Gallipoli And Vimy

While we had Vimy Celebrations this weekend coinciding with Easter, and ending today, the Australians and New Zealanders will celebrate the WWI battle of Gallipoli with Anzac Day at the end of the month.

A disaster on the scale of the battle of the Somme in WWI and Dunkirk and Dieppe.in WWII. As 'colonial' nations under the tutelage and control of the British Imperialists farmers and workers became cannon fodder in their Great War with Germany.

Tactically speaking, the plan is for British artillery to pound the Turkish position until precisely 4:30 when the ANZAC forces would attack from their trenches. In what may be an indicative blunder that no one in the military would care to admit to, the respective commanders fail to synchronize their watches. The ANZAC commander, Major Barton, realizes that the bombardment has inexplicably ceased seven minutes too soon. The Turks have had time to return to their trenches. Amazingly, the English Colonel Robinson (John Morris) orders the attack to go forward.

In what seems a counterintuitive tactic, the soldiers are ordered to empty their rifles of all ammunition and charge with "bayonets only." The first wave is cut down by heavy machine gun fire. Most of the men don’t make it but a few yards. A second wave meets an identical fate.

However for Canada, Australia and New Zealand , it was our recognition of the need for transparent autonomous military operations, that created our national identity on the battlefields of Gallipoli and Vimy.

How Hill 145 and Vimy changed everything

It was then that things changed. Instead of headquarters officers planning the operation in secrecy and isolation they did something unique. They planned the assault and then included every soldier in the plan. Maps, details and objectives were made a part of the daily training for six weeks. Model layouts of the ridge and Hill 145 were studied, not just by commanders, but by every soldier. Exercises were run in the weeks before the assault on a field laid out to simulate Hill 145 and the ridge. Units learned terrain, timing and cover. Where, up to that time, the taking of a position had been the objective of a platoon commander; it was now the objective of the whole platoon, and every soldier in that platoon knew the objective, the plan to take it and what adjacent units were doing.

The battles at Vimy and Gallipoli mark our true day of 'national' independence which would lead to real independence later from the British Empire. It is the military which creates the modern Canadian/Australian/New Zealand state's of the 20th Century from the rubble of the British Commonwealth.

Our countries national identities were formed because we fought Britain's wars, and in doing so we were blooded, and survived to challenge their ability and authority over 'our' state. Our view of ourselves as Canadians, Australians, or New Zealanders, as citizens of a nation was created in the trenches of France. Such was not the case for the State which would not come until after the Charter of Westminster and WWII. And indeed in Canada's case not until we had our own Charter in 1982.

"April 25, 1915, is a date etched in Australia's history. To many this is Australia's most important national day. Commemorative services are held at dawn, the time of the original landing."

“New Zealand’s experience at Gallipoli fostered an emerging national identity, and it’s important we create an environment that allows those traveling to Gallipoli to respectfully connect with their past and understand the massive sacrifice made by their forbearers,” said Rick Barker.

"Every nation has a creation story to tell; the First World War and the Battle of Vimy Ridge are central to the story of our country," Prime Minister Stephen Harper told those gathered, including Canadian veterans and high school students.

And it is a central event in Turkey's modern nationhood. Showing that nationalism in the 20th Century was the result of the fragmentation and destruction of the old Imperialist polities of the 19th Century.

Even though they were in the opposing ends of the battlefield, the Battle of Gallipoli left huge marks in the psyches of both Australia and New Zealand on the one side, and Turkey on the other. Even to this day, ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) Day is celebrated in both those countries, and it is considered that the battle marked the birth of the collective national identities of both those nations, replacing that of the collective identity of the British Empire. In Turkey, the battle is seen as one of the finest and bravest moments in the history of the Turkish people - a final surge in the defense of the motherland as the centuries-old Ottoman Empire was crumbling; which laid the grounds for the Turkish War of Independence and the foundation of the new Turkish Republic eight years later, led by Atatürk, a commander in Gallipoli himself.

See:

The Working Class Dies For Harper

Royal Newfoundlanders Died For the Seal Hunt

Draft Dodgers in Dukhbour Country

Stanway's Sombre Reflection on Somme

WWI Xmas Mutiny

Christmas in the Trenches

The Vimy Myth

The Best Laid Plans

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Bad Forest Management And Climate Change

What is worse climate change or climate change and pine beetles? Well according to industry sources the later. But note the highlighted section of this article, the industry itself is to blame for the beetle infestation because of its forestry practices. You don't need a weatherman to know why the forests don't grow.

Industry says climate change already impacting forests

Governments and all industry sectors in Canada must quickly "re-tool" to deal with climate change, says the Forest Products Association of Canada.

Avrim Lazar, the association's president, said the forestry industry is already witnessing a manifestation of climate change -a mountain pine beetle epidemic -destroy massive tracts of valuable forest.

"Canada has been protected by its cold weather forever," said Jim Fyles, scientific director of the Sustainable Forest Management Network and McGill University professor.

But now, in addition to the pine beetle, "there may be all sorts of bugs ... whose populations, always kept low by these cold winters, will increase as the temperatures rise," he said.

The development of useful policies and practices is required, Fyles said. In the forestry sector, for instance, the creation of a forest that is resistant or resilient to pests, should be a prime goal.

In Western Canada, past practices involving forest management and forest fire management have often worked to create "almost pure stands" of one species of tree.

A mixed forest featuring different species and trees of all ages creates "a landscape that is much more difficult for these epidemics to propagate in," Fyles said.

See:

Environment

Environmentali$m

Aspen Mystery

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CEO Profits From Ford Failure

Once again a CEO makes off with filthy lucre while the company collapses. Though some speculate that he may have been rewarded for saving Bush.
Since he did nothing that saved jobs at Ford.

Ford CEO: $28M for 4 months work
Struggling Ford Motor Co., which posted a record $12.7 billion net loss in 2006, gave its new CEO Alan Mulally $28 million for four months on the job, according to the company's proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday.The Ford (Charts) pay package for Mulally comes on top of the $7.4 million that aerospace company Boeing (Charts) had previously reported paying him for his eight months running that company's commercial aircraft unit before he made the move to Ford at the beginning of September. Mulally's pay package at Ford included a $7.5 million hiring bonus, as well as $11 million that Ford described as an offset for forfeited performance and stock option awards at Boeing. In addition he received $55,469 for relocation costs and temporary housing. The details of the compensation packages and costs come as Ford moves ahead with plans to close plants and cut more than 30,000 hourly positions from the company in an effort to stem losses.

The company had disclosed in a footnote buried on page 228 of an earlier filing with SEC that Mulally saw the value of his stock bonuses increase to $6 million from the originally agreed upon $5 million "after reviewing the company's 2006 performance results and Mr. Mulally's leadership role in progressing his key priorities."

Ford announced in March that all full-time staff would receive some form of modest bonus for 2006, as it attempted to improve morale in the middle of a downsizing. Most salaried workers and supervisors received between $300 to $800, depending on their location and rank in the company. Most union members received about $500. The company did not detail the overall cost of the bonus program, but the widespread bonuses cost the company at least $62 million, based on the 125,000 employees who were eligible for the payment.

See

Zero Sum Gain

Ford

CEO

Stock Options

Corporate Crime

White Collar Crime

Criminal Capitalism

Productivity

Wealth


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My Favorite Conservative

Comes from south of the border. Well duh. It is none other than John McLaughlin. The master of the quick quip. Host of the McLaughlin Group on PBS. The original Hardball discussion group.

McLaughlin remains a consistent libertarian in the face of populist and demagogic conservatism. He understands that capitalism demands a social democratic infrastructure to survive while advocating for individual liberty. A classic liberal.

His predictions are usually right on when it comes to realpolitik. On a scale of 1-10, one being political oblivion of being on Fox, ten being 'metaphysical certitude', I give McLaughlin a ten.

Industrial Revolution III Here's what George Halvorson, CEO of Kaiser Permanente, says, slightly redacted: Health care is in need of an industrial revolution. To reform health-care delivery, to improve its quality, to stabilize its costs, we must have access to data, reliable data, shared data. The only viable source of data is the computer. Patients' medical records need to be computerized. A well-connected, fully interoperable computerized system should be a major government goal, with appropriate funding to support it. For scale, we should think in terms of the Hill-Burton Act that gave us a national infrastructure of hospitals. The equivalent of that federal transformation, and others like it, must be undertaken now towards our health-care system. Medicare must step up to the plate to provide the funding that, over the course of the next half-decade, will completely wire U.S. health care. Health-care electronic connectivity is essential. Paper kills.

John McLaughlin It is a central pillar. If you don It is a central pillar. If you don't have the data, you cannot evolve public policy. -John McLaughlin 't have the data, you cannot evolve public policy.

Also see:

Mr. Conservative

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Liberals The New PC's

So suggests Gerry Nicolls who recently was fired from the National Citizens Coalition. It seems he is uber disappointed in the new Authoritarian Government of Harper the autarch. As result of his criticism of the Harpocrites, the invisible hand of the government reached out and touched the NCC which in return gave Gerry the boot.

Now Nicolls is suggesting a revival of the old Progressive Conservatives under the New Liberal Party of Dion. This of course has upset some Liberal bloggers, but frankly considering Dion's flip flops on issues like the war in Afghanistan and the Anti-Scab legislation, well if it walks like a PC and quacks like a PC it probably is a PC.

And think of it, if the Liberals became the new PC party Elizabeth May would join in a heartbeat and dissolve the Green Party into a new Progressive coalition with the Liberals.

The Progressive Conservative Party was cannibalized by the Alliance Party. The loss of the adjective “progressive” was more than grammatical. The heart was torn out of Canadian politics. The loss of the traditional, principled Progressive Conservative counter-weight to the ethically flexible Liberals has cost this country dearly.

After all the Progressives who came out of the PC's are now going Green.

See:

Elizabeth May and Red Tories

May Day For MacKay

Green Party

Elizabeth May

Peter MacKay


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Nuclear P3 Meltdown

Ah the joy of Private Public partnerships. The irony here is that the Bruce Plant is also owned by public pensions funds, private interests and the Power Workers Union. Originally mothballed by the Harris government, it was sold to a consortium of public private interests to pay for the expensive repairs Bruce needed to get it back online.

Robin Jeffrey’s determination created the opportunity that spawned Bruce Power and has led to a revitalization of nuclear power in Canada. The Bruce Power transaction received a Gold Award from the Canadian Council for Public Private Partnerships for “Excellence and Innovation in Infrastructure” and received the Financial Times Global Energy Award for “Successful Investment Decision of the Year” of 2001.

Local support wasn't a given for Hawthorne when he first came to the Bruce station, in 2000, as part of a team of experts imported by British Energy, a U.K. utility that leased the plant from the Ontario government that year. The 1970s-era station — which consists of eight Canadian-made Candu nuclear reactors — had languished and faltered under public-sector management. The provincial government had decided to see if private managers could do a better job running a major part of the nuclear fleet that supplies almost half of Ontario's electricity. To lure experienced nuclear managers to the province, Ontario's Conservative finance minister at the time, Jim Flaherty, offered British Energy a 17-year lease on terms critics considered too sweet for an asset the public borrowed billions to build.

Financial concerns involving its operations outside of Canada led British Energy PLC to withdraw from Bruce Power in 2003. As a result, the Cameco Corporation increased its share of Bruce Power to 31.6%, while new partners TransCanada PipeLines and BPC Generation Infrastructure Trust (a trust owned by the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System [OMERS]) each acquired a 31.6% share. The facility’s two primary unions retained their original 5.2% share.

With the McGuinty government promise to eliminate coal fired plants, Bruce coming back online at 'any cost' was a priority. And the cost was of course to the taxpayers of Ontario.

Ontarians would have saved $1.5 billion on their hydro bills over the next 25 years had the government negotiated a smarter deal to refurbish the Bruce Power nuclear station, the provincial auditor general says.

Electricity generated by refurbished reactors at a privately operated nuclear station will cost hydro consumers in Ontario 44 per cent more than the going market rate as a result of the government's failure to drive the best deal possible, the province's auditor says.

Auditor-General Jim McCarter said in a report released yesterday he recognizes that the province was not in a strong bargaining position when it cut the 2005 deal with Bruce Power, the privately owned consortium that operates the nuclear station on Lake Huron.

As a result, his report suggests, the government made too many financial concessions at the expense of electricity consumers.

The government will pay Bruce Power 7.1 cents a kilowatt hour for electricity produced from reactors the company plans to refurbish. This is significantly higher than the average market price of 4.9 cents consumers have paid over the past five years and experts' projections of future prices, the report says.

See:

nuclear power

Environment

Hydro

Energy Probe

CANDU

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Harpers War

Another six Canadian soldiers have died in Afghanistan. The deaths bring to 51 the number of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan. That means that since the Harper government began their war operations in Afghanistan, ending Canadian Peace Keeping in Kabul for active duty in Kandahar, 43 Canadian troops have died.

Many have died in accidents, or from friendly fire. Some have died from land mines, left over from the days of the Anti-Soviet war, mistakenly called IED's. And some have died from attacks by Afghanistan insurgents.

But of all the Canadians killed in Afghanistan the majority have died in the last year since Harper made Afghanistan his own personal war. They are as much victims of the Conservative Government as they are of the Taliban. They are victims of Harpers politics of being a Macho War Lord. And their deaths should be placed squarely in his lap.



Also See:

Kandahar

Friendly Fire

Afghanistan

War





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Inflation In Alberta

As reported in a couple of the Edmonton Sun columns by their token Left Winger (wink, wink) Neil Waugh, inflation in Alberta was up again.

The sharp jump in wages was almost matched with a 4.5% increase in consumer prices.

But it was not due to wages increasing nope, it was due to the over heated housing market, which keeps going up.

The continued strength of Alberta's energy-based economy resulted in Edmonton's housing market outperforming expectations, making it the hottest market in Canada in the quarter. During the first quarter, the price for a standard two-story house rose 54.4 percent in Edmonton and 27.4 percent in Calgary, Alberta, while the average national rise was 11.8 percent.

And considering the price of the mythical single-family dwelling has increased 16.5% in the first three months of 2007 - and now stands at $398,476 - that's either good news or bad news, depending on what side of the deal you're on.

If you'd bought or sold a year ago, the price you would have to pay has increased by an incredible 55.6% since then. Needless to say, it's a year-to-year record, as are all the other March stats the EREB keeps.

So far in 2007, board realtors have cleared $2.14 billion in sales, which is 80% higher than last year's pace. And that was hardly a recession year either.

In fact the "threat" of another huge spike in house prices has "sparked an early rush for new and resale houses," the ComFree monthly report cautioned.

Earlier this week the Calgary Real Estate Board revealed 3,939 combined residential sales in March (a new record) and the average sales price inched up 5.6% from February.

But that's a 27% year-to-year increase from last March. CREB president Ed Jensen called it an "interesting" month. No kidding, Ed.

But he also reported a 32% jump in listings over last year, which may mean that folks are trying to cash in on their windfall equity before it disappears like campfire smoke.

ComFree reports its average house price also bumped up 8% in March to $350,300.

And of course inflation is caused by those who exploit this hot housing market. Now usually when inflation increases workers wages are blamed and you can expect interest rates to climb or bosses to fight for claw backs. But when it comes to inflation caused by housing costs, well no one yet has implemented the solution; Rent controls.

But even down at the legislature last week the Alberta Tories were beginning to feel the heat over inflation.

Especially when Alberta NDP leader Brian Mason grilled Premier Ed Stelmach over when the PCs' affordable housing report will finally be released. It contains recommendations to put a clamp on soaring rental rates.

One of the province's biggest landlords, Boardwalk Real Estate Income Trust, recently gave the opposition more ammo when CEO Sam Kolias revealed in his year-end report to unit holders how he "maximized return" by responding to what he called "exceptionally strong market fundamentals.

"As occupancy tracked upward due to positive supply and demand forces," Kolias beamed, "rental rates followed suit, resulting in strong revenue growth."

And with 52% of his property portfolio right here in Boom-berta, he predicted his "proactive operating policies" would result in even greater revenue growth in 2007.

Unless, of course, the PCs implement their own report and slap on rent controls.

Meanwhile the average Albertan even with a good paying job cannot afford to buy a home,

Most Albertans think this is a bad time to buy a house -- but a good time to buy major household items. Leger Marketing surveyed 900 Alberta consumers for PricewaterhouseCoopers, in February, asking about the economy.Leger's report noted "the relatively pessimistic sentiment regarding interest rates, combined with the fact that the housing market in Alberta has boomed over the last two years."

So who is doing all the buying? Why speculators of course hoping to flip the house in the market to make money.

See:

Condos The Problem

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Attacking the Fishers

The annual seal hunt has begun and so has the propaganda war of the Anti-Seal Hunt foes.

The opponents of the seal hunt belittle and demonize the Fishers in Newfoundland and Labrador. Forgetting that native fishers also hunt seals.

Once again the Green NGO lobby against the seal hunt focuses on attacking workers not the government. And in attacking the fishers they attempt to make them appear less than human, less moral, less concerned about the environment than the nice folks who oppose the seal hunt.

In other words shameless propaganda that hopes to appeal to the reader to show what a backward dull witted people the fishers are.

As a fashion writer who has campaigned against the resurgence of fur on the catwalk, the scenes I witnessed during my time in Canada sickened and appalled me.

I really don't know how this practice can be called a "hunt". (At least foxes can run: seal pups can't even crawl.)

And actually, when I speak to one of the fishermen, he calls it a "harvest".

"Seals are like fish," he said. "There is no difference."

This is plainly ridiculous.

Seals are intelligent, inquisitive creatures. Watch them through a hole in the ice and they do a double-take when they spot you, and return, moments later, to stare with inquisitive eyes.

One seal claws at the ice as it tries to escape

Yet to the fisherman around the coast of Newfoundland, they are simply a threat to local fish stocks; a menace to be eradicated by any means possible.

I wish I could say such callous indifference was surprising. But even before I had been flown over the ice, the hypocrisy of the Canadian government had already prepared me for what lay ahead.

See:

A Word From Our Sealers

Not So Cute Seals

Seals Threaten Fish

Royal Newfoundlanders Died For the Seal Hunt

Your Anti-Sealing Donation At Work

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Gnostic Easter

I decided to be a wee bit blasphemous for Easter/Passover season. Consider it my Gnostic duty.

• The God Eaters
• Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani
• Whitman Wicker Man
• Pagan Origins of Easter
• Passover Song
• Palm Sunday April Fools Day

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