I Will Be Speaking In Edmonton Tonight

I will be on a panel tonight in Edmonton Celebrating the launch of Richard Day's book,

Gramsci is Dead: Anarchist
Currents in the Newest Social Movements (Pluto Press/Between the Lines)

Monday, December 5th 2005, 7pm
2nd Floor 10832 82nd Avenue

Earth's General Store

What strategies and tactics are today's activists using to achieve social
transformation? Are taking over the state or trying to reform its
structures the only way to achieve meaningful social change? Or are
direct-action tactics, for example, potentially more effective?

Join us for a participant-led conversation and celebration around these
questions. Some of our guests include long time labour activist Eugene
Plawiuk, IWW fundraiser Des Schell, the U of A Women's Centre, and others
to be confirmed.

The Road To Hell

is paved with good intentions. Like the Liberals attempt to impose affirmative action programs for candidates from visible minorities and the female majority.
Which were created under Chretien, and ended up with the current debacle of the Michael Ignatieff Affair. Another legacy of the Chretien Liberals that haunts Paul Martin. No wonder there has been a deafening silence from Scott Reid over this.

Whose party is it, anyway?
But the Liberals — unlike the other parties — added a new twist at their 1992 national convention, when they gave their leader, then Jean Chrétien, the specific power to appoint candidates directly, not just veto those he didn't' like. The intent was, perhaps, noble: Chrétien wanted to ensure more women and minorities made it into the House of Commons. Less uplifting was the implication that, left to their own devices, the riding associations wouldn't produce candidates nearly so dear to the leader's heart.

More Election Buzz

Buzz gets slammed again today from none other than the founder of the Waffle, no not the pancake the left wing rump of the NDP in the seventies. Herr Professor Doctor Mel Watkins no less, in collaboration with Straight Goods publisher Ish Theilheimer write the follwing as a front page editorial on their website journal (which predates Rabble.ca as a left online daily news journal).

Time to deal with the Buzz problem

Labour and NDP must confront the rogue elephant in the living room

In no case will Hargrove's message help the party that has always been labour's best friend politically.

Ouch. Say isn't the Elephant a symbol of a political party south of the border.

Nerd Stuff

I have added the following items into the left hand column here.

A technocrati link and search engine with my profile.

A chat box where you can leave instant messages. I liked this item over at Modblog and now there is one free online you can put on your page. So there it is. Abusers will be pumelled.

Also added the Activista search bar, this is for left wing and activist sites on the web. Great tool. And when they let me join their club I will add the search this blog feature.

Currently if you wish to search my articles here, which are running around 300 since I launched this blog last year at this time, my gawd he said I am prolific.
You can use the search bar in blogger above or use the technocrati search, the latter is more effective I find. Just type in the word an viola up come my articles

I reorganized the left hand bar as well as you can see. Blogs I belong to are down near the bottom along with my blog roll. If you have a blog and aren't in either than check my bloglines links I may have stuck you in there.

All the commercial junk I belong to which seems to be a good idea when in blogspace, is at the very bottom of the page. Though one I would highly reccomend is the spampoison. Killer little application.

Modblog Redux

My pal Critical has moved off Modblog as well and set up shop here at blogspot. It appears that like Battle Star Galactica a whole group of bloggers went here, to create an alternative to the near month long abscence of Modblog after it crashed. Critical has written a very good piece on ModBlog, at the exile page before moving to blogspot.Much nicer and helpful than I would be. Check out his new site he is a progressive blogger from Sri Lanka. My what a small world.

Harpers Day Care Policy Made In Alberta

Well as predicted Harpers Child Care policy was re-announced today. It was orginally announced after the Liberals made their child care program announcement last spring. So it's old news.

It is a made in Alberta policy. Modeled directly off the Klein Reichs policy of not funding public daycare centres in favour of giving everybody a hundred bucks to hire their grandmother to babysit. This is NOT an early childhood education policy, its a two tier day care program.

Tax credits are a sop to parents who can afford nannies. But it leaves working parents ( usually with two jobs to make ends meet) out in the cold trying to find space in overcrowded public daycares. And when they are rejected being forced to cough up extra dough for private day cares, which are notoriously under regulated and prone to child accidents. Yep nothing to see here move on.

Let The Green Party In

I posted my blog article on Vive Canada about the campaign to get the Green Party more media coverage, such as having them mentioned in articles, having their Green Blog linked at MSM election web sites and the all important involvement in the Leaders Debate. A good debate is going on at Vive Canada and we have at least twenty comments. I have also posted the two petitions in my left side bar under Election 2006. And I have been emailing comments out to the Media and on my email lists. How about you?

Brian Masse Slams Liberals

Here is an exerpt from NDP MP Brian Masse of Windsor to the CAW delegates;

I stood up in the House of Commons and voted to implement anti-scab legislation in federal jurisdiction.

I was proud to do that because I know it’s the right thing to do.

And I watched every single Liberal Cabinet minister – including some of the ones who were in this hall yesterday – vote to kill that legislation.

I was proud to stand next to David Christopherson when he introduced a law to put pension payments at the front of the line if a company goes bankrupt.

Yep he does the workers proud, but CAW still follows Buzz.......unfortunately.
CAW wants NDP to hold balance of power

Chavez Re-Elected

Here is the strategy straight out of Iraq, must be getting their political advice from the CIA, now lets understand how this works; Sunni's boycott bad, but doesn't undermine democracy in Iraq. Venezuelan boycott good, undermines democracy in Venezuela. Hmm yep that makes alot of sense, to Dick Cheney and Pat Robertson.Chavez's party claims major victory in Venezuelan poll The poll was boycotted by the country's five main opposition parties, who accused election officials of favouring Chavez and manipulating electronic voting machines. Prove It! Whine, Whine, Whine, would you like some cheese with that.

Liberals Get Their Own Grewal

In Edmonton-Mill Woods-Beaumont. Liberals have nominated Amerjit Grewal (no relation to the Conservative Grewal). The old David Kilgour riding, the Liberal nomination on the weekend went to a Trade Unionist and the only Indo= Canadian running in a riding dominated by Indo-Canadians.

The Conservative and NDP candidates are relatively unkown White Guys. Last time around Conservative Indo-Canadian Tim Uppal almost defeated David Kilgour. Kilgour had a machine in the riding, and was well connected to the community. Such is not the case with Mr. Unknown White Guy running for the Tories. Big mistake and as rumour has it while Uppal went for the nomination this time around the constiuency association pulled a Ignatieff type move. See the Liberals and Conservatives both do it.

This gives the Liberals an advantage, as they have the only credible candidate, cause he is left wing, a trade unionist and Indo-Canadian. Gee aren't those NDP credentials? So this is where the Buzz Theory will be applied in Edmonton, vote Liberal rather than splitting the vote and letting Mr. White Guy Conservative get in.

Big fight for nomination in Alta. Liberal riding

61-year-old who works driving a transit van for the physically disabled has won the Liberal nomination in one of only two Alberta seats the party took in the last federal election.

Amarjit Grewal, 61, was chosen on the second ballot to succeed veteran MP David Kilgour in Edmonton-Mill Woods-Beaumont. Grewal places himself on the party's left wing and says he wants more spending on affordable housing and supports public health care.

Creationism be damned

In my never ending quest to debunk the religious ideologist here we go again with a science tidbit that proves once again the empircal basis for evolution.

Study: Earliest Birds Have Dinosaur Feet

The earliest birds had theropod dinosaur-like feet, according to a new study released yesterday based on the best reserved Archaeopteryx fossil.

These findings support the arguable theory that Archaeopteryx, the first known bird, was a closest relative of the theropod dinosaur, and that modern birds arose from the dinosaurs, German and U.S. researchers said in the Dec. 2 issue of the journal Science.

And the New York museum has opened its controversial display on Darwin, with no corporate funding thanks to the pressure groups from the right lobbying against evolution. Which is fine by me we have to much corporate scientism being offered as science.

The same right whingnuts who denounce climate warming as junk science are really saying that evolution is junk science too.

Ok lets be clear here they are actually saying science is junk, just believe in the big white guy in the sky.

SCIENCE, RELIGION CONFLICT

Florida State University Michael Ruse, author of The Evolution-Creation Struggle echoed that, calling America "a peculiarly religious country" which was also a "science powerhouse. How can it be such?" he asked.

Ruse suggested the answer lay partly in history, not least being the Civil War after which Southerners turned to the Bible, and evolution "was taken to represent everything about the North that they disliked."

The result, he said, was the "red state-blue state clash -- It's not science versus religion as such -- but very much a cultural clash that we've got in America today." Others concurred, saying that the schism was part and parcel of a broader cultural war over contentious issues like abortion, gay rights and gun control.

Part of the problem with Darwinism, is that it is the identification with the theory of evolution with one man. Evolution is not just a theory of Darwin there were others including Alfred Russel Wallace. Wallace and Darwin collaborated on the theory of natural selection. But given the dominace of the need for bourgoise culture to create a solo individual hero, we have forgotten Wallace and equated evolution with Darwin only.

In reality evolutionary theory pre-dates Darwin and influenced his own work.In particular the work; Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation.

Here we have another example of the missing link in the history of science and ideas, the role of the masses, and in particular the working classes; mechanics, in reading and practicising science as an aspect of their trades. Such was the case since the founding of the Royal Society in England, the clash between the aristocracy and its erudition of scientific experimentation and the mechanics who read their works and improved if not proved or disproved their hypothesis.

It was the creation of the popular culture of reading and study, of the science of the common man that was the basis for Darwins later popularity. But without those who came before him, promoting a materialist history of the world to counter the dominant hegemony of the Church, we would have no Darwin.

And those who came before him like Wallace and the unknown author of Vestiges were social reformers, radicals. Darwin was not as radical as his predecesors, but benefited from the reforms in the society around him that allowed him to publish and confront his antagonists with relative safety.

Evolution as a theory was the result not only of pure science, as there is no such creature, but of the movements to challenge the ideas of the day, the movement known as Free Thought, closely aligned to atheism, which was still a hanging offense in England. Luckily such is not the case now, though the rightwhingnuts might make it a capital offense again should they gain political and cultural dominance.

The history of science and evolution in the 19th Century is the history of social reform and radicalism, as much a part of the workers movement as it is of the parlour rooms of the bourgoise.

Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. James A. Secord. xx + 624 pp. University of Chicago Press, 2001.

Most historians of science have treated Vestiges as a minor remnant of mid-Victorian culture. It has been typically regarded as an indicator that the evolutionary ideas earlier formulated by Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck continued to intrigue and trouble, even after they had been thoroughly repudiated by established scientists. Chambers's book is certainly remembered because Charles Darwin feared that the clever but amateurish "Mr. Vestiges" would render the intellectual public ill-disposed to any evolutionary understanding of life. James Secord conceives of Chambers's book in quite different terms. In Victorian Sensation he contravenes the usual presumptions. Because of his striking erudition and extraordinary scholarship, he has produced an argument that cannot be ignored, even if it must be resisted.

Through some 16 chapters, Secord details how Vestiges was physically made (with steam presses, but with hand composition of the lines of print), the way in which prices of the various editions determined its public (it became a cause only with the "people's edition"), and the manner in which different segments of British society (from working-class mechanics, to radical reformers, to Whig scientists, to Tory churchmen, to the Queen herself) read the message of the book and what meanings they imparted to their reading. Middle-class consumers, for example, took up the book with the same enthusiasm they felt for the latest novels of Sir Walter Scott. High Churchmen condemned its materialistic message, whereas radical reformers thought it supported their efforts. Scientists quite generally dismissed its shoddy zoology and botany.

The second subversive reason for focusing on the reaction of the reading public is that it allows us to advance another model of science. We need no longer be in thrall to the heroes of science. We can, rather, look to underlaborers such as Chambers who made Darwin's so-called genius possible: "Like all forms of hero-worship, this celebration of the author undermines possibilities for individual action, for none of us can be a Darwin, at least in the terms that the myth provides. It sets an unobtainable ideal?the genius revealing great discoveries?as the model of what a scientist should be." So histories such as Secord's have a pragmatic, even a moral purpose. It is troubling, though, to recommend Chambers as a model for even the mid-Victorian scientist. As far as we know, he never identified a fossil, never cracked a rock with a geology hammer, never charted the course of the planets.

Angus Reid Poll Dec 3

Canada Election 2006: A Two-Party Race Develops
Source: SES Research / CPAC
Methodology: A national random telephone survey is conducted nightly by SES Research throughout the campaign. Each evening a new group of 400 eligible voters are interviewed. The daily tracking figures are based on a three-day rolling sample comprised of 1,200 interviews. To update the tracking a new day of interviewing is added and the oldest day dropped. Margin of error is 2.9 per cent.

Well at least they have included the Green Party in this poll. Though things don't look good for the NDP, thanks to Buzz.....dumb dumb dumb.......But considering the lead in announcements all week was the Conservatives for good or bad, they have had little impact on the Liberal vote. They have taken a point away from both the NDP and Liberals. Mind you this is only week one of what is going to be a very loooooong campaign. Its a two way race alright, for who will be the next minority government in Ottawa.

Conservatives Take Fashion Lead

" Get Thee To Henry Rosen's"

Election week one and the Harper takes the lead in the all important fashion look. Yep he got more comments from the Media and pundits about his New Look, which they mistakenly called the Turtle Neck.

Get with it folks. Don't you guys shop at Henry Rosen or Tip Top. Now I know guys don't watch Fashion TV ,except for the Victoria Secret segments, but come on we got some female pundits here and they should know the difference between a Mock Turtle Neck and a Turtle Neck.

The Harper is sporting the latest in casual yet office acceptable apparel for those who don't want to wear neckties. It's not a T-Shirt and its Not a Turtle neck its the Mock Turtle Neck.

And Lets not get confused again.

Mock Turtle


Turtle Neck


Harpers mock turtle neck seems appropriate for his politics they are after all mock conservative, and he specialises in mocking the Liberals, and well he got mocked for his choice of cowboy attire this summer, including by me.

And it makes him look like the University Professor he always wanted to be. Ah the Intellectual Harper, not the every man but the expert.

Well congrats to the Tories for finding someone to dress him properly after this summers Stampede cowboy debacle.


So first week of the election the Harper sets the fashion agenda. Image is everything in politics. Mssrs. Duccepe, Layton and Martin, gentlemen how will you top this?

Certainly not dressed like this....

Workers Control vs Corporate Welfare

The headline reads;

Union officials confront Martin

PM vows he'll examine help for laid-off workers
Country lacks industry strategy, Conservative says
CORNWALL, Ont.—Prime Minister Paul Martin, who has been trumpeting Canada's economic good times, got an earful here from union representatives about the 900 jobs that have disappeared with the closing of the Domtar paper mill. "We presented the absolute devastation for the city of Cornwall from the loss of Domtar," said Bob Huget, who along with two other union officials elbowed his way into a planned consultation between the Liberal leader and local authorities about the plant shutdown.

Well there is no industrial strategy, its just more corporate welfare. Liberal policies costly: think-tankWhile the Conservatives strategy is well, wait for it....more corporate tax cuts. And you know what I think of those. Nope no strategy. Retraining laid off workers is not an industrial strategy. Lets take a lesson from the workers in Quebec who took control of their Alcan factory when it was going to get shut down. Ran it for month and made a profit. Why is no-one talking about what is as obvious as the nose on your face. Taxpayer funding to the workers to own and run their own factories. If the bosses wanna leave fine, go. But the productive infrastructure no longer belongs to them it goes to the workers, including managers, and they get to run it. With capitalization from the government and from venture capital funds, including union funds and credit union debentures specifically targeted at supporting the specific plants. There thats democratic capitalism for ya.

A Plague on Both Their Houses

So your choice is Evangelical Christian Liberals or Conservatives. That's no choice.

In the case of Liberal Raymond Chan the Martin Government made a pre-election announcement about the Chinese Head Tax, but like their other announcements any repatriations were frozen once the election was called. It was all for show for Mr. Chan.

Now he is running against the Past President of the right wing lobby Focus on the Family, who is a Conservative. Part of the evangelical conservatives campaign to take over the Conservatives. And apparently the Liberals as this article shows.

I don't care what party they run for they have an agenda, to make Canada look like the USA. They are anti-gay, anti-women, anti-non protestant, anti-liberty, pro-America, pro-male supremacy, why do I care what party they run for. A plague on both their houses.

Multiculturalism Minister Raymond Chan, who won by 3,700 votes, is being challenged in Richmond by Darrel Reid, an articulate former senior aide to Preston Manning. Reid is already pushing two wedge issues to wrest support away from Chan in Richmond's large Chinese-Canadian community.

He says Chan's $2.5 million Chinese head tax redress package announced last week is inadequate, and Reid has made clear he is opposed to gay marriage, whereas Chan voted in favour. Both men are evangelical Christians.

The Liberals will show no mercy, however, in portraying Reid as the poster boy for the religious right. Reid was until recently president of Focus on the Family Canada, a creation of Dr. James Dobson, considered President George W. Bush's most influential evangelical Christian ally.

The Liberals will use the same approach trying to retain Don Bell's seat in North Vancouver, where the Tory candidate is Cindy Silver, who once did legal work for Focus Canada and lists at the top of her website's endorsements page the backing of former Reform MP Sharon Hayes, a Focus Canada board member.

But Silver is moderately pro-choice on abortion and is a far more telegenic politician than Conservative Ted White, who Bell upset last year by a narrow four-per-cent margin. More important, it will be tougher to portray Silver as "scary" given that both Bell, the former District of North Vancouver mayor, and Silver attend the same evangelical church.

Yep thats whats really scary the voters get to choose Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum.