Inclusive Internet

A PEW study has found that more women, Afro-Americans and seniors are now accessing information online. However the socio economic status of individuals on the net, their access to computers and internet connections still shows that there is a 'class' division in the United States. Whereas in Canada, Finland, and other Nordic countries we have a more economical balance. Greater computer use and access to the internet. Cause its cold here, Winter subjects us to being consumers of electronic entertainment. Alberta has the greatest number of computers and internet access of any province in Canada. And Canada outstrips the U.S. for computer use and access. However this study probably could apply to Canada as well.

If you look at the graphic at the right you will see that somethings never change. For instance women use the internet to get maps and directions. "Yep honey I know where I am going I don't need no stupid map....uh honey I think we are lost"...is still a guy thing. Sex and money still dominate male surfing, duh oh, visiting adult sites and trading stocks the gap is huge.

And women use email more than men it's just an extension of the phone, and the phone culture that developed in advanced captialism that women use and rely on to break out of the isolation of the nuclear family.

But Pew's analysis shows the emergence of new gender gaps, where young women, black women and older men are more likely to be online than their opposite sex peers.

Further, Pew found that men and women use the Internet in different ways, paralleling traditional offline behavior.

Among the new study's findings:

*Younger women are more likely to go online than younger men. Eighty-six percent of women ages 18 to 29 go online compared with 80 percent of their male peers.

*Older men are more likely to go online than older women. Thirty-four percent of men 65 and older go online compared with 21 percent of women in that age bracket.

*Black women outdistance black men in Internet use: 60 percent of African American women are Net users compared with 50 percent of black men.

*About two-thirds of Latino men and women are online, an 18 percent rise for women and a 14 percent increase for men over the past three years.

*Money changes everything. Internet usage goes up with income: 90 percent of men and 95 percent of women in households earning $75,000 or more are online compared with 49 percent of men and 48 percent of women earning less than $30,000 a year.

Edmonton East Seperatiste

Well it turns out the if the Liberals win a minority government on January 23 Conservatives in Edmonton East under Peter Goldring will lead the charge for Alberta to leave Canada.

You see in the world of Blogging Tory's the majority come from Alberta, very few from the Maritimes, a handful from Ontario and the Rest of the Prairies, none from Inuvik and one or two from Quebec. And many from Alberta are supporters of Alberta Seperatism. They have links on their blogs to the Seperatist alliance in Alberta.

Bouguets of Gray has discovered that perennial right wing candidate for any position that is open, Gordon Stamp is not only Peter Goldrings campaign manager, but is the mysterious Conservative Alberta Seperatist known in the Blogosphere as 'Psycho'. The term seems self deprecating for Gord. Unless you know him. He has run for election since his time at the U of A. 30 years or so ago. But rather than Psycho he should have called himself Loser, which reflects his electoral successes.

Now as an Alberta Seperatist he can use the sobriquet Sore Loser.

But I firmly believe that if the Liberals stay in power - it is all over. I am just trying to educate everyone that now is NOT the time to pretend Albertans will live under a corrupt and immoral Liberal government...

Attention Edmonton East Candidates time to call Goldring on his loyalty to Canada, make him take the oath that his leader couldn't.

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Canada

Federal Election

Conservative

Edmonton East

Peter Goldring

blogs

Sticks and Stones

While Jack Layton may not blog on the NDP website he certainly has turned the Liberal Blog scandal, into a cause celebre.

The racist sexist blog comments came from Liberal Volunteer (sic) Mike Klander's attack on his wife and him (Klander who is no mere volunteer is a high ranking Liberal appratchick and was working on Debra "I Bore PET's Love Child' Coynes campaign against Jack.)

As reported here, and everywhere in the blogosphere, Klander managed to dis everyone, the disabled (Tory Stephen Fletcher), the ethnic/religious/visible minorities (Tory Rahmin Jaffer) and racial/sexist/sterotyping of Olivia Chow. And Jack.Wow all in one blog. Well Jack came out swinging. Layton lashes out over blog blunder

And even Stephen Harper joined him in denouncing the Liberal Blog antics. Giving folks more food for thought that maybe a minority CPC government with backing from the NDP was a realistic alternative to the Liberals.

"I frankly never expected that we would face such things, that a candidate would be singled out," Layton said in his first public appearance since before Christmas.

"I certainly hope racial slurs will come to an end in this campaign."

Layton noted that Europeans who controlled portions of China in the past used to hang signs that read "no dogs or Chinese allowed," and said no Chinese person familiar with their history will ever forget those signs.

"This is no joke, and I think it's a culture of arrogance that has set in . . . and the election will have to deal with it," he said. "It reminds us that insults flow from arrogance. There is far too much of this in today's Liberal party."

Layton slams Liberals for taunts against his wife

And what is this all really about. Well the historical arrogance of the Liberals who introduced the dreaded racist Head Tax on Chinese coming to Canada way back at the begining of last century. A Head Tax they refuse to pay back or apologize for. However they made half hearted attempts to make amends just days before the election call by announcing a memorial program funded through a Chinese Canadian Organization headed by long time Liberal Raymond Chan. The culture of entitlement knows no bounds of arrogance.

Layton also won applause for saying Canada should apologize for the head tax imposed on Chinese immigrants in the late 1890s and early 1900s, and compensate those who paid the tax and their surviving families.

"We need to have a response from our government that starts with an apology - an open and complete apology to the Chinese community," he said. "That has got to be the starting place for redress."

Ottawa collected $23 million from more than 80,000 Chinese immigrants between 1885 and 1923, with the tax ranging from $50 to $500 a person.

Last month, the federal government signed a $2.5-million agreement in principle with the National Congress of Chinese Canadians and other organizations to set up educational and commemorative projects related to the head tax.

But Prime Minister Paul Martin has refused to apologize for the controversial tax.

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Canada

Federal Election

Conservative

Liberal

NDP

blogs

klander

Jack Layton

Media Friendly

It has been noted by reporters, especially the CBC reporters embedded in the campaigns, that the Harper has been Mr. Congeniality this election. He visits them with beer in hand on his plane, socializes. Same with Jack Layton who whips out the guitar to sing Kumabia and some old labour hymns.

Whereas His Royal Highness Paul Martin has locked himself away in the front of the plane unavailable to reporters. Scott Feschuk his royal jester blogs that despite this being a none issue, whether one is media friendly or not, the real reason for PMPM hiding in the front of the plane is that he is practicing his ole soft shoe.

The Prime Minister, meanwhile, HAS NOT gone to the back of the plane (although in his defence, the annual PMO mambo contest is coming up soon, and heand Sheila need to put in some serious floor time if they have a hope ofdethroning me and Scott Reid).

Tags Canada Federal Election Liberals politics Blogs Paul Martin

Guns and Butter for Conservatives

Back to the Guns and Butter economics.

Well the Conservatives are promising to shell out $5.3 million in waste, err military spending.

As the old guns and butter formula in economics teaches us, guns cost more and are a waste, butter costs less and is good for people from farmers to consumers. Butter better, guns waste.

Hmm wonder where Harper got his economics degree from, Stalin U? Under Stalin butter was sacrificed, Ukrainians starved, but heavy machine industry grew in the Soviet Union, and they produced the Stalin Tank, percursor to the German Panzer.

Under Harpers plan he may say he wants to build more battleships, frigates, etc. however there is no matching industrial plan for Canada to become self sufficient in industrial production for military harware. The old corporatist monopolies, the Irvings on the East Coast and Bombadier in Quebec would be the only bidders for these contracts. All other companies in Canada are now U.S. subsidaries.

What the Liberals have wrought, as Mulroney did before them, is the destruction of Canada's indigineous ship builidng and aircraft manufacturing industries. Which is why we have been buying used submarines and faulty helicopters and a pending bid on a failed Hercules, because we no longer have the industrial infrastructure needed to create these war machines.

The destruction of Canada's military industrial complex, as embryonic as it was, is the earliest form of privatization and contracting out of jobs in our manufacturing sectior in order to court favour with our NATO allies. What we couldn't provide in troops and material we made up for in contracts for used military goods as well as open skies and ranges for NATO training excercises.

Digital Payola

The new age of payola scandals continues to rock the corporate recording monopolies yet again. This time its the folks who cried foul over napster now conspiring to maintain a price monopoly on your downloads. Guess they need the money to run all those anti-piracy ads. New York probes price-fixing in digital music

Haiti Quebec's Shame

Yves Engler, Paul Maritn heckler, the writer and director of a film critical of Canada's role in the coup de dat on Aristide in Haiti has an excellent column in today's Toronto Star. The Bloc and Liberals align on Haiti policy

In an earlier article I refered to Haiti as Canada's colony, perhaps the actual term should be Quebecs colony. As Engler says;

Reuters and Associated Press have reported numerous police killings of
unarmed protesters over the past 18 months. On June 28, UN Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping, Jean-Marie Guehenno, described the situation in Cap Haitien, the country's second largest city, as worse than that in Sudan's devastated Darfur region.
More recently, Thierry Faggart, director of the human rights section for the UN mission in Haiti, admitted that the post-coup human rights situation is "catastrophic."
Yet Canadian-funded NGOs working in Haiti (largely based in Quebec) who criticized the Aristide
government and called for his removal remain curiously silent on the abysmal record of the interim government.
Officials from the Quebec Federation of Labour blocked a resolution originating in English-Canada union locals criticizing Canada's role in Haiti at the Canadian Labour Congress's annual
convention in June.
Even Quebec-based Alternatives, a "progressive" news organization that receives CIDA funding for work in Haiti, effectively supports the Liberal government despite growing grassroots opposition to Canada's
shameful role in Haiti.
Why are the Bloc and Quebec "left" organizations siding with what has been described as "Canadian imperialism" in Haiti? Could it be the numerous Quebec-based companies that do business there? Or the diaspora that sent many members of the Haitian elite to Montreal? Or the fact that the Aristide government promoted the Creole language at the expense of French?

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Canada
Quebec
Haiti
UN
Imperialism
BQ
Liberals

And now a word from Quebec

The next leader of the CPC will be from Quebec. Once again the rumour mill is running in Quebec that high ranking Conservatives are planning to oust the Harper if he loses this election. Comments to that effect were made on Mike Duffy's show prior to the Christmas election break.

Several high ranking Conservatives in Quebec are suggesting that the Conservatives need a leader from Quebec in order to win an election in Canada.The fallout over the Conservatives Western Canadian leadership continues from the fall.

They have dismissed Peter Mckay as a potential leader instead focusing on the current candidate from Pontiac if he gets elected, or failing that some old Conservative hacks from the Mulroney era. Either way, the night of the long knives will begin on January 24 should Harper lose again.

The Conservatives maybe Her Majestys Loyal Opposition on that day, but the party will disintegrate into faction fights that have been patched over in order to win this election. Conservative unity will be tested should they not gain seats in Quebec, the Maritimes and lose seats in Ontario, and the prairies, sans Alberta. This is a fragile party held together not by policy but by sealing wax and string, and Harpers ego.


Also See:

Tory Watch

Harper



Tags Canada Federal Election Conservative politics Quebec Stephen Harper

Gay Cowboys

The proverbial manure has hit the fan, and will continue to, over the movie Brokeback Mountain, because of its depiction of homosexuality on the open range. Queer Thoughts ~ News for the Gay Community has reviews and will have the Christian Conservative response to the movie on his blog. I left him this comment, without links, so I have added them here and expanded on it.

Whats interesting is that gay cowboy culture was first mentioned in the CD and Book Who Built America a working class history of the U.S. and caused such a fuss that Dick Cheney's wife, Lynn, when she was head of the Endowment for the Humanities under Bush I,attacked it. Now I am not saying this was the only mention, the Journal Radical History also had a good article on Gay Cowboy culture, History of Manhood in America by Bruce Dorsey in 1996. But it too came out after Who Built America. Lynns fury over the gay cowboy section of this CD caused Apple to pull it at the time, they were including it in a bundle with several other encyclopedias for the Mac.

The real Cowboys.

The truth is stranger than friction to misquote T Bone Slim, and such is the case with the John Wayne, John Ford, Hollywood and Zane Grey's fictional characterization of cowboys in the North American prairies. Cowboys are not merely an American phenomena but one that stretches from Mexico to Canada. Their real story is the story of Capitalist expansion westerward after the Civil War.

Home on the Range: Richard Phillips

The cowboy of Western mythology rode the range during the heyday of
the long cattle drives in the l860s and 1870s. Despite the individualism
emphasized in myth, most cowhands were employees of Eastern and European
capitalists who raised cattle as a corporate enterprise to serve a growing
appetite for beef in the U.S. Cowboys were overworked hired hands who rode in
freezing wind and rain or roasted in the Texas sun; searched for lost cattle;
mended fences; ate monotonous and bad food; and suffered stampedes, quicksand,
blizzards, floods, and drought. The work was hard, dangerous, and often lonely;
pay averaged from $25 to $40 a month. Many became cowboys for lack of other job opportunities; one of every three cowboys was an African American or Mexican. In
the late 1930s writers employed by the Federal Writers Project in Texas interviewed more than 400 cowboys, providing some of the only firsthand sources
about late 19th-century cowboys. In this interview, cowboy Richard Phillips
offered a firsthand glimpse of the hard life that awaited the men who trailed
cattle to market.

And like the masculine/male relationships in pirate culture why should we should be surprised to discover a gay cowboy culture, or even a female drag culture ( Annie Oakely comes to mind) in the North American west? For that matter why should we assume that all cowboys were white? In Alberta the first cowboy of renown was John Ware, a black cowboy and rodeo legend. Cowboy culture was far from the red neck stereotype so affectionately embraced today. And we can expect to hear the gnashing of teeth and the whining from the right wing as yet another historical fiction bites the dust.

For those who don't know the story of Mr. John Ware, he rightly deserves
his reputation. His cowboy skills were legendary, and contrary to the popular
Hollywood image of cowboys, he was a gentleman, led an honest, moral life, and
was a loving father. His work was extremely difficult, as the working conditions
were as harsh as could be possible, and in those days there was not much in the
way of assistance if he became injured or disabled. Cowboys were responsible for
the well-being of cattle as they were moved from ranch to ranch or from
pastureland to pastureland. They had to protect them against poachers and from
wild animals, and they had to keep them from wandering away from the herd (in
the days when the great plains of Western United States and Canada were not
fenced off).

Tags
Alberta
Brokeback Mountain
Gay
cowboys
United States
Wild West
Pirates
masculine
movies
history
Lyn Cheney
Who Built America

Take Tasers Away from Cops

As I wrote here its time to remove tasers from the cops. The Canadian Mental Health association agrees. Police training inadequate, mental health advocates say
"Certainly the use of non-lethal weapons is preferable, but here we have an incident where Tasers are not non-lethal." Yep I said that too.

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Taser / police