Thursday, March 01, 2007

Dion Sucked

Celine Dion not Stephane Dion.

At the Academy Awards.

Doing a pathetic souless song dedicated to the great composer Ennio Morricone.

10:52: I'm not the biggest fan of movie scores, but I have to say, Ennio Morricone elevates the genre. Take notes, please, John Williams. Celine Dion opens her mouth, my cue to get up and stretch my legs.

In fact it was so bad that while she looked like she was lip-syncing the words were actually coming out of her mouth. With lip-syncing there is at least some power, some force, some emotion because it is pre recorded. This was live.

You had to lean forward to hear her sing, and as the camera focused on her mouth I was given to think of a Kissing Gourami as she painfully formed each word with her lips as she sang. High notes ferget it. Deep contralto ferget it. It was white toast, nah make that Melba toast.

Luckily it was the Academy Awards and not American Idol, or she would never have made the cut. But then again Best Supporting Actress awards are given to those who don't make it on Idol.


Dion's performance was a flat as the other Dion's has been in Question period.

That's what happens when unilingual Francophone's try to express themselves in English by reading from a script or a teleprompter.





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Tough Guys Cry

So I went out for smokes in the wee hours of this morning and what should greet me from the covers of the Edmonton Journal and Edmonton Sun? Why nothing less than front pages showing Oiler Captain Ryan Smith crying cause he got traded.

Not because he lost his teeth on the ice, or his team sucks, or because he was touched by some cancer kids in the hospital, or because he was outraged after visiting a womens shelter. Nope he is crying because he got traded.

Shades of Oilers past it is being played like the Gretzky trade. Which was the end of the Oilers reign as NHL Champs. They became chumps until last years great play-off season.

One look at the face of the former face of the franchise and you knew.

He's the broken-hearted former heart and soul of the Edmonton Oilers.

A dozen cameramen walking backward led a sobbing Ryan Smyth through the airport yesterday, his contorted face framed by the famed mullet. It said so much before a word was spoken.


Yesterdays papers were filled with Mark the Moose Messier crying because the Oilers hung his number up. Boy these tough guys show they really are sensitive new age guys. Nice to see. But in the cheering and partying over Mess the news coverage in the local papers seem to be a day behind on the Smith trade news.

Of course it was after two days of partying remembering the Oilers Championship which coincided with Alberta's last Oil boom. Talk about flashbacks here we are 25 years later and another boom and the Moose is retiring. There goes the last of the cocaine cowboys that were the Oilers past. At least they won the Stanley Cup, the Oilers are now officially out of it.

Today the crying is over Smyth and his trade, a trade made over a measly $100,000 difference.

Unless Smytty re-signs with the Oilers in the summer (he can join any NHL club), the Oilers are relegated to second-tier status in the NHL, at least in the coming "rebuilding" years.

Impeccable sources suggest the dispute wasn't so much about money, but conditions - such as Ryan's insistence on a no-cut/no-trade clause.

And, in the end, trading Smyth was a "hockey" decision. The money was there, but GM Kevin Lowe and his boss Cal Nichols felt $5.5 to $5.8 million a year could be better used on up-and-coming talent than a five-year commitment to a player who'll get slower and less productive as he ages.


Clearly these two guys quoted above from the Edmonton Sun don't talk to each other. Whats going on here is another brilliant Ken Lowe play. He has upped the value of Ryan Smith by trading him to the Islanders, helping them make the playoffs. He waited till the absolute eleventh hour to trade him. He traded Edmonton's best player, heck their only real player this season, sans Rollie the Goalie, to a team with a chance at the Stanley Cup or at least a play off contender.

He has all but admitted the Oilers are toast this season. So in what capitalism calls value added, he has made Smith more valuable for when he becomes a free agent in less than five months.

And yep the Oilers have the money to buy out Smyth this summer. In fact Smyth has not even packed up his family or home here. He doesn't have to, his trade to the Islanders is temporary. And the Oilers got a good deal, cash and two young players to help build up the team.

Why it's a win win as business likes to call it. And pro-sports is a business after all, and the players are commodities, the league is the market.

Its a smart move for a team that has nothing else good to say about it this season. Except that we won't be seeing the City pay for play off riots fueled by the greed of Whyte Avenue bars.

And all the tears, well these too shall pass. Besides they are only crocodile tears of very big egos either hurt or humbled, but big egos none the less. Hey it's not like these guys are Albert Schweitzer. They are after all just big dumb jocks.


See:

Hockey

Oilers


Pro-Sports


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Shaft


This is too funny I just heard it on CKUA Overnight...

John Shaft
Listen

I thought it was Billy Crystal imitating Sammy Davis Jr. doing Issac Hayes; Shaft Theme.

Nope I was wrong.

It was the real Sammy Davis Jr. doing the Shaft Theme. Talk about high camp.

He isn't even singing he is reading the words, sort of like William Shatner does.

And it is on not just one album, nor two, but three!

The only way it could have been campier is if he had a Klezmer band in the background. Nope sorry then it would sound like Sammy imitating Billy.




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Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Black History Month; C.L.R. James


Today is the last day of Black History Month and this is the final biography for this year, of black radicals whom I admire and who have influenced me.

CLR James is one of the great and underrated Marxists of the 20th Century. He was a Pan-African, in the tradition of Bakunin, and influenced Aime Cesar and Franz Fanon

His Pan-Africanism called out to the oppressed not only in Africa but the Caribbean, his home, to mobilize not around the narrowness of nationalism, but to strive to see the importance of Africanism as a counter to the colonial ideology of racism and oppression.

“this independent Negro movement is able to intervene with terrific force upon the general social and political life of the nation, despite the fact that it is waged under the banner of democratic rights ... [and] is able to exercise a powerful influence upon the revolutionary proletariat, that it has got a great contribution to make to the development of the proletariat in the United States, and that it is in itself a constituent part of the struggle for socialism.”.
The C L R James Internet Archive

He was a philosopher, an author, and a cricket fan.

He always came back to cricket and soccer as the great icon of working class democracy and plurality. And he always spoke highly of his favorite British Novel; Vanity Fair.

I had the pleasure of hearing him speak at the University of Alberta on four occasions through out his life. And he was always challenged by the Trotskyists in the city because being Trotsky' former secretary, he had split with the old man over the issue of whether the Stalinist Soviet Union was a 'degenerated workers state' or if it was state capitalism. He and his political partner Raya Dunayevskaya took the latter position as the Johnston-Forest tendency.

It was during this time that the Johnston-Forest tendency reached the conclusion that as they felt there was no true socialist society existing anywhere in the world, they called for a return to Marxist philosophy. Their return to Hegel's philosophy as being the foundation of Marx's philosophy was largely due to Dunayevskaya, who was deeply immersed in both Marx's and Lenin's writings. Johnson-Forest remained in the Socialist Workers Party until 1950, exiting with the book co-authored by James and Dunayevskaya, State Capitalism and World Revolution. In the three years Johnson-Forest remained in the Socialist Workers Party, James also participated in party discussions on the American “Negro question” (as it was then called), arguing for support for separate struggles of blacks as having the potential to ignite the entire U.S. political situation, as they in fact did in the 1950’s and 1960’s.

He was a vibrant speaker, even in his final years suffering from Parkinsons. He spoke of Hegel and Lenin, with a passion and an approach that clarified complex ideas and arguments in a language that was clear and straight forward. Bereft of sloganeering or jargon. And he was always approachable after his speeches, to discuss his ideas.

I had read his Black Jacobin's which we carried at our Anarchist bookstore; Erewhon Books.
Whenever I watch the movie Burn! I think of it as an excellent example of the lessons taught by CLR James in that book.

But to hear the perpetual Old Man speak was always a treat and a joy. I was young, he was a grandfather figure. Even in his last years, fighting the spasms, he spoke with a vibrancy of life fighting death, spirit fighting oppression. He was an inspiration.

His influence in the Caribbean cannot be underestimated even today. His influence on Marxism cannot either, for he gave birth to the New Left when he and his tendency split with Trotsky and Trotskyism.

CLR James was a 20th Century Renaissance man.

West Indian émigré, political organiser, Marxist theorist, historian, literary and cultural critic, novelist, playwright and short-story writer, teacher, cricketer, sports commentator. C.L.R. James’s life work covered a strikingly wide range of interests. All of these were tied together by James’s rigorous method and integrated political vision. In the obituary published in The New York Times on May 31, 1989, his third wife and former political collaborator, Selma James, wrote:

C.L.R. James was fundamentally a political person and his great contribution was to break away from the very narrow and white male concept of what Marxist politics was. He saw the world, literature, sports, politics and music as one totality, and saw political life as embodying all of those, which was very different from the politics he walked into in the middle of the 1930s, first in England and then in the United States.



The intellectual legacy of Cyril Lionel Robert James is complex and controversial. Best known as the author of The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, James also made significant contributions in the fields of sport criticism, Caribbean history, literary criticism, Pan African politics and Marxist theory. Though many academics and political activists have attempted to do so, it is impossible to isolate any one period of James' life as his true legacy. Many have lamented the lack of "a coherent sense of James' life as an integrated whole." James' political and literary activities extended over five decades and several countries - including Trinidad, Britain, the United States and Ghana. Such a long and extensive career easily lends itself to interpretative debate. Yet any accurate assessment of James' work must begin with his origins. Above all else, James was a quintessentially Caribbean writer. Like George Lamming, Jean Rhys and many others, James had to expatriate himself to reach an audience. His eclectic pursuits developed largely in response to his circumstances - to changing conditions in world politics and his personal situation

See:

Black History Month; P.B. Randolph

Black History Month; Paul Lafargue

Trotsky


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Anarchist History of Edmonton


Over at the Carnival of Anarchy our latest carnival subject has been Anarchism in your area, so I have posted a history of Anarchism in Edmonton; Black and Redmonton





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Batteries Not Included

I haven't posted as often these past few days because my keyboard was slooooow. After slowing down as I wrote over the weekend it bit the bullet. After a couple of days of defraging, cleaning up my files, doing everything I could to get my computer to work, I realized maybe I should check the batteries in the wireless keyboard. And viola I discovered once again the righteousness of Occam's Razor; "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one." So I have replaced dem batteries and things will now get back to normal...I hope.

Monday, February 26, 2007

Trumpetlingus

The dirtiest song ever.

Don Ellis performing Pussy Wiggle Stomp from his
Live At the Fillmore album.



There are no lyrics it's all grunts groans and licking the mouthpiece. Reminiscent of the later grunting orgasms of Keith Jarrett as he plays his piano, or the Japanese Cellist I saw in the seventies play with the Edmonton Symphony, who grunted and groaned playing his cello.

I found it a very funny song when I first heard it, and was suitably impressed with Don Ellis speeded up time signature.

However what was really funny was to hear him make dirty with what trumpet players do everyday, that is warm up their lips blowing into their mouthpieces before they even begin to practice with their horn.

Don Ellis was a unique product of the sixties, he mixed jazz, rock, electronica, classical and world music before anyone else in jazz. As the Sights and Sounds documentary on Don; Electric Heart, points out.

As a trumpet player myself, Ellis was a breathe of fresh air, and was as radical as Frank Zappa, and as underrated.

Until Ellis trumpet even when it was solo or big band, Miles or Herb Albert, was not a lead instrument, the source of the sound, with the band in the background. Ellis did for trumpet what great rock guitar soloists of the sixties did for that instrument.

In that wonderful world of blog syncronicity I find that there is a revival of sorts around Don and his music with last summers re-release of Pieces of Eight and Don Ellis Band Goes Underground.

But as I discovered years later writing this article and realizing I have no Don Ellis CD's . But I do have vinyl albums.
So as a result of this article I ordered some Don Ellis from my pal Peters store; South Side Sound.

I made a special order mistakenly of Don Ellis Live At Monterey, which does not have Pussy Wiggle Stomp on it. But is does have 33 222 1 222 which after listening too I realized was the musical basis, sub structure tonality for Pussy wiggle Stomp.

Listening to this break through Live album I realised that I had never heard it before. And suddenly it was all fresh. Why and what I remembered of Don Ellis, and what made him and his band unique. They were a band, and they went beyond cutting edge in sound not only for their time, for their moment in history, but beyond. And for a white jazz big band. They dared, they broke boundaries.

And for me as a young trumpet player, who had been forced to pick an instrument to learn, because that's what you do to keep up with the Jone's. So I picked trumpet as it broke through in pop music with Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass.

But it was Don Ellis that really turned me on as to what a trumpet and a modern big band could do.

In the post modern Jazz world of the seventies, Don broke open a dam, and the flood created the new jazz, including the urban funk of Miles as well as the popularization of Jazz fusion of Chick Corea. It was the new sound of classic rock meeting classic jazz.

Thanks to Don Ellis.

Don Ellis Collection

Don(ald Johnson) Ellis was a jazz trumpeter, drummer, bandleader, touring performer, recording artist, composer, and arranger. Born in Los Angeles in on July 25, 1934, he died of a heart attack at his home in North Hollywood on December 17, 1978. Ellis studied composition at Boston University (BMus 1956) and spent a year as a graduate student at UCLA, where he later taught. Ellis played with a variety of prestigious big bands and jazz groups, including those of Charlie Barnet, Sam Donahue, Maynard Ferguson, Lionel Hampton, Woody Herman, Ralph Marterie, Ray McKinley, Stan Kenton, George Russell, and Claude Thornhill. He also led big bands, jazz orchestras, trios, quartets, and other small combos of his own. He performed with the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington, DC, under the direction of Gunther Schuller, the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Leonard Bernstein, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the direction of Zubin Mehta.

Ellis is perhaps best known for his unusual and complex meters, amplified trumpet, electronic distortion, and quarter-tone melodic structures. He often used 9/4, 5/8, 7/8, 9/8, and 19/4 time signatures. He played a quarter-tone trumpet with four valves, which gave subtlety and microtonal effects to his music. In later years, he played a "superbone," a combination valve and slide trombone. Ellis received Grammy nominations for Live at Monterey (1967), Electric Bath (1968), The New Don Ellis Band Goes Underground (1969), Don Ellis at Fillmore (1970), and "Theme from The French Connection" (1972). "Theme from The French Connection" won the Grammy for "Best Instrumental Arrangement" in 1972.

Don Ellis Web Archive

DonEllisMusic.com -- Dedicated to the Music and Life of Jazz ...

Before his untimely death in 1978 at the young age of 44, Don Ellis was one of the most creative and innovative jazz musicians of all time. In a career span of less than 25 years, Don Ellis distinguished himself as a trumpeter, drummer, composer, arranger, recording artist, author, music critic, and music educator. However, Don Ellis is probably best remembered for his work as a big band leader. His orchestra, which was active from 1966-78, achieved enormous popular appeal at a time when the influence of big band music was noticeably fading.

Don Ellis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Don Ellis: Information from Answers.com

CD Baby: SAM FALZONE: A Family Sweet

While employed as a school teacher in 1965, Falzone met Don Ellis who was in residence at the University of Buffalo - a meeting that would rechart Sam's life for the next twelve years.

Ellis encouraged Falzone to begin writing and invited him to join his orchestra, for which he was to serve as performer, composer, and road manager from 1965-1976. The Don Ellis Orchestra not only was one of the most exciting and persistently innovative large jazz ensembles of the time, but also attracted a large and enthusiastic following. Falzone was frequently featured as a soloist ("Salvatore Sam" on Live at the Fillmore, "Pussy Wiggle Stomp" on Autumn) and composer/arranger ("Get It Together" on Tears of Joy, "Go Back Home" on Soaring, "Put It Where You Want It" on Connection).



Don Ellis at Fillmore
by Don Ellis
Sale from
$13.81
This is a crazy and consistently riotous two-disc set that... More features the Don Ellis Orchestra at its height. The 20-piece orchestra (with trumpeter Ellis doubling on drums along with a regular drummer and two percussionists) often used electronic devices (such as ring modulators) at the time to really distort its sound. When coupled with odd time signatures and such exuberant soloists as Ellis, trombonist Glenn Ferris, tenor saxophonist John Klemmer (showcased on the remarkable "Excursion II"), guitarist Jay Graydon, altoists Fred Selden and Lonnie Shetter, and tenor Sam Falzone, the results are quite memorable. Highlights of the date include "Final Analysis" (which contains a countless number of false endings), a bizarre rendition of "Hey Jude," and an often hilarious remake of "Pussy Wiggle Stomp." In 2005, the Wounded Bird label reissued this session on CD for the first time. Unfortunately, no bonus tracks were available. ~ Scott Yanow & Al Campbell, All Music Guide

DON ELLIS THE FINAL ANALYSIS

A miscellany of quotes made over the years by and about Don Ellis ... The late Leonard Feather once prophesied that Don Ellis would become the Stan Kenton


Don Ellis on YouTube



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As a huge fan of Don Ellis it's really special for me to get a chance to play his music this one in particular is one of my favorite tunes. It combines Don's "out there" writing and monumental trumpet lines reminiscent of Maynard Ferguson o (more)
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Added: 1 month ago in Category: Music
From: Fwlr2004
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Don Ellis
07:11
This is Don Ellis playing the song
"New Horizons"
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Added: 6 months ago in Category: Music
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Don Ellis MP3 Downloads - Don Ellis Music Downloads


Favorite Oddball Song Titles

Jazz Blogs


A group of Jazz blogs that rip music and do reviews of the hot jazz period of the late sixties and early seventies.


My articles on music:

Revolutionary Music Flashback

Happy Birthday Mozart

Soul of a City

Before MTV

Nazanin

Happy Birthday Bob

Daniel Barenboim's Dream

Rich Man's War

Classical Rock

Ennio Morricone A Fistful of Composer



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Sunday, February 25, 2007

Padrone Me Is This Alberta

The boom that is bringing thousands of temporary foreign workers to Alberta is also attracting recruiters hoping to profit from the demand. Some recruiters may be breaking the rules by charging foreign workers for the privilege of earning a paycheque in Alberta.

It's called Padronism and it's the soure of old world Immigration to North America in the fin de sicle of the 19th Cnetury and the early years of last Century.

Rules? Rules? What rules, in Alberta we have no stinking rules for business. That's why the government got out of the business of regulating business.


We got into a situation where just anybody hangs up a shingle and calls themselves a consultant, simply by virtue of the fact they may know some people abroad and think that they can link them to employers," said Edmonton Castle Downs MLA Thomas Lukaszuk.

Even worse, says the Alberta Federation of Labour, no one is enforcing the law, creating a situation ripe for exploitation. "It's like the Wild West," said AFL president Gil McGowan. "We need a sheriff to bring some order to the situation. Unfortunately, neither our federal or provincial governments seem willing to put on the badge."

And we wouldn't be having a labour shortage if we did not have an unregulated, unplanned development boom in Fort McMurray.

Unlike his counterparts in Ottawa and Victoria, Stelmach doesn't see the political potential in going green. On the contrary, he's using the issue to titillate the NEP base, a la Ralph Klein. Speaking in downtown Calgary this week, Stelmach said Alberta is not prepared to make any grand sacrifices or interventions to cut greenhouse gas emissions. "My government does not believe in interfering in the free marketplace," he said.

In Alberta and BC the new internal Labour Immigration agreement (TILMA) opens up both provinces to influxes of workers not just from their respective provinces but from across North America because it is NAFTA compliant.

And with our new Federal Minister of Immigration and Human Resoucrces being pro-temporary workers, is allowing an extension of two years to work in Canada.

While the move was applauded by stressed western Canadian businesses desperate for foreign workers, it was panned by labour leaders worried about Canadians' jobs and workers' rights.

"Employers shouldn't be put in the driver's seat when it comes to who gets into the country, because their interests aren't necessarily in line with the broader Canadian public," said Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour.

The new temporary worker extension was announced the same day that the Business Councils of North America met with Mexican, Canadian and American politicians in Ottawa to discuss the North American Security and Prosperity treaty. Meetings which were held in secret.

This exploitation will continue until these workers are unionized.

It is forward to the past, backwards to the future.


Montreal's King of Italian Labour: A Case Study of Padronism

Robert F. Harney

Abstract


"Montreal's King of Italian Labour" concerns the activities of Montreal padrone, Antonio Cordasco, who served as an intermediary between Canadian big business and Italian migrant labour during the early part of the century, in relation to the nature of padronism itself. The padrone's activities extended both along the communications network between European labour and North American industry and into many aspects of Italian life in Canada. Although the dishonesty and corruption of the padrone are clear, it is also clear that it was not the migrant labourers who objected to his work, or indeed, when it suited them, the Canadian government itself. Big business in Canada, backed by the government, needed transient labour and it was the actual immigrant policy of the Canadian government, the wish to make use of Italian labour but to prevent it from turning into permanent immigration, which made Cordasco's role possible. The migrant labourers, looking for means to make money and then return to their hometown, were happy with the padrone as long as he supplied the jobs promised them. It is shown then that the padrone came under attack only when the needs of Canadian big business did not satisfy the requirements of migrant labourers. Cordasco was destroyed, in the end, not by the Canadian government's concern for migrant labour, but by a more practical dilemma, that is, the existence of hundreds of labourers caught in Canada without work and without means of returning to their homeland.

Captive Workforce: Human Trafficking in America and the Effort to End It.


Prior to the middle of the twentieth century, “human trafficking” in its modern
sense was referred to by a wide variety of terms, from “Padronism” to “White Slavery.”
In the present day, “human trafficking” has not only been used to describe a wide range
of activities with respect to the commodification of humans, but other terms, from
“modern-day slavery,” to “involuntary servitude’ have been loosely used to describe
situations that qualify as “human trafficking” under the United Nations’ definition. Thus
because the terms “human trafficking,” “slavery” and “forced labor” have been and
continue to be used with enormous variation, any study on the subject has a tendency to
be enormously confusing. For my part, I attempt to be as clear and consistent as possible
in the application of terms throughout my work. However, readers should be aware that
there is a great deal of over-lap between each of these concepts, and thus any discussion
of the subject is bound to contain semantic slippages and blurred conceptual boundaries.

Rural Work, Household Subsistence, and the North American Working Class

This essay examines seasonal rural work as part of the survival strategies of rural and urban households and individuals in the Midwestern United States. Using workers' memoirs and data from government investigations, the lives of so-called “hobo” workers are examined in relation to communities, labor markets, gender and sexuality, and class formation. “Hobo” was a colloquial term for seasonal migrant workers; most were young, immigrant and US-born men of European ancestry employed in crop harvesting, logging, mining, railroad construction, and other short-term jobs. The seasonal labor market drew together a heterogeneous workforce including farm owners, farm laborers, displaced industrial workers, and young men seeking adventure, as well as criminals, marginally employable drunkards, and disabled men. The essay traces the lives of individual workers, explains labor market structures, and places the mostly-male seasonal workforce in the context of families and communities. The history of rural work in the Midwestern US confounds notions of class formation that posit a one-way trip from peasant to worker, and suggests the ways in which theories of class formation have leaned too heavily on an unexamined image of rural life.

JSTOR: Reinventing Free Labor: Immigrant Padrones and Contract

Reinventing Free Labor: Padrones and Immigrant Workers in the North American West, 1880-1930. By Gunther Peck (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. xiii plus 293 pp. $54.95/cloth. $19.95/paperback). In this rigorous and readable study, Gunther Peck provides a new perspective on an archetype of immigration history--the padrone, the immigrant labor contractor who held great power over his workers by controlling their employment. Early twentieth century reformers and some historians have viewed the padrones as villainous Old World relics, corrupt throwbacks to feudal hierarchy and deference trying to retain their power and stature amidst the rapid dynamic of modern industrial capitalism. Peck's padrones emerge as "entrepreneurs of space," providing critical links and a variety of functions in the volatile transnational labor markets that spread out across the North American continent.

See

Temporary Workers

Labour

Unions

NAFTA

AFL






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Friday, February 23, 2007

Anti-Terrorism Act Abolished

I guess this takes the wind out of the Conservatives erroneous claims that the Anti-Terrorism Act is supported even by the Supreme Court.

This decision was unanimous.

Court strikes down security certificates

The Supreme Court of Canada

Federal Government has one year to craft a new system, court says

We didn't have to wait for March 1 either for the sunset clauses, which were the most offensive assault on our civil liberties, to expire.

Mr. Harper said it was "dangerous" to defeat the measures.


"I can assure you that we have all kinds of security information that indicates that there are very real circumstances under which these provisions could be used," he said. "I think the facts are clear here. It's a simple question of whether we have the leadership as a Parliament to do the right thing when we have to do the right thing, regardless of the kind of pressure we may feel from our caucuses."


Once again the Judiciary defends the civil liberties of Canadians that the State would eliminate for the good of "Law and Order" that is their police and spies.

As for Harper, yesterday he recruited families of the Air India tragedy to bolster his case and further isolate the Liberals. He cited RCMP plans to use the anti-terror law's compulsory hearings to force reluctant witnesses to testify in the ongoing investigation of the 1985 terrorist bombing. In short, civil rights should continue to be suspended to compensate for shoddy police work. The RCMP bungled its first investigation by destroying evidence; it has had three years since the acquittals of two prime suspects to invoke investigative hearings. Why hasn't it? Its defenders say there wasn't time; witnesses are hard to locate. Or is it just that the RCMP, or any police force, does not want to give up blunt tools that may offend soft-on-crime whiners, but could some day be useful?



See:

Anti-Terrorism Act


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CN not hurting


CN awaits the State to legislate UTU workers back to work. They have made no effort to deliver just in time.

Rather they would sacrifice Canadians needs on the backs of their workers. It is after all a sure fire way of increasing your stock price. And your salary.

Ironically 'precision railroad' sounds a lot like precision model trains, and that is how Hunter Harrison has been running CN. Like his own toy railroad in his rec room. Or should that be wreck room?

The bottom line: Did CN push too hard?
In his four years at the throttle, Hunter Harrison has revolutionized how CN Rail does business, driving productivity, boosting the stock price by 150 per cent and making $56-million in 2005 for himself in his pursuit of a "precision railroad."

Five day stock price during strike

CNR (Canadian National Railway Company )
Last: $54.45
Change: +0.51 (+0.95%)
Revenue (ttm): $7,716.0M
EPS: 3.91
Market Cap: $27,493.13M
Time: 4:23pm ET



The strike is unlikely to have much of an impact on Canada's economy if it's settled within a month, Robert Hogue, a Bank of Montreal economist, said today in a report. ``While the current impact on business and many remote communities can be heavy, much of the broader economic toll, if any, will only surface if the strike carries on significantly longer,'' Hogue said.


The government is using the pretext of inconvenience to bring in Back To Work Legislation today. But inconvenience by whom?

Blaming the workers instead of CN which refuses to bargain. Notice the State always brings in " back to work" legislation, never back to bargaining legislation. And notice who is returning to work for the good of the country.

Lee Rawsthorne of the United Transportation Union local in Winnipeg said the returnees include about 150 workers in Winnipeg, roughly 30 in Dauphin and about six in Brandon.

Workers in Melville, Sask., are also reported to have laid down their picket signs.

Rawsthorne said the national union may not approve of the return to the job, but he said workers felt it was the right thing to do.

"It was never our intention to damage our country," he told CBC News. "It was to try to negotiate a deal.

See

CN


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