Liberals New Green Politics

A follow up on the Dion/May alliance announced today. Just how far are the Liberals willing to go with their new found principle of strategic voting?

Will the Liberals back down from running a candidate in Edmonton Strathcona, considering their poor showing last time, and the fact that the NDP candidate Linda Duncan is an environmentalist.

Will they also not run a candidate in Wild Rose where the Green Party ran second.

After all that would follow Cherniak's dictum; "This is about the Liberal Party doing what is right for a truly progressive Canada. The symbolism of running a candidate in every riding is somewhat meaningless in comparison."

Dion is not running a Liberal against the Green Party Leader in exchange the Greens won't run against Dion. Oh be still my beating heart like they stood a chance in his riding. Being so principled will he offer the same deal to Layton and Duceppe?


And the cynical could see this whole affair as a hastily constructed way of distracting from yesterdays Liberal bad news story on Belinda Stronach.




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Another Privatization Failure

Here is another sad story of a Canadian city attempting to reinvent government; the neo-conservative experiment in the private delivery of public services.

As in how much is this going to cost us if it fails?!

Ultimately its failure will cost taxpayers more, which always gets swept under the rug when privatization is initially pushed as low cost alternative to the public sector delivery of services.

OC Transpo, which is owned and operated by the city, contracted-out Para Transpo to First Bus, a private company that specializes in outsourcing public transit.

Except, I now understand, where there's no profit in it. First Bus, along with the rest of the private sector, isn't interested in providing the service.

And we will be left wondering what Ottawa's public transit for the disabled could have looked like if, instead of providing profits for Laidlaw and First Bus, we'd directly invested that money in the service over the last ten years.

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Criminal Capitalism: Office Romance

Another neo-con from the Bush White House bites the dust. Shades of the Lewinsky affair.

World Bank pledges action on Wolfowitz

The controversy relates to Mr Wolfowitz’s personal involvement in securing a promotion and a pay rise far in excess of the normal maximum associated with such a promotion for Ms Riza, a bank official with whom he was romantically involved...


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Vonnegut, Dresden and Canada

Kurt Vonnegut, author of `Slaughterhouse-Five,’ dies


The defining moment of Vonnegut's life was the firebombing of Dresden, Germany, by Allied forces in 1945, an event he witnessed firsthand as a prisoner of war. Thousands of civilians were killed in the raids.

The firebombing of Dresden, he wrote, was "a tower of smoke and flame to commemorate the rage and heartbreak of so many who had had their lives warped or ruined by the indescribable greed and vanity and cruelty of Germany."

His experience in Dresden was the basis of "Slaughterhouse-Five," which was published in 1969 against the backdrop of war in Vietnam, racial unrest and cultural and social upheaval. The novel, wrote critic Jerome Klinkowitz, "so perfectly caught America's transformative mood that its story and structure became best-selling metaphors for the new age."

Slaughter House Five became the anti war novel of the Viet Nam era in America. Today the fire bombing of Dresden is still controversial in Canada as military chicken hawks attempt to white wash Britain's Bomber Harris because he used Canadian pilots to do the dirty work of bombing civilian targets in WWII.

A war of words over Canada's role in the bombing of German cities during the Second World War will move to Parliament Hill after a Senate committee on veterans' issues agreed to calls from the Royal Canadian Legion to host hearings on a contentious exhibit at the Canadian War Museum.

The display, which notes critics have questioned the "value and morality" of the Allied bombing campaign in Nazi Germany, has sparked outrage among some veterans and prompted the legion to urge a public boycott of the Ottawa museum until the disputed wording is changed or removed.

A single panel at the heart of the conflict describes the "enduring controversy" over the role of Canadian bombing squadrons in attacking Germany's industrial infrastructure and major cities as part of an Allied strategy to destroy the enemy's morale and cripple the Nazi war machine.

"Mass bomber raids against Germany resulted in vast destruction and heavy loss of life," the panel reads.

"The value and morality of the strategic bomber offensive against Germany remains bitterly contested. Bomber Command's aim was to crush civilian morale and force Germany to surrender by destroying its cities and industrial installations.

"Although Bomber Command and American attacks left 600,000 Germans dead, and more than five million homeless, the raids resulted in only small reductions in German war production until late in the war."

The museum has defended its exhibit, arguing the actions of Bomber Command have been debated for decades and that raising questions about the conduct of the 1939-1945 war is part of what historians should do.

Fire bombing tests were conducted on model cities built in the Nevada desert as Mike Davis writes in his book Dead Cities. The tests showed what we know today; fire bombing was not a military success but it certainly was successful as terrorism against a civilian population.

Davis begins our apocalyptically inflected tour with a trip to New York’s Ground Zero. He then takes us to “German Village,” a Utah wasteland that was once a test site for Allied science advisors to rehearse the perfect plan for destroying Berlin,

As Niels Gutshow has shown, some hardcore Nazi ideologues actually welcomed the thousand-bomber raids and firestorms as a ritual cleansing of the "Jewish influence" of big city life and the beginning of a mystical regeneration of Aryan unity with nature. Thus, in the aftermath of the Hamburg, Cologne, and Kassel holocausts in 1943, the "eco-fascist" Max Karl Schwarz, who shared Ruskin's and Jefferies's aversion to the "toxicity" of big cities, proposed to "revitalize the landscape" by leveling the debris and planting trees. The old, dense cities would not be rebuilt; indeed, "only after the destroyed areas are animated through forest will they become a true urban landscape, that is, with houses and gardens." Authentically German garden cities would replace the decadent "Jewish" metropolis. After all, had not Zarathustra commanded his followers to "spit on this city of shopkeepers"?

The British Air Command also planned a final solution for Germany had D-Day not been successful, they were going to drop anthrax on Germany.


See:

RIP

Obituary


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Canada's New Progressive Right

With this announcement it is clear that Liberals have taken Gerry Nicoll's advise and moved to the progressive right. May and Dion the new Red Green Tories. A match made in Antigonish.


Globe and MailGreen leader to get free ride from Liberals
Globe and Mail, Canada - 2 hours ago
At the time of Ms. May's announcement it was rumoured that she already had a deal with the Liberals -- the party wouldn't run a candidate against her and ...
Liberals staying out of May vs. MacKay ChronicleHerald.ca
Liberals agree not to run candidate against Green leader CBC Nova Scotia
Green leader gets helping hand from the LiberalsThe Daily News


See:

Elizabeth May and Red Tories

May Day For MacKay

Shameless

Corporatism

Elizabeth May Catholic Grrl

PC=Liberals

No Room for Red Tories

You Tell 'em Danny Boy

Happy Canada Day/Jour heureux du Canada

Green Party

Elizabeth May

Peter MacKay

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Just In Time War

When capital needs to speed up production of surplus value, profit, it makes workers work faster, longer, it takes its investment in each worker and forces them to produce more. This is known as the speed up.

The development of Toyotaization of manufacturing is known as 'Just In Time Production'. Production is set at an upper limit, no excess stock is manufactured any goods needed are then produced on as need basis.

This is the rational behind the Bush Surge in Iraq. The reservists and volunteers are the working class and the factory conditions are replicated within the military;

Army Extends Iraq Tours to 15 Months

Pentagon extends tours for US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

15 Month Tours in Iraq? The War is Breaking Our Military

This is no different than the forced Over Time (OT) that workers in America have faced since the 1980's. Reductions in workers, layoffs, etc. led to increased OT for those that remained, increasing America's productivity. Productivity, the creation of surplus value; profit, was the mantra of the corporations adopting their management models to the need of capital.

And since these same neo-cons were in charge of the war in Iraq, they determined to use a corporatist model of political economy of war. While workers in the G6 produce material, those same workers in Iraq and Afghanistan destroy the excess production.

Since the U.S. armed forces,like Canada's, are the surplus working class, an all volunteer force, they act as a force on production; profit. Not only for the War Profiteers, but for those in the service of the State and those who having been formally associated with the State are now private contractors.

Since the U.S. has no extra armed forces it can put in the field it plays numbers games. This has been the whole reason d'etre of the neo-cons. Rumsfeld is gone but his policy lives one.

A volunteer army is working class, they joined not to fight in Iraq but because prior to 9/11 they were promised jobs, and training in job skills. And like their counter parts in industrial capitalist economies, the working class who fights Capitals wars are insufficient for their purposes. Thus the privatization of war in Iraq, the hiring of mercenaries to do your dirty work. Even with the privatization of security, cleaning, cooking and other services there are still not enough troops in the regular military to conduct this neo-con war, so their shifts at work are extended.

This is Class War according to the neo-con political economy; speed up and just in time production. The surge is the speed up, the lack of troops is the just in time model. Further added to this was the other cornerstone of neo-con political economy; privatization. There are as many private security forces in Iraq as their are U.S. military personnel. War conducted on a business model is Rumsfelds legacy which is legacy of failure. Red flag or white flag? Bush wants somebody else to run Iraq war


See:

A Surge in Terrorism

Sadr Surge

Surge In Iraq

Vietnamization of Iraq

Calling A Spade A Shovel

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Criminal Capitalism: Pet Food Scandal

Ah the joys of capitalism, which is to get away with making a profit at any cost, as long as you don't get caught. In the era of globalization this is what happens....

Xuzhou is the home of Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development, a small agricultural products trader that U.S. regulators say was the source of the wheat gluten, distributed to major pet food suppliers in North America, that was at some point adulterated with a toxic chemical that sickened or killed the animals.

Of particular concern are indications that Xuzhou Anying, whose main office consists of two rooms and an adjoining warehouse here, may have purchased melamine, the chemical linked to the animal deaths. The company has distanced itself from the pet food contamination and recall, saying it neither manufactures nor exports wheat gluten, but only acts as a middleman trading agricultural goods and chemicals.

Now, regulators with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are examining the possibility that melamine was intentionally mixed into the wheat gluten in China as a way to bolster the apparent protein content and to meet pet food requirements, according to a person briefed on the investigation.

Stephen Sundlof, director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine at the agency, said at a news conference last week that the agency had found unusually high concentrations of melamine in some batches of wheat gluten, as much as 6.6 percent. The agency said the concentrations were high enough to have led to kidney failure in some pets.

ChemNutra, a Las Vegas company, said it had purchased the wheat gluten from Xuzhou Anying and then shipped it to pet food makers in the United States and Canada. ChemNutra said Xuzhou Anying had provided chemical analysis indicating that there were no impurities or contamination in the product.

ChemNutra also says it was led to believe that Xuzhou Anying operated its own manufacturing facilities.

In recent months, Xuzhou Anying appears to have posted several requests on online trading sites seeking to purchase large quantities of melamine.

In one March 29 posting on a trading site operated by Sohu.net, a Chinese Web site, people who said they were with Xuzhou Anying wrote, "Our company buys large quantities of melamine scrap all year around." There were also postings on several other online trading sites, like ChemAbc.net.

See
Not In The Dog House

Corporate Crime

White Collar Crime

Criminal Capitalism

Productivity

Wealth

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Not In The Dog House

Reports of animal illnesses and deaths were first reported to Menu Foods in February as this video of the Menu Foods Press conference shows. Coincidence? I think not.....

The chief financial officer of Menu Foods Income Fund sold nearly half his units in the pet food maker less than three weeks before it announced a massive product recall, according to insider trading reports.

The reports show that Mark Wiens sold 14,000 units for C$102,900 ($89,700) on February 26 and February 27. As of Monday's close of C$4.46, the units would be worth C$62,440.

After the sale, Wiens owned 17,193 units and had options to buy 101,812, the trading reports show.

On March 16, the Mississauga, Ontario, pet food maker recalled 60 million containers of "cuts and gravy" style pet food amid reports of pet deaths due to contamination.

CEO

Stock Options

Corporate Crime

White Collar Crime

Criminal Capitalism

Productivity

Wealth


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Chrysler Inc. vs. Liberal Inc.

Better to take over a failing Big Three Auto company than to play in the back benches of a failing political party.

Onex, Magna eyeing joint Chrysler bid: report

Belinda Stronach leaving politics for Magna

Belinda Stronach to return to Magna as it grapples with Big Three auto woes

Belinda Stronach, the former Canadian cabinet minister who made national headlines for both her political and personal life, has decided not to stand for re-election and will rejoin the ranks of Magna International Inc. (MGa.TO: Quote, Profile, Research) as the auto parts company's executive vice-chair.

The Liberal politician, the daughter of Magna founder and Chairman Frank Stronach, said on Wednesday that encouragement from the company's leaders played a part in her decision.

"My father is looking to the future, the company is facing important strategic decisions, and the Canadian and global auto sector and economy are in a period of great challenge," Stronach said in a statement.

"So I am stepping aside from elected politics for the time being and will now take part in public life in a different way."

While in the Liberal party the best she could do around globalization was focus on mosquito netting.

Belinda Stronach focuses on global projects

Now she can focus on the real impact of globalization and how Daddies company exploits workers world wide.

Magna International's workforce dropped by about 1,150 net jobs in Canada last year as tough industry conditions dented the auto-parts colossus.

It marks the first time in more than a decade that annual employment at the country's largest industrial employer declined.

Magna's annual information form shows employment fell about 5 per cent to 21,050 from a peak of 22,200 in Canada during 2005.

Magna's information form also reveals that while employment decreased here, the company's overall workforce in 23 countries climbed marginally by 450 jobs to a record 83,250 in 2006 from 2005. Every other region in the Magna empire posted job gains.

Senior Magna executives have said in recent years that the company can stay competitive only by producing parts in lower-cost regions and near where auto makers build new assembly plants around the world.

It has led to strong increases in Magna's workforce in Mexico and Asia in recent years.

Although auto makers have expanded some operations here during the past decade, they have added only one assembly plant.

Three other assembly operations have also closed.

This shows that the good ship Liberal is leaking from all seams after electing Dion to be Captain. He relegated Belinda to the back bench, a big mistake.

And clearly internal party communications are not good, since the Liberals would not have appointed their favorite pet feminist Martha Hall Finlay to a safe seat in Toronto if they knew Belinda was quiting. Since she was the candidate in Newmarket kicked out for Belinda.

Of course with the woof and wiff of capitalist deal making over Chrysler during the past two months on could say this was a unexpected momentary decision. But clearly since she decided not to contest the leadership for the party, the writing was on the wall.

The selection of Dion as leader and his lack luster performance since then can only have hastened her decision. Whose your daddy? Well Belinda knows. Better to work for a Strong Daddy than a weak Dion.

As I have said many times Dion is the safe man, the safe choice, the third way, all which makes him a lame duck. Belinda leaving is a sure fire indictment of all the Liberals failures to change, despite Gerard Kennedy's assertions otherwise, and Dion's failure as Leader.

See:

Chrysler Made In Canada?

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Real Leadership

With these poll numbers Jack Layton can say that he would make a better PM than Stephane Dion. Since he got more support in Quebec and in the West than Dion and his support is competitive with the "Official Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition".

While Dion has been on another of his invisible tours of Canada, his third since the beginning of the year, Jack's visibility has been in the house thanks to the deal making the NDP is willing to do in order to keep parliament functioning. Jack has been an effective opposition leader, Dion has not.

Thus if it quacks like a lame duck, and walks like a lame duck, it's name must be Dion.

Keep those poll numbers coming in, they just make Liberals quack up.

H/T to Wundrick



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