No Room for Red Tories

The Conservative government has turfed party luminary Hugh Segal from the helm of a high-profile Senate committee

And it was Foreign Affairs. After the issued a scathing report on Afghanistan, that while supports the governments concerns about NATO commitment does not recommend continuation of Canada's involvement if NATO cannot get more support from its EU members.

The fact, as the article points out, that he also voted against the Government on three occasions in this sitting of the Senate must have pissed them off.

So they sicked Conservative Senate House Leader Marjorie LeBreton after him.

If you are a Red Tory there is no room under Harpers big blue tent for you.

LeBreton who is a pillar of Senate Caucus integrity, is on the board of MADD.

I wonder how it is going with the fraud allegations around MADD fund raising.



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Reading Entrails

The other reason Harper acted as he did yesterday, in pushing the Liberals buttons, is that he has read the entrails; the polls.

He is laying the groundwork to piss off the opposition enough that they get sucked into a confrontation that will lead to an election. Clever that.

He will wait till after March 26 to really begin pushing their red election buttons.




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Canada's Two Opposition Leaders

Canada does not have a PM it has an Opposition Leader running a Minority Government.

That is what was revealed by Stephen Harpers actions in the House during Question Period today.

He attempted a personal slander against a Liberal MP but was shouted down by the Official Opposition Liberals before he could finish quoting this from the Vancouver Sun;

A young Liberal MP who delivered Stephane Dion 250 leadership votes is the son-in-law of a man police have interviewed in connection with the Air India bombing case. Navdeep Singh Bains, MP for Mississauga-Brampton South, shot on to the national stage after the December 2006 convention in which he delivered huge support to Gerard Kennedy and later to Dion, who won the Liberal leadership by 437 votes.

The Vancouver Sun reporter is on a campaign to link the Federal Liberals directly to the Air India disaster. And it is a conspiracy theory worthy of a tinfoil hat. Her apparent political biases are gleefully pointed out by at least one sympathetic conservative blogger at the National Pest. She goes way back to show that the whole Air India disaster was Liberal bungling, or worse, conspiracy with nationalist militants in the Sikh community.

The number of questions surrounding why the Liberal party has suddenly done an about face on extending important provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act, provisions needed to continue the investigation of the Air India bombing, continues to grow.

Reporter Kim Bolan at the Vancouver Sun revealed that former prime minister Paul Martin sought the support of a terrorist group, the International Sikh Youth Federation, during his 1990 bid for the Liberal leadership.

Mr. Martin, flanked by other notable Liberals (Albina Guarnieri and Maurizio Bevilacqua) appeared at an ISYK convention asking delegates for their support as he sought the leadership of the party.

Here is the critical line in Ms. Bolan's report: "The Martin speech came two years after then Conservative external affairs minister Joe Clark warned Canadian politicians to steer clear of the federation, the Babbar Khalsa and the World Sikh Organization because of terrorist links."

Harper used the pretext of the Air India Inquiry and his attempt to renew the Liberals Anti-Terrorism Act to personally vilify and call into question the integrity of a sitting MP and his family. He was so eager he almost jumped out of his ill fitting suit.

Like the blogger at the National Pest, Harper is attempting to opportunistically use the Air India disaster and its 'about to fail public inquiry' to throw heat on the Liberals.

The Conservatives in opposition have long held that there was something nefarious and untoward in the Liberals working with their traditional base; immigrants and new Canadians. The Vancouver Sun reporter continues her articles in the same vein. The swipe by both the Vancouver Sun and the Conservatives is that the Liberals are guilty of associating with terrorists because of their support and fund raising in the Sikh and Tamil communities. A broad brush is used condemning whole communities, and the terrorist smear is one of convenience for the Conservatives. After all they have skeletons in their own closet.

What Harper attempted to do today was something that was NOT Prime Ministerial. Being the autocrat and autarch he is, he could not resist.

But PM's being statesmen and parliamentarians do not do such things. They leave the bullying and bully boy tactics to underlings, to cabinet ministers, to right hand men and women, whom they trust. To be able to sit back serenely in knowing you ordered the hit but not taking the pleasure or abuse that comes from delivering it.

But pompous megalomaniac he is Harper could not resist, nor could he trust anyone else to deliver his hit on Dion and the Liberals.And so he showed himself to be what he really is, an Opposition Leader. Not a Prime Minister.

And what he was today was an Opposition Leader, a strong one, one who is gaining in the polls. And thus one doomed by his limitations of office, and personality, to act like an Opposition Leader rather than as a PM. Holding on to power with a minority, but acting like you are majority has won Harper the polling support of some Canadians.

But in reality what the recent polls have shown is that he is far better as Leader of the Opposition than Dion is.

And that is what he confirmed today. He does not have the stuff to be PM. He is no statesman, and no parliamentarian.

He spoke of being the Executive branch of the government, and he is one who wants Executive power and prestige that the office of President has to the south.

And as such he will always be a pretender not a PM in the Canadian system of parliamentary politics.

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Cover Up

Another cat is out of the bag. And another Pandora's box has been opened by the Harper government. No less than the Air India Inquiry.

The ex Supreme Court Justice John Major's appointed by Harper to conduct a public hearing into the Air India F.U. has discovered that like the Arar Inquiry the State has marshelled all their forces in a united front called National Security.

The RCMP, CSIS, Foreign Affairs, the whole crew of bunglers has blacked out what could be incriminating evidence, refusing the Justice to even preview it in private.

And what could their reason be? Besides being creatures of paranoia, that their secret security state would fall apart if it was revealed how they operate? Or perhaps like bungling Keystone Kops they fell all over each other in jurisdictional sectarianism that meant no one cooperated letting the bad guys get away with murder.

Or perhaps it is more sinister than that.

CSIS specializes in deep cover operations, as they did with setting up the Heritage Front, may have set had an agent provocateur within the cell. Did they in effect create this very cell to keep track of Sikh Nationalist Militants. Did they end up supplying them with the explosives they needed.

It has been done before by the RCMP. Who were also bugging the same cell, and could they be in possession of evidence of CSIS wrong doing?

Again a jurisdictional dispute arises allowing each security division of the State point fingers at each other for their mutual failure to halt an operation they both had under surveillance. Mountie cited Air India threat days before bombing, memo says

We may never know unless Justice Major gets to see all the evidence.

And if ever there was a case against State Security Laws like the Anti-Terrorism Act that give the police unlimited powers of arrest and detention, as well as the ability to declare operations secret and blacked out, then this is it.

This along with the Arar case, the Ottawa Citizen Case, etc. etc. is evidence that we have the same old Keystone Kops operating in the same old fashion that the MacDonald Commission on the RCMP identified as the problematic source of their wrong doing and undoing as a secret security force.

Something that the Conservatives fear dreadfully hence their out and out attempt to fabricate links between the Air India disaster and their current attempt to extend the Anti-Terrorism Act. An act that was put in place years after Air India.

How embarrassing for a self declared Right Wing Law and Order government that is demanding an extension of its draconian authoritarian Anti-Terrorism Act being told it is this very act that is halting the Air Inquiry.

Instead the Harpocrites take a page from the Bush White House and their yellow cake from Niger, Saddam has Nukes, falsehoods.

Harper and Co. are now spuriously linking the renewal of the Anti-Terrorism Act with the Air India inquiry, claiming the RCMP need the act to catch the bad guys twenty-five years later, and after a court case freed them because of CSIS/RCMP bungling.

What Justice Marshall needs is open access to ALL Government files from all its agencies involved in the Air India affair. And that demands the elimination of all Official Secrets Acts including the Anti-Terrorism Act that allow the State to cover up it's Keystone Kops agent provocateur's and their incompetence.

“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.” Karl Marx

Articles referenced;

New Math

Why The Tories Want Tory Judges

More Foreign Affairs Incompetency

Statist Anti-Terrorism Act

Paranoia and the Security State

Fascists were CSIS Front

CSIS vs. CUPW

Canada’s Long History of Criminalizing Dissent

Also See:

CIA

Torture

RCMP

CSIS

Arar

Crime

Terrorism



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Could CN Bring Down Harper?

Well it could. They don't have enough votes to push back to work legislation on CN workers.

Back to work legislation is what CN was hoping for, thus they have refused to bargain. Which is why the Government stepped away from the strike hoping it would go away. It didn't and now they are over ruling their own Labour Board and trying to bring in back to work legislation. When it comes to CN they may be privatized but the State still gives them preferential treatment they got when they were a Crown Corporation.

Now if the Canadian UTU were really militant it would refuse to go back to work. Even if legislated back. Which CUPW did many years ago even though the Government jailed its leadership. Making them Labour Martyrs for years after.

As it is even an attempt to pass the legislation tonight in the House could be defeated. Which is what UTU is hoping for.....high hopes...like that ant and the rubber tree plant.

Ironically the last time CN workers were legislated back to work was when the company was still a Crown Corporation.

Government readies back-to-work order as CN strikers reject voluntary return

The Canada Industrial Relations Board refused to rule the wages-based strike illegal Monday after Blackburn said he wanted the dispute "ended in hours, not days."

The union had said it would send its members back if CN's request for a back-to-work order were approved by the board.

Asked how the union would respond to a legislated order, Wilner said: "Well, they have to get it passed first. Our understanding is that they don't have the votes and they could wind up having to call new elections if they fail."

There is plenty of precedent for federal back-to-work legislation, particularly in the railway sector. Such laws have been enacted 31 times since 1950, including six times in the rail industry, most recently in 1995.

See

Scab Trains Go Off The Tracks

CN Whines

CN Wildcat

American Union Bosses

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Predictable

Yep and this is how it begins. Charest to play up Quebec's nation status

Parliament accepting Quebec is a Nation did not bury the debate.

It was Stephen Harper playing Pandora.

And now the cat is out of the bag and the nation is out of the box.

And Charest is offering a third way between Trudeau Federalism and BQ/PQ Separatism/Sovereignty. Autonomy within a federal system.

"Yes, Quebec is a nation. Quebec is a force for change within Canada and a Liberal government represents this locomotive of change for Canadian federalism," Mr. Charest told more than 2,500 delegates at a party pre-election meeting on Saturday.

If re-elected, the Quebec Liberals say they will hold the first-ever summit of autonomous regions and federated states that would include Catalonia, Wales and Scotland in seeking a greater voice in international forums. The pledge was part of the election platform adopted by the delegates.

But as usual this change in Federalism is from above and not from the people. It is a change in government relations not in governance.

The true sociological doctrines of modern times can be summed up in a few words: Recognizing that, in the political and temporal order, the only legitimate authority is the one to which the majority of the nation has given its consent; that are wise and beneficial constitutions only those for which the governed have been consulted, and to which the majorities have given their free approbation; that all which is a human institution is destined to successive change; that the continuous perfectibility of man in society gives him the right and imposes him the duty to demand the improvements which are appropriate for new circumstances, for the new needs of the community in which he lives and evolves.

1867 Speech of Louis-Joseph Papineau at the Institut canadien

See

Get Over It

Still Quiet

Whipping Boy

Goose and Gander

Mulroney's Ghost

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Saving Capitalism From Itself

While the Flat Earth Society of climate change deniers think they are defending capitalism they are not.

The real advocates for saving capitalism are those who recognize Climate Change/Global Warming is a crisis. A crisis of capitalism.

Unlike the flat earth society that believes in and advocates for an a-historical mythical free market capitalism, these hard nosed realists, the real spokespeople for real existing capitalism accept they need to do something.

But of course they have no solution to the crisis. They only focus on making money off the crisis by ameliorating capitalist excess.

Which is why Sir Nicholas Stern made his announcements about the need for Green Capitalism from the TSX and the Economic Club. Bastions of real pragmatic capitalism.

"I’m not here to speak to any particular individual. I’m here to share ideas with Canadians, and the key message that was very influential, I think, in the way that Europe is moving forward," Stern told reporters Monday morning at the Toronto Stock Exchange during a joint news conference with Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki. "It’s very clear to me now that you can be green and grow."

Former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern was making his first visit to Canada since last fall, when he published a 700-page report that made international headlines with its warnings that the world could face an economic catastrophe similar to the Great Depression by ignoring the threat of climate change.

"So you have your choice now," Stern said in a speech to the Economic Club of Toronto: "You can be absurd and reject the science; you can be reckless and say we can adapt to whatever happens; or you can be unethical and disregard the future, simply because it’s in the future. That’s entirely up to you."

The remarks earned praise from Clive Mather, president and CEO of Shell Canada, which co-sponsored the event.

"Growth is for sure," said Mather, who has supported the international Kyoto protocol on climate change. "The issue is: On what basis do we grow. Do we grow low-carbon, or do we carry on as usual? And I think, as Nick Stern (explained), carrying on as usual carries enormous risks."

Meanwhile, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) last week outlined a course US utilities could take to drop their emissions to 1990 levels by 2030. For the industry, that would represent a more aggressive timetable than Stern's. In the process, the EPRI report suggests tacking a surcharge onto electric bills to help fund research into carbon-dioxide-light energy sources. EPRI estimates the surcharge would amount to an extra 47 cents on the average monthly electric bill. That would bring an additional $2 billion to the $3 billion the federal government now spends on energy research. One EPRI solution is to add 50 nuclear power plants, an uncertain prospect.

Big Enviro Groups ‘Holding Back’ Anti-Warming Movement

None of [the solutions presented by mainstream groups] address the power structures. None of them address corporations. None of them address a lack of democracy.”

The heat is on environmental groups and politicians to churn out proposals for stabilizing the planet’s rising temperatures, but some environmentalists say existing plans to cool climate change are timid. Their criticism reveals a rift between two approaches: preserving the American way of life at the expense of quicker solutions, or changing the structure of US society to counter an unprecedented threat.

The dominant approach to human-induced global warming revolves around slow but dramatic reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions by mid-century. The mainstream environmental community, along with a handful of politicians and corporations, is calling for various regulations and market-based actions to reduce greenhouse-gas output by 60 to 80 percent over the next 43 years.

This goal is based on what some scientists have estimated the United States needs to do to help the world limit the rise in global temperatures to less than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The goal presupposes that some climate change is inevitable. In 2006, a government-commissioned report in the United Kingdom called the "Stern Review" said that the "worst impacts of climate change can be substantially reduced" by cutting greenhouse emissions to meet the two-degree goal.

Market-based solutions

The basic premise behind long-term plans for emissions reduction is that moving away from a fossil-fuel-based energy system will take time because market forces will take a while to make renewable technology prices competitive.

"It’s still possible that we can avoid dangerous climate change and cut emissions in half by mid-century through a process that doesn’t require an immediate shutdown of all of our coal-powered plants," said John Coequyt, Greenpeace energy policy analyst. "We can still do this in a phased – and as a result – economically beneficial manner."

“There’s no reason we can’t get there within the next five to ten years with significant funding.”

In January, Greenpeace published what it called a "blueprint for solving global warming." The plan calls for 80 percent of electricity to be produced from renewable energy, 72 percent less carbon dioxide emissions, and for the US’s oil use to be cut in half – all by 2050.

The timeline is based on removing the market barriers to green energy, while making dirty energy more expensive. It does not call for significant public funding of renewable energy or government investments in new energy infrastructure or public transportation.

See

Capitalism

Environment

Bio-fuels


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Glass Half Full

CTV / Globe and Mail focused their reporting about their latest poll on Mr. Dion vs Mr. Harper, as usual.

That's a glass half empty.

On the other hand the glass is half full.

As their polling also shows that at this point it is just as likely to be Mr. Layton vs. Mr. Harper.

Meanwhile, when asked which party leader had the clearest vision of where he wants to take the country, Harper showed a significant lead over his rivals (percentage-point change from a Dec. 3-4 poll in brackets):

• Stephen Harper: 50 per cent (+ 18)
• Stephane Dion: 22 per cent (- 16 from when Paul Martin was leader)
• Jack Layton: 20 per cent (+ 1)
• Gilles Duceppe: 8 per cent (- 4)

More than half of respondents also felt that Harper is the most decisive of the party leaders.

• Harper: 53 per cent
• Dion: 19 per cent
• Layton: 20 per cent
• Duceppe: 8 per cent

Dion also lost out on charisma, which he himself defended shortly after becoming leader of his party.

"I would not have been able to win this race if I had not been able to connect with Canadians ... I have a capacity to communicate with passion and with reason," he said last December.

But respondents seem to have felt otherwise in the poll. Here are the results when voters were asked who was the most charismatic (percentage-point change from a Dec. 3-4 poll in brackets):

• Harper: 35 per cent (+ 18)
• Dion: 20 per cent (- 9 from when Martin was leader)
• Layton: 36 per cent (- 2)
• Duceppe: 10 per cent (- 4)

Lack of charisma, indecisive, and a whiner.....Dion slams Tory attack ads; wants Harper to withdraw them as matter of honour

Yep, it's as much a race between the NDP and Conservatives as it is the Liberals and Conservatives. Between Layton and Harper as much as it is Dion versus Harper.

And it's a dead heat on the environment. So much for the greening of the Liberals under Dion.

If there is a party in Canada facing a failure in leadership this poll shows only one; The Liberals.

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Button Up

Ok, what is with Harper and his suit coats. This is a serious image problem.

Quick, someone advise him it makes him look fat if every time he rises to answer a question in QP he button's up his suit coat.

And as soon as he sits down he unbuttons it.

To let his paunch out.

Fat I say.

Ill fitting suit.

Someone call a tailor.

A custom made well fitted suit will take pounds off.

Well maybe not......

















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Don Getty's Legacy

Today is Family Day in Alberta. A province wide holiday brought in by Premier Don Getty. It is his legacy. What is Chretien's? Or Ralph Klien's? They were after all Don's contemporaries and nemesis. And yet what did they do for the citizens, all the citizens. Nothing, nada, zip.

On the radio I heard the announcer prove his ignorance by thanking Ralph for todays day off. But such was not the case, Ralph had his chance to declare a holiday on Sept. 1 as the anniversary of Alberta's province hood, but failed to.

Family day was opposed by business interests which complained that would cost them money. When in reality it didn't. Another shopping day. What they lost in paying work place wages they made up in consumer spending. their wage slaves became their consumers with a commodity fetish.

But that same complaint did stop Ralph from declaring Sept. 1 a holiday. But then the fat boy who was King never played football. Peter Lougheed, and Don Getty, two Premiers did. As did our current Lieutant Governor; Normie Kwong. All three played for the Edmonton Eskimos.

Ralph listened to the business naysayers who run this province and capitulated.

His legacy is what? Defeating the deficit dragon.

Hmmm not so.

That was actually begun by Getty, Ralph inherited his program. Which was why in true Stalinist fashion he had to remake Don into the enemy, the bad guy, the Trotsky, who betrayed Alberta by running it into debt and deficit by trying to diversify the economy. A program begun by Lougheed. But a dream that failed and Getty inherited. But such was Lougheeds stature and reputation, Ralph and his neo-con advisor's could not touch him so they made Getty their scape goat.

Other accomplishments of the Getty Government ; a strong record of fiscal management, self-government for Metis Settlements, private telelphone lines for rural Albertans, the election of Canada's only elected Senator, and the creation of Family Day.

And Ralph inherited Senate Elections from Getty! A key plank of the Reform Party and the old Social Credit rump within the Alberta P C's.

Getty fumbled politically at the end of his Premiership but to be honest Ralph made him his political football, his scapegoat, his Trotsky, as he moved to rule the one party state with a new agenda, to create a Republican movement in Canada. Which was just another example of Ralph's ability at political plagiarism.

A political movement that was in direct opposition to Lougheeds Paternalistic State Capitalism. And one that failed.

See:

Don Getty

Ralph Klein

Alberta

Social Credit

Manning

Lougheed



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