The Face of Terrorism

Look Ma, Terrorists.
No dear they are homeless
Yeah ma, thats what they want you to think, the guy with the beard is obviously Ben Laden.
No dear, they are poor, out of work, homeless people.
Ya ma and poverty leads to terrorism.
Now dear be nice, and just ignore them.
Ma I am going to have to report you to Homeland Security,
for showing sympathy with our enemies.


Homeless security? U.S. warned of terrorists in disguise
Washington — Asking for increased vigilance in the wake of the London bombings, the government is warning that terrorists may pose as vagrants to conduct surveillance of buildings and mass transit stations to plot future attacks.

“In light of the recent bombings in London, it is crucial that police, fire and emergency medical personnel take notice of their surroundings, and be aware of ‘vagrants' who seem out of place or unfamiliar,” said the message, distributed via e-mail to some federal employees in Washington by the U.S. Attorney's office.

It is based on a State Department report that was issued last week. The State Department had no immediate comment Monday.

The warning is similar to one issued by the FBI before July 4, 2004, that said terrorists may attempt surveillance disguised as homeless people, shoe shiners, street vendors or street sweepers.

The Republican Administration in the US knows that in order to continue with it's fictional war on terrorism it must continue to make its citizens fearful and paranoid.

Hello American Citizens, wake up, it's not a bad dream. Yes you were attacked on your own soil, but the Bush administration was already preparing to go to war. The horryfiying reality is that you would still be in a war in Iraq regardless of 9/11. That was the Bush plan all along.

There is no war on terror, there is only the Bush war. Its an economic plan to keep America armed and dangerous, so as to maintain your hegemony in the world economy. Since Viet Nam, America has relied on its military expansion to use up its surplus value and to create new capital. You need foriegn wars not to keep America safe from terrorism, but from an economic collapse. A Permanent Arms Economy by Michael Kidron

Which reminds me that my favorite SF author Samuel R. Delaney, wrote the Fall of The Towers between 1963 and 1965 as a trilogy. (The Fall of the Towers (Bantam Spectra 0-553-25648-3, Feb ’86 [Jan ’86], $4.95, 401pp, pb) [Fall of the Towers] Reissue (Ace 1970) omnibus edition of the sf trilogy Out of the Dead City (Ace 1963), The Towers of Toron (Ace 1964), and City of a Thousand Suns (Ace 1965).)

It was NOT about the WTC Towers, they hadn't been built yet.

Nope it was an allegory on Vietnam. It was about an interplanetary war that didn't exist except in minds of its victims and the computers who controled their virtual war reality. It was the society of Tornor's ruling class way of keeping its economy booming, by a continual war against an unknown enemy, and keeping the big lie secret from it's citizens.

The protagonists of the novels are young anarchist nihilist beat poets who graffiti the streets with the slogan; "There is No War!"

A message that would serve American's well now.

SAMUEL RAY DELANY, JR. (b. April 1, 1942, New York, N.Y., U.S.), African-American critic and science-fiction novelist whose highly imaginative works address racial and social issues, heroic quests, and the nature of language.

Delany attended the Bronx High School of Science, and in the early 1960s, City College of New York (now City University of New York). His first novel, The Jewels of Aptor, was was written when he was nineteen and published in 1962. His subsequent trilogy, The Fall of the Towers, was completed while he was still twenty-one.



Gee mom he looks like one of those homeless terrorists.
Aw shut up, George


Big Apple Redux:
An Interview with Marshall Berman Tony Monchinski

T.M.: Besides the enormous human toll, here in New York City we no longer have our Twin Towers. In the November 2001 final edition of Lingua Franca you have an article entitled, "When Bad Buildings Happen to Good People." Like yourself, I'm a native New Yorker, albeit one with fewer years under his belt. For me, the Twin Towers always were: they were natural and normal, a part of the city as if they had always been. In Lingua Franca you describe the Towers as "expressions of an urbanism that disdained the city and its people." Please explain.

M.B.: If you contrast the World Trade Center with the skyscrapers in New York that were most prominent before them, the Chrysler and the Empire State Buildings, these building were on the streets, part of a total system, in the middle of life. The World Trade Center isolated itself from the city in very elaborate ways. It was hard to get to, it was hard to use. They had enormous expansives of space, but it was a lousy public space. In some ways they didn't want the rest of us there. Even before September 11th, it had its own forms of security clearance and it gave off hostility.

That's interesting, because just to the south of the World Trade Center, the Battery Park City Complex, which was built in roughly the same way through the Public Authority, was infinitely more user-friendly. Every weekend for most of the year, the parks, the Strand, the museums and restaurants that grew out of Battery Park City were jammed. People would use one or more of those, but to get to the subway to go home one would have to pass through the World Trade Center. And there it was like a ghost-town: you passed from this overflowing, full site to one that was empty.

From everything I heard, the Port Authority wanted it that way. Their idea of safety involved repelling the people. The slab shape of the Towers and their isolation grew out of an aesthetic voiced best by Le Corbusier, who said that in order to have modern planning we have to "kill the streets." For him the street epitomized disorder and chaos. The idea was to create some other system that repelled the city street. I think that this was one of the greatest mistakes made all over the world.

There is some fear of the city that plays an important role in 20th century culture. It created an endless series of completely sterile and empty gigantic spaces all over the world. There are certain types of stereotyped buildings that people eventually came to see as dreadful. But maybe they had to experience them and live with them before they could see what was wrong. That said, after the World Trade Center got bombed it made me and many other people feel more sympathy for it. Like us, it was vulnerable.

Go West Liberals,Thar's A Boom Out Thar

We Feel Your Pain Canada, Not

Alberta Awash in Riches

Alberta may get $7-billion surplus
Private sector foresees a booming budget as oil hovers above $65 (U.S.) a barrel. And as the money from crude and natural-gas royalties flood provincial coffers, there are concerns about how the Ralph Klein Conservatives will use the riches. "For the last 13 years, their whole mindset has been around the politics of constraint . . . well that doesn't prepare you well for the situation we are in now," said Roger Gibbins, president of the Canada West Foundation, a western think-tank. "It takes a real leap in imagination to get into this space. I think it's very difficult for this particular government to do this."

Well that's an understatement, the Ralph Reich is still in debt and deficit mode, and will be until the King steps down and makes way for his Calgary Corporate Replacement. But that does not assure us that the Party of Calgary will have any new ideas of what to do except like Scrooge McDuck to dive into their emabarssment of riches.



What's interesting is that the Harper Conservatives who complain about the Federal Liberal Government underestimating its surpluses are silent when Alberta does the same. Perhaps while Paul Martin is out here today, placating the alienated Alberta Robber Barons see below, he can ask Ralph for tips on underestimating surpluses and not having the opposition howl about it. Oh yeah that's right there is an Opposition in Ottawa, unlike Alberta.



The surplus we have in Alberta is thanks to the world price of crude and the $1 a litre gas prices at the pump in Toronto and Montreal. Thanks Canada. We appreciate your generosity even if we whine about our alienation. Again it's the Scrooge McDuck ideology in Alberta, 'they are out to get our oil, wealth, money." And its summed up as the NEP. Give it a break already heck most Albertans weren't even born when the NEP had its short lived existance.


Using data from First Energy Capital Corp. and Peters & Co. Ltd., The Globe and Mail estimated Alberta may reap an extra $3.9-billion to $4.1-billion in oil and gas royalties, on top of its budgeted $6.7-billion. Even the more conservative figure means that Alberta would take in a total of $11.6-billion in overall non-renewable resource revenue, easily surpassing the current record of $10.5-billion in fiscal 2000-01. In that scenario, the provincial surplus would swell to at least $6.9-billion, another record.

A growing windfall
Alberta's spring budget forecast $6.7 billion in oil and natural gas royalties but soaring prices since then mean the province will take in much more. Prices since April, along with analyst forecasts through to the end of March point to a windfall of close to $4billion, a record year for royalties and a surplus nearing $7 billion. The calculation of those extra royalties combine commodity price forecasts from First Energy Capital Corp. and Peters & Co. Ltd. with price sensibilities from Alberta Finance.
First Energy Capital Corp. Peters & Co.
First fiscal quarter $659 million $599 million
Second fiscal quarter $956 million $1.02 billion
Third fiscal quarter $1.23 billion $1.07 billion
Fourth fiscal quarter $1.27 billion $1.2 billion
Total $4.12 billion $3.89 billion

COMMODITY PRICE PROJECTIONS; FIRST ENERGY CAPITAL CORP AND PETERS CO.

Why that would be the amount needed to pay for Lyle Obergs $7 billion infrastructure bill, a need created because the Debt and Deficit Fear Mongers in the Kingdom of Ralph, failed to pay for them over the last decade. So there is no need to tap into the Heritage Trust Fund or to borrow the money.

But again the King Ralph and his government will cry poor, just like Scrooge McDuck, while being awash in riches, its been their mantra for 13 years why change now.




The Liberals Go West

Here they come
The boys in the bright white sports car
Waving their arms in the air
Who do they think they are?
And where did they get that car?
Boys In The Bright White Sports Car (Trooper)

A Great band from Calgary, home of Western Alienation and Warren Kinsella. This song started going in my head when I read about the PM and the Liberals moving right, err coming to Alberta to commiserate with those suffering from western alienation

PM's trip aimed at soothing West
On Monday, Martin will meet in Edmonton with the Canada West Foundation, an Alberta-based think tank that released a poll in 2003 that suggested most western Canadians believe the federal government doesn't care about them.

A right wing think tank from Southern Alberta, aren't they all, but not as right wing as the Western Standard.

Liberals seek to woo West at caucus meeting
At least one-third of western Canadians think it's time for their provinces to consider forming their own nation, a poll suggests. The survey, which was released earlier this month, was commissioned by Western Standard magazine, a right-leaning bimonthly news and opinion magazine founded in 2004 by Ezra Levant, a former Reform Party and Alliance Party activist."Westerners are very frustrated with their position in Confederation," said Faron Ellis, a political science professor at Lethbridge Community College, who conducted the survey.

Note Farron is also a longtime supporter of the Reform/ Alliance rump in the new Conservative party, he like this poll are NOT objective, and highly suspect. It's increbible that anyone gives this junk politics of Western Seperatism any credence, but then again Lougheed saw the danger of the right wing seperatist rump when the WCC won a provicial seat. Basically if you look at the politics of Western Seperatism they are the right wing of the right wing, old Social Credit, anti-French, anti-semitic, White Western Canada only type. Which means that they are all bluster and no base.

Of course Western Canada has suffered alienation from the East, cause it acted like a colonial power over the fate of the Western Provinces since the Riel Rebellion. But to kowtow to the likes of LeRant, the Byfields, Farron Ellis, or the majority of the Conservative Caucus, which comes from Alberta, is to capitulate to a minority view which is situated in one city; Calgary.

So lets call it Calgary Alienation, and Calgary Seperation, heck they already want to seperate from Alberta, cause we're all reds up here in Edmonton. And because they are the largest American city north of the 49th parellel. Whats good for Huston is good for Calgary.

And they rule the West in their little minds cause all the old eastern based capitalists are moving their Head Offices from Montreal, Toronto, and Winnipeg to Calgary. It gives them a royal swollen head about their importance as a city state.

Federal Budget gets big Canadian Yawn

One-half of respondents couldn't name one specific item from Goodale's financial blueprint. Half of Canadians paid absolutely no attention to the last federal budget, despite its long list of expensive spending promises on subjects ranging from child care to the military to seniors, federal government polling suggests.Cdns still demanding change: poll

To make matters worse, almost one-third still erroneously thought Ottawa is running deficits - undermining one of the Prime Minister Paul Martin's greatest claims to fame: the fact he balanced Ottawa's books, clearing the way for eight successive surplus budgets.

Okay Liberal media spinners here you go the messaage is; there is NO DEFICIT. The slogan should be hey we are like Alberta deficit free, and well on our way to being debt free thanks to the billions you bilked out of EI.

Liberals have been a little too successful with their controversial practice of underestimating surpluses to dampen public demands, said Derek Burleton, economist with TD Bank Group. "They've made clear . . . there are only limited fiscal resources and as a result, perhaps Canadians are interpreting that as government is running short of money - which spells deficit." Critics complain Goodale repeated that pattern in February's budget by projecting only a $3-billion surplus - just enough for his rainy-day fund - when the books are finally closed on fiscal 2004-05. In reality, the surplus should be about $6.8 billion, rising to $9.5 billion in 2005-06, thanks to lower debt-servicing costs and higher corporate tax payments, says economist Ellen Russell.

Yep who needs Monte Solberg whining about deficits when you have Goodale being cautious and the Liberals playing hide the surplus sasuage,with undeclared budget surpluses, to appear frugal and good managers. It fails to reassure Canadians all is well in the economy, surprize surpirze. Just say NO Deficit.

Surplus rockets to $9.5B
The federal government is -- and will continue -- racking up fatter-than-forecast budget surpluses that will climb back above the $10-billion mark next fiscal year, an economic think-tank says. The surplus this fiscal year will rise to $9.5-billion from an estimated $6.8-billion last year, and then surge even further to $11.3-billion in 2006-07, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says in a new forecast prepared for the House of Commons finance committee.The surpluses forecast by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives are in excess of the $2-billion a year required to meet the conditions for that agreement with the NDP to be implemented.

Ok so perhaps its Alberta and Canada awash in riches, but I don't expect to see Paul Martin and Ralph Klein toasting each other like their predecesors, Peter Lougheed and Pierre Trudeau, did back when oil boomed in the eighties.

Nope don't see that at all.

Now thats Western Alienation, well actually it's Calgary Pig Headedness, cause out West here we are real friendly even to our enemies.

US vs China for Global Hegemony

China differs from Japan in '80s: politics combines with potential for growth

The United States' trade deficit with China hit $162 billion last year, making it the largest imbalance ever recorded with a single country. This year's deficit is already running 32 per cent above last year's pace, and political pressure is heating up to put tighter restrictions on imports from China.That is why Chinese currency reforms take on much greater importance, that the Chinese might have learned from the Japanese to resist U.S.-led political pressure for currency revaluation. Japan ran into trouble in the late 1980s, in part by abdicating control over the yen and letting the dollar-yen conversion soar from 259 in 1985 to 121 by the end of 1987. Many blame that for setting the stage for an asset bubble that eventually collapsed in Japan.There are also significant political differences between the two. While the Chinese have been more open to foreign investment than Japan, there are some concerns that the communist political structure means that the Chinese won't embrace all kinds of foreign involvement such as an American company buying a big Chinese company. In addition, Standard & Poor's chief economist David Wyss points out that China's huge population - which he estimates is 10 times as large as Japan's - means that China has the capability of taking over world production of just about everything.

CHINA REPLACING THE UNITED STATES AS WORLD'S LEADING CONSUMER

China developed it's Three Worlds Geo Political Policy to combat American and Russian Hegemony back in the 1970's about the same time after Mao's death that the slow privatization of the State began.

Under the post Mao regime, the Three Worlds Policy acted as the basis of China's international relations. The Reforms of Deng Zhao Ping, and others kicked off the transition from a State Capitalist economy, to a mixed market economy. Anyone outside a few misquided Stalinists and Trotskyists who still believes that China is in anyway socialist and not an emerging capitalist economy is sadly deluded.

Chinese stocks surge as government's shareholder reforms advance

You can't have trusts, and stockholders in a socialist economy, these are the symptoms of industrial capitalism as outlined by Marx, Lenin, and Hilferding. China has moved beyond being a state capitalist economy, into being an industrialized monoploy capitalist economy. Which even the old left at Monthly Review has come to recognize.

China and Socialism: Market Reforms and Class Struggle
Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett
Monthly Review July-August 2004, Volume 56 — Number 3

Unlike Social Democratic mixed economies in Europe, the Chinese model is not that much different from the MITTA in Japan. Today China is applying the Three Worlds Policy to its economic clout in the world economy in order to bolster its polticial and economic hegemony in the Asian Pacific and into the Middle East, The regions of the Stans, Afghanistan,Kazahstan, Krygistan, etc., and into Africa.

PetroKazakhstan sold for $4.18 billion
CALGARY -- Canadian-based oil company PetroKazakhstan Inc., which placed itself on the auction block, announced Monday it has entered into an agreement to be purchased by a subsidiary of China National Petroleum Corporation in a deal worth $4.18 billion US.

Japan could be defeated because it operates within the global economy. China's isolationism allowed it to do what Japan and Russia couldn't, develop its internal market operations to rely on external investment and distribution while having the backing of the surplus value produced under State Capitalism. China's privatization has the backing of the state, and it is rapidly creating not a free market but monopoly capitalism as a result of large scale fordist industrial production.

Center for International Private Enterprise
Economic Reform Today
Globalization, Trade and Democracy
Number 3, 1997
Reforming China's Trading System
by Will Martin

In other words the surplus value is now becoming exchange value in the global marketplace, while internal reforms have less of an impact on the state and politics, as they do on the new Chinese 'market' of monopoly capitalism. Capitalism does not need democracy to function. And China is proving that. WTO China Updates

China and the world economy
From T-shirts to T-bonds
Jul 28th 2005
From The Economist
Beijing, not Washington, increasingly takes the decisions that affect workers, companies, financial markets and economies everywhere

Hence the urgency of the Americans to secure their place in the Alberta Tar Sands and in the global battle with Chinese capital over oil companies.

US To Raid Oil Sands

Americas Oil Security: Alberta's Tar Sands

Chinese President set to visit Canada
Coincidentally while US VP and Halliburton Consultant Dick Cheney will be visitng Alberta's Tar Sands.

China appears to notch a win in oil race
PetroKaz deal could reinforce country's presence in region
Rudyard Kipling and other 19th century writers called it the Great Game: British-held India and Czarist Russia playing out their imperialist ambitions on the vast and largely uncharted black hole of Central Asia that lay between them. More than a century later, there's a new "Great Game" under way in Central Asia, and the prize is one of the planet's last oil frontiers. Russia to the North, India to the South, China to the East and the United States all want a piece of the oil-rich countries of the Caspian Sea basin, including the mainly Muslim former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Yesterday, a unit of China National Petroleum Corp. struck a $4.18-billion (U.S.) deal to buy Calgary-based PetroKazakhstan Inc. and its roughly 150,000 barrels a day of oil production in Kazakhstan. The apparent loser in the bidding was India's Oil and Natural Gas Corp.

Venezuela's oil company sets sights on China
Venezuela's oil company opened an office in China, a client that is becoming increasingly important to the oil-rich South American country, the state news agency reported yesterday. Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez, who is visiting China, told the Bolivarian News Agency the new office in Beijing will serve as a "bastion for forging relations with new strategic partners." Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has promoted a closer relationship with China, India and other Asian countries in an effort to secure new markets for oil aside from the United States. Venezuela currently ships 68,000 barrels of oil per day to China, compared 12,300 barrels daily last year. AP

Unlike Japan, China views this as much as an economic war as one by any other name. Or in Clauswitzian terms; War is international economics by any other name, and the USA is no longer the lone hegemon in this field. China unlike the USA plans in terms of long wave strategies, as does Japan, which leaves the US vulnerable to eventual economic, military and political defeat in the Asian Pacific Region as well as in the currently contested region of the 'Stans. US imperialism is subject to the limitation of a national isolationist sensibility, while China has no such compunction.

''Setting the Stage for a New Cold War: China's Quest for Energy Security''
However, just as China has for centuries engaged in competition for leadership of Asia, the developing world and status on the world stage, so the need for energy security has now raised the possibility of further competition and confrontation in the energy sphere. This competition has so far been limited to the economic sphere through state-owned oil and gas companies such as China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec), China National Petroleum Corporation (C.N.P.C.), its subsidiary PetroChina and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (C.N.O.O.C.). However, as oil prices rise and China imports an increasing amount of its energy needs, the competition is likely to spill over into the political and military spheres. There are already indications of this.

China: middle kingdom, world centre
Le Monde Diplomatique August 2005
China has announced that the yuan will no longer be pegged to the dollar; greater currency flexibility will permit Beijing to use monetary policy to control its economy. And the entry of its enormous labour force into the global economy will change the world balance of trade. China wants to bypass the Japanese-United States alliance in Asia and at the United Nations, and, through asymmetrical diplomacy, become a different kind of world power.

China: Containment Won't Work By Henry A. Kissinger
Nevertheless, ambivalence has suddenly reemerged. Various officials, members of Congress and the media are attacking China's policies, from the exchange rate to military buildup, much of it in a tone implying China is on some sort of probation. To many, China's rise has become the most significant challenge to U.S. security.Military imperialism is not the Chinese style. Clausewitz, the leading Western strategic theoretician, addresses the preparation and conduct of a central battle. Sun Tzu, his Chinese counterpart, focuses on the psychological weakening of the adversary. China seeks its objectives by careful study, patience and the accumulation of nuances -- only rarely does China risk a winner-take-all showdown.It is unwise to substitute China for the Soviet Union in our thinking and to apply to it the policy of military containment of the Cold War. The Soviet Union was heir to an imperialist tradition, which, between Peter the Great and the end of World War II, projected Russia from the region around Moscow to the center of Europe. The Chinese state in its present dimensions has existed substantially for 2,000 years. The Russian empire was governed by force; the Chinese empire by cultural conformity with substantial force in the background. At the end of World War II, Russia found itself face to face with weak countries along all its borders and unwisely relied on a policy of occupation and intimidation beyond the long-term capacity of the Russian state

''China's Geostrategy: Playing a Waiting Game''
t is common knowledge that China is the most important ascending world power, and one that has only begun to realize its economic and military potential. Before the World Trade Center bombings on September 11, 2001, neoconservative strategists in Washington identified China as the most significant future threat to U.S. interests and defined the Sino-American relation as one of "strategic competition" rather than "strategic partnership." Although the "war on terrorism" has taken precedence over the longer term conflict with China in Washington's geostrategy, the neoconservatives' pre-9/11 judgment was well founded and remains so.

The "ruling party" -- as the Communists in Beijing now call themselves -- sees China's ultimate interest as becoming the undisputed regional power center in East and Southeast Asia, and a major influence -- along with India -- in South Asia, and -- along with Russia -- in Central Asia. In order to achieve its goals, Beijing will have to edge Washington out of Asia by incorporating Taiwan and rendering Washington's security guarantees for Japan and South Korea less credible. Beijing's strategy puts Washington on the defensive with the expectation that, as time goes on, the balance of power will shift inexorably in Beijing's favor. That is why Washington's current National Security Strategy posits a window of opportunity of about a decade for the U.S. to achieve permanent strategic supremacy in the world.

At present, China is what historian John Gittings calls a "status-quo power that often punches below its weight in international politics." That is a realistic position for a power to take that expects its situation to improve over time, as it builds up its economy and military to full potential. For the moment, Beijing's interests are best served by adopting a "defensive" posture and a foreign policy geared to promoting stability. That is likely to change to a more assertive stance the more that China's power resources increase.

Support Locked Out CBC Workers

Adrienne Arsenault in Neve Dekalim on the Gaza Strip on August 15, day 1 of the lockout.

CBC Workers Blog, Podcast, use student radio
Its an on air strike back by locked out CBC workers. They are blogging, podcasting, doing an online webnews page, and working with Canada's University/College radio stations which have public fm access, to create an alternative to CBC, broadcasting your favorite shows on air, as mp3's, etc. Its a whole new era of high tech labour activism.

Locked-out CBC staff in Calgary launches weekly radio broadcast Canadian Press
CALGARY - Locked-out CBC Calgary personalities launched a news and current affairs show on university radio Monday as the dispute with the public broadcaster dragged into its second week. "We hope we only have to do this once," said Tom Spear of the Canadian Media Guild, which represents 5,500 employees who have been locked out since Aug. 15. "But we're prepared to do it once a week for one hour on Mondays for as long as the lockout lasts."The program, on CJSW at the University of Calgary, began at 11 a.m. and was hosted by Newsworld anchor Kathleen Petty and other local broadcasters. Other radio shows are planned across the country in Vancouver and Fredericton through connections with campus radio stations.

Help Locked Out CBC Workers

Contact Anne McLellan and ask that she help resolve the dispute.

Alberta Federation of Labour Aug 19, 2005

4,500 CBC workers, ranging from technicians to on-air personalities, were locked out on August 15. The main issue in the dispute is CBC's attempt to bring in temporary contract workers, undermining job security and stability.

The Canadian Media Guild is asking Canadians to contact their MP to ask that the federal government step in to help resolve the dispute. In Alberta, we are being asked to contact Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan. You can contact her here:

Anne McLellan
MP Edmonton Centre
Constituency phone: (780)495-3122
Ottawa phone: (613)992-4524
email: McLellan.A@parl.gc.ca

Find the contact information for your local MP here.

For more on the CBC Lockout, go to the Canadian Media Guild's website.

Also see my blog articles on the strike:

Nasty Mother Corp.

Solidarity With Locked Out CBC Workers

And the issue is not Wages, Labour disputes not about wages

Like the Telus Lock Out, this is Management attempting to outsource and privatize work. And it is a Lock Out by Management this is NOT a strike.

Outsourcing is the 21st Century class stuggle; like the eight hour day was the 20th Century labour struggle.

CBC, union see contract work as the great divide

Contracted labour: Better for corporate bottom lines, worse for society?

Trend toward contracts over full-time jobs bad for society, say experts

Anarchism and Authority

ON AUTHORITY- by Frederick Engels

A number of Socialists have latterly launched a regular crusade against what they call the principle of authority. It suffices to tell them that this or that act is authoritarian for it to be condemned. This summary mode of procedure is being abused to such an extent that it has become necessary to look into the matter somewhat more closely.

 
Authority, in the sense in which the word is used here, means: the
imposition of the will of another upon ours; on the other hand, authority
presupposes subordination.  Now, since these two words sound bad, and the
relationship which they represent is disagreeable to the subordinated
party, the question is to ascertain whether there is any way of dispensing
with it, whether -- given the conditions of present-day society -- we
could not create another social system, in which this authority would be
given no scope any longer, and would consequently have to disappear. 
 
On examining the economic, industrial and agricultural conditions which
form the basis of present-day bourgeois society, we find that they tend
more and more to replace isolated action by combined action of
individuals.  Modern industry, with its big factories and mills, where
hundreds of workers supervise complicated machines driven by steam, has
superseded the small workshops of the separate producers; the carriages
and wagons of the highways have become substituted by railway trains, just
as the small schooners and sailing feluccas have been by steam-boats. 
Even agriculture falls increasingly under the dominion of the machine and
of steam, which slowly but relentlessly put in the place of the small
proprietors big capitalists, who with the aid of hired workers cultivate
vast stretches of land. 
 
Everywhere combined action, the complication of processes dependent upon
each other, displaces independent action by individuals.  But whoever
mentions combined action speaks of organisation; now, is it possible to
have organisation without authority? 
 
Supposing a social revolution dethroned the capitalists, who now exercise
their authority over the production and circulation of wealth.  Supposing,
to adopt entirely the point of view of the anti-authoritarians, that the
land and the instruments of labour had become the collective property of
the workers who use them.  Will authority have disappeared, or will it
only have changed its form? Let us see. 
 
Let us take by way if example a cotton spinning mill.  The cotton must
pass through at least six successive operations before it is reduced to
the state of thread, and these operations take place for the most part in
different rooms.  Furthermore, keeping the machines going requires an
engineer to look after the steam engine, mechanics to make the current
repairs, and many other labourers whose business it is to transfer the
products from one room to another, and so forth. All these workers, men,
women and children, are obliged to begin and finish their work at the
hours fixed by the authority of the steam, which cares nothing for
individual autonomy.  The workers must, therefore, first come to an
understanding on the hours of work; and these hours, once they are fixed,
must be observed by all, without any exception.  Thereafter particular
questions arise in each room and at every moment concerning the mode of
production, distribution of material, etc., which must be settled by
decision of a delegate placed at the head of each branch of labour or, if
possible, by a majority vote, the will of the single individual will
always have to subordinate itself, which means that questions are settled
in an authoritarian way.  The automatic machinery of the big factory is
much more despotic than the small capitalists who employ workers ever have
been.  At least with regard to the hours of work one may write upon the
portals of these factories: _Lasciate ogni autonomia, voi che entrate!_
[Leave, ye that enter in, all autonomy behind!]
 
If man, by dint of his knowledge and inventive genius, has subdued the
forces of nature, the latter avenge themselves upon him by subjecting him,
in so far as he employs them, to a veritable despotism independent of all
social organisation.  Wanting to abolish authority in large-scale industry
is tantamount to wanting to abolish industry itself, to destroy the power
loom in order to return to the spinning wheel. 
 
Let us take another example -- the railway.  Here too the co-operation of
an infinite number of individuals is absolutely necessary, and this
co-operation must be practised during precisely fixed hours so that no
accidents may happen.  Here, too, the first condition of the job is a
dominant will that settles all subordinate questions, whether this will is
represented by a single delegate or a committee charged with the execution
of the resolutions of the majority of persona interested.  In either case
there is a very pronounced authority.  Moreover, what would happen to the
first train dispatched if the authority of the railway employees over the
Hon. passengers were abolished? 
 
But the necessity of authority, and of imperious authority at that, will
nowhere be found more evident than on board a ship on the high seas. 
There, in time of danger, the lives of all depend on the instantaneous and
absolute obedience of all to the will of one. 
 
When I submitted arguments like these to the most rabid
anti-authoritarians, the only answer they were able to give me was the
following:  Yes, that's true, but there it is not the case of authority
which we confer on our delegates, but of a commission entrusted!  These
gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have
changed the things themselves.  This is how these profound thinkers mock
at the whole world. 
 
We have thus seen that, on the one hand, a certain authority, no matter
how delegated, and, on the other hand, a certain subordination, are things
which, independently of all social organisation, are imposed upon us
together with the material conditions under which we produce and make
products circulate. 
 
We have seen, besides, that the material conditions of production and
circulation inevitably develop with large-scale industry and large-scale
agriculture, and increasingly tend to enlarge the scope of this authority. 
Hence it is absurd to speak of the principle of authority as being
absolutely evil, and of the principle of autonomy as being absolutely
good.  Authority and autonomy are relative things whose spheres vary with
the various phases of the development of society.  If the autonomists
confined themselves to saying that the social organisation of the future
would restrict authority solely to the limits within which the conditions
of production render it inevitable, we could understand each other; but
they are blind to all facts that make the thing necessary and they
passionately fight the world. 
 
Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out
against political authority, the state?  All Socialists are agreed that
the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a
result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions
will lose their political character and will be transformed into the
simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of
society.  But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be
abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth
to it have been destroyed.  They demand that the first act of the social
revolution shall be the abolition of authority.  Have these gentlemen ever
seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing
there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its
will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon --
authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party
does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means
of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists.  Would the Paris
Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority
of the armed people against the bourgeois?  Should we not, on the
contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough? 
 
Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don't
know what they're talking about, in which case they are creating nothing
but confusion; or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the
movement of the proletariat.  In either case they serve the reaction.

written 1872, published 1874 in the Italian Almanacco Repubblicano



Engels is right in his criticism of anti-authoritarian social democrats.

Just like then,  the current  'anti-authoritarian' movement on the left, 

still does the knee jerk reaction to so called authority.

And lets be clear this is a a movement of the generic liberal left

in North America not specifically anarchist or libertarian as much

as it's supporters claim it to be.

Hence the navel gazing crusade to adopt consensus building

as key to the anti capitalist movement, while approving sectarian

self aggrandizing actions like the black block  as being acts of 'autonomy'.

As Engels says; "It suffices to tell them that this or that act is authoritarian

for it to be condemned". Yep nothing has changed in 133 years


Anarchism however is NOT Anti-Authoritarian liberalism as Emma Goldman

continously pointed out much to the chagrin of other anarchists of the time.

Which is why I do-not call myself an anti-authoritarian anything.

And neither did he:

From the Makhno Archive

• About the Platform, Nestor Makhno (a reply to Malatesta) 1928

You yourself, dear Malatesta, recognise the individual responsibility
of the anarchist revolutionary. And what is more, you have lent your
support to it throughout your life as a militant. At least that is how
I have understood your writings on anarchism. But you deny the
necessity and usefulness of collective responsibility as regards the
tendencies and actions of the anarchist movement as a whole. Collective
responsibility alarms you; so you reject it.

For myself, who has acquired the habit of fully facing up to the
realities of our movement, your denial of collective responsibility
strikes me not only as without basis but dangerous for the social
revolution, in which you would do well to take account of experience
when it comes to fighting a decisive battle against all our enemies at
once. Now my experience of the revolutionary battles of the past leads
me to believe that no matter what the order of revolutionary events may
be, one needs to give out serious directives, both ideological and
tactical. This means that only a collective spirit, sound and devoted
to anarchism, could express the requirements of the moment, through a
collectively responsible will. None of us has the right to dodge that
element of responsibility. On the contrary, if it has been until now
overlooked among the ranks of the anarchists, it needs now to become,
for us, communist anarchists, an article of our theoretical and
practical programme.

Only the collective spirit of its militants and their collective
responsibility will allow modern anarchism to eliminate from its
circles the idea, historically false, that anarchism cannot be a guide
- either ideologically or in practice - for the mass of workers in a
revolutionary period and therefore could not have overall
responsibility.

MAKHNO AND THE MAKHNOVSHCHINA.

Makhno led his army from the front but he also ran it with few concessions
to his political beliefs, discipline was harsh and often terminal.

The Makhnovist military forces
were commanded directly by Makhno and his staff with only lip service
paid to the ‘Regional Congress of Peasants, Workers and Insurgents’,
who theoretically controlled them. Makhno’s General staff were chosen
by him and were mainly Gulyai-Pole men that he new and trusted, this
group despite its lack of trained career officers was the backbone of
the Insurgent Army. So successful was Makhno’s tactics and organisation
that the White’s believed he had a professional staff pressganged from
captured officers, rumours spread that Makhno was advised by Colonel
Kleist a member of the German General Staff. In reality the Makhnovists
had no professional officers among their army, captured officers and
NCO,s were shot and the ordinary soldiers either joined the Makhnovists
or were disarmed and released after being distributed Makhnovist
propaganda. Though the Staff officers were appointed by Makhno, on a
Regimental level officers were elected by the men from their own ranks
and were mostly ex-soldiers. As to Makhnovist order of battle it is
confusing, certainly troops were organised into regiments, but it is
unknown if they were all of the same size or organisational structure.
Specialised units included eight Machine gun regiments of 300 men each,
and two Artillery divisions. Former Red army infantry Regiments
fighting with the Makhnovists would be of between 400 to 1,000 men.
Regiments seem to have been quite large and when fighting on the front
organised into Corps of six regiments. The confusion over the
Makhnovists order of battle probably has more to do with the
destruction of almost all of the records of the insurgent Army and the
deaths of most of its commanders than with any problems of
organisation. As well as the fighting forces the Makhnovists had their
own intelligence service the Kontrazvedka who gathered intelligence
from the villages and arrested Bolshevik and White spies, foiling
several attempts on Makhno’s life by the Bolshevik’s. The Makhnovists
while certainly not in the same league as the Red Army organisationally
did have an organised senior military staff, a civilian political
organisation and unit organisation at regimental level . Indeed for
several months they were part of the Red Army fighting on the southern
front against Denikin and later the Makhnovists activities in the
Whites rear forced Denikin to divert forces from the Moscow front to
deal with the insurgents. these were hardly the actions of counter
revolutionary kulaks.
The Makhnovists described themselves as Anarchists
but this has been denied by critics and indeed contemporary Anarchist
supporters of the Makhnovists. The 3rd Nabat (Confederation of
Anarchist Organisations of the Ukraine)Conference in Kharkiv held in
September 1920 reported that;
"As regards the ‘Revolutionary Partisan Army of the
Ukraine (Makhnovites)....it is a mistake to call it anarchist....mostly
they are Red soldiers who fell into captivity, and middle peasant
volunteers".
As regards the insurgent army this is basically true
many Red army men captured by the Makhnovists decided to stay and fight
and the majority of Makhno’s cavalry were middle peasants, due to the
agricultural development in South East Ukraine commercial grain farming
in an area of low population wages were higher and there was a far
larger number of middle peasants than in other areas of the Ukraine.
Makhno was undoubtedly an Anarchist of deep conviction he had spent
nine years in prison for his involvement with crimes committed while a
member of an Anarchist Communist group in Gulyai-Pole and had his
beliefs strengthened and sharpened by his time in prison with other
Anarchists. On leaving prison he worked in Gulyai-Pole to set up
organisations based on Anarchistic principles and attempted to apply
his beliefs to the Makhnovshchina. Makhno was no ideologue following
the teachings of any one Anarchist ideology he believed that Anarchism
was not a doctrine but a way of life;
"Anarchism does not depend on theory or on programmes
which try to grasp man’s life in its entirety.
It is a teaching which is based on real life,
which outgrows all artificial limitations".
To compare the Makhnovists and foreign peasant movements one should 
look to Mexico and the Mexican Civil War which gives two peasant 
movements to compare with Makhno’s.That of Doroteo Arango 
(Pancho Villa) and Emiliano Zapata. 
With the fall of the dictator Porfirio Diaz in 1910 Mexico fell into confusion
with peasant rebels, constitutional reformists and reactionary
supporters of the old regime vying for control over the country. Villa
operated in the Northern state of Chihuahua an area mainly of cattle
ranches and dominated by the landed upper classes. Labour was scarcer
and more expensive than in the rest of rural Mexico and the
independently minded cowboy’s and bandit’s provided Villa with
supporters susceptible to revolutionary propaganda. These hard core of
supporters provided Villa with cavalry, and like Makhno his was a war
of manoeuvre. Villa unlike Makhno could obtain weapons and equipment
from outside his own area across the border in the United States. Villa
like Makhno was a peasant who while in Prison gained what political
education he had from Gildardo Magana an intellectual involved in the
Zapatista movement. By 1914 he commanded 40,000 troops in the North of
Mexico. Although he paid lip service to the land reform program of
Zapata he never carried out any agrarian reforms, due partly to the
difficulties of dividing cattle estates up viably among peasants and
cowboys . In the South of Mexico, Emiliano Zapata led a peasant
partisan army that had perhaps more political similarities to the
Makhnovists than any other. Operating in their home region of Morelos
the Zapatistas redistributed the land of the huge estates (Haciendas)
to the local peasantry and sought to build self governing village
communities similar to those advocated by Makhno. Indeed the
Zapatista’s rural anarchism resembled that of the Makhnovists. Like the
Makhnovists the Zapatistas had to rely on what materials and supplies
they could capture and operated in their home region with some success
eventually capturing the capital Mexico city. The Zapatistas fought
mainly a defensive guerrilla campaign which was unable to defeat
superior government forces in open battle. Both the Zapata and Villa
movements failed to become more than peasant rebellions concentrated in
their home regions, and both failed to gain support among the urban
working class. The constitutional government who gained power with the
help of these two movements then turned on them killing Zapata in an
ambush in 1919 and making peace with Villa who was later assassinated
in 1923.
The Makhnovshchina was a peasant movement based
mainly on the support gained from around its centre, Gulyai-Pole and
the surrounding province of Ekaterinoslav. The Makhnovists
redistributed the land to the peasantry and attempted to run its
affairs in an instinctive Anarchistic fashion, despite the lack of
intellectuals among their ranks. While the Bolsheviks attacked them for
being petty-bourgeois Kulaks and agents of French and Belgian
financiers, they were quite happy to accept the Makhnovists help
against the White armies of Denikin and Wrangel. The Makhnovshchina was
a regional phenomenon which failed to gain support in urban areas, it
did succeed in winning the support of the Ukrainian peasant by
addressing their needs and organising in ways they could recognise and
relate to from their own experience of village life. But its strength
in the countryside, the movements understanding of peasant life was its
weakness when trying to organise in the urban environment.

Emma Goldman
My Disillusionment In Russia
CHAPTER XI
A VISIT FROM THE UKRAINA

In 1918, when the Brest Peace opened Ukraina to German and Austrian
occupation, Makhno organized the rebel peasant bands in defence against the
foreign armies. He fought against Skoropadski, the Ukrainian Hetman, who was
supported by German bayonets. He waged successful guerilla warfare against
Petlura, Kaledin, Grigoriev, and Denikin. A conscious Anarchist, he laboured to
give the instinctive rebellion of the peasantry definite aim and purpose. It was
the Makhno idea that the social revolution was to be defended against all
enemies, against every counter-revolutionary or reactionary attempt from right
and left. At the same time educational and cultural work was carried on among
the peasants to develop them along anarchist-communist lines with the aim of
establishing free peasant communes.

In February, 1919, Makhno entered into an agreement with the Red Army. He was
to continue to hold the southern front against Denikin and to receive from the
Bolsheviki the necessary arms and ammunition. Makhno was to remain in charge of
the povstantsi, now grown into an army, the latter to have autonomy in its local
organizations, the revolutionary soviets of the district, which covered several
provinces. It was agreed that the povstantsi should have the right to hold
conferences, freely discuss their affairs, and take action upon them. Three such
conferences were held in February, March, and April. But the Bolsheviki failed
to live up to the agreement. The supplies which had been promised Makhno, and
which he needed desperately, would arrive after long delays or failed to come
altogether. It was charged that this situation was due to the orders of Trotsky
who did not look favourably upon the independent rebel army. However it be,
Makhno was hampered at every step, while Denikin was gaining ground constantly.
Presently the Bolsheviki began to object to the free peasant Soviets, and in
May, 1919, the Commander-in-Chief of the southern armies, Kamenev, accompanied
by members of the Kharkov Government, arrived at the Makhno headquarters to
settle the disputed matters. In the end the Bolshevik military representatives
demanded that the povstantsi dissolve. The latter refused, charging the
Bolsheviki with a breach of their revolutionary agreement.

Meanwhile, the Denikin advance was becoming more threatening, and Makhno
still received no support from the Bolsheviki. The peasant army then decided to
call a special session of the Soviet for June 15th. Definite plans and methods
were to be decided upon to check the growing menace of Denikin. But on June 4th
Trotsky issued an order prohibiting the holding of the Conference and declaring
Makhno an outlaw. In a public meeting in Kharkov Trotsky announced that it were
better to permit the Whites to remain in the Ukraina than to suffer Makhno. The
presence of the Whites, he said, would influence the Ukrainian peasantry in
favour of the Soviet Government, whereas Makhno and his povstantsi would never
make peace with the Bolsheviki; they would attempt to possess themselves of some
territory and to practice their ideas, which would be a constant menace to the
Communist Government. It was practically a declaration of war against Makhno and
his army. Soon the latter found itself attacked on two sides at once--by the
Bolsheviki and Denikin. The povstantsi were poorly equipped and lacked the most
necessary supplies for warfare, yet the peasant army for a considerable time
succeeded in holding its own by the sheer military genius of its leader and the
reckless courage of his devoted rebels.

At the same time the Bolsheviki began a campaign of denunciation against
Makhno and his povstantsi. The Communist press accused him of having
treacherously opened the southern front to Denikin, and branded Makhno's army a
bandit gang and its leader a counterrevolutionist who must be destroyed at all
cost. But this "counter-revolutionist" fully realized the Denikin menace to the
Revolution. He gathered new forces and support among the peasants and in the
months of September and October, 1919, his campaign against Denikin gave the
latter its death blow on the Ukraina. Makhno captured Denikin's artillery base
at Mariopol, annihilated the rear of the enemy's army, and succeeded in
separating the main body from its base of supply. This brilliant manceuvre of
Makhno and the heroic fighting of the rebel army again brought about friendly
contact with the Bolsheviki. The ban was lifted from the povstar~tsi and the
Communist press now began to eulogize Makhno as a great military genius and
brave defender of the Revolution in the Ukraina. But the differences between
Makhno and the Bolsheviki were deeprooted: he strove to establish free peasant
communes in the Ukraina, while the Communists were bent on imposing the Moscow
rule. Ultimately a clash was inevitable, and it came early in January, 1920.

At that period a new enemywas threatening the Revolution. Grigoriev, formerly
of the Tsarist army, later friend of the Bolsheviki, now turned against them.
Having gained considerable support in the south because of his slogans of
freedom and free Soviets, Grigoriev proposed to Makhno that they join forces
against the Communist regime. Makhno called a meeting of the two armies and
there publicly accused Grigoriev of counter-revolution and produced evidence of
numerous pogroms organized by him against the Jews. 

Declaring Grigoriev an enemy of the people and of the Revolution,
Makhno and his staff condemned him and his aides to death,
executing them on the spot. Part of Grigoriev's army joined Makhno.

I Rest my case.



For Nick Driedger

Lack of Planning Created Skills Shortage in Alberta

Premiers say education and training key to Canada's economic future

Having a plan for economic development is seen as being a "planned economy'" in some folks minds, like the ruling Tired old Tories in Alberta.

Well all economies are planned, including the so called market economies. The plan can be obvious, such as government intervention in the economy ala Keynes or the plan can be, the Adam Smith secret hand of the marketplace, that is the corporate control of supply and demand. Yes market economies are planned economies, they are not 'free' associations of producers, so they have to plan.

Unfortunately when right wing nuts run the government for their business friends they let them do all the planning. Dumb move that. Cause they plan in quarters and bottom lines and fail inevitalibly to take into account the business cycle of boom and bust. Which is why all this talk about a Skilled Labour shortage in Alberta and increasingly across Canada is a great example of the failure of neo-liberalism and conservative governments to plan for the economy.

They knew they had a skills shortage in Alberta in the late 1970's when the Oil Boom was in full swing here. I worked for the Department of Adanced Education and Manpower in 1980. There used to be two seperate departments Advanced Ed for Post Secondary Education and Manpower for labour needs, labour law, etc. The then ruling Tories, under Peter Lougheed, came up with the brilliant scheme to merge these two completely different departments into one in order to solve the Skilled Labour shortage at that time. But since they didn't have a plan or a philosophy as to what the focus of Post Secondary Education was in Alberta (and by the by they still don't) or should be nothing really changed. Universities produced managers, engineers and professionals, Technical Institutes like NAIT and SAIT produced workers, tradesmen, etc. And never the twain would meet.

So what clever solution did the Alberta Government come up with to solve its skilled labour force crisis in both the oil patch and the construction industry? Importing workers, first from other provinces, such as Newfoundland, (which is why Fort McMurray is the biggest Newfie city in Canada) and when that wasn't working they began looking overseas. They also began the process of allowing private for profit insititutions like hair salons, to begin granting certificates and run apprenticeship programs (Esthetics is the biggest pink collar ghetto of young workingclass women in Alberta who enter trades).

We had begun to develop a trades and apprenticeship program in High Schools under the previous Social Credit Government after the Woods Education Commission report. Several schools in Calgary and Edmonton began to offer skills instruction and pre apprenticeship training, such as W.P.Wagner High School in Edmonton.

All of this came to a grinding halt in 1982 when the economic melt down affecting Canada and the rest of the G8 countries became a reality in Alberta, the bottom fell out of the gas and oil market while inflation hit double digits. All thought of skills training went out the window, as the Tories scrambled to save their asses, cause they hadn't planned for the economic boom and bust of capitalism. Duh oh.
Construction work disappeared, and wages fell, workers and management left the province in a rush to find work elsewhere. Skills training was no longer an issue, mere economic survival was.

Well here we are 25 years and one boom gone bust later, and we have the same old Tories in power and we have another skilled labour shortage, and their solution has been the same old same old:

The shortage of skilled workers is acute in booming Alberta, says Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Ed Stelmach.

"You can pick any trade, any profession: we're having difficulty filling those spaces with people,'' Stelmach said.

"It's hitting us on every level, even in small rural communities. I've talked to small agriculture machinery dealers who say they can't sell any more harvesting equipment because they don't have people to put them together in time for harvest.''

The strength of Alberta's oil and gas sector has allowed it to steal workers from other industries and provinces, a short-sighted strategy that's now created a looming crisis. Stelmach says skill shortages are hurting Alberta's economy and he believes the impact will be felt elsewhere.

"We just won't be able to grow at the same rate if you don't have the people to build the plants, to provide the goods and services,'' he said. "We'd like to come forward with a common strategy amongst all the provinces so we can get an agreement with the federal government and get different options.''

Premiers to concentrate on workforce
By Judy Monchuk
Canadian Press

Students demand more cash from Ottawa
Aug 8 2005 CBC News

Quebec university and CEGEP students want the premiers to concentrate on one major issue when they meet this week: getting more money from Ottawa for post-secondary education. The student groups say the federal government cut billions from education and social programs in the 1990s to balance the budget.

Like Health Care, Post Secondary Education is a Provincial Responsibility. Ottawa has handed over transfer payments for years until the deficit hysteria took over in 1995 and then Finance Minister Paul Martin cut federal funds to the provinces. The problem with federal transfer payments is that the provinces put them in general revenues, and there is no strings attached to ensure they are used for what they are supposed to be used for. We are just supposed to trust our Provincial governments to do the right thing with taxpayers money. Ah hem. Right.

In Alberta awash in oil riches, a billion here or there is negligble, the Ralph Reich is opposed to spending on infrastructure or the public sector. But this is nothing new, in the late seventies and early eighties with the first big boom in Tar Sands development, there were fewer students in university and college in Alberta due to many of them working. The lure of big bucks was there and our post secondary institutions were going through a funding crunch even then.

Again there was no plan, no vision for what training was needed for working class kids, what there was of a paln by the Tory government was that while Oil made the province money, what created jobs was a state subsidized construction boom.

Vote buying is an old tradition in Alberta, it's colourful and apocraphile beginings were in booze for votes and having the local drunk vote more than once for the same candidate at different voting stations. By the time of Peter Lougheed Government awash in oil money, this became a full fledged program aimed at the construction industry in the province. The Lougheed government built universities, seniors homes and hospitals all over the province. What they didn't fund was enough staff for these institutions. That was always an after thought.

In universities and colleges if you wanted to staff the new buildings, you increased tuition fees and user fees to pay for it. In 1977-78 differential fees were introduced in Alberta universities for foriegn students. Despite wide spread protests, the fees were passed by Government appointed Boards at the Universities and Colleges.

This set the stage for the imposition of tuition increases that would follow for the next quarter of a century. That's right we have had tuition increases for 25 years now. And all they have done is expose the policy, the only policy the Alberta government has ever had towards post secondary education, of downloading provincial debt to institutions, faculty and students.

In an Interview I did with the then Deputy Minister of Advanced Education in 1980 he said that the reason the province imposed tuition fee increases was because "there were not enough students in university and college" to make up for the funding shortfalls. Funding shortfalls that were a result of the province limiting funds for staff and student support, but being generous with funds for capital projects' ie. buildings.

He said then "It's a chicken and the egg problem", not enough students means that there aren't enough operating funds for universities and colleges, so the government allowed them to increase tuition fees to make up for the lack of bodies. When I asked if the logic of this would result in a tuition decrease if the student population increased, he said no, it would just stay stable, that is at the last rate of increase.

Well that didn't last long, as the oil boom and the economy took a nose dive with the global crash of capitalism in 1984. Remember the Dark Thursday of 1984 when the stock market crashed the worst it had since 1929, of course you do. we all do because it caused massive inflation not seen since the Weimar Republic.

As Kim Moody points out in his book An Injury To All this was the begining of capitals declaration of Class War against the working class and its unions. Wages fell or were rolled back, while inflation was rampant people lost their homes unable to make boom time payments. The Real Estate market caught fire, and flipping became the big thing.

If you had the money for a downpayment you could buy a house and sell it in a week. Farms collapsed, and lenders forclosed on farming families, across North America. It was as bad as the time of the Great Depression, but the social safety nets absent then, were in place now to help ameliorate some of the worst of the bottoming out of the marketplace.

Still it was not enough and food banks were created as a short term solution to the food crisis of the working class now unemployed. They are still with us today. And it was the time when homelessness became visible to the middle class in their communities. No longer just the mentally handicapped or the addicts, the street people were joined by working class families with no homes and no jobs. And they are with us still.

The old fall back of the Lougheed era of state subsidies to the construction industry for building infrastructure was halted, as was attempts to invest in big time heavy industrial projects, like the Swan Hills Hazardous waste plant, an original Don Getty P3.

By the time of the Ralph Reign in Alberta the government still had no plan for post-secondary education, except to use it willy nilly to meet short term employment needs whether that was teachers or nurses, which had projections of shortages due to pending mass retirements in the ninties. Or the development of management and entreprenaurial courses,such as Management Studies at the University of Lethbridge, and including selling off entire departments to industry and corporations, such as the University of Calgary Petrochemical Engineering department.

While the arts, humanities and libraries were cut back in funding, practical employable skills programming in science, engineering, education, medicine, and business/mamagement studies flourished.

In K-12 education the attack was over back to basics, testing, and in the ninties charter schools, vouchers, and the rise of market competition for schools. In Edmonton Public the ultimate reform in education complete decentralization, known as School Based Management, was introduced in the dark days of the early eighties as the government reduced its comittment to funding public education.

This meant the end and destruction of embryonic apprenticeship programs at W. P. Wagner. By the mid-eighties vocational education in Edmonton Public Schools was like its German or Japanese counterparts, based on targeting or tracking students into a career path. Unfortunately in Edmonton, and across Alberta, that targeting was not of the average student the vast majority of whom would not be going to university, but to the underprivileged, the emotionally or phsyically challenged. It was reduced to remedial vocational education.

Showing a complete disregard for working class educational needs, W. P. Wagner in its final days as a vocational school was doomed to comics in the library and an armed cop on patrol.

The failure to link skills education and vocational training begining in High School with streaming into apprenticeships was not restricted to the Department of Education, but also the newly renamed Department of Advanced Education and Learning. Once again the departments were seperated, new empires were created for Cabinet Ministers, but no plan was developed to deal with post secondary education in Alberta. No plan for training the vast majority of students who graduate from High School and will not be going on to university doomed to become little business men; managers at Wal-Mart or hair stylists in someone elses salon.

This government never did have a plan for training or vocational education. In the ninties when faced with its debt and defecit hysteria it began an ambitious program of rebuilding Alberta along Republican lines, including transforming public education and post secondary education into fee for service, school based management, voucher system funding to further reduce the governments funding of education. It also encourage privatization of eduction especially vocational education with the introduction of American private colleges and fly by night computer colleges with certification.

That was its sum total plan after special hearings on the future of post secondary education. The same old government appointed boards of directors of Alberta universities and colleges remained, only with more corporate partners and corporate hacks in charge. Even the corporatization of post secondary education in Alberta was left up to the market, leaving each institution to compete with each other for students (provincial funding) and corporate sponsors (operational and infrastructure funding).

While a specialized school like Old Scona Academic, which is the top academic school in Alberta, could exist all this time and successfully graduate high school students with a BA equivalency in courses that was given credit at Alberta Universities, such did not exist for trades or vocational training.

In Edmonton and Calgary the Trades Unions put more High School graduates through apprenticeship training programs than either the Public or Catholic boards do. Skill training in the urban mileux is not seen as essential, it is however seen as essential in the rural and smaller urban communities in the province.
Still for the Alberta Government its vocational program for High School is seen as an after thought, not a neccisity.

Through out the ninties, the provinces benefited from getting direct EI funding from the Federal Government to implement trades training. In Alberta no such a program was developed, instead those funds went into the provinces general revenues. Once again ripping of both employees and employers who paid into the fund, and the society at large for failing our students and adult learners who might want skill training. Instead the goverment funded private for profit companies that taught you how to write a resume. This was the extent of skills training in Alberta.

In order to integrate a proper skills training program in Alberta for the working class majority it has to begin in High School tracking non university track students into trades. The program has to be credit based and credited as part of the students apprenticeship. In post secondary education both the Trades Colleges and the University need to cross credit courses, for instance, in welding students in Fine Arts at University should take welding at NAIT or SAIT, and welding students at these colleges should be able to take credit courses in abstract metal sculpture. All students in both institutions should be taking economics, politics, science and philosophy courses offered by universities. The motto should be that every plumber can read Shakespere. We don't need comic books in our public school libraries. And we don't need the ideology that says being a blue collar worker is for 'dummies' literally or figuretively.

But that is the attitude, we currently have in 9-12 primary education and post seconday education. Because we have no plan.