Peak Oil = Alberta Water Shortage

While King Ralph bitch slaps the Pembina Institute for daring to point out that the Tar Sands may lead to a water shortage in Alberta, which is already facing drought conditions, claiming they should keep their noses out of the business of business, well a business blog says their concerns are justified.

The Oil Horror Picture Show (By Sean Brodrick)
Money and Markets, FL - 9 Aug 2006

Canada's total crude oil production has been dropping since 2004, and is down 11% since December, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

"But don't worry," says the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. That product, they claim, should get back up to the 2004 level starting in 2010, thanks to oil sands.

Trouble is, they want you to ignore the fact that every cubic meter of oil produced requires two to five times as much water. In other words, a million barrels a day of oil production translates into roughly 2 to 4.5 million barrels of water used in that same day.

Just among the oil sands projects now planned, the water use will increase to 529 million cubic meters, according to the Pembina Institute's report, "Down to the Last Drop."

Considering that the drought in North America is worsening, there may be better uses for Canadian water. Water or oil … that's a tough choice, isn't it?

In fact despite all the ramping up of oil production in Fort McMurray we still face Peak Oil conditions.

"Once peak oil occurs, then the historic patterns of world oil demand and price cycles will cease. In recent years, the realization of price stability has depended on the effectiveness of nations belonging to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to adjust for the production increases and lags of the non-OPEC nations. "We have now entered a period where production is lagging behind demand. A Thousand Barrels a Second

Nuclear powered steam injection, melted Glaciers, all the wild and crazy ideas of the seventies are being revived in Alberta in order to extract the expensive oil from the Tar Sands.

A step back in time and a blast from the past. Historian Michael Payne looks back at efforts to set off an atomic bomb at Cheechum Crossing. All in the name of getting oil out of the Athabasca Tar Sands.

Oh yes and don't forget it also takes natural gas to power the current extraction process.

Tar sands take 1,000 cubic feet of natural gas and a lot of water to produce a barrel of what equates to sour crude. Sour or heavy crude is difficult to process and can only be handled by a limited number of refiners

The Tar Sands oil production is an expensive process. In other words along with the social and infrastructure costs which are not being met, the real cost for a barrel of oil from the tar sands fails to take into account real cost inputs.

While Klein likes to say leave it up to business, the real costs are borne not by business but by all Canadians who have subsidized big oil since the begining of the Tar Sands.

Canadian tax law invented income trusts (ITs) initially to enable oil and gas companies to pay dividends from cash flow before taxes. That means they could securitize future revenue streams and offer tax advantages. Normal stocks pay dividends from after-tax earnings. These entities are much more common in Canada than in the U.S., although some others are said to be coming here. The recipient of the IT dividends is responsible for paying taxes on what he has received. That makes this vehicle similar to real-estate investment trusts in the U.S. and other countries. Looking to Canada for investment innovation


Mackenzie Gas, Athabasca Tar: Industrializing Canada’s Northwest ...



Also See:

Peak Oil

Tar Sands



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Verbena for Ambrose

A tiny plant may mean the extinction of Rona Ambrose as Environment Minister.

Why, because the plant grows in Klein country, and that means it will be sacrificed for the good of the oil industry.

Klein dismissed a call by the Pembina Institute for a moratorium on oilsands development until a comprehensive plan is developed. ‘‘The Pembina Institute should keep their noses out of anyone’s business, especially businesses that want to take risks,’’ Klein said Thursday.

Of course this is the same province that refuses to protect the endangered Grizzly Bear population allowing for hunting of the last of North America's great bears. And if they allow for hunting of the last of the North American Grizzlies why would they care for a tiny little flower.

The groups picked the least significant plant to test the government's commitment to protecting endangered species, said Devon Page, a lawyer with the Sierra Legal Defence Fund.

"Never mind polar bears and grizzly bears and caribou," he said. "What does it say about protection of species under the act if they won't protect the least significant? I think it tells you what will happen: no species will get protected."

Page says Alberta is the only province that doesn't have legislation to protect endangered species. Environment minister asked to save Alberta plants facing extinction

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The New Imperialist

Imperialism is the highest form of capitalism. Lenin

China apparently has embraced Lenins axiom as only they could as a State Capitalist Autarky. Now sitting at the international table of imperialism; the WTO, China today is colonizing Africa as its resource base, just as the old European Imperialist Powers did in the past two centruries.

The death of the so called Super Powers conflict with the end of the Cold War has in the era of globalization led to what Kautsky called Ultra Imperialism. And China is ruthlessly applying the logic of Imperialism in Africa. Far more so than even the old Imperialists ever did.

Its rapacious need for resources,oil, gas, and ivory, which has increased the poaching of Elephants, makes Africa, poor Africa, the new colony of Imperialist China. The result is the same old same old, China's new Fordist economy relies upon underdeveloped Africa.

Africa will remain underdeveloped and a battlefield of Imperialism until some country on the contient develops its own Fordist economy.

Chinese goods flood SADC, there maybe benefits

More than 93 percent of these imports were manufactured goods. By comparison, regional exports to China, which also saw a dramatic increase from 1.3 billion US Dollars to over 8.2 billion US Dollars were dominated by raw material.

What Do the Chinese Want?

This article is about one part of the Chinese plan for economic independence, not interdependence, in a global economy in which China, itself, has become, perhaps, the driving engine of demand for commodities. A place formerly held, and for a very long time, by the United States, and still held by the United States in the minds of many investment advice-giving financial analysts. The part of the Chinese plan for economic independence I wish to discuss can be called the gathering and control of the natural resources necessary for a modern industrial economy.

The Chinese do not believe that the end result of their, strictly supervised by the government and intentionally limited, foray into a mixed planned and market driven economy should be that anyone with money can buy, and has the right to buy, anything they want. They believe that a great nation must first and foremost control sufficient natural resources and energy to be independent of the needs or desires of any other nation. They have entered into the global marketplace only to fulfill that purpose. This is the basis of what I call the ‘gold war’ that has supplanted the earlier unsuccessful cold war waged by the late Soviet Union. The Chinese have realized, as the Russians never did, that if a nation hopes to be powerful and respected it must first be economically self sufficient and bring first to its own people the superior benefits it claims for its political system as a global role model.

China’s scramble for Africa finds a welcome in Kenya

China Makes Trade Links With Africa

PanAfrica: China-Africa Trade Up 72 Percent

China’s empire-builders sweep up African riches


Also See

China




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Zionism is Anti-Semitism

Karl Kautsky the leader of the German Social Democratic party wrote this work before and after WWI. His criticism of Zionism and its impact on the Middle East is relevant today as the Zionist State continues its war against its neighbours. Courtesy of the Marxist Internet Archive.

Are the Jews a Race? now appears for the first time in English. The first German edition appeared in 1914, under the title Rasse and Judentum; the second edition, in 1921, already included a number of important additions and improvements, particularly the new chapter entitled Zionism After the War; for the present English version, the author has revised and brought up to date the second German edition, in the light of recent developments in Palestine.


Zionism Before the War

Wherever the Jew – we mean the Eastern European Jew, still far from assimilation – may come, he is regarded as a foreigner among foreigners. He is nowhere certain even to be tolerated. The reactionary American workers, who keep out the Chinese and Japanese, who keep Negro workers out of their organisations, are equally opposed to Jewish immigration. The beginnings of such an attitude are already apparent. The Jew is secure against oppression only in a state in which he lives not as a foreigner, in a state – therefore – of his own nationality. Only in a real Jewish state will the emancipation of Judaism be possible.

This is the guiding thought of Zionism. Even among the circles of Western European Judaism, this idea has in recent years been replacing the idea of assimilation, of equality of rights within the existing states, which had until recently been dominant among the Jews. Zionism is coming more and more in conflict with this thought, for as assimilation progresses, the national Jewry loses in strength. It is therefore necessary to segregate Jews as sharply as possible from non-Jews.

Zionism meets anti-Semitism halfway in this effort, as well as in the fact that its goal is the removal of all Jews from the existing states.

The agreement between Zionism and anti-Semitism on these points is so strong, that there have even been Zionists who expected much gracious assistance in the realisation of their objects from the head of the Orthodox Russian nation, from the fountain-head of anti-Semitism all over the world, from the Czar of Russia.

Zionism After the War

Zionism is not a progressive movement, but a reactionary movement. Zionism aims not at following the line of necessary evolution, but of putting a spoke in the wheel of progress.

Zionism denies the right of self-determination of nations, instead of which it proclaims the doctrine of historical rights, which is breaking down everywhere today, even where it is supported by the greatest powers.

There is hardly any possibility that the Jews in Palestine will become more numerous than the Arabs. But every attempt made by the advancing Jewry in that country to displace the Arabs cannot fail to arouse the fighting spirit of the latter, in which opposition to the Jews the Arabs of Palestine will be more and more assured of the support of the entire Arab population of Asia Minor, in whose eyes the Jews appear as foreign rulers or as allies of the English oppressor.

It is a delusion to imagine that the Jews arriving from Europe and America will ever succeed in convincing the Arabs that Jewish rule in this country will ever redound to the advantage of the Arabs themselves.

In the early days of Zionism, people were blind to this difficulty. Little more attention was paid to the Arabs than was paid to the Indians in North America. Only occasionally is it remembered that Palestine is already an occupied country. It is then simply assumed that its former inhabitants will be pushed aside in order to make room for the incoming Jews. Ballod, for instance, discusses as follows the question of what is to be done in the way of claiming all of Palestine for Jewish colonisation:

“In the case of a mass colonisation, mere individual purchases of land from the Arab proprietors of large holdings would not be sufficient; on the other hand, in order that real-estate prices may not rise to fabulous heights, a Jewish chartered company must be given the right to expropriate land in return for adequate compensation.” [9] Ballod also says that the petty peasants, the fellahs, will not provide much trouble. In his opinion, they would “gladly leave Palestine if they should be offered opportunities elsewhere, for instance in Northern Syria or Babylonia, if the latter is to be reawakened to life by large-scale engineering operations, to obtain better conditions”. But who is to offer them these “better conditions”?

But the fact now is that England has won the war, and the Arabs have become as burdensome to England as they, once were to the Turks. The Zionists now present the reverse side of the medal and extol the Jewish colonists in Palestine as England’s allies against the Arab aspirations for independence.

In spite of all these changes, one condition remains permanent: the dependence of Jewish colonisation on the victorious European great powers, and the opposition of the colonists to the Arabs. Both are necessary results of the given economic and political conditions, and each of the two factors gives strength to the other in rapid alternation. Here we find the profoundest cause for the untenability of Zionism. Jewish colonisation in Palestine must collapse as soon as the Anglo-French hegemony over Asia Minor (including Egypt) collapses, and this is merely a question of time, perhaps of the very near future.

Also See:

Israel

Lebanon

Zionism

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Warning Warning

Blogger will be down for maintenancefor 45 minutes starting at 4pm (Pacific Time).

Yeah right 45 minutes, give or take a few hours. Well at least they warned us this time.

And I get to use my nifty Robbie the Robot graphic.




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Woods Lot

Woods Lot is an iconclastic blog well worth the read, covering topics in the true tradition of surrealism. A drink at the well of the exotic, esoteric and post modern. Not for the static conservative thinker, ain't that a contradiction in terms.



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Horus Set

Strange 'twin' new worlds found
Perhaps they could be called Horus and Set. Since Egyptian Dieties were stellar in nature.

The Egyptian Heaven and Hell by E. A. Wallis Budge [1905] A journey through the night side of the Ancient Egyptian cosmos.

Vol. I: The Book of the Am-Tuat
Vol II: The Book of Gates
Vol III: The Egyptian Heaven and Hell
The Book of Gates is an Ancient Egyptian cosmological treatise describing the architecture and inhabitants of the Tuat, the underworld which the boat of the Sun God, Ra, traverses during the night hours. This is the second volume of the three volume Budge series which deals with the books of the Underworld, the Egyptian Heaven and Hell. It also includes a short summary of the Book of Am-Tuat, the longer version of which comprises the first volume.


The Terrible Twins Horus and Set were originally expressions of the primal duality, the two aspects of Heaven, the day-sky and night-sky. As the Egyptian mythology was elaborated towards its final chaotic state, their symbolism drifted away from these absolute poles into the middle ground, first becoming solar, and finally taking on a variety of solar/martial and zodiacal characteristics. Yet their final form can still be expressed in a concise symbology, that of the astrological signs of Aries and Scorpio. Taken whole, their symbolism is that of the primal duality manifesting in its male aspects.

Math is Fun On a material world basis, Fractions are located between one and zero. For Ancient Egyptians, fractions had a religious origin from the myth of Horus and Seth. Seth tore out one of Horus' falcon eyes and cut it into pieces-pieces which thereafter symbolized certain fractions. Africans went on to develop a complex method of factorization. To show how conflict has occurred by mixing the spiritual with the worldly, European Renaissance scientist, along with their followers of Set (Satan), destroyed the sacred science by introducing the Evil Number, Zero, in arithmetic to take the first place of Number One. References: Diop, Civilization p276; Seleem, Egyptian Book of Life p12.

Horus-Set

The two Egyptian deities Set and Horus are two sides of the same coin. Horus is the external manifestation of the spirit of being while Set is the hidden god of the internal, representing Energy and Force. In the IInd Dynasty, when the Two Lands were unified, Khasekhemwy ruled in the names of both Horus and Set, trying to find a peaceful solution to the eventual Osirian takeover. Thus both symbols of Kingship, Horus and Set, became part of the attributes of the King. Set then became the strength or power of the King, as Horus became the vision or sight of the King.''

Contendings of Horus and Seth
This is written on Papyrus Chester Beatty I in Thebes during the New Kingdom and the reign of Ramses V. Its´purpose is entertainment rather than religious instruction, and it is written in a humorous way. Most likely it goes further back as its´content builds upon earlier tales of the deities involved .The tale is long with many incidents and what follows here is a much shortened version.

Osiris, Isis, Horus, and Set
While Osiris subdued the world by gentleness and persuasion, by song and flute (which he invented) his son Horus from first to last was a warrior. Born to be the avenger of his father, he is said to have assumed the shape of a human-headed lion to gain advantage over Set. In this form he is the Sphinx -- Har-em-chu -- which is verily his image. He is also represented standing on a boat of serpentine form, with spear in hand, killing the serpent. His constant warfare with Set covers many facts, cosmical, spiritual and historical. In one aspect it is the struggle with the lower, personal nature and symbolizes the trials of adeptship; the fact that his triumphs are but temporary shows that his adeptship has to be regained in each new birth. The magnet was called the "bone of Horus" and iron, "the bone of Typhon," the latter being the rough Titanic power which opposes its force to the divine magnetic spirit trying to harmonize everything in nature. The dual nature of Horus is referred to in Chapter XVII of the Book of the Dead in these words: "It is Horus when he riseth up with a double head, whereof one beareth right and truth and the other wickedness" (Set). In Chapter CLXXVII he is "the blue-eyed" and "the red-eyed Horus," -- Set was always depicted red. In Chapter XXIX B, Horus is the Universal Ego; the deceased says: "My heart is with me, and it shall never come to pass that it shall be carried away.... I am Horus, the dweller in hearts, who is within the dweller in the body." In Chapter LXXVIII, The Chapter of Making the Transformation into the Divine Hawk, the deceased says: "And behold, when as yet Isis had not given birth to Horus, I had germinated, and had flourished, and I had become aged. (pre-existence) ... And I had risen up like the divine hawk, and Horus made for me a spiritual body (sahu) containing his own soul.... I, even I, am Horus, who dwelleth in the divine Khu (luminous form). I have gained power over his crown, I have gained power over his radiance, and I have travelled over the remote, illimitable parts of heaven... Horus is both the divine food and the sacrifice.... The gods labor for him, and they toil for him for millions of years." In later times the Pharaohs, by way of asserting (rightfully or otherwise) their divine nature, assumed the title "The Golden Horus," for according to Chapter LXXXIII of the Book of the Dead, Horus was one of those Illuminated Beings "who emitted light from his divine body," and "who never lie down in death."



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Iraq and Blogs Killed Lieberman

The victory of Ned Lamont over Joseph I. Lieberman, a three-term senator and former vice presidential candidate, was a vivid demonstration of how the Iraq war is buffeting American politics and of the deep hostility toward President Bush among Democrats. It also suggested there are stiff anti-status-quo winds blowing across the political landscape as the fall elections approach. Mr. Lamont's victory marked the first time that liberal political blogs, after playing an increasingly noisy role in Democratic politics, have been associated with a major winning campaign, suggesting a moment of arrival for this new force in political combat. And the outcome will also undoubtedly prod other Democrats who supported the war - albeit with less gusto than Mr. Lieberman - to step farther away from the increasingly unpopular conflict.News Analysis: A referendum on Iraq policy

True, true, but it was also Lieberman's unfailing support for Bush and Bush's war that really did him in. Lieberman Praises Bush, Chides Kerry

Of course he promises to be a spoiler, since he is a spoilsport. Lieberman concedes to Lamont, vows to run in November

Of course the other Democrat Senator that is a Chicken Hawk is Hillary, and this does not bode well for her non-Presidential run in 08. Democrats' fury at war may sink Hillary Clinton

Which leaves the race open for the reborn, remade, Al Gore. It's ok Al, time to come in from the wilderness. Joe Lieberman Loss Equals President Al Gore?

So fellow bloggers let it not be said that we have little real influence in the world that is beyond this screen. Just ask Joe. The Unmaking of a Senator: How Bloggers Staged an Upset


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War is Rape

Testimony Tells of Rape, Killings in Iraq
Military investigators give details of a US soldier's admission. They say troops planned the assault while playing cards and drinking.

Just another example of rape as a function of War. Regardless of the army involved. Remember the Marines slogan; a rifle is for fighting, my gun is for fun. After all what's a little rape after mass slaughter, he said sarcastically; 'I got my kills ... I just love my job'


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We Are Hezbollah Redux

Marchers message wasn't 'Peace'
08-08-06, 7:11 am @ Canadianna

This demonstration took place in Britain over the weekend. Police estimate over 20,000 people attended (organizers put the number at 100,000.) Apparently, they're "ALL HIZBULLAH" now. One wonders if those holding those signs understand the nature of the cause they're endorsing.

Not anti-war, but pro-Hezbollah
07-08-06, 6:52 am @ Daimnation!

A columnist for Vancouver's Georgia Straight savages the Canadian peace movement for supporting a genocidal terrorist organization: Things started at a July 18 demonstration in Montreal, when a small group of young Lebanese showed up with a sign that read...

Gee you would think these bloggers would have read my comments on this. Guess not. Dummies.

Also See:

Israel

Lebanon

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World AIDS Conference sans Harper

The present Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, has not accepted an invitation to appear at the Toronto conference, disappointing its organizers.Dr. Helene D. Gayle, the president of the International AIDS Society, an independent professional group that is chief organizer of the meeting told the New York Times, "AIDS conferences can sometimes be hard on politicians."

Yep that must be it, or else its a simple case of Harper Homophobia. Because it can't be for any religious or moral reason since the majority of cases of AIDS in the world affect heterosexuals.

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Who Pays

For all of Mr. Harpers promises?
Why you and I of course.

TANSTAAFL.

Which is why for all their rhetoric of being fiscal conservatives and just like us, the Harpocrites are nothing of the sort, they simply are another party of big business.

When they talk tax cuts it's for the corporations not you or I.

Otherwise no working class Canadian would pay taxes on their wages if they earned less than $100,000 annually. That is a real tax cut for real people like you and I. Harper has funded his promises by taking from Peter to pay Pauline.

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Canada and Cuba

Before the revolution that brought Castro to power in 1959, the U.S. accounted for 85% of all tourists into Cuba--and for two-thirds of all trade with the island nation.

Today the majority of tourists are from Canada, which also dominates the hotel industry in Cuba. Too bad so sad about the American embargo. Good for us though which is why Harper will NOT change policy on Canada Cuba relations.

Air Canada currently runs 10 flights a week to Cuba, including to the island of Cayo Coco and the resort town of Varadero. During Cuba's busy winter season, Air Canada ups that to 28 weekly flights, including daily service from Toronto to Havana.

"Cuba has always been a favored destination for Canadians seeking the sun," said spokesman John Reber. Canada is Cuba's largest travel market, followed Italy and France.

In the late 1990s, some Canadian tour operators steered customers to Cuba instead of South Florida as new resorts opened on the island, Grossman said. She said the trend was short-lived but that Cuba remains a significant worry. Cuba's tourism industry could emerge as major competitor

Oh yeah and Cuba has discovered oil and gas thanks to Canadians.

Meanwhile Cuba "is exploring in its half of the 90-mile-wide Straits of Florida within the internationally recognized boundary as well as in deep-water areas of the Gulf of Mexico,” the Washington Times reports.

Two Canadian companies are presently pumping more than 19,000 barrels of crude oil each day from fields in the straits about 90 miles from Key West, and a Spanish company has announced an oil strike in deep-water areas of the same region, according to the National Ocean Industries Association.Cuba Drills for Oil 60 Miles Off US Coast

Trudeaus policy of friendly relations with Cuba have resulted in improved conditions for the Cuban people due to limited market reforms created in Post-Soviet Cuba.

Also See:

Cuba


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A Zionist Speaks of the Death of Zionism

The Zionist revolution has always rested on two pillars: a just path and an ethical leadership. Neither of these is operative any longer. The Israeli nation today rests on a scaffolding of corruption, and on foundations of oppression and injustice. As such, the end of the Zionist enterprise is already on our doorstep. There is a real chance that ours will be the last Zionist generation. There may yet be a Jewish state here, but it will be a different sort, strange and ugly. Israel, having ceased to care about the children of the Palestinians, should not be surprised when they come washed in hatred and blow themselves up in the centers of Israeli escapism. They consign themselves to Allah in our places of recreation, because their own lives are torture. They spill their own blood in our restaurants in order to ruin our appetites, because they have children and parents at home who are hungry and humiliated.

A Failed Israeli Society is Collapsing by Avraham Burg, 2003

Avraham Burg was speaker of Israel's Knesset from 1999 to 2003 and is a former chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel. He is currently a Labor Party Knesset member. This essay is adapted by the author from an article that appeared in Yediot Aharonot.

Also See:

Israel

Lebanon

Zionism


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Canada War Profiteers

The Dominion has an excellent report on Canada's war profiteering from the current Middle East Conflict. Canada produces military equipment used in attacks on Lebanon, Palestine

Even domestic businesses like Bombadier are part of the war profiteering by their business partners.

Meanwhile the radio news is reporting the Harpocrite Government is using the National Security Act to allow them to give away lucrative military contracts to their pals without having to tender the contracts.

Open, transparent accountable government I think not. But one that is driven to expand Canada's role as a war profiteer.


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Simplistic Harper

Mr. Harper has said demanding a ceasefire is too simplistic. "Conditions have to be put in place to make a ceasefire possible and make it stable," he said last week in Cornwall, Ont. "Obviously that isn't going to be the case as long as we have a terrorist organization that is initiating violence and won't cease its attacks."

Oh does he mean this terrorist organization that is initiating and continuing its violence and won't cease its attacks?

Deadly bombs strike near heart of Beirut

As more Israeli tanks prepare to cross the country's northern border Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said his security cabinet will meet on Wednesday to discuss the possible expansion of military operations in Lebanon. However he said he has not yet been presented with plans to do that. Inside southern Lebanon fierce fighting continues between around 10,000 Israeli soldiers and Hizbollah guerillas. Earlier Defence Minister Amir Peretz said the army is poised to occupy more areas of southern Lebanon.Israeli leaders to discuss expanding operations in Lebanon

I guess not, that would be too simplistic like this apologiy for Israels aggression.

Measured response or war crime?

Also See:

Israel

Lebanon

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Harpers Real Opposition

The opposition parties who have opposed the governments adventurist efforts in Afghanistan, the NDP and BQ, should use blow up photographs of each Canadian killed in Afghanistan and place them promintely in chairs facing the Harper government benches to remind them of the victims of their ill planned foreign adventurism in Afghanistan. This is the face of the real opposition.

In all, 24 Canadian soldiers have been killed since the beginning of Canada's military presence in Afghanistan in March 2002.

A list of the Canadians killed in Afghanistan since 2002

Also See:

Afghanistan



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Capitalism Destroys Civilization

In order to reduce competition capitalism in its 'creative destructive' logic needs to destroy civilization (the metropole) in developing countries in order to reduce them to primitive tribalist cultures dependant on Imperialist largese for their existence. This has occured in the cases of Beirut( the Paris of the Middle East) during the internecine war of the Eighties, the destruction of Zagreb and Bosnia Herzogovina, and now with Baghdad.

Then and now: Requiem for Baghdad
Baghdad was never the prettiest of places. But in the 1970s it sure had life. People flocked to its cafés and markets. The wide boulevards teemed with traffic. Books and paintings proclaimed the wealth of Iraq's cultural heritage. Patrick Cockburn, who witnessed it all, remembers the city that seduced him - and wonders if the great metropolis on the banks of the Tigris can ever rise again

Also See:

Iraq




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Gone Fishing

It's the long weekend in Alberta, though federal workers don't get the day off. So I am gone, but not forgotten. Won't be blogging this weekend. See ya Tuesday. Besides there is enough fun stuff here to read....catch up on some of my older pieces, while you wait for my pithy comments on the world as it is, as it was and as it should be.

Terrorist Government

Comments made on my article Hezbollah Are Not Terorrists claim that no government or state would allow a political organization to be armed and independent of the state. Of course that is true, however the Lebanese Government recognizes Hezbollah as its National Resistance.

And of course there is another state in the neighbourhood that has a history of arising from terrorism.

Lessons From History

On July 22, 1946, the King David Hotel was blown up by Jewish terrorists killing 91 and injuring 45 - mostly British and Arabs. The attack was ordered by the Haganah, the Jewish paramilitary terrorist organization which was the precursor to the IDF. The actual attack was caried out by the group Irgun under the leadership of Menachem Begin, later the Prime Minister of Isreal.


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Lets Get Our Facts Straight

There is a myth being perpetuated by Pro-Israel commentators and pundits that Hezbollah has been using rocket attacks on Israel before the current Lebanon conflict. Untrue.

Of course that doesn't stop Israeli apologists like Warren Kinsella from lying in print.

"What media admonitions are now being levelled Hezbollah, which Canada still considers a terrorist organization – and which fired hundreds of rockets at Israelis for months, and continues to do so? Nary a peep."

The fact is that it was Hamas that has been attaking Israel with rockets for months, not Hezbollah who only began their rocket attacks after Israel attacked southern Lebanon.

Of course Hezbollah has been accused of rocket attacks before, which turned out not to be true. And that was in 2005.

No rocket attacks were conducted prior to the raid into Israel in July when Hezbollah captured the Israel soldiers.

That clearly exposes Kinsella's 'big lie' though he is not the only one to make this false claim. And of course he does so because he equates Hezbollah to the Nazi's as does the National Post.

So we are clear let me repeat this 'fact'; Hezbollah launched its 'counter offensive' only after Israel launched its attack on Southern Lebanon, NOT before.

Nor were Hezbollah attacks made against civilians in the past two years, they were on Israel Defense Forces on the Lebanese border. Hezbollah, which fought a guerrilla war against Israel's 18-year occupation of Lebanon's southern border, frequently targets Israeli troops in the disputed Shebaa farms area.

Thats the facts.

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The Tyrant

Accusations of dictator and tyrant abound in the press these days.

Of course they are refering to this guy;















Of course those same accusations could apply to this guy too;
















Also See:

Cuba

One Party State

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Liberal Leadership Race Woman-less

Far and Wide does an assessment on the 'contenders' for the Liberal Leadership who he thinks have a chance. Who's Winning The Liberal Leadership Race? CTV says that the backroom boys agree. Liberal brass suggest tight 5-way leadership race

Unfortunately there are NO women in this listing. Where are they?

You have at least two running, Caroline Bennet and Martha Hall Findlay. So the Liberals publish a Pink Paper on Women in the Party and the top dogs in this race remain, men.

Calgary Herald Columnist Don Martin opines that Martha Hall Findlay may be the dark horse. No-name Toronto lawyer vows to take Liberals out of the doghouse As does the Tor Star;MARTHA'S THE ONE TO WATCH

Hope springs eternal as the saying goes. But boys being boys, and backroom boys being the ultimate boys club, well the Liberals will be a long time coming in electing a woman as leader.

Why? Well they can look to the Conservatives who elected a woman PM only to lose the election. Not her fault, it was a Mulroney backlash. And the NDP has had two women leaders, neither of which managed to get the publicity Jack the Moustache has.

Parliamentary Politics remains a boys club regardless of sufferage. Women in the Liberal Party remain tokens, just ask Sheila who was stabbed in the back by Martin. Or ask Ignatieff who took his seat from a woman MP.

The Liberals are all about tokenism. Always have been, always will be. They have their token labour types, like Buzz and the General Workers Union in Toronto, they have their token minority groups,aboriginals, in the closet gays and lesbians, visible minorities, pro-lifers, pro-choice, ethnic minorities, women, etc.

Tokenism is Liberalism.


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A Green Harper?

The Edmonton Journal suggests that Harper could become the Green PM if he made Clayoquot Sound a national park. I am sure the editorial board had its tongue firmly in its cheek, with this cheeky comment;

If the B.C. government won't come to its senses and reverse the regional board's decision and permanently protect the area, Prime Minister Stephen Harper ought to find a way. Harper could think of it as a fitting payback to the lumber industry that has embarrassed him over his softwood lumber deal, and at the same time as a way of winning back some of the environmental support his government has lost over the retreat from the Kyoto climate-change accord.

Anyone in the PMO reading the Edmonton Journal? You might want to pass this on to the Harper.



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