Alternate News From Lebanon

Check out the Arabist Blog for a balanced view of the current crisis in the Middle East, complete with Canadian content. As well for first hand reporting check out Electronic Lebanon Net part of the Electronic Infatada. Also check out Indymedia Lebanon. Also check out Cienfuegos an interesting blog that covers the middle east.

Also See:

Israel

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Zionist Post

Yesterdays National Pest read like the official voice of Israel in Canada. It began with George Jonas front page column, where upon he defends Israels massacre of innocents as ethically moral. In particular he decends to defending the indefensible, the killing of Canadians in Lebanon because well it was an act of war.

We know little about the Canadians killed and injured in Lebanon yesterday. Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay confirmed eight dead and six severely wounded. Early reports describe them as vacationers with dual passports, caught in an Israeli air raid in the southern part of Lebanon.

We know one thing, though: Israel didn't mean to harm them.

What is going on in the Middle East right now is a war between people who mean to kill civilians and people who don't. It's a war between a side that regards shoppers and restaurant patrons and bus riders as fair game and deliberately selects them as targets, and a side that regards targeting shoppers and similar non-combatants as terrorism, and targets only terrorists.

The Pest goes further and uses Jonas logic in its editorial as well. In praising the Harpocrites defense of Israeli aggression and war making, the editorial says the the difference is that Israel is protecting itself and acccidents happen while the 'terrorists' are out to kill innocents.

Jonas claims that innocent civilians were killed in Hafia before the Israelis accidentally killed the Canadian family in Lebanon, along with hundreds of other innocents that have died in the past six days of war.

Those Israeli innocents were workers at a railway station, which is unfortunately a legitimate military target. As Israel has already shown, the destruction of infrastructure, roads, railways, airports, ports, electrical and water utilities are all objects of military interest.

That the Post and Jonas can use this logic that terrorists are out to kill innocents and Israel is out to stop them but opps some innocents get killed along the way defies logic. And is of course simply apologetics for the Zionist State.

Being the voice of the Israel lobby in Canada, the Pest includes other Zionist apologists like Warren Kinsella, and is owned by the Asper family who have used the Post and their other CanWest papers to voice their support for the Homeland including adulterating stories with editorial comments refering to legitimate political parties as terrorist organizartions.

The irony here is that despite the villification of Hamas and Hezzbollah as terrorist organiztions, they are legitimate political parties. One is the Government of Palestine, the other has elected representatives in the Government and parliment of Lebanon.

They are not unlike their earlier counterparts in Israel, the terrorists of Irkun and the Stern Gang who led to the creation of the State of Israel and whose members later became respected parlimentarians and leaders of political parties in this so called 'democratic oasis' in the Middle East.

Yep terrorists who killed innocents, declared war on Great Britain and other allied powers in the Middle East. Who gained their own state and promptly exiled the Palestinian and Arab population.

Sixty years later the terrorist state of Israel is continuing its practices of war against its neighbours, with little concern of innocents. To them all Arabs are terrorists. And it appears that the Harper, Jonas and the Post agree. So what if they are Canadians, shit happens, so sad too bad. That's war.

Really despicable apologetics for Zionism. How low can you go? Just watch.

Also See:

Israel

Zionism



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Energy Politics

What was to be Stephen Harpers big announcement at the G8, that Canada would declare itself the model of free market energy politics was snuffed out by other international issues. The fact is that the energy marketplace is Alberta not Canada, and while the Harpocrite was lecturing Russia on free market economics, Ralph Klein was touring Americans through the Tar Sands. Neither of these two want a royalty regime that will benefit Canadians though. Ironically Alberta is just like Russia, a one-pipleine state.

One Bulgarian contributor to the study, Ivan Krastev, coined this memorable commentary: "For the last two years Russia completed a spectacular transition from a one-party state to a one-pipeline state.''

Less often quoted is Krastev's conclusion: "The policy consequence of this is that any genuine democratization of Russia is going to be possible only after the liberalization of the Russian energy sector.''

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World On Fire-Who Sells The Matches

Imposing Free-Market Democracy Unleashes Ethnic Hatred

World on Fire considers Israeli Jews as a regional market-dominant minority. As such this regional minority contributes to a familiar pattern underlined by Amy Chua's prediction: "if popular elections were held throughout the Arab world, Israel would be a common whipping boy among vote-seeking politicians." The book does not seek to relate Middle East instability to mondial instability, or to take note of the widespread if not worldwide identification of Israeli Jews with Americans as a single global market-dominant force. A chapter entitled "Why They Hate Us" focuses upon the U.S. Chua does classify Ashkenazi Jews as a market-dominant minority within Israel, and touches upon Palestinians as a potential entrepreneurial factor throughout the region.

Chua outlines this dynamic early and with characteristic clarity: "When free market democracy is pursued in the presence of a market-dominant minority, the almost invariable result is backlash. This backlash typically takes one of three forms. The first is a backlash against markets, targeting the market-dominant minority's wealth. The second is a backlash against democracy by forces favorable to the market-dominant minority. The third is violence, sometimes genocidal, directed against the market-dominant minority itself."


"World On Fire" by Amy Chua - Salon

"World On Fire" is about a phenomenon Chua calls "market-dominant minorities," groups like the Chinese in Southeast Asia, Jews in Russia, whites in Zimbabwe and Indians in East Africa and Fiji. Market-dominant minorities control hugely disproportionate percentages of their countries' resources. Filipino Chinese comprise just 1 to 2 percent of the Philippines' population, but control all of the country's major supermarkets, fast-food restaurants and large department stores, and all but one of the nation's banks. A similar situation obtains in Indonesia. Jews make up a similarly tiny proportion of Russia's population, but of the seven "oligarchs" who control virtually all of the country's business, six are Jewish. Lebanese dominate the economies in Sierra Leone and Gambia, while Indians dominate the economy in Kenya, along with a smaller, indigenous minority tribe called the Kikuyu. Similar examples abound worldwide.

It's enormously touchy to talk about the economic element of communal violence, especially regarding Jews, since rhetoric about one ethnic group exploiting another is so often a precursor to atrocity. But that's exactly why Chua's book feels so urgent. No matter how politically incorrect it is to talk about, her book makes clear that minority market domination is a reality in much of the world, one that's tied up in many ways with smoldering group hatreds and explosions of mass slaughter, and one that's made worse by Western policies.

Heather -- The Fall of the Roman Empire

Amy Chua's book "World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability" [reviewed here] presents her argument that much of the world's economic activity is controlled by "market-dominant minorities" (MDMs) and as democratic values take hold, there is often a conflict with the power of those minorities in dangerous ways. More dramatically, she proposes that the US is effectively now a global "market-dominant minority" which controls global values and activities in ways that are often not in the best interest of many entrenched or traditional power bases in the industrial and non-industrialized world.

Even more recently, I had a chance to read Moises Naim's "Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats are
Hijacking the Global Economy," [reviewed here] which looks at illegal traffic in humans, drugs, guns, information, and cash from a neutral or economic perspective. His investigations suggest that illicit trade is growing much, much quicker than legitimate trade thanks to reduced costs of communication and transportation. And law enforcement is falling behind, when it is even cognisant enough to spot the new forms of illicit trade.

Taken as a set, these three books suggest sobering times ahead. The patterns they describe are deeply engrained in our modern world and guide world events as the tides would a boat. We can also add to this list Tom Barnett's book "The Pentagon's New Map" which charts the flow of people, money, ideas, equipment, and violence in different directions to form a geopolitical pattern with contrasting Gap and Functioning Core. Barnett recommends particular institutional solutions to "shrink the Gap."

WNYC - Reading Room: World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market ...

The Paradox of Free Market Democracy: Indonesia and the Problems Facing Neoliberal Reform

Author:	Amy L. Chua

Council on Foreign Relations Press
June 2000

Democracy isn't working

It is the west's calling card, but its global applicability is now in doubt

Big Bang Theory In Ruins (Washington Post)

The most intellectually honest case for the war in Iraq was never about Saddam Hussein's alleged stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction. It was the Big Bang Theory.

Not to be confused with theories about the origins of the universe, the Middle East Big Bang idea was simple and seductive. Unlike other arguments for the war, it was based on some facts, though also on some wishful thinking. The point was that the Middle East was a mess. A nest of authoritarian regimes bred opposition movements rebelling against the conditions under which too many people lived and energized by a radical Islamist ideology. Some of them turned to terror. In this bog of failure, moderate Muslims were powerless. They were frequently jailed or killed.

Democracy - Not "The Free Market" - Will Save America's Middle Class

Here are a couple of headlines for those who haven't had the time to study both economics and history:

1. There is no such thing as a "free market."

2. The "middle class" is the creation of government intervention in the marketplace, and won't exist without it (as millions of Americans and Europeans are discovering).

The conservative belief in "free markets" is a bit like the Catholic Church's insistence that the Earth was at the center of the Solar System in the Twelfth Century. It's widely believed by those in power, those who challenge it are branded heretics and ridiculed, and it is wrong.

In actual fact, there is no such thing as a "free market." Markets are the creation of government.

Markets are a creation of government, just as corporations exist only by authorization of government. Governments set the rules of the market. And, since our government is of, by, and for We The People, those rules have historically been set to first maximize the public good resulting from people doing business.

If you want to play the game of business, we've said in the US since 1784 (when Tench Coxe got the first tariffs passed "to protect domestic industries") then you have to play in a way that both makes you money AND serves the public interest.

Stop Calling It Free Trade! - Reclaim Democracy.org

International trade agreements erect trade barriers as often as they remove them. As Wayne Andreas, CEO of agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland, said, "There is not one grain of anything in the world that is sold in the free market. Not one. The only place you see a free market is in the speeches of politicians." Well acquainted with both illegal price fixing and legally wielding political power to extract taxpayer subsidies, Andreas knows of what he speaks.

Free Market Democracy and the Chilean and Mexican Countryside ...
Democracy's stability in Chile and Mexico may depend as much, or more critically, on the transformation of social structure and social life induced by the imposition of free market policies in the 1970s and 1980s. This book demonstrates how rural societal transformations induced by free markets support national democratic consolidation. Although existing research has often examined the effect of democratic politics on the process of economic reform, it has avoided analyzing how free market reforms are connected to the process of democratic consolidation.

Security and Democracy in a Free Market - Global Policy Forum ...

It was unfortunate that the ideas of Indian-born economist Amartya Sen did not reach Thailand prior to 1997, otherwise the country might have better faced up to, or even been able to avoid, the economic crisis. Back then, as many may recall, faith in the open market system prevailed. Thai policymakers of the 1990s did not dare move away from sole attention on "growth" despite their concerns about inequality and the quality of growth.

But to Sen, the market economy hasn't succeeded, not because some people's interests are suppressed and other people are kept from the market, but because people gain individual advantage from it.

Sen is one of the leading advocates of economic thinking who does not share Milton Friedman's and the Chicago School's faith in free market economics. The Friedman world has little space for consideration of poverty. These champions of complete economic liberalisation simply thought that poverty would be drastically reduced if their system were allowed full rein.

Sen dismissed such a view as too narrow. Instead, he promoted "welfare economics" which looks beyond the operation of the market to a scrutiny of the institution of poverty and the concept of "need".

Next month, Sen will be in Bangkok to share his thoughts and push the issues related to deprivation, poverty and democracy on to the agenda of acceptable norms of development. The 1998 Nobel laureate will join 1,500 participants at a regional confidence on "Challenges on creating human security in the era of globalisation", hosted by Chulalongkorn University.

Sen's presence on the issue of human security caps his success in merging economics and ethics. Here, he shot down a previous argument of free marketers like Friedman that two parties will enter an exchange, as long as it is voluntary, if they can benefit.

Sen's thinking, however, is that many people who aren't poor are nevertheless interested in the problem of poverty, and its eradication, not because they think it is more "efficient" to remove it but because it is "wrong"! In other words, many individuals often behave ethically, that is, they do not put their own self-interest first.

In practice, he also observed that various cooperative strategies among firms or groups are invariably adopted because people have notions of other's rights (as well as their own); they have a sense of community, which they want to continue even in a free market environment.

While people do have a general ethical view of life that is not purely selfish, there are implications for the economic organisation of society, taxation structures, financial assistance to the poor and the recognition of social needs.

CORNEL WEST--DEMOCRACY MATTERS IN OUR TIME: LOGOS SUMMER 2004

In our market-driven empire, elite salesmanship to the demos has taken the place of genuine democratic leadership. The majority of voting-age citizens do not vote. They are not stupid (though shortsighted). They know that political leadership is confined to two parties that are both parasitic on corporate money and interests. To choose one or the other is a little like black people choosing between the left-wing and right-wing versions of the Dred Scott decision. There is a difference but not much—though every difference does matter.

Yet a narrow rant against the new imperialism or emerging plutocracy is not enough. Instead we must dip deep into often-untapped wells of our democratic tradition to fight the imperialist strain and plutocratic impulse in American life. We must not allow our elected officials—many beholden to unaccountable corporate elites—to bastardize and pulverize the precious word democracy as they fail to respect and act on genuine democratic ideals.

The problems plaguing our democracy are not only ones of disaffection and disillusionment. The greatest threats come in the form of the rise of three dominating, antidemocratic dogmas. These three dogmas, promoted by the most powerful forces in our world, are rendering American democracy vacuous. The first dogma of free-market fundamentalism posits the unregulated and unfettered market as idol and fetish. This glorification of the market has led to a callous corporate-dominated political economy in which business leaders (their wealth and power) are to be worshipped—even despite the recent scandals—and the most powerful corporations are delegated magical powers of salvation rather than relegated to democratic scrutiny concerning both the ethics of their business practices and their treatment of workers. This largely unexamined and unquestioned dogma that supports the policies of both Democrats and Republicans in the United States—and those of most political parties in other parts of the world—is a major threat to the quality of democratic life and the well-being of most peoples across the globe. It yields an obscene level of wealth inequality, along with its corollary of intensified class hostility and hatred. It also redefines the terms of what we should be striving for in life, glamorizing materialistic gain, narcissistic pleasure, and the pursuit of narrow individualistic preoccupations—especially for young people here and abroad.

MaxSpeak on the March of Democracy

When it comes to "democracy" and "rule of law," the neocons reveal their historical roots in the New Class/Crolyite politics of the "Progressive" era. "Democracy" means participating in a periodic legitimization ritual in which you select the professional elites that govern you, after which you sit down and shut up. The democracy, of course, should be as centralized, indirect, and all-around Hamiltonian as possible. Politics should be the domain of apolitical expertise, with conflict minimized and decisions based on the consensus of right-thinking people (i.e., the centrist establishment of men in suits who control big government and big business). Although the neocons love to emphasize decentralist values in their talk of "civil society," their version of civil society and citizen involvement applies only to the realms of private consumption and recreation; it implies nothing remotely touching on the spheres of self-government or economic production, that might undermine the control of the duly constituted managerial and plutocratic classes over the corporate state.

Iraqi democracy, like the kind just established in Afghanistan, means choosing the guy who will take orders from the IMF/World Bank and start implementing the privatization/austerity/"intellectual property" regime designed by Milton Friedman or Jeffrey Sachs.

Joseph Stromberg recently described a recurring neoliberal pattern of "privatization" that might be more accurately described as the systematic looting of public assets by politically connected corporate elites. Stromberg described the typical "privatization" procedure as "funny auctions, that amounted to new expropriations by domestic and foreign investors"; the likely result, he says, is "a massive alienation of resources into the hands of select foreign interests." More specifically, Naomi Klein recounted, in vomit-inducing detail, the kind of "democracy" the Iraqi Provisional Authority tried to foist on the Iraqi people.

(It's odd, by the way, that the people so intent on introducing "free market" principles to the state-owned Iraqi economy under Bremer were in remarkably little hurry about removing Saddam's draconian penalties for organizing independent labor unions.)

Democracy Against the Free Market: The Enron Crisis
and the Politics of Global Deregulation

Chomsky: Market Democracy in a Neoliberal Order

Realistic View of US Past— Free Market Policies Not Democracy’s Key

Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (Buy One, Get One Free)

by Arundhati Roy Presented in New York City at The Riverside Church May 13, 2003

Thwarted by a surge of democracy

Under cover of unification, free market liberals hijacked Europe

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Did You Say Libertarian Communist

Yes indeed I did, and as usual I get comments from the great unwashed masses that this is a contradiction. Well once more into the fray we go, but this time from an indvidualist anarchist in Switzerland who says;

Thus, anarcho-communists could in fact be regarded as anti-property market anarchists. With this in mind, all anarchists have to realize that the differences between anarcho-communism, libertarian socialism, individualist anarchism and anarcho-capitalism are marginal and that we are all working towards the same goal—a stateless society. Economics: The Market as an Inevitable Result of Individualism

A tip o the blog to Kevin Carson for this.

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Land Reform=Privatization

A brilliant analysis of Land Reform as privatization is made by Kevin Carson where he points out;

As Jesse Walker points out at Reason Hit & Run, much of what Evo Morales calls "land reform" is what libertarians would call "privatization"--if it wasn't done by, you know, Evo Morales. And if the beneficiaries weren't poor people.

The point I was making in reply to Mr. Stupid Angry Canajun.


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The Truth Will Set You Free

Rusty Idols hits the nail on the head over the whole crisis in the Middle East.

"The occupied territories and Lebanon are two of the few democratic states in the Moslem world - what we say we want to happen. Now the Palestinians are being punished for voting the wrong way and Lebanon, an urbane secular democracy is being pounded into gravel. Coincidently just as it's economy was starting to recover enough to make it a competitor to Israel."

Like the war in Serbia, which was an attempt to force that reclariant State Capitalist regime to privatize, the American Empire and its corporate interests do not want freedom or democracy in the Middle East. They want a 'free market', which is neither, what it is actually is the freedom for Halliburton to get contracts that would normally go to Bin Laden Inc.

Lebanon and Palestine are economic competitors with Israel, the decision to build the so called security wall, the Berlin Wall by any other name, had more to do with destroying Palestinian agrarian villages, olive and orange groves their major source of export production, as it had to do with keeping terrorists out of Israel.

All war is captalist expansion by any other name. In the case of Israel it wants to remain the dominant capitalist regime in the region.It will bomb its competitors out of business.


Bush, Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, Hezzbollah, war, invasion, eiruit, hostage, USA, Middle-East, crisis
Canada, Harper, G-8,

Scandal Harper Style

Seven Canucks die

Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Ambra Dickie confirmed the seven deaths and said three other Canadians were injured in the attack, but declined to provide names or hometowns of the victims, citing privacy laws.

The deaths occurred as the federal government began organizing evacuation plans for Canadian citizens in Lebanon while the violence in the region continues to escalate.

Bad enough the Harpocrite government has condoned the Israeli war of aggression on the civilian population in Lebanon. Now the so called accountable transparent governmentof the Harpocrites hides behind privacy laws not to name names when Canadians are killed by their pals from the Israeli Defense Forces. The silence from the Harper government over the murder of Canadians by the Imperialist Israeli's is deafening, then they try and cover it up. And then only after these deaths do they bother to start planning to evacuate Canadians from this war zone. Duh Oh.

In a telephone interview, Akhras said he got little help from Canadian consular officials.

"We're seeing that people are not really that interested," he said. "What are they waiting for? More victims?"

Akhras said his brother told him the bodies of kids killed in the blast were shattered.

"These are Canadian citizens, they're not Lebanese," he said. "They were picked up in pieces. Piece by piece.

Another relative pleaded with Ottawa to intervene.

"They're killing innocent people. They kill children with bombs," said Hussein El-Akhras, Mahmoud's cousin.

Here is an example of that selective precise bombing by Israel which the Harpocriters applaud even as our own citizens are killed. The Conservatives single minded imitation of the US policy in regards to the Middle East is putting Canada and Canadians at risk.

Mariam Shihabiyah, 39, a divorced mother of five, clutches pillows from her apartment as she flees a bombed-out area near the destroyed Hezbollah headquarters in Beirut’s southern suburbs yesterday. After days of Israeli airstrikes, Shihabiyah returned to salvage belongings from her apartment, minutes before another series of air attacks hit the area. (Associated Press)

One of Israel's top generals said residents in Lebanon were alerted to possible air strikes and told to leave dangerous areas. "We convinced them to leave their villages and homes, and go to the north of the country," said Israel's Maj. Gen. Udi Adam.

Also See:

Israel

Afghanistan

Harper

Bush, Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, Hezzbollah, war, invasion, eiruit, hostage, USA, Middle-East, crisis
Canada, Harper, G-8,

Reply To Stupid Angry Canajun

The SAC blog has a rant on individual property rights where upon he says;

"As much as I respect Mr. Plawiuk, I disagree that the right to individual property ownership is evil."

I never said Property was evil, perse, it is not. What I said was that private property is the origin of capitalism and its state, it is theft as Proudhon called it. He also said it was freedom, that is you have the right to what you possess, but not the right to possess more, that is to become a rentier. Proudhons whole work on Property was against the idea of the rentier class, which by the by Mr. Canajun is exactly the problem with deals made like the example you have given;

"Individual responsibility must return to our lives or we will not have lives worth living. If I sign a great deal with an oil company regarding my property, and I care about my neighbours, I tell my neighbours about the deal."

And if you don't care so what, in most cases of individual responsibility from the right the next phrase used is MYOB. You made a deal there is no need to say anything to anyone about it.

But again your land use is no longer a matter of your own use, but now is subject to being land use by a rentier, whose impact on others may include poisioning their ground water. Which by the by would mean you have a social responsibility to your neighbours to inform them of the deal you made. Once you no longer merely use your property for yourself, but now involve a third party, whose environmental impact goes beyond your property to impact on others, you no longer are a sovereign individual with their own possessions, you are now involved in a contractual arrangement which may have an impact beyond you and your property.

Mr. Canajun goes on to say;

If I sign a deal with an oil company because I am forced to, by way of required association with my neighbours, I undoubtedly end up with a loser of a deal because human nature ensures one or more of the group is corrupt or too stupid to understand the implications of the deal and this person frequently ends up in a position of power over the rest of the group who are too tired, busy or otherwise not motivated to get involved.

There is that force issue, who forced you? Ah right you are required to associate with your neighbours, for a common good. But what if your actions, a private deal with the oil company has the same impact, you are then the corrupt power hungry individual who affects their community without regard of their neighbours property rights. This is of course a straw man arguement, full of typical right wing assertions , that the common good of all is a threat to the individuals rights. Which of course is untrue. The historic case is that the large landowner is a tyrant over his neighbours, he is in effect the rentier with a monopoly, like his aristorcratic ancestors. For an excellent example of this see the movie Missouri Breaks.

The nature of private property is that it arises from the commons, from the encroachment acts of the state which limit the communal farm lands and creates private lands which can be fenced. It is this privatization of farming which creates capitalism in its modern form, and continues to plague the world today with despotism of the landlords/ladowners over the peasants. It is in effect theft of the peasants property both individual and communal that allows you Mr. Canajun to have the right to property.






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Tit for Tat

Our glorious Great Leader the Harpocrite says that Israel is only defending itself. Alrighty then explain this;

More than 100 Lebanese, mostly civilians, have been killed in the Israeli offensive, police said. In Israel, four civilians have been killed in Hezbollah rocket attacks. On Saturday, Hezbollah fired about 100 rockets at communities across northern Israel, the army said, hitting Tiberias, 22 miles from the Lebanese border, in the deepest strike yet. At least two homes were seriously damaged, and eight people were lightly wounded, medics said. Israel batters Hezbollah HQ, wipes out radar sites

As Israel claimed before the hostage taking, that Hamas rocket attacks were the reason for it to counter with its own rocket attacks which killed innocent civilians, Hamas rockets while a definite provocation had not killed anyone, now we have a massive offensive by Israel on two fronts killing and maiming civilians, while the counter attacks have been largely sturm and drang with little real impact on the Israeli population. Unlike Isreal's assaults which have had real impact on Palestinians in Gaza and now the Lebanonese. This is not self defense this is War.

The Israeli air strikes across Lebanon on Saturday hit roads, bridges, seaports, gas stations and fuel depots, taking a mounting toll of civilian casualties. In the Gaza Strip, Israeli warplanes attacked the Palestinian Ministry of Economy, keeping up a campaign of air strikes against institutions of the Hamas-led government in an effort to secure the release of a soldier abducted last month by militants.


Also See: Israel


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Canadian Exceptionalism

The Conservatives since they were the Reform Party, then the Alliance, have been staunch supporters of Israeli Imperialism in the Middle East. So what else is new. Well they now have made this internal policy a national policy in response to the current illegal war being conducted by a rogue nation whom they support unconditionally. Once again forgetting that they are a MINORITY government, and do not speak for all Canadians. If anything will lead to further terrorist targeting of Canada it is this.

With Israel exercising its military might on the ground in Gaza and in skies over Lebanon, leaders around the world — with the notable exception of our own Prime Minister — are calling on Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to apply less force. Speaking for Israel's closest ally, United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says: "It is extremely important that Israel exercise restraint in its acts of self-defence." Onus for restraint not just on Israel


Also See:

Israel



Bush, Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, Hezzbollah, war, invasion, eiruit, hostage, USA, Middle-East, crisis
Canada, Harper, G-8,

No Money For Carbon Credits But Lots for LNG

Here is the irony of the Harpocrites international policies, they denounce Kyoto because Canada would be spending millions on European carbon credits, while promoting Canadian investment in Russian Gas and Oil instead. Hmmmm. And this should make us all more wary of LNG development in Canada.

Canada hopes to turn itself into a key transit point for liquefied natural gas shipped to North America, in part by allowing gas companies to bypass more stringent regulatory requirements along the U.S.'s heavily populated eastern seaboard. At least eight Canadian gas projects are scheduled for construction by the end of this decade.



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Maggie Harper

Stephen Harper got a vote of confidence from Margaret Thatcher,

Oh be still my beating heart, the Harpocrite is now in the Reagan/Thatcher club of Neo-Con artists. Yep what Maggie did for England, Harper intends to do to Canada. Too bad the neo-con strategy is so out of date, some one should tell the Harpocrites their ideology is past its expiry date. It only works during a debt and deficit hysteria, not during a boom.


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Russia Is Right

'One cannot justify the continued destruction by Israel in Lebanon and in Palestinian territory, involving disproportionate use of force in which the civilian population suffers,'' Moscow said a statement Thursday. ''We firmly reaffirm support for Lebanon's sovereignty and territorial integrity.''

While the Harpocrite quizling sounds like Polly Parrot.

Bush emphasized Israel's right to defend itself.

''Israel has the right to defend itself,'' Harper said repeatedly during his 6 1/2-hour transatlantic flight to London.

G-8 leaders at odds over latest Mideast conflict





Also See: Israel


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Sex Can Be Dangerous

T-Rex Sex that is. Like horny teen agers everywhere, T-Rex becomes a juvenile delinquent at puberty.

Tyrannosaur Life Span Similar to Large Mammals, Study Says

The researchers found that mortality rates for Albertosaurus were high in the first two years of life, possibly due to predation, and then decreased until the teenage years, according to the researchers.

After age 13, the mortality rates jumped to 23 percent, researchers found. Dinosaurs lived roughly 30 years, about the same length of time as bears. Some reptiles can live 50 to 100 years or more.

``It was a real mid-life crisis, so to speak,'' Erickson said in a telephone interview today. ``Something happened to these animals at mid-life.''

Combat during mating is a possible reason the mortality rates spiked in the dinosaur's teenage years, Erickson said.

``Love was a dangerous game for tyrannosaurs,'' he said. ``Some animals today will often have combat and that can be lethal.''

Even T. rex struggled with midlife crisis

Study charts dinosaur survival rates

The living was easy for young tyrannosaurs

For Tyrannosaurs, Teen Years Were Murder

Also See:

Dinosaurs

Fossils

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Headline Says It All

Humiliating spectacle of a world leader caught without a policy

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Liberals Military Heritage

Fleet plagued by problems

Crash of a Canadian Forces helicopter, which killed 3 and injured 4 off Nova Scotia, occurred while aircraft was under restrictions because of past mechanical troubles

EDITORIAL: Keep our Snowbirds airworthy

Under the Trudeau government the Canadian state focused less on external military operational capacity and more on the use of the military for domestic problems.

One was the Trudeau fear of insurrection in Quebec post the FLQ crisis, the other was the idea that the military should also be used for domestic emergencies, like clearling snow from Toronto streets or clean up after storms.

The Trudeau government also looked at the military as an opportunity to offer jobs to Maritimers whose local fishing industry was in decline. Along with the policy of promoting the depopulation of the Maritimes by promoting fishers to take up work elsewhere in Canada, the military offered trades training to the unemployed.

Combined with the Liberals ideology that the military was for peace keeping, and their disdane for NATO (though unlike the NDP they never admitted to wanting to leave NATO, they merely provided the absolute minimum required to maintain membership) military equipment purchased was for domestic use.

After WWII the dismantling of the merchant marine directly impacted on Canada's ability to maintain its ship building ability.

Under the Mulroney government the final destruction of Canada's indigenous ship and aircraft building industry was sealed with the Free Trade Agreement and NAFTA. What the Liberals had wrecked with indifference, the Conservatives now finally killed with its sucking up to the U.S.

Under the Chretien Liberals, a new policy was introduced, one that bespoke the Liberals frugality with taxpayers money, post-Mulroney's spending spree, the government would only buy used military equipment at bargain basement prices, and would continue to maintain old outdated equipment past their expiry date.

There are no such thing as accidents. The failure of the Submarine fleet, the aging helicopter fleets, the dangerous outdated fleet of Tudor aircraft for Canada's Snowbirds, all this is the direct result not only of the Canadian Governments failure to fund the military but the result of the death of Canada's own homegrown ship and aircraft industries. The Liberals had no use for an indigenous Military Industrial complex, satisfied being a branch plant supplier to the US for its war operations.

The Liberals focused their policies on domestic peace keeping, increasing the capabilities of the military and police to monitor the Left, Labour, the Anti-War movement and Quebec nationalists.

Under the Conservatives, both Mulroney and now the Harpocrites, the military industrial complex that did exist in Canada was further reduced to hewers of wood and drawers of water for the benefit of the Americans.

Today the military is being funded to buy new equipment, from the U.S. And that includes secondary manufacturing and maintance, something Canada once was famous for, is now being contracted out.

The failure to subsidizde the Canadian Military Industrial complex was a political choice of the Liberals, they had little use for the Military, except to quell another Quebec crisis. For the Conservatives its a political choice as well, to integrate the Canadian Military Industrial complex into the American one. Meaning that our military will be supplied by the American Military Industrial complex.

Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.




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The Alternative To CBC

Is private monopoly;
Bell/GlobeMedia/CTV.
Yep, be still my beating heart.
The right and private broadcasters like to attack CBC and claim that the private sector should provide news, sports etc. The usual blah blah blah about competition. Right-o like this; CTV buys out rival CHUM.

CHUM announces layoffs in morning, while a friendly take over by CTV halts share trading yesterday on the TSX in the afternoon. Can you spell monopoly? Yep I can its three little letters; CTV. And you gotta love this bit;

Bell Globemedia president and chief executive, Ivan Fecan, said in an interview that news operations at CTV and CHUM will remain independent. “We’ll have two separate news organizations, one at CTV and one in Citytv, and they won’t report to each other in any way,” Fecan said. “I don’t think there’s any upside in having them being the same. You actually want them to be different because they have different approaches.

Sure no sooner did this come out of his mouth than across the country CITY TV has laid off its front of house staff, including its news anchors. Layoffs come as deal is unveiled

Citytv has been downsized.

Yesterday's takeover of its parent company CHUM Ltd. by CTV parent company, Bell Globemedia, for $1.7 billion wipes most local Citytv content off the air.

Breakfast Television survives -- and may be expanded -- but the 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts are gone.

But at least Frank and Gordon kept their jobs. But they only do commercials. And they aren't part of the union, like real folks who are getting laid off. Stop the CHUM deal and the layoffs says CEP

This comes after CHUM recently bought out its competitor Craig Broadcasting.

Thus in becoming a bigger fish in the media marketplace, CHUM got swallowed by an even Bigger Fish.

Bay Street calls it mergers and acquisitions, I call it monopoly. And it will impact the non-pay/non-cable portion of your TV. Which includes of course local news.

The reason for the merger, was that CHUM dominates the specialty/cable channels. Which make money.

TV sector growth slows: Statscan

A day after one of the biggest mergers in Canadian television history was announced, Statistics Canada reported growth in that sector slowed significantly last year. While the overall television industry slowed because of sluggish results from conventional television, the pay-television and specialty channel segment showed strong increases in revenue and profit.

Also See:

Monopoly

Media

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Eyeless In Gaza

The outrage against the illegal Israeli invasion of Gaza and its armed assault on the Palestinian Authority and its terror attacks on the Palestinian population is growing. Albeit amongst the leftwing blogs.

My Blahg On Gaza

It's Time to End the "Last Taboo" and Hold Israel Accountable for Its Actions - by Stephen Lendman



The left folks.

Not liberals like Mindelle Jacobs of the Sun who on the issue of Israel and Gaza sounds more like that other bitch queen at the the Sun; Michael Coren.
And like the proverbial Israeli Apologist and Suck Up Warren Kinsella liberals in Canada defend the aparthied state. In fact that is how they define themselves as liberals. For liberals Israel is the very model of a modern major democratic state.

For the Left the State of Israel is Imperialist and an occupying power, that is barely legitimate, the liberals paen that Israel is somehow democratic forgets the disenfranchised Arab population.

"The extermination of the Native Americans can be admitted, the morality of Hiroshima attacked, the national flag (of the US) publicly committed to flames. But the systematic continuity of Israel's 52-year oppression and maltreatment of the Palestinians is virtually unmentionable, a narrative that has no permission to appear."

--Edward Said, Palestinian writer, scholar and activist

And then as I googled Eyeless in Gaza, which is a novel by Aldous Huxely ( and an avante garde band) , I found these complimentary articles;

A critique of the media coverage from Australia Eyeless in Gaza

And from the US Arms and influence: Eyeless in Gaza

And in an article from last year after the Israeli withdrawl from Gaza we are reminded of the economic differences between the Palestinians and the Israelis. An economic relationship of indentured servitude by one group to the other.

According to the Palestinian Economic Council for Reconstruction and Development (PECDAR), annual per capita income in Gaza continues to average roughly $700, compared to the $16,000 per capita income enjoyed by Israelis. In the absence of relatively well-paying jobs, what will happen to the lines of unemployed Gazans? The potential flight of employment seekers -- a formidable phenomenon worldwide -- is only one problem. More immediately, if Gazans cannot feed their families, the recurrence of cross-border violence, if not a third intifada, will only be a matter of time. Eyeless in Gaza - Salon

Also See:

Gaza

Israel

Zionism/Anti-Zionism


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