Jasper National Park Centennial

When I was in Jasper this past weekend I learned that the National Park was 100 years old this year. It is still a jewel in the Rockies. In comparison to Banff which is the West Edmonton Mall of National Parks, this is a quiet, quaint, rustic little town, which you can walk through in thirty minutes at a quick gait. There were banners up in town announcing the centennial, but little else to note the event. No special T-Shirts, mugs, or other tourist bric a brak one usually finds. Very underplayed, unfortunately.

I have always liked Jasper since camping there in my younger years. Not much has changed in Jasper , unlike the commercialized corporate 'tourist' town of Banff. And even their centennial was muted and not given much publicity. A shame really, because Jasper in many ways reminds me of what Whyte Avenue used to be, before the boom in bars and trendy yuppification.

The tourists are from all over, Korea, Japan, though not as many as in Banff, Russia, Austria, Germany, Australia, etc. etc. Staff this year in the motels seemed to be a mix of Canadians and Australians, with fewer Quebecois this season. I don't often go in the summer, I prefer the early part of December when the rates are cheap and Ski season has not yet kicked in. Even at Xmas we got a great rate for two of us and two dogs. Three days for three hundred bucks.

Worrying though was the lack of snow. The Eastern face of the Pallisades was bare. And the Western face was a brown snow, spattered across gray rock face.
The rivers were barely frozen in spots, and the snow was a dirty brown across the fields and road ways.

Elk and caribou along with big horn were lowling about grazing the still plentiful standing dead grasses.

The signs warning of fire dangers from last summer were not changed, portending perhaps another bad fire season as climate change impacts even the Rockies.

History of Jasper

The first recorded visit to the Athabasca Valley was by surveyor David Thompson in 1810. The North West Company built a supply depot on Brule Lake in 1813, a settlement which later became known as Jasper House after North West Company clerk Jasper Hawes. With the decline of the fur trade, Jasper House was abandoned in 1884. The Dominion Government established Jasper Forest Park in 1907, setting aside an area of some 13,000 sq km. By 1911 the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway had reached Fitzhugh (now Jasper) Station. The Jasper-Edmonton road opened in 1928. In 1930, Jasper Forest Park was officially established as a Jasper National Park. Today more than 3 million visitors pass through the park gates each year, and more than 1.8 million stop to experience this unique wilderness and World Heritage Site.

Location Jasper is located in Jasper National Park near the British Columbia/Alberta border, 863 km from Vancouver, British Columbia and 414 km from Calgary, Alberta.

SEE:

Return Of The Work Camps II

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, Canada, Alberta, internment camps, relief, centennial, Jasper, Banff, national parks, tourism, Jasper, Albera

2008 Year Of Constitutional Change

Harper likes to talk out of both sides of his mouth. Especially when it comes to the Quebec Nation.

Stephen Harper apparently has been telling the Quebec media (in La Presse specifically) the following:

“Stephen Harper souhaite que la résolution qui reconnaît les Québécois comme une nation soit incluse dans la Constitution canadienne”

Translation: Stephen Harper hopes that the resolution recognizing the “Québécois” as a nation can be included in the Canadian Constitution!

Not only does he want to REFORM the Senate but now he wants to include Quebec as a Nation in the Constitution. Talk about pandering. The reality is that if he wants to reform the Constitution so do we all. Many of us want a new parliamentary system with proportional representation and the elimination of the Senate.

Which should be done as was originally proposed by Louis-Joseph Papineau back in 1867, through a Constituent Assembly of Canadians, not by Parliament or Legislatures.

This is Harpers cynical ploy to win votes in Quebec nothing less nothing more. Like his predecessor Brian Mulroney, Harper is treading a dangerous path, that will earn him the same boot in the butt as BM got. Which ironically was a boot with the name Reform Party of Canada on it.



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Harper Recycles

Stephen Harper, taking a page from Ralph Klein, is recycling old promises and announcements. Guess that's what he considers being Green.

PM kicks off final GST cut at electronics store

Mr. Harper wound up 2007 by holding a news conference at a Mississauga store on Monday to trumpet tax cuts his government has made and which take effect at midnight.

As the year turns, the GST will drop to 5 per cent, something that Harper's government announced months ago.

Mr. Harper said Canadians should not expect further tax cuts in 2008, adding that his government will be cautious on tax relief or new spending.

Even this is not as big a tax break as the corporations are getting thanks to Harpers generosity with our tax money. And what you save in GST you pay back in payroll taxes.

Starting Jan. 1, Canada's corporate tax rate will be trimmed to 19.5 per cent from the current 22.12 per cent. This rate is slated to come down each subsequent year until it is reduced to 15 per cent on Jan. 1, 2012.

As well, the tax rate on small businesses with incomes under $400,000 drops to 11 per cent from the scheduled 11.5 per cent rate.

Of course, what the government giveth, it often takes away and Ottawa has also brought in a slight increase in so-called payroll taxes.

The taxpayers federation estimates that employees will pay an additional $50.43 in 2008 on employment insurance and the Canada Pension Plan, while employers will pay $46.02 more per worker.

And it is the payroll taxes, EI specifically that creates the record Government Surpluses whether that government is Liberal or Conservative.

And note that workers still pay more than employers. Time to abolish taxes on the working class!



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Gone But Not Forgotten

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Gone is Andrew Anderson's THE CANADIAN BLOG EXCHANGE one of the best aggregators of political blogs left and right in Canada. For about a month it was being petulant about uploading stories, now it is gone off line for good. Andrew was looking for someone to take over the page for months now. Though it was announced a new site had been found the CBE is gone. Too bad. It was a good way to see political bloggers of all stripes, including the independents who belong to groups.

Here is what is left of links to CBE

The Canadian Blog Exchange on Technorati

Tailrank - Posts for 'The Canadian Blog Exchange'

And here is the Google Cache for Andrew's Bound By Gravity.

For those interested in a non partisan replacement aggregator check out;

Opinions Canada


SEE:

Canadian Blog Exchange Kaput?

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Pakistan: Feudalism Not Democracy

While the pseudo democrats of the Bush and Harper regimes bemoan the passing of Benazir Bhutto let us not forget that she, her family and their political party do not reflect a movement of democracy but rather the entrenched feudal interests of Pakistan's ruling classes.

To one side of the villa is the town of Nau Dero itself; to the other, the family's expansive estates, mirroring the separation between Pakistan's political elite and the country's teeming millions. Today, under the portraits of her hanged father and dead brothers, her testament will be read by Bilawal, her grieving 19-year-old son.

The family's franchise on political leadership will be handed on. The will's contents will determine the future not simply of her party, the Pakistan People's Party, but of Pakistan. But whether it contains enough to stop the violence is, perhaps, out of the Bhutto family's hands as the nation teeters on the edge of perhaps the worst bloodletting since Partition in 1947.

TIME reports that Benazir Bhutto’s son will likely be named on Sunday as new Pakistan People’s Party leader

As Georg Luckas points out in History and Class Consciousness, his seminal ultra left text which should be mandatory reading for all who claim a revolutionary class struggle perspective , this is the political reification of feudalism, that the poor and oppressed identify not with their class interests but with the landlord class.

It is difficult to imagine any good coming out of this tragedy, but there is one possibility. Pakistan desperately needs a political party that can speak for the social needs of a bulk of the people. The People's party founded by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was built by the activists of the only popular mass movement the country has known: students, peasants and workers who fought for three months in 1968-69 to topple the country's first military dictator. They saw it as their party, and that feeling persists in some parts of the country to this day, despite everything.

In effect there has been no bourgeois revolution in Pakistan that would allow it to evolve a modern capitalist democratic state. The creation of modern Pakistan sixty years ago was a still born bourgeois state.

The coming civil war is the failure of the bourgeois class struggle in Pakistan, to create the conditions for a modern capitalist state. Class War Not Civil War!

See:

Pakistan A Fascist State


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Pakistan A Fascist State

I am still in Jasper on vacation. Yesterday I saw this headline which I had to comment on;

Iran behind flood of weapons to Taliban, MacKay charges

Showing once again the quisling toadying the Harpocrite government engages in by parroting the U.S. political line. I said to my partner what a load of crap, the real threat is Pakistan, not Iran when it comes to succor and aid to the Taliban and Osama bin Laden Inc.

Sure enough even the Afghanistan government agrees;

No proof Iranian gov't behind IEDs: Afghan diplomat

This morning the headlines are that Benazir Bhutto has been assassinated in Pakistan. CTV News Net has had Eric Margolis on commenting on it pointing out she was more of a threat to the Musharraf regime than to the Islamist opposition.

Pakistan is not a democracy but a fascist state, one that engages in supporting both clandestine and state terror and has nuclear weapons, unlike Iran. Blame will be placed upon the Islamic opposition and the Taliban, but the reality is that like the earlier attack on Bhutto it is more than likely an act by the State Security Intelligence Service, an agency that has promoted terrorist acts against Afghanistan, Baluchistan and India.

The political assassination of Bhutto is further proof that Pakistan is a rogue nation, far more dangerous than Iran could ever be. But since it is a client state of the U.S. it will be protected from criticism, boycotts, etc. And of course it will not be on MacKay's agenda for criticism like Iran , nor will it be boycotted by the Harpocrites as they have done with the Hamas led Palestinian state.


With Bhutto's death the Terror State of Pakistan under Musharraf is exposed for what it is; a Bonapartist regime that is now a fascist state. Far more dangerous to its neighbours than Iran can ever be. Assassination of one's political opponents, the setting up of a Reichstag Fire last summer with the raid on the Red Temple all these are the politics of fascism. And of course the war on terror is exactly what fascists used to justify their authoritarian regimes in the past.


SEE

Musharraf's Coup

The Economist Agrees With Me

Afghanistan A Failed State

Pakistan Speaks For the Taliban

I Was An IslamoFascist For MI6

Harpers Silence Over Musharraf

Winning Friends

How To Create Terrorists

Say It Ain't So

Brief Cases vs Batons

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Merry Christmas, Happy Yule

The First Christmas Card

In the early 19th century it was common practice to hand write seasonal messages on calling cards or in letters. In 1843, in order to save himself having to hand-write dozens of Christmas messages, Sir Henry Cole had his friend, John Calcott Horsley, design and print a batch of cards. The words printed on the card were 'A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year' much the same is still found in cards today.

As Habermas points out in his seminal work on the Public Sphere, the post office and communications are key to not only the development of capitalism but also the concept of public space that is public communications arising out of private communications. This post card reflects the reality making public what had been a private matter, that is letter writing. The result would then be a whole communications industry devoted to greeting cards, which then created the conditions for public holidays and the resulting mass consumer society of department stores and mass advertising.

Donalda and I are taking our dogs; Trooper and Tami, off for a jaunt in the mountains for Xmas. So I won't be blogging for several days.

We are going to Jasper. Like Banff a national park created by slave labour, after WWI, using Ukrainian Internees. I will raise a glass in their memory.

Have a great Yule all. Drink a cup o' cheer to keep away the winter cold.

Here are links to my previous articles for this season.

Fiat Lux

Bad Headline

Virgin Birth Announced

WWI Xmas Mutiny

Christmas In the Trenches

Merry Christmas Red Baron

Merry Christmas

Cat Carol

Santa's Sweat Shop

Tannebaum

Rebel Jesus

Chavez Puts Christ In Christmas

Merry Christmashkah

Keeping the 'X' in X-Mas

Chuck Jones Explains It All





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Ezra's Petard

Well it looks like the defunct Western Standard, which is now only a blog online, has been hoisted by its own petard.

Western Standard's apology averts Islamic protest
Canada.com -
CALGARY -- A protest planned for Friday afternoon in Calgary to condemn alleged violent and racist postings has been cancelled after an apology from the Western Standard magazine.
Islamic group drops complaints against local mag Canoe.ca
Magazine apologizes for 'hateful' blog comments CBC.ca

The problem is that former publisher and now guest commentator Ezra Levant's Anti-Muslim rants encourage intolerance and hate speech as being so called freedom of speech in opposition to political correctness.

He no longer is publisher of the Western Standard, he no longer has a column with the Calgary Sun. But he seems to have gotten a job as commentator on Mike Duffy. Guess CTV is trying to keep up with CBC.

Ezra is a provocateur and nothing else. He comments to inflame. And then his followers use his excess's to justify their ignorant racist outbursts. Ezra is the problem, as much as those who comment on his rants.


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Justifying the Inquistion

Came across this stunning bit of logic from those nice folks who believe that abortion is worse than well worse than burning folks at the stake. No really I kid you not. Imagine if they get the chance to return society to their medieval values.

If you think that the Inquisition was evil or misguided, just consider the state of those countries today where the Inquisitions were the most active – Spain, Portugal, and Italy. Nearly everyone in those countries is Catholic, and consequently, all three of those nations have the most restrictive abortion laws in the world.

Over the course of six hundred years, the Catholic Inquisitions sent between forty to sixty thousand individuals to the scaffold to be burned by the secular authorities. This is less than half the number of abortions done in the United States every month.

Let's not forget who these folks were that the Catholics burned at the stake.

In the beginning, the Inquisition dealt only with Christian heretics and did not interfere with the affairs of Jews. However, disputes about Maimonides’ books (which addressed the synthesis of Judaism and other cultures) provided a pretext for harassing Jews and, in 1242, the Inquisition condemned the Talmud and burned thousands of volumes. In 1288, the first mass burning of Jews on the stake took place in France.

It is not known when burning was first used in Britain, but there is a recorded burning for heresy in 1222, when a deacon of the church was burnt at Oxford for embracing the Jewish faith so he could marry a Jew.

Book burning and burning folks at the stake just a step to the right of banning books.




SEE:

Unsafe Abortions Continue

Abortion Is Not A Sin

Pro Life?

Antinominalist Anarchism

The War Against Women

Jacques DeMolay Thou Art Avenged

Secular Society Demands Pope Apologize

Pope Benedict Deus Cannus Est

Bring Back Slavery

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Catholic Values

Catholic board bans 'Golden Compass' indefinitely

I guess we are lucky not to live under a Catholic Theocracy like feudal Europe did. Or else poor Phillip Pullman and his books would not just have been just banned by a Catholic school board. His books would have been used for kindling as the Church committed him to an auto da fey which was their punishment for the crime of heresy.



Now aren't you glad you live in a secular pluralist society which allows you the Freedom to Read unless of course you go to a taxpayer funded Catholic School.
Ironically the Catholic Church and its school boards are proving Pullman correct when he asserts the Church and organized religion is a threat to humanist enlightenment values.

Since they accept public funding while rejecting secular and public values in favour of their private morality it is time to tax the churches. Make em pay for their crimes against secular society and its enlightened values that they oppose.



SEE

An Open Mind

Nitwits

More Silly Censorship

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