Animal Tales

Passport? Passport?! Skunks don't need no stinkin passport....

- A stowaway skunk that ended up in Canada after traveling more than 3,500-kilometres (2,200 miles) shut in the back of a truck from California has found a ride home.

Do you think they were watching Happy Feet.

Sixty seals at a Dutch refuge took shelter from the devastating storm which

swept across Europe in a cinema.

Elmer Fudd has nothing on this duck hunter....

Duck shot by Florida hunter survives 2 days in refrigerator

Wildlife officials said the feathered Lazarus had been shot by a hunter and put into his refrigerator for two days. That's when the hunter's wife opened the door and the duck lifted his head, giving her a scare. The man's wife "was going to check on the refrigerator because it hadn't been working right and when she opened the door, it looked up at her," said Laina Whipple, a receptionist at Killearn Animal Hospital.

This gives new meaning to Blowin in the Wind....

The pilot of a TV news helicopter used wind from the aircraft's rotor to push a stranded deer to safety after it lost its footing on a frozen lake and could not get up.


You might not be cheering so loudly for Free Willy if you knew where he is ending up....Killer whales drawn to 'warm' Arctic

And this guy obviously was just not tasty enough....Diver 'swallowed' by shark survives

The hew and cry will be raised about the need to kill man eating sharks despite the fact that sharks continue to be endangered....

Conservationists worry about shark population
Experts point out attacks on humans are overblown and millions of the fish are being killed

Conservationists: C'mon, give sharks a break!

See

Endangered Species

Animals

Environment

Orca

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Save All The Bears

$30M forest pledge 'clear signal' of green Tories: Baird

This is a nice start, but in no way proves the Conservatives are Green since the promise for federal funding was made by the previous Liberal Government. And like all of this weeks announcements the Conservatives are recycling old Liberal policies on the environment.

Now If John Baird really wants to save the Bears and not just those in Spirit Bear Park, there are the polar bears in the Arctic, Black Bears and Grizzly Bears in Alberta and B.C. he could declare as endangered species.

Of course the last Conservative Environment Minister opposed declaring any species endangered, which is perhaps why her position became endangered.

See

Baird Pushes Aside Native Elder

Bears

Environment


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Profits Up Jobs Cut

Hmm whats wrong with this picture?

Pfizer to lay off 10000 to cut costs

Pfizer 4Q Profit Soars to $9.45 Billion

Falling rate of profit perhaps? Profit Disfunction?

Impotence-treatment Viagra posted quarterly sales of $450 million, a 5 percent gain, while revenue from allergy drug Zyrtec jumped 14 percent to $374

Of course a falling rate of profit does not mean profits decline it means that it takes more profit, gouged out of the working class, to keep running on the spot.

Labour being variable capital it is always expendable.....

Do the ‘deep roots’ of inflation lie in the falling rate of profit?

TWO apparently contradictory phenomena are manifest simultaneously in the American economic structure today; at least they appear contradictory in the terms by which they are often described – inflation and deflation. A vastly expanded credit system, with its mountains of fictitious capital, has debased the currency almost beyond recognition. Alongside of this, excess capacity of production shows up in idle plants, or partially operating plants, and the resultant large-scale unemployment.

Marx's Analysis of the Falling Rate of Profit on the First Version Of Volume III of Capital

If the ratio of the variable part of capital to the constant part…is large, …this
shows that all the means towards the development of the productivity of labour
have not been employed. …that therefore with a large quantity of labour little is
produced, whereas in the opposite case a (relatively) large amount is produced
with a small amount of labour. The development of fixed capital…is a particular symptom of the development of capitalist production.

Falling Rate of Pricing and Profit Over the Internet

Marx originally described a system-wide falling rate of profit crisis as part of his analysis of advanced capitalism. In Marx's model, the increasing use of machinery with a decreased use of human labor would ultimately so increase total production, that total consumption power would be too low to keep production recycling back into consumption. A great inventory bulge would lead businesses to lay of excess workers and the downward spiral of laid-off workers and decreasing sales would so affect sales, the profits would fall.

Miller-Must The Profit Rate Really Fall?

We live in an age in which the horror of a falling rate of profit increasingly permeates the consciousness of growing layers of capitalists throughout the world. While profit rates fluctuate widely from boom to bust, from one country to another, and from one business or branch of industry to another, the feeling that profits are not what they should be, or not what they used to be, grows.

For the capitalists, and the economists who try to serve them, the shifts in profits that occur on the balance sheets of banks and corporations are not, nor can they be, manifestations of an underlying tendency rooted in the basic character of the capitalist mode of production. If a squeeze on profits becomes apparent, any number of immediate or indirect causes can be pointed to: interest rates, taxes, wages, environmental and other regulations, etc. Instead of probing the inner structure of capital, and the laws of its evolution, they are restricted to examining this mulitplicity of conflicting forces that forms the outward appearance of economic relations. As Marx commented about the capitalists and their theoretical spokepersons:

"...it is just as natural for the actual agents of production to feel completely at home in these estranged and irrational forms of capital–interest, land–rent, labor–wages, since these are precisely the forms of illusion in which they move about and find their daily occupation. It is therefore just as natural that vulgar economy, which is no more than a didactic, more or less dogmatic, translation of everyday conceptions of the actual agents of production, and which arranges them in a certain rational order, should see precisely in this trinity, which is devoid of all inner connection, the natural and indubitable lofty basis for its shallow pompousness." (Marx, 1962, p. 809)

The Decline in the Rate of Profit and The Theory of Crises. Raya Dunayevskaya

The constant revolutions in production and the constant expansion of constant capital necessitate, of course, an extension of the market. But the enlargement of the market in a capitalist nation has very precise limits. The consumption goods of a capitalist nation are limited by the luxuries of the capitalists and the necessities of the workers when paid at value. The market for consumption goods is just sufficient to allow the capitalist to continue his search for greater value. IT CANNOT BE LARGER.

This is the supreme manifestation of Marx’s simplifying assumption that the worker is paid at value. The innermost cause of crises, according to Marx, is that labor power IN THE PROCESS OF PRODUCTION AND NOT IN THE MARKET, creates a value greater than it itself is. The worker is a producer of overproduction. It cannot be otherwise in a value-producing society where the means of consumption, being but a moment in the reproduction of labor power, cannot be bigger than the needs of capital for labor power. This is the fatal defect of capitalist production. On the one hand, the capitalist must increase his market. On the other hand, it cannot be larger. This is what Marx calls THE GENERAL LAW OF CAPITALISM which cannot be overcome other than by the abrogation of the law of value.

The only “market” that enlarges beyond the limits of the working population paid at value is the capital market. But there too the constant technological revolutions make the time necessary to REPRODUCE a product tomorrow less than the time to PRODUCE it today. Hence there comes a time when all commodities, including labor power, are “overpaid.”

See

Big Pharma

Capitalism

Labour




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Being Right, Again

Yeah I know it's difficult to be humble when you get it right....


Weapons in space

Published: Friday, January 19, 2007

PART I
Going ballistic: Twenty years after he announced it, Reagan's missile defence legacy lives on in the U.S. -- and Canada. David Pugliese investigates.

Xia Liping, a People's Liberation Army (PLA) officer and professor at the Shanghai Institute for International Strategic Studies, said Beijing did not want an arms race in space. But the reported test may have been intended to push Washington towards international talks aimed at preventing a race, he suggested.

"The weaponisation of space would be very dangerous; it could lead to a new arms race," said Xia, who stressed he had no firm knowledge of any test. "I would say, though, that in the history of arms control the rule is that the United States is willing to ban a military capability only when other countries possess it."

In October, the White House finally released its new U.S. National Space Policy (NSP). This came after years of dithering and bureaucratic infighting as to what it would include and how far it would stretch the boundaries from the previous policy, last updated during the Clinton administration in 1996. The new NSP at first glance doesn’t indicate many obvious differences. However, a closer reading reveals that this, like everything else coming out of the Bush White House, contains a unilateralist and militaristic bent that could prove quite dangerous.

This policy heavily promotes “unhindered” access to space for the United States, while the previous one pushed for access to space for all countries. The new NSP also contains a distrust of international institutions that falls in line with much of the administration’s prior actions. See: Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, abrogation of; Kyoto Treaty, dismissal of; International Criminal Court, continued opposition to.

See

BMD

North Korea

China

Space

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Baird Pushes Aside Native Elder

As seen on TV. In his rush to shake hands with the Premier of B.C., gotta get that photo op , Federal Conservative Environment Minister John Baird pushed aside the outstretched hand of the Haida Elder and ignored him through out this announcement;Ottawa vows $30-million to protect Great Bear

And just to clear the air, how much are they giving? Canada To Spend $25m On Rainforest Plan

Hmm it seems there is some conflict over how much that cheque was for....

Groundbreaking Great Bear Rainforest Agreement Secures $120 Million

Canada gives $100m to save Spirit Bear Rainforest



See

Environment


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Retro Tories

To be a conservative is to of course engage in retro-politics, to want to live in some golden age past.

Which must be the reason the New Conservative Government of Canada retrofit announcement was just a retrofit of the Liberals original EnerGuide program, and not nearly as effective as the NDP's retrofit plan.

See

Environment




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Skool Daze

It seems that building schools in Afghanistan is key to winning hearts and minds.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) - The Taliban said it will open its own schools in areas of southern Afghanistan under its control, an apparent effort to win support among local residents and undermine the western-backed government's efforts to expand education.

Canadians, Taliban in fight for young minds Schools going up in south of country

Afghan girls received school bags during the inauguration of a village primary school, built by Canadians, in Sparwan Ghar, 38 kilometres west of Kandahar, Afghanistan, on Saturday.

Of course it would help a lot if Pakistan's Military Intelligence Agencies were not funding and supporting the Taliban.

Since the Taliban schools are not schools but Madrasa for training insurgent fighters.

Afghan education minister says Taliban plan to set up schools is 'political propaganda'

Atmar described the Taliban as "enemies" of education, saying its militants had burned 183 schools in the past year, caused the closure of 396 others, forcing 200,000 students out of class. He also said 61 students and teachers had been killed.

"If they want to build schools, why are they burning our (government) schools?" he said.

Atmar dismissed the Taliban plan to open its own as "political propaganda," saying they did not control the provinces where it plans to set them up.

He said the government would have the "legitimate right" to attack Taliban schools that became centers of terrorism.

The Taliban's attacks on state schools in the past few years have chipped away at one of the main successes of Afghanistan's democratic revival: a huge foreign-funded development drive that has seen a fivefold increase in the number of children attending school.

Quetta is now the headquarters of the Taliban movement. What role are Pakistan’s intelligence agencies playing to sustain their presence?

President Musharraf relies on the religious party Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam, or JUI, which dominates this province, Baluchistan, as an important partner in the provincial and national parliaments.

At a madrasa, called simply Jamiya Islamiya, on winding Hajji Ghabi Road, a board in the courtyard proudly declares “Long Live Mullah Omar,” in praise of the Taliban leader, and “Long Live Fazlur Rehman,” the leader of JUI.

Members of the provincial government and Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam are frequent visitors to the school, the local opposition party member said, asking that his name not be used because he feared Pakistan’s intelligence services. People on motorbikes with green government license plates visit at night, he said, as do luxurious sport utility vehicles with blackened windows, a favourite of Taliban commanders.

Increasing Pakistani role seen in Taliban resurgence

The all-powerful Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), which had for long "used religious parties for Pakistan's domestic and foreign policy adventures", is extensively providing support to the Taliban.Western diplomats in Pakistan as well as Afghanistan say the ISI and the Military Intelligence are actively supporting a Taliban restoration in an effort to assert greater influence on the country's "vulnerable western flank" (read the porous Pak-Afghan border regions).

According to the New York Times, this is motivated not only by an Islamic fervour but also by a longstanding view that the jihadist movement allows them to assert greater influence in Afghanistan's border region.

According to the paper, so great is the ISI influence that even families who have lost their sons in suicide bombing missions against American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, say of the deaths on conditions of anonymity because of pressure from Pakistani intelligence agents.

The paper quoted a former Taliban commander as saying that Pakistani authorities jailed him when he refused to go to Afghanistan to fight against the NATO and Afghan forces, adding that for Western and local consumption, his arrest was billed as part of Pakistan's crackdown on the Taliban in the country.

According to Pakistani and Afghan tribal elders, former Taliban members who have refused to fight in Afghanistan have been arrested, or even mysteriously killed, after resisting pressure to re-enlist in the Taliban.

"The Pakistanis are actively supporting the Taliban," said a Western diplomat in Kabul, adding that he had seen an intelligence dossier highlighting a recent meeting on the Afghan border region between a senior Taliban commander and a retired colonel of the ISI.

Civilians on the border fear ISI

Carlotta Gall, a New York Times correspondent, who was manhandled and punched on December 19 by Pakistani agents who broke into her hotel room in Quetta, said Pakistanis and Afghans interviewed on the frontier — frightened by the long reach of Pakistan's intelligence agencies, spoke only with assurances that they would not be named. Even then, they spoke cautiously.

Despite this, they were visited by the ISI because the goons who broke into her hotel room copied data from the computers, notebooks and cellphones they seized, and tracked down her contacts and acquaintances.

They have been lucky not to have been killed so far because the ISI has a built a hideous reputation for bumping off people they see as being inimical to hardline Pakistani interests.

Some months back, Hayatullah Khan, a Pakistani journalist who exposed as lie the Pakistan military's claim of an attack on a terror camp (which was actually conducted by the US) was killed in cold blood.

See:

Baluchistan

Musharraf

Pakistan

Our Allies In Afghanistan Oppress Women

Womens Oppression Continues In Afghanistan

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Richardson On The Ticket

So who will place Bill Richardson on their ticket as Vice President? Obama or Clinton.

Bill Richardson, the avuncular governor of New Mexico, an internationalist with a gold-plated resume, on Sunday announced his intention to seek the Democratic presidential nomination, making history as the first Latino to have a credible chance to lead a national ticket.

Obama needs him more than Clinton does.

And this is just another 'first' in what appears to be a lot of firsts that will be occuring in the 2008 Presidential Race in the US.

First 'African'-American, not an American civil rights leader, running for President. First Woman, literally and figuratively as in First Lady, and now the first Latino.


As Russell Sadler says over at Blue Oregon;

"Obama, JFK and McCall were successful leaders because they were gifted with the ability to put into words what many people were thinking in a way that produces genuine empathy.

Democratic Party presidential candidates have not displayed this quality in decades. Among the present pretenders for the nomination, Sens. Joseph Biden and Christopher Dodd and Rep. Dennis Kucinitch do not display it. John Kerry and Al Gore? Nope. John Edwards displays it, but his base of support is too narrow. That leaves Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Unfortunately, her greatest strength is also her greatest weakness -- experience. The Republicans are in disarray. More than half the party is still in denial about why they lost control of Congress. A Clinton candidacy will be a lightning rod that will unite the Republicans, allowing them to paper over their differences to attack an old foe and get back in the game. That will be more difficult to do with Obama, who really represents a different generation."

Which is why Clinton made her abrupt announcement on the weekend, after having been coy about 2008 since 2004.

Hillary Clinton's abrupt announcement on Saturday that she is running for the presidency is a sign that her campaign is already in trouble. The most obvious answer is: panic. Since Barack Obama made his announcement last week, the Clinton camp must have felt a slippage in support, in terms of money and talent, that led it to announce the formation of her exploratory committee so abruptly.

It's going to be an interesting two years in American Politics.

This contrast was reflected in their announcement speeches. Obama attacked a politics that "has become so bitter and partisan'' and pledged himself to "our common interests and concerns as Americans.'' Clinton spoke proudly of her ability to take on partisan foes. "I have never been afraid to stand up for what I believe in or to face down the Republican machine,'' she said. "I know how Washington Republicans think, how they operate and how to beat them.''

The Democrats come out swinging with high profile candidates as the Republicans wallow around the trough looking for someone who looks not guilty.

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US Politics


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