Damn Fine Cup Of Coffee

FEATURE-Bolivian organic coffee farmers target niche markets

I drink organic Bolivian coffee, along with other organic and Fair Trade coffees. This is a fruity and piquent coffee with a touch of choclate to the flavour.

My pals at Earthson coffee in Edmonton roast their coffees out of their home. And they deliver their product to your door, at a price below those of more commercial companies in town. Email me if you want to contact them.

Over the past year I have been one of their coffee tasters testers. I didn't know I had the knack. I just like to drink coffee. Turns out I am a coffee gourmand.

The Bolivian organic is one of the new ones on the market and it is a damn fine coffee. To really get the full body, grind it fine, use cold water, and draw a cup off after your pot has about two cups in it. This is the full expresso flavoured version of the coffee, giving you its real full body taste that weakens as you add more water. Delicious.

And of course as with all Fair Trade coffees you know the farmers that grow and harvest these aren't being exploited unlike the real life poor farmers portrayed by real life Juan Valdez.


For news from Latin America See:

Latin America News Review

Narco News

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Child Labour In Alberta

Oh joy the dark old days have returned. No longer limited to developing countries the Alberta Advantage is now Child Labour.

AFL Posts List of Employers Using 12-14 year olds on Website

EDMONTON, June 7 /CNW/ - Nine months into new rules allowing restaurants
to hire 12 and 13 year olds it is clear they are failing to protect young
workers says the Alberta Federation of Labour today. The AFL released the list
of employers who have submitted the paperwork allowing them to employ
adolescents. The AFL also announced its intent to post the entire list on its
website (www.afl.org) and update it regularly. The AFL received copies of the
forms through a FOIP request.
Between July 1, 2005 and March 31, 2006, the first nine months of the new
rules for hiring children, only 160 forms were submitted to the government.
This is a fraction of the number of applications the government received
before the new rules. According to government figures, 552 permits to hire
kids under 14 were granted in 2004, and 359 permits in the first four months
of 2005.

Oh and the charges have upset MacDonalds. Those nice folks who are advertizing dates for their staff on bus ads in the city. Pimping I think is the term.


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Just In Case You Forgot

'Terror' suspects: Innocent unless proven guilty

Terror in the details

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Suplus Value

Here is the Stats Canada confirmation of that old Marxist theory of surplus value:

Canadian workers are more productive than ever. And they are cheaper, too
Canada's economic output is rising three times faster than the number of hours that people are working, helping to push Canada's labour productivity up by 2.3 per cent over the past year.

There is another side to the economic numbers, however. Canada's productivity is rising because the cost of labour is slowing.

Hourly compensation rose by 0.8 per cent in the first quarter, half the increase in the fourth quarter of 2005, keeping a lid on unit labour costs.

Whenever you hear the word productivity that simply means techology and cheap labour producing more profit. The watchword of capitalism. For workers it means you are getting screwed and paid less for it.

"Productive labour is therefore labour which reproduces for the labourer only the previously determined value of his labour-power, but as an activity creating value increases the value of capital; in other words, which confronts the labourer himself with the values it has created in the form of capital."

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Diamonds and Rust

While Miners in the North are on Strike at the Ekati Diamond Mine, Craig Kielburger of Free the Children puts Northern Development under the gaze of development elsewhere in the Diamond Fields of the World.

Fresh off the plane, I stood in a region engulfed by housing development and communities flush with new-found wealth. I wasn't in Sierra Leone or South Africa, where diamond mines have given rise to phrases such as "blood diamonds" and have caused massive social upheaval. On a work-related visit, I was in Canada's portal to the vast and serene north and, with my untrained eye, all seemed normal. We've all fallen prey to the marketing coup of the last century by believing that "a diamond is forever." But the communities that mine these diamonds are not.Since the discovery of Canadian diamonds in 1991, the Ekati and Diavik diamond mines have begun production in the Northwest Territories. The Snap Lake plant is gearing up for production next year and, as of this year, the Jericho project in Nunavut will also be in production. But according to Statistics Canada, these mines will be operational for only the next eight to 20 years.Once these mines shut down, miners can rarely transfer their skills beyond the industry. Diamonds are forever; prosperity isn't

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Pack Up And Move

Here is the authoritarian solution to unemployment typical of Conservatives and other right wing regimes, oh like the you know who.

MP: Help workers move
Alberta Tory says government should help relocate unemployed

Unemployed Atlantic Canadians should be encouraged by Ottawa to go where their opportunities are — namely job-rich Alberta — a parliamentary committee heard Thursday.

The suggestion, that the Conservative government could use taxpayers’ dollars to relocate jobless people from the Atlantic region, was made in Ottawa by Brian Jean — a Tory MP from northern Alberta — at a session of a federal committee studying employability in Canada.

Of course this guy forgets that there are over 2500 tradesmen currently unemployed in Alberta looking for work. Unemployed trades?

Or maybe he didn't. Since they are all union workers, and he is after all a Tory.

Do I smell another form of Tory Union busting.




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Fraser Institute Exposed

Here is an excellent expose on that charitable taxpayer funded think tank of the Right; The Fraser Institute. Who funds the Fraser Institute?

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Made In Cuba Green Policy

On Clean Air day Rona Ambrose assured reporters, again ad naseum, that sometime soon we will have a Made in Canada Green Plan.

My message to you, on Clean Air Day, is that the Government of Canada is working towards a “Made-in-Canada” approach to deliver real change and real results for all Canadians, in our common campaign to clean up our air and to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

So instead of Ambrose the Minister of Do Nothing standing up in the house talking about how the US is ahead of us, ad nauseum;

Hon. Rona Ambrose (Minister of the Environment, CPC): Mr. Speaker, the truth of the matter is that thanks to the Liberal government being in power for 13 years the Bush government has done more on the environment than this country has for the last decad. The Americans are outperforming us on pollution control. They are outperforming us on emission reductions. This government is going to ensure that we outperform not just the Americans but all of our counterparts.

How about we start comparing the Made In Cuba plan with the lack of plan that the Tories have. Because Cuba is way ahead of Canada, and the U.S.

Castro's new soldiers
Richard Gott
03 May 2006 04:59

At a petrol station outside the Cuban town of Cienfuegos, half a dozen teenage girls stand languidly by the pumps, jumping to attention when a car or lorry pulls up. They work the pumps efficiently, take payment and enter the transaction on to a large official form. They are dressed neatly in T-shirts and jeans and a slogan across their backs proclaims their identity as trabajadores sociales, or social workers. They are Fidel Castro’s latest army of guerrillas, deployed in the struggle against corruption, the scourge to which state-run economies have always been peculiarly vulnerable. They are also the vanguard of the generation upon whom the future of the Cuban revolution will depend.

On earlier visits to Cuba I have observed the petrol problem. Driving through the countryside you could always find a willing accomplice to direct you to a tank in someone’s back garden, where petrol would be sold at an advantageous price, or simply off-ration. It had been siphoned off the state’s supplies. The practice seemed harmless enough. Yet it had begun to create a large hole in the economy. Castro complained that “as much petrol was being stolen as sold’’, and last year his government stepped in with a novel solution. About 10 000 young activists, more than half of them women, have taken control of the country’s pumps, while the usual attendants have been sent home on full pay.

The social workers’ jobs do not stop at the petrol stations. They also go from house to house to hand out low-energy light bulbs, to check that everyone has the new electric pressure cookers provided by China and to prompt the exchange of old, gas-guzzling fridges from the 1950s for something more energy efficient. Others will move on to examine financial practices in bakeries and the construction industry. About 30 000 of these revolutionaries, aged between 16 and 22, have been deployed across the country. Identified some years ago as a potentially counter revolutionary class, they are helping to keep alive the revolution’s mystique.

Maybe the Tories could mobilize all their Blogging Tories and Fraser Institute student Interns to be Green Social Workers like Castro has done.

Besides both parties share the same intials; CPC. And same style of authoritarian leadership.


And don't forget all the Canadian investment in Cuba. Like Sherritt Gordon.

And we have a long tradition of being business and social partners with Cuba.

Our CPC could learn some lessons from the Cuban CPC.

Other Great Leaders of Canada have.



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Klein Makes Me Feel Safe

Trust Me Says Klein. There is nothing to Fear but Fear Itself.

“There’s no need for Albertans to be concerned,” said Klein, adding should a threat arise, the province is ready. “We do have an emergency plan and a security plan in place.” But how a potential threat will be dealt with or how the province would react to an attack, the premier admitted he does not know. “I don’t know what that security plan is and they won’t tell me,” said Klein.

Yeah Right. He doesn't know the plan but assures us he has one. I feel secure.

Sounds like Rona Ambrose's Made In Canada Green Plan. Oh yeah she worked for Klein once.

Maybe Klein will sign up to Warren the Moron's I Am Not Afraid Campaign. Maybe Molsons will sponsor it since the logo looks like something from a beer commercial.

I am an Albertan and I am afraid that we don't have a security plan.



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The Beautiful Game

I have watched a few FIFA World Cups off and on over the past few years. Not having a Canadian team in the game sort of makes it hard to feel participatory. No cheers for Canada

And despite the Stanley Cup and the NBA playoffs in North America, the rest of the world is preparing for the World Cup of Football, which unlike 'World' cups in the US of Eh is really a World Cup. Stop Everything: The World Cup is On!

Like the Olympics it happens only every four years and grabs the attention of millions. Even in Canada. World Cup brings best out of Toronto

What makes it the Beautiful Game, well it is the least expensive sport, it is a democratic sport anyone can play, as the left wing South American writer Eduardo Galeano noted, and even the poorest of the poor can rise out of the ghettos of the world to make it in the game.

Of course like all sports the FIFA World Cup of Soccer is big business, very big business.

But strange bedfellows are made in the world of Canadian Broadcasting when it comes to this years cup. The result is we get to watch all the games.

Rogers Sportsnet holds the rights for the World Cup, but will share game broadcasts and the studio show with bitter rival TSN. More amazing, the biggest game of all — the final on July 9 — will be on CTV, parent network of the aforementioned bitter rival.

For the game schedules click here. And it will be HD digital for really clear in your face viewing.

Here is a couple of good beginners guide for those who don't watch football (only called soccer in North America to differentiate it from the CFL/NFL game)

Why you should care about World Cup

NAMING THE BEAUTIFUL GAME It's Called Soccer

Certainly the Stanely Cup playoffs have grabbed my attention this year, with unprecidented exciting hockey not seen since the Oilers heyday of the eighties or back during the Montreal Canadians dynasty.

And the CFL was hot this year with Edmonton winning. And the NFL Superbowl was no slouch either. That is the other 'football'.

And of course playoffs in any sport is sweeter and more meaningful when your team is playing.

Which is why I will be watching the FIFA World Cup.

I finally have a team I can cheer for while I await Canada's day at the Cup.

Yep the Ukraine is in it. Like the Oilers they are an underdog. Making it all the sweeter when they win.

Ukraine Out To Garner Respect In Its First Cup Appearance

They have several star players but none as well known as striker Andry Sehvchenko, who has been picked up by Chelesa.

They have a dynamic coach who has brought the team together, choosing young players for speed and depth. They have made the Cup. Nazdarovev.

Anatolii Tymoschuk has told skysports.com that Ukraine will command the respect of their World Cup finals opponents.

With Shevchenko reminding Ukrainians of his namesake the Great Ukrainian National Poet and Hero Taras Schevchenko, the spirit of the country is with them.

Will they win the Cup who knows, they played fifth ranked Italy to a draw, but that is not the point. They are in the cup. Lets see how far they get. And as I said now it gives me something to watch and team to cheer for.

The are playing in Group H against Spain, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia, and I believe they can take it. And I am not the only one. Group H shows World Cup balance

Ukraine

Prediction — This is one of the tournaments true sleepers. They could have a potential meeting with France, a country with which their footballing talents are often compared to. And with their defense and finishing up front, it could mean au revoir Les Bleus.

Jeez getting old you turn into a sports nut.

Or perhaps its the war times, forcing us all to take out our visceral aggressions in sports, to deal with the stupidity of war and the politics of fear.


Also See:

Sports

Ukraine

Football



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We Are All Flintstones

Praise the Lord the Christian Bible believers were right. We didn't come from apes.

Yep the Flintstones had it right. We did come from stones, no wonder we rock n roll.


Australian Coastal Mounds May be Fossils of Earth's Oldest Life

The evidence prehistoric ameoba dung.

Others argue that primitive microbes formed the piles. The new study supports this second notion. Abigail Allwood's team trudged a 10-kilometer-long stretch of stromatolites and identified seven different types with exotic shapes. Some look like upside-down ice cream cones, others like egg cartons. Allwood told Nature magazine podcast interviewers that the formations are too complex to be chemical, although she acknowledges that their biological origin is unproven.

"Any one structure, even any one group of structures is not conclusive evidence of life in itself," she said. "The way I approached this was to look at a very large number of structures over a region and as I walked along the outcrops I began to notice that rather than just one type of structure there were actually several different distinct types and realized that they were distributed in patterns so that actually they look very similar to reefs. But they're obviously not coral reefs. They're reefs entirely built by microorganisms."

Also See:

Creationism

Evolution

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Teeny Tiny Tories

Scientists have discovered the ancestors of the Harper Conservatives.

Studies reveal pygmy dinosaur species

and of course the discovery was in Germany.

Harposaurus Sr. and Harposaurus Jr.

Also See:

Dinosaurs

Evolution

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666 in the news

Perhaps it is the millipede that is the Great Beast.

666-Legged Creature Rediscovered

Out of the past crawls leggiest bug

Although Illacme plenipes was discovered by a government scientist in 1926 in the same area of San Benito County, it hadn't been seen since. The leggiest female had 666 legs on half a millimetre width

Also See:

TSX 666

666, Crowley, Great-Beast, Satan, Anti-Christ, 6/6/06, Omen, Evil, Live, Christian, monothesism, religion, apocalypse, armageddon, endtimes

They Bombed Zarqawi Like Saddam

US airstrike kills Iraq terror chief al-Zarqawi

Given the Americans atrocious history of lack of scoring hits using precision bombing I think the partying over this should wait for the DNA evidence.

How They Got Zarqawi

The terrorist responsible for some of the most gruesome killings in Iraq was killed in a joint U.S.-Iraqi military operation Wednesday, after the U.S. and its allies had finally located him. A well-placed intelligence source in Jordan told TIME that the CIA was tipped off after Jordanian intelligence learned of a meeting that Zarqawi planned to hold in the town of Baquba, north of Baghdad. His safe house was targeted in an air attack, and, says the same source, the Jordanian-born leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq was killed in the bombing.

Remember they claimed they got Saddam and the Bathist leadership in the same kind of hit back in the early days of the war.

Al-Dura Farm, Baghdad

The war opened on March 20 with an attempted attack on Saddam Hussein. This strike was the beginning of a pattern that would be repeated many times. The U.S. military targeted a facility in the mistaken belief that the Iraqi leadership was there; instead of “decapitating” the regime, this strike resulted in fifteen civilian casualties because of faulty intelligence.

A human intelligence source provided the CIA with information on Saddam Hussein’s alleged location at a farm in al-Dura, a district of southeastern Baghdad.⁵⁹ Two F-117A Nighthawk aircraft dropped four EGBU-27 2,000-pound penetrator bombs at 3:15 a.m. on a reported bunker at the farm. Moments later, the rest of the farm was hit with up to forty cruise missiles (Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles, or TLAMs) in an attempt to kill Saddam Hussein.⁶⁰ The U.S. military later acknowledged there was no bunker at the farm, and Saddam Hussein broadcast a television interview days later.⁶¹ The attack resulted in one civilian killed and fourteen wounded, including nine women and a child.⁶²

And the US success at using CIA drones to kill Osama bin Laden well I rest my case.


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Nazanin

And while I am at it here is a link to Nazanin Af Shin-Jam's site with three cuts from her upcoming album; Nazanin, to be released in July.

Pop World Beat and call to revolution in Iran. Not bad, for a Former Miss. Canada, Miss. World runner up.

And like all of her sites even this one contains info on her cause celebre; Nazanin Fateh




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News Scoop: Nazanin Fateh

It turns out I have a scoop, no one else has covered the all Party MP news conference in Ottawa on Tuesday over the issue of Nazanin Fateh.

2 women unite in desperate cause

NAZANIN FATEHI: The Kurdish woman awaits execution in an Iranian prison for killing the man who tried to rape her NAZANIN AFSHIN-JAM: The Canadian model is leading a growing international campaign to spare the jailed woman's life

Along with Nazanin Af Shin-Jam,was Liberal MP Belinda Stronach who led the pack of MP's but no press release is on the Liberal web site.
Alexa McDonough was there for the NDP, ditto no press release.
Josée Verner was there for the Conservatives and again no press release.

Nor was there any coverage in the MSM so you can only read about it here. the press conference was coverd on CBC Newsworld and has not been archieved.

You see this story was swamped by the news coverage about the so called Terrorist Conspiracy. The life of a girl in Iran is worth less newsprint than the comic book accusations that so called terrorists planned to behead the PM.

I would call that a classical example of sexism in the media.



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CIA Creates Fortress Europe For Torture

This is interesting, the CIA plants a story in the US Media in advance of being criticized.

US Disappointed at New Report Criticizing CIA Tactics

June 06, 2006

The United States Wednesday expressed disappointment over a new report saying that secret U.S. transfers and detention of terrorist suspects in Europe violated international law. The State Department said intelligence cooperation among the United States and European allies saves lives.

The report commissioned by the Council of Europe is the latest in a series of critical assessments in the past year of cooperation between the CIA and European counterparts in the transfer and detention of terrorist suspects.

Here is the original report from the European Council released only Yesterday!

PACE committee: US has woven clandestine ‘spider’s web’ of detentions and transfers, with collusion of Council of Europe member states

Strasbourg, 07.06.2006 – The United States has progressively woven a clandestine “spider’s web” of disappearances, secret detentions and unlawful inter-state transfers – spun with the collaboration or tolerance of Council of Europe member states, the Legal Affairs Committee of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) said today.

In a draft resolution adopted at a meeting in Paris, based on a report by Dick Marty (Switzerland, ALDE), the committee said hundreds of persons had become entrapped in this web – in some cases when they were merely suspected of sympathising with a presumed terrorist organisation.

The parliamentarians said this knowing collusion of member states took several different forms, including secretly detaining a person on European territory, capturing a person and handing them over to the US or permitting unlawful “renditions” through their airspace or across their territory.

“It has now been demonstrated incontestably, by numerous well-documented and convergent facts, that secret detentions and unlawful inter-state transfers involving European countries have taken place, such as to require in-depth inquiries and urgent responses by the executive and legislative branches of all the countries concerned,” the committee said.

The committee called on Council of Europe member states to review bilateral agreements signed with the United States, particularly those on the status of US forces stationed in Europe, to ensure they conformed fully to international human rights norms.

The report is due for debate by the plenary Assembly – which brings together 630 parliamentarians from the 46 Council of Europe member states – in Strasbourg on 27 June 2006.

Draft resolution and recommendation
Mr Marty's explanatory memorandum (PDF)
Mr Marty's explanatory memorandum (HTML)
Graphic image of global ''spider's web'' (JPEG)
Information for the press
Video of the press conference
Summary of Mr Marty's explanatory memorandum
Special file

And of course the countries used are the NEW members of the EU, those countries that joined America's Coalition of the Blackmailed in their war on Iraq.


European states ‘in CIA’s spider’s web’

14 Nations Aided CIA in Abductions, Report Says

However for the CIA this is the continuation of the Cold War, sans the Soviet Union. They have merely transfered their dirty black operations from focusing on Russia, to using the East European countries as their dungeons for the War On Terror.

That is the same Cold War, which they used to justify their covert support of former Nazi's such as Bundesfueher Gehlen and his former SS division, because they had agents in Russia.

Appointing Hayden Makes Perfect Spook Sense

Early last year, the National Security Archive “posted the CIA’s secret documentary history of the U.S government’s relationship with General Reinhard Gehlen, the German army’s intelligence chief for the Eastern Front during World War II. At the end of the war, Gehlen established a close relationship with the U.S.,” writes Tamara Feinstein. “The documentation unearthed by the [Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group] reveals extensive relationships between former Nazi war criminals and American intelligence organizations, including the CIA. For example, current records show that at least five associates of the notorious Nazi Adolf Eichmann worked for the CIA, 23 other Nazis were approached by the CIA for recruitment, and at least 100 officers within the Gehlen organization were former SD or Gestapo officers.” General Reinhard Gehlen was a big time war criminal, responsible for organizing the Iron Guard in Romania, the Latvian Vanagis, and the Croatian Ustashe, groups responsible for brutal atrocities against the “untermenschen” of Eastern Europe (not only Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and communists, but anybody who opposed Nazi rule).

Of course, that the CIA embraced Nazi murderers (including the notorious Claus Barbie) should come as no surprise. “Certain American industrialists had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy,” William E. Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany, noted in 1937. “They extended aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there.” William Randolph Hearst, Sr., the Mellon-Davis-Duke Alcoa monopoly, the Du Pont corporation, ITT, General Motors, Standard Oil of New Jersey, the anti-Semite Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company, and of course the Bush crime family and no shortage of Wall Street bankers and financiers all supported and bankrolled the Nazis. Remember, the CIA’s first covert op was conducted in the name of the United Fruit Company and it has worked diligently in the service of corporations ever since.

This made headlines again this week with the realease of newly declassified CIA documents.

Why Israel's capture of Eichmann caused panic at the CIA
Guardian Unlimited, UK - 15 hours ago
Newly declassified CIA documents show the Americans and the German BND knew Eichmann was hiding in Argentina at least two years before Israeli agents snatched ...
CIA used former Nazis as spies, did not act on war criminals Hindustan Times
CIA ignored tip to arrest Eichmann to preserve Cold War stability Telegraph.co.uk
Files show CIA didn't pass tip on EichmannInternational Herald Tribune

In Somalia it turns out that once again the CIA's War On Terror has only made things worse. Its just not the CIA's week. Truly the Spy Who Came In With A Cold, or The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight.

Efforts by CIA Fail in Somalia, Officials Charge
New York Times, United States - 12 hours ago
... The officials said the CIA effort, run from the agency's station in Nairobi, Kenya, had channeled hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past year to ...
CIA role in Somalia may have backfired Denver Post
Somalia militia flaunts control Chicago Tribune

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Irony Redux

Here is another example of a real life definition of Irony/Ironic.

GM plant wins laurels, no promises
A General Motors Corp. factory that is scheduled to close in 2008 is turning out the highest-quality vehicles in North America

Yep my devils dictionary definition of capitalist planning; cutting your nose to spite your face.

Also See: GM

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The Left In Latin America

Foreign Affairs has an excellent article on the Left in Latin America. Castaneda has couched his analysis as Social Democracy versus Leninism. The Leninism he opposes is no longer Bolshevik but the 'populist' left, like Chavez and Morales, who will use the state to nationalize while embracing a cooperativist movement of the poor from below. Chavez is populist, not a socialist

This meme is being used in the media now to attack the Chavez/Morales Left as being authoritarian verus the left like Lula in Brazil and the new Socialist President Michelle Bachelet in Chile, who are more amenable to capitalism and imperialist demands.

Ironically populism is the basis of the new right in Canada and the United States, it is the source of the popularity of the Klein, Manning, Harper new right, in Canada as well as the base of the U.S. Republican party. Of course the commentators who denounce the populist left in Latin America do not apply the same critique to the Populist Right in North America.

The populism of the Left is being described as authoritarian when in reality it is not. But Castaneda sees it for what it is. That the seizure of state power is limited, where it will go, nowhere as in the case of Brazil, or towards a dual power situation as in Bolivia, Argentina and Venezuala with popular assemblies, worker community control is the real question. The latter is what scares the bejezus out of the right and liberals like Castaneda.

Latin America's Left Turn
Jorge G. Castañeda
From Foreign Affairs, May/June 2006

Summary: With all the talk of Latin America's turn to the left, few have noticed that there are really two lefts in the region. One has radical roots but is now open-minded and modern; the other is close-minded and stridently populist. Rather than fretting over the left's rise in general, the rest of the world should focus on fostering the former rather than the latter -- because it is exactly what Latin America needs.

JORGE G. CASTAÑEDA is the author of Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left After the Cold War and Compañero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara. Having resigned as Mexico's Foreign Minister in 2003, he is currently Global Distinguished Professor of Politics and Latin American Studies at New York University.

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Oil Verbs

Love these screaming headlines. Oil Verbs like; slip, plunge, fall, tumbles, slumps. Really? Which is it? Seems like it moved a little. I like slips, it actually is accurate. Oil slipped a little from $71 to be still above $70 per barrel yesterday. Hardly a drop in the bucket, nor a market plunge. Just a slip. Oil. Slip. Get it.

Oil slips towards $70 after US inventory builds

Oil prices plunge below 71 dollars

Oil slumps on rising US fuel inventory

Oil tumbles on rising US fuel inventory

But wait it gets better what is the actual price it supposedly fell to?

Oil prices fall to $70.40 a barrel

Oil Prices Fall to $70.53 a Barrel

U.S. crude oil traded 21 cents down at $70.61 a barrel

Crude oil for July delivery fell $1.68, or 2.3 percent, to close at $70.82 a barrel

What the hell price is being set here. Its all the same futures market. So why the 39 cent gap in all these prices. That gap is huge when it comes to stock investing.

Prices are still UP from last year. Prices are up 32 percent from a year ago.

So all this clamour and sturm and drang is for naught. A blip. Away to give a false image of the market falling. Chicken little headlines.

The real headline is:
Oil Still ABOVE $70 regardless of US reserves and Iran

But wait it gets better this headline runs counter to all the rest.

Oil eases towards $72 after positive Iran signal


If dropping a few cents leads to verbs like plunge, tumble, fall, drops, etc. why not replace eases with rockets, surges, leaps.

And which oil price are we talking about for our headlines, Brent Oil or Light Sweet Crude? Cause the latter is ABOVE $72.

Light sweet crude for July delivery fell 25 cents to $72.25 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, midmorning in Singapore.

Opps and here we go again what did light sweet crude actually drop to?

Light sweet crude for July delivery fell 35 cents to US$72.15 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange by midday in Europe.

Wait now I am really confused.

Oil Prices Continue to Fall
Light sweet crude for July delivery fell $1.68 to settle at $70.82 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, where gasoline futures slid by more than 5 cents to settle at $2.124 per gallon. July Brent crude futures on London's ICE Futures exchange fell $1.62 to finish at $69.19 a barrel.

Yep let the market decide our futures say the right wing neo liberals. Decide what? They can't even settle on the prices of Oil, whether it is above or below, up or down. Ain't capitalism grand. And this is the market that the right wing wants to dominate our society.


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Carnival

The following Carnivals are now out, which your humble scribe has contributed to.

The Carnival of History.

The XVI Carnival of Feminists is here!

And don't Forget the Carnival of Socialism

And your humble scribe will be hosting the next round so send your contributions to me at eugene@union.org.za

Deadline is before June 11.

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feminism, history, personal-investment

Oil Spill

The Oilers were defeated last night in a shut out 5-0 by the Oilers. Not only the ex-Oilers playing for the Hurricanes, but the Oilers strategies of blocking, and assault. Leaving the Oilers to shadow box with themselves. Looking forward to them getting their s*** together for the Saturday Night Showdown. It should be a Whale of a game.


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Deep Integration

Despite the rosy picture painted by CEO's in Canada lobbying for deep integration, an economic union with the U.S. and a common dollar, here is what happens to the Canadian economy. The U.S. Fed burps and the loonie falls.
Canada dollar slips on Fed comments, bonds mixed

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