Real Educational Reform

The assault on teachers unions has historically driven educational reform in North America. The claim that our education system is failing due to bad teachers, bureaucratic public education etc. has led the move towards so called market reforms in education; merit pay and charter schools to name two favorite right wing bugaboos.

However the reality is that in North America public education is generalized unless you are destined to go to university. Graduating from High School gives you a generalized diploma, worth nothing to employers. If you qualify as a potential candidate for a university education you get put into that track. That high school diploma is not generalized, and allows you to enter university post secondary education, if you can afford it.

All other forms of post secondary education; college and trades education, which actually educate/train students for the world of work are not tracked. They are in Europe and Asia which is why they beat out our students. Its not a matter of knowing more math or science but of having access to educated embedded job learning, apprenticeship opportunities beginning in high school and transitioning to post-secondary technical schools.

What’s the problem? The fact that the U.S. is the only industrialized society that relies so heavily on its higher education system to help young people get from the end of compulsory schooling into the workforce with the knowledge and skills to be successful in today’s economy. Despite the fact that nearly all young people now say that they want to go to college and that increasing percentages of high school graduates are in fact enrolling in college, our college completion rate is stuck at about 40 percent. Many organizations are now focused on the challenge of how to increase our college completion rate and have set a very aggressive target of 55 percent by 2025.

But even if this very ambitious improvement goal were to be reached, what is our strategy for getting the other 45 percent of young people the skills and credentials they will need to get launched on a career path that can enable them to earn a family-supporting wage and lead a productive life? This is the big question our report raises, and that you barely acknowledge.

In our search for answers, we draw heavily on two recently published Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) studies that bring important international evidence and experience to bear on the problem we cite, but you never even acknowledge this major section of our report. We point out that throughout Northern Europe from the age of 16 between 40 and 70 percent of young people enroll in programs that combine classroom and workplace learning, have significant employer involvement, and prepare students for careers in a wide range of occupations, not just the traditional trades.

SEE

Obama Embraces Neo-Con Agenda

Losing the Future

President Obama wanted to be the Education President, with his State of the Union speech entitled Winning the Future. Where he said;"Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may feel like you’re flying high at first, but it won’t take long before you’ll feel the impact."

Here is the sound of Air America crashing:

Rhode Island school district issues pink slips to nearly 2,000 teachers in effort to deal with massive budget deficit

Guess they missed the Presidents State of the Union speech when he said;

If we take these steps – if we raise expectations for every child, and
give them the best possible chance at an education, from the day
they’re born until the last job they take – we will reach the goal I
set two years ago: by the end of the decade, America will once again
have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.

See this is what happens when Republicans sweep local elections, grab governorships and state houses and legislatures, when they say spending cuts they mean attack on public sector workers and services, and in the final end union busting.

In his letter to the entire school department, republished in The Providence Journal, Brady wrote, "Since the full extent of the potential cuts to the school budget have yet to be determined, issuing a dismissal letter to all teachers was necessary to give the mayor, the School Board and the district maximum flexibility to consider every cost savings option."

Ah ha flexibility, that means instead of laying off the teachers, which would require rehiring based on union seniority rights, they have fired everyone giving themselves the option of rehiring whomever they like. In effect union busting.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) - Hundreds rallied on the steps of the State House in Providence Saturday as they stood behind their fellow protestors from Wisconsin.

The Rhode Island Teacher's Union marched to show support for their Wisconsin colleagues vying to keep their collective bargaining rights and to preserve the American dream.

"We're not gonna let them take away collective bargaining from us...it is time for every worker and every person in America to stand up and fight corporate greed," urged one protestor Saturday.

Mixed in among the crowds were Providence teachers who protested the recent firing of some 2,000 teachers in the district.

"Get down to city hall and tell Angel Taveras he has betrayed us...this is not just about a budget trying to bust our union," said Classical Teacher Anna Kuperman.

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval has shown "contempt" for public school teachers by proposing to cut their pay by 12 percent to 20 percent, the state teachers union leader said Thursday.

Lynn Warne, president of the 28,000-member Nevada State Education Association, said the annual starting pay of teachers -- now about $35,000 -- would drop to the $30,800 range in Clark County through the Republican governor's budget-cutting proposals.

"We feel an assault on education in this state," Warne told a joint Senate-Assembly budget committee hearing. "There is an assault on state workers as well."

Warne later explained that besides a 5 percent pay cut, teachers also would pay a 1.125 percent additional premium for retirement benefits and Sandoval also wants them to kick in 5.9 percent to help cover Public Employees Retirement System costs. That would bring every teacher's pay reduction to 12 percent.

Jeff Weiler, chief financial officer of the Clark County School District, said his district will have to lay off 2,500 teachers and 700 support personnel if Sandoval's plan wins approval.

The average class size would be increased by eight students and laid-off teachers would go on unemployment, he said.

The right wing pundits like to talk about 'class war' whenever someone mentions taxing the rich. This is what real class war looks like, union busting by Republicans. And it won't stop with the public sector unions.

In Wisconsin, the governor wants to gut collective-bargaining rights for public employees. Not to be outdone, the governor of Indiana is pushing two bills that would end bargaining not just for public employees but also for the private sector on construction projects (House Bills 1585 and 1216). In Ohio, Senate Bill 5 would end collective bargaining for state employees and take the heart out of bargaining for local government workers.

Governor Walker’s cuts aren’t just about Wisconsin. These legislative attempts to limit workers’ rights are a coordinated effort by the GOP and corporate CEOs trying to push cuts in our wages, abolish our benefits and outsource our jobs.

Public officials in several other states like Ohio, New Jersey, and Michigan are also set to consider eliminating collective bargaining (a worker’s ability to negotiate for wage increases, healthcare, job security, retirement plans, etc…) or drastically change employee pension and access to affordable health insurance.

In many states, public officials aren’t willing to negotiate with the unions that help protect the workers who keep states running—social and economic protections that help communities of color the most.

The Republican National Committee could not care less about the U.S. economy. A new RNC fundraising video (http://www.gop.com/obamasunionbosses/email/) demonstrates that it wants Americans to forget about our economic problems.

Instead the RNC has conjured up a new boogeyman to scare Americans enough to forget the past and open up their wallets: Union leaders.

“The RNC is trying to fool the public into thinking that they are defending the middle class against unions, and that is both outrageous and offensive,” said IAFF General President Harold A. Schaitberger. “Who do they think created the middle class? If they are successful in their efforts to destroy unions, there will be no middle class in America.”

The video seeks to paint middle class Americans – the teachers, sanitation workers, fire fighters and police in Wisconsin -- desperately trying to defend their collective bargaining rights as “jack-booted thugs.”

Unfortunately the firings in Providence this weekend were not a one off, nor should they have been unexpected as they had been done as early as last year, with support not only of Republicans but President Obama as well.

4 March 2010

Speaking before an audience of business executives at the US Chamber of Commerce on Monday, Obama hailed the decision to fire the entire teaching and support staff at Central Falls High after they rejected demands to work extra hours without pay.

He defended such measures as critical to implementing the national strategy of Education Secretary Arne Duncan to deal with 5,000 of the nation’s “lowest performing” schools, overwhelmingly located in the most impoverished areas of the country. In order to qualify for federal funding, school districts have the option of closing a school outright, handing it over to a charter school or school management company, imposing a longer school day and other attacks on teachers, or firing the staff and rehiring only half back.

Pointing to the 74 teachers and 19 other school employees in Central Falls, Obama insisted that teachers had to be held “accountable.”

The Rhode Island firings are meant to serve as an object lesson and warning to any teachers who dare oppose the destruction of their working conditions and wages and the government’s efforts to undermine and privatize the schools.

A Tax Some Repubicans Like

The Carbon Tax, which by the by is actually in effect in Alberta.

Which brings us to Alberta's small carbon tax. It has one – $15 a tonne for companies that exceed certain emission limits, with the money going into a technology fund. The trouble is that $15 a tonne is too low today to generate a lot of money, and will certainly be far too low tomorrow to generate the income the government will need to finance this expensive policy option.

However in Alberta the beneficiaries of this tax are the taxpayers; big oil.

And so with this model it should be no surprise that another capitalist who supports taxes is the CEO of Exxon; in this case the much hated Carbon Tax that Republicans and Harpocrites claim will kill jobs.

But a carbon tax appears to have little support in Ottawa. Both Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion have rejected the idea in the past, saying it will damage the economy.

Then there are Republicans who support carbon taxes because it undermines cap and trade, which by its sheer complications cannot actually function in the real market place.


Ironically its not Republicans but environmentalists and social justice advocates in California opposing it in favour of a carbon tax

February 16, 2011

But the environmental justice groups that brought the lawsuit against the Air Resources Board oppose the cap and trade program. These groups include the Communities for a Better Environment and the Center for Race, Poverty and the Environment.

“Cap and trade will create toxic hotspots in low-income communities of color,” said Maya Golden-Krasner, a staff attorney for Communities for a Better Environment.

Those who support cap and trade say the revenue gained from the trading of emission rights will be used to forge programs for these poor populations, Pincetl said.

This argument does not satisfy the environmental justice community, though.

“This heavy reliance on cap and trade won’t get us where we need to be,” Golden-Krasner said.

The coalition seeks methods other than cap and trade to reduce carbon emissions.

“We are supportive of AB 32,” Golden-Krasner said. “We just want to see the Air Resources Board actually examine alternatives to cap and trade.”

These alternatives include a direct tax to carbon emissions.

It is also the reason Alberta was the first province to impose a carbon tax, to avoid cap and trade.

Why GOP Rep. Bob Inglis is looking for a new job.

Tue Aug. 3, 2010 2:00 AM PDT

Inglis voted against the cap-and-trade climate legislation, believing it would create a new tax, lead to a "hopelessly complicated" trading scheme for carbon, and harm American manufacturing by handing China and India a competitive edge on energy costs. Instead, he proposed a revenue-neutral tax swap: Payroll taxes would be reduced, and the amount of that reduction would be applied as a tax on carbon dioxide emissions—mainly hitting coal plants and natural gas facilities. (This tax would be removed from exported goods and imposed on imported products—thus neutralizing any competitive advantage for China, India, and other manufacturing nations.)

Here was a conservative market-based plan. Did it receive any interest from House GOP leaders? Inglis shakes his head: "It's the t-word." Tax. He adds, "It's so contrary to the rhetoric we've got out there, to what Beck, Limbaugh, and others are saying."

January 2009

The world's biggest oil company, Exxon Mobil, has softened its hardline position on climate change by throwing its weight behind a tax on carbon emissions.

In a significant shift in stance, Exxon's chief executive, Rex Tillerson, told an audience in Washington that he considered a tax to be a fairer route to curbing emissions than a cap-and-trade system of pollution allocations.

"As a businessman it is hard to speak favourably about any new tax," said Tillerson. "But a carbon tax strikes me as a more direct, a more transparent and a more effective approach."

support for carbon taxes has been taken up by a growing cadre on the far right, including Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, economist Arthur Laffer, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), and yes, even climate wingnut Sen. James Inhofe (R-Gamma Quadrant). Hell, throw in a refunded gas tax and you get America's Worst Columnist© Charles Krauthammer too. Are we to believe that these folks understand the threat of climate chaos, want to reduce climate emissions the amount science indicates is prudent, and sincerely believe that a carbon tax is the best way to accomplish that goal?

Is a carbon tax in America's future?

By Timothy NoahPosted Thursday, Nov. 9, 2006, at 5:40 PM ET

Two days after the election, a movement is afoot to achieve an audacious Democratic goal. The weird part is that the people behind it are Republicans.

In a Nov. 9 Wall Street Journal op-ed, former Bush speechwriter David Frum suggested that President Bush propose a carbon tax. N. Gregory Mankiw, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Bush White House, suggested the same thing in an Oct. 20 op-ed in the Journal, and former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan talked it up in late September. Harvard's Martin Feldstein and Weekly Standard contributing editor Irwin Stelzer like the idea, too. Slate "Moneybox" columnist Dan Gross took note of this unexpected GOP trend in an Oct. 8 New York Times column ("Raise the Gasoline Tax? Funny, It Doesn't Sound Republican").

On a purely theoretical level, it's not at all inconsistent for a Republican to advocate a carbon tax. Conservatives prefer taxing transactions to taxing income because it's a way to avoid progressivity; rich and poor get taxed at the same rate. (In his op-ed, Frum makes no bones about wanting to use the carbon tax to "split the opposition" and to lower taxes on "work, savings and investment.")

The reason that that conservatives can support a carbon tax is because it is a Pigovian Tax, which is a classical liberal economic argument.

Pigou Club is described by its founder as “an elite group of economists and pundits with the good sense to have publicly advocated higher Pigovian taxes, such as gasoline taxes or carbon taxes.”

Pigou Club was founded by Dr. Gregory Mankiw by stating his legendary manifesto in the Wall Street Journal. As time passed more and more economists were added to the list of people supporting the Pigou Club. They include people from all sides of political spectrum.

Tax and Spend Banker

So the solution to Americas deficit problem whether Federal or State government would be to increase taxes...or so says the CEO of JP Morgan bank; Jamie Dimon.

JAMIE DIMON: States have a lot of wherewithal, when you talk about this huge deficit, the deficit in California is equal to one percent of the GDP in California, so if they raise taxes one percent, they could pay their deficit. And that's true for some of the other states and they have the wherewithal

This should not surprise anyone, tax cuts and spending cuts are what got California in the mess its in still thanks to Proposition 13 back in the Seventies.

The most significant portion of the act is the first paragraph, which limited the tax rate for real estate:

Section 1. (a) The maximum amount of any ad valorem tax on real property shall not exceed one percent (1%) of the full cash value of such property. The one percent (1%) tax to be collected by the counties and apportioned according to law to the districts within the counties.

And now it has become the clarion call of the American right, reduce government, which means reducing public services such as education, health care, etc.

California public schools, which during the 1960s had been ranked nationally as among the best, have decreased to 48th in many surveys of student achievement.

Which when government can no longer provide them must then contract out the jobs, privatizing them, which leads to private profits at public expense.

And at the root of California's misery lies Proposition 13, the antitax measure that ignited the Reagan Revolution and the conservative era.

Proposition 13 was the brainchild of the late Howard Jarvis. The antitax crusader was a policy genius not unlike Franklin D. Roosevelt. Both shared an affinity for designing deep structural change that, once embedded in the political system, is nearly impossible to alter without a massive change of heart by voters.

Jarvis created a similarly impregnable institution. When he rode the wave of anger over skyrocketing property-tax assessments to pass Proposition 13 in 1978, he included a two-thirds vote requirement for the passage of any new taxes in California — an insurmountable obstacle built on populist allergy to any kind of new levy. Beholden to a tax-averse electorate, the state's liberals and moderates have attempted to live with Proposition 13 while continuing to provide the state services Californians expect — freeways, higher education, prisons, assistance to needy families and, very important, essential funding to local government and school districts that vanished after the antitax measure passed.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1904938,00.html#ixzz1FBthoAOi

Harpers Crimilization of Canadians Is A Bad Investment

The Harpocrites right wing law and order agenda, though as la scandale Bev Oda shows the government itself is not above breaking the law, is typical right wing sturm and drang signifying nothing except a growth in the institutional prison industry.

The Harper Conservatives are under fire for their extraordinarily expensive legislative initiative, Bill S-10. Among other things, it seeks to spend at least hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers dollars on prison building, in order to impose a mandatory minimum term of six months in jail for anyone who grows more than six marijuana plants. Most Canadians, experts and non-experts alike, have criticized the proposal as costly and counter-productive, noting that it will imprison individuals who are mostly non-violent and who sell to willing adult consumers.

The cost is in some dispute. Correctional Services Canada estimates an increase in prisoner numbers of 3,400, requiring 2,700 new spaces, at a cost of $2-billion.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer, Kevin Page, thinks that lowballs the price tag. His office puts the increase in prisoner numbers at 4,200, at a cost of $1.8-billion for facility construction and an additional $3-billion a year for operations and maintenance. He suggests that by 2015/16, annual prison expenditure will have increased to $9.3-billion from the current $4.3-billion.

As a result the costs incurred will continue to balloon from lowballing by the government. And if the American experience tells us anything as we can see from the report below, the facts are that prison expansion is a drain on the public purse, with no rehabilitative or crime reduction consequences!

But let us not let the facts get in the way of a political ideology. After all these Republican Light Harpocrites are nothing if not panderers to American right wing ideology. An ideology that is the politics of fear.

Reason and the facts once again show that a policy of increasing the length of criminal sentences does nothing except expand the prison population, increasing costs to the public purse.

The growth of the corrections sector has other impacts. A number of rural areas have chosen to tie their economies to prisons, viewing the institutions as recession-proof development engines.
Though many local officials cite benefits, broader research suggests that prisons may not generate the nature and scale of benefits municipalities anticipate or may even slow growth in some localities. Record incarceration rates can have longer-term economic impacts by contributing to increased income inequality and more concentrated poverty.
Economic Impacts of Prison Growth
Suzanne M. Kirchhoff
Analyst in Industrial Organization and Business
April 13, 2010
Congressional Research Service
7-5700
www.crs.gov
R41177

P3 The Unvarnished Truth

The overall lessons from the case studies suggest that the prognosis
for future P3s is somewhat pessimistic. Governments have generally
found it difficult to effectively reduce their financial and budgetary
exposure. Furthermore, in some cases, governments have faced
significant increased political risk rather than reduced risk as they had
hoped. At the same time, their for-profit private sector partners have had
difficulty making adequate rates of return, although this is a tentative
conclusion as they have usually had incentives to publicly emphasize
losses.
In some respects, the somewhat negative findings are not surprising.
The public and private partners in P3s inevitably have conflicting
interests (Teisman & Klijn, 2002; Trailer et al., 2004). Studies have
shown that in other contexts with similar conflicting interests, such as
mixed enterprises that are jointly owned by private shareholders and
government, the result can be “the worst of both worlds”, achieving
neither high profitability nor worthwhile social goals (Eckel & Vining,
1985; Boardman & Vining, 1989). In sum, while the allocation of
decision-making and risk-sharing in P3s can vary widely, if decisionmaking
authority and financial risk-bearing are not appropriately and
clearly matched, incentives will be misaligned and effective outcomes
are unlikely. This raises the question of whether governments can learn,
individually or collectively, to adequately specify contract conditions and
institutional conflict resolution mechanisms ex ante so that the past is not
a prologue for the future.

SNC Lavilin Building Prison In Libya

The Harpocrites failure to rescue Canadians from Libya, follows on their failure to rescue Canadians in Egypt.

My husband and I were two of the many Canadians left behind at Cairo airport that evening when the Canadian evacuation flight left half full. The airport was in chaos, the conditions rapidly unsanitary and embassy staff next to impossible to find. Had staff at the Canadian embassy answered the phone, or at the least put on a voice mail message directing Canadians to the correct terminal, much of the chaos could have been avoided and the plane to Frankfurt would have left full.

However, during business hours, the voice mail message said the embassy was closed (it was not, as we learned later; some Canadians had managed to get to the embassy through Tahrir Square that day) and the only voice mail message said: “for an update on avian flu, press 8.” Avian flu? What about an update on how to access Canada’s voluntary evacuation flight? How difficult could that have been?

Incorrect information was given to our tour company with the result that while we were in terminal 4 with no information and no embassy staff and no way to contact them, the plane was leaving from terminal.

The Harpocrite government has so emasculated our Foreign Affairs department that when emergencies arise abroad we are beholden to others to rescue our own people.

Now it is revealed that Harper's reluctant sanction speech on Friday night may have more to do with SNC Lavalin, headquartered in Montreal, than with principles. In fact SNC Lavalin is building a prison in Libya, a prison which the dictator would have used to continue to illegally detain his opposition and torture them, but heck we only build it, we don't care how its used.

One Canadian engineering company confirmed Friday it was forced to halt work on a new prison in Libya and evacuate its workers after the security situation collapsed.

Montreal-based international engineer SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. reported it had begun work on a $275million jail in Tripoli under a contract with the Gadhafi government.

The prison contract was not publicly announced, though it is mentioned in the company's coming annual report, said Leslie Quinton, vice-president of corporate communications. It is one of thousands of projects the company is working on, she added.

Read more: http://www.leaderpost.com/news/Evacuation+sparks+confusion/4352074/story.html#ixzz1F7rkmLPw

Another reason for the Harpocrites reluctance to sanction Libya, would be that of course this prison like the prisons they propose is a P3, private public partnership. And guess who will be building the new prisons the Harpocrites will need once their tough on crime bills pass...why can you say SNC Lavalin.

After all SNC Lavalin is the also the contractor responsible for maintaining government buildings in Ottawa, while also supplying our troops in Afghanistan and American troops in Iraq with weapons systems.

Canada's SNC-Lavalin company that was at the centre of a headline-grabbing bribery scandal in Kerala is now under scanner at home for allegedly overcharging in government building maintenance. Canadian Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose Thursday ordered an independent auditor to review a building maintenance contract given to SNC-Lavalin after allegations that the company charged $1,000 to install just a doorbell and $2,000 to buy two plants. The Montreal-based company has a $6-billion, multi-year contract to manage 320 Canadian government buildings.

The firm manages a number of major buildings in Quebec and Ontario, including the CBC broadcast centre in Toronto and Complexe Guy- Favreau, a sprawling federal government building in Montreal.

ProFac, a division of Montrealbased SNC-Lavalin, also maintains several provincial government buildings in Alberta and Ontario and helped to build Camp Julien, a Canadian military base in Afghanistan.

KANDAHAR, January 11, 2009 — Today, the Honourable Beverley J. Oda, Minister of International Cooperation, launched the next phase of Canada’s Dahla Dam Signature Project in Afghanistan. She met in Kandahar’s Arghandab Valley with the Governor of Kandahar, Tooryalai Wesa, and representatives of the SNC-Lavalin/Hydrosult joint venture, the firm selected to lead repair efforts to Dahla Dam.

It is a Quebec company, a province that the Harpocrites need to get votes from. And it is a private monopoly engineering management firm that benefits from preferential government support. If the government sells off Atomic Energy Canada, SNC Lavalin could be a contender.


In other words a private corporation that benefits from public funding for private profit, while imposing its own management over public access to public buildings we pay for.....

Locked doors at the Yukon’s federal building signal it is now under the management of a Quebec-based multinational.

“I tried to get in the back door yesterday, but it was locked,” said a longtime employee on Thursday.

SNC-Lavalin ProFac was awarded the property management contract for the Elijah Smith Building on August 1st.

The corporate construction giant has offices in 30 countries and is working in 100 different countries around the world.

In 2004, SNC-Lavalin was given a $1.5-billion property management contract to maintain 319 federal buildings across Canada.

Its recent property management contract for the Elijah Smith Building is not part of that deal.

SNC-Lavalin is taking over a lot of federal buildings across the country, said Elijah Smith commissionaire Michael Roy, when asked about the recent changes.

SNC-Lavalin’s decision to lock the back door was made “to control access,” he said.

The multinational is also planning to shut down the public bathrooms and take out the public phone, said Roy, confirming reports the News received from other disgruntled employees.

Plawiuk Does Hitchens On Libya

It is not up to the United States or President Obama to respond to Libya's civil war, declared on the people of Libya by the Qaddafi ruling family. It is up to NATO as the European allied military force to enforce rule in the oil exporting country they most rely on. Europe by far gets more oil and gas from Libya than anyone else.But instead of being the force to counter Libya's dictator they shy away from their military political responsibility.

NATO Not Planning to Interfere in Libya

UN Security Council struggles over action in Libya

Former Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passy has been cited by NATO Watch as one of the leading international voices urging NATO and the EU to take measures to guarantee peace, security, and human rights in Libya.

In an article entitled "Responsibility to Protect in Libya: Calls for Intervention Intensify", NATO Watch stresses that calls by civil society to halt mass atrocities in Libya, where the regime of dictator Muammar Gaddafi faces a popular uprising, have been on the rise.

And it can be done easily, blockading Tripoli and all major ports with NATO's Mediterranean Navy and as asked for by Libyan UN delegates, a no fly zone over Tripoli, stopping the air attacks on civilians. And lets not forget Tobruk in the East which would welcome international support to protect their free zone from Qaddafi's counterrevolution.

The region was quiet for the first few months of the war, until Fascist Italy declared war against France and Britain on June 10, 1940. It remained a major active theatre for two and a half years until the British Commonwealth Eighth Army crossed the border from Libya into Tunisia. In February 1943, command of the Eighth Army passed from the Middle East Command to the Allied Joint command for the Mediterranean, AFHQ. The Middle East Theatre remained quiet for the remainder of the war.

If gunboat diplomacy was ever needed it is today in Libya, if ever NATO was going to fulfill its self appointed mandate of being Europe's enforcer, then it must respond to this historic moment and fulfill its historical reasone detre, to be an armed force for imperialist goals and objectives. And last time I checked at least one of those reasons was to promote and protect democratic movements.

Ducks Worth More than Workers

Well it seems that if you kill a worker in Alberta you only have to pay $1500

Syncrude also paid a court fine of $10,000 fine and $1,500 to the victim's family.
But if you kill ducks you pay $3million or $ 1,875,000 per duck.

According to the commercials the $1,500 would be a spit in the bucket in funeral costs alone. How pitiful, while the media and government praise the judicial fine to Syncrud, based on previous rulings the fine is put towards paying for a Health and Safety program. While this is an attempt to ameliorate a bad practice, why is the fine required, rather a ten year funding for all OHS training at Keyano College would be even better. And really $1,500 is a less than a spit in the bucket when it comes to the millions that Syncrud pulls out of the ground weekly.

Louis Riel Day

While in most of Canada February 21st is a holiday called Family Day and in the U.S. it is President's Day in the province of Manitoba it is Louis RielLouis Riel Day. Louis Riel negotiated the Manitoba Act that brought Manitoba into Confederation on the 12th of May 1870. The holiday celebrating Riel is celebrated on the third Monday of February.

Actually it should be celebrated across Western Canada because Manitoba was the official capital for Alberta, Saskatchewan and the NWT until 1905.

And just to piss off my Tory MP Peter Goldring who denounced Riel as an Anarchist and murderer. Must have confused him with Gabriel Dumont, whom George Woodcock, the Canadian Anarchist author, wrote a biography of.

Ironically my neigbourhood which Goldring represents has a large Metis community....hope they remember his stupid racist colonialist comments come election time.

In the late 1870s, Gabriel realized that with the dwindling numbers of
bison, the Métis would need government assistance for their survival. He
chaired meetings, in 1877-78, to draw-up petitions asking for representation
on the North-West Territories Council, to confirm Métis ownership of alreadyoccupied
lands and to ask for farming assistance, schools and new land
grants. In 1880, he led a successful protest against paying a fee on wood cut
on crown land. The following year, he petitioned for land grants and Scrip.
However, the Métis’ grievances were being ignored in Ottawa.
In 1884, frustrated with the federal government’s inaction, Gabriel
called a meeting to suggest bringing Louis Riel to Batoche from the Montana
Territory to help the Métis with their grievances against the federal
government. The other Métis leaders agreed: therefore, on May 19, Gabriel,
Michel Dumas, Moise Ouellette and James Isbister left for St. Peter’s Mission,
Montana Territory in order to bring Riel to Canada. By July 5, they were
back on Gabriel’s farm along with Louis Riel and his family.
During the early winter of 1885, Gabriel and Louis Riel concluded that
negotiations with the government had failed. Therefore in a secret meeting
on March 5, it was decided that Métis would resort to taking up arms, if
necessary. At this meeting, Gabriel was appointed the “Adjutant-General of
the Métis Nation”. He soon organized, along the lines of the bison hunt,
approximately 300 men for potential military action.
On April 24, the next Métis battle during the 1885 Resistance occurred
at Fish Creek, or as the Métis knew it “coulée des Tourond”. The Canadian
militia, commanded by General Middleton, outnumbered the Métis by a ratio
of five-to-one. However, under Gabriel’s leadership the Métis still managed
to drive-off the inexperienced Canadian soldiers. However, the victory was
costly for the Métis: they lost many horses and used much of their
ammunition. Once the battle was over, the Métis headed back to Batoche to
set up a defensive position.
The Battle of Batoche (May 9-12, 1885) followed two weeks later.
After four days of fighting, the Métis, who ran out of ammunition, could no
longer fend off the much larger and better-equipped Canadian militia. A few
days after the battle, Louis Riel surrendered. At this point, Gabriel and
Michel Dumas went into political exile in the United States – arriving across
the border on May 27. The American authorities arrested them
immediately; however, they were released two days later on orders from
Washington. Gabriel had relatives in the Montana Territory with whom he
stayed until he decided upon his future. Madeleine arrived that fall at Fort
Benton, Montana Territory. Unfortunately, she died in the spring of 1886
from tuberculosis – a disease that killed many Aboriginal people.
In June 1886, Gabriel joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show as a trickshot
artist with Annie Oakley and others. After that, he discovered a large
community of French Canadians living in New York and in New England and
spoke to them of the Resistance, which led to contacts with French-Canadian
nationalists in Québec. He was asked to begin a lecture tour by Laurent
Olivier David, president of the Société Saint-Jean Baptiste de Montréal. The
first speech went badly because Gabriel was highly critical of the clergy’s lack
of support for the Métis during the Resistance. The rest of the tour was
cancelled because Gabriel’s anticlerical outbursts upset French Canadians
who at the time were strongly Roman Catholic.
In 1893, after he was granted an amnesty for his role in the 1885
Resistance, Gabriel returned to his homestead at Batoche. He let his
relatives farm his land and moved into a small cabin on his nephew, Alexis
Dumont’s farm. It was here, on May 19, 1906, that Gabriel Dumont died
suddenly while visiting Alexis.

See my posts on Riel:

Why Isn't Today A Holiday?

Remember Riel

Rebel Yell

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