statism watch

Tim Harper, Les Whittington
November 16, 2008

Harper commits Canada to do its part, doesn’t rule out future bailout plan for auto industry

WASHINGTON–The Conservative government is going to open its wallet to help boost the Canadian economy as part of a global effort to stave off a deepening recession, Prime Minister Stephen Harper says.

After an emergency meeting with other world leaders yesterday, Harper said his government is setting aside its aversion to budgetary pump-priming – and deficit spending – so Canada can do its part to improve worldwide business conditions.

“We will do what we have to, to contribute to boosting global demand,” the Prime Minister told reporters after he and other Group of 20 leaders agreed on collective action to stimulate the economy.

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“…spy agencies have honed their skills at tracking and killing single individuals using aerial vehicles operated by technicians hundreds or thousands of miles away.”

Karen De Young and Joby Warrick, Washington Post
November 16, 2008

The United States and Pakistan reached tacit agreement in September on a don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy that allows unmanned Predator aircraft to attack suspected terrorist targets in rugged western Pakistan, according to senior officials in both countries. In recent months, the U.S. drones have fired missiles at Pakistani soil at an average rate of once every four or five days.

The officials described the deal as one in which the U.S. government refuses to publicly acknowledge the attacks while Pakistan’s government continues to complain noisily about the politically sensitive strikes.

The arrangement coincided with a suspension of ground assaults into Pakistan by helicopter-borne U.S. commandos. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said in an interview last week that he was aware of no ground attacks since one on Sept. 3 that his government vigorously protested.

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Christopher Booker, London Telegraph
November 16, 2008

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore’s chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China’s official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its “worst snowstorm ever”. In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

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