Will Klein Share Chretiens Fate?

I have been saying this for the past year since Klein announced his pending retirement, see here and here, but its nice to see someone on the right finally adimit it, but only after Martin and Chretien are no longer in office.

Deja vu? asks BBSIs it just me or does this sound strangely like the Chretien/Martin debacle? The forces pushing for Ralph's ouster might want to go back and study a little recent history. Do they want to risk a repeat of the Liberal's internal war in their own party?

And of course the real reason for the sexist and racial slur uttered and reported on faithfully by Ric Dolphin for the Western Slander was to show that the old boys network in the Tories are tired of Ralph. They are acting just like the Martinites and their quiet quizzling backstabbers did in pushing Chretien to quit. And look where it got them. Hey there might be a silver lining to all this yet. In other words the upcoming convention and leadership vote may not be going Ralph's way. The rattling of knives you hear are out for the Kings head.

Rick Bell covers the internecine intrique in his latest column in the Calgary Sun.

In this real life story, the king is Ralph and he has said he will leave in 20 months. He made his intentions quite clear last fall when he spoke about people lining up to replace him.

"These guys can kick tires. They can kick tires until their toes are blue but I ain't goin' until 2007 unless the party tells me they don't want me or I'm dead. Alright? Period."

Well, Ralph is very much alive but Tories at next month's party convention will get a chance by secret ballot to tell Ralph whether they want him.

And there are those in the party, and not a small number, who are pushing for the premier to lose the vote on his leadership, or secure a win so narrow he will be embarrassed into exile.

After all, in this place, the person who succeeds Ralph becomes premier, not just leader.

In recent days, an article in the Western Standard takes the rebellion in the ranks to a new depth, quoting unnamed Tories who believe Ralph's wife Colleen is keeping Ralph from leaving. One source maintains once Colleen is no longer the premier's wife she be- comes "just another Indian."

No party people are pointing fingers at the off-the-record racist. In fact, every single Conservative you speak to insists their outrage against this verbal swill be put on the record. But all kinds of back-stabbing bravado continues behind the scenes with no names attached.

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Klein, Chretien, Canada, Alberta, Premier, Leadership, politics,

Your Papers Please

Minister of Public Safety Oberfuerher Stockwell Day has decided that he should close down the Firerarms Registry cause its been a billion dollar boondoogle. Instead he wants to replace it with a National ID card and registry. Which will cost billions and be a greater infringement on our personal freedom by impacting all Canadians. Now whose the Statist?! So much for the Conservatives and their paper thin veneer of being Libertarians.

Tony Blair tried this in England to hue and cry and lost the vote. It is a major concern around the world as more and more statists attempt to impose ID cards using the hysteria around the phony war on terror as an excuse to increase monitoring of citizens. In fact statists have attempted to introduce National ID cards well before the 9/11 disaster.

Maybe Oberfuerher Day is being clever and thinks this issue will get the Liberals on side. Liberals will not prop up Conservative government: Bill Graham

The Conservatives are out of step with their rank and file on this issue, while having the support of the same Canadians who support the Firearms Registry, which is the majority of Canadians. And ironcially being the government in Ottawa if they push this National ID card, they will be alienating the West as a 2003 SES poll shows.


Or perhaps Stockwell Day is just hastening the day of Rapture and the coming of the Apocalypse since he is a born again evangelical Christian who believes in that bunkum.




A tip o the blog to My Bhlag and Progressive Right for this.



Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
National, ID, cards,, Canada, Conservatives, Stockwell, Day, Harper, Security, Anti-Terrorism,

How Many Audits Does It Take?

The new Minister of State Security Stockwell Day has announced that he wants yet another audit of the Firearms Registry.

Not satisfied with the previous audits; the first were internal audits done in 2000-2001, followed by the damning Auditor General audit in 2002 then followed by another damning independent audit in 2003 by Raymond V. Hession and KPMG

So how many audits do ya need Stockwell to tell you that the cost overruns were caused by Privatization and Contracting Out of services. Stockwell like Vic Toews, Minister of Justice,cannot believe the facts that are as clear as the noses on their faces. Contracting Out and Privatization created the cost over-runs:

Canada’s Billion Dollar P3 Boondoggle

What the Liberals and Conservatives Don’t Want You To Know

The real story behind the cost overruns at the Canadian Firearms Centre

"Just read your piece on the firearms P3 – quite a revelation. I am amazed we have never heard this before – congratulations for bringing it to light."
Murray Dobbin, author of Paul Martin Canada's CEO

Once again the Tory ideology that privatization, contracting out and Public Private Partnerships P3's are the solution to reducing government spending and costs falls flat on its face in the light of the facts of the Firearms Registry cost over runs. They just can't beleive it to be true. All the new audit will show is what the Auditor General and Hessions KPMG audit did and I reported in the article above.


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Stockwell Day, Vic Toews, Canada, Government, Firearms Registry, Long Rifles, Costs, Audit, Guns, gun, gun control

Idiot Provacatuer Redux

I posted a teaser, a portion of my article Idiot Provacatuer about Ezra LeRant and his Western Slander running the Mohammed cartoons on Vive le Canada, and what a firestorm of comments it generated you can read them here.




Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Ezra, Levant, Western, Standard, Muslim, Alberta, Cartoons, Canada, Blasphemy, Mohammed

Russia's Army of Slaves

I blogged here a year ago about the new trend in privatization, that of the use of mercenaries, so called contractors, in the War in Iraq.

It's a new phase of war and the advent of the Market State that Phillip Bobbit writes about which is why his quote runs in my side bar;

A state that privatizes most of its functions will inevitably defend itself by employing its own people as mercenaries.

This is occuring in Russian today as well. It is one of the side effects of the introduction of capitalism, sans democracy, into an authoritarian state.

Russian officer hired out troops for slave labour

Kontonistov was deputy commander of a division of the Strategic Rocket Forces in Siberia's Novosibirsk region, a unit that services Russia's nuclear missiles. He hired out his troops to local businesses, according to Interfax news agency, a practice believed to be commonplace in an army in which poorly paid officers say they have to find ways to supplement meagre incomes.

In the West we call this a Private-Public-Partnership, P3's.

The rest of the article goes on to discuss the fact that the Russian 'conscript' army is a horror show of abuse. Something Russian Mothers have been saying for almost twenty years now.

The cases have drawn attention once again to the wretched conditions suffered by military conscripts. All Russian men are supposed to serve two years in the military between the ages of 18 and 28. Reports of brutal initiation ceremonies and bullying are common.


Conscription in Russia has existed since the days of the Tzar, with only a few breaks.It did not begin with Stalin as some on the right like to assert using him as their boogyman. It began under the Tzar.

The Bolsheviks did not allow a conscript army, rather they formed the volunteer Red Army. Conscription did not come even with the invasion by the Western Expeditionary Forces, which included Canada, at the end of WWI.

The Soviet Military Experience : A History of the Soviet Army, 1917 - 1991

Roger Reese's book covers the entire period of the Soviet Army's existence, from it's revolutionary birth in 1917, until it's counter revolutionary demise in 1991. Reese analyses how the Soviet Army was intended to be unlike no other army ever previously conceived, made up of volunteers and loyal party supporters with the aim of being a tool of political expression for the party as much as a military force. He also shows how idealistic considerations for the running of the Army had to give way to practical issues for the effective running of the Army, and how this moved the Army closer to that of the Tsarist Army which many revolutionaries passionately sought to avoid. He also examines the performance of the Army during the Second World War, and the impact this had on dynamics and the moral state of the organisation, as well as refuting the argument that the Great Purges of 1937 - 1938 had an impact on the fighting ability of the Soviet Army. He then goes on to outline the stagnation of the Army which resulted in it reflecting many of the values of the Tsarist regime it replaced. Reese's focus for the book is a look at the Red Army merely in quantitative terms, but in terms of it's interaction with society and the health of the organisation internally. A interesting and well written read.

Conscription was introduced after Hitler invaded the USSR. It continued after the war as Russia faced off against the US in the Cold War, and it was used to reinforce Russias control over its authoritarian state regimes in Eastern Europe. It allowed for employment of the vast army of otherwise unemployed in Russia. Still even after WWI the Russian Army was modeled on the authoritarian armies of the past, both Russian and German.

It was not Afgahistan that was Russias Vietnam it has been Chechnya. Which coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union. It left the old Soviet military regime in a powerful position, thanks to the Cold War which placed both the US and USSR under the control of their respective 'Military Industrial Complexes'.

Since the war in Chechnya Russian Mothers have organized, like their Argentinian counterparts the Mothers of the Disappeared, to denounce the treatment of their sons in Russias conscript army.

While few are now sent to serve in the violent North Caucasus, near Chechnya, it is estimated that hundreds die each year through accidents or through the ritualistic bullying inflicted by superior officers. Forty-six soldiers died of non-combat injuries in one week alone last year.

The story goes on to talk about the most recent case of torture by officers of a rank and file conscript. Giving more credence to the case of civilians who suffered atrocities at the hands of Russian troops during the Chenchin war.

The case came amid growing public disgust over the fate of Andrei Sychev, a 19-year-old conscript at a tank academy in the eastern town of Chelyabinsk. He was reportedly beaten and tortured by his superior officers during a drunken rage on New Year's Eve, during which he was tied to a chair and repeatedly hit. He did not receive medical treatment for several days, by which time gangrene had set in, forcing doctors to amputate his legs, genitals and fingers. He was taken off a ventilator only on Monday.

If the bastards can do this to their own, what will they do to the enemy. Well this is what happens in Authoritarian regimes with hierarchical regimentation and a 19th century military hierarchy.

A volunteer army, a free standing militia is always the sign of a free peoples, because it can only exist because people volunteer to support their state. A volunteer Red Army, opps sorry its now Red, White and Blue, the old Tzarist colours, a volunteer Army in Russia is a much need reform.

Unfortunately given that the army is where the surplus unemployed are shipped too, Russia is unlikely to embrace even this modest reform. Instread it will contnue to brutalize conscripts, they are after all expendable, and use them for slave labour. All the atrocities of the bad old days of the Tzar have once again been revealed in 'Modern Russia'.

Unfortunately as we have seen as long as the military funtions based on its 19th century model, even in the United States, then a volunteer army does not assure you of ending abuse, there have been many cases of hazing in the US forces as well, though not nearly as bad as this. Nor does a volunteer army mean that it won't be an army of the otherwise unemployed, as the U.S. has also shown. Finally once in conflict its desertion rates will be high, but no more so than Russias which is high as well. Nor does a volunteer army mean there won't be mercenaries, private contractors, as we have seen in Iraq.

The only real volunteer armies that have existed are those during Revolutions, the Paris Commune in France, the October and February revolutions in Russia, and during the Spanish Civil War. The later was an all volunteer army including International Brigades, volunteers from around the world including Canada, and they were truly a volunteer army, electing their officers, debating strategy, and treating each other as comrades not conscripts.





Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Russia, army, torture, conscripts, Tzar, Stalin, Red Army, R3, Chechnya, volunteer, news, military, politics, Soviet, Army,

Workers vs Worker

In our society we like to pit worker against worker and this is what CUPE faces in Ontario with changes to their pensions plans. Unfortunately their own members have weakened their cause by breaking with union solidarity over plans for a one day walk out.CUPE solidarity breaks This tactic has been dismissed by many as extreme.

Except that when doctors do it, they call it a study session, the public supports them. So maybe CUPE Ontario should call it a study session.

On why blue collar workers and para professsionals are discriminated against by the media and the pundits when it comes to their work being as important as cops and firefighters.

Let's see last time their was a garbage strike in Toronto did the cops, firefighters or doctors clean up the mess? Nope. Neither did the Premier, his cabinet, the MLA's or the politicos in city hall.

And this issue is about downloading the public pension plan to municipalities, which also don't like it. But the cops and firefighters do because while other unionized workers and taxpayers face cost increases they get benefit increases.Premier turns up heat as CUPE tries to cool it


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Ontario, CUPE, McGuinty, pensions, OMERS, strike, wildcat, Ryan, Canada,

Paying Peter not Paul

ACE agrees to pay $266-million to investors
Globe and Mail - 10 hours ago
The parent company of Air Canada is rewarding its shareholders with a controversial $266-million payout, barely 17 months after exiting bankruptcy protection. It means ACE's largest shareholder, New York-based hedge fund Cerberus Capital Management LP, stands to collect almost $30-million in cash.

And not a penny to the workers who made the biggest investment of all with wage and benefit cuts. Without which Robert Milton would not have his cozy well paid job and the shareholders would have been shit out of luck. Air Canada Profits From Bankruptcy


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Air, Canada, airlines, Canada, ACE, Milton, profit, shareholders, stock, bankruptcy

The Crime of Privatization

Here is another example of the criminal nature of contracting out and privatization.

Payments may have lasted six years

The American company accused of offering secret commissions to two Edmonton police officers to get an untendered $90-million photo-radar contract may have offered the inducements for more than six years.

The RCMP did not release details of the charge against Dallas-based Affiliated Computer Services, but the publicly traded company was required to report the allegations to its investors through the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.

According to a document filed Wednesday with the SEC, the charge covers the period from Jan. 1, 1998, to June 14, 2004.

The RCMP charged the company Wednesday with offering secret commissions to two members of the Edmonton police service's traffic section. The officers were also charged with Criminal Code offences.

Det. Tom Bell faces three counts of breach of trust and one of accepting a secret commission.

Staff Sgt. Kerry Nisbet, the former head of the traffic section, faces two charges of breach of trust and one of accepting secret commissions.

Let's understand one thing, whether it is legal or illegal, its all about insider deals and low ball bidding. There are no real savings to taxpayers, you and me, the workers who are also employed either in the public sector or private sector. The only savings made in contracting out is by underpaying workers. Profits are pocketed not for the public good but the private fortunes of a few. And here is a perfect case where companies engage in bribery, good old crony capitalism, and kick backs to get contracts. Not unlike the Third World. In fact the very nature of privatization of government services is prone to exactly this problem, not as an anomaly but as business as usual.

"The commission is going to look at where did this go wrong, and how did it go wrong," Billett said at a news conference.

"Do we continue with ACS? Do we extend their contract? The (request for proposals) has gone out and we do have some options," he said.

The charges stem from a 19-month RCMP investigation into allegations that at least three traffic officers accepted perks from ACS. The city granted the company an untendered photo-radar contract worth an estimated $90 million over 20 years, based on the recommendation of the police service.

The fact is that the photo radar should never have been privatized. It was just the cops were too lazy to want to administer it, and the police, the city and the police commission mutually agreed that it was better to spend the money on cops than on civilians to operate the photo radar. Even though it brings in oddles and oddles of money.

So instead a private company was hired untendered, opps there is part of the problem, and then tips cops for their private profit. And this is saving us money? No we are being ripped off. And the police commision should have canceled the contract immediately and brought the whole thing back in house. It will pay for itself, and if the cops don't want to do the work, another city department could.

Here is another irony the RCMP investigation is secret but under U.S. corporate reporting rules the news is released for public perusal thanks to the SEC. So we find out what is happening not from the police commission, a civilian oversight committee but from the SEC. And these guys on the commission still want to go ahead with contracting photo radar out as if nothing has happened. That's criminal.


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Edmonton, police, photo-radar, privatization, crime, kickbacks, bribes, Alberta, Canada,

Abetting Addiction

Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich--something for nothing. George Bernard Shaw

The state in Alberta is addicted to gambling and the proftis from gambling which putrevenues into the governments coffers equivalent to other business, oil, gas and personal taxes. Gambling produces over $1-billion dollars annually in profits for the Province of Alberta

This gambling boom has translated into a windfall of revenue flowing to provincial government coffers. In crafting the 1999-2000 budget, the Alberta government projects that lottery revenue will total $770 million. This lottery revenue comes from video lottery terminals (VLTs), slot machines, and ticket lotteries only and it does not include other gambling revenues, such as licensing fees or income to non-profit organizations derived from horse racing, bingos, raffles, or charitable casino gambling. To place this in perspective, the estimated $770 million in lottery revenue compares with $1.1 billion collected annually from school property taxes, $690 million from health care insurance premiums, $570 million from fuel taxes, $452 million from liquor taxes, $350 million from tobacco taxes, and $346 million from crude oil royalties. Fully 4.5% of Alberta's estimated budget of $17 billion is expected to come from lottery revenues and this compares with 37% from combined personal and corporate income taxes and 14% from all natural resource revenues.EJGI:Policy:Gambling on the Edge in Alberta

And we have Premier who is also addicted. Just like he is to booze and smoking.

And with the Ralph Reich we have seen the government download its responsibilities to charities, who have become addicted to gambling revenues because of the states failure to provide adequate funding for them.

In fact privatization of gambling in Alberta coincided, not coincidentally, with the down turn in the economy in the eighties, and as a result of its success a new form of mass gambling was introduced,VLT's in the ninties. As the Klein government created a debt and deficit hysteria to justify reducing funding to the public sector it increased reliance on VLT's.

Wide spread success of the VLTs and expansion of privatized gambling was part of the governments overall privatization of public services strategy, whatever could be sold off or privatized was.History of Gaming in Alberta

Indeed every single school and hospital in Alberta relies on lotteries, casinos and bingo's to top up funding . These were once the pervue of the Non-profit's, arts groups, community leagues, boy scouts and girl guides. Now gambling is used to offset government funding shortfalls.

Alberta is Canada's gambling hotbed. Nine out of ten adult Albertans gamble on some form of legally-sanctioned "game" and this province has the distinction of having the widest array of gaming entertainment options available to its citizenry of any jurisdiction in North America. Even the kids are getting into the act as seven out of ten adolescents age 12 to 17 have gambled for money, either on a legal game or informally with family or friends (Wynne, Smith, & Jacobs, 1996).EJGI:Policy:Gambling on the Edge in Alberta

But then the individuals who are addicted to gambling, in many cases to VLT's the real problem in the industry,have seen little in the way of help from the Alberta government. And that does not include lottery tickets, or horse racing (which gets tax subsidies from the government because ex Premier Don Getty was a racing owner and enthusiast).

A Canada West Foundation study on gambling in Canada released on June 21, 2005 is alarming but not surprising. The study found that governments took in over $12.7 billion from gambling last year. It pointed to a big difference between how much Canadians report they are spending on gambling and what the actual figures show. Reported annual household spending was $272, yet the average spending level was four times higher, at $1,080. The Canada Safety Council suggests that very high losses by pathological gamblers may account for much of this discrepancy.Gambling problems risk further neglect

What is also interesting is that the debt incurred from gambling corresponds to the decline in savings that is occuring. Money is being spent on gambling that in the past would have been saved and earning interest, a far surer bet.

Alberta has an increasing gambling addiction problem. Until now. The Alberta government has come up with a solution for gambling addicts.

Problem gamblers to get help in casinos
CBC News - 14 hours ago
The province, in an attempt to stem a growing addiction problem, is putting treatment centres in select casinos. The first such centre opened Thursday at the Palace Casino in West Edmonton Mall.
Addictions staff posted in casino Edmonton Journal
Problems gamblers find help on site CBC Edmonton
StarPhoenix - Edmonton Journal - Calgary Sun - all 8 related »

Yep its the Alberta way. And you don't lose any of that gambling money the government is addicted to. I wonder what brilliant genius thought this up.

It makes as much sense as putting alcohol addictions counsellors in bars. Now come to think of it.....This is the prefect solution for King Ralph....this has got to be the dumbest idea yet.....

But it does little for the real source of gambling addiction; VLT's which this supposed solution does not address, because VLT's are in every corner bar and hotel. These are the real source of the states wealth because the games are rigged. You can't play for losing.

Gambling policy designed to create losers
Albertans are being swindled while the province rakes in the money

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
addiction, gamblersanon, gambling, Alberta, betting, VLT's, Canada, Edmonton, Calgary, Klein, government, revenues, horseracing, lotteries,

Ban Tasers

I have said it before we need to ban tasers from the cops.

Clearly its not tasers that are the problem its the cops. Remember its not tasers that kill people its the people using tasers.....and in this case its turned a cop from a Hero to a Zero.

And he tasered a kid, a kid, in a closed cell. Ohh big man. After he strip searched him, obviously this guy has sexual issues....like just a bit of sadism on the side...sexual violence is about power......but what do you expect from the authoritarian nature of cops as agents of the state...they are either in control or they get outta control.

Laurie Wood, the boy's lawyer, says the case raises more questions about the police department's use of Tasers. "I've always said that a Taser should only be used as a last resort," she said. "I think Tasers are being used by police officers as toys."

Yep this gives new meaning to boys and their toys.

Officer charged in Tasering of teen in police cell
Edmonton Journal - 19 hours ago
EDMONTON - The Edmonton Police Service charged one of its own members with assault Wednesday after an officer allegedly strip-searched then Tasered a 15-year-old boy in late 2003.
Assault charge for 'hero' cop Edmonton Sun
Edmonton cop charged in jail-cell Taser case Calgary Sun
CBC Calgary - Edmonton Journal - all 6 related »

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
taser, tasers, kid, cops, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, assault, police, EPS,