Monday, August 27, 2007

Military Industrial Complex

The most significant pronouncement of the 1960's which literally created a new perspective on Post War America for the radical Left and Right. And it is not only relevant today but continues to be the basis for a coherent oppositional critique of the neo-con agenda of American Empire and American Exceptionalism.

The irony is that the those on the New Left like the SDS accepted Eisenhower's assessment of the dangers and used as a critique of American State Capitalism while those from the Old Left embraced it during the cold war as 'anti-Stalinists', and became the founders of the Neo-Con movement in America today.

It was the SDS that inspired the emergence of the libertarian left and the left libertarian critique of this model of State Capitalism.


Eisenhower's Farewell Address to the Nation
January 17, 1961

"Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

"Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

"This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

"We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

EISENHOWER: SOLDIER OF PEACE

HE was a soldier who loathed war.

He was a politician who abhorred politics. He was a hero who despised heroics. Yet there was nothing inconsistent about Dwight David Eisenhower. As much as any other American of today or yesterday, he was the storybook American. A man of luminous integrity and decency, of steadfast courage and conscience, he embodied in his wide smile, high ideals and down-to-earth speech all the virtues of a simpler and more serene America.


In the councils of government we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Eisenhower's challenge from 40 years ago is more relevant today than ever, and he seemed to know it would be. ''Down the long lane of the history yet to be written, America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.... Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.'' Such words are rare in Washington today, but tomorrow their echo can still be heard.

Mega-contractors such as Halliburton and Bechtel supply the government with brawn. But the biggest, most powerful of the "body shops"—SAIC, which employs 44,000 people and took in $8 billion last year—sells brainpower, including a lot of the "expertise" behind the Iraq war.


The War Business

And so, for the private contractors that increasingly make up the infrastructure of our armed forces, fortune has arisen from tragedy. During the first Iraq war, in 1991, one in a hundred American personnel was employed by a private contractor. In the second Iraq war, that ratio is closer to one in ten. The Washing ton Post reports that as much as one third of the rapidly expanding cost of the Iraq war is going into private U.S. bank accounts.

The original point of this massive outflow of federal dollars was to save money. In Donald Rumsfeld's vision, privatization would bring the unbending discipline of the marketplace to bear on war itself. In 1995, well before his return to Washington, Rumsfeld presented to America his "Thoughts from the Business World on Downsizing Government," a monograph informed by his experience as both a White House chief of staff and defense secretary (under Gerald Ford) and a CEO of two large American corporations (General Instrument Corp. and G. D. Searle). "Government programs are effectively insulated from the rigors of the marketplace, and therefore are denied the possibility of failure," he wrote. "Sometimes, nothing short of outright privatization can restore the discipline of a bottom line."



Eisenhower's Farewell Warning Was Meant For Our Time


To be sure, there isn't really such a corporation: the Omnivore Group, as it might be called. But if there were such a company—and, mind you, there isn't—it might look a lot like the largest government contractor you've never heard of: a company known simply by the nondescript initials SAIC (for Science Applications International Corporation), initials that are always spoken letter by letter rather than formed into a pronounceable acronym. SAIC maintains its headquarters in San Diego, but its center of gravity is in Washington, D.C. With a workforce of 44,000, it is the size of a full-fledged government agency—in fact, it is larger than the departments of Labor, Energy, and Housing and Urban Development combined. Its anonymous glass-and-steel Washington office—a gleaming corporate box like any other—lies in northern Virginia, not far from the headquarters of the C.I.A., whose byways it knows quite well. (More than half of SAIC's employees have security clearances.) SAIC has been awarded more individual government contracts than any other private company in America. The contracts number not in the dozens or scores or hundreds but in the thousands: SAIC currently holds some 9,000 active federal contracts in all. More than a hundred of them are worth upwards of $10 million apiece. Two of them are worth more than $1 billion. The company's annual revenues, almost all of which come from the federal government, approached $8 billion in the 2006 fiscal year, and they are continuing to climb. SAIC's goal is to reach as much as $12 billion in revenues by 2008. As for the financial yardstick that really gets Wall Street's attention—profitability—SAIC beats the S&P 500 average. Last year ExxonMobil, the world's largest oil company, posted a return on revenue of 11 percent. For SAIC the figure was 11.9 percent. If "contract backlog" is any measure—that is, contracts negotiated and pending—the future seems assured. The backlog stands at $13.6 billion. That's one and a half times more than the backlog at KBR Inc., a subsidiary of the far better known government contractor once run by Vice President Dick Cheney, the Halliburton Company.

It is a simple fact of life these days that, owing to a deliberate decision to downsize government, Washington can operate only by paying private companies to perform a wide range of functions. To get some idea of the scale: contractors absorb the taxes paid by everyone in America with incomes under $100,000. In other words, more than 90 percent of all taxpayers might as well remit everything they owe directly to SAIC or some other contractor rather than to the IRS. In Washington these companies go by the generic name "body shops"—they supply flesh-and-blood human beings to do the specialized work that government agencies no longer can. Often they do this work outside the public eye, and with little official oversight—even if it involves the most sensitive matters of national security. The Founding Fathers may have argued eloquently for a government of laws, not of men, but what we've got instead is a government of body shops.


Port Huron Statement

of the Students for a Democratic Society, 1962


The Military-Industrial Complex. The most spectacular and important creation of the authoritarian and oligopolistic structure of economic decision-making in America is the institution called "the military industrial complex" by former President Eisenhower, the powerful congruence of interest and structure among military and business elites which affects so much of our development and destiny. Not only is ours the first generation to live with the possibility of world-wide cataclysm -- it is the first to experience the actual social preparation for cataclysm, the general militarization of American society. In 1948 Congress established Universal Military Training, the first peacetime conscription. The military became a permanent institution. Four years earlier, General Motor's Charles E. Wilson had heralded the creation of what he called the "permanent war economy," the continuous use of military spending as a solution to economic problems unsolved before the post-war boom, most notably the problem of the seventeen million jobless after eight years of the New Deal. This has left a "hidden crisis" in the allocation of resources by the American economy.

Since our childhood these two trends -- the rise of the military and the installation of a defense-based economy -- have grown fantastically. The Department of Defense, ironically the world's largest single organization, is worth $160 billion, owns 32 million acres of America and employs half the 7.5 million persons directly dependent on the military for subsistence, has an $11 billion payroll which is larger than the net annual income of all American corporations. Defense spending in the Eisenhower era totaled $350 billions and President Kennedy entered office pledged to go even beyond the present defense allocation of sixty cents from every public dollar spent. Except for a war-induced boom immediately after "our side" bombed Hiroshima, American economic prosperity has coincided with a growing dependence on military outlay -- from 1941 to 1959 America's Gross National Product of $5.25 trillion included $700 billion in goods and services purchased for the defense effort, about one-seventh of the accumulated GNP. This pattern has included the steady concentration of military spending among a few corporations. In 1961, 86 percent of Defense Department contracts were awarded without competition. The ordnance industry of 100,000 people is completely engaged in military work; in the aircraft industry, 94 percent of 750,000 workers are linked to the war economy; shipbuilding, radio and communications equipment industries commit forty percent of their work to defense; iron and steel, petroleum, metal-stamping and machine shop products, motors and generators, tools and hardware, copper, aluminum and machine tools industries all devote at least 10 percent of their work to the same cause.

The intermingling of Big Military and Big Industry is evidenced in the 1,400 former officers working for the 100 corporations who received nearly all the $21 billion spent in procurement by the Defense Department in 1961. The overlap is most poignantly clear in the case of General Dynamics, the company which received the best 1961 contracts, employed the most retired officers (187), and is directed by a former Secretary of the Army. A Fortune magazine profile of General Dynamics said: "The unique group of men who run Dynamics are only incidentally in rivalry with other U.S. manufacturers, with many of whom they actually act in concert. Their chief competitor is the USSR. The core of General Dynamics corporate philosophy is the conviction that national defense is a more or less permanent business." Little has changed since Wilson's proud declaration of the Permanent War Economy back in the 1944 days when the top 200 corporations possessed 80 percent of all active prime war-supply contracts.


The Return of the SDS


During the late 1960s, when students all over American were practicing direct democracy on campus by waging massive student strikes and taking over their university buildings, the three essays collected here for the first time were among the most widely read pieces of student radical literature. Their author, Carl Davidson, was national vice-president and inter-organizational secretary of the SDS. Starting from the sociologists' conclusion that modern universities are "knowledge factories" designed to serve the Military Industrial Complex, Davidson, in these essays, explored various analogies and connections between students and the working class and outlined a theory of student syndicalism that characterized a critical phase in the development of SDS. Drawing not only on classical Marxism but also on IWW and anarcho-syndicalist ideas as well as on newer revolutionary currents such as the Dutch Provos and French Situationists, these writings were among the most original and influential documents of the American New Left in its dynamic first decade, and remain an unexcelled "how-to" manual for insurgent students seeking to gain some measure of control over their lives. In a new afterward, the author situates the rise of student syndicalism in its historic context, while reflecting on the meaning of these writings for today.

The SDS of the sixties had its roots in the League for Industrial Democracy, a socialist organization with credentials. The League included Norman Thomas, Upton Sinclair, and Jack London. In the early 1960’s the youth branch of the league clashed with the old establishment and created Students for a Democratic Society. In the early sixties SDS was small, and disorganized because of an understandable aversion to centralization and a belief in localized participatory democracy. SDS involved itself in the civil rights movement and quickly grew. The strength of the SDS, and probably the reason it grew so quickly was that it had no official ideological line. It was certainly radical, but it made no policy naming it Anarchist, Marxist-Leninist, Democratic Socialist, or anything else. Instead it incorporated all of these, and the liberal students too. By creating unity among radicals in general where factionalism once existed the SDS became the biggest, most effective, and most known radical organization of its time.

Especially notable was the preference for community organizing among SDSers. Though many of these campaigns weren’t successful in accomplishing their goals, the idea was the right one. Any radical student organization must be an organization of action, of union organizing, and of protest organizing. Because these actions were so visible, they further contributed to SDS’ growing numbers, and as the organization grew they began to implement all the right actions that gained public attention and in some cases real change. The SDS organized boycotts, direct action, civil disobedience, and also did teach-ins and propagated ideas of class-consciousness. At its height the SDS was able to organize huge marches on Washington, and even gained the qualification of a true radical organization: interference by the FBI.


The American Student Movement of the 1930s

Poster, Declaration of the Rights of American Youth, American Youth Congress
The modern American Student movement began in the 1930s, when the National Student League joined with the Student League for Industrial Democracy to form the American Student Union (ASU). During its peak years, from spring 1936 to spring 1939, the movement mobilized at least 500,000 college students (about half the American student body) in annual one-hour strikes against war. The movement also organized students on behalf of an extensive reform agenda, which included federal aid to education, government job programs for youth, abolition of the compulsory Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC), academic freedom, racial equality, and collective bargaining rights.

The Student League for Industrial Democracy was the student affiliate of the League for Industrial Democracy (LID).

There were two distinct groups called the Student League for Industrial Democracy (SLID) in two different periods - one existed from 1931 until 1935, the other existed from 1945 until 1960.

The first SLID was formed when radical student members of LID left in 1931 and formed the New York Student League (which was renamed the National Student League a year later). In response to this new group, LID formed SLID in 1931. SLID existed until December of 1935 when, like the student members of LID in 1931, it became too radical for LID, and split off from LID. SLID joined with the National Student League (NSL) when it split from LID, with SLID and NSL combining to form the American Student Union.

The reincarnation of SLID is the more well-known one. In 1945, LID decided to recreate SLID. SLID was a small and fairly moribund group throughout the 1940's and 1950's, much like LID which now was more liberal and anti-communist than socialist. In 1960, SLID renamed itself Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) so as to have a more wide appeal among college students. SDS would become the largest and most influential left-wing student group in American history.

League for Industrial Democracy (or LID)

At Port Huron, Tom Hayden clashed with Irving Howe and Michael Harrington over perceived potential for totalitarianism. Hayden said, "While the draft Port Huron Statement included a strong denunciation of the Soviet Union, it wasn’t enough for LID leaders like Michael Harrington. They wanted absolute clarity, for example, that the United States was blameless for the nuclear arms race...In truth, they seemed threatened by the independence of the new wave of student activism..."

By 1965, SDS had totally divorced itself from the LID, and it became a publishing front for the followers of Max Shachtman, who had dominated the organization since the late 1950s. To this day, the post office box of the Shachtmanite legacy group Social Democrats USA is held under the name League for Industrial Democracy.

League for Industrial Democracy (LID)
"The league was established in 1905 to educate students and other members of society about socialist principles of democracy and labor. Over the years it lost its progressive orientation and by the 1950s became involved with the CIA in efforts to combat communism." Now dominated by anticommunists, its board is composed primarily of neoconservatives associated with the Social Democrats USA and the international institutes of the AFL-CIO.
"Included among LID ranks are Sol Chaikin, Eric Chenowith, William Doherty, Evelyn Dubrow, Larry Dugan, Jr., Norman Hill, David Jessup, John T. Joyce, Tom Kahn, Jay Mazur, Joyce Miller, Albert Shanker, Donald Slaiman, John T. Sweeney, and Lynn R. Williams. Penn Kemble and Roy Godson, a specialist in labor and intelligence theory, are also LID directors. The league received a NED grant in 1985 "for a study on the interrelationship between democratic trade unions and political parties, with special emphasis on socialist and social democratic parties, to examine their attitudes toward U.S. labor, foreign-policy, [and] economic issues.""






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Whose Economic Policy

It is not only the political process in Iraq that is a failure due to American hegemonic influence. It is also the Iraq economy that is suffering from America's hegemonic policies. And as usual America failed to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi's before making its puppet government apply its economic agenda.

An economic expert said that the political change in Iraq was accompanied by a change in principle of Iraq's economic vision, but details of the economic reforms are not yet complete. He noted that community involvement in the formulation of economic policy requires a democratic approach be followed by the State, involving concerted efforts of the concerned community of civil society organizations, university professors, the private sector, economic specialists and others in drafting of an economic vision.

Manaf Al-Saiyigh, expert at the Iraqi Center for Economic Reform, added that in the absence of this interaction between society and government any policy will suffer from a lack of understanding in society, and could lead to opposition and rejection.

Al-Saiyigh noted the existence of other policies with significant economic impacts such as privatization, reform of governmental supports, and implementation of the investment law, which doubtless will arouse strong reactions.

IMF advises Iraq to shore up reconstruction, oil investment

For the first time in 25 years, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has advised Iraq to increase the pace of reconstruction and investment, mainly in the oil sector.

"Directors commended the Iraqi authorities for keeping their economic programme on track by strengthening economic policies and making progress in structural reforms, despite an unsettled political situation and a very difficult security environment," said the IMF in a statement Tuesday summarizing its Executive Board assessment on Iraq's economic performance.

"The expansion of oil production is lagging, and that inflation, while on a downward path, remains high, reflecting in large part continued shortages, notably of fuel products," added the statement.

Oil majors to meet with the Iraq Government at the world's leading energy summit for Iraq

All attending Iraqi Ministries will be outlining the requirements for their relevant sectors in front of the senior corporate audience, before holding private consultations with some of the pre-eminent operators within the global energy sector.

These best-in-breed operators and companies will be represented at board level in order to build the relationships that will be crucial to the future of the Iraqi energy sector and include the likes of BP, Exxon, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, Lukoil, Statoil, Marathon Oil, Total, Shell, Kuwait National Petroleum, Annadarko, Schlumberger, ABB, ONGC, General Electric, Cummins Power, Mitsui, Aegis, ArmorGroup, Janussian, Control Risks Group, Unity, Hart, Olive Security, GardaWorld and Triple Canopy.


All attending Iraqi Ministries will be outlining the requirements for their relevant sectors in front of the senior corporate audience, before holding private consultations with some of the pre-eminent operators within the global energy sector.

These best-in-breed operators and companies will be represented at board level in order to build the relationships that will be crucial to the future of the Iraqi energy sector and include the likes of BP, Exxon, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, Lukoil, Statoil, Marathon Oil, Total, Shell, Kuwait National Petroleum, Annadarko, Schlumberger, ABB, ONGC, General Electric, Cummins Power, Mitsui, Aegis, ArmorGroup, Janussian, Control Risks Group, Unity, Hart, Olive Security, GardaWorld and Triple Canopy.


Analysis: Kurd oil law drives Iraq oil

The KRG has already signed contracts with small companies to explore for and develop its oil and gas, a move derided by Baghdad for allegedly overreaching its authority. The Kurds are also keen on breaking the nationalized oil sector open to a free market, a prerogative so controversial it is a major stalling factor of the federal oil law and a move the oil unions have threatened to strike to prevent.

To ensure passage of the constitution, its authors left parts vague. Arguments over the federal oil law are in many ways rooted in the mixed interpretations of the constitutional articles applying to Iraq’s oil, which are the third-largest reserves in the world. It calls for the central government to work with the oil-rich regions and provinces in “the management of oil and gas extracted from present fields” and “formulate the necessary strategic policies to develop the oil and gas wealth in a way that achieves the highest benefit to the Iraqi people.”


Iraq lowers light crude oil price for USA and increases it for Asia and Europe

An Iraqi official announced that Iraq lowered the official selling price of Basra light crude oil destined to be exported to the USA. In the meantime it raised the same which is destined to be delivered to Asian and European countries.


George Bush was correct. America is not Nation Building in Iraq and it is doing a lousy job of colonialisation as an Empire.

MR. RUSSERT: Richard Engel, I, I quoted your conversation with Prime Minister Maliki to Senator Warner, saying that Sadr, the leader of the Shiite militias, is of the same school.

MR. RICHARD ENGEL: Mm-hmm.

MR. RUSSERT: Joe Klein in Time magazine wrote this, that “US Ambassador Ryan Crocker” said, “‘The fall of the Maliki government, when it happens, might be a good thing.’” And then Klein asks, “But replace it with what?” Half of Maliki’s Cabinet has abandoned his government. Are his days numbered?

MR. ENGEL: His days are certainly numbered. This government is going to collapse. The problem is, it’s going to take several months to form a new government. And there’s a very likely and real possibility that you could have a series of unstable governments that come and then collapse, sort of like a parliamentary system you may have had in Italy in the 1980s. And that weak political structure is not one that is suitable for Iraq’s problems. I think we need to totally change the, the rules of the game and change the political structure in such that the president or the prime minister has much more authority. This idea of a power-sharing government, while it may be the pinnacle of democracy, is not one that is strong enough to get the—help Iraq get over its very real problems.

MR. RUSSERT: Tom Ricks, you write this, and we’ll end on a literary note. “Shakespeare’s tragedies have five acts, and I fear we have not yet seen the beginning of Act IV.” What’s Act IV and V?

MR. RICKS: Well, Act III is the Petraeus phase. Act IV, I think, would be the spreading of the war, the next phase, maybe the post-American phase. And Act V will be the regional consequences. I think the point is Iraq, I think, is going to be much more difficult for this country than the Vietnam War was.

MR. RUSSERT: Why?

MR. RICKS: Because we could walk away from Vietnam. And it was bad for the Cambodians, bad for many Vietnamese, but we could wash our hands of it. I think Iraq is not going to be so easy to get out of. We have stepped into something in the middle of a economically vital region for the entire world.

Because America's Military Industrial Complex is attempting to privatize a State Capitalist economy in order to pay off it's war debt.

Iraq Resconstruction Teams Struggle to Sustain Grassroots Projects

As security improved in Anbar province, U.S. Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) -- some military-led, some commanded by State Department specialists -- moved to restore Ramadi's connection to the national power grid. Now 80 percent of residents have regular power, according to Col. John Charlton, an Army commander in the province.

The electricity somewhat benefited the area's state-owned businesses -- cement is the major product -- but widespread hirings failed to materialize, according to Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Walter Gaskin, senior commander in Anbar. "The biggest employer is still the army."

Despite disappointing results, PRTs like those in Ramadi remain at the forefront of the U.S. and coalition strategy in Iraq. All told, there are dozens of reconstruction teams: Their number has doubled since the beginning of "surge" operations in December. PRTs in safer areas include just a few people, others in more dangerous regions are manned by hundreds of soldiers with heavy weapons. The idea is to work with local employers and government officials to shore up basic infrastructure and institutions and get people working, in hopes that grassroots improvements might somehow spread and trickle up to the higher levels of Iraqi government, where sectarian squabbles have resulted in gridlock.

"Decentralization of [Iraqi] government services is one major area of emphasis for us," Reeker says.



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Sunday, August 26, 2007

Williams Out Deals Stelmach



Newfoundland's Danny Boy brings home the bacon while Albertans suffer from a-give-away-a-day by Eddie Stelmach. And both of 'em are Conservative Premiers.

For months, Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams has stared down the country's largest oil companies. Wednesday, "Big Oil" -- as the bombastic Williams likes to call the multinationals -- blinked.

At a St. John's news conference, the premier announced a "memorandum of understanding" outlining a deal that will develop the $5-billion Hebron offshore oil project located 350 kilometres southeast of the provincial capital. In a rare public-private arrangement, the province will invest $110 million in return for a 4.9-per-cent equity stake in the venture. Williams said that will amount to about 35 million barrels of oil out of a possible overall haul of 700 million barrels.

On the royalty side, the province received an improved rate structure that would deliver a new royalty of 6.5 per cent of net revenues when oil prices exceed $50 a barrel.

William's victory of State Capitalism for the Public Good is a lesson for Stelmach as Erin Weir points out;

Williams’ victory clearly contradicts the view that oil is a “globally competitive” business in which governments need to give away substantial resource rents to get investment. In fact, Canadian governments have a very strong bargaining position because our country hosts more than half of global reserves open to private investment. Even the Premier of a small, poor province successfully stood up to the multinational oil companies. This outcome begs the broader question of why larger, richer provinces collect such unimpressive royalties on the depletion of their finite oil and gas reserves.


The irony is that Eddie wants to adopt some practices from Newfoundland, unfortunately not those dealing with oil/resource ownership and royalties. As they used to say about Red Rose Tea; 'Pity'.


Stelmach wants to find out how the Newfoundland and Labrador cellphone driving ban, implemented in 2003, has affected vehicle accident rates in that province.






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Infrastructure Collapse

When your infrastructure was built fifty years ago, and was expected to only last half that time, well this is what happens when you waste a decade fighting the deficit chimera of the nineties.
Tunnel ceiling cracks close Montreal streets

–A large section of downtown Montreal will remain closed for the weekend after two cracks were found in a tunnel that makes up part of the underground city.

Montreal police widened a safety perimeter last night to include a number of blocks in the city's downtown core after officials felt there was a real risk of a road collapse following the discovery of cracks in an underground tunnel.

Fire chief Serge Tremblay told reporters last night that a second fissure was also found, but experts haven't been able to conclude what caused the cracks or how long they had been there.


Bridge to Laval latest to undergo repairs

Since the collapse last year of the Laval overpass, Quebec's Transport Department has been conducting more thorough inspections of the province's infrastructure.

Last week, responding to fears a 69-year-old north-end Montreal overpass could collapse because its concrete has "weakened," the city barred all trucks from the heavily-used structure and announced plans to demolish and rebuild it next year.

This is the empirical result of the neo-conservative political agenda of reducing taxes and regulations,failing to fund infrastructure and public services, and promoting privatization.

Bridges in Canada have reached 49 per cent of their useful life, according to a 2006 Statistics Canada study, and experts warn our country's roads, wastewater plants and other infrastructure isn't in any better shape.

A Statistics Canada study examining the age of infrastructure in Canada cited wastewater treatment facilities as the oldest, with 63 per cent of their useful life behind them in 2003. Roads and highways had reached 59 per cent of their useful life, and sewer systems 52 per cent.


Of course it is not only occurring in Canada, but also in the U.S. which originated the daft ideology of the neo-cons.

Emergency personnel look over a truck that lies in a hole in the street after a steam explosion in midtown Manhattan, New York, Wednesday, July 18, 2007. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)


Cataclysmic infrastructure collapse: Who pays?
A recent Minneapolis bridge collapse and New York steam pipe explosion, both of which collectively caused the deaths of at least six people and more than US$250 million in damages, has brought infrastructure liability to the fore, according to a report by KPMG.

At issue is whether insurers are on the hook for the cataclysmic failure of a decaying urban infrastructure.

KPMG Insurance Insider quotes Claire Wilkinson, the vice president for global issues at the Insurance Information Institute, on the issue of where liability falls in the event of a massive infrastructure failure.

She notes that, in the United States, federal and local authorities that administer bridges and road can claim "sovereign immunity" to avoid liability. But she adds the common-law defense may no longer apply if the infrastructure was under repair, opening the public entities and contractors to charges of negligence..
"A contractor employed by the state could cause damage where the state would be held liable," KPMG quotes Wilkinson as saying.

And even if a contractor has liability coverage, Wilkinson adds, in a world of multi-million construction projects, the limits would likely be quickly eclipsed. KPMG notes that in the event a state contractor exceeded liability limits, the pubic entity might be held responsible for project liability associated with the costs of reconstruction, casualty, property business interruption and/or workers compensation claims.
And so the result is the idea that P3's will solve the under investing done by Governments at all levels for the past two decades. Except the so called 'private' partner, ain't. It's your and my pension funds. In other words you and I pay twice, as taxpayers then as Pension Fund participants.

The bridge collapse in Minneapolis is giving rise to other concerns. Hundreds of billions is needed to rebuild the nation's infrastructure. It's not just roads and bridges. It's also generation and transmission.

Enter infrastructure investing: Public and private pension funds currently invest in varied assets that range from stocks to bonds to real estate. But some are now taking a look at vital infrastructure as a way to earn better-than-average returns as well as to guarantee the longevity of an area's economic growth. If such allocations could provide competitive returns, pension experts say that fiduciaries and trustees would not violate their obligation to act solely in the interest of plan participants.


See:

Minister of P3

Mr. P3

Super P3

Public Pensions Fund Private Partnerships

Pension Fraud Brings Down Japans Government


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A Big But


When an explanation is not an explanation it usually ends with a "but".

As is in this case of the latest scientific explanation for why folks experience their astral body.


"Brain dysfunctions that interfere with interpreting sensory signals may be responsible for some clinical cases of out-of-body experiences," said Henrik Ehrsson, a neuroscientist formerly of University College London, and now at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden.

"Though, whether all out-of-body experiences arise from the same causes is still an open question," he added.


SEE:

Kabbalistic Kommunism

Snake Oil Saint

For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing

New Age Libertarian Manifesto



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Saturday, August 25, 2007

Mrs. PM Stay At Home Mom



Barbara Smith of Calgary shares something in common with Laureen Teskey aka Mrs. Stephen Harper. They are both professionals from Calgary. One has chosen to be a stay at home mom the other supports her right. Barbara's business is lobbying for tax credits for stay at home moms. Which would include 'professional' working moms; like Laureen.


Laureen Teskey Harper runs a graphic design business from the Harper/Teskey home,

Laureen Teskey, 42, wife of newly-elected Prime Minister designate Stephen Harper is by profession a graphic designer who used to run a thriving design firm in Calgary.

In fact, Ms. Teskey, who now also goes by the name of Laureen Harper, met the her future husband when she was a member of and graphic designer for the Canadian Reform Party, of which Harper was a Member of Parliament for in the 1990s.


Real working women, the majority of Canadian women, professional or wage slaves, support their families by working out side the home .

They don't have the luxury of choice, like Mrs. Stephen Harper nor of benefiting from Barbara's tax breaks.


Engendering the State: Family, Work, and Welfare in Canada -
by Nancy Christie - 2000 - Political Science - 480 pages


See:

Bank Union

Paleontologist Versus Paleo-Conservatives

Feminizing the Proletariat

UN Report Says We Need A Living Wage

Whose Family Values?



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Link Byfield's New Party


Living off the avails of his Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy, which arose from the corpse of the politically and fiscally bankrupt Alberta Report, Link Byfield has decided that being an elected Senator in Waiting is not enough. So he and some pals have formed a new Right Wing Rump Party.

Whats interesting is that all these neo-con wannabe Reform Parties in Alberta seem to come from or originate in Calgary. The largest American city north of the 49th parallel. Which explains their Republican agenda.


A Canadian development without a direct parallel in Australia was the key role
played by “Calgary School” political scientists in new right party politics and freemarket think tanks like the Fraser Institute. In Australia a number of economists have played a prominent role in promoting public choice frames of analysis, but largely via think tanks rather than through direct involvement in party politics.

Members of the Calgary School reproduce the main features of US right-wing

anti-elite discourse, including a contrast between elite fashions and mainstream
traditional values, a campaign against the tyranny of political correctness, and an
attack on self-styled equality seekers—feminists, anti-poverty groups, the gayrightsmovement, natives and other ethnic and racial minorities.


To be honest they should quit calling themselves Albertans or Party of Alberta and call themselves what they are; the Calgary Republican Lobby. Since many of them believe Ronald Reagan Was Better Than Trudeau.

Background of Albertans

Many Albertans have immigrated from the United States. The energy industry, as well as the ranching industry, has attracted many Americans. Attacking Americans attacks the family background of many Albertans. Prominent Albertans have American roots. Senator Ted Morton is originally from California. MP Myron Thompson is from the U.S..
Their appeal is limited to the Americanized Albertans who live in Southern Alberta. So they don't even appeal to the Lougheed liberals who made the PC's the Party of Calgary. And they don't appeal to urban voters.

And they certainly don't appeal to Northern Albertans who make Redmonton their capital.




SEE:

Not Before Alberta Votes

Link Byfield Goes AA

Mr Harper Forgets Redmonton

Leo Strauss and the Calgary School

Mormonism Cult of the Political Right

Creationism Is Not Science

Reform Party of Alberta

Return of the Socreds

Aboriginal Property Rights

Shop Keepers Liberty

Alberta Separatism Not Quite Stamped Out




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Surf's Up In Gaza

The antithesis of the surf routine in Apocalypse Now.

Surfing for Peace. Cowabunga!


Dorian Paskowitz, 86

Dorian Paskowitz, 86, from Hawaii, handed over some of the surfboards himself. The retired Jewish doctor hopes a love of surfing will help bring Israelis and Palestinians together

Israel has allowed few nonessential goods to pass into Gaza since the militant group Hamas took over the coastal territory in June. When Paskowitz, 86, reached the crossing, the officer in charge had reason to be wary: Israeli forces trying to thwart rocket fire from Gaza that day had killed three Palestinian gunmen and two children who were playing near a rocket launcher near the border. Eight other Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops this week, among the bloodiest this summer.

Paskowitz, who is known as Doc, said he told the officer:

"I came 12,500 miles from Hawaii to give away these boards. The guys who need them are standing 50 meters from here, and you're trying to stop me. How can you do that to a fellow Jew?"

He showed the Israeli officer a photograph of two Gaza surfers on the Mediterranean shore with one battered board between them. It had appeared in the Los Angeles Times on July 29 with an article about how some Palestinians try to escape the poverty and violence of the overcrowded strip by riding the waves.

Paskowitz is one of surfing's top gurus in America
after first taking to a board 75 years ago. He and his surfing brood - eight sons, one daughter and a brood of grandchildren - have been dubbed the "first family of surfing", with premier US newspapers and magazines writing about them for years.

The medical doctor who has penned a book on "Surfing and Health" hopes his initiative will bring happiness and hope to both Palestinian and Israelis.

He hopes to organise surfing competitions off the Mediterannean coast of Israel and Gaza within the next three years in order to bring the two sides closer.

"We love to surf and we know how other people love to surf. There is nothing more fulfilling."


See:

Israel

Palestine


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Put Doc's On Salary



It's time to proletarianize these petit-bourgeoisie self employed businessmen, and put them on salaries in community based medical clinics. Which would include pharmacists, and other complimentary workers like nurse practitioners.

This is not as far fetched as it may seem. Without such a radical grassroots reform expect the CMA businessmen to continue to lobby for contracting out and user fees as their ideals of Medicare reform.

Medical user-fee motion vote narrowly fails

doctors narrowly defeated a controversial user-fee motion at the annual Canadian Medical Association meeting.

The motion, which proposed that patients should help fund their care with "co-payments and health savings accounts," drew support from 48 per cent of voting doctors. Fifty per cent were opposed and two per cent abstained.

"Co-payments" mean patients would pay a fee when they see their doctors or obtain hospital services. "Health savings accounts" would act like registered retirement savings plans, enabling people to stash savings in tax-sheltered accounts, to be spent on medical items like home care, long-term care and prescription drugs.

CMA president wants public and private health care

"My support for universal health care is unequivocal, but I believe the [Canada Health] Act must be revised, reformed and updated," said Day, a founder and owner of the private Cambie Surgery Centre in Vancouver.

He said there could be a role for private health care in our public system.

"I realize it will surprise some of you that I raise this topic," he said. "Let's be clear. Canadians should have the right to private medical insurance when timely access is not available in the public system.

"Contracting out public health services to the private sector to reduce wait lists is not a new idea and does not spell the end of universality."


Prescribing a health-care revolution

The entire health-care system has to be examined with two aims in mind: To offer excellent health care as it is provided now, but using different professionals at a much lower cost.

Let's start with the drug companies. They spend tens of millions on research and promotion and bring out new drugs at an inflated price that are only marginally, if at all, better than the drugs being used. It is estimated that only about one in 20 drugs released for use is of major importance. The government should appoint pharmacists to check these new drugs against what is in use for a particular patient to see if the higher price is reflected in a healthier patient.

All the work done by doctors, dentists, pharmacists, nurses and optometrists must be examined to see if their jobs can be inter-changed at a lower cost. As an example, the Ontario government will soon license dental hygienists to practise independent of dentists. This could change the way basic preventive oral care is offered in Ontario, surely at a lower cost.

In the North, where doctors are scarce, nurse-practitioners do the job of the GPs very successfully.


SEE:

Laundry Workers Fight Privatization

Two Tier Alberta



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