Frost Hits the Rhubarb

Mar. 27, 2007: Bud Talkinghorn

2007-03-27T15:22:00.000-03:00

Multiculturalism and the death of democracy

The liberal elite have succeeded in fostering the idea that the diversity that multiculturalism brings is a positive addition to Canadian culture. Look at all the colourful costumes and foreign delicacies that visible minorities have introduced into "white bread" Canada, they proclaim. Furthermore, they say, the widely divergent cultural attitudes towards equality and liberty that do not go along with our past beliefs will only make us more inclusive and expand democracy. Obnoxious cultural beliefs such as honour killings, forced marriages, female exclusion and genital mutilation, the dowry system and religious hatreds will wither away over time. That our greatest terrorist plots have been linked to Sikhs and Muslims (second generation at that) is put down to aberrations. Considering that the champion of multiculturalism, the CBC, was a target for car bombing is simply not discussed at all, nor was the CBC poll that showed only 73% of Canadian-Muslims could completely condemn the Toronto terrorist plot. So deluded was CBC that they even tried to paint this horrifying statistic as a plus.

The idea that our new Third World immigrants should welcome our Western concepts of female equality, rule of law, and scientific rationalism is quickly becoming passe. Any attempt to make these concepts stick is dismissed as racism or ethno-centric neo-colonialism. Shakespeare and all those dead old white historians and philosphers must not be elevated above aboriginal oral song poems nor any non-white traditional narratives. Somehow the contradictions between the abolition of Western values in favour of promoting a hodge-podge of immigrant customs are never logically explained as a good thing.

A case in point is the complete distruction of the National Organization of Women. This was a government funded organization that was supposed to advance the equality of all Canadian women, but turned into a claque of "women of colour", who excoriated what white women stood for. It went from being headed by Judy Rebbick, a New York Jewess, to Sunara Thobani, a transplanted East-Indian, to Barbara Grant-Cummings, a Barbadian-Canadian, to (name lost to me), an Aboriginal woman. Not only is this organization not reflective of all Canadian women, its voice is so stridently connected to leftist, racial identity politics that it doesn't even champion the concerns of visible minority women. Yet the left still demands that taxpayers keep on amply funding it. [Does it still exist?]

In his blog, entitled "How Multiculturalism Took Over America", Lawrence Auster (FrontPageMagazine.com, July 9, 2004) gives us the straight talk on what multiculturalism has wrought. His opening salvo is in the form of a supposition. He asks you to imagine a large population of Italian-Americans moving en masse into a Muslim country and demanding that the host country drop all public observations of its religion. When the majority religion gets upset, the Italians reply that they are merely enriching the country with diversity, and if they change some of their laws and traditional customs to accommodate we newcomers that will only doubly "enrich" them. Reverse this scenario and you have the Charter-driven Canadian model. We can't even rid ourselves of the gangsters and terrorists who gain entry into our country.

While Austen gives examples from America, most have applicablity to Canada. The liberal media and the universities have had the same pernicious effects on our Western culture. Lost to reason is that these visible minorities have fled their repressive and corrupt countries for life here. If they have to give up some of their more negative religious and tribal customs, that is the price they should pay. There is no reverse migration to their countries because most are failed, or semi-failed states, with no freedom or chance of economic growth. You only go to Saudi Arabia or any other totalitarian state if the company gives you a huge salary boost, plus a "hardship allowance". Yet we allow the negative aspects of these foreign cultures to entrench themselves in Canada. And as the massive influx of these cultures continues, they will eventually demand entrenchment of these beliefs into law.

I highly recommend the lengthy article by Lawrence Auster [see below], as he rigorously lays out the dangerous path we are on. Already, we have seen massive demonstrations in the United States calling for "No one is illegal". The immigrant lobbies and the loonie-left have picked up that refrain here. Our wonderful culture is under ferocious attack and we retreating on many fronts. We must stop this before it is too late. And it is already late in the day.

© Bud Talkinghorn

A must read

Lawrence Auster: How Multiculturalism Took Over America ... , FrontPage magazine.com , July 9, 2004

www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=14164

Some years ago the Harvard sociologist Nathan Glazer declared that "we are all multiculturalists now." One's initial response to such an unwanted announcement is to say: "What do you mean, 'we'?" Yet, even if "we" do not subscribe to that sentiment, it cannot be denied that over the last twenty years multiculturalism has become the ruling idea of America, incarnated in every area of society ranging from educational curricula to the quasi-official establishment of foreign languages, to mandated racial proportionality schemes in private employment and university admissions, to the constant invocations by our political, business, and intellectual elites of "diversity" as the highest American value. How, so quickly and effortlessly, did this alien belief system take over our country? In this article, I look at multiculturalism as an ideology that has advanced itself by means of a set of propositions. My intent is to examine the false arguments of the multiculturalists themselves, and to see how they have used these arguments to fool an all-too-willing American majority to go along with them.

The Fraud of Inclusion [....]

There is much more. For example from Lawrence Auster: continued , FrontPage magazine.com , July 9, 2004

Example 5.
The more outspoken multiculturalists—i.e., the articulate ideologues of the left—will admit that the cultures they want to "include" in the American culture are radically at odds with it. Diversity consultant Edwin J. Nichols teaches the following model explaining the divergent intellectual styles of ethnic groups:

The Philosophical Aspects of Cultural Difference:

European and Euro-American: Member-Object; the highest value lies in the object or in the acquisition of the object.

African, Afro-American, Native American, Hispanics, Arabs: Member-Member. The highest value lies in the inter-personal relationship between persons.

Asian, Asian-American, Polynesian: Member-Group. The highest value lies in the cohesiveness of the group.

Native American: Member-Great Spirit. The highest values lies in oneness with the Great Spirit.(5)

Observe how Nichols portrays the Western orientation in negative terms ("Member-Object," "acquisition") that suggest cold selfishness and materialism, while he describes the non-Western cultures in positive terms ("inter-personal relationship," "group cohesiveness," "oneness with the Great Spirit") that suggest warmth and humanity. Yet Nichols' very attempt to debunk the West and praise the non-West has the opposite effect from what he intends, since the unpleasant-sounding phrase "Member-Object" is really a way of describing the Western belief in objective truth—the very basis of Western religion, science, philosophy, law, and government. [....]

Auster explores the myths, ending with "Moderate Myth Number Six: The 'Equality' That Becomes 'Diversity'"

Nipigong, Myanmar -- Burma

Did you see the BBC news item showing the new Burmese capital, Nipigong? It is set in the middle of a nowhere dusty plain, with six lane avenues, sweeping gates (painted in garish colours) and wedding cake palaces--all stunningly grotesque. Something that even Ceaucescu couldn't have dreamed up. Right up there with Mobuto's new capital, whose international airport is now almost totally reclaimed by the jungle. The Burmese military junta will probably demand that you take a trip there before being allowed to visit Pagan. After all, they poured billions into it. The march of folly never ends.

© Bud Talkinghorn

"Go, tigers, go!"--Motto of the World Wildlife Fund

Well, don't go so far that big game hunters can't blow them pesky critters to smithereens. It seems that this champion of the salt water croc, the koala bear, and the tiger has limits to its largesse. It turns out that one of India's premier tiger sanctuaries was actually used as a shooting gallery. The top administrator admitted that he had fudged the tiger tally for years. There weren't 4,560 tigers in the reserve, but probably no more than a thousand and a half were left [1500]. The administrator said he sold licences to hunters. So much for the "Save the Tiger" fund.

Being a cat lover, I had actually contributed to this cause. Therefore, I took particular umbrage at this obscene fraud. Somehow the Aga Khan, who is one of the WWF's great sponsors, remained untarnished by this scandal. But Khan is a man who knows how to cultivate the leftist club of the U.N. Just to stay with the animal theme, he has many tentacles in high places.

You want to support the feline world? Put out a tin of cat food for the woods cats.

© Bud Talkinghorn

WWFKF

WorldWideFeedKittiesFund -- a new charity idea -- If you would like to improve upon this idea, leave a comment. It's for the good of the kitties.

All donations to the WWFKF charity gratefully accepted. We accept loonies, if you don't have millions ... or even hundreds to give away for the good of the kitties.

Memo to the GG: If it's good enough for millionaires and billionaires, it's good enough for Canucks, you know, the rest of us who live in Canuckistan. One of us who contributes to the WWFKF expects to be honoured with an Order of Canada, Humanities award. We're going to run a lottery -- a buck a ticket -- ticket to be drawn by someone with a spotless ticket drawing reputation, the owner of the local corner store, probably.

Note: This is a New Charity, developing, as we speak; official charity status, soon come, sure to come. If it's good enough for the Khadrs to set up a charitable foundation, to say nothing of coming to the notice of a former PM, it's good enough for those of us here for generations. We affirm that no money will be sent to jihadis abroad; all monies collected will be only for kitties ... well, maybe the odd liquid bash to admire and pet kitties. We save Heinz 57 kitties with liquid eyes.

Founded by Frosty, kitty lover, member of the hoi polloi and from the lower end of the charity spectrum.

Mar. 25, 2007: Poll question for you

2007-03-25T15:55:00.000-03:00

Online poll:

Is Canada's New Government headed in the right direction on the environment?

Yes - 52%

No - 39%

Undecided - 9%

Express yourself online: Do you think Budget 2007 will achieve results that will help build a Stronger, Safer, Better Canada?

www.victoews.com

Mar. 25, 2007: A Dangerous Tolerance

2007-03-25T15:15:00.000-03:00

The dangers of tolerance
Accepting views opposed to freedom and western lifestyle emboldens extremists , Licia Corbella, Mar. 25, 2007

calsun.canoe.ca/News/Columnists/
Corbella_Licia/2007/03/25/3828492-sun.html

In the same week Farzana Hassan was threatened with death, Quebec's chief electoral officer said Muslim women who wear the niqab would not have to show their faces to confirm their identities at the ballot box.

Excellent. A must read article

Giving in is not "reasonable accommodation"; it is appeasement.

Lift face veils or don't vote, Quebec tells Muslims
Faced with death threats, public outrage, chief electoral officer reverses decision Tu Thanh Ha, Ingrid Peritz, Bertrand Marotte, Mar. 24, 2007

www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/
LAC.20070324.QUEBEC24/TPStory/Front

TROIS-RIVIÈRES, QUE., MONTREAL AND SAINT-EUSTACHE, QUE. -- With three days left in one of the most tightly contested elections in decades, Quebec's electoral officer yesterday reversed his decision to allow Muslim women to vote without having to lift their face veils to identify themselves.

Chief Electoral Officer Marcel Blanchet invoked emergency powers to change his mind on one of the controversial minority-rights issues that have roiled the campaign and led to death threats, public outrage and repeated criticism by Parti Québécois Leader André Boisclair.

Mr. Blanchet said his office had been inundated with calls and emails about his decision to allow women to wear the niqab when they voted.

Search: resentment of minorities

Actually, Quebec is the only province that could get away with standing up to Muslims who are encroaching more and more upon the values and traditions of our society, apparently in order to replace them with theirs, the ultimate aim being to change our society. Many have stated they want to make the West Islamic.

This always starts in seemingly insignificant ways; up to now, Canadians have tried to accommodate them. Or it starts with with charges of "discrimination" and people have bent over backwards in fairness to accommodate this minority. It has to end. Thanks to Quebeckers who don't take much pushing from anyone, once they get their backs up, Quebeckers almost invariably win because they have a positive sense of their own culture, less likely to have been subjected to the global guilt classes so prevalent in anglophone schools. Quebec's response is good news for the rest of us. They have done us a service. The time has come for the rest of Canada, TROC, to develop a collective backbone. Based on our Judeo-Christian tradition, Canadians have a Western culture worth protecting, one of freedom and democracy. We all must protect it from those who would attempt to change it. Freedom needs light to breathe.

While campaigning in the Magdalen Islands, Liberal Leader Jean Charest supported the chief electoral officer's decision, saying it did not infringe on religious rights and remained an issue of proper identification of voters.

Shama Naz, a 30-year-old Montrealer who wears a niqab, said the issue has been blown out of proportion. She said Muslim women routinely remove their face veils for security matters. She has done so for her Medicare card photo, and each time she crosses the border to visit her father in New York State.

Related editorial: Voters and the niqab -- Muslim student's refusal uncovers debate , Mar. 24, 2007

www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/
LAC.20070324.ENIQAB24/TPStory/Editorials

Anyone who reads Frost Hits the Rhubarb may guess at the position of the Globe and Mail.

No nude drawings, no art credit , Michael Valpy, Mar. 24, 2007

www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/
LAC.20070324.UWO24/TPStory/National

Draw nudes or don't take the course. Refuse to draw nudes once you're in the course and you fail.

Ms. Mahmud brought a letter from the university's Muslim chaplain stating that prolonged exposure to the nude body of a person who was not one's marital partner was contrary to Islamic teaching. She was willing to take a zero for the part of the course that involved nude drawing. [....]

A report on discrimination against Muslim students made public this week by the Canadian Federation of Students calls it "one of the most egregious stories" of a university refusing to accommodate diversity

[....] "It's hard for us to see how equal treatment means we can say to some students, 'No, I'm sorry you have to read that novel that portrays homosexuality in a favourable light -- but, no, you don't have to do that drawing.' "

Which is evil?

The nude body or Iraq insurgents used children in car bombing: general , Mar 20, 2007

www.forumsvibe.com/elwoodpdowd/view
topic.php?t=3317&mforum=elwoodpdowd

Insurgents in Iraq detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle with two children in the back seat after US soldiers let it through a Baghdad checkpoint over the weekend, a senior US military official said Tuesday.

The vehicle was stopped at the checkpoint but was allowed through when soldiers saw the children in the back, said Major General Michael Barbero of the Pentagon's Joint Staff.

"Children in the back seat lowered suspicion. We let it move through. They parked the vehicle, and the adults ran out and detonated it with the children in the back," Barbero said.

... the first time he had seen a report of insurgents using children in suicide bombings. But he said Al-Qaeda in Iraq is changing tactics ...

A US defense official said the incident occurred on Sunday in Baghdad's Adhamiyah district, a mixed neighborhood adjacent to Sadr City, which is predominantly Shiite.

... parked next to a market across the street from a school, [....]

Mar. 25, 2007: Follow the money ...

2007-03-25T14:28:00.000-03:00

Behind every good man, as the saying goes, there is a good woman.

Behind global warming guru Al Gore is global warming guru mastermind Maurice Strong.

[....] The untouchable “Father Earth” is chairman of the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) the world’s first trader in greenhouse credits.

Search: depopulationist , Machiavelli , fire hazard , Chery , David Rockefeller

Source: Gore & Strong shadowship:
Somebody should turn the lights on , By Judi McLeod, March 23, 2007

www.canadafreepress.com/2007/cover032307.htm

Related:

# Gore Welcomed By Protesters During Toronto Visit

www.citynews.ca/news/news_9024.aspx

# Gore pays for photo after Canada didn't

www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.ht
ml?id=5961259b-de08-4532-850b-09d4753bed39

Mar. 25, 2007: Protection and Promotion

2007-03-25T12:36:00.000-03:00

The right to promote means this will burgeon. The linguistic, native, academic and arts communities must be thrilled with this.

An important step in the fight for cultural diversity , Beverley J. Oda, National Post, March 21, 2007

www.canada.com/nationalpost/
news/editorialsletters/story.ht
ml?id=35e466f1-935a-46cd-97eb-bc1bb1dc6b62

Beverley J. Oda is the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Status of Women.

Canadians should enthusiastically welcome the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, which came into force on Sunday.

[....] The Convention will be a valuable tool for our country and other signatories. This treaty, which reaffirms the right of states to adopt and maintain policies that encourage cultural expression, will help us promote the growth of cultural industries in Canada and around the world. By recognizing both the social and the economic nature of cultural goods and services, the Convention gives our artists and creators the flexibility needed to continue sharing their stories with Canadians and the rest of the world. In return, Canadians will be able to have rich and diverse access to cultural works from our country and elsewhere.

With the entry into force of the Convention on March 18, we are taking a significant step. However, we must now turn our attention to implementation. Once again, we are counting on the support of our partners within Canada and around the world. We will continue to demonstrate leadership internationally so that our position is well understood -- particularly at the First Conference of Parties, to be held by the summer of 2007. [....]

Ah, wonderful ... the right to set up multicultural, academic, education and native departments to teach a Heinz Ketchup of languages ... Rights to special schools coming up ... If you don't think that's coming, do a little reading. If almost no-one knows an almost dead language, if there is practically no language left to teach, and if those who know those few words are hardly literate, all the better. We'll create a reasonable facimile. The modern thousand varieties of languages coming up. Oh, yes, working Canadians may work to pay for it, particularly if you speak English. You may also pay for the ads the government will run to convince doubters that if one parent speaks the language of power in Canada, then they really should enrol their precious bundle and budding linguistic success story in their schools. They will be creating new schools to accommodate those new languages which they will staff, as well, and they will invite your child to attend too. Create a need and academics and bureaucrats will fill it. If there is no need, they'll create that for you too.

Note: I didn't even get into the plans by the arts communities. Scroll down FHTR the week beginning Jan. 29, 2006.

I suspect Min. Oda means well but she will learn, if she hasn't already.

Mar. 21, 2007: Totally absorbing

2007-03-21T13:21:00.000-03:00

Update: Mar. 24, 2007

The day after the url above was posted, the website had disappeared. The website might have been down. It seems to be all right now, so try it again.

Total‘s CEO charged in Iran probe , Pierre-Antoine Souchard, AP, March 22, 2007

www.localnewsleader.com/elytimes/
stories/index.php?action=fullnews&id=84851

PARIS - An investigating judge filed preliminary charges Thursday against the chief executive of Total SA in a corruption case linked to a 1997 contract with Iran , the company and judicial officials said.

De Margerie, who replaced Thierry Desmarest as Total‘s CEO in mid-February, was released after two days of questioning in the case. However, he is forbidden to meet with certain people during the investigation, the officials said without elaborating.

De Margerie is also targeted in an investigation into Total‘s activities in Iraq.

[....] Total is suspected of having indirectly paid commissions into two accounts of a Swiss citizen of Iranian origin acting as an intermediary, according to judicial officials. Tens of millions of dollars allegedly passed through the accounts before ending up in an account of a Persian Gulf country, the officials said.

Double click to enlarge, back to return.

Total

transnationale.org

transnationale.org/companies/total.php

The list at the left below concerns the ethical rating of Total.

Technip is owned by Total and listed in the above screen capture. Technip is operating in Newfoundland. More here: Frost Hits the Rhubarb April 22, 2005

Search: Technip

There are several entries.

End of Update

Totally intriguing

Check carefully the Total menu at left and don't miss what is available if you move the sliders to reveal more information: ownership, CEO's-managers-directors (See 1999), world locations and manufacturing, subsidiaries owned, shareholder country and related information in revealing gifs explained at left.

And then, there is Addax & Oryx for added absorption

Mar. 21, 2007: Budget

2007-03-21T09:00:00.000-03:00

Budget: Organized alphabetically by topic of interest

www.budget.gc.ca/2007/bp/topicse.html

I have noted a positive change in the government of Canada websites; we can actually find information since the advent of the CPC government.

Mar. 20, 2007: Bud Talkinghorn

2007-03-20T14:30:00.000-03:00

Surveillance and Superbugs

Surveillance--courtesy of Britain's Big Brother

We saw this coming years ago, as a few thousand public area cameras were mounted in high crime areas of the British urban areas. Well, those "few" have swelled to a few hundred thousand cameras, and they are not just in in the slums of London or Manchester. They have been embraced by shire towns across Britain. In their highest density positions, you can be photographed hundreds of times in a given day. Not content with that Orwellian snooping, they have introduced loud speakers to the cameras, so they can command you (at ear-splittting decibel levels) to stop some behaviour--like stealing or vandalizing ... or surrepitiously picking your nose or scratching some more private bodily part. The almost laughable nanny state has morphed into something far more sinister. One of the great scenes in Orwell's "1984" was when Winston Smith was watching the state-mandated morning exercise on TV. Suddenly a harsh female voice screams from the TV, "Winston Smith, number 2995, you are not properly doing your exercises." As Smith's approved vice is smoking Victory cigarettes, he has to wheeze his way through the routine. Can Britain be far behind this once-fictious control mechanism?

Therefore, we should vigourously oppose our police introducing this method. It always starts off as a law and order issue, but can easily devolves into constant surveillance of your every day public outings. Next thing you know it is, "Citizen, you are walking your cat around the block without the designated pooper-scooper at hand. Go back to your house now."

© Bud Talkinghorn--It's a slippery slope indeed.

Wait until what you do in your free time is monitored for its impact upon the company's image. But hasn't that already happened to a teacher in BC who wrote a letter to a newspaper, in his private capacity, concerning homosexuality and affirmation of it? Dr. Kempling? Check.

Superbugs

No antibiotic bullets left to meet the new plagues

The National Post (Monday, Mar. 18, 2007) ran a truely frightening story entitled "Superbugs: just out there on the street". What we saw with SARS is happening again. The hospital "superbugs", such as C Difficile, drug-resistent staph, and E. coli and a very pesky pneumonia are moving on to your local mall. The implications of these deadly diseases becoming epidemic is almost beyond imagination. Soaring death rates, economic depression and self-imposed isolation of the populous are but a few of the dire consequences.

The overuse of antibiotics, insufficient drug research and the natural evolution of bacteria and viruses has caught us flatfooted. According to Dr. Robert Hancock, director of microbial diseases research for UBC, we are not prepared for these diseases. Antibiotic funding and research has not been given the priority it deserves. He quotes some interesting statistics. "One in twenty E-coli cases in intensive care is now virtually untreatable and AIDS funding has outstripped that of antibiotics by 7 to 1, AIDS in North America kills about 10,000 people a year, while antibiotic-resistent diseases kills 90,000." Most of those occur in hospital patients, so what will be the death toll when it lurks on public surfaces? Going shopping without a hazmat suit on will be considered fullfilling some death wish. Black Monday will be the new blue Monday at the work site.

It is time the federal and provincial governments start to address this looming crisis. Much more money and effort has to be put into finding stronger antibiotic drugs. The hospitals, in the meantime, must all start enforcing strict hygenic control. That can start with their staffs, who have been shown to be inexcusably lax about basic hygiene such as bathroom handwashing. Doctors have to refuse antibiotics for viral diseases. Immigration must begin to refuse entry to immigrants or refugees, who carry multi-resistent forms of TB, which Dr. Hancock states, "is the most deadly organism on the planet." We used to screen immigrants and refugees for TB, but that sensible health precation probably was overruled after social activists complained it was "too insensitive". I knew years ago that many diseases had shown resistence to Vancomycin, the top line antibiotic, but the extent of the problem was a mystery until now. I thank The National Post for this timely warning. Wash those hands, folks.

© Bud Talkinghorn

The article: Superbugs 'just out there on the streets'
Experts concerned , Sharon Kirkey, CanWest, March 19, 2007

www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.ht
ml?id=9ca023a3-c331-4666-aacd-03a3c97a55e6

[....] Community-acquired methicillin-resistant s.aureus (CA-MRSA) is emerging in daycares, schools and cruise ships. Nearly 500 cases have spread across Alberta and outbreaks have occurred in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario.

[....] And the superbug "hit list" keeps growing: E. coli, a major cause of wound, urinary and gastrointestinal tract infections are rapidly turning resistant to a growing number of drugs. One in 20 E. coli infections in intensive care units are currently virtually untreatable.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa, an organism that causes life-threatening pneumonia and post-surgery infections, is also becoming multi-drug resistant.

There are multi-resistant strains of tuberculosis, "the most deadly organism on the planet," said Dr. Robert Hancock, director of microbial diseases research at the University of British Columbia and a Canada Research Chair. [....]

Which is more important? To fund AIDS medication for people who apparently, are not changing their behaviour, whether in the West or in Africa, or to fund research to protect Canadians against stuperbugs? What would a prudent family member fund if it were his family vs the rest of the needy ones who won't learn in the face of all kinds of evidence that they should? Should we be funding AIDS victims amongst the community within which it is rising? You all by now must know which voting block that is. You could ask Stephen Lewis, Bill Clinton, or any number of AIDS activists who gathered for the Toronto guilt fest to criticize the rest of Canadians who aren't giving enough for the AIDS activists' pleasure, in Aug. - Sept. 2006. Of course, that might be pointless, for the activists insist AIDS is everyone's disease, not a particular group's. Well, by now, homosexuals, heterosexuals, druggies and those who read and learn, know how AIDS is spread. They have either changed their behaviour or ... well, why should the rest care? Fund the research that is going to help the great majority of Canadians.

Health care dollars - AIDS or Superbugs?

www.forumsvibe.com/elwoodpdowd/
posting.php?mforum=elwoodpdowd

Mar. 19, 2007: EU Declaration of Independence

2007-03-19T09:00:00.001-03:00

Native Revolt: A European Declaration of Independence , Fjordman on Fri, 2007-03-16, via PuntedPosters / starboardside

www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1980

After the death last Sunday of Rinie Mulder, a 54-year old indigenous Dutchman who was shot by a police officer, non-immigrant citizens went on a rampage in Utrecht. Apparently Mulder intervened when Muslim youths harassed a pregnant native Dutch woman. Locals claim the police has failed to protect them for years. They say the authorities are afraid of the immigrants and tolerate their criminal behavior.

This issue is not just about Utrecht or Holland. Similar resentment against Muslim immigrants, but at least as much against their own authorities, is quietly brewing among the natives all over Western Europe.

It is insulting that two thirds of the Dutch, one of the founding members of the European community, voted against the proposed EU Constitution, and yet EU leaders will apparently just ignore this and force their massively undemocratic Constitution down people's throats anyway. [....]

This violence by Muslims is usually labelled simply as "crime," but I believe it should more accurately be called Jihad. Those who know early Islamic history, as described in books such as The Truth About Muhammad by Robert Spencer, know that looting and stealing the property of non-Muslims has been part and parcel of Jihad from the very beginning. In fact, so much of the behavior of Muhammad himself and the early Muslims could be deemed criminal that it is difficult to know exactly where crime ends and Jihad begins. In the city of Oslo, for instance, it is documented that some of the criminal Muslim gangs also have close ties to radical religious groups at home and abroad. As Dutch Arabist Hans Jansen points out, the Koran is seen by some Muslims as a God-given "hunting licence," granting them the right to assault and even murder non-Muslims. It is hardly accidental that while Muslims make up about 10% of the population in France, they make up an estimated 70% of French prison inmates.

Search: We demand that , multiculturalism , Muslim immigration , Europe is being targeted for deliberate colonization , If these demands are not fully implemented

This is a must read article.

A Moral Collapse

Free speech--but only for our enemies , David Frum, National Post, March 17, 2007

www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/issuesideas/story.ht
ml?id=cb35bf58-197b-40f2-9531-6f0dc7248235

.... So if it's legal to burn the American flag, surely it must be legal to trample the flags of murderous terrorist organizations, right? Right? Right??

But that's not how modern universities act. To them, Old Glory may be barbecue starter, but a terrorist flag is a sacred symbol.

Prodded by the local Palestinian student group, SFSU's student government voted to condemn [....]

There is obviously something profoundly wrong on American campuses -- and not only American campuses, as the unhappy history of Canada's Concordia University reminds us. Apologists for terrorism receive maximum protection for the most vicious bigotry, for menace and intimidation, and even outright violence. Yet that zeal for free speech vanishes altogether when opponents of terrorism engage in much, much milder forms of protest. This goes beyond double standards. It is a moral collapse. [....]

Mar. 18, 2007: Bob Stenhouse, Whistleblower, Arctic Map

2007-03-18T17:30:00.000-03:00

Update and Related Mar. 19,2007:

Frost Hits the Rhubarb Nov. 19, 2006: 3 -- or scroll down this for the following: Frost Hits the Rhubarb Nov. 19 - 25, 2006

frosthitstherhubarb.blogspot.com/
2006/11/nov-19-2006-3.html

Search:

Memory Lane -- Whistleblowers and criminal activity -- criminal gang and triad related

[ex RCMP Staff Sgt.] Bob Stenhouse , Cpl. Robert Read

Frost Hits the Rhubarb October 6, 2005
Scam the Taxpayers, Get Half a Million -- But RCMP Get Fired for Doing Their Jobs -- Perhaps Too Well

frosthitstherhubarb.blogspot.com/2005/10/
scam-taxpayers-get-half-million-but.html

The link should have been:
www.macleans.ca/topstories/article.jsp?content=60484

Someone had changed the link to this:
www.nvweather.net/messages/organic_teas_290.html

Undercover Mountie -- a copy of an article published in Maclean's from Nov. 26, 01 by Robert Sheppard

One was a memo Stenhouse himself had written

[....]

One of the cases Read pursued involved three Taiwanese brothers who brought 3,000 Asian families into Canada under our much maligned immigrant investor scheme. The trio was linked to fraud, bribery and the Chinese mafia. [....]

Some background on the judge who made the decision against ex-RCMP Cpl. Robert Read: Justice, the Honourable Sean J. Harrington [....]

Frost Hits the Rhubarb February 15, 2005

Robert Read ex-RCMP: "Triads had infested Canada's immigration system" -- "a political silver bullet" -- NATIONAL SECURITY

frosthitstherhubarb.blogspot.com/
2005_02_13_archive.html

The Report: [There are two posts.]

38th PARLIAMENT, 1st SESSION -- Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates -- EVIDENCE: ex-RCMP Corporal Robert Read, ex-foreign service officer, the blunt ex-foreign service officer Brian Adams, Joanna Gualtieri, Canada's expert on whistle-blowing, civil servant Allan Cutler, et cetera, February 3, 2005 -- you may download it

[....] 38th PARLIAMENT, 1st SESSION -- Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates -- EVIDENCE from Allan Cutler and Selwyn Pieters; next, ex-RCMP Corporal Robert Read, ex-foreign service officer, the blunt ex-foreign service officer Brian Adams -- and more February 3, 2005, -- sections 1530 - 1550 only -- The excerpts above Read and McAdam are from further down in this file. Search their names if you are in a hurry.

Frost Hits the Rhubarb June 11 - 16, 2006

Whistleblower Profiles 2004

Search:
fipa.bc.ca/library/Whistleblower_Profiles_2004.doc
Notes from Edmonton Journal, Oct. 19, 2000

Bob Stenhouse

End of Update

Mountie trades badge for pulpit (10:05 a.m.)
‘It was God who inflamed my passion to stand up against injustice’ , Don Retson, edmontonjournal.com, March 16, 2007

www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.ht
ml?id=4766cd37-66b8-4c43-b1b7-69ef40131b86&k=79191

This is a good news story and there is more in the Edmonton Journal, Mar. 17, 2007.

Stenhouse learned about International Justice Mission (IJM) Canada from an article in The Journal by Canwest reporter Norma Greenaway.

IJM Canada uses retired or serving police officers and lawyers who go underground in countries like Cambodia, with its notorious child-sex trade industry.

There, as in other countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the investigators help local authorities rescue victims of sexual exploitation, forced labour and violence, and also prosecute the perpetrators.

The organization is purposely vague about its investigative methods, but makes no secret about its goal of trying to put an end to human trafficking for the purposes of feeding the sex or forced-labour trade.

A call to do justice -- As an undercover Mountie, Bob Stenhouse dealt with the darkest of the dark -- cases involving murder, outlaw biker gangs and sex crimes against children. New role as evangelical pastor a good fit for former RCMP officer, one of the RCMP whistleblowers , Don Retson, The Edmonton Journal, March 17, 2007

www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/religion/story.ht
ml?id=c6df29ed-1724-462a-85a7-3a3a88e6d723

CBC: The Fifth Estate - After the Cameras Went Away -- Listen to a Clip

www.cbc.ca/fifth/after_rcmp.html

www.cbc.ca/fifth/media/mountie.ram

In an earlier operation, IJM [International Justice Mission] was able to rescue 37 girls who'd been forced to work in brothels, also in Cambodia. One of the girls was only five years old while nine of the girls were between five and 10. That operation led to 13 prosecutions, resulting in six convictions, ranging from five- to 20-year prison sentences.

Sadly, McIntosh said Canadian pedophiles are among those who exploit children overseas.

Frost Hits the Rhubarb Nov. 19, 2006: 3

frosthitstherhubarb.blogspot.com/
2006/11/nov-19-2006-3.html

Search:

Memory Lane -- Whistleblowers and criminal activity -- criminal gang and triad related

Undercover Mountie -- Bob Stenhouse was a cop's cop -- until he broke the code and blew the whistle on the RCMP

Ex-RCMP Staff Sgt. Stenhouse

Stenhouse v. Canada (Attorney General) (FC) Reference: [2004] 4 F.C.R. 437

Crucial arctic map missing
Sovereignty issue: Can Canada prove it paid Norwegian for his discovery? , Nathan Vanderklippe, National Post, March 17, 2007

www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.ht
ml?id=5569b1be-64c5-48f6-8587-75596b554fa5

VANCOUVER - The country's record-keepers can't find a Scandinavian explorer's map that Parliament bought so it could plant the Maple Leaf on a trio of petroleum-rich Arctic islands, potentially opening a door for Norway to grab them back.

[....] The islands in question are Axel Heiberg, Ellef Ringnes and Amund Ringnes. Together, they make up the northwestern edge of the Canadian Arctic archipelago, a place where the winter sun disappears for months at a time and windchills regularly approach -100C. Named after Norwegian beermakers, they are uninhabited and desolate, home only to muskoxen, caribou and the occasional polar bear. [....]

Thin Ice-Saattuq, Mar. 17, 2007 on Global TV at 7 p.m. -- It was just about what you would expect from CBC. It featured the usual people: David Suzuki, Sheila Watt-Cloutier and others, with Tom Jackson narrating. There was no attempt at showcasing competing scientific conclusions about global warming, that is, other perspectives from scientists who see what is happening as part of a normal long-term cycle. The program was intended to make us worry about global warming and the Inuit way of life in the North. I have a hard time with stories of how the Inuit pursue their traditional ways and hunt for food ... while using modern inventions such as snowmobiles, guns, etc. Just which aspects do they wish to preserve? Or is it more a call for more taxpayer investment and who would dispense it? No mention of transparency nor accountability. One aspect of note in the program is the attempt by other countries to claim the water passage as not necessarily belonging to Canada; there were wonderful scenes of the North and of an island which Denmark claims.

Mar. 18, 2007: Foundation, Microinsurance, AKAM, Pakistan & Tanzania

2007-03-18T16:00:00.000-03:00

Update to: Mar. 15, 2007: Missing screen capture
Banking, Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development, Citigroup, ABN-Amro, Pakistan, Habib Bank

frosthitstherhubarb.blogspot.com/2007/03/
mar-15-2007-missing-screen-capture.html

Scroll down that same webpage to a list of links to related points starting with:

Frost Hits the Rhubarb Feb. 25 2007
re: Global Development
Microcredit - CIDA - Aga Khan Foundation - Taxpayer Input - Public-Private Partnerships - Transparency - Ramifications - Private Microbank - AKCA / AKF

There are other links.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Awards $5.5-Million Grant to Aga Khan Foundation U.S.A. for an Initiative In Microinsurance -- Five-year grant will focus on microinsurance for the poor in Pakistan and Tanzania , InterAction.org Media, January 17, 2006 -- American Council for Voluntary Interaction -- here , Aga Khan Foundation U.S.A. Martha Sipple, (202) 293-2537

www.interaction.org/newswire/detail.php?id=4736

66.218.69.11/search/cache?p=
Gates+Foundation%2C+
grant%2C+%245.5&ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-t-501&x=
wrt&u=www.interaction.org/newswire/
detail.php%3Fid%3D4736&w=
gates+foundation+grant+
5.5&d=Io7SnBIeOYg5&icp=
1&.intl=us

Washington, DC, January 17, 2006 – The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded a grant of $5.5 million to Aga Khan Foundation U.S.A. (AKF USA) for a microinsurance initiative in Pakistan and Tanzania. .... improve the economic stability of microentrepreneurs and other poor families....

AKF USA will work with the Aga Khan Agency for Microfinance (AKAM) in implementing activities, first in Pakistan, where the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) has well-established institutions and a long history of innovation in financial services, insurance, social development and poverty reduction. In 2007, AKAM will begin program activities in Tanzania, where AKDN has also had a long-term presence.

The initiative is designed to create a replicable model for extending and deepening the impact of microfinance by providing affordable, comprehensive insurance products to poor and very poor microfinance clients. It offers the opportunity to test how microinsurance services could become a powerful and cost-effective tool complementing micro-lending and savings. [....]

The Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) .... It is a group of private, non-denominational development agencies .... sub-Saharan Africa, Central and South Asia, and the Middle East. The Network’s nine development agencies ... compassion for the vulnerable in society. Its annual budget for philanthropic activity is in excess of US$300 million.

The agencies of the AKDN have been involved in microfinance for over 60 years, starting initially with small-scale micro-credit schemes for the poor. In 2005, these various micro-finance agencies were amalgamated under the Aga Khan Agency for Microfinance (AKAM) to deliver innovative services including micro-insurance, small housing loans, savings, education and health accounts, and support for small entrepreneurs seeking to develop businesses related to restored cultural assets. [....]

Mar. 18, 2007: Coal technology

2007-03-18T15:00:00.000-03:00

Related: Frost Hits the Rhubarb Mar. 14, 2007
Updated: Mining, Copper-Gold, DRC, Gobi

frosthitstherhubarb.blogspot.com/2007/03/
mar-14-2007-updated-mining-copper-gold.html

The Precarious Future of Coal -- A new MIT report says that much more effort is needed to develop and test technology that will make clean-coal power plants economical and practical. , By Kevin Bullis, March 14, 2007

www.technologyreview.com/
read_article.aspx?id=18389&ch=energy

Energy experts from MIT have released a long-awaited report on the future of coal. [....]

The report, based on a study by 13 MIT faculty members, comes at a time when growing concerns about global warming are making it increasingly likely that governments worldwide will impose a price on carbon-dioxide emissions to force a cut in the release of this important greenhouse gas.

[....] The report challenged the idea, argued by some energy experts, that a new type of coal plant--one that converts coal into a gas before burning it--will make it easier and cheaper to capture carbon dioxide, compared with collecting it from the smokestacks of conventional power plants. The MIT experts say that several factors make the picture more complicated. Such coal gasification doesn't work well with low-grade coal, for example, and both the new and the conventional plants will require major changes to capture carbon dioxide, according to the MIT report.

As a result, the MIT researchers recommend that governments not support the new gasification plants over conventional plants.

Part I: China's Coal Future , By Peter Fairley, January 04, 2007

www.technologyreview.com/Energy/17963/

To keep pace with the country's economic growth, China's local governments, utilities, and entrepreneurs are building, on average, one coal-fired power plant per week. The power plants emit a steady stream of soot, sulfur dioxide, and other toxic pollutants into the air; they also spew out millions of tons of carbon dioxide. In November, the International Energy Agency projected that China will become the world's largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in 2009, overtaking the United States nearly a decade earlier than previously anticipated. Coal is expected to be responsible for three-quarters of that carbon dioxide.

[....] Gasification transforms coal's complex mix of hydrocarbons into a hydrogen-rich gas known as synthesis gas, or "syngas." Power plants can burn syngas as cleanly as they can natural gas. In addition, with the right catalysts and under the right conditions, the basic chemical building blocks in syngas combine to form the hydrocarbon ingredients of gasoline and diesel fuel. As a result, coal gasification has the potential both to squelch power plants' emission of soot and smog and to decrease China's growing dependence on imported oil. It could even help control emissions of carbon dioxide, which is more easily captured from syngas plants than from conventional coal-fired plants.

Despite China's early anticipation of the need for coal gasification, however, its implementation of the technology in power plants has lagged. The country's electricity producers lack the economic and political incentives to break from their traditional practices.

[....] Direct liquefaction produces more fuel per ton of coal than Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. Experts at the Chinese Coal Research Institute in Beijing estimate that the process captures 55 to 56 percent of the energy in coal, compared to just 45 percent for Fischer-Tropsch. However, direct liquefaction is also far more complicated, requiring separate power and gasification plants to deliver heat and hydrogen and considerable recycling of oil, hydrogen, and coal sludge between separate sections of the plant. And breaking down hydrocarbons to just the right length requires exquisite control of the operating conditions and a consistent coal supply.

Search: Inner Mongolia's coal capital, Erdos

Part II: China's Coal Future -- To prevent massive pollution and slow its growing contribution to global warming, China will need to make advanced coal technology work on an unprecedented scale. , By Peter Fairley, January 05, 2007

www.technologyreview.com/Energy/17964/

Carbon Power ....

Ironically, China's move to a more open economy has hampered efforts to deploy more innovative technologies. [....]

The Yantai power plant was based on integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) technology. IGCC plants resemble natural-gas-fired power plants--they use two turbines to capture mechanical and heat energy from expanding combustion gases--but are fueled with syngas from an integrated coal gasification plant. They're not emissions free, but their gas streams are more concentrated, so the sulfurous soot, carbon dioxide, and other pollutants they generate are easier to separate and capture. Of course, once the carbon dioxide--the main greenhouse gas--is captured, engineers still need to find a place to stow it. The most promising strategy is to sequester it deep within saline aquifers and oil reservoirs. [....]

The problem is that IGCC plants still cost about 10 percent to 20 percent more per megawatt than pulverized-coal-fired power plants. (And that's without carbon dioxide capture.) China's power producers--much like their counterparts in the United States and Europe--are waiting for a financial or political reason to make the switch. In part, what's been missing is regulation that penalizes conventional coal plants. And China's environmental agencies lack the resources and power to make companies comply even with regulations already on the books. Top officials in Beijing admit that their edicts are widely ignored, as new power plants are erected without environmental assessments and, according to some sources, without required equipment for pollution control. [....]

Buffett to PetroChina Dissident: You Can Always Sell Your Berkshire Stake Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s Warren Buffett turned the tables on a shareholder who called on him to sell shares of PetroChina Co. because its government-owned parent operates in a nation accused of genocide. , March 9, 2007

www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=
20601109&sid=
aHFqv4n.uxwE&refer=exclusive

[....] The Berkshire shareholder, Judith Porter, submitted a ballot proposal aimed at forcing Berkshire to divest its stake in PetroChina because of killings in Darfur, a region of western Sudan. Last month Buffett said PetroChina, controlled by China's biggest government-owned oil company, has no influence over the country's business with Sudan because it's merely a subsidiary.

[....] Campaigners such as the Sudan Divestment Task Force, based in Washington, are trying to sway universities, investment companies and state pension plans to pull their money out of companies that do business that directly benefits the Sudanese government. Militias backed by the government have killed more than 200,000 people, according to United Nations estimates. [....]

Search: taught sociology at Bryn Mawr College , business that directly benefits the Sudanese government

A woman's right to choose deserves a sympathy card? RightWingNews -- Sending Sympathy Cards To Women Who've Just Had An Abortion?

www.rightwingnews.com/mt331/2007/03/
sending_sympathy_cards_to_wom
e_1.php?comments=show#comments

Mar. 18, 2007: Afghan Prisoner, Allegations, Attaran Complaint

2007-03-18T01:09:00.000-03:00

Security, Afghanistan, Amir Attaran, Justices

Background

When the Globe and Mail reports and quotes someone, particularly anyone connected to a university, a foundation, an agency or similar publicly funded group, or "experts", check into their backgrounds. Often why we should pay attention to those quoted is omitted; sometimes, I check backgrounds to see whether they have their own agenda, are connected to a political philosophy or some cause. Usually, I am not disappointed. I noted that Mr. Attaran (see below) came from Harvard (as did Michael Ignatieff) and his interests seem to be AIDS, money for AIDS drugs (to be administered by the UN?) and sub-Saharan Africa, coincidentally, an interest of Paul Martin's if you recall.

How far should Canada go to ensure fair treatment of Afghani detainees? , Kady O'Malley, Macleans.ca | Mar 06, 2007

www.macleans.ca/homepage/features/
article.jsp?content=20070307_121257_5348&s=ct

OTTAWA - It was, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor insisted, completely unrelated to allegations of prisoner abuse. But in light of how things had played out in the month previous, it was hard to see last week's news that Canada had become the first NATO ally to sign an agreement with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) to monitor transferred detainees as a coincidence.

While sold by O'Connor has an "extra layer of protection" that complement an agreement with the International Red Cross that the minister repeatedly assured the House was already in place, the new arrangement seems a little more important than that - especially now that thel Red Cross has publicly contradicted O'Connor's description of how much it's been doing to date. [....]

Search: a complaint filed with the Military Police Complaints Commission (MPCC) by Amir Attaran. The University of Ottawa professor , In Kabul, prisoner Abdul Rahman alleged , Amnesty International Canada secretary general Alex Neve , AIHRC, which monitors prisons and detention centres , In Kabul, prisoner Abdul Rahman alleged that local authorities beat him with rubber hoses and wood batons

And Rahman's word would be beyond reproach? From a Lib/lib/left perspective, some people believe the word of these prisoners; yet they are trained to lie, to claim torture and racism.

Check a little further into the University of Ottawa's Mr. Attaran and other activists, experts or spokesmen for the poor prisoners.

Amir Attaran -- or here

www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Amir_Attaran

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=
pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=
11197373&query_hl=1&itool=pubmed_docsum

Defining and refining international donor support for combating the AIDS pandemic.
* Attaran A,
* Sachs J.

Center for International Development, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. amir_attaran@harvard.edu

The international aid effort against AIDS is greatly incommensurate with the severity of the epidemic. Drawing on the data that international aid donors self-reported to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), we find that, between 1996 and 1998, finance from all rich countries to sub-Saharan Africa for projects designated as AIDS control ...

Is there any reason Mr. Attaran would be negative about the military in Afghanistan or wish the Conservative government to be gone and then things could return to normal?

Dr. Amir Attaran, lawyer and immunologist, writes on public health and global development issues.

Attaran is a frequent critic of the unaccountability and poor performance of what he has called the "foreign aid industrial complex", and organizations such as USAID, the World Bank, the World Health Organization, and although his work with [Jeffrey] Sachs [director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University] inspired it, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

[....] Dr. Attaran has been a paid consultant to NGOs (e.g. Doctors Without Borders), the United Nations (e.g. the UNDP), the pharmaceutical industry (e.g. Novartis), and an unpaid consultant when requested by various developing country governments (e.g. Brazil, Malawi) and human rights groups (e.g. Amnesty International).

He is currently Associate Professor of Law and Population Health, and the holder of the Canada Research Chair in Law, Population Health and Global Development Policy at the University of Ottawa, Canada. Previously he was an adjunct lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University, publishing research as part of the Center for International Development and the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Search: human rights and development

Dow Jones International: DAVOS: AIDS Activists Laud Pharmacia Plan For Generic Mfg -- More on Amir Attaran , 24 January, 2003

www.accessmed-msf.org/prod/
publications.asp?scntid=
2812003950572&contenttype=
PARA&

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP)--AIDS activists Friday praised the plan of Pharmacia Corp. (PHA) to work with a nonprofit agency to allow the manufacture of cheap copies of its AIDS drug for marketing in poor countries.

[....] even if the drug on offer isn't in great demand.

They stressed that without billions more in aid from the West, the world's hardest-hit countries wouldn't be able to afford even the cheap, generic copies.

"This is half of what's needed," said Dr. Amir Attaran of the Center for International Development at Harvard University, who helped develop the model. "This helps solve the supply side, but there's no demand because these countries are deadly poor."

Canada Research Chair in Law, Population Health and Global Development ...

Mr. Attaran -- ATTARAN, Amir ... Canada Research Chair in Law, Population Health and Global Development Policy, Associate Professor, Biotech, Comparative Law, Environmental Law, Globalization, Health Law and Policy, Human Rights, International Human Rights Law, Law and Society, International Development

www.etudesup.uottawa.ca/Default.aspx?tabid=
1727&monControl=Profs&ProgId=661

www.google.com/search?q=
cache:iJXtcSbPn8oJ:www.etudes
up.uottawa.ca/Default.aspx%3Ftabid%3D1727
%26monControl%3DProfs%26Prog
Id%3D661+who+appointed+Amir+Attaran+,+
Canada+Research+Chair+in+Law,
+Population+Health+and+Global+
Development+Policy+at+the+University+
of+Ottawa&hl=
en&amp;amp;amp;ct=
clnk&cd=
8&gl=ca

"Attaran is best known in the HIV community for co-authoring an updated version of Lee Gillespie-White's earlier paper on patents in Africa. .... 172 patents on ARV products in Africa are not a barrier to treatment"

www.cptech.org/ip/health/pharmadefenders.html

Amir Attaran: Attaran is currently an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy for the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, but his main job has been to work for Jeffrey Sachs [....]

Amir Attaran Says New Study Shows that Patents Are Not The Obstacle to HIV Treatment in Africa. PhRMA's page on patent on AIDS drugs provides typical spin for the article.

The basic thrust of the Attaran/Gillespie-White JAMA paper is that 172 patents on ARV products in Africa are not a barrier to treatment. [....]

What were the plans?

On the way to finding more on the man who would speak out on Canada, prisoners, and Afghanistan, Amir Attaran of Ottawa University, I found more Ottawa University graduates.

Common Law Bulletin, Summer 2005 -- Paul Martin's gift to the SCOC
The Honourable Justices Bastarache & Charron: Our Pride
Common Law Graduates on the Supreme Court of Canada

My heart fills with pride when I see the present composition of the highest court in the country. Indeed, currently on the bench of the Supreme Court of Canada are two Common Law graduates from our Faculty of Law. These are, of course, the Honourable Mr. Justice Michel Bastarache (’78) and the Honourable Madam Justice Louise Charron (’75).

Two Supremes from the University of Ottawa? I am tempted to say of such coincidence: Of all the gin joints in all the world* ... and I'm afraid I have given in to temptation. [* coincidence]

Justice and Justices

Provinces regain power to force public inquiries into conduct of judges , Janice Tibbetts, CanWest, March 14, 2007

www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.ht
ml?id=19dc0564-f7c7-4e24-8c39-135bb30f239b

Judges have lost a showdown with politicians in a court ruling that reinstates a special power allowing provincial attorneys general to force public inquiries into judicial conduct that can lead to removal from the bench. The Federal Court of Appeal ruled against Ontario Superior Court Justice Paul Cosgrove, a former federal Liberal Cabinet minister .... decision to clear a Barbadian woman of first-degree murder. .... independence of the judiciary .... "Judicial independence does not require that the conduct of judges be immune from scrutiny," Justice Karen Sharlow wrote in a unanimous ruling.

Mar. 17, 2007: Security

2007-03-17T20:01:00.000-03:00

Everyone needs to feel secure

Jihad.com , Sunday, March 11, 2007

60minutes.yahoo.com/segment/47/jihad_online

Afghanistan and Iraq are half a world away from the United States, but the most important front in the war on terror may just be a mouse click away. Correspondent Scott Pelly takes an in-depth look at the world of Jihad online, including how ordinary Americans are fighting back. [....]

Freedom of speech row as talk on Islamic extremists is banned , By John Steele, 5/03/2007, The Telegraph

www.forumsvibe.com/elwoodpdowd/view
topic.php?t=3236&mforum=elwoodpdowd

A leading university has been accused of "selling out" academic freedom of speech by scrapping a talk on links between the Nazis and Islamic anti-semitism after allegedly receiving emails from Muslims protesting about the event.

Matthias Küntzel, a German author and political scientist who specialises in the threat of Islamic fundamentalism, was told yesterday by the University of Leeds that a talk scheduled for yesterday evening, and a two-day workshop, on Hitler's Legacy: Islamic Anti-semitism in the Middle East, had been cancelled because of security fears.

[....] "My impression was that they wanted to avoid the issue in order to keep the situation calm. My feeling is that this is a kind of censorship.''

He has given the talk at Yale and in universities in Jerusalem and Vienna. [....]

Daniel Pipes: receives a Free Speech Award
“The Rushdie Rules: Will the West Accept Islamic Law?” , Mar. 3, 2007, Sponsor: Trykkefrihedsselskabet

gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2007/03/
www.trykkefrihed.dk/kalender-trykkefrihedspris2007.htm

Natana DeLong-Bas: American Professor, Wahhabi Apologist -- here , by Stephen Schwartz, Real Clear Politics, January 19, 2007

www.campus-watch.org/article/id/3035

www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/
2007/01/natana_delongbas_american_prof.html

[....] DeLong-Bas is a professional apologist for Saudi extremism. .... had found "no convincing evidence that Osama bin Laden was behind the attacks on the World Trade Center." Her interview was made public in translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) at www.memri.org.

In a long colloquy clearly intended to flatter her Saudi patrons, DeLong-Bas claimed that she had been studying the works of Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, founder of the Wahhabi sect, for a decade, and had read all of them. But she was forced by a persistent Saudi reporter to admit that she had never read the Islamist preacher's correspondence, which critics of Wahhabism and other Saudis consider key to understanding him. She rambled on, claiming that Islamist terror has nothing to do with radical religious interpretations, and with an almost absurd predictability blamed everything wrong in the Muslim and Arab world on the U.S. and Israel. She even described the "democracy" of terrorist groups like Hamas and the Wahhabi agents in Somalia as superior in achievement to U.S. democratization efforts.

Intellectually, Natana DeLong-Bas fits comfortably in the philosophical milieu of contemporary MES. For the majority of MES scholars in the U.S., certain cliches--little more than slogans--have become the foundation for teaching a new generation of American scholars. These truisms include the claim that radical Islam is a construct fabricated by Western "Orientalists," that all the problems of the Arab and Muslim nations are caused by Western economic rapacity, and, of course, that American support for Israel is the principal cause of Arab and Muslim discontent. [....]

List of articles by Douglas Farah

Pakistan's Downward Spiral , By Douglas Farah

counterterrorismblog.org/2007/03/pakistan_downward_spiral.php

Sudan Found Liable for Terrorism in USS Cole Trial , By Douglas Farah, March 14, 2007

counterterrorismblog.org/2007/03/
sudan_accused_of_terrorism_in.php#trackbacks

A federal judge in Norfolk, Virginia today found the government of Sudan liable for terrorism for the Oct. 12, 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in the port of Aden, Yemen. "There is substantial evidence in this case presented by... [....]

The 1,400-year war: On Wednesday, Key Porter books released reflections on Islam ideas, opinions, arguments, by National Post columnist George Jonas, National Post, March 16, 2007

www.canada.com/nationalpost/columnists/story.ht
ml?id=c2727806-3212-4217-944b-7144baebacf5

[....] The melodious ditty would be viewed as offensive to "diversity" today. We meant to give no offence to anyone -- none of us had ever seen a Turkish lad -- but we did associate the song with what we had been told about the Turkish occupation of Hungary -- the Turkish hodoltsag or bondage, as we invariably referred to it, just as Palestinians refer to the creation of Israel as nakba, or catastrophe.

Being in thrall to the Turk meant being in thrall to Islam. This was worse than being in thrall to the German -- Hungary's other great historical trauma -- for Germans were at least kin in Christ, while Turks were Muslims.

Christianity's roots in Hungary were not very deep, but they did go back to the 9th century (with pagan revolts extending into the 11th). The Magyars, a coalition of seven tribes of nomadic horsemen from Siberia, kept riding west until they emerged from familiar Asia and found themselves in alien Europe. This happened shortly before the end of the first millennium. The Magyar chieftains concluded that they had no choice but to adopt Christianity and settle in the fertile lands along both banks of the river Danube, in a region the Romans had called Pannonia.

The chieftains did not realize that they had picked a natural conflict zone. They pitched their tents in the borderlands between civilizations. Buda Castle was still a long way from being built in 895 AD, but the grey Danube (it was never blue) roiling at the foot of the future seat of Hungary's kings was the last in a series of moats between East and West, Asia and Europe, paganism and monotheism. In due course, it became a moat between Islamand Christendom. [....]

Mar. 17, 2007: Happy St. Patrick's Day

2007-03-17T15:00:00.000-03:00

Abdullah Almalki -- Ottawa man's name comes up in U.S. terror trial , Andrew Duffy, CanWest / Ottawa Citizen, March 14, 2007

www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=
3dfde3e5-9d24-48d3-a3e9-9a2572886af6

[....] "Among the items shipped to Elzahabi's New York business," the FBI affidavit reads, "were large quantities of portable field radios or walkie-talkies suitable for communications in extreme rural locations without regular or even cellular telephone service."

[....] One of the documents taken in the RCMP raid and filed in the Elzahabi case is a fax from Almalki dated April 17, 1996.

The fax, which is addressed to "Mr. Zahabi," directs him to remove the labels from various communications components, repackage them with stickers from Almalki's company, Dawn Services, and ship it to Micro Electronics International in Lahore, Pakistan. The goods were insured for $298,000 US.

U.S. authorities have suggested the shipments were intentionally disguised and destined for Afghanistan.

But Almalki said ... destined for the Pakistani military ... low-tech and required assembly by a skilled firm, such as Micro Electronics, to be turned into field radios. [....]

Almalki, 36, a Carleton University graduate, was a principal target of an RCMP national security investigation that ensnared Maher Arar and ultimately led to his deportation and torture in Syria.

Almalki, too, was arrested in Syria while visiting relatives in April 2002. He spent 22 months in Syrian prisons, where he was questioned and tortured, he says, based on information that could only have originated with Canadian security agencies.

I suspect another lawsuit coming up ... After all, Maher Arar got over $10-million, based on his word, essentially.

9/11 confession -- 'I was responsible for the 9/11 operation' -- Al Qaeda suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has claimed he organized the September 11 attacks on the United States

www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=
c41e178d-7733-4859-9667-6cbe29f31206

[Articles]
Mohammed says killed U.S. reporter Pearl: transcript
"I was responsible for the 9/11 operation." Excerpts from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's testimony
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in his own words
Archive: Arrest may bring more attacks
Archive: Interrogation reveals Pearl details

Memory Lane: Frost Hits the Rhubarb July 18, 2005
Are Muslims here to escape the Third World or to re-create it?

Islamo-fascism in Canada--a compendium of viewpoints

frosthitstherhubarb.blogspot.com/2005/07/
are-muslims-here-to-escape-third-world.html

Scroll down to:

[....] Mr. El-Nashar, the Eygptian chemist,

[....] El-Nashar was once arrested in Eygpt in connection with the Luxor tourist attack that claimed 58 lives and temporarily crippled Eygpt's tourist industry. As well, Sidique Khan, one of the suicide bombers, is connected to a terrorist assassination by another British-Muslim in Israel, and a thwarted attack in London in 2004.

[....] Pakistani madrassas extoll suicide attacks and preach a virulent anti-western message.

[....] As George Jonas writes, one commentator who did get it was the British parliamentarian, Enoch Powell, who was universally despised by the western left-wing. In 1958, he gave a speech criticizing Britain's policy of mass immigration from the Third World. As a classical Greek scholar, Powell made reference to Virgil's poetic line: "Like the Roman, I see the the river Tiber foaming with much blood." Powell saw that the British culture could not sustain large immigration by people, who not only didn't believe in that culture, but secretly despised it. Instead of nipping this anti-western sentiment in the bud, the government pushed a multicultural policy. This policy, like ours here, encouraged people to keep their cultural values, rather than assimalate. It funded cultural centers such as the one that the terrorist Khan ran. Rather than being a false prophet, Enoch Powell has been shown to be extremely prescient. Thirty-seven years have passed and now one out of eight Londoners is Muslim. Mosques like the infamous one in Finsbury Park have become training grounds for terrorists and the true crazies are allowed to openly preach sedition and murder in Hyde Park. The British political and media elites, who vilified Powell for the remainder of his life, will never admit their disgraceful misjudgement, but you won't hear them mouthing their multicultural platitudes anymore either. As Jonas puts it, "Are (the Muslims) here to escape the Third World, or to recreate it?"

Jerusalem on the Jukebox--Playing the same old sad tune

Maybe it time to disabuse ourselves of a Palestinian-Israel peace solution. [....]

B.C. man in terror probe
Accused of financing Afghanistan camps , Stewart Bell And Nathan Vanderklippe, National Post, with files from Brian Hutchinson, Adrian Humphreys and CanWest, March 13, 2007

www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.ht
ml?id=74bda148-2b97-4fdf-8331-64fd6f3d29ab&k=44803

A Canadian under investigation in British Columbia and Ontario for allegedly scamming millions from investors was arrested in Spain yesterday for his suspected role in financing terrorist training camps.

[....] Neither the FBI nor Spanish authorities would provide details of the allegations yesterday, but the National Post has confirmed that Canadian securities regulators have also been investigating Mr. Anderson.

The B.C. Securities Commission said it had been holding hearings into Mr. Anderson's financial dealings since April, 2006. A spokesman for the commission, Andrew Poon, said the man arrested in Spain is the same man being investigated by the commission.

The connection between Mr. Anderson's alleged investment scheme and terrorist financing surfaced at a hearing held on Feb. 26, when the commission introduced as evidence the U.S. allegations. The Ontario Securities Commission has also accused Mr. Anderson of violating provincial securities law. [....]

CANADIAN EXECUTIVES
members.canada.com/services/newsletters.aspx?site=
cc&provider=canada&brand=members

High-profile corporate scandals involving Nortel Networks Corp. and Conrad Black may be under the spotlight in Canada. But a new survey reveals Canadian business chiefs are failing to comply with securities reforms designed to protect investors and bring corporate governance here in line with the United States. Only one in ten executives at public companies say their peers are ready to deal with the new rules being introduced by the Canadian Securities Administrators to mimic legislation in the United States known as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, or SOX [....]

UN predicts huge migration to rich countries , By David Blair,16/03/2007

www.forumsvibe.com/elwoodpdowd/view
topic.php?t=3227&mforum=elwoodpdowd

Can the UK cope with nine million more people?

At least 2.2 million migrants will arrive in the rich world every year from now until 2050, the United Nations said yesterday. [....]

I am not convinced of the wonders of immigration, particularly from certain areas. Fix what is broken first.

Alberta and Ontario singled out in air pollution study , Mike De Souza, CanWest, March 15, 2007

www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=
01d3021e-f35c-4c58-b46a-24579b61728e&k=59202

OTTAWA -- Alberta and Ontario have found themselves singled out in a new evaluation of air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions across Canada.

According to the survey, Alberta produced more than a quarter of Canada's total air pollutants and about 40 per cent of the nation's greenhouse gas emissions in 2005, while Ontario represented 21 per cent and 28 per cent of total emissions, respectively, in the those categories for the same year.

The rankings were part of a PollutionWatch study [www.pollutionwatch.org/], published Thursday by Environmental Defence and the Canadian Environmental Law Association, based on an evaluation of statistics collected by the federal government. [....]

Dion backtracks on reverse-onus crime bill -- The federal Liberals unveiled a new emphasis on law and order Wednesday with a platform aimed at blunting Conservative charges they're soft on crime.

www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=
1b874b81-3e82-400a-bf78-854bc5c2eef4&k=62292

Target: Alberta's oilpatch -- Menacing comments from a top Liberal critic put the province's oil industry on guard , Terry O'Neill - March 12, 2007

www.westernstandard.ca/website/
index.cfm?page=article&article_id=2355

[....] Foremost in Klein's mind were comments made the week previous by the federal Liberal party's newly minted natural resources critic, Ontario MP Mark Holland, who suggested in a radio interview that a Liberal government would take over the Alberta oilsands if need be to fight global warming, and said later that a Liberal government would not be satisfied with the sort of soft "intensity targets" the Conservative government favours for slowly whittling down the oilpatch's carbon dioxide emissions. These targets, still being negotiated, aim to reduce the amount of emissions per barrel of oil produced, not the actual number of barrels.

The Conservative approach is something the oilpatch can live with. "We understand the public pressure that's out there, that people want to take action, that Canada needs to be doing its global share," says Pierre Alvarez of Calgary, president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. "We agree with that." What the Grits have in mind, though, is another story. As specified by Holland, the Liberals would order energy companies to cut actual production from the bountiful oilsands deposits around Fort McMurray in northern Alberta. This, Holland said, was necessary to help the country meet its Kyoto Protocol commitment to reduce, by 2012, CO2 emissions to six per cent below 1990 levels. However, by the time Parliament ratified the deal, in December 2002, total GHG emissions had increased by 24 per cent since 1990. The emissions just kept rising under the big-talking but do-nothing Liberal governments of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin. [....]

Memory Lane: Hezbollah and the West African Diamond Trade , MEIB staff, June - July 2004

www.meib.org/articles/0407_l2.htm

Drug Production and the Environment in Lebanon -- trafficking, transshipment, and money laundering , by Alexander H. Joffe, 2000 Middle East Intelligence Bulletin

www.meib.org/articles/0010_l1.htm

A.H. Joffe taught in the Department of Anthropology at the Pennsylvania State University from 1995 to 2000. He holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from the University of Arizona and has written on modern Middle Eastern topics, including truth and reconciliation commissions, intelligence reform, and weapons of mass destruction for Middle East Quarterly and Crime, Law, and Social Change.

The good news is that, according to U.S. government sources, drug production in Lebanon has vastly decreased from its peak during the late 1980's and early 1990's.2 The bad news is that Lebanon is now a center for trafficking, transshipment, and money laundering.

Almost as bad is the fact that behind virtually every illicit drug is a chemical process that results in a variety of hazardous wastes. These problems have not yet been fully documented in Lebanon. But strong a circumstantial case can be made that extensive drug production in Lebanon, past, present, and future, will have a highly detrimental impact on an already fragile environment.

Background

Drugs have been present in the Middle East since remote antiquity. Opium was cultivated and widely traded during the Bronze Age, if not earlier, while cannabis is likely to have originated in Central Asia and is well documented archaeologically in the Near East by the first millennium BC.2 In contrast, coca does not occur naturally in the Old World. The drugs that were available were widely used and traded as medicinals and for use in rituals, but recreational use may be suspected. There are no data which speak directly to the scale of production of use in antiquity.

Modern production and use of drugs in the Middle East has not been addressed by historians, but whatever small-scale production existed in the early 20th century increased dramatically during the 1970's and 1980's in response to rising global demand. By the 1980's, production and export of drugs in Lebanon had become a massive industry. During the 1980's, cultivation of cannabis and opium poppies expanded tremendously throughout Lebanon due to growing international demand and the breakdown of central government controls. A key role was taken by occupying Syrian military and intelligence officials, with at least tacit support from Damascus. A number of high ranking officials, including Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass, were directly implicated, giving permission to smugglers to travel unhindered throughout Syria and Lebanon. According to some estimates, the industry generated over $2,000,000,000 a year in profits.3

The profits collected by Syrians served the Assad regime by cementing the allegiance of primarily Alawite officials. [....]

B.C. auditor general fed up with addicts , CanWest, March 15, 2007

www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/story.html?id=
b8a8ee50-4bd0-406e-95bf-94b0fb6a6f3f

Addicts are having sex and shooting up drugs outside the downtown Victoria office of the B.C. Auditor General, and he -- like many others -- is fed up with the situation. In a tersely-worded letter to Victoria city council and police, Arn van Iersel expressed his "great concern" over safety issues in and around the alleys of Bastion Square, and said the number of police must be increased in the area.

"Just last week we had a couple fornicating outside our training room," writes van Iersel in a letter dated Feb. 13. "We also again had people shooting up drugs outside our back door. This is not the workplace I or my staff would like to have, and certainly not the image we want to have about Victoria." [....]

Ah, gee. Who says there is no good news?

Watchdog warns CBC could go off the air for 1.5 million viewers , Tim Naumetz, CanWest / Ottawa Citizen, March 14, 2007

www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/story.html?id=
ac38d522-e4d8-422b-a1a8-b77d05c1c110&k=85165

Friends of Canadian Broadcasting is warning the Commons heritage committee today the Crown broadcasting corporation is set to "unplug" hundreds of thousands of viewers in small cities and rural areas across the country.

The Canadian-content watchdog [Think of heavy handed social engineering and propaganda] is basing its concerns on a little-noticed submission the CBC made to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission last fall suggesting smaller communities now rely heavily on satellite or cable TV. [....]

Search: A Canadian Media Research Inc. survey done for Friends of Canadian Broadcasting

Think of how that could be skewed to give the answers wanted. Why does a taxpayer funded broadcaster need "Friends of...", except for keeping jobs for those involved, for pushing propaganda, and, of course, for their activist causes for the left. Bah! Humbug.

What programming does CBC provide that resonates with rural Canada? That speaks to rural Canada's political or other concerns? CBC is more likely to be telling us of the wonders of multiculturalism, heart warming stories of immigrants to Canada--preferably non-white, non-Christian, and how we must learn to accept their ways, along with their demands. Programming tends to follow liberal leftist values -- Da Vinci and the safe heroin injection sites, for example. When was the last time rural Canada was presented positively in a CBC program which reinforces rural values? There may be items concerning urban crime, Canadians' unfairness to natives, how the poor need and want more, problems with racism, etc. We are to welcome diversity no matter how much the representatives of that diversity offend our ways and are less than tolerant of our ways. Think of Little Mosque on the Prairie; the only stupid, intolerant characters are white Canadian prairie small town citizens. Frankly, most of what rural Canada values is undervalued. Why should we care? Frankly, CBC, we don't give a d***. And another thought: Burn baby, burn.

Diversion: That's only 51 years ago!

Comments made in the year 1955:

"I'll tell you one thing, if things keep going the way they are,
it's going to be impossible to buy a week's groceries for $20."

"Have you seen the new cars coming out next year? It won't be long
before $2000 will only buy a used one."

"If cigarettes keep going up in price, I'm going to quit. A quarter
a pack is ridiculous."

"Did you hear the post office is thinking about charging a dime just
to mail a letter?"

"If they raise the minimum wage to $1, nobody will be able to hire
outside help at the store."

"When I first started driving, who would have thought gas would
someday cost 29 cents a gallon. Guess we'd be better off leaving the car in the
garage."

"Kids today are impossible. Those duck tail hair cuts make it
impossible to stay groomed. Next thing you know, boys will be wearing their hair
as long as the girls."

"I'm afraid to send my kids to the movies any more. Ever since they
let Clark Gable get by with saying 'damn' in 'Gone With The Wind,' it seems
every new movie has either "hell" or "damn" in it.

"I read the other day where some scientist think it's possible to
put a man on the moon by the end of the century. They even have some fellows
they call astronauts preparing for it down in Texas ."

"Did you see where some baseball player just signed a contract for
$75,000 a year just to play ball? It wouldn't surprise me if someday they'll be
making more than the president."

"I never thought I'd see the day all our kitchen appliances would be
electric. They are even making electric typewriters now."

"It's too bad things are so tough nowadays. I see where a few
married women are having to work to make ends meet."

"It won't be long before young couples are going to have to hire
someone to watch their kids so they can both work."

"Marriage doesn't mean a thing any more; those Hollywood stars seem
to be getting divorced at the drop of a hat."

"I'm just afraid the Volkswagen car is going to open the door to a
whole lot of foreign business."

"Thank goodness I won't live to see the day when the Government
takes half our income in taxes. I sometimes wonder if we are electing the best
people to congress."

"The drive-in restaurant is convenient in nice weather, but I
seriously doubt they will ever catch on."

"There is no sense going to Lincoln or Omaha anymore for a weekend.
It costs nearly $15 a night to stay in a hotel."

"No one can afford to be sick any more; $35 a day in the hospital is
too rich for my blood."

"If they think I'll pay 50 cents for a hair cut, forget it."

Thanks to a friend for this.

Mar. 15, 2007: Bud Talkinghorn

2007-03-15T21:00:00.000-03:00

The same-sex marriage bill--the Liberals said this couldn't happen, but it has.

Tucked away on page A-6, bottom one inch column of The Globe and Mail (March, 15) is this little Bill 37 amendment. In the N.B. legislature there was a proposed amendment to the new Marriage Act, which would exempt clergy and civil servants from performing a marriage that was against their beliefs. The Liberal majority defeated it. To quote the Attorney-General, one TJ Burk, he said the bill amendment was "flawed and would be a step backward for New Brunswick". Allowing people to have freedom of belief is "backward"?

Almost everything connected with the same-sex bill was tainted with fraud or coercion. First the committee to investigate public opinion on this was stacked with same-sex supporters. Many groups were given advance warning to mobilize their support. Then the committee disbanded before its term was up. Supposedly, because the courts had made a ruling on it. A small sidebar: Isn't it interesting how the superior courts' (or Supreme Court) manages to weigh in on the side of the Liberal's positions? Every time the opposition to same-sex marriages brought up freedom of religious conscience they were pooh-poohed. "Never can happen," the Liberals/Bloc/ NDP leaders assured them. "The Charter wouldn't allow that."

Well, I'm sure there were protections in the original Nazi Party's constitution for citizens' beliefs. But Hitler didn't want to appear, as TJ Burk would put it, "backward". Therefore, new interpretations of the old laws would now apply. I can only hope that the religious challenge this. But where can it get justice? The Supreme Court?

© Bud Talkinghorn--The clergy, in particular, were supposedly protected. What a travesty!

The appointed justices have done their liberal duty. To do what those who appointed them wished was, IMHO, a major reason why they rose from the bottom of the legal pool. All along the way, they make evident their leftist/liberal/Liberal bona fides until, in the fulness of time, they reach the pinnacle of the judicial system. The culmination is the SCOC, a politicized, appointed group who do what they were advanced to do. So what else is new in Canada? Freedom of religion, particularly Christianity, or freedom of conscience in the face of the leftist and Liberal juggernaut which held sway for years? No contest. FHTR

Conrad Black--An appreciation

Perhaps Conrad will turn out to be a big time embezzler, who demanded to live like Louis the Sun King. Certainly the liberal media misses no opportunity to point out his foibles and "predatory" nature in business. An example of that hatchet job they are presenting was in full evidence last night on CBC's "Life and Times" program. Peter C. Newman managed to inject his usual venom with comments like "A mafia don" as well as insinuating that Barbara Amiel, his wife, was a nympho. A few of Black's old acquaintances were trotted out as character references; however, the entire thrust was what a shady egotist Black was. The liberal left delights in his current situation and their media coverage shows it in spades. It vindicates Black's comment that, "In Canada they always want to cut down the tall poppies."

Another Conradian statement was that "Canada is the true home of political correctness". It wasn't just what he said, but how he went about creating a conservative antidote to that scourge. Black built up a newspaper empire that attacked those who had foisted this odious political correctness upon us. The creation of The National Post was his crowning glory. It tackled this suffocating victimology that The Toronto Star, the CBC/CTV, and The Globe and Mail stuff their content with. It was a big spear to skewer the sacred liberal cows of aboriginal policy, the radical feminist movement and, yikes, even The Supreme Court. The Liberal Party was a favourite target, especially as they wallowed in the sleaze of Adscam. By its role in elevating Stephen Harper and the Conservatives to power, the liberal media had found a worthy, if despised, opponent.

So even if the Blacks had a "let the shareholders eat cake" mentality, Conrad will be remembered by Canadian and British conservatives--large C and small--as a champion.

© Bud Talkinghorn

Mar. 15, 2007: Missing screen capture

2007-03-15T00:46:00.000-03:00

Update Mar. 15, 2007: I just discovered that, for some reason, this screen capture was no longer visible in this post (Mar. 13, 2007: Banking Update-Pakistan-Afghanistan). I have put it up again, but I could not post it so I am re-posting here. There are strange things done 'neath the midnight sun by the men who moil for ... whatever. FHTR

Double click to enlarge; back to return.

Banking, Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development, Citigroup, ABN-Amro, Pakistan, Habib Bank

Foreign Banks May Spend $1 Billion on Pakistan Stakes (Update1) , By Warren Giles, Feb. 2, 2007 (Bloomberg)

www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a_C_PAnJs58U

Overseas banks, including Citigroup Inc. and ABN Amro Holding NV, may spend as much as $1 billion to buy stakes in Pakistani banks and take advantage of the rising demand for credit in the South Asian nation.

[....] Citigroup and ABN-Amro will consider acquisitions to catch up in Pakistan with Standard Chartered Plc, which bought Union Bank Ltd. in September for $487 million to cement its place as the biggest overseas lender in a nation of 160 million people.

On Sept. 5, in Pakistan's largest banking transaction, London-based lender Standard Chartered bought a 95.37 percent stake in Union Bank for $487 million to create Pakistan's sixth- largest lender by assets. In 2003, Pakistan sold a 51 percent stake in Habib Bank Ltd., the nation's second-biggest lender, to the Geneva-based Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development for $390 million. [....]

Citigroup Will Consider Acquisition of Pakistani Bank (Update3) , By Naween A. Mangi, Nov. 23, 2006 (Bloomberg)

www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=
newsarchive&sid=afUHuOn7VkXE

Citigroup Inc. will consider the acquisition of a Pakistani bank as it seeks to close the gap with the U.K.'s Standard Chartered Plc in South Asia's second- biggest economy.

The biggest U.S. bank will also double branches in Pakistan in a year as it capitalizes on rising loan demand from consumers and small companies, [....]

The Union Bank purchase by Standard Chartered was the largest in Pakistan's banking industry. In 2003, Pakistan sold a 51 percent stake in Habib Bank Ltd., the nation's second-biggest lender, to the Geneva-based Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development for $390 million.

[....] Citibank plans to treble lending to small and medium Pakistani enterprises .... bank targets more buyers of cars and apartments.

Soomro said Citibank will also consider starting Islamic financial services in Pakistan, a nation where 97 percent of the population is Muslim. Islamic law, or Shariah, bans the payment and receipt of interest and stresses profit-sharing.

``This is an area of real opportunity,'' said Soomro, who arranged a $600 million Islamic bond sale for the government in January 2005. Citigroup also arranged the country's first Islamic corporate debt sale in February 2006 for Water & Power Development Authority. [....]

If interest is verboten, how will they make money? Check further ... Maybe it leads to other businesses?

All for the good of humanity ...

In trying to find out more about the recipient of $30-Million Canadian tax dollars, the Aga Khan through his foundation (The international wing is "private", not run by an elected Board of Directors responsible to shareholders nor to the Canadian government, so who tracks what happens?), I have been overwhelmed by the number of positive articles listed by Google. Then, on posting something, I received an anonymous comment, obviously from an Aga Khan accolyte, a believer who perhaps is tasked with ensuring that the media do not dig into the world's "official humanitarians". Well, apart from making a mistake concerning the AK's birthplace which I have corrected and noted more than once, I have not found anyone disputing the substance of what I have found. Even "righteous philanthropists" who receive taxpayer money need to be checked to find out where taxpayer money has gone ... Anonymous spurred me to check further.

Double click to enlarge; then "back" to return

There was a screen capture here but someone with more clout than your humble blogger removed the possibility of its being seen. How ... expected. Never cross the powerful ... international do gooders and humanitarians ... or their anonymous acolytes.

I shall check whether this new copy is here tomorrow.

Related:

Frost Hits the Rhubarb Feb. 25 2007

re: Global Development
Microcredit - CIDA - Aga Khan Foundation - Taxpayer Input - Public-Private Partnerships - Transparency - Ramifications - Private Microbank - AKCA / AKF

frosthitstherhubarb.blogspot.com/
2007_02_25_archive.html

Scroll down; assume [...] after each

Feb. 27, 2007: Introduction

Private Microbank

The Micro Finance Bank Ltd set up by the Aga Khan Rural Support Program , the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development

CIDA: a partner with the Aga Khan Development Network

Aga Khan Agency for Microfinance (AKAM), an arm of the Aga Khan Development Network
[....]

Feb. 26, 2007: Innovations in Microcredit

This is intended to provide more background to other posts ... on aid, microcredit, development, foundations, banking endeavours, and taxpayer money.

Feb. 26: 2007: Global Development ....

There is more and also links to other posts from months ago.

Frost Hits the Rhubarb Jan. 14 - 20, 2007

frosthitstherhubarb.blogspot.com/
2007_01_14_archive.html

Banking and microcredit related -- Search:

Update-additions: Jan. 13, 2007: Financing Disaster #2 Introduction

Jan. 13, 2007: #1 CIDA Evidence to Senate Committee [i.e. Where has Canada's Foreign Aid been going in Afghanistan? - Continued below]

Jan. 13, 2007: #2 CIDA Evidence to Senate Committee [52-million-dollar micro-financing program in Afghanistan - $100 million per year - supervised by ARTF and the World Bank - Middle Eastern accounting firms - women trained in communication and media - radio - $3-Million out of $90-Million for basic education for girls]

Jan. 13, 2007: #3 CIDA - ARTF [Asian Development Bank, the Islamic Development Bank, the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program ... - officials from the Canadian International Development Agency: Hau Sing Tse, Vice-President of the Asia Branch, and Phillip Baker, Director of the Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka Division - Afghan ARTF Expatriates Services Program - artfexpat.gov.af which leads to iom.int or the International Organization for Migration - Lateral Entry Program to place 100 lateral entrants from NGOs and international organizations in middle- and senior-level line positions in government ministries and agencies]

Mar. 14, 2007: Updated: Mining, Copper-Gold, DRC, Gobi

2007-03-14T17:00:00.000-03:00

I moved a post from yesterday to go with this update.

Update - More re: Mining, Copper, Congo, Gobi, Myanmar, Africa, Gold, Banro, AMEC, Peter Lighthall -- who was mentioned below in "Mining Africa Congo DRC" as being with "global engineering consultants AMEC" -- The complete article is worth reading before the update article.

What intrigued me were phrases such as "the social and community aspects of mining" and the mention of the environment, environmental monitoring, communications in Africa, concern for natives or Africans, that kind of thing ... how shall I put it? As I read, a certain tone, "doing good", "responsible development", while mining and making money. It just draws some of us like a flies to honey.

If you search Banro or Banro, AMEC, there are some articles of interest. For example:

Nothing Like it on Planet Earth - Robert Friedland's Tour d' Tolgoi , By Resource Investor, 07 Mar 2005 at 09:03 AM GMT-05:00 -- or here

www.resourceinves
tor.com/pebble.asp?relid=9010

www.google.com/search?q=cache:6qRD5wxW_28J:www.resource
investor.com/pebble.asp%3Frelid%3D9010+Banro,+
AMEC&hl=en&amp;ct=clnk&cd=6&gl=ca

Note: this address was delivered at the BMO Nesbitt Burns 2005 Global Resources Conference, Tampa, Fla. Stream the audio recording of this presentation -- The audio may be no longer available.

files.presentation-direct.com/presentations/
200502/BMO_resources_02282005/ivan
hoe/player/launch_audio.asx

I believe that, previously, I have mentioned Warren Buffet buying up coal or coal bearing areas.

Note: Myanmar, Gobi, China, copper, gold, diamonds, steel, coal ... and more.

[....] Ivanhoe Mines recently listed on the New York Stock Exchange and trades in Toronto. We want to remind you that we really are an international mining company. We produce copper in Myanmar, we're the lowest cost primary copper mine in the world according to Brook-Hunt.

We are also developing our Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold project which I am going to be telling you about in Mongolia, and we are still own a very large gold asset in Kazakhstan which we are going to be daylighting.

Our project in Myanmar [....]

We recently discovered what we believe is the richest copper discovery in the world.

[....] Now I'm going to tell you a little about Oyu Tolgoi in the south Gobi region. This is in fact at this conference, the only world class development project. As have been saying year in and year out, the real wealth in this industry is generated by developing a new resource; the real money for shareholders.

Mongolia is three times the size of France, twice the size of Texas, 2.6 million people, and our lands there in yellow are about the same size as Japan, or Italy, about 135,000 square kilometres, the largest land position in the mining industry. When we staked it for copper and we had copper on the brain, we never dreamed that we wound find metallurgical and steam coal. But we are now an energy company as well as a mining company. We own the coal rights, the nickel rights, the zinc rights, the copper and the gold rights throughout this highly mineralised region rich.

.... But we're not in China, we're in the independent country of Mongolia. So we're of China, but not in China. Mongolia is big, [....]

We still believe that we haven't found the guts of the Oyu Tolgoi ore body. There is a danger that subsequent drilling is vectoring in on extremely high grade gold zones. They are supported by this form of mineralization, and we've had geologists from the likes of Phelps Dodge and Rio Tinto hold our core in their hands and said, “never on Plant Earth has anything like this been found!”

[....Ladies] and gentlemen, what we are looking at here is a copper factory. But the interesting thing about it is, in order to build our copper factory, we need steel from China, and in order to build the steel, we need iron ore and in order to make the iron ore, we need metallurgical coal. And we just had a 71.5% increase in iron ore prices. Now this is a very boring commodity, iron, but in the last two years it’s up 100%. Iron has out-performed gold.

Virtually everything has out-performed gold. [....]

Thinking people want exposure to stuff the world needs like cooper, and of course, it's often said, real men mine copper, not gold. Gold is you know, it’s okay, it’s okay, it's okay as a byproduct, but what you really want is this commodity, copper, which has far out-performed gold.

And the great gold mines - like Wheaton River has exposure to buy at Alumbrera or Newmont was rescued by its Btu Hijau holding; they’re really just copper mines in disguise. So I still would want to tell you that I would much rather own a copper mine than a gold mine. [....]

End of Update

Mining Africa Congo DRC

Africa's DRC back on map for miners -- 'Companies who are there are going to reap rewards' , Drew Hasselback, Financial Post, March 05, 2007

www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.ht
ml?id=f5c44cc4-72af-4add-a718-034410ca0b7b&k=86256

The Democratic Republic of Congo was once one of the world's largest copper producers. .... mining was responsible for one-quarter of the African nation's gross domestic product.

A brutal civil war in the 1990s ... Canadian miners are helping lead the way.

[....] "I think the conditions are difficult," says Jamie Kneen, a spokesman for Ottawa-based industry critic Mining Watch. "I think there needs to be much better evidence of the way things are being done. When you look at the Gecamines arrangements, they don't look terribly advantageous to the Congolese government or the Congolese people."

[....] A Parliamentary committee last summer held a series of round tables that among other things tried to shed some light on the practices of Canadian-based mining companies operating in developing countries. Such attention is gold for industry critics who are keen to use a surge of public attention to advance their agendas.

[....] "Probably the thing we're growing fastest right now is working with clients on talking about the social and community aspects of mining," says Peter Lighthall, a Vancouver-based vice-president with global engineering consultants AMEC. "That means helping develop relations with First Nations or indigenous communities, either in Canada or overseas. I think that's something that has been very good business for us, but also a great necessity for our clients."

[....] Banro's Mr. Cowley believes the return of a mining industry will spark development of other aspects of the DRC's economy. The country needs private investment to make that happen, he says.

"It's on the back of the private sector that the country will develop. It's gone through torrid times and it's really just come out of it no w," Mr. Cowley said. "Besides the minerals, I know some of the South African communications and mobile phone companies think there's extraordinary and huge potential."

Search: Kinross Gold Corp. , former Kinross executive, Art Ditto , Katanga Mining Ltd., which acquired that copper- cobalt project , free elections , Vancouver-based Tenke Mining Corp., Paul Conibear, president of Tenke. , Arizona-based Phelps Dodge Corp. , Lundins' Congolese project , Toronto-based Banro , 3.7 million ounces of gold at its four properties in the DRC.

Why did I expect the next words to be "sustainable development", along with the "private investment"?

Mar. 14, 2007: Quality, Not Quantity

2007-03-14T14:00:00.000-03:00

Population: Quantity or Quality?

This is worth reading and discussing since Andrew Coyne makes valid points about larger vs smaller populations. My caveat is that, until we have the security aspect straightened out, immigration and acceptance of questionable refugees must be considered first, in the interests of Canadian citizens. Questionable entrants, those immigrants and refugees who do not choose to be tolerant and to accommodate themselves to Western culture, as well as those questionable because of their criminal backgrounds and/or criminal gang ties, such as the triad members who have entered, must be prevented from entering Canada and remaining. Get that Charter amended, reign in the courts who accord rights in defiance of logic; do something to protect us from that aspect of the Trudeaupean folly that would put the rights of strangers ahead of the rights of Canadian citizens. Because of lack of security checks or other laxity, immigration has been far from an unalloyed blessing.

Certain groups have brought their extremism and hatreds with them. I do not think we should be importing any more of them. Fill in for yourself which groups have proven to be part of what I describe. It may be politically incorrect to mention this but, since I am hardly pc, I am saying stop! until we decide as a country what our values are and what we are willing to protect to maintain our Western freedoms and democracy. Catering to disaffected entrants who hate us but want our prosperity or the space Canada affords is not the answer. Turf the worst and consider the best, for a change.

Disregard the leftist/liberal/Liberal need for voters which has unduly influenced immigration, buttressed by the appointment of immigration commissioners and members of the courts with a left/Lib slant, a need for voters which has been blatantly fulfilled to the detriment of the long term good of Canada. Don't call me racist; I am concerned about Western values, not colour. There is a difference. Canada must draw immigrants who will add positively to Canada, not come here, then whinge about their rights which, if they don't get what they want, all of a sudden become accusations of racism. Getting CBC to rant on about diversity and multiculturalism will not always paper over the problems anyone with ears to hear and eyes to read can learn. Canadians are talking and turning off the LiberalPropagandaOrgan in droves.

Let's be the Alberta of the G8
Immigration has made us wealthy in people, too , Andrew Coyne, National Post, March 14, 2007

www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.ht
ml?id=1410adfc-f59f-43eb-b5ef-e753524989e4

In recent times, the Prime Minister has taken to referring to Canada as an "emerging energy superpower," a reference to our bounteous oil wealth. But perhaps it's time to start reckoning our assets in a new way, in terms of the only productive resource that really matters: people. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Canada, the emerging population superpower.

[....] More than that, numbers do count in this world. Bigger countries, as a rule, are more exciting, diverse, consequential places than smaller ones. France is more interesting than Liechtenstein. Japan has more impact on the world than Bermuda. Bigger countries not only have a greater chance, statistically, of producing those truly extraordinary individuals, an Einstein or a Bill Gates, they also attract more talented people, in the same way and for the same reason that people move to the big city from smaller centres. They allow people to live larger lives, both individually and, in the clout they wield in the world, collectively. Alberta's rapid population growth in recent years has made it a force to be reckoned with in confederation. Why should we not aim to be the Alberta of the G8?

Perhaps if we had one-fifth the United States' population, rather than a 10th, we would look upon our neighbours with less defensiveness, less envy disguised as disdain. Perhaps we might begin to treat them less as big brothers, and more as rivals, for indeed we would then be theirs. Perhaps the 21st century might belong to Canada, where the 20th passed us by.

Andrew, I do not necessarily think bigger is better, nor do I wish Canada to be a world power. Has it ever occurred to you and others like you, perhaps with visions of dollars dancing in your heads, as Canada becomes even more prosperous, that prosperity for some of us is not reckoned in dollar terms? There is a quality of life which a Hong Kong (yes, prosperous, but unbearably noisy, for example) or a Paris (great art, great galleries and museums, extraordinarily rude restaurant personnel, of which I have met the rudest samples ever, from North Africa), a New York (Yes, it has the Metropolitan or Lincoln Centre, but have you ever made the mistake of trying to read a newspaper in a NY restaurant, while eating breakfast when the waiter wants you to leave so he might do ... whatever?). I could go on. I love Canada without some of what wealth and power bring. With the seeming death of rural areas, particularly where the farmers are not big business farms, the death of small towns, I would protest that loss.

My Canada needs to be a haven of relative peace, quiet, contemplation, time for family and friends (You can't make loads of money that way!), time for families to play with children, to join them at games, music, all the activities which make for healthy families and happy people. Money and business are not everything. Some of us want just enough to live a decent life without frills and luxury, but such that it gives a life that, at its end, may be described as rich. Another loonie in the pocket won't do it and massive immigration so that more people may make more and more loonies definitely won't do it.

It's quality, not quantity, that I want. Maybe others feel the same. The least you could do is ask. Memo to the Immigration Minister: Ask us!

Conrad and the CBC

Mention of the CBC above reminds me of the CBC glee today, emanating from all corners, in endlessly talking, under the guise of reporting news, anything negative that may be dredged up about Conrad Black. You will hear the "news" repeated endlessly. I don't know whether Black has done anything wrong or not, but CBC's bias is enough to have me at least tending toward Conrad Black's camp. At least Black produced good newspapers, for which he will always be remembered fondly, along with his mode of speech.

Mar. 14, 2007: Canada - India , UN

2007-03-14T13:00:00.000-03:00

Free trade agreement with India will boost Canada's prosperity and security , CCD Press Release on 10:24:41 2007/03/13
In Reply to: Ottawa pitching trade deal to India posted by STEVEN CHASE, Globe and Mail

canadiancoalition.com/forum/messages/21768.shtml

Ottawa, Canada - The Canadian Coalition for Democracies (CCD) welcomes the decision of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative Government to begin negotiating a "high-quality free trade agreement" with India. This initiative was announced by Parliamentary Secretary Ted Menzies on behalf of International Trade Minister David Emerson in India on Monday night.

"This is a significant step towards realigning Canadian foreign policy in the Asia-Pacific region with the realities of the 21st century," said Dr. Salim Mansur, CCD's Senior Fellow and professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario.

“A free trade agreement, if signed over the next few years, will pave the way for advancing economic, cultural, educational, and social ties between Canada and India. ....

[....] Canadian foreign policy had its "golden age" some half century ago .... Canada's strong partnership with India within the Commonwealth and the United Nations was a key component of Ottawa's middle power diplomacy. Since then, the relationship between the two countries, despite the common heritage of parliamentary democracy, rule of law and English as an official language, has not been sufficiently nurtured. Today, India is world's largest democracy, the 12th largest economy and by 2025 expected to likely become the 4th largest economy, and a global power with more than a sixth of the world's population and a rising middle class of around 400 million.

"Looking ahead, the need for a Canada-India partnership is vital for both countries in the pursuit of common interests in wealth creation, global peace, regional stability and supporting the growth of democracies in the greater Middle East, Central and South Asia, Africa and the coastal states of the Pacific region," added Mansur. "We also note that Canada's commitment to Afghanistan is matched by India's economic contribution, while Ottawa and New Delhi share similar concerns on UN reform." [....]

Suggestion: Why not turf connections with the UN for reasons which have been enumerated many times, its uselessness for anything but expanding itself and talking being paramount. End its expansion into Canada. Set up a United Democracies and see whether that would be of use. Set a time limit for its re-assessment. If UD proves no better, end it, and go it alone, making what treaties and agreements Canada's government might make. Get out of the business of supporting failure and hot air.

Mar. 13, 2007: Various

2007-03-13T16:00:00.000-03:00

I have moved the section on mining to a new post with update, above. Mar. 14, 2007

Natives

Bill C-257 will hurt Canada's natives , Matthew Coon Come, National Post, March 07, 2007

www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/editorialsletters/
story.html?id=9e8367c7-51bf-42cd-893b-ad3531ac5899

Matthew Coon Come is chairman and CEO of Cree C3 Management Corporation and was national chief of the Assembly of First Nations from 2000-2003.

Parliament is currently considering C-257, a private member's bill that seeks to enhance labour rights by banning replacement workers in federally regulated industries. It should not pass. While such provisions sound superficially appealing, the reality is that this legislation is fundamentally flawed. Its enactment would do severe harm to rural and remote communities in general, and Cree and other aboriginal Canadians in particular.

To fully appreciate why, it is helpful to understand why certain sectors were first designated under federal law when our country's initial labour laws were drafted.
Industries such as telecommunications, broadcasting, banking and transport by air, rail and marine are unlike other sectors: Their proper function is critical to the health of our national economy and to the well-being of all Canadians. As is so often the case, what is potentially harmful to non-aboriginal Canadians is of even greater concern to Indian, Inuit and Metis people.

The effect of C-257 is that labour disputes could bring vital services -- in some cases, essential services -- to a dead halt. [....]

Canadian natives stress equal status as nation at London portrait exhibit -- "We are in a stage just on the verge of making some important roads of how well we survive as a people into the future with a distinct identity," , Tristan Stewart-Robertson, CP, March 07, 2007

www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.ht
ml?id=99ebb56f-face-4166-8888-
62613b1203b8&k=22597

LONDON (CP) - Natives from Canada called on the British Crown to remind the Canadian government about indigenous "sovereignty" at the Tuesday night opening of a major exhibit of historical portraits in London.

Representatives of the Haudenosaunee - or Iroquois - Confederacy Council urged a renewal of the original agreement made almost 300 years ago when four indigenous envoys, whom the British at the time called "kings," were brought to England to meet Queen Anne.

[....] Keith Jamieson, a historian and curator from the Six Nations of the Grand River community, presented a formal statement from the confederacy, approved after several meetings in recent weeks. It calls for the renewal of agreements that recognized the Haudenosaunee as equal nations and partners as Britain fought to defeat the French in North America.

"We, the chiefs of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Council in a full session at the Onondaga Council House, Grand River, would like to take this opportunity to remind our English allies that these portraits are an expression of our sovereignty as nations and that we ask the Crown in Britain to remind their representatives in Canada of the commitments that we have together," the statement reads.

The statement was made as tension continued between the Six Nations community at Caledonia in Ontario over land developments.

Three hundred years ago, the deal with the British eventually led to the Haudenosaunee leaving New York state as the United States declared independence, and their settlement in Ontario. [....]

Native studies ... bearing fruit.

Kyoto Global Warming Climate Change

Discussion thread: Scientists threatened for 'Climate denial'.

www.forumsvibe.com/elwoodpdowd/view
topic.php?t=3153&mforum=elwoodpdowd

USS Clueless

Stardate 20020814.2036

(On Screen): I have just read an amazingly profound article, which now joins a select group along with Kagan, Mead and Peters as the most important I have read regarding international politics. (Update: here's a longer article by Fonte which goes into more detail.)

The very best analysis articles are those which take a lot of things which seem unrelated and show how they're actually part of the same thing, and what that implies. I try to do that here, but I've never written anything as profound as Fonte has. This article shows that a completely new international political movement has formed, which opposes liberal democracy as we in the US practice it. He refers to it as transnational progressivism and makes a persuasive case that it is the underlying philosophy behind such apparently disparate phenomena as the anti-globalist movement, the "sustainable development" movement, those who support the International Criminal Court, much of forces supporting "multiculturalism" in the liberal academia, the apparent hypocrisy of international human rights organizations who are eager to condemn the US while ignoring much worse abuse by third world nations, and the formation of the European Union and the structure of the European Commission in Brussels. It ties in the clear elitist elements that all of these demonstrate and the way that all of them are fundamentally undemocratic and demonstrably contemptuous of the opinions of the "common man". It also ties in with the entire idea that nations should have high taxes, central control and heavy social spending. These things don't seem to be related, but they all express the same fundamental political philosophy.

It explains why to some people there is no greater insult to throw at their opponents than "patriot". It explains the real basis of claims about "international law" and why those who use the term are so emphatic about insisting on it. [....]

The key concepts of transnational progressivism are:

Groups are what matter, not people. [....]

The goal of fairness is equality of result, not equality of opportunity. [....]

Being a victim is politically significant. [....]

Assimilation is evil. [....]

An ideal democracy is a coalition where political power is allocated among groups in proportion to their numbers. It has nothing to do with voting or with individual citizens expressing opinions, and in fact it doesn't require elections at all. A "winner take all" system, or one ruled by a majority, is profoundly repugnant because it disenfranchise minority groups of all kinds and deprives them of their proper share of power.

National identity is evil. [....]

He's got it. By God, I think he's got it.

B.C. man linked to terror camp

Investment scheme said to support terrorist activities , David Baines, Vancouver Sun, March 13, 2007, via newsbeat1

www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.ht
ml?id=b8b4d168-9bb0-4b1e-b1f1-68cbd9d5b4f2&k=93106

A White Rock man arrested in Spain Monday is accused of helping run a fraudulent Islamist investment scheme that U.S. authorities allege was used to help finance Islamist terrorist activities, including a training camp in Afghanistan.

Brian David Anderson, 61, was arrested in a Madrid hotel by Spanish police who were collaborating with FBI agents.

Anderson has been linked to New York businessman Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari, 53, charged last month with terrorism financing, material support of terrorism and money laundering. [....]

Search: Flat Electronic Data Interchange (FEDI) , Alishtari (a.k.a. "Michael Mixon"), from 1998 through 2004, Alishtari , Alpha Program , 100-per-cent interest per month, increasing to 200 per cent , Frontier Assets , Alpha Frontier Ltd., a company incorporated in the Dominican Republic.

Why Islam Forbids Pork? , By: Rashid Shamsi, (The Muslim World League Journal, Rajab 1420 - October 1999)

[....] Muslims are required to be selective and to distinguish between Halaal (Lawful) and Haraam (Unlawful) [....]

Moderate Muslims

Where were our media? Did they report on this effort by moderate Muslims?

Pulling Muslims from Dark Ages , Salim Mansur, Mar. 10, 2007

www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/
Mansur_Salim/2007/03/10/3725446.html

This past week individuals from various professions and different ethnicities sharing a connection with Islam gathered in St. Petersburg, Fla. The meeting was billed as Secular Islam Summit.

A statement -- The St. Petersburg Declaration -- was released which calls for an affirmation of individual rights and freedom of conscience for Muslims and non-Muslims alike in the Muslim world.

The declaration begins, "We are secular Muslims, and secular persons of Muslim societies. We are believers, doubters, and unbelievers, brought together by a great struggle, not between the West and Islam, but between the free and the unfree." [....]

A successful Islamic reform will occur when many more Muslims insist on the "release of Islam from its captivity to the totalitarian ambitions of power-hungry men and the rigid strictures of orthodoxy."

Then Muslims might find for themselves "a noble future for Islam as a personal faith, not a political doctrine" as the brave individuals gathered together at the first Secular Islam Summit dared publicly to imagine. [....]

Women, Feminism, Lesbianism, Saudi Arabia, Same-Sex Relationships

Saudi Daily Discusses the Phenomenon of Same-Sex Relationships in Some Saudi High Schools and Colleges , March 9, 2007, Special Dispatch Series - No. 1496

memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD149607#_edn1

The Saudi daily Arab News recently reported on the phenomenon of lesbian relationships among students in some Saudi high schools and colleges.

The following is the full text of the article as it appeared on the Arab News English website: [1]

Saudi Student: "Administration at Colleges Do Carry Out Random Inspections to Prevent Such Behavior From Happening"

[....] "'My relationship with my family isn’t very good and I don’t get the love and attention that I should be getting from them. My family is very disconnected and there are a lot of family problems,' she said, adding that she is not paying much attention to her coming marriage. Rather she says her attention is fixed on Uhoud.
"Uhoud, on the other hand, feels similarly and also pays very little attention to other students who frown at her relationship with Fawziya.

"Fawziya and Uhoud’s affair is not an isolated one. ....

"There are other examples of such relationships blooming behind the walls of schools run by the Education Ministry. ....

"'What is surprising is that there was a married girl in her seventh month of pregnancy who was pursuing other girls to satisfy her sexual needs. Administration at colleges do carry out random inspections to prevent such behavior from happening,' said Al-Ghamdi."

Saudi Student: "I Blame a Lack of Awareness Among Families Toward Their Daughters" [....]

[1] Arab News, February 21, 2007.

You will be relieved to learn: "Education Department Source: "The Ministry Has Not Outlined Punishment for Students Who Are Caught in Such Relationships"" and that "Saudi Specialist: "Such Girls Need Help and Treatment""

If they can "treat" lesbianism or homosexuality, is it innate or learned? Is it possible that the dreadful treatment of women in Saudi Arabia and throughout much--though I am assured, not all--of the Islamic world lends itself to female-female bonding, rather than male-female bonding? Can a Western women imagine what it must be like to be denied the freedoms she takes for granted, then to see Islam making inroads in the West, attempting to change our ways?

To which I say: no, no, no ... a thousand times NO!

Islam Jihad Afghanistan Iraq

Afghanistan: The Rising Threat against Education Targets , Stratfor, February 26, 2007 2007 GMT

www.stratfor.com/products/wtr/wtr.php

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney arrived in Afghanistan from Pakistan on Feb. 26 on a surprise visit to the region. While in Islamabad visiting Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Cheney made a point of expressing concern about the resurgence of the Taliban and their al Qaeda allies in Afghanistan. This resurgence, coupled with the approaching spring thaw, is likely to result in a greater number of attacks against schools and educators in the country.

Part of NATO and the U.S.-led coalition's reconstruction effort has been on rebuilding schools in Afghanistan's small towns and villages. [....]

Justice, Ralph Goodale, rights

A Must Read

We get letters! Steve Janke, Mar. 8, 2007 via newsbeat1
www.stephentaylor.ca/archives/000801.html

The other day, I got an email from Dr. Tom Flanagan, political science professor and close adviser to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Dr. Flanagan writes:
This afternoon (March 6, 2007) I got a call from CBC TV news reporter Krista Erickson. She said she was desperately seeking someone to provide balance for a story she was doing on Christine Tell and the Saskatchewan Judicial Appointments Committee. [....]

Becoming a judge in Ralph Goodale's Saskatchewan (updated) , December 29, 2005

Screen capture of interest - justices and donations

www.stephentaylor.ca/archives/
donations-saskatchewan-judges.gif

Deadbeat Writes , David Warren - February 26, 2007

www.westernstandard.ca/website/index.cfm?pa
ge=article&article_id=2324

[....] Our entire society has an interest in reckless, ideologically motivated judges laying the "rights" groundwork for the court legislation of polygamy. Which is precisely what the Ontario Court of Appeal's "three parent" decision provided. Yet the justices, in their reasoning, could not be bothered to consider the consequences of what they were doing. The destruction of a society's entire moral order being not the sort of thing they feel the need to concern themselves with.

McMurtry is the same chief justice who presided over the creation of "same-sex marriage" through a court decision in June 2003--and was photographed partying with the plaintiffs afterward. A complaint about this behaviour from REAL Women of Canada was dismissed only last month by the Canadian Judicial Council. This review panel did not challenge the fact; they only failed to find anything wrong with it. And given mainstream media who are utterly unprepared to make an issue of that sort of thing, why should they worry? [....]

... "revolution against decency." I am one of tens of thousands of publicly labelled "deadbeat dads," created by a vicious Ontario bureaucracy with the Orwellian name "Family Responsibility Office."

A must read article.

How did this festival fare? That's Chutzpah! -- Tradition and modernity meet at Vancouver's eclectic festival of international Jewish culture and talent -- Vancouver's Chutzpah! Festival 2007, running February 17-March 3, 2007, Dina O'Meara - February 26, 2007

www.westernstandard.ca/website/
index.cfm?page=article&article_id=2327

Chutzpah! strives to live up to its name, which is a Yiddish word for unmitigated gall, or moxie, depending on your view. An old definition of chutzpah goes as follows: a young man who has killed his parents begs for leniency from the judge. "Have mercy," he pleads, "I'm an orphan!" Insolence, audacity; the word has many connotations, and Chutzpah! incorporates as many as possible. [....]

"It's a festival for everyone," Albert says. "Chutzpah! reflects a lot of collaborations, a range of culture. Its way of artists presenting themselves in secular, religious or traditional performances makes the festival a great meeting ground." Chutzpah! was launched in 2000 through the Norman Rothstein Theatre at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, as a vehicle for Jewish artists to present their works. Funded through an endowment by David Levi in memory of his wife, Lisa Nemetz, the festival has gained steam and notoriety since 2005, when Albert decided to kick it up a few notches and present more international performances. "You don't want to just coast, as a festival," she says. "It's a competitive world out there for audiences and acts." [....]

As a gentile sheila, I love the word "chutzpah"; Canadians may need a little more chutzpah to do what has to be done to preserve our Western values.

If the eco-snobs had their way, none of us would go anywhere , By Janet Daley, Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 08/01/2007

www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jht
ml?xml=/opinion/2007/01/08/do0801.xml

[....] Just as ordinary working people had begun to enjoy the freedoms that the better-off have known for generations - the experience of other cultures, other cuisines, other climates - they are threatened with having those liberating possibilities priced out of their reach. [....]

The environment may or may not be at risk from those multitudes of ordinary Britons who can now afford to escape regularly from their parochial isolation and the narrow-minded ignorance that goes with it.

But before we give the eco-lobby the unconditional benefit of the doubt, can we just look at the balance sheet?

It is not just air travel for the poor that the green tax lobby is engineering: it is a restriction on any mobility. Clamping down on one form of movement, as the glib reformers have discovered, simply creates intolerable pressure on the others. [....]

The price of spin , National Post, March 13, 2007, via newsbeat1

www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/editorialsletters/story.ht
ml?id=837ba5c3-00c1-4df4-b2e9-92fded36514c

Over the weekend, the Canadian Press revealed that the RCMP had paid an Ottawa communications consultancy, McLoughlin Media, nearly $25,000 to prepare then-commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli for his ill-fated Sept. 28, 2006 appearance before the House of Commons public safety committee. [....]

It was a waste because senior civil servants have no business spending tens of thousands of taxpayers' dollars to burnish their responses before Parliamentary committees or the media.

At $400 an hour [....]

Greg Weston: Envirowallet Attack , Mar. 13, 2007, via newsbeat1

www.ottawasun.com/News/Columnists/
Weston_Greg/2007/03/13/3742075-sun.html

While hitting up corporate eco-culprits for the massive costs of reversing global warming may seem perfectly fair and rational, those demanding polluters pay might want to be careful what they wish for.

In the long run, more green for Mother Nature could mean a lot less of it in the pockets of ordinary Canadians.

[....] The technology does exist to reduce emissions from oil extraction and refineries, and it is all enormously expensive.

Does anyone honestly believe the oil companies wouldn't pass along much of those costs to consumers?

Ditto for the single worst greenhouse polluters in the country, the giant coal-fired electrical generating stations. [....]

Maybe instead of Guilt and Victimology 101, Canadian students could learn something about economics, capitalism and how it works? People who know more than I tell me that when business is good, it lifts everybody's fortunes -- A rising tide lifts all boats.

Mar. 13, 2007: Money & Drugs

2007-03-13T14:00:00.000-03:00

Securities Investigation, RCMP - IMET, Backdating, RIM, Balsillie

Canadian seniors group calls for enforcement reform -- Is it time for a national securities cop?

It isn’t that Canada doesn’t have securities laws; it has lots of them. But there seems to be a problem with enforcement. , By David Clarke, March 12, 2007, via newsbeat1

www.investmentnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/arti
cle?AID=/20070312/FREE/70308027

OTTAWA — [....] Even the Mounties agree that reform is needed.

“We’re one of the only Western countries without the authority to compel people to talk,” Superintendent John Sliter, director of the RCMP’s integrated market enforcement branch [IMET], said at a conference last month.

Although provincial securities commissions have the power to require witnesses to provide evidence during investigations, Canada’s criminal authorities have no similar powers.

Does that strike you as strange? Consider what they investigate, to say nothing of the knowledge of accounting they would require. This is not ordinary police work; it is very specialized.

The branch’s teams have tackled most of Canada’s biggest securities investigations, including those involving Nortel Networks Corp. of Brampton, Ontario, Royal Group Technologies Ltd. of Woodridge, Ontario, Portus Alternative Asset Management Inc. of Toronto, and Norbourg Asset Management Inc. and Norshield Asset Management (Canada) Ltd., both of Montreal.

But the RCMP has charged no one in the cases under investigation.

Accounting Problem at RIM results in Balsillie relinquishing his position

Mr. Balsillie, a Harvard business graduate says RIM was tripped up by complicated accounting rules around the issuance of stock option grants that were different in the U.S. and Canada.

Business as usual at RIM, Balsillie says -- despite "So did we do backdating? Yeah. We did backdating."

Relinquishes chairman post; co-CEOs will pay for cost of internal review , Simon Avery, Tech Reporter, Mar. 2007

www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/
LAC.20070306.RRIMBALSILLIE06/TPStory/Business

[....] Jim Balsillie resigned as chairman of the BlackBerry maker after taking responsibility for errors that will lead to an approximate $250-million (U.S.) restatement of earnings. It is also still possible that the bookkeeping problems could lead to disciplinary action by securities regulators in the United States and Canada, which are conducting their own separate reviews of how RIM accounted for its stock option grants.

... Waterloo, Ont., ... "We're still co-CEOs. [....]

Balsillie says RIM was tripped up by complicated accounting rules around the issuance of stock option grants that were different in the U.S. and Canada. [....]

backdating [....]

Would it not be elementary to think that backdating is not quite the thing to do? It is obvious to me that stock options that could be dated whenever you wished, would be dated so as to make the most money ... but that is in the eyes of a member of the non-RIM stock owners. Perhaps it is more complicated if you own the company.

More here: Balsillie steps down as RIM chairman

www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.ht
ml?id=f87e86ed-070e-4e68-a55e-6e8c1117f33e

Neighbourhood Druggies

Parents: "These drugs are widely available at school dances," reveals Det. Sgt. David Malcolm. "They're widely available at raves."

Accidental Find Leads Cops To One Of The Biggest Drug Busts In Toronto History , Monday March 12, 2007, via newsbeat1

www.citynews.ca/news/news_8688.aspx

It is, by any measurement, a staggering find.

Toronto Police have confirmed they've helped make one of the biggest Ecstasy busts in the city's history.

[....] What they found inside stunned everyone involved - at least 140,000 Ecstasy pills and 214 kilograms of MMDA, worth an estimated $21.4 million on the streets. [....]

Link for this:

How to Spot An Ecstasy Lab In Your Neighbourhood

It goes on all the time behind closed doors. And those doors may be closer to your home than you think. No one who lived near the house where one of the biggest drug busts in history was made last week seemed to have any clue about what was going on inside.

Yet there are ways to spot an Ecstasy lab and the suspicious activity it causes. Here's what to look for:

Do not miss reading that list from the Abbotsford B.C. Police Dept.

Mar. 13, 2007: Banking Update-Pakistan-Afghanistan

2007-03-13T04:00:00.000-03:00

See Mar. 15 for the screen capture which had been below but disappeared. FHTR

Banking, Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development, Citigroup, ABN-Amro, Pakistan, Habib Bank

Foreign Banks May Spend $1 Billion on Pakistan Stakes (Update1) , By Warren Giles, Feb. 2, 2007 (Bloomberg)

www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a_C_PAnJs58U

Overseas banks, including Citigroup Inc. and ABN Amro Holding NV, may spend as much as $1 billion to buy stakes in Pakistani banks and take advantage of the rising demand for credit in the South Asian nation.

[....] Citigroup and ABN-Amro will consider acquisitions to catch up in Pakistan with Standard Chartered Plc, which bought Union Bank Ltd. in September for $487 million to cement its place as the biggest overseas lender in a nation of 160 million people.

On Sept. 5, in Pakistan's largest banking transaction, London-based lender Standard Chartered bought a 95.37 percent stake in Union Bank for $487 million to create Pakistan's sixth- largest lender by assets. In 2003, Pakistan sold a 51 percent stake in Habib Bank Ltd., the nation's second-biggest lender, to the Geneva-based Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development for $390 million. [....]

Citigroup Will Consider Acquisition of Pakistani Bank (Update3) , By Naween A. Mangi, Nov. 23, 2006 (Bloomberg)

www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=
newsarchive&sid=afUHuOn7VkXE

Citigroup Inc. will consider the acquisition of a Pakistani bank as it seeks to close the gap with the U.K.'s Standard Chartered Plc in South Asia's second- biggest economy.

The biggest U.S. bank will also double branches in Pakistan in a year as it capitalizes on rising loan demand from consumers and small companies, [....]

The Union Bank purchase by Standard Chartered was the largest in Pakistan's banking industry. In 2003, Pakistan sold a 51 percent stake in Habib Bank Ltd., the nation's second-biggest lender, to the Geneva-based Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development for $390 million.

[....] Citibank plans to treble lending to small and medium Pakistani enterprises .... bank targets more buyers of cars and apartments.

Soomro said Citibank will also consider starting Islamic financial services in Pakistan, a nation where 97 percent of the population is Muslim. Islamic law, or Shariah, bans the payment and receipt of interest and stresses profit-sharing.

``This is an area of real opportunity,'' said Soomro, who arranged a $600 million Islamic bond sale for the government in January 2005. Citigroup also arranged the country's first Islamic corporate debt sale in February 2006 for Water & Power Development Authority. [....]

If interest is verboten, how will they make money? Check further ... Maybe it leads to other businesses?

All for the good of humanity ...

In trying to find out more about the recipient of $30-Million Canadian tax dollars, the Aga Khan through his foundation (The international wing is "private", not run by an elected Board of Directors responsible to shareholders nor to the Canadian government, so who tracks what happens?), I have been overwhelmed by the number of positive articles listed by Google. Then, on posting something, I received an anonymous comment, obviously from an Aga Khan accolyte, a believer who perhaps is tasked with ensuring that the media do not dig into the world's "official humanitarians". Well, apart from making a mistake concerning the AK's birthplace which I have corrected and noted more than once, I have not found anyone disputing the substance of what I have found. Even "righteous philanthropists" who receive taxpayer money need to be checked to find out where taxpayer money has gone ... Anonymous spurred me to check further.

Double click to enlarge; then "back" to return

Related:

Frost Hits the Rhubarb Feb. 25 2007

re: Global Development
Microcredit - CIDA - Aga Khan Foundation - Taxpayer Input - Public-Private Partnerships - Transparency - Ramifications - Private Microbank - AKCA / AKF

frosthitstherhubarb.blogspot.com/
2007_02_25_archive.html

Scroll down; assume [...] after each

Feb. 27, 2007: Introduction

Private Microbank

The Micro Finance Bank Ltd set up by the Aga Khan Rural Support Program , the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development

CIDA: a partner with the Aga Khan Development Network

Aga Khan Agency for Microfinance (AKAM), an arm of the Aga Khan Development Network
[....]

Feb. 26, 2007: Innovations in Microcredit

This is intended to provide more background to other posts ... on aid, microcredit, development, foundations, banking endeavours, and taxpayer money.

Feb. 26: 2007: Global Development ....

Update-additions: Jan. 13, 2007: Financing Disaster #2 Introduction

Jan. 13, 2007: #1 CIDA Evidence to Senate Committee [i.e. Where has Canada's Foreign Aid been going in Afghanistan? - Continued below]

Jan. 13, 2007: #2 CIDA Evidence to Senate Committee [52-million-dollar micro-financing program in Afghanistan - $100 million per year - supervised by ARTF and the World Bank - Middle Eastern accounting firms - women trained in communication and media - radio - $3-Million out of $90-Million for basic education for girls]

Jan. 13, 2007: #3 CIDA - ARTF [Asian Development Bank, the Islamic Development Bank, the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program ... - officials from the Canadian International Development Agency: Hau Sing Tse, Vice-President of the Asia Branch, and Phillip Baker, Director of the Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka Division - Afghan ARTF Expatriates Services Program - artfexpat.gov.af which leads to iom.int or the International Organization for Migration - Lateral Entry Program to place 100 lateral entrants from NGOs and international organizations in middle- and senior-level line positions in government ministries and agencies]

Mar. 13, 2007: Global Warming-Think for yourself

2007-03-13T03:10:00.000-03:00

Kyoto, Global Warming, Environment

Sun, not us causing warming -- Lorne Gunter column...

www.forumsvibe.com/elwoodpdowd/view
topic.php?t=3147&mforum=elwoodpdowd

www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.ht
ml?id=551bfe58-882f-4889-ab76-5ce1e02dced7

Global Warming on Mars, Pluto, Triton and Jupiter strongly points towards the Sun or Some other cosmic force being the cause of the recent global warming on Earth. , Mar. 4, 2007 -- There are quotations from scientists and a video

seoblackhat.com/2007/03/04/
global-warming-on-mars-pluto-triton-and-jupiter/

And at the end ...

[....] “But there is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.”

– MIT Professor Richard Lindzen

Watch this video of Richard Lindzen and tell me he’s just some crackpot:

Oilpatch besieged by climate drive -- Rules, costs mount , Jon Harding and Claudia Cattano, Financial Post, March 10, 2007

www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.ht
ml?id=e961e018-f50e-41c0-94aa-3de2128b9779&k=20400

CALGARY - The Canadian oilpatch is being bombarded by so many new costs -- primarily linked to climate change -- it is in danger of being stifled and growth plans could be put on hold, it was claimed yesterday.

Pierre Alvarez, head of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, said the Alberta and federal governments are taking aim at oil and gas companies. .... The hurdles include:

- The Alberta government announced on Thursday it accelerated implementation of the country's first carbon dioxide emissions management law. It involves having Alberta's top 100 industrial facilities reduce the intensity of greenhouse gas emissions by 12% starting on July 1. Those who can't meet the new regulations by becoming more efficient have to pay $15 per tonne for every tonne they produce above the target, money that will go into a provincial fund. [....]

review of royalty rates ...

- Ottawa is talking about eliminating the accelerated capital cost allowance, a tax measure allowing oilsands projects to recover their capital costs faster in the early years. [....]

The Great Global Warming Swindle

www.channel4.com/science/microsites/G/
great_global_warming_swindle/index.ht
ml?intcmp=homepage_box3

Channel 4, Thursday 8 March, 9pm [There is a tinyurl link to watch the videos -- see below.]

Are you green? How many flights have you taken in the last year? Feeling guilty about all those unnecessary car journeys? Well, maybe there's no need to feel bad.
According to a group of scientists brought together by documentary-maker Martin Durkin, if the planet is heating up, it isn't your fault and there's nothing you can do about it.

We've almost begun to take it for granted that climate change is a man-made phenomenon. But just as the environmental lobby think they've got our attention, a group of naysayers have emerged to slay the whole premise of global warming.
[....]

Another source: tinyurl.com/2j63qw -- The Great Global Warming Swindle videos

[list of videos]

The Great Global Warming Swindle
1 hr 16 min
The Great Global Warming Swindle
Channel 4
1 hr 14 min
BBC Documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle
British TV, Channel 4
1 hr 14 min

The emperor’s green new clothes , March 9, 2007, via newsbeat1

www.melaniephillips.com/diary/?p=1467

Channel Four’s devastating documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle has blown an enormous hole in every fundamental claim made to support the climate change obsession — including the claim that the argument is over. A procession of eminent scientists — climatologists, meteorologists, oceanographers, geologists, biogeographers, astrophysicists, professors of earth science, plus the former head of Greenpeace, who said that the global warming proponents were ‘anti-human’ — showed on the contrary that the theory bore no relation to science whatsoever. The earth was much warmer during many periods in the past; the ice caps were always expanding and contracting and Greenland was much warmer 1,000 years ago; most of the atmosphere was not warming as much as surface temperatures; volcanoes, animals and vegetation each produced infinitely more carbon dioxide than human activity; carbon dioxide could not possibly be the culprit for climate change since historically the warming of the atmosphere preceded any increases in carbon dioxide, thus showing up a central claim made by Al Gore in his movie to be utter rubbish; and so on.

Moreover, they also testified that the computer models which produced all the forecasts of climate apocalypse were rigged [....]

Gore gored pdf , 16 November 2006 -- or a cached copy here with an introduction by Viscount Monckton of Brenchley

www.cei.org/pdf/5632.pdf

[It begins with a quotation from Monckton]

Gentle reader,
In this commentary on Al Gore’s Sunday Telegraph article of 19 November 2006 responding to my articles of 5 and 12 November on climate change, Gore’s full text is full-out in Roman face. Comments are indented in bold face. Readers may check the elementary calculations with a scientific calculator. The calculations use the simple formulae provided by the UN as derivations from the complex atmosphere-ocean general-circulation computer models upon which it heavily relies in the absence of hard, climatic data. References to scientific papers in support of the commentary are listed at the end.
Monckton of Brenchley

A FORMER colleague of mine in the US Senate, the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, once said, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts.” I was reminded of this upon reading the Viscount Monckton of Brenchley’s two submissions to the Sunday Telegraph. That global warming is likely to cause harm rather than good is an opinion, to which Gore is entitled. That there is no scientific consensus as to the rightness of that opinion is a fact, to which all are entitled. .... Of the emails, about one-third were from scientists in climate physics and related fields, including tenured professors, solar physicists, forestry specialists, government environmental scientists, and even a particle-physicist from CERN reporting its upcoming research to test the theories of Svensmark et al. (2006) about cosmic rays and cloud formation, suggesting a considerably larger role for the Sun in warming than the UN allows. About 95% of the 500 emails I received, and very nearly all the emails from scientists, were strongly supportive of the conclusions which I had reached: namely, that global warming is probably harmless, and that, if not, even if we in the UK stopped using energy altogether the effect on future temperature would be negligible.

To begin with, there is a reason why new scientific research is peer-reviewed and then published in journals such as Science, Nature, and the Geophysical Research Letters, rather than the broadsheets. The process is designed to ensure that trained scientists review the framing of the questions that are asked, the research and methodologies used to pursue the answers offered, and even, in some cases, to monitor the funding of the laboratories – all in order to ensure that errors and biases are detected and corrected before reaching the public. [....]

[Page 16]

Conclusion
ALL TEN of the propositions listed below must be proven true if the climate-change “consensus” is to be regarded as true. We conclude as follows:
Proposition
Conclusion
1. That the debate is over and all credible climate scientists are agreed.
Demonstrably false
2. That temperature has risen above millennial variability and is exceptional.
Very unlikely
3. That changes in solar irradiance are an insignificant forcing mechanism.
Demonstrably false
4. That the last century’s increases in temperature are correctly measured.
Unlikely
5. That greenhouse-gas increase is the main forcing agent of temperature.
Not proven
6. That temperature will rise far enough to do more harm than good.
Very unlikely
7. That continuing greenhouse-gas emissions will be very harmful to life.
Unlikely
8. That proposed carbon-emission limits would make a definite difference.
Very unlikely
9. That the environmental benefits of remediation will be cost-effective.
Very unlikely
10. That taking precautions, just in case, would be the responsible course.
Demonstrably false
References [....]

Gaia Theory , James Lovelock, February 2003

www.channel4.com/science/micro
sites/S/science/nature/gaia.html

Charles Clover's weekly column which takes an inside look at the environment.
Looking at the clouds from both sides , Mar. 2, 2007

www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/
main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/03/02/nearth02.xml

Clouds undoubtedly play an important dual role in regulating the Earth's climate — they both reflect light back into space in the daytime and keep the nights warmer. None of these effects is unknown – people have been studying them since the 1970s. The vital question is whether cosmic rays are the major factor in cloud formation, as Svensmark would like us to believe.

If cosmic rays are the dominant influence on climate, as Svensmark and Calder speculate, the 2,500 scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may have to revise their recent findings that man-made influences are 90 per cent likely to be the explanation for the warming we are seeing.

Will this happen? I don't think so – for three reasons.

There are many more articles under this heading if you go to CEI and search further for “alternate response”

COMPETITIVE ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE
The Heated Energy Debate
Assessing John Holdren’s Attack on Bjørn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist
By Robert L. Bradley, Jr.
President, Institute for Energy Research -- or here posted by GTAsprawl

cei.org/pdf/3539.pdf

www.forumsvibe.com/elwoodpdowd/view
topic.php?t=2911&mforum=elwoodpdowd

There is enough commentary in reviews for sceptics to use their own heads.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming (and Environmentalism) (Paperback)

www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/1596985011/ref=
s9_asin_image_3/104-0334018-2051933

# Publisher: Regnery Publishing, Inc. (February 12, 2007)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 1596985011
# ISBN-13: 978-1596985018

Book Description
This latest installment in the P.I.G. series provides a provocative, entertaining, and well-documented expose of some of the most shamelessly politicized pseudo-science we are likely to see in our relatively cool lifetimes.

From the Inside Flap

"Global warming": the Left's last best chance to gain a stranglehold on our political system and economy

For decades, environmentalism has been the Left's best excuse for increasing government control over our actions in ways both large and small. It's for Mother Earth! It's for the children! It's for the whales! But until now, the doomsday-scenario environmental scares they've trumped up haven't been large enough to justify the lifestyle restrictions they want to impose. With global warming, however, greenhouse gasbags can argue that auto emissions in Ohio threaten people in Paris, and that only "global governance" (Jacques Chirac's words) can tackle such problems.

Now, in The Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to Global Warming and Environmentalism, Christopher C. Horner tears the cover off the Left's manipulation of environmental issues for political purposes--and lays out incontrovertible evidence for the fact that catastrophic man-made global warming is just more Chicken-Little hysteria, not actual science. He explains why, although Al Gore and his cronies among the media elites and UN globalists endlessly bleat that "global warming" is an unprecedented global crisis, they really think of it as a dream come true. It's the ideal scare campaign for those who hate capitalism and love big government. For, as Horner explains, if global warming really were as bad as the Leftist doomsayers insist it is, then no policy imaginable could "solve" it. According to the logic of the greens' own numbers, no matter how much we sacrifice there would still be more to do. That makes global warming the bottomless well of excuses for the relentless growth of big government. [....]

20 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
Step out of the right-left paradigm..., February 28, 2007
Reviewer: Daniel Colman "Danielsun"

I am a college student .... I was convinced that man was significantly accelerating Global Warming and anyone who disagreed was motivated by politcal or economical ambitions. Since reading this book however, I have been questioning everything. I love dissent, for it is what makes good science and a good democracy for that matter. Furthermore I am suspicious of anyone who tries to silence debate. [....]

27 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
Destroys "Man-Made" Global Warming Theory, February 28, 2007
Reviewer: Scott Dow "God's Gift Is Your Intellect - Use It In All Matters" ...

This book is chock full of well-researched and documented facts concerning global warming - a natural cycle that has been happening on Earth for . . . ever.

[....] The Left has its own warped view of many subjects, global warming being only one, and no amount of reason, logic or intellectual discourse will make them change how they "feel" or turn them from their fanatic belief in their new religion.

[....] following their own high-priest of global warming - a failed ex-politician who is making a fortune on the backs of his moronic followers.

They also, again with a straight face, talk about "deniers" who get paid by "big oil" while ignoring the fact that environmental organizations survive by exploiting and, at times, making up doomsday crises to generate a big fund-raising payday from the same "useful idiots" that Lenin (not Lennon, for you libs - Lenin) described so accurately and used so effectively.

And, yes. There is no doubt that the environmental movement is the new clandestine home of socialism/communism/marxism. U.N. control, international rules and regulations, penalties and taxes payable to the U.N., etc. And the U.S. is the target of it all. Don't fall for it.

... decide for yourself what makes more sense and what you will believe.

Via Small Dead Animals February 27, 2007 -- DailyGut.com -- JimTreacher.com

www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/005666.html
www.dailygut.com/?i=2172
jimtreacher.com/archives/001472.html

"Is it that evil right wingers don't understand [carbon offsets]..." "Or that they don't buy it?

[....] "And you're not even planting them yourself, you're buying 'carbon offsets' from somebody who tells you they're being planted so you can feel better about yourself. Where are these trees being planted? By whom? How long will it take for these miraculous fast-growing trees to counteract your wastefulness? Hurry!"

(Personally, I want to be on the same side as the guy who wrote this (warning: extremely rude & offensive in every possible way, shape and form), right or wrong, rather than that of boring old Suzuki.)

Very Political Science -- The scientific tradition of dispassionate objectivity is fast becoming a thing of the past , Ted Byfield - February 26, 2007

www.westernstandard.ca/website/
index.cfm?page=article&article_id=2323

Scientists should temper the language with which they warn us of the perils of global warming, writes a Toronto columnist, because they're starting to sound more like politicians. ....

[....] Science portrays itself as above human emotion. It's strictly concerned with scientifically demonstrable truth. That factor provides its credibility.

It doesn't support causes, hold dogmas, run crusades, merchandise or advertise. It isn't out to save the world. It simply says, "Here's the truth, and here's the evidence," then bows serenely into the background. That was the tradition.
Not anymore. [....]

"Is this global warming stuff for real or just nonsense?" one might ask. "Nonsense?" comes the gasping reply. "It's the scientists who are saying this, mister. THE SCIENTISTS!" [with tongue firmly in cheek ....]

Mar. 13, 2007: Security, Corruption, Gangs ...

2007-03-13T02:10:00.000-03:00

Laptop, Computer Security, Privacy

Stolen laptop sparks Order by Commissioner Cavoukian requiring encryption of identifiable data: Identity Must be Protected , TORONTO, March 8, 2007, CNW

www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/March2007/08/c8227.html

[....] A physician at SickKids, who also functions as a researcher there, left the hospital on January 4, 2007, taking one of the hospital's laptop computers,.... leaving the laptop under a blanket between the front seats of the van (which had no trunk). When he returned, he discovered that the front passenger window had been broken and the laptop had been stolen.

The personal health information stored on the stolen laptop ....

... very sensitive information was also included such as drug therapy and HIV status. The health information of the patients was being used in 10 different research studies. Some of the patient information had been provided to SickKids by the University Health Network (UHN), since roughly 350 of the patients had been treated at both SickKids and UHN.

All of the data on the laptop was also saved on the SickKids' main server, but the only security measure on the laptop was a login password. [....]

Corruption -- Gang Land

Meet the FBI's ‘Best Undercover Agent' , By Jerry Capeci, NY Sun, March 1, 2007 -- and List of Results for Topic: Gang Land -- Related Articles from the New York Sun

www.nysun.com/article/49571
www.nysun.com/related_re
sults.php?term=Gang+Land&topic=TRUE

At 6-foot 4-inches and more than 300 pounds, veteran FBI agent Joaquin "Jack" Garcia is a small mountain of a man who is hard to miss. That's never stopped him from being a master of disguises. In recent years, the expert undercover agent's appointment calendar must have read a bit like the script for the 1960s screwball comedy "If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium.

Mr. Garcia surfaced last year when he took the stand in a closed courtroom to describe how he had played the role of a Gambino associate for 27 months. At the same time, Mr. Garcia was also posing as a New York capo in a 36-month FBI sting against crooked Florida cops in which four police officers were nailed last week on corruption charges (thus the reason for the secret testimony). [....]

FBI officials, not to mention Mr. Garcia and 12 other agents who worked undercover in the investigation, are furious about the leak, and are likely to point to it the next time the agency gets accused of not sharing information with local police.

On the bright side, Messrs. Companion and Courtney called in sick and began to inquire about retirement benefits when they got wind of the probe. They didn't react the way New York's infamous Mafia Cops, Louis Eppolito and Steven Caracappa, often did during their careers. The dark side — that the lives of FBI agents were put at risk if the Hollywood cops had taken the same path as the murderous New York duo — doesn't sit too well with the FBI. [....]

Lengthy, detailed, fascinating -- more here: GangLandNews.com

Security, Terrorists, Charter

'Give me your tired, your poor ?and your terrorists' -- A Canadian version of the Statue of Liberty , letter, National Post, March 07, 2007

www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/editorialsletters/story.ht
ml?id=73a7c3c6-4e70-4380-b1c8-ae3af05e678e

Amid reassurances by RCMP Deputy Commissioner Gary Bass that the gutting of Canada's anti-terror legislation "won't derail" the Air India probe, the idea of a Canadian version of the Statue of Liberty -- which would serve as a re-affirmation of the universality of our beloved Charter of Rights and Freedoms --is gaining renewed strength.

... "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. We'll also take terrorists with internationally acknowledged credentials and offer them the benefits of our world-renowned judicial system, providing all comers with generous and virtually unlimited litigation support and the additional bonus of a better than even chance of acquittal in the unlikely event of criminal prosecution."

"So send these, the homeless, tempest-tost travellers to our shore, I lift my lamp beside the Charter's golden door!" ...

Memory Lane: Nuclear Security, Pakistan, Nuclear Scientists

Canada-trained Pakistani nuclear scientists 'defecting' -- or here , January 16, 2003

At least five of nine Pakistani nuclear scientists who have 'secretly' left their country to seek more money and better working conditions were trained in Canada ...

Another top scientist, Dr. A.Q. Khan, the man who made Pakistan's nuclear bomb and who has been linked to assisting Iran, Iraq and North Korea weapons programs, was also hosted by the Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd, (AECL).

... fears of the world community about the safety of Pakistan's nuclear weapons falling into wrong hands. [....]

Pakistani scientists like Dr. Khan, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Chaudhry Abdul Majeed got uranium enrichment expertise courtesy of AECL which had helped build a Candu reactor near Karachi.

Some 50 other leading Pakistani nuclear engineers, including the five of nine who have 'absconded' were also trained in Ontario and New Brunswick.

The nine scientists who are said to have left Pakistan are listed in an internal CHASNUPP memo as Muhammad Zubair, Asst. Engineer, (CNS Fellow, Electrical Division, April 1997), Murad Qasin, Senior Engineer (KINPOE fellow, Mechanical Division, Maintenance, Feb 2000), Tariq Mahmood Senior Engineer, (CNS Fellow, Operation Division, May 2000), Saeed Akhther Senior Engineer, (CNS Fellow, Training Division, June 2000), Imtaz Baig, (Senior Engineer KINPOE Fellow, Operation Division July 2000), (Weheed Nasir, Senior Engineer, KINPOE Fellow, Mechanical Division Aug 2000), Munawar Ismail Senior Engineer (CNS fellow Technical Division Oct. 2000), Shaheen Fareed (Senior Engineer CNS fellow Operation Division Feb. 2002) and Khalid Mahmood (Senior Engineer, Operation Division, July 2002). [....]

Mar. 13, 2007: Security, Justice, Terrorists

2007-03-13T02:00:00.000-03:00

Security, Canadian Embassy, visa

Warsaw embassy fraud rap -- "The arrest stemmed from a Toronto Sun article in February last year after Toronto-area Poles complained about having to pay bribes at the embassy to obtain Canadian documents." , Tom Godfrey, Mar. 10, 2007

www.torontosun.com/News/World/
2007/03/10/3725803-sun.html

A senior visa officer at the Canadian Embassy in Warsaw has been charged with 100 counts of fraud for allegedly using her position to smuggle hundreds of people -- including some criminals -- into the country without security checks.

Warsaw security police seized $175,000, jewelry and about $7,500 Cdn from a bag being carried by a suspect, who's identified in the Polish press as Michalina Hoffman, 61, a Polish citizen employed at the embassy for 30 years. [....]

Security, Crime Gangs

David Harris on Supreme Court decision on Security Certificates
On CBC's 'As It Happens', David Harris is interviewed on the Supreme Court decision on Security Certificates and the implications for preventing terrorist attacks while maintaining civil rights. Audio clip below ... , Posted by CCD on CBC Radio on 20:49:58 2007/03/03

From a series of articles in The Province, BC

SERIES:
Today: Wanted in Thailand, plus Canada's painfully-slow extradition process.
Monday: Fugitives from the Philippines find a way to stay in Canada.
Tuesday: A Mexican fugitive's fight changes the law.
Wednesday: Murder in India. A son's fight for justice.
Thursday: Chinese bankers stash their loot in B.C.
Friday: Your views on our series.
OUR TEAM
Fabian Dawson
Project Editor
Michael Roberts
Reporting

Note: Sometimes, articles have a different title. Dig around a bit.

Don't put out the welcome mat for foreign criminals , The Province, March 09, 2007

www.canada.com/theprovince/news/editorial/story.ht
ml?id=ba0e2b13-b4f7-457f-aa54-f687d9aa7df6

Part of the problem is the onerous obligation the Supreme Court of Canada has placed on those countries with which we have extradition treaties to provide comprehensive evidence in support of their extradition requests.

In the past, a simple statement of alleged facts was sufficient. Now extradition judges must insist that evidence is provided of an equivalent nature to that required in Canadian courts.

This is placing an extraordinary burden on countries ....

Charter of Rights ....

It is one thing to refuse to extradite a wanted killer to a country that applies the death penalty; quite another to afford lengthy sanctuary to an alleged multimillion-dollar bank fraudster on the sole grounds we don't approve of his or her country's court system. [....]

'Assassin' finds new life in T.O.
How accused killer found favour with our justice system , Mike Roberts, The Province, March 05, 2007

www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.ht
ml?id=93b02607-7e5e-44ae-bd3c-29f7849eb584&p=4

"You have to be smoking dope if you can't see the truth here," says Javier, 37, a Harvard-educated property developer.

"They [Canada] didn't bother to look with their own eyes, to read, to see that there was no persecution involved at all."

Gideon was 16 and living with his mother and brother in Los Angeles when his father was killed.

He had gone back to the strife-torn Philippines in 1983 for the "love of his country and people." [....]

EXTRADITION THAI OFFICIALS. What's the holdup, Canada? -- A SLOW PROCESS. For 10 years, we have provided a haven for two fugitives wanted in Thailand , Mike Roberts, The Province, March 04, 2007

www.canada.com/theprovince/news/news/unwind/story.ht
ml?id=f495b483-39b7-448b-916e-72325303087a

[....] Thailand has been battling for 10 years for the return of Rakesh Saxena, wanted for allegedly embezzling $88 million from the Bangkok Bank of Commerce, triggering the 1997 southeast Asian financial crisis.

It's also been a decade since Thailand first sought the return of Michael Karas, a Canadian national wanted for allegedly murdering his Thai common-law wife in the beach resort of Pattaya.

Both men are in the Lower Mainland, and have retained pricey lawyers to fight any step that might take them closer to extradition.

B.C. Supreme Court judges -- extradition judges -- have ruled that there is sufficient evidence to extradite both men. [....]

UK: No Charter For Terrorists , February 14, 2007, via newsbeat1

news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30100-1251508,00.html

Human rights laws should not be used to scupper anti-terror legislation, the Lord Chancellor will warn today.

Judges and lawyers will be urged not to allow laws, which were designed to protect people, becoming a "terrorist's charter".

The comments Lord Falconer will make in his major policy speech are likely to be interpreted as a reference to human rights lawyers - and possibly judges - who have sometimes been blamed for frustrating the Government's attempts to bring in new laws on terrorism. [....]

Mar. 13, 2007: UN Funding and Plans

2007-03-13T01:00:00.000-03:00

Burkean Canuck

burkeancanuck.blogspot.com/2007/03/
what-canada-and-permanent-members-of.html

What Canada and the permanent members of the Security Council contribute to the UN , Russ Kuykendall on March 8, 2007

(Cross-posted from Burkean Canuck).
The permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, and their contributions (U.S. dollars) to the Regular Fund of the UN for 2006:

United States of America. Contribution to the "Regular Fund": $423, 464,855 (22% of total fund);

The United Kingdom. Contribution to the "Regular Fund": $117,934,962 (6.127% of total fund);

Republic of France. Contribution to the "Regular Fund": $116,067,867 (6.03% of total fund); ***

People's Republic of China. Contribution to the "Regular Fund": $39,516,971 (2.053% of total fund); and

Russian Federation. Contribution to the "Regular Fund": $21,173,243 (1.1% of total fund).

And Canada . . . Contribution to the "Regular Fund": $54,145,756 (2.813% of total fund). For more, see here (these amounts don't include the financial contributions to UN Peacekeeping, which are considerable. In Canada's case, this amounts to $133.6 million (U.S.). Nor does it include the following:

Canada is among the top ten donors to the [www.unsystem.org/] UN System of funds, programs and agencies, such as the UN Development Program, UNICEF and the World Health Organization, providing over US$600 million dollars a year in core and program funding.

So, somewhere in the neighbourhood of in excess of $780 million (U.S.), or about 875 million Canadian dollars. Here's the list of the top ten donors:
www.globalpolicy.org/finance/tables/system/topten.htm [....]

Burkean Canuck -- worth reading. Does anyone else feel that those who actually pay for the UN--by far the biggest contributor is the US--should be treated with more respect?

*** Why is France so influential in the UN and in Canada, using the UN and particularly, promoting the UNESCO / UN Protocol on Protection of ... [blah blah blah] ... which encompasses more than language? There is also a post Trudeaupean concern for Canada's natives and their culture (which has become dear to France and UN types), along with other causes. What do France and the UN really want? Oil? Minerals in the north? Power? Influence? I wish the feds would get France and its influence via Quebec politicians and their hangers on out of Canadians' lives; that's the ROC's lives to which I'm referring. Memo to Quebec politicians: What does France want from you and yours? Read the fine print and reconsider Canada.

The Global Policy Forum may be less than scientific. See: New GPF Page on Global Climate Change
www.globalpolicy.org/

Scientists agree that human activity causes a rise in both average world temperatures and the occurrence of extreme weather events.

Do scientists agree?

UN Finance

www.globalpolicy.org/finance/index.htm

The United Nations and all its agencies and funds spend about $20 billion each year, or about $3 for each of the world's inhabitants. This is a very small sum compared to most government budgets and it is just a tiny fraction of [....]

Many proposals for UN reform deal with restructuring the UN’s funding. Some suggest that the UN must seek alternative financing sources to fund its programs. Proposals include instituting a global tax on currency transactions, while others propose environmental taxes and taxes on the arms-trade. [....]

Background Information and Analysis on UN Finance
... including a history and a detailed chronology of the UN financial situation.

Tables and Charts on UN Finance
... data on member states’ assessments, payments and debts to the UN budgets.

General Articles on UN Finance
... including the status of member states’ payments to the UN and how some countries, including in particular the US, fail to pay on time and in full. [Re-check the figures above]

UN Documents on UN Finance
...

Financing of UN Programmes, Funds and Specialized Agencies
...

Alternative Financing for the UN -- This section provides information on alternative financing proposals (of the UN and development in general), including global taxes.

www.globalpolicy.org/finance/alternat/newindx.htm

Taking Action on UN Finance
This section includes information on the Millennium Mobilization, a call for action, and other activities related to the UN's financial dificulties.

General Analysis on Alternative Financing for the UN
... the need for alternative financing sources for the UN and looks at specific proposals, including a global lottery and an international financing facility.

Global Taxes

www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/glotax/index.htm

Many experts have suggested alternative financing schemes such as global taxes to improve the UN financial situation and make the organization less dependent on state contributions. This page explores global taxes and their dual role as policy instruments and as revenue sources for international programs and institutions. The page gives special attention to currency transaction taxes (Tobin tax) and energy taxes.

Links and Resources on UN Finance
...

I suspect it might be worth reading ... plans, plans, plans.

Have Canadians ever had a chance to vote on whether they think continued support for the UN is worth the money? Is continuing influence from the UN in Canada a positive or a negative? Has its effectiveness in anything other than its own growth and perpetuation been assessed? Let's have a debate, at least. Forget the Mothercorps; it is too biased for reasoned debate. The Blogosphere?

Mar. 6, 2007: In the interest of control

2007-03-07T15:30:00.000-04:00

Think of the implications of this, if it were to come here. Could it?

France bans filming of violence by amateur photogs , By Peter Sayer, IDG News Service, Mar. 6, 2007

www.forumsvibe.com/elwoodpdowd/
viewtopic.php?t=3014&mforum=elwoodpdowd

The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The law could lead to the imprisonment of eyewitnesses who film acts of police violence, or operators of Web sites publishing the images, one French civil liberties group warned on Tuesday.

... 16 years after Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King were filmed by amateur videographer George Holliday ....

If Holliday were to film a similar scene of violence in France today, he could end up in prison as a result of the new law, said Pascal Cohet, a spokesman for French online civil liberties group Odebi. And anyone publishing such images could face up to five years in prison and a fine of €75,000 (US$98,537), potentially a harsher sentence than that for committing the violent act.

.... The law, proposed by Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy, is intended to clamp down on a wide range of public order offenses. During parliamentary debate of the law, government representatives said the offense of filming or distributing films of acts of violence targets the practice of “happy slapping,” in which a violent attack is filmed by an accomplice, typically with a camera phone, for the amusement of the attacker’s friends.

The broad drafting of the law so as to criminalize the activities of citizen journalists unrelated to the perpetrators of violent acts is no accident, but rather a deliberate decision by the authorities, said Cohet. He is concerned that the law, and others still being debated, will lead to the creation of a parallel judicial system controlling the publication of information on the Internet.

The government has also proposed a certification system for Web sites, blog hosters, mobile-phone operators and Internet service providers, identifying them as government-approved sources of information if they adhere to certain rules. The journalists’ organization Reporters Without Borders, which campaigns for a free press, has warned that such a system could lead to excessive self censorship as organizations worried about losing their certification suppress certain stories.

Mar. 6, 2007: Coal, Clouds, China, CDM -&- CRA

2007-03-07T15:03:00.000-04:00

Montreal Protocol slowing warming -- 1987 pact focused on ozone layer

www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/
RTGAM.20070306.wxclimate06/
BNStory/ClimateChange/home

Is the implication, then, that we should support Kyoto, that maybe it would help too?

Check for whether India signed but China, which would not sign the Kyoto Accord, is one of the countries that would benefit from CDM, according to David Suzuki, (Mar. 6, 2007: CDM - scroll down to it)

[We] can purchase international carbon credits through the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

Meanwhile, China refused to sign to make any concessions to countries in the West who have actually been working on cleaning up their air.

Is China's soot print changing weather? , Anne McIlroy, Mar. 6, 2007

www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/
RTGAM.20070306.wxpollution06/
BNStory/International/home

Soot produced by burning coal in China and India isn't just making it harder for local people to breathe, but could be contributing to freakish weather in Canada and the United States, a team of scientists reported yesterday.

The particles of pollution, known as aerosols, are responsible for the brown haze over many Chinese cities. But they drift upward over the Pacific, where they are causing more large clouds to form higher in the atmosphere where it is colder, says Renyi Zhang, an atmospheric scientist at Texas A&M University.

The result has been more intense storms over the ocean, he and his colleagues argue in a paper published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. More intense storms over the Pacific will change the air-flow patterns around the globe, they say.

"And that is going to change meteorology everywhere," Dr. Zhang said in an interview. [....]

In April, NASA launched CloudSat (right) and CALIPSO, two satellites equipped to investigate the role clouds play in climate. They will work in conjunction with three satellites already in orbit to learn more about how aerosols affect clouds and weather.

Glitch shuts down Web tax filing , Oliver Moore, Globe and Mail, Feb. 7, 2007

www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/
RTGAM.20070307.wxtaxes07/BNStory/National/home

The computer systems that allow people to file personal income-tax returns online have been shut down indefinitely by the Canada Revenue Agency, which took the unprecedented move after finding data irregularities.

CRA commissioner Michel Dorais said yesterday that there was "no indication" these irregularities were being caused by hackers. But the agency decided it wasn't worth the risk of keeping the systems running while the source of the problems was being determined. [....]

Mar. 7, 2007: Correction and a copy

2007-03-07T14:00:00.000-04:00

Correction Mar. 7, 2007: to a post from February, Frost Hits the Rhubarb Feb. 10, 2007: Global Warming

I corrected a date: A reference to FHTR May 18, 2006 should have been May 28, 2006 and I added search terms. Earlier I had corrected the header date from Feb. 19 to Feb. 10, 2007. My typing, again. Sorry.

A copy of the corrected post follows.

Global warming

Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide
Global Warming: The Cold, Hard Facts? , By Timothy Ball, February 5, 2007

www.canadafreepress.com/2007
/global-warming020507.htm

Global Warming, as we think we know it, doesn't exist. And I am not the only one trying to make people open up their eyes and see the truth. But few listen, despite the fact that I was the first Canadian Ph.D. in Climatology and I have an extensive background in climatology, especially the reconstruction of past climates and the impact of climate change on human history and the human condition. Few listen, even though I have a Ph.D, (Doctor of Science) from the University of London, England and was a climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. For some reason (actually for many), the World is not listening. Here is why.

What would happen if tomorrow we were told that, after all, the Earth is flat? It would probably be the most important piece of news in the media and would generate a lot of debate. So why is it that when scientists who have studied the Global Warming phenomenon for years say that humans are not the cause nobody listens? Why does no one acknowledge that the Emperor has no clothes on? [....]

Make a wild guess about who would lose.

UN IPCC Summary - Climate Change

A prospectus for big government , Lorne Gunter, National Post, February 05, 2007 -- Lgunter@shaw.ca

www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/issuesideas/story.ht
ml?id=3ec32ebc-ccdc-4287-a69a-94da29b65178

[....] In effect, the IPCC summary is a prospectus for big government written by big government's sales department.

And don't expect the full truth to come out even when the 1,600 pages of science are finally released. The IPCC has a habit of censuring the work of scientists who disagree with the global alarmist orthodoxy. It has also instructed scientists still working on their academic contributions to the final report that those contributions must be modified after publication of the summary so as to "ensure consistency with" the summary's conclusions.

It is the political tail wagging the scientific dog. [....]

SEPP News Release: More Than 15,000 Scientists [two-thirds with advanced academic degrees] Protest Kyoto Accord; Speak Out Against Global Warming Myth -- signed "a Petition against the climate accord concluded in Kyoto (Japan) in December 1997. " The Science & Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), April 20, 1998 [Contact: Douglas Houts]. via CNEWS Forum link posted by caspar34

www.sepp.org/pressrel/petition.html

This is no longer available online but, my post has a lengthy excerpt. See below for the link -- Frost Hits the Rhubarb week of May 28, 2006.

... More than 15,000 scientists, [8/4/98: now about 17,000] two-thirds with advanced academic degrees, have now signed a Petition against the climate accord concluded in Kyoto (Japan) in December 1997.[....]

Dr. S. Fred Singer, president of The Science & Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) and author of Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming's Unfinished Debate, explained: "Scientists are understandably upset when they see $2 billion per year devoted to research on climate change, much it irrelevant and concerned only with imaginary consequences of a hypothetical warming -- while other fields of science are starved. They are also appalled and angry that an increasing fraction of this research money is diverted into "community workshops," thinly disguised brainwashing exercises to create public fears about climate catastrophes."

Correction Mar. 7, 2007: I changed this from May 18 to May 28, 2006
Related: Frost Hits the Rhubarb May 28, 2006

Search:

May 29, 06 #2: Kyoto, Scientists & Data

May 29, 06 #1: Propaganda, Kyoto, Activists, NRTEE, Global Justice

... "see Kyoto for the bogus alarmism and wealth-transfer scheme that it is."

Climate Change, the Networks, NRTEE National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy

There is much more information on that webpage.

More here: Frost Hits the Rhubarb May 23-06: UN, Rights, Activists Networks' $$$ -- Sheila Watt-Cloutier was part of that illustrious group who travelled with ex-Governor General Adrienne Clarkson on her Inuit Circumpolar Tour

That connects to what I have written on the natives' spokesperson, at least the one brought out more than once by CBC TV and mentioned in various news items elsewhere as a native with aboriginal traditional knowledge of the environment in the North, Sheila Watt-Cloutier. There is a connection between the talk of global warming, the natives, trusts, nuclear waste ... who knows what else was planned?

Related: posts within the past month or so re: natives , global warming , Sheila Watt-Cloutier

Feb. 4, 2007: Science- Traditional Knowledge-Politics

Feb. 3, 2007: Climate, Spin, Awards, Politics -- Background: excerpts only -- Check the full post and other links.

Frost Hits the Rhubarb Jan. 20, 2007: #2
Kyoto, The Science and the Scientists, Native Input, Funding, Special Arrangements and More

Frost Hits the Rhubarb Jan. 29, 2007: Climate, IPCC, CBC, Film
The Preaching, the Politics and the Science ... and the Hockey Stick Graph

Mar. 6, 2007: Canada: Haven to the World's Most Wanted

2007-03-06T16:00:00.000-04:00

Via the Judicial Activist Enablers

Prime Time Crime: Leo Knight, a former Canadian police officer, security expert and media commentator -- Fugitives among us , March 04, 2007

leoknight.blogspot.com/2007/03/fugitives-among-us.html

Kudos to The Province's Fabian Dawson and Mike Roberts....

Don't miss them as they show a clear and decisive result of what happens when judicial activism trumps the will of Parliament. [....]

Canada: Haven for world's most wanted , The Province, March 04, 2007 -- Fabian Dawson, Project Editor, and Michael Roberts Reporting

www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.ht
ml?id=b088fcde-9299-46a6-b9f6-322f80f9d698&k=10407

[....] Canada's hesitancy in dispatching fugitives back to the countries where they are wanted is an increasingly sore point among foreign governments. [....]

The latest case involves a trio of former bankers with the Bank of China. They are accused in an embezzlement scheme involving $100 million. [....]

Why do the world's most wanted seek sanctuary in Canada?

Many are wealthy, allegedly having plundered the treasuries, banks and businesses of their home countries.

They know that, with the right lawyers, they can exploit Canada's extradition system to buy indefinite liberty.

There's one track for the wealthy fugitive, another for the poor, says one extradition lawyer.

"No lawyer's going to take legal aid for making submissions to the minister of justice," he quips.

Canadian law provides a host of options and "protections" within the context of extradition.

"The Charter [of Rights] applies to every aspect of the process," a justice department official says. "That's our system. We can't fault [fugitives] for availing themselves of their legal rights."

And those rights have become more deeply entrenched with rulings by the Supreme Court of Canada that effectively open new loopholes. [....]

COMING UP IN OUR SERIES:

Today: Wanted in Thailand, plus Canada's painfully-slow extradition process.
Monday: Fugitives from the Philippines find a way to stay in Canada.
Tuesday: A Mexican fugitive's fight changes the law.
Wednesday: Murder in India. A son's fight for justice.
Thursday: Chinese bankers stash their loot in B.C.
Friday: Your views on our series.

Worth reading.

Mar. 6, 2007: Recruiting Jihadists

2007-03-06T15:30:00.000-04:00

Terrorists Take Recruitment Efforts Online
Scott Pelley On The Use Of The Internet To Recruit Jihadists , Mar. 2, 07

www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/02/
60minutes/main2531546.shtml

[....] "Without a doubt, the Internet is the single most important venue for the radicalization of Islamic youth," says Army Brigadier General John Custer, who is the is head of intelligence at central command, responsible for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Custer says he knows where the enemy finds an inexhaustible supply of suicide warriors. ....

Asked if the Internet is training up new battalions of those young people ....

And this, Custer told 60 Minutes, is just how they do it. "You start off with a site that looks like current news in Iraq. With a single click, you're at a active jihad attack site. The real meat of the jihad Web site, Jihad Internet. Beheadings, bombings, and blood. You can see humvees blown up. You can see American bodies drug [sic] through the street. You can see small arms attacks. Anything you might want in an attack video. Next link will take you to a motivational site, where mortar operatives, suicide bombers, are pictured in heaven. You can you see their farewell speeches. Another click and you're at a site where you can download scripted talking points that validate you have religious justification for mass murder," he explains. [....]

Worth reading.

Mar. 6, 2007: IPY & UArctic & Studies

2007-03-06T14:00:00.000-04:00

University of the Arctic or UArctic

www.uarctic.org/Frontpage.aspx?m=3

The CBC article on the environment

www.cbc.ca/technology/
quirks-blog/2007/03/polar_peril.html

The United Nations International Polar Year [www.ipy.org/] kicked off this week, and Canada [www.ipy-api.ca/english] leads the effort with 2,000 scientists supported by $150-million from the federal government, more than any participating nation. Finally, the Cryosphere [nsidc.org/cryosphere - The National Snow and Ice Data Center] , the realm of ice on the planet, is getting the attention it deserves. [....]

Results from the recent Arctic Climate Impact Study [www.amap.no/acia] show that the Arctic Ocean will be ice-free during the summer, all the way to the pole, in less than 50 years. [That is disputed by many scientists.]

That led to: Arctic Climate Impact Assessment -- Overview Report in four languages ... Saami, Norwebian, Russian ... -- tinyurl.com/2qzybe

amap.no/documents/index.cfm?dirsub=
%2FACIA%20Overview%20
Reports&sort=default

Remember then Governor General Adrienne Clarkson's Circumpolar Tour, a member of which was the Inuit activist and "environmental expert" Sheila Watt-Cloutier, along with approximately 55 others favoured by Her Excellency or the Liberal government of the day (Sept. 2003?). What was the purpose? It seems to have had more import and impact, perhaps, than simply flying around the Polar regions on an official visit. Why the polar regions? Read further and come to your own conclusions. What was that land claim that Andy Scott settled outside of Parliament and did it have anything to do with the optimism toward the bottom of this post?

An international project of the Arctic Council [www.arctic-council.org/] and the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC), to evaluate and synthesize knowledge on climate variability, climate change, and increased ultraviolet radiation and their consequences. The results of the assessment were released at the ACIA International Scientific Symposium held in Reykjavik, Iceland in November 2004.

The Arctic Council is a high-level intergovernmental forum. The members are Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, the Russian Federation, Sweden, and the United States of America. IASC is a non-governmental organization that facilitates cooperation in all aspects of arctic research in all countries engaged in arctic research and in all areas of the arctic region.

[....] Permanent Participants [....]

* Aleut International Association
* Arctic Athabaskan Council
* Gwich'in Council International
* Inuit Circumpolar Conference
* Saami Council [Consider the possible implications; then check below.]
* Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North

The address given:

Indigenous Peoples Secretariat
http://www.arcticpeoples.org/
P.O. Box 2151, Strandgade 91, 4th floor
DK - 1016 Copenhagen

Further research elicited: cyberus, acuns
acuns@cyberus.ca
www.uottawa.ca/associations/aucen-acuns [no longer of use - defunct? Or behind a firewall?]

Member of the Circumpolar Universities Association -- a trans-national network
www.arctic.uit.no/cua_secr/Lib/inst02.html

Course Announcements
www.cyberus.ca/~acuns/ethics.html

[IASSA = International Arctic Social Sciences Association]

UArctic or University of the Arctic: Bachelor of Circumpolar Studies 322 1 -- or here

uarctic.org/BCS322_mod11_3evXS.pdf.file

Key Terms and Concepts

• indigenous intellectual property rights

• indigenous self-determination

• participatory research

• codes of conduct/codes of ethics for research

• informed consent [....]

It might be of interest to see what this includes and where it is leading. For that, check some of the funding awards and some samples of the research. Note oral history, language, personal experiences, qualitative research, constructivist approach, how the Saami influence our own natives, along with a treaty which changes ... something or other, compared to other treaties. There is UN involvement, as well.

Indigenous Intellectual Property Rights [This may be related to the UN Protocol on Protecting Cultural Diversity - See FHTR the week of Jan. 29, 2006]

According to standard-setting documents formulated by indigenous peoples, “indigenous cultural and intellectual property rights [refer] to such things as indigenous art, songs, poetry, literature, biological and medical knowledge, ecological knowledge and environmental management practices, and other aspects and expressions of indigenous cultural heritage” (Simpson 1997, 18). Indigenous peoples’ use of intellectual property law is linked to the fact that states have been put under pressure to protect intellectual property, within a Western, legalistic tradition. However, the terminology and concepts of such legislation are quite alien to indigenous ways of thought. “Property” is not a universally recognized concept, especially not under its aspect of individual rights that can be alienated and sold. Likewise, the distinction between “cultural” and “intellectual” is reductionist and not necessarily relevant outside the legal context. The whole issue is framed in concepts originating in Western property law and legal systems. Dr. Erica-Irene Daes, who has long been chairperson of the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations (WGIP) (which convenes every summer in Geneva), has suggested that “indigenous heritage” would be a more “simple and appropriate” expression than “indigenous cultural and intellectual property rights” (cited in Simpson 1997, 20).

The work of ethnographers .... has been done without seeking the consent .... In the last decades of the twentieth century, some aspects of indigenous knowledge have also emerged as commodities of increasing economic value to non-indigenous peoples. In this context, indigenous peoples of the circumpolar North have voiced their concerns about the unauthorized appropriation of their heritage by outsiders and the commodification of this heritage without their control. [....]

Canada
Association of Canadian Universities for Northern Studies, ACUNS [www.cyberus.ca/~acuns/] However, the website(s) mentioned for Canada is defunct but there is another possibility via Thompson River University

Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) ... -- or Thompson Rivers University - TRU - formerly University of the Cariboo or Cariboo University

www.tru.ca/finance/pro_manual/research_in
dex/research_grt_agencies.html

Handbook of Opportunities pdf

www.gov.nu.ca/education/eng/css/curr/10-12/
Aulajaaqtut/Handbook%20of%20
Opportunities/Handbk_of_Opp.pdf

Some samples of studies subsumed under "science":

Science Award Recipients 2005-2006

Title: Bringing History Home: Digital Media and the Repatriation of Cultural Knowledge in Northern Athabaskan Communities

The issue of repatriation is usually connected to the return of cultural artifacts and human remains by museums to source communities. However, through ethnographic fieldwork and multimedia projects .... examine the role of digital archives and multimedia as tools for the repatriation of language materials and cultural documentation, such as photographs, film, and audio and video recordings. My research will compare the ways in which four Athabaskan communities ... are making use of digital media. Using methods of participatory ethnography while facilitating community media projects as a videographer, trainer, and multimedia producer, I will document the ways that new technologies (visual documentation and multimedia) are used to represent aspects of native culture and language by different agents such as community members, academics, and government institutions.

These communities differ significantly in their historical experiences with residential schools and with land claims. They offer a unique opportunity to study how current approaches to the use of technology are influenced by earlier attitudes towards literacy and increasing political awareness derived from land claims. At the community level, my research will make a significant contribution to the creation of multimedia resources that are focused on the needs and knowledge systems of northern indigenous people, minimalizing the orientation towards urban Euro-Canadian practices in developing new media for First Nations communities. On a more general level, my research will examine the potential for digital archives and multimedia to aid in the reconstitution of wider socio-economic, political and authority practices and evaluate the impact of such new technology on the socially contended roles of northern native and non-native Canadians. [....]

Title: The Perspectives of Inuit Women on Their Health and Well-being in a Nunavut Community: A Qualitative Study

[....] The study will utilize participatory action qualitative health research methods to interview community members in Iqaluit, Nunavut. ... opportunity to participate directly in the study by sharing their knowledge and providing their perspectives on the research question. ....

... important to both acknowledge the skills and support systems .... Key Inuit organizations in Nunavut, such as the Qulliit Nunavut Status of Women Council and the Qikiqtani Inuit Association have been consulted during the proposal process and given an opportunity to provide feedback on the topic and nature of the research study. [....]

Title: Gathering Stories for Community-Based Environmental Contaminants Research: A Partnership of the Moose Cree First Nation and Environmental Toxicologists

Through interviews with MCFN members, stories will be gathered for examination from both an indigenous cultural perspective and a toxicological (western science) perspective. The people of the MCFN are interested in exploring how their knowledge can be complemented with western science to identify environmental factors that may be contributing to a decline in the health of their people. ....

Our research team consists of the MCFN community, an environmental toxicologist, an environmental fate expert ....

Title: Prevalence of Gonococcal and Chlamydial Infections in an Inuit Community, Identifying Gender Differences in: Social Networks, Risk Perception and Health Services Utilization

Title: Ice, Through Inuit Eyes: Contributions of Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit to sea ice and climate science in the Canadian Arctic

.... gain a better understanding of the importance of sea ice to Inuit culture and identity; ....

Title: Historical, biophysical and cultural basis of revegetation in Whapmagoostui-Kuujjuarapik, subarctic Québec.

The vegetation cover at Whapmagoostui-Kuujjuarapik was destroyed by the building of a military base in 1955. Since then, it has never succeeded in regenerating itself completely and shows generalized degradation. The incapacity of the vegetation cover to return to its original state is explained in part by the rigour of the subarctic climate, and the demographic pressure combined with the anarchical use of all-terrain vehicles. ....

-to study the inhabitants’ perception of the vegetation cover, of its degradation and of its restoration ....

Speech Language Pathology

Title: Using Maximum Length Sequences in Auditory Brainstem Response to Assess Auditory Processing Disorder

Of interest also was the direction in which the studies appeared to be moving; there appears to be much social science, as opposed to "hard" science.

2006-07 Awards
www.acuns.ca/cnst06-07rec.htm

Title: Adapting to Environmental Change in the North: Linking Traditional Knowledge, Social Capital, and Adaptive Capacity in the Slave River Delta

.... My research project has evolved through collaboration with the local Dene Band after members expressed interest in implementing a people-focused project to parallel ongoing paleohydrological research. Through an examination of the relationship between change and human responses, I am focusing specifically on the contributions of traditional knowledge and social capital. The objectives of this study are to: a) develop a framework of trends and indicators of environmental change, impacts and adaptations based on traditional knowledge, ....

Education

Title: Indigenous Higher Education in Canada’s Western Arctic: An Inuvialuit Perspective.

As a result of my thirty-five years residency at Inuvik, NWT,.... transformation among the Inuvialuit people living within the Inuvialuit Settlement Region.

This proposed research is qualitative, with constructivist assumptions, utilizing a critical auto-ethnographic theory of inquiry. My methods will comprise use of open-ended questions in select interviews with elders combined with utilization of my field observations. My primary sources will be Inuvialuit (Inuit) and Gwich’in (Dene) oral histories (current and past), documentary sources from diaries, archives and personal collections, and print sources (indigenous and non-indigenous government publications). Secondary sources ....

The second time frame, 1973-78 .... their [sic] emerged a mainstream type of public adult education that consisted of programs of individual vocational skill development and English language literacy. From the Inuvialuit perspective, these adult education initiatives were no longer community/ family generated from within by Inuvialuit chiefs/ leaders but imposed by outside educational agents (Government of Canada; Government of the Northwest Territories).

Education

Title: Envisioning Alternative Education for Northern Indigenous Students
My doctoral research will focus on Alternative Education for Northern Aboriginal Students, with the main focus on high school students. ....

1. Why is the current education system unsuccessful for a large number of students?
2. What would constitute a more successful education system?

I will be using a qualitative approach because of its flexible nature, the possibility for rich data collection and the ability to follow wherever data lead. The research process will be based in constructivist grounded theory, with focus groups and interviews as main modes of data collection. [....]

Land Claims and Nunatsiavut

Title: The Nunatsiavut land claim agreement: towards a culturally sustainable future for the Inuit of Labrador

.... Not only has the newly ratified Nunatsiavut land claim agreement changed the geopolitical landscape of Canada as a whole, but it provides the foundations through which the Labrador Inuit can finally recognize their claims to self-government and territorial sovereignty. .... This project will look at the principles and stipulations that make up the treaty’s body, and show how its foundations provide for the cultural security of the Inuit people. More specifically, I want to show the evolution of modern Inuit treaties in Canada by emphasizing on how Nunatsiavut differs from earlier treaties (like Nunavut)....

Finally, the paper will focus on how the treaty attempts to realize Inuit concerns for cultural protection, with language retention and cultural education being paid close attention to. ....

Impact of the Saami

Nunavut Teacher Education Program, Nunavut Arctic College
Title: How to prepare caribou skins for different purposes.

A century has passed and a new beginning has started, today the Inuit people are reclaiming their traditional way of preparing and sewing hunting clothing though programs that are geared towards teaching those who are interested on how to prepare and sew caribou skins and other skins and pelts; ....

[....]

Title: Sami self government in Northern Europe: an example for northern Canadian Aboriginals

.... the Sami have their own parliament, there own government structure, and a great deal of land and hunting rights across their tradition territory ....

Language

Title: The Visual and Aural Representations of the Cultural Geography of the Yukon-Alaska Borderland

The purpose of this project is to expand existing documentation of the cultural geography of the Yukon-Alaska borderlands through the integration of photographs and recordings of pronunciation of place which bear Athapaskan names within an existing geographical and textual database. ....

The Upper Tanana Dineh Place Names Dadtbase [sic] currently contains documentation of 647 named localities along the borderlands from the White River, Yukon, to Tanacross, Alaska. It exists in several formats (print, PDF and ArcView GIS and Filemaker databases). The Yukon Native Language Centre at Yukon College and Easton both hold photograpsh and aural recordings of many of these places. My work will integrate these photos and recordings direcly into the Filemaker database. Users of the database will then be able to see a visual representation of the place and hear an expert speaker pronounce the name of the place in the Upper Tanana language. ....

Indigenous Cultures in Digital Cultures

www.arsc.edu/news/indigenous_cultures.html

Spring Training: Workshops for EMACS, MATLAB®, and IDL

www.arsc.edu/support/training/SpringTraining2007.html

Mar. 6, 2007: MP Andy Scott

2007-03-06T12:04:00.000-04:00

N.B. Liberal MP Andy Scott leaving federal politics for private life

He had been Minister of Indian affairs, Minister for Infrastructure and Housing, Solicitor General and regional minister for New Brunswick. [pork portfolio]

Loose lips on a plane resulted in his having to resign from his position as Solicitor General, the APEC scandal, the "Let Hughie take the fall" episode. Also, it was then-Min. Scott who settled a Labrador Inuit land claims suit by regulation, and not through Parliament, as had been customary. He was a supporter of Paul Martin, a good Liberal ... whatever that implies. There were a few scandals in Indian Affairs involving money shenanigans which seem not to have impacted his tenure. What has been the outcome of investigations into those?

Related: Solicitor General Andy Scott resigned in November 1998 after he was heard loudly ... When the letter became public, Mulroney sued the federal government for ...

www.cbc.ca/news/background/
cdngovernment/scandals.html

Andy Scott is a career politician who became executive director of the New Brunswick Liberal Party shortly after leaving school. ...

www.cbc.ca/news/background/
martin_paul/cabinet2004.html

Mar. 6, 2007: CDM

2007-03-06T06:06:00.000-04:00

An Inconvenient Truth , David Suzuki, February 20, 2007

www.forumsvibe.com/elwoodpdowd/view
topic.php?t=2854&mforum=elwoodpdowd

[....] As for the remainder, we can purchase international carbon credits through the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). This was set up precisely to help countries like Canada achieve our targets in a meaningful way. Funds from the purchase of these credits goes towards projects in developing countries that will result in a net decrease in greenhouse gas emissions.

Global warming is a problem without borders, so if Canada helps reduce heat-trapping emissions in another part of the world, the effect is the same. A global carbon market is an effective economic tool to help solve a global problem. Canada should embrace this market. A well-regulated market can be an extremely effective way to help developing countries “leapfrog” technologically and go from high-carbon to low-carbon sources of energy. [....]

Who will run that Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and could we expect it to be run as the UN Oil for Food Program was run? Who are the intermediariaes? Who benefit?

Mar. 3, 2007: WFM, Global Governance & UN Tentacles in CA

2007-03-03T16:03:00.000-04:00

Update Mar. 6, 2007: In the screen capture on the World Federalist Movement in Canada, otherwise known as the World Federalists Movement, below, is mention of the UNEP or United Nations Environmental Program begun by Maurice Strong.

Related: Frost Hits the Rhubarb Feb. 26, 2007: Strong: Environmental Guru -- re: UN Maurice Strong Environment Kyoto

frosthitstherhubarb.blogspot.com/2007/02/
feb-26-2007-strong-environmental-guru.html

At the United Nations, the Curious Career of Maurice Strong , By Claudia Rosett and George Russell, February 08, 2007

www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,250789,00.html

[....] Strong, now 77, is best known as the godfather of the environmental movement, who served from 1973-1975 as the founding director of the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) in Nairobi. UNEP is now a globe-girdling organization with a yearly budget of $136 million, which claims to act as the world’s environmental conscience. [....]

Rosset is worth reading; she has done considerable investigative work on the UN, its Oil for Food corruption, Tongsun Park and Maurice Strong's part in it and related journalistic work.

Related: Note mention of "Global Taxes": Frost Hits the Rhubarb Feb. 4, 2007: Science- Traditional Knowledge-Politics

Eminent Scientists' Conclusions, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, IPCC Summary a Political Document, World Federalist Movement and President, ex-Liberal Solicitor General Warren Allmand, Responsibility to Protect-R2P-R2PCS (Civil Society) ... Screen capture: WFM, UN Global Taxes which was updated Feb. 6, 2007 (I had typed 2006 in error.)

frosthitstherhubarb.blogspot.com/
2007_02_04_archive.html

Search for United Nations in relation to R2P and R2PCS:

[....] Sheila Watt-Cloutier [Inuit activist]

[....] Jan. 20, 2007: #2

Kyoto, The Science and the Scientists, Native Input, Funding, Special Arrangements and More

[....] She champions ... traditional ecological knowledge [....]

Responsibility to Protect - Engaging Civil Society R2PCS. The project, which is a collaboration of the WFM [....]

WFM = World Federalist Movement and ex-Solicitor General and Liberal Warren Allmand, President. Check for taxpayer funds.

R2P = Responsibility to Protect
R2PCS = "Responsibility to Protect" and engaging "Civil Society"

Note: R2P and Global Taxes, Warren Allmand, International Criminal Court

There is more in that post if you check.

End of Update

I don't recall voting for this, that is, funding studies into the possibility of world federalism. Do you? It sounds too much like a world government run by the inept UN. Check further into the funding for all these helping, do-good, activist-filled organizations and homes for ex-politicians.

Double click the screen capture to enlarge the screen capture, then "back" to return.

Do you want Global Governance and to be taxed by the United Nations?

World Federalists Canada.org

Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly -- and here

www.worldfederalistscanada.org/

Search: world federalists movement [Note the S in federalists]

UNPA campaign -- Campaign for a UN Parliamentary Assembly

www.vcn.bc.ca/wfcvb/unpafolder/unpa_home.html

UNPA = UN Parliamentary Assembly

If you Google "www.vcn.bc.ca", you will find this entry:

Home - Vancouver Community Network
Owns and operates a free, publicly accessible, non-commercial computer utility which provides public space on the internet.

www.vcn.bc.ca/

If it is free, who pays for it? Taxpayers?

Unfortunately, it may not be entirely apolitical. I am shocked.

Peace, Earth and Justice News -- or here

www.pej.org/html/modules.php?op=
modload&name=
News&file=
article&sid=6599

Islands - Victoria News / PEJ Events
Date: Feb 09, 2007 - 09:57 AM
.
Left Coast Events - Lower Mainland - Feb 6 07

1. FROM BETTY K: Pls write a letter to the Judge!!!! - sentencing, Feb 8th
[....]
6. COOPRADIO.ORG: Prosecuting War Crimes - LawyersAgainst the War & Gail Davidson - Feb 12 & 29th
7. Georgia Strait Alliance News & Events - Feb 7-11,21-25th
[....]
9. Saving the Commons and the Commoners, Thur. Feb.15
10. Maher Arar Speaks! - Feb 16th
11. COPE Dinner with Jinny Sims - Feb 17th
[....]
13. OAXACA :: CONNECTING COMMUNITITES FEB 18
[....]
15. Upcoming Courses at SHADE Consulting - Feb 23, Mar3rd [....]

Google: www.vcn.bc.ca , wfcvb

World Federalist Movement Canada - Vancouver Branch
e-mail wfcvb@vcn.bc.ca. URL: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/wfcvb ... 2002-2004 World Federalist Movement - Vancouver Branch • wfcvb@vcn.bc.ca ...

www.vcn.bc.ca/wfcvb/

World Citizens Unite! | ChangeEverything.ca

www.changeeverything.ca/world_citizens_unite

Is this representing one side of the political spectrum using other taxpayers' money?

Empower the United Nations ! - Canada Young Disgners - Kenya Young General Assembly - Worldwide ... Note there are three urls.

www.vcn.bc.ca/wfcvb/
www.renewableplanet.org
www.empowertheun.org/signeesorgendorse.html

WORLD PEACE HERO TO BE HONOURED AT WORLD PEACE FORUM -- Note prominent names , June 22, 2006

ploughshares.ca/libraries/
Statements/WORLD%20FEDERALIST%20MOVEMENT.pdf

2006 award recipient is Project Ploughshares cofounder, Ernie Regehr

Vancouver—“Nations rightly honour their military heroes. The Canada World Peace Award celebrates those courageous individuals who make outstanding contributions to world peace and justice.” says Warren Allmand, President of the World Federalist Movement–Canada(WFMC).

Since 1972, WFMC's annual award has paid tribute to such champions of world peace as Lester Pearson, Stephen Lewis, Louise Arbour, Lloyd Axworthy and Roméo Dallaire. This year, the honour will go to Ernie Regehr, cofounder of Project Ploughshares, the influential global peace advocacy agency of the Canadian Council of Churches. The banquet award ceremony will
take place during the World Peace Forum in Vancouver ... (University of British Columbia campus).... Robin Collins, Chair of WFMC's Executive Council. [....]

Empower the United Nations !

I do not have much respect for the UN, given what has been revealed about its corruption. Why do Canadian taxpayer funds go toward a World Federalist Movement and undoubtedly, if one were to dig, to its United Nations tenatacles in Canada? Do you want Global Governance and to pay taxes to the UN? Information on this was posted on Frost Hits the Rhubarb in February.

Responsibility to Protect

www.worldfederalistscanada.org/R2Ppapers.htm

International Criminal Court

www.worldfederalistscanada.org/icc.htm

Indigenous People's Declaration

www.worldfederalistscanada.org/allmand_dec06.htm

World Federalists [note the S] Movement
Peace Operations and Civil Society

www.worldfederalistscanada.org/powg_dec06.htm

Global citizens movement
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_citizens_movement

Global Justice Movement

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_justice_movement

[....] Visions of a Global Citizens Movement

Orion Kriegman, author of Dawn of the Cosmopolitan: The Hope of a Global Citizens Movement, provides the most complete description to date of what a potential Global Citizens Movement might look like. In his introduction he states, “Transnational corporations, governments, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) remain powerful global actors, but all of these would be deeply influenced by a coherent, worldwide association of millions of people who call for priority to be placed on new vales of quality of life, human solidarity, and environmental sustainability.”

Kriegman distinguishes this “coherent, worldwide association of millions” from the existing fragmented social movements active in the World Social Forum. These movements tend to be issue-specific – focused on labor, environment, human rights, feminist issues, indigenous struggles, poverty, AIDS, and numerous other interrelated but “siloed” efforts. Coherence among these movements would require a reframing of their work under the rubric of the struggle for a socially just and ecologically sustainable global society and the establishment of an institutional structure to defend the rights of humanity, future generations, and the biosphere. Kriegman asserts, “The upsurge of civil society activity, in the form of NGOs and social movements, over the past few decades can be understood as an early manifestation of the latency in the global system, and at the same time this transnational activity helps deepen the latency. However, existing social movements have not found a way to effectively balance the creative tension between pluralism and coherence to provide a collective framework for theory and action. Without a shared framework, it is hard to imagine how the latent potential would coalesce into a global systemic movement. The development of a shared framework will depend on new forms of leadership to facilitate engaged dialogue inclusive of diverse voices.” [....]

Mar. 3, 2007: Bud Talkinghorn & Security

2007-03-03T14:06:00.000-04:00

Re: SCOC, Security Certificates, Maher Arar, Terrorists, CBC, Politicized Media

Three strikes and security is out

Talk about synergy. We have the Supreme Court disallowing indefinite detention of high risk terrorist suspects. The biographies of these suspects makes for interesting reading. Sprinkled amongst them are connections to various al-Qaeda affiliates in North Africa (e,g, Moroccans, Algerians, Egyptians). None are Canadian citizens, while most have visted or trained in Afghanistan. Following that court decision, up almost immediately was the opposition's voting down two more security measures. Now terrorist suspects who are thought to be within days of carrying out their attacks can no longer be detained and questioned without criminal charges being brought. Nor can material suspects to these plots be hauled in for questioning.

The case of indefinite detention without evidence given to suspects is a sad occurence. It smacks of a police state, but this measure is taken in the face of a hidden enemy. Al-Qaeda has planted sleeper cells throughout the Western world. Many of these sleepers have advanced educations and are invisible to all intents and purposes. A fairly recent al-Qaeda cell broken up in Pakistan contained a cardiologist, a teacher, and two professional engineers. They were only a week away from a horrendous plot to massacre hundreds. An insidious enemy with new tactics (think 9/11) must be dealt with differently. Especially as The Charter means we can't deport these people--another Supreme Court interpretation. [Brought to you by a mainly Liberal-larded appointment process -- FHTR]

The opposition's demand that the other security provisions be stricken was nothing but political opportunism. Both the NDP and the Liberals had to "whip" their caucuses to get the right vote numbers. Still one Liberal voted for the extension, and four others by not attending the vote, while Irwin Cotler, the former Justice Minister, abstained. He later told the press, "There was no need for this revision. It has never been abused in the years the laws were implemented. It is a necessary measure." However the majority saw the gains in the ever-growing Muslim voting bloc. Without going into elaboration, let's just say that many of that community harbour paranoid conspiracy theories. Also a huge amount of denial persists about what is being perpertrated in the name of their faith. Whatever party plays to that paranoia best gets their votes.

Stephen Harper said it succinctly after the vote. "This decision will come back to haunt the Liberals." I believe that will be true; especially should a major terrorist attack occur before an election. No mealy-mouthed spin doctoring will cover up their vote mongering over security. They proved that the combined leftist parties can hobble the Conservatives, but at what cost to Canada?

© Bud Talkinghorn--If Al-Qaeda could vote in Canada it would be hard for them to decide which left-wing party represent the greatest number of "useful fools". Probably the NDP. Unfortunately, they are perpetual losers in elections, so the Liberals would get them by default.

Related post: scroll down for: Mar. 1, 2007: Security: Domestic terror wins big -- "CSIS has identified over 50 terrorist groups operating on Canadian soil and over $256 million have been identified by FINTRAC in 2005/2006 as having possible links to terrorism."

frosthitstherhubarb.blogspot.com/2007/03/
mar-1-2007-security-domestic-terror.html

Court considers strict bail conditions of terror suspect , Andrew Duffy, CanWest, Ottawa Citizen, March 01, 2007

www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=
82b6421f-365d-4659-8886-46c2290a8db8&k=29511

OTTAWA - Accused al-Qaida terrorist Mohamed Harkat says his bail conditions are so strict he fears his release has also imprisoned his wife and mother-in-law, one of whom must be with him every minute of the day - even in public washrooms. [....]

On May 23, 2006, Federal Court Judge Eleanor Dawson, citing unnecessary government delays in Harkat's security certificate case, ordered him released. But she imposed some of the strictest conditions in Canadian history.

Under terms of his release, Harkat must wear an electronic monitoring device that allows authorities to track his movements and he must be in the company of his wife, Sophie, or mother-in-law, Pierrette Brunette, at all times.

He is allowed three, four-hour excursions each week that must be approved in advance by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). He is not allowed to leave Ottawa, nor visit the airport, train station, bus depot or any car rental agency. He is not allowed to use a computer or cellphone. His mail is searched and his phone is tapped by federal authorities. [....]

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service alleges Harkat travelled to Afghanistan in the early 1990s and developed a relationship with al-Qaida lieutenant Abu Zubayda.

I'm afraid most of us experience a failure to empathize ... but that's not nice ... and we must be nice useful fools ... and we have the courts to help ... somebody. Harkat could leave Canada but he has such influential supporters here that he'll do fine right here, whatever the majority of Canadians might want.

Related to Bud's next post: Disturbing reality buried
Fear of causing offence and wilful blindness will only end the day innocent Canadians die -- or How many would Behead PM Harper? How many Canadian Muslims, that is.

calsun.canoe.ca/News/Columnists/Corbella_Licia/
2007/02/18/3642930-sun.html

www.forumsvibe.com/elwoodpdowd/
viewtopic.php?p=16093&highlight=
&mforum=elwoodpdowd#16093

Muslim-Canadian attitudes: A most inconvenient truth

CBC recently commissioned Environics to do a survey of Muslim-Canadian and other Canadians' attitudes. On The National, CBC doled out their predictable multicultural Pollyanna-ish conclusions. "Look", it bannered, "Fully 73% of Muslims condemn the actions of the 17 Muslim-Canadian terrorist suspects." 73%, wow! What a strong majority! On their website, they trot out the words of some Muslim sociology prof, Haideh Moghissi, to baldly state, "That figure of 12% who thought mass murder of their fellow citizens was justified doesn't warrant attention." Oh, really? And the 15% who weren't sure? What are we to make of them? Your neighbour's family is mindlessly slaughtered, but 27% of the neighbourhood either applauds or is uncertain as to their feelings about it. Reason for deep concern or not?

Licia Corbella from The Calgary Sun was concerned, nay horrified, by these numbers. She wrote a column on it (Feb. 18, 2007). That 27% of respondents can't unequivocally see the sheer wickedness of this aborted plot is chilling information indeed. Even taking the margin of error into consideration on the humanitarian side, that still means a minimum of 47,000 Muslims are sympathizers with the terrorist suspects. It makes the citizens of the fictional prairie town in "The Little Mosque on the Prairie" sound not bigoted, but prudent. Periodically we have the reports of radical mosques in Toronto and Vancouver preaching jihad, to chew on. What the combined information shows is that, like similar polls in Britain and the Netherlands, there is naked hatred of Western standards of democracy and social equality. That much of this animosity is held by second generation Muslim-Canadians is doubly frightening. They are the invisible snakes in our multicultural New Jerusalem garden.

The omission of the negative side to this poll is typical of CBC. As with the old time Marxists, the facts make no impact. Even that the CBC headquarters was one of the targets of the terrorist suspects cannot shake their blindered view of our failed immigration policy. Only their success in social engineering could explain why they released these poll statistics in the first place. Ordinarily, any poll that exposes their failed ideological stance is buried. An example was the recent poll showing the Conservatives on a steep upward movement. Maybe they did report it, but not the day it came out. I never saw it and I was looking for it that day.

As for the supposed 73% who condemned terrorism, how many simply gave the answer that wouldn't mark them as religious psychopaths? This poll wasn't asking what their favourite cereal was. One can hope that these disturbing results are being absorbed by our lenient IRB and the present government. How many kissing cousins of Ahmed Ressam can we tolerate in our midst? Canadians, wake up and smell the cordite.

© Bud Talkinghorn

Related: The Toronto Star article referencing Maher Arar is no longer available: [Frost Hits the Rhubarb Aug. 28 - Sept. 3, 2007 -- Re: Arar ... Ex-consul grilled over what he knew, when, Sep1. 1, 2005]

However, it is available here:

Ex-consul grilled over what he knew, when
Last witness to testify at inquiry
Taxpayers to foot $8 million plus bill , by MICHELLE SHEPHARD, STAFF REPORTER - Toronto Star, Sept. 1, 2005

www.ymlp.com/pubarchive_show_mess
age_iframe.php?montrealmuslimnews+4913

Original link:

www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=
thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&amp;cid=
1125526233255&call_pageid=968332188774&col=
968350116467&DPL=IvsNDS%2f7ChAX&tacodalogin=yes

[....] Portions of a censored government report, released at the inquiry only yesterday, make the claim that Arar told a consular official he was beaten with an electric cable while detained in Syria. That contradicts statements by the consul, Leo Martel, that he was never aware of the abuse.

The censored report was written by an unnamed government official about a conversation the official had on Feb. 8, 2004, with Martel, Canada's former consul in Damascus.

[....] Martel, the only Canadian official to meet Arar while he was in Syria, was the last witness to appear before the inquiry. Lawyers will present their public summary reports to the inquiry later this month, after which O'Connor will write an interim report. [....]

Even though the report concerned Arar's case, a government spokesperson said yesterday it had been censored on the grounds of privacy concerns, since Martel asserted the information concerned Nureddin. [....]

Search: Muayyed Nureddin

Mar. 1, 2007: Right Honourable Senators

2007-03-01T12:05:00.000-04:00

Senate shuts down little-known emergency fund -- The Senate has shut down a slush fund that gave thousands of dollars to Liberals over the past year, and at least one Conservative senator only learned of the fund recently, CTV News has learned. , With a report by CTV's David Akin in Ottawa, 28/02/2007 11:18:54 PM

news.sympatico.msn.ctv.ca/TopStories/Content
Posting.aspx?newsitemid=
CTVNews%2f20070228%2fsen
ate_fund_070228&feedname=
CTV-TOPSTORIES_V2&showbyline=True

"There are all these arrangements made are beyond the knowledge of the public, let alone people in the Senate," Marjory LeBreton, the government leader in the Senate, told CTV News.

She said she discovered the fund last month -- only when the Liberal-dominated Senate decided to end the program. [....]

Last year, four Liberal senators received a combined $42,500 from the fund, and this year, another two Liberal senators got a total of $42,500.

Senator Serge Joyal ... $25,000. He is writing a book on Canada-U.S. relations. [....]

Liberal Senator George Furey is not amused ... nor are we, though our reasons may differ.

Just imagine what Senator Joyal would have to say about Canada-US relations and where that would fit into the near future ... in an effort to get things back to normal. I wonder what his sequel would be?

Mar. 1, 2007: IRB

2007-03-01T10:00:00.000-04:00

Jean-Guy Fleury, chair of the Immigration and Refugee Board -- "Immigration Board head abruptly resigns amid changes" Maria Jimenez, Feb. 28, 2007, Globe and Mail

www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.2007
0228.wxrefugees28/BNStory/National/home

Jean-Guy Fleury, chair of the Immigration and Refugee Board, has unexpectedly announced his resignation, creating a leadership vacuum at the beleaguered tribunal. [A vacuum? Obviously, something must be done. ]

Mr. Fleury is stepping down eight months before his mandate ends ....

Immigration Minister Diane Finley. ....

Mr. Fleury's departure comes as Ms. Finley is set to adopt changes to the appointments process for IRB members, among them a proviso that the minister appoint two of the seven members on a newly formed selection committee. ....

Yesterday, the five members of the IRB's old advisory panel responsible for appointments also resigned ....

Search: competency test , $100,000-a-year , who the new chair will be

Those who resigned were concerned about "political patronage" ... Political patronage must never have happened before ... Why, bless their little pea-pickin' hearts ... selflessly concerned about Canada and Canadians ... to the end ... but, we're almost grown up now so ...

Mar. 1, 2007: Security: Domestic terror wins big

2007-03-01T09:00:00.000-04:00

Domestic terror wins big in today's flip-flop vote by Dion's Liberals , February 27, 2007, Canadian Coalition for Democracies

canadiancoalition.com/forum/messages/21539.shtml

Ottawa, Canada - Today, the Liberal opposition lead by Stéphane Dion joined with the other Opposition parties to kill two provisions of Canada Anti-Terrorism Act that were passed into law by the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien in 2002. With all the hyperbole generated by these provisions, it is essential that Canadians understand their implications and judge for themselves if today's vote was a win for human rights or for those plotting acts of terror in Canada. [....]

CSIS has identified over 50 terrorist groups operating on Canadian soil and over $256 million have been identified by FINTRAC in 2005/2006 as having possible links to terrorism. Today, Canadians lost vital tools needed to stop a massacre before it happens and to compel those with knowledge of terrorist activity to disclose such vital information to a judge.

Search: The "preventative arrest" provision , the use of "investigative hearings"

You may comment on that website.

Mar. 1, 2007: Updates & A Challenge

2007-03-01T05:00:00.000-04:00

Four updates have been added to Feb. 27, 2007: Introduction which concerns the following -- copied from the top of that post.

This is intended as an introduction to a group of posts that are related in that they explore microcredit, global banking innovations, Canada's aid, public-private partnerships, foundations and financial transparency when Canadian taxpayer dollars are involved, administration of this aid, research and technology deals involving Canadian and foreign universities, along with other deals which may be the main interest of the foreign companies involved (e.g. potash, uranium), and more. I believe there has been too little made known--or allowed to be--too much beyond the purview of Canadians about what has gone on and may be continuing; yet Canadian tax dollars are involved, along with issues of security and prudence. I believe the light of transparency and accountability need to be shed on all of this. It would help if our media would investigate, engaging our best journalists.

A challenge for our best journalists

I believe that some people would prefer votes and making money to taking care of Canadians' long-term interests and Canadians' security. There is too much hidden. I have tried to investigate but I am an amateur without the resources nor experience of good journalists. Some like me are not at all interested faux news, for example, articles concerning an Anna Nicole Smith or whatever is today's bit of diversionary fluff. We want news that is news, investigative journalism. Capiche? Scroll down to the beginning: Feb. 27, 2007: Introduction

Comments welcome, if they address the issues of concern.

Feb. 28, 2007: Global Warming

2007-02-28T18:00:00.000-04:00

Environment , Global Warming

NOT THAT SIMPLE
GLOBAL WARMING: WHAT WE DON'T KNOW , By ROY W. SPENCER, February 26, 2007 via newsbeat1

www.nypost.com/seven/02262007/postopinion/oped
columnists/not_that_simple_opedcolumnists_roy_w__spencer.htm

The media is, almost by definition, most interested in extreme views on the issue, so reporting seldom reveals that broad scientific uncertainty still exists.

Feb. 28, 2007: Memory Lane

2007-02-28T17:00:00.000-04:00

Update Mar. 1, 2007: This has several items related to The Legislature Raids

February 28, 2007 Bill Tieleman: new disclosures rock Collins, Clark, others

bctrialofbasi-virk.blogspot.com/

bctrialofbasi-virk.blogspot.com/2007/02/
bill-tieleman-new-disclosures-rock.html#links

A link at the bottom: www.billtieleman.blogspot.com/

New allegations made by defence lawyers in Basi Virk BC Legislature raid case touch top levels of provincial and federal Liberal Party insiders.

Lawyers defending David Basi, Bob Virk and Aneal Basi in the BC Legislature raid case have filed an application for disclosure with BC Supreme Court that makes a number of stunning allegations. [....]

Keep scrolling down that website for much more on that case which is ... muy complicado ... by accident or by design ...

Re: Court Challenges Program, Language, BC Legislature Raid, Basi / Basis, Virk, BC Rail, Telecom

Memory Lane: Court Challenges Program

What has been the purpose of the Court Challenges Program ... other than garnering votes from identifiable voting blocks? Read on.

Frost Hits the Rhubarb Oct. 15, 2006
Oct. 18, 2006: Court Challenges Program Update -- and follow the links along the yellow brick road

frosthitstherhubarb.blogspot.com/
2006_10_15_archive.html

Frost Hits the Rhubarb Oct. 3, 2006: Bud Talkinghorn

frosthitstherhubarb.blogspot.com/2006/10
/oct-3-2006-lets-look-at-law.html

What is ... The Law Commission of Canada, anyway?

[....] Oct. 3, 2006: Let's look at the Law Commission's Experts and their concerns.

frosthitstherhubarb.blogspot.com/2006/10
/oct-3-2006-lets-look-at-law.html

[....] This is the most informative article I have seen on the Court Challenges Program

Premier's propaganda in favour of Court Challenges Program , Church and State October 02, 2006

state-and-church.blogspot.com/2006/10
/premiers-propaganda-in-favour-of-court.html

[....] III) History of the CCP

“The Trudeau government launched the Court Challenges Program in 1978. It was designed to let language groups ratchet up pressure on the provinces to provide more bilingual services using the language guarantees in the British North America Act and, later, the Charter of Rights. In 1985, the Mulroney government extended the CCP to fund “equality seeking groups,” namely feminist, multicultural, gay, lesbian, and other groups…. The CCP has encouraged some groups to by-pass the political process by using the courts instead.

[....] IV) An Unaccountable Biased Program [.... Do not miss reading this.]

Related: Feb. 26, 2007: RCMP, Language, Privacy, Rights

Memory Lane: Frost Hits the Rhubarb Dec. 17 - 23, 2006

frosthitstherhubarb.blog
spot.com/2006_12_17_archive.html

Dec. 23, 2006: BC Rail Memory Lane [Who are providing the private money mentioned here and who benefit? .... B.C. Rail investment partnership agreement .... can he tell the House why B.C. Rail is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a taxpayer-financed gift to CN in the form of brand-new B.C. Rail trucks and vehicles? .... a billion dollars of private sector investment]

Basi / Basis - Virk - Third Parties

Somewhere, among the turkey dinner, the cocktail parties, the schmoozing ... lies the shadow ... the ghost of Christmases past [re: Udhe Singh (Dave) BASIS / Basi and Bobby Singh VIRK .... putting at risk the bidding process for the Freight Division of BC Rail .... Anne Cameron, on hearing of the Tsawwassen land deal ...]

Check for the words "money laundering". ... I seem to remember the words. Maybe it is only because this affected banks and a securities company , not just BC Rail and the BC government. Note the alternate spelling of Basi / Basis. FHTR

Website: The Legislature Raids

Header: Why did R.C.M.P. and Victoria police raid the B.C. Legislature on 28 December 2003? Why is the public left without answers to that question? Let's share what we know. [....]

Memory Lane: Philosophical difference: telecom policy review , Oct. 20, 2006

mtl3p.ilesansfil.org/blog/archives/2006/10/20/
alt_telecom_policy_review_panel.html

Re: Sheila Copps

This is a crazy session! 1) she is all about the “content is king” model as opposed to the idea that communication is king. 2) She said (and later defended) the idea that free content is not very good. That the only creators that matter are people that are selling content (but that fits in with her political work -she helped put the tax on blank cd’s). 3) That government won’t respond to “the public interest” but only to interest groups. So that if Cracin wants to get stuff done they should figure out which interest groups are going to be effective allies. And that traditional enemies (like copyright groups) are not possible allies because of the changes in content and telecom realities.

*great* session. I’m really glad that they invited her and that she came. I completely disagree with her about the internet (she seems to see it as a distribution network, not as a communication network) but I love her realistic advice to this group.

Feb. 28, 2007: Update

2007-02-28T16:49:00.001-04:00

I have updated yesterday's post: Feb. 27, 2007: Introduction

Feb. 28, 2007: Bud Talkinghorn

2007-02-28T16:02:00.000-04:00

Canadian security? What's that compared to getting re-elected?

So the Liberal Party has voted against their own security bill, which allowed indefinite detention of those thought to be high terrorist risks. The provisions of the bill are draconian in many respects, yet are necessary because the Charter doesn't allow Canada to expel them to their mostly Islamic homelands. This is because every one of these countries employs torture and/or the death penalty. If they are merely innocently charged people, why would their governments do such things to them? The truth is that, often, they are known terrorist members back home as well.

So we are now caught between a rock and a hard place. If they are released, they will always remain a distinct threat. The message it sends to our sleeper cells here doesn't bear thinking about. The Liberals have come up with a solution to this extralegal security measure; however, they have nothing to offer for Canadian security. All they will would gain is the Muslim-Canadian vote in the cities. However, if you are completely opportunistic, that might be enough. On the other hand, should one of these "unjustly incarcerated" lads be involved in a horrendously successful terrorist attack on our soil, the Liberals could suffer irreparable damage to their brand. * The NDP--their cheerleaders on this legal position change--would suffer also. Small wonder that Dion had to "whip" his caucus on the vote. The stakes are very high indeed.

© Bud Talkinghorn--One could ask; why not just charge them and go to court? The rationale for not doing that is that it would destroy the inter-intelligence trust built up. The linkage for detaining these suspects is based on all kinds of secret sources. A court trial would expose these deep cover operatives, leading to chaos and possible assassinations of the agents involved. All future co-operation would disappear. A thorny problem, which perhaps the opposition can help solve. Don't take any bets on that support though.

* Which part undamaged would that be Bud? FHTR

Four Ex-Prime Ministers reflect

Roy MacGregor has written an interesting column in The Globe and Mail (Feb. 22 A-3). He corralled Brian Mulroney, Kim Campbell, Joe Clark and Paul Martin and asked them to reflect on their attitudes about the political scene. Some of their comments were right on target. Joe Clark opines; ["There was a time]...when the general assumption was that government was good. Now, almost the opposite applies. If the government proposes something, that generates suspicion about it. That's not a generational phenomenon factor; that's a broad phenomenon. It's societal."

Joe Clark is a good place to begin to examine why this has been happening. I can't think of a better example of why people so dislike and distrust politicians. Always the reddest of Red Tories, he never accepted that real conservatives could no longer stand his squishy, quasi-liberal platforms. When the various sections finally united under The Conservative Party banner, with Stephen Harper as leader, he did not leave the scene gracefully. Instead, he turned positively traitorous, urging his Red Tory rump to vote Liberal. As they did in a number of ridings. He does not reflect on that scurrilous business however. Rather, he blames the organization of government, saying it allows less and less latitude for change. How ironic that Harper proved him so wrong on that score.

Brian Mulroney is another one to look at for this widespread disaffection of the electorate. He wooed the likes of Lucien Bouchard to his party and watched them defect and form the Bloc Quebecois Party. Then, in a last ditch effort to appease Quebec, he thought up Meech Lake and The Charlottetown Accord. These would not have only given Quebec unequal benefits, but would have allowed their veto on any future Canadian Constitutional change. When the Accord was put to a national referendum, it was soundly defeated. This, despite the support of the media, Acadians and cultural elites. I'm sure that the rousing defeat of the government and its acolytes was so embarassing that another referendum will never be considered. Mulroney lamely stated afterward that "he had rolled the dice" on the issue. Unfortunately, for him and his party the dice came up snake eyes.

Brian brings us to Kim Campbell, the sacrifical lamb substitute for Mulroney in the next election. Campbell, who had held a couple of cabinet positions, was chosen but given no time to properly prepare for an election. This however cannot be an excuse for the infamous campaign comment, "An election campaign is no time to discuss ideas". Duh! She was doomed to failure anyway as the albatross--no, elephant--of Mulroney hung around her neck. The PCs were nearly wiped out, electing only Jean Charest and Elsie Wayne. Jean shortly crossed over to the Quebec Liberal Party and Wayne was anything but a Red Tory. Kim was given a golden parachute, the Consul-General position for LaLa-land, where she attends endless receptions. What business she has directed our way is a state secret.

Paul Martin ended up with two albatrosses to bear. Having the nickname of "Mr. Dithers" attached to you is heavy enough. Than he had the resentful Chretien clique to contend with. But for me it was his statement during the election debate that poleaxed him. After hysterically demanding that Harper not touch a single article in The Charter or The Constitution, he blurted out that if he won he would take the Notwithstanding Clause out of the Charter. That Harper shouldn't touch anything (without being labelled a fascist in waiting), but Martin then proposed to gut the only check on legislation which is a gold mine for our social activist industry.

MacGregor should have demanded some personal accountabilty from these four. Perhaps their egoes wouldn't allow for such intospection. The commonality among them is that they feel they have diminished respect from Canadians. How those sentiments might have come about from their own behaviour is never explored. Since they have left the area, we have witnessed shameless floor crossings, and renunciations of former policy positions. Each one is a slap in the face to the electorate. It proves that too many of them are mere opportunists. Along with the pols, the MSM also are losing ground to the used car salesmen in the trust polls.

To be fair, the Canada of the past has changed beyond recognition. As the ghettoization of our cities continues apace, the politicians have to keep recrafting their messages to fit the immigrant demands. The Charter challenges all seem to be curve balls. The split between lower case liberals and conservatives is becoming wider. Any discussion of political social policy is a party spoiler. Still, all the aforementioned party leaders have a sad role to play in this current divide.

© Bud Talkinghorn

Feb. 28, 2007: Prenatal Vitamin

2007-02-28T14:33:00.000-04:00

Vitamins key for fetuses
Broad study finds daily prenatal vitamin with folic acid can prevent cancer and certain birth defects , Globe and Mail, February 26, 2007

Women who take a daily multivitamin before and during pregnancy sharply reduce the likelihood that their children will develop leukemia, brain tumors and other forms of childhood cancer, according to new Canadian research.

The startling finding that a cheap supplement purchased at the drugstore can prevent cancer as well as a range of birth defects adds weight to the theory that micronutrients have lifelong health benefits for the developing fetus. It also bolsters the case for having all women of childbearing age take multivitamins, particularly those rich in folic acid.

[....] A prenatal multivitamin is specially designed to foster normal fetal development. It contains more folic acid, more iron and less vitamin A than a regular multivitamin.

Earlier research has shown dramatic benefits of taking prenatal multivitamins. These include sharply lower rates of neural tube defects such as spina bifida, cardiovascular defects, limb deformities, cleft palate, urinary-tract defects and hydrocephalus.

Evidence of the importance of micronutrients - and folic acid in particular - has been growing for years. Folate is found naturally in leafy green vegetables, including spinach, in citrus fruits and in dried beans. [....]

Feb. 28, 2007: Morals, Terrorism, Female Genital Mutilation

2007-02-28T14:10:00.000-04:00

In Chaotic Gaza, Islamists Firebomb Internet Cafes Over Morals , By Daniel Williams, Feb. 26 (Bloomberg)

www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p
id=newsarchive&sid=aVYd7ujnOFEs

Soon after a firebomb exploded at 3 a.m. and destroyed four computers in the Al-Shawa Online Internet Cafe in Gaza, owner Alaa al-Shawa clicked onto his e-mail at an undamaged machine.

The first message surprised him: It was from the bombers themselves, explaining that establishments such as his were keeping Muslims away from prayer and providing pornography. That's why it was hit.

``This just shows how confused these fanatics are,'' said Al-Shawa, 27. ``Even they use the Internet to circulate their statements, but they think everyone else uses it for porno.'' [Are these lads so fixated on sex? Is it possible that they have excessive urges that must be curbed? Or is this simply nuts? See below.]

A group called the Swords of Islamic Righteousness has claimed responsibility for the attacks. In a leaflet distributed at Al-Azhar University last month, it said it attacked Internet cafes ``which are trying to make a whole generation preoccupied with matters other than jihad and worship.'' [....]

There are none so blind ...

Northern Virginiastan , Investor's Business Daily via newsbeat1, Posted 2/26/2007

www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?sec
id=1501&status=article&id=257386735556435

Homeland Security: Authorities across the pond now fear that even more Muslims — possibly numbering in the thousands — are plotting terror. On this end, however, U.S. officials still can't see anything in the pipeline.

Either the British have better intelligence than we do, or we don't have any radicalized Muslim communities here in America. Sanguine U.S. authorities are guessing the latter.

[....] Right across the Potomac from [Chertoff's] office is the second-highest concentration of Muslims in the country. Baileys Crossroads, Va., is teeming with Islamic radicals just as hostile to the U.S. government as their counterparts in London.

Baileys Crossroads is the heart of the Wahhabi corridor, which includes the safe houses where the hijackers stayed and the mosque where they and dozens of other terrorists have worshipped. [....]

Search: Taliban Towers , Saudi madrassa that's graduated several terrorists , residents are routinely subjected to , calls to pray blasted over mosque loudspeakers

What have the feminists done about this?

Memory Lane: cliterectomy , female genital mutilation , Inter-African Committee (IAC) , Women and Feminists , SoW , Status of Women

Frost Hits the Rhubarb Dec. 27, 2006

frosthitstherhubarb.blogspot.com/2006/12/
dec-27-2006-suffer-little-children.html

Dec. 27, 2006: Suffer little children
Female Circumcision / Female Genital Mutilation (FC/FGM) / Cliterectomy

In Canada, Genital and Sexual Mutilation of Females, Women's Int'l Network / Gale Group, 2002

Barbarism will never be eliminated if everyone hides it.

Incidence in Africa [screen capture]

advancing the notion that the cruel practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) is actually a triumph for feminism

Re Immigration: Frost Hits the Rhubarb Nov. 3, 2006
frosthitstherhubarb.blogspot.com/2006/11/
nov-3-2006-do-we-really-believe-that.html

Nov. 3, 2006: Do we really believe that ...
These minds are capable of being changed?

Muslim Rape, Feminist Silence

Where do Canadian feminists, the Status of Women (SOW) stand on this subject?

drawing attention to who fund the left

Feb. 28, 2007: Security, the Spin, Another Private Foundation

2007-02-28T10:00:00.000-04:00

It has irritated me that, while repeatedly mentioning that PM Harper apologized to Mayer Arar, there was virtually no exploration of whether torture actually occurred, that is, proof other than Arar's word, and the mainstream media have been his champion. Nor was there any questioning of, if torture occurred, what went wrong under the previous administration(s), nor exploration of how this might have occurred, why Arar was under surveillance, nor discrepancies, and there were discrepancies. None of this has been explored by journalists, at least from what I read or listened to from the usual suspects. It is as though Arar's troubles were the current government's fault.

A world of Maher Arars
Why won't the U.S. admit Maher Arar's innocence? It may be fear of precedent. Tales of other suspects seized and sent abroad to face torture are beginning to come to light in Europe. This week, those stories helped bring down the Italian government. And as Doug Saunders reports, this could be just the beginning. , Doug Saunders, Globe and Mail, Saturday, Feb. 24, 2007

www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/
RTGAM.20070224.wararus0224/
BNStory/International/home

Note: PM "Harper apologizes to Arar for torture in Syria" -- Actually, he apologized on behalf of Canada. What occurred, whatever it was, occurred under a previous administration but apologies customarily come from whoever is PM when the issue is settled (Or said to be settled, considering that there may yet be a sequel, imho).

Does it serve the BCE/Globe and Mail/CBC political purpose to muddy the waters concerning Arar? While propagandizing for him, there is much missing, as the next article will detail.

Paid $10.5-million ... taken at his own word

What really happened to Maher Arar? Maher Arar received the largest government settlement in Canadian history. Even after an inquiry, the public should ask, why? Kevin Steel, Feb. 26, 2007

www.westernstandard.ca/website/ind
ex.cfm?page=article&article_id=2333

Excellent. Read this one closely.

The problem is, Arar's claims of physical torture have gone largely unchallenged. The Canadian media has been eager to report every dramatic detail and columnists write as if the allegations are established fact. But even though the Arar commission wrote that he had been tortured, it did little to substantiate the 34-year-old wireless technology consultant's assertions. [....]

When compared to the recommendations outlined in the Istanbul Protocol, the Toope Report can only be characterized as inadequate. For instance, the Protocol emphasizes the creation of a medical report by a physician with expertise in documenting physical abuse. But no such medical report appears to have been created .... Toope relied on an oral interview with Doug Gruner, a doctor who Amnesty International, which had politically lobbied for Arar, had recommended--hardly an independent expert. As for expertise, [....]

The Protocol stresses the selection of an unbiased physician, but Toope makes no effort to establish Gruner as unbiased and actually notes Gruner is also working for another political activist. [....]

Search: why Canadian police were suspicious of him back in 2001 , whipped with a two-inch-thick electrical cable , an experienced consular official , Martel , Even after Arar was released, he did not speak of beatings., Stephen Toope, president of the left-leaning Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, was appointed as fact-finder , rapporteur of the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances , al Qaeda teaches them to make a claim of torture , Manual on the Effective Investigation and Documentation of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, otherwise known as the Istanbul Protocol , The credibility of Arar's allegations of physical torture , gone unchallenged , to obtain any documentation establishing Maher's whereabouts , produced none.

More on another Foundation

I thought the fact that the one investigating came from the Trudeau Foundation; yet Trudeau's son Sacha Trudeau was one of the ones supporting one or more of the ones picked up on security certificates was intriguing. What, exactly, is the Trudeau Foundation for, the one Canadian taxpayers kicked $125,000,000 into ... in honour of something or another?

A "Private" Foundation for "advanced research in the humanities and the human sciences"

Frost Hits the Rhubarb -- or you may find it here but it would not come up for me this morning. I posted it but it did not exist ... this morning. Try Frost Hits the Rhubarb Dec. 5, 2006

Dec. 5, 2006: Ring around the rosie ...

Caveat emptor: Please note that, even as I was putting this up, the first link developed some strange extra marks ... maybe normal, maybe Gremlins.

Based on the Liberal leadership fest, yesterday, Dec. 4, 06, I posted "CTV interrupts convention coverage to interview Alexandre Trudeau in Havana". Intrigued, I searched and found the following; you might be similarly intrigued.

Table of Contents [....]

[Naturally, some information goes astray.]

Search:

Sacha Trudeau - Security Certificates
Missing history and screen capture

Trudeau takes up cause of hunger strikers held on security certificates

www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/story.ht
ml?id=c0c9c837-6ed5-4864-83e0-72fce4c6603f&k=4724

Filmmaker Alexandre Trudeau [Sacha] has come to the defence of two security detainees now on a hunger strike for improved conditions, appealing to federal Justice Minister Irwin Cotler to intervene on their behalf.

Frost Hits the Rhubarb December 11, 2006
Dec. 11, 2006: Propinquity

It's wonderful how the concerns of various groups coalesce ... or appear to ... academe , "doing good" for students , academics , mentors , foundations , mining , mining engineering , investment banking , bank profits , taxpayer money

First, some background and / or related items, then the current news below those items -- Street race: Now TD vies for the prize

re: Toronto Dominion Bank, TD Securities, Frank McKenna and ranging over Falconbridge, CVRD, mining and energy, oil sands, Air Canada, AIM funds, Cheung Kong and its partners, Deutsche Bank and Bilfinger Burger, Anglo-Swiss miner Xstrata PLC, Toronto-Dominion advisory deals, equity deals and more

Background

Dec. 5, 2006: Ring around the rosie ...

frosthitstherhubarb.blogspot.com/2006
/12/dec-5-2006-ring-around-rosie.html

Scroll down to this section: The Pierre Trudeau Foundation - Scholar in Mining Engineering Grant -- Global Citizenship - Canadian Taxpayers' Contribution

Sacha Trudeau on Global Citizenship , UBC Report, Nov 3, 2006, Public Affairs, UBC / University of British Columbia [....]

Not exactly how it all began, my son, but moving in that direction , a bit of Memory Lane from Industry Canada, 2002 [....]

modern technology network

[....] Update 2:....

More Background

The halls of academe , CVRD Brazil , Trudeau Foundation Mining Engineering Grant , UBC Mining engineering , internships in Brazil at CVRD , Vancouver-based Teck Cominco Ltd. , Xstrata , Falconbridge and Inco , Noranda , Sumitomo , and more [....]

There is much more on that foundation, should you check.

Frost Hits the Rhubarb Sept. 21, 2006: Crying Wolf or ... what?

Al Shukrijumah, Adnan G. , tbk.com -- The Terrorism Knowledge Base

frosthitstherhubarb.blogspot.com/
2006_09_17_archive.html

[....] Bit by bit, the al-Qaeda operative allegedly managed to pilfer approximately 180 pounds of nuclear material from the university - - enough to build several radiological bombs.[xv]

CFP article: Al-Quaeda' "hidden arsenal"

www.forumsvibe.com/elwoodpdowd/view
topic.php?t=359&mforum=elwoodpdowd