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Along with this divide between equality and freedom, we also have this age-old pathology in the West: how do you keep people devoted to Western government and committed to the idea that civilization is fragile, when it’s so successful and so many of us are insulated from the alternative? I don’t think any of us in this room have seen in our own livelihood a bin Laden or a Saddam Hussein. We see an angry Dean, we see a nasty journalist editor, perhaps we have a librarian in a carrel that kicks us out, but a man who wants to kill you or bring you back to the 8th century? This is hard to conceive for us. And it was hard for the Greeks to conceive that the Persians were that way, it was hard for the Romans to conceive that the Germani across the Rhine were that way. It’s just something that the West deals with."
"All the same, Russia pledged to increase its total oil deliveries to China by rail to 11 million tons this year, from 6 million tons in 2004. At the summit meeting in Moscow, state oil firm Rosneft signed cooperation deals with the Chinese oil firm Chinese National Petroleum Corporation and Asia's biggest refiner, Sinopec. Rosneft alone plans to increase annual deliveries to China to 9 million tons in 2006, from 4 million tons in 2005."
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Security Council members agreed on Tuesday to hand over potentially sensitive documents to investigators probing alleged corruption in the oil-for-food program for Iraq, a U.N. spokesman said.
At issue was a request for informal notes junior U.N. staff had taken on a Security Council committee that supervised the $67 billion oil-for-food program."
The Americans are probably concerned about minor issues like security.They are probably wondering how many CSIS, RCMP and CBSA officers have been hired above the attrition level with the $10 billion in the security envelope considering they have fewer people today than 12 years ago. Having fewer officers doesn't sound like increased security. Lest we forget Ressam was caught by an alert, experienced officer- not a computer.
Actually increasing manpower instead of talking about it would probably allay American fears on security issues and probably ease border issues which have cost thousands of Canadians' jobs.After all, they keep repeating security trumps trade so maybe that should be addressed .With $700 billion in trade , one would think that $10 billion would be a substantial amount to fix the manpower problems. When only a few hundred have been hired with that $10 billion, one wonders how seriously the government addresses the security problem.To put it another way- even if 700 hundred have been hired @ $90,000/ officer that's only $63 million - where did the rest of the $10 billion go-to replace antiquated equipment that should have been replaced years ago anyway? If the government were truly serious about security, at least 5000 officers would have been hired above the attrition level.The first duty of a government is to protect its citizens.
Meanwhile the other network that was approved with conditions is planning an English service
doing about it besides making excuses? That $1.5 billion could have been put to better use- like hiring more officers and stiffer sentences.
In Canada victims are written off because they don't have a large constituency.Here's a bulletin, predators that use weapons cause the ER's more work than necessary. Since there is already a financial crunch in healthcare system ,why should someone's mother, who has a heart attack and that paid their taxes for 40 years, have to wait in the ER longer than necessary because the bandits have easy access to weapons,- gun registry or no registry? Why was it more important to deal with farmers, hunters, target shooters than with the crooks?- because it was easier?
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When we're so dependent on foreign suppliers, giving away American sources of petroleum and hydrocarbons doesn't make sense." William Reinsch, who served as a senior export-control official in the Clinton Commerce Department, told the Wall Street Journal that CNOOC's "ownership of natural resources like this does raise national-security issues." Mikkal Herberg, director of the Asian Energy Security program at the National Bureau of Asian Research, a Seattle think tank, told the Los Angeles Times that Unocal has some "very, very good deep-water exploration skills" that could have military applications. "
