

Those who call the Republican War administration Chicken Hawks now have good reason to revert to the original meaning of the term.

Homeland security official faces sex-related charges

The deputy press secretary for the United States Department of Homeland Security was arrested for using the internet to seduce what he thought was a teenage girl, authorities said.


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The Privatization of Torture

The War in Iraq has been called the new face of war in the 21st Century by no less than President Bush.

And what is this new war? It is war by private armies the so called 'contractors', private companies like Halliburton, and now the contracting out and privatization of torture.

Of course when the Market State privatizes war completely we will be in the era of decadence that saw the fall of all great Empires that relied upon mercenary armies, from Carthage to Rome.

AI accuses CIA of using private planes for rendition flights

04/05/2006

In a report issued on Wednesday, Amnesty exposed what it described as a covert operation involving front companies and private aircraft operators to preserve the secrecy of so-called rendition flights.

Son San Joan airport in Majorca

And of course these private planes have been landing at small regional airports in Canada.

Earlier this year, media reports said that American planes believed to be contracted to the CIA made 74 flights to Canada between September 2001 and November 2005, according to documents released to Canadian Press through freedom of information.But Amnesty's Canadian office said that requests to the Liberal government for a review of the allegations met with no response. Amnesty's secretary general, Alex Neve, sent a letter to Stockwell Day, the minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, calling for an investigation by the Tory government.The human rights organization also called for safeguards ensuring that Canadian airports are not used to transfer suspects to countries where they may be held without protection of international law. More flights linked to CIA

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War Is No Place For A Free Press

In the battle for news accuracy War creates the conditions of censorship and self censorship which has led to the failure of the media to report accurately from their positions as embedded cheerleaders...... this is the latest in the efforts of the War Department to control the Press.....which has resulted in this......


Editor's note: All media organizations reporting on the conflict in Afghanistan while embedded with the Canadian Forces are signatories of Rules for Embedded Media. The Toronto Star has been ordered by the military to refrain from illustrating by graphic the precise area where last week's firefight took place. The army in Kandahar invoked the rules, believing any illustration would put lives at risk.Was Canadian soldier slain by friendly fire?


More on Afghanistan


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Same Sex Marriage No Debate

What was missing from the Throne Speech?

Why there was no reference to Same Sex Marriage and its pending demise under the Tories.

But don't worry King Stephen is still straight.

• View Larger Image

Stephen and Laureen Harper share a kiss in the rotunda after the Throne Speech was read yesterday.

While there was no mention of abolishing the much-maligned gun registry or holding a free vote in Parliament on same-sex marriage, Justice Minister Vic Toews confirmed they both remain on the government's agenda.Harper's 'clear and focused agenda'

Anyone studying the dynamics of Harper's past election strategy would know that he's developing a formula for handling persistent problems: confront them head on, admit their intractability and then move on. Harper did this in the opening days of the election campaign last December with the same-sex marriage controversy. He said he was against same-sex marriage up front, so his critics didn't say it first. Then it never came up again. HARPER'S OTHER FIVE PRIORITIES

And it still hasn't come up yet.......Which means it was never a priority for Harper merely an issue he could use to get Social Conservative votes.....ever the opportunitst....So Link Byfield and his ilk will have to settle for pictures of Harper kissing his wife, while they cool their heels over his Free Vote on Marriage....And the longer the Tories wait the more entrenched it becomes....clever.....then Harper can say he tried...and when they lose the vote in the house.....we all move on over what has become a non-issue......


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