BendGovernment

Harper and the Conservatives are doing a generally good job, yet there are loose ends that must be cleared up.

Pressed for time? Not really interested? Well here in short form, I ask, is this OK with you?

Freedom quietly ebbs away in Canada via [amateur paralegal] Human Rights Commissions.

In a nutshell then, here is why the Human Rights Commission related trials in Vancouver are so important.

Some Provincial Human Rights *police* have been abusing their powers.

In the beginning they protected rights of the minority from unfair discrimination. A good thing.

Recently they have been unfairly leveling charges and penalties upon authors who express opinions about things like the influence of immigrant groups. Not the same as malicious slander at all.

Authors have made observations about fund raising for terrorist groups, risk prone religious practice, and dress that conceals a person*s identity.

A free society should be able to talk about things that affect our security and freedom even if it does relate to one religious or ethnic group, so long as the debate contains no slur or disrespect.

The discussion of policy and security is not * hate speech*, yet the HRC can charge an author who writes about *sensitive* issues with a crime.

The government backed HRC [appointees], can lay charges and prosecute the author while attending their own employment five days a week without any cost or penalty, except for some overtime if desired.

The author must be absent from employment and pay for lawyers, assuming debt from day one and then certainly pay financial penalties as the HRC has never lost a case so far. [ Fishy?] a Kangaroo Court that is not a real court yet operates in Canada? Impossible, you say? Wanna* bet?

The freedom to express opinions or report on the dangers of some religious customs and deceptive fund raising is squashed by the HRC. Clearly un-Canadian , deceptive and dangerous. [ No appeal ].

Keep Canada free. Do not allow the HRC to stifle opinion and debate in magazines like Macleans, the National Post or the bogosphere.

Learn about this under-reported fiasco in the Steyn - Levant - Macleans Magazine VS Human Rights Commission series on Canadian Blogsite @ -

http://www.SmallDeadAnimals.com
= TG

Labels: Canada, Commission, freedom, Human Rights, Levant, Macleans, Steyn

The Radio1 issue is from 1942






These early issues of S/9 are from 1935



The Hytron Tube ad is a magazine back cover.

The real romance of radio & shipping. . . eh?


Remember to click on the image for a closer view. Images may have been better if I had removed the plastic covers.

Labels: Antique, antiques, communications, Ham, History, Radio

Avoid US dollar value shares?

Stick to Canada, Netherlands, German, India and more reliable currency values?

Addison Wiggins thinks so, because . . .

** Today, there are simply too many dollars in circulation for the currency’s own good. Why? Americans have been living beyond their means for more than two decades. The U.S. dollar’s problems stem from a single cause. **If there’s a bubble,** wrote David Rosenberg, chief economist at Merrill Lynch, ** it’s in this four–letter word: debt. The U.S. economy is just awash in it. **

You’ve seen it firsthand: John Q. Public now holds more credit cards and outstanding loans – with a higher and higher total debt load – than ever before. Outstanding consumer credit, including mortgage and other debt, reached $ 9.3 trillion in April 2003 – a significant increase from its $ 7 trillion total in January 2000 – but by the third quarter of 2007, debt had nearly doubled since 2000, to $ 13.7 trillion. With consumer spending alone responsible for approximately 70 percent of U.S. GDP, that’s quite a hefty personal debt load.

The corporate debt picture is no better. American companies have never depended so much on sales of their corporate bonds. Between 2002–2007, investment – grade corporate bond sales increased nearly 60 percent, growing from $598 billion to $951 billion. But junk bond sales for that same period broke the bank, surging from $57 billion to $133 billion.

The third leg of the debt problem, following consumer and business debt, is Uncle Sam. Government debt as of November 7, 2007, officially passed $ 9,000,000,000,000. That’s about $ 30,000 for every man, woman, and child in the country. This total includes debt owned by many types of investors, from individuals to corporations to Federal Reserve banks and especially to foreign interests. (By 2004, foreign central banks had stockpiled more than $ 1.3 trillion worth of dollar – denominated Treasury bonds and agency bonds at the Federal Reserve. By 2007, foreign debt had nearly doubled, to $ 2.033 trillion.)

What the $ 7.8 trillion figure does not account for are items like the gap between the government’s Social Security and Medicare commitments and the money put aside to pay for them. If these items are factored in, the government debt burden for every American rises to well over $ 175,000. In 2005, the Methuselah of investment mavens, Sir John Templeton, then 93, said you should get out of U.S. stocks, the U.S. dollar, and excess residential real estate. Templeton believed the dollar would fall 40 percent against other major currencies, and that this would lead the nation’s major creditors – notably Japan and China – to dump their U.S. bonds, which would cause interest rates to run up, thus beginning a long period of stagflation. He was right.

Don’t let his age fool you – Templeton was still sharp in 1999 when the financial industry hacks in Florida were urging their customers to buy more tech stocks. Templeton warned that the bubble would soon burst. He was right; they were wrong. Of course, he was only 87 back then. He is almost certainly right again. Other great investors, too, are getting out of the dollar. For the first time in his life, Warren Buffett is investing in foreign currencies.

George Soros, who made a fortune selling sterling in the 1992 ERM crisis, warns that the U.S. system could “ blow up ” at any time. Richard Russell, the influential editor of the Dow Theory letters, speaking at the New Orleans Investment Conference, warned: “If ever there was a crisis that could shake the global economy – this is it.” Jim Rogers is teaching his daughter to speak Chinese. When old – timers nod their heads in agreement – especially when they happen to be the most successful investors in the world – their advice may be worth listening to.

American consumers, companies, the U.S. government, and the country as a whole owe more dollars to more people than ever before. But perhaps the greatest threat to the U.S. economy is its foreign creditors. There is – or should be – a limit to the number of dollars foreigners are willing to buy and hold and thus a limit to their willingness to service our credit habit. Why? Because the United States, while still the world’s number – one economic power, is showing itself to be an unreliable steward of its own currency.

Regards,
Addison Wiggins
The DailyRekoning.com
=============================
= TG

Labels: currency, dollar, dollar inflation, Euro, Euros, India, inflation, US, US Dollar, Value

Wonderful woman who has been there and seen that.



Excellent focus.

Total clarity without a flood of detail.

Communicating principle to us in her second language.

This is the atrocity Saudi religious police enacted against girls caught in a school fire because their faces were not covered.

http://muttawa.blogspot.com/2004_04_01_archive.html

North America should see this video from time to time but alas, Britney Spears stands in the way. = TG

Labels: honor, Honour, Muslim, Muslim women, religious police, Respect, Saudi, women

Things are looking up for us ** Poor Boys**

To go along with the new modern Asustek laptop bargain at $299,

http://tinyurl.com/2zt7et

you will soon be able to buy a car that uses no gas or diesel for 2,500 Euros.

There is a BBC video waiting for you at:
AutoBlogGreen.com

French designed, India made at Tata Motors and a new plant going up in Melbourn Au.

Soon, a car and a great laptop for 9K. = TG

Labels: $299, Asus, Asustek, Bargain, Bargain laptop, Euros, no gas, Tata motors, Van

35 mpg CAFE into law? 86 mpg Honda Insight..No problemo!

December 19, 2007
Now it's pen-on-paper official:

Let's just be thankful that the 35 mpg standard survived all the backing down. And the Detroit News mentions this: **a measure in the bill that will provide at least $90 million annually for battery research to make plug-in hybrids a reality.**

Somehow I thought the PHEV money had been stricken. Hey, it's nice to be wrong. While the 35 mpg number won't kick in until 2020, the bill mandates changes starting with the 2011 model year. My, that's soon.
========== AutoblogGreen.com

PHEVs are a reality, only not in large scale production yet. There is a thriving business in converting the Prius and other makes from hybrid to PHEV. = TG

Labels: auto, Bush, CAFE, hybrid, hybrids, law, mpg, President Bush, sign

Venezuela's Hugo Chavez says he wants to send oil to $200 a barrel. Robert Zubrin has a plan to stop him. In his just released book, Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil,


The clever Saudis are the most lethal enemy of our Western free world. Osama was / is a Saudi. 1999 oil income approx 4 Billion$…2007 oil income 800 Billion$. The Saudis finance madrasses world wide where hungry young men are offered regular meals along with anti-western brain washing.

Robert Zubrin correctly suggests a stroke of the pen in USA congress that will limit oil price gouging. There is NO shortage.
================== Expert and Author: of Energy Victory.

In a nutshell, his proposal is this: that the American congress should pass a law mandating that all new cars sold in the United States be flex-fueled, which is to say able to run on any combination of gasoline or alcohol fuels. Flex fuel is proven technology which only adds a few hundred dollars to the cost of a car.

[ In 2008/09, 100% of all new cars sold in Brazil will be 100% Flex fuel.= TG]

In 2007, roughly 90 percent of all cars sold in Brazil were flex-fueled, but outside of that country, their market share was quite low - comprising about 3 percent of US auto sales, for example. However, as Zubrin argues convincingly, if it were mandated that every new car sold in the USA had to be flex fueled as a standard feature, then practically every auto manufacturer in the world would be forced to switch their lines over to flex fuel.

[ If you own a Flex fuel vehicle you have a choice. Gas at $1.05 -litre or E85 or M85 at 49 cents per litre. If the Saudis / Opec lower gas prices to compete, you can revert to gasoline anytime the price is below biofuel prices.= TG]

Thus the effect of a US flex fuel mandate would be global, and within a few years, put hundreds of millions of cars on the road worldwide capable of running indifferently on either methanol, ethanol, or gasoline.

With such a market available, alcohol fuel pumps and associated infrastructure would quickly appear, and the vertical monopoly that the oil cartel holds on the world's vehicular fuel supply would be broken, as gasoline would be forced to compete everywhere against alcohol produced from multiple sources, including biomass, coal, stranded natural gas, recycled urban trash, and so forth.


To be sure, such a development would not quite destroy OPEC. Alcohol fuels are only competitive against oil when the price exceeds about $50 per barrel. So in a free market, the best Zubrin's plan could accomplish would be to send oil prices back down to that level. Still, in the face of current oil prices of $100 per barrel, and much worse potentially in the offing, forcing the price back to $50/bbl and containing it at that level would certainly be an enormous accomplishment.

[Hugo Chavez is suggesting Opec pricing go to $200 per barrel. ]

Which brings us to Zubrin's idealism. He doesn't just want to take away the Saudi's treasure. He wants to use it to end world poverty. He says: **Instead of financing terrorism, our energy dollars could be used to fund world development. Instead of selling blocks of our media to Saudi princes, we could be selling tractors to Africa. Instead of paying for death, we could be helping to spread life. Instead of buying arms for our enemies and chains for ourselves, we could be building a world of prosperity and freedom.**

http://www.energy-daily.com/reports/The_Plan_To_Destroy_OPEC_999.html
====================
As Zubrin puts it: **So the crux of the matter comes down to this: Do we want to win or lose? The issue at stake in energy security is not a matter of whether the price of gasoline will be $2 per gallon or $3 per gallon; it is who will determine the human future. Do we want to have the enemy's fate in our hands, or do we want to have ours in theirs?**

[BTW… gasoline in the UK sells for about $8 a gallon.. ]

Laos harvests sweet yams for bio fuels. China has been ramping up production. Brazil learned the lesson of 1972/73. North America*s and UK*s ExxonMobile, Chevron, Shell, BP and all are in bed with the devil.. Too bad for us. = TG

Labels: energy, flex-fuels, Hugo Chavez, hybrid, oil, Opec, terrorism