Showing posts with label Stepen Harper. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stepen Harper. Show all posts

Friday, December 05, 2008

Harpers Putsch


Since winning power in 2006, albeit as a minority government, Stephen Harper has been set on gaining a majority to keep HIM in power as PM. That first summer his reading included a biography of Stalin, the Man of Steel.

And like Stalin his recent political machinations reminded me of the intriques in the Bolshevik Party as Stalin played off alliances of Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Radek, Bukharin, and other central committee and politburo members, against each other to maintain power.

In porouging parliment he saved his job and his government...for the moment.

And despite his protestations about saving demoracy, his actions are the opposite. Which is typical of the right wing, who use language to mean its opposite. For instance Freedom of Information acts passed by right wing governments are anything but that, they actually limit freedom of informantion and access. Just as the Harperocrites transperancy and accountability act is anything but.
And right wing parties manufacture political crisises in order to create the conditions to either take power or stay in power.

So when Harper talks about democracy he means something other than parlimentary democracy. Rather he looks south and want to create a PMO with the power of the U.S. Presidency.

"The Canadian government has always been chosen by the people," the prime minister declared in his mid-week televised address to the country.
But now, he told viewers, a coalition of opposition parties is trying to oust him through a backroom deal "without your say, without your consent and without your vote."
Just how valid is Harper's claim that changing governments without a new election would be undemocratic?
"It's politics, it's pure rhetoric," said Ned Franks, a retired Queen's University expert on parliamentary affairs. "Everything that's been happening is both legal and constitutional."
Other scholars are virtually unanimous in their agreement. They say Harper's populist theory of democracy is more suited to a U.S.-style presidential system, in which voters cast ballots directly for a national leader, than it is to Canadian parliamentary democracy.
"He's appealing to people who learned their civics from American television," said Henry Jacek, a political scientist at McMaster University.
In Canada, there's no national vote for prime minister. People elect MPs in 308 ridings, and a government holds power only as long as it has the support of a majority of those MPs.
"We have a rule that the licence to govern is having the confidence of the House of Commons," said Peter Russell, a former University of Toronto professor and adviser to past governors general.
"I'm sorry, that's the rule. If they want to change it to having a public opinion poll, we'd have to reform and rewrite our Constitution."


If we are to understand the current political situation and how we got here we have to review Harpers rise to power. Firstly he left the Reform Party as a short lived MP, having been a former assistant to its first MP Deborah Grey. He had an ego that would not let him work with Preston Manning then Reform Party leader who is a prairie populist. Harper however comes from the Calgary School, a modern neo-con politick influenced by Reagan/Gingrich Republicanism, and the authoritarian ideology of Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss. Several members of the Calgary School being ex-pat Americans.

The new conservative movement sled by Harper shed its populist appeal, and its base, while maintaining the language of reform to appeal to that base. Under the tutelage of Calgary School mandrin Tom Flanagan. the object was not Preston's agenda to reform Canadian politics, but to gain power and destroy their main opponent the Liberal Party. It was to hold power at all costs, first and foremost, democratic reform was abandoned for the politics of right wing political economic social engineering, to transform the state in Canada into a Republican lite government. In order to do this it was required to Unite the Right.

With the failure of the Reform Party and Canadian Alliance to do this, it was clear that a strong man, a man of steel, would be needed to bind the disparte right wing base together into a party capable of winning an election and begin the process of defeating and destroying the Liberal Party, Canada's Natural Governing Party, andultimately what these ex-American politicos hate most the liberal social democratic Canadian State.

This was the same agenda of the Gingrich Republicans and their Contract With America, to defeat forever the Democrats, who had been the Natural Governing Party in the United States.

With Harpers win of the leadership of the newly minted Conservative Party, which intigrated the Canadian Alliance with the old Progressive Conservative Party, purging the progressives and populist Reformers, the Republican Revolution model of politics was adapted to Canada.

The arrogance of the Liberals was finally met with an arrogant Conservative leader set with and agenda to seize power and destroy them once and for all. No other Canadian politician had ever been elected to parliment like Harper. None of the previous Conservative PM's had ever viewed taking power to mean destroying their political opposition.

This should have been clear to the Liberals, but in their arrogance as the Natural Ruling Party they chaose instead to view their defeat in 2006 as the fault of the internal clash between Paul Martin and Jean Chretien. A clash that had led to Martin gaining a minority government bequethed with a Chretien era scandal. Even after Martin's defeat the party failed to realize how serious Harper was about his mission and political agenda to destroy them.

In their arrogance they held a six month leadership race complete with supposed party revitalization discussions. The latter ended up on the cutting room floor. The former was hotly contested, and included a front runner, Michael Ignatieff, brought from Harvard to battle the Calgary School boys. Unfortunately the race which got nasty ended in a lame duck choice; Stephane Dion, whom nobody really wanted, but appeared at th moment to unite the party as the best of a bad lot. Again the failures and foibles of all the leadership candidates were exposed for all Canadians to see, and their words used in the leadership debates would come back to haunt them.

In choosing Dion, they thought they would naturally regain power, they were unprepared for the total war that Harper was about to unleash on them.
With a minority government and buckets of money available the Harper government wasted no time in perparing for another election. And it began the day that the Liberals elected Dion as their leader.

Gone now were the catcalls about you had ten yearsto fix things, and accusations about the Quebec Ad Scam and being entitled to their entitlements. No the Liberals played into Harpers
hands, his strong leadership, his furherprinzpal, versus their milqutoast soft leader Dion.

They prepared for a spring election, spending on attack ads against Dion that left the broke Liberal party reeling. When that election did not happen they porogued parliment for the summer to return in the fall, blaming the Liberals for their failure to pass law and order legislation that was their stock in trade appeal to their right wing base.

By the end of 2007 they had wasted the surplus the Liberals had left them with GST cuts, tax cuts for big business and bloated military budgets for their war in Afghanistan. This was always a key element of the neo-con agenda, spend government money so that they had no alternative but to cut politically objectionable services and programs.

"I'm hopeful there will be some ideologically-driven, neo-conservative cuts to government," political scientist Tom Flanagan, a former chief of staff to Harper, said in an interview.
Such cuts, he added, would be consistent with Harper's long-term goal of reducing the size and scope of government.
"I think that's always been sort of the long-term plan, the way that Stephen was going about it of first depriving the government of surpluses through cutting taxes . . . You get rid of the surpluses and then it makes it easier to make some expenditure reductions."
At a minimum, Flanagan said: "I think there's certainly room for some incremental cuts to useless programs."
The government has already used the economic crisis to put off plans for a national portrait gallery, citing the need for fiscal restraint in uncertain times.
From Flanagan's perspective, the government would do well to scupper a host of grants, contracts and business subsidies and to pare a lot of what he considers wasteful spending on cultural and aboriginal programs.

Despite passing legislation for fixed date federal election, with the next one being the fall of 2009, Harper kept up the election style attacks on Dion and the Liberals. It was always about Harper versus the other guy, who was a wimp, not a leader, etc. etc. Canada was kept on election footing, the Conservatives showed off their new war room for the election, and then quietly closed shop six months later.

Durng the Fall of 2007 through the spring of this year the rudderless Liberals prop up the Harper government, unable and unwanting to bring down the government, unprepared to go to the polls, Dion allows his MP's to bow out of critical votes, including confidence votes, with only token opposition to Harper.

Come the summer of 2008 and again government is porugued for the summer to resume in the fall. Everyone is busy watching the U.S. Presidential race, and watching house prices drop as oil prices rise, and the loonie gains on the U.S. dollar. Then everything begins to fall apart. The recession comes, a recession that George Bush spends a year denying, saying the fundamentals of American Capitalism are strong. John McCain his replacement says the same thing on the campaign trail. Heck even our Economist In Chief, our PM Stephen Harper assures Canadians that our economic fundamentals are strong, and a recession and credit melt down won't hurt our financial system and the government surpluses.

But Harper see's the writing on the wall, a recession would bring down his minority government, so being the opportunist he is he gambled on an early election, before the meltdown got to bad. Despite fix election dates he threw that aside like his promise not to tax Income Trusts. Two years of election style campaigning had left the Liberals and Dion weakened, and the polls showed that in the early days of the recession he was risisng in the polls, Canadians were looking for secure leadership in this time of unease and uncertainty.

So he called an election in September for October. The Man of Steelwas now transformed into Uncle Steve, the sweater wearing, father of two, a serious listner at the kitchen tables of immigrant and ethnic Canadians as nmumerous TV ads showed us.

And then the sweater came off. Harper announced political cuts to Arts and Culture programs, and denounced artists and cultural workers as effette elitists (read Liberals) who criticise the government that feeds them. And he introduced tough Law and Order promises to put teenagers in adult prisons. Appealing to his right wing base in Western Canada. But it bombed in Quebec and we were to discover that the Conservatives had contracted out their campaign in Quebec leaving them with no one to effectively counter the BQ attacks on these policies.

All along our esteemed Economist and PM insisted like his counterparts to the south that Canada's economic fundamentals were strong. And then the market crashed. And despite that crash Harper lied to the Canadian people saying that he would not have a deficit and that his government would still have a surplus. He insisted our financial market place could weather the storm, while promising $75 billion to bail out the banks.

An all the while the Liberals floundered about with a lacklustre leader whose complex Green Plan was obtuse except for one fact, it was a tax increase. Harper leaped on this from the earliest days of the Green Shift even before the election to call it a deficit plan and a tax grab. And the Liberals could not convince Canadians otherwise. The Natural Governing Party entered the election as the Natural Bumbling Party.

Jack Layton on the other hand finally abandoned the politcs of being the Opposition and ran for the PM's job. While Elizabeth May and the Green Party finally got into the leaders debates.
Still we all watched the U.S. election campaign between Obama and McCain.
And despite the pre-election polling, the defeat of the Liberals and their leader, Harper won a pyrichic victory, he ended up with more seats, as did Jack Layton and the NDP, but Harper remained with a minority government, in the midst of the biggest crisis capitalism has faced since the Great Depression.

Dion having blown it,by leading the Liberals to their worst historic defeat ever, mopped around Stornmount, spending several days before announcing his retirement as leader of the Liberals. Dion was always his own worst advisor. And his shock at losing as well as his hubris and arrogance that he could be defeated so badly, would siber him up.

Despite bailing out the banks Harper insisted that he would not run a deficit, that he could balance the budget, that his government would have a surplus, as the loonie crashed, the Big 3 Automakers called for bailouts, and the market crash created a recession in Canada.

And so we come to the last two weeks as Parliment resumed. Promising a fiscal update to address the economic crisis facing the country and the world Harper produced a political document that was aimed at his long range plan all along, to finally destroy the Liberal Party once and for all. There was no investment strategy, no bail out for the Big Three, no economic plan perser. Hower there was further cuts to government spending, the only thing neo-cons know how to do, wage controls and the end of the right to strike for federal public sector workers, and the end of public financing of political parties. It was this that was the final straw that broke the camels back.

The path to Conservative political dominance is to financially bankrupt your opponents.
So wrote Tom Flanagan, one of the deep thinkers of the conservative movement in Canada and a mentor to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Flanagan's prescient op-ed piece from August appeared to come to fruition in Thursday's fiscal update when Harper's Conservatives moved to end public financing of federal political parties under the guise of austerity. "There will be no free ride for political parties," Flaherty told the House of Commons in his speech on the update. "Even during the best of economic times, parties should count primarily on the financial support of their own members and their own donors."

The irony is that public financing of political parties was a longstanding Reform Party demand, along with fixed election dates and Senate Reform. Even though it was introduced by Jean Chretien in his final days as PM, a legacy project, it passed the house unanimously. The Canadian Alliance, the former Reform Party, supported it becaue they saw it as a way of leveling the playing field, the Liberals had long benefited from Corporate and Union donations. For Harper now to eliminate it, without even having bothering to raise the matter during the election was simply another example that his agenda was to destroy the weakened Liberals. Finally Dion the doormouse woke up to the fact that the Harper agenda was not just power for its own sake, but the destruction of the Liberal Party. Indeed the entire Liberal cacus finally read the writing on the wall, which had been Conservative graffiti for a decade.

And the little professor saw a chance to be PM, in a coalition government playing right into the hands of Harper. The NDP and Bloc had begun coalition discussions and invited the Liberals in, as they fumed over the betrayl and attack by Harper. Their mistake was to allow Dion to remain in charge, thus playing into Harpers hands. Jack Layton had gotten more popular votes than Dion and indeed the NDP won more seats, and came in second in many regions including Alberta. The Liberals were decimated, and the little professor who would be PM was not seen by Canadians as worthy of the job. Even as leader of a coalition.

Harper played on that to his advantage, while lying about the whole way we had gotten into this mess. We had seen what was supposed to be a fiscal update, changed into a attack on other political parties, wage controls on the public sector, and cuts to government spending. No fiscal stimulaus, other than bailing out the banks, was proposed. No fiscal plan was offered, and still Harper and his ministers claimed they would have a surplus and would not go into deficit.

He could not help himself, he was true to his long term goal of destroying the Liberals, and he saw them severly weakened and he took advantage. He did not expect that the opposition would coalesce into a united front coalition that could offer an alternative to his government.

Which they did.

He quickly backtracked, withdrawing the offending proposals to remove public financing and the right to strike, though wage controls were not off the table. However the damage was done.

And he insisted the next election would be fought over public financing which he couched in the old language of the 2006 election, that the opposition wanted their entitlements.

Faced with a united opposition, a coalition prepared to govern in his stead, who had already let the Govenor General know that, he began another election campaign. With coffers full of donations, he launched his so called defense of democracy, note well not defense of Parliment, but of that American abstract notion of democracy, one person one vote.

Not willing to face the wrath of the house he approached the GG to porouge parliment, to live to fight another day. While he accused the opposition of courting a coup with their coalition, he in fact conducted a parlimentary putsch yesterday to stay in power for another seven weeks.And he did so not for the good of Canada, or the Canadian people, nor even for the good of his own party. He has no plan to deal with the recession and its spiral into depression, rather he will use the seven weeks to run yet another election campaign against the Liberals.

The Liberals mistake and the cracks are showing now with dissident MP's denoucning Dion, was to not have demanded Dion step down and appoint an interm leader to be the PM in a coalition government.

That option remains open. Or they could make Jack PM. Not likely.

So let us recap the Harper government is a minority, the majority of Canadians voted for the opposition. They don't want another election, only Harper does because he has the money to run one. He wants an election not to govern but to finally kill the Liberal party, to run a stake thrrough its heart so it will not rise again.

And that is all his political agenda was ever about. So lets not hear anymore about defending democracy, or being best suited to solve the economic crisis, which he denied we were in and still has not offered any solutions for.Or that he is fighting for Canadian unity against nasty seperatists that he was willing to join with to defeat the Liberal minority government of Paul Martin.

Let us understand that Harper and his cronies seek power for its own sake, to mold Canada in their neo-con image. He has pulled off a parlimentary putsch to stay in power. We need a strong coalition to defeat him and replace him in January.

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Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Class War Returns


Once again the right wing in Canda has declared class war, on the heals of the attacks on public sector workers by the Harpocrite government.


Premier Ed Stelmach's government should expand no-strike legislation for public-sector employees to blunt the unions' main bargaining tool in contract negotiations, says the Alberta director for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. Such a move, said Danielle Smith, would help deflate public sector payrolls. A national CFIB study examining the gap between wages paid in the public and private sectors at all three levels of government shows on average, public employees earn considerably more, especially when pensions and benefits are included. Federal employees get 17.3% more; provincial 7.9% more
A hiring freeze to shrink public payrolls or expanded no-strike legislation could help achieve that, she said. Now the question arises how politically realistic such measures are, given at the federal level, expanded non-strike provisions, as suggested by the Tory minority government, helped precipitate a putsch by the Opposition.


Dannielle Smith is a Calgarian like the PM, a former Fraser Institute student, a scab during the Calgary Herald Strike, a fellow traveler of the Canadian Reform/Alliance/Conservative party, do ya think this survey may have been leaked to the Harpocrites earlier than its release today to justify their attack on the public service unions in the fiscal update?

Once again the right wing ideolouges promote class war while claiming to speak for taxpayers, who really are not taxpayers but business interests who pay little or no taxes. The real taxpayers are the working class, especially those who are unionized and pay the highest taxes!

SEE:
Harpocrites Declare Class War
Wage Controls

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Harpocrites Declare Class War

While pundits of the right claim the governments downfall is due to its attack on the democratic reform of public financing of political parties they overlook the fact the Harpocrites declared class war in their fiscal update.

Canada's largest federal union is planning to join a national campaign for public servants to support a coalition government and topple the minority Conservative government.
The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) is joining a number of groups, including the Canadian Labour Congress, to back a Liberal and NDP coalition after accusing the Conservatives of failing to provide enough stimulus to kick-start a weakening economy.
The decision comes after the government of Stephen Harper backed down on a plan to take away the unions' right to strike when it introduces legislation to limit public servants wage increases to 6.8% over four years.
PSAC president John Gordon rejected suggestions such a campaign violates the bureaucracy's non-parti
Mr. Gordon said the union was willing to restrain wages and do its bit for the economy when it agreed to the government's 6.8% deal, but was incensed when Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's economic statement offered no stimulus package for the economy and then heaped "another slap" on federal workers by taking away the right to strike and collective bargaining, rolling back wages of workers whose contracts were already settled.


SEE:
Wage Controls


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Friday, November 14, 2008

Huh?

NEW YORK, Nov. 13 /Standard Newswire/ -- The following text is of remarks by President Bush on Financial Markets and the World Economy:

History has shown that the greater threat to economic prosperity is not too little government involvement in the market - but too much.

Huh?

Hoover proves lack of government involvement led to the Great Depression. Here is Republican historical revisionism in it most blatant stupidity.Right wing American ideologues whether Republican, Conservative or Libertarian all try and avoid this obvious fact instead blaming the Smoot Hawley Act which was protectionist for the long Depression. In fact it was Hoovers hands off approach to the markets for three years that created the spiral downward. Smmot-Haweley and protectionist measures in Europe only agrivated that downward rush.

Bush, the Republicans, heck the liberals and the Libertarians in America live in a cloud cookoo land, one that imagines an artisan/farmer free market, free of monopolies, cartels and special business interests tied to the state. A time that is a fiction, a myth, of American Capitalism.

Ain't ever been such a creature nor is it the nature of American Capitalism and Imperialism.

Bush admits that capitalism is in a crisis; Faced with the prospect of a global financial meltdown
nations have responded with bold measures, and at Saturday's summit, we will review the effectiveness of our actions. This crisis did not develop overnight, and it will not be solved overnight.

And his solution is to keep on keeping on, capitalism is great, yep it has crisis, but heck its still the best system ever devised by humans.

This is a decisive moment for the global economy. In the wake of the financial crisis, voices from the left and right are equating the free enterprise system with greed, exploitation, and failure. It is true that this crisis included failures - by lenders and borrowers, by financial firms, by governments and independent regulators. But the crisis was not a failure of the free market system. And the answer is not to try to reinvent that system. It is to fix the problems we face, make the reforms we need, and move forward with the free market principles that have delivered prosperity and hope to people around the world.
Like any other system designed by man, capitalism is not perfect. It can be subject to excesses and abuse. But it is by far the most efficient and just way of structuring an economy. At its most basic level, capitalism offers people the freedom to choose where they work and what they do, the opportunity to buy or sell the products they want, and the dignity that comes with profiting from their talent and hard work. The free market system also provides the incentives that lead to prosperity – the incentive to work, to innovate, to save and invest wisely, and to create jobs for others. And as millions of people pursue these incentives together, whole societies benefit.


A nation that gave the world the I-Pod which is manufactured in China. Because as Reason magazine announced in 1999 that the world of the 21 Century was no longer America as the producer nation but America the consumer/service industry nation. A predicition that failed to understand that this would ultimately lead to a credit crisis, when a nation fails to produce value but rather lives on the value produced by others and lent to them.

Free market capitalism is far more than an economic theory. It is the engine of social mobility – the highway to the American Dream. It is what makes it possible for a husband and wife to start up their own business, or a new immigrant to open a restaurant, or a single mom to go back to college and begin a better career. It is what allowed entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley to change the way the world sells products and searches for information. And it is what transformed America from a rugged frontier to the greatest economic power in history - a nation that gave the world the steamboat and the airplane, the computer and the CAT scan, the Internet and the I-Pod.

Bush went on to defend capitalism, specifically post WWII American Capitalism, which itself is not a free market economy, but one of protectionism combined with state capitalism of the Military Industrial Complex. America subsidizes its aircraft manufacturerers, its agribusiness cartels, its auto industry, and has since WWII. To hear the President proclaim the glory of free markets and free peoples, is to also deny the hisorical reality which is American Capitalism. He further equates Japan's economic boom with American Capitalism, when in reality it is the result of State Capitalism. Japan used the Military Industrial Banking model for its development.

Ultimately, the best evidence for free market capitalism is its performance compared to other economic systems. Free markets allowed Japan - an island nation with few natural resources - to recover from war and grow into the world's second-largest economy. Free markets allowed South Korea to make itself one of the most technologically advanced societies in the world. Free markets turned small areas like Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan into global economic players. And today, the success of the world’s largest economies comes from their embrace of free markets.

South Korea which itself is an other model of State Capitalism, with Military and Finance capital under a pro-USA military dictatorship finally evolving into a manufacturing fordist economy modeled on the success of Japan. As for Singapore and Hong Kong these two islands of free market economies are ruled by dictators, proving that capitalism can function without democracy.

Meanwhile, nations that have pursued other models have experienced devastating results. Soviet communism starved millions, bankrupted an empire, and collapsed as decisively as the Berlin Wall. Cuba, once known for its vast fields of cane, is now forced to ration sugar. And while Iran sits atop giant oil reserves, its people cannot put enough gasoline in their cars.


Oh sure free markets really work well, except Cuba is rationing sugar because they cannot compete with American subsidized sugar and the American led economic boycott of their country. No free market here.

As for the Soviet Union it collapsed because it lost the military race under Reagans expansion of military spending, the USA Military Industrial Complex defeated the Soviet Unions Military Industrial Complex. Capitalism did not defeat Communism, rather the American model of State Capitalism proved to be more flexible than the autarchic command economy model used in the Soviet Union. Unfortunately China proves that this autarchic command model can be flexible, and now American Capitalism is beholden to China for its national debt.

But Bush was not the only one to proclaim that Capitalism may be melting down but its still not the problem. In listening to their Republican masters voice, our own Finance Minister and PM echoed Bush's doctrine that capitalism has not failed.

In a piece in the Financial Times, meanwhile, Mr. Flaherty too had rare kind words for the invisible hand, downplayed grand global financial architectural plans and suggested that reform -- like charity -- should begin at home. "The open market system did not fail in this crisis," he said.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is expected to join U.S. President George W. Bush in a defence of free-market capitalism and resistance to international calls for dramatic re-regulation of financial markets.


The ruling class recongizes that capitalism has once again failed, the bubble burst, the market crashed, what goes up must come down, the business cycle has not been superceded by globalization. The elephant in the room is socialism. The Republican Libertarian argument is to let the market decide, except contrary to their Libertarian dogma that market has come cap in hand to its State to bail it out. Opps. Guess real capitalism does not like the discipline of the marketplace. In attempting to not bail out the working class who is really suffering from this crisis with record home foreclosures, record unemployment and the very real threat of the meltdown of America's core manufacturing centre; Michagan, Bush and Harper need to couch the argument as a question of state intervention. The strawman they set up is to equate state capitalism, state intervention as socialism. Which it is not.

Capitalism cannot continue as it is. Temporary fixes like increased regulation, government bailouts etc. are not a solution to the crisis nature of capitalism. Socialization of capital is what is required. The fact that workers create captial, not business which only produces 'jobs', without workers capitalism collapses. This was clearly seen in Alberta last year during the height of the boom, when neither for love nor money could businesses find enough workers.
The result was many small businesses, you remember them they are the core of the economy according to Bush and Harper. closed.

Workers create captial, they circulate that capital by home purchases and by consuming the products they produce. They fund capital through their pension and benefit plans, pensions are called institutional investors in Wall Street, one of the largest sources of capital available currently.

The Canada Pension Plan fund said Wednesday it ended its latest quarter with a loss of more than $10 billion in the value of its assets, primarily because of the stock market turmoil that has battered share prices around the world.
But president and CEO David Denison said Canadians shouldn't worry that the loss will affect their current or future retirement benefits.
"This fund is designed to be able to withstand this short-term market volatility that we are living through, quite frankly better than any other fund in this country," Denison said in an interview with The Canadian Press.


Here is the true source of capital the working class blue, white and green collar, that produce and consume. And it is the means to change capitalism, the use of workers productive value matched by their pension funds and the corporate pension liabilities which are owed them, with capital from public pension funds, workers can then fund the corporations and run them themselves.

In Quebec there are labour funds as well as the Cassie Popular, the credit unions which have enormous reserves of workers capital to be able to use for promoting workers control of industry. In the rest of Canada workers whose credit unions are mimicing banks, need to take control of them and use this vast reserve of capital to invest in worker controled industries.

With the socialization of capital under workers control, the question of bail outs and regulation of the market become moot.

This is the socialism that Bush and Harper fear. This is why they distort the definintion of socialism equating it with state capitalism and command economies. Which socialism never was about. It is about the need to socialize captial to benefit those who create it; the working class.

It is the working class who are the real investors in capitalism, not those investors on Wall Street who play the market. The working class exists because of capitalism and capitalism exists because of the working class. As this crisis deepens and government intervention fails to stop the melt down, the only solution that will become clear is the need for socialization of capital under workers control.


SEE:
STFU 'W'
October Surprise Was The Market Crash
No Austrians In Foxholes
CRASH
The Return Of Hawley—Smoot
Canadian Banks and The Great Depression
U.S. Economy Entering Twilight Zone
What Goes Up...
Wall Street Mantra
Bank Run

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Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Arts Vote Cost Jaffer His Job

Alberta and Quebec have long been allies in their opposition to the powers of Ottawa. This past election that commonality was shown in the reaction to Harpers Arts and Culture cuts. While pundits focused on Quebec's reaction they overlooked its impact in Alberta. In particular in Festival City; Redmonton.

The defeat of Edmonton Strathcona MP Rahim Jaffer was a direct result of Harpers attack on Arts and Cultural workers. After all Redmonton has a booming arts and culture community, we have the Winspear and the Citadel, the Jubilee, we have arts groups and theatre groups, a major Symphony, Jazz City, the Fringe Festival, an International Childrens Arts Festival, a Buskers Ball, the Edmonton Folk Festival and an International Street Preformers festival, etc, etc.

Edmonton Strathcona itself is one of the cities Arts hub. Known to all as Old Strathcona with its infamous Whyte Avenue at its core, it is the centre of the Theatre community hosting the second largest Fringe Festival in the world. Not only do Edmontonians produce and preform the plays, they are mass of volunteers needed to run the Fringe and the mass of visitors to the Fringe.

Did Harper miss this fact? You bet. When the uproar over his political purging of arts funding mobilized the Arts and Cultural community, it was a nation wide response. Of course the greatest coverage was its impact in Quebec where polls showed Harper's policy led to loss of support for the Conservatives.

But overlooked was its impact here in Redmonton. Harper backpedaled and announced that he had increased Heritage Canada funding, but that of course is tied to politically correct Conservative values, then he annouced increased funding for arts and culture for wait for it....children to take piano and dance lessons. He overlooked the fact that dance classes were already eligable for his childrens athletics tax credit that the government introduced last election. And how does funding piano lessons equate with funding for Symphony orcehstra's, Opera, etc. It doesn't. And so it cost Rahim his job.

Arts voters in Edmonton Strathcona voted strategically. And not only NDP and Liberals but Conservatives as well. When it comes to Edmonton Strathcona which is the Reddest part of Redmonton, we have elected NDP MLA's here. When the provincial Tories run candidates here they have been Red Tories,

Rahim was in a tough fight and he knew it. From the start he did something he has not done in previous elections, put up lawn signs. There were Jaffer signs on my street and my moms street where they had never been before. But like the Liberal signs many were on rental or commercial properties, put their in many cases not by the renters but the landlord.

Linda Duncan ran an excellent campaign, and it was based on building a base through three elections. The NDP made a break through federally in the riding when they ran Malcolm Azania, and broke through the usual two way race between Conservatives and Liberals which had left the party trailing a distant third over the years.

The Azania campaign team stayed on and recruited Linda to run last election. She further consolidated the NDP's second place standing loosing to Jaffer by only 5000 votes, votes that had gone to the non-existant Liberal candidate. In that election it was the Liberals who were the vote spliters.

But this election it was clearly a two way race, and despite his sign campaign Jaffers laziness and arrogance cost him. He did not address the Arts cuts, nor did he distance himself from the Harper arts attacks when Harper insulted all cultural workers and masses of volunteers who support them by calling them elitists. In fact he insulted some of the leading citizens of this city who are proud of the efforts they have put into fund raising for Arts and Culture, including wealth bourgoise like the Winspears who donated to have the Winspear Centre for the Arts built. Opps.

Jafers arrogance was on public display election night when at ten o'clock he got up to announce his imminent victory, which the media mistakenly announced not noticing that their were still 14 polls not counted, polls which included mine which are all strong NDP polls.

He was pulled down from the podium by an aide who told him it wasn't in the bag yet.

When he lost he was at a loss for words for several days, again Jaffer's arrogance was publicly displayed with his refusal to concide the election. He only announced his final defeat the same day he eloped with fellow MP Helen Guergis.

The delicious irony of this is that he appears to be off to Ottawa to live with Helen as her live in Assistant and Helen will have lots of time to spend with Rahim since it is speculated that she is destined for the back bench in the upcoming cabinet shuffle.

Yes Linda Duncan and her team ran a great campaign. But in the end we have to thank Stephen Harper for attacking the Arts and Culture community, it pushed her over the top. And put a bright orange spot in the middle of Blue Alberta.

And this is no minor break through. It shows that the Harpocrites policy of taking Alberta for granted cost them big time in Edmonton Strathcona. Next election that vulnerability could lead to more defeats for the Harpocrites.



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Tuesday, November 27, 2007

The Ugly Canadian

While Harper trumpeted Canada's generosity towards Tanzania, money promised by the previous Liberal Government and still not up to the actual commitment of 20% of the GDP, the real face of Canada was shown by the Mining companies that Harper had in tow with him. The same gang he had in tow with him when he visited Latin America earlier this year. For Harper 'aid' means investment opportunities.

DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA — The goal was to leave the image of a benevolent Canada investing in the health of poor Africans, but in the end it was another Canada, that of its globe-hopping mining companies, that stole the day.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper spent eight hours yesterday in this commercial centre on the Indian Ocean, visiting a school, lunching with Tanzania's President and announcing a $105-million contribution to a new health-care initiative in Africa and Asia.

Yet it was a 45-minute meeting with officials from a dozen Canadian investors, led by mining giant Barrick Gold Corp., that dominated Mr. Harper's news conference with President Jakaya Kikwete.

Thanks in large part to Barrick's three gold mines, Canada has emerged as Tanzania's largest foreign investor, prompting a resource boom that helped Tanzania record a 6.2-per-cent growth rate last year.

Yet the mining success has prompted allegations that royalties are too low and that Tanzania's people, still among the world's poorest, are not sharing adequately in the bonanza.

Adding to this is a nasty labour dispute at Barrick's Bulyanhulu gold mine, where 1,000 of the 1,900 workers have been on what the company calls an illegal strike for the past month.

A court hearing scheduled for yesterday, at which the union hoped to obtain an injunction to stop Barrick from hiring replacement workers, was postponed to today for reasons that were unclear.

Mr. Harper would not comment on the strike other than to say that he expects Canadian companies to "act responsibly within the laws of the land" when they are abroad. He praised Tanzania for creating a stable political and business environment that encourages Canadian companies to invest.

Mr. Kikwete was also diplomatic when the subject turned to Canada's investment in the mining industry and in particular the work of a committee created to advise the Tanzanian government on whether to change the royalty regime.

"We are not blaming the mining companies," the President said, noting that the companies are living within Tanzanian law.

He added that the goal of the review is to achieve a "win-win situation" for the companies and the government.

"We'd like to see more and more Canadian investment," Mr. Kikwete said.

It was the second time in recent months that Mr. Harper had met Barrick officials during an international trip. In July, he stopped off at Barrick's offices in Santiago, Chile, where the company is developing the massive Pascua Lama mining project in the Andes, despite protests from environmentalists.

Joan Kuyek, the national co-ordinator of MiningWatch, a group that critiques what it sees as irresponsible mining practices around the world, says Barrick's Tanzanian operation displaced thousands of small-scale miners and gives little back to Tanzania.

"If Mr. Harper met only with people chosen to have him meet with and didn't meet with the small-scale miners, didn't meet with the people who have to deal with the social and economic and environmental price that these mines are racking up in Tanzania, and didn't meet with their representatives, well I think that's pretty shocking," Ms. Kuyek said.



See:

Cold Gold

Afghanistan or Africa

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Sunday, November 25, 2007

Kyoto Ratification By Australia

Leaving Harper as the odd man out.

Australia's new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, made climate change his top priority on Sunday, seeking advice on ratifying the Kyoto pact and telling Indonesia he will go to December's UN climate summit in Bali.

Rudd, 50, presented himself to voters as a new-generation leader by promising to pull troops out of Iraq and ratify the Kyoto Protocol capping greenhouse gas emissions, further isolating Washington on both issues.

But while he intends to immediately overturn Howard's opposition to the Kyoto pact, Rudd has said he would negotiate a gradual withdrawal of Australian frontline forces from Iraq.

Rudd, a Mandarin-speaking former diplomat, said he discussed Kyoto ratification with his British counterpart Gordon Brown, as well as Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
"President Yudhoyono formally invited me to attend the Bali conference, which will of course deal with climate change and where we go to now on Kyoto. I responded positively," he said.
SEE;

APEC Is Not Kyoto

John Harper Stephen Howard


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Saturday, November 24, 2007

Harper's Buddy Goes Down Under

Australia’s Prime Minister Defeated After 4 Terms


Howard's defeat leaves Harper isolated on the international stage as he attempts to push the American agenda on climate change. And he has been an embarrassment at the Commonwealth Conference in Uganda where Canada is isolated over climate change and is seen as being obstructionist. With Howard going down and Australia's new Labour PM; Kevin Rudd proclaiming he will sign Kyoto, Harper is further isolated.

Canada holding up climate-change deal at Commonwealth: sources

KAMPALA, Uganda–Canada and Australia are trying to block Commonwealth efforts to call for binding climate-change targets, a well-placed Commonwealth official told the Toronto Star yesterday.

"It's Canada and Australia on one side and everybody else on the other," he said. Fifty-two countries are in Kampala to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and at the end of the three days a declaration on climate change is expected.



Canada will be further isolated come the Bali round of talks on Kyoto 2.


The most dramatic shift in the stalemate is likely to come from Australia in coming days. The country goes into an election with opinion polls consistent in their predictions of a change government, which would see the anti-Kyoto Howard government replaced by the opposition Labor Party under Kevin Rudd.

Rudd says he will “move immediately” to ratify Kyoto and go to the Bali meeting personally, no doubt to stage-manage a high-profile jumping of the fence, switching Australia to the pro-Kyoto camp while in the spotlight of world attention. It would be a largely symbolic move but one that would leave the US more isolated in its opposition to Kyoto and binding emissions cuts than it already is. The Bush administration is unlikely to budge in Bali, but it is becoming less important anyway.

The agreement of Mid-western governors last week to follow states in the US West and North East toward setting emission caps and establish trading schemes now means almost half of the USA, in population terms, is by-passing White House policy and aligning with the Kyoto approach. Bush is only a year or so from leaving office and will almost certainly make way for a successor, Republican or Democrat, that will move on caps and carbon trading nationally. In a year’s time the capping of US carbon emissions will probably be a fait accompli.

Canada may be heading a similar way, with the federal Harper government’s recent rejection of Kyoto commitments being undermined by a number of provinces moving in step with the pro-active US states.




And Canada faces further embarrassment as Harper beaks with tradition, I guess that is the meaning of his governments 'new' Conservativeness , and refuses to allow opposition politicians to attend the conference as part of the Canadian delegation.

Opposition steams at exclusion from global warming summit
Environmental groups pushing to bring opposition mps to talks in Bali

Someone should remind him that he is a Minority PM, and his party does not represent the people of Canada. Harper is embarrassing us on the international stage over Climate Change. It is one thing to claim we missed our targets, it is another to parrot the Republican agenda that says developing countries are just as responsible as developed countries.

And it is completely unacceptable to be an obstructionist when it comes to international goals and treaties, as he is doing in Uganda.

Commonwealth reaches consensus on climate

Updated Sat. Nov. 24 2007 10:12 AM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

The Commonwealth's leaders have agreed to an action plan on climate change that doesn't set out binding targets or timelines for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The statement released Saturday does call for greater co-operation between developed countries like Canada and developing nations, CTV's David Akin reported from the summit in Uganda.

Canada had opposed language that would set firm, Kyoto-style targets.

Environmentalists and Commonwealth sources claim Canada stood only with Australia in opposing firm targets.

The Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said it would like to see flexible targets with more emphasis placed on improving technology to deal with climate change issues.



Come next November, failing a spring election, Harper will be further isolated as the White House changes hands.

But to Hardheaded Harper Canada's isolation from global consensus is his way of profiling Canada in the international community; as an obstructionist. Unfortunately it is not the profile that Canadians want or need.

Making Maxime Bernier foreign affairs minister
didn't add credibility to Stephen Harper's claim that Canada is again taking its global place.

SEE;


APEC Is Not Kyoto

John Harper Stephen Howard


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Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Which Priority Was This?

Gee I didn't know Capital Punishment was one of the Stephen Harper Party priorities. No mention was made in the throne speech. Did I miss that.

And gee they even did a 'secret' poll and found out that other than their base, the majority of of Canadians oppose capital punishment. Does that matter? Nope its full speed ahead with their Hidden Agenda.

So now we have reversals on clemency and the abandonment of sponsorship of the UN resolution on a global moratorium on the death penalty. All
straight out of Tom Flanagan's play book

OTTAWA - The Conservative government will not co-sponsor a United Nations resolution calling for a global moratorium on the death penalty, breaking with a nearly decade-old tradition.

An official with the Foreign Affairs Department says Canada will vote in favour of the resolution when it comes to the floor of the UN General Assembly in December, but will not sponsor it.

"There are a sufficient number of co-sponsors already, and we will focus our efforts on co-sponsoring other resolutions within the UN system which are more in need of our support," said Catherine Gagnaire.

Seventy-four other countries have put their names forward as sponsors, including the United Kingdom, Australia and France.

Last week, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day surprised the House of Commons by announcing that Canada will not oppose the execution of a Canadian citizen on death row in Montana for two murders. Day said the new policy will apply to "murderers" such as Ronald Allen Smith who have had a fair trial in a democratic country.

The government has not specified which countries it considers democracies.


Scott hits the nail on the head with his observation;

"Basically I perceive that image the Cons want to be seen showing is “we’d support a reinstatement of capital punishment if we had the numbers in parliament to do so, but since we don’t, we’ll send out a sublinimal message like this and like last week’s “no clemency pleas” to show our hard-core supporters we really do wish we had capital punishment here (nudge, nudge, wink, wink)”

SEE:

Another Tory For Capital Punishment

More Conservative Media Backlash

Conservative Columnist Opposes Capital Punishment

Capital Punishment Poll

Harpers Lethal Injection


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