Friday, November 16, 2007

This Deserves A Public Inquiry

Even more than L'affaire de Mulroney this deserves a public inquiry.

Ottawa says Afghan detainees were not tortured, government documents say otherwise

This is Canada's Abu Ghraib.

Canada : Ankle-deep in blood and shit

Amnesty International Canada and the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association had to drag the Harper government before a Federal Court judge to get them to turn over documents they were determined to keep secret. Documents including a Canadian correctional services inspector asking Ottawa for better boots because she was "walking through blood and fecal matter" when she inspected the prisons.


SEE:

Lies & Secrets

PM Fails to Discuss Prisons In Afghanistan

Activist Courts and Afghan Torture

Taliban Dion

Vive Le Difference

Don't Forget About This Guy


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CNN Debate Debacle

It was a debacle last night for the Democratic Presidential Leadership Debate on CNN. It was all fluff and personal attacks encouraged by Wolf Blitzer and his team. There they came the eight candidates for president...nope wait a minute there are only seven.

I was watching and said hey where was Mike Gravel. Well he got locked out. You see it's all about money. But did Wolfie bother to tell us that. Nope. I had to dig around to find this;

Mike Gravel, the former senator from Alaska, will be excluded from this debate. According to Associated Press reports, Gravel didn't meet the fundraising requirement set by CNN. All eight candidates were charged with raising at least $1 million to be invited to the debate and, by September, Gravel raised about $240,000.

So it's not that you're a candidate but that you are a candidate that meets the fund raising demands of CNN!!! Of course CNN is simply doing what MSNBC had already done to Senator Gravel. It seems that media wants to determine who the winners are. Ah say it ain't so.

Actually if CNN had their way they would have dumped Kucinich too. But he raised enough money.

So Wolf did his best to avoid treating Kucinich as a contender. This article gives a good review of just how pathetic the treatment of Kucinich was by Blitzer and Co. And the bias was documented by rival MSNBC.


At 8:26, with Kucinich not having had the opportunity to say one word, CNN asked all the candidates to say whether they would support the Democratic nominee no matter what. They all said yes, except for Kucinich, who took the opportunity to say 10 words, receiving huge applause. His words were: "Only if they oppose war as an instrument of policy." A little vaguely worded, but I don't think that vagueness was Kucinich's intention. I think his intention was to contrast his own position with that of most of the other people on the stage. If he is not nominated, he is not going to be able to support the nominee.

Half an hour into this train wreck, no candidate had had an opportunity to speak to their priorities, but we heard a lot about CNN's. At 8:27 CNN asked Obama about immigration. At 8:29 WB dumbed this down and asked all the candidates for opinions on giving drivers' licenses to undocumented people. At 8:32 Kucinich got a chance to say his 11th word. He shifted the topic to NAFTA and took exception to the stupid question, refusing to answer it, winning loud applause.

Then CNN started asking various candidates about education, and for the first time asked Kucinich a non yes/no question. But instead of sticking with education, the topic of the questions before and after Kucinich's, WB asked Kucinich what he disagrees with labor unions on. Kucinich's answer was good, but not inspired. Maybe after 37 minutes, the Congressman had drifted off into daydreaming.

After education, CNN asked every candidate except Kucinich about Pakistan. At the end of this segment, at 8:52, Kucinich said "Hello? Hello?" But CNN refused to ask him a question.

Next CNN turned to Iraq, and this time Kucinich was included. He said that Congress should cut off the funding [big applause]. Then he answered the Pakistan question that CNN had refused to ask him. Blitzer quickly cut him off.

At 8:58, CNN came back to Kucinich on China trade, and he nailed it. And he criticized Edwards for having voted for normal trade relations with China. Edwards dodged the question. And Edwards criticized NAFTA, although he has made clear he will not end it.

When WB finally turned to Kucinich, rewording an audience member's question, he said "You were the only one who voted against the PATRIOT Act..."

"That's because I read it," Kucinich interjected to huge applause.

Kucinich nailed the question and turned to the topic of preventing an attack on Iran as well. WB saw what was coming and tried to cut him off, but Kucinich said "Impeach them now!" [huge applause]

Them. He did not say Cheney only.

Kucinich was only permitted to speak that one time during the debate's entire second hour.

From NBC's Lauren Appelbaum
There were two periods during the debate where Clinton and Obama dominated the debate. Members of the audience, as well as Kucinich, verbalized that they were upset. Although Wolf Blitzer promised all the candidates would have ample time to speak, the clock says otherwise.

Here are the speaking times for the second half of the debate:

Obama: 7:03 (during 5 times)
Clinton: 6:33 (during 6 times)
Biden: 5:45 (during 4 times)
Richardson: 5:29 (during 4 times)
Dodd: 3:10 (during 2 times)
Edwards: 2:53 (during 3 times)
Kucinich: 2:10 (during 2 times)

And, the totals are:

Obama: 18:22 (during 16 times)
Clinton: 17:28 (during 16 times)
Richardson: 13:41 (during 11 times)
Biden: 10:46 (during 9 times)
Edwards: 10:43 (during 10 times)
Kucinich: 6:52 (during 7 times)
Dodd: 6:34 (during 7 times)

When the candidates were asked abut labour unions, specifically a question bashing Teachers Unions for not allowing merit pay and protecting bad teachers, only Kucinich challenged the premise that unions were bad. He said he was a member of union, IATSE, that his dad was a teamster and he spoke for working people. for the working class. Yep he actually said 'working class'. Way to go Kucinich. Voice of the working class. But of course that voice was stifled by Wolf and Co. at every opportunity.

The former Cleveland mayor said he has never forgotten the poverty he grew up in, and said he still lives in a house he bought in a working-class neighborhood of Cleveland in 1971 for $22,500.

"Look, I know that I'm a long shot, but so are a lot of Americans, and they're in a much more difficult position than I'm in because they're threatened with losing their jobs, their wages are stagnate, they don't have health care benefits, their retirement's in jeopardy or their home is in jeopardy," he said.

"What I stand for is central to the hopes and aspirations of the American people, and as they understand that, my support starts to grow."



When it came to predictable questions about migrant workers Kucinich nailed it.

During the "yes or no" question on support for driver's licenses for illegal immigrants, Obama stumbles further, giving a "Clintonesque" answer before saying, when pressed, "yes."

The rest of the responses: Biden - no; Clinton - no; Edwards - no; Dodd - no.

Dennis Kucinich has the best answer, telling Blitzer: "I take issue with your description of people being illegal immigratns....they're undocumented." There are no illegal human beings. "I take exception to the way you framed that question," he tells Blitzer.




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Why Isn't Today A Holiday?


Time to put out a call for a Pan Canadian Holiday to mark today.

Keeping It RIEL - Louis Riel Day

This would be popular in Quebec, and popular with aboriginal and Metis peoples. And of course for Western Canada it marks the beginning of our alienation from Ontario that bastion of British Colonialism. So it's a winner as a national holiday whose time has come.

And it would piss off the reactionary right wing revisionists like Flanagan, Morton, and Byfield.

SEE:

Remember Riel

Rebel Yell

Liberal Genocide; The Lubicon


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Pay Day For Alberta Teachers


File this under cleaning up outstanding issues before calling an election. What a difference five months make.

Alberta is signing a $2.1-billion cheque to avert a province-wide teacher strike.The Alberta government announced Thursday it will assume the $2.1 billion teachers' portion of their unfunded pension liability. In return teachers' associations across the province must pledge five years of labour peace.

Since it was created in the 1930s, the teachers' pension fund has been underfunded by both the government and the ATA. The liability currently totals $7.1 billion, including $6.4 billion up to 1992 -- when both sides agreed to increase their contributions -- as well as $700 million since then.

If they accept the deal, teachers will stop paying pension liability contributions -- 3.1 per cent of their salaries this year. The deal would save teachers roughly $2,000 a year that has been deducted from their paycheques for years to help cover the pension liability.

They will also each get a $1,500 lump-sum payment and a yearly raise tied to the average weekly earnings index, which is also used to calculate MLA salaries.

The deal came with two months left to prevent province-wide walkouts. If ratified by the 62 affected union locals by Jan. 1, 2008, it will give teachers a 3% raise this year and assume their payments for the fund beginning this year, bringing the immediate salary increase to 6.1%.

Additionally, teachers are limited under the Education Act to working no more than 200 days per year.

If school boards and teachers' ratify the deal, it will eliminate any possibility of strikes or lockouts until September 2012.

Alberta Teachers' Association president Frank Bruseker called the agreement one of the highlights of his career. He pledged to do everything he can to ensure it's ratified at the board level.

Shannon McElroy, president of the Edmonton Catholic teachers' local of the ATA, also praised the pact. "From my perspective as a local president it's unprecedented, historically, that we would reach a deal ... of this magnitude on so many issues," McElroy said. "I'm not seeing any downside to this."

The winners are the teachers and school boards. The province has got province wide bargaining that they always wanted but now they have to foot the bill. Be careful of what you wish for. This frees up school boards to use provincial funding for public education instead of teacher salaries.

But don't think that it means that teachers will vote Tory. On the other hand it does mean the Alberta Liberals have just been screwed.

But the losers are the Alberta Liberals - who in times past acted like they were the political arm of the ATA. "In raw political terms," Liberal finance critic Rick Miller gulped, "this means our policy platform just got a page shorter."


And you just can't satisfy some folks.


But the Canadian Taxpayers Federation was scathing in its reaction to the deal, criticizing Stelmach for selling out taxpayers.

"Premier Stelmach has offered teachers $2.1 billion of taxpayers' money in exchange for them not going on strike during the upcoming provincial election," Scott Hennig, the group's Alberta director, said in a news release.

The federation calculated the deal will cost each Albertan $600, and called on the government to hold a plebiscite before signing any new agreement.

"Teachers are getting their debt paid off 52 years early and all taxpayers get is a lousy five years of no strikes."

$600 bucks for five years of labour peace. Priceless.



See

AIM High for more on the Alberta Government and its public pension plans.

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From Lyin Brian To Litigious Brian

Pundits are asking why the old Mulroney Schreiber Airbus scandal is making news now.This is what happens when you publish your memoirs and start making front page news with your attacks on other party leaders. The press has a long memory.

Especially when you conveniently forget to mention you took a $300,000 kick back in cash that you failed to pay taxes on until much later. Even though this was 'news' back in 2003.


William Kaplan, A SECRET TRIAL, Brian Mulroney, Stevie Cameron, and the Public Trust, McGill-Queen’s, 2004

A SECRET TRIAL, wasn’t, I believe, written because Kaplan suffered a change of conviction about Brian Mulroney’s present status as an innocent in the Airbus Affair. It is a book of greater seriousness than that. Kaplan is a sophisticated lawyer, author, labour mediator, and a serious thinker about the viability of Canadian democracy.

Three matters, especially, conspired to re-focus Kaplan’s interest on the Mulroney record and the role played in it by Stevie Cameron. First he discovered that Brian Mulroney had not been candid with him, had perhaps deceived him, and perhaps deliberately. Kaplan had “unprecedented and unlimited access to Mulroney’s files” (p. viii), and to his person, during the research and writing of his defense of Mulroney book entitled Presumed Guilty, Brian Mulroney, the Airbus Affair, and the Government of Canada (1998). Kaplan recorded some of his conversations with Mulroney and quotes these to make his point in A SECRET TRIAL.

Kaplan concludes about the Mulroney/Karlheinz Schreiber relation: “I had been duped. Schreiber had been part of the Mulroney circle even before he [Mulroney] entered public life. In fact, he played an important behind-the-scenes role in Mulroney’s road to power.” (p. 13)


Kaplan was duped, the Liberal Government of the day was duped and so were the people of Canada. And so Schreiber languished in jail awaiting extradition to Germany out of sight out of mind. Then he start making noise. And the $300,000 cash payment made the news, again.

The CBC Fifth Estate digs it up again and reminds the public that Mulroney sued the Government of the Day, and the taxpayers forked over several million dollars for his retirement fund and oh yes he forgot to mention that little cash payment at that time.

The launch of Brian Mulroney's volume of memoirs was the publishing event of this year. But, in more than 1,000 comprehensive pages of anecdote and information there is one notable name missing--Karlheinz Schreiber--the German dealmaker at the centre of the darkest chapter of Mr. Mulroney's life. Linden MacIntyre and a fifth estate team report new revelations about the relationship between the two men as well as details about the attempt to cover the trail of the $300,000 cash the former Prime Minister received from Schreiber.



Mulroney review will consider bid to recoup cash from ex-PM


And when you value your personal reputation more than the political impact it will have you go from being Lyin' Brian to Litigious Brian.



Mulroney calls for public inquiry

No apology from Liberal MP sued by Mulroney

Mulroney's suit seeks $2 million in damages and punitive damages. Should he win the case, Mulroney wants the money to go to health care facilities in Ontario.

In the 1990s, Mulroney won a $2.1 million settlement from the government after police documents alleged he took kickbacks for the sale of Airbus planes to Air Canada in the 1980s.



Why is the Harper Government implicated? Simple when Harper created his transition team in the early days of February 2006 it was staffed by old Mulroney cronies. In particular Derek Burney who is now on the Harper Panel on Afghanistan. The apple does not fall from the tree.

This reminds us once again of why Brian Mulroney ended his term as PM being the most hated Canadian and leaving his party decimated. He also alienated his right wing base which gave rise to the Reform Party of Preston Manning and Stephen Harper. He made politics all about him. And he is doing it again. And he will take the New Conservative Party and its not so New Government down with him.



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