Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Baby It's Cold Outside

Listening to CKUA they just played Baby It's Cold Outside with Louis Armstrong and Velma Middleton And it is. Brrrrr. And just think it is still Fall, twenty three days till it is officially winter. Brrrrrrrr




EXTREME WIND CHILL VALUES EXPECTED OVERNIGHT.
CLEARING SKIES AND NORTHERLY WINDS OF 20 KM/H WILL PRODUCE EXTREME WIND CHILL VALUES OF -40 OR LESS. EXTREME WIND CHILL VALUES WILL DIMINISH LATER THIS MORNING AS THE WINDS GRADUALLY DIMINISH.

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Monday, November 27, 2006

Green Capitalists

Wait till they find out about how the Tories are denying them access to the lucrative carbon trading market. Then they will be really pissed.


Going for the green

Is there a secret cell of environmentalists in the business community? You might think so, given that 7 per cent of executives (11 per cent in the resource sector) support the Green Party, or that Stéphane Dion gets his highest level of support from resource sector executives. Support for strong climate change policies, however, is even more widespread in the business community than that. In the C-Suite survey last May we reported that executives were not enthusiastic about Canada withdrawing from Kyoto. In fact, 40 per cent were opposed, and another 30 per cent felt it should be a low priority. And it appears to matter politically in this group. In the survey just completed, executives were asked if the Conservative decision to replace previous environmental plans based on Kyoto with the new Clean Air Act made them more or less likely to vote Conservative: Thirty-five per cent said it made them less likely and only half as many said it made them more likely. There are five times as many executives in Central Canada less likely to vote Conservative as a result of the Clean Air Act than those more likely.

See:

Green Capitalism

Ambrose



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Your Pension Dollars At Work

As I said here the new P3 model in Canada is not private public partnerships but Public Pension Partnerships that bailout the Government. But it is still taxpayers money at work.

Water is the new oil: CIBC


In Canada, there are few ways for investors to directly invest in H2O. However, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board recently launched a bid for a British water utility.

The colossal cost of fixing crumbling water infrastructure in the developed world has opened the door to government privatization.

Water delivery systems in the industrial world are in “dire need” of repair, says a report released Monday by CIBC World Markets Inc. At least one-fifth of America's municipal wastewater treatment facilities do not comply with federal regulations and in some U.S. cities, more than half of the water headed to consumers is lost along the way.

CIBC economist Benjamin Tal, author of the “Tapping into Water” report, estimates it will take “hundreds of billions of dollars” to fix dated water infrastructure in North America and Europe.

Federal governments are not rushing to fix the infrastructure and municipalities lack the means to do so. “As a result, governments are now much more open to the notion of privatizing their water infrastructure which, in turn, is providing a substantial boost to the private water industry,” Mr. Tal said.


See

P3

CPP





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Kill Em All

In a Globe and Mail Special reporter Grahame Smith interviews two Taliban fighters. They explain the difference between the American and Canadian military operations against them.

"There is a big difference between Canada and the United States," Mr. Azizullah said, tapping his fingertips together in a pensive gesture. "If we attack the Canadians, they call for aircraft and bomb everything in the area. The U.S. only tried to kill the Taliban. The Canadians try to kill everybody."

Makes ya proud don't it. Yep winning the hearts and minds. Not. It's called total war.

Oh and for all those pro-war folks who keep refering to NDP leader Layton as Taliban Jack for calling for withdrawing our troops to Kabul and promoting peace negotiations well.....

Mr. Azizullah made clear that he watches Afghanistan's political scene carefully. He gave a current example: Burhanuddin Rabbani, Afghanistan's former president and a prominent warlord who now serves as a member of parliament in Kabul, recently told Afghan journalists that his associates are talking to the Taliban, but he didn't give details about the negotiations. Most of the Taliban are ethnic Pashtuns from the country's south and east, and the upsurge of violence this year has been concentrated in those regions, although the Taliban have been searching for ways of opening new fronts in the north. Mr. Rabbani, of the northern Tajik ethnic group, lost his presidency to a Taliban assault a decade ago, but Mr. Azizullah suggested the old commander might now be willing to switch sides."Rabbani is talking about an alliance with the Taliban," he said. "This could help us greatly, give us power in the north."

Also See:

Afghanistan



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Privatizing The Wheat Board

This is what happens when you privatize the Wheat Board. The Australian Wheat Board is a model that right wing looney Lorne Gunter suggested the Tories use for their new dual desk marketing scheme.

And it gets even better because BHP Billiton is also charged. They are the nice folks doing diamond mining in Canada's far north, who forced their workers to strike this summer.

Australian company paid kickbacks to Saddam

The payments were made to ensure access to the lucrative Iraqi market, where the United States and Canada were major competitors.

The commission also found that the company, AWB (formerly the state- owned Australian Wheat Board), had "deliberately and dishonestly" devised a scheme for the payments, made from 1999 until the overthrow of Saddam three years ago, that would deceive the United Nations. When the United Nations conducted an investigation in 2005, headed by Paul Volcker, AWB withheld thousands of pages of documents and its lawyers made false statements, the commission found.



THE monopoly of AWB over Australia’s A$4 billion-a-year (£1.6 billion) wheat export market was in doubt yesterday, after a judicial inquiry found that the exporter had paid Iraq US$222 million (£115 million) in bribes to secure grain sales between 1999 and 2003.

Meanwhile, 11 former AWB executives, including Trevor Flugge, the ex-chairman, and Murray Rogers, the ex-chief executive, could face criminal charges after the 11-month inquiry by Terence Cole, a retired judge.

Brendan Stewart, AWB’s present chairman, said yesterday that the exporter deeply regretted the way in which its wheat trade with Iraq had been conducted.

This week BHP Billiton, the mining giant, will release the results of its own investigation into the scandal, in which it is also implicated.

In his report, Mr Cole described Norman Davidson Kelly, the founder of Tigris Petroleum, BHP’s joint venture partner, as a “thoroughly disreputable man with no commercial morality”.

Five former and current BHP executives testified at the inquiry.



SEE:

Wheat Board



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Maritime Monday


Fred Fry does a carnival of maritime stories from across North America each Monday at Maritime Monday, I found it because he linked to one of my stories. Interesting cross section of stories with his comments.


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The Blog Is Under Harpocrite Survelliance


Gee I didn't know this until I Go0gled myself. Thanks for the heads up Werner.As they say knowing this is better late than never. Nice to know that taxpayers money is being well spent by the PMO-Paranoid PM Office. Of course this is not the first time my blog has been under survelliance.

privy council gunning for plawiuk
25 Sep 2006
by Werner Patels
the privy council seems to be gunning for fellow blogger eugene plawiuk.
according to my site stats, someone at the privy council in ottawa (a regular
visitor to my site, by the way) has done a google search specifically for eugene .


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Morton Supports Harper Quebec Motion

Ted Morton the man who wants Ralphs job has always wanted the same powers that Quebec has for Alberta. And as one of the Calgary School Morton was Harpers mentor.

On Mike Duffy Live today he told Jane Taber he supported the Quebecois motion presented by Harper in the house. Hmm I wonder how his rabid anti-Quebec, anti-bilingualism/bi-culturalism Anglophile base will react to that come next weekends vote.

Also See:

Ted Morton


Conservative Leadership Race



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Whipping Boy


Chong quits Tory cabinet over Quebec motion A three line whip has been called by the Harpocrites. That means not only must Cabinet vote in favour of the Quebecois motion but so must every caucus member and MP or absent themselves from the house.

A three-line whip is the most urgent, and every MP is expected to attend and vote with their party. An MP who fails to attend may be temporarily suspended from the party, a penalty known as ‘having the whip withdrawn’.


This from the party that called for free votes, and criticized the Liberal government when it whiped its Cabinet but allowed its MPs a free vote on Same Sex Marriage. My, my whats that saying in french; oh yeah;Plus de changement de choses, plus ils restent la même chose.

And the subtext of losing ones Intergovernmental Affairs Minister is that he WAS NOT CONSULTED, before Harper sprang his motion on the house last week. Harper talked to Liberal leader BillGraham and consulted famed constitutional expert Dr. Dion, but failed to discuss it with his Intergrovernmental Affairs minister, the guy in charge of the file.


Despite his role as the federal link between Ottawa and the provinces, Chong has had little to do with the Conservative government’s busy relations with the Quebec National Assembly. Most of those relations have been handled by Harper himself.

Harper conceived his strategy in the hope of outflanking the Bloc Quebecois and boosting sagging Conservative popularity in Quebec for the next election.

But he didn't consult Chong, the second-term MP who had been his surprise choice as intergovernmental affairs minister when the Tories formed a cabinet in February.

As it turned out, Chong rarely spoke publicly on federal-provincial issues during his 10 months in office, leaving all the key decision-making to the Prime Minister's Office.


Not consulting is a major downfall of this Harper driven government. They didn't consult the Income Trust industry, they didn't consult over the cuts to the Womens Program or Court Challenges, they didn't consult the environmentalists, and they didn't consult parliament over Afghanistan.

Harper just goes ahead and does what he wants. Bull in the China Shop. Damn the torpedos full speed ahead.

And the other point that arose from Chongs resignation and was raised by the press in the shambles of the press conference with Senator Marjorie Lebreton and Quebec MP Laurence Cannon, was what is the difference between Quebecker and Quebecois. Cannon himself slipped in the press conference and admitted that Quebecois means the founding french families, the Old Quebecois of which he is one.

"I am resigning as minister so I can abstain from the vote tonight," Chong, the former intergovernmental affairs and sport minister, said at a news conference. "While I am loyal to my party and to my leader, my first loyalty is to my country. I believe in one nation undivided called Canada."

He said voting for the motion to recognize Quebec as a nation would be supporting ethnic nationalism, something he could not bring himself to do.

But Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon responded by saying the debate over Quebec as a nation is not divisive and gives voice to Quebec’s unique identity.

Chong’s opinion that it grants Quebecers "ethnic nationalism" isn’t realistic, he said at a news conference with Senator Marjorie LeBreton.

"I certainly don’t share that point of view because this debate has been going on for close to 40 years," Cannon said.


Now some may say this is a semantic difference, however as one reporter pointed out it is more than that. Quebecker includes Anglophones and immigrants who live in Quebec as well as Francophones. Quebecois in Quebec sometimes means the founding families the pure laine. It is a term of racism and petit-bourgoise nationalism as infamously memorialized in Jacques Parizeaus speech denouncing 'foreigners in Quebec' for defeating the 1995 referendum. Foreigners, being Jews, immigrants and Anglophones. It is ethinc nationalism not just a nuanced phraseology, despite Cannon's denials. had

Mr. Chong quit his post as federal Intergovernmental Affairs Minister to protest Stephen Harper’s much-ballyhooed proposal to recognize Quebecers as a nation. His move instantly reduced his status to that of a backbencher, with the associated reductions in salary, staff and perks. “I believe in one nation, undivided, called Canada,” he said yesterday. “My first loyalty is to my country. It is for this fundamental principle that I cannot support the motion recognizing the Québécois as a nation.”


And as for the nasty results of censure for those who would oppose the bosses motion well Lebreton dismissed that too.

She denied Chong would have faced serious consequences, such as being kicked out of caucus, if he didn’t tow the party line. "There was no threats," she LeBreton said. "No one was threatened with being kicked out of caucus."

Ha, what the hell does a three line whip mean.

Theoretically at least, expulsion from the party is automatically consequent from defying a three-line whip.
Chief Whip - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

After all this is the party that just turfed Garth Turner for far less. If Chong stayed and voted against the motion well he would be sharing wall space with Garth.

See

Quebec

Harper Autocrat


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Map Of PC Votes Across Alberta

In the wake of this weekends vote for the man who would replace Klein, Greg Farries at the Politic.com has created a map of how the province voted and how Calgary and Edmonton voted. It shows overwhelming support for Morton in the old Socred ridings of the south of the province. Why am I not surprized. He has coloured Morton blue, a big blue wave that protends nothing good for Alberta or Canada.


See:

Conservative Leadership Race



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