Otto Reich, the Phone Companies, and the Honduras Coup

I still don't fully know what to make of the coup in Honduras, but this article talks about the role of Otto Reich in the events. Otto Reich was (if memory serves) fingered as an economic hitman by John Perkins (in Confessions of an Economic Hitman) for his role in the Venezuelan coup. And his name also comes up in analysis of the 2004 Haitian coup.

Creepy stuff.

This part is interesting:

All international telecom traffic is subject to interconnection fees with the phone company in the country where the call is terminated. These interconnection fees are split 50/50 between the company sending the call and the company receiving the call so that they are only paid if there is an excess of traffic in one direction or another.

With underdeveloped countries such as Honduras or Haiti, there is an overwhelming excess of one-way traffic as a result of emigrants to the U.S. or tcm4other Western countries calling their families back home. It is precisely in these extremely poor countries, where the telephone company has not been privatized, that interconnection settlements represent a vital source of revenue to the state.

Won't You Be My Neighbour?

I was looking up some information about my riding, and I stumbled upon these stats:

First Language
English	45,300
French	1,450
Portuguese	14,550
Chinese	14,475
Italian	4,515
Spanish	2,625

Population, just over 100K. Just under half that population has English as a first language.

Canadian Born:	49.21%
Ontario Born:	39.65%
Immigrant:	47.80%
Visible Minority:	32.84%
Aboriginal:	0.65%