The Royal Bank has been refusing to open American dollar accounts for Canadian citizens with dual citizenship in Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Sudan, North Korea or Myanmar since April 2006.
The Royal Bank has confirmed it is conforming with U.S. Treasury Department laws.
According to CBC :
"A spokesperson for the federal Finance Department said it was unaware of the practice, and that the bank could be liable for heavy fines."
Now, as it happens, the Royal Bank has a blog [Ed. note - and rivetting stuff it is too] and on this blog they are running a contest : The Next Great Innovator Challenge.
Drop by and let them know that your idea of a great innovation is abiding by Canadian law.
Bonus Reading : The Case For the Amero - The Economics and Politics of a North American Monetary Union,
a Fraser Institute report by Conservative/Reform Party member Herb Grubel.
I especially liked this line with its quotation marks :
"#39 Resistance to the amero will be lessened by continuing to call it officially a "dollar".
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Monday, January 15, 2007
Martin Luther King Day
When the first Gulf War broke out, it was 24/7 on the tube.
The grainy greenblack skyline with lightbursts of "precision bombing", cameramen leaning out of balcony windows in Iraq - Whoa that was a close one!, the endless speculation as to the likelihood of Saddam using chemical weapons on Israel.
UBC's CITR radio station declined to cover it at all.
I remember the announcer saying that in place of war coverage, they would be broadcasting instead the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. And so they did. The news slot would roll around and we would get another speech, recorded twenty-five or more years earlier during the Viet Nam war.
"And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor."
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
They kept this up all day.
It was heart-breaking and uplifting.
It was a lot harder than watching the war on TV.
It still is.
Quotes lifted from Intrepid Liberal.
The grainy greenblack skyline with lightbursts of "precision bombing", cameramen leaning out of balcony windows in Iraq - Whoa that was a close one!, the endless speculation as to the likelihood of Saddam using chemical weapons on Israel.
UBC's CITR radio station declined to cover it at all.
I remember the announcer saying that in place of war coverage, they would be broadcasting instead the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. And so they did. The news slot would roll around and we would get another speech, recorded twenty-five or more years earlier during the Viet Nam war.
"And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor."
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
They kept this up all day.
It was heart-breaking and uplifting.
It was a lot harder than watching the war on TV.
It still is.
Quotes lifted from Intrepid Liberal.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Spinning hearts and minds
From the Globe&Mail :
"After nine months commanding NATO forces in battled-scarred southern Afghanistan, Brigadier-General David Fraser is back home selling the Canadian mission -- with gusto.
When the veteran infantry officer wasn't directing the fierce fight against Taliban insurgents, he was engaging the hearts and minds of Afghans.
In his media and lecture circuit, the main message, carefully scripted by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government, is that Canadian troops are turning back the Taliban and helping to rebuild a shattered and destitute country.
Gen. Fraser reeled off the kilometres of roads rebuilt, canals constructed and ... "
Meanwhile, over at the NYTimes :
"The road that cuts through the heart of Panjwai district here tells all that is going wrong with NATO's war in Afghanistan.
To fight their way into this area and clear it of Taliban insurgents, NATO troops bulldozed through orchards, smashed down walls and even houses, and churned vineyards and melon fields to dust.
Reconstruction projects were planned, but never materialized. Now NATO countries are championing the thoroughfare as a $5 million gift to local people.
Displaced and buffeted by fighting since May, the Afghans are homeless, fearful and far from being won over. They say the road was built for the troops’ benefit and forced on them, at the cost of their land and livelihoods.
“We are compelled to be happy about the road,” said Hajji Baran.
“They bombed our orchards and fields and we have nothing now,” said Hajji Abdul Wahab Kutaisi, 65, a farmer from Pashmul. “They made a road through my land.”
"After nine months commanding NATO forces in battled-scarred southern Afghanistan, Brigadier-General David Fraser is back home selling the Canadian mission -- with gusto.
When the veteran infantry officer wasn't directing the fierce fight against Taliban insurgents, he was engaging the hearts and minds of Afghans.
In his media and lecture circuit, the main message, carefully scripted by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government, is that Canadian troops are turning back the Taliban and helping to rebuild a shattered and destitute country.
Gen. Fraser reeled off the kilometres of roads rebuilt, canals constructed and ... "
Meanwhile, over at the NYTimes :
"The road that cuts through the heart of Panjwai district here tells all that is going wrong with NATO's war in Afghanistan.
To fight their way into this area and clear it of Taliban insurgents, NATO troops bulldozed through orchards, smashed down walls and even houses, and churned vineyards and melon fields to dust.
Reconstruction projects were planned, but never materialized. Now NATO countries are championing the thoroughfare as a $5 million gift to local people.
Displaced and buffeted by fighting since May, the Afghans are homeless, fearful and far from being won over. They say the road was built for the troops’ benefit and forced on them, at the cost of their land and livelihoods.
“We are compelled to be happy about the road,” said Hajji Baran.
“They bombed our orchards and fields and we have nothing now,” said Hajji Abdul Wahab Kutaisi, 65, a farmer from Pashmul. “They made a road through my land.”
Thursday, January 11, 2007
They call it science. We call it bullshit.
"CO2 They call it pollution. We call it life."
Remember that TV ad from the Competitive Enterprise Institute , the one arguing that global warming is not really a problem? They also did the one about how the polar icecaps are actually increasing in size.
A policy research think tank [Ed. note : Read 'oil industry front'], CEI received $2 million from ExxonMobil over the last 8 years.
No more. Exxon has pulled the plug.
From Reuters and CNN :
"Exxon, the world's largest oil company and a longtime skeptic that humans are responsible for global warming, is joining other industries at a series of meetings in Washington and elsewhere to discuss how laws on U.S. carbon control should be written, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Exxon's thinking on global warming has recently become more in-line with those in the scientific community who believe global warming is a human-made reality.
Exxon has also said it has stopped funding the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think tank that questioned the premise that humans are largely responsible for causing global warming by burning fossil fuels with ad campaigns like "Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution; we call it life."
From the ExxonMobil website :
"ExxonMobil takes climate change extremely seriously. We recognise that the risk of climate change and its potential impacts on society and ecosystems may prove to be significant and that actions are needed to address this issue.
We are taking actions to reduce emissions now and are also investing in research and technology in the area of advanced vehicles and fuels, energy technology and climate science that can help find long-term solutions to global warming.
ExxonMobil is taking steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions now."
Still, not everyone seems to have got the memo.
The Natural Resources Stewardship Project, a Canadian environmental policy research think tank which evidently feels the need to put quotation marks around words like "green energy" and "environmentalists", lays out a strategy which quite likely involves a child blowing on a dandelion :
"NRSP’s first campaign is focused on dispelling the notion that Canada needs CO2 reduction plans. CO2 is very unlikely to be a substantial driver of climate change and is not a pollutant."
NRSP, a Canadian environmental think tank more regressive than Exxon.
For more on the parentage of Not Really Science People [Ed. note: Tim Ball!] : BigCityLib
UPDATE : From Rabett Run :
"Richard Littlemore [DeSmogBlog] has the Calgary Herald's statement of defense against Tim Ball suing them because they called him Tim Ball."
Heh. Go Dan Johnson.
Related post : Tim Ballyhoo
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Monday, January 08, 2007
Steve and Sandra and the Clean Baird Act
All Baird quotes courtesy of today's CBC Almamac.
Trouble with Rona was - she just didn't use her boots enough.
Friday, January 05, 2007
25 cents vs 25 percent
In the midst of the recent debate over whether the NDP proposal to increase the Ontario minimum wage by $2 to $10/hr would cause the economic sky to fall, Accidental Deliberations produced this great chart to show just how far behind corporate profits the minimum wage has actually fallen. The "Adjusted Minimum Wage" column shows where the min wage should be. Alas, while profits have almost doubled in the last decade, the minimum wage has increased a whole 60 cents.
So how much of an increase did Ontario's lowest paid workers get?
Ontario Labour Minister Steve Peters announced a 25 cent increase, bringing the minimum wage to $8/hr.
"It is to Ontario's economic advantage to see that our workers are paid a fair wage," said Peters, who also voted on Dec 12 to increase Ontario's MPPs salaries by a whopping 25%.
25 cents vs 25 percent.
Rambling Socialist covers NDP House leader Peter Kormos' ejection from the Ontario legislature for pointing out this hypocracy on the part of the Libs and Cons, who put aside party differences just long enough to pass it 78 to 4.
UPDATE : The Toronto Star gets it.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Where's Waldo?
asks the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Ten points if you can find the average Canadian annual salary on this chart.
100 points for finding the minimum wage worker.
The third bar represents the average annual earnings of Canada's top 100 CEOs, ranging from $2.8 million at #100 to $74.8 million at #1.
By the time you read this, the average top CEO in Canada will have made twice what the average Canadian will make in the whole year - at $4500 per hour.
The most frequently made objection to raising wages is that it prohibits industry competitiveness.
Really?
Are these guys really worth the entire yearly salaries of a whole town?
After all, it's not like that money is going into Research and Development, is it?
Meanwhile one in six children in Canada live in poverty.
Electoral democracy is very nice but it doesn't mean squat without some improvements in our economic democracy.
Monday, January 01, 2007
Happy New Years - Peace on Earth
Star Wars stormtroopers carrying the flags of the world in the Rose Bowl parade.
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