You Like Us You Really Like Us

Canada 'not at its best at the moment': Economist

The Economist this week is Covers Canada literally. We are the Cover Story. They like us they really like us. Well they should we are the most successful capitalist economy in the G8, or the G9 or the G10, of the G11 or the.....And we Love NAFTA.....Ask Paul........We are fighting those nasty Yankee Protectionists to defend something that the Liberals once claimed was the fight of their life to oppose.....Yep the Economist says we're cool, and then the other shoe drops........
The magazine also points to Canada's peculiar flaws. "Canada has everything, except perhaps ambition." Ouch. And with tha erudite British aplomb they co on to give our little country their capitalist report card;

The latest edition says Canada is beset dysfunctional politics, grumpy anti-Americanism and three brewing political storms: one in the West, one in Quebec and one in its relations with the United States. The business-oriented publication is running a 14-page special report and a lead editorial on Canada.

It's upbeat about Canada's overall prospects: "Peaceful, diverse, tolerant (in June gay marriages became legal throughout the country) and with long-term riches to boot - if this isn't 'cool', what is?"

However, it points to building political turbulence.

Looking at the campaign for the Jan. 23 federal election, the survey describes the country's politics as "a fractured mess."

Prime Minister Paul Martin is "a fine finance minister, but as prime minister he has, on the whole, disappointed."

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper is described as "an aloof, cerebral figure, disparaged well beyond Liberal circles as a neo-conservative importing dangerous ideas from the United States.

He is also "clueless with the media."

Yep that sort of hits on the head doesn't it.

The Logic of the Homophobic Right

Here is an example of the irrefutible logic of the anti-gay rightwhingnuts. It appears today on the Anti-Abortion Anti-Gay Anti-Feminist Lifesite (sic)- The rightwhingnutz of Lifesite claim that the Charter defends individual rights not rights to Same Sex Marriage.

However, as the Family Research Council (FRC) has pointed out, "while every individual person is free to get married, no person, whether heterosexual or homosexual, has ever had a legal right to marry simply any willing partner. Every person, whether heterosexual or homosexual, is subject to legal restrictions as to whom they may marry. To be specific, every person, regardless of sexual preference, is legally barred from marrying a child, a close blood relative, a person who is already married, or a person of the same sex. There is no discrimination here, nor does such a policy deny anyone the 'equal protection of the laws', since these restrictions apply equally to every individual." Aha now I get it Mr. or Ms. Individual regardless of sexual orientation may NOT engage in pedophilia, incest, bigamy or gay marriage. The first three are 'criminal acts' under the Criminal Code of Canada. So what Lifestyle is saying is that gay marriage is not a human right for Mr or Ms. Individual it is a Criminal Act apparently banned by the Criminal Code.

To further clarify this important point, in case you didn't get it Mr. or Ms. Individual, they say; "The fundamental 'right to marry' is a right that rests with individuals, not with couples. Homosexual individuals already have exactly the same 'right' to marry as anyone else. " As long as you marry Mr. or Ms. Individual of the opposite sex. FRC points out that "Many people who now identify themselves as homosexual have previously been in legal (opposite-sex) marriages. On the other hand, many people who previously had homosexual relationships have now renounced that behavior and married persons of the opposite sex." So Mr or Ms Individual can marry someone who is or was gay as long as they are of the opposite sex.

Yep see what I mean irrefutible logic. I am convinced. I will now go marry my dog cause it's not specifically banned by the Criminal Code. Its my individual right according to the logic of FRC.

Contradictions of the Security State

So explain this, Canada and the US are looking at imposing passport identification for cross border travel. US passport plan gives way to cross-border ID Meanwhile the government says Canadians are NOT entitled to passports. Hmmmm...... The Charter of Rights and Freedoms doesn't entitle any Canadian — including Abdurahman Khadr — to a passport, a government lawyer argued yesterday as the man with family ties to Al Qaeda fought for the right to have the travel document"There is no authority suggesting such a right (to a passport) exists in Canada," said Morris. "It doesn't guarantee you a right to travel and it's not necessary for it." Oh really, tell that to US and European Customs!

Better yet the current Toronto Centre Liberal Candidate Bill Graham bungled this case, and denied Khadr his passport.....Government lawyers admitted yesterday that former foreign affairs minister Bill Graham bungled the handling of Khadr's failed application. Court documents reveal that the passport office withheld information from Khadr and his lawyer related to the decision because the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service requested secrecy. Yep I smell another Liberal Scandal happening here, just in time for the Election.

Blame 50 Cents

Carrying guns has become trendy, Vancouver police fear
Vancouver police say they're worried about a new trend, as more young men with minimal gang or criminal connections are carrying handguns - that packing a gun appears to have become an "in" thing. Yep it's all that ultra violent motherf***** n****, yo ho, you bytch, Gangsta Hippty Hoppy music thay all listen to.....Gangsta Hip Hop is to Black Community Resistance as the Iraqi Resistance is to Freedom for Iraq. It's all about guns and money, and money and guns, and money for guns, and guns for money.......and I just realized that in Canada 50 cents is two bits...as in two bit punk...or two bit gangster...or two bit thug.....We waz ahead of our time.....

Election Comix

Harper will 'burn people out,' Martin camp says

Paul Martin's handlers believe there is a chance
Conservative Leader Stephen Harper will "burn people out"
with his daily doses of policy announcements.

Thats cause Martin has Nothing to say.......

Venezuela vote was fair

As I said here the other day, Chavez was elected by popular vote, once again. Three times now. And those that boycotted the elections did so under the misguided support of the United States,US Criticizes Venezuelan Vote ,and in doing so cut their noses off to spite their faces. As the song goes "When will they ever learn". America loves democracy, wants to spread democracy around the world, as long as its on America's terms, with American approved leadership, and friendly to America.
Observers say Venezuela vote was fair Jose Silva, head of the European Union team, said the vote was clean and praised the elections council."For us, there was transparency in the electoral process," said Silva, who oversaw about 160 observers

Purge

In the long standing tradition of Stalinism China is looking to blame local officials, Beijing vows to punish polluters, for the recent toxic spill and explosion at the gas plant that has now polluted two major cities. Toxic slick hits another major Chinese city But how do you punish capitalism? Since China's problems are all related to her growing market economy, that still relies on the party cornyism of Stalinism and its lack of regulation of the market. Ironic that. The Chinese state capitalists share something in common with the American Free Marketers. Like Bush they refuse to accept Kyoto or their responsibility for the environmental damage their rush towards industrialized Fordist production brings.

The vice-mayor of the Chinese city where a chemical blast polluted a major river last month has been found dead.

Three weeks on from the accident, China's leaders are finally scrambling to assign blame, says a BBC correspondent in Beijing, Louisa Lim.

The saga has already led to two resignations - the head of the environmental watchdog and the boss of the petrochemical company in charge of the plant which exploded.

The government has set up a team to find out who was responsible for the explosion. It warned that anyone who failed to co-operate would be punished.

Government leaders are increasingly stressing the need for local officials to be seen to be accountable, and more transparent.

But our correspondent says that the terms of the investigation refer only to the immediate explosion, not to any ensuing cover-up, and therefore might not be enough to assuage public anger.

25,000 and counting

Over 25,000 people have signed the online petition in Arabic and English, demanding freedom for the four members of Christian Peace-Keeper Teams, who were taken hostage in Iraq. The petition was begun Dec. 1 and it is now seven days later, and that is an amazing amount of signatures. And its still not too late to add your name.

Canadian Muslims have been out spoken in defense of the CPT. Muslims appeal for westerners' freedom As have Palistinians who know them and their selfless work well. A Canadian Iman is in Baghad attempting to negogiate with the gangsters that have kidnapped them.Montreal man in bid to free hostages

Today is the eve that these defenders of the defenseless may face their last day alive. Fear grows for hostages as deadline looms The fascist thugs who have kidnapped them threaten to kill them tommorow. Their demands are unrealistic, and a feint, it is these very CPT members who have done more to help the imprisioned and detained in Iraq than the creeps who have kidnapped them.

The current so called resistance movement in Iraq is not, it is a fascist movement, as are all those who support either Al Quaida, or the Sunni and Shite militias. The Americans and their puppet government in Iraq are directly to blame for the CPT plight. For having falsely imprisoned hundreds of innocent Iraqi's. For the abuse they have suffered at the hands of the American Empire and the Iraqi State. As new evidence has shown in the media the New Democratic State in Iraq has tortured, abused, killed and secretly detained Iraqis for poltical purposes.

This is the situation that these brave souls, two Canadians amongst them, stepped into to side with the oppressed, and the families of the detained. Those who kidnapped them are the lowest of the low, and in good company with the Bush Administration, and the Iraqi Government.

If anyone thinks this so called resistance movement and its civil war in Iraq is about bettering the conditions of the Iraqi people, this incident should dispell that illusion. Anyone who would do this to those who support the people and oppose war and imperialism are fascists.

The War For Chocolate

In an article about Chocolate and the continuing civil war in the Ivory Coast, there was a Canadian connection.....The cocoa industry is a sensitive subject here. Secrecy is such a priority that the government doesn't publish official production figures. French-Canadian journalist Guy-Andre Kieffer, who wrote articles about corruption in Ivory Coast — including its cocoa industry — disappeared in the country in 2004 and was believed murdered. The vast majority of the crop is grown in government-held territory, but the U.N. report said rebels use cocoa, along with gold, diamonds and timber, to fund "their military activities, as well as for personal profit." On the other side, the U.N. said, the government "is dependent on the cocoa crop to maintain solvency and succeed in paying its civil servants, including the military."

War in Africa is always about business, about the resources a region has. The right wing analysists will talk about tribalism, and try to project this as still the Dark Continent of primitive peoples warring amongst themselves. But such is not the case.

In the Congo and Rawanda the conflict is over gold, silver, and diamonds, still is. In Sierra Leone its over diamonds. In Ethiopia and Somolia its oil and heavy metals. In the Sudan, its not about Darfur, its about oil. Nigeria, Angola, oil.

And my favorite is Chad. You never hear of Chad except once a decade when one of its neighbours and their European allies decides to invade. Little Chad is one richest countries in heavy metals, uranium and precious ores. If nuclear power gains popularity again expect Chad to be in the news.

And chocolate, well that is a major commodity that while it melts in your mouth it's harvested and processed by child slaves in the Ivory Coast. Ironcially this was the point of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory that critics overlooked.

Children who are slaves are then dragooned into the internecine rivalries as child soldiers. Just as we have Child Armies in the Central African conflicts funded by the diamond trade, we have child armies in the Ivory Coast funded by Hershey. As the saying goes War is good for business, invest your son.

Victory at MotherCorp

JB the CBC Election Blogger has added the Green Party Blog and Blogging Greens to his blog side bar listings. And he wrote about the NDP candiates blogs and a very funny piece on Monte Solbergs blog and his new roommate Chuck Strahls blog. Very funny. All is forgiven JB. Could you remind the PTB that the CBC main election page still has the Green Party lumped in with 'Others'.

Blogging NDP Candidates

Jack doesn't blog, strange that for such a with it guy. Nor does any mysterious unnamed party flack on their website (like with Tory Flog). Nor does Jacks brain trust of Anne, Brad, or Jamie. However there are Blogging NDP Candidates and their blogs are listed here. And while the Tories and Liberals have TV ads the NDP has Radio Ads, rumour has it that Jack is being toured with an Amish Horse and Carriage.

Green Opportunism: The Anti-Sealing Lobby

Green organizer quits over seal hunt opposition

Lori-Ann Martino, who was a candidate in Labrador riding in the 2004 federal election, says she cannot abide the party's opposition to a commercial seal hunt.

"This is a terrible strategy," said Martino, who feels the Green party is attempting to recruit voters who are morally opposed to the seal hunt but may not be informed about it.

"I have put so much work personally in distancing Newfoundland from that generic, stereotypical view [that] completely overrides the complexity of the issue ... and the economic importance and cultural importance of the hunt," Martino said.

Martino, though, said Green strategists hoping to appeal to new voters devised the initiative.

She said rank-and-file members she consulted did not support the decision.

"There was just such a disconnect between the membership and the leadership. And the Green party was never supposed to be about leaders," Martino said.

Harris said potential economic replacements for the seal hunt could include ecotourism.

Good on ya Martino. Jim Harris has placed the Green Party in the position of taking on a popular yet misguided opposition against Sealers. Martino is right it isn't about cute cuddly seals, thats incidental. Its about oddles and oddles of money that Green NGO's make off the seals so called plight.

Its about demonizing people in favour of animals. its about anthropomorphizing seals and dehumanizing sealers. Its about eco-racism, Inuit sealers are never attacked but Newfoundlanders are, cause they are Irish. The English colonial attitude about the stupid peasant Irish is reflected in the language and attitude of the anti-sealer movement.

I have taken the unpopular position of questioning the whole logic behind the anti-seal hunt protest last sealing season on my Red Between the Lines Blog.
See:

• Did Viagra impact the Seal Hunt

• Seal Hunt Deja Vu Redux

• Who Speaks for the Sealers?

• A Rational Observation on the Seal Hunt

• Seal Hunt Deja Vu.

I was influenced by a critical article on Greenpeace that appeared in the Fall 2004 Issue Of Labour/le Travail, The Canadian Labour History Journal, that I reccomend reading: Environmental Justice for Whom? Class, New Social Movements, and the Environment: A Case Study of Greenpeace Canada, 1971-2000 by John-Henry Harter.

It is rare that the left or labour or anyone identified as progressive criticizes the Real Politicks of the Green NGO movement. But here is an excellent article that shows how Greenpeace first aligned with the Sealers, then abandoned them on the ice so to speak by first supporting a limited hunt and then calling on their own for the ending of any hunt. Harter goes on to link this anti-worker attitude to the very nature and structure of Greenpeace and its subsequent attempts in the last few years to bust the union created by its own workers.

While the knee jerk reaction of Canadians and Americans, young and old, left or right, is to end the seal hunt this is neither sound social ecology nor real environmentalism.It is psuedo environmentalism created as a publicity ploy by GreenPeace many years ago to get their name known to the public. And it foucused on the cute cuddly seals while making the sealers into brutal sadistic Nazi like killers.



It all had to do with the success of the PR image they created around the cute big eyed seals. A subliminal image in the eye of the poor seal shows a sealer about to club it.

The success of this PR move led to the split between Paul Watson and Greenpeace, over their moving on to other issues, while Watson wanted to make the seal hunt their main focus. Thus Watson created the Sea Sheperd Society opposed to both Whaling and Sealing. Like Greenpeace he bought a boat and hit the high seas like Captain Ahab, for Paul his Moby Dick was the Whaling industry.

And there is a difference between these two sea marine mammals and their status as endangered species. Which is why focusing on one species that is not endangered perse, over one that is, blurs the lines between rational ecology from animal liberation.

And currently this issue is no longer about rational ecology or even environmentalism it has become a simple Animal Liberation cause celebre on one hand and a quick way to make bucks and get free publicity for Green NGO organizations like the Humane Society of North America. Who launch the same campaign year after year with little intention of changing the seal hunt, but cashing in on donations from the gullible.

The seal hunt in Canada this year was scandal ridden with a falsified news story sensationalizing the hunt in the Boston Globe.

The Boston Globe has retracted an article by a Halifax-based freelancer that described the opening day of the seal hunt. The article, by Halifax-based writer Barbara Stewart, was published Wednesday, and described vividly how on the preceding day "hunters on about 300 boats converged on ice floes, shooting harp seal cubs by the hundreds, as the ice and water turned red."

The story was untrue, a figment of the writers graphic imagination. But it sold to a liberal newspaper conditioned to see the seal hunt as bad. Greenpeace which had begun the campaign jointly with the sealers to reduce the quotas had abandoned them and went on the attack against them. The Seal hunt maybe the issue on the surface but beneath the surface the target has been the workers; the sealers.

This isn't an anti-sealing movement its an Anti-Sealer movement, and those in Newfoundland know it. Which is why Martio in all good conciousness could not continue in the Green Party where an Ontario based leadership made a decision based upon populist politics.

In the ROC we have been so innundated with this anti-sealer propaganda that every year like clockwork the campaigns rollout , the protests begin and the money flows in to the various Green NGO's. If people were so concerned about the sealers fate that money would flow to them to pay them to end the hunt.

During last seasons seal hunt a member of the Board of Wattson's Sea Sheperd Society sayed it was ok to kill sealers to stop the hunt. Dr. Vlasak was an outspoke Animial Rights activist who had already said it was ok to kill scientists who work on lab animals.

Vlasak was barred from entering the United Kingdom after he told a 2003 conference in the United States that he supports assassination of animal researchers as a means of stopping animal-based research.

"If these vivisectors were being targeted for assassination, and call it political assassination or what have you ... strictly from a fear and intimidation factor, that would be an effective tactic," Vlasak said at the time.

In an interview this week with the CBC, Vlasak did not back down from those remarks, and he said he also supported violence against sealers.

"Are these people comparable to people that chop up animals in laboratories just to further their academic careers? Yeah, I think they're all abhorrent in a certain way," he said.

Meanwhile, Vlasak – who did not back down from any of his previous comments about violence – has blasted CBC's coverage of his views.

He said his comments were not comprehensively reported by CBC, and that he was not speaking on behalf of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

"What an unethical breach of journalistic integrity," he wrote in an e-mail message, adding that he had repeatedly described the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society as a non-violent organization.

"I didn't expect much from a Newfie, but you have hit a new low for one-sided reporting," Vlasak wrote.

Watson himself was pressured to get rid of Vlasak, but that was not the only incident where violence against sealers was promoted by Watson. RCMP investigate death threats against a sealernd his family posted on the Sea Shepard Blog.

The CBC reported; An April 2 posting on a blog on the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's website identified Genge's name, mailing address, phone number and even the name of his wife. The RCMP are investigating the incident.

These are not just aborations from an otherwise socially conscious campaign, they show that the anti-sealing campaigners will stop at nothing to destroy the livilihoods of the sealers. After that you can expect them to pop into your neighbourhood to end the slaughter of inncocence in the meat packing plants.
Or the lobsters in your local resteraunt.

This is not about living with animals, the animal activists around Sea Shepard or PETA have one agenda, them or us. And in this case the them is animals and the us is well us. They want to impose their vegan, not vegetarian but the much more radical dietary restriction, morality on us. And after all if their tactics resemble shock troops, thats cause Adolph was a vegetarian too. One's dietary preferences do not a progressive social movement make.

And their opposition to the seal hunt is purely opportunist now, they will make millions of dollars doing it, funding their lifestyle activism, with little or no concern for the impact they have on the the people and their communities. Whether it is sealers in the Arctic, Norway, Greenland or Newfoundland.

In Watson's case what began as a campaign against the stupidity of Whaling has now become a campaign against fishing. Period. Like globe hopping anti-globaliztion spokespersons, Watson is a one man show, who pops up whereever he thinks an injustice is being done protests, gets busted, makes the news and leaves. With no consideration his actions have on the people or communities he disrupts. This isn't eco activism this is eco protest tourism.

After all as Vlasak said he doesn't much care for Newfies, nor does Greepeace or Paul Watson. They only care about using the seal hunt to publicize themselves to gain more money from the unsuspecting but sympathetic public.

As they go on another mission somewhere else in the world to disrupt another community. This is not eco-activism, this is not the long struggle of working with communities to evolve change. It is animal liberation at the cost of other animals, us. This is simply eco protest tourism. Meanwhile, Watson's protest is over for this year. His ship the Farley Mowat passed by the seal hunt off the northeast coast of Newfoundland before heading to the Grand Banks to protest overfishing. The Farley Mowat has now left Canadian waters and is now sailing to Bermuda.

Victory!

Pressure from progressive bloggers and blogging dippers has forced the CTV Election Weblog to add the Green Bloggers to its links! And congrats to them for publishing comments, the other webbieelectionbloggies don't. And congrats to actually publishing a visitor blog article, and a good one at that. And for actually having this. Its unique. They have also been watching the blogosphere for leads and giving credit to the source. Again CTV take the lead in web blogging during this election. Hey Mother Corp there are lessons to be learned here.

And while giving tips o the blog I wanna draw your attention to the great coverage on CPAC. Yesterday they ran a feature background documentary on Day Care/Early Childhood Education in Canada, featuring all sides of the debate. The winners clearly were propenants of publicly funded, regulated daycre. Great documentary very fair and balanced.

Harper the Statist

Ok I couldn't believe it when I read this editorial but here it is. For a moment I will let you guess where this came from.

Tories offer a big buyoff

Day-care allowance echoes Quebec's statist programs

Well, it's not your father's Canadian Alliance any more.

The Conservative Party's baby bonus -- more precisely, its promised annual $1,200 allowance per child -- is classic state interventionism. It's also a significant upping of the bid in the parties' competition to stake out the family values constituency.

As such, it is the thin end of what could become a ruinously expensive wedge. Society may be prepared to countenance tax breaks for low-income families, but as a general principle, people who have children should pay for them.

Why would anybody expect the state to do so?

The reason, of course, is that Quebec's socialist Parti Quebecois started this madness in 1997, with its so-called $5-a-day day care. Since upped to $7, it proved wildly popular.

Looking for a vote-winner itself last year, the embattled federal Liberal government adopted the idea, pledging $5 billion over five years for national day care.

Frankly, Quebec's experience should have been a salutary warning, rather than an inspiration.

Well contrary to this editorial the Quebec program didn't just pay parents it provided a public regulated non profit day care system for children. It then subsidized these programs at a cost of $5 per day allowing for more affordable access. The creation of public day care spaces is what this ediorial must mean by statist.

That is not what the Harper plan is, not even close, his plan is to give parents $4 a day, with no plan to fund non profit regulated public child care or build more centres.

So to call his plan statist is a bit much. To compare it to the Quebec model is an even greater jump in logic. To say that this isn't your fathers Alliance party, well yes it is, it just isn't yer grandaddies Reform Party of Presto Manning.

To say that people who have children should pay for them contradicts the conservative eulogy of the sacredness of family, and how children are a resource for the future. Thats the contradiction of conservative thinking, on the one hand children are their parents problem on the other they are our future. Which is it?

Well both, but in order to raise children and to have them socially develop not as a resource but as citizens in the commune, err community, then they are a responsibility for all of us. Hence it takes a village, always did, to raise children. Today society is the extended family that replaces the tribe, clan and village. So yes we do have a social responsibility for children. Thats why we have public education and need public regulated day care in the community and in our schools and workplaces.

The editorial, was not from the National Post, scion of the new right, nor from the Calgary Sun or any of the Sun papers. Nope it was from the Calgary Herald today. So anybody still out there think our media is liberal?

More MSM Election Weblogs

Canwest news, publishers of the Edmonton Journal, Ottawa Citizen, owners of Global TV etc. have their correspondents web blogging about the election here.
And for Alberta politics from the Press Gallery in the Leg I can highly reccomend Graham Thompsons new blog at the Edmonton Journal.

Albertans Challenge Harpers Day Care Plan

I got this email from Public Interst Alberta which has been lobbying for better child care in Alberta. Thought I would print the whole thing as it raises serious criticisms of Harpers Made In Alberta Day Care Plan.

The Conservative Party of Canada released their plan for Childcare
yesterday. The main focus of the Conservative Party plan is to give families
$100 per month for every child under the age of 6 ($2.4 billion annually)
regardless of income and allow them to "choose" their own childcare
preferences.

The media called on Public Interest Alberta to respond to this new plan. In
particular, I did a CBC Television Interview (in English and French that ran
province wide) and an interview in the Calgary Herald and the Edmonton
Journal (see article).

It is very important that people who care about this important public
interest issues use the election to participate in phone in shows and write
letters to the editor of your local new papers. Here are some points that
are important when looking at this issue.


* Families will not have a real choice for childcare and early
childhood education options unless there is an affordable, accessible and
high quality childcare system in place.

* Giving all parents money directly as a policy to build a childcare
system is the same as giving money to everyone who owns a car and expecting
that will build a road system.

* The tax incentives for corporations to start new childcare centres
will not work. This was tried by the Harris government and it failed because
most businesses are not interested in creating childcare centres. They do
however, want their employees to be able to access quality childcare and
expect that their tax dollars will provide this important public service.

* The Conservative plan makes no mention of support for low and
middle income families who are currently getting subsidies other than to say
that the current agreements will end next year. Under Alberta's recently
released 5 point plan to use the federal childcare funds, families are
currently able to receive a subsidy up to $500/month per child ($575 for
infants) (paid directly to the childcare centres) for licensed and
accredited childcare. Presumably the subsidy arrangement for these families
would be replaced by the Conservative plan with this $100/month plan.

* The Conservative party plan does not even mention early childhood
education as an essential element of any childcare system. The current 5
point provincial plan allows families to receive $100/month for early
learning opportunities for pre-school children.

* There is no mention in this plan for enhancing necessary supports
for parents such as exists with Alberta's new parent link centres.

* The Conservative plan does not address the issue of children
between the ages of 6 and 12 who require before and after school care. There
is a real crisis in after school care that needs to be addressed and any
childcare plan must reflect this.

* Quality childcare comes when childcare workers are well trained
and properly paid for the important work they do. The Conservative plan does
not address the need to increase the training and pay childcare workers get
and would not support the current salary and training for childcare workers
announced in Alberta's 5 point plan for childcare.



I hope these points help provide some context to the debate and will
encourage you to speak out on this issue.



Thank you for your support of Public Interest Alberta.



Sincerely,



Bill Moore-Kilgannon

Executive Director

Public Interest Alberta

From the Harpers Mouth

quoth-the-harper This is a great article on Harper I highly reccomend it. Couldn't have done a better job on it myself, nice piece of research and political analysis.

Harpers Day Care Plan Redux

For $1200 a year here is the kind of child care Harpers sacred 'Parental Choice' brings. This happened in Ontario where the Harper plan is already in place introduced by Mike Harris.

Woman's mental deficiency cited

Jeffrey's grandmother assessed in 1970
Had been charged in death of her first baby, court told

The 54-year-old woman facing a murder charge for the starvation death of her grandson, Jeffrey Baldwin, was diagnosed with "borderline mental retardation" 35 years ago, court heard yesterday.Elva Bottineau, who was assessed at the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry in 1970 by psychiatrist Dr. Eugene Mandryk, was described in a report as being of "borderline mentally defective intelligence," and displaying "social immaturity, poor judgment, aggressive tendencies and poor impulse control." Bottineau and Kidman, 53, have pleaded not guilty to the first-degree murder of five-year-old Jeffrey, who died of septic shock on Nov. 30, 2002. They have also pleaded not guilty to the unlawful confinement a granddaughter. Despite each having a criminal record for child abuse, the couple was given custody of Jeffrey and his three siblings by the Catholic Children's Aid Society.

Like the Conservatives and Real Women the Catholic Childrens's Aid Society probably adhered to the idea that parenting and child rearing are 'natural', and one needs no training it just comes to you when you have children. Yep ideology trumps reason. Much like Harpers dumb Made in Alberta Child Care plan.

The Real Crime In Canada

Is violence against women. Today is Dec. 6 and we remember the massacre of women Engineering students in Montreal by Mark Lapine. And yet in Canada violence against women has not declined, while other forms of violent crime has, including crime linked to drugs. Nurses remember victims of abuse, call for end of violence against women Which makes Harpers get tough on crime announcement on the weekend as misplaced as they get.

"I want to talk about the values of a peaceful, orderly and safe society, and a problem none of the other parties seem to care about -- the problem of crime and the threat it poses to our families and our communities," Harper said at a recreation centre in Burnaby, B.C.

Yep well instead of focusing on the symptoms like drugs or guns, we must look at the culture we live in that continues to allow for domestic violence, sexual assault, violence against women.

"We've got to get to the root causes of crime -- despair, poverty, addiction -- in our communities," Layton said during a campaign stop in Vancouver."That means we've got to put an equal emphasis on the prevention of crime in the first place, as we put on dealing with the results of crime at the end of the day."

Harper would bring in draconian measures that will only lead to a growth in the prison industrial complex, as has occured in the U.S. The Liberals responded after Dec. 6 with tougher gun laws and the billion dollar boondoogle of the Firearms registry, which has not reduced gun crimes but has criminalized gun owners. Nope neither of these approaches will work, until we begin to actually teach about human relationships in our schools.

We can no longer leave this up to the dysfunctional patriarchical families and churches to teach moral and character education on an adhoc basis, or on the basis of patriarchical beliefs that women are the property of their husbands to with as they will. It's time to address the real issues around the crimes against women and children which is the fact that in our society they are still seen as the property of their husbands/fathers, and what happens in the home is not the concern of society.

Such is also the ideology of the Conservatives daycare announcements, that society should not provide early childhood education, rather parents should do this or choose who does it. We don't allow this for children aged 5 and up who HAVE to go to school, nor should we continue to allow it for younger children. We are socially disadvantaging them.

The conservatives disadvantage working mothers, that's a crime, by denying them access to publicly funded and regulated day care. Instead they complain of the Nanny State will funding tax breaks for nannies. Nannies who are from the Phillipines and are exploited in the homes of the rich, because as indentured servants they have no rights, and no one to monitor their working conditions. Again the exploitation of women for the sacred family of patriarchy.

Women are still fired for getting pregnant in some workplaces, including Catholic Schools if they are unwed. And as more women enter the workforce, and remain the primary care givers for children and the elderly, the workplace has yet to meet their needs with onsite daycare. The rare exception, such as the CIBC, gets an innovative workplace award from the Conference Board of Canada, when this should be the norm not the exceptional.

Yes we have crime in society much of it based upon the failure of the nuclear patriarchial family to meet its social obligations, because it is dysfunctional as Wilhem Reich correctly opined. When the right reacts to youth crime, they call for getting tough on hoodlums, tough love. But many of those committing these crimes come from broken homes with little love in the first place. Nor did our social institutions create a home like atmosphere for them, instead shoveling them through agencies and schools until they got expelled from the 'system' with no future.

Such as Mark Lapine who 16 years ago took his frustrations out on women whom he blamed for his low self esteem as a patriarch in training. His upbringing in a single mother family, isolated ,from the community in modern urban Montreal, in his own little world, all this contributed to his madness. Being a patriarch in the making he had no male role model in his own world or in ours. So for his own personal psychological reasons he was going to go out and prove to the world he was a man. And to do so as society around him told him he did it by taking a woman, or in this case women, literally.

His crime was not the gun he used, or his hatred of women, his crime was that of being a patriarch in the making rather than a human being in the making.
His crime was seeking power over others, a crime that politicians, priests and bosses practice everyday.

"We see that the compass of the emotional plague coincides approximately
with the broad compass of social abuse, which has always been and still is
combatted by every social freedom movement. With some qualifications, it can
be said that the sphere of the emotional plague coincides with that of
"political reaction" and perhaps even with the principle of politics in
general. This would hold true, however, only if the basic principle of all
politics, namely thirst for power and special prerogatives, were carried
over into those spheres of life which we do not think of as political in the
usual sense of the word."

"Those who are truly alive are kindly and unsuspecting in their human relationships and consequently endangered under present conditions. They assume that others think and act generously, kindly, and helpfully, in accordance with the laws of life. This natural attitude, fundamental to healthy children as well as to primitive man, inevitably represents a great danger in the struggle for a rational way of life as long as the emotional plague subsists, because the plague-ridden impute their own manner of thinking and acting to their fellow men. A kindly man believes that all men are kindly, while one infected with the plague believes that all men lie and cheat and are hungry for power."

The Emotional Plague /Listen Little Man by Wilhelm Reich

Lapines crime which so shocked us, is our crime, for society made him the criminal he was as it does all criminals. Locking them away and throwing away the key does not address the real nature or source of crime; the social structure of the authoritarian patriarchical society. It merely reinforces it.

Which is why Harper and the right wing can pass all the laws they want, it will never reduce crime. It is the very reactionary politics that continues to promote the emotional plague that is the social conditioning of patriarchical capitalism.

In Quebec today violent crime including violence against women has decreased, in this largely social democratic country, one that has a fully functioning public day care system. In Alberta on the other hand, home of Harper and the most right wing free market government in Canada, violent crime and violence against women is the highest in Canada. That is the real crime.

For Reich, a key question was: Why did people support the Nazis? Reich stated that he found that several things went together in Nazi Germany:

• Strong paternal authority
• Sexual repressiveness
• authoritarian personalities
• reactional political ideologies

Economically the Nazi program was not in the interest of lower middle class people of Germany, but they gave their support to it. Reich asked, What psychological reason could be found that would make the fascist ideology compelling to this group of people?

His answer was: The combination of authority and rebellion. Reich said the sons would especially admire an authoritarian person above them who was also rebellious. (Like Hitler and Stalin) That way they could fulfill the desire to rebel but with subservience. This was a submission that came with some real resentment.

FAMILY AND WORK. Reich noticed that the family structure and work structure in the German lower middle class overlapped. In their small farms and businesses, both the family authority and the work authority were the same person.In other cases, if you go off to work you're going to work somewhere else. But if you're in a situation where you're working together within the family, the father's capacity to ensure his authority, to have a kind of totalitarian state within the home, goes way up.

• Especially in such situations, fathers are better able to sexually repress their sons. So the sons develop a subservient attitude toward authority and a stronger identification with the father, which transfers to other authorities. They develop an authoritarian personality structure. A very strong identification with the authority who is above you and a subservience to it. Reich was apparently the first to look at this. Later Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswick, Levinson & Sanford studied this dynamic in much more detail in their social psychological classic, The Authoritarian Personality. Still later, Milton Rokeach continued this line of inquiry in Dogmatism.
• The authoritarian agenda is largely unconscious. People are almost totally unconscious of what they are doing, The parents carry out the intentions of authoritarian society. The authoritarian parent finds meaning through identification with a strong leader and nation. This explains why people get so caught up in their nation "being Number 1."
• Reich held that most of our inner experience has been cut off along with our sexuality, so that "being number 1" is where people of whom this is so find meaning in life.

THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX. Reich's explanation: You also get the Oedipus complex from this kind of situation. Sexual desires naturally urge a person to enter into all kinds of relations with the world, and to enter into close contact with others in a variety of forms. If these urges arep reressed, they can only express themselves in the narrow confines of the family. Karen Horney referred to "the emotional hothouse of the family."

'FAMILY VALUES" The "safeguarding of the family," held Reich, customariily refrers to the male-dominated authoritarian and large family. This, he declared, "is the first cultural precept of every reactionary ideology."

• Rather than support a variety of family forms, reactionary ideologies bolster the particular form that has an authoritarian male at the head. This sets people up to go for politically conservative ideologies.
• Jennifer Stone, a contemporary thinker, declares, "Always remember, 'family values' is a code-word for male supremacy."
• One cross-cultural study found that male dominance in the sultural structure was highly correlated with aggression.
• A feminist psychoanalyst, Nancy Chodow, maintains that no matter what you say about sex roles, if mother does all the childcare, it will perpetuate sex roles of traditional patriarchal society.

Campaign Confidential Comics

I found these quotes at CBC Campaign Confidential

Going constructive, as they say, was overdue for Harper
– a year of attack-dog politics has worsened the negativity and anger,
issues he needs to work out with Canadian voters…


Jack Layton took Buzz's self-promotion from NDP pain in the butt to NDP back-stabber
like a man, given the blood gushing from the open back wound.


The Liberal campaign high command hasn't yet decided whether it's mainly fighting opponents on the right or opponents on the left.

I Will Be Speaking In Edmonton Tonight

I will be on a panel tonight in Edmonton Celebrating the launch of Richard Day's book,

Gramsci is Dead: Anarchist
Currents in the Newest Social Movements (Pluto Press/Between the Lines)

Monday, December 5th 2005, 7pm
2nd Floor 10832 82nd Avenue

Earth's General Store

What strategies and tactics are today's activists using to achieve social
transformation? Are taking over the state or trying to reform its
structures the only way to achieve meaningful social change? Or are
direct-action tactics, for example, potentially more effective?

Join us for a participant-led conversation and celebration around these
questions. Some of our guests include long time labour activist Eugene
Plawiuk, IWW fundraiser Des Schell, the U of A Women's Centre, and others
to be confirmed.

The Road To Hell

is paved with good intentions. Like the Liberals attempt to impose affirmative action programs for candidates from visible minorities and the female majority.
Which were created under Chretien, and ended up with the current debacle of the Michael Ignatieff Affair. Another legacy of the Chretien Liberals that haunts Paul Martin. No wonder there has been a deafening silence from Scott Reid over this.

Whose party is it, anyway?
But the Liberals — unlike the other parties — added a new twist at their 1992 national convention, when they gave their leader, then Jean Chrétien, the specific power to appoint candidates directly, not just veto those he didn't' like. The intent was, perhaps, noble: Chrétien wanted to ensure more women and minorities made it into the House of Commons. Less uplifting was the implication that, left to their own devices, the riding associations wouldn't produce candidates nearly so dear to the leader's heart.

More Election Buzz

Buzz gets slammed again today from none other than the founder of the Waffle, no not the pancake the left wing rump of the NDP in the seventies. Herr Professor Doctor Mel Watkins no less, in collaboration with Straight Goods publisher Ish Theilheimer write the follwing as a front page editorial on their website journal (which predates Rabble.ca as a left online daily news journal).

Time to deal with the Buzz problem

Labour and NDP must confront the rogue elephant in the living room

In no case will Hargrove's message help the party that has always been labour's best friend politically.

Ouch. Say isn't the Elephant a symbol of a political party south of the border.

Nerd Stuff

I have added the following items into the left hand column here.

A technocrati link and search engine with my profile.

A chat box where you can leave instant messages. I liked this item over at Modblog and now there is one free online you can put on your page. So there it is. Abusers will be pumelled.

Also added the Activista search bar, this is for left wing and activist sites on the web. Great tool. And when they let me join their club I will add the search this blog feature.

Currently if you wish to search my articles here, which are running around 300 since I launched this blog last year at this time, my gawd he said I am prolific.
You can use the search bar in blogger above or use the technocrati search, the latter is more effective I find. Just type in the word an viola up come my articles

I reorganized the left hand bar as well as you can see. Blogs I belong to are down near the bottom along with my blog roll. If you have a blog and aren't in either than check my bloglines links I may have stuck you in there.

All the commercial junk I belong to which seems to be a good idea when in blogspace, is at the very bottom of the page. Though one I would highly reccomend is the spampoison. Killer little application.

Modblog Redux

My pal Critical has moved off Modblog as well and set up shop here at blogspot. It appears that like Battle Star Galactica a whole group of bloggers went here, to create an alternative to the near month long abscence of Modblog after it crashed. Critical has written a very good piece on ModBlog, at the exile page before moving to blogspot.Much nicer and helpful than I would be. Check out his new site he is a progressive blogger from Sri Lanka. My what a small world.

Harpers Day Care Policy Made In Alberta

Well as predicted Harpers Child Care policy was re-announced today. It was orginally announced after the Liberals made their child care program announcement last spring. So it's old news.

It is a made in Alberta policy. Modeled directly off the Klein Reichs policy of not funding public daycare centres in favour of giving everybody a hundred bucks to hire their grandmother to babysit. This is NOT an early childhood education policy, its a two tier day care program.

Tax credits are a sop to parents who can afford nannies. But it leaves working parents ( usually with two jobs to make ends meet) out in the cold trying to find space in overcrowded public daycares. And when they are rejected being forced to cough up extra dough for private day cares, which are notoriously under regulated and prone to child accidents. Yep nothing to see here move on.

Let The Green Party In

I posted my blog article on Vive Canada about the campaign to get the Green Party more media coverage, such as having them mentioned in articles, having their Green Blog linked at MSM election web sites and the all important involvement in the Leaders Debate. A good debate is going on at Vive Canada and we have at least twenty comments. I have also posted the two petitions in my left side bar under Election 2006. And I have been emailing comments out to the Media and on my email lists. How about you?

Brian Masse Slams Liberals

Here is an exerpt from NDP MP Brian Masse of Windsor to the CAW delegates;

I stood up in the House of Commons and voted to implement anti-scab legislation in federal jurisdiction.

I was proud to do that because I know it’s the right thing to do.

And I watched every single Liberal Cabinet minister – including some of the ones who were in this hall yesterday – vote to kill that legislation.

I was proud to stand next to David Christopherson when he introduced a law to put pension payments at the front of the line if a company goes bankrupt.

Yep he does the workers proud, but CAW still follows Buzz.......unfortunately.
CAW wants NDP to hold balance of power

Chavez Re-Elected

Here is the strategy straight out of Iraq, must be getting their political advice from the CIA, now lets understand how this works; Sunni's boycott bad, but doesn't undermine democracy in Iraq. Venezuelan boycott good, undermines democracy in Venezuela. Hmm yep that makes alot of sense, to Dick Cheney and Pat Robertson.Chavez's party claims major victory in Venezuelan poll The poll was boycotted by the country's five main opposition parties, who accused election officials of favouring Chavez and manipulating electronic voting machines. Prove It! Whine, Whine, Whine, would you like some cheese with that.

Liberals Get Their Own Grewal

In Edmonton-Mill Woods-Beaumont. Liberals have nominated Amerjit Grewal (no relation to the Conservative Grewal). The old David Kilgour riding, the Liberal nomination on the weekend went to a Trade Unionist and the only Indo= Canadian running in a riding dominated by Indo-Canadians.

The Conservative and NDP candidates are relatively unkown White Guys. Last time around Conservative Indo-Canadian Tim Uppal almost defeated David Kilgour. Kilgour had a machine in the riding, and was well connected to the community. Such is not the case with Mr. Unknown White Guy running for the Tories. Big mistake and as rumour has it while Uppal went for the nomination this time around the constiuency association pulled a Ignatieff type move. See the Liberals and Conservatives both do it.

This gives the Liberals an advantage, as they have the only credible candidate, cause he is left wing, a trade unionist and Indo-Canadian. Gee aren't those NDP credentials? So this is where the Buzz Theory will be applied in Edmonton, vote Liberal rather than splitting the vote and letting Mr. White Guy Conservative get in.

Big fight for nomination in Alta. Liberal riding

61-year-old who works driving a transit van for the physically disabled has won the Liberal nomination in one of only two Alberta seats the party took in the last federal election.

Amarjit Grewal, 61, was chosen on the second ballot to succeed veteran MP David Kilgour in Edmonton-Mill Woods-Beaumont. Grewal places himself on the party's left wing and says he wants more spending on affordable housing and supports public health care.

Creationism be damned

In my never ending quest to debunk the religious ideologist here we go again with a science tidbit that proves once again the empircal basis for evolution.

Study: Earliest Birds Have Dinosaur Feet

The earliest birds had theropod dinosaur-like feet, according to a new study released yesterday based on the best reserved Archaeopteryx fossil.

These findings support the arguable theory that Archaeopteryx, the first known bird, was a closest relative of the theropod dinosaur, and that modern birds arose from the dinosaurs, German and U.S. researchers said in the Dec. 2 issue of the journal Science.

And the New York museum has opened its controversial display on Darwin, with no corporate funding thanks to the pressure groups from the right lobbying against evolution. Which is fine by me we have to much corporate scientism being offered as science.

The same right whingnuts who denounce climate warming as junk science are really saying that evolution is junk science too.

Ok lets be clear here they are actually saying science is junk, just believe in the big white guy in the sky.

SCIENCE, RELIGION CONFLICT

Florida State University Michael Ruse, author of The Evolution-Creation Struggle echoed that, calling America "a peculiarly religious country" which was also a "science powerhouse. How can it be such?" he asked.

Ruse suggested the answer lay partly in history, not least being the Civil War after which Southerners turned to the Bible, and evolution "was taken to represent everything about the North that they disliked."

The result, he said, was the "red state-blue state clash -- It's not science versus religion as such -- but very much a cultural clash that we've got in America today." Others concurred, saying that the schism was part and parcel of a broader cultural war over contentious issues like abortion, gay rights and gun control.

Part of the problem with Darwinism, is that it is the identification with the theory of evolution with one man. Evolution is not just a theory of Darwin there were others including Alfred Russel Wallace. Wallace and Darwin collaborated on the theory of natural selection. But given the dominace of the need for bourgoise culture to create a solo individual hero, we have forgotten Wallace and equated evolution with Darwin only.

In reality evolutionary theory pre-dates Darwin and influenced his own work.In particular the work; Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation.

Here we have another example of the missing link in the history of science and ideas, the role of the masses, and in particular the working classes; mechanics, in reading and practicising science as an aspect of their trades. Such was the case since the founding of the Royal Society in England, the clash between the aristocracy and its erudition of scientific experimentation and the mechanics who read their works and improved if not proved or disproved their hypothesis.

It was the creation of the popular culture of reading and study, of the science of the common man that was the basis for Darwins later popularity. But without those who came before him, promoting a materialist history of the world to counter the dominant hegemony of the Church, we would have no Darwin.

And those who came before him like Wallace and the unknown author of Vestiges were social reformers, radicals. Darwin was not as radical as his predecesors, but benefited from the reforms in the society around him that allowed him to publish and confront his antagonists with relative safety.

Evolution as a theory was the result not only of pure science, as there is no such creature, but of the movements to challenge the ideas of the day, the movement known as Free Thought, closely aligned to atheism, which was still a hanging offense in England. Luckily such is not the case now, though the rightwhingnuts might make it a capital offense again should they gain political and cultural dominance.

The history of science and evolution in the 19th Century is the history of social reform and radicalism, as much a part of the workers movement as it is of the parlour rooms of the bourgoise.

Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. James A. Secord. xx + 624 pp. University of Chicago Press, 2001.

Most historians of science have treated Vestiges as a minor remnant of mid-Victorian culture. It has been typically regarded as an indicator that the evolutionary ideas earlier formulated by Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck continued to intrigue and trouble, even after they had been thoroughly repudiated by established scientists. Chambers's book is certainly remembered because Charles Darwin feared that the clever but amateurish "Mr. Vestiges" would render the intellectual public ill-disposed to any evolutionary understanding of life. James Secord conceives of Chambers's book in quite different terms. In Victorian Sensation he contravenes the usual presumptions. Because of his striking erudition and extraordinary scholarship, he has produced an argument that cannot be ignored, even if it must be resisted.

Through some 16 chapters, Secord details how Vestiges was physically made (with steam presses, but with hand composition of the lines of print), the way in which prices of the various editions determined its public (it became a cause only with the "people's edition"), and the manner in which different segments of British society (from working-class mechanics, to radical reformers, to Whig scientists, to Tory churchmen, to the Queen herself) read the message of the book and what meanings they imparted to their reading. Middle-class consumers, for example, took up the book with the same enthusiasm they felt for the latest novels of Sir Walter Scott. High Churchmen condemned its materialistic message, whereas radical reformers thought it supported their efforts. Scientists quite generally dismissed its shoddy zoology and botany.

The second subversive reason for focusing on the reaction of the reading public is that it allows us to advance another model of science. We need no longer be in thrall to the heroes of science. We can, rather, look to underlaborers such as Chambers who made Darwin's so-called genius possible: "Like all forms of hero-worship, this celebration of the author undermines possibilities for individual action, for none of us can be a Darwin, at least in the terms that the myth provides. It sets an unobtainable ideal?the genius revealing great discoveries?as the model of what a scientist should be." So histories such as Secord's have a pragmatic, even a moral purpose. It is troubling, though, to recommend Chambers as a model for even the mid-Victorian scientist. As far as we know, he never identified a fossil, never cracked a rock with a geology hammer, never charted the course of the planets.