Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Private Health Care Here

Company plans private health care across Canada by 2007
Well could this be the headline that breaks open the election for the NDP?!
The Continued Bastardisation of Canada's Health Care System

by D.L. McCracken
Wednesday, 11 January 2006
With the announcement today that three more private health care clinics will be opened in three Ontario cities by this coming summer, this writer believes it is prudent to re-publish a column written late last year which explored the new trend, dubbed the 'bastardisation of Canada's health care system'.


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Canadian Troops In Canadian Cities

Ah the Sturm and drang the crying and wrenching of hair. The Conservatives and Bloggin Tory's are all aghast at the Liberal attack ad about Harper filling our cities with armed military units. The Canadian Army in Canada's cities.

An image taken from one of the Liberal attack ads on Conservative Leader Stephen Harper.

Something about insulting the military. Oh give it a break. Its a great ad. It's exactly what Harper said so he left himself open to this attack.

The Liberals had the good sense to pull the ad, not before it got run in Quebec though. And now it runs for free on the news day in day out. Dumb Conservatives.

Instead of complaining about it here is what the Conservatives should have done, run their own ad that reminded Quebecois about the times the Liberals used Canadian troops in Quebec. In peace time. In Canada. In Canadian cities.

Standoff at Oka

In March 1990, Mohawks warriors at Kanesatake set up a blockade over disputed land with the municipality of Oka. In August, Canadians soldiers were called in to serve at the standoff.
In March 1990, Mohawks warriors at Kanesatake set up a blockade over disputed land with the municipality of Oka. In August, Canadians soldiers were called in to serve at the standoff.

It's a scene of hysteria, pandemonium and high tension as more than 2,500 soldiers descend upon Oka. People prepare for the worst as the army advances to the main barricade at the edge of the sacred Mohawk territory. Images of tanks and soldiers in full combat fatigue fill TV screens. A dramatic stare-off between a Canadian soldier and a Mohawk warrior known as Lasagna come to symbolize the gulf between the two sides.




The October Crisis: Civil Liberties Suspended
In October 1970, tanks roamed city streets and soldiers in full battle gear raided homes in their hunt for "terrorists." They were looking for the Front de libération du Québec; French Canadian nationalists who abducted a British diplomat and a Quebec minister. Some felt like they were living in a police state. How far would Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau go? "Just watch me," he said. Three days later he invoked the War Measures Act and a nation waited with civil liberties suspended.

Soldiers on the streets of MontrealIn 1970,a crisis rocked Canada the likes of which had never before been seen or even imagined. A state of siege existed. There were kidnappings of prominent individuals. One was murdered. The War Measures Act was invoked for the first time in peacetime. Soldiers were in the streets, a very un-Canadian scene. The Prime Minister spoke of an, “apprehended insurrection”. Some saw freedom fighters where others saw terrorists. There were immense repercussions for the FLQ, (Front de liberation du Quebec) the independence movement, the Parti Quebecois, and the federal-provincial relations. In short, the October Crisis of 1970 signaled Canada’s coming of age as we left behind forever our innocence and naivete.

Children gather and stare at a sight they have never seen before - armed Canadian soldiers on the streets of Montreal.








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Where is the Conservative Platform?

Well the Liberals and NDP released their campaign platforms complete with costing today. Where is the Conservative platform? Nowhere, nada, non-existant. Making it up as they go along. So that every time someone challenges them like say the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, they can say;

Conservative finance critic Monte Solberg said the report card was unfair because his party hasn't yet released all of its election promises. "It's hard to make a judgement, to say somebody's plan is poor if they don't have all the facts," Solberg said."Still, I won't lose any sleep over it."

Hmm talk about arrogance. Certainly a trait not limited to the Liberals.

Conservative hack Ezra Levant and his publication the Western Standard released the Liberal budget hours before the party did. Monte commenting on the leaked document said.
"The Liberals are making it up as they go along,". Well hours later we have the Liberals document and no Conservative platform any where in sight.

The MSM and the Blogging Torys are cheering that Ezra got a scoop,
Its not much of a scoop when its released hours later. The real scoop would have been if he had leaked the Conservative platform which he does have access to.


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Conservative Tax Plan Gets an F

According to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce report card on the parties and their platforms. Of course the social democratic parties the BQ and NDP get failing grades from Canada's voice of capitalism. On the other hand here is what they say about the Liberals and Conservatives tax plans. Liberals Fair, Conservatives Poor. Go sit in the corner Mr. Harper.

And several question marks dotted the report card, noting areas where the parties haven't yet fleshed out their full platforms.

Paul Martin's Liberals were graded "fair" for a fiscal plan that promises $30 billion in personal and corporate tax cuts over five years and has already implemented an increase of $500 in the basic personal exemption everyone gets before taxes kick in.

And as one of their last acts before the election was called, the Liberals reduced the lowest personal income tax rate to 15 per cent from 16 per cent.

However, the overall Liberal timetable for reductions is too slow for overtaxed Canadians, said the chamber.

But it's better than the Conservative program, which received a "poor" grade because leader Stephen Harper says he'd roll back the recent Liberal tax cuts and replace them with his own program based on a two percentage point cut to the GST.



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Capitalism Threatens Coelacanth

Bad enough international deep sea trawlers have destroyed coastal fishing reserves, like our cod stocks now they threaten the last of the living dinosaurs. The same situation occurs domestically as more and more recreational uses of Canada's fresh water lakes threaten our dinosaur fish, the Sturgeon. See my LiveJournal blog for more on this.

These ships are basically the result of the industrialization of fishing. Like agribusiness, larger is better. What agribusiness has done is destroy the family farm as it industrializes agricutural production. Industrialized fishing has done the same.

These ships are floating factories, that scoop up the bottom of the ocean and then process the fish on board. They are not selective, they scoop up everything taking what they need and tossing the rest, as the old saying goes letting God sort them out. Of course that mythical higher being is invoked cause the fish that are not needed are injured, tortured in fact, if not killed out right from crashing from nets to the depths of trawlers belly.

Trend for deep-sea trawling puts rare fish species on the ocean's critical list

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

Published: 05 January 2006

Trend for deep-sea trawling puts rare fish species on the ocean's critical list 'There is a real danger that slow -growing, deepwater species will take centuries to recover from current fishing, if they can at all'

Deep-sea fish are being taken to the brink of extinction because the dramatic collapse of shallow-water stocks is sending fishing trawlers further out to exploit deeper waters.

Scientists believe the overfishing that has caused the demise of the traditional catch of fish, such as cod and plaice, is now causing an equally severe, long-term decline of more exotic, deep-water species.



Since the first Coelacanth was discovered in 1938 by local fishermen, village based sustainable fishing has been threatened just like this dinosaur fish. Around the world these large industrial fleets of the G8 countries threaten domestic fishing villages and peoples.

If this is not a damned good reason to ban deep sea trawler fleets, then it should at least give one pause. A ban on deep sea trawlers is something environmentalists have been demanding for sometime now. It is an issue that brings together environmentalists and fisher folk who often are on opposite sides.

Notice the difference between the find of a rare Coelacanth in 1998 and the current story of how they have now become endagered. In just eight years.

Save Our Dinosaurs! I say.


Dinosaur fish pushed to the brink by deep-sea trawlers

After surviving for millions of years, the coelacanth is threatened by commercial fishing fleets

Inigo Gilmore in Tanzania
Sunday January 8, 2006
The Observer


It is not every day that you come face to face with a dinosaur dating back 400 million years, but for the fishermen in Kigombe on Tanzania's northern coast it has become almost routine.

In the middle of Kigombe, a village of simple huts on this breathtaking edge of the Indian Ocean, a young fisherman stood proudly before a large green plastic container. Ceremoniously he reached inside and hauled out a monster of a fish, slapping its 60kg (132lb) of flesh on a table, where three children gawped at its almost human-like 'feet'. This is a living fossil, a fish with limbs, a creature once believed extinct: a coelacanth.

Now it seems that man may have discovered the fish just to eradicate it, as ever deeper trawling throws up serious fears for the already dwindling populations of the fish, which lives at depths of between 100 and 300 metres (328ft to 984ft).

The appearance of these creatures off the Tanzanian coast is a dramatic and as yet unfinished chapter in the extraordinary story of the coelacanth, an ancient fish that was 'rediscovered'. The coelacanth evolved 400 million years ago - by contrast Homo sapiens has been around for less than 200,000 years - and was believed to have gone the way of the dinosaurs until one was caught off the coast of South Africa in 1938.


New sighting of 'living fossil' intrigues scientists

Coelacanth
A coelacanth
RELATED VIDEO
CNN's Don Knapp reports on the exploits of this ancient aquatic dweller
Windows Media 28K 56K
September 23, 1998
Web posted at: 11:40 p.m. EDT (2340 GMT)

From Correspondent Don Knapp

SAN FRANCISCO (CNN) -- An ugly fish known as the "living fossil" has made another appearance in the ocean, surprising scientists.

A coelacanth has been found in Indonesia -- 7,000 miles (11,200 kilometers) from its only previously known location near Madagascar.

The ancestors of the coelacanth (pronounced SEE-la-kanth) date back 400 million years. Until 1938, scientists knew the coelacanth only as a fossilized relic from the dinosaur era.

"So in 1938, it was almost a shock when one showed up, that you get this, what's called a living fossil basically, this fish that's known only from the fossil record and here it is, some 80 million years later, you get a live one," said Douglas Long of the California Academy of Science.

coelacanth displayed
The second coelacanth known is exhibited in 1952

A fisherman pulled the first-known modern coelacanth from the waters near the Comoros Islands near Madagascar. South African biologist Marjorie Courtenay Latimer came across it in a fish market.

History repeated itself in the latest discovery. University of California-Berkeley biologist Mark Erdmann was in Indonesia on his honeymoon when he visited a fish market in Manada, Sulawesi, to look for manta shrimp, the animal he studies.

"His wife pointed out a large, ugly fish going by on a hand cart, which he looked at and immediately recognized as a coelacanth," said Roy Caldwell, a biologist at UC-Berkeley.

fin
The fleshy fins of the coelacanth earned it the nickname of 'fourlegs'

Caldwell said the coelacanths recently found in Indonesia apparently live in the same type of environment as those found in the Comoros, caves about 600 feet (18 meters) deep along the steep sides of underwater volcanoes.

One reason for the coelacanth's ancient popularity was its fleshy fins that reminded people of human limbs, Caldwell said. Those fins led to speculation that the fish were direct ancestors of land vertebrates.

The fish did not turn out to be the ancestor of humans, but did manage to outlive the dinosaurs.


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Ukraine Gases Government

Yushchenko's Ukrainian government ran out of gas yesterday a second defeat for his regime of friendlier oligarchs, since the Orange Revolution. His government was defeated over their gas deal with Russia.

On January 1 the Ukraine went from a Presidential Republic to a Parlimentary Republic.

Way back in the Kuchma era, when the idea of changing the constitution was first bruited about, then-opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko and his allies were against it. The changes, which would have shifted a lot of power from the president to the parliament and the prime minister, were a ruse on the part of the regime running Ukraine at that point: the powers that be wanted to ensure that a future President Yushchenko would have as little power as possible.

Now fast forward to last December, when, as part of the compromise package that ended the Orange Revolution on favorable terms, Yushchenko agreed to the same constitutional changes he’d previously fought against so bitterly. Come Jan. 1, 2006, Ukraine would indeed become a parliamentary, and would no longer be a presidential, republic. Keiv Post



Today Yushchenko
is whining and crying because he has been taught a lesson in parlimentary representative democracy, which of course is not the same thing as real democracy which was in the streets a year ago. And of course it just screwed up his plans to challenge the Constiutional changes that came into effect January 1.

Ukraine president says parl't vote destabilising

KIEV/ASTANA (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said on Wednesday the decision by parliament to sack his government over a costly gas deal with Russia was wrong and destabilised the country.

Deputies, angered by last week's deal with Russia to pay nearly twice as much for imported gas, on Tuesday backed a no-confidence motion against the government after just over three months in office.

"Yesterday's decision was incomprehensible, illogical and wrong," he told reporters in the Kazakh capital where he is on a visit. "It simply serves to destabilise the situation."

Incomprehensible, illogical and wrong? Hardly. Since Russia's Gazprom has been playing politics with gas supplies to the Ukraine, not unlike our Big Brother down south playing politics over Soft Wood Lumber, the deputies were right.

Ah well there is always a silver lining in such a parlimentary defeat......

Yushchenko said: "I don't see this as a tragedy. It's an experience that will increase the quality of Ukrainian politics."

Analysts said it was another blow for Yushchenko who has struggled in the face of corruption scandals and a faltering economy to hang on to the euphoria that marked his rise to power a year ago after popular protests against his Moscow-backed opponent.


But that's not how the quizzling Yushchenko see's it. And suddenly in the defeat of his government for a second time, the Orange Revolution also appears threatened. A desperate man, Yushchenko goes from democrat to Presidential dictator in the face of crisis.

Ukraine MPs vote to sack cabinet over 'traitorous' gas price deal with Russia

Viktor Yushchenko, the hero of the orange revolution of 2004, questioned the parliament's right to dismiss his government and ministers spoke of a bizarre legal vacuum opening up.Mr Yushchenko hinted he might disband the parliament in response, as his supporters called on him to adopt direct presidential rule until new parliamentary elections could be held at the end of March


There is no crisis here, the government fell, it's no confidence, come back with a better deal. But Yushchenko is acting in the traditional apparatchik style, like the west's favorite little Tzar, Yeltsin. Speak like a democrat rule with an iron fist. Yushchenko opposed the idea of a Parlimentary Republic, still does. He faces certain defeat now in the upcoming Spring elections.

Putin's number 1 man stepped down over Gazprom's plan to renege on an already existing gas price deal, then Yuvshenko's government deserves to fall for accepting a bad deal just because the Russians offered them an even worse choice. As the Guardian reported;

Andrei Illarionov, a former senior economics adviser to the Kremlin, who resigned last week in protest over government attacks on political freedom, claimed that Gazprom's price of $50 per 1,000 cubic metres had been fixed for five years with Ukraine in 2004.

"The talks ended successfully for Gazprom, and Gazprom is completely satisfied," said Alexei Miller, chief of the Russian company, as he and Naftogaz head Oleksiy Ivchenko announced a new five-year contract. "We reached a broad-based agreement on mutually acceptable terms," echoed Ivchenko.

The deal appeared to have a third winner: a Russian-Swiss trading company that will be the sole gas provider to Ukraine. OAO Gazprom will sell gas to the Rosukrenergo trading company for $230 per 1,000 cubic metres as of January 1, and Ukraine will buy gas from the company for $95. Moscow had earlier insisted that the Ukrainians should pay $230.

Ironically Gazprom has a new board member, one with whom Putin hopes to solidify his state monopolies access to Europe economically and politically.

The board of Gazprom, the Russian state-owned energy company that supplies gas to the West, has recently welcomed a new member: Gerhard Schroder. Why, one may ask, would Mr. Putin want a former German chancellor on the board?

The answer is that the Russian president owes Mr. Schroder quite a debt. Not only did Germany throw its considerable weight behind Mr. Putin's brutal regime, but it was during the period when Mr. Schroder's Red-Green coalition was in office that Germany abandoned nuclear power and left itself at the mercy of the Kremlin for 40% of its gas supplies.


Yep there is a winner here, its the Public Private Partnership's (P3's) in Russia and the Ukraine.

While those in the west will cheer this and claim that the Free Market, er private sector can make a better deal, competition will drop prices, blah blah, all this shows is that once again privatization does no such thing.

It merely lines the pockets of the private sector by passing on increased costs to the average citizen. In this case a mysterious company formed by the Oligarchs in the Ukraine to take advantage of the gas crisis. It's almost criminal, except that this is business as usual in the new capitalist Ukraine. Sort of reminds me of Enron.

Putin And The New Cold War
UNIAN, Ukraine - 10 Jan 2006

Some believe the move was motivated by something more sinister. Jérôme Guillet, a French banker who has worked closely with Gazprom, said: "There is a story behind this deal as most of the negotiations go on behind the scenes and what we see in public is only ever a small part of the iceberg.

"Gas transit is the biggest source of loot on offer. It looks like Yushchenko has been trying to clean up but that new people are attempting to barge into the business. They have caused the public row in an effort to
embarrass the president."

The only clear winner from last week's deal is a company called RosUkrEnergo, which has been promoted to "exclusive distributor" of Russian gas to Ukraine. The deal will see its sales nearly double from 40bn c ubic metres to 77bcm as a result. Although it is a 50/50 joint venture between Gazprom and Ukraine, no one really knows who owns the Ukrainian half, which is controlled by Swiss registered holding companies in nominee accounts of Austria's Raiffeisen Zentralbank Oesterreich.

The draft agreement between Russia and Ukraine also creates another intermediary to handle the imports from Russia, jointly operated by RosUkrEnergo and jointly owned with the Ukrainian national gas company Naftogaz.

One western gas executive who works with Gazprom and Naftogaz said: "Something very fishy is going on here as Gazprom has further diluted its share of the profits it gets from selling gas to Ukraine. It looks very much like someone behind the scenes was blocking a compromise unless they were cut in on the deal. Gazprom only owns half of RosUkrEnergo, which means it owns half of a half of the profits this new intermediary will earn. Someone was making a lot of money before. Now they are going to make even more."

Under the deal, Gazprom will receive from Ukraine its demanded four-fold increase in price from $50 to $230 per 1,000 cubic metres. Although the volume of gas it delivers to Ukraine will fall to 17bcm from 23bcm, it will still net $3.9bn this year from the higher prices, up from $1.1bn last year. struck on prices with Ukraine a few days later and supplies were restored. Thus the dispute could also be seen as a high-risk move by Putin to bring a revenue-destructive gas subsidy from its Soviet days on to a market footing.

RosUkrEnergo, set up in the summer of 2004, is the latest in a line of mysterious companies acting as an unnecessary middleman between Naftogaz and Gazprom. It replaced EuralTransGas, which was a 100% Ukrainian-owned company with unknown owners, which in turn replaced the scandal-ridden Itera, believed to be controlled by Gazprom's previous management.

Bill Browder, president of Hermitage Capital, a big Gazprom minority shareholder, said: "There is no economic reason to justify the existence of this company. It earns hundreds of millions of dollars a year of profit, but why would Gazprom, a monopoly supplier, want to give away this money to a faceless company when it could perfectly well handle this business on its own?"

So is this another case of the Oligarchs influence over the Yuvshchenko government? An accusation the Prime Minster the Orange Bloc's Yulia Timoshenko made against him last fall. So he sacked her just like he plans to sack the current government. His threat to do a Yeltsin on the Ukrainian Parliment, is an empty one. All bluster and bravado of someone who has been defeated not once but twice, by the very Revolutionary changes he called for.

So much for the Orange Revolution. Yuvshchenko has made pulp of it. The Revolution is dead, Long Live the Revolution.

Gas Pressure
The Ukrainian government is the first victim in the gas war
The Fight for Power
Ukraine's Supreme Rada assembled yesterday to discuss the agreement with Russia on natural gas and fired the country's government, accusing it of “inability to defend national interests.” In response, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko threatened to dismiss the parliament and his party, Our Ukraine, called for direct presidential rule until parliamentary elections in March. Although the current government is continuing to function, the ministers are being called “acting.” This is a heavy blow to Yushchenko, not least because big business is supporting the opposition. Ukrainian industrialists are not happy with the agreement or with the government.

Timoshenko held a press conference last night as well. When asked by Kommersant how the dismissal of the government would effect the further development of events and the negotiations between Kiev and Moscow on natural gas, she stated that “there is not a single political party in Ukraine that thinks that contract should have been signed. The great victory of Ukraine was that Ukrainian politicians showed the ability to unite before the threat of external risks, regardless of ideological and political differences. Nonetheless, there will never be a union between our bloc and other political parties.”

Timoshenko said that “the dismissal of the government means that the parliament has taken responsibility for how the situation will develop with guaranteeing Ukraine natural gas.” She wanted to see the parliament form an official negotiating group with special responsibilities. That group would establish “where the corruption is” and where negotiations with Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Russia were conducted unprofessionally. “If the parliament forms such a negotiating group, I want to be part of it,” Timoshenko added.
And behind all this sturm and drang over Gaz lays the real politicks about what this all about. Russia is cut off from its Baltic Sea Fleet harboured in the Ukrainian controled Black Sea.

The new Crimean war: how Ukraine squared up to Moscow

For 200 years, the Black Sea has been a haven for the Russian fleet. Now, thanks to the dispute over gas, the first salvoes have been fired in the battle to rid Ukrainian waters of Moscow's presence. Andrew Osborn reports from the historic port of Sevastopol



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