400 Year Old Nanotechnology

The Arabs do it again. But how did they do it? It is still a mystery.

A team led by Peter Paufler, a physicist at Germany's Technical University of Dresden, recently made that discovery when the researchers found multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) in steel from a 17th-century Damascus saber (Nature 2006, 444, 286).

First discovered just 15 years ago, single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) are molecules of pure carbon with many unique properties. Smaller in diameter than a virus, nanotubes are about 100 times stronger than steel, weigh about one-sixth as much and are among the world's best electrical conductors and semi-conductors. Smalley, who devoted the last 10 years of his career to studying SWNTs, pioneered the first method for mass-producing them and many of the techniques scientists use to study them.

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Arab

Danger Nanobots


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PMO Spies On Cabinet Ministers

I guess Rona Ambrose passes insepection from the PMO cause she stays on message. Even when her communications director is away working on the Haskett campaign.
The rest had better shape up.

Harper's PR aide secretly asks cabinet staff to critique bosses



A tip o' the blog to Dissonance and Disrespect for this.

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PMO


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Harper Is No Statesman

Don Martin in the National Post sums up the latest Harper shoot from the lip international blunder. It seems every time Harper gets on a plane he suffers from Air Rage. He did it this summer over the war in Lebanon and now he does it to China. Truly he is no Statesman. And he doesn't appear to want to be.

After the Chinese leadership asked Harper for a meeting to ease rising tensions between the two countries, the Prime Minister insisted human rights would be on the formal agenda and no mere superpower could decree otherwise.No one in the PMO can explain why Harper waited for the Chinese to extend the invite, what made Harper think he could dictate the agenda and why this rookie Prime Minister failed to grasp the protocol for dealing delicately with concerns that rankle notoriously prickly Chinese leaders.

Business leaders don't like what they're hearing because warm government relations are essential to smooth Chinese trade relations. Experts say it was a mistake because Harper denied the Chinese a face-saving escape. Even friendly government forces in Alberta think Harper's heavy-handed tactics are off base.

Some observers see Calgary MP Jason Kenney, the Prime Minister's sidekick and notorious mainland nose-thumber, as the China clipper.

He defiantly met the Dalai Lama, a Tibetan holy man viewed as a separatist agitator by the Chinese, and was the cheerleader for giving him an honorary Canadian citizenship.

But it's more than just Kenney freelancing on the file. Stockwell Day wrote a paper in favour of recognizing Taiwan while he was Conservative foreign affairs critic. Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay, after attacking China for industrial espionage, turned his political back on meeting the Chinese ambassador for too long. And if that wasn't enough evidence of chilling China relations, a Chinese human rights discussion process and a strategic partnership group set up by the Liberals are being mothballed.

Besides, if Harper insists on riding the high white horse to defend human rights, he'd better watch where he gallops. Violations are not exclusively a made-in-China concept.

Russia has been caught allegedly spying in Canada and been red-flagged by Amnesty International for deteriorating human rights protection. Funny how Harper went to Moscow in July and neglected to raise either concern with President Vladmir Putin.

And what about Dubya? The United States has been fingered for holding "thousands" of prisoners without charge or trial in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba. Will Harper scold George Bush? Doubt it.

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Harper

Lebanon

China

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Harpercrsy

Canadian reporters covering PM Harpers trip to Viet Nam for the APEC conference have been banned from asking him questions. No scrums are allowed with the PM. Instead PMO issues press statements. While the PM lectures Viet Nam on democracy, human rights and the need for a free press. Heh, heh. What a kidder this guy is.


Harper kicks off APEC activities by meeting Vietnamese prime minister

Canadian officials later told reporters that during the private portion of the meeting, Harper tied in human rights concerns with Vietnam's expanding trade file. He told Nguyen that economic openness went hand in hand with social and political freedoms. Harper also raised several individual cases of political dissidents imprisoned by the Vietnamese government, including one man who landed behind bars after providing testimony to the U.S. Congress on human rights in his country. Vietnam has been criticized by observers for religious persecution, particularly of Buddhists and Christians, and also for cracking down on journalists and publishers critical of the communist regime.

Of course Canada needs to lecture the rest of the world on Human Rights our record is so pure. Let's see our secret police arrest and keep folks in secret detention and deport folks to be tortured abroad. They raid journalists offices and throw them in jail. The PMO refuses to meet with press critical of the government. The government wants to remove human rights legislation passed by the previous government. And we have a one party state in Alberta.Yep a clear case of kettle calling the pot black.

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Arar


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Politics Is Pragmatic

The Financial Times discovers that even left wing regimes can be pragmatic. They seem surprised at the success of globalized capitalism which they have touted for so long.

Morales opts for a pragmatic Bolivia

The patients start to queue at Chacaltaya hospital at 3.30am. By the time the doctors arrive, at 8am, the line stretches all the way round Plaza German Busch. This grubby square is in Alto Lima, the poorest area of El Alto, a city of 850,000 that sits above La Paz, Bolivia.

Chacaltaya is the first medical facility in South America’s poorest country to treat patients for free. Its staff are part of a contingent of 1,200 doctors from Cuba who have treated more than 2.2m Bolivians so far this year, or 25 per cent of the population.

The hospital, which is widely believed to be funded by Venezuela, highlights the relationship that Evo Morales, Bolivia’s president, has built with allies in Caracas and Havana.

Yet in recent months La Paz appears to have been seeking greater independence from Venezuela and this radical Latin American axis.

Mr Morales, flush with energy revenues and a sense of importance from his position in the region, has shown signs of moving closer to more moderate regimes in the region, such as Brazil and Argentina, and of reaching out to long-time foes including Chile and the US.

One of the reasons for the shift is that the strength of the Bolivian economy gives Mr Morales much greater room for manoeuvre than his predecessors enjoyed.

Revenues from higher gas prices and gas tax increases imposed last year mean that the government is no longer strapped for cash. Debt payments have been reduced as the result of a debt forgiveness deal agreed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The fiscal deficit, which peaked at 8.8 per cent of gross domestic product in 2002, fell to 1.6 per cent of GDP last year and this year is on course to run a fiscal surplus for the first time in three decades.

Vietnam rolls out red carpet for Bush
Still, Hanoi is keen to strengthen further its relationship with Washington, which is better than ever before. Although two-way trade is now at $9bn (€7bn, £4.8bn) – making the US Vietnam’s largest trading partner – “the potential re­mains huge between the two countries,” Nguyen Tang Dung, the Vietnamese premier, said. “It is the consistent policy of the government of Vietnam to move forward, and push relations with the Americans.”

Vietnam’s economic progress
Unlike their more ambivalent predecessors, Hanoi’s new generation of less-ideological, more market-savvy Communist rulers certainly sees foreign investors as important assets in the drive to transform the country into a regional powerhouse, and to generate job opportunities for the approximately 1m young people entering the labour force every year.


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State Capitalism

Globalization


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Tory Bashing

Today it appears I am in a Tory bashing mood.

Gong Show Redux

Canada accuses Chinese envoy of spying on the homophobic fascist cult the Falun Gong. After having been embarassed by the Chinese government who snubbed a meeting with Harper, now the Harpocrites do a bit of tit for tat. Someone in Foreign Affairs that is a Sinologist should be advising this New Canadian Government that in one fell swoop they are undoing over thirty years of effective foreign relations with China. For the shear arrogance of ideology.

After becoming prime minister in 1968, Mr. Trudeau launched a review of Canadian foreign policy which placed a greater priority on Canada’s relations with the countries of the Asia-Pacific region. This led to the establishment of diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China in 1970. In 1973, Pierre Trudeau became the first Canadian Prime Minister to visit China.

globeandmail.com: Thursday, October 11, 1973

Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's visit to China got off to an unusually brisk start yesterday,

Astounded onlookers watch Canada's prime minister ascend the steps of China's Great Hall of Leaders on Nov. 28, 1983. The visit had been kept under wraps. Even the Peking papers haven't written much about Pierre Elliott Trudeau's meeting with Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang. The two world power figures discuss nuclear disarmament over ornamental pots of Chinese tea. This is not Prime Minister Trudeau's first visit to China.


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LOL

Conservative Cold Warriors

China

Spies



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Social Capital

Que. to fund companies with 'social conscience' As I have said here before funding for worker owned cooperatives and for alternatives to corporate capitalism needs to be developed across Canada. Using union pension funds and Labour Investment Funds for social investment rather than as they are currently being used as funding for P3's.

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Labour Investment Funds

Worker Cooperatives




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Unnesasary Cuts

GST cut taking bite out of government bottom line but it did not take a big bite.

However, the budget surplus for the first six months of the current fiscal year was still more than $5 billion more than during the first half of last year, a year when the government eventually chalked up a hefty, and politically embarrassing, $13.2-billion surplus.

So why the cuts to programs like Status of Women, Court Challenge etc. Which resulted in hardships for social avocacy agencies while making little in savings, which the Tories claimed as their excuse for cutting the programs.

Liberal finance critic John McCallum pointed out that spending on all federal departments and agencies, not including Defence, has risen 8.6% in the first six months of the fiscal year."It strikes me that's a big spending increase for a government that's cutting programs for the vulnerable and at the same time arguing it's a tough, low-spending government," McCallum said.

Of course it was ideologically driven. Instead of funding womens advocacy for feminism this is what the Tories fund; Down the way in the Beauce region of the province, Industry Minister Maxime Bernier doled out a government grant of $23,820 "to promote female entrepreneurship" (think about that one),

And while doling out money to Quebec to buy votes the Tories are still using the working class to build up the surplus to pay for their war efforts. Liberal, Tory same old Story.

Tories walk Grit path

Harper government treats EI as a cash cow

The Employment Insurance Commission this week announced a small cut to EI premiums effective Jan. 1, 2007.

You'll save a whole seven cents per $100 of insurable earnings come the new year. That means someone earning $30,000 a year will save about $1.75 a month.

If you're an employer, the premiums you pay for your workers will fall 10 cents per $100 of insurable earnings.

Wow.

What the EIC doesn't tell you, however, is that despite the small premium cut the massive EI surplus -- pegged at $48 billion last year -- is projected to grow by another $1.5 billion this year, even though the federal government claims EI is now operated on a break-even basis.

According to Human Resources Development Canada's own 2005-2006 estimates, the EI surplus is expected to grow to $49.5 billion in 2006.

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Canadian Values

Remember this from the last election.













Now compare that with this statement.

"Canadian values -- our belief in democracy, freedom, human rights," Harper said. "They don't want us to sell that out to the almighty dollar,"

I guess Canadian values are different from Conservative values.



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