Monday, May 07, 2007

We Are Not Crooks

Now here is a stunning bit of logic from our law and order government in Ottawa.

It reminds me of Richard Nixon's famous quote; "I Am Not A Crook."

As we all know innocent people have nothing to hide.

An official from the Prime Minister's Office recently followed a journalist off Parliament Hill, then approached the reporter to challenge a story about the PMO's refusal to disclose how Harper's travelling hairdresser is being paid.

The official told the reporter three times that accountability measures are for crooks, not honest people.

It appears to be a theme in the Harper government.

While stressing the need for clear rules and transparency for others, the cabinet continues to tightly control information, censor documents and only selectively disclose ministerial expenses.



See:

Harpers Fascism

Leo Strauss and the Calgary School

Post Modern Conservatives.

Why The Conservatives Are Not Libertarians

Liberals The New PC's

Trotsky on Harper


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Canadian Shooters Use Long Guns


Revisiting A Canadian Tragedy

Revisiting A Canadian Tragedy

As America grieves the victims of the Virginia Tech massacre, we take you back to 1975, when a shooting spree at a school in Brampton, Ontario, shocked the country. We bring you eyewitness accounts, and we'll find out what we've learned.

CBC Sun Day report ran this amazing piece of forgotten history. I left the following comment on their web site;

"I too did not know about the Brampton tragedy and I thank you for using this opportunity to present this in light of the Virgina Tech massacre. I note that the comment made by Carole MacNeil was that the first such shooting in a school occurred here in Edmonton in 1959. "

The situation between these high school shootings and the later Taber, Dawson and Virginia Tech massacres show we do not have enough psychological counseling prior to such incidents, rather we provide it after the fact.

The other point to remember is that so far all the shootings in Canada including Edmonton, Brampton, the Lapine shooting in Montreal, the Taber shootings, and Dawson College, unlike the situation in the U.S., were all done using long guns, rifles.

The same long guns that the Harpocrites don't want registered. Because after all law abiding duck hunters and farmers use them too.


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Just Say No



The Alberta Tories continue their war on.....affordable housing and rent controls....delegates at the Alberta PC AGM reject rent controls.

"Rent controls and all other sorts of initiatives are sort of like a drug," delegate Jon Lord, a former Tory legislature member, told delegates prior to the vote. "They're very addictive, and they're difficult to get off of once you start down that road."


So having access to affordable housing makes you like a junkie. Under the Tories you can go join all the other folks who have addictions living on the street.

But of course the fact is we have had rent controls in Alberta before, and yes they were brought in however reluctantly by this very same PC party. But of course lets not let the facts get in the way of the myth of the free market.

Even Coun. Terry Cavanagh, who once had the job of phasing out provincial rent controls, urged Stelmach to look seriously at bringing them back.

Alberta introduced rent controls in 1975, when inflation soared. Coun. Terry Cavanagh was chairman of the provincial rent decontrol board that oversaw the phase-out of the controls between 1977 and 1980.

Cavanagh said Sunday that Stelmach should consider rent controls again, regardless how delegates voted. Its something the province has to look at, when you have people whose rents are going from $550 to $1,100.

Their wages arent going up 100 per cent, he said. Its going to be difficult for them to pay.
The Conservative convention heard rent controls are addictive and, once begun, are hard to end.

Cavanagh said controls phased out in an orderly fashion when he ran the decontrol board. Landlords were allowed limited annual increases so that, once an apartments rent exceeded a certain amount, controls came off.

That way the pricier units, presumably occupied by higher-income tenants, came off controls first, he said.


You might wonder what time period the PC's are stuck in....Rick Bell in his Calgary Sun column says the chosen people who attended the AGM come from the time of Howdy Doody...that glorious post WWII boom period which had no inflation....

Talk about the blind leading the blind. The majority of the Tory party are like the Beverly Hillbillies next to Unsteady Eddie's Green Acres cabinet.

They are a good cross section of Alberta ... in 1962.

Remember they didn't even know there was a boom until last year. Their crowd has been in power so long they don't care what mere mortals think.

That's why we are treated to the illogic of Lovable Lloyd Snelgrove, the power behind the Tory throne with the fancy handle of President of the Treasury Board, shamelessly thinking if he limits gouging to once a year instead of twice annually, it's "a good start."

Lloyd is the guy who doesn't make much sense when he defends scuttling the government's own task force's idea of two-year guidelines: inflation plus 2% plus more for added expenses, hardly a draconian design.

Then he says temporary rent controls won't encourage investment in new housing. Lloyd, read the affordable housing report. A cap on rent hikes is seen as a short-term deal.

Besides, without rent controls, where's all this supposed building of rental units now?

Yep during this long boom with no rent controls we have actually seen apartment construction decline in Alberta.

So if there are no rent controls what will the government do instead to stop the gouging?

"Gouging? Landlords are gouging? That's news to me" says Honest Ed the Chief Tory Salesman

Guess he missed the Stats Can Report on housing, and all the articles published in Calgary this past year.

Stelmach must have thought he looked compassionate when he talked to reporters about how upset he is with landlords gouging tenants with huge rent increases.

"I've heard about these absolutely astronomical rent increases that really are un-Albertan," Stelmach said in advance of his speech to the Tories' annual convention in Edmonton. "We have to look after the vulnerable. A thousand- dollars-a-month increase is beyond reason."

The $1,000-a-month increase was a reference to the story, raised by Alberta's NDP during question period on Thursday, of a 74-year-old widow in Edmonton facing a tripling of her rent from $595 a month to $1,595.

Indeed, for a few moments his message was all about compassion and how his government was angry with unscrupulous landlords. And he hinted that maybe his government will revisit its opposition to rent controls depending on what happens during debates at this weekend's convention.

But then some Calgary journalists began poking at Stelmach. Why was he so upset with the story of one Edmonton woman? Didn't he realize Calgary tenants have been hit by huge rent increases for months?

That's when Stelmach unwittingly unholstered the gun and took aim at himself.

"I wasn't aware of anybody getting a $1,000 increase," he said. Bang.

The Calgary journalists were gobsmacked. They have been writing stories about Calgarians being hit by $1,000 rent increases since last August. There have been so many of those stories that journalists have stopped reporting on them and have moved on to heartbreaking tales of tenants being gouged by $2,000 a month rent hikes.

And here's Stelmach saying he's not aware of what's going on in Alberta's largest city. He tried to look compassionate but ended up looking clueless


So the Tories solution is to meet landlords and tell them gouging, whatever that is, is not nice. And then threaten them...with rent controls.....I can see Boardwalk REIT shaking in their boots right now.....


The hikes are making a mockery of Stelmach's promise to do what's right for all Albertans. In a free enterprise economy, the kind the Stelmach government supports, he's doing what's right for all Alberta landlords. The only thing guiding the economic tiller is Adam Smith's invisible hand. The problem is this hand is steering the government towards the rocks.

Stelmach has ruled out rent controls as un-Conservative. Without rent controls, however, some landlords are jacking up people's rents so high that Stelmach has complained they're "un-Albertan."

So, what's a government to do when hoisted on its own ideological petard?

It goes behind closed doors and threatens landlords that unless they stop exercising their rights in a free market economy -- the very rights that the government purports to support -- the government might have to take drastic action against landlords, including, say government sources, the possibility of rent controls.

Lots of folks are coming to Alberta to work, lots of Alberta businesses need workers, but workers have nowhere to live. One would think that this simple equation workers = renters would sink into the troglodyte Tories tiny dinosaur brains.

Housing a priority for eastern jobseekers

Which means that once again we have a government that has no plan for dealing with the boom and the resulting housing crisis. Except to repeat that famous Klein line; "let the eastern bastards freeze in the dark."

See:

Housing


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Sunday, May 06, 2007

Twas A Dark And Stormy Night

Probably the best representation either by painting or photogrpahy of Queen Elizabeth in a long time, done by Annie Leibovitz.

While younger than the Queen, Leibovitz is also now in the prime of her life, and so this poignant portrait finds commonality between the subject and the photographer.

Note that it is lit by twilight, with storm clouds looming, shadow and light, the evening or her reign, how apocryphal. The portrait following is even darker. And just as stunning. Reminding one of the days of Bulwer-Lytton who scribbled a dark and stormy night at the end of Victoria's reign.

While the Queen visits Jamestown to celebrate the founding of capitalism in the new world, her last visit to Virginia was when she was twelve. The Queen of modernism in photography captures her spirit in the fin de siecle of her reign.

H/T to Cathie From Canada

[Anni+Leibovitz+Queen.jpg]


queen

Celebrity photographer Miss Leibovitz created the image by digitally superimposing her picture of the Queen against the moody backdrop of the Palace lake and ominous black clouds.

The effect is eerily reminiscent of pictures from Scottish Widows' well known ad campaign.

It is the second official portrait to be unveiled in a week by Miss Leibovitz, who is best known for magazine portraits - including one of a naked John Lennon hugging Yoko Ono hours before his death.

Her previous image showed the Queen sitting, gazing wistfully out of an open window. It was inspired by a similar photograph Cecil Beaton took of her mother.


SEE:

History of Slavery

1666 The Creation Of The World

The Origin of American Conspiracy Theories

The Truth Shall Set Ye Free

Free Trade: Primitive Accumulation of Capital


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Not So Good News


The rich get richer and the rest of us run in one place says the latest Stats Can report.

Incomes for senior families and single people remained virtually unchanged, the report showed, at $40,400 and $21,400 respectively.

However, the report also noted that the gap between the highest-income and lowest-income families in Canada widened to $105,400 in 2005, up from $83,800 in 1980.

The gap between the families with the lowest and highest incomes, an indication of income inequality, widened during the past decade, the agency said

Average after-tax income in 2005 was $128,200 for the 20% of families with the highest incomes, compared with $22,800 for the 20% with the lowest.


SEE:

Canada's Wealthy, Still

Productivity

Taxes

Wealth


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HIJABS AND HABITS

Expressing our oppression as women in solidarity with our sisters. And since this call for solidarity comes from a Catholic there is no difference between the hajib and the habit. Both are symbols not of liberation but of patriarchy.


I am calling out to every woman in this world who, regardless of her ethnic origin, religious background or even sexual orientation, will recognize my voice as female, feminine, and therefore will feel and acknowledge the resemblance, the sorority. I am calling on to you my sisters because some of us are suffering today and I believe that we, as loving sisters, must show them we will not turn our backs on them. Muslim women are indeed women like us, mothers, daughters, and sisters. The most common thought when a Muslim woman is seen wearing a Hijab (headscarf) is to assume that it is a sign of oppression and that this woman is not free of her own choices. Yet in the “Western” world (of what I know myself from France and Canada) wearing a Hijab is certainly a very difficult and courageous act because it is the visible and unmistakable sign of a religion that has become synonymous with terrorism since the 9/11 attacks. But “terrorism” has no race or religion. The Muslim community, Islam, have nothing to be forgiven for. The actions of some people cannot justify the generalization of a whole group. I think History has proven this point many, many times. People from my father’s family have perished in concentration camps during World War II along with Jewish people, communists, homosexuals, and many other oppressed groups rejected solely because of their existence. This situation is not different. As human beings we cannot accept this injustice: we cannot condemn and reject Muslims on account of their nature. I was raised a Christian and as such I will address the Christian community, in particular the Catholics. Oh my sisters and brothers I am asking you, for the love of Jesus (peace be upon his head) himself: who is the good Christian? who is the good Catholic? I will tell you. The good Catholic is the one who hid his Protestant neighbours on the night of August 24, 1572 at Saint Barthélémy, France. An estimated 70,000 Protestants were killed in France, 3,000 in Paris. Yet a lot survived because good Catholics extended their hands to their Protestant brothers and sisters. The same good Catholics, good Christians, saved their Jewish neighbours from deportation during World War II. The good Christians today, I have no doubts, will reach out their hands onto their Muslim brothers and sisters.
All I am asking of you is to follow my lead in a peaceful and symbolical gesture: let us wear a Hijab for a day. Let us show our solidarity and love for our Muslim sisters who choose to wear it every day, not as a sign of oppression, but as a sign of courage and honesty.

Nuns should wear the habit

After reviewing A Nuns Habit, which lists poorly devised reasons for not wearing the habit, I feel encouraged to write on the subject. In short, my opinion remains that all religious sisters and nuns should wear the habit of their respective orders. No longer should these women, who have given their lives to the service of God and the Church, be dressing like laypeople. It is time to return to the ancient practice of wearing a distinct habit - this is not fulfilled by wearing laypeople's clothing!

The habit inspires women to leave their lives and gives themselves to God. The same is true for men who are inspired by the garments worn by priests and monks. To enter a religious order, one does not just experience a change of heart and soul, rather, there is also a change in the physical realm. For example, many religious orders require the women to adopt a new name when they become a nun in addition to wearing the habit.

See:

Spot The Contradiction





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Muslims and Christians Refuse To Play Ball


Hmm, I wonder if it was because the women priests wouldn't wear hajibs.

A soccer game bringing Muslim imams and Christian priests "shoulder to shoulder" on a field in Norway was cancelled Saturday because the teams could not agree on whether women priests should take part.

See:

Witches Play Mullahs To A Draw



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Alberta Tories Support Nuking the Tarsands

At least one Alberta Tory knows the difference between power and energy. Though apparently one delegate at this weekends PC Convention thinks the Liberals are still in power in Ottawa.

Nuclear power is for creating electrical energy, the use that is being looked at for the Tarsands is to produce steam for injection into the oilsands to release the bitumin, which is neither efficient nor cheap. Nuclear power to just produce steam is like hunting flies with a shotgun.


Also Saturday, delegates voted to explore using nuclear power plants to assist oilsands development.

Delegate Bill Dearborn of Medicine Hat said the oilsands need a nuclear option as a bulwark against any future federal raids on Alberta's resource-based economy.

"We're familiar with these Liberal governments in Ottawa that have imposed unfair taxes on the oil and gas industry in the past,'' he said.

But delegate Don Dabbs said he has participated in a past provincial study on nuclear power and that it's not the way to go to generate steam power for the oilsands.

"A reactor to generate steam is not the principal purpose of a nuclear reactor. It's for electrical energy.

"It's a very expensive source of steam.''

Thomas Savery's Steam Engine circa 1698Thomas Savery (1650-1715)
Thomas Savery was an English military engineer and inventor who in 1698, patented the first crude steam engine, based on Denis Papin's Digester or pressure cooker of 1679.

Thomas Savery had been working on solving the problem of pumping water out of coal mines, his machine consisted of a closed vessel filled with water into which steam under pressure was introduced. This forced the water upwards and out of the mine shaft. Then a cold water sprinkler was used to condense the steam. This created a vacuum which sucked more water out of the mine shaft through a bottom valve.


Boilers

The high-pressure steam for a steam engine comes from a boiler. The boiler's job is to apply heat to water to create steam. There are two approaches: fire tube and water tube.

A fire-tube boiler was more common in the 1800s. It consists of a tank of water perforated with pipes. The hot gases from a coal or wood fire run through the pipes to heat the water in the tank, as shown here:


In a fire-tube boiler, the entire tank is under pressure, so if the tank bursts it creates a major explosion.

More common today are water-tube boilers, in which water runs through a rack of tubes that are positioned in the hot gases from the fire. The following simplified diagram shows you a typical layout for a water-tube boiler:


In a real boiler, things would be much more complicated because the goal of the boiler is to extract every possible bit of heat from the burning fuel to improve efficiency.


Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR or CANDU).

The CANDU reactor design has been developed since the 1950s in Canada. It uses natural uranium (0.7% U-235) oxide as fuel, hence needs a more efficient moderator, in this case heavy water (D2O).**

** with the CANDU system, the moderator is enriched (ie water) rather than the fuel, - a cost trade-off.

The moderator is in a large tank called a calandria, penetrated by several hundred horizontal pressure tubes which form channels for the fuel, cooled by a flow of heavy water under high pressure in the primary cooling circuit, reaching 290Æ’C. As in the PWR, the primary coolant generates steam in a secondary circuit to drive the turbines. The pressure tube design means that the reactor can be refuelled progressively without shutting down, by isolating individual pressure tubes from the cooling circuit.

A CANDU fuel assembly consists of a bundle of 37 half metre long fuel rods (ceramic fuel pellets in zircaloy tubes) plus a support structure, with 12 bundles lying end to end in a fuel channel. Control rods penetrate the calandria vertically, and a secondary shutdown system involves adding gadolinium to the moderator. The heavy water moderator circulating through the body of the calandria vessel also yields some heat (though this circuit is not shown on the diagram above).


Steam generator (nuclear power)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an article about nuclear power plant equipment. For other uses, see steam generator.

Steam generators are heat exchanger used to convert water into steam from heat produced in a nuclear reactor core. They are used in pressurized water reactors between the primary and secondary coolant loops.

In commercial power plants steam generators can measure up to 70 feet in height and weigh as much as 800 tons. Each steam generator can contain anywhere from 3,000 to 16,000 tubes, each about three-quarters of an inch in diameter. The coolant is pumped, at high pressure to prevent boiling, from the reactor coolant pump, through the nuclear reactor core, and through the tube side of the steam generators before returning to the pump. This is referred to as the primary loop. That water flowing through the steam generator boils water on the shell side to produce steam in the secondary loop that is delivered to the turbines to make electricity. The steam is subsequently condensed via cooled water from the tertiary loop and returned to the steam generator to be heated once again. The tertiary cooling water may be recirculated to cooling towers where it sheds waste heat before returning to condense more steam. Once through tertiary cooling may otherwise be provided by a river, lake, ocean. This primary, secondary, tertiary cooling scheme is the most common way to extract usable energy from a controlled nuclear reaction.

These loops also have an important safety role because they constitute one of the primary barriers between the radioactive and non-radioactive sides of the plant as the primary coolant becomes radioactive from its exposure to the core. For this reason, the integrity of the tubing is essential in minimizing the leakage of water between the two sides of the plant. There is the potential that if a tube bursts while a plant is operating; contaminated steam could escape directly to the secondary cooling loop. Thus during scheduled maintenance outages or shutdowns, some or all of the steam generator tubes are inspected by eddy-current testing.

In other types of reactors, such as the pressurised heavy water reactors of the CANDU design, the primary fluid is heavy water. Liquid metal cooled reactors such as the in Russian BN-600 reactor also use heat exchangers between primary metal coolant and at the secondary water coolant.

Boiling water reactors do not use steam generators, as steam is produced in the pressure vessel.


See:

Sustainable Capitalism

Tarsands To Go Nuclear

Nuke The Tar Sands

Dion Pro Nuke

Cutting Your Nose

Energy

CANDU


Peak Oil

Tar Sands



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Mixed Reviews For NDP Website

The gnu makeover of the NDP website gets mixed reviews;

The NDP ruined it?s website!

On the new NDP web site

NDP Website Updates: The Good & The Bad


My comment left at the above blog was; 'the posting of the link to the ND Youth in 6 point at the bottom of the page says a lot about the importance the party places on these core activists.' And there is no search function.

And then there is the ultimate thumbs up review, where a partisan blogger actually uses the newly provided NDP template for their blog.

Then I discovered it was just Werner Patels disguising himself as a Dipper.

Which is a good reason why you should not allow folks to use your template.



As you can see the green background colour has changed from light green to dark forest/green. Be still my beating heart.



And to think that after getting all huffy about Robert McClelland's My Blahg and the promise to address bloggers after the uproar over Brad Lavigne, this is what we get, blog tools.

Whereas the Blogging Dippers dealt with the McClelland crisis by electing a politburo to run it while remaining autonomous from the party.

Still waiting for the party blog......or blog agreggator.....or the party facebook page....or....oh well they have Werner to blog for them now....




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Gimme More Public Inquiries


The Air India public inquiry shows why we need one into recent RCMP scandals and not Government appointed inquiries.


Inquiry highlights inter-agency issues: Rae

"I think what the public is hearing, perhaps in an abrupt way, is what I think has been pretty clear to people who have studied this for a long time -- that there really was a problem of communication between different levels of government, different departments, agencies, the RCMP and CSIS," Rae told CTV's Mike Duffy Live on Friday.

With new information emerging from the inquiry, critics have wondered if race played a part in how authorities handling the case.

Asked if she thought the information Bartleman provided to the RCMP would have been treated differently if the plane was filled with whites, NDP MP Alexa McDonough said she felt it was a factor.

"I wish it weren't true. But I do think it's true," McDonough told Mike Duffy. "I also think it's shocking that as we pushed and pushed for an inquiry...they kept saying there's no need for an inquiry there's no new information there's nothing more to be learned.

"That turns out not to be true. It's an utter horror story, and thank goodness there is now a full public inquiry underway that can get to the bottom of this."



Shock, outrage and more questions

Their outrage was palpable. Family members of those killed in the Air-India disaster have been trying for more than 20 years to find out what happened at the time of the mid-air bombing.

Yesterday, they heard that days before it occurred, the RCMP brushed off information from an electronic intercept suggesting an Air-India flight had been targeted for the coming weekend.

"It's absolutely incredible," Prakash Sahu, who had a father, stepbrother and stepsister on the flight, said yesterday in an interview from Montreal. "This makes a mockery of what the RCMP were doing."

He was upset it took so long for someone to say publicly what many family members believed for so many years. He wondered why the Mounties have failed to bring those responsible for the bombings to justice. "They should have solved this long ago," he said from London, Ont.

The government resisted calls for a public inquiry for years by "hiding behind the criminal investigation," Mr. Paliwal said. He praised former Supreme Court judge John Major, who heads the inquiry. "We have a lot of confidence in him," he said.


Articles referenced;

RCMP Terror

New Math

Why The Tories Want Tory Judges

More Foreign Affairs Incompetency

Statist Anti-Terrorism Act


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