AFL Agrees With Me

I wrote last August; Lack of Planning Created Skills Shortage in Alberta

Now the Alberta Federation of Labour has issued a report that agrees with my hypothesis. AFL seeks free tuitions in high-demand jobs

How efficient is the Alberta apprenticeship system?

The public school system in Alberta views a 25% failure to complete rate a disgrace at the high school level. By contrast, over half (57.3%) of all apprentices in Alberta fail to complete their apprenticeship within the optimum program time. Even after eleven years, the failure to complete rate is over 40%.

The Alberta Apprenticeship and Industry training Board claims that 75% of apprentices complete their training - however, the Board does not include apprentices who fail to complete their first year in their calculations. That is like a high school not counting anyone who fails to finish grade 10 in their overall failure rate.

Do employers fully support the apprenticeship program?

Only 18 % of Canadian employers take on and train young apprentices - although 41 % of all employers had the capacity to do so - according to a recently released joint study by the Canadian Apprenticeship Forum and Skills Canada.

Business and government have it all wrong on labour shortage

Report disputes need for foreign workers

Stricter rules urged over employment of foreign oilsands workers

Chinese workers already here?

Oilsands to rescue

No matter who you’re talking to,” gloomed Alberta Federation of Labour president Gil McGowan, “they all seem to say the sky is falling.”

And the heat is on to adopt what he calls “radical solutions” – which is a codeword for massive importation of foreign workers.

Yesterday, the rumours came true when Canadian Natural Resource Development Ltd. vice president Lynn Zeidler confirmed that the contract to build the $30-billion Horizon project’s massive tank farm has been awarded to a Chinese company. Soon 250 guest workers from China will be on site north of Fort McMurray.

“Compared to the 6,000-man job we’re running,” Zeidler said, “it’s not a very big contract.

“These workers, like every other worker on site, will be paid competitive wages and housed in union-approved camps,” she added.

The Chinese government-owned company won the tendered contract fair and square, she insisted.

While Business of course which has failed to meet the needs of the labour market sing the same old song; gimme more tax breaks, deregulate the market.

Alberta Federation of Labour President Gil McGowan says the restaurant industry has benefitted from government intervention in the labour market—intervention designed to keep a lid on wages. “Instead of raising the minimum wage, they increased supply, by making it easier to hire children as young as 12. The laws of the market, it seems, are only allowed to work when they dictate the prices of the goods employers sell. But when they push up labour costs, and increase workers’ share of the Alberta Advantage, the government steps in.” ARE ALBERTA WORKERS BEING LEFT OUT OF THE BOOM?



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The Cradle of Humanity

Ethiopia, which any African will proudly tell you, is the 'homeland' of humanity.

Giday WoldeGabriel, a geologist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and another leader of the team, said the abundance of monkey and other mammal bones and petrified wood found at the sites showed that this was a woodland ecology between four million and six million years ago.Paleontologists Find Species With Links to 'Lucy Skeleton'

All ancient civilizations passed through it, all ancient civilizations are represented in its fertile plains. All the monothiestic religions and even the gnostic heresies are represented in Ethiopia in their earliest forms.

And of course the great journey of modern humanity begins in Ethopia.

'Missing link' to earliest humans revealed

Professor Tim White, from the University of California at Berkeley, USA, one of the leaders of the team that discovered the fossils, said: "Australopithecus became a superior omnivore, able to eat tubers and roots with more fibre and grit, adapting it better to times of scarcity during periods of extended drought.

Note to vegans; Omnivore

Note to Creationists: that makes two 'missing links' in a week.
Evolution 2
Creationism 0
Intelligent Design 0

"They may have been small brained, but they stuck around a long time, fully half of our zoological family's 6 million-year existence on the planet."

The scientists believe Australopithecus evolved from some species of Ardipithecus.

In all, teeth and jawbones of eight individuals were found, all dated to about 4.1 million years ago.

A partial thigh bone and hand and foot bones similar to those of "Lucy" dating from 3 million to 3.4 million years were also found 60 kilometres away from the site.

A Link in Lucy's Past

Paleoanthropologist Tim White of the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues have unearthed fossils representing the oldest species of Australopithecus, Au. anamensis, in northeastern Ethiopia's Middle Awash valley. The 4.1-million- to 4.2-million-year-old remains--including jaw fragments, teeth and a femur--extend the range of this hominid, which was previously known only from two sites in Kenya. And in terms of age and anatomy, they are intermediate between two other hominids found in the Middle Awash: the older Ardipithecus ramidus and the younger Au. afarensis (Lucy's species).

Asa Issie, Aramis and the origin of Australopithecus

Humanity is widely believed to have descended from the genus Australopithecus, but the beginnings of that genus are shrouded in mystery. Newly discovered fossils from a previously unsampled time slice in the Middle Awash study area of Ethiopia add important information on the subject. They represent the earliest known member of the genus, Australopithecus anamensis, the first to be found outside the Turkana basin in Kenya. The finds are from a woodland context and show how Australopithecus may have evolved from the more primitive Ardipithecus, and may have been ancestral to Australopithecus afarensis, popularly known as 'Lucy'.

Also see Primates

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Migration

Immigration is when the State imports people into a country.

Imperialism creates migration.

Migration is displaced,' free', labour forced to seek work elsewhere because of underdevelopment of the local economy.

Globalization is the corporate face of Imperialism in the 21st Century.

Immigration is the States ability to import labour to add to the 'army of underemployed/unemployed', for the purposes of taxing them.

Migrant labour will displace our jobs/migrants do the jobs our (insert country here) workers won't goes the arguement.

In reality just like immigrants brought in by the State, migrant workers will find low paid jobs in sweat shop economies of the black market. Jobs that indigenous workers do not have access to normally. In other words there exists a 'free' or black market in labour.

Nannies are one of the legal forms of chattel slavery that the State sanctions and has been a large source of labour migration into Canada that functions similarly to the black market operations such as sewing sweat shops.

Where migrant labour and immigrant labour meet is in the black market; the underground economy as Finacial Post editor Diane Francis calls it. That is the world of unregulated labour, labour that is not covered by government labour laws.

Farm workers were not covered by provincial employment standards acts in the but UFCW won the right to unionize them in a Supreme Court ruling.

This is a significant step forward for undocumented, temporary workers as well as documented imported temporary workers. It also bodes well for temporary construction workers imported into Alberta. Unfortunately management goons associated with labour contractors can easily replace real unions as 'workers representatives' in Alberta. Again showing the coorespondence between the 'legal' economy and the 'underground economy'.

This can be sub contracted trades work, taxi cab driving, janitorial companies, delivery services, fast food joints, small craft businesses; tailoring, shoemakers, etc. A large number of the service industries that business writers and neo-con apologist term; the new service economy.

There was an interesting liberaltarian perspective on migration published at Vive le Canada. Interesting because Vive is part of the nationalist Canadian left. The article is from a right wing libertarian site. For a Left Libertarian perspective on immigration reform in the U.S. see;the view from below . And actually we all agree, that migration is not problematic however contradictory its economic function is.

Condradictory because it exposes the developmental weakness of decadent capitalism. This is the crux of Negri and Hardts theory of Empire and its contradiction; the Multitude. The multitude is free labour, migration, rather than immigration. It is not yet a negation of globalized capitalism, since as a class the 'multitude'; the migratory proletariat have not yet become self concious. Yet.

The spontaneous demonstrations, the growing mass rallies in the US over the last ten days against their jingoist racist security laws over undocumented workers shows that the 'multitude is beocming class conscious. labour is leading the fight for migrants rights in the U.S. as it did with the IWW at the begining of last century when migration and immigration swelled in North America.

This shows that the movement that Negri and Hardt call the multitude, comes from rural underdeveloped economies, not yet industrialized enough to become economic Tigers.

I don't say countries, because much of the exodus North from Latin America and Africa is by peasants farmers displaced by corporate agribusiness, and water privateers. In effect it is provincial movement from countries, whose national capital is export business rather than the creation of regional market based capitalism. Sustainable capitalism in the world economy. Another contradicition. To be sustainable the market has to be small and based on the village cooperatives.

These cooperatives are destroyed and displaced by global investment capital, aiming for production for export, secondary production for export, and IMF funding for imports.

The destruction of nomadic and traditional farming results in famines which then impact the traditional geographical economies. Actual village cooperatives have survived the current ten year drought in some areas of Africa by the development of local economies, such as maize production from farming to its grinding into meal. Because they have taken care of the land which is the basis of their production.

The nomadic cattle herders, have been the ones to suffer the worst effects of the drought creating a landless multitude swarming to the capitols of Central Africa to end up dying enmasse. Those that survive move towards work, survival.

The entire Middle East is made up of masses of imported workers. The Arab republics of oil could not function without them. In the case of Kuwait for instance the entire indigenous population are property owners, a small wealthy population who consume and act as managers. The real working class, is imported. This then is one aspect of the global market state.

The migration of workers from the hinterlands to the metropols is as old as capitalism, since the mechanization of production, production that begins with agriculture. Capitalism developed out of agriculture, and its displacement historically is of peasants, through enclosure, forcing them to become a new industrial proletariat.

Migration is the result of the underdevelopment of local sustainable economies, the destruction of those economies, in order to colonize the people as consumers rather than producers.










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The Morning Star

Venus: Earth's evil twin
As the first mission in a decade reaches toxic, red-hot Venus, Steve Connor asks, what can we learn from our nearest neighbour?

Gee I dunno know, maybe; "this is what global warming looks like".Mass extinctions a risk: Climate study

But something happened to Venus that turned it into the hellish place it is today. Rather than possessing oceans of liquid water and a life-sustaining atmosphere, Venus is a dry, hot place with a runaway greenhouse effect that traps heat tightly to its surface. For all its similarities to Earth, Venus is in fact a very different type of planet to its nearest neighbour. Over the next two years, Venus Express should help to explain why our close neighbour has turned from a potentially habitable haven to a place of hellish activity.

And there is that demiurge iconograhy in the headlines again; Venus = the other. Hellish, evil, satanic, etc. Venus firetrap

Of course Venus has long been associated with Lucifer, as the morning star.



Also see:

Judas the Obscure

For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing

New Age Libertarian Manifesto

Another Prehistoric Woman

My Favorite Muslim

Antinominalist Anarchism


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Rabble Needs A Union

Uh oh. Canada's left wing,progressive, trade union supported Rabble.ca has engaged in the lowest form of management sleaze; firing by email.

In this case the Babble editor; Audra Williams.

Opps wrong move, you idiots, she runs the discussion forum, babble.

Which just blew up in a mass strike by its reader/contributors in solidarity with Audra.

Oh yes and Rabble.ca is NOT unionized.

Do I sense a 'boycott'.....



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We're In Afghanistan For How Long?!

Shades of George Bush. Do I hear an echo?

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says Canadian troops will remain in Afghanistan for "years," a sure sign soldiers will stay in the war-torn nation long after the current commitment expires in 2007.

Since we are already in Afghanistan and all troop activity will be troop renewal there will never be a vote in the house. Harper has already said that.

"Our troops are already deployed in Afghanistan, have been deployed for some time and as we know, will be there in some form in the next few years," Harper told the Commons during the afternoon question period.Canada now has 2,200 troops in Kandahar, a commitment that ends in February. Harper said a decision on the next deployment would be made in the "very near" future but left little doubt that more troops would be deployed."We're there for the long term and we support the mission of our troops," Harper said.

To go to war will remain the Governments prerogative, despite Canadians opposition.

Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor isn't answering those questions either. In an interview with Maclean's, he interpreted Harper's position as an open-ended rejection of any debate or vote by MPs on troops in Afghanistan -- even if a further deployment is contemplated after the current commitment ends in February 2007. O'Connor said any future phase of Canada's armed presence in Afghanistan would be regarded as an extension of the previous Liberal government's decision to send troops over, a position fully supported by the Conservatives. "I think the Prime Minister has been pretty clear that we're not going to have a debate or vote on Afghanistan," he said. "That's his position, and I'm right in line with his position. This is a continuing commitment." Canada in combat

And without a vote you get a consensus parliament, proving that only having a No-Vote Debate is useless; Afghan debate not really a debate

All four parties voiced strong support for Canadian troops.

More articles on Afghanistan



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Afghanistan Debate Too Late

Watching the Canadian Political Parties in Parliament debate Afghanistan (noted a lot of empty seats in the house ) on CPAC, and I come to the conclusion that for all the high and mighty moral rhetoric about the rights of the Afghan people, women's rights, the need for economic development, security of person and property, the need for reconstruction, the debate is three decades late.

This should have been the debate that happened when the Mujahedin guerrillas swept out of the hills, inspired by the Iranian Islamic reactionary coup, to overthrow the Soviet allied government. An independent government that provided for education, healthcare, women's rights, and economic development that was not based upon opium. All the reasons the Conservatives have given for being in Afghanistan now. Tch, tch.

She can remember the cinemas and the picnics in the sun. She can remember the packed cafes and the student parties and the libraries with their shelves heaving with books and the clean, modern hospitals with the calm, competent doctors that made her decide she wanted to be a doctor herself. 'They were the good times,' she says. 'When the Soviet Union was in control. Since then everything has been a long dark night.' The Observer | Special reports | The Afghan women who saw freedom ...


The centuries-old burka, variations of which have been worn in the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and Asia, has often been a symbol of the struggle between competing conservative and modernist factions in Afghanistan. During the Soviet regime in the 1980s, women were not obliged to wear it. They participated actively in public life in the cities: 50 percent of government workers, 70 percent of schoolteachers and 40 percent of doctors in Kabul were women. The rural areas were more conservative, but women moved about relatively freely as professionals, aid workers, and members of the community. Afghanistan/Stories from the field-About-face for Afghan women: to ...

But of course we forget that the reason the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan was thanks to CIA funding of their overthrow of the Soviet regime, under Reagans dirty war. And the millions paid for stinger missiles to the CIA saw an expotential growth in opium production in order to pay for those missiles. The Taliban and their ilk were the direct result of America's Cold War. Then the chickens came home to roost.


Now we are claiming that we are there to defend democracy and economic development, that was destroyed by the CIA and the Mujahedin. US Brought Grief To Afghan Women

The warlords and Mujahedin in Afghanistan do not want our help, and will overthrow whatever tenuous regime is in place within the next decade. Despite all the rhetoric about pluralism and democratic values the Karzai regime has, it is ruled by Sharia law, one that denies basic democratic rights of free speech, religion etc. as has been shown over the past few months.

Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan is considered a U.S. puppet by most Afghans. His authority outside Kabul is merely symbolic. Local control in the provinces is left to a mix of opium gangsters, former Taliban commanders and tribal elders. Mark Schneider, president of International Crisis Group has said, “It's not merely about drug money financing candidates. Drug lords are candidates.”Why are we in Afghanistan?

Had we really wanted to halt the Mujahedin and the Taliban and supported a pluralist civilization in Afghanistan we would have supported the Soviet 'invasion' , instead of supporting the American 'invasion' twenty years later.


More articles on Afghanistan


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Seal Hunt Debate

I cross posted my article Your Sealing Hunt Donation At Work at Vive Le Canada where a mighty debate has ensued in the comments column. Meanwhile I have received the following email which represents the unsung voices in this debate;

I read your article in Vive la Canada. Thank you for the support and your
recognition that these animal rights groups are taking advantage of the
visual senses to make a fraudulent living. We need the support of your
farming industry and labour groups across the country. It is time this
country eliminated influence from American organizations established to
destroy our livelihood and markets while lining their pockets.
This is also a conservation issue for our ground-fish species. Our fishery
has been destroyed and our shellfish is being undermined by European tariffs
and cheap labour in China. This must stop, we have to get control of our
primary food sector. We need to protect our economic sovereignty as well.


My Seal Hunt Articles


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Marx Was Right

Marx's reserve army of labour is about to go global

The eruption of the Indian and Chinese economies could shift the balance of power sharply in favour of capital in the rich world

At first glance, the eruption of China into the world economy seems to be just the latest example of Asian countries catching up with the leading industrial powers. China's export growth has been spectacular, but so was that of Japan and Korea in earlier decades.

What makes China (and India) fundamentally different, however, are their vast labour reserves. Total employment in China is estimated at around 750 million, or about one and a half times that of all the rich economies, and nearly 10 times the combined employment of Japan and Korea. About one half of China's employment is still in agriculture; together with tens of millions of urban underemployed, they constitute a reserve army of labour of quite unprecedented magnitude.

The effect of this reserve army has been to hold down wages. After nearly 25 years of rapid economic growth, wages in China's manufacturing sector are still only 3% of the US level; after similar periods of rapid expansion in Japan and Korea, wages were some 10 times as high.

It is not too far-fetched to imagine a long period of investment stagnation in the industrialised countries, with "emerging markets" being so much more profitable. This could bring intense pressure on jobs and working conditions in Britain and elsewhere. Even sectors where relocation was not possible, like retailing or education, would be flooded with job seekers. The bargaining chips would be in the hands of capital to a degree not seen since the industrial revolution. Fluctuations in labour's share being confined to the range of 65-75% could disappear too, with Marx's rising rate of exploitation re-emerging, a century and a half after he first predicted it.

Also See:

Capitalist Crisis

Free Trade; Hong Kong & Somalia

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Another Miracle on Ice

Jesus Christ on hockey skates! Well, not exactly. But a new theory suggests Christ was walking on ice, not water

Quick sign him up for the Oilers. They need a miracle on ice.



Also see: Judas the Obscure


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