Fascist Killed in Lebanon

Not the headline you are going to see in the MSM. And before folks go blaming Syria, one must remember that the Gemayel family has many enemies in Lebanon. As the Guardian points out;

Pierre Gemayel, the anti-Syrian politician shot dead in Beirut today, came from one of Lebanon's most prominent political dynasties.

His grandfather - also called Pierre - founded the Phalange party, a Christian Maronite paramilitary youth organisation modelled on the fascist organisations he observed while in Berlin as an Olympic athlete in 1936.

During the 1975 Lebanese civil war, the Phalange party was the most formidable force within the Christian camp.

Its militia shouldered the brunt of the fighting against the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and, as part of the Lebanese Front - the mostly Christian, rightist coalition - the power of the Gemayel family increased considerably.

The Phalange were also the name of Franco's Fascists during the Spanish Civil War.

See:

Lebanon

Fascism


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Chantal Hébert Agrees With Me

As I wrote the other day the Leadership Race to replace Ralph will have national implications. Even more than the Liberal Leadership race.I see that Toronto Star columnist Chantal Hébert agrees with me.

The last federal election campaign demonstrated that a few weeks can really be an eternity in politics. The next two weeks will change the Canadian landscape in fundamental ways.That starts Saturday when Alberta Conservative members take the first step in picking the successor to Premier Ralph Klein. With eight candidates running, the process is expected to require a second ballot a week later.In time, its outcome will have a profound impact on the rest of Canada. The balance of economic power is shifting west and with it unprecedented clout for the leader who will next be speaking for Alberta at the federal-provincial table.

See:

Conservative Leadership Race

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It's Not An Election

The Tories are tryng to pretend their provincial leadership race is an election. It ain't.

The biggest challenge facing the next premier will be rekindling interest in the Tory party, says a political expert who expects voter turnout to fall well below projections.

"The number of voters will be a lot fewer than candidates estimated back in September," Steve Patten, a University of Alberta political scientist, told the Sun yesterday.

Three months ago, the camps of top Tory leadership candidates Lyle Oberg, Mark Norris, Jim Dinning and Ted Morton all expected to sell upwards of 100,000 party memberships.

"Add up all their claims and we're talking in the neighbourhood of 500,000 memberships sold to people who would be expected to vote for the next premier," Patten said.

"Nothing close to that kind of number has materialized."

Patten said he's interested to see how close voter turnout will be to the 78,000 who cast ballots in 1992, when Ralph Klein won the premiership on a second ballot.

Since 1992 our population has grown to be 3.5 million. And it is still growing.

Edmonton is expected to gain 83,000 residents by 2011

Although many former Saskatchewan residents return home for a visit, there are still far too many heading for black gold in Alberta."Pretty much everyone is moving to Alberta these days," said Fritsche, who thinks Saskatchewan should try and capitalize on the growing population that lies right next door.

So when Klein was elected leader 78,000 PC members voted. Even though more memberships than that were sold.

Today we know that the membership sales will not be reflected in those who vote. For instance business and unions have bought up memerships to hand out to get out the vote for their candidates. The Building Trades unions are supporting Oberg, despite his right wing views, because he is promising them jobs with his position on increasing funding for infrastructure.

The Edmonton Business community has gone all out in buying memberships in bulk to hand out to their employees and friends to support Mark Norris. Its a campaign to get an Edmontonian elected leader. They have abandoned Hancock the other Edmontonian because he is a Red Tory, and Norris has pull because of his political family connections.

So less than .o5% of the population will make the decision on who will lead the party and thus elect the leader of the One Party State in Alberta.

When Klein ran it was against Red Tory Nancy Betkowski. A second ballot was needed because he lost to her by one vote. He had sold more memberships than her but his supporters did not come out on the first ballot. This is the fear the Dinning folks have.

That vote was then spilt between the Calgarian For Leader and the Edmontonian for Leader factions. The Red Tories lined up behind Betkowski, the social conservatives behind Klein for the second ballot.Still in the final tally more memberships were sold than came out to vote.

In this race the front runners are Dinning and Oberg.

But the race is split this way;

Dinning represents the Calgary Establishment, a centerist candidate, a liberal fiscally and politically as was Lougheed who supports him.

Norris represents the fiscal conservatives, social liberals, business establishment of Edmonton. Its the anti-Calgary Tories he represents.

Hancock is a Red Tory to the left of the other candidates. His support is really limited to Edmonton to those not supporting Norris. Whom he throws his support behind on a second ballot will be important.

Oberg, Morton, and Doerkson split the social conservative vote between them.

Oberg relies upon the rural anti-urban anti-Calgary voters, based in Southern and Central Alberta. He also has the support of the traditional Liberal Building Trades unions. Though how many of their members will vote is questionable. As it is boom time and the tradesmen are busy working, working, working. Lots of OT versus taking time to vote.

Morton has organized the grass roots social conservative base, and is getting support from Manning, Harper, Day, Kenney, etc. So he poses a second ballot threat to Oberg. Failing that he and Doerkson could combine to push Oberg past Dinning on the second ballot.

Doerkson is a spoiler, taking votes away from Oberg, but a late comer so his campaign is really about anybody but Lyle. His supporters will go to Morton.

Ed Stelmach, farmer, rural vote, fiscal conservative, in this race a centerist compared to the social conservative gang above. His chances are zip, nada.
Though on the second ballot who he throws his support behind could be telling.

Advance polls opened yesterday. The vote is this weekend. Place your wagers.

See:

Conservative Leadership Race

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The Boy Next Door

Is this Jack The Ripper? Why not Jeffery Dahlmer was 'frighteningly normal' until they checked his freezer.

Though this fellow looks a little swarthy and foreign looking, like the immigrants who flooded Victorian London from Eastern Europe at the time to live in the working class ghetto of Whitechapel.

Racial profiling?

A likely computer generated image of Jack the Ripper.

Jack the Ripper was short, stocky and about 30 years old -- 'frighteningly normal' -- according to a profile of the notorious Victorian-era killer published using state-of-the-art computer generated imaging.

See:

Portrait of the Artist As Jack the Ripper

Jack the Ripper

Crime



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Putins Enemies

As Viktor Yushchenko of the Ukraine learned it is poisionious to be on Putins bad side.

A former agent in the Russian successor to the KGB who was apparently poisoned by a toxic chemical while dining with a contact in London is in a "serious but stable" condition, University College Hospital said Monday.

Alexander Litvinenko, 43, a former lieutenant-colonel in Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) who defected to Britain six years ago, fell ill on November 1 after a meeting at a London sushi bar.

A clinical toxicologist, John Henry, has said Litvinenko had been poisoned with a potentially lethal dose of the metal thallium.

Litvinenko's friend Alex Goldfarb, who has been visiting him in hospital, said doctors told him he had a 50/50 chance of surviving the next three to four weeks.

Litvinenko, who is under armed guard in hospital, looked "like a ghost," Goldfarb reported.

The Times of London said Monday that the affair could plunge Britain into its "worst crisis with Russia" since President Vladimir Putin came to power.

Litvinenko had been investigating the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, an outspoken critic of Mr Putin and Russian policy in Chechnya, who was shot dead in her Moscow apartment building last month.

See:

Back in the USSR

Oligarchs

Tymoshenko 'Evita'of the Ukraine

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Scientology Wedding

So Tom and Kat were married in a Scientology ceremony. I wonder if they took their oaths while using an E-meter.

Hubbard electro-psychometer (E-meter): a crude lie detector used by Scientology auditors (counselors) to examine a person's mental state. Scientologists claim the device allows people to "see a thought". In the hands of a trained auditor, they believe it can uncover "hidden crimes".

The E-meter is never wrong. It sees all; it knows all. It tells everything.

-- L. Ron Hubbard

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BT Flacks For Ambrose

So while Rona Ambrose's media spokesperson is off working on London North Conservative candidate Dianne Hasketts campaign they are forwarding her press contacts to the Blogging Tories.

Ambrose's speech won Canada its third and fourth fossil awards of the conference.Asked about the awards and subsequent news coverage around them, Ambrose spokesman Bob Klager referred Sun Media to a Conservative blogger's website that blames the media for being biased.

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Ambrose

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A Real Made In Canada Green Plan

What the Conservatives could not do the NDP has. They have produced a realistic Green Plan for Canada.

While the Liberals and BQ played patisan politics with the environment in Nairobi, the NDP developed a plan that will rescue Ambrose and Harper from their time in perdition.

As the NDP did with the Liberal Government in rescuing them with their Alternative Budget. It is all about the politics of the possible. Kudos to Jack and his team.

It took weeks of work. First to negotiate with an intransigent minority government. And then to do the hard work in the backrooms to draft this while the Liberal and BQ spouted off hot air about the environment in sparing matches with Ambrose.

NDP Leader Jack Layton has revealed the significant changes he wants to the Tories' Clean Air Act, a piece of legislation he says is "not honest."

Layton unveiled his party's demands Sunday on CTV's Question Period. Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently invited the NDP to help refine the widely unpopular document which all three opposition parties slammed, saying it did little to tackle climate change.

The NDP-proposed amendments include the following:

• To rename the act the Healthy Air and Climate Act, indicating that Kyoto Protocol targets, which were absent from the original bill, would become a key priority of the revised act;
• To set targets that Canada must meet, such as the Kyoto Protocol 2008 to 2012 targets, an 80 per cent reduction in emissions below 1990 levels, by 2050;
• To set interim targets at five year intervals between 2015 and 2050;
• To give new authority to the environment minister that would allow him or her to designate significant areas under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act;
• And a "just-transition fund" to help the automobile move from voluntary to mandatory targets.

The proposed changes would effectively gut the Conservative legislation as it currently stands.

See:

Ambrose

Envrionment

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BT Condolences

It was nice to see these two Blogging Tories being non-partisan enough to publish their condolences about the passing of Lucille Broadbent.

My condolences to Ed Broadbent

A Sad Day for the NDP



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Sweatshop Secrets of Success

You know its serious when its reported in Business Week. And while this is about American companies in China lets not forget that we have our own sweatshop companies here in Canada investing in Nicaragua and Haiti. Like Gilden Active Wear. They too use third party codes of conduct.


For more than a decade, major American retailers and name brands have answered accusations that they exploit "sweatshop" labor with elaborate codes of conduct and on-site monitoring. But in China many factories have just gotten better at concealing abuses. Internal industry documents reviewed by BusinessWeek reveal that numerous Chinese factories keep double sets of books to fool auditors and distribute scripts for employees to recite if they are questioned. And a new breed of Chinese consultant has sprung up to assist companies like Beifa in evading audits. "Tutoring and helping factories deal with audits has become an industry in China," says Tang, 34, who recently left Beifa of his own volition to start a Web site for workers.

Some American companies now concede that the cheating is far more pervasive than they had imagined. "We've come to realize that, while monitoring is crucial to measuring the performance of our suppliers, it doesn't per se lead to sustainable improvements," says Hannah Jones, Nike Inc.'s (NKE ) vice-president for corporate responsibility. "We still have the same core problems."

This raises disturbing questions. Guarantees by multi-nationals that offshore suppliers are meeting widely accepted codes of conduct have been important to maintaining political support in the U.S. for growing trade ties with China, especially in the wake of protests by unions and antiglobalization activists. "For many retailers, audits are a way of covering themselves," says Auret van Heerden, chief executive of the Fair Labor Assn., a coalition of 20 apparel and sporting goods makers and retailers, including Nike, Adidas Group, Eddie Bauer, and Nordstrom (JWN ). But can corporations successfully impose Western labor standards on a nation that lacks real unions and a meaningful rule of law?

See:

China Needs Free Unions

Independent Unions In China

Sweatshops


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