Monday, November 26, 2007

More Silly Censorship


You would think that those who want to censor books and movies would learn that it always backfires and simply acts as a form of advertising for the particular work in question.

The Dufferin-Peel Catholic board is conducting an informal review of The Golden Compass because concerns have been raised about the children's fantasy book in the neighbouring Halton board.

"It warrants us having a look at it," said community relations manager Bruce Campbell, adding staff members have been assigned to read the book and basically provide a plot synopsis "so we understand what it's about."

The Halton Catholic District School Board has pulled The Golden Compass – an award-winning book set to be released as a major motion picture next month – from library shelves after a complaint.

The other two books in the trilogy by British author Philip Pullman, which have been compared to the Harry Potter series, are also off the shelves for now, but available if students ask for them.

The Halton board is convening a committee to review the book and recommend whether it should be available to children.

Halton Catholic elementary principals were directed not to distribute the December Scholastic flyer because The Golden Compass is available to order.

A board-issued memo says the books are "apparently written by an atheist where the characters and text are anti-God, anti-Catholic and anti-religion."

In the U.S., Catholic groups are urging a boycott of the movie and accuse the books of being anti-Christian and promoting atheism.


Actually even if the author is an atheist and 'anti-god' they are not particular about whose god they are opposed to. Thus to claim the author is Anti-Christian misses the point, if he is Anti-GOD, anti-theism,he is Anti-Muslim, Anti-Judaic, Anti-Buddhist,Anti-Hindu, Anti-Giant Flying Spaghetti Monster, Anti-Cuthulu, etc. etc.

It is a fantasy novel. Get over it.

And as long as public funds pay for Catholic Schools then they are 'public' schools and should not be allowed to censor 'publicly' available reading materials. If you want papal dispensation for your library you can always go private.

Of course in the U.S. they are private schools. And so this is another political campaign by the right wing fundamentalist lobby from the U.S. And of course the atheist threat is much exaggerated as we find out in this article from the Boston Globe. Mr. Kaufman is more of a religious antiestablishmentarian than an atheist. But to the Catholic church it is all heresy.

ON DEC. 7 New Line Cinema will release "The Golden Compass," starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, the first movie in a trilogy with the massive budget and family blockbuster potential of "The Lord of the Rings."

Yet, even before it opens, "The Golden Compass" finds itself at the center of a controversy. The Catholic League, a conservative religious organization, launched a campaign on Oct. 9 calling on all Catholics to boycott the film. The group also published a lengthy pamphlet attacking the story and distributed the pamphlet to Catholic schools across the country. Other groups have joined the fray, including the evangelical nonprofit Focus on the Family, whose magazine Plugged In urged parents to keep kids out of theaters showing the film. And the Christian blogosphere is alive with warnings not only about the movie trilogy, but also about the series of books it is based on.

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, charges that the books, known as the "His Dark Materials" trilogy, are deeply anti-Christian. Donohue says he fears that the film will inspire parents to purchase "His Dark Materials" for their fantasy-hungry kids on Christmas, unaware that the third book of the series, "The Amber Spyglass," climaxes in an epic battle to destroy God. Some of the book's villains are referred to as the Magisterium - a term used to refer to the Catholic hierarchy. The British author, Philip Pullman, has said openly that he is an atheist, and Donohue charges that his books are designed to eradicate faith among children.

But this is a sad misreading of the trilogy. These books are deeply theological, and deeply Christian in their theology. The universe of "His Dark Materials" is permeated by a God in love with creation, who watches out for the meekest of all beings - the poor, the marginalized, and the lost. It is a God who yearns to be loved through our respect for the body, the earth, and through our lives in the here and now. This is a rejection of the more classical notion of a detached, transcendent God, but I am a Catholic theologian, and reading this fantasy trilogy enhanced my sense of the divine, of virtue, of the soul, of my faith in God.

The book's concept of God, in fact, is what makes Pullman's work so threatening. His trilogy is not filled with attacks on Christianity, but with attacks on authorities who claim access to one true interpretation of a religion. Pullman's work is filled with the feminist and liberation strands of Catholic theology that have sustained my own faith, and which threaten the power structure of the church. Pullman's work is not anti-Christian, but anti-orthodox.


And of course the novel and the movie has witches in it, which is always a good reason for Christian fundamentalists to bash fantasy novels.

Witches who rule the northern skies and creatures that manifest themselves as people’s souls have been brought to life by the latest special effects in The Golden Compass, the year’s most eagerly awaited film. These are shown here for the first time after Philip Pullman declared that the screen version of his classic story lived up to what he was trying to achieve when he put pen to paper.
And while the Toronto Star Article first quoted above about the Dufferin school district claims that the author confesses he wants to 'Kill God' here is what he really said.

One movie getting maximum publicity is "The Golden Compass," starring megastars Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig. The film opens Dec. 7, and what a film it is for the Christmas season.

Cineastes should know it is an adaptation of the first volume of Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy. Though Mr. Pullman's sales don't come close to those of J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame, they are well into the millions. A literate and gifted author, he is not conventional regarding religious matters.

If you want the full, fascinating details of why you might not put his works at the top of Santa's list for young children, check out the well-documented article "How Hollywood Saved God," by Hanna Rosin, in the December Atlantic.

In the first paragraph, Miss Rosin quotes Mr. Pullman referring to C.S. Lewis' classic Chronicles of Narnia children's series as "morally loathsome." He also told her that his work was Narnia's moral opposite: "That's the Christian one. And mine is the non-Christian one." Despite his take on religion, Mr. Pullman's stories are marvelously inventive.

Non-Christian does not equate with Anti-Christian. And being Anti-Church, as in Catholic Church also does not equate with being Anti-Christian, just ask Hus, Wycliffe, or Luther. And the smear about killing god in his novels is being promoted of course by Christians.

And when you dig underneath the political discourse it always all about equating the 'other' religion or even anti-religion as being a lure of Satan.

One of my favorite writers and philosophers, Joseph Campbell, says in his tome Hero With a Thousand Faces, "It is possible to speak from only one point at a time, but that does not invalidate the insights of the rest," and I find that quote particularly relevant in any discussion of The Golden Compass. Does Pullman's exploration of his own ideas around organized religion invalidate the insights of Christianity? The truth is, this is more than a movie, it's a representation of a particular world-view and set of ideas. If it wasn't, it would matter neither to the Christians who consider it a heretical tool to lure children into Atheism (I guess that makes Atheism the new Satanism) that the film exists, nor to the Atheists that New Line has reportedly watered down author Philip Pullman's ideas to make it more palatable to the Christian Right. But does the fact that the film is about religion mean that people of faith shouldn't see it and discuss it?


And if you ask early Gnostic Christians about that they will tell you the Devil is in the details.


SEE:

Wicca Bashing

Out Of The Hogwarts Broom Closet

The Ethnic Cleansing of Satanists

Islamicists and Evangelical Christians

The War Against Secular Society


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Sunday, November 25, 2007

Fix Those Balconies

Cancun hotels sure do have a lot of faulty balconies. Seems Alberta tourists have a tendency to fall to their deaths from them. After partying at local nightclubs.
Can you say cover up.

Another Canadian dies in Cancun after balcony fall
six months ago, another Alberta man fell to his death from a balcony in Cancun.

CALGARY -- Family of an Okotoks-area man who fell to his death in Cancun dispute Mexican authorities' claims that he took his own life.

Chris Morin, 30, was found dead outside a resort hotel early Thursday after he apparently fell from a fourth-floor balcony.

The Associated Press reported Friday that Mexican authorities suspect the death was a suicide, a claim rejected by Morin's sister, Tina Shipley.

CALGARY - The grieving family of an Okotoks man is disputing claims by Mexican authorities that he committed suicide by leaping to his death off a fourth-storey hotel balcony in Cancun.

Mexican police say that Christopher James Morin's diary, found in his Costa Maya Barcelo hotel room, indicated he was depressed.

But a distraught Tiffany Ennis, Morin's longtime girlfriend, said Saturday that Morin gave no signs that he was suicidal.

"He was so excited. He put his foot in the ocean and he was going to go surfing the next day," said Ennis, who received a late-night text message from Morin on Wednesday, talking about his plans.

"He'd never been on a trip before. It was his dream to swim in the ocean," Ennis said through tears.

Morin, 30, and a friend, Joseph Clayton, arrived for a sunny resort holiday on Wednesday. By Thursday he was dead. Hotel staff found his body at 6 a.m., lying on a tiled patio beneath his room.


And the government still has not issued a travel warning about Mexico.


SEE:

Mexican Cover Up Redux

Mexican Murder Cover Up


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Police Brutality

This is not just an issue of the weapons used by police, in particular the RCMP, such as tasers, pepper spray, batons or guns. It is about a police culture that sees citizens as bad guys and themselves as the good guys. We are all criminals in their eyes. They have forgotten their jobs are to 'serve and protect' the citizens not just the state or property owners.

This is the fourth taser related death in a month. It appears that the police believe it is okay to apply deadly force against those 'acting erratically', that is mentally disturbed. And you thought the death penalty was banned in Canada. Nor did you think it applied to people suffering from mental illness.

VANCOUVER - The RCMP has launched a number of investigations into the Saturday morning death of Robert Thurston Knipstrom, 36, four days after he was pepper-sprayed, Tasered and hit with a baton in an altercation with police. The incident is now being handled as an in-custody death, RCMP said in a news release.

"Because of the possibility that the police use of force could have been a factor in the individual's medical injuries, the RCMP began the in-custody-related investigative protocols from the very beginning," said the police release.

Knipstrom was taken to hospital in extremely critical condition after a confrontation with police at the EZ Rental Centre in Chilliwack, B.C., on Monday.

He had been seen driving dangerously through city streets, forcing other vehicles to avoid him. When police arrived, they said they found Knipstrom acting agitated and erratic. They used pepper spray, Tasers and police batons to try to restrain him, but were forced to call in backup when those tactics failed.



As my pal April Reign so aptly put it;

My family and I along with other activists from Bread and Roses attended the rally to remember Robert Dziekanski and to demand an investigation into his death.

As was stated at the rally this is no longer just about 4 officers, or TASER™’s this is about a culture and climate of political change which has allowed and encouraged the police to see the general public as an enemy to be subdued.

The culture of the police state has long existed, even before the Harper Law and Order Government came to power. It was always thus. The history of policing is the history of putting down protest, in particular working class protesters. Since its inception under Sir Robert Peel police replaced state militias whose purpose was to break up workers strikes and rallies.
The widespread distress accompanying the Napoleonic Wars had repercussions in Oxford. Food, money, and coal, bought with large sums subscribed by the city and university, were given or sold cheaply to the poor, but nevertheless violence flared sporadically because of high food prices.
In 1800 a troop of horse was sent to Oxford from Reading, and the local
militia was called out after countrymen had been intimidated in the market,
and the mob had threatened to attack the town hall and colleges; other poor townsmen terrorized farmers in neighbouring villages, forcing them to promise to sell their corn cheaply.
In 1814 J. I. Lockhart, the city's M.P., was forced to enter the city armed
after voting against the import of corn.
With the return of peace Oxford settled back to a more somnolent state, broken only rarely by such outbursts as the arrest, and subsequent rescue in Oxford, of those accused of the riots connected with the inclosure of Otmoor in 1830.
In 1856 many townsmen, disappointed of an official celebration on the ending of
the Crimean War, lit bonfires in the streets; one at Carfax aparently destroyed the
city stocks.
The last major riots occurred in 1867, in protest at an increase in the price
of bread, and in the wake of similar riots in the West Country. A detachment of
Guards was sent from Windsor, and peace restored by a reduction in bread prices.

  • 1829 Metropolitan Police Act - Robert Peel, Home Secretary forms Metropolitan Police who also police naval dockyards in areas like Portsmouth.
  • 1829 Invention - Stephenson's 'The Rocket' steam train wins trials.
  • 1830 Violent 'Swing' riots by farm workers in southern England seeking higher wages and the end to mechanisation - 9 executed, hundreds transported or imprisoned
  • 1830 Selborne and Headley Workhouse riots. William IV succeeds George IV as King
  • 1830 Employment law limits 12 -18 year olds to maximum of 12 hours work a day, 9 to 13 yr. olds to 9 hours
  • 1832 - 1889 Winchester City Police formed and year of the Great Reform Act doubling the number of people eligible to vote
  • 1834 Abolition of Slavery and The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 - An Act for the Amendment and better Administration of the Laws relating to the Poor in England and Wales is one of the most significant pieces of social legislation in British history. Read about the Workhouse
  • 1835 Municipal Corporations Act - Boroughs to appoint Watch Committees



Community policing does not mean the police are part of the community or under community control quite the contrary it means they police 'the community'. It is class war by any other name.


The history of modern law enforcement began 166 years ago with the
formation of the London Metropolitan Police District in 1829.
By
creating a new police force, the British Parliament hoped to address the
soaring crime rate in and around the nation's capital, attributed at the
time to rapid urban growth, unchecked immigration, poverty, alcoholism,
radical political groups, poor infrastructure, unsupervised juveniles,
and lenient judges. The principles adopted by Sir Robert Peel, the first
chief of the London Metropolitan Police, for his new "bobbies" have
served as the traditional model for all British and American police
forces ever since. These principles include the use of crime rates to
determine the effectiveness of the police; the importance of a centrally
located, publicly accessible police headquarters; and the value of
proper recruitment, selection, and training.

Prostitution, Race and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire, by Philippa Levine. New York, Routledge, 2003. ix, 480pp. $104.95 US (cloth), $26.95 US (paper).

A wealth of material is covered, though her findings can be reduced to what many scholars have begun to agree upon: that colonies were seen as posing a persistent threat of moral degradation, that European women merited protection while "native" women were to be controlled, that European men complicated matters through their symbolism of strength yet lascivious lives, that the realm of sexuality was a constant worry given its ready possibility of racial and other hierarchical transgression.

The RCMP's inglorious history as the State Police and Policing for the State was pacification of the West for the CPR control of the aboriginal and metis population, and includes massacres of working people, such as in Estevan, Saskatchewan during a miners protest in the 1930's.

And of course who can forget their actions in Quebec in the seventies or infiltration of the Anti-War movement and the Left with agent provocateurs, which produced a scandal leading to the creation of that other State Police Agency; CSIS.

The State is against the people it functions for the good of capitalism, as does its police who view property as more important than people.

These cases are not about tasers perse but about out and out police brutality, the police culture of self investigation and the lack of civilian oversight of all police forces including the RCMP. It is also another reason for unionizing the RCMP.

It is also the greatest chink in the Law and Order armour of the Harper Government.

The public demonstrations this weekend protesting the death of Robert Dziekanski show that people are not being sucked in by the Harper Law and Order agenda. In fact it is a breathe of fresh air to see folks finally protesting and challenging the police who have forgotten whom they serve and protect; the very citizens they view as their enemy.



SEE:

Video Not Taser Creates Inquiry

Repeated Cover-ups by Mounted Police

Conservative Governments Kill Workers

Police Black Bloc

Canada’s Long History of Criminalizing Dissent


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Kyoto Ratification By Australia

Leaving Harper as the odd man out.

Australia's new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, made climate change his top priority on Sunday, seeking advice on ratifying the Kyoto pact and telling Indonesia he will go to December's UN climate summit in Bali.

Rudd, 50, presented himself to voters as a new-generation leader by promising to pull troops out of Iraq and ratify the Kyoto Protocol capping greenhouse gas emissions, further isolating Washington on both issues.

But while he intends to immediately overturn Howard's opposition to the Kyoto pact, Rudd has said he would negotiate a gradual withdrawal of Australian frontline forces from Iraq.

Rudd, a Mandarin-speaking former diplomat, said he discussed Kyoto ratification with his British counterpart Gordon Brown, as well as Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
"President Yudhoyono formally invited me to attend the Bali conference, which will of course deal with climate change and where we go to now on Kyoto. I responded positively," he said.
SEE;

APEC Is Not Kyoto

John Harper Stephen Howard


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Saturday, November 24, 2007

Harper's Buddy Goes Down Under

Australia’s Prime Minister Defeated After 4 Terms


Howard's defeat leaves Harper isolated on the international stage as he attempts to push the American agenda on climate change. And he has been an embarrassment at the Commonwealth Conference in Uganda where Canada is isolated over climate change and is seen as being obstructionist. With Howard going down and Australia's new Labour PM; Kevin Rudd proclaiming he will sign Kyoto, Harper is further isolated.

Canada holding up climate-change deal at Commonwealth: sources

KAMPALA, Uganda–Canada and Australia are trying to block Commonwealth efforts to call for binding climate-change targets, a well-placed Commonwealth official told the Toronto Star yesterday.

"It's Canada and Australia on one side and everybody else on the other," he said. Fifty-two countries are in Kampala to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and at the end of the three days a declaration on climate change is expected.



Canada will be further isolated come the Bali round of talks on Kyoto 2.


The most dramatic shift in the stalemate is likely to come from Australia in coming days. The country goes into an election with opinion polls consistent in their predictions of a change government, which would see the anti-Kyoto Howard government replaced by the opposition Labor Party under Kevin Rudd.

Rudd says he will “move immediately” to ratify Kyoto and go to the Bali meeting personally, no doubt to stage-manage a high-profile jumping of the fence, switching Australia to the pro-Kyoto camp while in the spotlight of world attention. It would be a largely symbolic move but one that would leave the US more isolated in its opposition to Kyoto and binding emissions cuts than it already is. The Bush administration is unlikely to budge in Bali, but it is becoming less important anyway.

The agreement of Mid-western governors last week to follow states in the US West and North East toward setting emission caps and establish trading schemes now means almost half of the USA, in population terms, is by-passing White House policy and aligning with the Kyoto approach. Bush is only a year or so from leaving office and will almost certainly make way for a successor, Republican or Democrat, that will move on caps and carbon trading nationally. In a year’s time the capping of US carbon emissions will probably be a fait accompli.

Canada may be heading a similar way, with the federal Harper government’s recent rejection of Kyoto commitments being undermined by a number of provinces moving in step with the pro-active US states.




And Canada faces further embarrassment as Harper beaks with tradition, I guess that is the meaning of his governments 'new' Conservativeness , and refuses to allow opposition politicians to attend the conference as part of the Canadian delegation.

Opposition steams at exclusion from global warming summit
Environmental groups pushing to bring opposition mps to talks in Bali

Someone should remind him that he is a Minority PM, and his party does not represent the people of Canada. Harper is embarrassing us on the international stage over Climate Change. It is one thing to claim we missed our targets, it is another to parrot the Republican agenda that says developing countries are just as responsible as developed countries.

And it is completely unacceptable to be an obstructionist when it comes to international goals and treaties, as he is doing in Uganda.

Commonwealth reaches consensus on climate

Updated Sat. Nov. 24 2007 10:12 AM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

The Commonwealth's leaders have agreed to an action plan on climate change that doesn't set out binding targets or timelines for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The statement released Saturday does call for greater co-operation between developed countries like Canada and developing nations, CTV's David Akin reported from the summit in Uganda.

Canada had opposed language that would set firm, Kyoto-style targets.

Environmentalists and Commonwealth sources claim Canada stood only with Australia in opposing firm targets.

The Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said it would like to see flexible targets with more emphasis placed on improving technology to deal with climate change issues.



Come next November, failing a spring election, Harper will be further isolated as the White House changes hands.

But to Hardheaded Harper Canada's isolation from global consensus is his way of profiling Canada in the international community; as an obstructionist. Unfortunately it is not the profile that Canadians want or need.

Making Maxime Bernier foreign affairs minister
didn't add credibility to Stephen Harper's claim that Canada is again taking its global place.

SEE;


APEC Is Not Kyoto

John Harper Stephen Howard


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Friday, November 23, 2007

Conservatives Clemency For Canadian Criminal Capitalist

While the our Law and Order Government is planning to extradite Karlhaus Schrieber to Germany to face charges of swindling and fraud they are lobbying for the return to Canada of another criminal swindler. Who just so happens to be a millionaire. And they want to transfer him to a Canadian prison to serve out his sentence.

His family fears he faces death in the Bulgarian prison. Luckily for him, Bulgaria like Canada no longer has capital punishment. Wait a minute didn't they deny a clemency appeal for a Canadian on death row in the U.S. and any hope he had of transfer to prison in Canada.Oh yeah he ain't a millionaire and he ain't a white collar criminal. Spot the contradiction.
Europe condemns Canada over change in clemency stance


Bulgaria is one of the post soviet kleptocracies, a mafia-capitalist state bent on the privatization of everything. Our Canadian capitalist took advantage of that situation and got himself in trouble. And unlike Canadians on death row, or Karlhaus Schrieber, he has friends in the Harper government.

And of course Kenney and Harper being from Alberta are familiar with crony capitalism and the One Party State. Just like Michael Kapoustin understood that Bulgaria was a kleptocracy and took advantage of the crony capitalism occurring in that country to make a profit.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and two of his most trusted ministers have for more than a year been quietly pressuring the Bulgarian government to transfer home to Canada a former millionaire Canadian businessman jailed overseas since 1996 on charges of fraud and embezzlement, CanWest News Service has learned.

Despite numerous diplomatic efforts - including a meeting in Sofia last year between Bulgaria's top prosecutor and Secretary of State Jason Kenney, at which Kenney pleaded for the return of 55-year-old Michael Kapoustin - Bulgaria refuses to transfer a man it once labelled an international swindler.

As a result, Canada is turning up the heat, invoking for the first time an international treaty that forces the unco-operative Bulgarian government into mediation talks.

On Thursday, a Canadian delegation will square off against Bulgarian officials in Strasbourg, France, headquarters of the Council of Europe - a European human rights body created in the wake of the Second World War to oversee, among other things, prisoner-transfer rules among the countries of Europe, Canada and the United States.

The mediation process follows months of failed intervention by Kenney and Harper - who has lobbied the Bulgarian president on the Kapoustin case - and by Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, who is responsible for prisoner transfers to Canada and is also the MP for Kapoustin's British Columbia-based family.

Such efforts are a marked contrast to the Harper government's treatment of some other Canadians imprisoned abroad.

Since last year the Conservatives have denied the transfers of at least 17 Canadian citizens jailed in the U.S., even though their transfers to Canadian prisons were approved by U.S. authorities.

The government is also refusing to advocate against the death row sentence of Ronald Smith, an Albertan convicted of murder in Montana.

Kapoustin's repatriation, however, is "a priority for our government," said Kenney in a letter last December to Bulgaria's prosecutor general, adding, "Our government is determined to robustly defend the interests of Canadian citizens abroad."

Kapoustin was born in Yugoslavia but grew up in Toronto and Vancouver after his family immigrated to Canada in the 1950s. He became a high-profile entrepreneur in Bulgaria during the 1990s, as capitalism replaced communism following the breakup of the Soviet bloc.

"Michael was a very high flyer in Bulgaria in the post-Soviet period," says Gar Pardy, Canada's former director general of consular affairs, who has taken up Kapoustin's case in retirement. "He was running a bunch of companies and there was a lot of money on the go.

Bulgarian officials charged him with tax evasion, money laundering, fraud and embezzlement. Authorities shut down Kapoustin's companies and seized assets he claims were worth more than $11 million.

In 1996, he was arrested during an airport stopover in Germany and extradited to Bulgaria.

In 2002, after six years in detention, a Bulgarian court finally convicted Kapoustin on a new charge of embezzlement and sentenced him to 17 years in prison.

Pardy says that for years he and other Canadian diplomats worked hard to secure Kapoustin's transfer to a Canadian prison, where he would soon be eligible for parole - but never got anywhere with Bulgarian officials.

On Tuesday, Canadian law firm Amsterdam & Peroff announced that it has produced a website about its pro-bono client Michael Kapoustin, a citizen of Canada who has been languishing in a Bulgarian prison since he was convicted to 17 years in prison on what his defense team insists were false charges of embezzlement, fraud, tax evasion, and money laundering.

The website has been created to coincide with a new level of government talks about the prisoner transfer treaty between the two nations.

Article 23 of the Council of Europe's Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons to initiate mediation has been invoked by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper who, after over a year of constant contact, has not been able to secure Kapoustin's release and extradiction to Canada.

The website allegedly shows violations of Kapoustin's basic due process and fundamental rights in the trial, torture, solitary confinement, cruel and unusual treatment in prison, and the irresponsible conduct of a number of former government officials.

"For so many years, the family has been told to keep quiet about these injustices while numerous promises to bring Michael home were repeatedly broken. The time has come to speak up," said international lawyer Dean Peroff of Amsterdam & Peroff.

Michael Kapoustin's wife, Tracy, has been raising their 14-year-old son alone for most of the boy's life as a result of the imprisonment.

Kapoustin, now 55, was a millionaire entrepreneur. He became very influential in Bulgarian business circles in the early 1990s as Communism collapsed and Capitalism began to flourish in the Eastern European nations.

Bulgaria: A Hard But Lucrative Place for SMEs
03.08.2007 For the past seven years, Swiss entrepreneur André Felder has been working in Bulgaria. Despite some unpleasant experiences, he does not regret his decision to move there. At a forum during the latest Credit Suisse field trip to Bulgaria, he warned investors and business people against having unrealistic expectations.

What was Bulgaria like seven years ago?
Chaotic. The mafia were also rampant. The gray economy was bigger than the "regular" economy. But it was a time of optimism and a new direction, and perhaps a dose of "Wild West" capitalism is simply part and parcel of that sort of pioneer era.

What exactly do you mean by Wild West capitalism?
We lived by the laws of the jungle. My original partners very nearly forced me out of the business, for example - without providing any form of compensation. And institutional sloppiness and arbitrariness nearly drove me to bankruptcy.

Do you think that would still be possible today?
Organized crime remains active - but it's in retreat. And obviously corruption is still an issue. But recently in particular, a lot of things have changed for the better. The reform process is beginning to take effect, and there is broad agreement among people about the need for reforms in the administration and justice system.


ROMANIA AND BULGARIA

The EU's Unpopular Expansion

In its latest progress report, issued in December, the European Parliament expressed shock at the "audacity of organized crime" in Bulgaria. According to Western observers, the economy is pretty much controlled by shady insider dealing. Recently, Susette Schuster, a judge from Cologne, was sent to Bulgaria on an EU mission and came back with "alarming" findings: The legal system is tangled, judicial reform is chaotic, the trust of the citizens in the state is weak, and corruption is widespread.

In addition, officials at Eurojust, the EU body that coordinates the member states' judicial systems, have also discreetly contacted parliamentarians in Brussels. They are afraid that their fight against terrorism and the trafficking of drugs, weapons and children would be made more difficult once Bulgaria's criminal gangs' informers in government gain access to all of the files. People who once dealt in drugs at the behest of the Communist state apparatus, now hold key positions in the police, the judiciary and politics. The same people will soon find themselves in control of €2.3 billion that the Bulgarians are due to receive in subsidies from Brussels over the next three years.


23.01.06

The so called people's representatives - the politicians onf Bulgaria are just business men people in suits working in the parliament, geting payed by the national taxes collected off the people. Those Bulgarian businessmen - called Government Deputies (GD) - are trading with national goods. Whenever money come from the European Union (EU), the GD's are spreading them amongs themselves. They think and act as they think: "Those are money for our associates, their firms, and our companies. Let's split them, and screw the republic. This Is Capitalism!" Post-communistic looting of the the country. All closed factories, all farms forced to bancrupcy, all MAIN sectors of transport, comunication, and energy are privatised, and/or sold out to foreign investors in suspicious secret deals, are dooming a nation to be the employer of his own looter.

Luchezar Boyadjiev interviewed by Geert Lovink

The first interview was conducted during the opening of Hybrid Workspace in June 1997, the temporary media lab in the margins of the big art show Documenta X in Kassel (Germany).

> Could you explain us the current situation in Bulgaria from your point of view? For a long time, the Bulgarian communists have stayed in power, after having changed their faces. Recently, a lot has happened in South-East Europe... student demonstrations in Serbia, the first non-communist government in Romania, anarchy in Albania... What is the reason of the apparently unique position of Bulgaria?

The more time passes after 1989, the more differences there are between each country in Eastern Europe. In the past, Bulgaria had a privileged position, in terms of being one of the closest allies of the Soviet Union. The country enjoyed an almost free supply of raw materials, crude oil, electricity. A utopian situation, having no worry about how to produce and make a living for its citizens. Now, it looks as if time has stopped after 1989. We realized this only recently. On the surface, a democratic reform took place. A free-market economy was introduced, of which I am not a fan, but which seemed to be the only way out of the deadlock. As it turned out, there is no capitalism, so consequently, there is no opposition to capitalism. This applies also to the social situation. A redistribution of the old money of the regime is now taking place among its loyal followers who are now top bankers or mafia leaders. This is not capitalism, it is Monte-Carlo money. Easy come, easy go, no re-investments.


Bulgaria

Violina Hristova of Sofia, senior reporter for Standart News specializing in reporting on organized crime:

What distinguishes my country are the extortion rings controlled by groups of ex-athletes, especially wrestlers. They also control narcotics traffic, smuggling, counterfeiting and prostitution. They call it the "Wrestlers mafia. " The wrestlers' weapons are always baseball bats, and they use "security organizations" (protection agencies) as their cover.

Although many people talk about connections between the Bulgarian and Italian mafia, there's no proof. Some experts estimate 4,000 people are involved in this kind of organized crime. These groups launder money and bribe public officials and police. The businessman who does not go along may be beaten severely or even murdered. Sometimes the wrestlers make mistakes. For example, last summer in Sofia they kidnapped a businessman's mother-in-law instead of his wife. Many of these wrestlers are former members of government security forces.

Some people estimate the wrestlers control 50% of the nightclubs, 70% of the gambling and 80% of the cigarette and alcohol trade in Bulgaria, and are partners or owners of six casinos. The Wrestlers mafia originated after the change of the political system, as big groups of shady operators began employing the ex-weightlifters, ex-wrestlers, ex-boxers. Also employed were former police officers and the security services. Many believe these profits from illegal activities are being invested in the privatization process and legitimate businesses will emerge from them.


Crime and Democracy in Bulgaria


By Robert Kaplan | Saturday, June 23, 2001

In Bulgaria, I found a society that was regarded as a democratic success abroad, but was really under siege from criminal clans. Organized crime is, of course, a common feature of former Soviet bloc societies.

Romanians seem to be adapting to global capitalism in the same aggressive manner they once adapted to communism.

By the 1980s, communist parties had evolved largely into large-scale mafias which, when the system collapsed, simply divided into smaller mafias that purchased politicians in all those new and weak democracies. Common, too, are allegations of a new Russian imperialism by way of European-wide crime connections and energy monopolies like Gazprom.

Quasi-legitimate enterprises

Nowhere, however, were such phenomena so transparent as in Bulgaria when I visited in 1998. Is is a poor, small country in which democratic institutions have been fighting valiantly against Russian attempts at "re-satellitization" by criminal stealth. Bulgaria illustrates how the potential evils of the new century are ominous precisely because of their ambiguity. It is no accident that here the word "groupings" is used instead of mafias.

These networks include legitimate enterprises — audited by Western accountants and, increasingly, linked to Western multinationals — as well as legitimate entities. They engage in activities such as compact-disk pirating, illicit-drug activity, money laundering and extortion. One foreign diplomat told me, "These groupings engage in violent intimidation and corrupt politicians. Yet, their genius is to cover their tracks to an extent that they are quasi-legitimate."

Transition economy crime stories

The breakdown of Bulgaria's Communist state provided numerous opportunities for people close to power to cash in.

Bulgarian crime has no centuries-old tradition like Italy's, or even one of heroic thieves and warrior clans as in Russia, Serbia, or Albania. Nor is there the colorful ethnic ingredient here that distinguishes criminal circles in the Caucasus, particularly in Georgia and Chechnya, with their family mafias and highwaymen. The Bulgarian groupings essentially are the result of the transition from communist totalitarianism to parliamentary democracy.

Cashing in

The breakdown of the Communist state provided numerous opportunities for people close to power to cash in. Some Olympic wrestlers, for example, gained control of motels along Bulgaria's international highways and at border checkpoints.

These motels provided revenues from prostitution and currency dealing and helped give them access to the car-theft business. This involved the theft of both local vehicles and those stolen in Western Europe, which passed through Bulgaria to the former Soviet Union by ship across the Black Sea.

A Russian satellite for crime?

In Bulgaria, Russians as a people are very much liked, even if Russian communism is not.

Not surprisingly,a strong bond exists between Bulgaria's groupings and Russia. Political party connections evolved into economic connections when Bulgaria was still a subservient satellite state. Strong links between the KGB and Bulgaria's communist-era security service became crime connections. And the countries' similar Slavic languages helped nourish social connections among criminals.

But what makes Bulgaria particularly vulnerable to Russian organized crime is that unlike other formerly communist states such as Hungary and Romania, here — for linguistic and historical reasons — Russians as a people are very much liked, even if Russian communism was not.

Not all that glitters is gold

Thus, even with a stable democracy, Bulgaria may not become a civil society if it continues to be undermined by this new and subtle Russian imperialism. As former president Zhelyu Zhelev told me, "The political parties could easily evolve into masks for mafia structures, with crime groups financing election campaigns."

The West could then leave Bulgaria to its fate by declaring it a "democratic success story." Since the Washington establishment typically prefers to simplify its problems by accepting official truths this seems a possibility. Bulgarians are right: They are in danger of being forgotten.

Hope and misconceptions in Romania and Bulgaria

What the man on the street fears

Many Bulgarians and Romanians fear, however, that prices will rise after 2007 and that they will no longer be able to afford the basics, such as a heated apartment, a kilo of pork and a cinema ticket. Nothing sets of older people, farmers, and other ordinary citizens like the concept of EU accession. They worry that the EU will interfere too much in agriculture and that home-brewed schnapps will be made illegal.

Less than two years before they are due to join the EU, the feared rise in the cost of living is already beginning. At the end of September, a new tourism law was passed in Sofia: from now on the prices for Bulgarians and for foreign visitors should be comparable. Up until now, as in many other Eastern European countries, foreign tourists in Bulgaria paid many times more than domestic tourists for taxis, hotels, or museums. Thus the average Bulgarian fears that EU accession spells the end of annual holidays to the Black Sea. With an average income of €140 a month, Bulgarians cannot compete with tourists from the rest of the EU.

Faith in the EU-friendly political classes also suffers on account of corruption and crony-capitalism, both alive and well in Bulgaria and Romania. The biggest Bulgarian weekly paper, 168 chasa (168 hours) broke the news at the end of September that the young and ambitious Minister of State, Nikolai Vassilev, has, it is alleged, virtually exclusive control over the distribution of the money from EU Structural Funds. Meanwhile, according to the Romanian English-language daily paper Nine O’Clock, the Romanian President, Traian Basescu, has suggested a year long “abstinence from corruption” to his people at the end of September. This is theoretically supposed to wipe out corruption…

The Mafia is delighted

In the midst of this, Bulgarian and Romanian politicians are breaking into a sweat in order to fulfil their election promises: primarily, the longed-for EU accession in the year 2007. Bulgaria is behind in law reform, with 22 draft bills still waiting to be passed. Similarly, according to the Associated Press, the Romanian Prime Minister, Calin Tariceanu, pointed out at the end of September that his parliament had “still around 100 bills” that needed to be passed before EU accession.

The Mafia is delighted at the delays. The volume of human trafficking in the region is alarming, reports Richard Danziger from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in this year’s report on South Eastern Europe. General Boyko Borissov was, until recently, the General Secretary of the Bulgarian Ministry of the Interior and “Enemy No.1” of organised crime. In an interview with the Bulgarian magazine Egoist, he says that the fight against trafficking in drugs and people, money laundering and credit card fraud, as well as extortion, has had more success over the past few years. But unfortunately, he often finds that his hands are tied by the contradictory legal environment. Bulgarians and Romanians alike hope that these things will change with EU accession

Two Types of Post State-Socialist Capitalism
Following the disintegration of state socialism, a market system based on private ownership and production for profit has been constructed in all but three of the former state socialist societies.

There is no chance of a return to state socialism. The measures of reform have secured a high level of irreversibility: the planning mechanism has been destroyed, and the lynchpin of the political system, the Communist Party apparatus, dissolved. Whether these countries have moved to a modern capitalist system is open to question. The consequences of transformation have led to three blocks of post state socialist countries: two of which are market orientated and have large private sectors and one small cluster of countries which preserve statist economies (Uzbekistan, Belarus and Turkmenistan, which are ignored in the following discussion). Despite the significant policies of destatisation, the post-communist societies all share in common a higher level of state control than market capitalist countries and most have stock market capitalization at the levels of very low income countries. In terms of social development, the post-communist states have fallen in the world rankings of human development.

Weber’s claim that modern capitalism is distinguished by ‘the pursuit of profit and forever renewed profit, by means of continuous, rational, capitalistic enterprise’ applies more to the first group than to the second. The first includes the central European countries – Slovenia, Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Estonia – all new members of, and having borders with, the European Union. These countries are approaching the levels of OECD countries with respect to marketisation and privatisation, they also have a very positive participation in the global economy. This group is closest to the continental type of market capitalism, though it is more state led. They all have a low level of stock market capitalization and more developed welfare states, making them distinct from the Anglo-American countries. What is particularly important, from the point of view of the transition to a self-sustaining capitalist system, is that a high level of accumulation of capital is sustained. The figures cited above (Fig 3-2 and Table 3- 3) is the exceedingly low levels in all the former state socialist societies. Some, but not all, have very high exposure to the global market which acts as an exogenous source of economic change.

They resemble, and are likely to identify with, the continental European system as they all have embedded welfare states derived from the state socialist period. Economic coordination here is not through stock exchange capitalism, but is dependent on the state and also on companies with an international presence. Tutored by the conditionality requirements of the EU and the IMF, they have developed not only the economic preconditions of capitalism, but also the political and societal: an appropriate type of government, a civil society and an emerging bourgeois class structure.

A second model is that of a hybrid state/market uncoordinated capitalism. This is a relatively economically poor group which has had an unsuccessful period of transition: Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and Moldova. These countries have exceedingly high income differentials, and high levels of poverty and unemployment. They have the characteristics of low income, primary sector exporting countries, with a very low integration into the global economy. They have particularly low levels of domestically sourced investment, though those with a large energy sector (such as Russia) have significant and disproportionate foreign direct investments.

The form privatisation has taken may lead to relatively few owners in extractive industries, such as oil, giving rise to great wealth on the one hand and, because of relatively low employment rates and ineffective redistribution policies, to poverty on the other. Economic policy should be concerned not only with efficiency, but also with equity. The move to the market and private ownership has significantly diminished equity in the post-communist states – though less so for those bordering on the European Union.

Bulgaria

Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005
Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
March 8, 2006

Bulgaria is a parliamentary democracy of approximately 7.7 million persons, and is ruled by a coalition government headed by Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev. Multiparty parliamentary elections in June were deemed generally free and fair despite some reported irregularities. While civilian authorities generally maintained effective control of law enforcement officers, there were some instances in which law enforcement officers acted independently of government authority.

The government generally respected the human rights of its citizens; however, there were problems in several areas. The following human rights problems were reported:

  • police abuses, including beatings and mistreatment, of criminal suspects, prison inmates, and members of minorities
  • harsh conditions in prisons and detention facilities
  • arbitrary arrest and detention
  • impunity
  • limitations on freedom of the press
  • some restrictions on freedom of religion
  • discrimination against certain religious minorities
  • widespread corruption in executive and judicial branches
  • violence and discrimination against women, children, and minority groups, particularly the Roma
  • trafficking in persons
  • discrimination against persons with disabilities
  • child labor

SEE:

Crime Pays If You Are Rich

Bulgarian Women Abused

Albania's Hero


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Nova Scotia Imitates Alberta 2


In another example that the old neo-con ideal is not dead yet, Nova Scotia like Alberta is once again looking at P3's as a solution to long term funding of infrastructure. Despite its failure in that province previously. And like Alberta, which has a labour boom while Nova Scotia has a labour deficit, the costs will rise because of scarcity of labour. Those costs will be passed on to taxpayers if not now then over the life of the P3 agreement.

Once hailed as the new vision of the right, privatization, P3's and contracting out have proven to be a billion dollar boon-doogle and not a solution to rising costs. They are in fact simply taxpayers paying private companies to provide services that make them profit, by cutting wages and providing poorer quality, and they end up costing us more in the long run. It looked good on paper, but as with most of these ideas from the seventies they have proven their time has come and gone.

In fact in Canada it is your and my pension funds that paying for these P3's. So we get screwed twice as taxpayers.

Nova Scotia Throne Speech eyes privately funded roads, bridges

The Canadian Press

HALIFAX — Nova Scotia's Conservative government has opened the fall session of the legislature with a Throne Speech promising a return to public-private partnerships in constructing roads, schools and other facilities.

In a document entitled “Throne Speech for the New Nova Scotia,” the government says it has learned from the mistakes made when a previous Liberal government introduced the P3 concept that built 30 schools in the 1990s.

The government says with a $12.4-billion debt, it has to find ways to reduce the costs of building and maintaining public roadways and buildings.

The speech estimates the province is facing a long-term bill of $8-billion to build and maintain infrastructure.

The document also says a new department will be created that is focused solely on the environment, along with a new Ministry of Labour and Workforce Development to help deal with a shortage of skilled labour.

The government is also promising new education standards with primary attention paid to mathematics and literacy and says it will continue a freeze on university tuition with more reductions planned.

SEE

Nova Scota Imitates Alberta


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Nova Scota Imitates Alberta


Alberta has the most regressive labour laws in Canada. It long ago banned hospital workers, including nurses, right to strike. That of course did not stop those workers from going on strike. The right to strike is an essential workers right and is defended by the International Labour Organization as such. It is as essential as the right to unionize.

If governments banned the right to unionize it would be seen as the actions of an authoritarian state. The same goes for banning the right to strike.
Ironically unions were banned in the 19th Century as 'criminal conspiracies' to limit trade. It was several years after Canada became a nation that Britain changed its laws and Canada followed suit. That did not stop workers from organizing unions, as secret societies; like the Knights of Labor. It meant workers on the job organized, and went on strike because that is their right as workers. All we have to sell is our labour or our time, our presence on the job.

In Alberta hospital workers were declared an essential service that still did not prevent AUPE or the Nurses union from going out on 'illegal' strikes. And win wage and benefit gains.

In Nova Scotia the hospital employers are running TV ads, I have satellite so I get to see them when I watch the CFL or NHL on CBC Halifax, claiming it hurt patients and is in everyones 'best' interest to end the right to strike. They claim other provinces do it and it has brought labour peace. Actually they meant to say appeasement. However that being said these employers are just another arm of government. They are government appointees or hirelings. So while one arm of the government, the legislature, brings in anti-worker anti-union anti-strike laws the other arm of the government, its employer association running the public hospitals, does the PR for the law.

The fact is that if the employer, who is the government, would fund hospitals and medical services properly then workers would be assured of proper wage and benefit increases, and proper hours of work. Instead the employer, which is the government, wants to cut wages, benefits and contract out work, split shifts, end seniority etc. etc.

A group that does not face these draconian attacks is of course the Doctors who are a business monopoly. There are few doctors strikes in Canada, and if they do occur they are short lived because governments assure doctors their services are paid for. Then they turn around and cut services in hospitals and cut other workers wages and benefits and tell them to hold the line.

The reality is that mediation only works between equals. In this case the government and its hospital administration view doctors as indispensable, and other workers as dispensable. If they didn't they would fund hospitals fully so all workers got the pay, benefits and hours of work they deserve. If that was the case there would be no need to strike.

Mediation does not work. Nor does denying workers the right to strike. They will, as history has shown, strike when they get cheated and screwed whether it is against the law or not.

What is interesting is that this balanced and pro-union article is from a Business Journal.

Union Dues: Anti-strike bill 'political posturing'
BY BRIAN FLINN, TRANSCONTINENTAL MEDIA
The Nova Scotia Business Journal

Health workers, the NDP and the Liberals are lined up against the government's highest-profile bill as the Nova Scotia legislature ends a seven-month summer break. Premier Rodney MacDonald said he's pushing ahead with the doomed anti-strike legislation because Nova Scotians deserve to hear it debated and find out how their MLAs vote. But he's not putting his minority government's survival on the line.

"There won't be any confidence votes this fall," MacDonald told reporters.

The government has been working on a bill to replace health strikes with arbitration since a brief IWK walkout earlier this year. Health- and community-care workers don't want to lose collective bargaining rights, and plan to rally outside Province House today while Lt.-Gov. Mayann Francis reads the speech from the throne.

"We're pleased the opposition will defeat this bill," said Joan Jessome, president of the Nova Scotia Government and General Employees Union. "But it can come back again and again. We need to make our point strong and clear enough to put this to rest."

The premier said he does plan to revive the bill later. "I'm a patient person," he said.

Both the Liberals and the NDP plan to defeat the bill at the first opportunity, when it goes to a second reading vote. MacDonald said the Liberals are "stuck in the past," while the NDP is standing up for special interests.

"They receive a lot of funding from the unions. They generally tend to be the biggest contributor to the NDP and most of their candidates," he said. "It's unfortunate; you don't put that ahead of health and safety."

NDP Leader Darrell Dexter said MacDonald is trying to distract attention from bigger problems in health care, such as emergency-room closings and the shortage of nursing-home beds. He said it's unfortunate the government is wasting some of the few days it allows the legislature to sit, on a doomed bill. "This bill is purely a product of political posturing," Dexter said.

Liberal Leader Stephen McNeil said he doesn't hear Nova Scotians pleading for anti-strike legislation. He said his party wants to co-operate with health workers, not take away their rights. "Where's the crisis?" McNeil asked. "I have yet to understand why the premier and the government are hanging their hats on this issue."

The House has to sit for only two days to avoid the label of the laziest legislature in Canada for a fourth year in a row. Prince Edward Island's House sat just 24 days this year, one more than Nova Scotia. – The Daily News


EXTRA: Strike threats useful warning system
By Brian Flinn, Transcontinental Media

Taking the right to strike away from health workers would damage an important safety mechanism and jeopardize the care of Nova Scotians, according to a new study by the Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Saint Mary's University professors Judy and Larry Haiven wrote that health workers know when the system is being pushed beyond tolerable limits and can signal it by threatening to strike. They said it's similar to the "red cord" used to stop assembly lines when something goes wrong in a factory.

"Health-care workers must have a way of indicating that the conditions under which they work do not overstress them or the quality of health-care delivery," the Haivens wrote. "Thus, in the health-care system, the red cord can be said to be the power of health-care workers to threaten to, and if necessary, withhold their labour."

Labour Minister Mark Parent has argued a modern health-care system cannot tolerate work stoppages. The report says "management by stress" now predominates in health care, and an outlet is more important than ever. "If politicians and health-care administrators insist on running a system so close to the bone, then the ability of workers to strike, to pull the red cord, as it were, is an essential system mechanism to ensure patient safety in the long run." – The Daily News


And this is from the Dominion Blog

November 23, 2007

NS Government Faces Heat Over Anti-Strike Bill

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In one of the more polite demonstrations I've attended, a union coalition lead by the Nova Scotia General Employees Union staged a sidewalk rally of about 500 in front of the province's legislature on Thursday. While members of the crowd, which included a strong contingent of nurses and healthcare workers, heckled Premier Rodney Macdonald's minority government (top pic), the military guard-laden arrival of Nova Scotia's Lt.-Gov Mayann Francis, due to read her first speech from the throne, on the other side of the building was met with no interruption (bottom pic). After Macdonald's assertion that the unions were being "disrespectful" for holding a demonstration during the ceremonial speech from the throne, the union leadership responded by urging demonstrators to remain quiet outside of the legislature while Francis made her speech.

The rally was called in response to a bill due to be introduced by the minority tories banning the right to strike for the 32,000 healthcare workers in Nova Scotia. Macdonald had promised to introduce the bill in May following a one-day strike at a children's hospital in Halifax. The bill seems to be on the verge of being junked as a result of the union campaign, as both the Liberals and NDP have pledged to vote against it, were it to be introduced by the minority government. As a result, Macdonald has admitted he is unwilling to see his government fall as a result of the proposed anti-strike legislation.

Regardless of this apparent defeat, the throne speech outlined the Tory government's plans to establish more publicly funded, private health facilities in the province.


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