A Vision Of Things To Come

Ralph Klein, Preston Manning and Mike Harris have all touted their "Third Way" for Health Care reform in Canada as NOT being modeled on the US but on Europe and the UK. Well lets look at the success the UK is having with its third way model of public private healthcare delivery. Opps better not. Blair faces inquiry into NHS crisis


One of the problems of the GP contract - like so many Labour health reforms - was the number of other radical changes, some of them contradictory, being pursued at the same time. The prime minister has still not learned. In an address to the New Health Network think-tank yesterday he listed four big reforms which the government is pursuing. This month marks the nationwide introduction of payments by results, the biggest change since the NHS was launched 58 years ago, under which finance flows to hospitals, ambulance services, primary care and mental health teams according to the numbers of patients treated, rather than a block contract. On top of that, the government is expanding patient choice, introducing more independent providers and promoting GP commissioning. He could have noted two other reforms - both currently unnecessary - involving radical restructuring of primary care trusts and strategic health authorities. Right goals, too many wrong results


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Go Willie Go

Are you on the bus or off the bus? That's the challenge Willie Lambert is making to the members of CAW. Bus driver aims to steer CAW at top

And it's about time that Buzz faced an election instead of an acclamation.

Hargrove has been repeatedly acclaimed to the union's top job since he first took over from Bob White in 1992. He has said this will be his last campaign -- the union's constitution requires staff to retire at 65, the age he'll reach at the end of another three year term. Hargrove Challenger

What is important in Willie's run is the criticism that Buzz has been getting over concession bargaining and sweetheart contracts with the Big Three auto giants, while failing to organize Magna International or the Japanese and Korean automakers in Canada.

Lambert also criticized Hargrove for accepting changes in labour contracts with Ford and General Motors and for failing to speak out strongly enough for protection of Canadian manufacturing.By agreeing to work rules and other changes in CAW contracts with Ford and GM, Lambert said, Hargrove is setting the stage for the companies to demand even more concessions in the next round of collective bargaining

Buzz dismisses Willie cause he is a public sector worker, a mere bus driver.

"He doesn't come from the auto industry - he works in the public sector. . . . So he doesn't have the same threat to his job as the auto workers."

Uh huh, well he is a bus driver driving the buses members of CAW make, and without drivers well I guess those buses would just sit idle. And the public sector has taken many hits over the last ten years, under Harris and Rae. What an a-hole.

Gee Buzz I thought you were trying to build a national social union not just an autoworkers union. Since that's why you said you were raiding SEIU and why you have been cozing up to AUPE.

Anatomy of a raid

And that's awful patronizing of you to attack Willie for saying what your old pal, mentor and ghost writer Sam Gidin has also said. And he came out of the auto industry. He has publicly criticised your cap in hand gofering for Big Auto.

Concessions in Oshawa: The End of an Era?
Monthly Review, VA - 31 Mar 2006
by Sam Gindin.

Go Willie Go.


Also See CAW To Leave CLC?

Get The Buzz


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Honk For Public Day Care

I want a national Day Care Program and I won't let go until I get it.

That Harper sure has a way with kids.

Harper willing to go to the polls over child-care allowance
Harper said that he could work with the NDP and Bloc Québécois. He suggested those parties are not ideologically opposed to his plan, but instead criticize the amount of the allowance.

What BS. They are opposed to his plan which only creates a baby bonus and ends federal funding to the provinces and does not create a national public daycare program. The NDP plan is just that plus a $1200 tax credit, not cash which will be taxed. Chow calls Conservatives’ childcare bluff

The BQ only care about getting money for Quebecs existing program, the so called fiscal imbalance. So the Tories will count on them to back up this baby-bonus, in exchange for an asymetrical fiscal deal with Charest.

Not only does the kid put the squeeze on Harper but in the very community centre where he is speaking the folks also think his plan is bunk. PM Keeps Plan for Child Care

Prime Minister Stephen Harper challenged his opponents yesterday to take his minority government down over the Conservatives' cherished child-care plan, saying they'll have the chance to do it soon.

Harper's announcement received lukewarm response from some parents in the community centre.

"I think it's just a payoff. Of course I'm going to take the money but I don't think it's solving any problems," said Lydia Pranaitis, who has two children under two.

When she goes back to work from maternity leave, Pranaitis said it will cost her $1,900 per month for child care.

"I think this whole system is breeding poverty," she said.

"If I were a single mother, what could you do?"

Benn Uba agreed it's better to have the money than nothing.

But the father of two children said he would rather see more child-care facilities with subsidies for parents.

"It's tight, it's hard," Uba said of trying to pay the family's bills and pay for child care.

"People don't want to have children anymore."

Besides the cash for parents, the Conservatives also pledged in their first throne speech to create 125,000 new spaces by offering $250 million in tax credits for businesses and non-profit groups that create new spaces.

Critics have said similar efforts by provincial governments have failed to motivate corporations in the past.

Taking Care of Canada's Children

By Nicole Hacock, Director of YWCA Cambridge

The fatal flaw in the Conservative plan is that it ignores Canadians’ desire for quality early learning and care programs. Although the government says it will offer tax incentives to businesses so they can create child care spaces, when the Mike Harris government in Ontario tried this in the 1990s, guess how many spaces the private sector created? None.

The Conservative plan confuses families’ legitimate desire for income support with the need for an accessible, high quality child care. We believe that Canada can deliver both. Families need both, if they are to help their children get the best start in life and balance the overwhelming demands of work and family life.

Since February 24, more than 22,000 Canadians have signed an on-line open letter that urges politicians to work together to honour the child care agreements created last year. At www.buildchildcare.ca, people from all walks of life are saying the same thing: $1,200 a year is not enough. Canada can, and must, do better.

Hayley Wickenheiser, a gold medal mother (and hockey star at the Turin Olympics) signed the child care open letter this week.

Also See

Childcare

Daycare



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Edmontonian Discovers New Dinosaur

And no its not the Conservatives though it does bear a striking resemblance to Alberta's very own Ralph-saurus

New discovery dethrones T-rex

U of A paleontologist identifies carnivore bigger than Tyrannosaurus and millions of years older

EDMONTON - A University of Alberta dinosaur hunter has identified one of the largest meat-eating dinosaurs to ever roam the planet, a bloodthirsty beast that hunted in packs in South America and ripped apart much bigger plant-eaters with its razor-sharp teeth and snapping jaw.

Philip Currie, a well-known paleontologist and biological sciences professor at U of A, and Rudolfo Coria, a paleontologist in South America, excavated a group of at least seven of the ferocious predators in red desert sandstone outside Plaza Huincul in Argentina.

The bones are 80 to 90 million years old -- much older than those of the Tyrannosaurus rex, which lived 65 to 70 million years ago in what is now Asia and North America.

"It's always pretty exciting when you realize you're working on a new type of dinosaur," said Currie, who co-authored a paper about the discovery that appears in the spring edition of Geodiversitas, a journal about earth sciences.

"For me, especially, big carnivorous dinosaurs have been one of my passions since I was a kid and found a dinosaur in a cereal box."

A Meat Eater Bigger Than T. Rex Is Unearthed

The discovery, along with other recent ones in Canada, Mongolia and the United States, appeared to support an emerging interpretation of the hunting behavior of predatory dinosaurs. Instead of being solitary hunters, as once thought, they may have operated in groups.

"The presence of so many animals in one quarry," Dr. Currie said in a statement released by the University of Alberta, "suggests that they were living together in a pack at the time leading up to their catastrophic death." Giant dino-predators may have hunted in packs

Meat-Eating Dinosaur Was Bigger Than T. Rex

Other dinosaur experts say the discovery sheds valuable new light on the most fearsome land predators ever known.

Lowell Dingus is an associate paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

"The remarkable remains of Mapusaurus provide another important example of the spectacular kinds of gigantic carnivorous dinosaurs that roamed South America near the end of the age of the dinosaurs," he said.

Mapusaurus belongs to a group of recently recognized theropod dinosaurs called carcharodontosaurs, which have also been found in Africa.

The new species "increases both our knowledge of the anatomy and the diversity of this peculiar group of theropod," said Ronan Allain of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, France.

Allain says Mapusaurus is more closely related to the Argentinian Giganotosaurus than to the African species.

"It means a South American [carcharodontosaur] lineage could have evolved regardless of the African forms."

He says the other main contender for the title of biggest ever meat-eating dinosaur is Spinosaurus, whose fossil remains come from North Africa.

More on Dinosaurs

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Canadian's Vote Out Berlusconi

Now if we only had been able to vote for the "President of the Free World" , Kerry would be in the White House. Italian Canadian voters pivotal in electing Prodi

Also see: The Friendly Fascist



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Haiti Canada's Colony

Here is another example of the continuing Canadian colonialism of Haiti.

I like this telling headline; Canada Gov. General For Haiti

Governor-general returning to Haiti
Michaelle Jean was a terrified 11-year-old when she and her family fled a barbarous regime in Haiti. Next month, she will return to her homeland as Canada's governor-general, sitting shoulder to shoulder with other heads of state to witness the inauguration of Haiti's new president. The initial plans are for Jean to attend the inauguration of Rene Preval in Port-au-Prince on May 14.

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Vegan Myth Busting

Progressive Bloggers has had an open thread this weekend on the Seal Hunt debate. One of the contributors Mark Francis has been defending veganism, the dietary ideology behind many of the hunt opponents.

As I remarked in my previous post meat eating, hunting and fishing, and later animal husbandry were essential for human evolution. However Mark in a post asserts that Vegans produce less greenhouse gases in their consupmtion of fruit and vegitables;


Of course, there's problems with animal husbandry: vegan diets are much better for the earth: 'Vegans produce 1.5 tons less greenhouse gas emissions per year'


The study failed to consider the high cost and petrochemical basis of fertilizers, soil destruction, labour intensive farming for vegitables and fruits, DDT and pesticide/herbicide use, gas comsuption by combines and other farm equipement and their emissions, etc. And they failed to consider the large scale use of water, irrigation in California for instance, and the electricity and energy associated with it.

When we do green assessments of production, all input variables have to be taken into consideration which was not done in this case.

They compared apples and oranges, pardon the pun. In criticizing the waste from massive single animal factory farms, such as the massive swine farms, they failed to compare it with the average single crop vegitable or fruit farm. And they failed to compare it to the large scale vegitable crop production in the US, such as cotton, peanuts, soy, etc. which are subsidized, and are used for oil seed production not food. They also failed to consider the input and output costs of GMO, genetically modified, crops.

True industrial farming of single animal species is problematic, espicially swine. However so is single crop production of seed products for oil or sugar beets , as the deterioration of soil conditions in Southern Alberta show's.

So when folks talk about food production as if one form of industrial production is better than another, they are frankly pissing in the wind. All industrial based farming is energy intensive, and produces waste, whether in secondary and tertiary production and transportation. To look at these costs would be to look at the real green costs of capitalist food production.

The key to the regeneration of farming is green input output organic small scale farming, not the industrial model. Regardless of crops or animals raised. And that farming has to be based on an understanding of the ecology and ecological impacts it has.

Also See: The Truth About the Farm Crisis




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Big Meat Eaters

Mammoth meals helped early tribes thrive REGULAR meals of mammoth meat helped some early human tribes to expand more quickly than their largely vegetarian contemporaries, according to a genetic study.

And of course they survived better than their strictly vegitarian relatives who died out. Veganism is a urban consumer phenomona of industrial society (call it the California diet) not a natural phenomena amongst human societies. And thanks to a meat diet our brains grew larger, as Engels points out;

But all that was not yet labour in the proper sense of the word. Labour begins with the making of tools. And what are the most ancient tools that we find – the most ancient judging by the heirlooms of prehistoric man that have been discovered, and by the mode of life of the earliest historical peoples and of the rawest of contemporary savages? They are hunting and fishing implements, the former at the same time serving as weapons. But hunting and fishing presuppose the transition from an exclusively vegetable diet to the concomitant use of meat, and this is another important step in the process of transition from ape to man. A meat diet contained in an almost ready state the most essential ingredients required by the organism for its metabolism. By shortening the time required for digestion, it also shortened the other vegetative bodily processes that correspond to those of plant life, and thus gained further time, material and desire for the active manifestation of animal life proper. And the farther man in the making moved from the vegetable kingdom the higher he rose above the animal. Just as becoming accustomed to a vegetable diet side by side with meat converted wild cats and dogs into the servants of man, so also adaptation to a meat diet, side by side with a vegetable diet, greatly contributed towards giving bodily strength and independence to man in the making. The meat diet, however, had its greatest effect on the brain, which now received a far richer flow of the materials necessary for its nourishment and development, and which, therefore, could develop more rapidly and perfectly from generation to generation. With all due respect to the vegetarians man did not come into existence without a meat diet, and if the latter, among all peoples known to us, has led to cannibalism at some time or other (the forefathers of the Berliners, the Weletabians or Wilzians, used to eat their parents as late as the tenth century), that is of no consequence to us today.

The meat diet led to two new advances of decisive importance – the harnessing of fire and the domestication of animals. The first still further shortened the digestive process, as it provided the mouth with food already, as it were, half-digested; the second made meat more copious by opening up a new, more regular source of supply in addition to hunting, and moreover provided, in milk and its products, a new article of food at least as valuable as meat in its composition. Thus both these advances were, in themselves, new means for the emancipation of man. It would lead us too far afield to dwell here in detail on their indirect effects notwithstanding the great importance they have had for the development of man and society.

The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man

A tip o' the blog to Dust My Broom for this.


Also See:

Ecology=Equality

The Incredible Shrinking Man

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Carnival of Socialism

Once upon a time there was a Carnival of Un-Capitalism. It was one of those aggregate blog Carnivals that are so popular. It stopped being published when the Un-Capitalist Journal was created, in August 2005. Check it out. Great collection of articles.

Sigh, so where are lefties to go and Carnival?

Well a new Carnival has been started by John Angliss, thanks, the Carnival of Socialism, which will post aggregate stories every fortnight (two weeks to those of you not from the UK). The first collection will be out May Day, May 1st. How appropriate.

See ya at the Carnival.




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Union Busters Update

Currently workers at the Northern Canadian Ekati Diamond Mine in Diavik, owned by BHP are on Strike.

It is a misnomer to call this a mine, it is an enormous large scale operation that is less a mine than a huge deep open pit processing operation like the Tar Sands.

A blog has been set up BHP Labour Watch, by the striking workers that details their issues and day to day struggles.

The union busting goon squad from AFI is currently on the picket line protecting scabs crossing the lines, AFI will be speaking at a Human Resource Managers conference in Victoria this week promoting their corporate protection services.

Bottomline is that AFI are professional union busters, their purpose on the picket line is to intimidate strikers, harrass them, attack them, document them for court cases by the employer, in other words to be the front line in the bosses attack on workers rights. Just like their predecesors the Pinkertons.

BHP Labour Watch says;

BHP CLAIM THEY "WON'T USE REPLACEMENT WORKERS" HAS NO MERIT.

BHP, has hired a southern secturity force to intimidate and harass picketers and citizens of Yellowknife. But that isn't all this company does. Here is an excerpt from one of their pomotional docmuments. You decide: is BHP telling the truth?

AFI strives to recruit the best personnel for clients requiring replacement workers to continue operations. Our complete replacement workers service includes performance monitoring and the administration of payroll and benefits, which removes clients from all direct responsibility for the temporary workforce.
Accredited through the Professional Recruiting Association of Canada, our recruiting teams use a comprehensive, three-phase selection process to identify the best possible employees.
Note that the skill or trade of replacement workers required will affect the recruiting time and rates of pay.

Neither BHP or AFI have any respect for Northern values that is obvious.

BHP USING GOONS

Ekati “Goons” Harassing Yellowknifers

(Yellowknife) Ekati’s professional strike breakers have been attempting to intimidate Yellowknife citizens showing sympathy for the Ekati diamond workers currently on strike.

The President of the Union of Northern Workers, Todd Parsons has been receiving reports of people being followed around Yellowknife and even to their personal residences late at night.

“I think it goes beyond simple harassment when women are being followed home. I think this is very close to stalking which is a criminal offence.”

When consulted, a BC Federation of Labour spokesperson said they were not surprised by the use of intimidating tactics. The southern security force hired by BHP Billiton is well known for its use of provocative and intimidating tactics.

“I am disgusted by BHP’s recent statement that they would not tolerate harassment by our members while they turn around and employ people to specifically harass not only our members but innocent citizens of Yellowknife,” said UNW President Todd Parsons.


A tip o' the blog to my pal Bill Tieleman for this.

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