Mulroney's Ghost

Call this an example of Faustian politics, once again the Conservatives have made a deal with the devil to gain support in Quebec. Just like Mulroney did in order to form his coalition government.

Tory cabinet minister says Quebec is a nation

A spectre is haunting Canadian politics and that spectre is the Quebec Nation.What none of our federalist parties wish to address of course is that this is not just and issue over the Constitution of 1980 but the con job that Confederation was back in 1867.




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No Show Rona

Will she or won't she show up in Kenya?
Robert Fife the parliamentary correpsondent for CTV suggested on Mike Duffy live on Friday Nov. 10 that the Conservatives MIA Environment Minister Rona Ambrose might not show up in Kenya for the Koyto 2 round of discussions.

And this may be why he thinks that; Ambrose's opening remarks are delivered electronically in Nairobi.

From Macleans; Rona Ambrose: A Week in the Life



See:

Rona Ambrose

Environment


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Climate Catastrophe In Ten Years

So much for the Tories Hot Air Plan. By the time they enact their legislation the seas will probably be rising.

Coral warns of rising seas

The most alarming aspect of the research is that scientists have no way of predicting when ice sheets will collapse, causing a surge in sea levels. “The problem with melting ice sheets is that it doesn’t happen gradually or steadily. It can be catastrophic and … the concern is the rate of sea level rise,” said McCulloch. “There may not be much time. These things could happen quite rapidly, like tens of years.”

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An iceberg floats in the Southern Ocean, south of Invercargill on New Zealand's south island in this undated handout photograph made available by the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) on November 9, 2006. Scores of icebergs have floated to within about 300 km (186 miles) of New Zealand, with the largest measuring about 1.8 km (1.1 miles) in length and standing some 120 metres (360 feet) above water.(Xinhua/Reuters Photo)

See:

Environment

Climate Change

Arctic

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Our Electric Universe

One of the heretical theories that Professor Velikovsky proposed was that the main force in the universe was not gravity but electromagnatism. It turns out that his prediciton was borne out by discoveries of electrical storms between plants like Jupiter and Saturn and their moons. And by the electrical discharges from the Sun which appear as plasmatic solar flares.

Strongest lightning storm on record strikes Saturn
The most powerful lightning storm ever detected on Saturn has been captured by the Cassini spacecraft – but scientists are still not sure what is causing it. "It is clear that this is the strongest lightning activity that we've seen with Cassini since it arrived at Saturn," says Donald Gurnett at the University of Iowa, US, and RPWS principal investigator. "In fact, the flash rate even exceeds the rate observed by Voyager 1 back in 1980 and the intensities are at least as large, if not larger."

• Erratic 'superbolts' of lightning seen on Saturn

I am proud to say that my Alma Mater the University of Lethbridge had the bravery to grant Doctor Velikovsky with an honorary degree.


See:

Cosmology


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Our Ancestor?

May be the sea urchin.

"Scientists have long known that humans and sea urchins are closely related. In fact, these animals are the only invertebrates on the human branch of the evolutionary tree of life. Now that the sea urchin genome is sequenced and assembled, that genetic connection is even clearer."

Spiny creature's genome insight

"Any snorkeler who has ever marvelled at the spherical, almost otherworldly, symmetry of the sea urchin will be amazed to learn that this organism, so different in habitat and body plan from ourselves, actually shares a substantial number of the same genes and pathways," said Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) which helped fund the project.

"It turns out that the sea urchin is very much like us," said George Weinstock, the co- director of the HGSC. "You wouldn't think it to look at it. But it's closer to us than a fly," he said. The group estimates the sea urchin has 23,300 genes. For comparison, the fruit fly has about 13,600 and humans 20,000 to 25,000.

See:

Evolution

Darwinism


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Seals Threaten Fish

Here is another reason why we need to cull the seal herd. By protecting them we have created an ecological imbalance. Opps. See there are consequences to our involvement in the environment, good or bad. And good intentions have consequences and some of them turn out not to be so good. Of course the bad also has consequences, such as mass destruction of the cod stocks not by seals but by trawler fishing.

Canadian Sealers Complain About Lack of Work; 'We Ain't Allowed Where the Seals Are'

Twenty years ago, he said, most fish plant workers found only one or two wormy fish per shift. Now, he said, fish are heavily infested. The worms come from seal feces, research has shown.

The quality of finished product suffers because fillets are sometimes only fit to be packaged as fish bits after the worms are picked out of them, said Mr. Wadman.

"When we do miss a worm, we get some very significant phone calls," he said.

Grey seals are even showing up at his plant, waiting by water outflow pipes hoping to snag bits of fish, Mr. Wadman said.

DFO scientist Mike Hammill said researchers sample seal feces and analyze stomach contents and also look at fatty acids in seal tissue to determine what the grey seals are eating.

Researchers determined that seals don’t always eat a lot of cod. Quite often, he said, the seals eat species that aren’t as commercially important, such sand lance and redfish.

But the amount of cod making up a grey seal’s diet can jump to a high of 40 per cent or a low of 10 per cent, depending on the location and time of year, he said.

The grey seal population is now estimated to be 260,000-strong in Atlantic Canada, up from 20,000 in the 1970s.

See:

Seal Hunt

Fishing


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US Defends War Crimes

At the United Nations, a Security Council resolution condemning Israel's attack on the Gazan town of Beit Hanoun which killed 19 civilians this week was rejected when it was vetoed by the U.S.

And folks wonder why the Palestinians and their allies in the Middle East believe this clash of civilizations is a war against them by the State of Israel on behalf of the American Empire. Israel is not defending itself, but progelmating its colonial power in the region. In Palestine as it did in Lebanon this summer.

See:

Kristallnacht In Gaza

Israel

Lebanon

Zionism

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Our New Police State

Those who enforce the laws of the State, should have no say in the Judiciary. To do otherwise is to move towards a police state. The police are already sufficiently 'above the law', laws that apply to you or I do not apply to them in the execution of their duties.

Welcome to the new government of law and order. Friendly fascism by any other name.

Toews scolded over plan to name judges

The Harper Conservatives, refusing to back down in a fight with the country's senior judges and lawyers, said Friday they are going ahead with a contentious plan to give police a voice in screening judicial contenders to the federally appointed bench.

The plan was first reported this week in an exclusive Winnipeg Free Press story.

Justice Minister Vic Toews issued a news release confirming his plans less than an hour after Canada's lawyers joined a growing chorus of protest that the move could politicize the judiciary by "stacking the deck" in the judicial selection process.

A flagging relationship suffers another blow

Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin has never been one to play her cards carelessly or blurt out an indiscretion.

When she chose to lead the country's top judges into a very public battle with Justice Minister Vic Toews over his plan to transform the judicial appointment process, it meant only one thing: that she believed the very independence of the judiciary was at stake.

But the legal establishment was sent reeling anew yesterday when, just hours after she and the Canadian Judicial Council publicly rebuked Mr. Toews for his arbitrariness, he plowed ahead with a plan that many believe will politicize the federal bench. Without a word of apology or concession, Mr. Toews put his official stamp to a scheme that could destroy a judicial vetting process created specifically to reduce patronage and favouritism.

The most serious effect of Mr. Toews's plan is a change that could allow the government to block virtually any judicial candidate it does not favour, a dramatic change to the legal landscape that opens the door to the government packing courts with political cronies or candidates who share its ideology.

Mr. MacCarthy said that four federal nominees on the reconfigured advisory committees -- one of whom will be drawn from the police community -- could potentially be swayed by the government to operate as a sort of voting bloc to stack each vote.

The key to this scenario is that Mr. Toews's plan calls for the eighth member -- the sole judicial representative on each committee -- to be a non-voting chair. (The committees are a mélange of government, law society and bar association representatives.)

As a result, the federal bloc would emerge a 4-3 winner in any close vote. "Those people will carry the day, rather than a consensus forming," Mr. MacCarthy said.

The storm over the appointment process underlines a spreading abyss of distrust between the judges and Mr. Toews, a leading critic of the judiciary during his days as an Opposition critic.

Indeed, the controversy is merely the latest blow in a relationship that has spiralled steadily downward.

In what was perceived as a direct slap at the judiciary, the Justice Department recently refused to implement a 10.8-per-cent salary raise for federally appointed judges that had been recommended by an independent salaries commission. The government instead substituted a 7.5-per-cent raise.

Various of Mr. Toews's law-and-order bills have also sought to reduce judges' sentencing discretion, furthering his view that judges cannot be trusted


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Lest We Forget

The impact of WWI on the 20th Century.

It was birth of modern capitalism and imperialism and the death of fin de sicle 19th century. As Hobsbawm wrote the modern 20th century begins with WWI and ends with the downfall of the Soviet Union in 1989.

This was an Imperialist War. It had no purpose other than as an internecine conflict to reshape the world for the European Imperial powers. As a result it ended the age of Empires, the old colonial powers in Europe, the Ottoman Empire, all met their inglorious end with WWI.

WWI was the violent cesarian birth of modern capitalism. It aided in the rapid development of Fordist production in the United States. As result Amercia surpassed England to become the future capitalist empire replacing the old Empires of Europe.

It wiped out an entire generation, the lost generation of Fitzgerald.

As a result of this war radical movements in art formed in Europe such as Dada, Futurism, Surrealism and the whole modernist movement in Art.

The war spirit the warrior culture of WWI would create the conditions for fascism begining with the Futurist movement in art. Mussolini and Hitler both embraced the warrior kulturekampf of futurism.

It would shrink the world with the development of a mass diaspora from Europe to America resulting in the creation of Hollywood, mass media, travel literature, mass advertsing (based on the propaganda efforts used in WWI). See Gothic Capitalism Redux

The world had never experienced a world war before, and thus the creation of the global village and the preconditions for 21st Century globalization were laid out in the creation of a new politics of international relations, the League of Nations and Wilsonian inspired Nationalist movements.

That without this war there would have been no Russian Revolution. As a result of poor working conditions, war profitering and lack of veterans pensions and support WWI created the revolutionary conditions for the mass General Strikes world wide during 1919.Several of these created revolutionary situations of workers power, soviets, in Europe specifically in Russai,Italy and Germany.

The psychic devistation, as much as its physical destruction, of WWI resulted in an Occult Revival in Europe and North America, like the workers movement, this had as much to do with searching for a better world, a better future, one without war.

As result of WWI new utopian socialist movements and populist reform/revolts spread through-out Europe and North America. Including in Western Canada Social Credit, and the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, etc. Many of these movements looked towards new distributive models of sharing the wealth. Some like the IWW, Anarcho-Syndicalism and Technocracy advocated an new form of production and distribution models under workers control.

As result of WWI there was the contradiction that some of the utopian movements in art, politics, science, religion, philosophy, economics would be socialist and some would be fascist.

It resovled nothing in Europe, leading to the rise of fascism in Germany due to the economic oppression of the allies demands on the defeated nation.

WWI created the conditions for future of anti-semitism through the creation of the protocols of the Elders of Zion and the Zionist nationalist movement.

That WWI created the modern middle east. The area was divided up by the Imperialist nations, creating modern Iraq, Syria etc. This was a direct result of the discovery of oil which became the life blood of the new Fordist capitalism.

As the result of the post WWI colonization of the Middle East by the declining Imperial powers, modernist culture responded with a fascination for orientalism.

As a result of the technological advances in chemistry, etc. we moved from organic biological pharmacy to new plastic based chemistry and mass production. This was a result of the use of gas warfare. As a result it led to new advances in medicine including the need for mass public medicine as a result of the tragedy in the trenches and the Post War influenza epidemic.

New weapons of war and technology; tanks, motorcycles, planes, heavy ships, submarines,the machine gun, radar, sonar, TV, etc. were introduced during and directly as a result of WWI. The space program began as a result of rocket experimentation arising from the war.

As result of WWI the second wave of modern Feminism began lobbying for womens sufferage, birth control, sex education, the flapper became popular, women smoked cigarettes to show their liberation in popular culture.

It created the Jazz age, the short boom between 1920-1929. This included the rise of Afro-American culture in the US jazz music, blues, modern dance, etc. And its popularity in Europe especially France.

That it created an exile community of Americans abroad, writers, painters, thinkers, publishers, artists, etc. Paris became the home of a generational diaspora of Americans.

Finally it created the Canadian identity as a Nation State with our involvement in the War. A History of Canadian Wealth, 1914.


Rememberance Day Special here are articles I have done related to WWI:

Royal Newfoundlanders Died For the Seal Hunt

Draft Dodgers in Dukhbour Country

Stanway's Sombre Reflection on Somme

WWI Xmas Mutiny

Christmas in the Trenches

The Vimy Myth

Canada's First Internment Camps

Canada’s Long History of Criminalizing Dissent

Rebel Yell

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Vladimir Palaniuk RIP

You know him as Jack Palance.
But he was Ukrainian. He passed away yesterday.

Born Vladimir Palahnuik to Ukranian immigrants, he called himself Walter Jack Palance to keep from being teased. As a young man, he was a professional boxer, which explains his rippled nose. He served in the Army Air Force during World War II, and required facial reconstruction after the B-24 bomber he was flying crashed while patrolling the coast of California.

See: RIP




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