Harpers Buzz Off

So as Chrysler Canada announces two thousand job cuts, the PM refuses to meet or take phone calls from Buzz Hargrove, President of the CAW.

Hargrove expressed disappointment that Prime Minister Stephen Harper didn't find some time to meet with him Thursday, especially given the dire circumstances in the auto sector. The prime minister's officials said they had no record of a request from Hargrove to meet.

Gee thats strange since Buzz called, left messages, was in Ottawa, and the NDP and Liberals knew he wanted to meet with Harper. Both parties raised Harpers refusal to meet with Buzz during question period.

Automobile Industry

Hon. Scott Brison (Kings—Hants, Lib.):

Mr. Speaker, with massive layoffs pending at Chrysler, why has the government cancelled labour market partnership agreements that could have helped many of the 2,000 Chrysler workers and why is this Prime Minister, the first in 40 years, refusing to meet with the head of the CAW?

Hon. Monte Solberg (Minister of Human Resources and Social Development, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, the member should know that the government announced its intentions to strengthen labour market initiatives in “Advantage Canada”. We are in constant contact with our provincial partners on all of these issues.

We will certainly put in place all the measures necessary to ensure that we have the strongest possible economy, something that is already happening under the leadership of the Prime Minister.

Hon. Scott Brison (Kings—Hants, Lib.):

Mr. Speaker, we have a minister who is laissez-faire and a Prime Minister who does not care.

The Liberal government partnered with the auto industry to create thousands of new jobs. Canada's neo-Conservative government has done almost nothing and we are losing thousands of auto workers jobs.

Will the Prime Minister meet with the head of the CAW, take action, and reintroduce the previous government's auto strategy that was working and creating jobs here in Canada?

[Translation]

Hon. Maxime Bernier (Minister of Industry, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, I would remind my hon. colleague that we tabled the Advantage Canada plan, a plan that will enable the automobile industry and all other industries to enjoy competitive tax conditions.

We will continue to lower taxes, to limit paperwork and regulations interfering with the productivity of Canadian business in the automobile sector, and we are proud of what we are doing.

Harper is the first PM not to meet with Buzz. But maybe he didn't need to meet with Buzz.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says the looming job losses at Chrysler have nothing to do with federal government policy.

Except that Canada is negotiating a bilateral trade deal with Korea, home of Hyundai.

And considering that Buzz and Stephen agree on the need to go slow on emission regulations you would think Harper would take a call from Hargrove.

Buzz Hargrove, head of the Canadian Auto Workers' union, told the committee that too-tough efficiency standards could result in plant closures.

No sooner had Buzz said that then this happened.

Buzz Hargrove fears major job cuts at Chrysler
OTTAWA – As many as 2000 of Canada's workers with DaimlerChrysler could lose their jobs, Canadian Auto Workers leader Buzz Hargrove suggested Thursday. ...

And suddenly Buzz is doing as I have said Canada's labour movement would have to do, accept the global market and demand Fair Trade agreements.

Hargrove calls for 'fair trade' deal with Asia to curb auto job losses

Automobile Industry

[Table of Contents]

Hon. Jack Layton (Toronto—Danforth, NDP):

Mr. Speaker, today's news that Chrysler is going to eliminate 2,000 jobs in Canada makes it very clear that we have to get down to helping out our auto industry. Consumers want fuel efficient cars, but the government stands by and does absolutely nothing about it.

That is why the NDP put forward a green car strategy in 2003, supported by Greenpeace and the CAW. Too bad the Liberals would not adopt it because it would have transformed our industry and we would have been in the forefront of protecting jobs and creating new jobs as well.

Does the Prime Minister not understand that when it comes to building green cars, either we get it done or China, Japan and Korea will do it?

Right Hon. Stephen Harper (Prime Minister, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, while we are obviously concerned by the announcements that we expect from Chrysler, this is a global company that is making global decisions. These are not related to policies in our country, as the member well knows. At the same time, we have seen a growth in other parts of the auto industry.

I appreciate some of the suggestions the leader of the NDP has made. They are much more positive than the motion tabled last week by the Leader of the Opposition, which would effectively propose that we cut emissions from the auto sector, from all sectors, by one-third in the next four and a half years. I wonder if he has any idea how that would devastate the Canadian auto sector.

Hon. Jack Layton (Toronto—Danforth, NDP):

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister is wrong about the impact of his own actions. The workers in the auto sector are worried and rightly so. Their jobs are on the line. As people look for more efficient cars, they will not find them manufactured here because there has been no action.

The government says that it is a global marketplace, that the market will take care of it, but the market is not fair. Those other countries can sell their cars in Canada without limit, but we cannot sell good Canadian cars, built right here, to countries like China, Korea and Japan.

Is that why the Prime Minister thinks it is a good idea to sign a free trade deal, signing away our auto industry to Korea?

Right Hon. Stephen Harper (Prime Minister, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, the government has been pursuing negotiations with South Korea and with others for the express purpose of opening up Asian markets to Canadian products. I am glad to see that Buzz Hargrove seems to have completely reversed himself and now suggests that is exactly what we should be doing, trying to open Asian markets. The government will work hard with the industry to do that.

The government has ongoing consultations with the energy sector. There are some happening this very day. We think it is important to consult with industry before telling it to simply slash one-third of its production, as the opposition would.

Ouch! Of course that is not what Buzz is saying, but that's the spin the Free Traders will make over Fair Trade. Until the labour movement and its political allies spell out the difference.

What we need is a national industrial ecology strategy, not just tax cuts and credits for the industry. And that does not mean that industries in Canada have to be Canadian owned either. Sovereignty is not determined by corporate ownership but by the working class, having autonomous Canadian unions, and eventually in joint ownership of industry in Canada.

As recent negotiations with CAW and Falconbridge's new owners Xstrata PLC have shown.

Each of the past three bargaining rounds between the Canadian Auto Workers and previous owner Falconbridge Ltd. were marred by bitter confrontations and each ended in dispute. Workers were off the job in 1997, 2000 and in 2004.

Things were so bad, that after members voted to end a particularly acrimonious seven-month strike in February, 2001, the CAW was still hurling public insults at Falconbridge's front office.

"The previous owners seemed willing to spend a million dollars to save a dime. These people, the new owners, seem to recognize the value of a dime. That's different. It's going to require us to adjust our style as well. So we've made a commitment to try to work on the relationship over the life of the agreement and that was part of our settlement. How do we communicate better and how do we get things done in a positive way?" Mr. Mitic said.

See

Hargrove

CAW



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Black History Month; Paul Lafargue

For Black History Month I will look at some of the historically obscure but influential black intellectuals of the 19th Century.

Today I feature Paul Lafargue, Karl Marx's son in law who was a Mulatto and faced racial discrimination as well as being subjected to antisemitism.

Paul Lafargue was born in Cuba in 1842. As he would later boast, he was an “international[ist] of blood before [he] was one of ideology.” By which he meant that of his four grandparents, only one was a Christian French citizen – one of his grandmothers was an Indian from Jamaica and one was a mulatto refugee from Haiti, and his maternal grandfather was a French Jew. He also liked to say that “the blood of three oppressed races runs in my veins” and when Daniel DeLeon asked him about his origins, he promptly replied, “I am proudest of my Negro extraction.”

Despite his family ties to Marx and his friendship and patronage by Engels we was no Marxist, he was a follower of Proudhon and an avowed anarchist/libertarian socialist.

He is known for his famous exhortation to the working class to struggle against work; The Right To Be Lazy (1883)

This would be the inspiration for the polemical proto-situationist text; The Right to Be Greedy and later Bob Blacks popular consumer version;The Abolition of Work

Lafargue's critique that workers under capitalism were no better off than slaves rings true even today. He applied the term wage-slave literally, and literarily. He exhorts workers to not to demand the right to work but to demand the right to leisure. Something capitalism of his time could not provide, though today it is all around us in modern consumer society of the G8 countries.

Capitalism, controlling the means of production and directing the social and political life of a century of science and industry, has become bankrupt. The capitalists have not even proved competent, like the owners of chattel slaves, to guarantee to their toilers the work to provide their miserable livelihood; capitalism massacred them when they dared demand the right to work -- a slave's right.

His tongue in cheek sarcasm and ridicule makes his writing humorous, accessible and pointed. In this case he points out that those who advocate for the morality of animal rights would do well to advocate for the ultimate pack horse of capitalism, the worker.

THE RIGHTS OF THE HORSE AND THE RIGHTS OF MAN

Capitalist Civilization has endowed the wage-worker with the metaphysical Rights of Man, but this is only to rivet him more closely and more firmly to his economic duty.

"I make you free," so speak the Rights of Man to the laborer, "free to earn a wretched living and turn your employer into a millionaire; free to sell him your liberty for a mouthful of bread. He will imprison you ten hours or twelve hours in his workshops; he will not let you go till you are wearied to the marrow of your bones, till you have just enough strength left to gulp down pour soup and sink into a heavy sleep. You have but one of your rights that you may not sell, and that is the right to pay taxes.

Progress and Civilization may be hard on wage-working humanity but they have all a mother's tenderness for the animals which stupid bipeds call "lower."

Civilization has especially favored the equine race: it would be too great a task to go through the longs list of its benefactions; I will name but a few, of general notoriety, that I may awaken and inflame the passionate desires of the workers, now torpid in their misery.

Horses are divided into distinct classes. The equine aristocracy enjoys so many and so oppressive privileges, that if the human-faced brutes which serve them as jockeys, trainers, stable valets and grooms were not morally degraded to the point of not feeling their shame, they would have rebelled against their lords and masters, whom they rub down, groom, brush and comb, also making their beds, cleaning up their excrements and receiving bites and kicks by way of thanks.

Aristocratic horses, like capitalists, do not work; and when they exercise themselves in the fields they look disdainfully, with a contempt, upon the human animals which plow and seed the lands, mow and rake the meadows, to provide them with oats, clover, timothy and other succulent plants.

These four-footed favorites of Civilization command such social influence that they impose their wills upon the capitalists, their brothers in privilege; they force the loftiest of them to come with their beautiful ladies and take tea in the stables, inhaling the acrid perfumes of their solid and liquid evacuations. And when these lords consent to parade in public, they require from ten to twenty thousand men and women to stack themselves up on uncomfortable seats, under the broiling sun, to admire their exquisitely chiseled forms and their feats of running and leaping They respect none of the social dignities before which the votaries of the Rights of Man bow in reverence. At Chantilly not long ago one of the favorites for the grand prize launched a kick at the king of Belgium, because it did not like the looks of his head. His royal majesty, who adores horses, murmured an apology and withdrew.

It is fortunate that these horses, who can count more authentic ancestors than the houses of Orleans and Hohenzollern, have not been corrupted by their high social station; had they taken it into their heads to rival the capitalists in aesthetic pretentions, profligate luxury and depraved tastes, such as wearing- lace and diamonds, and drinking champagne and Chateau-Margaux, a blacker misery and more overwhelming drudgery would he impending over the class of wage-workers.

Thrice happy is it for proletarian humanity that these equine aristocrats have not taken the fancy of feeding upon human flesh, like the old Bengal tigers which rove around the villages of India to carry off women and children; if unhappily the horses had been man-eaters, the capitalists, who can refuse them nothing, would have built slaughter-houses for wage-workers, where they could carve out and dress boy sirloins, woman hams and girl roasts to satisfy their anthropophagic tastes.

The proletarian horses, not so well endowed, have to work for their peck of oats, but the capitalist class, through deference for the aristocrats of the equine race, concedes to the working horses rights that are far more solid and real than those inscribed in the "Rights of Man." The first of rights, the right to existence, which no civilized society will recognize for laborers, is possessed by horses.

The colt, even before his birth, while still in the fetus state, begins to enjoy the right to existence; his mother, when her pregnancy has scarcely begun, is discharged from all work and sent into the country to fashion the new being in peace and comfort; she remains near him to suckle him and teach him to choose the delicious grasses of the meadow, in which he gambols until he is grown.

The moralists and politicians of the "Rights of Man" think it would be monstrous to grant such rights to the laborers; I raised a tempest in the Chamber of Deputies when I asked that women, two months before and two months after confinement, should have the right and the means to absent themselves from the factory. My proposition upset the ethics of civilization and shook the capitalist order. What an abominable abomination -- to demand for babies the rights of colts.

As for the young proletarians, they can scarcely trot on their little toes before they are condemned to hard labor in the prisons of capitalism, while the colts develop freely under kindly Nature; care is taken that they be completely formed before they are set to work. and their tasks are proportioned to their strength with a tender care.

This care on the part of the capitalists follows them all through their lives. We may still recall the noble indignation of the bourgeois press when it learned that the omnibus company was using peat and tannery waste in its stalls as a substitute for straw: to think of the unhappy horses having such poor litters! The more delicate souls of the bourgeoisie have in every capitalist country organized societies for the protection of animals, in order to prove that they can not be excited by the fate of the small victims of industry. Schopenhauer, the bourgeois philosopher, in whom was incarnated so perfectly the gross egoism of the philistine, could not hear the cracking of a whip without his heart being torn by it.

This same omnibus company, which works its laborers from fourteen to sixteen hours a day, requires from its dear horses only five to seven hours. It has bought green meadows in which they may recuperate from fatigue or indisposition. Its policy is to expend more for the entertainment of a quadrupled than for paying the wages of a biped. It has never occurred to any legislator nor to any fanatical advocate of the "Rights of Man" to reduce the horse's daily pittance in order to assure him a retreat that would be of service to him only after his death.

The Rights of Horses have not been posted up; they are "unwritten rights," as Socrates called the laws implanted by Nature in the consciousness of all men.

The horse has shown his wisdom in contenting himself with these rights, with no thought of demanding those of the citizen; he has judged that he would have been as stupid as man if he had sacrificed his mess of lentils for the metaphysical banquet of Rights to Revolt, to Equality, to Liberty, and other trivialities which to the proletariat are about as useful as a cautery on a wooden leg.

Civilization, though partial to the equine race, has not shown herself indifferent to the fate of the other animals. Sheep, like canons, pass their days in pleasant and plentiful idleness; they are fed in the stable on barley, lucerne, rutabagas and other roots, raised by wage-workers; shepherds conduct them to feed in fat pastures, and when the sun parches the plain, they are carried to where they can browse on the tender grass of the mountains.

The Church, which has burned her heretics, and regrets that she can not again bring up her faithful sons in the love of "mutton," represents Jesus, under the form of a kind shepherd, bearing upon his shoulders a weary lamb.

True, the love for the ram and the ewe is in the last analysis only the love for the leg of mutton and the cutlet, just as the Liberty of the Rights of Man is nothing but the slavery of the wage-worker, since our jesuitical Civilization always disguises capitalist exploitation in eternal principles and bourgeois egoism in noble sentiments; yet at least the bourgeois tends and fattens the sheep up to the day of the sacrifice, while he seizes the laborer still warm from the workshop and lean from toil to send him to the shambels of Tonquin or Madagascar.

Laborers of all crafts, you who toil so hard to create your poverty in producing the wealth of the capitalists, arise, arise! Since the buffoons of parliament unfurl the Rights of Man, do you boldly demand for yourselves, your wives and your children the Rights of the Horse.

Also See:

Black Herstory Month: Lucy Parsons




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Abortion, Adoption, or Abandonment

While fetus fetishists like to claim that they are protecting the unborn, they forget the mother who gives birth.

And while they denounce abortion and promote adoption there is another alternative for those women whose upraising is such that it denies them sex education or teaches them abstinence through fear of sex.

It is called infanticide. In this case it was abandonment, but it could have ended tragically.

The mother of a newborn baby girl found abandoned in sub-zero temperatures in Saskatoon is a confused, isolated teenager with no family support, police say.

The 18-year-old abandoned her newborn in sub-zero temperatures on the back step of a house Saturday morning after giving birth through the night.

Saskatoon police described the mother as a student living on her own, who comes from "a very difficult background" and has no family in the city.

"You have a very confused 18-year-old girl, without support, without friends in town, and she felt isolated, I think that probably describes her attitude or confused state -- not knowing what to do, clearly not being in a position to care for a child," Staff Sgt. Kirby Harmon told reporters Tuesday.

It is clear to me that we need to have comprehensive sex education and family life education not as voluntary programs but as compulsory in public schools.

Cases like this cry for the licensing of people to be parents. Just because you can procreate does not mean you are suitable to be a parent as the thousands of cases of child abuse prove. We license cars, guns, doctors, pilots, lawyers, teachers, etc.

Parenting is not natural it is learned there is reason for the saying "it takes a village to raise a child", because prior to the rise of the nuclear family, it was the village or extended family; tribe, clan that raised children as a collective effort.

Nor should birth be forced on women as being natural, their fate due to biology. Not in this day and age of birth control. Even if we are still waiting for a male birth control pill after forty years.

But the same folks that oppose abortion as a choice, oppose sex education also oppose birth control and in Canada and the United States they are the dominant special interest lobby.

Which is why their anti-sex politics are an emotional plague that infected this poor woman and led her to be wracked by guilt. Guilt for having sex, for having the baby, for giving birth. And she disposed of her guilt on someone else's doorstep.

Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings

can master their sadistic destructiveness.

Wilhelm Reich, on Sigmund Freud's hope

See

Infanticide

Abortion

Sex education

Family

Emotional Plague

Wilhelm Reich

Feminizing the Proletariat

Kids Are Commodities

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Prove You Are Gay

File this under Catch 22. You are only gay if you can prove you have had gay sex. Unless you have had gay sex you are not gay.

Wait a minute what about heterosexuals who are celibate or abstain till marriage. How do we know they are really straight?

Only someone from Brokeback Alberta, homophobic home to closeted cowboys, could come up with this logic.

"The (refugee) judge just didn't think I was gay enough and I didn't qualify to be gay."

IRB adjudicator Deborah Lamont, who heard the case from Calgary via videoconference, questioned his lack of same-sex relationships while he lived in the U.S.

"I found the claimant's many explanations unsatisfactory for why he chose not to pursue same-sex relationships in the U.S. as he alleged it was his intention to do so and he wanted to do so," she wrote in her decision.

Instead, she concluded: "...he is not a homosexual... and fabricated the sexual orientation component to support a non-existent claim for protection in Canada."

Gee and how was he supposed to PROVE he had gay sex.

And if he did would it end up on Fox News; Boys willingly submitted to rape according to O’Reilly

See

homosexual

gay

immigration

refugee



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Pachyderm Liberation

No sooner do they get criticized for the prison conditions that they keep elephants in, than the Edmonton Zoo folks tell us all is well.

Except it ain't. Last fall one of the elephants injured her trunk on the fence at the zoo. The zoo enclosure is too small and what the heck are we doing keeping tropical animals in a boreal region in an outdoors Zoo.

And this is the same reactionary defense of the indefensible, that Zoo Check got when they denounced West Edmonton Mall for their enclosure and imprisonment of Dolphins,all died except Howard who was secretly shipped out in the middle of the night.

Zoocheck Canada, a Toronto-based animal rights group, says Edmonton’s cold climate and small zoo enclosure are making the zoo’s two elephants, Lucy and Samantha, sick, stressed and bored.

Spokesman Julie Woodyer said today that renowned African elephant expert Winnie Kiiru, project manager of the Amboseli Human-Elephant Conflict Project in Kenya, visited several Canadian zoos last fall and determined that the climate is too cold and enclosures too compact at many facilities in Alberta, Ontario and Quebec.

“After reviewing all of the elephant enclosures in Canadian zoos, it is my opinion that the Edmonton Valley Zoo is the worst at this time,” Kiiru said in her report, released last month.

“The climate in Edmonton is completely inappropriate for elephants.”

In her conclusion, she recommends that the “City of Edmonton take immediate action to move Lucy and Samantha to a sanctuary that can provide them with a more appropriate physical and social environment and to close the elephant exhibit at this zoo.”

And it's not just Edmonton, Zoo Check has criticized the famous Calgary Zoo for elephant breeding.

Female elephants are matriarchal social animals, needing to be in a group, which is not what occurs in Zoo's or circuses.

Elephants live in a very structured social order. The social lives of male and female elephants are very different. The females spend their entire lives in tightly knit family groups made up of mothers, daughters, sisters, and aunts. These groups are led by the eldest female, or matriarch. Adult males, on the other hand, live mostly solitary lives.

The social circle of the female elephant does not end with the small family unit. In addition to encountering the local males that live on the fringes of one or more groups, the female's life also involves interaction with other families, clans, and subpopulations. Most immediate family groups range from five to fifteen adults, as well as a number of immature males and females. When a group gets too big, a few of the elder daughters will break off and form their own small group. They remain very aware of which local herds are relatives and which are not.

Elephants are also self aware, that is they have the ability to think and communicate. Thus it is unconscionable to keep them imprisoned and neither Zoo can defend its actions as being good for the animals, the species, or science.

From a study reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an Asian elephant housed at the Bronx Zoo in New York, repeatedly touched a white cross painted above its eye, when it saw this mark reflected in a large mirror. Another mark made on the forehead in colourless paint, was ignored, showing that it was not the smell or feeling which caused the interest. Elephants are among the very small number of species such as the great apes and Bottlenose Dolphins capable of self-recognition.

Elephants in Zoos and Circuses in North America are the direct result of the Slave Trade and are the last vestige of that original Atlantic trade that brought Africa to the attention of North America's colonizers.

The Geography Of The Atlantic Slave Trade

"Chart of the Sea Coasts of Europe, Africa, and America . . ." From John Thornton, The Atlas Maritimus of the Sea Atlas. London, ca. 1700. Geography and Map Division. (1-11)

This map's elaborate cartouche (drawing), embellished with an elephant and two Africans, one holding an elephant tusk, emphasizes the pivotal role of Africa in the Atlantic trading network. The South Atlantic trade network involved several international routes. The best known of the triangular trades included the transportation of manufactured goods from Europe to Africa, where they were traded for slaves. Slaves were then transported across the Atlantic--the infamous middle passage--primarily to Brazil and the Caribbean, where they were sold. The final leg of this triangular trade brought tropical products to Europe. In another variation, manufactured goods from colonial America were taken to West Africa; slaves were carried to the Caribbean and Southern colonies; and sugar, molasses and other goods were returned to the home ports.

19th Century European Zoo's contained not just Elephants and other African flora and fauna, but Africans as well. Today we keep Elephants in their place. And our attitudes towards Elephants, as well as other species, as being self aware and cognitive is the same as it was towards indigenous peoples.

A Human zoo (also called "ethnological expositions" or "Negro Villages") was a 19th and 20th century public exhibit of human beings usually in their natural or "primitive" state. These displays usually emphasized the cultural differences between indigenous and traditional peoples and Western publics. Ethnographic zoos were often predicated on unilinealism, scientific racism, and a version of Social Darwinism. A number of them placed indigenous people (particularly Africans) in a continuum somewhere between the great apes and human beings of European descent

Entrepreneur William Reynolds, who billed the city as The Riviera of the East, had a herd of elephants march in from his Dreamland on Coney Island in about 1907, ostensibly to help build the boardwalk, but in reality to generate publicity. (Long Beach Historical and Preservation Society)

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Halloween Election?

So much for Ontario's historic first "fixed" election date.
Premier Dalton McGuinty's government has switched the much-ballyhooed Oct. 4 provincial election to Oct. 10 because of a conflict with the Jewish holiday of Shemini Atzeret. With the change, this year's election will fall on a Wednesday, instead of a Thursday, the traditional day for votes in Ontario. Democratic Renewal Minister Marie Bountrogianni said that's because Ontario's chief election officer, John Hollins, was concerned Oct. 11 might infringe on that week's Eid al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. "The Jewish holiday pre-dates Dalton McGuinty's legislation. You think they would have figured this out from the beginning. This is incompetence."Hudak said, noting the holiday concern has been raised for two years.

Oh heck hold it on Halloween.

I am sure most pagans wouldn't mind, and besides it would be appropriate.

After all politicians are masters of disguising their true intentions.

And like ghosts and goblins they go door to door seeking to trick or treat.

And it is a celebration of ancestor worship and the dead, oh sorry that's the Senate.



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Spring Romance?

Condi is coming back to visit with Peter.

It will be a week after Valentines day, but it's the thought that counts.

After all he chased after her through out the middle east last month. And virtually repeated what she said word for word.

They are like peas in a pod when it comes to their Foreign Affairs in the Middle East. And when they have disputes she smooths them over for him.

So will there be another candle light dinner a visit to Peters bachelor pad in Ottawa and then a morning stop at Timmies like the last time she visited?

A tip o' the blog to audacious ontology

See:

Peter Heart Condi

Love and the Whole World Loves With You

Peter MacKay

Cougar


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Mad Bull

BSE confirmed in Alberta bull BSE case #9.

Again from Alberta; preliminary findings suggest the bull was born and raised in Alberta.

Which is because of this;The Real Story of Alberta's BSE Crisis



See
The Truth About the Farm Crisis



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Anti-Intellectual Tories

Remember this; "There's been a lot of research," Oda says. "So when you look at millions of dollars that has gone to studying, we believe that now is the time to start doing something about the facts that we know."

Well its the same argument John Baird used in the House yesterday justifying cuts to environmental research in Canada.

Northern Climate Exchange

Hon. Larry Bagnell (Yukon, Lib.):

Mr. Speaker, the greatest impact of climate change in the world is on Canada's Arctic.

The Conservatives have claimed they are now finally concerned about the impacts of climate change, but on March 31 the government will close the Northern Climate Exchange which does important tracking and research both nationally and internationally. Why is the government again turning its back on the north?

There is still time for the minister to reverse his ridiculous decision. Will he commit to do that today?

Hon. John Baird (Minister of the Environment, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, the government recognizes the importance to act on greenhouse gas emissions. Climate change is having a huge effect not just on Canada, but particularly in our Arctic.

However, this government believes that the time has finished to talk about things, to study things, to reach into promoting things. The time has come to act. That is why this government is taking real action on climate change reduction. We introduced equal energy initiatives, more energy efficiency and more clean energy.

The Reform/Alliance/Conservative party has always had a bee in its bonnet about academic research, along with their pals in the National Citizens Coalition (NCC), Harpers former employer.

When they were in opposition MP John Williams published an annual review of government waste, which often focused on humanities research grants to academics.

And now they are the New Government in Canada they refuse to fund academic research that conflicts with their social conservative agenda.

When the Tories take 'action' it results in cuts to vital ongoing research.

See

Status of Women

Bev Oda

Tory Cuts

Baird

Environment



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Correction Child Care For Seniors

A correction on my post yesterday about Child Care and Seniors here is what Harper actually said;

Right Hon. Stephen Harper (Prime Minister, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, as the Leader of the Opposition knows, the government has been investing in areas of core federal responsibility like national defence, international trade, security and direct assistance for Canadian families.

On the other hand, it is interesting to note what the Leader of the Opposition wants to do. He wants to kill pension income splitting for seniors. He wants to repeal our tax cuts, including the GST cut. He votes against anti-crime legislation. He wants to take away the child care benefit from seniors, to scrap the softwood lumber agreement, to rip up military contracts and all the benefits to Canadian firms in all regions. We do not want to go back.

Apparently in Harpers New Canada only seniors are having children. Wow biotechnology sure has come a long ways.

See

Daycare

Childcare



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Tories Promote Lung Cancer

The most common form of cancer associated with smoking is lung cancer. And women suffer from lung cancer more than men.

And women and girls smoke more than men and boys.

Remember this; Oda insists her government will instead fund organizations and programs she says more directly affect women.

I guess that explains why the Tories gave a half million they saved from cuts to the Status of Women to Big Tobacco.

After all cigarette smoking directly affects women.

And they could say they were promoting women in politics;

Sources said the break -- worth about $500,000 -- is aimed at the constituency of Immigration Minister Diane Finley, who is thought to be in some danger of losing the next election.

Yes, I know I could have said this was classic pork barrel politics but Olaf said it so much better.

And the Tories are once again on message;

"It's an issue of tax fairness," said Dan Miles, communications director for Mr. Flaherty.

We all know what that means.

See

Smoking

Health

Feminism

Status of Women

Bev Oda

Tory Cuts


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Firefox 2

Released last October I only just upgraded to Firefox 2 yesterday when Google notified me that an upgrade was available.

And wow what a difference.

It includes spell check, which really helps me out, as folks have commented on my spelling, and it works automatically, in my email, my blog, when I post to Canada Blog Exchange, wow I was impressed.

Then my system shut down and it retrieved and restored my settings, including this blog posting when I opened Firefox again.

It includes a Google search bar, and when you click to open a new site it posts it in the tab bar rather than in a new window. IE7 ain't got nothing on this.

What we do care for, and where IE7 can’t compete, is innovative features. The live bookmarks, which bring Web feeds into the bookmarks folder, now get live titles as well. These add live micro-summaries to previously static bookmark titles, which can show the latest news headlines or blog posts, for example.

Like many of the new features, session restore used to be available as a third-party extension but is now built in. This enables the browser to restore all current tabs should the browser shut down abnormally — a lifesaver with multisite browsing and sadly missing from IE7. As is the integrated inline spellchecking that works in a similar, squiggly underline fashion as Word but is active in Web forms, forums and blog posts. Tab handling has improved in Firefox 2, with all labels now having a minimum size to ensure descriptions are readable no matter how many are open, before becoming scrollable when the screen is full. Also, if you close a tab by accident, you can now restore it with a single click.





The graph shows that, over the last week or two, Firefox 2 uptake has finally overtaken Firefox 1.5 usage. This appears to be quite an accurate assumption since Firefox's user base has traditionally been considerably more tech savvy and, further, the upgrade to Firefox was not forced on users. Hence, user uptake of the new browser appears to be much more enthusiastic than the uptake of IE7,





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Strange Bedfellows

The politics of universal health care makes for strange bedfellows in the U.S.

Wal-Mart, Unions Unite on Health Care

This united front of business and labour are calling for universal health care. But it is not Canadian style single payer universal medicare.

Joining Wal-Mart Stores Inc. CEO Lee Scott and Service Employees International Union leader Andrew Stern at a Washington press conference were top executives from Intel Corp., AT&T Inc. and Kelly Services Inc., a temporary staffing agency.

The partnership of business and union leaders laid out four main goals, including universal health-care coverage for all Americans and boosting the value of every U.S. dollar spent on health care. The business and union leaders' coalition, dubbed "Better Health Care Together," pledged to convene a national summit by the end of May to recruit others from the private sector, labor, government and non-profits.

If the environment is Canada's top election issue, Health care is going to be the issue in the next U.S. Presidential election.

But will any of the candidates endorse a single payer system like we have in Canada?


Wal-Mart, Union Leaders Collaborate on Health Care- PBS




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Nortel Slash & Burn

Since the nineties Nortel has been cutting its workforce and shipping jobs off shore, 56,000 workers cut, and it still has not gotten it out of its fiscal spiral downwards. Why should this be any different.

Nortel to slash 2900 jobs in latest cost-cutting

Nortel Networks Corp. will slash 2,900 jobs, or 8.5 percent of its workforce, over the next two years and shift another 1,000 employees to lower-cost locations like China, India and Mexico as North America's biggest maker of telephone equipment struggles to shore up its profits.Nortel, which currently employs about 34,000 workers, said on Wednesday This is the latest round of job cuts at Nortel, which once employed about 90,000 people. Last June, the company said it would cut 1,100 jobs and alter its pension plans in an attempt to contain costs.

The layoffs are the latest in a series of cost-cutting moves made by Chief Executive Officer Mike Zafirovski since he took over the beleaguered company in November of 2005. Since the collapse of the telecom and “dot com” markets in 2001-2,
Nortel has cut more than 60,000 jobs.

As usual let's look at how much the guy at the top makes while his company bottoms out and he slashes jobs.

	Nortel Networks Corp.(1)	Zafirovski, Mike	$37,429,297
Salary: $305,785 Bonus: $0 Subtotal: $305,785 % chg Other: $28,698,591 Share Units: $8,424,921 Option Gains: $0 TOTAL: $37,429,297 New option grant: 5,000,000 ($10,695,000) Industry: Information Technology Legend

And the reason for Nortel's collapse was not productivity nor the crash of the dot.com bubble but criminal capitalism.

Nortel CFO Leaves (Again)

Nortel chief financial officer Peter Currie is stepping down this spring to take on "new challenges."

The company announced Tuesday that Mr. Currie will be stepping down on April 30 of this year, although he will continue to provide advice to the company to ensure a smooth transition.

Currie took over the CFO chair one year ago to help Nortel recover from several years of financial scandals and mismanagement. Between February 1999 and April 2004, two of the three men who held the title of Nortel CFO were fired for cause.



See

NORTEL: REDUX

NORTEL: Canada's Enron

Criminal Capitalism

We Need a Living Wage

The Phoney Debate On Net Neutrality

CEO


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