GST Computer Opps

Forget about the Firearms Registry, here comes yet another computer based screw up by the Federal Government. Once again rigging together a computer system under incompetent supervision. Not the first time of course, and the same problem that plagues the contracting out of computer operations like the Firearms Registry, is that the Deputy Ministers in charge don't supervise.

RTF's are poorly planned, and basically the bureaucracy resists change and sabotages any computerizing of government services, by omission or commission. Mind you the DM in charge are clueless when it comes to computer systems and rely on being sold by salesman. Don't take this person with you to buy a car.

But the irony of this screw up is well delicious. It's the Conservatives own Gouge and Screw Tax that has been running on the same jerry rigged computer system since they were last in power. Maybe Brian Mulroney knows how to fix it.

Tories inherit troubled GST computer project just as they plan to cut the tax

The replacement was to cost $98.5 million and be running by 2004. But costs have soared and schedules have slipped: the latest official estimate is $145 million, with a new start date of next October.

A newly released audit, however, says even this number is too low. Additional testing, training and compensation to Quebec, which must upgrade its own GST computers in tandem, will push the total cost to about $200 million, more than double original projections.

The auditors, in a December 2005 report obtained by The Canadian Press, give mixed reviews to the new project. Some aspects were well-managed, they found, and some cost overruns were unavoidable.

But high-level supervision of this major government project was inadequate, the report says.

"It was evident that there was a lack of skill sets in certain business areas," says the document. "Formal senior level oversight . . . on a regular basis . . . was not evident."

Project teams "did not have a clear understanding" of aspects of the system, and there were no detailed plans for training or testing, which have helped drive up costs.

Supervisors also failed to deal properly with the problem of corrupt data, which has to be repaired before it can be inputted into the new system. An estimated 740,000 to two million records will require electronic fixes.

The federal government has a badly tarnished record when it comes to implementing new computer systems:

-In 2003, National Defence discovered it had been defrauded of $146 million through bogus invoices related to computer systems.

-A 2003 audit found the Canadian Coast Guard had mismanaged a project to link its ships and shore stations by computer. The original budget of $7.9 million soared to $13.3 million and would likely climb even higher, the audit said.

-An internal audit last year of the military's MASIS computer project, designed to track inventory, estimated the true cost at about $325 million - far in excess of the $147 million planned in 1997.



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Olympic Medal Count

We're number Three ! We're number Three! I know it's a silly cheer until you realise we had the best showing ever in any Olympics. And we are number one with women getting the most medals in any Olympics. We're #1 We're #1. See there are Olympics even if Team Canada lost. And Don Cherry sulked.

Winnipeg's Cindy Klassen achieved unprecedented results, capturing five medals to give her six overall, both Canadian records. It also marked the highest total by a female speed skater, surpassing the four gold medals won by Lidiya Skoblikova of Russia at the 1964 Innsbruck Winter Games.

"To see Cindy Klassen win five medals, she was definitely the woman of the Games," Rogge said.

"Led by Cindy...(these) Games have been a huge step forward for high-performance sport in our country," said Canada's chef de mission Shane Pearsall.

		Gold	Silver	Bronze	TOTAL
	GERMANY	11	12	6	29
	UNITED STATES	9	9	7	25
	CANADA	7	10	7	24
	AUSTRIA	9	7	7	23
	RUSSIA	8	6	8	22

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William F.Buckley 'Get Out Of Iraq Now'

The elder voice of the Conservative right in the United States opines that the U.S. efforts in Iraq have been a colossal failure and the best bet is to get out now.

Bad enough the Prez is facing a united front of Democrats and Republicans over the whole Dubai owns our Ports issue, and united front calling for his impeachment over illegal wiretapping, now Bill Buckley slaps him upside the head over Iraq.

Not a good week for King George II.

IT DIDN'T WORK

By William F. Buckley Jr.Fri Feb 24, 9:05 PM ET

“I can tell you the main reason behind all our woes — it is America.” The New York Times reporter is quoting the complaint of a clothing merchant in a Sunni stronghold in Iraq. “Everything that is going on between Sunnis and Shiites, the troublemaker in the middle is America.”

Mr. Bush has a very difficult internal problem here because to make the kind of concession that is strategically appropriate requires a mitigation of policies he has several times affirmed in high-flown pronouncements. His challenge is to persuade himself that he can submit to a historical reality without forswearing basic commitments in foreign policy.

He will certainly face the current development as military leaders are expected to do: They are called upon to acknowledge a tactical setback, but to insist on the survival of strategic policies.

Yes, but within their own counsels, different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat.

A tip o' the blog to Bitch/Lab for this.


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Kids Are Commodities

So says Steve Janke over at Angry in the Great White North. No kidding, pardon the pun. He says raising rug rats is the way we pay for our pensions and future caretaking. By demanding that we return to the bad old days before the Welfare State. Steve says Children have no value

What he means is that they are no longer commodities as producers, they remain commodities as consumers of course. So they cost him lots of money, and he wails about having to spend more on them through his taxes. That is he is opposed to day care, cause well the little woman should work at home only and raise the kids. For free of course, no pension, no wages for housework, its a payless career that should bring its own satisfaction. Why child raising is a joy. Which is why in the sixties before the discovery of post pardum depression, psychiatrists made valium the solution for the bored, stressed out housewives of North America.

Love these conservatives their solution is always Forward To The Past or Backwards Into The Future. No really he says that socialized pensions are horrible, poor deluded youngster born post depression in the wonder days of Trudeaumania and Keynes. He can live in his conservative fantasyland because we have social programs. Programs his parents and grandparents demanded, fought and voted for.

Unlike his parents and grandparents who lived through the dirty thirties when Janke's conservatism ruled, no pensions, no old age security, no Unemployment Insurance err pardon me I mean, Employment Insurance (that wonderful Orwellian turn of phrase), no Medicare and damn it No Damn Welfare. Relief was a dollar a week and you had to be married, if not, off to the concentration camps you go.

Better yet he blames them tax and spend Liberals for all this nasty stuff. And then he goes one step better and claims that taxes are the reason for declining birth rates. Ahem the lengths these guys go to blame taxes for everything is well, just exasperating.

But people had even larger families before. Why? Because as much as children cost money when they are young, they have monetary value when they are older. That value is realized when you retire and the children take on the responsibility of taking care of you.

In the old days, people didn't have pensions and RRSPs. They had children.

But someone came up with the idea of socialized pensions. Everyone pays higher taxes, and that money goes into a pool, managed by the government, invested by bureaucrats (usually in government bonds, surprise), and eventually doled back out to you when you retire. In fact, all they did was take over the intra-generational redistribution of wealth that was taking place when children took care of their parents.

But now you've got higher taxes. You have to pay for that. What expense can you cut back on? What is there that you can you do less with, now that your discretionary income has been curtailed?

Of course, kids. I mean, they aren't actually worth anything now, right? And so you see a crash in the birthrate. Of course, what did you think would happen?

Hello stupid, one of the greatest functions of capitalism has been to destroy the bourgeois family along with the peasant family. It is not taxation or the state demanding these developments its capitalism. Capitalism reduces the need for large families in the developed world, literacy, education, a flexible workforce all that 'stuff' that's good for industry is what causes increased security and economic development. Having an advanced capitalist economy results in lower childbirth rates as women become liberated from child rearing in order to go into the work force.

Modern capitalism has allowed the birth of the independent woman who is no longer economically dependent on her husband.

Camille Paglia

Having lots of children wasn't and never has been a glorious prospect. The reality is that having lots of children for the peasant or farming family and later the artisans family was to have workers. Survival rates of children in feudalism as in modern Third World countries was low due to disease. Which is why in earlier societies before the advent of industrialization and capitalism and in modern developing countries the motto was and is it takes a village to raise a child, opps sorry not in Steves mythical world. In his world the family is the bourgeois family of the 19th century. Sometimes called the nuclear family, mom, dad, two kids and a dog.

Unless you are Catholic which is a religion of go forth and multiply and is peasant based from its power in the feudal period to its dying power today in the peasant based economies of the Developing World.

This 'modern' model of the nuclear family evolved under capitalism, as the bourgeoisie values of housework and homework and the management of the home, became a science for the upperclass women and their middle class followers. In the 19th Century Domestication, the ideal of the house wife as manger evolved through the writing of books on home management and etiquette. All this home management was not done by the middle class or upper class woman, but her maids and nannies, predominately Irish working girls. Who then went home to raise their own families after spending their days in indentured servitude to their bourgeois owners. That is the model of the nuclear family.

The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors", and has left no other nexus between people than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment". It has drowned out the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of Philistine sentimentality, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom -- Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers.

The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation into a mere money relation.

The Communist Manifesto. Bourgeois and Proletarians

The reality is that daycare is the modern form of the nanny culture. Irish maids and servants were not unknown amongst the wealthier craftsman in Canada at the turn of last century. There is no inherent value in one parent staying home with the children after infancy. In fact amongst the bourgeois of the 19th century nursemaids were also employed, so that the upperclasses didn't have to suffer the physicality of touching their own children.

Of course that is not what day care or child care offers today. It is about early childhood education. The right wing now goes aghast and agog about this, in much the same way their ancestors were opposed to public education. Well some of their ancestors, others of these dinosaurs , the nativists approved of public education, especially in the United States, where it was seen as Americanizing papists and immigrants.

So think what these folks like Janke are saying, they don't want public day care, so they don't want public education nor public pensions. What the heck do they want? Some strange never existing ideal of a so called free market, one they have read about in books but has never existed.

But at least Janke is honest, he believes in child labour, from cradle to the grave, he says you have kids so they can work for you. Yep if you lived on the farm in 1930 that would be true. Today well he like the rest of the right wing whiners want to wish themselves back to those glory days. But capitalism won't let them go back.

Capitalism needs social services, pensions, benefits, day care, healthcare, etc. despite the Conservative contention that the mythical market should provide these services, it is the Capitalist State that is expected to relieve that burdern off business. These benefits should not be paid for out of its surplus value/profit but paid for by its State through taxes on workers.

After all capitalists never call for the end of individual income taxes, only corporate taxes. That way they can retrieve more of their profits back from what they grudgingly pay us every two weeks.


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Breaking Out Of The Cultural Burka

Gee when an American superstar said this the right wing attacked her for being a bimbo. Now let's see what happens when a Muslim woman says the same thing.

---

Muslim Madonna' - Brace for another muslims' riot, bloodshed ' Feb 24, 2006

Muslim pop singer Deeyah has irked the Muslim world with her provocative new music video that shows her stripping off a burka to reveal her bikini-clad body. Deeyah claims, the video, What will be? deals with Muslim women's rights and female empowerment, as it also features Muslim women who have fought for freedom of expression.

Once again the body is the centre of politics and theology, the body not as self ownership of ourselves but as a commodity. And it is as much objectification of womens bodies, by declaring them sexual and evil, to say must be covered up or to say they should be exploited in bathing suit beauty contests. 'Beauty' contests remain a commodifcation of women and their bodies as much as covering them up. Again the message is that women are objects, not subjects, of desire. And in order to be desirable an entire industry exists to recreate women in some male ideal image.

And even bikini wearing singers in music videos as brave and liberating as that is remains with the limits of objectification. But it is step towards womens liberation even within these limits.

To resist the reactionary attitudes against our bodies and against the myth of the fall of Eve, which is the source of patriarchical monotheisms fear and hatred of the body, is to accept the body as natural. The only radical ideology that does is naturism which of course is still taboo even in the west. Which is why nudes sell magazines.

Naturam expelles furca tamen usque recurret.

"You expel nature with a pitchfork, but it just comes back."

Horace

Which is why the body is still the central debate within the feminist movement. The Playboy debate, is it or isn't it pornography ,remains with us both in the U.S. and UK . As a result what Deeyah is doing will be appauled by some and denounced by others, not just mullahs but by sex negative feminism. What Deeyah is doing is what new wave feminism is doing in the west, challenging the ownership of womens bodies. Or as the second wave Feminists called it Our Bodies Our Selves.

In Her Own Image

Artist/musician Gwynn Hermann tears down artistic barriers

Hermann attended Herron School of Art at IUPUI and began work on a photography degree in 1994. In those days, she said, the photography department was known for its feminist teaching staff. “Some hated it — especially the male students — and some loved it; I was in the latter category. Feminism really did change the course of the art world; it challenged the status quo, forced people to reconsider, or just plain consider for the first time, the assumptions put forth about roles of gender and identity, class and status. Feminism demanded that the voices and viewpoints of people other than old/dead white men be heard.”

Her work, even in a tolerant environment such as Herron, was controversial. “I began to make a long series of self-portraits, often nude, to the point that some of my classmates begged me to shoot something else. I did self-portrait work for two reasons. I wanted to change the poor self-image I had. I’d struggled with depression and anxiety attacks much of my life, and I got to a point where I hated myself and couldn’t trust myself, and I knew that had to change. I embraced self-portraiture as a way to kind of catch me when I wasn’t looking.”
She paused to catch her breath. “It’s hard to explain.”

Except this new wave feminism is saying sexuality is ok showing our bodies off is empowerment much to the chagrin of second wave feminists,conservative moralists and now the mullahs.

Women have moved beyond the self awareness stage of feminism to what Wendy McElroy calls Self- Ownership. And within the limits of culture that is the challenge in Iran as much as it is in the good old USA, that other theological nation ruled by mullahs. Ironic since the United States sees itself as the very ideal of capitalism, which demands the constant destruction of social values.

Modern capitalism has allowed the birth of the independent woman who is no longer economically dependent on her husband.

Camille Paglia

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Democracy of the Rich

It's called crony capitalism, though most of us would call it business as usual. Once again being a democracy means little when it is a front for the rich. In this case the oligarch is in Thailand though this could be the Ukraine or Italy for that matter.

Sell-off and sell-out?

In the past few weeks the anti-Thaksin movement has gathered momentum, with attention focusing on his family's recent $1.9bn sale of the huge telecoms conglomerate Shin Corp. Critics were furious that the already wealthy Shinawatra family avoided paying tax on the sale.They also accused Mr Thaksin and his relatives of betraying Thailand's interests by selling to Temasek, a Singaporean company.

When push comes to shove and democracy as a front for the ruling classes doesn't work then the rules get changed, Berlusconi allies denounce possible indictment or martial law is declared Manila stifles people power

The right of course being right always supports the Oligarchs denouncing democracy when it doesn't work for them such as the election of Chavez in Venezeula, Morales in Bolivia and now Hamas in Palestine.

Petkoff thinks Chavez has been a terrible president but a strong candidate?

Bolivian speaker denied entry to US

Billion dollar scandals and rip offs are ok under capitalism, but the democratic election of those who think people are more important than profit, well that's not acceptable. They have to be assassinated for being dangerous not to democracy but to capitalism and the Oligarchs in power. Like what happened to Allende in Chile.SUBJECT: CIA Activities in Chile

What does Pat Roberts think about assassinating Hugo Chavez?

‘Israel considers Palestinian PM legitimate assassination target ...


Of course democracy is better than the alternative.

Wait a minute he is voting.











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UAE Controls the Port of Vancouver

The storm of protectionism disquised as concern over terrorism and security continues in the United States. Bush faces bipartisan backlash on Arab port administration And these guys talk about Free Trade, until they realise that it means foreign ownership.

In an opinion article in the Chattanogan Jason Kibby writes; The United Arab Emirates also controls a port at Vancouver, Canada. Should we tell the Canadians to send them packing? Guess that's why Fox TV says Canada exports terrorists to the U.S.


My Libertarian pal Brad Spangler says the solution is worker ownership of the ports, what a novel idea, but it will never happen in the dog eat dog world of monopoly state capitalism. Though we can hope one day this solution will happen;says Brad; People are furious about this. I’ll repeat again my own call for non-violent revolutionary community seizure of the ports.



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Capitalism Kills

Often overlooked by the defenders and apologists of capitalism, is that the bottom line is just that the bottom line, and how profitable a company is, is more important than worker or public safety, as todays headlines show;

Hope fading for 65 Mexican miners

55 killed, 100 injured in worst garment factory fire in Chittagong

Building collapse in Dhaka kills 16, injures 45

Moscow police arrest director of collapsed market hall
Most of the victims of the collapse, almost all guest workers from former Soviet republics in the Caucasus and Central Asia, have already been identified by relatives and work colleagues.

The price of capitalist development understood as a whole, in its facets as development and underdevelopment, is unsustainable because it consists of death. As I have argued elsewhere (Dalla Costa M., 1995), a central assumption must be that, from the human viewpoint, capitalist development has always been unsustainable since it has assumed from the start, and continues to assume, extermination and hunger for an increasingly large part of humanity.
Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Development and Reproduction [.pdf]

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The Zarqawi Factor

The destruction of the Shia's holiest shrine, the Golden Mosque, in Iraq and the immediate reaction that IT MUST HAVE BEEN THE SUNNI'S, has created a condition that favours one particular group.

What seems to have been lost in all this is cool heads and reasoned thinking ,that perhaps the actual bombers were followers of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, after all two years ago he announced this as his strategy to divide the Sunni's and Shia's.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is Iraq's most notorious insurgent - a shadowy figure associated with spectacular bombings,

Bomb attacks on Iraq's Shia-dominated government and security forces have continued apace, however, with many of the bloodiest strikes of 2005 blamed on Zarqawi's group, now renamed al-Qaeda in Iraq. An intercepted letter released by the Americans in February 2004 seems to support their claim that targeting Shias is central to Zarqawi's strategy in Iraq. In it, Zarqawi appears to share his plans for igniting sectarian conflict in Iraq as a means of undermining the US presence there. Within days of the letter's release, bomb attacks on recruiting centres for the Iraqi security forces had killed nearly 100 people. Attacks are now a daily occurrence in Iraq. Whether or not Zarqawi is behind them all, he is seen by the US as the biggest obstacle to their hopes of progress in Iraq - their most dangerous enemy in the country.

With the current division politically in Iraq and rising internecine incidents of mutual attacks and reprisals, between these two groups, the outrageous bombing of the Shia's Golden Mosque would hasten further sectarian violence, and benefit the divide and conquer strategy of Zarqawi. At last early this morning a spokesperson for the Shia, has come out and pointed the finger at Zarqawi as the possible provocatuer.

As Shiite leader Abdul Aziz al- Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said in a statement calling for national unity:

It is regrettable that things reached the degree that Sunni and Shiites are paying for the crimes committed by the enemy of Islam and Iraqis. This is what Zarqawi is working for -- that is, to ignite sectarian strife in the country. We call for self-restraint and not to be dragged by the plots of the enemy of Iraq.

In the Middle East it appears that forty eight hours later cooler heads are now prevailing. Despite the usual blame the US and Israel tripe, the reality is now setting in, that the fascists in Al Quiada would benefit most from this bombing.

US, Iran and al-Qaeda are each accused for the Samarra mosque bombing

Religious and political leaders are multiplying their appeals for unity against division. Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Shia Islam’s highest authority in Iraq, spoke again today. According to one his aides, Mohammad Hakkani, the issue is not only rebuilding the mosque, but building Iraq with all its ethnic and religious components.

For his part, Mgr Shleiman Warduni, auxiliary Chaldean bishop of Baghdad, said that the purpose of the attack was clear: “It was meant to spread division and hatred and stop the country’s progress. We are not yet in civil war, but when such bloodbaths occur we should not take that risk too lightly”.

Extremist Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr from Qom (Iran) told al-Jazeera that Sunnis should join Shiites in pledging not to kill fellow Muslims and should distance themselves from “takfiris”, Sunni extremists who target Shiites.

According to the Khaleej Times, during protests in Bahrain against the mosque bombing people shouted slogans against Al-Qaeda and its supporters, accusing them of trying to fuel sectarian hatred. Many marched holding pictures showing the damaged dome and placards equating the attacks with the controversial cartoons of the prophet Mohammed.

Asia Times also pinned the blame on al-Qaeda-linked groups calling them the “prime suspects” but also saying that they might “be the biggest losers in the fallout” because once the wave of outrage subsides the “Iraqi resistance will be viewed in a new light. And plans for a region-wide anti-US resistance movement centred on Iran will have to be rethought.”

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Blogging Capitalism

For those who thought Blogging was an alternative to commercial capitalist media here is an interesting article, a rude awakening if you will.

Blogs to Riches

The Haves and Have-Nots of the Blogging Boom.

To analyze the disparities in the blogosphere, Shirky took a sample of 433 blogs. Then he counted an interesting metric: the number of links that pointed toward each site (“inbound” links, as they’re called). Why links? Because they are the most important and visible measure of a site’s popularity. Links are the chief way that visitors find new blogs in the first place. Bloggers almost never advertise their sites; they don’t post billboards or run blinking trailers on top of cabs. No, they rely purely on word of mouth. Readers find a link to Gawker or Andrew Sullivan on a friend’s site, and they follow it. A link is, in essence, a vote of confidence that a fan leaves inscribed in cyberspace: Check this site out! It’s cool! What’s more, Internet studies have found that inbound links are an 80 percent–accurate predictor of traffic. The more links point to you, the more readers you have. (Well, almost. But the exceptions tend to prove the rule: Fleshbot, for example. The sex blog has 300,000 page views per day but relatively few inbound links. Not many readers are willing to proclaim their porn habits with links, understandably.)

When Shirky compiled his analysis of links, he saw that the smaller bloggers’ fears were perfectly correct: There is enormous inequity in the system. A very small number of blogs enjoy hundreds and hundreds of inbound links—the A-list, as it were. But almost all others have very few sites pointing to them. When Shirky sorted the 433 blogs from most linked to least linked and lined them up on a chart, the curve began up high, with the lucky few. But then it quickly fell into a steep dive, flattening off into the distance, where the vast majority of ignored blogs reside. The A-list is teensy, the B-list is bigger, and the C-list is simply massive. In the blogosphere, the biggest audiences—and the advertising revenue they bring—go to a small, elite few. Most bloggers toil in total obscurity.

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