Labour Liberal

Before the advent of Labour Parties in Canada, parties made up of trade unionists, labour rights MP's and MLA's ran for existing parties either Liberal or Conservative as hyphenated labour candidates. Thus you would have Labour Liberals or Labour Tories.

See my essay's; Edmonton Labour Council in Municipal Politics 1903-1960 and Edmonton 1919

Today in Alberta we have such a MLA in Dan Backs who was kicked out of the Liberals and sits as and independent. Perhaps we can call him Independent Labour Liberal.

He was the outspoken voice of the Building Trades unions in the Liberal Caucus. The Building Trades like the Alberta Teachers Association are the labour backbone of the Alberta Liberals. They are the aristocracy of Labour, they are professionals with all the associational power of a union, and more, they are the creme de la creme of professional specialization. Thus they are able to become bosses as well as workers, and their politics reflects this petit-bourgoies class.

But as a political backbone of the Alberta Liberal Party they are expected to be supportive but silent. To gain power they must play the leadership game, make a leader or elect one. And they have done neither.

Business or other special interests get Liberal attention, indeed are given voice by the Liberals, where they remain silent is on Labour. Despite Labours support. Which is why the NDP exist, but for the old craft unions and their professional counterparts, the Liberals are their natural home.

Witness the support for Martin, no not by Johnny Come Lately Buzz Hargrove, nope the General Workers Union of Toronto. This construction union, one of the largest in the province of Ontario was the backbone of the Liberal campaign in T.O.

So when brash newly elected MLA Backs decided to shake things up and become the outspoken voice of Labour in the Liberals, he was unceremoniously turfed. Here was an MLA with ties to the Building Trades, and who actively supported them in the Legislature over issues like forgeign workers, minimum wages, working conditions, etc.

So it turns out turfing him was a mistake, bigger than the Federal Conservatives didwhen they turfed outspoken Garth Turner. Because Blacks was quoted in the press as a Labour critic and the "official opposition" Liberals weren't. They have lost their voice of labour.

Alberta labour laws blasted

Alberta's NDP blasted the Tory government over its antiquated labour laws yesterday, signalling the end of premier-designate Ed Stelmach's honeymoon.

Ray Martin took the government to task for its failure to introduce first-contract legislation after a series of prolonged and violent strikes.

Martin said the lack of a law requiring mandatory arbitration of new union contracts has created another "ugly" labour dispute at the Palace Casino.

Independent Liberal Dan Backs, who introduced a private members bill to address the issue last year, said that if it had passed there wouldn't be several hundred casino workers facing the prospect of Christmas on the picket line and a conflict in the "economic engine" of West Edmonton Mall.

"It's clear that if there would have been first contract legislation that I proposed last year that we wouldn't be having this sort of problem," he said.



See

Dumb Move

Kevin Taft

Gomperism

Liberals

Unions

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The Boys of Summer

Life is a book that we study.
Some of it's leaves bring a sigh.
There it was written, my Buddy,
That we must part, you and I.

Nights are long since you went away.
I think about you all through the day,
My buddy, my buddy,
Nobody quite so true.

Miss your voice, the touch of your hand
Just long to know that you understand,
My buddy, my buddy,
Your buddy misses you.

Miss your voice, the touch of your hand
Just long to know that you understand,
My buddy, my buddy,
Your buddy misses you.

Your buddy misses you...

MY BUDDY Lyrics - by ANNE MURRAY from album ALL OF ME

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Liberal Leadership Race


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Two Strikes For Chong

If I was MP Michael Chong I would be worried since this is two strikes, and he is a member of a three strikes law and order government.

Michael Chong was one of a dozen Conservatives who voted against reopening the same-sex marriage debate in the House of Commons yesterday.This is the second time in a week the Wellington-Halton Hills MP has expressed a view contrary to the party's.Last week, Chong resigned from his cabinet position after stating he couldn't support a motion by Prime Minister Stephen Harper that recognized the Québécois as a nation.

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Whipping Boy

Michael Chong

SSM

Same Sex Marriage


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Credit Where Credit Is Due

See what toxic chemicals can do to you I have two heads

Yes the new ban on toxic chemicals is a great step forward. However I did notice that after Head Honcho Steve announced the ban, it was Medicare Minister Clement that took the press scrums and did the interviews. Environment Minister Rona Ambrose was there to look good for the photo op but took no questions nor appeared on the talk shows, despite Steve saying this was part two of the Conservatives Green Plan. She has been MIA for the past month at various meetings. Now she shows up and is used as a prop, now whose being sexist?

Clement did mention en passant that it took Government scientists seven years to arrive at a valid system of classifications for over 2,300 toxic chemicals. No small feat that. So I must conclude that the project was begun under the Liberals, and came to fruition under the Harper Government. So I guess the Liberals did do something about environmental health after all.

The irony in the Tories tough love announcement on regulating toxic chemicals, is that regulations are great but you have to have someone enforce them. And that happens to be one of the cuts the Tories made for efficiency. They cut regulation enforcement staff.


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A Whimper

Not with a bang but a whimper....

Drowned out by the blare of Dions Dual Citizenship, Same Sex Marriage, the Arar Affair and RCMP Comissioner Zaccardelli's resignation. And oh yes a full fledged PMO PR announcement, with ministers in tow, calling for a ban on toxic chemicals.

The accountability act passed in the house today, after a side deal between Liberal and Conservative House Leaders to pass it expeditiously.

— The House of Commons unanimously accepted an amended accountability act Friday with some 90 changes.

The Conservative government’s showpiece legislation passed through the House without a recorded vote and is now set to get royal assent and pass into law early next week.

The bill received all-party support.

“This is an accomplishment we can be quite proud of,” New Democrat MP Pat Martin said in a release.

NDP hails passing of Accountability Act

Average Canadians can expect more ethical government after today's passage of the Federal Accountability Act. While the final bill is not perfect, NDP MPs worked tirelessly and achieved key improvements in areas such as stopping patronage, protecting whistleblowers and reining in powerful lobbyists.

So now will John Baird tone down the Scream Queen routine in the house since he will no longer have the Accountability Act to refer to when he bitches out the Liberals. And my goodness after all his attacks on the 'Liberal Senate' for delaying his bill well now he is signing a different tune. He sheepishly admits to being proud of the Senate amendments.

In fact since he is so fond of using newspaper quotes in his Ministerial responses in Question Period here is one I look forward to him quoting.

Treasury Board President John Baird did not dispute that the bill is improved as a result of the Senate examination, which involved dozens of witnesses commenting over weeks of hearings this autumn. Baird said outside the Commons, "this bill is a heck of a lot stronger than it was when we introduced it on April 11. If anything, it's tougher — so we're proud of that.


So the NDP and the Senate have as much to be proud of as the Harpocrites. Probably more so because all their amendments passed.

Imagine that.

Probably the reason the Harpocrites underplayed the fact it was up for the vote today. And why they had no 'formal' comment on it, aside from Baird being scrummed, while the NDP issued a press release. Out manuvered by the NDP on their numero uno election promise.



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Marxism and Religion

From Monthly Review Press an excerpt from their new book;Marxism and Religion

Prometheus played a crucial role in Marxs original thesis on philosophy and religion.

Prometheus as I have discussed here also relates to Lucifer.

Uh oh I can see those right wing Christian conspiracy nutbars figuring that this means Marxism=Satanism. Oh wait they already do.

I think they may be confusing Marx with Bakunin who also embraced Prometheus as the ideal of human liberation as he did Satan.

"But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first free-thinker and emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and humanity, in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge." [God and the State]

Of course the right wing Christian zealots hate the Englightenment and thus all enlightenment thinkers, who are classical liberals. Which is why it is hard to understand how right thinking libertarians can have anything to do with them.

The Enlgightenment is the creation of a Satanic/Luciferian cult according to Christian conspiracy nuts. Which cult, why Freemasonry of course. The Brotherhood of Man is not the Brotherhood of God. It is the begining of the liberation of man from God.

It is this liberation that Marx and Bakunin both embraced Prometheus as an icon; not as a god but as a liberator of men from the gods. In that Marxism and Anarchism are logical extensions of classical liberalism, as is modern libertarianism.



Marxism and Religion

The Prometheus of Marx's doctoral thesis appears profoundly Feuerbachian, as does the fuzziness of the boundary drawn there between human and divine. Well versed though he was in Greek mythology -- knowing that Prometheus, born of gods and titans, had to be a god -- Marx nonetheless assigned him human status: "noblest of saints and martyrs in the calendar of philosophy." Whence came this divine aspiration attributed to the human species? Was it inherent in the cosmos? Had Feuerbach simply substituted a Spinozean pantheism for Christianity's orthodox theism? And did Marx and Engels concur? They soon distanced themselves from Feuerbach, yet they would not hesitate to impose on proletarians the god-like tasks of Prometheus.

Despite these ambivalences of concept and explanation, Marx and Engels remained nonbelievers and foes of institutionalized religion. This heritage from the Left Enlightenment they powerfully transmitted to their followers thus helping to ensure that through the next century and a half Marxist parties would serve as prime targets for religion's multitudinous defenders. At the same time -- more than any other nineteenth-century tendency of radical anti-capitalism -- Marxism remained open to labor unionism and working-class politics. Marxist activists proved influential leaders in both these enterprises. It may not be irrelevant, therefore, to ask how successful they were in pursuing the party line on religion and whether it proved an asset or hindrance in organizing workers, nor to inquire why Marx and Engels themselves had chosen to make criticism of religion the "premise" for their project in revolutionary political economy. Such questions may seem more pertinent to our own times than to those in which Marx and Engels actually lived. Any investigation of their stance toward religion must begin by noting that their careers fell within the opening century of the Age of Secularism. Nonbelief, for the first time in more than fifteen hundred years was becoming intellectually -- even to some extent socially -- tolerable.

Orthodox religionists, Protestant or Catholic, still controlled most major institutions such as city and state governments and universities throughout western Europe, yet they faced increasingly articulate resistance from educated opponents among the upper classes. Thus, for example, when John Stuart Mill in England declared that the "whole of the prevalent metaphysics of the present century" constitutes a "tissue of suborned evidence in favor of religion," he was saying approximately what Marx and Engels were saying, and targeting the same German idealist metaphysics they were rebelling against. While for Mill the main enemy was Kant, it was of course Hegel for Marx and Engels. Different though the systems of these philosophers were, it would not be inaccurate to describe both as idealist constructions designed to protect religion. To protect it against what? Against the oncoming Era of Secularism: against the rise of skeptical rationalism; against cumulative disillusionments attached to the memory of religious wars that had raged across Europe for almost two hundred years; against the encroachments of empirical science into orthodox belief. Marx and Engels in all these controversial areas stood on solid ground to the extent that their peers in class status and education were likely to remain tolerant toward criticisms of religion that many of them already shared. Yet obviously no such immunity would attach to radical criticisms of class hierarchy.

From Feuerbach to the Manifesto

The Hegelian dialectic in a broad sense had idealized the cosmos as an ongoing spiritual process. More narrowly, that portion of it that paralleled human history could be analogized to Christian doctrine. God's decision to create a world populated by creatures (including humans) established the antithesis. Conflict stemmed from the willed act of human creatures to use their God-given liberty for rebellion against the creator. Resolution, after many turns of the dialectic, must await the advent of Christ, begotten out of mortal flesh by divine spirit, and thus providing the synthesis within which the opposites -- mortal and divine, creator and created -- will at last be rejoined. According to the famous legend, Marx had arrived at his class interpretation of human history by an intellectual tour de force, that is, by translating Hegel's idealist dialectic into a materialist one. Thus, instead of pushing the narrative through a sequence of metaphysical abstractions, the dialectic would now be made to convey human class struggles in the language of historical realism.

A full-dress presentation of the materialist dialectic occurs in the Communist Manifesto (1848). There are some baffling conceptual problems about this transformation, of which I will mention (at this point) only one. If history comprises a series of struggles in which exploited (therefore antithetical) classes overpower one another to establish each in turn its own dominance, there would seem no possible escape from this repetition unless a class formation occurred that somehow had the power (or lack of power!) to break out of the circle. Recalling the original model -- that is, the Hegelian dialectic that symbolically enacted the Christian story -- it is obvious the crucial role belonged to Christ, who by his sacrificial death terminates the long chain of contradictions between creator and created. Yet when the idealist dialectic is turned upside down and all the actors become "real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces," what sort of class formation could be expected to play a comparable role? "The idea --fundamental for Marx from then on," writes the Marxist historian, Eric Hobsbawm, "that the proletariat was a class which could not liberate itself without thereby liberating society as a whole, first appears as 'a philosophical deduction rather than a product of observation.' . . . [Thus] 'the proletariat makes its first appearance in Marx's writings as the social force needed to realize the aims of German philosophy.'" Needed, that is, to materialize the idealized figure of Prometheus.

Also see:

Judas the Obscure

For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing

New Age Libertarian Manifesto

Another Prehistoric Woman

My Favorite Muslim

Antinominalist Anarchism



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Fourth Quarter Boom

Well unlike Wall Street it looks like my blog boomed in the fourth Quarter, and it ain't even over yet.

This is good news for my Blogshares



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Blogs


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Harpers Legacy

Is not a good one so far, says Toronto Sun columnist Chantal Hébert

Still, Harper has earned a place in the history books for his efforts this week. Harper became the first post-war Prime Minister to ask the Commons to consider taking away the rights of a Canadian minority.That he failed to garner sufficient support to press on with the plan does not mitigate the fact that he was willing to ask.

But in asking he was only fullfilling his Election committment. One he should never have made, but had too. And after breaking at least two he had to keep this one. As Don Martin points out;

One contrast is worth noting. Harper, who went on for 7,500 words to defend traditional marriage to the exclusion of gay/lesbian couplings in February, 2005, didn't bother to debate yesterday.

His views are already known, shrugged an aide. Given that his pre-election views on income- trust taxes and Quebec's nationhood were also well known, perhaps a confirmation was in order.

But the fight has gone out of Harper. He's an ideologue with a pragmatic streak. He knows when to fight and when to surrender. This was time to wave the white flag. In the Prime Minister's place, Nicholson could muster only bland excuses for the resurrection of the divisive debate. It was an election promise. It deserved a free vote. Let's move along.

See

Harper

SSM

Same Sex Marriage


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Good Advice

A Blogging Tory has some good advice for the social conservatives who doggedly will not let go of the the bone of abortion or same sex marriage. And another tells them the issue is over. But are they listening. Nope. Even after the Boss tells them to drop it; Same-sex marriage issue put to rest: PM

Of course the social conservatives will push, push, push, themselves out of the party. Ah well there is always the Christian Heritage Party for them. Since their alliance withSikhs, Hindus, Muslims and Jews was only a marriage of conviniance over the issue of heterosexual marriage.

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Answering the Social Conservatives

Feminism

SSM

Same Sex Marriage


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Hewers of Wood

Rights do evolve....

Natives must be allowed to harvest timber on Crown land for personal use, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled Thursday. "The right to harvest wood for the construction of temporary shelters must be allowed to evolve into a right to harvest wood by modern means to be used in the construction of a modern dwelling," the judgment read."Any other conclusion would freeze the right in its pre-(European) contact form."

I will expect the non-aboriginal Canadians to begin screaming discrimination any time now....waiting....waiting....should happen soon....always does...it is inevitable...

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Aboriginal

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