Calgary Municipal Election: Freaks, Losers and Burnouts edition

You'd think if you're Richard Evans and you're running for office, with an election just weeks away, you'd have better things to do then cyber-squatting on domains for other people's screen names and re-directing them to NAMBLA's homepage. You'd be wrong.

The only thing more sad and pathetic then doing something so juvenile is having nobody but the terminally stupid and/or those with an axe to grind actually falling for it.

So aside from a professional internet troll, we also have Steve Chapman, a member of the Progressive Group for Independent Wingnuts Business, and partner in obsessive lunacy with Craig Chandler, the guy who thinks you shouldn't be allowed to live in Alberta unless you vote Conservative. He's running in my ward and this will be his third kick at the can. He came very close to winning last time, so if you live in Ward 8 and you'd rather not shamefacedly tell friends and family across the country 'yes that's the loonie who represents me.' vote early and often.

We've got some embarrassing incumbents too, like Ric McIver, who fanatically pursued supporting the troops with stickers on city vehicles, but voted against letting the ones serving in Afghanistan being able to vote in city elections.

So all in all, no crazier or more reactionary a mix than you'd find in city council elections anywhere in Canada.

Well, maybe a little.

UPDATE: I can't believe I almost forgot Ward 6 incumbent Craig Burrows, who thinks the real problem in Alberta is that workers have too many rights, specifically he'd ban their right to go on strike. This of course would create second class citizens out of Albertans covered by provincial labor laws - to be fair Alberta's labour laws already make Alberta's workers second class citizens - but wouldn't affect telecom workers, railway workers, federal civil servants, posties - anybody who falls under federal labour law. It's also pretty unambiguously a recipe for chaos and even violence.

See my first post on the election and Calgary Municipal Election: Support the troops edition.

Hit the Calgary label to see all my civic election posts.

Sunday Linkblast - September 30

• Shifting Targets: Sy Hersh on the Bush administration's propaganda campaign for war with Iran
  If what they are really concerned about is foreign sponsors of attacks on US troops in Iraq, why aren't they talking about Saudi Arabia?
  
  
• A Challenge
  In which I pick a fight with the Liberal blogosphere, and so far almost nobody shows up.
  
  
• Burma blog updates
  Keep up to date - as much as possible.
  
  
• Blade Runner 3.0
  Yet another cut. I'm fonder of the world weary Harrison Ford voice-over version than I probably should be, but yes I'll be getting this version too. How about a deluxe edition with all three main versions?
  
  
• So when do the wingnuts start calling him 'Taliban Karzai'?
  And yeah, isn't it kind of douchebaggish for Peter McKay to dictate terms to another nation's elected independent government?
  
  
• The rising loonie isn't just hurting manufacturing
  When can we expect government support for this vital sector?
  
  
• All about the oil
  The paper trail.

The hot new teen fad: Self Immolation

The first thoughts that go through my head when I hear the words 'flaming axe' are Jimi Hendrix at Monterey. This apparently, is just another sign of how old I am, because it now means turning a lighter and a can of Axe body spray into an improvised flame thrower and igniting yourself for the amusement of your friends and a YouTube audience.

Of course anything's better than actually using the stuff as a cologne. Ever been trapped in close proximity to a teenager who thinks Axe, and lots of it, is an effective substitute for soap? It'll make you want to rip your eyes out and plug your nose with them if your sinuses don't shut down automatically in self defense.

To be fair, I remember friends doing this trick with oven cleaner or hair spray when I was a kid but primarily as an improvised weapon in the occasional battles between punks, headbangers and skinheads on the suburban streets of Vancouver in the 80's. These were not Einsteins- some of them were huffing the leftovers - but even they would have thought doing it to yourself for kicks would be moronic.

Is this just another example of evolution in action?

A promise that was never going to be kept

I said a year and a half ago in the halcyon days of April '06 that the Harper promise to create 125,000 new childcare spaces was a knowing lie. Conservative commentors were shocked, shocked at my cynicism.

Now here we are. The government admits that the promise won't be kept and the experts in the field shrug and say, yeah, their 'private investment' plan was never going to produce the spaces they said it would - it failed in the Harris government in Ontario and it was always going to fail federally.

They knew this. They can't claim it's come as a surprise.

So all over Canada, thousands of childcare spaces that would have existed under the Martin Liberal plan - flawed, insufficient, a desperate last minute plan to avoid well earned electoral annihilation, but at least a plan - do not exist. Parents that could have used those spaces as part of the task of increasing their household's economic stability, maybe even clawing their way above the poverty mark, are getting a piddling $25 a week and getting taxed even on that.

And the Conservatives who made a promise they knew wouldn't be kept shrug their shoulders and say 'whaddaya gonna do?'

Let's play a game

Just to continue on in the same theme of my previous post, let's see if anybody out there can provide an example of progressive social or economic policy -Deeds not words - by a federal Liberal government that wasn't forced on them by the courts or a minority government position - in say, the last 25 years. You know what? Forget the time-line, if you've got something that's thirty or forty or fifty years old, lets hear it. That will tell us something too.

Anyone?

Anyone at all?

Here comes the sellout

I hate to say I told you so..... actually that's a damned lie, I quite enjoy saying I told you so. So, on the subject of the Liberal Party's impending sellout of Canadians on the Conservative throne speech vote, I told you so.

Dion's so called tough conditions are the political equivalent of a beaten dog rolling over and exposing his vitals. Watch Dion leap on any marginal, purely notational Conservative compromises that pretend to cater to his 'demands' in any way shape or form.

We're staying in Afghanistan, we're abandoning Kyoto, there will be some minimal and almost completely theoretical nod to poverty - nothing more than we'd get from a Liberal majority government, so nothing much.

And Stephen Harper and the Conservatives will be staying in power with the active connivance and support of the other right wing party in Canada's parliament.

Voter Suppression

You could say that Voter ID laws are a solution in search of a problem given the paucity of evidence that any kind of wide-spread in person voting fraud exists, but of course they are a solution to a problem identified by the proponents of these laws:

Too many poor people are voting.

Underneath all the pious bleating about 'protecting the process' and 'fighting fraud' the underlying concern is nakedly partisan and tactical. The more people who vote - particularly among the lower socioeconomic spectrum, the more people who vote for leftists.

This was what was the most offensive about Harper's attacks on Mayrand, demanding that he do the Conservative's partisan dirty work for them. The changes that were demanded of Mayrand would have opened the door for a requirement for photo-id at the voting booth without it ever having to be debated by our elected representatives, and photo-id requirements are about weeding out the kind of people who don't have photo-id from voting at all.

And the kind of people who don't have photo-id aren't the kind of people voting Conservative.

In the US these kind of laws are of a piece with the mysterious and official looking signs that appear on telephone poles and walls in poorer neighborhoods just before election day warning that if you have traffic tickets you'll be arrested at the polling station, or that election day has been rescheduled and your new polling station is somewhere else altogether.

It's the more subtle end of the spectrum from armed racists demanding proof of citizenship from Latinos who show up to vote or the 'literacy tests' that used to be required in the South - that always seemed to have more stringent requirements the darker a prospective voters skin was.

The issue of requiring photo ids to vote in the US is now going to the Supreme Court, a Supreme Court carefully stacked with right wing Republicans, but one that has shown a certain independence from partisanship on at least some issues. It will be interesting to see how they rule.

Here in Canada progressives should start thinking about government ID drives similar to the registration drives the American system requires to get the vote out, but which have been hitherto unnecessary here. There are concerted efforts afoot to drive down the number of voters with specific partisan goals. This is a fight that needs to be won, but back-up plans predicated on losing it should be in place as well.

When even Bush gets it...

...how hard to understand can it be?

Although many conservatives condemned the university's decision to invite Mr Ahmadinejad, Columbia's right to do so was defended by the country's most senior Republican.

"I'm not so sure I'd offer the same invitation, but nevertheless, it speaks volumes about the greatness, really, of America," said George Bush. "We're confident enough to let a person express his views. I just really hope he tells everybody the truth.

"He's the head of a state sponsor of terror, and yet, an institution in our country gives him the chance to express his point of view, which really speaks to the freedoms of the country," the American president told Fox Television.

How will the 30%ers respond to Chimpy repeating what the hated liberals have been saying for the past week about letting Ahmadinejad have his say being part of what freedom of expression is all about?

Their heads might just explode from the sheer cognitive dissonance.

Drunken Lullabies

Flogging Molly

Sunday Linkblast - Sept 23

• Readers are encouraged not to draw any obvious and natural conclusions
  Big media responds to criticism.
  
  
• Orange Quebec?
  The MSM shrilly insists that Outremont means nothing. Is it wishful thinking?
  
  
• The transhuman future
  The top ten transformative technologies.
  
  
• Objects in the magnetosphere
  Fascinating video of bubbling solar process.
  
  
• Political gossip columns
  Krugman on the sad state of political reporting.
  
  
• Decadence and decline
  The shallow perversity of the last days of the Bush Empire.
  
  
• It's almost enough to make you miss Tricky Dick
  Almost.
  
  
• American Telcos: 'How much we participated in illegal tapping of American citizens is nobody's business.'
  How much of the same kind of behavior have Canadian telcos like Telus and Bell participated in?

So how will they justify it?

The Liberals I mean, and voting for the government throne speech next month.

They're going to, we all know it. The NDP won't, the Bloc can't so aside from the purely partisan selfish needs of protecting the Liberal Party from an election they're terrified of, how will Dion and the Liberals justify supporting Stephen Harper and his Neo-con agenda?

Updates: 'Nuh-uh!'
and: 'It's not you, it's me.'

On the Radio

Regina Spektor live at Lollapalooza

Calgary Municipal Election: Support the Troops edition

What is supporting the troops?

Is agitating for stickers supporting the troops?

Is taking the vote away from the troops supporting them?

As Calgary's excellent independent weekly FFWD reports, Ward 12 Ald. Ric McIver has been agitating since July for 'support the troops' stickers to be added to all city vehicles. The motion has been repeatedly voted down.

And rightly so; I have never once met anyone who doesn't support the troops - including among those most vehemently opposed to the Afghanistan mission. The 'support the troops' meme, one of the more toxic imported by Canada's right wing from America's right wing, is actually a rhetorical stick to bash those who oppose the mission.

Many - in fact the majority of Canadians at this time - believe supporting the troops means opposing the mission and believe, accurately I think, that the real message of 'support the troops' is 'support the mission' or by opposing it you are opposing the troops. The motion has been voted down every time it's been brought to council.

The same Ald. Ric McIver voted to ban mail-in ballots for city elections after a scandal involving fraudulent ballots during the last election. Ironically the scandal showed that the system worked, because the perpetrators were caught. But in a panicky rush to judgement the Calgary city council banned all mail-in ballots.

Which means the the same member of city council agitating for a shiny sticker to support the troops voted to take the vote away from Calgarians serving our country in Afghanistan.

But it's okay, because he supports shiny stickers even if he doesn't support the troops.

See my first post on the election.

Hit the Calgary label to see all my civic election posts.

Post-Net Neutrality

Confused by the whole net neutrality debate? Here's the explanation in one graphic nutshell:

Spotted at Boing Boing

To Parity and beyond!

The Canadian and US dollar reached parity today for the first time since 1976. Some analysts predict it will soon outstrip the American currency.

"Fundamentally this country is head and shoulders above the United States on an economic basis."

So a mix of our economy rising and theirs staggering, really high commodity prices for our wheat and oil - and of course the fact that we aren't vomiting blood and treasure into a Mesopotamian quagmire makes a big difference. That and the housing bubble hasn't popped as bad on us as it did for them and we never had as big a sub-prime debacle.

I would argue that a big contributing factor is that with our mixed market approach we haven't fallen into the market fundamentalist trap that has beggared their infrastructure and destabilized their society with huge wealth imbalances. That and the old right wing dependence on massive deficit spending to paper over the deliberate wealth distribution upwards. They're one Chinese foreclosure away from complete paralysis.

We're headed in the wrong direction on all of these issues but the Americans are much further along on the road to ruin.

Alberta Oil Royalties Review: Albertans deserve another two billion a year

I'll admit to being surprised. I wondered what the frantic squealing I could hear through my window over downtown Calgary was this afternoon, turns out it was dozens of explosive prolapses in oil company boardrooms across the city.

A panel reviewing the fairness of Alberta's royalty take from oil and gas development said today Albertans are not collecting a fair share and recommended a massive jump in royalties paid by oilsands projects.

The six-member panel headed by Bill Hunter recommended that the government's overall take from oilsands projects be raised to 64%, from 49% today. The panel recommends leaving the 1% pre-payout royalty unchanged, but that the post-pay out royalty be increased to 33%, from 25%.

"Albertans do not receive their fair share from energy development and they have not, in fact, been receiving their fair share for quite some time," Mr. Hunter said in a letter to Alberta Finance Minister Lyle Oberg. "Royalty rates and formulas have not kept pace with changes in the resource base, world energy markets and conditions in other energy rich jurisdictions.
....

Premier Ed Stelmach, who launched the review last February, a promise he made in his leadership campaign to replace Ralph Klein, said he will respond to the report by mid-October.

"Albertans made it clear that examining the province's royalty regime was a priority to ensure they are receiving their fair share from energy resource development," he said.

The energy sector, the province's economic engine, is likely to be shocked at the recommendations after pleading for maintaining the status quo. Its view is based on escalating costs in the oilsands that generally make projects uneconomic when oil prices fall below US$50 a barrel. It had also argued for the status quo for conventional production, which in Alberta is mostly natural gas, because high costs and low commodity prices made the business increasingly challenging.

"The energy industry generally took the view that little in royalty and fiscal regime needs attention, while the municipalities, non-industry interest groups and the public were nearly unanimous in taking a different view," the report said.

Now Premier 'Special Ed' Stelmach will spend the next month frantically trying to figure out how to ignore the recommendations of his own review. Refusing to implement the housing review recommendations only cost the PCs Ralph Klein's old riding, how much will punting this report cost them?

'Oh shit. What do I do now?'

UPDATE: Those explosive prolapses I mentioned? Guys? Screw your outrage.

Holocaust drama on Iranian state TV

So the most popular show on Iranian TV right now is called 'Zero Degree Turn' a drama about the Holocaust. It shows Jews being dragged off to the concentration camps by the Nazis and the hero is a Palestinian Iranian who sneaks Jewish refugees out of Europe. In order to appear on state TV the program had to be approved by Iranian religious authorities.

The show, the most expensive production in Iranian history, has drawn an avid audience of Iranians riveted by the plight of its characters.

"Once, I wept when I learned through the film what a dreadful destiny the small nation had during the World War, in the heart of so-called civilized Europe," said Mahboubeh Rahamati, a Teheran bank teller.

Iran has the largest Jewish population in the Middle East outside of Israel. The program was made with their active cooperation.

Since the story of this TV show appeared in AP and Wall Street Journal articles the right wing blogosphere has jumped on an untranslated story in the German magazine Spiegel claiming the program is actually anti-Semitic or at least anti-Zionist and actually blames the Holocaust on Zionists who wanted to force European Jews to re-settle in Palestine. The International Herald Tribune reports that although some Iranian hardliners have certainly put this interpretation on the show it does not seem to have appeared overtly in its story-lines as of yet.

So far at least the biggest objection of the 'bomb Iran' crowd may be that the show doesn't fit the narrative of genocidal Nazi Iran.

New York Times unblocks

As predicted by several commentators the New York Times will stop charging for access to the Times Select portions of their website effective at midnight tomorrow.

For me and many thoughtful progressives - the most important part of this news is that the columns of Paul Krugman will now be available for free. I've already added him to my blogroll in anticipation.

Yet another nail in the coffin of traditional cash flow models for the Internet.

UPDATE: To all my new visitors from Australia, (Crikey, but there's a lot of you.) thanks for dropping by and feel free to check out the rest of the blog.

That desperate keening sound...

...is Jason Cherniak whistling past the graveyard.

Say hello to the new federalist progressive alternative in Quebec:

Iraq government expels Blackwater

After an incident where Blackwater operatives sprayed a Baghdad street with automatic fire killing eleven people, including one policeman, and wounding 13, the Iraq government has revoked the secretive private mercenary army's license to operate in the country and ordered them to leave. The shooters may even face charges, although some commentators claim they have complete immunity.

There was some doubt whether the order was still in effect, or that the Iraq government would even be allowed to expel Blackwater, after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to personally apologize for the incident.

Blackwater currently run all security for western officials and most visitors to the country. They are widely despised by Iraqis as arrogant and violent mercenaries. They've also been used domestically, notably in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Their tactics have led to controversy before as in this video.

``They're famous for being very aggressive. They use their machine guns like car horns. But it's not the goal to kill people.''said Robert Young Pelton, an independent military analyst and author of the book ``Licensed to Kill.''