statism watch

Russia Today
November 3, 2008

Until a couple of months ago, some economists argued Russia’s robust growth of recent years had effectively “decoupled” it from a direct correlation with the US economy. While the financial crisis proves the theory wrong, the Russian government is insisting on a new world order

As world leaders try to deal with the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, President Dmitry Medvedev is echoing his French and British counterparts in calling for far reaching changes to the world financial system.

“We will need a new international agreement. The financial system must have common sources, which implies a multiplicity of world financial centres and reserve currencies. We need to form a new risk-management system,which would be based on new techniques, not the principles that the Bretton Woods agreement was based on,” Medvedev said.

Named after the 1944 meeting in the New Hampshire town of the same name, the Bretton Woods agreement led to the creation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Developed countries agreed to stick to a fixed exchange rate for their currencies, pegged to gold.

In the 70s, the Nixon administration unilaterally untied the dollar from gold, making the dollar itself a reserve currency.

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Rachel Metz, Associated Press
November 3, 2008

NEW YORK — Perhaps the biggest threat to Google Inc.’s increasing dominance of Internet search and advertising is the rising fear, justified or not, that Google’s broadening reach is giving it unchecked power.

This scrutiny goes deeper than the skeptical eye that lawmakers and the Justice Department have given to Google’s proposed ad partnership with Yahoo Inc. Many objections to that deal are financial, and surround whether Google and Yahoo could unfairly drive up online ad prices.

A bigger long-term concern for Google could be criticisms over something less tangible – privacy. Increasingly, as Google burrows deeper into everyday computing, its product announcements are prompting questions about its ability to gather more potentially sensitive personal information from users.

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That’s twenty-six.

CBC News
November 3, 2008

A man involved in a weekend stun gun incident in Calgary has died, a spokesperson for the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team said Monday.

Gordon Walker Bowe, 30, was arrested after police were called to a vacant duplex in the 500 block of 42nd Street S.E. at about 8 p.m. Saturday following reports of a suspicious man in the neighbourhood and a break-in.

The provincial response team, which investigates any use of force by police that results in serious injury or death, has confirmed that a Taser was used during Bowe’s arrest, which involved a “significant physical struggle.”

Cliff Purvis, executive director, said he didn’t know how many times the Taser was used.

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A reminder that your elected representatives still accept letters of protest from their constituents. You too can take a stand, simply, with pen and paper. You don’t even need a stamp! Are you willing to let international, unelected, unaccountable lobbyist bodies create policy for your country?

Michael Geist, The Toronto Star
November 3, 2008

Earlier this year, many Canadians were taken aback by reports of a secret trade agreement that conjured up images of iPod-searching border guards and tough new penalties for everyday activities. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement – being negotiated by Canada, the United States, Japan, the European Union and a handful other countries – generated sufficient public concern such that then-Industry Minister Jim Prentice specifically denied any links between the treaty and proposed new legislation.

While the ACTA debate has largely disappeared from the public radar screen, talks continue. Over the summer, I reported about attempts to establish a private consultation committee composed of industry groups that excluded public interest organizations.

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Alexander Cockburn, The Toronto Star
November 3, 2008

The disadvantages to the McCain-Palin ticket don’t need much explication. McCain has never risen to the challenge of the world financial crisis and this failure has shrivelled his chances to near invisibility. Though Sarah Palin has enough horse sense to attack Wall Street greed, it’s a brave soul who would argue that she’s ready to run the country, which in the unlikely event of Republican victory she might well have to do.

So we’re left with Obama-Biden. In the last days before the election, I’ve been scraping around, trying to muster a single positive reason to encourage a vote for Obama. Please note my accent on the positive, since the candidate himself has couched his appeal in this idiom. Why vote for Obama-Biden as opposed to against the McCain-Palin ticket?

Obama invokes change. Yet never has the dead hand of the past had a “reform” candidate so firmly by the windpipe.

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