New video shows saddam at the end of his rope
http://www.nationalnewswatch.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4589&Itemid=41

Best of the season to Kate and all her readers.

Our year-end review and recap is now online.

http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2006/12/newsmaker-of-year-and-more.html

Call a Designated Driver tonight - lets all have a safe and Happy New Years tonight.

easier format

http://3w.filecabi.net/video/saddam-hung.html

More trouble along the US border with Mexico:

Additionally troubling to U.S. authorities are the growing cultural similarities between Mexican drug cartels and established terrorist groups.

Like Islamic extremists and other terrorist organizations that use suicide bombings or decapitations to strike fear into their enemies, drug-trafficking organizations have developed cultural associations with death over the past several years.

Along the streets of Ciudad Ju rez, statues of La Santa Muerte - The Saint of Death - can be found at almost any local shop. The robed skeleton with a sickle clutched in its bony fingers is worshiped by many drug runners in Mexico and the United States.

The empty-eyed deity is particularly haunting in a city known for the brutal murders of nearly 500 women since 1995. Many Mexican and U.S. law-enforcement officials have attributed the murders to drug traffickers, some of whom have been arrested. But the murders continue, and women still live in fear.

"Women shouldn't be on the street after dark," said Lalo, 81, who sat with his wife at their empty shop in downtown Ciudad Ju rez.

Danger signs are everywhere. Billboards follow passers-by like shadows, warning women to be vigilant. Every man begins to look like a predator.

"There is so much death," Lalo sighed. "I'm beginning to think the saint is real."

The attitudes and actions represented by worship of La Santa Muerte culturally connect Mexico's drug cartels to terrorist groups, according to DEA officials.

In cities all along the U.S.-Mexico border, the popularity of the death deity is growing. From Tijuana to the violent sister city of Laredo, Texas - Nuevo Laredo - La Santa Muerte is found in statues, stickers and trinkets.

Like Hezbollah and al-Qaida, which promise martyrs that their family members will be provided for after suicide bombings, Mexican drug-trafficking organizations promise high-level members that if they die in the name of the cartel, their families will be provided for. Other similarities include the growing number of beheadings of Mexican police officials by the cartels to instill terror.

More at jihadwatch

Scientists told to stop study thta could lead to cure of homosexuality

w3.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2524408,00.html

"Martina Navratilova, the lesbian tennis player who won Wimbledon nine times, and scientists and gay rights campaigners in Britain have called for the project to be abandoned.

Navratilova defended the “right” of sheep to be gay."

Poor, oppressed, misunderstood, abused as a child, neglected, disenfranchised, disempowered, marginalized, dead Saddam!

Here is the latest -Bush Did It- column from Gwynne Dyer

Saturday, 30, December, 2006 (10, Dhul Hijjah, 1427)

A Deeply Stupid War in Africa
Gwynne Dyer, Arab News

“The Ethiopians now are advancing, but that is not the end,” Omar Idris, a
senior official of Somalia’s Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), told the BBC on
Wednesday. “We know what happened in Iraq, the experience of the
Americans... I think this is very, very early to say that the Islamic Court
forces were defeated.” The war is starting in Somalia, but it may end up
being fought in Ethiopia and Eritrea, too. Together, the three countries
contain almost a hundred million of the poorest people on the planet.

On Thursday, the Ethiopian Army took Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, and the
UIC, the closest thing to a government that Somalia has had since the
country collapsed into anarchy fifteen years ago, retreated south towards
the border with Kenya. Ethiopia has tanks, jet fighters and the tacit
support of the United States; the UIC has only light weapons and the support
of Somalis who distrust Ethiopians (i.e. almost all of them). So the UIC
will probably win in the end, but it will take a long guerilla war.

This is a war founded on a misconception and driven by paranoid fantasies.
The misconception was the US government’s belief that the Islamic Courts,
local religious authorities backed by merchants in Mogadishu who wanted
someone to curb the warlords, punish thieves, and enforce contracts, were
just a cover for Al-Qaeda. So the US instead backed the warlords who were
making Somalis’ lives a misery.

American support is the kiss of death in Somalia, so the warlords were
finally dislodged in Mogadishu last June by an uprising led by the UIC and
supported by most of the population. The warlords fled to an American ship
offshore, their clansmen went to ground, and the UIC rapidly took control of
most of southern Somalia, bringing order for the first time since 1991. But
the US immediately started plotting its overthrow.

Washington’s principal instrument in this enterprise was Ethiopia, Somalia’s
giant neighbor to the west. Ethiopia’s 75 million people outnumber Somalis
by more than seven-to-one — but although the Christians of the highlands
have always dominated Ethiopia, almost half of its people are Muslims, like
the Somalis. In Ethiopia’s sparsely populated eastern desert, the Ogaden,
most of the people are not only Muslim but ethnically Somali. This is where
the paranoid fantasies kick in.

Most of Ethiopia’s Muslims are too busy scratching a living to challenge the
Christian near-monopoly of power in their country, but the last thing
Ethiopia’s rulers want to see is an Islamic regime next-door in Somalia. To
make matters worse, the Ethiopians suspected that their enemies, the
Eritreans, were sending troops and arms to help the Islamic Courts regime in
Somalia.

Ethiopia has fought and won two wars with Somalia over the Ogaden, in 1964
and 1977 (back when Somalia had a government and an army). It fought a
bitter border war in 1998-2000 with Eritrea, a breakaway province that won
its independence in 1993. (Ethiopia has rejected the decision of an
independent panel on the border, and that war is just waiting to start
again.) So over the past year, Ethiopia’s paranoid fantasies have come
together with Washington’s.

The official American position, stated last week by Jendayi Frazer,
assistant secretary of state for African affairs, is that the UIC is now
“controlled by Al-Qaeda cell individuals. The top layer of the Court are
extremists. They are terrorists.” Even US diplomats in the region privately
reject this assertion, but it is now an article of faith in Washington.

Ethiopia accuses the UIC of “threatening Ethiopian sovereignty,” which
merely means that senior UIC members make the same claims about the
Somali-Ethiopian border that all Somali nationalists of every party have
always made. No UIC troops have even approached that border — but just after
the UIC took control of Mogadishu in June, Ethiopia started sending troops
into Somalia.

The Ethiopians said they were there to support the so-called “transitional
government” of Somalia, a body led by Abdullahi Yusuf, a Somali warlord who
is a long-standing ally of Addis Ababa. But the “transitional government,”
which emerged from UN-backed talks between Somali factions in 2004, lacked
popular support and never controlled much except the town of Baidoa, near
the Ethiopian border.

In early December, Islamic Court troops moved on Baidoa with the declared
intention of driving the Ethiopian troops out. On Dec. 24, Ethiopia
responded with the offensive that has now taken Mogadishu. With overwhelming
material superiority and US-supplied satellite surveillance data, the
Ethiopians have won an easy victory, and already the warlords who used to
dominate the capital are reasserting their control under the mantle of the
“transitional government.”

But this is just the start of a long guerilla war that will sap the strength
of the Ethiopian Army, a Christian-led force backing unpopular warlords in a
Muslim country. It will radicalize the Islamic Courts and turn them into
exactly the extremist force that Washington and Addis Ababa fear. It will
probably radicalize Ethiopian Muslims and start insurrections there. It will
almost certainly trigger a new war between Ethiopia and Eritrea (which has
sent troops to Somalia to back the UIC).

The Ethiopian invasion is illegal, unjustified and deeply, deeply stupid,
but it has Washington’s strong support. From the same folks who brought you
Iraq....

And here is more news regarding "the same folks who brought you Iraq"...

Saturday, 30, December, 2006 (10, Dhul Hijjah, 1427)

The Mini Economic Boom in Iraq That Is Hardly Reported
Amir Taheri, Arab News

UM QASAR, Iraq — While the American political elite are using Iraq as an
excuse for fighting internal political wars, a different reality is taking
shape in parts of this war-torn nation. Wherever some measure of security is
assured, that is to say in more than 80 percent of Iraq, towns and villages
long left to die a slow death are creeping back to life.

Nowhere is this slow but steady return to life more startling than in Um
Qasar, in the southeast extremity of Iraq on the Gulf. Four years ago, this
was a jumble of rusting quays, abandoned houses, gutted buildings, and a
wall of mud erected by an ever-receding sea. By the spring of 2003, Um Qasar
’s population had dwindled to a few dozen, along with hundreds of stray
dogs. There was even talk of abandoning it altogether.

Today, however, Um Qasar is back in business as a port with commercial and
military functions. Hundreds of families that had left after the first Gulf
War in 1991, have returned to join many more who have come from all over
Iraq to seek a fortune.

The boom in Um Qasar is part of a broader picture that also includes Basra,
the sprawling metropolis of southern Iraq, the Shiite holy cities of Najaf
and Karbala, the Fayli stronghold of Mandali on the Iranian border, and much
of Baghdad, not to mention the Kurdish provinces in the northeast.

When the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank reported two years
ago that the Iraqi economy was heading for a boom, skeptics dismissed that
as misplaced optimism. Now, however, even some of those who opposed the
toppling of Saddam Hussein admit that many Iraqis share that optimism.
Newsweek has just hailed the emergence of a booming market economy in Iraq
as “the mother of all surprises,” noting “that Iraqis are more optimistic
about the future than most Americans are.” The reason, of course, is that
Iraqis know what is going on in their country while Americans are fed a diet
of exclusively negative reporting from Iraq, focused on terrorist attacks,
and motivated by an almost irrational hatred of the Bush administration.

The growing dynamism of the Iraqi economy is reflected in the steady
increase in the value of the national currency, the dinar, against the three
currencies in direct competition with it in the Iraqi marketplace: The
Iranian rial, the Kuwaiti dinar, and the US dollar, since January 2006.

No doubt, part of the dinar’s strength reflects the rise in Iraq’s income
from oil exports to almost $40 billion in 2006, an all-time record. But oil
alone does not explain all, since both Iran and Kuwait are bigger exporters
than Iraq. The fact that civil servant salaries have increased by almost 30
percent, with a further 30 percent due to come into effect early next year,
has also helped boost demand. But a good part of the boom is due to an
unexpected flow of foreign capital. This has been facilitated by the
prospect of a liberal law on direct foreign investments, something that
exists only in such free-trade parts of the region as Dubai and Bahrain.
None of Iraq’s six neighbors offers such guarantee for the free flow of
capital to and from the country.

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the number of private companies in
Iraq has increased from a mere 8,000 to more than 35,000 this year. Each
week an average of 60 new companies spring up in Iraq’s booming areas.

A good part of the investment in southern Iraq, including Um Qasar, comes
from Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

“Whatever happens, Iraq is Iraq,” says a Kuwaiti businessman, building
hotels in the south. “Iraq will always remain the country with some of the
world’s largest oil reserves and the Middle East’s biggest resources of
water.”

One hears similar comments from local and foreign businessmen investing in
real estate in Najaf and Karbala. Over 200 million Shiite Muslims regard the
cities as holy. Najaf and Karbala have always been dream destinations for
pilgrims from as far away as Latin America and Australia. Under Saddam
Hussein, however, few foreign pilgrims were allowed. With the despot gone,
pilgrims are pouring in — and with them the fresh money that is transforming
both holy cities.

Some of the money brought in belongs to Iraqi expatriates who are returning
home, albeit in smaller numbers compared to two years ago.

That good business is possible in Iraq is reflected in the performance of
the new companies, most of which did not exist three years ago. One
privately owned mobile phone company is expected to report revenues of more
than $500 million this year, a sevenfold increase in three years. Another
private firm marketing soft drinks has seen profits double since the end of
2003. The number of luxury cars imported has risen from a few hundred in
2002 to more than 20,000 this year.

But what about continued terrorist attacks? Most foreign investors coming to
make money in Iraq shrug their shoulders.

“Doing business in any Arab country is always risky,” says a Turkish
investor who has set up a trucking company and a taxi service. “In some Arab
countries, you risk nationalization or straight confiscation by the ruler.
In other Arab countries, you must give a cut to one of the emirs. Here, you
face possible terrorist attacks. But such attacks are transitory; they
cannot go on forever, while the dangers you face in other Arab countries are
permanent features of life.”

The relatively low cost of labor is another attraction to investors. Wages
in Iraq, where unemployment is estimated to be over 30 percent, are less
than a quarter of the going rates in Kuwait. Nevertheless, the Iraqi boom
appears to be attracting some Iranian laborers from areas close to border —
men and women who come in for a few days to make some money before returning
home.

Although Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki’s government has slowed down the pace
of privatization, as set by Paul Bremer, the American pro-consul, in 2004,
the foundations of the command economy created by Saddam Hussein continue to
crumble.

The transition from a rentier economy in which virtually the whole of the
population depended on government handouts to a free-market capitalist one
entails much hardship for some segments of society.

Many pensioners and some civil servants find it hard to make ends meet as
prices rise across the board. The end of government subsidies on virtually
everything — from bread and sugar to gasoline and water — is also causing
hardship.

But judging by the talk in teahouses and the debate in Iraq’s new and
pluralist media, most people welcome the switch to capitalism and regard it
as an exciting adventure.

As trucks are loaded with a variety of imports destined for Baghdad, we ask
the drivers what they think would happen if the multi-national force, led by
the United States, left Iraq soon.

Most shrug their shoulders, unable to make any prediction.

One driver has something to say.

“Why leave?” he asks. “Do I abandon the goods that have come from such a
long way before they reach their destination?”

Translated into practical politics, this amounts to a plea for “staying the
course,” which means not allowing the terrorists to impose their agenda. But
the man in Um Qasar does not know that in the United States the phrase
“staying the course” drives the cut-and-run party up the wall.

CP-MSM's editors, etc., cannot fathom a warrior culture. These pacifists-leftoids would deny that these warriors protect even them. ...-

CANADIAN SOLDIERS READY TO REENLIST FOR ANOTHER TOUR IN AFGHANISTAN
Sweltering heat in the summer, frigid cold in the winter, sleeping in the desert and the ever-present threat of Taliban attacks doesn't seem to be a downside for some Canadian soldiers serving here. cnews ...-

Oddly, Gwynn Dyer never mentioned that the Islamic courts had imposed beheading as the penalty for not praying five times a day. Or that wherever there's an Islamist government in the world, the bordering internal regions and/or neighbouring soveriegn countries are under constant attack. Or that the UIC declared that they were in partnership with al Queda. Or that they extended an invitation to Islamists throughout the world to come and make war against dissenting Somali citizens and Ethiopia.

Radical opinionists like Dyer are in league with death and are therefore the enemy as much as the Islamofascists they support.

One of their own has proof positive of the Canadian Media's bias for Liberal's Kyoto Hoax.

Lorrie Goldstein treats my queries with respect. Greg Weston, anh.

http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Goldstein_Lorrie/2006/12/31/3097188-sun.html

But any jurno who publicly makes the connection(already well known in the Blogsphere) between Kyoto,Chretien,Martin -- AND -- the UN,Maurice Strong,Earth Charter,One World Governance .. will go down in history as the Jurno-Terminator. The mother of all Whisle Blowers.

Gwynne Dyer, a deeply stupid White Man in Africa.

UK Preparing for a 'Dirty Bomb' Attack

In addition to those 12,000 chem/bio/nuke protective suits, the UK Home Office has quietly ordered 8,000 ‘dirty bomb’ body bags. (LGF)

Who would of thunk?
CTV's (illustrious?) QP panel didn't even mention Taliban Layton this a.m. ... or else I missed something ... or not.

Voting closes: December 31, 2006 at 11:59:59 pm Pacific

1. Kofi Annan 31.1%

Leading poll results at LGF.

Idiotarian of the Year; Robert Fisk Award 2006.

Good post concrete. And to think that 10-20 years ago, my information came from that hippy in his leather rag. Those two things, him and rag, should have been my first clues.

irwin daisy at December 31, 2006 11:30 AM

That is VERY interesting and helps to fill in the overall picture. Terror tactics to subvert your local police and get them to look the other way. Mexico is getting worse.

Reader tips are a great feature of this blogsite.

A friend saw a NewsNet item about a male criminal who who crossed from the USA to Canada in a Burqa and almost made it.

Another example of why any concealed face is not viable in a secure society.

In Italy, a group of burqa clad women left a jewellery store with stolen goods and the security camers were useless because faces were hidden. = TG

Whether Saddam was hung or not is none of my concern. That was between him, his wives and mistresses. That he was _hanged_ is a big deal. (so to speak)

it occurs to me the business of saddam getting strung up, reduces him to the fate akin to some stickup artist that shoots the elderly shop owners and is also sentenced to die by hanging.

mr pompous mass murderer is now nothing more than a couple megs of video on some web site host, disappearing from view and then next time showing his head all tilted askew AT THE END OF THE ROPE.

anyone who thinks THAT isnt going to deflate the agitators and insurgents knows nothing of the psychology of power.

ah yes, the business of despotism certainly is risky; ciausesceu(sp), milosovic, jerusowski(sp) of poland, pinochet and his legal problems, etc etc.

A good New Year to you, and yours, Kate.

Imethisguy, Good one ;-)

Happy New Year , y'all.

Are carbon offsets providers cashing on the Global Warming crisis?
CarbonSMS ^ | 31/12/2006 | Andrew

A new report on the carbon offset retail market shows that retail offset providers face several challenges in supplying credible, cost effective offsets to the market. After finding a price of £1.5 ton/CO2 per carbon credits in US, I was surprised to see prices in different carbon offset websites from different countries ranging from £2.50 up to £12.40 with an average of £5.10 tonne/CO2. In the Brisith case price ranges from £7.40 to £9.00 tonne/CO2 which I see ludicrous because this could mean that we British people pay more without making a real benefit on the environment. This make me wonder if the price this offfset providers charge is really the cost of the project or the money is being taken by intermediaries. I think this market needs more transparency so we as consumers can evaluate the offset quality, where the money goes, how the project are selected and benefits they provide to the environment and communities. It will be sad to see that our hopes to mitigate Global Warming by offseting our emissions are not helping as they should. CarbonSMS.com recently posted some questions that we should ask offset providers when buying carbon credits. In addition to carbon offsetting we need to take other measures that could have more impact. ...-

KEYWORDS: CARBONOFFSET; CARBONSMS; CLIMATECHANGE; GLOBALISM; GLOBALWARMING; SCAM ...-
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1760722/posts

Jinn| Born of fire
Our correspondent travels to Somalia and Afghanistan in search of jinn ___

THERE is a cleft in a stone hill outside Qardho, in northern Somalia, which even the hardest gunmen and frankincense merchants avoid. In the cool dark, out of the bleached sunshine, there is a pit, a kind of Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole, which is said to swirl down into the world of jinn. Locals say jinn—genies, that is—fade in and out above the pit. Sometimes they shift into forms of ostriches and run out over the desert scrub.

The Bible holds that God created angels and then made man in his own image. The Koran states that Allah fashioned angels from light and then made jinn from smokeless fire. Man was formed later, out of clay. Jinn disappointed Allah, not least by climbing to the highest vaults of the sky and eavesdropping on the angels. Yet Allah did not annihilate them. No flood closed over their heads. Jinn were willed into existence, like man, to worship Allah and were preserved on earth for that purpose, living in a parallel world, set at such an angle that jinn can see men, but men cannot see jinn.

Less educated Muslims remain fearful of jinn. Hardly a week passes in the Muslim world without a strange story concerning them. Often the tales are foolish and melancholy. In August, for instance, Muslims in the Kikandwa district of central Uganda grew feverish over reports of jinn haunting and raping women in the district. So when a young woman stumbled out of the forest one day, unkempt and deranged, she was denounced as a jinn. Villagers beat her almost to death. ...-
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1760720/posts

Is it true that wikipedia.org/ is an informational site that relies on individuals posting and continually updating knowledge ??

Amazing that it works, as one would think that the wakos would sabotage it. But I guess there are lots of knowlegeable people out there that keep it updated with the truth, and hence it works. So reassuring for Mankind.

sda is a very, very signifigant Media-Auditor already, but if Wikipedia is any indication, sda may become hda. www.hugedeadanimals.com

Not a stretch at all as the Left Stream Media is at the root of a lot of societies problems. Misinformation can be worse than no information.

Family clues to Iraq’s missing oil billions December 31st, 2006

The dictator is dead, and now the hunt for his illicit fortune is intensifying. Officials from the FBI and US Treasury are focusing their inquiries on £2.2bn of illegal oil profits

American and Iraqi government investigators tracing hundreds of millions of pounds missing from Saddam Hussein’s illicit fortune are hoping to question members of the former dictator’s close family.

Officials from the FBI, the American Treasury and the State Department particularly want to find £2.2bn in illegal profits that Saddam’s regime is alleged to have earned from 2000-2003 from an oil-for-trade pact signed with Syria that was outside the official United Nations administered oil-for-food programme, according to official documents released to a US congressional sub-committee. ...-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1980561,00.html

Canadian connections: The connections to Trudeau, Martin, Chretien, Shoyama, Power Corp., the Librano$, organized crime, the biker gangs, the "Sask-NDP-Mafia", Indian chiefs, and.... Citoyen Dion. And more....

The biggest story in Canada in decades; the left MSM will not touch this. ...-

Maurice Strong: The new guy in your future!

By Henry Lamb
January, 1997

http://www.sovereignty.net/p/sd/strong.html

it just dawned on me what the dead animals are.

msm credibility prominent among them.

maz2 6:15 PM, you are absolutely correct.

I read that article on Maurice Strong a long time ago. It was absolutly scary then and now it is horrific.

If Canadian Maurice Strong has a little more time we may well have Koffi Annan imposed on the world as our UNelected, UNdefeatable, UNaccountable, UNwieldly Dictator for an UNdeterminable time in power.

And the Media does not report on this. Excepting a few like Peter Foster and Terrance Corcoran.

The Canadian Media is liable, big-time, IMO.

Citizen Dion said:

While the Earth Burns: Dion to push for Afghan Marshall Plan
Mr. Dion said Canada must push its allies to build a Marshall Plan to rebuild the economy of ... Environmental Economics (39); Environmental Politics (63) ...
whiletheearthburns.blogspot.com/2006/12/dion-to-push-for-afghan-marshall-plan.html

Where did Dion get this?

Here it is: The Manifesto of The Mao Strongites:
...-

How Environmentalists Intend to Rule the World

By Ron Arnold

Critics have long believed environmentalists were planning global domination.

The problem with making a credible case against such an ambitious plan was simple: no environmental leader had published one.

Yet conflicts over global warming, world trade, multinational corporations, population control, sustainable futures, and transnational government left little doubt that environmentalists in fact shared the unspoken aim of wielding supreme power over a green future. But there was no proof.

For years, critics, lacking hard evidence, were reduced to piecing together a jigsaw puzzle of suspicious environmentalist actions - funding from huge charitable trusts, ties to the broader "progressive" community, and dissemination of concepts hostile to American democracy - in hopes that the emerging picture would reveal a dictatorial smoking gun. Results ranged from isolated case studies to pathetic conspiracy theories. They missed the mark because there was no visible mark to hit.

All that changed March 14, 2002. ...-

Excerpts:

The third premise is a scheme to save us from the

two bogeymen:

"another Marshal Plan," which Hayes later calls, "Marshal Plan II."

The two bogeymen:

* Nature bats last. Catchphrase meaning nature will destroy you if you violate her rules, and capitalism violates nature's rules. We're doomed.

* The house is on fire. Capitalism is the fire, earth is the house, capitalism is destroying everything, air, water, soil, all life on earth. We're doomed.

That's sufficient reason to justify destroying capitalism. ...-

http://www.sovereignty.net/p/ngo/ron.html

Why just scary back then ?? Well, how could a wealty Trudeau flake in the UN impose UN/World governance on strong democratic countries ?? It was far fetched, so I thought.

We came very close to Strong's 'UN One World Governance'. It is called the UN IPCC Kyoto Protocol. It seems to now be dead though, thanks to the Internet and Blogs. Also to Austrailia, Japan, China, Russian scientists, Bjon Lomborg, PM Harper, Senator Inhofe, Dr.Tim Ball, Dr.Patrick Moore, Terrance Corcoran, Peter Foster and others.

Kofi Annan's legacy: peacekeeping, war on poverty
AP

UNITED NATIONS — Kofi Annan steps down as secretary-general at midnight today, leaving behind a global organization far more aggressively engaged in peacekeeping and fighting poverty — but struggling to restore its tarnished reputation.

Taking office six years after the Soviet Union collapsed, Annan, 68, helped preside over a decade that saw the world unite against terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, then divide deeply over the U.S.-led war against Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein.

At a Millennium Summit in September 2000, he spurred world leaders to adopt a blueprint to wage a global war on poverty and bring the United Nations into the 21st century. ...-
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1760785/posts

From Comments:

why is the Oil For Food scandal swept under the rug? It's the most heinous example of corrupt governance that I have ever heard of. I bet 90%+ of Americans have never heard about it.

2 posted on 12/31/2006 5:59:18 PM PST by ilgipper

An Outrageous occurence today, (New Years Eve). I was settling down for an hour or so of The Royal Canadian Air Farce. They are on CBC but they are usually witty even when they were anti Conservative. Today was an exception, it was a rant against Harper and the governing party that was completely absent of any humor. The people representing the Cp were insipid and were certainly not given any lines that would even slightly make it a fair battle. The star was an acter representing Dion who was delivering barbs and putdowns in better English than Dion will ever have. Stephen Harper, Sell the CBC as soon as you get your majority,

An Outrageous occurence today, (New Years Eve). I was settling down for an hour or so of The Royal Canadian Air Farce. They are on CBC but they are usually witty even when they were anti Conservative. Today was an exception, it was a rant against Harper and the governing party that was completely absent of any humor. The people representing the Cp were insipid and were certainly not given any lines that would even slightly make it a fair battle. The star was an acter representing Dion who was delivering barbs and putdowns in better English than Dion will ever have. Stephen Harper, Sell the CBC as soon as you get your majority,

ronrob:
I'm with you on that! I too watched it and it was unbelievably rude and insipid.
As a matter of fact I turned it off after only a few minutes or so.

Whatever happened with that case of the 'business supervisor' fired from SaskPower for allegedely stealing $190,000, through false expense claims, between May of 2002, and the time he/she was fired?

Its not been in the media. The RCMP have not laid charges.

Another NDP/SaskPower cover-up? My New Years Resolution this year is to do everything I can to ensure that the bums get thrown outta office!

The Sleepy Subject of Canada’s Grain Exports Perks Up

By IAN AUSTEN
Published: January 1, 2007

OTTAWA, Dec. 31 — The business of grain marketing has not been its usual sleepy self lately in Western Canada.

Plans by the government to strip the Canadian Wheat Board of its monopoly control over most of the country’s wheat and barley exports have provoked a fight that is pitting farmer against farmer and the agency against the government.

The wheat board, founded 75 years ago as part of a wave of cooperative ventures for improving farmers’ lives, is now one of the world’s largest grain traders, with annual sales of $4 billion to $6 billion.

The board is, in many respects, among the last of the cooperative projects that remains true to its original goals. But those goals now have little in common with the open market philosophy of the minority Conservative government that came to power just under a year ago.

Shortly before Christmas, that clash resulted in an unusual cabinet order to fire the wheat board’s president, Adrian Measner.

The fate of the board will be eagerly awaited in the United States, where farm groups have unsuccessfully challenged the Canadian board’s monopoly. Among the companies likely to move into Canada’s export market, if it is opened, are commercial grain traders like Cargill of Minneapolis and Archer Daniels Midland of Decatur, Ill...

www.nytimes.com/2007/01/01/business/worldbusiness/01wheat.html?ref=business

I propose a project for 2007.

As one who has pretty much reached the end of my patience concerning the bias of MSM reporting in Canadian media, and after watching Lisa Laflamme's scurrulously slanted "year-end" report on, apparently, our failed mission in A-stan, and the fact that all it does is rack up the body count as the Taliban ever pushes the boys back (I did learn that we haven't lost as many since Korea, but learned nothing about what projects we ARE doing in A-stan), I think its time we make an active effort to target, and force out, the members of the Canadian MSM, that steadfastly refuse to bring their bias into check as reporters.

If the industry won't houseclean, maybe its time the blogosphere does it for them. Perhaps a weekly "Christine Lawand Memorial Award for Yellow Journalism". Hang on every word, dissect every statement. Castigate every transgressor. Am I being too difficult... :)

Welcome to 2007: Fact-Checking the New York Times

Little Green Footballs is running slower than a mule on Valium this morning, apparently because of a link in this article at the New York Times that’s sending a deluge of people looking for the cellphone video of Saddam Hussein’s execution: Hard Choices Over Video of Execution. ...

In his haste to take a slap at the “conservative” blog LGF for not observing the same “niceties” as mainstream media, New York Times writer Bill Carter failed to notice that the “complete video” is not posted at LGF, and never has been. Good work!
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/

CTV aired the cell-phone video, right up to the dropping of the floor, last night on their 11 PM national broadcast, with Tom Clark leading the item with a long diatribe about how awful the retribution was going to be by all of the Saddam supporters in Iraq. Apparently execution of a mass murderer is a bigger deal than the murders he has committed. Maybe its time to stop bothering with the niceties of a trial - seems to be more trouble then its worth. Shoot 'em when you get 'em - at least it wouldn't provide a platform for those who excuse any crime on the basis of some expedience.

London Times: Saudi Arabia Bigger Threat than Iran

The Times of London opinion piece is headlined:

*You're attacking the wrong nation, Mr. Blair.*
In it, commentator Anatole Kaletsky argues that British Prime Minister Tony Blair's bellicose words about Iran in a recent speech are misguided — and that the real terrorist threat originates in Saudi Arabia, an *ally* of the West.

In his December 20 speech in Dubai, Blair called Iran the greatest *strategic threat* in the Middle East and declared that it seeks *to pin us back in Lebanon, in Iraq and in Palestine. Our response should be to expose what they are doing, build the alliances to prevent it and pin them back across the whole of the region.*

But Kaletsky points to *the country that really is the financial and spiritual homeland of al-Qaida, the 9/11 terrorists and the majority of foreign insurgents fighting in Iraq. This country is, of course, Saudi Arabia . . . *

*The Saudis' ambivalence in the war against jihadi radicalism is hardly surprising, since extremist interpretations of Islam remain far more dominant in Saudi society than they have ever been in Iran or any Middle Eastern country other than Afghanistan under the Taliban.*

*Moreover, the radicalization of previously quiescent Muslim populations from Indonesia and Turkey to Britain, Spain and France continues to be directly funded by the Saudi money pouring into Sunni mosques and madrassas inspired by the extremist Wahhabi sect.*
=======From Newsmax Email==

This is one long standing blogsite that lends weight to
What Keltsky writes in the respected London Times:

muttawa.blogspot.com/2006/02/emergency-meeting.html

= TG

"CTV aired the cell-phone video, right up to the dropping of the floor, last night on their 11 PM national broadcast, with Tom Clark leading the item with a long diatribe about how awful the retribution was going to be by all of the Saddam supporters in Iraq. Apparently execution of a mass murderer is a bigger deal than the murders he has committed. "

I believe the concern is over the sectarian taunting by some of the witnesses, which makes the execution look like sectarian revenge rather than national justice. (I have seen the cell-phone video and the taunting is inappropriate and disturbing, if understandable.)

toronto star- pravda USSR))))
;-)Just came across of “Great Dismantler' puts ideology into action” by dimitry - nice Canadian name – must be “first nation” guy/gay. I can only ask – do you love Canada Dimitry? or you work for putin?

These Muslims have their nerve!Talking about taunting What about the taunting Daniel Pearl got just before they HACKED his head off!

Norm, the problem with the taunting is that the execution was supposed to represent impartial justice enacted by the state.

Nobody is saying that about the execution of Daniel Pearl (which was truly horrible).

In its haste to present the case for not making abortions illegal, the NYT ran with a story about an El Salvador woman sent to prison for 30 years for having an abortion.

Turns out someone finally noted that the real truth of the testimony was that she strangled her live-born infant, and hence, was found guilty of infanticide.

The reporter never actually read the court's rulings at all before filing his story.

3w .nytimes. com/2006/12/31/opinion/31pubed.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

"The care taken in the reporting and editing of this example didn’t meet the magazine’s normal standards. Although Sarah H. Smith, the magazine’s editorial manager, told me that relevant court documents are “normally” reviewed, Mr. Hitt never checked the 7,600-word ruling in the Climaco case while preparing his story. And Mr. Hitt told me that no editor or fact checker ever asked him if he had checked the court document containing the panel’s decision."

skip...1005 a.m. several bloggers are discussing this as a project.Todays episode with NYT/LGF is evidence MSM is getting a bit on the (sloppy) defensive.My energy will be in 'encouraging' friends and family to check the 'facts' on the internet.The Caucescue/Hussein contrast is evidence of the problems.

While some are on the media bias subject,how is it Flaherty became the Canadian newsmaker of the year?I pay close attention to the news and somehow I must have missed a hell of a lot of stories. I doubt if most Canadians had a clue who he was before the income trust decision,and still many would not be able to name his position.The media would not have named him so they could bring up the horrible conservatives and how they broke a promise, would they?

Never mind,he was only business newsmaker of the year.My apologies.

The Year of "Zombietiming" Dangerously

A BBC expert says one of the new trends that will shape the year 2007 is “zombietiming”—the exposure by blogs of bad and/or biased mainstream media reporting.

Congrats to LGF operative zombie for graduating to the lofty status of a verb. I’m picturing Dan Rather backed into a corner, snarling, “You no good zombietiming blogger!” ...-
LGF

Evidence:

The Red Cross Ambulance Incident

How the Media Legitimized an Anti-Israel Hoax and Changed the Course of a War
+ Introduction

+ What Supposedly Happened: The Media Accuses Israel of War Crimes

+ The Ambulance With a Hole in Its Roof: Dismantling the Evidence

+ Possible Rebuttals and Explanations of the Apparent Fraud

+ The Media Responds: Attempted Refutations of This Essay by Journalists

+ Conclusion: How a Hoax Became News
LGF

*******************************************************

This adds weight to [previous comments], re: the growing state of hatred between Saudi-Sunni and Shiites In Iraq.

With friends like the Saudies . . .

The Sunni may be a minority in Iraq, but they are no minority in the ME. One wonders if the Saudies helped Saddam and his Baathist minority grab power in Iraq in the first place, during his early years.

iht.com/articles/ap/2006/12/29/africa/ME_GEN_Saudi_Shiites.php

tinyurl.com/ycmvv3

The US balancing act is to let powers deflate each other without losing Iraq to a new
Dictatorship altogether. = TG

Red-Green Alert!

Not found on the website of Citoyen Dion.

Red-Green Alert! Chunks of Louisiana slip-sliding into the Gulf of Mexico. Area is bigger than 11,000 football fields. Cajuns are heading north to Acadie, Nouveau Brunswick, Canada.

Global warming has not yet claimed responsibility. ...-

Study: La. slowly slipping into gulf

AP on Yahoo ^ | 1/1/07 | Cain Burdeau - ap
NEW ORLEANS - A new report by scientists studying Louisiana's sinking coast says the land here is not just sinking, it's sliding ever so slowly into the Gulf of Mexico. The new findings may add a kink to plans being drawn up to build bigger and better levees to protect this historic city and Cajun bayou culture. If the land is shifting — even slightly — engineers may need to take that into consideration as they build new levees and draw lines across the coast to identify areas that should and shouldn't be protected. Researchers have known for years that...-
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1761058/posts

Did you hear the joke linking Helen Thomas, 72 virgins and al-Zarqawi?

Go to this "energizing weekend" for the rest of the story.

Seriously, look at the headline: "Better Media Control". Control is a cardinal tenet of left-liberal/socialist dogma. ...-

Liberal Conference For Better Media Control (BARF ALERT)

Activists, media makers, educators, journalists, policymakers and concerned citizens are gathering in Memphis this January to mobilize for better media.

The National Conference for Media Reform is for anyone who is concerned about the state of our media and committed to working for change. This energizing weekend will present ideas and strategies for winning the fight for better media and connect you with thousands of media reformers from across the nation.

Speakers include Geena Davis award winning actress and founder of See Jane, Danny Glover actor and activist, White House press corps columnist Helen Thomas; Rev. Lennox Yearwood of the Hip Hop Caucus, Phil Donahue, television host, Jane Fonda, actor and co-Founder, Women's Media Center, Kim Gandy, president, National Organization for Women, Rev. Jesse Jackson, civil rights leader, Bill Moyers, journalist and Author, . . .-
free republic

On Evil
by Theodore Dalrymple (Jan. 2007)

Excerpt:

In that slaughter, in the space of three months, neighbours killed without compunction those with whom they had been friendly all their lives, only because they were of the different, and reputedly opposing, ethnic designation. They used no high-tech means, only clubs and machetes. Women and children were not spared; husbands of mixed marriages killed wives, and vice versa. The participation of the general population in the slaughter was its most remarkable feature: usually in mass murder, it is the state that does the killing, or rather the state’s agents, since the state is an abstraction without an existence independent of those who work for it. Hatzfeld, the African correspondent of the French left-wing newspaper, Liberation, went to interview some of the perpetrators a few years after the genocide. They were friends who took part in the murder (if that is not too slight a word for it) of 50,000 of the 59,000 Tutsis who lived in their commune....-

http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm?frm=5150&sec_id=5150

Telegraph | News | France accused of genocide by Rwanda's leader
President Paul Kagame of Rwanda yesterday accused France of direct responsibility for the 1994 genocide of at least 800000 people in the central African ...

Canadian Liberal leader Dion is a French citizen. Dion is mute/silent about the human genocide in Rwanda. Why is Dion silent? Silence implies consent/agreement. Speak, Dion. ...-

The Media
Delusions of “reality”

By James Bowman

Not long ago, as I was listening to a BBC reporter describing the latest terrorist outrage in Baghdad—scores killed … deteriorating security situation … Iraqi government helpless … military untrained and disorganized … terrorists operating at will, etc.—it occurred to me that, even if all that the reporter had said were perfectly true it was also exactly what the terrorists would have said if they could have written his script for him. Did this matter? Was it just a coincidence that the “reality” of the Iraq war, endlessly repeated and identified as such by the news media, so closely resembled the terrorist “narrative,” as our brainy students of textual deconstruction would put it? Or—the question seemed just worth asking—was reality itself being shaped by the terrorist narrative because of, first, the media’s predisposition to believe it and, second, the lack of any persuasive rival narrative from those who continued to claim, in more or less vague terms, that “progress” was being made against the insurgency?

I don’t know the answer to this question, but one indication of the importance of asking it came as the media themselves, perhaps emboldened by the success of their preferred party in the recent election, embarked on one of their periodic “reality” jags, proudly boasting of their own intimate relations with that elusive commodity and taking the occasion to pour scorn and contempt upon what they take to be the Bush administration’s unfamiliarity with same....-
http://www.newcriterion.com/archives/25/01/delusions-of-reality/

Just finished; 'Freakonomics', by Steven Levitt.

An unconventional Economist, very logicaly, explains a lot of our 'habits' in terms of 'the power of incentives'.

He stands a lot of "beliefs" on their head. Like political correctness and peak oil.

Connect the dots to the Liberals, aka the Librano$

1. Frost hits the rhubarb posts this:

The following is dedicated especially to those who try to protect the taxpayers of Canada, perhaps in the background.

Connecting the dots

Caveat: It is difficult to read what is in the following tables because they are small, but Blogger is limited for displaying table information. Check the websites in question. Note that below the tables is more information. It is possible to save and to enlarge the tables....-
http://frosthitstherhubarb.blogspot.com/2007/01/jan-1-2007-happy-new-year.html

2. Jack's Newswatch posts the above link and comments:

Connecting the dots

My eyes just crossed! | January 1st, 2006

The following is dedicated especially to those who try to protect the taxpayers of Canada, perhaps in the background.

3. Commenter says:

What a coup/almagamation of financial criteria. Charts unreadable, but websites listed to study. Off the top, Bombardier subsidized, and to what amount with 90 percent of its rail manufacturing offshore. No, Conservatives aren’t partyers with colored condoms, thongs-for-sale interests — pursuing fiscal responsibility is any intelligent society’s endeavour.

Links will take time to scrutinize, digest for full implications. Where’s Stephen Taylor? He can weigh in here.

Comment by Anna Keightley | January 1, 2007

Financial Alert: "Sell" Librano$.

The Librano$, an epithet applied to the Liberal Party of Canada, is apt and real. The criminality is found in a maze of financial transactions, similar to the Enron scam. Who can deconstruct the Librano$?

Frosthitstherhubarb has amassed a passel of financial stuff; we await the results of the financial analysis.

BTW, Prime Minister Harper is versed in economics. Has he a dossier on the Librano$?

This may be of interest:

"Years before the fall of Enron a group of college students did an analysis of it for a business class, says Malcolm Gladwell, and posted their advice on the web: “Sell”... more»"
(arts and letters daily)...-

Link goes here:

OPEN SECRETS
by MALCOLM GLADWELL
Enron, intelligence, and the perils of too much information

Conclusion:

The people in the group reviewed Enron’s accounting practices as best they could. They analyzed each of Enron’s businesses, in succession. They used statistical tools, designed to find telltale patterns in the company’s fi-nancial performance—the Beneish model, the Lev and Thiagarajan indicators, the Edwards-Bell-Ohlsen analysis—and made their way through pages and pages of footnotes. “We really had a lot of questions about what was going on with their business model,” Krueger said. The students’ conclusions were straightforward. Enron was pursuing a far riskier strategy than its competitors. There were clear signs that “Enron may be manipulating its earnings.” The stock was then at forty-eight dollars—at its peak, two years later, it was almost double that—but the students found it over-valued.

The report was posted on the Web site

of the Cornell University business school, where it has been, ever since, for anyone who cared to read twenty-three pages of analysis.

The students’ recommendation was on the first page, in boldfaced type: “Sell.” ...-

http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/070108fa_fact

Hoax: Freakonomics:

I read and posted about the book in sept 2005.

interesting topics include ill-conceived monitoring of high school test scores in Illinois(?), which result in some teachers correcting the test answers to make themselves look good, and debunking of Rudi Giuliani's claim his countermeasures is what cleaned up NYC when in fact the sudden plunge in certain crime stats all over the country coincided with the age range of the generation out of roe vs wade many of whom would have grown up in economically and socially distressed environment if abortion hadnt been made legal.

ah maz, dontcha know according to Kate, 'connecting dots' is pasttime that is supposed to be given up after childhood ????

ROYAL LEPAGE CHALLENGES AUDITOR'S REPORT
Auditor General Sheila Fraser rarely gets accused of getting it wrong, but a major federal contractor strongly disagrees with her latest report, which looked into the bungling of a $1-billion deal to move Canada's military, RCMP and public servants to new postings. ...-
national newswatch

" a major federal contractor" = Royal Lepage. Nice wording. Translation: A major Liberal, aka Librano$ proxy, partner, paypals.

The tactic: Shoot the messenger; in this case, the forensic accountant, Sheila Fraser.

Royal Lepage is treading on dangerous ground; contempt of Parliament. ...-

More here:

Lobbying and Donations by the Top 25 Federal Government Contractors
(Democracy Watch - October 31, 2002)
http://www.dwatch.ca/camp/RelsOct3102.html

Bombardier donations!!!! to Chretien's Librano$ included. Royal Lepage's contributions pale relative to Bombardier's large$$e. Yet, Royal Lepage sales are higher than Bombardier's, according to figures from Elections Canada, aka J-P Kingsley's ex-turf.

"bungling of a $1-billion deal"

So why do they continue to report $1B? My calculator adds up to $1.5 billion.

Jan 30, 2006 $26,750
Nov 4, 2004 $124,984,000
Nov 4, 2004 $29,279,000

Meanwhile Bombardier has surpassed RL with sales $219,008,873 (since Dec 2003)

csi.contractscanada.gc.ca

My calculator adds up to $1.5 billion.

My calculator obviously doesn't work either. More like $1.5M

From Bourque
January 2nd, 2007
Bourque has learned that Don Guy, the Ontario Premier's former Chief of Staff, is now President and CEO at Pollara, the country's leading public opinion and market research company. According to an internal document, Guy, who won't be involved in any way in any Ontario government work, will be offering "expertise in strategy development, management, execution and relationship-building" to "lead POLLARA through its next stage of expansion to meet the growing needs of its customers at home and abroad". It is expected that Guy will be steering the company back toward the private sector, where it has enjoyed its greatest success. Don Guy will continue to serve as campaign director for the Ontario Liberal Party, a role he has held since 1998 through to the October 2007 Ontario general election.
Why do i think the Liberal Party of Canada is about to see a massive surge in "recently conducted" polls?