Canada Post Gets It

CUPW and Canada Post agree on something for once.

Canada Post lowers flags in Edmonton to honour military bomb ...

One of the fallen soldiers, Lieut. William Turner, was a part-time army reservist who worked in the city as a letter carrier. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers asked that the flags be lowered and Canada Post has agreed, said Ramon Antipan, president of the CUPW local.

"It is important because (Turner) was one of our members," Antipan said. "He truly believed in the mission. This is in recognition for what he was doing."

Antipan said the union has also received permission for staff to wear black ribbons or arm bands.

While the Harpocrite continues to avoid the body bags and the lowering of the flag in order to avoid responsibility for the deaths caused by his ChickenHawk policy of not cutting and running.

Now he says he won't do the decent thing and show up Canadian Forces Trenton to observe the return of the bodies of his fallen men, cause it might be a photo op for the Taliban. I knew the Harper had a low opinion of the media but they are not the Taliban. And I don't think the Taliban read the National Post. What a coward, cluck, cluck.

Now think if CUPW takes it a step further since one of their own was killed and launches a Get Out Now campaign. Harper will face his own political fire-fight.

In a ceremony that has become all-too familiar at Kandahar airfield, the flag-draped casket of a Canadian soldier is carried into the open belly of a Hercules on Monday. (CP / Murray Brewster) Defence minister defends change in flag policy

Apparently the above picture will give succour to the Taliban. So sez Stephen Bush, err George Harper.

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The Working Class Dies For Harper

Turner, a Canada Post letter carrier stationed in Edmonton, and Mansell, a carpenter, were two of the more than 400 reservists currently serving in Afghanistan. Fallen Canadian soldiers begin long journey home

No flags lowered, Harper won't show up when the body bags return to Canadian Forces Base Trenton. All this is still just a rich mans war.

No need to tell us how we are being protected from Osama bin Laden Inc., all we are doing is protecting the Caspian oil pipeline and its counterpart the Opium pipeline.

And our volunteer reserves, ordinary Joes and Janes working full time and being soldiers part time are being sacrificed on the altar of the Harpocrites political ego. His failure to show up for their funeral shows he is more chicken than hawk when it comes to facing his responsibilities of sending our military to war.

As the troops on both sides of the conflict in WWI learned, there is no honor in dying for the capitalists and their war machine. But I guess Harper never read Johnny Got His Gun in school.

There's nothing noble about dying. Not even if you die for honor. Not even if you die the greatest hero the world ever saw. Not even if you're so great your name will never be forgotten and who's that great? The most important thing is your life little guys. You're worth nothing dead except for speeches. Don't let them kid you any more. Pay no attention when they tap you on the shoulder and say come along we've got to fight for liberty or whatever their word is there's always a word.

Just say mister I'm sorry I got no time to die I'm too busy and then turn and run like hell. If they say coward why don't pay any attention because it's your job to live not to die. If they talk about dying for principles that are bigger than life you say mister you're a liar Nothing is bigger than life There's nothing noble in death. What s noble about lying in the ground and rotting. What's noble about never seeing the sunshine again? What's noble about having your legs and arms blown off? What's noble about being an idiot? What's noble about being blind and deaf and dumb? What's noble about being dead. Because when you're dead mister it's all over. It's the end. You're less than a dog less than a rat less than a bee or an ant less than a white maggot crawling around on a dungheap. You're dead mister and you died for nothing.

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Mutualist Economics of SETI

This is the market economy that my mutualist and free market anarchist comrades evoke as an example of what makes the market different from capitalism.

In this case SETI . Which has no hope of ever being profitable.

But which can raise funding and labour by volunteers for scientific projects. In this case a project organized along mutualist economics and cooperativism that even Kropotkin would see as an example of anarchist science.

I contribute to the SETI project along with the climate change project.

It takes up so little effort and time and space on your computer, you should to.

The project is one small example of SETI's slowly growing respectability as a scientific enterprise. Where scientists once had to beg for time on radio and optical telescopes to conduct the hunt, they now build instruments dedicated to it full time.

The SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., for example, plans to flip the switch on 10 of its 30 new radio- telescope dishes at the Allen Telescope Array in Hat Creek, Calif. later this month. By using off-the-shelf equipment to hold down costs, and developing some fancy processing techniques for incoming signals, the Allen Telescope Array team will be able to hunt for radio signals from ET at the same time astronomers use these antennas for more mainstream research.

Although scientists have given these efforts a broad nod through organizations such as the National Research Council, funding still comes largely from private donors. The Allen array is named for Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, who wrote the check for the observatory's initial installation. The money for Horowitz's telescope came from the Planetary Society in Pasadena, Calif., and a private foundation.

So SETI needs YOU and if you sign up you will get a nice letter from Sir Arthur C.Clarke, yes the sci-fi author. Of course it is a begging letter. But this is a mutualist project.

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This Blog Makes Newsweek

And the MSNBC website since they are owned by the same corporate media conglomerate. The article in particular is on Internet Censorship; The Limits of Freedom And it made it to the Blog Talk column at MSNBC/Newsweek. Aw Shucks, blush, I guess stuff I have to say is of some value after all.


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Happy Birthday Mom

It's Earth Day be kind to your mother, no need to send her a card, just clean up your mess. Earth Day began after we saw our home from space and after we landed on the moon.

Thanks to the Space Race we came to a global conciousness of how small we are in the universe, and how important our planet is, hence the creation of Earth Day. It will be nice once we realize we are all Earthlings now. OPr to misquote JFK who launched the space race; Ich bin ein Erdenbürger.

The problem we face is two fold, capitalism and nationalism. Both the creation of the Industrial Revolution of the 19th Century. Today in order to clean up their mess we must become more than internationalists we must become as
The Internationale says; the human race. One Planet, One People.

As I have blogged here recently we need an Industrial Ecology for the planet somethng that capitalism cannot and will not develop. It is a contradiction to continual expansion and profit taking. Which of course leads to entropy called by Marx the falling rate of profit.James Lovelock and Gaia’s revenge

A successful greening economy, an industrial ecology of waste reduction and recycling, such as was done during War Rationing in WWII, with greening of end use, means a permanent fall in the rate of profit and an eventual steady state econonmic ecology; socialism by any other name.

Figure 3: Industrial Ecosystem at Kalundborg

Also See:

Petrocan's Arctic Sovereignty

The Truth About the Farm Crisis

Capitalism's Denial of Climate Catastrophe

After Montreal A View From the Past

Climate Change and Social Barbarism

Capitalism=Climate Change

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Harpers Flag

Maybe this is the real reason Harper feels less patriotic about our Flag
See previous post.

Image courtesy andrew currie. A tip o' the blog and thanx for the use.


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Lower The Flag

I oppose our war in Afghanistan, but not our men and women who have to fight and die there.

I object to their officers the war mongers and professional soldiers, and their political bosses.

And in this case I REALLY object to the failure of the Conservative Government to do the right thing and lower the flag each time our men and women are killed in battle. No more flag lowering for Canadian soldiers

The Flag is being used to hide behind by the coward that talks tough with others lives. The Harpocrite is taking his burying of anything Liberal too far.

The flag continued to fly yesterday on the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa. The newly elected Conservative government has said it will no longer lower the flag to half-staff every time a Canadian soldier is killed, a break with tradition established by the Liberals. A terrible price

A challenge to the Blogging Tories and Progressives For War, you support this war, demand that Harper lower the flag. Let your Legion and Veterans associations know, get them to raise the hue and cry. Email your MP. Raise the call.

If you live in (R)Edmonton let the city council and the school boards as well as the legislature know you want the flags lowered. It's the least we can do.

Chickenhawk that the Harpocrite is he won't listen to you anymore than he listens to anyone else.

We lower the damn flag for Royalty and Pontiffs, lower it for those who fight your wars.

Never Again!- War Amps

We Remember Them- Royal Canadian Legion

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Business As Usual

They call it crony capitalism, as if it is somehow different from capitalism in general. It ain't it's business as usual.

Prosecutors have been investigating Hyundai Motor over allegations that it embezzled money from affiliates. The money allegedly went into a slush fund that was used to bribe government officials. Over the past month, prosecutors have raided offices of Hyundai and its three affiliates, Kia Motors, logistics unit Glovis Co. and auto parts maker Hyundai Autonet, questioning key officials. Hyundai chairman to be questioned in S. Korean bribery scandal

Their real crime is their closing their plant in Canada to move south to non-union state's like Alabama and Georgia. And of course demanding tax breaks to move there.





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Pension Plunder

So if public pension funds like the Ontario Teachers Pension Fund has made money why is it forcing its workers on strike, and demanding its members pay rate hikes and face benefit cuts? Is the word greed?

"The average Canadian pension plan has realized a robust 15.8 per cent annualized return over three years" with a return of 14.9 per cent over the past year, McDougall said.

Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan has called for benefit cuts and a hike in member contributions. Pension funds continue to do well in first quarter

Could it because it has to pay this guys salary? Because Teachers has been making a profit, if it didn't then instead of giving him a $1 million dollar bonus, they should have shown him the door. But some peoples greed knows no bounds.

Teachers last month reported investment income of C$14.1 billion ($12.4 billion) for 2005. Its net assets were C$96.1 billion, making it a mammoth on the Canadian investing landscape.

On Friday, union negotiator Brock Suddaby took aim at compensation paid to Claude Lamoureux, the plan's chief executive.

According to Teachers' annual report, Lamoureux made C$5.54 million in total compensation for 2005, including salary, bonus, and payments under a long-term incentive plan, as well as other compensation. This was an increase of almost C$1 million from 2004.

"The CEO ... made more money last year than our members will make in their entire lifetimes," Suddaby said in a statement. "He made as much money in 2005 as 100 of our members. Yet he has the gall to demand a longer work week from our members. He has the gall to demand that a portion of staff pay be allotted to individuals hand-picked by management." Strike set at Ontario Teachers Pension Plan

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Tories Tinker with Taxes

The Harpocrites are in the backroom this weekend, avoiding Earth Day working on your taxes. Well actually working on their wonky budget. It seems some have them have seen the light, that their GST tax cut and their baby bonuse won't help the average Canadian working family. Slow learners.Flaherty vows big tax cuts in budget

Critics say that Canadians earning between $10,000 and $85,000 annually who don't have children under six years old would be better off under the Liberal income-tax breaks enacted last November than they would be under the one-percentage-point GST cut and targeted measures the Tories pledged in the recent election campaign.

That's because this group doesn't benefit from the annual $1,200-a-child daycare payment the Tories are giving to parents with children under 6.

The Conservatives are working this weekend in hopes of shortly finalizing the budget, expected to be delivered the week of May 2, and are still considering measures that might offer Canadians additional tax relief, sources say.

PM looks to sweeten tax plan

Fine but how about a couple of really radical ideas; like eliminating the GST completely. Or the deficit finance tax on gas. Or gasp Income Taxes on anyone earning $100,000 or less a year.

Yes you read that right. I have said it time and again. Something not even the Blogging Tories ,theCanadian Taxpayers Federation, Fraser Institute or the Conservatives have dared to say, ever. Period. From the left a more radical tax cut then anything the right has ever advocated. Oh right because its for workers not business. Damn pinko.

More On Harpers Tax Cuts




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