Iraq still remains the most dangerous place for journalists: 22 journalists lost their lives there in 2005. A total of 60 journalists have been killed on duty in Iraq from the beginning of the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 through the end of 2005. That number surpasses the 58 journalists killed in the Algerian conflict from 1993 to 1996.
Canadians terrified of Harper's real plans
Wed Jan 4 2006
FRANCES RUSSELL
WITH the wind at their backs from NDP leader Jack Layton's calls for a change in government and a cheerleading national media, Stephen Harper's Conservatives are cruising at 54 per cent in the polls, just as Brian Mulroney was in April 1984.
Well, no.
After almost two years of all-scandal, all-the-time, the Free Press headline Monday summed it up best: "It's Tories by a nose in new poll." All other surveys still show the Liberals tied or with a slim lead.
How can this be? How can the Liberals even be close after the gaffes, the insensitivity, the dithering, the lack of focus, the culture of entitlement, the arrogance and yes, the scandals? Not to mention the 22 months of the most relentlessly negative campaign in Canadian history, staged by Harper's Conservatives.
Part of it may be public turnoff from the daily battering of words like "corrupt," "corruption," "organized crime," "criminal conspiracy" and worse, spilling daily from the Conservatives, amplified by most of the media. Like battery acid, it's corroded the civility of our political culture and is driving voters away from the ballot box in droves.
But mostly it's because, furious as all Canadians are at Liberal sins, they remain terrified of Stephen Harper and the direction he would take the country.
Like the Bush Republicans, the Harper Conservatives set groups in society against each other. Like Bush Republicans, they govern for the secure and affluent, for the "have mores," as President George W. Bush once memorably described them. And like Margaret Thatcher, they don't believe in society, only in individuals.
Their idea of public policy, as a prominent New Democrat once put it, is to give everybody a bucket of gravel and tell them to go out and build a highway.
It sounds so democratic to give individuals money to "choose." But Conservative promises of taxable allowances and credits, for day care, for public transit passes, for private but not public pensions and for children's amateur sports, don't create public services available to all. They just help individuals with above average incomes. Taxable allowances and credits do nothing for people who don't pay taxes and little for people who earn a modest living.
The single mother working at Wal-Mart on minimum wage can't benefit from a taxable allowance for child care. She needs a subsidized child- care space, a space that won't be available. A tax credit for a bus or subway pass isn't any use to her either if she can't afford all that money at once or if there is no public transit to use. As for the tax credit for sports equipment, she needs it for food and rent.
Harper's $400 million for individual transit tax credits would be better used assisting municipalities to improve their public transit systems. His $1,200 per child taxable allowance is of no use if there is no quality child care to be bought at any price. And his $250 million for new child care spaces is conditional on those spaces being provided by business through tax credits, hardly comparable to the Liberals' universal national childcare program, modelled after universal public education.
The senior relying on the Canada Pension, Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement is by definition worse off than the senior with a private pension. But the worse-off senior gets nothing from the Harper Conservative plan for tax credits for private pensions only.
Harper says his plan to station the military in big cities is to deal with natural disasters. But it has sinister connotations of a U.S.-style security state and is far more likely to be about social control.
As the gun violence currently plaguing Toronto illustrates, there is blowback from government policies designed to punish certain groups in society simply because they are disadvantaged. Toronto today is reaping the whirlwind that the former Conservative government of Mike Harris sowed when it slashed welfare rates by 22 per cent and terminated social housing. And Torontonians should take note that several former Harris cabinet ministers are running on the Harper ticket.
In addition to squandering billions on tax allowances and credits to well-off Canadians, Harper intends to cut the GST by two percentage points, transfer a substantial number of tax points to the provinces as he takes Ottawa out of national programs and further slashes personal and corporate incomes taxes.
Vancouver entrepreneur Jayson Kaplan recently returned to Canada from the U.S. In a letter posted on the Politics Canada website, Kaplan is urging his fellow Canadians to see the close similarities between Harper and Bush. He says Harper is using Bush's 2000 election strategy, allaying voter fears by promising to be a "compassionate" conservative, not to intrude the state into matters like abortion and only to spend "projected surpluses." Once in office, Bush did the exact opposite.
"Voting for Stephen Harper is like voting for George Bush," Kaplan writes. "The two are just too similar in their campaigns and their beliefs for it to be a coincidence."
FrancesRussell@mts.net
NDP `taking it up a notch' on airwavesBut the boot is gone and gloves are off as the NDP prepare to launch two new attack ads. 19 Days and counting.
The NDP's first two English-language ads have only been gently negative, presenting lighthearted criticism of the governing party. The New Democrats' pre-Christmas ad, for example, reminded viewers that all the Liberals had given Canadians this holiday season was a lump of coal, but they'd given their Liberal friends big gifts. Then, it encouraged voters to turn around and give the Liberals "the boot" this holiday season. Although critical of the Liberals, its witty approach softened any blows.
the New Democrats are set to release a pair of new ads, one that hammers the Liberals' record and another that pushes the NDP agenda as the only possible option for voters come Jan 23.Tags
Eugene Plawiuk has attacked this online magazine and one of its authors claiming that AlbertaAvenue - The Voice of Alberta does not know where it stands.
In addition, we cannot condone their decision to put up an ex-con and jewel thief as a candidate, which goes against their repeated claims of fighting against thieves in government.
Green Party hit with second elections complaintA second complaint to Elections Canada of alleged electoral-law violations by Green Party officials has been made public by a former party member, even as the party threatens legal action against the initiator of a complaint reported last week.
Elections Canada talking with Greens about possible election-law violationsThe discussions are based on a letter of complaint filed by Matthew Pollesel, the party's former assistant national organizer. Pollesel alleges that the former grassroots party has been hijacked to gain access to federal election subsidies provided under the new elections-financing law. Leader Jim Harris is accused of underestimating his expenses for the party leadership in 2003.
But not so strange when you realize that Schizoid Werner is anything but transparent hiding behind his multipleblog personalities.
Also see
RCMP should have waited, Hargrove says
Buzz Hargrove said it was not "proper police work" for the RCMP to confirm it was investigating a possible leak of the announcement in the midst of a federal election campaign, and suggested that it gave an unfair advantage to the opposition.
The outspoken union leader made the assertion on CBC Radio's morning program The Current, in which he was on a panel of political "mavericks," along with former Liberal MP Carolyn Parrish and one-time Conservative Deborah Grey.
Mr. Hargrove, who endorsed the Liberals in December, characterized the "supposed leak" as an opportunity for the Conservatives to launch a "nasty campaign" against the reigning Liberals.
Yesterday, other members of the CBC panel responded with incredulity to Mr. Hargrove's statement. Ms. Parrish called Mr. Hargrove a "former idol of mine. He's obviously deserted the NDP and gone very Liberal on us," she said.So I thought of Phil Ochs when I read about Buzz, and this came to mind......
Love Me, Love Me, Love Me, I'm A Liberal ....Phil Ochs
Once I was young and impulsive
I wore every conceivable pin
Even went to the socialist meetings
Learned all the old union hymns
But I've grown older and wiser
And that's why I'm turning you in
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
"For many Canadian families with immediate relatives overseas, one of the challenges that they have faced is the $975 right of permanent residence fee," he said.
The landing fee will be phased out over the next three years. The fee will drop immediately to $600, then to $300 after 12 months, and finally to zero within the next two budgets.
The government had claimed the fee was imposed to cover costs associated with processing applications. Yet opponents criticized the fee, saying it was a money grab.
While that seems more democratic, it would be anything but. What it would do is give small fringe parties supported by only tiny pockets of Canadians all the power to decide whether governments live or die. And what that would mean is that instead of encouraging parties to be mainstream, moderate and offer universal appeal to Canadians, it would instead reward radical ideas and crazy policies that are simply unpalatable to most Canadians.