A Little Bit Of Heaven In Ottawa

Alberta is fondly refered to as Gods Country. In the house that King Peter Lougheed built; the post 1971 PC controled Alberta Legislature, the TV cameras all focus on the Government Bench and the Premiers front row.

There is no ability to pan across to the opposition or even the public gallery. And if the Premier moves out of range of these anchored camera's well they miss the action... as occured recently when King Ralph threw legislation at a page.

The Press gallery was two floors below any offices of importance. But the fridge used to have beer so that made it barable.

The Press in Alberta is dominated by Kleins autarchy, obey the rules or don't get called. Bite the hand that feeds you press tips and well, so much for your career as a political reporter. And then there is the Alberta Media version of FAUX News the CFCN network, and Limbaugh in Ruthordford.

Back in the ninties the only provincial public radio station in Canada; CKUA was fully privatized and lost its perennial contract to broadcast live from the Alberta Legislature during Question Period when it was held.

They had done this for seventy five years, and even survived the tyranny of the Social Credit government of Bible Bill. But in one fell swoop of anti-democracy the only station willing to carry the QP was cut off from access due to increased costs charged to them now that they were privatized. The logic befuddles the mind.

So good luck in Ottawa, you mighty media giants. You are about to face the wrath of Gods country. How DARE YOU PRESUME on the PM. Welcome to a little bit of Alberta in Ottawa. A little bit of Heaven for Cesar Harper.

Reporters face off with PMO over limits on access

Harper tightens secrecy, limits access

Tory gov't secrecy blasted by Graham

Battle heats up between media and Prime Minister's Office

Security on Parliament Hill barred reporters from attending a pair of Stephen Harper photo opportunities Monday as the Prime Ministers Office flexed its media messaging muscles.

The made-for-TV confrontation between security and reporters outside Harper's office door graphically illustrated the deteriorating relations between a PMO seeking total message control and news media defending their hard-won access.

It's a battle that may be beginning to resonate beyond the cozy precincts of the Peace Tower as the Conservatives threaten to hold secret cabinet meetings and withhold information about visiting heads of state.

"Harper ran on a campaign of open and accountable government," New Democrat MP Charlie Angus said Monday.

"And the first thing we see him doing is putting plywood up over all his windows and barring access to the doors. My question is, why? What is Harper afraid of?"

Among a series of media access restrictions already imposed or being contemplated, the most inflammatory is a plan to bar reporters from staking out cabinet meetings, where they can ask departing ministers about their portfolios.

In order to stop the practice, the PMO is suggesting it will keep the weekly meetings secret. At a minimum, it hopes to force reporters to wait a floor below the cabinet room, so that only ministers who want to speak - or have permission - will face the media.

Emmanuelle Latraverse, a Radio-Canada reporter and president of the press gallery, said the PMO is attempting to claw back access rights that have taken years to win.


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Hey Ralph Smell The Coffee

In Alberta it is very bad to be spoken of in the same breathe as Jean Chretien. Very bad indeed. Just ask Paul Martin......And it is reoccuring more frequently......Ralph and Jean, two who took too long to say goodbye........

Like Jean Chretien, Ralph Klein can't see that times have changed

Major tactical errors have touched our previously Teflon premier

Sheila Pratt, The Edmonton Journal

Published: Sunday, March 26, 2006

So how did Ralph Klein, for years the leader who could do no wrong, get himself into such a mess this week?

Mr. Populist Premier, just "Ralph" to most Albertans, the mastermind of massive Conservative majorities for a decade, suddenly finds his grip is slipping. One cabinet minister, Lyle Oberg, openly says it's time Klein is gone and another, Ed Stelmach steps down. With party rank and file torn in their loyalties, the top brass worry Klein may take the party down with him.

It seemed to happen so fast, but signs have been there for awhile.

Who could forget that great moment after the 2001 election when an ecstatic, yes, gloating Klein grinned into the cameras "Welcome to Ralph's world!" He'd crushed the opposition to nine seats and took back much of Edmonton. He had the world in his hands.

That was the zenith. The cult of Klein soon began to fray at the edges and it was evident after the 2004 election,which laid the groundwork for today's mess

A new fear factor: Speaking up to Ralph

Globe and Mail, Canada
By Deborah Yedlin.

CALGARY — Lyle Oberg has been a hot topic in Calgary's business community since he broke ranks with Alberta Premier Ralph Klein and dared to voice what many in this province have been thinking for at least the past 12 months.

One oil patch industry insider went as far as saying "people were very happy" that someone finally had the gumption to challenge Mr. Klein, even if it has cost Mr. Oberg a run at the top job in provincial politics.

Many business leaders in both Edmonton and Calgary have been equally reticent to confront him. They too have been nattering for months that it's time for the Premier to go but because the oil patch depends on the government for favourable rulings on everything from royalty rates to approvals for new projects, the silence has been deafening.

Now, Mr. Oberg has spoken up and will likely pay the ultimate political price. With luck, his comments will resonate with delegates when they walk into the voting booth this weekend and anonymously cast their ballots during Mr. Klein's leadership review.

Mr. Klein has said he's willing to accept a 70-per-cent approval rating. He'd do better to think of two Jeans: Mr. Béliveau -- who retired after helping the Montreal Canadiens to win 10 Stanley Cups -- or Mr. Chrétien, who will go down in Canadian history books as a leader who held on to power at a huge cost to the country and his party.

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The Truth Is Missing

The Canadian Blogging Community Page over at The Truth Laid Bear has been missing in action for a week now. The page pops up with the following message;Sorry; this page is not yet available. Check back in a few hours... Hours is one thing, days and weeks are another.Anyone know why the page is not available?


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CAW To Leave CLC?

CAW leadership urges members to abandon NDP

This is the syndicalism of Sam Gompers; reward your friends and punish your enemies.

Mr. Hargrove said a CAW council decided that the union should endorse strategic voting. Jim Stanford, an economist in the CAW research department, said many members felt it was inevitable that their organization would part ways with the NDP. Recent consultations showed that members wanted the CAW's political action to be driven by issues rather than by party affiliation, he said. "If you force people to choose between their union and a party, it's the union they'll choose. It's the union that delivers their bread and butter.

The CLC is aligned to the NDP as are its affiliates. The only union that isn't is the real heirs of radical Canadian syndicalism is CUPW.

CUPW is one of the most radical unions prepared to back up its demands with the mass strike, wildcats and direct action. Whose president showed what militant leadership is when he went to jail on behalf of his members who staged a strike despite a Federal Government ban.

Something Buzz has never done, gone to jail for the rank and file. And so his syndicalism is that of Gomperism, bread and butter issues, his politics of strategic voting is to reward his friends, the Liberals and NDP while punishing the Conservatives. This is a step backwards politically.

It also allows for right wing locals to become non involved, and really in the CAW was predicated upon the shift to the right by the Oshawa local which under the tutelage of the right supported the Reform party federally.

Something that Buzz avoids talking about.

Just like he refuses to accept that his strategic voting politics won nothing last time around. His political acumen is as limited as his nationalist left trade unionism.

Is this part of a Buzz plan to create a seperate Labour Federation in Canada?

I have speculated on that before.

And it is begining to look like a battle royal in the House of Labour and on the Labour Left.

Where is the CAW Going (Buzz Hargrove and Sam Gindin Exchange Views)

Which is why it is time for One Big Union, not through mergers and acquisitions like USWA and IWA, nor through misanthropic attempts to create yet another Labour Federation. No its through revolutionary syndicalism. The IWW shows the way this can be done historically and currently.

Buzz and the CAW show that the days of the trades unions and their industrial union counterparts are now to be spent in retirement from the Class War. Despite their comments to the contrary they are off the social battlefield while immersed in internecine ego-trips of building Empires as their's crumbles.

In the early 1990s, the CAW responded to management's notions of work reorganization with their own agenda for defending workers. Today, the union sounds uncomfortably like management as it reinforces GM demands for 'flexibility'.^* In 1996, the CAW struck GM - successfully - over the very outsourcing issue it was now giving up in the middle of an agreement (endorsing the loss of some 400 janitors - preferred work for some senior workers - and indicating more 'flexibility' as needed). Since the breakaway from the UAW the CAW consistently fought for improvements in work time. Now, in spite of added pressures on workers and an older workforce, relief time is being surrendered.

The leadership's defence has echoed the earlier refrain of the UAW (not to mention the familiar mantras of Thatcher then Blair): 'The world has changed', 'there is no alternative', 'expectations have to be lowered'. These lame phrases reveal a sad memory loss of the risks and uncertainties of that earlier time when the union resisted in spite of global and national trends, the warnings of its American parent, double-digit unemployment rates in the economy, and concerns about industry trends that were at least as great as today's. The world had changed back then and it is continuing to change today, but the lesson to be learned is not that becoming a spokesperson for the companies or forging closer ties to Liberal politicians will save us. Nor that our expectations should be lowered as technology develops and the economy becomes more productive. The question rather is whether unions are up to changing their own structures, building the appropriate allies, and developing a vision that can excite and mobilize their own members as part of challenging, rather than giving into, corporate power.

Mar 22, 2006

Sam Gindin

Concessions in Oshawa: The End of an Era?

Get All The Buzz




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No Place At Home

The reason that folks get frustrated trying to legally get into Canada, refugees at that. Which would explain the unconsciousable delays resulting in the worst of atrocities.

Family trying to get kids out of refugee camp A family that has been trying for almost two years to get their children out of an African refugee camp recently learned that one of their children was raped in the camp.

And if that is not bad enough our new Conservative government is deporting so called illegal aliens, folks who have lived here without becoming citizens, though they work and pay taxes, go figure.....

A reluctant new life Over the weekend, 24 people are deported to Portugal ...
Toronto Star, Canada - 5 hours ago
... They were told to go to the Immigration Canada office on Airport Rd. on March 10. ... Report to Canada Immigration Centre Pearson International Airport. ... ...
Plane load of deportees flown to Portugal CTV.ca
'Come back' Toronto Sun
all 5 related »

Nope they aren't deporting them they are just carrying on with Liberal policy.....and gee I was naive to think that the Conservatives actually meant it during the eelction when they said that they would govern differently...NOT

Rumours of immigration crackdown untrue: Solberg
CTV.ca, Canada - 18 hours ago
... record. They were expected to board a plane Sunday to return to Portugal after exhausting all avenues with Immigration Canada. Members ...
Deal with illegal workers, online readers tell Ottawa Toronto Star
Solberg mum on illegal workers issue Metro Toronto
Working in the shadows Toronto Star
all 4 related »

I guess the Harpocrites are trying to be just like their role models in the U.S.

Immigration debate heating up in US Senate

LA Immigrant Rights March

However by continuing the policy of the Liberals, a policy that has been twelve years in the making and even then its was not implemented under Volpe before the election. So the stay the course policy of Solberg results in this;

Ottawa deports Iran-native despite torture fears

And so Canadians had better wake up to the stupidity of blame the immigrants/refugees/sans papier, becuase otherwise we end up getting to be known as this.......

Challenging immigration control in Canada
Bordering On Apartheid

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War on the Ice

Frustration, hot tempers and arrests mark start of Atlantic seal hunt

I dunno know do ya think that a lower than expected kill number might have something to do with it?

"So far the hunters have taken 3 000 to 4 000 seals. That's not ridiculously slow, but it's not fast either. It's the lower edge of the norm," Simon told Reuters.

Some sealers park boats after slow opening day

Which is not actually the celeberaties and anti-seal hunt protestors fault, but then they are there and are an easy target to lash out at. And the protestors will of course take credit for it.

"The hunters are very frustrated. About 60 fishing vessels have returned. The sealers needed to calm down," said Jean-Claude Lapierre, a spokesperson with the Magdalen Islands sealers association. "The animals are scarce because of the thinning ice conditions. And now they have to deal with Ms. Aldworth's group who is intervening with our livelihood."

The seal population was devasted by mother nature earlier this year. Reducing the herd count.

Seal Hunt Protest Cancelled
Hundreds of baby seals were washed out to sea and drowned by surging waves propelled by a major blizzard yesterday.

No species chauvinism there, just a mass genocide due to natural causes. The law of the biosevere that Captain Paul Watson loves so much.

Opps here comes Mother Nature again; Spring blizzard blankets eastern Newfoundland


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The Human Condition

René Magritte,

La condizione umana,

1935



Tip o the blog to fellow Now Public member Janeway for this elusive and rare painting by Magritte. Not the usual Magritte. I checked several image sites and you get the usual....

So consider this a little o' bit of Monday morning surrealism......the movement not just the art.....like a fine cup o coffee...the dialectic dances........

Which is better than the altenative....

Boomtown Rats - I Don't Like Mondays

The silicon chip inside her head
Gets switched to overload




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Paul Watson Green Conservative

Yep that's right I did not misspell Conservationist. Because he ain't. He is a self professed conservative who views humans as expendable.

Hmm we have heard of this somewhere before haven't we? Something about some Volk being more equal than others.....Scratch an animal rights activist and you find a fascist. Like Bardot. Darling of Stormfront and the White Wacists.

Bardot wrote "My homeland, my earth, is again invaded, with the blessing of successive governments, by an overpopulation of foreigners, notably Muslim." She called Le Pen "a very fine man" in her best-selling autobiography.


In Watson's Green fascism it's the planet that is 'Lebensraum' and the Volk for Watson are all the creatures on the earth, with the exception of those who suffer from species chavuinism, and guess who they are.....don't believe me well lets hear from the good Captain.....


Rejecting the Cultural Justification for Slaughter
Let me see, for defending whales, we are anti-Japanese, anti-Norwegian, anti-Icelandic, and anti-Native American. For defending seals, we are anti-Canadian, anti-Norwegian, anti-Russian, and anti-Namibian. For defending trees, we are anti-Hispanic and anti Native American, oh yes, and anti-working class. It appears that loggers who make four times the average income of an environmental activist are working-class and the lower-paid activists are viewed as wealthy. You see, when you work without pay because you feel that the entire future of the planet is at stake, this is viewed as a luxury. In other words, environmental activists have the luxury of sleeping in trees and not owning a home, a car, or recreational vehicles.

Clarification on Where Director Paul Watson Stands on Various Issues

I long ago decided that for this planet to be saved, we have to step outside the paradigm of anthropocentrism and adapt a ecocentric perspective.

A ecocentric perspective does not allow for consideration of special interest groups of human beings whose actions threaten the biosphere. The interests of the biosphere take precedence over the interests of hominid special interest groups.

Racism and Sexism for example are social issues but they are not issues relevant to the survival of the biosphere. They don't sit around the SPLC and the NACCP and discuss species protection and clear cut forestry issues. People don't go to feminist and gay rights meetings to discuss air pollution and wolf re-introduction programs. These issues have their place within the social environment of one species but they are not relevant to the rest of the citizens of the biosphere. Thus I believe that the role of an environmental organization is to discuss and act on environmental issues independent of human social issues.

I also don't believe that racism is relative to the ecocentric world. There is only one race that I recognize and that is the human race and racism is a form of behavior caused by abstract and nonsensical prejudices among members of the same species. No intelligent person can be a racist because it makes no ecological or biological sense. I have found it interesting that when I maintain that all humans are equal and all members of one species that some find this statement racist because I refuse to see any distinctions between people based on skin color or features.

I think that speciesism is a far more serious issue. Human discrimination against practically every other species on this planet has resulted, is resulting and will continue to result in mass extinctions, extirpations and diminishment. Whereas racism is acknowledged, speciesism is not even given a moment's thought by most people. It is willfully and arrogantly ignored.

I am first and foremost a conservationist and this means that I am a conservative. But being a conservationist conservative has no relationship to the present perversion of political conservatism - like this particular right wing Christian fundamentalist Republican rhetoric that is presently posing as conservative.

He condemn's himself in his own words, while he denies those who oppose him the same rights to free speech as he demands.

And those who think that this is the first time he has been criticized by the Anarchist Left well read on;

ECO-WARRIOR OR ECO-TERRORIST?

Pie Paul Watson?

At a joint Sea Shepherd and Jack Metcalf news conference yesterday, far right-wing racist Jack Metcalf complained that the civil rights of Sea Shepherd had been violated by the Makahs. This is the same Jack Metcalf that has spent a lifetime seeking to deny civil and human rights to people of color. The same Metcalf who, while in the Washington State Assembly, stated that "Black people are genetically incapable of governing themselves." The same Metcalf that the ACLU gave a 0 rating on his voting record on civil rights in Congress. To Metcalf, and others like him, rights only belong to rich white men.

A CERTAIN CALL FOR TRUTH AND JUSTICE FOR THE MAKAH

And even better even the Vegans can see Watson for the racist fascist he really is.

Jun12

the knee-jerking that must end

Posted in race |

As to Paul Watson’s article, I’m unsure why the EF!J even printed it. Was it because Mr. Watson has achieved legendary status among Earth First!ers? Surely it wasn’t to prove that radical environmentalists aren’t racist. It would have been different if Watson used the space provided to renounce his past decisions, but instead he spends hundreds of words explaining how unapologetic he is for supporting the messed-up policies of groups like SUSPS. While Watson starts off by saying that he is unaware of any anti-immigration sentiment in the organizations he supports, he then goes immediately into explaining the negative costs of immigration. Yes, we need to question what roles humyn populations play throughout the world, but what questions are asked, who is asking them, and who feels entitled to answer? White Supremacy tells us to focus on overpopulation and to stop it through forced sterilization, refusal of health care, genocide, destruction of ecosystems, and other forms of violence. As someone who sees no need for (and has no respect for) centralized governments, I don’t understand anti-immigration sentiment. Borders are nothing but imaginary political boundaries. When we begin to look at why people take daily risks to cross those militarized boundaries (and why those in power prefer to keep them militarized) we can begin to understand why our population grows that 1.3 percent each year.

Watson comes from a tradition that sees Humans as expendable. Long live the Earth. The Nazi's to popularized this peasant belief in the sacredness of the land over the people, as the Land and Blood movement that later resurfaced as the right wing rump of Green Politics in the 1990's in Germany.

In fact the Green movement is not originally left wing, it arises out of isolationism ala the America first ideology of Buchanan and Nadar.

In England it appeals to the social reformers who would legislate against prostitution, fallen women, alcohol, etc. rather than addressing the real cause of the social problems, capitalism.

Darker shade of Green

Far-right attempts to influence the British Green movement take three forms. Firstly, an authoritarian strain in the environmental movement has proclaimed the need for a centralised and strongly 'eco'-policed state, since the publication of Garrett Hardin's 1968 essay 'The Tragedy of the Commons'. Immigration, seen as threatening the ecological carrying capacity of a country, should cease. Population must be cut, by coercion if necessary. Social issues such as homelessness and poverty are seen as a distraction from the essential job of tackling the environmental crisis. In Britain, this strain dominant in the environmental movement of the early 1970s has waned considerably. It is represented by the Campaign for Real Ecology and eco groups disillusioned with the Green Party, with an ideology rooted in the pessimistic conservatism of Malthus. Far from overtly racist, despite some frankly repellent views - neither can this conservative environmentalism be seen as a fascist movement - it is clearly positioned on the statist right.
Eco-fascism also has a lengthy lineage in Britain. The Soil Association, Britain's organic lobbyists, counted amongst their earliest members Jorian Jenks, former agriculture advisor to the British Union of Fascists. AK Chesterton, first Chairman of the National Front, was closely linked to far-right environmentalism of the 1930s. His uncle GK, Catholic apologist and purveyor of the Father Brown stories, invented the ideology of Distributism with Hillaire Belloc. Distributism, proclaiming the principle of 'three acres and a cow', seen as a 'third way' between capitalism and communism, drifted into the anti-semitic sphere before becoming the inspiration behind the modern remnants of the Front. Issues of Distributist newsletters in the 1950s advertised support for car free cities, decentralisation, the racist League of British Loyalists and Rudolf Hess.

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Why Am I Not Surprised

It appears that NAFTA may have impacted our National Savings Rate (NSR), as well as the Households Savings Rate (HSR). From 1994 to 2004 (the most recent year with data available), Canada’s NSR increased 6.6%, to 23.1%. However, with the exceptions of 2000 and 2001, the percentage of income Canadian households have devoted to savings has shrunk or stayed the same every year since NAFTA’s implementation. In 2005, Statistics Canada and the OECD reported that Canadians savings were –0.4%! So says Centrerion

NAFTA, the FTA, WTO, APEC, CARICOM, CAFTA, etc. etc. ad nauesum are all global agreements between govenrment and business. They are macroeconomics. However the neo-con's have always claimed that their supply side economics were trickle down, which this shows is a bunch of bunkum.

Canada last year enjoyed a greater than expected record $30.2 billion surplus in its trade and investment dealings with the rest of the world. But Canadian employees worked for less money in December, according to another set of Statistics Canada data released yesterday.Current account surplus passes $30 billion

As does a comparison between average wages in the same period and corporate profitablity including the stock market. Wages have remained stagnant in the Canadian economy. True unemployment has decreased, but wages have not increased significantly.

Globalisation, Technology and Wage Inequality, 1870-1970

Canada Wages, salaries and supplementary labour income 1926 to 1975

The economic boom that began in the late 1990s has likewise drawn attention away from this convergence of minimum wages and poverty, Goldberg says, persuading most Canadians that they are better off now, even as the largest portion of the boom’s benefits has gone to the richest 10 percent of Canadian families.Working for a living

Consumer Price Inflation Since 1750

- between 1750 and 2003, prices rose by around 140 times;

- most of the increase in prices has occurred since the Second World War: between 1750 and 1938, a period spanning nearly two centuries, prices rose by a little over three times; since then they have increased more than forty-fold.

Put another way, the index shows that one decimal penny in 1750 would have had greater purchasing power than one pound in 2003.

Consumer price index

1995 to present. Includes core inflation, CPI-XFET, CPIW, and the effect of changes in indirect taxes

Retail increases have been to blame for inflation,Retail Sales Lend To Loonie Strength because the regular judas goat of wage increases was not available for blame.

Higher wages could drive Canada inflation-analysts

Bank of Canada's press meet big draw for C$, bonds

Again despite the increasing ease and reduction in production costs, including a steady increase in productivity, the share earned by average workers remains static. And its impact is felt the most on female workers.

Women still losing wage wars

Pink ghetto lives on in workplace

Why single moms have a double load to carry

New research from Statistics Canada concludes the number of Canadian children in single parent families rose 50 per cent in 20 years. It also concludes single mothers are five times as likely as those with partners to end up with a low income. The study, published this week, found the proportion of children under age 18 in a single mother family rose to 21 per cent from 14 per cent in the two decades between 1981 and 2001.

What makes our economy attractive is the social wage, the taxes we pay for social services that supplement capitalist investment strategies. The taxes paid by the average Canadian worker are now 60% of the Federal and Provincial direct funding, while corporate taxes have decreased.

GST and PST consumer taxes and user fees, another form of taxation, are also aimed at the working class taxpayer along with the stupid tax; VLT's, lottery's, and gambling.

The tax breaks that business has instituted for itself with its neo-con agenda for government in North America has not trickled down to the working classes. Rather we have had to make up for those breaks from our own pockets. Either in tax increases, service reductions, loss of hours of work, minimal wage increases, increase costs in our benefit plans.


What Wages Tell You -- and What They Don't

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of September 2005, health insurance represented the largest single component of compensation costs for workers in private industry. In Canadian cities, for example, the BizCosts study estimates that benefits add only 20% of agents' annual wages to agents' annual compensation because Canadian residents are entitled to government-sponsored health care.

In a wealthy country that offers, for instance, government-sponsored health care and top-notch public education, you may pay more up front in hourly wages. Yet as a percentage of these wages, you might pay less for some types of benefits, like health care, if they're already available to residents of that country. According to the World Health Organization, as of 2002, private health care expenditures accounted for about 30% of all health care spending in Canada; the government took care of the rest. That same year, spending on health care in the U.S. was nearly evenly divided between public and private entities, with private expenditures representing 55%, or a slim majority, of health care spending.

Tymoshenko 'Evita'of the Ukraine

Or Maria Ukrayna the icon of the Ukraine the mother goddess motif which Tymesheko has milked in a media savy campaign out of the Eva Peron play book.


Hundreds Cheer Fallen Queen
The Moscow Times, Russia - 23 Mar 2006
... Yushchenko fired Tymoshenko as his prime minister, and since then the diminutive blond firebrand many have compared to Eva Peron has been out in the cold





I am speaking of her media and political savy in going wheat blonde and wearing a sacred cross hair braid, instead of her more Modern Euro look of long straight black hair pre the Orange Revolution. Ukraine: Interview -- Yuliya Tymoshenko Marks First 100 Days as PM



Her hair braid is based upon the sacred bread braids of the mother goddess of the fields of pagan Ukrainian tradition. It is specially used on Paska for Christmas and Easter pagents of the Christian faith.

On our trip to Russia, we saw numerous female "Babas" dating from as early as the Bronze Age (2000 BCE) and as late as the Middle Ages, and many of them have protruberances coming from the tops of their heads that later marked Shiva or the Buddha.

Tymeshenko needs to smile less severly, and more often. The Stern Mother though wins the Slavic heart far more than the Tzar/Batko. But like Evita she has the voice of the people.

And for her battles with both Yushchenko the privateer and Yanukovich Putin's puppet, she needs to be severe.YUSHCHENKO CHOOSING BETWEEN TYMOSHENKO AND YANUKOVYCH?






Strong willed, for all the babka's, which is also a sacred bread , a mushroom (which of course is how Ukrainians felt before the Orange Revolution last year),as well as being the affectionate name of the grandmothers who have faced the worst brutality of the Russian Ukranian rush to privatize.

Ukrainians' deal blow to reformist leadership

Maria Kompaneyets, 63, voted for Yanukovich in 2004, but had hopes that Yushchenko would use his popular mandate to improve life, especially the economy and pensions, recurrent complaints among those who are less well off.

"Nothing changed, at least nothing changed for better, neither in the country nor in our own life," she said, voting with her husband, Pyotr. "Of course we had hopes. So much had been said in those days. Who could expect that it would turn out so bad?"

Still, faced with the chance to turn again to Yanukovich and his party, which has promised to undo the mistakes of Yushchenko, she decided on Tymoshenko.

The politician's confrontational style has been blamed for much of the economy slowdown since 2004, but her fiery, charismatic oratory remains popular, as the initial results of the election showed.

"When I listen to her speaking," Kompaneyets said, "I get goose bumps."

Just like the people of Argentiana would get when they hear Evita Speak.



And in the grand theatrical tradition of the media and political savy Evita too knew how to gain focus with her hair style, forcing it into a wave, but unlike Tymoshenko, Evita had the winning smile. And there are other similarities with Evita; they are both wealthy.

The millionaire revolutionary
She has been a powerful voice during this week's protests in Kiev. But who is Yulia Tymoshenko?

And so the news from the Ukranian election is that the Revolution continues with Tymoshenko being the icon most likely to succeed. It was never about Yuskenko he is yesterdays man. A straw man, the real reformists were with Tymoshenko and Yuschenko buried himself when he booted her out of government.

But in a shock result, Ms Tymoshenko beat Mr Yushchenko into third place, raising new doubts about how the warring leaders will now be able to form a governing coalition.

According to three different exit polls earlier, Mr Yanukovich's Regions Party was forecast to win 27-33 per cent of the vote.

Mr Yushchenko's Our Ukraine was set to occupy an embarrassing third place with 13-17 per cent, behind Bloc Yulia Tymoshenko with 21-23 per cent.

But the Regions Party was expected to fall well short of an overall parliamentary majority, leaving the country with the prospect of prolonged political uncertainty as politicians struggle to form a coalition. Ukraine set to snub leaders of Orange revolution

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