statism watch

Announced at the Canadian International Council – that’s our newly minted franchise of the Council on Foreign Relations.

CBC News
January 19, 2009

Federal Industry Minister Tony Clement said Monday the government will inject $350 million into the Business Development Bank in a move meant to spur the extension of credit to small and medium-sized firms.

Clement made the announcement in Toronto during an address to the Canadian International Council.

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Steve Watson, Infowars.net
January 19, 2009

A prominent PhD economist has slammed the latest round of bank bailouts and argued that they will not work because the financial crisis was caused and prolonged by such activity in the first place.

Marc Faber, founder and managing director of Hong Kong-based Marc Faber Ltd., has argued that propping up weak companies with taxpayer money is foolhardy.

“The financial crisis has occurred because of government interventions,” Faber told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.”

“Specifically central banks, or specifically the US Fed, by keeping interest rates artificially low for too long, they created a huge leverage in the system. So the people who created the problem now are in charge to bail out the system and that’s why I am very skeptical that it would work,” Faber explained.

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Care about your country? Then join the civilian press corps. Buy a cheap handheld camera or upgrade your cellphone to one with vid capability – and carry it with you. Accountability of power is one of the pillars of a civil society.

CBC News
January 19, 2009

The second phase of the inquiry into the death of a Polish immigrant who was shocked with a Taser at Vancouver International Airport begins Monday in Vancouver.

Retired B.C. Court of Appeal judge Thomas Braidwood will spend the next six weeks overseeing the inquiry prompted by Robert Dziekanski’s death on Oct. 14, 2007, a death that triggered debate across the country on the police use of stun guns.

The first half of the inquiry, a “study commission” held last year, broadly examined Tasers and their use.

The second phase will focus specifically on what happened to Dziekanski and look for recommendations that could prevent a similar incident in the future.

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Has it not been said that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing while expecting a different result?

David Stringer, Associated Press
January 19, 2009

LONDON – Britain announced a new bank bailout Monday to boost lending into a struggling economy and protect banks from the bad assets sinking their balance sheets – an admission that an earlier sweeping rescue plan didn’t do the job.

The plan outlined Monday would require banks who want to participate to identify their riskiest assets and allow them to pay a fee to insure them with the government. By offering to insure bank loans, the government is exposing taxpayers to billions of pounds of potential losses, though an exact amount can’t be pinpointed until banks start participating.

But banks would have to enter legally binding agreements to lend more money to borrowers, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said.

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David Derbyshire, Daily Mail
January 19, 2009

The cocktail of gender-bending chemicals entering rivers and streams is more potent and harmful than anyone realised, it has been revealed.

Scientists have found an entirely new class of chemicals that is changing male fish into females – and which could be contributing to the soaring rate of infertility and defects in men.

They have yet to find the source of the chemicals, known as anti-androgens, but believe they could come from pesticides, industrial pollution or pharmaceutical drugs.

Until now it was assumed that the most serious gender bending man-made chemicals were those that mimicked the female sex hormone oestrogen.

The new pollutants, which were discovered in more than 30 rivers, work by blocking male sex hormones such as testosterone. In animal tests they have shown to cause low sperm counts and genital deformities.

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Sound familiar, Toronto? This is an international scam. It’s also an international scam that elected representatives – the US Congress, the Canadian House of Commons – are being cut out of the decision making process. As states are increasingly piloted by elite policy-making forums and international ‘governance’ – meaning, binding treaties overseen by unelected bodies – these parliamentary chambers become increasingly ceremonial and vestigial.

James Chapman, The Daily Mail
January 19, 2009

Powers which allow the Government to impose bin taxes on the whole country without consulting Parliament have been brought in by stealth.

A little-noticed clause in the Climate Change Act means all councils are free to adopt charges of up to £100 – without MPs voting on the issue first.

The Conservatives said the revelation was an ‘outrage’.

They likened it to ship money, the tax levied by Charles I without the consent of Parliament – one of the causes of the English Civil War.

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Michelle Shephard, The Toronto Star
January 19, 2009

GUANTANAMO BAY — Omar Khadr’s military hearing resumed amid questions as to whether the charges against the Canadian captive have been withdrawn and if the military judge was still legally mandated to hear his case.

After less than an hour of arguments Monday morning, Army Col. Patrick Parrish called a recess to consider how the case should proceed.

If Parrish rules that the charges against Khadr have indeed been withdrawn, it would be the fourth time since the Toronto-born prisoner was captured in 2002 that his war crimes charges have been thrown out. Khadr has been charged with five war crimes, including murder for the death of U.S. Delta Force soldier Christopher Speer

The confusion about Khadr’s hearing began last week when lawyers were told that a top Pentagon official had secretly withdrawn the charges against Khadr and the other prisoners the Pentagon is prosecuting. The charges were then reinstated last week.

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Ian Black, Nicholas Watt, Peter Walker, The Guardian
January 19, 2009

Troops pulling out ‘at greatest possible speed’ says Israeli PM – but Hamas threatens to start rearming immediately

Israel pulled out more troops and tanks from the Gaza Strip this morning in what the government said would be a swift withdrawal as long as the fragile truce holds.

Hamas followed Israel in agreeing a ceasefire yesterday, ending three weeks of heavy fighting in Gaza that left more than 1,200 Palestinians dead and much of the coastal territory in ruins.

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Ian Black, Nick Watt, The Guardian
January 19, 2009

Mubarak calls summit to secure end of fighting, death toll tops 1,300 as UN humanitarian team goes in

Hamas followed Israel into agreeing to a fragile ceasefire yesterday, ending three weeks of heavy fighting in the Gaza Strip, as Arab and European leaders scrambled to agree lasting arrangements to prevent a new outbreak of hostilities.

The Palestinian Islamist movement said it would give Israel a week to withdraw its troops and tanks from the territory, but Israel retorted that it would decide when to leave. “The operation is not over,” said a military spokeswoman. “This is only a holding of fire.”

Seventeen rockets were fired into Israel, three of them after the Hamas statement. But Israeli army officials confirmed last night that some ground forces had started to pull out, while the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said: “We are interested in quitting the Gaza Strip at the greatest possible speed.”

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