Ed Woods Curse

The angora sweater curse of Ed Wood has struck.....

Hollywood heart-throb Johnny Depp developed an unhealthy obsession with women's clothes while starring in film biopic Ed Wood.

I would never have noticed from his manly roles of late as Pirate Jack Sparrow and Willy Wonka......




SEE:

Metrosexual







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Battle of Algiers

Is is not just a classic movie, it is a great political movie. It shows that the current so called Muslim Middle East grew out of nationalist, secular, anti-colonial struggles.


Battle of Algiers director dies

Pontecorvo was nominated for two Oscars

Italian film-maker Gillo Pontecorvo, who directed The Battle Of Algiers, has died at the age of 86.

Pontecorvo's film depicted the brutality of both sides during the guerrilla uprising against French colonial rule in 1950s Algeria.

Shot like a documentary, the highly influential film was banned in France for some time, while its scenes of torture were cut in the US and Britain.

Ironic since now this is common practice by the US and Britain in Iraq.

And even more irony......

In 2003 the Pentagon screened the film to officers and civilian experts who were considering the challenges faced by the U.S. military in Iraq, the New York Times reported. A flier inviting guests to the screening read: "How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas."

It is one of those political films that every progressive should have along with the films of Costa Gavas. Who recently co wrote a film on the Battle of Algiers, and has been given an honorary degree from SFU.




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Bush School Summit

In the wake of the plural suicides in the US and Canada involving school children George Bush announced a School Summit on Violence and Security which happened this week.Chaired by the man who ok'd the Bush regimes right to violate the Geneva convention and approved the Admistrations right to use torture.Naked and afraid

Apparently though when it comes to school security in America the children were left behind in the interests of the War on Terror.....

The highlight of the summit seems to have been a rebuke of Bush administration policy by the manager of the Center for the Prevention of School Violence in Raleigh, N.C. He wanted to know why the administration attempted to cut the $347 million allotted for school-safety grants for states this year.


See:

Real Christian Values

The Solution To Columbine Syndrome

Gill


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Bye, Bye Baghdad

Look who wants to 'cut and run' from Bush's failed war.

Army chief declares war on Blair: 'We must quit Iraq soon'
The views of General Sir Richard Dannatt will send shockwaves through Tony Blair's government. The head of the Army is calling for British troops to withdraw from Iraq "soon" or risk catastophic consequences for both Iraq and British society. In a devastating broadside at Tony Blair's foreign policy, General Sir Richard Dannatt stated explicitly that the continuing presence of British troops "exacerbates the security problems" in Iraq."I am going to stand up for what is right for the army. Honesty is what it is about. The truth will out. We have got to speak the truth."


Sure leave Iraq and go to Afghanistan to repeat the mistake.

He understands why Prince William and Prince Harry want to serve on the frontline but has not yet decided whether they will be allowed to fight in Afghanistan.

Harry completes training to become troop leader

See:

Iraq

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Harpers Ghost Writer

It's Kinsella right....well it sounds like him....Liberals anti-Israel, Harper claims




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Canada's Napoleonic Code

Law & Order is the cry of the right wing historically. It is of course the defense of their property rights that they care about. In true conservative fashion of believing in traditional values, like going backwards into the future, or moving forward to the past the New Conservative Government has introduced the return of the Napoleonic Code.

Reverse Onus" for dangerous offenders

Typical of an autark like Harper who reads Stalin and models himself Canada's Emperor ala Napoleon.

The possibility for justice to endorse lengthy remand periods was one reason why the Napoleonic Code was criticized for de facto presumption of guilt, particularly in common law countries. The rules governing court proceedings, by today's standards, probably gave too much power to the prosecution; it must be said, however, that criminal justice in European countries in those days tended to side with repression.

Just like Canada today under Emperor Harper.

See:

Canada's Prison Indsustrial Complex

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Newspaper Follies

I was looking over the various papers available on the street, the dailies and the weekles, and low and behold if the National Pest boxes are missing around Edmonton Centre and the Library. Is this the final death knell of the paper that has been fiscally and politically bankrupt since its inception by the arch crime lord Conrad Black?!

The Edmonton Sun has had a makeover, not popular with the bus riding crowd nor seniors. Having gone to six columns, the paper of the proletariat has ticked off its readers. The columns make the print size smaller and harder to read. Not good for seniors, and they have grumbled about it. The white space is offset with more space for ads. As one reader pointed out the change makes the paper less news more ads. How you can have less news in a paper you can read in five minutes, well the Sun has managed it.

The RightWing Weekly Western Standard is less than a smashing success as a newstand seller. Over at Hub Cigar they report selling 15-20 weekly. Whereas the liberal Alberta Views sells 35 weekly, as do Harpers and Atlantic. Heck even the American liberal weekly the Nation sells 25. That's why we call it Redmonton.

See:

National Post

Western Standard

Edmonton Sun


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Having Faith

One of the evangelical advisors to George W. in his first term coined the phrase compassionate conservatism. Five years later it could be called an inconvenient Christianity. And following in the footsteps of the Foley follies this could be the blockbuster expose for fundamentalist Christians that Woodwords book was for Iraq.

More than five years after President Bush created the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, [David Kuo] the former second-in-command of that office is going public with an insider’s tell-all account that portrays an office used almost exclusively to win political points....Kuo alleges that then-White House political affairs director Ken Mehlman knowingly participated in a scheme to use the office, and taxpayer funds, to mount ostensibly “nonpartisan” events that were, in reality, designed with the intent of mobilizing religious voters in 20 targeted races. ... Nineteen out of the 20 targeted races were won by Republicans, Kuo reports.

ThinkProgress has obtained an excerpt from the book, set shortly after Bush’s 2001 inauguration:

Every other White House office was up and running. The faith-based initiative still operated out of the nearly vacant transition offices.

Three days later, a Tuesday, Karl Rove summoned [Don] Willett [a former Bush aide from Texas who initially shepharded the program] to his office to announce that the entire faith-based initiative would be rolled out the following Monday. Willett asked just how — without a director, staff, office, or plan — the president could do that. Rove looked at him, took a deep breath, and said, “I don’t know. Just get me a f—ing faith-based thing. Got it?” Willett was shown the door.

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Conservatives Attack Prairie Farmers

Driven by the Southern Alberta farming lobby that is deeply influenced by its American roots, the area is rampant with Mormons, Dutch Reformed Church and other proto-American exiles, the old Reform party took the position that the Canadian Wheat Board was a communist state monopoly. That's because it was originally formed in the dirty thirties during the Great Depression as a producers cooperative.

The New Conservative Government of Canada having its roots in this backwater minority lobby has taken on the Canadian Wheat Board and has decidied that one of its election promises, though not one of its five priorities, was to carry on the Reform party tradition and attempt to open up the western Canadian wheat and barley market by eliminating the Wheat Board. The problem is that of course while a free market in wheat and barley may appeal to large producers with their own trucks living close to the U.S. border, for the majority of wheat and barley farmers trade is international, and the single desk has served them well.

Orginally intended to be a producers cooperative board, the state created a bueracracy alienated from the farmers. In the last decade that has changed in response to pressure from the farm base and in response to criticism from the right and the right wing lobbying for a dual market in wheat and barley. The Board is now elected by farmers. And the much lauded dual market lobby even has elected its own members to the board. However they garner far less grassroots support than they do media attention, and of course their voice is not really of farmers but of the neo-liberal Calgary lobby around the Reform/Alliance/Conservative party.

Now the government intends on forcing the stupidity of a dual marketing scheme on farmers without asking them their opinion. Worse it is gagging them, refusing to allow the Wheat Board to defend itself. Talk about a paranoid authoritarian action by the state. So much for democratic consultation with stakeholders.

Wheat Board ordered not to sow discontent Globe and Mail, Canada - 11 hours ago WINNIPEG -- The Conservative government has banned the Canadian Wheat Board from advocating its continued existence as the monopoly seller of Western Canadian ...
Canadian Wheat Board asks Ottawa to withdraw partial gag order Canada.com
Farmers fretting over Wheat Board's future Globe and Mail
Farmers Support Wheat Board Despite Conservative Claims
Wheat Board supporters accuse Ottawa of imposing gag order
Canadian Wheat Board won't sit on committee designed to end its existence
Prairie coalition fights for Canadian Wheat Board
Keep the tradition of the Wheat Board
Farm groups demand voice in talks about Wheat Board

Why it makes one wonder where the libertarians in the Conservatives disappeared too. Nary a one left to speak out against state interference in a producers cooperative, which is democratic. What ever happened to minila state intereference, the compalint that was raised agaisnt the Liberal government from its domination over the farmers on the Wheat Board. The Wheat Board exists not to limit the market, but to get the best deal for the most farmer from a market that is dominated and manipulated by large American Agribusiness monopolies. And their market manipulation works against the producers in favour of the market gamblers and the big agribusinesses who control transportation, storage, frefining, distribution and marketing. Volatile CBOT Wheat Futures Hit Market-Makers Hard


I guess it is time for another praririe farmer rebellion against a government in Ottawa that doesn't listen to them. Ironic ain't it.



See:

Wheat Board

Mormonism Cult of the Political Right

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Ding Dong Monopoly

Bell Canada known as BCE owner of the Globe and Mail, CTV, Bell mobility, etc. has moved into the income trust business, in order to avoid taxes. The Toronto Star has an interesting take on this Curtain falls on flawed business strategy

Bell had a monopoly in Eastern Canada, built as it was on a contiental basis in the Eastern seaboard of the US and Canada. It never made it out west, due to expense and risk. So instead provincial governments and the City of Edmonton created competing phone systems.

In the case of Emonton Telephones it was a private company which was sold to the city in the early 20th Century. Alex Taylor took advantage of the fact that neither Bell nor Alberta Government Telephones saw fit to build a telephone line to the city. It later was sold to AGT in the ninties, wtoghether they became the privatized Telus, Bells largest competitor.

In order to have competition between monopolies they have to be large enough corporate behemoths to take each other on. Sort of like Gozilla versus Mothra, or the silent dinosaur movies of the twenties. The liberaltarians believe that a mythical state-free market would eliminate monopoly, it is a myth. The inherent drive of capital is to centralize itself and thus to create a state capable of allowing for monopoly and oligopoly. It does not want competition but centralization and collusion.

Telus has gone into creating an income trust fund so flush with capital that it needs to hide it under the bushel of this ponzi tax avoidance mechanism.

Bell on the other hand is bleeding capital, and as the Tor Star article points out going the income trust route is counter intuitive. Instead of investing capital for profit they are divesting themselves of profit in a trust which pays out high income to investors and managers.

Once again the capitalism shows it is not capable of operating an efficient system of production and distribution. Captial and the capitalist is always distracted by the next get rich quick scheme to maximizes it's profit from credit and interest.


See:

Unproductive Capital


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