Angus Reid On Line Poll

Does Canada need a federal election in spring? Give us your opinion nowAngusReidForum.com Do you want a federal spring election?
YES	36%
NO	64%

Please note that these survey results are of website visitors who voluntarily take the survey. These results are not necessarily representative of the larger population.


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The Only Poll That Counts

The latest poll shows that the Harper attack ads and attacks on Dion and the Liberals has had an impact in the ROC. But the real poll is what their impact has been in Quebec, because Quebec is the key to any Liberal or Conservative victory. And their impact has been a big fat Zero.


Decima's poll, provided to the Canadian Press, showed the separatist Bloc Quebecois, which runs candidates only in Quebec, stood at 35 percent in the province, with the Liberals at 23 percent and the Conservatives at 15 percent.

And for those who think we are going to have a spring election sprung on us, think again...not with these numbers we ain't.

In an average of the last three weekly polls, the Conservatives have 33 per cent, the Liberals 30 per cent, the NDP 14 per cent, the Bloc nine per cent and the Greens 11 per cent.


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Labour Shortage = Union Busting

The only labour shortage in Alberta is finding unskilled folks to work at Timmies, and even there they are now paying $14 an hour plus benefits. But as for skilled labour, well they are working there too because they can't find jobs through the Merit Contractors and their business pals like CNRL and the Padrone's of CLAC.

These guys being anti-union would rather hire temporary workers for $14 dollars an hour no benefits. To do union jobs that pay over $22 an hour with benefits.

Worker shortage a 'myth' - union
'Lots of skilled people in province'
Alberta's labour shortage is a myth, says the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

Tim Brower, IBEW Local 424 business manager, says non-union contractors are using the "myth" of a labour shortage to bring in temporary foreign workers who are taking away jobs from Albertans. "There is a shortage of unskilled people in this province. I won't deny that," he told reporters at the legislature yesterday. "Tim Hortons is looking for people. 7-Eleven is looking for people ... but when it comes to skilled people in this province, there is no shortage. I am the expert. I have them available."Brower said 1,000 electricians in his union are unemployed or working other jobs because they can't find work in their trade. "I have run into my members working at Home Depot handing out electrical components," he said. "Some of them are driving trucks.

And since our new Minister of Human Resources; Monte Solberg loves his Timmies it's no wonder he is joining his pals in the non-union construction sector in Alberta calling for more Temporary Workers. Thats so more unionized workers can get jobs at Timmies. There are lots of unemployed skilled workers in Alberta, but of course they belong to the building trades unions.

Companies like CNRL and others that are using Merit Shops to build oilsands projects are taking advantage of this to undercut the unions. Heck even right wing Edmonton Sun Columnist Neil Waugh noted this 'fact' last summer. And he notes it again today in a scathing attack on lack of planning by the new Stelmach regime.

That's because the Merit Shops are not independent contractors at all but spin offs of unionized companies! Merit Shops are about as independent as CLAC is an independent union. Neither of them are and both are spin offs of Alberta's Big Construction Companies trying to bust the Building Trades Unions.

Kushner is the president of the Merit Contractors Association and the person most responsible for getting a review of the Code rolling. Call them merit contractors, or open shops, it all means non-union (or at the very most, an "alternative" labour group such as the Christian Labour Association of Canada).

Alberta's non-union construction industry began 20 years ago, as the oil price slump of the early 1980s shut down jobs and pushed companies into bankruptcy. Driven by the earlier, decades-long boom and labour shortage, construction labour relations had become a perpetual upward spiral of wage increases. Faced with the crunch, companies had to cut costs or go under.

The end result was the famous "spin-off" company, a term industry people are reluctant to use to this day. After locking out their employees for 25 hours, the firm would hire them back in a subsidiary company, or through a labour broker, at lower wages. After the dust settled, the complexion of Alberta�s construction industry had changed forever.

Today, there are few union contractors working in the commercial/institutional sector, while the large industrial projects are built almost exclusively by organized labour. The Merit Contractors Association represents 670 companies in Alberta, employing over 20,000 persons who complete 32 million hours of construction work annually. The Association has been growing at a rate of 36% a year, for the past four years. During those four years, it�s been lobbying ceaselessly, in its own right and through its members, for changes to workplace legislation, making annual presentations at Standing Policy Committee and appearances at Conservative Party functions.

See

Labour Shortage

History of the WRF

Alberta's Free Market In Labour

The Labour Shortage Myth

AFL Agrees With Me

Lack of Planning Created Skills Shortage in Alberta

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CLAC, unions, labour shortage, Monte Solberg, Canada, Alberta, tarsands, oilsands, labour, labor, work, jobs, IBEW, Merit Contractors, non-union, rat unions, yellow dog union, Timmies, Tim Hortons, temporary workers

Dion Sucked

Celine Dion not Stephane Dion.

At the Academy Awards.

Doing a pathetic souless song dedicated to the great composer Ennio Morricone.

10:52: I'm not the biggest fan of movie scores, but I have to say, Ennio Morricone elevates the genre. Take notes, please, John Williams. Celine Dion opens her mouth, my cue to get up and stretch my legs.

In fact it was so bad that while she looked like she was lip-syncing the words were actually coming out of her mouth. With lip-syncing there is at least some power, some force, some emotion because it is pre recorded. This was live.

You had to lean forward to hear her sing, and as the camera focused on her mouth I was given to think of a Kissing Gourami as she painfully formed each word with her lips as she sang. High notes ferget it. Deep contralto ferget it. It was white toast, nah make that Melba toast.

Luckily it was the Academy Awards and not American Idol, or she would never have made the cut. But then again Best Supporting Actress awards are given to those who don't make it on Idol.


Dion's performance was a flat as the other Dion's has been in Question period.

That's what happens when unilingual Francophone's try to express themselves in English by reading from a script or a teleprompter.





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Ennio Morricone, Celine Dion, Stephane Dion, Francophone, politics, movies, Hollywood, singers, Academy Awards, Kissing Gourami

CN not hurting

CN awaits the State to legislate UTU workers back to work. They have made no effort to deliver just in time.

Rather they would sacrifice Canadians needs on the backs of their workers. It is after all a sure fire way of increasing your stock price. And your salary.

Ironically 'precision railroad' sounds a lot like precision model trains, and that is how Hunter Harrison has been running CN. Like his own toy railroad in his rec room. Or should that be wreck room?

The bottom line: Did CN push too hard?

In his four years at the throttle, Hunter Harrison has revolutionized how CN Rail does business, driving productivity, boosting the stock price by 150 per cent and making $56-million in 2005 for himself in his pursuit of a "precision railroad."

Five day stock price during strike

CNR (Canadian National Railway Company )
Last:	$54.45
Change:	+0.51 (+0.95%)
Revenue (ttm):	$7,716.0M
EPS:	3.91
Market Cap:	$27,493.13M
Time:	4:23pm ET

The strike is unlikely to have much of an impact on Canada's economy if it's settled within a month, Robert Hogue, a Bank of Montreal economist, said today in a report. ``While the current impact on business and many remote communities can be heavy, much of the broader economic toll, if any, will only surface if the strike carries on significantly longer,'' Hogue said.

The government is using the pretext of inconvenience to bring in Back To Work Legislation today. But inconvenience by whom?

Blaming the workers instead of CN which refuses to bargain. Notice the State always brings in " back to work" legislation, never back to bargaining legislation. And notice who is returning to work for the good of the country.

Lee Rawsthorne of the United Transportation Union local in Winnipeg said the returnees include about 150 workers in Winnipeg, roughly 30 in Dauphin and about six in Brandon.

Workers in Melville, Sask., are also reported to have laid down their picket signs.

Rawsthorne said the national union may not approve of the return to the job, but he said workers felt it was the right thing to do.

"It was never our intention to damage our country," he told CBC News. "It was to try to negotiate a deal.

See

CN


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unions, labour, strike, Hunter Harrison,labor, workers, Canada

Could CN Bring Down Harper?

Well it could. They don't have enough votes to push back to work legislation on CN workers.

Back to work legislation is what CN was hoping for, thus they have refused to bargain. Which is why the Government stepped away from the strike hoping it would go away. It didn't and now they are over ruling their own Labour Board and trying to bring in back to work legislation. When it comes to CN they may be privatized but the State still gives them preferential treatment they got when they were a Crown Corporation.

Now if the Canadian UTU were really militant it would refuse to go back to work. Even if legislated back. Which CUPW did many years ago even though the Government jailed its leadership. Making them Labour Martyrs for years after.

As it is even an attempt to pass the legislation tonight in the House could be defeated. Which is what UTU is hoping for.....high hopes...like that ant and the rubber tree plant.

Ironically the last time CN workers were legislated back to work was when the company was still a Crown Corporation.

Government readies back-to-work order as CN strikers reject voluntary return

The Canada Industrial Relations Board refused to rule the wages-based strike illegal Monday after Blackburn said he wanted the dispute "ended in hours, not days."

The union had said it would send its members back if CN's request for a back-to-work order were approved by the board.

Asked how the union would respond to a legislated order, Wilner said: "Well, they have to get it passed first. Our understanding is that they don't have the votes and they could wind up having to call new elections if they fail."

There is plenty of precedent for federal back-to-work legislation, particularly in the railway sector. Such laws have been enacted 31 times since 1950, including six times in the rail industry, most recently in 1995.

See

Scab Trains Go Off The Tracks

CN Whines

CN Wildcat

American Union Bosses

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Predictable

Yep and this is how it begins. Charest to play up Quebec's nation status

Parliament accepting Quebec is a Nation did not bury the debate.

It was Stephen Harper playing Pandora.

And now the cat is out of the bag and the nation is out of the box.

And Charest is offering a third way between Trudeau Federalism and BQ/PQ Separatism/Sovereignty. Autonomy within a federal system.

"Yes, Quebec is a nation. Quebec is a force for change within Canada and a Liberal government represents this locomotive of change for Canadian federalism," Mr. Charest told more than 2,500 delegates at a party pre-election meeting on Saturday.

If re-elected, the Quebec Liberals say they will hold the first-ever summit of autonomous regions and federated states that would include Catalonia, Wales and Scotland in seeking a greater voice in international forums. The pledge was part of the election platform adopted by the delegates.

But as usual this change in Federalism is from above and not from the people. It is a change in government relations not in governance.

The true sociological doctrines of modern times can be summed up in a few words: Recognizing that, in the political and temporal order, the only legitimate authority is the one to which the majority of the nation has given its consent; that are wise and beneficial constitutions only those for which the governed have been consulted, and to which the majorities have given their free approbation; that all which is a human institution is destined to successive change; that the continuous perfectibility of man in society gives him the right and imposes him the duty to demand the improvements which are appropriate for new circumstances, for the new needs of the community in which he lives and evolves.

1867 Speech of Louis-Joseph Papineau at the Institut canadien

See

Get Over It

Still Quiet

Whipping Boy

Goose and Gander

Mulroney's Ghost

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Quebec, Liberals, Charest, nation, nationalism, Canada, election, province, PQ, BQ, separatism, autonomy, Scotland, Catalonia, Wales, sovereignty,

Liberals Weakness

The environment will NOT be the key issue in the next election. It will have an impact but not what Dion and the Greens hope for.

Harper has made it clear that the next election will be about Law and Order and Afghanistan. And this is where the Liberals are weak, a house divided.

And this is where the NDP is strongest in holding principled positions directly opposed to the Harpocrites. Sure their positions are at odds with pundits and pollsters but in the end a clear stark line of demarcation between the NDP and the Harpocrites leaves the Liberals out on a limb. As centrists they have failed to appeal to either the right or the left, and all Dion has done is paint himself green.

Meanwhile on issues of Law and Order and Afghanistan they suffer from the political baggage they carry from having been the government in power that introduced Anti-Terrorism laws and troops in Afghanistan.

Thus the Dion Liberals skate all over the ice trying to coordinate their right wing and left wing. And like the Oilers, they are not scoring goals.

Challenged this week on his judicial agenda, Harper opted for a schoolboy counterattack. Without much connection to anything relevant, the Prime Minister accused Liberals of not liking the police. That tactic echoes this government's response to skepticism about Afghanistan: To doubt its purpose or progress is to undermine troop morale

Despite growing opposition within Liberal ranks, party Leader Stephane Dion says Grits will "absolutely not" revisit their decision to oppose an extension of two controversial provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act on civil liberties grounds. Dion's spokesman Andre Fortin made the statement Friday as a potential mutiny appeared to be shaping up among Liberal MPs, some of whom argue that one of the measures, investigative hearings, are vital to an RCMP probe into the 1985 Air India bombing. Among Liberal MPs citing the Air India case are justice critic Marlene Jennings, Stephen Owen, Keith Martin and Don Bell.

While the party may have put its bickering behind it, the NDP said yesterday Mr. Dion has yet to make clear his position, refusing to back a withdrawal of troops but also opposing the extension of the mission to 2009. "If Mr. Dion is looking to blame someone for the current state of the Canadian mission in Afghanistan, he might want to start with his own caucus," the NDP said, noting that several key Liberals did not turn up for a vote on extending the mission.

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Danger At Work

Not hundreds, not thousands but;
Hundreds of thousands of Canadians assaulted at work

Work not only kills it injures. And not a word about this crime wave in the workplace from the Law & Order government in Ottawa.

In a report released Friday, the agency said 17% of all self-reported incidents of violent victimization that year, including sexual assault, robbery and physical assault, occurred at the person’s place of work. That figure represents over 356,000 violent workplace incidents in Canada's 10 provinces. And those were only the incidents that were reported.

Don't expect the Law and Order Conservatives to do anything about violence in the workplace because that would interfere in the market place.

As Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day reminded us when he was Labour Minister in Alberta and unions called for Working Alone legislation after workers were assaulted on the job. He said there was nothing he would do about bringing in Working Alone legislation. Instead he cut jobs in his department.

It took the murder of a young woman working alone in Calgary to actually get the ruling PC's in Alberta to take the issue seriously. But by then Stock was leading the New Canadian Alliance Party.

Of course Public Safety in Canada means keeping us safe from foreign terrorists not terror on the job. Especially when most of these assaults were on public sector workers, that is government workers.

The majority -- about 70% -- of the violent workplace incidents were classified as physical assaults. That's more than the 57% of non-workplace incidents that were classified as physical assaults. The three offences were much more common in the social assistance and health care services sectors, the study found. One-third of all workplace violent incidents involved a victim who was working in those types of jobs. A high proportion also occurred in accommodation or food services, retail or wholesale trade and educational services sectors.

As the ILO reported as far back as 1998 the reason for the increasing assaults in the work place is the decrease in workers on the job the privatization of public services and the consequences of the reduction in the size of government. Because the bureaucracy has not declined only front line services.

In situations of structural change and transition, when the main objective is to retain employment and income, safety and health issues are often relegated to second place. However, it is these very situations which generate anxieties, frustration and organizational difficulties, which in turn can lead to violence. In practice, violence at the workplace may include a wide range of behaviour, often of an ongoing and overlapping nature. While attention has traditionally been focused on physical violence, in more recent years evidence has been emerging of the impact and harm caused by non-physical violence which, although often referred to as psychological, can also have physical repercussions for the victim.

A survey by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) revealed that almost 70 per cent of respondents considered verbal aggression to be the leading form of violence, citing physical violence as the next most frequent form. Growing attention is also being paid to perpetuated violence involving repeated behaviour. In itself this type of violence may appear to be relatively minor, but cumulatively it can become very serious, taking the form of sexual harassment, bullying or mobbing. It is this type of behaviour which can have the most negative impact on human resource development at the workplace.

The impact of the 1995 Neo-Con revolution in Canada, the so called "Reinventing Government", when Stockwell Day was Labour Minister in Alberta and Paul Martin was Finance Minister, and both the provinces and Federal Government cut funding and outsourced public sector jobs, is still with us.

And thus the public sector and service workplace is just as unsafe as it was when miners needed canaries to go into the mines. Which is why we mourn the loss of life and the injuries of class on April 28 each year.




See

In Canada Work Kills

Work Sucks

Laundry Workers Fight Privatization

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workers, injuries, assault, crime, work, labour, labor, government, public sector workers, service workers, Canada, job, dangers on the job, assault, crime, Stockwell Day, unions, Alberta, working alone

Top 47

A diverse field of Canada’s most well known and respected personalities from journalists to politicians offering their comments on the issues of the day, everyday.

This is a misleading article; first because there are only 47 folks listed.

Second because many of these folks don't "comment on the issues of the day, every day".

Third; because there is not a single labour activist amongst them. Nor anybody from the left. Notably missing are Judy Rebick , James Laxer and Jim Stanford.

Fourth; no environmentalists; Elizabeth May isn't even on the list nor David Suzuki. And no NDP bloggers.

Which is why they probably couldn't find fifty to fill the list.

It's a who's who of Macleans favorite Conservatives and Liberals. After all Maude Barlow is a Liberal.

And they have one token Dipper; Jamey Heath.

At least Kinsella ain't on the list. Boy he's going to be pissed.

h/t to Scott Tribe



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enMasse

Came across the alternative to Babble at Rabble.....still going strong with a blog and discussion forum.

Q:

How did enMasse come to be?

A:

Well... you'd better take a seat... Where to begin? EnMasse came into being after Audra Williams, the moderator of the babble discussion forums at rabble.ca was fired by the Management Committee by e-mail during a series of life crises. Audra was an extremely well-liked moderator and was largely responsible for the creation of babble at the time of the Quebec City protests in 2001 and for its success until April of 2006, when she was summarily fired. After firing Audra, the Management Committee proceded to adopt an extremely hardnosed attitude towards her and towards outraged members of the community, of which there were many. The Management Committee refused to negotiate and some members of the community began actively spamming the discussion forum in an effort to secure Audra's re-instatement. At the same time as the spamming of the discussion forums, a movement for a "strike" against babble developed, largely led by the babbler with the handle Kevin Laddle. The strikers refused to post to babble until Audra was re-instated. The "Babble Strike" movement grew and on April 10, 2006, a new discussion forum was created on a server paid for by The JF. This forum was initially known as the Babble Strike Forum (BSF). In the first two days over 150 babblers left to join the BSF. At first the BSF was used as a forum to debate the response to the actions of the rabble.ca Management Committee and to debate the possible future of the BSF as an independent progressive discussion forum. As it became increasingly clear that the rabble.ca Management Committee would never agree to the re-instatement of Audra or any of the accountability and democracy reforms demanded by the babble strikers, a consensus developed to forge ahead with the creation of a new progressive space on the internet. At that time, the site was re-named "Temporary Left Wing Board" while a decision was made regarding the naming of the site. On April 28th of 2006, only eighteen days after the site's founding, the name "enMasse," often shortened to EM, was chosen by a significant margin in a vote of the membership. EM has suffered through growing pains and several unfortunate and painful divisions among the membership leading to the departure of a significant number of members. However, as of September 2006 seems to be on a steady footing and is a thriving and vital community.

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Audra Williams, Rabble.ca, Babble, blogs, leftwing blogs, Canada, feminism, socialism, GLBT

Who Said This?

But the democratic part of democratic conservatism reflects our insistence on democratic accountability and reform in government.

We believe that Parliament must be reformed so that individual MPs can have a meaningful voice; that an appointed, patronage-ridden Senate is a disgrace; and that citizens must be able to have a direct say over governing their country through such means as initiative and referenda.

This is the Reform part of our heritage, and this conviction that government must be more open, more free, and more democratic is a central part of our political creed.


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Conservatives Soft On Porn

Since the Conservative Government denied Telus the chance to become an Income Trust they have turned to a new source of profit; cellphone porn.

And what do we hear from the Party in Power that once accused Paul Martin of being soft on kiddie porn?

Nada, nothing, silence.

After all for laissez faire Industry Minister Maxime Bernier it's just another choice in the telecom market place.

As for the Minister in Charge of the CRTC; Bev Oda, well like the Canadian Television Fund it's probably a matter best left up to the CRTC.

Are we shocked at the pervasive liberalism of a supposedly social conservative Law & Order party now governing us?

Not really after all its just a matter of realpolitik, just like their promotion of lung cancer with tax breaks for Big Tobacco.

See:

Telus

CRTC

Bernier

Phone

Income Trusts

Bev Oda

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The End Of The Leisure Society

Many Canadians probably feel as if they are working longer hours. Now, a new study by Statistics Canada finds they are right: Workers are spending more time on the job and less time with their families.

On average, workers had 45 minutes less time with their families on workdays in 2005 than they did almost two decades earlier, says the study released Tuesday. Most of that lost time is taken up by work.

While 45 minutes every day might not seem like much, the time adds up. Based on a 260-day work year, that means 195 fewer hours spent with the family in 2005 than in 1986. That's almost five, 40-hour work weeks.

From 1998 to 2005, the average work week in the active population increased from
44.6 to 46.3 hours, while leisure time declined from 31.5 hours to 29.5 hours,
effectively erasing two decades of gains on that front.
¨ Over the same period, fathers’ average work week increased from 49.1 to 53.2 hours
and mothers’ from 39.4 to 44.1 hours.
¨ During the 1990s, fathers increased the time they devoted to household chores and
care of the children, while mothers increased both their working hours and their leisure
time. But this trend toward closing the gender gap in caring and working came to a halt
in 2005.
¨ Parents with children under the age of five are the most likely to report being time stressed
– two-thirds of mothers and just over half of fathers.

The crisis of leisure time was a fixation amongst sociologists and popular culture pundits, in the Sixties and Seventies we were promised a glorious future of the end of work, or at least a working week of twenty hours by 2000.

Instead the End of Work has become the End of Leisure and the extension of the exploitation of the masses by the extension of the working day and the work week.

Labor saving technologies were supposed to usher in the Leisure Society and in the 1960s the concern was what would we do with all the time on our hands? How delighfully naive. Labor saving technologies meant one person could do more! It was like the paperless office promise...about as practical as the paperless bathroom Yes, we will find work to do for all the idle hands.

Instead of the eight hour day and the forty hour week in Alberta we now have a 44 hour week, before overtime is considered. And we have many folks working more than one job, thus a longer work time. All this because capitalism is a failed dream for the vast majority of workers. And in a grand case of irony the Leisure Studies program at the University of Calgary was canceled due to budget cuts.

While our leisure time was supposed to liberate us in the recreation of ourselves from workers into the ultimate renaissance (hu)man it has simply created a literal cottage industry of consumers owning a second home and consuming capitalist recreation.

The leisure industry channels and organises our desires and enables optimum enjoyment, preferably in a second home. For while the first home excels in usefulness and efficiency, the second home symbolises all that is good in life. Here, on a carefully chosen sofa, we can finally take a breather from our busy lives, preferably in leisure wear and with a Bloody Mary. Here, we are far removed from bosses and technology, close to nature and our loved ones, and do only what we feel like doing.

When we think of leisure, we likely ponder pleasure in paradise, or we entertain the idea of being somewhat lackadaisical, perhaps in a sunny clime. We might not think of “leisure” as a topic of study per se and we probably give little thought to what researchers of leisure actually do outside of their leisure time.

“A lot of people cringe,” admits Don Dawson, acting chair of the Department of Leisure Studies at the University of Ottawa. “They wonder what I am talking about.”

In fact, what he is often talking about is a theoretical concept of leisure and utopia. And he talks about it formally in a presentation at the international Canadian Congress on Leisure Research in Edmonton in May. This topic represents the culmination of his 20 years of research into a diverse number of subjects — from his first major project in the early 1980s, which looked at the leisure activities of immigrants, to other interests such as sustainable tourist development in northern Québec, mentoring at-risk youth through recreation and family leisure activities.

Above all, Dawson suggests most outside observers have a very limited understanding of the field of leisure studies.

“What strikes people is the diversity,” he says. “The recreation field, for example, stretches from therapeutic recreation to eco-tourism, from sports to the arts, from the sociology of pleasure and leisure constraints to post-modernity and culture.”

He adds that the range of this field is huge, and has its own distinctive history and its trends. Over the past decade, for example, many investigators have concentrated on leisure constraints, the factors that have prevented people from enjoying their recreational activity. Similarly, others have examined the effects of leisure — not simply the personal benefits, but also social, community, economic and ecological impacts. More specifically, leisure studies has analysed tourism, which generates $50 billion worth of spending in Canada every year, leaving its mark on the country in many different ways.

We could have the leisure society if we wanted it. But Samuel Smiles won; our lives are ruled by a work ethic and a duty to consume ...

This is the contradiction of advanced or decadent capitalism as predicted by Marx in his Grundrisse; and by futurists today.

The black box economy is a strictly theoretical possibility, but may result where machines gradually take over more and more roles until the whole economy is run by machines, with everything automated. People could be gradually displaced by intelligent systems, robots and automated machinery. If this were to proceed to the ultimate conclusion, we could have a system with the same or even greater output as the original society, but with no people involved. The manufacturing process could thus become a ‘black box’. Such a system would be so machine controlled that humans would not easily be able to pick up the pieces if it crashed - they would simply not understand how it works, or could not control it. It would be a fly-by-wire economy.

Thorstein Veblen declared the existence of the leisure class at the end of WWI and the IWW declared that the four hour day could lead to full employment. Yet here we are almost a hundred years later and we are nowhere close to that liberatory experience instead we are going backwards to the future, forward to the past, working longer hours and ending up with the ten and twelve hour day. Something we fought to end in 1888.

Technology, automation, computerization, has not liberated us it has merely made us cogs in the cybernetic machine of modern capitalist society. And it is our bosses, our managers, and the professional class that continue to enslave us to their conceptions of life in their machine age.

And this is the Big Lesson: it takes workaholics to create, maintain and expand capitalism. As opposed to common beliefs (held by the uninitiated) – people, mostly, do not engage in business because they are looking for money (the classic profit motive). They do what they do because they like the Game of Business, its twists and turns, the brainstorming, the battle of brains, subjugating markets, the ups and downs, the excitement. All this has nothing to do with pure money. It has everything to do with psychology. True, the meter by which success is measured in the world of money is money – but very fast it is transformed into an abstract meter, akin to the monopoly money. It is a symbol of shrewdness, wit, foresight and insight.

Workaholics identify business with pleasure. They are the embodiment of the pleasure principle. They make up the class of the entrepreneurs, the managers, the businessmen. They are the movers, the shakers, the pushers, the energy.

Also see;

Black History Month; Paul Lafargue

Take Time From the Boss

Work Sucks

Time For The Four Hour Day

Tyrant Time-Tempus Fug'it

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Canada, work, leisure, working hours, leisure time, overtime, Veblen, crisis of leisure time,

Saudis Threaten Oil Production World Wide

The armed Islamicist faction of the Saudi State, bin-Laden Inc. issued a statement yesterday saying that competitor oil producing nations could be targeted for attacks.

An Arabian-peninsula-based terrorist website encouraging attacks on oil installations in Canada, Mexico and Venezuela to disrupt the U.S. economy. A statement on the al-Qaida Voice of Holy War e-magazine said “it is necessary to hit oil interests in all regions which serve the United States, not just in the Middle East.”

The Saudis are worried that the U.S. move to reduce its reliance on their oil, hence their involvement in the war in Iraq, they are Sunni's after all, a fact overlooked in all the finger pointing at Iran.

Nawaf Obaid, a security advisor to the Saudi monarchy, said in an article from the Washington Post:

...therefore the Saudi leadership is preparing to substantially revise its Iraq policy. Options now include providing Sunni military leaders (primarily ex-Baathist members of the former Iraqi officer corps, who make up the backbone of the insurgency) with the same types of assistance -- funding, arms and logistical support -- that Iran has been giving to Shiite armed groups for years. Another possibility includes the establishment of new Sunni brigades to combat the Iranian-backed militias.

Another possibility includes the establishment of new Sunni brigades to combat the Iranian-backed militias. Finally, Abdullah may decide to strangle Iranian funding of the militias through oil policy. If Saudi Arabia boosted production and cut the price of oil in half, the kingdom could still finance its current spending. But it would be devastating to Iran, which is facing economic difficulties even with today's high prices. The result would be to limit Tehran's ability to continue funneling hundreds of millions each year to Shiite militias in Iraq and elsewhere.

The sub-text of this article is clear. If American troops walk out of the Iraqi Armageddon, Saudi Arabia will walk in, not with troops but with oil, funds and possibly proxies, chosen from among the various Iraqi Sunni forces, both old and new. This is a clear warning to disaffected American constituencies who are calling for the return of their troops. Once again, Saudi Arabia is serving the interests of the Bush administration by calling on Americans to stay in Iraq because the alternative is going to be worse. When asked if Saudi engagement in Iraq would precipitate a regional war, Obaid replied “so be it, the consequences of inaction are far worse.”

Now that Bush has said for a second time that the U.S. needs to reduce its reliance on Saudi oil, and the Democrats concur the Saudis have again unleashed their puppets in Binladen Inc.

Al-Qaida has called for terrorist strikes against Canadian oil and natural gas facilities to "choke the U.S. economy." An online message, posted Thursday by the al-Qaida Organization in the Arabian Peninsula, declares "we should strike petroleum interests in all areas which supply the United States ... like Canada," the No. 1 exporter of oil and gas to the United States. Three western countries are mentioned in the call-to-arms -- Canada first, followed by Mexico and Venezuela. Would-be attackers are instructed to specifically target oilfields, pipelines, loading platforms and carriers.

Al-Qaeda's beliefs are those of Salafism, which originates in the Saudi Arabia as the State religion.

While a number of CIA veterans have written about Islamic extremism, Sageman's treatise provides the most detailed account of how Al Qaeda emerged from the rubble of war-torn Afghanistan to become the vanguard of a Sunni Muslim revivalist movement known as Salafism (deriving from salaf the Arab word for "ancient one"), which calls for the restoration of "authentic Islam" through the violent overthrow of the established order. Social bonds have played a more formative role than ideology in the growth of "the global Salafi jihad," as Sageman calls it, which became leaner and meaner and increasingly radicalized. "Conceptually we failed," admits Robert Baer, a former officer in the CIA's Directorate of Operations, who was right in the thick of things in the Middle East and Central Asia during his twenty-one-year cloak-and-dagger career. "We didn't consider Sunni Islam to be a threat to the West. We didn't want to see it."

Al-Qaeda attacked one of the Saudi refineries last year, but that was a feint. The refinery was not destroyed and conveniently the 'terrorists' were executed on the spot. Had the Saudis wanted to they could have found out who was behind this. Just as Jordan had, when attacked by Zarqawi's forces. But when you fund terrorist organizations in the game of geopolitics, plausible deniability is the name of the game, not ending terrorism.

Saudi Arabia and Global Terrorism: From al-Qaeda to Hamas

The Saudis welcome the current U.S. focus on Iran, its major competitor in the region for oil and gas exports.

Earlier key Sunni Arab allies while endorsing the goals of Bush's plan, and expressing hopes of success , almost in the same breath suggested that the Shia -led government in Baghdad cannot or would not implement the plan.

Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal was perhaps the most positive , who agreed " with the full objectives set by the new plan, the strategy." After talks with Rice earlier , he commented , "This has objectives that ... if it were applied, it will solve the problems facing Iraq." But he emphasized that it was the responsibility of the Iraq government alone. "We cannot be Iraqis more than Iraqis," Saud emphasised. "Other countries can help, but the burden, the whole burden and taking a decision will be the Iraqis'."

It was well put by the Saudi newspaper Al Jazirah which noted, "The Americans are trying to get out of the Baghdad bottleneck and they are looking for agent players in managing their conflict with Tehran to make their new strategy in Iraq successful."

Of course the Sunni Arab world would not trust Prime Minister al-Maliki's government with close ties with Shia Iran The Shias have become empowered after many centuries , courtesy Washington and would not let go .Rice did admit that" There are concerns about whether the Maliki government is prepared to take an evenhanded, nonsectarian path here. There's no doubt about that."

Intimidated and nervous, Sunni Arab rulers in Cairo, Amman, Riyadh and the Gulf are egging US to stay put in the region , to stop and roll back Iranian influence . They had acted similarly when Saudis, Kuwaitis , Emirates , Egypt , West et al had encouraged and funded 'brother Saddam' and Iraq in its 1980-88 war against a rampant Iran after the Khomeini led Shia revolution of 1979 .Iraq's Shia Arabs had fought against Iran's Revolutionary Guards and young boys seeking martyrdom .

In a recent Asia Times report, Amandeep Sandhu revealed that Saudi Arabia has boosted oil production with the express intent of lowering world oil prices and hurting Iran’s economy.

Moreover, Sandhu reports, Israel and Saudi Arabia have been engaged in secret talks that might be aimed at securing Saudi approval for Israeli overflight rights, should Israel opt to attack Iran’s nuclear installations. And, according to Sandhu, “a financial war on Iran has already begun”--noting that the Iranian parliament concedes that the country’s internal stability would be at stake if full economic sanctions were imposed.

Which explain's why this happened last summer after Israel invaded Southern Lebanon.

Leading Saudi Sheik Pronounces Fatwa Against Hezbollah

Wahhabism in the Service of American Imperialism: 
The Politics of a Fatwa

CIA funds Hizbullah rivals

The Telegraph said the American move is supported by the region heavyweight Sunni countries of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt as well as Israel.

It added that former Saudi ambassador in Washington Prince Bandar bin-Sultan is believed to have been closely involved in the decision to take on Hizbullah.

Prince Bandar, now King Abdullah's national security adviser, made several trips to Washington and held meetings with Elliot Abrams, the senior Middle East official on the NSC.

Prince Turki al-Faisal, Bandar's successor, has resigned abruptly as ambassador to Washington last month.

Intelligence sources said that a principal reason for this was his belief he had been undermined by Prince Bandar, who had not told him of the Lebanon plan or even that he was visiting Washington.

The Israeli government, which sees Iran as its chief enemy, has also been involved.

"There's a feeling both in Jerusalem and in Riyadh that the anti-Sunni tilt in the region has gone too far," said an intelligence source.

He said the aim is to stopping Iranian hegemony in the Middle East emerging from the US invasion of Iraq.

After all the Saudi family business of Bin-Laden Inc. the parent operation is the largest engineering firm in the region which has cooperated with Bechtel and competes with Halliburton. It also owns Arbusto Energy in cooperation with the Bush regime.

With America's declaration that it wants to reduce its reliance on Saudi oil, the Saudis had to hit back. The fact they would also target Venezuela, no fan of the U.S. but a major supplier to America shows that this is aimed at allies of Iran as well as allies of America like Canada and Mexico.

Also tar sands production is the next stage in long term oil production, which will replace the need for Saudi oil. And both Alberta and Venezuela have vast reserves of oilsands coming on line.

The Saudis were worried when the U.S. invaded Iraq, Saudis helped fund the Sunni insurrection, a fact under-reported by the MSM. Partially because of the links between the Saudi Royal Family and the Bush Royal Family.

The Sunni attacks on Iraqs oil pipelines and refineries sabotaged the U.S. ability to rely on Iraq as a replacement for Saudi oil. Now the Saudis threaten their natural competition with Jihad. After all in the Saudis view it's their religious right to do so and it's in their economic and political interests.

Thanks to the Bush regime and its complicated personal business relations with the Saudis they can point the finger at al-Qaeda giving them both plausible deniability. And once again create the fictional need for more State Security in both the West and in the Middle East. We know who funds the Terrorism that the U.S. has declared war on, but of course its all one big geopolitical game of power politics between Bush Inc. and Bin-Laden Inc. A dance of the dialectic between the funders of terrorism and the funders of the war on terror.

In southern Adelaide, construction of Park Holme mosque halted this month, because the foreign minister, Alexander Downer ordered that the Saudi government should not be funding the building. The mosque had been a haunt of immigrant Warya Kanie, who was captured in Iraq last year, fighting against the coalition.

A report by terror analyst Jean-Charles Brisard, compiled for the UN Security Council in December 2002, stated that between 1992 and 2002, al-Qaeda received between $300 million and $500 million from Saudi businessmen and banks. This represented 20% of Saudi GNP.

According to Brisard, Abdullah Bin Abul Moshin al Turki, the secretary general of the Muslim World League (founded in Mecca in 1962), entered into business negotiations in Spain with Muhammad Zouaydi in 1999. Zouaydi was al-Qaida's main fundraiser in Europe. Abdullah al Turki was an adviser to the late King Fahd. In November 2003, Turki was awarded a prize by King Abdullah for his missionary work.

According to the Jamestown Foundation, the MWL spreads "radical and vehemently anti-American" propaganda, and also has an agenda specifically targeting Europe. The Saudis began a policy of globally disseminating their brand of Sunni Islam during the 1980s, as a reaction to the Iranian (Shia) revolution. According to former CIA director R. James Woolsey, the Saudis have spent nearly $90 billion spreading their ideology around the globe since the 1970s.

Al-Haramain received large donations from the Saudi royal family. Its international branches were involved in funding Al Qaeda. Omar al Faruq was al-Qaeda's senior representative in Southeast Asia. He was arrested by Indonesian authorities on June 5, 2002. According to Jean-Charles Brisard, al Faruq confessed: "Al Haramain was the funding mechanism of all operations in Indonesia. Money was laundered through the foundation by donors from the Middle East."

See:

Bin Laden Inc.


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