Friday, November 23, 2007

Conservatives Clemency For Canadian Criminal Capitalist

While the our Law and Order Government is planning to extradite Karlhaus Schrieber to Germany to face charges of swindling and fraud they are lobbying for the return to Canada of another criminal swindler. Who just so happens to be a millionaire. And they want to transfer him to a Canadian prison to serve out his sentence.

His family fears he faces death in the Bulgarian prison. Luckily for him, Bulgaria like Canada no longer has capital punishment. Wait a minute didn't they deny a clemency appeal for a Canadian on death row in the U.S. and any hope he had of transfer to prison in Canada.Oh yeah he ain't a millionaire and he ain't a white collar criminal. Spot the contradiction.
Europe condemns Canada over change in clemency stance


Bulgaria is one of the post soviet kleptocracies, a mafia-capitalist state bent on the privatization of everything. Our Canadian capitalist took advantage of that situation and got himself in trouble. And unlike Canadians on death row, or Karlhaus Schrieber, he has friends in the Harper government.

And of course Kenney and Harper being from Alberta are familiar with crony capitalism and the One Party State. Just like Michael Kapoustin understood that Bulgaria was a kleptocracy and took advantage of the crony capitalism occurring in that country to make a profit.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and two of his most trusted ministers have for more than a year been quietly pressuring the Bulgarian government to transfer home to Canada a former millionaire Canadian businessman jailed overseas since 1996 on charges of fraud and embezzlement, CanWest News Service has learned.

Despite numerous diplomatic efforts - including a meeting in Sofia last year between Bulgaria's top prosecutor and Secretary of State Jason Kenney, at which Kenney pleaded for the return of 55-year-old Michael Kapoustin - Bulgaria refuses to transfer a man it once labelled an international swindler.

As a result, Canada is turning up the heat, invoking for the first time an international treaty that forces the unco-operative Bulgarian government into mediation talks.

On Thursday, a Canadian delegation will square off against Bulgarian officials in Strasbourg, France, headquarters of the Council of Europe - a European human rights body created in the wake of the Second World War to oversee, among other things, prisoner-transfer rules among the countries of Europe, Canada and the United States.

The mediation process follows months of failed intervention by Kenney and Harper - who has lobbied the Bulgarian president on the Kapoustin case - and by Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, who is responsible for prisoner transfers to Canada and is also the MP for Kapoustin's British Columbia-based family.

Such efforts are a marked contrast to the Harper government's treatment of some other Canadians imprisoned abroad.

Since last year the Conservatives have denied the transfers of at least 17 Canadian citizens jailed in the U.S., even though their transfers to Canadian prisons were approved by U.S. authorities.

The government is also refusing to advocate against the death row sentence of Ronald Smith, an Albertan convicted of murder in Montana.

Kapoustin's repatriation, however, is "a priority for our government," said Kenney in a letter last December to Bulgaria's prosecutor general, adding, "Our government is determined to robustly defend the interests of Canadian citizens abroad."

Kapoustin was born in Yugoslavia but grew up in Toronto and Vancouver after his family immigrated to Canada in the 1950s. He became a high-profile entrepreneur in Bulgaria during the 1990s, as capitalism replaced communism following the breakup of the Soviet bloc.

"Michael was a very high flyer in Bulgaria in the post-Soviet period," says Gar Pardy, Canada's former director general of consular affairs, who has taken up Kapoustin's case in retirement. "He was running a bunch of companies and there was a lot of money on the go.

Bulgarian officials charged him with tax evasion, money laundering, fraud and embezzlement. Authorities shut down Kapoustin's companies and seized assets he claims were worth more than $11 million.

In 1996, he was arrested during an airport stopover in Germany and extradited to Bulgaria.

In 2002, after six years in detention, a Bulgarian court finally convicted Kapoustin on a new charge of embezzlement and sentenced him to 17 years in prison.

Pardy says that for years he and other Canadian diplomats worked hard to secure Kapoustin's transfer to a Canadian prison, where he would soon be eligible for parole - but never got anywhere with Bulgarian officials.

On Tuesday, Canadian law firm Amsterdam & Peroff announced that it has produced a website about its pro-bono client Michael Kapoustin, a citizen of Canada who has been languishing in a Bulgarian prison since he was convicted to 17 years in prison on what his defense team insists were false charges of embezzlement, fraud, tax evasion, and money laundering.

The website has been created to coincide with a new level of government talks about the prisoner transfer treaty between the two nations.

Article 23 of the Council of Europe's Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons to initiate mediation has been invoked by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper who, after over a year of constant contact, has not been able to secure Kapoustin's release and extradiction to Canada.

The website allegedly shows violations of Kapoustin's basic due process and fundamental rights in the trial, torture, solitary confinement, cruel and unusual treatment in prison, and the irresponsible conduct of a number of former government officials.

"For so many years, the family has been told to keep quiet about these injustices while numerous promises to bring Michael home were repeatedly broken. The time has come to speak up," said international lawyer Dean Peroff of Amsterdam & Peroff.

Michael Kapoustin's wife, Tracy, has been raising their 14-year-old son alone for most of the boy's life as a result of the imprisonment.

Kapoustin, now 55, was a millionaire entrepreneur. He became very influential in Bulgarian business circles in the early 1990s as Communism collapsed and Capitalism began to flourish in the Eastern European nations.

Bulgaria: A Hard But Lucrative Place for SMEs
03.08.2007 For the past seven years, Swiss entrepreneur André Felder has been working in Bulgaria. Despite some unpleasant experiences, he does not regret his decision to move there. At a forum during the latest Credit Suisse field trip to Bulgaria, he warned investors and business people against having unrealistic expectations.

What was Bulgaria like seven years ago?
Chaotic. The mafia were also rampant. The gray economy was bigger than the "regular" economy. But it was a time of optimism and a new direction, and perhaps a dose of "Wild West" capitalism is simply part and parcel of that sort of pioneer era.

What exactly do you mean by Wild West capitalism?
We lived by the laws of the jungle. My original partners very nearly forced me out of the business, for example - without providing any form of compensation. And institutional sloppiness and arbitrariness nearly drove me to bankruptcy.

Do you think that would still be possible today?
Organized crime remains active - but it's in retreat. And obviously corruption is still an issue. But recently in particular, a lot of things have changed for the better. The reform process is beginning to take effect, and there is broad agreement among people about the need for reforms in the administration and justice system.


ROMANIA AND BULGARIA

The EU's Unpopular Expansion

In its latest progress report, issued in December, the European Parliament expressed shock at the "audacity of organized crime" in Bulgaria. According to Western observers, the economy is pretty much controlled by shady insider dealing. Recently, Susette Schuster, a judge from Cologne, was sent to Bulgaria on an EU mission and came back with "alarming" findings: The legal system is tangled, judicial reform is chaotic, the trust of the citizens in the state is weak, and corruption is widespread.

In addition, officials at Eurojust, the EU body that coordinates the member states' judicial systems, have also discreetly contacted parliamentarians in Brussels. They are afraid that their fight against terrorism and the trafficking of drugs, weapons and children would be made more difficult once Bulgaria's criminal gangs' informers in government gain access to all of the files. People who once dealt in drugs at the behest of the Communist state apparatus, now hold key positions in the police, the judiciary and politics. The same people will soon find themselves in control of €2.3 billion that the Bulgarians are due to receive in subsidies from Brussels over the next three years.


23.01.06

The so called people's representatives - the politicians onf Bulgaria are just business men people in suits working in the parliament, geting payed by the national taxes collected off the people. Those Bulgarian businessmen - called Government Deputies (GD) - are trading with national goods. Whenever money come from the European Union (EU), the GD's are spreading them amongs themselves. They think and act as they think: "Those are money for our associates, their firms, and our companies. Let's split them, and screw the republic. This Is Capitalism!" Post-communistic looting of the the country. All closed factories, all farms forced to bancrupcy, all MAIN sectors of transport, comunication, and energy are privatised, and/or sold out to foreign investors in suspicious secret deals, are dooming a nation to be the employer of his own looter.

Luchezar Boyadjiev interviewed by Geert Lovink

The first interview was conducted during the opening of Hybrid Workspace in June 1997, the temporary media lab in the margins of the big art show Documenta X in Kassel (Germany).

> Could you explain us the current situation in Bulgaria from your point of view? For a long time, the Bulgarian communists have stayed in power, after having changed their faces. Recently, a lot has happened in South-East Europe... student demonstrations in Serbia, the first non-communist government in Romania, anarchy in Albania... What is the reason of the apparently unique position of Bulgaria?

The more time passes after 1989, the more differences there are between each country in Eastern Europe. In the past, Bulgaria had a privileged position, in terms of being one of the closest allies of the Soviet Union. The country enjoyed an almost free supply of raw materials, crude oil, electricity. A utopian situation, having no worry about how to produce and make a living for its citizens. Now, it looks as if time has stopped after 1989. We realized this only recently. On the surface, a democratic reform took place. A free-market economy was introduced, of which I am not a fan, but which seemed to be the only way out of the deadlock. As it turned out, there is no capitalism, so consequently, there is no opposition to capitalism. This applies also to the social situation. A redistribution of the old money of the regime is now taking place among its loyal followers who are now top bankers or mafia leaders. This is not capitalism, it is Monte-Carlo money. Easy come, easy go, no re-investments.


Bulgaria

Violina Hristova of Sofia, senior reporter for Standart News specializing in reporting on organized crime:

What distinguishes my country are the extortion rings controlled by groups of ex-athletes, especially wrestlers. They also control narcotics traffic, smuggling, counterfeiting and prostitution. They call it the "Wrestlers mafia. " The wrestlers' weapons are always baseball bats, and they use "security organizations" (protection agencies) as their cover.

Although many people talk about connections between the Bulgarian and Italian mafia, there's no proof. Some experts estimate 4,000 people are involved in this kind of organized crime. These groups launder money and bribe public officials and police. The businessman who does not go along may be beaten severely or even murdered. Sometimes the wrestlers make mistakes. For example, last summer in Sofia they kidnapped a businessman's mother-in-law instead of his wife. Many of these wrestlers are former members of government security forces.

Some people estimate the wrestlers control 50% of the nightclubs, 70% of the gambling and 80% of the cigarette and alcohol trade in Bulgaria, and are partners or owners of six casinos. The Wrestlers mafia originated after the change of the political system, as big groups of shady operators began employing the ex-weightlifters, ex-wrestlers, ex-boxers. Also employed were former police officers and the security services. Many believe these profits from illegal activities are being invested in the privatization process and legitimate businesses will emerge from them.


Crime and Democracy in Bulgaria


By Robert Kaplan | Saturday, June 23, 2001

In Bulgaria, I found a society that was regarded as a democratic success abroad, but was really under siege from criminal clans. Organized crime is, of course, a common feature of former Soviet bloc societies.

Romanians seem to be adapting to global capitalism in the same aggressive manner they once adapted to communism.

By the 1980s, communist parties had evolved largely into large-scale mafias which, when the system collapsed, simply divided into smaller mafias that purchased politicians in all those new and weak democracies. Common, too, are allegations of a new Russian imperialism by way of European-wide crime connections and energy monopolies like Gazprom.

Quasi-legitimate enterprises

Nowhere, however, were such phenomena so transparent as in Bulgaria when I visited in 1998. Is is a poor, small country in which democratic institutions have been fighting valiantly against Russian attempts at "re-satellitization" by criminal stealth. Bulgaria illustrates how the potential evils of the new century are ominous precisely because of their ambiguity. It is no accident that here the word "groupings" is used instead of mafias.

These networks include legitimate enterprises — audited by Western accountants and, increasingly, linked to Western multinationals — as well as legitimate entities. They engage in activities such as compact-disk pirating, illicit-drug activity, money laundering and extortion. One foreign diplomat told me, "These groupings engage in violent intimidation and corrupt politicians. Yet, their genius is to cover their tracks to an extent that they are quasi-legitimate."

Transition economy crime stories

The breakdown of Bulgaria's Communist state provided numerous opportunities for people close to power to cash in.

Bulgarian crime has no centuries-old tradition like Italy's, or even one of heroic thieves and warrior clans as in Russia, Serbia, or Albania. Nor is there the colorful ethnic ingredient here that distinguishes criminal circles in the Caucasus, particularly in Georgia and Chechnya, with their family mafias and highwaymen. The Bulgarian groupings essentially are the result of the transition from communist totalitarianism to parliamentary democracy.

Cashing in

The breakdown of the Communist state provided numerous opportunities for people close to power to cash in. Some Olympic wrestlers, for example, gained control of motels along Bulgaria's international highways and at border checkpoints.

These motels provided revenues from prostitution and currency dealing and helped give them access to the car-theft business. This involved the theft of both local vehicles and those stolen in Western Europe, which passed through Bulgaria to the former Soviet Union by ship across the Black Sea.

A Russian satellite for crime?

In Bulgaria, Russians as a people are very much liked, even if Russian communism is not.

Not surprisingly,a strong bond exists between Bulgaria's groupings and Russia. Political party connections evolved into economic connections when Bulgaria was still a subservient satellite state. Strong links between the KGB and Bulgaria's communist-era security service became crime connections. And the countries' similar Slavic languages helped nourish social connections among criminals.

But what makes Bulgaria particularly vulnerable to Russian organized crime is that unlike other formerly communist states such as Hungary and Romania, here — for linguistic and historical reasons — Russians as a people are very much liked, even if Russian communism was not.

Not all that glitters is gold

Thus, even with a stable democracy, Bulgaria may not become a civil society if it continues to be undermined by this new and subtle Russian imperialism. As former president Zhelyu Zhelev told me, "The political parties could easily evolve into masks for mafia structures, with crime groups financing election campaigns."

The West could then leave Bulgaria to its fate by declaring it a "democratic success story." Since the Washington establishment typically prefers to simplify its problems by accepting official truths this seems a possibility. Bulgarians are right: They are in danger of being forgotten.

Hope and misconceptions in Romania and Bulgaria

What the man on the street fears

Many Bulgarians and Romanians fear, however, that prices will rise after 2007 and that they will no longer be able to afford the basics, such as a heated apartment, a kilo of pork and a cinema ticket. Nothing sets of older people, farmers, and other ordinary citizens like the concept of EU accession. They worry that the EU will interfere too much in agriculture and that home-brewed schnapps will be made illegal.

Less than two years before they are due to join the EU, the feared rise in the cost of living is already beginning. At the end of September, a new tourism law was passed in Sofia: from now on the prices for Bulgarians and for foreign visitors should be comparable. Up until now, as in many other Eastern European countries, foreign tourists in Bulgaria paid many times more than domestic tourists for taxis, hotels, or museums. Thus the average Bulgarian fears that EU accession spells the end of annual holidays to the Black Sea. With an average income of €140 a month, Bulgarians cannot compete with tourists from the rest of the EU.

Faith in the EU-friendly political classes also suffers on account of corruption and crony-capitalism, both alive and well in Bulgaria and Romania. The biggest Bulgarian weekly paper, 168 chasa (168 hours) broke the news at the end of September that the young and ambitious Minister of State, Nikolai Vassilev, has, it is alleged, virtually exclusive control over the distribution of the money from EU Structural Funds. Meanwhile, according to the Romanian English-language daily paper Nine O’Clock, the Romanian President, Traian Basescu, has suggested a year long “abstinence from corruption” to his people at the end of September. This is theoretically supposed to wipe out corruption…

The Mafia is delighted

In the midst of this, Bulgarian and Romanian politicians are breaking into a sweat in order to fulfil their election promises: primarily, the longed-for EU accession in the year 2007. Bulgaria is behind in law reform, with 22 draft bills still waiting to be passed. Similarly, according to the Associated Press, the Romanian Prime Minister, Calin Tariceanu, pointed out at the end of September that his parliament had “still around 100 bills” that needed to be passed before EU accession.

The Mafia is delighted at the delays. The volume of human trafficking in the region is alarming, reports Richard Danziger from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in this year’s report on South Eastern Europe. General Boyko Borissov was, until recently, the General Secretary of the Bulgarian Ministry of the Interior and “Enemy No.1” of organised crime. In an interview with the Bulgarian magazine Egoist, he says that the fight against trafficking in drugs and people, money laundering and credit card fraud, as well as extortion, has had more success over the past few years. But unfortunately, he often finds that his hands are tied by the contradictory legal environment. Bulgarians and Romanians alike hope that these things will change with EU accession

Two Types of Post State-Socialist Capitalism
Following the disintegration of state socialism, a market system based on private ownership and production for profit has been constructed in all but three of the former state socialist societies.

There is no chance of a return to state socialism. The measures of reform have secured a high level of irreversibility: the planning mechanism has been destroyed, and the lynchpin of the political system, the Communist Party apparatus, dissolved. Whether these countries have moved to a modern capitalist system is open to question. The consequences of transformation have led to three blocks of post state socialist countries: two of which are market orientated and have large private sectors and one small cluster of countries which preserve statist economies (Uzbekistan, Belarus and Turkmenistan, which are ignored in the following discussion). Despite the significant policies of destatisation, the post-communist societies all share in common a higher level of state control than market capitalist countries and most have stock market capitalization at the levels of very low income countries. In terms of social development, the post-communist states have fallen in the world rankings of human development.

Weber’s claim that modern capitalism is distinguished by ‘the pursuit of profit and forever renewed profit, by means of continuous, rational, capitalistic enterprise’ applies more to the first group than to the second. The first includes the central European countries – Slovenia, Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Estonia – all new members of, and having borders with, the European Union. These countries are approaching the levels of OECD countries with respect to marketisation and privatisation, they also have a very positive participation in the global economy. This group is closest to the continental type of market capitalism, though it is more state led. They all have a low level of stock market capitalization and more developed welfare states, making them distinct from the Anglo-American countries. What is particularly important, from the point of view of the transition to a self-sustaining capitalist system, is that a high level of accumulation of capital is sustained. The figures cited above (Fig 3-2 and Table 3- 3) is the exceedingly low levels in all the former state socialist societies. Some, but not all, have very high exposure to the global market which acts as an exogenous source of economic change.

They resemble, and are likely to identify with, the continental European system as they all have embedded welfare states derived from the state socialist period. Economic coordination here is not through stock exchange capitalism, but is dependent on the state and also on companies with an international presence. Tutored by the conditionality requirements of the EU and the IMF, they have developed not only the economic preconditions of capitalism, but also the political and societal: an appropriate type of government, a civil society and an emerging bourgeois class structure.

A second model is that of a hybrid state/market uncoordinated capitalism. This is a relatively economically poor group which has had an unsuccessful period of transition: Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and Moldova. These countries have exceedingly high income differentials, and high levels of poverty and unemployment. They have the characteristics of low income, primary sector exporting countries, with a very low integration into the global economy. They have particularly low levels of domestically sourced investment, though those with a large energy sector (such as Russia) have significant and disproportionate foreign direct investments.

The form privatisation has taken may lead to relatively few owners in extractive industries, such as oil, giving rise to great wealth on the one hand and, because of relatively low employment rates and ineffective redistribution policies, to poverty on the other. Economic policy should be concerned not only with efficiency, but also with equity. The move to the market and private ownership has significantly diminished equity in the post-communist states – though less so for those bordering on the European Union.

Bulgaria

Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005
Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
March 8, 2006

Bulgaria is a parliamentary democracy of approximately 7.7 million persons, and is ruled by a coalition government headed by Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev. Multiparty parliamentary elections in June were deemed generally free and fair despite some reported irregularities. While civilian authorities generally maintained effective control of law enforcement officers, there were some instances in which law enforcement officers acted independently of government authority.

The government generally respected the human rights of its citizens; however, there were problems in several areas. The following human rights problems were reported:

  • police abuses, including beatings and mistreatment, of criminal suspects, prison inmates, and members of minorities
  • harsh conditions in prisons and detention facilities
  • arbitrary arrest and detention
  • impunity
  • limitations on freedom of the press
  • some restrictions on freedom of religion
  • discrimination against certain religious minorities
  • widespread corruption in executive and judicial branches
  • violence and discrimination against women, children, and minority groups, particularly the Roma
  • trafficking in persons
  • discrimination against persons with disabilities
  • child labor

SEE:

Crime Pays If You Are Rich

Bulgarian Women Abused

Albania's Hero


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Nova Scotia Imitates Alberta 2


In another example that the old neo-con ideal is not dead yet, Nova Scotia like Alberta is once again looking at P3's as a solution to long term funding of infrastructure. Despite its failure in that province previously. And like Alberta, which has a labour boom while Nova Scotia has a labour deficit, the costs will rise because of scarcity of labour. Those costs will be passed on to taxpayers if not now then over the life of the P3 agreement.

Once hailed as the new vision of the right, privatization, P3's and contracting out have proven to be a billion dollar boon-doogle and not a solution to rising costs. They are in fact simply taxpayers paying private companies to provide services that make them profit, by cutting wages and providing poorer quality, and they end up costing us more in the long run. It looked good on paper, but as with most of these ideas from the seventies they have proven their time has come and gone.

In fact in Canada it is your and my pension funds that paying for these P3's. So we get screwed twice as taxpayers.

Nova Scotia Throne Speech eyes privately funded roads, bridges

The Canadian Press

HALIFAX — Nova Scotia's Conservative government has opened the fall session of the legislature with a Throne Speech promising a return to public-private partnerships in constructing roads, schools and other facilities.

In a document entitled “Throne Speech for the New Nova Scotia,” the government says it has learned from the mistakes made when a previous Liberal government introduced the P3 concept that built 30 schools in the 1990s.

The government says with a $12.4-billion debt, it has to find ways to reduce the costs of building and maintaining public roadways and buildings.

The speech estimates the province is facing a long-term bill of $8-billion to build and maintain infrastructure.

The document also says a new department will be created that is focused solely on the environment, along with a new Ministry of Labour and Workforce Development to help deal with a shortage of skilled labour.

The government is also promising new education standards with primary attention paid to mathematics and literacy and says it will continue a freeze on university tuition with more reductions planned.

SEE

Nova Scota Imitates Alberta


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Nova Scota Imitates Alberta


Alberta has the most regressive labour laws in Canada. It long ago banned hospital workers, including nurses, right to strike. That of course did not stop those workers from going on strike. The right to strike is an essential workers right and is defended by the International Labour Organization as such. It is as essential as the right to unionize.

If governments banned the right to unionize it would be seen as the actions of an authoritarian state. The same goes for banning the right to strike.
Ironically unions were banned in the 19th Century as 'criminal conspiracies' to limit trade. It was several years after Canada became a nation that Britain changed its laws and Canada followed suit. That did not stop workers from organizing unions, as secret societies; like the Knights of Labor. It meant workers on the job organized, and went on strike because that is their right as workers. All we have to sell is our labour or our time, our presence on the job.

In Alberta hospital workers were declared an essential service that still did not prevent AUPE or the Nurses union from going out on 'illegal' strikes. And win wage and benefit gains.

In Nova Scotia the hospital employers are running TV ads, I have satellite so I get to see them when I watch the CFL or NHL on CBC Halifax, claiming it hurt patients and is in everyones 'best' interest to end the right to strike. They claim other provinces do it and it has brought labour peace. Actually they meant to say appeasement. However that being said these employers are just another arm of government. They are government appointees or hirelings. So while one arm of the government, the legislature, brings in anti-worker anti-union anti-strike laws the other arm of the government, its employer association running the public hospitals, does the PR for the law.

The fact is that if the employer, who is the government, would fund hospitals and medical services properly then workers would be assured of proper wage and benefit increases, and proper hours of work. Instead the employer, which is the government, wants to cut wages, benefits and contract out work, split shifts, end seniority etc. etc.

A group that does not face these draconian attacks is of course the Doctors who are a business monopoly. There are few doctors strikes in Canada, and if they do occur they are short lived because governments assure doctors their services are paid for. Then they turn around and cut services in hospitals and cut other workers wages and benefits and tell them to hold the line.

The reality is that mediation only works between equals. In this case the government and its hospital administration view doctors as indispensable, and other workers as dispensable. If they didn't they would fund hospitals fully so all workers got the pay, benefits and hours of work they deserve. If that was the case there would be no need to strike.

Mediation does not work. Nor does denying workers the right to strike. They will, as history has shown, strike when they get cheated and screwed whether it is against the law or not.

What is interesting is that this balanced and pro-union article is from a Business Journal.

Union Dues: Anti-strike bill 'political posturing'
BY BRIAN FLINN, TRANSCONTINENTAL MEDIA
The Nova Scotia Business Journal

Health workers, the NDP and the Liberals are lined up against the government's highest-profile bill as the Nova Scotia legislature ends a seven-month summer break. Premier Rodney MacDonald said he's pushing ahead with the doomed anti-strike legislation because Nova Scotians deserve to hear it debated and find out how their MLAs vote. But he's not putting his minority government's survival on the line.

"There won't be any confidence votes this fall," MacDonald told reporters.

The government has been working on a bill to replace health strikes with arbitration since a brief IWK walkout earlier this year. Health- and community-care workers don't want to lose collective bargaining rights, and plan to rally outside Province House today while Lt.-Gov. Mayann Francis reads the speech from the throne.

"We're pleased the opposition will defeat this bill," said Joan Jessome, president of the Nova Scotia Government and General Employees Union. "But it can come back again and again. We need to make our point strong and clear enough to put this to rest."

The premier said he does plan to revive the bill later. "I'm a patient person," he said.

Both the Liberals and the NDP plan to defeat the bill at the first opportunity, when it goes to a second reading vote. MacDonald said the Liberals are "stuck in the past," while the NDP is standing up for special interests.

"They receive a lot of funding from the unions. They generally tend to be the biggest contributor to the NDP and most of their candidates," he said. "It's unfortunate; you don't put that ahead of health and safety."

NDP Leader Darrell Dexter said MacDonald is trying to distract attention from bigger problems in health care, such as emergency-room closings and the shortage of nursing-home beds. He said it's unfortunate the government is wasting some of the few days it allows the legislature to sit, on a doomed bill. "This bill is purely a product of political posturing," Dexter said.

Liberal Leader Stephen McNeil said he doesn't hear Nova Scotians pleading for anti-strike legislation. He said his party wants to co-operate with health workers, not take away their rights. "Where's the crisis?" McNeil asked. "I have yet to understand why the premier and the government are hanging their hats on this issue."

The House has to sit for only two days to avoid the label of the laziest legislature in Canada for a fourth year in a row. Prince Edward Island's House sat just 24 days this year, one more than Nova Scotia. – The Daily News


EXTRA: Strike threats useful warning system
By Brian Flinn, Transcontinental Media

Taking the right to strike away from health workers would damage an important safety mechanism and jeopardize the care of Nova Scotians, according to a new study by the Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Saint Mary's University professors Judy and Larry Haiven wrote that health workers know when the system is being pushed beyond tolerable limits and can signal it by threatening to strike. They said it's similar to the "red cord" used to stop assembly lines when something goes wrong in a factory.

"Health-care workers must have a way of indicating that the conditions under which they work do not overstress them or the quality of health-care delivery," the Haivens wrote. "Thus, in the health-care system, the red cord can be said to be the power of health-care workers to threaten to, and if necessary, withhold their labour."

Labour Minister Mark Parent has argued a modern health-care system cannot tolerate work stoppages. The report says "management by stress" now predominates in health care, and an outlet is more important than ever. "If politicians and health-care administrators insist on running a system so close to the bone, then the ability of workers to strike, to pull the red cord, as it were, is an essential system mechanism to ensure patient safety in the long run." – The Daily News


And this is from the Dominion Blog

November 23, 2007

NS Government Faces Heat Over Anti-Strike Bill

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In one of the more polite demonstrations I've attended, a union coalition lead by the Nova Scotia General Employees Union staged a sidewalk rally of about 500 in front of the province's legislature on Thursday. While members of the crowd, which included a strong contingent of nurses and healthcare workers, heckled Premier Rodney Macdonald's minority government (top pic), the military guard-laden arrival of Nova Scotia's Lt.-Gov Mayann Francis, due to read her first speech from the throne, on the other side of the building was met with no interruption (bottom pic). After Macdonald's assertion that the unions were being "disrespectful" for holding a demonstration during the ceremonial speech from the throne, the union leadership responded by urging demonstrators to remain quiet outside of the legislature while Francis made her speech.

The rally was called in response to a bill due to be introduced by the minority tories banning the right to strike for the 32,000 healthcare workers in Nova Scotia. Macdonald had promised to introduce the bill in May following a one-day strike at a children's hospital in Halifax. The bill seems to be on the verge of being junked as a result of the union campaign, as both the Liberals and NDP have pledged to vote against it, were it to be introduced by the minority government. As a result, Macdonald has admitted he is unwilling to see his government fall as a result of the proposed anti-strike legislation.

Regardless of this apparent defeat, the throne speech outlined the Tory government's plans to establish more publicly funded, private health facilities in the province.


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Thursday, November 22, 2007

Video Not Taser Creates Inquiry

B.C. is calling for an inquiry to the Taser death of a Polish immigrant at the Vancouver airport. Alberta is reviewing police procedures for use of tasers. Stockwell Day says hey its all okay because it was only one death from a taser, while thousands die annually from drunk drivers.

All this sturm and drang is not because Robert Dziekanski died from police brutality and their use of a taser. Nope. It's because a video showing the police brutality was aired world wide.
A video the RCMP attempted to suppress.

It is now being reported that there was an airport worker present who spoke Polish who could have helped Mr. Dzienkanski it now turns out.

And after much haranguing in the house Day finally admits he has a report from the Canadian Border Service and then he post dates his comments to say he asked for it from day one. Oh yeah right.

Canada Border Services has so far declined to comment on what happened during the 6 ½ hours Mr. Dziekanski spent inside the airport's international baggage hall, an area that falls under CBSA jurisdiction.

Day noted that the RCMP probe into the case could result in criminal charges. He also highlighted the fact he ordered a review of Taser-use policy a few days after Dziekanski's death.

Asked Tuesday if he would apologize for the border agency's handling of Dziekanski's arrival, Day said he's sorry.

"I'm sorry it happened. I'm sure all Canadians are sorry it happened . . . This is a very serious incident that took place."

The Canada Border Services Agency has been silent as to how Dziekanski went apparently unnoticed for several hours in the baggage area of the airport.




No one cared, no one did anything until this video came out. A month after the fact.

And this is not the only case that it has taken a citizen video on the internet to force a police investigation. It is becoming more common.

A dashboard camera video posted on YouTube less than 24 hours ago showing a Utah Highway Patrol officer firing a Taser at a driver he stopped for speeding has prompted authorities there to expedite an internal investigation into the incident.

"We've known about the incident since it occurred," Cameron Roden, a spokesman for the Utah Highway Patrol, told ABC News. "But with it coming out on the Internet, we're trying to move the investigation along."



And the fact is that police use of tasers is justified by the cops themselves. They have little civilian or independent research done on the use of tasers prior to their use, it always after the fact. The taser company has sponsored the research saying they are safe. Other research has been conducted by pro police advocates again showing tasers are an alternative to lethal force.

The police wanted tasers as an alternative to lethal force, not as an alternative to pepper spray which they also carry, has decided in certain situations known only to themselves it will be the weapon of first choice. It is the logic of the cops; shoot first ask questions later.

A Regina psychiatrist believes that police should deal with aggression by talking, not by using a conducted energy device (CED) such as a Taser.

"Tasering is an easy option but it's not the only option," said Dr. Dhanapal Natarajan, a member of the board of directors of the Canadian Psychiatric Association (CPA).

"We deal with aggressive patients all the time in the psych unit, but we talk to them. Talking is more important than straight away resorting to shooting a Taser."



This is the problem the police determine the safety of the weapon and its use; when, where, and how.
Hospital patient in Prince George, BC subdued by police Taser

While the facts surrounding the death of a young Frederick man are still emerging, law enforcement officials insist that Tasers are safe and effective.

It wasn't lightning that struck Jarrel Gray, 20, early Sunday morning. It wasn't a bullet, a knife or a blow.

It was one shock, according to Sheriff Chuck Jenkins, at a low voltage for five seconds that dropped him to the ground. A few hours later, he was dead.

The sister of a New Brunswick man who died after police repeatedly shocked him with a Taser says the devices should be banned across Canada until their safety can be proven.

Karen Geldart of Moncton, N.B., said Wednesday the furor over the death of a Polish man who was stunned with a police Taser at Vancouver International Airport is vindicating concerns she has had since her brother Kevin Geldart died in 2005.

Geldart, 34, died in a Moncton, N.B., bar after a confrontation with four RCMP officers. He was shocked so often, including to his head, that witnesses said the smell of burning flesh made it hard to breathe.

"I don't want to sound macabre, but I'm satisfied there has been such a public outcry," Geldart said, referring to the national outpouring of concern over the videotaped death of Polish citizen, Robert Dziekanski, on Oct. 14.

"I feel somewhat vindicated. Kevin, I believe, died in vain because other deaths occurred after he died. Let's hope that's not the case with Mr. Dziekanski's death."

Geldart said there should be a single, comprehensive and national review of the use of Tasers by all police forces in Canada.

We've been told that tasers are a useful tool for law enforcement to subdue agitated people.

But in the last two days in Jacksonville, Florida tasering has resulted in two deaths.

In the latest case, a man got into a wreck in the Springfield area Tuesday afternoon. The driver then got out of his vehicle and began fighting with another man.



In Vancouver four burly police officers took down Mr.
Dziekanski, they applied a taser gun to his neck, they also apparently kneeled on him. Now the taser was not required from what we saw on the video because they already held him down. He was far less agitated than the student in Florida whose video we saw as he cried out don't taser me bro.

The police use a variety of dangerous disabling tactics, one is the carotid choke hold that has caused injury and deaths.

But the real issue is that it is the police that determine what weapons or physical restraint tactics they will use. There is no ethical oversight by a civilian authority, even the State does not oversee the police, it takes their word for whatever they do.

And that is the bigger issue here. Who polices the police.

This then is a step in the right direction.

- The man who will head a review of the RCMP's use of tasers following the death of a Polish visitor in the Vancouver airport says he is concerned they may be deployed too quickly and too often.

Paul Kennedy, chairman of the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, said yesterday that there have been instances "where I thought it was being used inappropriately at too early a level of intervention."

Through the review ordered this week by Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, Mr. Kennedy said he wants to get a sense of whether RCMP "policy and their model in terms of recourse to force is appropriate."

And he wants to find out whether officers "have thought about other devices. Have they been told that this is either a last resort or should be used at the higher end in terms of intervention?"

The inappropriate use of tasers is not a new concern for Mr. Kennedy. In his annual report tabled in June, he said one taser-firing incident led him to conclude that a review of the weapons was necessary.

Mr. Kennedy pointed to the case of an intoxicated woman - he didn't name her - who was tasered by an RCMP officer and taken to the police station.

"That was okay in the first instance," he said. But then "she is in the station and the device is used against her again. It's a woman handcuffed in a station when there were other officers there. I said that is inappropriate in my belief. The commissioner agreed with me."

The review, Mr. Kennedy said, will provide an opportunity to look at the full range of cases in which they have been used and determine whether the rules are clear and are being followed.


SEE:

He Was Polish

Policing Mental Illness


Cops and Tasers

Ban Tasers

Death by Taser

Take Tasers Away from Cops

The Market Fazers Taser

State Security Is A Secure State

Policing the Police

A Tale Of Two Whyte Avenues

Ban Handguns From Cops


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Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Young Americans For Freedom


From Gun Control.... 'non partisan' indeed, LOL. They are just another Republican/NRA lobby.

Guzman, an economics major at Texas State University-San Marcos, is among 8,000 students nationwide who have joined the nonpartisan Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, arguing that students and faculty already licensed to carry concealed weapons should be allowed to pack heat along with their textbooks.

"It's the basic right of self defense," said Guzman, a 23-year-old former Marine. "Here on campus, we don't have that right, that right of self defense."

Every state but Illinois and Wisconsin allows residents some form of concealed handgun carrying rights, with 36 states issuing permits to most everyone who meets licensing criteria. The precise standards vary from state to state, but most require an applicant to be at least 21 and to complete formal instruction on use of force.

These college students should be required to take a logic course or at least a situational sociology course . Because they obviously miss the stupidity of their argument. Lax American gun laws, and its wild west gun culture create the climate and ability for people to use guns at random. Wisconsin allows eight year olds to carry guns. Ipso facto we need more gun toting folks to be able to shoot it out with them. Yep that is the very definition of 'public safety' ...American style.

The fact that anyone anywhere anytime can get a gun is not the problem no sir, it's the fact that innocent law abiding citizens can't carry concealed weapons that's the problem. Yep love that circular logic.


Come to think of it that reminds me of the Broadway black comedy that became a movie from 1971 called Little Murders written by Julius Feiffer, Village Voice cartoonist and starring Eliot Gould. Yep that's the logical out come of this particular lobby group. And 1971 was the last time we heard from Young Americans For Freedom.

And as usual Americans will claim their right to shoot each other is protected under the Second Amendment. However that Amendment deals with an armed population; a citizens militia, as opposed to a standing army. Such guns would be a collective not individual responsibility. Such as having a militia in each town or city that has a collective weapons cache.

"A well-regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
Today America has both a standing Army and a militia; the National Guard.




SEE:

Public Suicide

Emotional Plague

Bush School Summit


The Solution To Columbine Syndrome

Stupid Gun Argument


The Spectre of Charles Whitman

Gun Nutz

Ban Handguns From Cops

Canada’s Billion Dollar P3 Boondoggle


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Tuesday, November 20, 2007

The West Wins TO Goes NFL

Well that was a spectacular set of CFL finals on the weekend. As I said to my partner it would be sweet to see the Blue Bombers beat the Argonuts. An all West Grey Cup in the city we all love to hate; Toronto.

After all Torontonians could care less about the CFL they want the NFL. Torontonians have no use for Canadian sports, they view themselves as home to American sports, like baseball and basketball. The CFL well that's just a prairie league. And the prairie league is coming to their home town to show them how the game is really played.

In the midst of a breakout season, Alex Rios was sidelined for several weeks with a serious infection in his leg.  (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)


The program
OTR (Official Toronto Report) on the Toronto Sports Network (TSN) , a program given to prestidigitation on when the perennial losers the Maple Leafs will win the Stanley Cup ,had Paul Godfrey and Pinball Williams on earlier this year once again talking trash about bringing in the NFL. The premise is if they do the CFL will collapse.

Paul Godfrey, the president and chief executive officer of the Toronto Blue Jays who has been pressing Toronto's NFL viability for 20 years, said that Larry Tanenbaum, chairman of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, and media mogul Ted Rogers have joined forces and will bid on bringing an NFL regular-season game to Toronto in 2008 and 2009.



What a pretentious proposition. The CFL is a Western League always has been. Its greatest support and fans are in the West and Hamilton. Toronto has always viewed the league as second best next to the NFL. Ottawa is gone, Montreal collapsed and came back. But in the West the teams are strong. And because of that they were able to bail out Hamilton and Montreal when they had tough financial times. Because unlike privately owned teams that go bankrupt, the majority of teams in the West are community owned.

If Toronto gets the NFL it's impact on the CFL will be minimal. The game will continue. It is a blue collar sport, where the players at the end of the season go back to their jobs, their farms, and work until next season. Unlike U.S. pro sports.

If Toronto got a NFL franchise then the CFL would still have Hamilton, could revive Ottawa, and look east to a team in the Maritimes. Lack of a team in Toronto would only hurt Toronto. And for the CFL no great loss except for Skydome, and that can be rented. And if Toronto gets the CFL the Skydome rent will be cheap because the plan is for Godfrey and pals to build a new stadium for its NFL team.

Toronto must prove mettle as host of the Grey Cup
Tue, November 20, 2007
By TERRY JONES, SUN MEDIA

Bubbling in the background of the 95th Grey Cup is the fight for the right to play host to the 100th anniversary edition.

Should the 2012 Grey Cup be in Toronto? Or out West?

With Toronto to be flooded by football fans from the West for a surprise Saskatchewan Roughriders-Winnipeg Blue Bombers Grey Cup, there will be no lack of fans here to support the concept of the 100th anniversary belonging where the Grey Cup has flourished since Toronto last fumbled the football here in 1992.

Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatchewan and Winnipeg each have held two successful celebrations of Canadiana in the interim with almost no Toronto fans showing up to participate.

But there's more to it than that. Looming in the background is the NFL and the Buffalo Bills. Toronto will have one pre-season game and one regular season game of the Buffalo Bills for each of the next five years.

It's possible the 100th anniversary Grey Cup game could be held here the same year Toronto becomes a full-schedule NFL city.

A Grey Cup on Sunday and the Toronto Bills hosting Monday Night Football the next night? Would that be a good thing or a bad thing?


Canadian Colts? NFL team considering move to Toronto

By Dave Forister, THG Sports

Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay was recently quoted as saying the Colts would consider a move to Toronto in 2007 if the team can’t come to an agreement with the city of Indianapolis on the building of a new stadium by that time.

The Colts, whose revenues are among the worst in the league, feel they need a larger, more modern stadium with luxury skyboxes to be able to compete financially with other teams in the NFL. If the city won’t build them a new stadium, then it is very likely they will move. “The RCA Dome is a very nice facility—by 1984 standards. It is depressing when we go on the road and see all these great new facilities and then have to come back here and play,” said Irsay in a Sunday afternoon interview.

Irsay told The Hoosier Gazette he would like to keep the team in Indianapolis because of the tremendous fan support the team receives, sometimes even selling out a game when a very good opponent comes to town, but in the end the decision will come down to finances. “It is all about the Benjamins,” said Irsay.

Toronto has a metropolitan area of over 5.5 million, five times that of Indianapolis, and is willing to build a new stadium if the NFL wanted to move a franchise into Canada’s largest city.

“We would welcome the NFL to Toronto with open arms,” said the city’s new mayor David Miller, “Except if the Cardinals wanted to move here of course. They suck.”

If the Colts can’t come to terms with Indianapolis and do decide to move, they would play in the Toronto Sky Dome until a new football-only stadium was built. The Sky Dome seats 53,506 for football and is currently the home of Major League Baseball’s Blue Jays and the Canadian Football League’s Argonauts.


SEE:

unintended consequences

Edmonton Eskimo Moon's NFL Hall of Fame

SKYDOME THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF SPORTS



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Harpers War Costs More Lives


Harpers War; the body count has increased to 65

And it's a land mine by any other name that killed them. And the reason was that they were traveling in a 'light armoured vehicle' an ATV by any other name.

And as per usual the Afghani killed remains unnamed. As if he was just a bystander in the war.

Nov 19, 2007 05:32 PM
THE CANADIAN PRESS

MONTREAL – The family of a Quebec soldier who died in battle in Afghanistan says he was committed to making a difference in this world.

Cpl. Nicolas Raymond Beauchamp, 28, of the 5th Field Ambulance of CFB Valcartier, was killed on Saturday when his light armoured vehicle struck a roadside bomb.

Pte. Michel Levesque, 25, of the Royal 22nd Regiment – also known as the Van Doos – was also killed in the blast, as was an Afghan interpreter.

SEE

Clarification

Harpers Body Count





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Monday, November 19, 2007

Chandler Wins Egmont Nomination



Well Craig Chandler sold enough memberships to his extreme right-whingnut pals to win the Calgary Egmont Conservative MLA nomination. You may remember Craig " Alberta; Love it or Leave It" Chandler from my previous posts. If not check them out.

There is a silver lining to his victory though. It opens Calgary Egmont to a possible Liberal victory. As Calgary Grit writes;

As a constituent in Calgary Egmont, I'm a little torn about this one. Having Craig Chandler as my MLA is a scary thought but, at the same time, it puts a riding that was never going to elect a Liberal MLA before into play. The Alberta Liberals have nominated former Catholic school board trustee Cathie Williams in the riding - quite the catch. Cathie is an accomplished woman who is smart, politically astute, passionate about policy, and not Craig Chandler. These four qualities of hers should make Calgary Egmont a riding to watch during the upcoming provincial election.
Or perhaps an NDP sneak up the middle.
Or maybe not.

And PB blogger Daveberta apparently live blogged Chandlers victorious nomination win.
live from the edmontonians for craig chandler party

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