POLITICAL ASTROLOGY 

THE YEAR OF THE YANG FIRE MONKEY

I have written about Political Astrology before and in particular about the impact of unexpected change created in the Year of the Monkey.      

It has been twelve years since the last one, and at that time I used it to predict the minority government of Paul Martin and his and the Liberals fall from power. That was 2004, I also used it as the basis of predication of the coming Obama campaign for POTUS and the auspicious birth it would have in the year of the Monkey.

With the topsy turvy politics that began a year ago with the totally unexpected win by the NDP in Alberta and later the Trudeau Liberals federally in Canada and the Trump and Sanders campaigns in the US change of the trickster kind, the unexpected is the norm, it flows right into the year of the Monkey. As I said back in 2004;

And why should we put such credence into the Year of the Monkey? Well it occurs on a twelve-year cycle, and in Canadian politics the year of the Monkey has seen the fall of many PMs and their parties.In the monkey year1992, Brian Mulroney stepped down as PM and was replaced by Kim Campbell, who went down to defeat in the 1993 election.In 1980 Pierre Elliot Trudeau came out of retirement to defeat PC Prime Minister Joe Clark, who had held his office for only a year. Of course PET had the year of the Monkey on his side having become PM in 1968, a crucial and revolutionary year of the Monkey.1968 is a quintessential year of the Monkey, with the Paris uprising of students and workers, the Tet offensive effectively defeating the Americans in Vietnam, the Chicago riots at the Democratic Convention which led to the election of two time loser Richard Nixon. The assassination of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and the Russian invasion of Chezslovakia.The Year of the monkey in 1956 saw John Diefendbaker elected Leader of the Progressive Conservatives who win the 1957 election with a Minority Government, the first minority government in Canadian history, which lasted only one year.

The Unexpected Should Be Expected should be the motto of this year of the Monkey as it is the norm.

Today we are seeing a much broader range of change occurring as this is the year of the Male Fire Monkey a much more active trickster. With a Jupiter nature, the Monkey Trickster spirit is sure to impact on mundane politics which Jupiter rules. The rise of both Trump and Sanders are reflective of this spirit. And so is the win by Leicester in the Premier League of Football, their first such win in 132 years, at 5000-1 Odds !!!

Hoary astrology is the practice of Political Astrology; it uses a base style of chart first developed in England by the father of modern political astrology William Lily who predicted the Great London Fire of 1666. I do not have those abilities nor do I use the standard astrological tools. I use an intuitive method looking at events that would fit in the spirit of this year of the Monkey.

Hanuman which is the Monkey God in Asia is the spiritual nature of Man the Trickster, which we find in other cultures with their tricksters; Set of the Egyptians, Loki of the Norse, Coyote and Raven of North American first peoples, the Fox in Aesop’s Tales and in Japan, and Mercury for the Greeks.  All of them turn the world on its head, spin the magician or shaman around the leave folks guessing. They do it with a laugh, either on you or on them. While the tricks can teach a lesson that lesson may not be benevolent nor without some pain or other form of unexpected event.

In this the campaigns of Trump and Sanders actually reflect that Fire Yang of this year’s Monkey Tai Sui the Grand Duke of Jupiter. Jupiter rules politics, the Twentieth card in the Tarot; XX The World or Aeon

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Both candidates for POTUS came from behind, with nothing but negative expectations and media prognostications the magick of the media appointing or anointing their winner and their loser, as though they were Thoth himself.

But here the truth of Ptah did not come from the lips of the media but rather from the people, change was in the air, as the saying goes. In the spirit of the Monkey King, the people decided to support these two politicians because they were not the usual kind of politician. One was a seventies anti war activist a self avowed Socialist, the other a racist bigoted businessman who was both a Democrat and a Republican.  Such Janus like archetypes now fill the imagination of the mass of the American public.

The seventies, which is when I became a young radical activist, have returned, to remind the yuppies, nerds and geeks that they are the baby boomers who lived in the seventies, making it a time of both mass anti war protest and organizing for a political revolution, a music and cultural upheaval and finally a spirit of change, that society as well as the individual could change, it was Yippie culture and Hippie culture combined, it was protest and self help/inward awareness, paganism and Buddhism began to expand in North America. All of the counter culture, freak culture of the Woodstock generation is wrapped in an old guy who was a hero of mine when I was a teenager and he was an anti war socialist elected mayor in Vermont.

This particular historical moment in time, on the way to the second decade of the 21^st. Century with its millennial generation is exactly where we were at fifty years ago, ironically. All the Occult and Revolutionary revival of the seventies is coming to be the norm in this new age. The concept of an alternative consciousness, a worldwide ascendant consciousness of humanity and the idea of a revolutionary consciousness baptized the new century in Seattle and Chiapas in 1999. And five years ago its zeitgeist became apparent to all of us with the Weltanschauung of the Arab spring.

Both Trump and Sanders reflect this zeitgeist in the year of the Monkey, the anti free trade movement has a left and right base and both these candidates reflect these bases, while their parties the Democrats and GOP do not.

They are the Left and Right of the same coin, a libertarian urge to social change for the good of the individual and for society. Unfortunately as we have learned from history this left right deviation occurred in the thirties and created fascism, which has returned as the zeitgeist of the Trump movement. White America is being swept up in final campaign, before it becomes a minority in the United States. 

Both Sanders and Trump reflect this, both are appealing to predominately white voters, and in both cases they are appealing to the working class, there is no middle class that was a socioeconomic myth of  sixties sociologists to confuse producers with consumers, creating new classes such as blue collar and white collar, to separate them into economic categories. Everyone wants to be white collar, middle class, a consumer, who may or may not be a direct producer, like auto workers, or secretaries, both jobs created for post WWII North America.

Trump appeals to the older white working class, while Sanders appeals to the new generation their children and grandchildren who now live in a pre socialist world of postmodern capitalism. Like Star Trek that my generation grew up with the advanced communications, social media, internet world which is very much the creation of the 21^st Century, is real change occurring instantly give or take a couple of months or years of development.

Apps reflect this change, this shift from consumer based capitalism, to active ameliorating capitalism on its way to becoming socialism, not just the conditions for socialism but actually shifting productive relations into socialist relations of production.

Everyone under advanced capitalism is becoming a producer user, even this blog is reflective of that change, by its very nature the blog allows me to create more than just an article but an actual autonomous media form, that can be spread everywhere on the internet, no different than the New York Times.

The modern technology being used by millennial’s attests to this sense of coming socialism, socialism of the association of free producers, artisans not wage slave labourers,  using apps they create and share. We have a sharing economy bursting through a capitalist economy, whether you and I like it or not. Revolutions are radical change whether people like it or not and we are in a period of revolutionary change unseen since after WWI.

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

Uber is one of these kinds of disruptive technologies it confronts the old taxi culture that grew out of the forties to sixties when a small group of capitalists dominated and created an industry based on ownership of state sanctioned cab licenses. 

The ultimate purpose of Uber and other such apps, is to eventually be used by us to call autonomous vehicles to our home, workplace or shopping mall, we will no longer own cars, but use a new form of public transit, privatized as it is now. It will change because we are now actually talking about socialism in North America. 

Currently Uber is destroying the taxi industry, and transferring that ability to drive people, to people themselves, taking it out of its specialized role in society, in much the same way the car itself replace the horse drawn carriage or the street trolley.

But eventually once Big Auto starts producing autonomous vehicles, there will be an app used to call up a vehicle, but there will be no need for Uber.

Cars would be leased and once they outlived their lives they would be returned for recycling and reuse, this idea has been in circulation for twenty years now.

Socialism is the natural result of the contradictions of capitalism, which is a failed economic model, based on continuous growth of at least 3% annually, as Prof DavidHarvey has pointed out. Socialism occurs when capitalism reaches the point of restricting the growth of technology, robotics, automation, which can free us from the drudgery of wage slavery. We move from an economy based on production and waste, to one that is that is green, that uses natural resources in a way that considers their finiteness, that then relies on reusing and recycling these products.

Green economics is one aspect of socialism it involves current research in areas like green manufacturing, green chemistry, etc. These are actual fields of research and development. The idea is to take responsibility for your product from cradle to grave and when we go to bury it we find ways of breaking it down and reusing it.

Autonomous production; the freedom to choose, that supposed gift of capitalism is actually central to socialism, the concept of the free association of producers comes with the change in technology, like 3D Printing. This allows for manufacturing at home, a return of home based work, an end of the factory.
The Internet of Things, IoT allows us to administer things, not people, Engels ideal of the socialist state.

Millennial’s understand this, they grok the potential in the social media they use, they live in and live with. They used this to create the Arab Spring, the first world wide revolutionary struggle since the Bolshevik and Spanish revolutionary  struggles in the twentieth century . This consciousness of change was not lost on them.

It is this spirit of hope and change of that revolutionary potential that makes them embrace Sanders call to political revolution and Socialism.

It is the fear of job loss, of destruction of the norm, of the end of power of the white race that drives their parents and grandparents to Trump.

Like the turn of last Century which saw a horrifying war of Capitalist expansion that cut short the lives of an entire generation in Europe, and the creation of Modernism as a result, we are in a period of change, where consciousness, our social and personal self awareness is aware that we and the times we live in are full of potential for change and are changing.

Unlike the lost generation of WWI our Millennial’s as well as members of Gen X, Y, Z are all here. And like the generation of revolutionaries, modernists, they are the voice of the future, of a socialism that is not 19^th or even 20^th century, but a new model of an advanced technology shared for free in open source. 

Where work is what we all do because it is something we want to do, not because we are selling our time to someone else. Technology is on the edge of history, like Marx predicted in his work the Grundrisse, we can transform capitalism into socialism, by using technology to free us from wage slavery.

The followers of Trump are the heirs of the post WWI reactionaries and traditionalists who also appear at this time with the futurist and modernists movements, they are the founders of Fascism. 

They are not quite conservative or aristocratic, though these values and images of power appeal to them, they are actually as much a part of the revolutionary change in consciousness that is occurring, their spokespeople on the right talk about dialectics, gnosis, Hegelianism, all the left topics that while they dispute them consider them important enough as an ideology to continuously confront despite their protestations that Socialism has failed, and is a failed ideology.

It is more than an ideology; it is a historical zeitgeist originating in capitalism once capitalism develops industry and technology to a level of autonomous use it transforms into the potential for a socialist political economy.

It is here that the conspiratorial ideologues of the right, like Eugene Volokh, influence the readers of both the National Review and the National Enquirer. 

This movement of radical traditionalism of Evola and Volokh appeals to the American conspiracy theory imagination which Trump uses very effectively.

 However the white working class, like the coalminers in Appalachia who have abandoned Clinton for Trump, do not see that their jobs, their lives, their very existence being sacrificed by their bosses but because of Free Trade deals.

 With a reactionary consciousness they look to the very same boss who sold them out to save them, the left and the Democratic party has failed them. But they too embrace Sanders political revolution from the right, and support Trump because he will end trade deals. He will save their jobs. Even if the Republican Party is the party of free trade the very reason they have lost their jobs, they do not care, they are not republicans they are Trumpites.

Sanders and Trump’s political revolution also calls into question the whole two party system and Trump more than even Sanders has exposed what a rigged game it is.

In a sense Trump as post modern aristocrat has stepped down from his lofty heights to save the people. His politics are not of reform or revolution but of the great man in history no different from Mussolini or Bismarck who created state socialism in order to unify Germany.

Sanders political revolution harkens back to the seventies, to the ideals of the anti war movement which was the first post WWII movement to seriously threaten the establishment, even more so than the very successful CND anti nuke movement that it originated from.

He has not announced its structure, because as a transitional program it is made up of demands like #Fightfor15, ending Big Money in politics, etc. are all tactics for change, they are not a real program for socialist change. He is using this campaign like a big anti-war teach-in.

America’s political system is broken, this election has proven it.

 

And the Monkey King knows it and is only too glad to show it.

THE ALBERTA NDP THE PARTY OF OIL WORKERS

THE COINCIDENTAL BIRTH OF THE NEW DEMOCRATS 

AND THE OIL INDUSTRY IN ALBERTA

Rachel Notley warned New Democrats that adopting the LEAP manifesto which demands the end of oil extraction from the Tar Sands as well as conventional and shale gas plays, and NO pipelines, would put the Eastern arm of the party in direct conflict with a party that is proudly Albertan and directly involved in the oil industry history in the province even more so than the long ruling party the PC’s.

It was the development of oil and energy in Alberta that created new wealth and a new industrial province after WWII. The discovery of oil not only brought the oil industry but also the oil and energy workers union, a small American union that had an arm in Alberta, the Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers OCAW. In Alberta it was beginning its organizing of workers in the field and in the new gas and chemical plants being built between Edmonton and Fort Saskatchewan.

This was the post war boom, the party in power was Social Credit, and while  there was no NDP there was an active labour political movement housed in the AFL and Edmonton Trades and Labour Council, members belonged to the Communist Party, the CCF and some still belonged to the OBU and IWW.

Edmonton had a history of electing labour council members as Mayor, Aldermen (women), school board trustees and Hospital Board members. Elmer Roper  longtime labour activist, CCF activist and candidate, owner of ABC Printing and publisher of Alberta Labour News would be elected Mayor of Edmonton after the creation of the NDP by the merger of the CCF with the newly created post war Canadian Labour Congress.

The sixties saw the growth of the labour movement in Canada and in Alberta, including the creation of an active movement of organizing public sector workers, provincially, municipally and federally. The Federal Workers Union originating in Calgary would merge with the Ontario based National Workers Union to create what we know as the Canadian Union of Public  Employees, the Civil Service Union of Alberta would become a union known as the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees.

But throughout the oil boom of the fifties and sixties the union most associated with the provincial NDP was the Oil Chemical and Atomic Energy Workers Union under the leadership of Neil Reimer and his assistant Reg Baskin

That’s right the party was brought to life in Alberta by Oil Workers in the provinces new Energy market. Its first party leader was Neil Reimer, who would meet a charismatic young politician a contemporary of Peter Lougheed and Joe Clark at the University of Alberta, Grant Notley who would go on to become party Leader and its first elected MLA.

Notley himself did not represent Edmonton but his home region, the oil rich north of Alberta, the Grand Prairie, and Peace River riding.

As it had since 1936 the Social Credit party of Alberta held power in the province as a one party state, under the permanent leadership of Premier Ernest Manning, Preston’s daddy.  The New Democratic Party of Alberta focused its energy not only on consolidating union power in the party as well as the voices of the left and progressives but in challenging that Social Credit domination of Alberta Politics.

This was also the time of the Cold War and the Anti Communist Witch Hunts, a time being anti war, anti nuclear war, pro labour, was considered suspect. Where union members who were left wing were exposed to police spying, where padlock laws in Quebec had been used to raid imprison and steal property belonging to those accused of opposing the Duplesis regime or who were suspect of being Reds.

Duplessis ‘s party in Quebec aligned with that provinces Federal Social Credit Party which was aligned with Alberta’s Party as well. In both provinces the left faced one party dictatorship which reminded many despite their democratic trappings of the forces they had been fighting against in WWII.

As in Alberta it would be the post war labour movement in Quebec under Louis Lebarge that would mobilize politically as well as economically against the Old Regime, his right hand was a young activist lawyer named Pierre Eliot Trudeau. And like Alberta they were building a provincial and national party; the Liberals.

This then is the historical basis for the differences between the left in Quebec and the rest of Canada and why it took so long to breech these two solitudes, as was done in 2012 under Jack Layton and the federal NDP.

Premier Rachel Notley, the daughter of Grant Notley, the first NDP MLA ever elected to the Legislature, the first opposition member elected against the Social Credit party of Ernest Manning  had this rich history as her prologue at this week’s national NDP Convention in Edmonton where the party adopted the LEAP manifesto which challenges the very energy economy that makes Alberta a modern industrial state.

This province created the NDP under the leadership of  Neil Reimer, an oil worker and oil union organizer.  Neil was the first leader of the Party, and Reg Baskin was his right hand in their union and the party.

Neil also created the modern Canadian Energy Workers union,  Neil and Reg first represented oil workers in the new industry in the province with the OCAW  oil chemical and atomic workers of Canada, which had one other base of expansion; Louisiana.  He and Reg made it the Canadian Energy Workers Union, which became CEP merging with the Canadian Paper workers unions in BC, and now has consolidated with CAW to create UNIFOR.

Neil’s daughter was Jan Reimer two term Mayor of Edmonton during the 1990’s and while party labels are not used in Edmonton municipal elections everyone knew that we had an NDP mayor.

Meatpackers, a union that disappeared in the eighties with amalgamation of the meat packing industry into a smaller and smaller oligopoly, was a militant base of union workers and activists including communists and socialists, that was a large base for the party, as was Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 488.

These were the post war unions that were the party’s base in Edmonton and across the province. Federally the postal workers were a strong backbone for the Federal Party, though there were two separate unions at that time, letter carriers and inside workers, the latter being more left wing and militant with OBU IWW communist, socialist and Trotskyist activist workers.

It was the discovery of tar sands oil that led to the growth of the province, the union and the NDP. It was also this discovery and its needed development during the Arab Oil Crisis of 1971 that led to the end of the Social Credit government, its movement, but not its essence. In its place came the newest members of the Alberta Legislature elected in 1967 for the first time, the Lougheed Progressive Conservatives. They would be joined by Grant Notley and the NDP in opposition in 1968, when Grant won a by-election in Spirit River.

The “Progressive” element in the Lougheed PC’s represented the post war Liberal base among the non Anglo ethnic communities in Edmonton and Calgary, such as the recent post war immigration of Ukrainians, Italians, Portuguese, Greek, European, Asian, and Displaced Peoples. The Liberals had no political existence in Alberta since they were wiped out by the United Farmers/ Labour Party coalition in 1921.

Even Lougheed’s conservatism was not the neo conservative Austrian school embraced by the republican lite Preston Manning cons of today, it was classical liberal capitalism, that progressive aspect of capitalism that sought to ameliorate through regulation what short comings capitalism itself may suffer from despite its idealism of being the ‘ideal’ system.

The history of the Alberta NDP is the history of the Oil Workers and the Oil Industry in Alberta, even more than it is for the current batch of Conservatives provincial or federal.  The NDP in Alberta grew up with the oil industry with its workers and their union. For the Alberta NDP to reject both the LEAP manifesto and those call for the end of pipelines is natural and should have been expected by those who know the party history in the province.

For those who fail to understand this historic base of the party in Alberta fail to understand the social democratic politics of the oil industry, the NDP has long supported a form of nationalization under public ownership and increased workers control through unionization.

This occurred in the case of Suncor which was the earliest of the oil sands operators, before the Syncrude conglomerate was created.  In the early seventies after the Lougheed government promoted the oil sands, Suncor began mining operations.  Neil Reimer’s new Canadian Energy and Paperworkers union, CEP, got its birth in a long and bitter historic strike at the Suncor operations.

CEP went on to organize refineries in Edmonton, Sherwood Park and Fort Saskatchewan.

It tried but failed to organize Syncrude due to its conglomerate ownership and its concerted anti union efforts over the decade of the seventies into the eighties. Today unionized Suncor has bought out Syncrude so this situation opens it up to unionization decades later.

The seventies and eighties saw massive growth in the province including growth in both private and public union membership.

This also saw the success of the NDP and the left in Edmonton. While Grant Notley was a lone NDP member in Alberta Legislature, Edmonton saw a left wing U of A Prof David Leadbeater elected alderman.  Notley was joined in the house by Ray Martin, from Edmonton.

The NDP elected Ross Harvey its first federal MP from Alberta in the eighties from the old packing plant and union district of Edmonton Beverly. This was at the height of the Arab Oil Crisis of early eighties, which the Conservatives in Calgary blamed on the NDP Liberal National Energy Plan, NEP, which included the creation of the Canadian Publicly Owned Oil and Gas Company PetroCanada.

PetroCanada was a success and saved Calgary and the Lougheed Government during this oil crisis, it was able to buy up, nationalize, American oil companies like Gulf Mobile, Texaco, Chevron,  as well as smaller Canadian and American oil companies that were going broke or bailing out of Calgary heading back to Dallas and Huston.

And CEP was there to unionize it. Today PetroCanada is no more the Liberals privatized during the Austerity crisis of the Nineties, and Paul Martins Liberal Government sold off the last of our shares prior to the 2006 election.

Ironically it is Suncor that bought them and then bought up PetroCan and absorbed it., just as it has done with its competitor Syncrude.

It would be during the late eighties and early nineties that under Ray Martin the NDP would gain a record number of seats, going from 2 to 23 and status of official opposition. But by the time of the middle of nineties and the Austerity panic of debt and deficit hysteria and the birth of the neo conservative movement that two city Mayors, Ralph Klein of Calgary and Lawrence Decore of Edmonton would battle it out for Premier of the Province, Klein for the PC’s and Decore for the Liberals. Both ran on Austerity budgets, one promised massive cuts the other brutal cuts. It was a close election the losers were the NDP who were wiped out as a third party.

In Edmonton we had a new NDP mayor to replace Decore, Neil’s daughter Jan Reimer, joined by another leftist alderman the bus driver Brian Mason. The NDP centred itself in Edmonton at this time and got elected the enormously popular  team of Pam Barrett and Raj Pannu.

The CEP was critical in supporting the NDP at this time, including having its past president Reg Basking become leader of the Party.

After the shocking early death of party leader Pam Barrett, former alderman Brian Mason ran in her riding, Highlands, which also covers the Federal riding of Beverly that Ross Harvey once represented and won her seat in the house. Raj Pannu became the first Indo Canadian leader of an NDP party in Canada.  After he stepped down Brian Mason became the leader of the party.

The party went from four seats to two to four until Brian stepped down and the party elected Grant Notley’s daughter, Rachel Notley, who had sat in the house with Brian through all those ups and downs in electoral success.

The party base is the labour movement and left across the province and no less important unions such as CEP, IBEW, Carpenters and UA488 all involved in the oil sands and the petrochemical industry in Alberta.

So why are the various wags and pundits surprised when the Alberta NDP does not LEAP off the edge of a cliff named STOP PIPELINES, STOP DIRTY OIL.

In the finest of social democratic traditions, the Alberta NDP will do no such thing nor should it be expected to. It will ameliorate the worst of the environmental damages that the fossil fuel industry has and can be expected to cause. They will create a green plan, and expand the carbon fuel tax the PC’s brought in.

 It will do what the conservatives would not do, and that is eliminating Alberta’s Socred PC dirty energy economic backbone: coal. And that is the real dirty energy in Alberta, coal fired utility plants. These plants are evenly divided between private ownership, with state support from the ruling Socreds and PC’s, TransAlta Utilities, and publicly owned municipal utilities EPCOR and ENMAX. TransAlta is the original P3 funded by taxpayers under the Socred and spun off to become a private company where government cabinet members retire to the board of.

Even Lougheed was tied to the coal industry representing his old employer Mannix Inc, as a board member of Luscar Coal, which during the nineties created a major controversy with its efforts to mine outside of Jasper National Park.

Contrary to Greenpeace and other environmentalists who claim oil sands are the dirtiest energy the real dirty energy on the Palliser Plains of Alberta and Saskatchewan is coal.

Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel that needs to be kept in the ground. There is no such thing as clean coal!

There is however clean petrochemical fuels, that is the nature of refining, creating finer and finer grades of hydrocarbons; ethenes, benzenes, oil and gas for plastic production, diesel etc.

That is the reason for both the Joffre and Scotford massive refining projects and the plan for the heartland refining project, which would allow the province to crack and refine bitumen into secondary and tertiary hydrocarbons.

That is what the future of the energy is in Alberta, stopping the use of coal, refining hydrocarbons and shipping them south, east, and west.

Why would the NDP limit the provinces ability to ship what it processes.

As I have pointed out the pipeline west will probably go through the Peace River Athabasca highway route to Prince Rupert, which coincides with BC Site C dam development and its LNG  pipeline development, giving pipeline companies an alternative to going to Kitimat via the BC Sacred Bear Rainforest.

Energy East will be built and the NDP will promote as it did in the eighties, the idea that Alberta energy for a fair price should go east. What occurred instead was it was shipped to refineris in Ontario and Quebec at discounted prices where it was refined and sold to the US while oil was imported from the Middle East.

This was the original idea of the NEP that the NDP and Liberals promoted to Lougheed, and he agreed to! And like the NDP this was his vision for Alberta oil before he died.

While the LEAP manifesto is suitably left wing green etc, even shudder, anti capitalist ( read anti corporations) it is not something either the labour movement or NDP in Alberta will agree to do much more about than debate. Debate will be welcome, dictat not so much.

LEAP like most environmentalism today fails to take into consideration that even if workers had control of publicly owned energy companies, we would still be producing hydrocarbons, and will be even after the glorious Socialist Revolution.

The dirtiest energy causing climate change is not oil sands in Alberta or Venezuela it is coal and wood burning worldwide.  That is the challenge we face to shut down coal, and wood burning, not to accept the myth of Clean Coal, and to make sure we ameliorate environmental damage caused through hydrocarbon production.

You want to keep something in the ground its coal, and the biggest fight back in Alberta today is the utility lobbies who oppose the Alberta NDP Government ending of coal fired utilities.

In Alberta the NDP is the party of oil and oil workers. Never forget it. The old Social Credit of Preston Manning’s daddy’s day and the PC’s of Lougheed Klein were both parties of coal.

HUBRIS THY NAME IS KINDER MORGAN 

Why the BC Government Rejected Trans Mountain Pipeline

 in Favour of a Pipeline to Prince Rupert 

"Kinder Morgan is failing British Columbia's test for proceeding with a proposed pipeline expansion, so far unable to prove it will meet key safety requirements or serve the province's best interests, the environment minister says.Mary Polak said the Texas company has not provided enough evidence in its plans for the Trans Mountain pipeline to convince the government it can meet five pre-conditions for approval.The province said in its final written submission to the National Energy Board on Monday that it is unable to support the pipeline expansion from Alberta to the West Coast."    Trans Mountain pipeline project hasn't yetmet B.C.'s 5 conditions: minister

While the protests of the anti-pipeline advocates in the Lower Mainland of BC appear to have succeeded with the BC government's announcement today do not be so sure that this will not mean pipelines will not reach the pacific coast for Supertanker export to Asia. 

This is the pipeline to go from Bruderheim, Alberta, a small town south of Edmonton, to Burnaby BC it is NOT the controversial Northern Gateway Pipeline which is also proposed to go to the Southern Coastal waters of the province, ending up with a deep water port in Kitimat, in the Hecate Strait.

While this pipeline will end up in Burnaby, home of the Left Coast revolutionary hot bed of Simon Fraser University , it is merely an expansion of an existing pipeline, going to an existing refinery. A refinery that is still functioning though it was built in 1938 a year before World War 2.0 the refinery is 80 years old now. It is what they call in business a gravy train, it has already been paid for years ago, even any upgrades have paid themselves off so any money made is pure profit.

Two pipelines were proposed to travel to the Vancouver -Kitimat coastal area, with the idea of building deep water ports in some of the roughest most dangerous water anywhere on the Pacific coast. It appears with this decision and the Federal governments conditions on the Northern Gateway, that pipelines going to Kitimat or Burnaby are now not going anywhere.

So where will a pipeline be built to get Alberta bitumen to market? 

More than likely right here.........

There’s a dumb, dumb, really dumb idea that just won’t go away—that Enbridge could solve all its problems if only, if only, it would send the Northern Gateway Pipeline to Prince Rupert.Enbridge long ago rejected the idea. Before Enbridge updated its website to make  Gateway Facts, to make it slick and more attractive, the old website had an FAQ where Enbridge explained why it wasn’t going to Prince Rupert.

TransCanada was selected by Progress Energy Canada Ltd. to design, build, own and operate an approximately 900-kilometre natural gas pipeline (approximately 780 km terrestrial and 120 km marine) running from Hudson’s Hope to Lelu Island near Prince Rupert. 

TransCanada provides update on Prince Rupert Gas Transmission projectAlthough the start date of the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission Project is largely out of TransCanada's hands, vice-president John Dunn told the Prince Rupert and District Chamber of Commerce the company will be ready to go should the time come."Pacific NorthWest LNG is working to receive their necessary regulatory approvals and it is up to our customer to look at the global and fiscal environment for LNG and make a positive final investment decision. we will be ready to commence construction as soon as that occurs," he said of the Lelu Island terminal that will receive gas from the line, noting construction also depends on regulatory approval from the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission for the pipeline.Dunn said the delay in a final investment decision by the project's lone customer does not mean TransCanada's work on the pipeline has come to a halt. With the company expecting to announce three prime contractors for the approximately 900 kilometre pipeline later this year, Dunn said there is a lot going on in the background."One of the things that the announcement in December mention is that both Pacific NorthWest LNG in terms of their terminal at Lelu Island and PRGT in terms of its pipeline are working very diligently with major constructors to drive the cost down. We are taking the opportunity with this pause in the decision to basically look at realigning the costs across the project, whether it be materials or whether it be suppliers," he said.

Not only is BC planning on building a LNG gas line along the Yellowhead they also plan on building deep sea ports for Tankers off the coast of Prince Rupert which could accommodate raw bitumen from Fort McMurray or upgraded petroleum distillates from Edmonton . The Yellowhead already has a major highway, railway and existing pipelines so the environmental damage in comparison to the southern routes is not as significant, the community disruption is less and the potential for long term jobs in this region make it an attractive proposition that should have been considered in the first place.

It also fits in with the provinces plan of expanding its hydro dam operations in the Northern Peace region that it share with Alberta.

  The third dam – "Site C" – was also proposed at the time for a site 83 km downriver of the Peace Canyon dam, or approximately 7 km southwest of Fort St. John. 

Currently the Site C dam proposal is facing protests as well. But if I were of a conspiracy frame of mind, I would say that with this rejection of Kinder Morgan and the delays over North Gateway, despite the protests against the Site C Dam the BC government could not have planned it better if they had adhered to central planning. 

Will the Northern Gateway be built further North, along Highway 16, the infamous Trail of Tears where hundreds of First Nations women and girls have disappeared. 

It appears that if any pipeline is going to come from Alberta to the BC coast it may be along  the Trail Tears giving more poignancy to the appropriateness of that name. 

January 11, 2016

COUNTERING THE RIGHT WING ECHO CHAMBER IN ALBERTA 

Mr. Mcleod has given the government six months to change forty four years of right wing boondoggles created by PC regime and the thirty five years of right wing single party state of the Socreds. Wow what generosity. Six months vs. seventy five years.

The writer does not declare his political party affiliation though his complaints resonate within the echo chamber of the Wildrose supporters, in fact the whole myth of lack of communication is the reason d'etre that they use to criticise our Premier, whom he dismisses as Mrs. Premier.

Claiming that Bill 6 was forced on Albertans is a lie, the PC's actually had the bill in planning. He knows this as do the rest of the protestors against protecting Farm Workers, legislation all other provinces except Alberta have.

Their lobbying efforts resulted in a few thousand protesters, a handful of no significance except for their having been organized by the opposition parties. Compare that to the thousands upon thousands of Albertans who communicated their displeasure with Ralph Kleins Bill 11. This protest was a communications error in that the NDP should have called the WR out on it.

Finally like the other losers in this election who support Republican like politics in Alberta, the writer threatens the Premier and the government with Posse Communitas Militia like action if they don't change their ways. 
"U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy once observed, “Those who make peaceful evolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.”
In this day and age of domestic terrorist threats, I am surprised the editor allowed this clear call to violence against the Premier and her government to be published.

On the other hand perhaps it is good that people see the violence the minority of right wing backers of the opposition are willing to contemplate. It is unfortunate that those who lost the election though think they have the right to threatened armed violence if they don't get their way. That's not Alberta thinking thats Oregon.

NDP have failed at communication

Wednesday, Jan 06, 2016 06:00 am

By: Brian McLeod

Comments    |   

A A

As you may have noticed, I have been uncharacteristically quiet regarding our New Democrat regime now well ensconced in the provincial legislature. I adopted this policy as I felt it only reasonable to give the premier and her government the time to show us “their true colours,” and, besides, the provincial Tories so badly messed up the process that a little patience is mandated. However, from what I’ve seen over the past many months, I think we now have an appreciation for the government’s true colours: black, red and yellow. Now, before you grab your atlas and tell me these are the colours of the German flag, the NDP colours have some very non-German meanings. Red, for the premier, represents her love of spending – the more red ink – the merrier. Naturally, the credit agencies have responded by dropping Alberta’s credit rating, a normal response whenever they see a government losing total touch with reality.

Black, on the other hand, represents the mood of the people of Alberta, and the state of our economy – I’m sure it’s no grand revelation to you that there is a lot of anger in our province, an anger that appears to be growing daily.

Finally, yellow represents – again no surprise – the cowardice the government has shown in dealing with the voters of this province. This government has attempted to push through legislation while studiously avoiding any discussion with the groups that will be affected by such legislation. Bill 6 is one of numerous examples. When a government refuses to discuss its plans, or explain its actions, it creates an atmosphere of suspicion and fear, and these two emotions – along with anger – are alive and well in Alberta.

Over the last six months, I have heard countless stories about what the proposed legislation means to the average Albertan. I’ve been told the government plans to seize the farms of Alberta farmers, in order to set up the countless windmills they plan to install. I’ve also been told that the windmills have already been ordered. Others have informed me that the carbon tax imposed on Albertans will generate revenue to be sent to poorer, foreign nations, who cannot afford to implement the solutions agreed upon at the Paris environmental conference. None of the money will stay in Alberta.

I’ve heard the government plans to shut down all facilities using fossil fuels, including coal, petroleum and natural gas, which would appear to cover every facility in the province. Likely, you’ve heard dozens of other versions. My anger with this government stems from the fact that the NDP have done a terrible job explaining its plans, outlining its legislation, or discussing, with anyone, the effects of all these plans and legislation.

When a government fails at its primary duty of communicating with the people, then rumours, half-truths and lies fill the air, and that’s what is happening in Alberta. Mrs. Premier, this is totally unacceptable. The people of Alberta deserve better than what they are receiving. Premier Ralph Klein proved that Albertans are willing to face bad news, as long as they are included in the discussions, and understand the process. What they will not accept is silence, misinformation, and double talk.

U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy once observed, “Those who make peaceful evolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.” In Alberta’s case, the peaceful evolution has been rendered impossible by the government’s own refusal to listen to the people, talk to the people, and, in an overall sense, communicate, period. Mrs. Premier, the people of Alberta are not doormats and will not tolerate being treated as such. Someday, somewhere, someone is going to start pushing back.

Brian McLeod is a long-time resident of St. Albert.

EMPIRE

according to Hardt and Negri's Empire, the rise of Empire is the end of national conflict, the "enemy" now, whoever he is, can no longer be ideological or national. The enemy now must be understood as a kind of criminal, as someone who represents a threat not to a political system or a nation but to the law. This is the enemy as a terrorist....In the "new order that envelops the entire space of... civilization", where conflict between nations has been made irrelevant, the "enemy" is simultaneously "banalized" (reduced to an object of routine police repression) and absolutized (as the Enemy, an absolute threat to the ethical order"

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESTON MANNING 

ON THE EVE OF CANADA'S 42ND ELECTION

19, OCTOBER 2015

Dear Mr. Manning;

Sir, I am writing you to appeal to you in these last days of this election, before voting day, to speak out about the undemocratic and downright Un Reform Party and actually Anti Reform Party principles and ethics on democratic governance  by the Prime Minister, your student and apprentice, Stephen Harper.

I know the old days were full of idealism like the West Wants In and that would change things for the good, like ending MP’s pensions.  Oops that’s perhaps not the best example since you and your MP’s did take them.

Ok how about Senate Reform, the triple EEE Senate, the PMO not appointing Senators but they be elected by the provinces. Sheesh sorry another Oops; how did that work out to become the PMO appoints Senators, 56  in all, the largest by any PMO which means larger than any Liberal Government ever appointed.

Recall, remember recall, if you didn’t like you MP you could get a petition together and kick em out between elections. Remember Recall the very core principle of the Reform Party, the Reform in the Reform Party.  How’s that going under Harper. Ahh come on I know, don’t blame Stevie you dumped that one yourself when you became Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.

About Stornaway, that was of course foolish youthful braggadocio on your part as a green Party Leader, boasting that as leader of the Reform Party in Opposition you would never live there, so really this is not all on Stevie. The Reform Party of Preston Manning. reformed once in power as the Official Opposition you just became another parliamentary party.

 Heck you guys on the right split again, like an amoeba into three conservative parties and so the whole focus of Stephen Harpers campaign was to win power by bringing you all back together under the strong leadership of one man him.

Oh dear perhaps this is a bit farfetched to ask of you, to opine on how Stephen Harper is BAD FOR DEMOCRACY but you have since retirement from parliamentary politics set up a foundation  Manning Centre for Building Democracy  for the promotion of Edmund Burke’s and John Locke’s classical liberal interpretation of governance and democracy, the two not necessarily being synonymous.

I know like many in the old Reform Wing of the party, you harbor secret dreams of being a libertarian like those of your ideological counterparts south of the border. Even here you must admit that your libertarian shadow self must surely cringe at Harper’s draconian police state law Bill C51.

Of course you have had some victories with Steve in power  you and your Reform Party base did manage to undemocratically reform the Canadian Wheat Board out of existence as promised by you way way back when. However I am sure like many Albertans and Canadians who believe in a fair deal not a fixed one no effort was put into reforming the wheat board to become a democratically run producer cooperative.

 So congratulations your privatization ideology succeeded in destroying the farmers cooperative and having it sold , no pardon me, given away for free to a Saudi Arabian corporation owned by the Sovereign Wealth Fund of the Saudi Arabian Government.  This then is the free market principle in practice not in theory.  Another failure that began under you.

Perhaps you really can’t criticize Stephen Harper, because you like him have a fuehrer complex, the need to be the alpha male, the big man on campus, the boss.  Unfortunately for you you truly do love the ideal of reform, as with most conservative thinkers, it is an ideal, when it comes to political practice democracy is abandoned for power, and as we know from at least one other conservative thinker absolute power corrupts absolutely.

In this I think we can both agree that Stephen Harper has abandoned all principles except that of staying in power, and changing the country to fit his ideology, not yours, mine or anyone elses and certainly not the Conservative Party. And he learned that ideology at the feet of Barry Cooper, Tom Flanagan, and the right wing political think tank at the University of Calgary. That once hot bed of neo conservative braggadocio about how it was all new, an alternative to the failure of the government welfare state and the socialist economics of Keynes.

Add in a dash of prairie populist Reformism the spirit of recall, reform of the senate, and the right to vote on legislation by petition; Referendum, the three R’s of your Reform Party . All old Alberta ideas from even before they were adopted by you, the son of the Socred Premier of Alberta. The reform agenda was and is prairie populism spread by socialists and social creditors.

In fact in Alberta it was socialist labour and the United Farmers of Alberta that attempted to implement these practices, years before Social Credit.

You know that and so do I because I am a historian of the labour movement in this province.

Doesn’t Stephen remind you of someone?

Dare I say your father; Ernest Manning  and before him Bible Bill Aberhart the creators of the Social Credit movement and Party here in Alberta. Bible Bill despite his name was more  Fuhrer than Premier, he is actually Steve’s ideal, for after only being in power for a short time Aberhart brought in a draconian censorship law prohibiting criticism of his regime, which to its credit to this day the Edmonton Journal challenged to the Supreme Court and won in having it overturned.

Sounds familiar, ignore the charter and constitution and the principles of law, while declaring yourself a law and order government. These of course are the classical principles and practices of what we now call fascism. Harper declares himself a democrat a libertarian free marketer, but in reality as Tom Flanagan now admits to the ‘horror of'’ having created a Prime Minister who considers himself  The Great Leader, and it does not help that 9/11 Truthers believe he shares a birthday with the Fuhrer.

 One does not need to invoke Hitler, to remember that fascism arose following failed revolutions in the Twentieth Century, Aberhart’s Social Credit suffered as much from being a socialized credit system and a National Socialist ideology.

This ideology is still with us within the right wing around the world, at its base it has never changed, it is anti-parliamentary, anti-democratic, but you can vote, as you are told, because all this just gets in the way of the great leaders will.

Unfortunately now that I think of it perhaps it is too much to ask you the founder of the  Manning Centre » Preston Manning, President and CEO, to speak out for defence of our democratic freedoms, of speech, assembly, protest, etc. Principles now challenged by Harpers bill C51.

Or his bill C24 which strip Canadians of their citizenship in violation of UN principles and the principles of the Magna Carta

Or the bills to demand Unions provide financial information to the public, while political parties and corporations don’t have too. We have an identical bill used against First Nations when they receive government funds

We have the total destruction of Science and Research done by the Federal Government. Including libraries and research document holdings being destroyed, the only thing missing is the mass public bonfires. Perfect for Halloween or Guy Fawkes day.

Of course among conservatives there are those proponents of individual freedom and personal choice  that call themselves democratic or libertarian, as in civil libertarian, civil liberties do not conflict with conservative principles based on English jurisprudence.

On the other hand there is the right wing school of thought that embraces Pharaonism, Caesarism, the  Fuhrer Principle, the Strong Man theory of history. In this case the writings and teachings of two University of Chicago professors, Leo Strauss, and Carl Schmitt both idealized the leader of the nation ruling over and uninhibited by the peoples tribunes their parliament, judiciary, senate, all bodies of the state. The strong man simply walks over, tramples, or ignores, all such laws as he does not need or approve of. This of course was one of the schools of thought in the think tank that bred Harper at the University of Calgary.

It is time that those conservatives like yourself decide which side of history you are on those of civil libertarian democrat or those of the strong man Stephen Harper school.

Since you have not spoken out opposing his actions at the time, perhaps now in the final days of this historic election you can once again dig deep into your democratic morals and ethics to really see  Steve in that light how can you remain unmoved to speak out against him.

Mr. Manning you have a chance to make a real difference this election, one that says principles are more important than the party or the man running it. But rather the will of the people, and the people themselves rule, and are not ruled by the party or the leader.

This election we have seen quite clearly it is about one man, not his party, or the Conservative MP’s or Senators, it is about Stephen Harper, as much as he says its not about him. Of course it is.

You once believed that our MP’s were responsible to the voters, and to their constituents, not that they were party men and women who simply transmit the will of the PMO down to the peons.

Sir; as a conscientious compassionate conservative democrat and civil libertarian how can you sit by and remain silent.

Yours for Democracy,

Eugene Plawiuk

Notes and References

Manning Centre for Building Democracy - Facebook

Populism in Europe and the Americas: Threat Or Corrective for Democracy? Populism and Democracy in Canada's Reform Party  

Preston Manning Wikipedia Bio

Number of years Ernest Manning was Premier of Alberta: 25 [1943–1968]

#elxn43 #cdnpoli #abpli #manning 

I AM FROM ALBERTA WE KNOW COAL 
A hundred years ago my grandfather a Ukrainian immigrant worked in the coal mines in Wayne Alberta.
Forty years ago I went to University in Lethbridge, Alberta, the home of coal mining in southern Alberta.
Alberta exports more coal than oil by rail.
Alberta' now strip mines coal next to power plants, Genesee Plant lake Wabamum owned by EPCOR
For sixty years even after the discovery of oil in Leduc Alberta remains a coal province.
Most of our GHG comes from the emissions from coal fired power plants.
Rachel Notely and the NDP government wll now transfer coal fired power plants to natural gas, another fuel we have plenty of.
Former Premier Lougheed was never an oil man he worked for Mannix Corporation which owns Luscar Coal Mining. They wanted to open up an
open pit mine just outside Jasper National Park.
But that project became fiscally and socially unfeasible..
Alberta was home to the United Mineworkers, the Western Miners Union, IWW and OBU, the first western coal mining strike was in Medicine Hat, later the miners organized in Southern Alberta, building a base along with the Communist Party in the Crowsnest Pass Blairmore area of the Rockies in Southern Alberta.
Edmonton at the turn of last century was a mining city, with coal mines criss crossing underneath the riverbank. Ukrainian mining families dug into the riverbank 1912-15 to live in caves.
So while we are known now for oil, oil sands, we were once like Pennsylvania in the USA a coal mining region. with a large Ukrainian population and with oil which is why we both survived unlike West Virginia .
Today both Alberta and Pennsylvania also have shale oil. we have long histories of fracking.

The myth of clean coal comes from the experimental and not yet proven Carbon Capture and Sequestration CCS. This has nothing to do with being green or reducing the use of one form of fossil fuel, coal. Instead CCS takes coal gas (methane) by making it into a liquid by putting it under pressure and injecting it into existing played out oil fields, including shale oil, to extract residual oil. In other words CCS is just another form of fracking  

Coal was and is our dirtiest energy

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