[. . . . It] might be time to bet on the ever-volatile shares of pure oil and gas production companies. They still look dirt cheap -- as long as oil prices stay at these levels.

[. . . . ] Meanwhile, shares in giant "integrated" oil companies -- which also run refineries and service station empires -- are changing hands at valuations in line with those of other blue-chip companies.

[. . . . ] So which to invest in, stable but rather dull integrated companies . . . or madcap producers?

First a little math, because the two sets of companies are valued by investors in very different ways. Traditionally, producers such as Talisman Energy Inc. or PanCanadian Petroleum Ltd. have reported little in the way of earnings because they must reinvest much or all of their profits each year in finding and developing new reserves as their old properties are exhausted.

So Bay Street focuses almost exclusively on their cash flow, or profits before deductions such as interest and depreciation of assets, because it indicates how much financial muscle a company has to keep looking for oil and gas.

Integrated companies such as Imperial Oil Ltd. or Petro-Canada, by contrast, do produce a regular stream of earnings from their processing and retailing arms, so they can be valued on regular earnings.

[. . . . ] Among the integrateds the underdog is Husky Energy Inc., with an earnings multiple of only eight.

Husky, a rescue vehicle for the defunct Renaissance Energy Ltd., is controlled by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing. It's lurched along at $13 (Canadian) and change ever since it began trading at that price in August, 2000.

Analysts like the company's widely mixed base of refining assets, but investors still seem wary of Husky's New Boy taint.

Robert Plexman and Karin Scott at CIBC World Markets call the stock a "buy" but also caution that it's a "deep value play."

It is estimated that over 200 Canadian companies have passed into Chinese influence or ownership since the early 1980s through the triads, tycoons or China national companies. These businesses are found in various sectors of the economy, ranging from multinationals to banking, high technology and real estate (CITIC, Norinco, Husky Oil, Grand Adex Properties Inc, Merrill Lynch, Gordon Capital, Inc, Tai Foong International, CIBC, Ramada Hotels, China Vision and Semi-Tech Corporation, etc.). [. . . . ]

It's interesting to note that for all the billions earmarked to be spent in Iraq, Washington could subsidize the construction of enough oil-sands plants in Alberta to produce five million barrels a day, more oil than Americans buy from the Middle East.

And nobody would have to die.

It appears no one in the Administration in Washington, supposed to be oil-savvy Texans, thought of this.

Perhaps the opening of an office in Washington next month by the Alberta government will awaken the next American president and Congress to the huge opportunity of continental oil self sufficiency.

This would be good policy. Leaving the price of a commodity as critical to economic growth as oil up to the markets is a foolish business because the situation has changed. Market forces have handed the oil-soaked Middle East despots and terrorists an upper hand and a weapon.

Besides the "market" is a joke.

The oil cartel is capable of smoothing out price spikes but refuses to. This is because its member nations are so badly, or corruptly, governed that they are part of the problem and hooked on the revenue.

This is the situation facing the world for some time to come: Every oil field in the developing world has become a terrorist target.

[. . . . ] A U.S.-financed oil sands initiative would be a bonanza, giving the continent a big competitive advantage over Asia or the European Union.

[. . . . ] Thousands of jobs would be created and a more aggressive exploitation of the oil sands, with U.S. government help, would insure the economics of the construction of a natural gas pipeline to connect the Canadian arctic with the oil-sands plants as well as the construction of the Alaska pipeline, thus bringing to U.S. markets the best and cleanest-possible fuel.

"A Quebec court judge gave admitted drug smuggler Donald Matticks permission yesterday to leave the country once before his sentencing hearing on Jan. 18 - as long as he shows his return ticket to a police investigator in advance.

[. . . .] Mattick's lawyer, Mr. Morneau said he did not see anything extraordinary in asking. . ." Judge Claude Parent to grant his client's special request."

Organized crime investigators swooped down on the small community of Seymour Arm at the north end of Shuswap Lake Tuesday in a raid on several large-scale marijuana-growing operations that police say involved more than half the town's residents.

Beginning at 7 a.m., about 100 officers executed warrants on 14 properties and 14 vehicles, all within a four-kilometre radius, and arrested 16 adult males.

[. . . . ] The two-year police investigation grew out of complaints from residents unhappy with the number of growing operations in the area and complaining of violence, threats and intimidation. [. . . . ]

In the eyes of Islamists, Las Vegas is the Sodom and Gomorrah of modern times: a city where women not only bare their bodies but also sell them in the all-engulfing pursuit of the god they call Dollar, while men drown their soulless bodies in alcohol and gamble away their own god, Money. Yet this is where a number of strict-living Islamist terrorists, including the leader of the 9/11 hijackers, Mohamed Atta, and four other 9/11 hijackers spent part of their summer shortly before they committed their evil deed.

Strangely, in a city where surveillance cameras record the blinking eyes and sweaty brows of gamblers in every casino, no video footage exists, according to law enforcement, of the tourists-turned-terrorists who planned to murder 50,000 people. However, using airline reservation, motel and car rental records, along with eyewitness reports, the FBI has managed to piece together a threadbare account of the visit of the five 9/11 hijackers and other Islamists just weeks before 9/11.

According to the records, the hijackers’ movements don’t appear to be those of would-be terrorists planning to strike a deathblow to America. They reportedly were seen by witnesses in Strip resorts, a public-access computer store near the University of Nevada Las Vegas, a Starbucks across the street from a public library (within walking distance of the computer store), a pizza joint, car rental agencies and a Las Vegas Boulevard sandwich shop.

[. . . . ] There seems to be no record of the alleged transfer of $100,000 to Atta in Las Vegas. But if there was a transfer of money to the 9/11 hijacker, it could have been laundered through one of the casinos or a local “hawala.” The hawala system is similar to the “black peso” system used by narco-traffickers and involves transferring money across borders without using electronic or physical means. Currency changers (hawaldars) receive cash in one country and fellow “hawaldars” in another country -- usually family or members of an ethnic group or clan -- dispense the identical amount, minus fees, to the recipients, who are provided with code words, serial numbers of bills, encrypted digital messages or signals such as handshakes or innocuous stroking of facial hair. [. . . . ]

Watching the Presidential debates of October 1st, and the subsequent reactions to them, has left me once again with the sad realization that there are many millions of people who prefer a man who says the wrong things well over one who says the right things badly – and in the case of the first debates we are talking about saying very, very stupid things well and intelligent things very, very badly.

Now I don’t mean stupid in a bad way. I fully credit John Kerry with the intelligence needed to analyze, dissect, and evaluate a position and without mechanical aid quickly and accurately use advanced trigonomic functions to determine the most popular position on a wide range of complex issues – a feat that requires a very quick mind indeed.

So it’s not dumb stupid, those statements he made in the first debate. It’s more of an entirely understandable, eminently defensible, very common fossilized kind of stupid that we saw from the Senator. It was the stupid of a man claiming to have new ideas and new plans based on shared assumptions and models that no longer apply to reality.

President Bush seemed stupid in comparison because he seems to only know three things in all the world – and it is our great good fortune that he is right about all three.

In a moment, we’ll look at what both men said, and through a very specific filter: not their Aggregate Presidentiality, or their respective Molar Charm Ratio. We’re going to look at what both men believe in respect to deterrence: whether their positions increase or decrease the likelihood of further attacks on the US.

That’s it. That’s all. That’s the sum total of this election for me. We’ve survived boobs and crooks and idiots and charlatans of all stripes and colors, struggled through booms and recessions, surpluses and deficits, and wars on poverty and drugs and crime and General Public Lasciviousness and come through just fine, and we will again.

But the nuclear destruction of the heart of Manhattan, or Long Beach Harbor, or the Capital mall – these things are serious business and as Sam Johnson once said, the prospect of being hanged in the morning tends to focus the mind. [. . . . ]

SENATOR KERRY: I can make American safer than President Bush has made us.

And I believe President Bush and I both love our country equally. But we just have a different set of convictions about how you make America safe.

I believe America is safest and strongest when we are leading the world and we are leading strong alliances.

I'll never give a veto to any country over our security. But I also know how to lead those alliances.

This president has left them in shatters across the globe, and we're now 90 percent of the casualties in Iraq and 90 percent of the costs.

I think that's wrong, and I think we can do better.

Four years ago, I would have voted for this policy in a heartbeat. This is what I mean by not stupid in a dumb way. But it is stupid in an ignorant way.

It’s stupid because it is a precise example of how to fight the last war. We are in a World War right now. It is being fought all across the globe and the consequences of winning or losing this war will effect every person on the planet. It is World War IV. If you can’t see that then you are either not paying attention, or are mollified by our spectacular successes over the past three years.

[. . . . ] President Bush believes that a free and democratic state provides a shockingly clear example that there is another way for Arab peoples to live. He believes, as I do, that all people want to live free and determine the course of their own lives. You claim that this is a mistake. You seem to be determined to fulfill that prophesy.

You lack the vision, Senator, to see this as a many-front war. You lack the insight to see how the sight of Saddam crawling from a hole inspired an identical self-possessed lunatic to give up Libyan nuclear weapons program. Iraq deterred Libya, you eternal defeatist. And all of the rest of the former free-range dictators now hang on the results of this election to see whether they will get a man who has capitulation in his very marrow, or one who has weathered inbelievable pressure, slurs and insults, and very likely thrown away his second term, to face reality and do something. Something unpopular. Something that he knew would make his poll numbers go down.

[. . . . ] And I might add I have won every Monday morning game I have ever quarterbacked.

[. . . . ] My friends, if any of you think this may in any way convince people unsure of what to think about this critical election, for God's sake print out as many NON-COMMERCIAL (Short form: that means, no charge) copies as you can and drop them out of airplanes if you are able. This election is entirely too close.

A senior Public Works official who oversaw the awarding of a $1-billion contract took a Caribbean cruise with the winning bidder, sources familiar with a federal probe of the bid told Sun Media. Lee Douglas, who has since retired as a procurement team leader, joined Royal LePage Relocation's Ray Belair, Belair's wife and 10 other couples on a cruise shortly before the lucrative five-year contract was awarded in December 2002. Sources say Douglas paid for her cruise.

[. . . . ] Douglas took hospitality from the real estate giant.

[. . . . ] Douglas was responsible for developing the evaluation criteria for the contract to move public servants and oversaw the committee tasked with awarding the $1-billion contract.

The Aug. 26, 2003 memo says Douglas' immediate subordinate also violated the federal hospitality policy, "as have members of the evaluation team from other departments." [. . . . ]

OTTAWA—A Montreal ad agency donated $5,000 to the Liberal party out of the same bank account where it kept money supposedly earmarked for the federal sponsorship program, a public inquiry was told yesterday.

Government auditors testified they discovered the donation, made by Media Vision IDA, during a review of the program four years ago.

The transaction "was obviously a concern to us," said Jim Hamer, an official with the internal audit office of the Public Works Department.

But lawyers with the federal Justice Department later concluded there was no legal impropriety.

That was because the contract Public Works had signed with Media Vision didn't specify that money paid to the firm to fund sponsorship projects had to be kept separate from other cash. [. . . . ]

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission ruled yesterday that it will not ban so-called junk voice mail because it has not been enough of a nuisance or inconvenience.

The decision is a huge victory for companies such as Toronto-based Infolink Technologies Ltd. which faced a possible ban on its "Voicecasting" system. Using that system, Infolink sends thousands of advertising messages directly to voice mail boxes without ringing telephones.

Bell Canada had been trying to stop Infolink and the others for three years arguing that it annoyed customers of its Call Answer service. But yesterday the CRTC rejected those arguments and said Infolink's service is not intrusive.

[. . . . ] "However, I think we will be looking at other ways that we can ensure that our customers are protected, which could include requesting that the commission allow us to impose new restrictions on these types of [automated dialling] providers," he said. Those restrictions could include compelling companies like Infolink to maintain "do-not-call lists".

"The problem with [yesterday's] decision is that it leaves us with a large gap that we think needs to be addressed. Because, as it stands now, this Voicecasting technology is not subject to any restrictions whatsoever," Mr. Elder said. "It's not even subject to the type of restrictions that apply to old-fashioned live voice telemarketing."

OTTAWA -- Parliament should debate and consider blocking the proposed takeover of Canada's largest mining firm by a Chinese government-owned company that has been linked to the use of forced labour in China's infamous "gulag" prisons, MPs from all four parties said Tuesday. [. . . . ]

OTTAWA -- The federal government has approved the contentious use of biometric facial data on Canadian passports. [. . . . ]

Things are going from bad to worse for the United Nations. The latest complication for Secretary-General Kofi Annan's attempt to control the damage in the Oil for Food scandal is the resignation of Anna Di Lellio, spokeswoman for the Independent Inquiry Commission into the U.N. Oil-for-Food Program headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, for slurs against the president of the United States and the prime minister of Italy. Her departure is welcome. But the question remains: Anna Di LellioHow could someone who believes the president of the United States is a threat to world peace analogous to Osama bin Laden have been appointed to such a sensitive position with the Volcker panel in the first place?

[. . . . ] Less than one week after the Heritage paper quoting Mrs. Di Lellio was published, she announced her resignation, which was accepted by Mr. Volcker. Her departure raises disturbing questions: What kind of investigations does the United Nations conduct before making such appointments? Was Mr. Annan or any other senior official aware of the Guardian essay? If not, why not? How does someone with such an unbalanced view of reality get selected to work for a U.N. commission, especially one dealing with an international financial scandal of major proportions? The Volcker panel has faced obstacles from the start (such as a lack of subpoena power) and the commission's strained relationship with Capitol Hill —stemming from its efforts to limit congressional oversight of the Oil for Food scandal. Given that, the question arises: Did Mrs. Di Lellio slip through the cracks, or was she deliberately placed in such a sensitive position?

Executives at French oil major Total have been detained for questioning as part of an investigation into transfers of millions of dollars in suspected bribes to win oil development rights in Russia and Iraq.

A spokeswoman for Total, the world's fourth-largest publicly traded oil company by market value, confirmed by telephone from Paris on Monday that French investigators had raided the company's headquarters and questioned several employees last week. But she said the probe targeted the activities of officials and not the company itself, and declined to comment further. [ . . . . ]

"Ask for death" is the message that the Palestinian Authority [PA] has been conveying to its children since the start of violence in October 2000. In June 2002, two articulate 11-year-old girls were interviewed in the studio of official Palestinian Authority TV. Among other topics, they spoke of their personal yearning to achieve death through Shahada – Death for Allah – and of a similar desire they said exists in "every Palestinian child." It is striking that their desire for death was expressed as a personal goal, not related to the conflict with Israel. Having been convinced that dying for Allah is preferable to life, their goal in living is not to experience a good life, but to achieve the proper death – Shahada.

The following is a selection from their remarks:

Host: "You described Shahada as something beautiful. Do you think it is beautiful?"

Walla: "Shahada is very, very beautiful. Everyone yearns for Shahada. What could be better than going to paradise?"

Host: "What is better, peace and full rights for the Palestinian people, or Shahada?"

Walla: "Shahada. I will achieve my rights after becoming a Shahida."

Yussra: "Of course Shahada is a good thing. We don’t want this world, we want the Afterlife. We benefit not from this life, but from the Afterlife... The children of Palestine have accepted the concept that this is Shahada, and that death by Shahada is very good. Every Palestinian child aged, say 12, says ’Oh Lord, I would like to become a Shahid." [PATV, June 9, 2002]

What has caused this compelling desire for death among these children, a desire that conflicts with the basic survival instinct of every human being?

During the more than two and a half years of armed conflict, the Palestinian Authority [PA] has been making a paramount effort to convince their own children that there is no greater achievement than to die for Allah in battle, known as Shahada. This has been done via the many mediums at its disposal, including children’s TV broadcasting, the educational system, cultural programs, directives from political and religious leaders and even encouragement from within the family.

[. . . . ] Part I: The Indoctrination of Children to Seek Death

a. Short Propaganda Films for Children
b. Schools and Textbooks
c. Culture
d. Political Leadership
e. Parents and the Palestinian Public
f. Religious Leadership

Part II: Results of the PA Shahada Indoctrination

a. Ages 6-9: Playing Death Games
b. Ages 10-13: Expressing Desire to Die
c. Ages 14-17: Shahada Missions

Part III: Findings and Conclusions

On September 26, in 668 precision words, Chris Satullo, editorial page editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, significantly advanced a debate that Nick Coleman, Dan Rather, Alex Jones and others have trivialized by dumping on the bloggers from a "higher" position. Satullo abandons that, in favor of widening the circle. He says journalists should pay serious attention to bloggers. And he has a warning: Orwellians in the mist.

[. . . . ] On September 26, in 668 precision words, Chris Satullo, editorial page editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, significantly advanced a debate that Nick Coleman, Dan Rather, Alex Jones and others have trivialized by dumping on the bloggers from a "higher" position. Satullo abandons that, in favor of widening the circle. He says journalists should pay serious attention to bloggers. And he has a warning: Orwellians in the mist.

[. . . . ] When journalists go after bloggers, op-ed style, they typically have one thing to say: these bloggers, they're not real journalists. And they don't have to meet our standards, so don't trust them. . . . .

[. . . . ] Satullo's column is challenging to bloggers but open to their contributions. It's neither condescending nor sentimental about the blogging trend. In my view his Sep. 26th piece ought to be linked to and read. It ought to be argued about. We ought to know who agrees and who doesn't with:

* The real job of journalism is to help make the public lfe of the nation work well.

* For journalists, the rise of citizen comment on the Internet should be something to celebrate and learn from.

* The bias discourse has descended into meaninglessness, which doesn't meant the press isn't trapped by its own preconceptions.

* The survival of Big Media is not critical, the survival of journalism is. There's a big difference between those two.

* Bloggers "who care about facts and ideas," and there are many of those, should be wary of the Orwellians on their own side, who are themselves engaged in propaganda-- the charge they are most likely to hurl at others. [. . . . ]

THREE MONTHS after Barry White walked away from a Keele St. halfway house, Corrections Canada and police are asking for the public's help in finding the convicted killer. White, 25, walked away from the Keele Centre July 5 after being granted statutory release on a manslaughter conviction.

[. . . . ] He is black, with a light complexion, 5-foot-8 and 140 pounds. Police say he should be considered dangerous.

[. . . . ] Until recently the world stood on a precipice; now it is falling off. Communism is raising its head. Ever more boldly and shamelessly it dispenses with its mask of ideological transformation. Its time, or so it would seem, has come.

Times change, methods remain, and sometimes only forms undergo minor amendments. In translation into practical language this means, in the case of the Communists, less worry about the workers and more commitment to universal affairs. Feminism, ecology and permissiveness are the proper concerns of modern Bolsheviks. Sometimes, however, it is convenient for them to employ old and tried slogans, of which the most effective, established and proven is that of peace. Peace, for which countless hosts of Bolsheviks fought throughout an entire century, is again becoming the motive power of the Communist movement today. Across the world, hundreds of thousands of people take to city streets in an impressive display of unity, venting their anti-American, anti-imperialist frustration. Justifications vary, and paradoxes easily arise. In addition to the dedicated leftists, bearing colorful flags and slogans, it is possible also to encounter skinheads, for whom anti-war excesses constitute an excellent opportunity for expressing racial hatred. The Communists know well how to exploit such feelings. [. . . . ]

What do they know about the actual missile resources of the "former" Soviet Union? What do they think of the coordinated test missile firings carried out last autumn by the Russian Army? How do they estimate the missile potential of this "ally," whose military budget is allegedly one fortieth of that of the Pentagon, and who is nevertheless still able continually to update his missile technology? Does information of this nature stimulate them to reflection? And what reaction can we expect in the face of the alliance, formed some years ago, between France, Germany and Russia? Against whom, in other words, was this alliance assembled? Is the American government well-disposed towards it? Does it perceive it to constitute a threat? [. . . . ]

[. . . . ] But following my column "Third World War" (Sept. 9) some American readers pointed out what might be termed a technical inaccuracy, and I agree absolutely.

The war against Islamic terrorists is, in reality, the Fourth World War, the Cold War having been the Third World War.

That was the war against Soviet Communism and it lasted from 1945 until 1989-90 when the final remnants of that evil system collapsed.

It now lives on in just two countries: North Korea, which is planning to get an arsenal of nuclear weapons, and poverty-stricken Cuba, where, back in 1962, Fidel Castro tried to install Soviet nuclear missiles aimed at the U.S. and Canada.

[. . . . ] I myself played a role, as many readers know, when in Ottawa in 1971 a Soviet diplomat tried to co-opt me, but, with the help of our intelligence services, we turned the game against him.

From then until 1978 I used my journalistic credentials to ingratiate myself to all the East Bloc embassies in Ottawa, reporting everything back to our intelligence agencies.

It all came to a head in February, 1978, when I revealed the RCMP had caught 13 Soviet diplomats in a spy ring, but not only had Prime Minister Trudeau (Marxist-Leninist himself) refused to expel them, he had warned the Mounties not to even make it public.[. . . . ]