Canada's private sector eyes Haiti reconstruction | The Dominion

by Van Ferrier
The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca

Check out the video. Not very professional but beats the old zerox machine. Now the second act to the tragedy begins.

On March 31, 2010 the United Nations hosts a major conference in New York to plan and coordinate reconstruction in Haiti. It is still unclear what role Canada played in the ouster of democratically elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide in 2004 that paved the way for foreign multinationals including Canadian sweatshop and mining companies.

Canada's private sector eyes Haiti reconstruction | The Dominion

Another classic line

“We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat,” said Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who became the senior American and NATO commander in Afghanistan last year. His comments came during a recent videoconference to answer questions from troops in the field about civilian casualties.

Tighter Rules Fail to Stem Deaths of Innocent Afghans at Checkpoints - NYTimes.com

Harper's Humiliating Muzzle on Scientists

 

Canada is becoming a global joke as our world-class experts are prohibited from speaking.

By Mitchell Anderson - 25 March 2010

The scandal is growing at Environment Canada of how Canadian climate researchers are being "muzzled" by draconian policies of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

This week the Montreal Gazette reported on a leaked document showing that the information restrictions brought in by the Harper government have severely restricted the media's access to government researchers. (read more)…

Harper's Humiliating Muzzle on Scientists | Mostly Water

Have a Nice World War

Image via Wikipedia

 

By John Pilger; March 26, 2010 - Znet
War. The United States has invaded Africa. US troops have entered Somalia, extending their war front from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen and now the Horn of Africa. In preparation for an attack on Iran, American missiles have been placed in four Persian Gulf states, and "bunker-buster" bombs are said to be arriving at the US base on the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

Have a Nice World War, Folks | Mostly Water

Al Jazeera English - CENTRAL/S. ASIA - Disputed island claimed by sea

A tiny island claimed for nearly 30 years by India and Bangladesh in the Bay of Bengal has disappeared beneath the rising seas, scientists in India say.
The uninhabited territory south of the Hariabhanga river was known as New Moore Island to the Indians and South Talpatti Island to the Bangladeshis.

 

Al Jazeera English - CENTRAL/S. ASIA - Disputed island claimed by sea

Akira Kurosawa: 10 essential films for the director's centenary | Ben Walters | Film | guardian.co.uk

Akira Kurosawa, the legendary Japanese director, was born 100 years ago today. He's already the subject of a Google doodle, now here's a guide to ten key Kurosawa movies, from classics such as Seven Samurai and Throne of Blood to late greats Ran and Dreams

Akira Kurosawa: 10 essential films for the director's centenary | Ben Walters | Film | guardian.co.uk

Destination Subconscious: Cary Grant and LSD - WFMU's Beware of the Blog

"I knew Cary Grant very well and he loved ... what did they call it? Acid! LSD. He said he liked to take the trip." - Debbie Reynolds

"I learned many things in the quiet of that room ... I learned that everything is or becomes its own opposite ... You know, we are all unconsciously holding our anus. In one LSD dream ... I imagined myself as a giant penis launching off from earth like a spaceship." - Cary Gran

Destination Subconscious: Cary Grant and LSD - WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Germany social welfare ruling sees 'right' to social, cultural life

Frankfurt
A landmark court ruling has opened a battle over what social welfare model the traditionally generous German state can offer, raising questions about the balance between human dignity and the need to balance the national books.


Germany social welfare ruling sees 'right' to social, cultural life / The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com

Quantum Mechanics Grows Way Up: Superposition ...

In all of its creepiness and beauty, quantum mechanics has taken a mammoth leap out of the microscopic realm, courtesy of a team of researchers at the University Of California—Santa Barbara. One of the bizarre properties of the quantum realm is “superposition,” which reduces crudely to the ability of an object to occupy multiple different states at the same time. It’s the property Erwin Schrödinger lampooned in his well-known cat-in-a-box thought-experiment. e.g. the cat cannot be both dead and alive at the same time. Well. . . it can. Maybe even literally.

Quantum Mechanics Grows Way Up: Superposition At The Visi... | Motherboard

Canada’s Long Embrace of the Honduran Dictatorship

Why do we not  a hear fuss about this. Are the Liberals afraid to offend the business interests . The economy (oh holy economy- the only god worth mentioning anymore) over human rights . And nothing subtle about it. As the Conservatives like it, it's as clear as black or white. And as blatant. The whole E.U. and O.A.S. don't recognize the Honduras regime. But, hello! U.S. and little Canada. We think it's just ducky. Embarrassment upon embarrassment. The evil of which they speak!

Peter Kent recently returned from a three day trip (February 17-20) to Honduras, proudly declaring the mission a success. As Canada's Minister of State for the Americas, Kent is the Tory government's point person for Canada's growing political and economic interests  in the region. Honduras has become an important focus of those interests, since the military coup last June against the moderately left-leaning president, Manuel Zelaya, swung the country sharply back to the right.

Canada’s Long Embrace of the Honduran Dictatorship

6 Cars So Alluring They’re in an Art Museum | Autopia | Wired.com

Some cars are so beautifully designed and exquisitely engineered that they transcend mere transportation to become works of art. They are rolling sculptures, and to see them is to think, “That car belongs in a gallery.”

6 Cars So Alluring They’re in an Art Museum | Autopia | Wired.com

U.S Consulate Blocks Award-Winning Journalist from Coming to Chicago | The Progressive

Interesting. The same weekend both Canada and the U.S. block Palestinian spokesmen from visiting. No, there's no bias going on here. No.

Omer was to speak on April 5th at the Newberry Library in Chicago at an event sponsored by Haymarket Books and funded by the Lannan Foundation. The topic: “Reflections on Life and War in Gaza.”

U.S Consulate Blocks Award-Winning Journalist from Coming to Chicago | The Progressive

Super-fast book scanner digitizes a book within minutes | robaid.com - Rob Aid presents robots, gadgets. tech and bionics

 Complete with  a little demonstration manual. I would have thought that there was already such a thing...

Scanning a book manually, page by page, is a slow, mind-numbing task. In order to solve this problem, Professor Masatoshi Ishikawa from the University of Tokyo (we also wrote about his baseball robot), and his lab members Takashi Nakashima and Yoshihiro Watanabe, created a super-fast book scanner. The system lets you scan a book by rapidly flipping its pages in front of a high-speed camera. They call this method book flipping scanning.

Super-fast book scanner digitizes a book within minutes | robaid.com - Rob Aid presents robots, gadgets. tech and bionics

Harper government succeeds in obstructing entry to Palestinian leader and peace activist Mustafa Barghouti

News came through after business hours this Friday afternoon that the Harper government has succeeded in blocking a high profile speaker on Palestinian human rights entry to Canada.

Harper government succeeds in obstructing entry to Palestinian leader and peace activist Mustafa Barghouti | rabble.ca

Targeted Assassination Of Iraqi Academics

So this is the 7th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq and the author of this article talks of the intent and results of this massive crime.

Targeted Assassination Of Iraqi Academics By Prof. Lieven De Cauter

Happy Meal is ageless: no decay in a year on a shelf - Boing Boing

thanks boingboing.com. a go-to site --check it out.

Joann Bruso, author of Baby Bites - Transforming A Picky Eater Into A Healthy Eater Book, a book on getting kids to overcome picky eating habits, has been blogging the half-life of a McDonald's Happy Meal that she bought a year ago. In the intervening year, the box of delight, plastic toys and food-like substances has experienced virtually no decay.

Happy Meal is ageless: no decay in a year on a shelf - Boing Boing

Iran’s Natural Gas Riches: US Knife to the Heart of World Future Energy

by Finian Cunningham (globalresearch.ca)

Critics have long suspected that the real reason for US and other western military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan is to control the Central Asian energy corridor. So far, the focus seems to be mainly on oil. For example, there have been claims that a planned oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea via Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea is the main prize behind the US's seemingly futile military campaign in those countries.

But what the CNPC-Iranian partnership shows is that natural gas is the bigger prize that will be pivotal to the world economy, and specifically the dual flow of this fuel eastwards and westwards from Central Asia to Europe and China.

Iran’s Natural Gas Riches: US Knife to the Heart of World Future Energy

R.I.P. the world's shortest man

R.I.P He Pingping, the world's shortest walking man

Lisa Katayama at 10:06 AM March 17, 2010

from boingboing.com
The world's shortest walking man, 21-year old He Pingping from Inner Mongolia, died this past weekend from heart complications. Sadly, we do not know much about his life aside from the fact that he was a 27-inch tall chain smoker who spent much of the last few years traveling to Japan, the US, and Italy after being recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records in 2007. I wish people focused more on what kind of person he was and how he coped with the constant stares and media attention instead of just displaying him as a freak show. He's pictured here with the world's tallest man, Bao Xishun, who is also from Inner Mongolia.

Happy St. Pats!

This morning I went off to see

My mechanic, to pay his small fee.

Just as I feared,

The fix proved quite dear—

But the blarney was perfectly free!

(thanks--hilowbrow.com)

Biography celebrates Surrealists' enigmatic muse | Books | The Guardian

She was the quiet woman of Surrealist Paris and an enigmatic muse that inspired some of the greatest art of the 1930s and 40s.
But Nusch Éluard, a beautiful model who sat for Picasso and posed for Man Ray, has been largely overlooked by history since her death in 1946.
Biography celebrates Surrealists' enigmatic muse | Books | The Guardian

Ukraine Geopolitics and the US-NATO Military Agenda: Tectonic Shift in Heartland Power

A decisive vote against NATO

On February 14 Ukraine's Election Commission declared Viktor Yanukovych the winner in that embattled country's Presidential runoff vote, defeating former Prime Minister and Orange Revolution instigator Yulia Tymoshenko. Contrary to the positive spin Washington is trying to put on the events, they mark the definitive death of Ukraine's much-touted “Orange Revolution.“

Ukraine Geopolitics and the US-NATO Military Agenda: Tectonic Shift in Heartland Power

"Citizen Saul"

 Writer, literary activist, public intellectual, John Ralston Saul is, not accidentally, both a man of the world and an articulate proponent of values he thinks are quintessentially Canadian writers.
The Walrus | April 2010 | "Citizen Saul" by Stephen Henighan

Haiti's Excluded

revisiting Haiti

Ruth Derilus had seen her share of tragedy. A 33-year-old iron-willed social worker trained by Haiti's Papay Peasant Movement, she twice helped organize relief efforts when massive floods devastated the city of Gonaïves and the surrounding countryside. In September 2004 she worked with women's and youth groups after Tropical Storm Jeanne killed more than 3,000 people. Four years later, she lost her home when a second deluge, unleashed by Tropical Storm Hanna and augmented by Hurricane Ike, once again brought the city to its knees. Ruth kept on going, working to organize rice farmers whose crops had been destroyed. ( read more...)

Haiti's Excluded

Iraq's Political Prisoners.

Meanwhile. back in Iraq. Sanctions are still on. Yes that's right, sanctions are still on. And this about the Iraqis still in prison, by Laya Anwar.


"...we would like to inform you that the USA occupying forces in Iraq have locked-up more than (162,000) hundred and sixty-two thousand Iraqi citizens in more than (50) prisons and detention camps including (28) camps run by US occupying forces, in addition to many undisclosed investigation and incarceration centers over Iraq.

The number of detainees registered in International Red Cross records is around (71,000) Seventy-one thousand, the other detainees are not recorded with the IRC because they are arrested at US detaining centers where visits by the Red-Cross representatives are denied by the occupying forces and thousands of war prisoners and old age detainees have been imprisoned and detained for more than six years suffering from unbearable and painful living and health conditions

An Arab Woman Blues - Reflections in a sealed bottle...: Iraq's Political Prisoners.

The Difference Between a Terrorist and Someone Who Flies a Plane Into a Building

By Reese Erlich

There seems to be some confusion about who are the real terrorists these days. Allow me to shed some light on the issue.

John Patrick Bedell was angry at the totalitarian federal government that had devastated public education, private property rights and monetary policy, so he shot two security guards at the Pentagon. He was not a terrorist.

Andrew Joseph Stack flew a small plane into a building housing an office of the Internal Revenue Service in Austin, Texas, killing one IRS worker and wounding 13 people in the structure. Earlier that day, Stack wrote a diatribe on his Web page against the IRS and the federal government. “Violence not only is the answer,” he wrote, “it is the only answer.” Stack was not a terrorist.

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist of Palestinian origin, opened fire on fellow soldiers in Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13 and wounding 29. He strongly opposed U.S. military action in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is a terrorist.

Reese Erlich: The Difference Between a Terrorist and Someone Who Flies a Plane Into a Building - Truthdig

Youth speaks to Harper on utube

from 'the gallopimg beaver'. some great questions. one of my favourites- "whats your hair made of".

As PMO spokesthingey Dimitri Soudas pitches it somewhat awkwardly on YouTube :
Ask Your Questions to Prime Minister Harper :

Submit your questions for Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in his response to the Speech from the Throne and the recent budget. The Prime Minister will answer a selection of your top-voted questions in an exclusive YouTube interview next Tuesday March 16, 2010 at 7 p.m. ET.

It must have seemed like a pretty good idea at the time when they were kicking it around the PMO - avoiding reporters while controlling the message, getting down with new social media, and reaching out directly to the demographic with a solid majority lockdown on Youtubeworld - youth.
But as any working clown will tell you, teh youth are a very tough audience. A sampling of questions submitted to Steve so far :
The Galloping Beaver

Pink Floyd Wins Case Over Digital Singles

Pink Floyd's epic concept albums? Record company EMI will no longer be able to offer individual tracks for sale as digital downloads.

Pink Floyd Wins Case Over Digital Singles

They have good reason not to like Canada « Yves Engler

NEWS FLASH! We are not the most popular girl in high school. There are some parties where Canadians are not invited. There are some places where it’s not a good idea to show up with a Canadian flag sewn on to your backpack. There are some people who don’t like us because of the things we do and the company we keep.

They have good reason not to like Canada « Yves Engler

Pentagon Accuses Pacifists of Undermining the Quest for World Peace

Pacifists are undermining efforts to establish world peace, or so says a cabinet member of a country that calls itself a superpower.

Addressing NATO officers and officials at the National Defense University in Washington on February 23, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the demilitarization of Europe, “where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it,” is impeding efforts to establish real security and lasting peace in the twenty-first century.

Pentagon Accuses Pacifists of Undermining the Quest for World Peace

“You do not become a ‘dissident’ just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career,” Vaclav Havel said when he battled the communist regime in Czechoslovakia. “You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society. ... The dissident does not operate in the realm of genuine power at all. He is not seeking power. He has no desire for office and does not gather votes. He does not attempt to charm the public. He offers nothing and promises nothing. He can offer, if anything, only his own skin—and he offers it solely because he has no other way of affirming the truth he stands for. His actions simply articulate his dignity as a citizen, regardless of the cost.”

ClubOrlov: Corn Madness

this is a letter by a russian philosophy graduate, recently married to a u.s.ian, who happened to move to the u.s. just in time for the downturn. interestingly he compares the u.s. to russia and it's falling apart in the 80's.


"The question of when the modern capitalist system is going to collapse has interested me since my student years, and I have approached it from various directions: from the commonplace conspiracy theories to the serious works of Oswald Spengler and Noam Chomsky. Unfortunately, I still can't fathom what it is that is keeping this system going..."

ClubOrlov: Corn Madness

Canada has long supported efforts to destabilize Venezuela

here's Yves Engler who has written a book on Canada's sleazy dealings in Haiti. And has just come out with a book on the Canada/ Israel connection, with the background of Canada's problem with the elected government of Venezuela. They have a problem with the elected government of Palestine. And strangely enough had a problem with the elected government of Haiti as well. Some countries just can't seem to elect the right people and there lies the problem. In Haiti it's Canada's sweat-shop garment manufacturers. (they were going to get a raise). In Venezuela it's the Canadian mining sector. I'll let Yves Engler explain.

The government of Hugo Chavez was correct recently when a representative said Ottawa supports “coup plotters” and “destabilizers” in Venezuela.

But it’s not because Harper is of the “ultra right” as suggested. In fact, both Liberal and Conservative governments have tacitly supported the U.S. campaign to replace the government of Venezuela.

In April 2002 a military coup took Chavez prisoner and imposed an unelected government. While most Latin American leaders condemned the coup, Canadian diplomats who were working under the direction of a Liberal government were silent.

Canada has long supported efforts to destabilize Venezuela « Yves Engler

Will Canada Join Israel’s Next War? By Jack Miller

On February 12, Shalom Life, the online magazine of the weekly Jewish newspaper Shalom Toronto, published an interview with Peter Kent, the minister of state for foreign affairs (Americas). “Prime Minister Harper,” Kent told Shalom Life, “has made it quite clear for some time now and has regularly stated that an attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada.”

Will Canada Join Israel’s Next War? By Jack Miller

What In The World Are They Spraying?

What would you say if you were told that airplanes were regularly spraying toxic aerosols in the skies above every major region of the world? That is exactly what a group of protestors were claiming outside of the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting that was held in San Diego from February 18-22.


What In The World Are They Spraying? By Michael J. Murphy

REEFER MADNESS 2: POT PSYCHOSIS - JAMES TENAFLY | VBS.TV Blog

from vbsblog

A few months back, we shared a story with you about the danger of unleashing your latent schizophrenia by smoking weed. Well, those crappy scientists who love to ruin everything fun are gearing up for another blow to everyone’s favorite plant-that’s-totally-not-a-drug.read on if it's not too scary

REEFER MADNESS 2: POT PSYCHOSIS - JAMES TENAFLY | VBS.TV Blog

Hugo Chavez for premier of Alberta

Jeff Rubin

Is there heartache in the heartland? As Albertans shoulder the weight of a new $4.5-billion budget deficit (not to mention the burden of equalization payments to the rest of Canada), despite the fact that they own the world’s largest oil reserve open to private investment, some might suggest that something is seriously amiss in the heartland.
But instead of imposing painful health care spending cuts or equally unappealing personal tax hikes, maybe there is another, better way to go.

Hugo Chavez for premier of Alberta - The Globe and Mail

The NAFTA big chill suit against Danny Williams and the public interest

Free trade, nations, corporations and the battle. Check this out for ironic and silly.


AbitibiBowater, our largest forest company, is using Chapter 11 of NAFTA to sue Canada over the actions of the province of Newfoundland.. If the company succeeds in this case, it will be the great chill that corporations everywhere dream of to prevent governments from defending the public interest by taking back public resources that have been licensed to private companies for economic development.


The NAFTA big chill suit against Danny Williams and the public interest | rabble.ca