Sub Prime Exploitation

Subprime mortgages impact disproportionately on the working class in particular the ethnic working class in the United State. Foreclosures will result in increased homelessness in the U.S. Even those who could afford better loans were subject to denial of access to better loan rates due to systemic racism.

This is what class war looks like under modern casino capitalism. It is the Enron moment for the mortgage industry.

The White House announcement of a Mortgage forgiveness program, after the Fed bailed out the financial markets, is too little too late.

Latinos and African-Americans who bought homes or refinanced mortgages in the San Jose metropolitan area last year were much more likely than white borrowers to get subprime loans, according to a study scheduled for release today.

In its annual survey based on federally collected data, this year titled "Foreclosure Exposure," community activism group ACORN said 47 percent of Latinos who got mortgages to buy homes in Santa Clara and San Benito counties in 2006 received "high cost" loans that the group considers to be synonymous with "subprime." Nearly 32 percent of African-American borrowers buying homes got high-cost loans, while only 8.5 percent of white borrowers did.

The trend is the same for those who refinanced loans - Latinos and African-Americans got subprime loans 23.5 percent and 22.8 percent of the time, respectively, compared with 9.4 percent among white borrowers.

"The racial disparity persists even among borrowers of the same income level," the report's authors wrote. Upper-income Latinos and African-Americans were more than five times as likely to get high-cost loans than upper-income whites, the study said. Upper-income borrowers were those with income of at least 120 percent of their area's median income.

Vallejo is the Bay Area's version of ground zero for the subprime loan crisis.

A significant number of residents of the largely blue-collar city of 120,000 have taken out subprime loans -- expensive mortgages issued to people with poor credit.

In 2005, almost one-quarter of mortgages in the Vallejo-Fairfield metropolitan area were subprime loans, according to the Center for Responsible Lending's analysis of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data.

Vallejo home prices fell 8.5 percent from November to March, according to DataQuick Information Services. For people who bought in recent months without putting any money down, that means they may owe more on their mortgage than the house is worth.

In a report called "Losing Ground," the center spotlights the Vallejo-Fairfield metropolitan area (which comprises all of Solano County) as a potential trouble spot, with one of the highest projected foreclosure rates in the country. The report predicted "that 23.8 percent of subprimes there will end in foreclosure," said Paul Leonard, director of the center's office in Oakland.

Areas with high foreclosure rates tend to share some characteristics. One is sinking home prices. Many "tend to be on the perimeter of major metropolitan areas rather than at the heart," said Leonard. "The housing prices in those areas are most subject to change. Often they tend to have a high concentration of minorities."

The people seeking help have almost identical stories, Hardy said. They bought homes using subprime loans. After a low initial rate, their monthly payments skyrocketed. Meanwhile, home prices in their neighborhoods went down, so they cannot easily sell or refinance. The result is that the homeowners owe more on their homes than the houses are worth.

Hardy said her clients tend to be blue-collar workers who earn close to the median income for Solano County, which is $75,400 for a family of four. Some of them used what are called stated-income loans, meaning a loan officer allowed them to claim that their earnings were higher than they are.

They bought homes about two years ago, using a type of mortgage loan in which they made low, interest-only payments for two years, followed by 28 years of adjustable-rate payments. Usually they did not make down payments. Once the initial two years were up, their monthly mortgage payments shot up.

"Nobody sat down with them and said if your interest rate goes up just 2 percent, here's what your house payments will be," she said. "These people all of a sudden are getting notices that in 60 days their house payments will go up $600 or $800 a month, and they say 'I can't do that.' "

"Until six months ago, we could almost always save the person's investment, either by helping them to refinance or explaining that they needed to sell and get their equity out before foreclosure," said Martin Eichner, director of dispute resolution at Project Sentinel, a nonprofit HUD counseling agency in Sunnyvale.

"But more and more, the calls we're getting are from people who bought on a shoestring and have few, if any, options to avoid the foreclosure. They haven't built up any equity and they put themselves in loans that were essentially doomed to fail with 100 percent financing and/or negative amortization."

But a series of interviews with subprime borrowers, mortgage lenders, appraisers, current and former regulators, and the inspector general of the Department of Housing and Urban Development paints a different picture — of a widespread pattern of questionable lending practices and outright fraud that has already sparked a wave of criminal and civil actions against various players in the $10 trillion market for residential mortgages.

Questionable mortgage practices can take on many forms, but the fall into two broad categories:

• Predatory lending. In this case, complex mortgage terms and interest rate risks were not fully explained as required by federal law. The borrower is usually the victim.
• Mortgage fraud. In these cases, often carried out by sophisticated swindlers, the lender is typically the victim.

As the housing market boomed in the early part of this decade, lenders proliferated with deals that often seemed too good to be true. To be sure, some borrowers - eager to "cash out" their rising home equity generated by the housing boom - were too quick to refinance at below-market interest rates and artificially low monthly payments.

SEE:

Canadian Banks and The Great Depression

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Canadian Banks and The Great Depression

I found this informative post at Market Oracle which made reference to a little known fact about how Banks in Canada and the U.S. faired differently during the great depression.

The comments from Market Oracle about Americas current Housing Bubble crash, once again remind us that American Exceptionalism includes massive market failures due to speculation.

Greed is as American as apple pie.

A Letter from a former Banking President Discussing the Housing Bubble

an article that came out in the Saturday Evening Post in November of 1932 from a former bank president in New York, three years after the crash, highlighting the economic situation of a post bubble world.

“This is a shameful and humiliating exhibition. It is uniquely bad. Across the border in Canada, there was not a single bank failure during our period of depression, and one must go back to 1923 to find even a small one. Nowhere else in the world at any time, were it a time of war, or of famine, or of disaster, has any other people recorded so many bank failures in a similar period as did we. We were not experiencing a war, a famine or any other natural disaster. All the economic tribulations we have undergone in the past three years have been man-made troubles, and Nature has continued to shower us with an easy abundance – more, indeed, than we have known how to distribute with economic wisdom.”

Of course the banks in Canada foreclosed on Western Farmers, during the depression and used the land bank to shore up their wealth. Until the creation of Canada's National Bank the commercial banks issued dollars and currency from which they made their profit. Canadians were big savers after WWI but without deposit insurance found their savings wiped out during the depression.

According to the Department of Finance, two small regional banks failed in the mid-1980s, the only such failures since 1923, which is the year Home Bank failed. There were no bank failures during the Great Depression.

The Canadian recovery from the Great Depression proceeded slowly. Economists Pedro Amaral and James MacGee find that the Canadian recovery has important differences with the United States In the U.S. productivity recovered quickly while the labor force remained depressed throughout the decade. In Canada employment quickly recovered but productivity remained well below trend. Amaral and MacGee suggest that this decline is due to the sustained reduction in international trade during the 30's.

It took the outbreak of World War II to pull Canada out of the depression. From 1939, an increased demand in Europe for materials, and increased spending by the Canadian government created a strong boost for the economy. Unemployed men enlisted in the military. By 1939, Canada was in the first prosperity period in the business cycle in a decade.

The Depression also led governments to be more present in the economy. It brought about the creation in 1934 of the Bank of Canada, a central bank to manage the money supply and bring stability to the country’s financial system.

Hard to imagine now, but not too long ago paper money in Canada was issued by commercial banks. That was before 1934, when the Bank of Canada Act established a central bank with the sole right to issue paper money. It was just one of the many roles the Bank of Canada would take on.

Creating a central bank was one of the first major things Canada did on its own after becoming more independent of Great Britain in 1931 (with the Statute of Westminster). But the Bank of Canada was not established just to assert our independence. Instead, Prime Minister R.B. Bennett was frustrated that there was no way for Canada to settle international accounts with England. A central bank could do that.

The time was ripe to set up a central bank. During the Great Depression, Canadians had criticized and mistrusted the commercial banking system. They had doubts about the efficiency of Canada’s financial structure. Pressure also came from outside our borders to create a central bank to help settle international accounts. There was no independent agency issuing notes or managing government banking.

The creation of the Bank of Canada was the result of protests against the banks by Western farmers in particular those from Alberta! Like the Wheat Board farmers demanded and got a Central Bank.

At the same time that the Canadian
government was doing nothing on the monetary
front, the chartered banks were repaying their
borrowings from the government under the
Finance Act.63 The resulting monetary contraction
exacerbated the economic downturn. The banks
became increasingly cautious about their own
lending activities as the economic environment
deteriorated. Banks may have also repaid their
borrowings under the Finance Act in response to
earlier criticism for having borrowed so extensively
prior to the stock market crash (Fullerton 1986, 36).
While the extent of the economic downturn
in Canada was undoubtedly made worse by
these monetary developments, the monetary
contraction helped to strengthen the Canadian
dollar, which reached US$0.90 by the spring
of 1932.

The government finally reduced the
Advance Rate to 3 per cent in October 1931 and
to 2.5 per cent in May 1933. (See Chart C2 in
Appendix C.)64 In the autumn of 1932, it also used
moral suasion to force the banks to borrow under
the Finance Act and reflate the economy
(Bryce 1986, 132). This easing in monetary policy
led to some temporary weakness in the Canadian
dollar, which briefly fell as low as US$0.80. The
weakness was short-lived, however.

Following the U.S. decision to prohibit the export of
gold in April 1933 and similar efforts in the United
States to reflate, the Canadian dollar began
to strengthen.65 The Canadian government’s
decision in 1934 to expand the amount of Dominion
notes in circulation by reducing their gold backing
to 25 per cent did not have much impact on the
Canadian dollar.

In the economic circumstances of the time,
and given similar developments in the
United States, this move was viewed as appropriate
and elicited little market reaction (Bryce 1986, 143).
The Canadian dollar returned to rough parity
with its U.S. counterpart by 1934 (Chart 3) and, at
times, even traded at a small premium. With the
U.S. dollar depreciating against gold and the pound
sterling, the Canadian dollar returned to its old
parity with sterling.

Not surprisingly, as the 1930s progressed
with little sign that the Depression was ending,
pressure began to mount on the government to do
something. In addition to concerns about the
adequacy of the Finance Act, there was also
widespread public distrust of the banking system,
largely because of the high cost and low availability
of credit.

Farmers, especially those in western
Canada, who were suffering from a sharp fall in
both crop yields and prices, were particularly
critical of banks and consequently very supportive
of the formation of a central bank. They hoped
that a central bank would be a source of steady and
cheap credit.

With effective nominal interest rates on farm loans in
excess of 7 per cent, real interest rates were very high
—about 17 per cent in 1931 and 1932, owing to
sharply declining consumer prices.

In July 1933, the government set up a
commission with a mandate to study the
functioning of the Finance Act and to make
“a careful consideration of the advisability
of establishing in Canada a Central Banking
Institution . . . .” (Macmillan Report 1933, 5).66
Lord Macmillan, a famous British jurist and known
supporter of a central bank, was chosen by Prime
Minister Bennett to chair the commission.
The other members were Sir Charles Addis, a
for mer director of the Bank of England;
Sir William T. White, the former wartime Canadian
Finance Minister and banker; John Brownlee,
Premier of Alberta; and Beaudry Leman, a
Montréal banker.

Public hearings began on 8 August 1933,
and the final report was presented to the government
less than seven weeks later on 28 September. While
the commission voted only narrowly in favour of
the establishment of a central bank, its conclusion
was never really in doubt. The two British
members of the committee, joined by Brownlee,
voted in favour of a central bank, a position
supported by both the Conservative government
and the Liberal opposition.

When we look back at the monetarist policies put in place during the Depression and those in effect today one gets a disturbing sense of Deja Vu.


SEE:

Social Credit And Western Canadian Radicalism

Historical Memory on the Eve of the Election

Calgary Herald Remembers RB Bennet

Origins of the Capitalist State In Canada

Rebel Yell

A History of Canadian Wealth, 1914.

Radical Capitalists Not So Radical

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Blaming Others

The reason for the failures in Iraq are not George Bush's fault they are the fault of others.

Just whose brilliant idea was it to disband the Iraqi army? The former U.S. boss of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, says President Bush knew about and supported his plans to dissolve Saddam's military, according to letters he released to the New York Times yesterday.

Annoyed that Bush was quoted in a recent book as suggesting that he had gone a bit Rambo out in the desert, Bremer disclosed his spring 2003 correspondence with the president.

The impetus for Bremer's action was Bush's interview with Robert Draper, author of the new book "Dead Certain," in which the president sounded as if he had been taken aback by the decision.

"The policy had been to keep the army intact; didn't happen," Bush told Draper. When Draper asked how he had reacted when the policy changed, Bush replied, "Yeah, I can't remember. I'm sure I said, 'This is the policy, what happened?'"

Rumsfeld also serves as a major, if absent, character in today's sweeping USA Today investigation tracking the Defense Department's slowness to equip the troops in Iraq with protective gear like body armor and devices to jam signals from detonators.

Even as the president and Pentagon officials claimed they were doing all they could to get these items for the soldiers, the paper digs up documents suggesting that "the military cut or underfunded several programs and moved so slowly and grudgingly that members of Congress" had to step in with "extraordinary measures."

Interviewed officials complained of a refusal among top military brass at the beginning of the war to believe that the fighting would be anything but brief. Once things started to get bogged down, there was a "peacetime mentality" guiding acquisition of "up-armored vehicles," the paper reports.

In one particularly striking example, Pentagon officials "balked at pleas from battlefield commanders and their own analysts to provide the lifesaving MRAP, or Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, for patrols and combat missions." Only after Rummy left and Robert Gates took over did the Pentagon embrace the MRAP.

Draper's account of the bulk of Bush's presidency sheds light on a loyal and secretive inner circle that, at least privately, was not always on the same page. Draper tells of an April 2006 dinner at which Bush asked aides for a show of hands on whether his divisive defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, should be fired.

The vote: 7-4 to get rid of him, with Bush siding with those who wanted him kept on for the time being. Rumsfeld was replaced after the elections that fall switched control of the House and Senate to Democrats.

White House aides who wanted Rumsfeld out were privately dismayed when retired generals called publicly for his ouster, fearing that would steel Bush's resolve to keep his defence chief, the book says.

Bush, without addressing that meeting, suggested to the author that the ex-generals did get under his skin. "My reaction was, 'No military guy is gonna tell a civilian how to react,"' he said.

Just like his failure to deal with Hurricane Katrina.

The latest book published about George W Bush reveals that the US president was not fully engaged in key policy areas, including the disbandment of the Iraqi army and the build-up to Hurricane Katrina.

At a briefing at his Crawford ranch the day before the hurricane made landfall, Mr Bush was "gassed" after an 80-minute bike ride and asked no supplementary questions following a briefing from advisers. He merely assured them the federal government was prepared to help.

SEE:

Daddy's Boy

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Daddy's Boy

So come January 2009 what will Ex-President Bush be thinking about? His failed war in Iraq? His failed war on Terrorism? All the homes not built in New Orleans? Crumbling American infrastructure? Nope. True to form he will be thinking of how he can make a buck off being an Ex-Pres. Just like Daddy does. And of course he has to keep up with the Clinton's.

After he leaves office, President Bush is quoted as telling Draper that he wants to build what he calls a "Fantastic Freedom Institute" in Dallas. He describes it as being a place where young leaders can come, write and lecture.

But first, Bush tells Draper, he wants to make some money to "replenish the ol' coffers,” noting he can make "ridiculous” money on the lecture circuit.

“I don't know what my dad gets. But it's more than 50, 75 [thousand] … Clinton's making a lot of money," the president is quoted as saying.

Given his failed presidency the only place that would welcome him on the lecture circuit is Albania.

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Double Trouble

Two Hurricanes have hit Mexico and Nicaragua , but don't expect the folks at CNN and Fox who do their Wild Weather/Wicked Weather reports to make much about this since all they care about is their gulf coast. There will be no wall to wall coverage, just updates.

Oh yes and remember last year when the hurricane season was milder and all the climate change deniers rejoiced at how wrong predictions were for a nasty hurricane season. Well this year it is a nasty hurricane season as predicted due to climate change. However since they have not hit the U.S. corporate America could care less.

The U.S. still has not paid up its funding obligations to Nicaragua after Hurricane Mitch.

Hurricanes swept ashore in Nicaragua and Mexico within hours of each other Tuesday, the first time Atlantic and Pacific hurricanes have made landfall on the same day since the National Hurricane Center began keeping records in the 1940s.

Felix arrived first, punishing sparsely populated northern Nicaragua with 160 mph winds before dawn, then plowing inland across Honduras, threatening floods and mudslides in a region still recovering from Hurricane Mitch, which killed nearly 11,000 people in 1998.

More than 1,900 miles away, Henriette swelled to hurricane strength Tuesday afternoon and roared onto the southern tip of Mexico's Baja Peninsula, an area thick with some of Latin America's swankiest hotels and vacation homes.

Tuesday was historic for two reasons: It was the first time on record that two Category 5 Atlantic hurricanes made landfall in the same year, with Felix coming two weeks after Hurricane Dean slammed into southern Mexico.

And Atlantic and Pacific hurricanes had never made landfall on the same date, according to records that began in 1949.

A NOAA map on Tuesday shows hurricanes Henriette, left center, and Felix. There were no reports of serious damage from Henriette, but Felix cut a swath of destruction as it headed into Honduras.

This storm will now be true test of the Harpers Development Agenda with his new found interest in Latin America and the Caribbean. Lets see how quick he responds to this disaster.

As they say there is always a silver lining in every storm cloud this case Alvaro Orozco who has gone into hiding, may not be deported to Nicaragua since his home may not be there anymore. Wishful thinking.




SEE:

Hurricane and Howard Dean

Mother Prevails

Remember Katrina and Rita?

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Shark Bait

More stupid human speciesism.

Since all sharks look the same.

Lucky for the shark there was a 'Life' guard at the beach to save his life.

These are Michael Coren's kind of folks, beating up on a poor shark.

When a Coney Island lifeguard spied a shark near an upset group of swimmers, he did what he thought was right: He rescued the fish

Marisu Mironescu, 39, said he was prompted to action Monday after seeing about 75 to 100 people circling the 60-centimetre sand shark off the beach and "bugging out."

"They were holding onto it and some people were actually hitting him, smacking his face," said Mironescu. "Well, I wasn't going to let them hurt the poor thing."

He grabbed the largely harmless shark in his arms and carried it, backstroking out to sea, where he let it go. "He was making believe like he's dead, then he wriggled his whole body and tried to bite me," Mironescu said.

The rescue ended a holiday weekend that began with another city shark scare Saturday, when a 1.5-metre thresher shark washed up on Rockaway Beach, sending hundreds of swimmers out of the water.

And size does matter. Five feet is a lot bigger than 3.5 feet.

At least these New Yorkers did do the 'right thing'. Since sharks are an endangered species thanks to stupid humans.

A five-foot-long thresher shark that washed up on a crowded city beach this weekend — and was pushed back into the sea by beachgoers — is dead.

Rockaway Beach was back open Sunday, a day after a shark sighting shut it down.

Park officials say a shark washed up on the shore Saturday near Beach 109th Street. Some New Yorkers approached the creature and pushed it back into the water.

The Parks Department ordered swimmers back on the shore and closed the beach and surrounding bay for the rest of the day.

Sunday morning, a dead thresher shark, five feet in length, washed up on the shore at Beach 113th Street. Parks officials say they believe it was the same shark as Saturday.

An expert from the New York Aquarium told the New York Post that thresher sharks don't attack nearly as often as the famous Great White, although swimmers have been injured by their tails.

Thresher Shark

The genus and family name derive from the Greek word alopex, meaning fox. Indeed the long-tailed thresher shark, Alopias vulpinus, is named the fox shark by some authorities.

All three thresher shark species have been recently listed as vulnerable to extinction by the World Conservation Union (IUCN).

Sand Shark

The sand tiger (Carcharias taurus) is a coastal shark often encountered by shore fishermen while fishing for striped bass and bluefish. Please note that this species is protected by both State and Federal laws .

Sand tigers have two dorsal fins of equal size and are grayish brown in appearance, often with dusky spots on their sides and tail. They are most often confused with smooth dogfish (Mustelus canis), but sand tigers have very noticeable long thin teeth while smooth dogfish do not. The spiny dogfish (Squalus acanthias) is another small coastal shark, but can easily be distinguished from a sand tiger by its two dorsal fin spines and the lack of anal fin. If you accidentally catch a sand tiger,you should take care to return it to the water unharmed.

SEE:

Prison Zoo Complex

They Walk Among Us

Nessies Relative

Nessie?

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Senator Craig Lies, Again

I am resigning he said, but apparently he had his fingers crossed. Ok he ain't gay, he didn't solicit sex in a public washroom, and he is not resigning. Wow just for lying he should be run out of town on a rail way before the end of the month.

But the pièce de résistance is that he is so incompetent he left a message about his clever subterfuge on a complete strangers answering machine.

U.S. Sen. Larry Craig says he might reconsider his decision to resign if he clears his name in his arrest for disorderly conduct in a restroom sex scandal.

That’s why Craig chose his words carefully during his resignation speech Saturday in Boise, according to a voice mail message he mistakenly left on a stranger’s phone. In the message obtained by the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, Craig tells a man named “Billy” that his choice of language is deliberate because it leaves the door open for him to stay in office.

In the message, Craig mentions that he has the support of Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., a backer who Craig saw as pivotal for giving his efforts political legitimacy.

The day after Craig’s resignation speech, Specter went on Fox News Sunday. “I'd still like to see Senator Craig fight this case," Specter said. "He left himself some daylight, when he said he "intends" to resign in 30 days. I'd like to see Larry Craig go back to court, seek to withdraw his guilty plea and fight the case.”

The voice is indeed Craig’s, spokesman Dan Whiting said. Whiting would not say who “Billy” is. Later that day, Craig announced that he had hired high-profile criminal defense lawyer Billy Martin, whom Craig hired to help him unravel the guilty plea Craig filed last month.

Whiting confirmed in an e-mail that his boss “intends to resign on Sept. 30th. However, he is fighting these charges, and should he be cleared before then, he may, and I emphasize may, not resign.”

H/T to Cowboys For Social Responsibility.


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Patels Panics

I got this message from Herr Werner Patels on MyBloglog account.

Please be advised that Eugene Plawiuk will be reported to the authorities for criminal libel and harassment this week. A report about this will also be sent to his union and the school he works at, since he is clearly not fit to be around children.

It appears that bi-polar blogger Patels is panicking, first he erased his offending web pages on Alberta Spectator blog where he attacked Montreal Simon and Red Tory last month, then he created a new set of multi-blog personalities called Eye On. Including Eye On Blogosphere.(aka Eye on Blogs)

What Eye on the Blogosphere is about

1. cyberbullying
2. freedom of speech
3. harassment
4. libel
5. political blogging

1. 
   

Ironically his attack on them was the result of one of his purged posts (available thanks to Google Cache) where he said this;

As I wrote here a while ago, there seems to be a trend (primarily among lefties and/or Liberals) to muzzle bloggers by slapping them with lawsuits. Funny how you never hear about conservatives suing bloggers (unless I missed something, so if you have information on such a case, please do drop me a line in the comments section below).

Ah hem, well I for one would like to report Werner for threatening to do this, I am not sure he is a conservative, but he is a whingnut. Of course his threat to me is not the first time he has said he would sue me. Or report me to my employer which he has also threatened to do to me and other bloggers in the past.

Now in the midst of his latest revisionist rewriting of the story of his cyberstalking, he has created another blog called Common Sense Musings. Which used to be his Ideas And Issues Blog. And was the original URL setting for Alberta Spectator.

Common Sense Musings provides snapshots of the world we live in. This blog is about finding common sense, or rather, an attempt to instill some common sense, as well as about ideas and the issues that matter.

Of course with multiple blog personality Werner his opinions are as far from commonsensical as one can be.

At this site he reposts his posts from his other blogs. In this particular case he has reposted his revisionist history of his cyber-stalking and blog attacks on Red Tory and Montreal Simon with a passing reference to yours truly whom he calls and extremist leftist. It is the same story he published on the weekend in his new Eye On Blogs. Which I commented on .

Unfortunately he has purged all his posts at Eye On Blogs and reposted his new sanitized version at his Common Sense Musings.

I guess he figures if he says something over and over again on various of his blogs which he sanitizes then folks will be fooled into believing he is a reasonable, rational, fellow.

He also rewrote his article on Michael Coren, at yet another of his blogs purging any reference to me. The original article was posted on the now purged Alberta Spectator, there he had linked to my original article on Coren and recognized I had blogged on this first, he gave me a H/T.

• 

  On animals, mental disease and Michael Coren

  8 days ago in Alberta Spectator · Authority: 122

  we can eat them, wear their skins, experiment on them if we can thus improve the human condition. Clearly, if there's a mentally ill individual, it's Coren, but not people who really and truly understand animals and what they're all about. Hat tip to Eugene Plawiuk for alerting me to the story. Cross-posted from A Writer's Musings Alberta Spectator

As for criminal libel there is no such a creature, there is slander and libel and it is covered in a section of the criminal code. It is not a felonious offense so it is a civil matter which is resolved through a suit in civil court.

And purging your offensive articles, will not save your ass if you are sued.

Please have your lawyers contact my lawyers;
Hungadunga, Hungadunga, Hungadunga, Hungadunga and McCormack.




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No Boom For Canadian Workers

What Time Is It?

Time For the Four Hour Day.

Employees burn while the economy booms With Canada's unemployment rate hovering at its lowest level in 30 years, you'd think all would be harmonious in the labour market. But while more of us are working, a new study from the Canadian Policy Research Networks shows many of us aren't happy with the quality of our jobs. Despite the current economic boom, real wages have increased only slightly since 1980. And it's also becoming more difficult to balance work and home life.One in five Canadians are dissatisfied in that regard, a 20 percent increase from 1990 to 2001.Working overtime is part of that equation. Almost a quarter of those questioned reported working overtime, and about half of that extra work was uncompensated. Teachers lead the way in unpaid overtime, at 34 percent. And work schedules are problematic as well. Both long work weeks and short work weeks are on the rise, meaning some workers have no time, while others are always strapped for cash.

Only one in three Canadians is ”very satisfied” at work and the country will face difficulties attracting new workers, according to a study published on Monday.

“It should be of concern that only about one-third of all workers are very satisfied with their jobs and that fewer than one in five employees are very positive about multiple dimensions of job quality,” the Canadian Policy Research Network said in its report.

“The report provides solid Canadian evidence that the nature of a job and the environment in which people work are critical to achieving employee satisfaction,” the report’s author Graham Lowe wrote.

What workers want: It's time to raise the bar

My research for a Canadian Policy Research Networks report, "21st Century Job Quality: Achieving What Canadians Want," examined dozens of job-quality measures to reach this conclusion. The biggest change since the early 1990s has been a 45-per-cent decline in unemployment. However, the hiring binge has not increased the proportion of full-time, continuing jobs.

Precarious employment persists. While more people work shorter weeks, the longer work week (more than 40 hours) has increased. Employers have been slow to adopt or offer flexible hours and schedules, something workers of all generations want. Information technology, and growing concern for the environment, should make telecommuting an easy move, but if this happens at all, it usually involves unpaid overtime on evenings and weekends. Basic benefits are being cut back, notably employer pension plans and supplementary medical insurance.

SEE:

Productivity and Wages

$63.90 Per Hour

The End Of The Leisure Society

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Curses!

It appears though that Wicca has made it into the Big Leagues in America. As in Major League Baseball. Not so strange since most sports types are superstitious and after all witchcraft and magick is commonly used in Soccer.

Garner can’t find right voodoo doll

Looking for a way to slow down Chicago Cubs ace Carlos Zambrano, Houston Astros manager Phil Garner decided to try voodoo.

“I’m confused,” Garner told Chicago’s Daily Southtown. “I went online and looked for my voodoo guy and I’m going to have to pick one and try to get it. Most of these curses are against lovers … I’ve got to find one that puts a curse on a baseball player.”

Of course there are other ways to curse a ball player.

“It wasn’t voodoo. I stayed away from the voodoo. I can’t go into the details. I’ll just have to tell you Wicca (a form of witchcraft),” Garner said to the Houston Chronicle, explaining his latest plan.

But Voodoo ain't Wicca. The former does claim on occasion to use curse magick the latter says it doesn't.


Voodoo is Black Magick, as in originating in Africa, while Wicca claims to be White Magick, as in Eurocentric.

A Witchcraft suppression bill, currently being drafted by the Mpumalanga legislature, has struck fear into the hearts of South Africa's witches, who fear the dark days of medieval witch-hunts may soon return.

The bill, leaked in June to the South African Pagan Rights Alliance (Sapara), threatens to undermine the freedoms and rights of a religious minority by criminalising and prohibiting their right to exist and practise their religion, says Sapra convener Damon Leff.

The draft, titled the Mpumalanga Witchcraft Suppression Bill 2007, states in its introduction that it is "to provide for the suppression of witchcraft in the province".

In Chapter 6 it states any person who "professes a knowledge of witchcraft or the use of charms" or "for gain pretends to exercise or use any supernatural powers, witchcraft, sorcery or enchantment" shall be guilty of an offence.
One of the major causes of the Western pagans' upset, according to Leff, is the failure of the bill to recognise the doctrinal and ethical gap between Western pagan and some forms of traditional African witchcraft.

And according to Vos, by lumping the two religions together the bill has overlooked how differently they approach the issue of ethical responsibility.

"While in rare cases (some in Mpumalanga) murder has been committed to get hold of human tissues, such as hearts and genitals for muti practices, the furthest a Western pagan would go is to collect human hair and nail clippings," he claimed.

Another serious criticism Western pagans in the country harbour is the bill's stereotyping of witches and witchcraft as being harmful and dangerous to their community.

The bill defines witchcraft as "the secret use of muti, zombies, spells, spirits, magic powers, water, mixtures, etc, by any person with the purpose of causing harm, damage, sickness to others or their property".

Leff has asked the Mpumalanga advocates to replace it with the definition: "a religio-magical occupation that employs the use of sympathetic magic, ritual, herbalism and divination".

AIDS, Witchcraft, and the Problem of Power in Post-Apartheid South Africa

As an epidemic of AIDS sweeps through this part of Africa, isidliso is the name that
springs to mind amongst many in the epidemic’s path. To the extent that this occurs, the epidemic of HIV/AIDS becomes also an epidemic of witchcraft. But the implications for a witchcraft epidemic are quite different from those of a public health crisis, at least as such things are conventionally conceived in western discourses of social and political management.

In this paper I will examine some of the implications of interpreting HIV/AIDS
infection as witchcraft and ask what they might mean for the legitimacy of public power in post-apartheid South Africa. For when suspicions of witchcraft are in play in a community, problems of illness and death can transform matters of public health into questions of public power, questions relating to the identification and punishment of persons deemed responsible for bringing misfortune to the community, that is: witches.

So instead of using pins in dolls to curse his opponent perhaps Garner should have found a witch who was good at casting Lucky Mojo Spells.

Like this guy.

Wiccan Wins Lottery

Wiccan instructor Elwood "Bunky" Bartlett says a New Age book store made it possible for him to become an overnight multi-millionaire.

The Maryland accountant, who claims to hold one of four winning tickets sold for Friday night's estimated 330 million dollar Mega Millions jackpot, says he made a bargain with the multiple gods associated with his Wiccan beliefs: "You let me win the lottery and I'll teach."

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