Hey Cus,Good To Know Ya

Jurrasic Park may arise with a Neandertal colony instead of Dinosaurs. After all in the 19th Century we kept folks in Zoo's during the rise of European colonization of Africa. And they were human beings. These folks after all are only our cousins.

Announcing a two year Neandertal genome decoding project ...
"If Dr. Pääbo and 454 Life Sciences should succeed in reconstructing the entire Neanderthal genome, it might in theory be possible to bring the species back from extinction by inserting the Neanderthal genome into a human egg and having volunteers bear Neanderthal infants. This might be the best possible way of finding out what each Neanderthal gene does, but there would be daunting ethical problems in bringing a Neanderthal child into the world again."

How Neandertal DNA Will Shed Light on Human Genes
Neandertals, our most closely related cousins, vanished approximately 30,000 years ago, leaving only traces of their existence. Now scientists in Germany and Connecticut plan to resurrect their DNA, potentially shedding light on our own unique evolutionary path.

Also See:
454 Life Sciences' Genome Sequencer 20(TM) Wins R&D 100 Award

ScienceDaily: Neandertal Genome To Be Deciphered

Max Planck Society - Press Release Neandertal Genome to be Deciphered


But it seems that it has taken ten years to get this project off the ground

Neandertal DNA Archaeology September/October 1997
For the first time, DNA of a premodern human has been recovered. Svante Pääbo of the University of Munich and colleagues in Germany and the United States successfully extracted the DNA from a right humerus (upper arm bone) of a Neandertal. Their findings, presented in the July issue of the journal Cell, provide important information about when Neandertals and modern humans diverged from a common ancestor, the nature of interaction between Neandertals and modern humans, and the ultimate fate of the Neandertals.

Neandertal DNA sequences and the origin of modern humans.
Furthermore, the age of the common ancestor of the Neandertal and modern human mtDNAs is estimated to be four times greater than that of the common ancestor of human mtDNAs. This suggests that Neandertals went extinct without contributing mtDNA to modern humans.

Are you a Neandertal? Take the genome sequency quiz on how much you know about Neandertal DNA. The Neandertal Mystery (and human history)

With all this news about Neandertal's in 2006 it could be because this is the 150 anniversary of the first discovery of Neandertal.

The 1856 discovery of the Neandertal type specimen (Neandertal 1) in western Germany marked the beginning of human paleontology and initiated the longest-standing debate in the discipline: the role of Neandertals in human evolutionary history




.

We may have coexisted but human Neandertal interaction appears limited to humans taking over long deserted Neandertal caves. Scientists find contention in the idea that their was social interaction and mating between us For instance a the conclusion in a 2004 Study found: No Evidence of Neandertal mtDNA Contribution to Early Modern Humans.

But that was contradicted this summer by the release of this study:

There is a little Neanderthal in a lot of us

People who have large noses, a stocky build and a beetle brow may indeed be a little Neanderthal, according to a genetic study. But the good news is that other research concludes that Neanderthals were much more like us than previously thought.

People of European descent may be five per cent Neanderthal, according to a study published in the journal PLoS Genetics, which suggests we all have a sprinkling of archaic DNA in our genes. The researchers focused on linkage "disequilibriums," or sections within genes that did not make sense if only modern human matings are considered.

"Instead of a population that left Africa 100,000 years ago and replaced all other archaic human groups, we propose that this population interacted with another population that had been in Europe for much longer, maybe 400,000 years," says Dr Vincent Plagnol, of the University of Southern California, who with Dr Jeffrey Wall analysed 135 different regions of the human genetic code. "Possible Ancestral Structure in Human Populations".

Meanwhile our cousins appear to have survived longer than once thought.Carbon dating confirms Neandertals lived longer along with modern humans than previously thought. Giving more evidence of possible interaction.

Neandertals' Last Stand Was in Gibraltar, Study Suggests
A new cave discovery suggests that Neandertals survived until at least 28,000 years ago—2,000 years longer than previously thought. The Iberian Peninsula—now home to Spain, Portugal, and Gibraltar—was a final holdout for Neandertals (often spelled "Neanderthals") as modern humans spread across the rest of Europe and an ice age descended, a new study says .


The Last of the Neandertals?
The Gibraltar dates appear to represent the latest known Neandertal sighting, because there are no other accepted sites younger than 30,000 uncalibrated years ago. But the Gibraltar Neandertals were not entirely alone: Although there are very few modern human sites in southern Spain or Portugal at that time, one site about 100 kilometers east at Bajondillo, Spain, has been dated to about 32,000 uncalibrated years ago. The team concludes that Neandertals did not rapidly disappear from the area as moderns advanced across Europe but co-existed with them by taking refuge at Gibraltar and other southern sites over thousands of years. "While pioneer modern humans were staking tenuous footholds" in the region, the last Neandertals "were hanging on," Finlayson says. He points out that Gibraltar was surrounded by coastal wetlands and woodlands and blessed with mild temperatures around this time, making the peninsula an excellent refuge from competition with the moderns.

But they were not wiped out by modern humans. No siree....wait for it.....Climate Change may have had something to do with it.

Neanderthals' 'last rock refuge

Chris Stringer thinks the site provides an important insight into the reasons for Neanderthal extinction.

"For years, many of us have tended to look for one single reason why Neanderthals died out - that we interbred with them, or out-competed them, or killed them off. The Gibraltar evidence fits into a picture that has been emerging in recent years of quite a complex event," he explained.

"The idea of modern humans coming in and Neanderthals dying out simply didn't happen."

One view of Neanderthal extinction has them rapidly vanishing as modern humans swept across Europe. Modern man is a suspect, but the new evidence supports an important role for climate change.

In the end, rapid climate change may have doomed the species

The Neanderthals survived in local pockets during previous Ice Ages, bouncing back when conditions improved. But the last one appears to have been characterised by several rapid and severe changes in climate which hit a peak 30,000 years ago.

These were probably more dramatic in more northerly parts of Europe, where they may have upset the balance between Neanderthals and modern humans, allowing moderns to gain the upper hand.

PNAS, January 17, 2006; 103(3): 553 - 557.
T. Higham, C. B. Ramsey, I. Karavanic, F. H. Smith, and E. Trinkaus
Revised direct radiocarbon dating of the Vindija G1 Upper Paleolithic Neandertals



And Neandertals may be the evolutionary norm and modern humans the deviant, coincidental with Stephen J. Goulds theory of evolution being a truncated bush rather than a tree.






Modern Humans, not Neandertals, may be evolution's "odd man out"

New research published in the August, 2006 journal Current Anthropology by Neandertal and early modern human expert, Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., professor of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, suggests that rather than the standard straight line from chimps to early humans to us with Neandertals off on a side graph, it's equally valid, perhaps more valid based on the fossil record, that the line should extend from the common ancestor to the Neandertals, and Modern Humans should be the branch off that. "I wanted to see to what extent Neandertals are derived, that is distinct, from the ancestral form. I also wanted to see the extent to which modern humans are derived relative to the ancestral form," Trinkaus says. "What I came up with is that modern humans have about twice as many uniquely derived traits than do the Neandertals. "In the broader sweep of human evolution," says Trinkaus, "the more unusual group is not Neandertals, whom we tend to look at as strange, weird and unusual, but it's us - Modern Humans."

The most unusual characteristics throughout human anatomy occur in Modern Humans (right), argues Trinkaus, not in Neadertals (left).

Trinkaus first asserted this theory three years ago.


And Neandertals were more advanced than once thought.

How modern were European Neanderthals?

Neandertals were much more like modern humans than had been previously thought, according to a re-examination of finds from one of the most famous palaeolithic sites in Europe by Bristol University archaeologist, Professor Joao Zilhao, and his French colleagues.

Professor Zilhao has been able to show that sophisticated artefacts such as decorated bone points and personal ornaments found in the Châtelperronian culture of France and Spain were genuinely associated with Neandertals around 44,000 years ago, rather than acquired from modern humans who might have been living nearby. His findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) USA.

Now archaeologists can show that the Grotte des Fées stratigraphic pattern is illusory because the supposedly Neandertal levels overlying those belonging to the modern human Aurignacian culture are in fact backdirt from nineteenth-century fossil hunting. According to Professor Zilhao and his team, this adds to the evidence from other sites in the region that the Neandertals already had the capacity for symbolic thinking before the arrival of the modern humans into western Europe, which has been radiocarbon dated to around 40,000 years ago.

Professor Zilhao said: "This discovery, along with research on the rock strata at other cave sites, has huge implications for how we view the European Neandertals and, more widely, human evolution. The differences between Neandertals and modern humans may be much less than had been previously thought, suggesting that human cognition and symbolic thinking may date back to before the two sub-species split around 400,000 years ago."

New Neandertal remains from Cova Negra (Valencia, Spain).

The recognition of diagnostic Neandertal features in several of the specimens, as well as their western European context and late Pleistocene age, suggests that all the human remains from Cova Negra represent Neandertals. The archaeological evidence from Cova Negra indicates sporadic, short-term occupations of the site, suggesting a high degree of mobility among Neandertals.

Evidence shows they were tool makers who had developed a flint based tool manufacturing base. Anghilak Cave: Documenting Neandertal Occupation at the Periphery thus proving the importance labour in the transition of becoming human.

And evidence shows that Neandertals were practicing mutual aid and solidarity.

Does Wounded Skull Hint at Neandertal Nursing?
European researchers have investigated a 36,000-year-old case of assault and battery. Their conclusion: the victim, a Neandertal, possibly male, received a violent blow to the head. Presumably he survived, however, because somebody nursed him back to health.

Neandertal Humans Developed Social Skills
"This is the oldest example of someone surviving for some period of time without an effective set of choppers," Trinkaus said. "There had to have been extensive preparation of food a combination of cutting and cooking before this person could eat. They had good cutting tools and controlled fire, but the absence of real hearths and tools that would have done more than dice the food suggests that this individual was being given softer food items by other members of the social group

A good site dealing with Neandertals and Evolution/Creationism is Fossil Hominids. Because the evidence show that Neandertals were not what Creationists claim they are;

They were people, forced to live in harsh conditions, after the dispersal of humanity at Babel, during the great post-Flood Ice Age.



Scientists made castings from two Neandertal specimens to reconstruct the first-ever fully articulated Neandertal skeleton, seen above in frontal and side views.
National Geographic News March 10, 2005

For a virtual tour on Neandertals go to: Prehistoric Cultures -- Universitiy of Minnesota Duluth They prove that Jocks are not an evolutionary branch of Neandertals.

Old Stone Age is a website dedicated to ongoing Neandertal digs in Europe.

Blogs to keep you uptodate on the lastest Neandertal news;

John Hawks Anthropology Weblog paleoanthropology, genetics, and evolution

General Evo News

Technocrati Links for Neandertal


And about that spelling thing.....Robert J. Sawyer: Neanderthal or Neandertal

And you too can be a Neandertal.



See:

Anthropology

Evolution

Darwin

Primitive Man




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Neo-Liberal State Capitalism In Asia

Reading the Right from the Left.

Free Trade Zones are the newest formation of state capitalism. Of course the contradiction here is that they pose as a form of free trade. When in fact the difference between them and state enterprizes is simply a matter of ownership. Name change really. Of course there are concrete structural differences to. But for all intents and purposes both are forms of state capitalism.

Whether they are called new economic zones; in Canada's Maritimes (dominated by call centres rather than the traditional use of these zones for manufacturing), Maquiadoras in the Caribean, Latin and South America, or Special Enterprize Zones zones in Asia and Aftica or economic reconstruction Zones in American inner cities, they remain a market distortion.

In India they are finding that the creation of these Special Enterprize Zones (SEZ) distort the market place. And since they are implemented as one of the tools of neo-liberalism to free the market of state control it is another contradiction of real existing captialism, rather than the text book capitalism of the Austrian or Chicago schools. Such text book capitalism showed its failure in the melt down of the Russian economy after its failed attempts to privatize with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989.


Attack on Indias economic zone plan

Since the passing of the Special Economic Zones Act in February, hundreds of businesses have rushed to take advantage of generous tax breaks, causing consternation in the finance ministry, the central bank and even the International Monetary Fund.

Special economic zones have been established in several countries, most notably in China, where they attracted the foreign investment and know-how that were central to the modernisation programme launched in 1978. However, critics claim SEZs attract investment only by offering distortionary incentives rather than by building underlying competitiveness and can delay real economy-wide reform

But economists believe the proposed SEZs are unlikely to help Indian manufacturers achieve scale efficiencies, since 133 of the 267 are less than 1 square kilometre in area. The average size is just 4.2 sq km.

“Mega-sized SEZs are the ideal solution,” said Chetan Ahya of Morgan Stanley. “We believe that in today’s highly competitive globalised world, the concept of small-sized SEZs is completely outdated.”

In a continuation of a long-running turf war with the commerce ministry, finance ministry officials said the scheme was providing unnecessary tax breaks to real estate development that would have taken place regardless of whether there was a SEZ scheme in place.

It remains the function of the state to create these zones, through cheap land, tax and regulation breaks, in particular labour laws, health and safety regulations, etc. In other words it is not about trade or even production but cheap manufacturing of goods, which can only be brought about by an attack on labours wages and benefits, which eat into surplus value (profit). When the neo-liberals call for de-regulation, ending red tape, etc. it is always the labour laws they focus on or laws that impact on workers. A couple examples from the Financial Times online should suffice to make the point.

UK in secret deal with Italy on China trade

Britain has just enough EU member states ready to support its exemption from the working time directive – seen as a vital part of Britain’s flexible labour market – but the coalition is flaky.But the proposed deal has hit a hitch: Italy has so far refused to give Britain the written assurances it wants on working hours. Communists and socialists in Mr Prodi’s coalition believe the UK’s working time “opt out” exploits workers and gives Britain an unfair advantage over countries where the 48-hour limit applies.



Another shift in ownership from an autarkic form of state capitalism to a monopoly state capitalism like India's (their so called Democratic State Capitalism) is currently occuring in China as part of its economic reforms. That is the creation of capitalist law, specifically bankruptcy law.

China state firms win stay of execution

The move, aimed at cushioning the social impact on employees of financially strained state companies, will slow the disposal of bad loans held by state banks and distressed debt companies and perhaps also reduce buyout opportunities for foreigners.

The bankrupcty law, passed in August after more than a decade of debate, is seen as crucial stage in China’s reforms as it enables creditors and investors to weed out underperforming companies by filing for bankruptcy to recover at least part of their funds.

However, the law, which is due to come into effect in June 2007, will not apply to 2,116 state-owned enterprises considered at financial risk by the Chinese authorities until at least the end of 2008.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Professor Li Shuguang, one of the authors of the new law, said that for those companies, employees’ health and wage claims would still take precedence over creditors’ claims, an arrangement that had so far slowed restructuring in some sectors.

Estimates of the claims by state employees range from hundreds to thousands of billions of renminbi, China’s currency.

In other words before the capitalist risks their investment, the public has alread invested more than the private capitalist ever would. Any change in the regulations of the state, do not minimize the state, they simply make it more open to the influence of monopoly capital for its own interest.

Private equity firms’ and foreign multinationals’ efforts to buy and restructure state companies would also suffer a setback.

Professor Li, who hosted a seminar for Wall Street analysts and investors at New York’s China Institute in September, said it was “the most important law in China’s development of a market economy”.

“It shows the central government’s commitment to introducing a market economy and to use the legal system to deal with the issues arising from a market economy. That would have been unthinkable 10 or even five years ago.”

Actually the most important development of the Chinese economy in its transition to monopoly corporate state capitalism from the autarkic variety was the opening up of the banking system to foreign investment and the development of a stock exchange.

The later was further enhanced by China's take over of Hong Kong one of the biggest market exchanges in the world. While the PR was that this was the end of British colonial rule over the island and the end of the age old battle between China and Britain which began during the opium wars, Hong Kong's value was its investment and banking window onto the monopoly capitalist world.

A major portion of the foreign investment in China consists of Chinese private capital
recycled through Hong Kong. The importance of Hong Kong for the growth of nonstate
enterprises in China lies in its efficient financial markets and legal system.
A Proposal to Privatize Chinese Enterprises and End Financial Repression
Cato Journal -Volume 26 Number 2, Spring/Summer 2006

This new bankruptcy law however is a major and significant change for enabling foreign captial to buy and operate state enterprizes, not create new ones with their own capital. In other words a Public Private Partnership (P3) the keystone of the neo-liberal economic reforms in this period of globalization.

Foreign Direct Investment, FDI in China is not being invested in new enterprize zones nor in the developing private sector. Rather it is focused on Partnerships in existing State Enterprizes or SOE's as they are called. This means that Western corporate monopolies financial and manufacturing, are partnering with existing state enterprizes awaiting the day they can buy them at fire sale prices.

The market reforms in China, as they have been applied elsewhere, once again shows the textbook liberaltarian idealists of the Von Mise institute and the neo-liberals at the CATO institute overlook the key determinant of the capitalist market that is the labour theory of value.

For them labour is reduced to an input value not unlike raw materials and technology. It is a form of variable capital investment. More importantly for this form of liberal economics, cost, price and consumption rule. Yet in reality, by their own admission labour value is the key to capital creation. Even in China during this transisition from the autarky of State Capitalism to a privatized state capitalism.

The key here is that the two components of liberalization are P3's in State industries and the transfer of the responsibility of social benefits to the State.
What makes private industry competitive is its ability to keep wages and benefits low even more than a cheap tax regime. The lattter is gravy.

China has allowed both private industry and its own state enterprizes to transfer their responsibility for wages and benefits to the state. Ironically the state has no infrastructure for the delivery of unemployment insurance, health care, welfare or social assistance, pensions etc. because these orginally had been the responsibility of the State enterprises.

With Dengs capitalist reformation the result was an uneven playing field. Free Trade Zones and private companies were allowed to exploit the vast labor market with low wages and no benefits. While the state enterprizes were expected to carry on with higher wages and benefits.

This produced the false impression that private enterprize and Free Trade Zone businesses are more productive than state owned enterprizes. They are not more productive, they are more profitable because they keep more of the surplus value of their labour due to lower wages and no benefits.

The sources of the Chinese economic miracle are well known. The
rise in rural incomes, with the adoption of the household responsibility
system (the shift away from collectivized farming) and the bonus
from the demographic transition with a fall in the dependency ratio
(the ratio of children and the old to workers), led to a marked rise in
savings rates.

A monumental unintended consequence of the decollectivization
of agriculture was the initiation of a boom in small-scale,
nonfarm rural enterprises, which began with Deng Xiaoping’s injunction
that it was virtuous to be rich. Local party officials took this to
heart, becoming directors and managers of township and village enterprises
(TVEs).

With the rise in farm incomes, the pent-up demand for manufactured
goods and housing was met by the TVEs, which were run as
profit-making capitalist enterprises, even though they were collectively
owned. They provided the local authorities with “extrabudgetary
revenues” and gave officials legal opportunities to become
rich.

Unlike SOEs, the TVEs did not carry any welfare responsibilities
and were free to hire and fire the abundant local labor. With Deng’s
creation of the Special Economic Zones in China’s southern rim in
the early 1980s, the TVEs—and later individually owned private
firms—became the spearhead of a Dickensian capitalism.

These nonstate enterprises have made China into the processing
center for manufactured goods in the world. Success has occurred by
using cheap labor in the Chinese countryside along with foreign technology,
and relying on self-financing from household savings and
enterprise profits, along with foreign capital from the Chinese diaspora
and a myriad of multinationals, and engaging in fierce locational
competition promoted by local municipal authorities.
This labor intensive industrialization is now spreading inland along
the Yangtze (The Economist 2004: 13).

These spin-offs from the decollectivization of agriculture were
aided by the massive buildup of infrastructure by the state.

Labor intensive export industries were further helped by domestic price
reforms and by one of the largest unilateral liberalizations of foreign
trade in history.

The rapid export-led industrialization in the private sector is based
on processing imported components with domestic and foreign
capital and technology, and cheap domestic labor.

In the pre-reform period (before 1978) China’s development strategy
provided only limited urban employment opportunities. Consequently,
the government assigned several workers to the same job,
leading to a large labor redundancy in the SOEs. As these industrial
workers only received a low wage to cover current consumption, the
government also had to cover their pension, health, housing, and
other social expenditures from the SOE revenues, which were mandated
to be remitted to the government.

In the reform period, the SOEs have been responsible not merely for wages but also for these “social” benefits, which has imposed a “social burden” on them that is absent in their non-SOE cousins. This burden has grown in the reform
period as wages and benefits paid by the SOEs have grown by 16 percent per annum between 1978 and 1996, while their output grew by 7.6 percent per annum (see Lin 2004).

A Proposal to Privatize Chinese Enterprises and End Financial Repression
Cato Journal -Volume 26 Number 2, Spring/Summer 2006

The new bankruptcy law as well as reforms to State owned companies, the ability to layoff and fire workers, reductions in wages and benefits, and a shift of the responsibility for these to the State, are being implemented in China. The profitability of SOE's is reduced because of the surplus value absorbed by labour.
Again it is not investment, nor techology nor the bueracracy that is the source of profit it is labour. In the case of the newly privatized corporations if the costs were the same they would actually be making less profit for Chinese investors as the techology and marketing aspects of these companies are in the hands of their foreign investors.

The fact is that both the private sector and the state owned enterprizes are kept afloat by the Chinese people by low wages and the banks investing their savings in these companies.

The key to the historic development of capitalism was the privatization of agriculture. The end of the commons and the creation of the encroachment acts. Historic capitalism developed in England before its advent anywhere else in the world. Because of the privatization of agricultural production. This has occured in China with the Deng reforms, privatization of land is the modern equivalent of the English encroachment acts, thus creating a capitalist economy regardless of the politics of the State.

The state can call itself anything it wants, communist, socialist, democratic, republican, blah, blah. The political ideology of the state is is irrelevant to capitalism as a system. Capitalism created the state in its image, for the centralized accumulation of capital. Its political forms regardless of the propaganda of the left and right, are neccasary for the primitive accumulation of capital. If a state is authoritarian at first, as the state was prior to the advent of capitalism, then it will be liberalized as it creates its own bourgoise, the private owners of wealth. Which accounts for the development of the national state in the 19th century and its further development in the 20th.

As long as the state functions to provide private land and labour for those with inherited wealth, then the economic system is capitalism. In the case of China instead of inheriting land, labour and wealth from ones aristocratic and fuedal status and holdings, the inheritance came from ones position in the Communist Party of China.

China’s task of moving from the plan to the market was much easier than that of the other
socialist transition economies of Russia and Eastern Europe because of differences in their
initial conditions. Russia and Eastern Europe had about 90 percent of their labor force in
industrial SOEs, while most of China’s labor force (80 percent ) was in agriculture. For
Russia and Eastern Europe the only route to a market economy was a “big bang” to
dismantle SOEs, which resulted in short-term losses in output and employment. In contrast,
China, by replacing its rural communes with the household responsibility system, all
but in name restored privately run and owned family farms. This Chinese rural “big bang”
led to a rise in output and allowed China time for gradual reform of its inefficient stateowned
industrial enterprises.

A Proposal to Privatize Chinese Enterprises and End Financial Repression
Cato Journal -Volume 26 Number 2, Spring/Summer 2006

China's advantage over India as stated at the begining of this article, is a matter of land. Both countries have labour capacity, manufacturing base, but it is land capacity that restricts India's ability to compete with China for manufacturing. Which is why India's techonolgical development has been centred, like our own in the Maritimes, around call centres, and the outsourcing of IT and software development, as well as phamaceuticals. Such tertiary businesses do not need large amounts of land, and with cheap labour can provide for high rates of profit.

India is the world's fastest wealth creator
So, where is the growth going to come from? The answer is infotech (IT), pharma and textiles. With more wealth, the investment pattern too is expected to change from predominantly cash deposits (which constitute over 60% of the AUM in India, China and Korea) to equities and more sophisticated instruments.

China is becoming like its neighbours , Korea and Japan, a market driven state capitalist economy. India is developing as primary resource based manufacturing economy; steel and developer of tertiary industries in its fordist economy.

The neo-liberal shaping of state capitalism in both China and India into market states relies soley on its devaluation of labour, not tax or land incetives.

See

China

India

Marx

Capitalism

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Blog Lies About Layton

There are a whole raft of blog lies being circulated about Jack Layton and the NDP. See: New Democratic Party::Jack Layton and New Democratic Party::Criticism

For instance how he was snubbed by Karzai. He wasn't they met yesterday in Montreal.

Karzai, Layton discuss Afghanistan mission
CTV.ca, Canada - 15 hours ago
NDP Leader Jack Layton and Afghan President Hamid Karzai agreed to disagree on the role of Canadian troops in Afghanistan. "Clearly ...
Karzai, Layton agree Ottawa Citizen (subscription)
Afghan president, Layton discuss military mission Toronto Star
Karzai, Layton find common ground CBC - Newfoundland & Labrador

Now the latest smear campaign is how the NDP is changing it's positon on Afghanistan. It isn't. I blogged about it here right after the convention. And I further elaborated on it here.

Now you don't have to read my blog to get it. It was also published in the MSM. But of course if you don't pay attention to what is actually said by the NDP: the need to have a peace process in place, support for reconstruction and a limited troop prescence in the North You will continue to make stupid comments like these;

Layton's spectacular about-face on Afghanistan

Taliban Jack Now says He didn't say withdraw the troops


Also See:

NDP

Afghanistan






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Libertarian Communism A Definition

Since I continue to get comments from those who attempt to enlighten me as to why you cannot be a Libertarian and a Communist the latest being here.

I thought I would let an expert on the subject explain it. For those who are so blighted by half baked Republican interpretations of both terms that they just don't get it.

This is an exerpt from the 1910/1911 Encyclopedia Britannica entry on Anarchism; by Peter Kropotkin

Anarchism continued to develop, partly in the direction of Proudhonian ‘mutuellisme’, but chiefly as communist-anarchism, to which a third direction, Christian-anarchism, was added by Leo Tolstoy, and a fourth, which might be ascribed as literary-anarchism, began amongst some prominent modern writers.

The ideas of Proudhon, especially as regards mutual banking, corresponding with those of Josiah Warren, found a considerable following in the United States, creating quite a school, of which the main writers are Stephen Pearl Andrews, William Grene, Lysander Spooner (who began to write in 1850, and whose unfinished work, Natural Law, was full of promise), and several others, whose names will be found in Dr Nettlau’s Bibliographie de l’anarchie.

A prominent position among the individualist anarchists in America has been occupied by Benjamin R. Tucker, whose journal Liberty was started in 1881 and whose conceptions are a combination of those of Proudhon with those of Herbert Spencer. Starting from the statement that anarchists are egotists, strictly speaking, and that every group of individuals, be it a secret league of a few persons, or the Congress of the United States, has the right to oppress all mankind, provided it has the power to do so, that equal liberty for all and absolute equality ought to be the law, and ‘mind every one your own business’ is the unique moral law of anarchism, Tucker goes on to prove that a general and thorough application of these principles would be beneficial and would offer no danger, because the powers of every individual would be limited by the exercise of the equal rights of all others. He further indicated (following H. Spencer) the difference which exists between the encroachment on somebody’s rights and resistance to such an encroachment; between domination and defence: the former being equally condemnable, whether it be encroachment of a criminal upon an individual, or the encroachment of one upon all others, or of all others upon one; while resistance to encroachment is defensible and necessary. For their self-defence, both the citizen and the group have the right to any violence, including capital punishment. Violence is also justified for enforcing the duty of keeping an agreement. Tucker thus follows Spencer, and, like him, opens (in the present writer’s opinion) the way for reconstituting under the heading of ‘defence’ all the functions of the state. His criticism of the present state is very searching, and his defence of the rights of the individual very powerful. As regards his economical views B.R. Tucker follows Proudhon.

The individualist anarchism of the American Proudhonians finds, however, but little sympathy amongst the working masses. Those who profess it - they are chiefly ‘intellectuals’ - soon realize that the individualization they so highly praise is not attainable by individual efforts, and either abandon the ranks of the anarchists, and are driven into the liberal individualism of the classical economist or they retire into a sort of Epicurean amoralism, or superman theory, similar to that of Stirner and Nietzsche. The great bulk of the anarchist working men prefer the anarchist-communist ideas which have gradually evolved out of the anarchist collectivism of the International Working Men’s Association. To this direction belong - to name only the better known exponents of anarchism Elisée Reclus, Jean Grave, Sebastien Faure, Emile Pouget in France; Errico Malatesta and Covelli in Italy; R. Mella, A. Lorenzo, and the mostly unknown authors of many excellent manifestos in Spain; John Most amongst the Germans; Spies, Parsons and their followers in the United States, and so on; while Domela Nieuwenhuis occupies an intermediate position in Holland. The chief anarchist papers which have been published since 1880 also belong to that direction; while a number of anarchists of this direction have joined the so-called syndicalist movement- the French name for the non-political labour movement, devoted to direct struggle with capitalism, which has lately become so prominent in Europe.

As one of the anarchist-communist direction, the present writer for many years endeavoured to develop the following ideas: to show the intimate, logical connection which exists between the modern philosophy of natural sciences and anarchism; to put anarchism on a scientific basis by the study of the tendencies that are apparent now in society and may indicate its further evolution; and to work out the basis of anarchist ethics. As regards the substance of anarchism itself, it was Kropotkin’s aim to prove that communism at least partial - has more chances of being established than collectivism, especially in communes taking the lead, and that free, or anarchist-communism is the only form of communism that has any chance of being accepted in civilized societies; communism and anarchy are therefore two terms of evolution which complete each other, the one rendering the other possible and acceptable. He has tried, moreover, to indicate how, during a revolutionary period, a large city - if its inhabitants have accepted the idea could organize itself on the lines of free communism; the city guaranteeing to every inhabitant dwelling, food and clothing to an extent corresponding to the comfort now available to the middle classes only, in exchange for a half-day’s, or five-hours’ work; and how all those things which would be considered as luxuries might be obtained by everyone if he joins for the other half of the day all sorts of free associations pursuing all possible aims - educational, literary, scientific, artistic, sports and so on. In order to prove the first of these assertions he has analysed the possibilities of agriculture and industrial work, both being combined with brain work. And in order to elucidate the main factors of human evolution, he has analysed the part played in history by the popular constructive agencies of mutual aid and the historical role of the state.

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Uh Oh Ozone

View of the Ozone layer shot by European Space Agency (ESA) satellite ERS-2

The seasonal ozone hole over Antarctica is reaching a record size previously seen in 2000 and 2003, the World Meteorological Organisation has said.

And since it is spring now down under watch out for break away Ozone....

New Zealanders are being warned to cover up and use sun block as a patch of thin ozone layer moves across the country.



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Progressive Economics Blog

Found this economics blog. Maybe they should be invited to join the Progressive Bloggers seems like a natural fit.

Relentlessly Progressive Economics

Commentary on Canadian economics and public policy

A Blog of the Progressive Economics Forum

The Progressive Economics Forum is a network of Canadian economists with a progressive bent. See the main PEF website here.

The Forum was officially founded at a special meeting at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada in late May 1998. About 125 people attended an introductory panel on the future direction of economics, and about half of those stayed for the formal founding business meeting of the PEF. The business meeting formally adopted our name and a constitution, and elected a Steering Committee to which additional members have been added.

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About Time

This is news in Texas.

Alberta scraps royalty tax credit after 3 decades

- The Alberta government eliminated the Alberta Royalty Tax Credit on Thursday in a move that Energy Minister Greg Melchin said would add $111 million a year to government coffers when it comes into effect on Jan. 1.

The tax credit is one of the last vestiges of the Alberta-Ottawa energy wars of the 1970s, enacted in 1974 to counter a move by the federal government to eliminate tax deductions for royalties paid by oil and gas companies.

Leach suggested that the credit fell victim to politics. All the major candidates in Alberta's Tory leadership race advocate steps to increase the province's share of resource revenues, which amounted to $14 billion in the last fiscal year."We think it's responding to uninformed criticism of Alberta's royalty regime," he added.

Thursday's decision received unqualified support from an unlikely source --provincial NDP leader Brian Mason.

"We are very pleased that the government has finally been forced to cancel this corporate giveaway," he said. "The end of this program means a victory for Albertans."

Now lets adjust that pitiful 1% royalty we get paid for the people of Albertas resources namely the Tar Sands.

Yes it is a sop to the complaints raised about the fact we have the lowest royalty rate in the world. I like the guy who says we are uninformed....we are well informed that we are being ripped off.

First, contrary to popular belief, the Alberta government derives much more in royalties from natural gas than it does from oil. In 2004-05, it received $9.7 billion in resource revenues. Of this, $6.4 billion was from natural gas royalties, $2.0 billion was from oil royalties, andthe remainder was from other sources such as land sales. BMO Report January 2006 Alberta’s Long-range Outlook: “Oil’s Well”

Heck Newfoundland has a higher royalty rate than we do for all that Tar Sands oil.

And lets not forget that the Alberta Advantage did not begin under Ralph but under Lougheed,and it was created by OPEC and the oil boom of the seventies. Yet the Lougheed government still gave out corporate welfare. Without both Federal and provincial state capitalism the Tar Sands would never have been developed.

See

Oil Royalties


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CJSR Fund Drive

Donate to the Far Left of the Radio Dial. Community radio station CJSR is having its annual fund drive. And its a charitable donation, with a tax reciept and great swag. You can't get that from PBS.




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