He did this not just in any piece of legislation, but in the Electoral Franchise Act, an act that defined the federal polity of adult male property holders and that he called “my greatest achievement.”
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
John A. Macdonald wanted an ‘Aryan’ Canada
He did this not just in any piece of legislation, but in the Electoral Franchise Act, an act that defined the federal polity of adult male property holders and that he called “my greatest achievement.”
Robocalls Scandal: Complaints From Canadians Have Doubled
By mid August, Elections Canada had received 1,394 complaints "alleging specific occurrences" in 234 of Canada's 308 federal ridings, the lawyer for the elections watchdog says.
Syria Conflict: Russia Warns West Against Unilateral Action On Syria Following Obama Threat
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking after meeting China's top diplomat, said Moscow and Beijing were committed to "the need to strictly adhere to the norms of international law...and not to allow their violation".
Elections Canada commissioner declines to hand over robocalls investigation data to Federal Court
By Aug. 16, the agency had fielded 1,394 complaints alleging specific instances of misleading phone calls during the election from people in 234 different ridings, according to new data provided by the Commissioner of Canada Elections.
Wall Street crooks: A brief history of financial deregulation
I had the opportunity to participate in the beginning of Occupy Vancouver, Canada assemblies in October, 2011 before returning to Cuba. That experience, from the perspective of 40 years of citizen activism, gave me a feeling of intense excitement and hope for a better world, a feeling I had not felt for decades.
Critics blast Harper's proposed F-35 procurement plan
Winslow Wheeler, a former defence auditor in Washington, says anyone would be a “fool” to commit to the program before the multi-role jet fighter exits its testing and development phase in 2019.
Mr. Wheeler was among four witnesses to appear on Parliament Hill on Tuesday before a panel of New Democrat MPs, who interrupted their summer recess in an attempt to put last spring’s incendiary controversy back on the public radar.
Ottawa cuts to refugee health care almost costs man his vision
Garcia Rodriguez was almost certain to go blind, after Ottawa terminated the interim federal health coverage of the Colombian refugee and many others like him as of June 30.
Repeated pleas by Dr. David Wong, an eye surgeon at St. Michael’s Hospital, for an exemption for Garcia Rodriguez had fallen on deaf ears at Citizenship and Immigration Canada.
The Wrong Reasons to Back Pussy Riot
From Madonna to Bjork, from the elite New Yorker to the populist Daily Mail, the world united in supporting Russia’s irreverent feminist activists Pussy Riot against the blunt cruelty inflicted on them by the state. It may not have stopped Vladimir Putin’s kangaroo court from sentencing them to two years in prison on charges of hooliganism, but blanket international media pressure helped turn the case into a major embarrassment for the Kremlin.
Yet there is something about the West’s embrace of the young women’s cause that should make us deeply uneasy, as Pussy Riot’s philosophy, activism and even music quickly took second place to its usefulness in discrediting one of America’s geopolitical foes. Twenty years after the end of the Cold War, are dissident intellectuals once again in danger of becoming pawns in the West’s anti-Russian narrative?
Back in the ’70s, the United States and its allies cared little about what Soviet dissidents were actually saying, so long as it was aimed against the Kremlin. No wonder so many Americans who had never read Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s books cheered when he dissed the Soviet Union later felt so shocked, offended and even betrayed when he criticized many of the same shortcomings in his adoptive homeland. Wasn’t this guy supposed to be on our side?
Using dissidents to score political points against the Russian regime is as dangerous as adopting a pet tiger: No matter how domesticated they may seem, in the end they are free spirits, liable to maul the hand that feeds them.
How many fans of Pussy Riot’s zany “punk prayer” in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova’s erudite and moving closing statement were equally thrilled by her participation, naked and heavily pregnant, in a public orgy at a Moscow museum in 2008? That performance, by the radical art group Voina (Russian for “war”), was meant to illustrate how Russians were abused by their government. Voina had previously set fire to a police car and drew obscene images on a St. Petersburg drawbridge.
Stunts like that would get you arrested just about anywhere, not just in authoritarian Russia. But Pussy Riot and its comrades at Voina come as a full package: You can’t have the fun, pro-democracy, anti-Putin feminism without the incendiary anarchism, extreme sexual provocations, deliberate obscenity and hard-left politics.
Unless you are comfortable with all that (and I strongly suspect 99 percent of Pussy Riot’s fans in the mainstream media are not), then standing behind Pussy Riot only now, when it is obviously blameless and the government clearly guilty, is pure opportunism. And just like in the bad old days, such knee-jerk yet selective support for Russian dissidents — without fully engaging with their ideas — is not only hypocritical but also does a great disservice to their cause.
A former Soviet dissident and current member of the anti-Putin opposition, Eduard Limonov, knows such cynicism too well. Thrown out of the Soviet Union and welcomed in New York as a Cold War trophy, Limonov soon learned that it wasn’t the dissent part that the United States loved about Soviet dissidents, but their anti-communism. A bristly and provocative anti-Soviet leftist, he got to work doing what he did best — taking on the establishment — and quickly found himself in hot water again, this time with the Americans. Limonov concluded that “the F.B.I. is just as zealous in putting down American radicals as the K.G.B. is with its own radicals and dissidents.”
At the core of much of the media fever over Pussy Riot lies a fundamental misunderstanding of what these Russian dissidents are about. Some outlets have portrayed the case as a quest for freedom of expression and other ground rules of liberal democracy. Yet the very phrase “freedom of expression,” with its connotations of genteel protest as a civic way to blow off some steam while life goes on, is alien to Russian radical thought. The members of Pussy Riot are not liberals looking for self-expression. They are self-confessed descendants of the surrealists and the Russian futurists, determined to radically, even violently, change society.
Anyone who has bothered to see them beyond their relevance as anti-Kremlin proxies will know that these young people are as contemptuous of capitalism as they are of Putinism. They are targeting not just Russian authoritarianism, but, in Tolokonnikova’s words, the entire “corporate state system.” And that applies to the West as much as to Russia itself. It includes many of the fawning foreign media conglomerates covering the trial, like Murdoch’s News Corp., and even such darlings of the anti-Putin “liberal opposition” establishment as the businessman and anti-corruption campaigner Aleksei Navalny.
Pussy Riot’s fans in the West need to understand that their heroes’ dissent will not stop at Putin; neither will it stop if and when Russia becomes a “normal” liberal democracy. Because what Pussy Riot wants is something that is equally terrifying, provocative and threatening to the established order in both Russia and the West (and has been from time immemorial): freedom from patriarchy, capitalism, religion, conventional morality, inequality and the entire corporate state system. We should only support these brave women if we, too, are brave enough to go all the way.
Original Article
Source: ny times
Author: VADIM NIKITIN
Yet there is something about the West’s embrace of the young women’s cause that should make us deeply uneasy, as Pussy Riot’s philosophy, activism and even music quickly took second place to its usefulness in discrediting one of America’s geopolitical foes. Twenty years after the end of the Cold War, are dissident intellectuals once again in danger of becoming pawns in the West’s anti-Russian narrative?
Back in the ’70s, the United States and its allies cared little about what Soviet dissidents were actually saying, so long as it was aimed against the Kremlin. No wonder so many Americans who had never read Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s books cheered when he dissed the Soviet Union later felt so shocked, offended and even betrayed when he criticized many of the same shortcomings in his adoptive homeland. Wasn’t this guy supposed to be on our side?
Using dissidents to score political points against the Russian regime is as dangerous as adopting a pet tiger: No matter how domesticated they may seem, in the end they are free spirits, liable to maul the hand that feeds them.
How many fans of Pussy Riot’s zany “punk prayer” in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova’s erudite and moving closing statement were equally thrilled by her participation, naked and heavily pregnant, in a public orgy at a Moscow museum in 2008? That performance, by the radical art group Voina (Russian for “war”), was meant to illustrate how Russians were abused by their government. Voina had previously set fire to a police car and drew obscene images on a St. Petersburg drawbridge.
Stunts like that would get you arrested just about anywhere, not just in authoritarian Russia. But Pussy Riot and its comrades at Voina come as a full package: You can’t have the fun, pro-democracy, anti-Putin feminism without the incendiary anarchism, extreme sexual provocations, deliberate obscenity and hard-left politics.
Unless you are comfortable with all that (and I strongly suspect 99 percent of Pussy Riot’s fans in the mainstream media are not), then standing behind Pussy Riot only now, when it is obviously blameless and the government clearly guilty, is pure opportunism. And just like in the bad old days, such knee-jerk yet selective support for Russian dissidents — without fully engaging with their ideas — is not only hypocritical but also does a great disservice to their cause.
A former Soviet dissident and current member of the anti-Putin opposition, Eduard Limonov, knows such cynicism too well. Thrown out of the Soviet Union and welcomed in New York as a Cold War trophy, Limonov soon learned that it wasn’t the dissent part that the United States loved about Soviet dissidents, but their anti-communism. A bristly and provocative anti-Soviet leftist, he got to work doing what he did best — taking on the establishment — and quickly found himself in hot water again, this time with the Americans. Limonov concluded that “the F.B.I. is just as zealous in putting down American radicals as the K.G.B. is with its own radicals and dissidents.”
At the core of much of the media fever over Pussy Riot lies a fundamental misunderstanding of what these Russian dissidents are about. Some outlets have portrayed the case as a quest for freedom of expression and other ground rules of liberal democracy. Yet the very phrase “freedom of expression,” with its connotations of genteel protest as a civic way to blow off some steam while life goes on, is alien to Russian radical thought. The members of Pussy Riot are not liberals looking for self-expression. They are self-confessed descendants of the surrealists and the Russian futurists, determined to radically, even violently, change society.
Anyone who has bothered to see them beyond their relevance as anti-Kremlin proxies will know that these young people are as contemptuous of capitalism as they are of Putinism. They are targeting not just Russian authoritarianism, but, in Tolokonnikova’s words, the entire “corporate state system.” And that applies to the West as much as to Russia itself. It includes many of the fawning foreign media conglomerates covering the trial, like Murdoch’s News Corp., and even such darlings of the anti-Putin “liberal opposition” establishment as the businessman and anti-corruption campaigner Aleksei Navalny.
Pussy Riot’s fans in the West need to understand that their heroes’ dissent will not stop at Putin; neither will it stop if and when Russia becomes a “normal” liberal democracy. Because what Pussy Riot wants is something that is equally terrifying, provocative and threatening to the established order in both Russia and the West (and has been from time immemorial): freedom from patriarchy, capitalism, religion, conventional morality, inequality and the entire corporate state system. We should only support these brave women if we, too, are brave enough to go all the way.
Original Article
Source: ny times
Author: VADIM NIKITIN
Telling Harper What He Wants to Hear
On Aug. 8, Environment Minister Peter Kent announced that Canada is half way toward meeting its greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions targets for 2020, and congratulated his government for having “set the stage for the progress we’ve achieved this year.” Minister Kent drew his remarks from a new Environment Canada (EC) report titled, “Canada’s Emissions Trends 2012.” Unfortunately, key conclusions made in the report are without merit, and the progress Minister Kent heralds is largely illusory. It appears that the Harper government is either meddling in EC’s science reporting or that EC, pulverized by cutbacks, has resorted to telling Kent what he wants to hear. Perhaps it is both.
The report makes a number of spurious claims. It says, for instance, “Total emissions in 2020 are projected to decrease to 720 Mt.” But the emission level in 2010 was 692 Mt, so 720 Mt actually represents an increase in emissions.
The report makes a number of spurious claims. It says, for instance, “Total emissions in 2020 are projected to decrease to 720 Mt.” But the emission level in 2010 was 692 Mt, so 720 Mt actually represents an increase in emissions.
Ohio GOP Admits Early Voting Cutbacks Are Racially Motivated
Earlier this month I reported how Ohio Republicans were limiting early voting hours in Democratic counties, while expanding them on nights and weekends in Republican counties.
In response to the public outcry, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, who intervened in favor of limiting early voting hours in Democratic counties, issued a statewide directive mandating uniform early voting hours in all eighty-eight Ohio counties. Husted kept early voting hours from 8 am to 5 pm on weekdays from October 2 to 19 and broadened hours from 8 am to 7 pm from October 22 to November 2. But he refused to expand early voting hours beyond 7 pm during the week, on weekends or three days prior to the election (which is being challenged in court by the Obama campaign)—when it is most convenient for many working Ohioans to vote. Rather than expanding early voting hours across the state, Husted limited them for everybody. Voter suppression for all!
In response to the public outcry, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, who intervened in favor of limiting early voting hours in Democratic counties, issued a statewide directive mandating uniform early voting hours in all eighty-eight Ohio counties. Husted kept early voting hours from 8 am to 5 pm on weekdays from October 2 to 19 and broadened hours from 8 am to 7 pm from October 22 to November 2. But he refused to expand early voting hours beyond 7 pm during the week, on weekends or three days prior to the election (which is being challenged in court by the Obama campaign)—when it is most convenient for many working Ohioans to vote. Rather than expanding early voting hours across the state, Husted limited them for everybody. Voter suppression for all!
The Danger of Laughing at Todd Akin
“First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV in an interview Sunday. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
What's the Single Best Explanation for Middle-Class Decline?
I don't know! Or at least, I have no confidence that I understand exactly which issues had exactly what effect on the stagnation. The flat-lining of middle class wages is probably the most important long-term economic story in the United States, and its roots stretch deep into such far-flung themes as how technological changes hurt unions and how the subsidy for employer-provided insurance contributed to escalating health care costs.
The Problem With Men Explaining Things
He kept us waiting while the other guests drifted out into the summer night, and then sat us down at his authentically grainy wood table and said to me, "So? I hear you've written a couple of books."
I replied, "Several, actually."
Pussy Riot Sentence Prompts Soft Response From John Baird And Canada
Canada's usually outspoken foreign affairs minister stepped out of character Monday with a low-key response to last week's sentencing of Russian punk band Pussy Riot, which has sparked condemnation worldwide.
GOP Platform To Call For Constitutional Ban On Abortion: Report
The news comes amid ongoing controversy surrounding Rep. Todd Akin's (R-Mo.) suggestion that victims of "legitimate rape" rarely get pregnant. The GOP Senate candidate running against Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) has faced calls to abandon his campaign from both parties despite attempting to walk back his remarks.
Lakeland Mills sawmill warned multiple times before fatal blast
In several photos of the Prince George mill, obtained by The Vancouver Sun under a freedom of information request, the dust is so thick it is visible in the air as hazy, luminescent dots.
A five-year span of fire inspection reports, as well as the Nov. 29, 2011 photos, show Lakeland Mills was warned several times about combustible dust hazards before the April 23 explosion that killed two workers.
Private sector could run federal energy plants in Ottawa
Public Works and Government Services Canada has invited proposals from suppliers of public-private partnership advisory services for its “energy service acquisition project.”
Time to fight for universal Pharmacare
As a country, we provide universal access to medically necessary hospital care, diagnostic tests and physician services based solely on need. It’s a point of national pride. But Canadian “medicare” — as it is affectionately known — ends as soon as a patient is given a prescription to fill.
Anti-F-35 campaign about to resume
The attacks on the federal government’s national shipbuilding program
haven’t been as sustained as the endless denigration of the jet
purchase. Maybe that’s because most of the $35 billion Ottawa is
budgeting for navy and coast guard ships will be spent within Canadian
borders.
Merger of private-sector unions needed to combat Conservatives' attack on labour movement: CAW chief
"The attack on workers is heating up," Ken Lewenza told a CAW convention in referring to the proposed merger with the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada.
"Again collective bargaining is being strangled and unions are being targeted. The downward pressure on wages and other forms of compensation is staggering."
The politicization of Canada’s history
The latest offensive in the federal government’s campaign to promote the bicentennial of the War of 1812 comes in that diverting one-minute film appearing on big and small screens this summer.
The film offers a microcosm of the War of 1812: ranks of red-coated soldiers, marching in lockstep, shouldering muskets with fixed bayonets, firing on command. Feverish violins, and a mélange of breathless players: Laura Secord, Tecumseh, Sir Isaac Brock.
Over this the narrator intones darkly: “The United States invaded our territory. But we defended our land. We stood side-by-side, and we won the fight for Canada!”
The film offers a microcosm of the War of 1812: ranks of red-coated soldiers, marching in lockstep, shouldering muskets with fixed bayonets, firing on command. Feverish violins, and a mélange of breathless players: Laura Secord, Tecumseh, Sir Isaac Brock.
Over this the narrator intones darkly: “The United States invaded our territory. But we defended our land. We stood side-by-side, and we won the fight for Canada!”
Conservatives not standing up for their regions on EI: Toone
CARLETON-SUR MER — Conservative politicians in New Brunswick including Premier David Alward should be doing more to defend their region and fight the federal government’s planned changes to Canada’s employment insurance system, says NDP MP Philip Toone.
“He’s got a lot of explaining to do,” Toone said in an interview with iPolitics. “He’s not fighting this EI reform at all. Frankly, I don’t think people in New Brunswick are very happy about that.”
Toone says he has begun putting together a common front to fight the changes and is encouraging Conservative politicians to join it as well.
“He’s got a lot of explaining to do,” Toone said in an interview with iPolitics. “He’s not fighting this EI reform at all. Frankly, I don’t think people in New Brunswick are very happy about that.”
Toone says he has begun putting together a common front to fight the changes and is encouraging Conservative politicians to join it as well.
Moiling for gold: Harper spends second day in the North at area mine
And today Stephen Harper is off to see what a more modern day version of that work looks like.
On his first full day in the North, Harper was to tour Captstone's copper gold Minto mine, about 240 kilometres north of Whitehorse.
Northern resources could turn Canada into economic powerhouse: Stephen Harper
The untapped oil, natural gas and mining resources in the North could bring billions in revenues and investment, according to some estimates, and Harper went so far as to predict that cash could turn Canada into an economic powerhouse.
Environment department urges minister to avoid distractions and regulate polluters
Kent received the memo after a widely-circulated scientific commentary downplayed the global warming footprint of oilsands production.
Canada-EU free trade and the Quebec election: The view from ATTAC-Quebec
Church, State, and the Pussy Riot Trial
Harper v. The Judges
Lockheed Martin executive says F-35s will deter 'potential adversary countries' Russia, China
In a Sun News TV interview about opposition to the Conservative government’s decision to acquire a fleet of 65 F-35s for the Canadian Air Force, Lockheed Martin executive Steve O’Bryan defended the aircraft and, in response to a question from interviewer Lorne Gunther, explained why the U.S. and other members of an F-35 consortium feel the sophisticated and costly new warplane is required.
Quebec is committing slow-motion suicide
The province is committing slow-motion demographic suicide. Year after year it fails to bring in enough newcomers to replenish the diminishing ranks of the native-born.
The Parti Québécois Leader’s proposed law banning the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols, such as turbans, skullcaps or other head coverings, by provincial employees – while permitting a discreet crucifix on a necklace – will only make the problem worse.
Todd Akin Piers Morgan Interview Fail: Embattled Senate Candidate Bails On CNN Host
The six-term Missouri GOP congressman, a candidate for U.S. Senate, apparently bailed on a planned interview with CNN's Piers Morgan, leaving the host to berate him as a "gutless little twerp" Monday evening.
Akin's troubles began Sunday when he suggested during a television interview that women who are victims of "legitimate rape" are biologically unlikely to become pregnant -- attributing the dubious science to "doctors." Numerous Republicans have called on the congressman to withdraw from his challenge against Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill.
F-35 jet program funding unchanged despite promised review
Steve O’Bryan, Lockheed Martin’s vice-president for F-35 program integration, says the company is still planning its deliveries of 65 of the jets to the Royal Canadian Air Force.
Defence officials juggled numbers to rationalize F-35 costs, e-mails show
The revelation — which one analyst says is completely wrong — emerges as the NDP prepares to hold its own hearings into the government’s plans to purchase the controversial fighter jet.
Since the Harper government announced its intention to purchase 65 F-35s in July 2010, it and the Defence Department have maintained that the cost of sustaining the fleet would run in the same order of magnitude as Canada’s CF-18s.
Green Party of Canada convention: 'Cooperate to defeat Harper'
This year's convention saw discussion of 27 policy motions, six constitutional motions, eight directive motions and three emergency motions.
All of the policy, constitutional and directive motions were subjected to an online vote prior to the convention. Emergency motions were first presented at the convention itself and thus had not previously been voted on. All resolutions will be subjected to a final and conclusive vote by the membership after the convention.
In Canada, ‘non-ethnic’ is still the norm
I was wrong. Now the Bank of Canada is insisting that a female image on our $100 bill might once again be “too Asian” for Canadian society.
The United Church boycott is in keeping with its principles
In making its decision, the UCC has provided principled leadership on an issue of international importance – leadership sorely lacking from the Harper government and our other political leaders.
Cycling ban proposed on street with disused streetcar track following death of cyclist
Cycling advocates and local politicians have called for the city to examine the dangers that streetcar tracks pose to cyclists since the death of Joseph Mavec on Aug. 6. Although the city does not track crashes on streetcar tracks, advocates say a wrong turn onto the rails can send even the most seasoned rider flying.
"Nonprofits" Tied to Karl Rove, Koch Brothers Spend Millions on Elections and Call it Public Welfare
With the presidential election less than three months away, Republicans and Democrats are blanketing the airwaves with campaign ads. Much has been written about the super PACs behind these ads, but far less is known about social welfare nonprofits that are far outspending super PACs on TV advertising in the presidential race. As of August 8, these nonprofits had spent more than $71 million on ads mentioning a candidate for president, whereas super PACs have spent an estimated $56 million. And, unlike super PACs, these organizations enjoy tax-exempt status and do not have to disclose the identity of their donors. A new investigation by ProPublica reveals how these nonprofits are exploiting their special tax status to mount a secretly funded, permanent campaign. We speak to investigative reporter Kim Barker.Video
Source: Democracy Now!
Author: --
Stephen Harper: Canada’s future lies in its northern resource riches
Harper kicked off his annual tour of northern Canada here Monday with a bullish vision that sees the country’s prosperity fuelled by the untapped Arctic resources.
“Those who want to see the future of this country should look north,” the prime minister told a gathering of Conservative supporters.
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