The Latin American Consensus

It appears that the Left wing governments in Latin America have decided to use their Petropower to bypass US hegemony in the region.

Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, says Brazil, Argentina and his country will move forward on a proposed natural gas network spanning much of South America. He added that the agreement heralded a new era of regional co-operation with less US influence.On Thursday, Chavez said: "This is the end of the Washington consensus," referring to a set of US-backed free market policies meant to solve South America's economic woes.
"It is the beginning of the South American consensus."

While this looks good at first glance the problem is that it is stil industrial development and such developement threatens the Amazon jungle.

The pipeline would stretch from Caracas, Venezuela, to Buenos Aires, Argentina, cutting through Brazil's Amazon rain forest. It would also link to Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

What is interesting is that the three countries, excluding Bolivia, which still has to nationalize its oil and gas industry, are now looking at oil and gas for export while moving their domestic market for cars to the low pollution alternative of natural gas.

It was not clear how much each country would invest, but Chavez said the investments would pay for themselves if some countries - especially Brazil and Venezuela - change their petrol-powered cars to natural gas. According to Chavez, that shift alone would allow for a massive increase in petrol exports by both Venezuela and Brazil, generating as much as $15 billion in annual revenue. Argentina has the world's largest fleet of cars running on natural gas, followed by Brazil.

Which means that while they reduce greenhouse gas emissions on one hand, they will also be destroying part of the lungs of the world to do it. Sustainable capitalism, once again faces its own contradicitons.

Also see:

Chavez

Bolivia Moves Left

Oil Crisis

The End of the Oil Age

US Government Discovers Peak Oil

Tags

oil
Latin America
Chavez
Brazil
Agentina
natural gas
pipeline
South America

China Challenges US over Saudi Oil

The number two oil economy in the World, China, is challenging American hegemony over the oil fields in the Middle East. This will surely push peak oil in both the short and long term. By developing trade partnerships with oil producing countries like Saudi Arabia, China can avoid American interfence in its importing oil, since the Saudi's can claim its just a business deal.

China, the world's second biggest oil consumer, has been aggressively seeking to strengthen relationships with major oil suppliers as it grows increasingly reliant on oil imports. Saudi Arabia accounts for about 17% of China's imported oil.Total trade between the two countries - much of it Saudi oil bought by China - grew by 59% in the first 11 months of 2005 to $14 billion, according to China's Foreign Ministry. Some observers believe that the Chinese need for new oil supplies could lead to a stand-off with the United States over access to Middle Eastern oil. King to sign Saudi-China oil deals

Also see:

Oil Crisis

The End of the Oil Age

US Government Discovers Peak Oil

Tags

oil

peak oil

China

Saudi Arabia

Middle East

Reg Alcock Has To Go

There are rumblings that Treasury Board President Reg Alcock is in trouble in his Winnipeg riding. And good news that would be. Alcock represents all that is Liberal, arrogance, a sense of entitlement, and despite Comrade Buzz Hargroves endorsement, he is anti union. He forced PSAC workers to strike last fall. Now after five years without a contract, hmmm sounds like the Liberals are taking lessons from Telus, this is how he responds to the Federal Correction Officers and their union at a public meeting last week.

Alcock: Correctional officers are "dumb as posts".

Also See: Liberals Refuse To Speak To Union

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Federal Election
Politics
Liberals
unions
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CSN

Historical Memory on the Eve of the Election

Well said from the right. Publius at Gods of the Copybook Headings gives us a historical overview of how we got here today, where an Alberta based Conservative party, not seen since the days of Borden and Bennett, will become Government.

A government which is poised to also include Quebecois. There is a spectre haunting Ottawa and it is the spectre of Riel. His ghost appears as the spirit of reform of the new Conservative party and the NDP. Both Western Canadian Parties.

The old Conservative Party has been historically the voice of Ontario/English colonialism in Canada. Craig Oliver noted yesterday on CTV's Question Period that Western Alienation has existed since the beginning of the NWT, we were created as a colony of Ontario. Or at the very least a colony of John A. MacDonald, the CPR and the British Crown. Yep Ontario.

Pubilus says;

Westerners, to mangle F. Scott Fitzgerald, are different from you and me, they're from out West. The regional differences, economic, social and demographic between the West and Ontario have made certain kinds of ideologies more attractive, both to the man in the street and the region's elites. Prairie populism is not in and of itself an ideology, as Stephen Harper realized when he quit the Reform caucus and agreed to lead the National Citizens' Coalition. Once in power populism disintegrates almost immediately. Just try and remember who the United Farmers of Alberta or the United Farmers of Ontario were. Footnotes in our national histories because they brought anger but not the ideas that make policy and institutions, the sort of things that last. The ideologies that the West brings to the table, really more like different perspectives on ones found else where in Canada, are libertarian and evangelical.

Actually UFA and UFO did bring policies to the table, interestingly policies that were key to Reform's original popularity; Recall and Referendum. And I agree that once in power populism dissolves in the face of power. Manning sat in Stornaway after saying he wouldn't. Reformers accepted Pensions after being elected based on saying they would never accept them (Hey Deb Grey how's your retirement going at taxpayer expense). Like Mussolini, the rabble is organized in the streets to mount the barricades and then once in power they rule from the statist quo.

I don't mean libertarian in the sense that the people of West want to destroy the welfare state - if only! - merely that they are more skeptical of government, having felt its ill affects only too acutely in the region's comparatively short history. I don't, also, mean evangelical in the purely religious sense. Evangelical in the simpler sense of wanting change and expecting risk - of idealism. There are Christians in Ontario, they're just very quiet about it, lest they be discovered and soon after interrogated for not conforming. It's a beat and sound that's different out there. Nothing wrong with Ontario, Canada needs Ontario and needs what it represents. It just needs less of it in the years to come. Enough with the United Empire Loyalists and the never ending permutations on their bloody paternalism. I'm all for stability, I' m occasionally smug - no really, I am - but the Globe and Mail I do not need.

Here! Here! I agree. The IWW, the One Big Union; the industrial union movement of the working class originated in Western Canada. Not insignificantly because the work out here was not Trades or Craft based but semi or un-skilled labour. Farmers forced to mine or cut trees or build railways.

Even our Socialist movement, the Socialist Party, and the Social Democratic Parties, were an outgrowth of both class and ethnic consciousness of battling the English Canadian Ruling class. To the English bourgeois we were all Enemy Aliens. Sound familiar.

But a strong streak of libertarian socialism of the William Morris school, of autodidactic learning, of a third way between the Socialism of the English and the Europeans developed.

Our own indigenous socialist movement was of farmers and workers, and worker farmers if you like. It arose with a sense of liberty, we left the old country to be free, and came to a country that had a more advanced capitalist economy, albeit a mercantile monopoly capitalist one.

My grandparents faced down the big Mining companies, the railways and the banks to make a living. In order to get a fair shake they had to organize, so they did. Unions and political parties. In this case the UFA, then the CCF and the Communist Party of Canada all had their roots in the evangelical call of socialism and the ideals of the cooperative commonwealth.

Publius is correct about evangelism as well. For it was the Methodist and Anabaptists who populated the west at first. J. H. Woodsworth the fiery orator for the Social Gospel. My own grandfather who was recognized as a preacher by the Presbyterian (itself an offshoot of Methodism) Church, because there were no Ukrainian Orthodox or Catholic Churches out west at the turn of last century. My grandfather who then helped found the first socialist workers farmers organization in Western Canada, the Ukrainian Farmer Labour Temple.

This evangelism today has been embraced by the right. But it was there in the founding of the socialist movement as well. You have to be an idealist to believe in the cause. Regardless of the rigor of you learning, even founded in materialism, it is idealism that is the heart and soul of radical movements, left or right.

And while the right would have you believe the West was always Right, not so, the West is the very soul of Socialism in Canada. We have always embraced reform out west both Left and Right. And we have embraced clear cut plain speaking politics. In effect we can never be Liberals, mealy mouthed centerists who seek state power. Our clashes have to be clear cut, black and white, left and right. In the west the middle way, the centrist, the statist quo was the rule of Ontario, the English ruling class in Canada. We sent politicians left or right to Ottawa to represent us. That is why we never sent many Liberals. It was either Conservatives or CCF'ers.

The Liberals were wiped out in Alberta for over sixty years as a provincial party. Today the Federal Liberals stand on the eve of their greatest defeat. One that may not be as bad as Kim Campbells, but for the all powerful party of the Centre and Central Canada, it will have the same psychic impact. Their internal battles over power for the past four years have left them unfit to rule. And the two parties that will replace them in the House as voices of the Left and Right, the NDP and Conservatives will be because the West Wants In. Both are parties of the West.
We will have the last laugh this election night. And it's been a long time coming.

Also See:

Social Credit And Western Canadian Radicalism

Canada's First Internment Camps

LABOUR HISTORY

The Edmonton General Strike Of 1919

Also references in the article: A greater union,

Calgary 1919-The Birth Of The OBU And The General Strike

The CCF:The Original Reform Movement

The Edmonton District Labour Council and Municipal Politics 1903-1906

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Canada
Federal Election
Politics
Green Party
NDP
Conservatives
BQ
Liberals
Labour History
Canadian History
CCF
UFA
Riel
Western Canada
Reform Party

(r)Evolutionary Theory

I came across this article on evolutionary theory, Stephen Jay Gould and Dialectical Materialism at Monthly Review. Well worth the read in this era of psudeo science, ID, and junk science; Creationism.

It shows that one can be critical of Darwin and the founders of the science of evolution, without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Criticsim of evolutionary theory and its links to bourgoise society is not what the promoters of ID and critical discussion of evolutionary theory have in mind though, nor would they allow it in classroom.

Notice that through out the debate around ID there is a dearth of discussion of Stephen Jay Goulds work on puncutated evolution. A highly critical analysis of presumptions of uniformity, the very basis of which the creationists attempt to call into question evolution. The article below shows how Gould applied dialectics to question assumptions made by the founder of uniformism Charles Lyell (1797-1875) geologist. and his influence on T.H. Huxley as well as Darwin.

Gould deals with both catastrophism, and creationism and comes up with his own take on evolution. From a dialectical materialist perspective.

Natural History and the Nature of History
Richard York and Brett Clark

Over 500 million years ago, Pikaia, a two-inch-long worm-like creature, swam in the Cambrian seas. It was not particularly common, nor in anyway would it have appeared remarkable to a hypothetical naturalist surveying the fauna of the time. Pikaia is the first known chordate, the phylum to which Homo sapiens and all other vertebrates belong. As the late Stephen Jay Gould, paleontologist, evolutionary theorist, and dialectical biologist, posited in one of his most renowned books, Wonderful Life (1989), an exceptional level of human arrogance is necessary to argue that Pikaia was superior to its many contemporaries who either went extinct or, through the vagaries of history, dwindled to obscurity. Yet, despite the absurdity of it, bourgeois thought is so deeply committed to portraying history as a march of progress leading inexorably to the present that many natural historians have long argued that evolution on earth unfolded in a predictable, progressive manner, with the emergence of humanity, or at least a conscious intelligent being, as its inevitable outcome. This view fits well with the perspective of the dominant classes of various historical ages, who typically believe the particular hierarchical social order that supports them is both natural and inevitable, the point toward which history had been striving. As Marxist scholars have long recognized, ruling-class ideology gets smuggled into the damnedest places, including interpretations of the natural world. This elite construction of nature, which often involves demarcating so-called inherent hierarchies, is often used to justify inequalities in the social world. It would be wise to call into question such depictions of the social and natural world and to seek an understanding of natural history free of this ideology.

Also see:

Dialectical Science-JBS Haldane

Dialectical Anthropology-AP Alexeev

Tags
Mutual Aid
evolution
science
animals
Darwin
creationism
biology
Stephen Jay Gould
Darwinism
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history of science
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Steeler Nation Superbowl Bound

The Steelers are going to the superbowl. It's the fourth quarter and the Broncos are suffering badly at the hands of Pittsburg. Its over the team placed 6th in their Division has spent the last few weeks marching over the number 1, 2 and 3 teams. It's Steeltowns revenge.

There isn't much left of Steel in Steel town. In fact all that is left of the mighty US Steel corporation is the ensigna of the Steelers Football Assocation.

And in this well crafted piece from Monthly Review, the author explains why the Steelers represent the icon of a passing industry, in a town now being recrafted as a Public Private Corporation.
And unlike last year Steeler Nation may not have to face the humiliation of not being in the Superbowl. While the folks left behind in Pittsburg suffer at the hands of the boondoogle of Corporate restructuring of the oldest working class city in North America.

The Glory and the Gutting: Steeler Nation and the Humiliation of Pittsburgh
Charles McCollester

Last football season the Pittsburgh Steelers stunned fans with an unexpected series of victories. A Steeler Nation-composed of a generation of Pittsburgh's workers who scattered across the United States as their jobs vanished in the last quarter of the twentieth century-filled stadiums in a dozen cities with their team's colors, black and gold. The delirium peaked with the Steelers' victory over the New York Jets, which seemed like an act of God. The improbable twice-missed field goals and overtime win continued the Steelers' fourteen-game winning streak and their march toward the Super Bowl-until that road was cleanly blocked by the New England Patriots. Whatever deity oversees such matters, she must have a sense of equity or cosmic balance because the Steeler Nation in diaspora enjoyed its moment of glory just as the real, living, here-still-today city of Pittsburgh, near bankruptcy, suffered humiliation and dismemberment.

How Ford Screwed Up

'Black Monday' looms over Ford's future
DetNews.com, MI - 11 hours ago
... As a result, Ford's factory utilization rate is the lowest in the industry -- just 79 percent, Harbour Consulting said last week. ...
Stamping plant braces for Ford cutbacks Buffalo News
Wixom plant might be shut down Oakland Press
Ford closures to hit 29,000 jobs, 10 plants TODAYonline
Bloomberg - DetNews.com - all 282 related »

Tomorrow Ford North America will announce massive job cuts and plant closures. The result of poor productivity? No the product of poor planning. Yep capitalism is all about planning, that's why Herr Dr. Marx saw it as revolutionary. Capitalism as reflected by large scale industrial production should be close to socialism with its ability to plan for production.

But in the eighties the Toyotaization of capitalism changed all that, it created just in time production, producing only goods needed immediately for production rather than stockpiling them. While this produced short term economic gains, it left capitalist corporations vulnerable to increased shortfalls due to strikes, natural disasters, or economic problems.

Toyotaism

Toyotaism is the Japanese version of Taylorism which, in this case, is a management technique that encourages workers to internalize self-monitoring and correction and that results in exploitation (Steingard and Fitzgibbons, 1993). Eiji Toyoda, founder of Toyota, visited Ford’s Rouge River Plant in Detroit, Michigan, USA, then the largest industrial plant in the US, and studied it during the spring of 1950 (Womack et al., 1990, pp. 48-9). That study, and an earlier one his uncle Kiichiro Toyoda conducted at Ford in the 1920s, became the basis of Toyotaism’s lean production.

Toyotaism is a modernistic discourse, which is hierarchical, capitalistic and environmentally exploitative (Boje and Dennehy, 1993; Clegg, 1989, 1990; Jameson, 1984a, 1984b, 1986). A sub-discourse, in the modernistic discourse, is the myth of progress. “Progress” is a privileged discourse and is given the power to define reality, to judge what is and is not “civilized”, “modern” and “superior”. In Toyotaism, the Toyota model of greenfield start-ups is deemed to be “progress” over what existed before. It is the easternization of less developed countries (Kaplinsky, 1994). The discourse of “progress” degrades the past as “inferior”, “inefficient” and “primitive” or said differently, “progress” confers privilege the economically and militarily more powerful version of reality over the weaker, to define what is and what is not civilized.

Kaizen’s emphasis on continuous quality improvement makes it a discourse concerning progress. Post-modern organizational theorists argue that kaizen is exploitative for it is stressful and encourages personal sacrifice for increased production quotas and corporate profits (Boje and Winsor, 1993; Redher, 1992; Steingard and Fitzgibbons, 1993; Winsor, 1993). It is a fanatical one-way system in which tasks have been heavily based on time and motion studies (Parker and Slaughter, 1988, p. 36). Job enrichment in kaizen systems creates the illusion of empowerment, all the while increasing employee interchangeability (Winsor, 1993, p. 115) and encouraging self-regulation, which results in increased output (Coriot, 1980). Self-management and worker control is an illusion. In reality there is a machine pace, team-peer pressure and intimidation (Redher, 1992). Workers are coerced into giving suggestions for improvement by publicly posting the quantity of suggestions per worker, and by linking suggestions to performance appraisal (Imai, 1986, p. 15; Winsor, 1993, p. 116).

Meanwhile large transnational corporations like Ford were buying up automobile companies in Europe and Asia in order to produce vehicles in those markets. But what they ended up producing was more American vehicles for those markets, which did not meet the need of their consumer markets. Thus Ford moved in a new direction, one that ultimately was a management decision of the CEO's and one that had disastrous results as the average worker at Ford is about to discover tomorrow.

Ford's fight for survival

What's happened is that Ford has almost completely reversed the shifts made in the radical reorganization a decade ago called "Ford 2000." The brainchild of former chairman and CEO Alex Trotman, Ford 2000 attempted to adjust to the increasing globalization of the auto business by eliminating regional organizations in Europe, Asia and South America and replacing them with five vehicle centers. Each of the five centers would be charged with developing a single class of vehicles -- large rear-drive sedans, small front-drive econoboxes -- and marketing them around the world.

Ford 2000 looked good on paper but really messed things up. A lot of local market knowledge disappeared with the elimination of the regional organizations, and lots of experienced managers went out the door too. Then, under Trotman's successor, Jac Nasser, the vehicle centers stopped sharing common components like air conditioners and shock absorbers and began developing their own, causing an explosion in costs.

Now Ford has recentralized product development and engineering to enforce an economical sharing of platforms and components across product lines. So engineering for a new small car platform known as C1 will serve as the underpinnings for cars marketed by Ford, Volvo and Mazda.

Ironically the very nature of planned mass production economics under capitalism was given a name. Fordism. It is the very model that Lenin saw the Soviet Union adopting for manufacturing, that Stalin implemented and was the ideal of production after WWII in all of the Pacific Asian countries. Manufacturing never left Fordism behind, it merely tinkered with aspects of the managing production but never the skelton of the model.

It was this new model of globalization, globalized industry;Toyotaism, that Ford management did not or would not adapt to.The could not move beyond Fordist production models, no matter their new forms of flexibility, because they tried to reproduce Ford industrial production models in each country not taking into account the ability to link plant production across national boundries. For example in North America Canadian plants are more efficient and modernized than American Plants, as are parts plants in Mexico. But despite this and NAFTA, Ford keeps plants open in the U.S. not for production purposes but for poltical optics. Hargrove worried about Ford's Monday announcement

The closing of the Rover plant in the UK last year shows how global automanufacturing no longer relies upon national based plant operations. The result of the closing of Rover caused only a momentary outrage. There was no General Strike like when Thatcher closed the Coal Mines. Rover occured during the election and was a poltical non-issue. New Labour under Tony Blair gained an unprecidented Third Government. Despite protest votes. Rover was less of an issue than Blairs stand on Iraq.

Automotive production is now world wide. And in fact we suffer classic capitalist overproduction in the market. Toyota has become the number one car maker in the world because it has adapted its production modes to be developed within other nations, with parts productions centred in Japan. Toyota is expanding its North American operations out of Canada, not the U.S. based on exactly this model.

Ford and GM maintain full car and truck production in North America, and compete with their own offshoots in Europe and Asia. This is their problem, they have only accepted globalization as a means of distribution not as a means of production.

Emerging Organizational Forms: Beyond Fordism

• This chapter analyzes our industries and postindustrial sectors, which are structured by flexibility, greater rationalization and the implementation of communication and information technology. Fordism, Toyotaism, Lean Production and Flexibility Specialization changed our work and our societies. These successful producers acquired advantages in the market by their ability to respond in a prompt and flexible way to signs given by the competitive market. The competition regarded price, quality, demand and delivery. The producers had to be able to adapt to the new form of production by readjusting their productive processes in order to reach the demands of the market. This ability reformulate relies on their strategy use of a type of machinery that can manufacture products.

• Fordism
• Fordism consists of just-in-time inventory control, and leaderless work groups. This approach to automated production literally deskilled the workers, which at the end of Fordism marked a significant setback for the working class. Fordism refers to upholding the loyalty of he workers by profiting from a high-income economy, by generating mass products through the assembly line techniques. The characteristics of Fordism consist of the following economies of scale, technical control, specialization, repetition and the separation of mental for manual work. The labor of Fordism The Fordist labor market had little to none managerial and professional elite with minimal job training required. Greater productivity is achieved by the development of efficiency in manufacturing. The use of the assembly line is to be able determine the sequences of operations for the creation of each product. The Fordist economy competition and process protects the national markets and creates global competition. It has been known to bring about mass production of standardized products and compete with others forms of production by cutting the cost.
• Toyotaism
• Totyotism refers to the management culture and labor processes that are dominant during the latter part of the twentieth century. Toyotaism depends on the cooperation of labor management, multiple skills and problem solving. Fordism had an external method of putting on pressure to increase production. Through Toyotaism the pressure is no longer from outside, but is exerted from within the work of the team. The Toyotists labor market has diverse career ladders, excellent participation and long lasting job placement. Toyotaism is known for its "just-in-time" production, quality control throughout the entire flow of production and prompt reaction to the market requirements.
• Lean Production
• Lean production is based on doing more with less, meaning less time, inventory, space, labor, and money. The Lean Production model consists of careful selection, job switching, simplifying procedures, speeding up production eliminating waste and surveillance. The lean production concept is a way of improving processes through customer relationships, fast product development and manufacturing, and the collaboration with its suppliers. One main element of lean production is elimination waste elimination, which implies continuous workflow and customer satisfaction. When these elements are focused on it expands in the areas of cost, quality and delivery.
• The Flexibility Paradigm
• The flexible specialization (post-fordism) strategy was to obtain advantages in the market by presenting a product with exceptional quality and technology. This idea demands the constant change of the product with flexible forms of production. In contrast with the mass production, it allows the creation of standard quantities of a variety of non-uniform products that are selected according to the market and its consumers. Flexible production relies on the beliefs that it would not prosper by treating workers like machines and the assembly worker could perform most functions better than the specialists. Flexible specialization significantly reduced the demand for unskilled labor, which requires that you are intelligent and are capable of self-control. The downside to this is the number of unskilled industrial workers that are unable to obtain a job within this field of work. The flexible specialization presents higher costs than manufacture it also involves high levels of technological development. This new form of structuring the market encouraged the development of global markets, which also affected the practices of consumption.

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labour

UAW
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Ford
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Rock n Roll Paul

Martin sez this Moderate Tories 'dead as disco'

Then he does this



Reminds me of that famous lyric from Long John Baldry;

Don't lay no boggie woggie music on the King of Rock n Roll.

Guess Paul is getting ready for his new career after Monday night.

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Canada
Federal Election
Politics
Liberals 
Paul Martin

We Now Interupt This Program For The Election

Well Nodice is down, so they are linking to Wikipedia Opinion polling in the Canadian federal election, 2006 page. Where you can get both the polling numbers as of Friday and seat projections which look interesting so here they are;

Polling Firm	Date	Link	Liberal	Conservative	NDP	BQ	Other
Ipsos-Reid	January 21, 2006		46	157	42	62*	1
EKOS	January 20		53	151	41	62*	1
Strategic Counsel	January 19		63*	154	28	62	1
SES Research	January 19		88*	135	28	56	1
EKOS	January 19		73*	135	40	59	1

A Conservative majority government......scary.....very scary.....downright really really scary.....with the BQ as oficial opposition as I precogitated here earlier, and with the NDP almost wiping the floor with Liberals. Why it's the Return of Brian Mulroney!


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Federal Election
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Green Eggs and Hamas

So if Hamas wins the Palestinian election as it is predicted, will that mean Israel and the United States will feel justified in attacking the occupied territories for being a Terrorist State. And how will the pro-Israel lobby in Ottawa deal with a Palestinian Authority that is run by Hamas which they have declared a terrorist organization. Hmmmm.

Or will all the sturm and drang we have heard from the Bush Administration, the Pro-Israel lobby, and the Zionist Israeli state, be silenced as they realize that for peace to occur they have to deal with Hamas. Mideast could take a radical new turn

They will be face to face with their self declared enemy, one that they created by failing to support Arafat or his successors and the Fatah movement. Now they are trying to make up for it, too little too late. U.S. Funds Enter Fray In Palestinian Elections

Sharon is out of the picture, Hamas is in the spotlight. And a new round of Peace negotiations that was being contemplated by Sharon's Centerist political party is now on hold. Israel on alert as Hamas leads poll

Ah the irony of such rough justice middle east style.


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