Canada
What a lovely kettle of fish!
Canada and Venzuela are also being heavily courted by the PRC to divert oil sales from the western (read USA) market to the dear old mainland PRC.
I for one am not surprised. The more we find out about the corrupt support that Saddam was given, the better we “understand” the “principled” opposition to the US led effort in Iraq. What a coincidence! All the opposing nations from China and Russia to “friends” like Canada, France, Germany, Belgium et al were right in there with the UN feeding at the trough. And people want us to turn to the UN? For what?
This is why I don’t pay taxes to the Canadian government and will be a permanent emigre…shamefull…I wonder if people at JB’s tonight will defend this.
From everything i have read about the whole mess, there are no direct links to those in power. It would be one thing if the PM or one of the cabinet ministers were caught on tape demanding money or that others made the demands. One can assume that those involved are just a small group acting on thier own behalf. I do beleive that it is a mess and something needs to be done about it. All those who were involved should be punished. But why should the whole party be blamed for the actions of a few individuals?
the whole party should be blamed for all the fiascos of the past decade … this one included. they won’t be though, because the opposition parties just can’t get it together. that, and any party with even a partial leaning to the west will get no support from the “center of the universe” and those near there.
might be a smaller minority government (ha) but i don’t see people making the switch yet.
Chewycorns, I hope you email this list to The Globe and Mail. Have you sent it to any Canadian newspapers? I believe every word of it…and Canada’s playing with fire when it comes to China. They don’t know what they are doing and the Chinese are running circles around them…just yesterday, I was reading up on that so-called ‘trade mission to China’ that was in the news recently and started to look up the actual trade deals that were signed. It was like ‘overseas Chinese Mr. _______________ signs deal with small town tech. college _______________ to provide English teachers for less than the Canadian minimum wage.’ / ‘overseas Chinese Mr. __________signs deal with mid-sized Canadian city ___________ to buy Canadian potash.’ It was scary…
From my understanding, more sordid in-depth details on my first post are available, but in Canada there is a “news blackout” on most of the details based on a gag order. Details on the cozy relationship between Raymond Chretien, Chirac, and a “secret” marriage between the two families. Harper alluded to this one time in the House of Commons, and the Liberals asked him if he cared to repeat those words outside of Parliament The whole power structure revolves around the Liberals – the establishment won’t rock the boat, especially if it involves giving power to a bunch of Western Conservatives. The Globe and Mail is part of Liberal Inc. so they won’t rock the boat too much…
Regarding the Trade Missions – yes I know they are a joke. I don’t mind Canada selling its natural resources to clients, but not the companies on a whole and not to Chinese-government owned entities with links to the PLA. Regarding the city links etc., it just reiterates my opinion of the small businessman in Canada. Willing to feed on the table scraps or sell out their countrypeople, because they are too stupid, parochial, and politically brainwashed to do anything better. 
I can just picture these twits talking about hockey and Tim Hortons, while bitching about the US to the “butchers in Beijing.” Seriously, it saddens me that the country treats its number two trading partner (China) better than its number one partner (The United States). Now that I have two passports, my Canadian one is expendable. :bravo:
Just last night, I was thinking that Canada’s obsessive compulsive relationship with defining its foreign policy in relation to the US is going to do us in…the US won’t do us in…the 3rd party here, China, will basically take over Canada without our even noticing and we will still be facing the US and patting ourselves on the back for saying ‘zed’ instead of ‘zee’ meanwhile all of our oilfields, freshwater, natural resources, real estate are owned by the Chinese gov’t and overseas Chinese patriots to Beijing.// Have you ever noticed that Canada doesn’t have any Masters Programs in East Asian Studies like the Hopkins Nanjing Center or Sheffield, UK or SEAS?? That’s weird to me.
All your Canada are belong to us.
p.s. does anyone else think we could use a few more emoticons. I’d be nice to have an RoC and PRC flag in addition to the existing US, EU, Canada, and UK flags.
To be fair, China owns alot of the USA’s debt and some assets as well. It all sounds similar to when americans were complaining about Japan owning everything. I dont agree with selling some of our private companies to China. It would be one thing if they were individual Chinese owners, but not the state. I havent heard about it in a while, but i know there was talk about China buying one of our steel producers. Dont think it was Inco, but it was a big one. I think Canada really needs to be doing more than just selling primary products, refine them and make something of them and then sell that.
While I agree with the statment that “the center of the universe” doesnt want the conservatives, iam out west and i dont want them either. Like a friend of mine said, its trusting the devil you know opposed to the one you dont. And the things ive heard them talk about wanting, makes me want to keep them out. But what are my options, NDP havent been doing enough to make me want to vote for them.
ndp - bwa haha haha hahahahahaha. provincial ndp destroyed bc for a decade, and (some say draconian) measures were put in to try improve things since they got tossed out on their collective ear. bc is getting hot again, but not to the point where it could be (yet).
thought they don’t impress me that much, the conservatives must be able to do a better job than the present bunch. it’ll just take a miracle for the east/central to vote in a bunch from the west. but there’s a first for (almost) anything.
One Canadian politician I admire greatly was the late Separatist Premier of Quebec, Rene Levesque. Levesque was a Quebec Nationalist, a separatist who dreamed of creating a Francophone state from the remains of Canadian Confederation. He was an honest man, and a straight-shooting politician. He wasn’t a hypocrite either. That’s quite an achievement for a Canadian politician. He was honest and real. He’d rather show you the unpleasant truth than a varnished lie.
He would be turning over in his grave over the Federal sponsorship scandal. After all, Quebec has some of the cleanest election financing laws in the democratic world. Under Levesque, Quebec’s law governing the financing of provincial parties promoted grassroots democracy. The law limits individual contributions to $3,000 and prohibits donations from companies.
The great thing about this scandal is that it will light the separatist flame again. :bravo: :bravo: 
theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ … /National/
(same article)
this has me a little confused, though. i thought the whole basis for the independence movement was their own view that quebeckers are different. if this is only english canada’s opinion about quebec, then why push for it? to realize “our” views about quebec? or is it that they want to consider themselves as distinct and unique, but we are not allowed to do the same, at least not in any way that casts them in an unflattering light?
In my opinion, Quebec
Is that so?
Asia.ubc.ca/[/quote]
The ‘Asian Studies’ Program at UBC- as far as I can tell- is focussed on Literature, Language Studies, Religious Studies, Anthro and doesn’t really get into politics. That is the beauty of Sheffield’s program, where you can study contemporary identity issues in Okinawa in English or the Hopkins Program where you can study public memory in Nanjing, etc. I suppose you could always do Politics and ask for a thesis supervisor who knows East Asia but it really isn’t the same as other institutions where a political analysis of the East is encouraged. There is probably one exception to my observation here: there is a ‘working group’ on the South China Sea at UBC that tries to track territorial claims and international law.
things are heating up … some liberal mp’s “may” cross to the conservatives …
liberals at 25%, conservatives at 36% …
will it finally reach the boiling point?
cbc.ca/story/canada/national … 50411.html
a quote from David Kilgour, a Liberal MP from Edmonton:
Na Na Na Na Hey Hey Hey Goodbye!!! :bravo: :uhhuh: :upyours:
Why aren