statism watch

Paul Koring, Globe and Mail
November 14, 2008

Review of policy decisions by government officials falls outside complaints commission’s mandate, court filing argues

More than 20 months after it first promised full co-operation, the Harper government has moved to block public hearings into whether it ordered Canadian soldiers to transfer prisoners to Afghan security forces knowing the detainees would likely be tortured.

Only weeks before the long-delayed hearings were to begin, government lawyers want the Federal Court to outlaw them, saying the independent Military Police Complaints Commission can investigate only specific and individual instances of tortured prisoners, not whether all prisoners faced the risk of torture.

Commission chairman Peter Tinsley ordered the public hearings last spring, saying he was left with no other choice. “Ordering a public interest hearing is necessary to ensure a full investigation of the grave allegations,” Mr. Tinsley said. Since then, he has rolled multiple allegations covering different time periods into a single public-interest investigation.

Hearings were to start Dec. 4.

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Paul Joseph Watson, PrisonPlanet.com
November 14, 2008

Neel Kashkari, the fox appointed to guard the henhouse and front the multi-trillion dollar bailout, faced angry questions from Dennis Kucinich and Rep. Darrell Issa during a hearing today, as Issa accused him of playing a “bait and switch” game with taxpayers’ money.

All the major networks carried footage of the U.S. House subcommittee hearing this morning and aired Kashkari’s opening statement in full. But as soon as Kucinich and Issa were about to weigh in, the networks almost simultaneously cut the feed and moved on to a different story. Another example of how the corporate media is owned by the same elite that runs the Federal Reserve.

Kucinich accused Paulson and Bush of circumventing Congress by completely changing the destination of where the bailout money would go and refusing to disclose what had happened to $2 trillion dollars of taxpayer money, adding, “I think it’s fairly obvious that Congress would have never passed the [rescue plan] had it known how Treasury would marshal the resources it was given.”

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Jacob Steelman, LewRockwell.com
November 14, 2008

In the midst of the imploding US and European financial systems and the resultant bankruptcies, nationalizations and bailouts the People’s Daily, China’s official newspaper, called for a new global currency to replace the US dollar. Writing in the People’s Daily edition of 17 September 2008 Professor Shi Jianxun of Shanghai’s Tongji University said that “[t]he world urgently needs to create a diversified currency and financial system and fair and just financial order that is not dependent on the United States.”

This was later followed by a Friday 26 September address by Prime Minister Gordon Brown before the United Nations in which he called for a new “global financial order.” It is to be based on “transparency, not opacity, rewarding success not excess, responsibility, not impunity, and …is [to be] global not national.” Brown went on to say “We must clearly state that the age of irresponsibility must be [at an] end.” As the G20 nations prepare to meet in Washington this week Mr. Brown has again called for a new global financial order, a Bretton Woods II. Mr. Brown wants the Middle East oil producers and China to assist in contributing to the bailouts taking place in the United States and Europe. In calling for such contributions Mr. Brown is effectively admitting the United States and Europe are broke and have exhausted their government (and central bank) resources in an effort to cure this massive market correction (frequently called a recession, deep recession or even depression) which has been underway since August 2007. China has announced its own stimulus program but it is unclear whether included in the 4 trillion Yuan amount are new programs or existing ones or a combination of both (my Chinese friends who are cynical about China’s government leaders laughingly tell me it probably includes the infrastructure projects for China’s 2008 Olympics as well).

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Steve Hargreaves, CNN.com
November 14, 2008

U.S. economic mettle is tested as emboldened leaders from throughout the world gather in Washington

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The role of the United States as the world’s economic leader will be tested this weekend when 20 significant world leaders meet in Washington to address the global financial crisis.

Some European leaders are hailing the summit as the next Bretton Woods – a reference to the historic talks in the latter days of WWII that, in effect, made the dollar the world’s dominant currency and laid the foundation for the economic order of the past 60 years.

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This is good in theory – if it were about reducing government overhead and getting the state out of markets it has no business being in. However, recent stories, such as this one in the New York Times, make it clear that such assets are more likely to be handed over to institutions newly flush with cash for pennies on the dollar. Looting, in other words. Hey Jim, didn’t your leader say something about buying low and selling high the other day?

Tonda MacCharles, Bruce Campion-Smith
November 14, 2008

CN Tower among items potentially on the block as Ottawa faces deficit; CBC won’t be sold off

WINNIPEG–The Conservative government is considering selling off capital assets to help balance the books, a sale that could include the CN Tower, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said yesterday.

Other belt-tightening measures under consideration include public sector pay-freezes, and cuts to operating expenditures.

Flaherty declined to say which assets are on the block, but said such a sale is “one way of reducing a deficit or perhaps having a small surplus.”

He raised the example of the CN Tower, which was completed at a cost of $63 million in 1975. It is federally owned and managed by Canada Lands Company, a Crown corporation.

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Jeff Gray, The Globe and Mail
November 14, 2008

Despite cancelling a study on road tolls just before the fall election, the federal transportation department was among the key sponsors of a Toronto conference yesterday on road pricing featuring experts from Europe and the United States.

Transport Canada officials cancelled a study of road pricing on Sept. 6, the same day a story about the study appeared in The Globe and Mail and the day before the federal election was called.

But yesterday, Transport Canada was at the top of a list of sponsors of the Transportation Futures Forum, a conference at a downtown Toronto hotel featuring officials involved in road-pricing schemes – including central London’s famous congestion charge.

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