Thursday, October 19, 2006

Bi-Partisanship



Here is the reality of American political bi-partisanship.

Congressmen say sea lion hunt necessary
Sea lions are protected by federal law. But Republican Doc Hastings and Democrat Brian Baird said they will introduce a bill that would let officials from the two states, as well as American Indians, quickly obtain permits to kill a limited number of sea lions that are going after salmon in the Columbia. Michael Garrity, associate director of American Rivers, an environmental group, objects to the bill, saying dams and the degradation of salmon species' habitat is more to blame for their decline in numbers. "It seems like whenever the federal government's failures to restore these salmon become obvious, you often see relatively minor problems like sea lions scapegoated," Garrity said.


Both parties of capitalism share a common species chauvinism that is based on viewing ecosystems as 'resources'. In this case pitting species in an eco-system under destruction by capitalism, against each other claiming that the sea lions are the reason for the destruction of salmon stocks.

Not unlike those that blame the seals on the Atlantic coast for the destruction of the cod stocks when we know it is offshore industrial fisihing trawlers from Europe that have overfished the grand banks.


In the case of west coast salmon it is again a case of commercial overfishing, and environmental degradation of their spawning grounds thanks to commercial logging and mining.

The decline in the Orca population that feeds off sea mammals like the Sea Lion
are in decline. The two types of Orca have a symbiotic relationship with each other and are crucial to the eco-reality of salmon stocks. Orca's that eat sea mammals provide reduction in competition for Orca's that eat salmon.

See:

Our Whales Are Missing

High Crimes On The High Sea's

After Montreal A View From the Past

Ecology=Equality

Seals

Social Ecology




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Daves Not Here, Man


We will never know...Marijuana may slow progression of Alzheimer's....because the Tories canceled the research into medical marijuana use...

For the younger generation Dave's not here, man is a comedy routine by Cheech and Chong. It makes fun of the myth that marijuana causes short term memory loss. Which is funny in this context because a drug that has been seen as causing short term memory loss is being used to end long term memory loss.

Tommy Chong was just released from jail in the U.S. is a former Calgarian, just like Stevie boy. He was busted for selling water pipes, somethng legal in Canada right now. But in his home town of Calgary the wife of King Ralph reccomended banning drug paraphenalia in her report on crystal meth.



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Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Was It Something I Said?

Garth TurnerThe guy who is closest to being a libertarian in the Conservative party gets the Harper Boot.

Garth Turner suspended from Tory caucus
Ontario MP Garth Turner has been suspended from the federal Conservative caucus for criticizing the prime minister. Government House leader Rahim Jaffer said Wednesday that Turner was ousted on the recommendation ...
Outspoken MP Turner suspended from Tory caucus

Strangely his weblog: The Turner Report is now listed as 403 Forbidden. Censureship under Canada's Man of Steel; the Harper is total. To read it you have to goggle cache it.

Was it something he said? Like this;

While many coming to this blog disagree, my position on Tuesday – when the Harper Administration releases its plan – will be that climate change is the greatest all-round threat this country faces, and that my nation’s government should not let us down with half-measures, a curtsy to junk science or a sell-out to the tar sands.

Or maybe this:

NDP seeks moratorium on income trusts
"It's time for a review," added Conservative MP Garth Turner, a former federal minister of National Revenue. The comments follow the release of a report by tax expert Jack Mintz that once BCE's Bell Canada and Telus Corp. are converted into trusts, the loss in tax revenues will reach $1.1 billion a year, up from what is currently $700 million.

Or this:

Tories under fire over gay-marriage plan
The proposed bill came under fire immediately Wednesday from opposition members, advocacy groups and even those within the Conservative caucus. Tory MP Garth Turner said that such a law could be the "slippery slope" toward protecting bigotry and intolerance, and fellow Tory Art Hanger said Charter protections of religious freedom are "cast in stone," so another law may be unnecessary.

Or this:

Splitting retirement income not a high priority
Conservative Party policy espouses the goal of creating tax fairness for families and reviewing the idea of income splitting for senior couples. Yet, the day before 31 MPs from all parties dropped into a conference on pension splitting this week, Flaherty told reporters: "It's not a high priority, I can tell you." Yet, the income-splitting proposal would benefit more seniors than the Tories' costly capital gains promise. And Halton MP Garth Turner says he found many voters raised the income-splitting issue while he was campaigning for election last winter. It was Turner who co-hosted the Pension Tension conference Tuesday.


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Second Thoughts

Let's see they raise the age of consent and drop the age for adult criminal charges. But that contradiction appears to have lit a lightbulb in their dimwitted dinosaur brains.Tories back away from putting young kids into justice system
The Conservative government plans to introduce a new law in the coming months for harsher treatment of young offenders, but Justice Minister Vic Toews is backing away from the prospect of bringing children as young as 10 into the criminal justice system. Toews, who publicly mused this summer the courts should handle 10- and 11-year-olds who run afoul of the law, told CanWest News Service Tuesday there is little appetite among his provincial counterparts to lower to age of criminal responsibility.

Of course in Afghanistan the same Tory Government is using our armed forces to train children to be killers.

See:

Toews

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Children of War


In Afghanistan Canadian Troops are using children to act as police while they build roads in Kandahar. Standing on Guard for Thee

Someone should inform War Child that they don't have to look just at Africa for this illegal and immoral use of children as soldiers. Now War Child can bring their protest home.

The roads the soldiers are building
are NOT infrastructure for the Afghani's but are needed for military purposes. Because of course there is no money for Afghani' infrastructure projects in Kandahar.

In fact the roads are being built in order to avoid landmines, which have killed more Canadian soldiers than the Taliban have. And of course cleaning up Landmines internationally is another Canadian campaign, one that has been unable to act in Afghanistan for the past year since the Mission changed from Peacekeeping to a counterinsurgency war.

'Billions more needed' for children in war zones

Save the Children said that in war-torn areas schools are often destroyed or commandeered by troops, and their teachers killed or forced to flee. Without the "safe place" that schools provide for children, youngsters become vulnerable to abuse and are often recruited to fight, it added.

According to the report, in 2003 more than half of armed conflicts around the world used fighters who were under the age of 15. In the past decade, 2 million children have been killed in armed conflict, 6 million have been injured and another 20 million have been forced to flee their homes. "Given that most conflicts last for more than 10 years, children are spending their whole childhoods living in fear and without access to education," it said.


Afghanistan



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Not A Libertarian Among Them

The Blogging Tories are at it again, they are now doing a blog burst to oppose the reinstatement of funding for the Court Challenges Program. It is the same kind of campaign they launched in favour of cuts to the Status of Women. As usual these social conservative dweebs prove their is not a libertarian bone in their body politic.

In ideological goose step with their Republican counterparts south of the border, they forget that the CCP is actually a program that benefits the citizens of this country, not all of whom are Taxpayers (that appleation is used by the right to designate businessmen). In fact it allows the average Canadian to challenge the State. A unique program indeed. And one of the few libertarian policies to come out of the Trudeau government. Right up there with the right to abortion, no fault divorce, and gay rights.


Of course these idiots make the usual rhetorical excuses such as the program is for 'special interest groups". And of course all special interest groups=left wing.

For the right wing they complain that they don't get funding to OPPOSE Supreme court challenges. Well duh. The fact is that the social conservatives who oppose abortion, gay marriage, gay rights, womens rights, etc. want the state to fund their religious lobbies to side with the State. Can you say contradiction. Of course these church based and right wing charitable lobbies are TAXFREE. Something they forget to mention.

Except that the Conservative government is now looking at legislation for aboriginal womens property rights which was a direct result of the Court Challenge program.....hmmmm can you say hypocrisy.

Of course aboriginal peoples are a 'special interest' for the average right winger. Who wants to strip them of their 'special status' , that is they own the land we are on, and make them just like us cause they are NOT taxpayers now.

Cutting court challenges program would be "devastating" for r Aboriginals: program director

Badiou said that as "historically disadvantaged groups," Aboriginals would stand to lose much if funding was cut off entirely.

"As disadvantaged groups, they often do not have the funds. This program provides them with a voice to be heard," he said. Referring to program data, Badiou said that First Nations communities do take advantage of the program. In the year ending 2006, he said, Aboriginal applicants represented 19 % of all applicants received since 1994, or 266 total applicants. Of those, a total of 185 cases were funded by the Court Challenges Program, representing about 21% of all applicants. This is no insignificant amount, he says.

Significant cases involving Aboriginal equality rights have been funded through the program, said Badiou, pointing to annual report data.

For example, the program funded the Corbiere case where an Aboriginal woman challenged Indian Act provisions that prohibit band members living off- reserve from participating in Band elections. Due to a shortage of land and housing, many members of the Batchewana Indian Band in Northern Ontario often must live off-reserve. Particularly affected by this provision are women and children reinstated under Bill C-31 who have never had the opportunity to live on the reserve. A number of persons in this position challenged the residency requirement as contrary to the equality guarantees in section 15 of the Charter. The court would eventually agree that the band provisions did violate the off-reserve band member's equality rights and the requirement was struck down.

In the L'Hirondelle case, a number of Indian Bands had brought a challenge to Bill C-31. This Bill amended the Indian Act to oblige Indian Bands to include in their membership persons who, for various reasons, have been excluded from such membership. The case has tremendous implications for Aboriginal women who were particularly targeted by C-31 when they lost their Indian status and other descendants of band members who had lost theirs. The case has been to trial at least once is still working its way through the courts.

And despite the Arar debacle, which the Law and Order Tories continue to refuse to address RCMP/CSIS wrong doing, it appears that another vunerable group of Canadians will also be denied access to challenge the State, refugees.

Cuts to Program Shut Out Refugee Appeals
But penniless refugees wronged by CSIS will not be able to challenge the spy organization anymore using the Court Challenges Program. Last month, the program, together with 15 others the Conservatives consider a waste of taxpayers' money, was axed. The Treasury Board cut $5.6 million from the program. The government said the cuts to the programs will save taxpayers' $2 billion.


See:

Property Rights


Aboriginal

Right Wing



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Money For Big Auto None For Workers

The McGuinty Liberals can throw millions at the auto industry but when it comes to a living wage for Ontario workers.... Liberals reject call for $10/hr. minimum wage

And like conservatives everywhere they use this excuse...."Raising the minimum wage to $10 would hurt more poor people than it would help because employers would have to cut staff, Finance Minister Greg Sorbara said" Gee he sounds like the Communist appointed leader in Hong Kong.

Increased minimum wages means women on welfare can actually find work that pays.....
Minimum Wage - Canadian Social Research Links

Perspectives on Labour and Income - September 2006 online edition
(PDF file - 419K, 17 pages)
The Core-Age Labour Force / Minimum wage workers in 2005
September 22, 2006
The feature article in the September 2006 online edition of Perspectives on Labour and Income, released today, is "The core-age labour force." The article examines labour force participation rates of women and men aged 25 to 54 over the last 10 years. After rising steadily from 1995 to 2004, participation rates for both sexes declined very slightly yet persistently from 2004 into the first half of 2006. However, it is too early to say if this is the beginning of a trend. One of the study's notable findings is the strong growth in the number of women with children (especially very young ones) entering or staying in the labour market.
This issue also includes an update on minimum wage workers for 2005. ("In 2005, some 587,000 individuals worked at or below the minimum wage set by their province.")



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Which Is True

Here is an example of the classic case of the glass is half empty, the glass is half full....

1 in 12 unhappy in their work: Study

Most Canadians are satisfied with their job: StatsCan

But as I said yesterday this headline says it all:
Work sucks!

See:

Class War




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Our Whales Are Missing

Commercial fishing of Salmon off the west coast is not just problematic for indigenous peoples as well as fishers, it is problematic for Orca's as well. There are two species of Orca's one eats sea mammals the other eats salmon. Orca's are intelligent, matriarchical in social structure and from the experience's we had with the individualist Orca; Luna we have found they use language to communicate between each other and with other species. They are intelligent, and learn. Now three of them of are missing off the coast of Seattle.

Researchers: 3 killer whales missing for weeks, feared dead

By PEGGY ANDERSEN
ASSOCIATE PRESS WRITER

SEATTLE -- Three young adult killer whales - members of the family groups that spend their summers chasing salmon around Washington's San Juan Islands - have not been seen in weeks and are feared dead, researchers said Tuesday.

One of the orcas leaves a 4-month-old orphan, whose care apparently has been taken over by another female.

The three salmon-eating orca families that frequent the state's inland waters are J, K and L pods. J-pod spends virtually the entire year in the waters north of Puget Sound, while the other two groups head out to the open ocean in winter.

The pods, called the southern resident population, are unique in diet, language and DNA, and were declared an endangered species last year, with a recovery goal of 120 animals. If the three missing whales have died, the three pods will total 87 orcas, with just 23 reproductive females.

The missing mother, K-28, is from K-pod, said Kelley Balcomb-Bartok, a research assistant at the Center for Whale Research in Friday Harbor, which tracks the pods and maintains photo-identification records of each animal.

A photo of K-28 taken Sept. 1 shows a dip behind her blowhole, which indicates illness or malnutrition, he said. The 12-year-old female may also have had difficulties related to the birth.


K-28 has not been seen since, though researchers have had other encounters with the group and have seen her calf swimming close to other family members. Her baby, K-39, likely is being cared for by an older female, K-41, Balcomb-Bartok said.

Orcas are not fully weaned until about age 2, and researchers worry the calf, described as "healthy and precocious," may not survive the winter.

The two other missing orcas are from L-pod: L43, 34-year-old mother of three last seen Sept. 2; and L-71, a 20-year-old male last seen July 15 despite 25 encounters with L-pod.

"We've spent weeks searching for these individuals, we've spent weeks waiting," Balcomb-Bartok said.

Since the two pods leave the state's sheltered waters for much of the year, "Our concern is the coast - what's out there?" he said. "Are there salmon runs they used to rely on that are reduced dramatically? ... Maybe in some areas they either are no longer available or they're in such short supply they're not sustaining the population."

Many of the region's salmon runs also are listed as endangered or threatened, their numbers down to about 10 percent of historical highs.

While orca calf survival rates have been problematic for years, "losing adults is cause for concern," Balcomb-Bartok said. He noted an earlier death to illustrate the risks: "When J-18 washed up off Vancouver Island several years ago he was sterile and a high level of toxins had eaten their way through his system."

Whale experts worry about the effects of pollutants such as polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs - an industrial product banned since the 1970s but persistent in the environment - and fire-retardant polybrominated diphenyl ethers, which are still produced.

"All those big boys," Balcomb-Bartok said. "Things that are insidious in the environment as a whole."

Federal action in response to the orca's endangered listing is still being decided. The National Marine Fisheries Service has proposed declaring as critical habitat virtually all the state's inland waters, except shorelines where water is less than 20 feet deep and areas near military installations.

Developers and agricultural interests have already challenged the draft proposal in federal court, contending the whales are part of a larger healthy population and do not warrant special protections - a stance initially taken by NMFS but reversed by a federal judge whose ruling led to the current listing .

A Whale of an Imitation

Listen to or download the audio filemp3 or audio fileOgg files. external site - links will open in a new window (what's ogg?)
Luna
Luna - Courtesy, Rachael Griffin

Remember Luna? He was the young killer whale runaway who took up residence in Nootka Sound, off Vancouver Island. He gained fame for seeking out the company of boats, sea planes and local people, and all attempts to lure him back to sea and reunite him with his pod were in vain. Eventually he got into an accident with a tugboat propeller and died. But because Orcas are such social creatures and tend to stay with their family pods their whole lives, Luna’s behaviour when he was alone gave scientists an opportunity to learn more about the implications of social living. Andrew Foote, a biologist from the University of Durham, studied hours of recordings of Luna and compared them to the recordings of Luna’s family pod. Part of his goal was to figure out, not just what killer whales are saying, but how they learn to speak. He thinks Luna’s vocal legacy, which includes not only his family’s sounds, but also those of other family pods and even imitations of sea lion barks, is good evidence that killer whales aren’t born with a full repertoire of sounds, but actually learn them from their surroundings.

Related Links

external site - links will open in a new windowStudy in Biology Letters
external site - links will open in a new windowLab at the University of Durham, where Mr. Foote did his research
external site - links will open in a new windowUniversity of Aberdeen in Scotland, where Mr. Foote is doing his PhD on Atlantic killer whales
external site - links will open in a new windowLuna tribute page




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The New Atlantis

In Malta they aren't waiting to find the real Atalantis they are building one of their own.

Atlantis: A computer-generated image of how the concrete megalithic temple will look in the proposed marine park.

A highly innovative marine tourist attraction out at sea is being proposed by a group of investors who include an operator in the fish farming industry, a hotelier and members of the diving community. The attraction, which is to be called Marine Adventure Park, would enable divers to swim with fish in an "aquarium" nearly the size of a football pitch that would be situated a kilometre off Ras il-Griebeg, outside Mellieha Bay.



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