Howdy Marcos,
Rodney King 1992, after having the shit beat out of him, same, shit floating to surface, parts of LA on fire in race riots.
"Can't we all just be friends"
George Bush meets Martin 2004
"Can't we all just be friends"
FUCKYOUGEORGE, civilized countries depend upon laws, contracts, agreements, etc.
Message to PM putting a tarrif on Maple Syrup ain't going to do it. 27% on gas, hydro, petroleum might just bring both sides of the NAFTA agreement to the front page.
FuckyouTuckerCarlson "you do need us"
Notes from the North
From the "Wolf Blitzer Reports" staff
CNN
Thursday, December 2, 2004 Posted: 3:50 PM EST (2050 GMT)
Air Force One is framed through Canadian and American flags as it is de-iced as it prepares to leave Ottawa, Canada, Wednesday.
CNN's Wolf Blitzer interviews Canadian Parliament member Carolyn Parrish and CNN's own Tucker Carlson on U.S.-Canada relations (December 2)
Wolf Blitzer Reports
Canada
United States
Tucker Carlson
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- We've been inundated with e-mail from viewers about Tuesday's debate on U.S.-Canadian relations. CNN's "Crossfire" co-host Tucker Carlson squared off against outspoken Canadian Member of Parliament Carolyn Parrish -- and the sparks flew.
Carlson: "Canada needs the United States for trade and a lot of reasons. Without the U.S., Canada is Honduras, but colder and much less interesting. I think that makes -- the dependency makes Canadians understandably resentful."
Parrish: "Oh, oh, oh Tucker, you're way out to lunch on this one, my friend."
A lot of our Canadian viewers agreed.
John from Wasaga Beach, Ontario, wrote:
"The USA doesn't need Canada? Tell that to the many Americans who buy prescription drugs here. Wait until you need cheap, clean fresh water. But like oil, I suppose Tucker would just march the army in to take it."
Adrienne from Toronto wrote:
"It is this same egocentric attitude displayed by Tucker that only serves to further anti-American sentiment not only in Canada but all over the world."
Aaron from Ottawa observed:
"Mr. Carlson unfortunately personified the stereotype Canadians have of Americans by being self-important and arrogant."
Speaking of stereotypes, this one struck a nerve.
Tucker: "You know that's true, Carolyn. There's a lot of dog sledding."
Parrish: "No, there's not a lot of dog sledding. There's a lot of dog walking, my friend. Not dog sledding."
S.C. from Moncton, New Brunswick, noted:
"I've lived here all my life and never seen a dog sled. Shows how limited his knowledge is of life outside the U.S."
The face-off was also a hot topic for Canadian newspapers with articles in the National Post and the Toronto Sun, among others.
The Sun, noting Parrish's previously outspoken anti-Bush sentiments and her reputation for shooting from the lip, ran this headline:
"Lip Glosses Over Insults -- Parrish a Pussycat on CNN Creampuff ......
'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
VANCOUVER (GlobeinvestorGOLD) — I have just spent the past week in California.
I travelled from the capital Sacramento in the north to Los Angeles in the south, and I regret to report: across the whole damn state, the softwood lumber dispute, which has Canada on the verge of declaring retaliatory war on vital American commodities such as goldfish and pizza, is not on the radar.
Not to say that Canada is not on the radar. Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly regularly excoriates his “radical” neighbour to the north for its activist take on gay marriage and abortion, and just as regularly amuses himself by staging mock gladiatorial battles between Peter Worthington, that old Tory, and Rick Salutin, that old Socialist. Reality TV for hosers.
Softwood lumber deserves more attention, even from Bill O’Reilly. It provides the foundation and structure for California sprawl. The metropolitan area of Sacramento, a long-time sleepy provincial capital more like Saskatoon than Hollywood, is the hot new epicenter of the state. In the last decade, its population has exploded to nearly 2 million souls, almost all of whom appear to live in single family detached homes built of Canadian softwood lumber. But your average two-by-four has zero entertainment value. So it’s not in the same league as gossip about home-run king Barry Bonds and his reliance on the “cream” and the “clear” or Arnold Schwarzenegger’s’ latest attempt to try to reconcile his Republican aspirations and his Kennedy Democrat wife.
Building America, one bungalow at a time
This is a shame, because Canadian lumber is building America, one bungalow at a time. We sell a lot of softwood lumber to the U.S., about $4.6-billion worth a year, according to most sources. About one-third of the lumber used by the U.S. comes from Canada, according to B.C.'s Minister of Forests Mike DeJong. An even greater shame is that the U.S. government rakes off about $750-million of that annual take in so-called subsidy and dumping duties, 27 per cent of the total value of the exports. Then, thanks to something called the Byrd Amendment, it gives that money to our industry’s U.S. competitors. No wonder we’re mad.
Canada has complained to NAFTA and the World Trade Organization, and consistently both bodies have ordered the Americans to roll back their duties on what the U.S. Commerce Department persists on calling Canadian subsidized lumber — subsidized because in B.C., for example, companies are granted cutting rights to timber tracts, and in return the government charges stumpage fees, a tax on each tree cut.
The U.S. argues those fees are set low to make Canadian companies more competitive, and for the past 3 1/2 years has slapped countervailing subsidy duties against those exports. And even though the B.C. government has completely restructured the price-setting mechanism for lumber to comply with U.S. free-market notions, the tariffs are still in place.
The NAFTA panel trying to settle the dispute has ruled against the Americans three times, the latest coming in the form of a command to cut the subsidy tariff from 18.79 per cent to about 8 per cent by Dec. 13. The Americans are expected to comply, but the B.C. and Canadian governments, along with the forest industry, are outraged that Washington imposed the duties in the first place, even more outraged that the Byrd Amendment has channeled the spoils to U.S. forest companies, and have blown a complete gasket over a bill in Congress that would apportion the money before the dispute is settled. Right now, the $3.8-billion pile sits in an account, growing by $100-million a month, waiting for a resolution. Meanwhile, the 8% dumping duty remains unchanged.
In addition to the Dec. 13 deadline, the WTO has given the U.S. until Dec. 27 to repeal the dreaded Byrd Amendment. NAFTA has given the Commerce Department until Jan. 24 to reconsider its subsidy math. The B.C. Lumber Trade Council, for one, is confident the bottom line will end up zero, “if they do their recalculations faithfully and in a manner that’s consistent with the NAFTA panel.”
In no hurry to repent their evil ways
Despite what appears obvious to all good Canadians, the Americans are in no hurry to repent their evil ways. In fact, they are actively and aggressively fighting on against Canada — not to mention their own U.S. builders. The U.S. Commerce Department, for instance, calculates the so-called subsidy on expensive boards from the B.C. coastal industry, ignoring the fact that these days, most of B.C.’s exports are cheaper boards from the Interior. In his recent 30-hour quickie visit to Canada, President George W. Bush furrowed his brow and promised to study the matter. Even though he ducked blame for the Byrd Amendment, pinning the tail on Congress, he did make the right noises about the need for his nation to comply with its international trade agreements.
If the U.S. does comply with the ruling — and it hasn’t budged to date even though it’s Canada 6, U.S. 0 on the WTO and NAFTA scoreboard — it will come at a good time for Canadian forest companies, which are now also beset by the twin demons of lower softwood lumber prices — down 9.6 per cent in October from September — and the Canadian dollar, which has risen 30 per cent against the U.S. dollar from the beginning of 2003 to today. Because lumber is priced in U.S. dollars, U.S. lumber exports have declined in value by that amount. The trade dispute makes a trinity of demons, which are turning what started out as a pretty good year into another year of living dangerously for the forest industry.
If all else fails, the WTO has given Canada permission to retaliate against these ugly Americans by slapping $150-million in surtaxes on American imports, and Ottawa has hypothetically targeted everything from goldfish to golf clubs, from putters to peanut butter, focusing diabolically on states that stand to benefit from the Byrd Amendment, states that harbour villainous U.S. forest companies (which, inconveniently, are many of the same forest companies that operate in Canada, and sell lumber to the U.S., but that’s another story).
We can only hope the U.S. comes to its senses and starts to comply before this thing descends further into the realm of the ridiculous. One can only imagine what Bill O’Reilly will do with punitive Canadian tariffs on red-blooded, albeit cold-blooded, American goldfish. |
