Headlines for Dec. 6, 2011

Let’s not forget that Canadian banks were already bailed out to the tune of 114 billion.

Carney pledges ‘no bailouts’

Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney says he wants to reform global financial rules to ensure that no banks can become large enough that they’d threaten the global economy.

“I’m saying no bailouts,” Carney told the CBC’s George Stroumboulopoulos in a recent interview. “The objective [is] ending ‘too big to fail’.”

Carney was recently named head of the Financial Stability Board, a recently formed international agency with a mandate to oversee the international financial system. In the interview, he says the goal is to bring global rules closer to Canada’s model.

LoL. Of course they would…

Halliburton ‘destroyed’ Gulf of Mexico spill evidence

Oil giant BP has accused oilfields services firm Halliburton of destroying damaging evidence relating to last year’s oil well blast in the Gulf of Mexico in which 11 people were killed.

At a hearing in a New Orleans’ court, BP said Halliburton had “intentionally” destroyed test results on its cement product used at the Macondo well.

Halliburton denied this, saying the claims were “without merit”.

Kucinich: Is Obama stumbling into war with Iran?

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) on Monday questioned whether the Obama administration was trying to provoke Iran into an armed conflict.

The Iranian government claimed on Sunday that it had shot down a RQ-170 Sentinel — a U.S. high-altitude reconnaissance drone — that had flown into Iran’s eastern airspace.

The Pentagon later said the drone had malfunctioned and gone missing over western Afghanistan late last week, and denied it was shot down.

…here’s a shocker…

Soviet Subs Cruised Canada’s Arctic, Cold-War Era Maps Suggest.

The old Soviet Union may have been just as familiar with Canada’s Arctic waters as Canadians.

Sections of Cold-War-era nautical charts obtained by The Canadian Press suggest that Russian mariners have for decades possessed detailed and accurate knowledge of crucial internal waterways such as the Northwest Passage.

Those charts, which may offer the first documentary proof of the widely held belief that Soviet nuclear submarines routinely patrolled the Canadian Arctic during the Cold War, are still in use by Russian vessels. In some places, they are preferred to current Canadian charts.

…sad that Canadians can not see this, even though I think we all understand the disaster of trickle doewn on an instinctive level…

The Harper government and Republican economics

The Harper Conservatives model their economic policies on beliefs held dear by American Republicans: just lower taxes, and reduce government, and business will create the wealth.

With this approach, not only is income becoming less equal as the OECD just noted, Canadians and Americans are not becoming wealthier. The “give business a tax break” and the “let the invisible hand of the market do the rest” policies are not improving life for Canadians or Americans.

As creation of real full-time jobs dries up, and precarious employment increases, more Canadians and Americans drop out of the fabled middle class each year. The loss of well-paying manufacturing jobs has seen to that, along with union busting, and attacks on minimum wages, and unemployment insurance.

LoL… they already won the election in part on this issue, but OK,…

Parliamentarians mark École Polytechnique massacre – but Tories aren’t welcome

As women across Canada mark the 22nd anniversary of the massacre at Montreal’s École Polytechnique on Tuesday, Conservative women on Parliament Hill continue to work to scrap the long-gun registry that was created in response to those shootings.

That has people on the Hill so upset that government MPs have been purposely shut out from officially speaking at and attending an event on Parliament Hill to honour the 14 young women who were shot dead in 1989.

…we knew it already… but OK…

Canada’s wage gap at record high: OECD

The gap between Canada’s rich and poor is growing amid shifts in the job market and tax cuts for the wealthy, according to a study that shows income inequality at a record high among industrialized nations.

A sweeping OECD analysis to be released Monday shows the income gap in Canada is well above the 34-country average, though still not as extreme as in the United States.

…and once in while, a ray of sunshine from Barry…

Obama backs envoy after Israel remarks

US President Barack Obama’s administration has rejected Republican calls to fire the ambassador to Belgium after he suggested that Israeli actions against Palestinians, including settlement building and military strikes, were partly to blame for anti-Semitism in Europe.

Ambassador Howard Gutman, who is Jewish and the son of a Holocaust survivor, said in a speech that a new type of anti-Semitism had emerged in Europe that was not “classic bigotry” but instead linked to “continuing tensions” between Israel and the Palestinian territories and other Arab neighbours.

Iranian Troops ‘On Alert’ in Face of Growing Threats

Western intelligence sources are reporting that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is ratcheting up its combat readiness today, as well as deploying troops to defensive positions amid fear that an attack is in the offing. Western reports also have sleeper agents in Tehran launching attacks.

Of course the prospect of an attack on Iran is nothing new, and the nation has been facing international threats of an imminent attack virtual since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, with claims that they are within a matter of months of obtaining a nuclear weapon the default excuse for the threats since at least the mid 1980s.