The Proletariat Congress

Despite that in recent months, the Conservatives have mounted an election-style smear campaign against Stephane Dion and the Liberals, alleging that the Liberals would blow the federal surplus (wait, wasn’t that surplus a result of former Prime Minister Paul Martin’s tenure as Minister of Finance? Not that it matters but it seems that there would be no surplus to speak of without Martin…), soften the sentences for repeat offenders, take away the child tax credit (a whole $1200/annum, which doesn’t even pay for a month of child care in a major city)… and basically polluted the air waves with their diatribes about how Dion is unfit to be PM… the same Conservative Party is now sueing the Liberals for $2.5 million…

So, what exactly is Harper having a tantrum over? Oh right, the Cadman affair, in which the Conservatives supposedly funded life insurance for the former MP. The condition was based upon his return to parliament in 2005 to help topple Martin’s minority Liberal government. And this would be easy to clear up if Cadman (Chuck Cadman) hadn’t been diagnosed with terminal cancer and hence had his time on earth cut short.

Here’s the kicker, it seems that in the end, Cadman didn’t follow throw and instead voted with the Liberals. This makes the situation sticky, but either way, unlike the allegations being used against the Liberal party, this one actually has water and could hold up in court. That’s if the judge doesn’t decide that this lawsuit is frivolous and throws it out, leaving no recourse other than a parliamentary investigation (just what we need, another snore-a-thon a-la Mulroney-Schrieber affair and the endless pointless questions…).

As for evidence indicting the Conservative Party and Harper, there is a tape (isn’t that convenient?) in which party officials are heard making the offer to Cadman. Nevertheless, Harper and his cronies are alleging that it was doctored, according to court documents. That doesn’t change the fact that there is still a tape implicating them as key players in this scandal.

The alleged tape, used by Vancouver author Tom Zytaruk who penned the newest Cadman biography is also said to be incomplete, though the author, unconnected to the parties involved says otherwise.

Now then, to complicate matters further, the Liberals had gone as far as to publish this issue on their website, giving it a spot on their site’s headline.  And this is precisely why the Tories are taking them to court, because the material was published on the Liberal’s website.  Never mind that the Tories were using other mediums to get out their hate messages.

Pot, meet kettle…

Harper files lawsuit against Liberal over website claim

Today I was asked by my father who is out of town to go check on his plants and water them, as well as pick up any mail that would be on the floor. Two of the pieces of mail on the floor caught my eye. Both were propaganda leaflets from the Conservative Party, attempting to brainwash the voting public into buying their line.

The first one challenged voters to pick whether or not they wanted to keep the ‘Child Tax Benefit‘. The two options were yes, represented by Harper and no, represented by Dion, who had voted against it in the first place. What this little piece of paper fails to inform you of is that this Child Tax “Benefit” that Harper is pimping out really doesn’t cover the true cost of child care and that in created this “benefit”, he scraped the federal childcare programme, which despite its flaws helped more people than this paltry hand out would. Mere peanuts and we’re expected to jump for joy because the government is pretending it understands what it means to make ends meet every week and the burden of sacrifice in order to put hot food on the table.

The child tax benefit is a mere $1200 per annum, which barely covers one month of child care in any Canadian city. It does nothing for those who need it, and those who can afford it, it’s just peanuts for those citizens anyway. It is nothing more than an insult to the tax paying public.

The second leaflet was more general, targeting Dion’s poverty elimination programme, which would involve spending and raising taxes. Again, the public was presented with options, either accept the tax and/or debt or neither if they go with Harper. The thing is however, that in order to reduce poverty, there needs to be money spent. Money needs to be raised to reduce the total deficit that may be acquired during this campaign to raise Canadians above the national poverty line.

The federal government is touting a 10 billion, yes, that’s BILLION, dollar surplus in this year’s budget; 10 billion going towards the federal debt, with Flaherty saying that the government needs to spend less. And the public… we get just peanuts. Of course, what the government isn’t telling the people is that it inherited this carefully managed surplus from the Liberals; that this budget is a product of the Chretien era, when Paul Martin was Minister of Finance.

The budget, being touted as prudent does nothing to aid the crumbling infrastructure of Canadian cities nor to alleviates the crippling poverty that has some Canadians struggling to survive. Nothing for child care.

The two flyers in question do nothing to shake my immense hatred of the Harper administration and its pandering to the Bush administration and it’s failing war on terror, as well as other failed policies. It merely reaffirms what I have always believed.

And “Hon” (nothing honourable though) Peter van Loan, MP (c/o CRG Government Caucus Services, 131 Queen Street Suite 8-02, House of Commons, Ottawa ON, K1A 0A6)… it’s obvious you are in line with the party on the environment because your little flyers are nothing more than a waste of paper and yet more garbage to add to our ever growing landfills. Of course, there are some environmentally minded Canadians out there who will merely toss this tripe into their black boxes or use it to line their bird cages…

The spineless, cowardly Canadian Conservatives have blindly caved into American pressure once again. The ever weak-kneed Tories have decided roll over on Bush’s command and remove the US and Israel from its torture watch list because the two allege that they would never be involved in such inhumane activities nor should they be associated with rogue states like Iran and Syria. Those states engaged in torture. The US simply engages tactics to up the extraction of information using provisory amenity readjustment; it’s not really torture if the Americans do it…

Nor is it torture when the Israelis kill bystanders in their fight against Hamas or when they leave eight hundred thousand or so people in the Gaza strip without power. It’s not torture when they do it because they’re “protecting” Israelis from those poor Palestinians civilians… err, I mean, evil Islamic terrorists who just want to live in their homeland. Never mind that this affects everything including hospitals, medical clinics, water works, houses et cetera. Of course, that doesn’t matter to Israelis because the Palestinians aren’t “God’s Chosen”.

Gaza City plunged into darkness

Rather than worrying about the people who are suffering, I mean, “enjoying” their provisory amenity readjustment, the resolutely obtuse Harper administration has elected to willfully ignore the plight of those in these two nations in favour of international relations. Never mind that Canadians would rather keep rogue nations on the torture watch list, even if they are our “allies”. Of course, if they were truly worried about international relations, they would be in contact with our NATO allies who have qualms about engaging in such inhumane activities, with a flagrant disregard for human rights.

Like the good Harper ass-sucking Tory he is, Maxime Bernier, the Foreign Affairs Minister has come out (sorry, it’s not a closet; Harper won’;t give up the key for it), assuring America and Israel that it was simply an error and that it was never meant to be. He attempted to make it crystal clear that they, the Tories would never see to displease their extraterritorial overlords ever again. This pleased Israel’s Ambassador to Canada, Alan Baker, who had been most displeased upon seeing the document naming Israel along with the rogue state of Iran. He was most insulted but was placated upon receiving reassurances from Bernier that it would never happen again.

The US Ambassador to Canada, David Wilkins has uttered his displeasure with the government by terming it “offensive” that his country was considered on par with such insolent nations like China, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Afghanistan and Syria. He had a wee tantrum has he told a well-controlled press conference about the gross error in judgement made by the puppet government in Ottawa, saying it was, “Quite frankly it’s absurd. For us to be on a list like that is just ridiculous.”

How can it be ‘ridiculous’ when the two nations are known to engage in such activities that are contrary to the well being of others in the world? How is it not torture? Is it only torture when your enemy does it? Or because you’ve made the claim that you’re not actually torturing people because you’re simply trying to protect the world from terrorists? Sorry, playtime’s over children, let the adults take over and you can go sit in the corner and think about the crimes you’ve committed as you wear that lovely orange state-issued jump suit that you’ve given to the detainees at Gitmo.

Canada to rewrite Manual US criticized

Israeli envoy slams torture claim

Ottawa reverses torture stance

Canadian FM regrets ‘torture list‘

The year is 1986, we’re near the the city of Tchernobyl, Ukraine, in one of the satellite states of the USSR. Today also happens to be April 25. All is calm, yet many live near a nuclear power plant, which supplies many with clean-burning electrical power, which is supposed to be more environmentally friendly than coal-fire plants. Each of the four reactors can create 1000 Gigwatts of power. On the same day, April 25, just before the evening shift came in, an order to meet peak evening demand came in, leaving the evening shift take handle it. Yet at 1:23:40, it took only seconds and limited knowledge of the state of the state one of the reactors to lead to one of the greatest nuclear disasters in history, rivalled only by Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Other places with problems in the same time period were Sellafield, Ireland and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.Fast forward to the year 2008, a good 22 years after Tchernobyl, to Ottawa, where a minority government is getting a might to big for its britches. A childish regime that doesn’t like to play nice with others in the playground and will take the ball home when the others don’t let him play by his rules. This kind mentality pervades the political front in Ottawa, and the casualty today is the former Canadian Nuclear Safety president, Linda Keen, whose only mistake was doing her job. She was fired by the minority government for refusing to start up a reactor that produced medical isotopes, being more than 50% of the world supply.

There had been rumours about a shortage of these isotopes, though it’s easily attributed to media sensationalism; anything to make a catchy headline and an engaging byline. There was no impending crisis despite the media’s twist on the story. It was easy to see that this was for safety and if there really was a shortage, the safety watch dog would have done something to alleviate public concerns while the safety upgrades go under way.

The Nuclear Safety Commission is a quasi-judicial arms-length body in charge of overseeing nuclear safety in Canada. As the police are there to enforce the law of the jungle in our streets, the Safety Commission is there to ensure that we don’t get exposed to the ill-effects caused by a nuclear meltdown. They are an inpendant commission who carry out safety inspections and ensure compliance.

The reactor had been shut down during a routine inspection that found the facilities weren’t in compliance with an earlier safety report to have the reactor at Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.’s shut down because it hadn’t added the cool pumps, which would help in avoiding meltdowns during seismic activity. The reactor had been shut down in November of 2007, and would have been reopened once the upgrades had been done, and at the time of the firing, one of the two necessary upgrades had been completed, with another one due shortly after it.

On December 11th, the AECL had met with a House committee to give an update on it, and had given an estimate of 16 days or so to complete the upgrade. Neither the minority government nor the opposition governments were listening to this. Against the Nuclear Safety Commission and Linda Keen’s orders, they passed legislation, permitting the reactor to be brought back online despite that the existing safety concerns surrounding the Chalk River facilities, and the fact that there is known low but still detectable seismic activity in that region.

This put her at odds with Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn, one of the many spineless “Yes” men in the Harper administration, who love nothing more than making senior bureaucrats operate under the party banner. It should be noted that Harper has referred to Keen has that “Liberal appointee”, effectively bringing petty partisan politics into a ring where nuclear safety is tantamount to the industry where a single fault in a reactor is the difference between life and death, as history has shown us with Tchernobyl.

16 hours before Keen was expected to testify before a House committee about the reason behind keeping the reactor down, she was fired from her position, and all because she was doing her job and not bending over backwards to cater to a childish regime that doesn’t have the guts to speak to the media directly and prefers to act like a cowardly little bully, retreating when the big boys start to call the shots.

A clearly partisan move. An attempt to silence her and keep the media in the dark about the truth. Of course, this takes into account that the voting public lives under a rock with its fingers shoved in its ears. It’s too bad the Conservatives think this; they’d know otherwise, except they’ve lost their collective head, which is shoved 20,000 leagues up the ass they so willingly kiss.

PM defends firing of nuclear watchdog

Ousted regulator just doing her job

Concerns over nuclear safety