Edmonton Racist Cops

First Edmonton Cops pick up homeless indigenous people off Whyte Avenue and hold them in a van for hours and then drop them off miles away from where they picked them up.Edmonton police investigate forced ride claims

Now they are exposed for having used drugged and drunk indigenous people for observation purposes.Cops slammed for observing stoned addict

How do you spell racism? EPS

Edmonton Police Service.





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CN Wildcat

Canadian workers did not wait for permission from their Yankee Union Bosses to go on strike. And of course it began in Montreal, since Quebec workers have a long history of labour militancy.

- Canadian National Railway Co. said on Saturday that 2,800 of its conductors and yard-service workers at its operations in Canada began a strike, a work stoppage that could affect the country's key shipments of grain, timber and other commodities.

CN, Canada's largest railway, said it was putting management personnel on trains and in switching yards to continue freight operations across Canada because of the strike by members of the United Transportation Union (UTU).

CN said the strike is restricted to Canada and its other unionized employees remain at work.

CN said it was ready to negotiate with the UTU at any time, but the company was seeking to have the strike declared illegal because CN said it had been informed that the certified bargaining agent of the UTU members employed at the rail company had not authorized the walkout.

CN says that the proper union representatives did not authorize the strike action and will file a complaint with the Canada Industrial Relations Board.

The union admits that while its international president has not provided authorization, it does not affect the legality of the strike.

Rex Beatty, a representative for the UTU said in a statement that the union was “disappointed that it could not reach a negotiated settlement.”

The union submitted an offer to CN that included 3 percent wage increases, paid every Jan. 1 between 2007 and 2009 and also sought a $1,000 bonus paid to employees March 1.

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More Foreign Affairs Incompetency

We need a serious shake up in the Foreign Affairs department. This is not the first time this has happened.

"Canadian diplomats failed to contact the Chinese family of Huseyin Celil for more than 10 months after the Canadian citizen was arrested,"

So while the Harpocrites saber rattle and endanger our trading relationship with China they should get their ducks in a row before beaking off.

Foreign Affairs failed to protect Maher Arar, instead acting as a conduit for CSIS.

They failed Canadian businessman William Sampson when he was arrested and tried in secret in Saudi Arabia.

The BC Civil Liberties Association has proposed a bill that would force Foreign Affairs and other Canadian government agencies to protect Canadians abroad from torture.

It is not just a case of sloppiness or bureaucratic failure it is explicit policy, based on Canada's Security Laws. All of these cases, except Sampson (but he was judged guilty of a crime, by the Suadi's, thus reluctance on the part of FA to do anything) were because the Canadians were considered terrorists by Canada's allies.

Iacobucci's remit is to examine the cases of Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nurredin. All are Canadian citizens born abroad. All have been under investigation by the RCMP, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service or both. All ended up being jailed and tortured in Syria and (in the case of El Maati) Egypt.

As such it fits in with a longstanding cold war security regime that exists in Ottawa amongst Foreign Affairs and Intelligence services.

Britain, the US and Canada had begun talking about psychological warfare together at least as early as June 1951, when Sir Henry Tizard, the Ministry of Defence's senior scientist, met Canadian scientists and Cyril Haskins, the senior CIA researcher, in Montreal. Among the Canadians was Donald Hebb of McGill University, who was looking for funds to research "sensory deprivation" - blocking out sight, sound and touch to affect people's personality and sense of identity. Early photographs show volunteers, goggled and muffled, looking eerily similar to prisoners arriving at Guantánamo.

And while there are commentators asking why Arar did not sue his captors it is important to remember that Sampson was unable to sue Saudi Arabia as Arar was denied the right to sue Syria.

In the area of justice and oversight Canada is also failing to meet recommendations set out by the UN human rights committees. Canada must change the State Immunity Act to allow individuals to seek redress in Canadian Courts for torture and other serious human rights violations suffered abroad, says Amnesty International Canada.

Canadians cannot seek redress for torture in other countries and rejected refugees who may face the danger of torture, as the Committee against Torture has noted, are being denied a judicial review on the merits of their cases. The Committee has called for this type of review. Canada must meet this recommendation, says Amnesty International Canada, and live up to the requirement of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and establish the refugee appeal process.

After all like it or not Huseyin Celil is considered a 'terrorist' by the Chinese. And the Harper government has been quick off the mark to use that label in questionable circumstances too, like they did when in opposition alluding to Maher Arar, being a terrorist.

The Harpocrites are very selective in whom they label terrorists, for instance Jason Kenney spoke on behalf of the PM at an event held by an Iranian terrorist organization.

And let's not forget that the Harpocrites major reason for challenging China over 'human rights' is their close relationship with and support for the fascist cult the Falun Gong.

And when they banned the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist organization it had less to do with Sri Lanka and more to do with cutting off Liberal Party support in the Tamil community in Canada.

And recent actions by the Sri Lanken government of breaking the peace agreement and using child soldiers means that instead of being an honest broker the Canadian government choose sides like they did with Israel. And the side they choose is guilty of state terrorism.

The fact that the Karuna faction has abducted so many children in Government-controlled areas in the eastern districts of Sri Lanka raises the question why the Government has not more effectively protected those children, investigated the complaints made by the children’s families, and secured the release and return of the children from the Karuna faction camps that are located in areas under Government control.

Based on the facts and circumstances set out in this report, I have concluded that certain elements of the Sri Lankan security forces are complicit in the abduction of children by the Karuna faction, and that at least some elements of the security forces have facilitated and sometimes participated in those abductions.

Ambassador Allan Rock, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict,

Terrorism is a broad brush pejorative for labeling the supposed 'enemies of the state', whereas others would call most of these organizations National Liberation Movements and the difference is crucial.

Whether the Tamils in Sri Lanka, the Kurds, or the Palestinians in the territories occupied by Israel, the Canadian government is targeting as terrorists people who are, in fact "victimized refugee groups involved in an armed conflict in terms of their self-determination rights", she asserts.

But it has been deliberately obscured by the American Empire and quickly adopted by other states to justify their repression of National Liberation Movements and oppositional groups, including those engaged in armed struggle.

Once you use the ideology of the War on Terror, you throw out your right to defend your citizens accused of being terrorists. This is the catch 22 Harper finds himself in over the Celil case.

Foreign Affairs deals with state to state relations, and the Chinese State has declared Celil a terrorist. Thus Foreign Affairs deems him a security threat, just as they did with Arar.

And they do so because of what Harper prides himself on most, being the Law and Order PM. Foreign Affairs is just carrying out their operations under the existing security laws. Laws which must be changed in the interests of all Canadians, here or abroad.



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RCMP

Arar

Foreign Affairs

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China


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Black Like Me

When Senator Biden made his gaff about Barack Obama he hit on the unsettling subtext in the American psyche; was Barack Obama really 'black'.

“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

Well of course he is. But what is really being said is that Obama is not the N word.

African Americans are openly asking whether the first-term Illinois senator is "black enough."

But in order to court the black vote he will need to win the Democratic nomination, he must be careful not to raise any flags among a white electorate, which so far feels unthreatened by him.

"When you hear about his background, you hear Hawaii, Kenya (where his father was born), or Kansas (his mother's home state). You don't hear Alabama," says Ronald Walters, president of the African American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland. "It's not strange at all that blacks would view him with a little suspicion. When somebody presents themselves, you want to look them over and if they don't share your background you might withhold judgment."

Debra J. Dickerson, a black author and essayist, broke the "not black enough" debate into the open in salon.com, last month, arguing Obama would be the great black hope for president, except he isn't black.

She argues that "black" in U.S. culture means those descended from West African slaves.

Biden's choice of words clean, ( a slip of the tongue he probably meant to say clean cut) articulate, knowledgeable, mainstream etc. all could be referenced back to Americas popular culture of racism.

Obama is middle class he represents those class values regardless of race. Or because of it, since race politics in the United States has been dominated by the grievances of the ghetto.

The N word is the new iconography of pride of current hip-hop black gangsta rap culture which currently dominates the cultural self-image of blacks in the United States.

It is the same issue with Tiger Woods, who is Thai and Black. His blackness was questioned like Obama's is. But it wasn't really about his mixed race it was because he was light skinned he was not N enough. Until his father started making his presence seen.

You never saw his Thai mother of course, ostensibly because she was the little woman at home and not a golfer. You saw his father who was a golfer, but one who didn't make it in the white segregated golf world because he was 'black' an African-American, despite also being of mixed race.

Tigers dominance and race breakthrough in golf was his fathers goal and victory, and it was a victory for all black's whether grandchildren of slaves or newly arrived from the Caribbean. But his race was still used against him no matter how light his skin.

Like Tiger, Obama is also mixed race, so he is lighter skinned, and he was brought up in Hawaii and abroad. He is not N enough, for some American blacks. He has not suffered their ghetto life is the subtext of their comments.

Well neither has Rev. Sharpton or Jesse Jackson. But they speak for those folks, you see. That's their politics, the politics of the disposed, the politics of the ghetto. And the resentment of slavery deeply underlies that politics.

Like Quebec's Nationalism, the resentments run deep, and the old grievances of reparation underlie pre-Obama politics of blackness.

In reality Tiger and Obama are the beneficiaries of the Great Society, they are part of the rising black middle class that has benefited from affirmative action, equal rights, voting rights, civil rights.

They represent the new generation of middle class blacks seeking to assimilate into American culture. They are the post Colin Powell, Condi Rice generation, just as they are the post Jackson/Sharpton generation.

It was Oprah, the black multimillionaire media mogul and voice of the black middle class that pushed Obama to run. He speaks for her generation and class.For a different kind of blackness in America, one that leaves behind the grievances of the ghetto and looks towards integration into the American melting pot.

Tiger and Obama cannot say they fought to get where they are. But they can appreciate the fight that got them where they are. Hence Obama's announcement today from the hometown of Abraham Lincoln.

Republican Lincoln, emancipator of the slaves, in one fell swoop Obama takes out the Republicans, who no longer are the party of Lincoln, in Democrat country, felling the Dixiecrats and Tammany Hall Democrats, and uses the great iconography of the Great emancipator and the emancipation to launch his campaign.

Lincoln was not a conservative or a neo-con, he too was a an anti war activist and pro labour, a social democrat. This is often forgotten by the current crop of Republicans that refer to him as if their party is His party. It isn't.

And Obama can appeal to both Democrats and Republicans as he can independents with his message of a politics of hope. That is why the Democratic establishment is wary of him. As they are of his populist base and politics.

His campaign will coincide with the fortieth anniversary of Robert Kennedy's run for the presidency. His campaign is grassroots, being driven by a popular push to have him run just as Kennedy's was.

The younger Kennedy's presidential bid in 1968 was a wild, people-driven ride, and it is not surprising that reporters who cut their teeth on it now look back on that summer with awe.

On the surface, Obama's embryonic campaign has some qualities that Kennedy's had. He too has hesitated publicly before subjecting himself to the fray. He too attracts vast audiences, full of hope, because he promises the future not the past. He has an ease with the language that sets him apart. And, merely by joining the race, he is rewriting the odds.

The race echoes 1968 too. Then, as now, a failed war dominated an anguished national campaign. Then, as now, the war compelled candidates, not least Kennedy, to get off the fence and adapt to anti-war concerns. Back then, though, it was the Republicans who had the last laugh. The hopes of the Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy campaigns ended with the election of Richard Nixon.

As for his blackness, it has nothing to do with skin colour or race but more to do with how Democrat black politics has played out in the United States. No major black American candidate for the party's leadership has had such a broad base of public support.

To some it is disconcerting that he appeals to white voters, to women, to other ethnic minorities and yes to blacks.He appeals to the fictional self-identified American middle class and their myth of the American Dream. So did Robert Kennedy. The similarities are striking.

He truly is a black man running for President, as the cheering crowds in Kenya attested to. He is more African, than those who criticize him as an Uncle Tom.

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NOW Public AP

I belong to Now Public which originates from Vancouver, B.C. and is a source for the news media of 'citizen journalism' or as they call it crowd powered media. They have announced that they will be officially part of the AP wire service.

Which shows that contrary to the contrarians blogging does have an impact on the main stream media. It is being integrated into the mainstream media as news and opinion just as the MSM have added blogs to their own online services.

Another example proving Time Magazine was right in selecting YOU as the person of the year.


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Union Drive USA

This law will be the New Deal of the 21st century if it is passed.

Employee Free Choice Act Hearings Begin in Congress

But the right wing is mobilizing to oppose it.

"Under current law, an employer can already agree to collective bargaining with the union on behalf of his workers when a majority of them have signed union authorization cards. But if the employer wants to make sure that his workers weren't pressured into signing the cards, or if he wants to try to convince them that they will have more flexibility without a union or even that the union may end up destroying jobs, he can insist on an open campaign period followed by a secret ballot election.

The new bill, on the other hand, would force the employer to recognize the union solely on the basis of cards collected by union organizers, collected before the employer even has a chance to make his case to the employees".

Linda Chavez is president of Stop Union Political Abuse.

Linda Chavez is a former Bush appointed Secretary of Labor. What a friend the bosses have in Linda. And like a reformed smoker there is nothing worse than a former union porkchopper and labor fakir, that is someone who has been appointed a union bureaucrat and not elected by the members. Such was Chavez's role in the American Federation of Teachers. Now she attacks unions from her position of privilege. Once a labor fakir always a fake unionist.

If employers want to make their case to their workers they would have insured they had good wages, benefits and working conditions, a grievance procedure, profit sharing, etc. etc. But they won't until forced to.

The right wing pro boss lobby in the U.S. is ramped up attacking this new bill as anti democratic. Really. What about the Right To Work laws that the U.S. government passed that even after workers vote to join a union, those opposed don't have to they get to be free riders.

It was the right wing who brought in the Taft-Hartley Act which limited workers democratic rights and favored the bosses. Since then so called democratic votes have been rigged in favour of the boss. This is the act that Chavez and her ilk defend and claim is the very essence of American free choice and democracy.

That's not choice that's union busting.

Currently, workers do not have “free choice” when going through the NLRB petition and election process, Sweeney said. Instead, he said, the petition “triggers a bitter, divisive and often lengthy anti-union campaign designed to chill or destroy union support.”

He continued, “The NLRB process may be called an ‘election,’ but it is nothing like any democratic election held in any other part of our society.”

And the argument Chavez and her ilk make that workers are not joining unions because they have no interest in doing so, of course denies the reality that the bosses are anti-union period. They will use any means possible to stop unionization of their companies. And the laws in the U.S. favour the boss not the workers. Thus the so called democratic vote of all workers is rigged in favour of the boss not the unions. It allows the bosses time to organize an anti-union drive.

The idea behind EFCA is simple. Most any American can join a group -- a church group, the PTA at their child's school, or the National Rifle Association -- by signing a card and paying dues. With EFCA, if a majority at a workplace wants to build a union, they sign cards and the employer recognizes their wishes. Negotiations for a labor contract begin soon after.

Hey don't forget the NRA.

And let's look at how the bosses convince workers NOT to vote union.

The University of Illinois at Chicago's Center for Urban Economic Development released a study in December 2005 that found outrageous instances of employer resistance when workers decide to form a union: 30 percent of employers fire pro-union workers; 49 percent of employers threaten to close a worksite when workers try to unionize; 82 percent of employers hire union- busting consultants to fight organizing drives; and 91 percent of employers force employees to attend anti-union meetings one-on-one with supervisors.

But right now tens of millions of workers can't join unions even when they want to. The Bush administration, which is anti-union to its dying breath, controls federal agencies like the National Labor Relations Board, which oversees labor disputes between workers and their bosses.

This means that Bush-appointees don't settle disputes fairly, but automatically favor companies and typically refuse to protect workers' rights.

But even when Bush appointees aren't tipping the scale to hurt workers, the system of arbitration and labor relations always favors the companies. Even when a majority of workers at a shop or business sign union membership saying they want their union to represent them in collective bargaining, companies have the power to refer the dispute to an NLRB election. This referral gives them something like 6 weeks to change the workers' minds.

And they really go to town on the workers. Threats and harassment are all too common. Bosses will even stage mandatory meetings of workers where they feed the workers a lot of anti-union propaganda like claims that unions will either strike or force the shop to close.

Surveys indicate that more than half of all bosses threaten – illegally – to shut down the workplace and move out of the area or country if the workers decide to join a union. As many as 25 percent of workers who are trying to start a union at their workplace are either fired or threatened with being fired – illegally.

In Canada several provinces have this labour legislation in place, including binding mediation on a first contract. The result has been less first contract strikes and union busting.

In Alberta, the only 'Republican' lite province in Canada, we do not have this legislation we are far closer to the American style labour laws. The result has been long drawn out strikes not only for union recognition but for a first contract. If this law passes in the U.S. it will leave Alberta one of last bastions of right wing anti-labour laws in North America.



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Deforming The Senate

Reforming the Senate is a waste of time.

But Harper is pushing Senate reform , actually its more like deform, his proposal is that provinces hold Senate elections during Federal elections and then the PM would appoint the 'elected senators' thus avoiding a constitutional change, read constitutional amendment, is another Alberta innovation.

Quebec will never agree, Que. says no to Harper's senate plan even though Alberta has already done this, which leaves eight other provinces open to electoral reform through the back door. And it is being rejected not only by Quebec but Canada's biggest province, Ont. minister dismisses Harper's Senate-reform plan

And it is being rejected even by the other Western Canadians; If the Senate mattered

The Triple E Senate originated in Alberta, and was a key platform demand of the Reform Party it is Harpers sop to his Alberta base the only province that has held Senate elections. And even those elections have lacked popular support, garnering as many spoiled ballots and abstentions as votes.

And who wants Link Byfield in the Senate, he and his whole family are representatives not of Alberta but the loony right.

That Harper continues to attempt Senate Reform by edict, misses the whole point of the Reform Movement in the West. It was about reforming the parliamentary system, but under Preston Manning it only went part way with the concept of the Triple E Senate.

Like vestigial useless wisdom teeth the Senate is the home of non-representative democracy, the last vestige of aristocracy, modeled as it is on the House of Lords. It represents the early parliament of landowners. You need to own property and be over the age of thirty to sit in the Senate, or to even run for the Senate.

We don't need to reform the Senate we need to eliminate the Senate and replace it with Proportional Representation, and a greater say in Ottawa. Senate Reform itself was realpolitik of the Manning reformers, they didn't think they could radically change Canadian parliamentary politics perse so they used Senate Reform as their hobbyhorse.

The reality has changed since the eighties and nineties, and PR is now on the agenda for the NDP and Greens and even members of the Liberals, Conservatives and BQ.

So instead of Senate Reform let's abolish the Senate and talk about real parliamentary reform including PR, recognition of municipalities as political bodies that pre-date provinces thus entitled to federal recognition as provinces are, recognition of Aboriginal Self Government, and a new federalism based upon constituent assemblies.

Now that would be radical reform.

The true sociological doctrines of modern times can be summed up in a few words: Recognizing that, in the political and temporal order, the only legitimate authority is the one to which the majority of the nation has given its consent; that are wise and beneficial constitutions only those for which the governed have been consulted, and to which the majorities have given their free approbation; that all which is a human institution is destined to successive change; that the continuous perfectibility of man in society gives him the right and imposes him the duty to demand the improvements which are appropriate for new circumstances, for the new needs of the community in which he lives and evolves.

1867 Speech of Louis-Joseph Papineau at the Institut canadien

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Senate Reform

Abolish the Senate 1

Democracy Is Messy

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Brain Scan For The Election

Scientists Claims They Can Read The Secret Intentions In The Brain

Let's scan Harper, Dion, Duceppe, and Layton to find out when the election will be.




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American Union Bosses

Here is an perfect example of why we need autonomous democratic Canadian unions.

Conductors at Canadian National Railway Co., the country's largest railroad, won't strike immediately after a midnight deadline even if labor talks today don't produce an agreement, a union official said. The United Transportation Union chapter, which represents Canadian National's 2,800 conductors and yard workers, needs to apply for strike authority from its Cleveland-based headquarters, Frank Wilner, a union spokesman, said in an interview today.

It's not the workers who decide to strike but the 'union bosses' ,as the Sun newspapers call 'em , in the U.S. This is the real meaning of International Unions operating in Canada, they are American business unions run by union bosses rather than by the members.

CN workers are represented by three different unions, which just goes to show that they need One Big Union of all the workers, run by the workers.

And here is another reason for Federal Anti-Scab legislation.

The company has said it will continue its freight operations across Canada during a strike, with management personnel performing the UTU-represented conductor and yard-service jobs.

This is just another CN disaster in the making, refusing to negotiate while raking in record profits and subjecting its workers to speed ups and accidents.

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This is Class War

Unions




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Harper Flashback

Another broken promise.

"When I'm prime minister I will not whip our cabinet,"Harper said

Well I guess that's technically true he whips the whole caucus, and has even used the triple whip ,which even the Liberals didn't use, leading to a cabinet minister stepping down.



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