Alberta sinks even further to the right

Just when you thought Alberta politics may be returning to common sense after their home team (Stephen Harper and the Conservatives) won the last federal election, University of Calgary professor/right wing nutbar Ted Morton gathers the support fo enough angry white men still traumatized by the National Energy Program and Same Sex Marriages to get within striking distance of the Premier's office.

Morton's strength has caught a few observers off guard, including this page's Alberta correspondent, Don from Revolutionary Moderation. Many had predicted a much better result for Jim Dinning, whose organization and endorsements easily outstripped the other front-runners. While Don believes a Morton victory might be a long-term boost to the remnants of a left wing in Alberta, this page believes that Premier Morton will cement our eastern neighbours as the Alabama of the North and threaten national unity more than having to stay after school and write out "Quebec is a Nation" 500 hundred times. Any and all true progressives in Alberta are invited to contact this page about relocation opportunities to the more comfortable political climate of British Columbia.

This page had the opportunity to study in the Political Science department at the University of Calgary, so I know the effect that Morton had on people like Ezra Levant, Jason Kenney, and the Prime Minister. Imagine that effect on an Alberta Tory machine that permeates every aspect of public life. Morton can seal the deal this weekend if he continues to play to the contrarian ignorance of rural Albertans, blames the province's pseudo-problems on "the east", and keeps up the arrogant tough-guy posturing. If this page wasn't glad I left the Redneck Republic of Alberta years ago, I certainly am now.

A prayer for the Mayor

Dear God, please let Sam Sullivan walk again so we can all feel less guilty when someone eventually beats the sh*t out of him. Vancouver gets hit by a winter storm which is most acutely felt by the city's homeless population. A few hundred extra beds may be available, but Vancouver's homeless number in the thousands. What's the response from Mayor Sullivan and his NPA henchmen? Increase the number of emergency shelters? Appeal to Victoria or Ottawa for assistance? No, declare war on the homeless.

How sick is 'Project Civil City'? Sullivan wants Federal Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day on the "Civil City Leadership Council". For those of you scoring at home, that's the same Stockwell Day who as an Alberta Cabinet Minister, thought that "honourable" prisoners should go ahead and "take care" of sex offenders among Alberta's prison population. By this reasoning, City Hall could rake in oodles of revenue from selling Bumfights videos as the "good" homeless lay the smackdown on the "bad" homeless.

'Project Civil City' is nothing more than a shameless rewarming of Lorne Mayencourt's Safe Streets Act, right down to the definition of 'aggressive' panhandling to try and avoid The Charter of Rights and Supreme Court of Canada rulings which legalized panhandling. All of the fascist intimidation and police crackdown tactics prescribed by Sullivan are intended to 'clean up the streets' before the 2010 Olympics. It's funny, but Jim Green also had a plan to clean up the streets too, but it involved harm reduction for addicts and social housing, not a blitzkreig of the Downtown Eastside. Green leveraged his support of the Olympics to get something for the people most in need, but Sullivan, the NPA, and their good friend JAMES Green stole the 2005 election to ensure that City Hall wouldn't have to deliver.

Until an affordable home is a right that the state can and will deliver, the state has no right to attack those who can't afford a home.

Je me souviens quoi je veux souvenir

Stephen Harper recognizes Quebec as a Nation within Canada. Regular readers may the find the following words shocking and deeply disturbing, but this page agrees with the Prime Minister on this one. The social, cultural, and political evolution of Quebec differs radically from the rest of Canada, and all most Quebeckers want is for someone outside of Quebec to finally smile and nod their head to that fact.

As far as the political impact is concerned, the pundits and talking heads are tripping over themselves to declare Harper's declaration as a strategic masterpiece. In reality, the resolution does little more than shoplift the box of fireworks for the Liberals' upcoming convention. When the writ is dropped again sometime in the next few months, the Conservatives will also have to recognize that most Quebeckers support the Kyoto Protocols, consider the national childcare 'program' a joke, and villify the Charest government for their misadventures in private health care. Quebec may be a nation to the Conservatives, but it may not necessarily be a friendly one.

BCNDP should tune in to APC

This page is baffled that after the cancellation of the Fall session of the legislautre, when there are ample opportunities to connect with communities and build her party, BC New Democrat Leader Carole James would take off on a business-sponsored junket in Taiwan? The NDP has been holding community conferences around the province, but there's a huge difference between a talking shop for true believers and getting in the Liberals' face, even if it is outside the legislature and on the streets.

This activity shows how wrong James' 'congenial' approach can be, especially when it comes to addressing issues like health care and affordable housing. If we had centre-left politicians that were actually doing the job in holding our fascist overlords accountable, would we be witness to scenes like the dustup at Library Square between Vancouver budget planners and the Anti-Poverty Committee? The anger and resentment at all levels of government is getting worse, and if Opposition politicians aren't tuned into it and channelling the frustration into positive change, will Radical Islamic terrorism really be the major security issue at the 2010 Winter Olympics?

Hopefully James has a sizeable antenna, because the excitement of the streets of Taipei is a long way from the growing unrest on the streets of Vancouver.

The Hypocrisy of Respect

The House of Commons has unanimously approved an NDP motion to grant a state funeral to the last surviving First World War veteran. This page considers it an appropriate measure to commemorate a defining moment in Canadian history and hopefully, Percy Wilson (Age 105), Lloyd Clement (Age 106), and John Babcock (also 106) don't mind Ottawa telling them that their days are numbered.

Conservative MPs didn't seem to have a problem voting for the Dominion Institute's proposal to honour the Canadian sacrifice in Europe 90 years ago. However, when the government stopped the practice of lowering the Parliament Hill flag to half mast to honour the fallen in Afghanistan, it showed that the Tories have a real problem with honouring Canadian sacrifice in this day and age, for fear it may raise questions as to why the sacrifice is made. Here's hoping that when these three distinguished veterans do pass away, the Prime Minister at the state funeral is one that pays his or her respects because he or she actually means it, unlike Stephen Harper who only does so because it's politically convenient.

Army wins Grey Cup?

The British Columbia Lions won the 94th Grey Cup yesterday in Winnipeg, defeating the Montreal Alouettes 25 to 14. The game was marked by a tight defensive struggle, Paul McCallum's record-tying 6 field goals, a spirited halftime performance by Nelly Furtado, and the largest military deployment in Grey Cup history.

The Canadian Armed Forces were a noticeable presence during Grey Cup week as they wrapped up their year-long 'Operation Connection'. While the military claims the operation isn't necessarily a recruiting campaign, this page considers it a stroke of genius on their part to stake out a position between the beer tent and the cheerleader autographs tent: Now that's taking advantage of people who aren't thinking clearly. Of course it's all about recruiting, why does the military need to promote itself? Is there a competing Canadian military, some sort of WestJet military? Call me unpatriotic, but this page doesn't see any use in promoting the military beyond recruiting: some of us stroll by City Hall, see the Maple Leaf flag flying from the roof and assume that the military are doing their job.

Strangely enough, with all the jet fighter fly-bys and players posting for photo-ops on top of tanks, nobody mentioned the 'A-word'. In fact, CBC Sports declined the requisite look-in at our troops in Kandahar. Even more strangely, the MVP in yesterday's game was Lions' quarterback Dave Dickenson, who is the son of anti-war activist and Montana State Legislator Sue Dickenson (D - MT District #25). If Rick Hillier and Stephen Harper aren't noticing that Americans are sick of Bush's phony wars to the point that Democrats can take control of Montana, putting Canada on the same kind of militaristic cultural footing isn't making much of a connection.

Boiling Point

This week's heavy rains have overloaded Vancouver's water treatment plants, leading to an unprecedented Boil Water Advisory from the GVRD. The immediate reaction of this page is gratitude that CUPE BC shut down the free-market pirate nutbars who wanted to privatize water treatment in Vancouver a few years ago. The subsequent reaction is curiosity as to whether or not any of our Conservative overlords know that this situation might have just a little bit to do with global warming and climate change.

As many regular visitors are aware, this page relishes in the telling of others what to do. In the wake of this public hazard/inconvenience, here are my tips to avoid e coli, cryptosporidium, and all the other nasties which have yet to be flushed from the mains:

-Try to limit your hoarding of bottled water. There's a reason why it's a BOIL water advisory and not a bottled water advisory. Thousands of British Columbians are still without power, and can't boil their own water, so they need the bottled water more than you.

-Bottled water is treated water is a plastic bottle. Party ice is treated water frozen in a plastic bag. A visit to the nearby convenience store this morning saw the shelves emptied of bottled water, but the cooler was still full of the solid water.

-Football fans: beware of cheap draft beer specials on Grey Cup Sunday. If it's watered down, it's watered down with parasites. Hung over is one thing, infected is another.

-It's raining: the stuff falling from the sky is safer than the stuff coming out of the taps, and it's free. Instead of succumbing to the pseudo-panic in the bottled water aisle, pick up a barrel and an extra kettle.

This page realizes that this situation could go on for weeks, and that many people are too lazy to look after themselves and prefer to buy their way out of trouble. I predict that sometime before Xmas, someone in the Lower Mainland gets to see the value in fluid ounces of a Playstation 3.

Lucky Break

More commotion yesterday in this page's neighbourhood than the World Cup or the Parade of Lost Souls: a four-storey building frame came crashing down on Commercial Drive. Fortunately, none of the 15 members of the construction crew were near the collapse as they were on their coffee break. Worksafe BC is investigating.

This page posts this story as a public service to anyone being told how things like paid breaks, vacations, or occupational health and safety need to be rolled back to generate "competitiveness" and "productivity". My research illustrates that workers who are happy, and still alive, are more productive than those who are not.

Grin and Borat

This page returns from a few days off, which included seeing Sascha Baron Cohen's subversive opus, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazahkstan. Since the film opened to packed cinemas across North America last weekend, the wire has buzzed with accounts of practically everyone who appeared in the movie suing Cohen for being played for intolerant buffoons. To the cinematically wronged would-be plaintiffs, this page has a few thoughts for you to mull over before signing that affidavit:

-You signed a contract. Obviously a manipulatively worded contract, but nonetheless a contract. Cohen must know what he's doing, otherwise Da Ali G Show would never have aired in North America.

-This brand of undercover journalism has been coverd by the First Amendment for decades, from John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me to Tyra Banks' Fat Like Me. If the frat boys successfully sue Cohen because he caught their vino veritas tirades of racism and misogyny on camera, what happens to the Daily Show? Is Michael Moore reduced to Canadian Bacon 2?

-Cohen takes down opponents with judo-like precision. The government of Kazahkstan is furious about their country's portrayal in Borat, to which Cohen deftly deflected the criticism in the Borat personna and called on Kazahkstan officials to "sue the lying Jew" (i.e. Cohen himself) who would produce such propaganda.

-Why are you suing for defamation when you should be suing for royalties? Borat could be one of the highest-grossing films this year. Why not get your cut and call your humiliation a teaching moment? I did something like that six years ago, which is why I'm one of a handful of people with a blog AND real estate in Vancouver! (SPOILER ALERT) If anyone was going to sue, I thought it would have been Pamela Anderson for the staged kidnapping attempt near the end of the film. I guess any publicity is, as Borat says, very nice.

Far From the Cenotaph

Tomorrow is Remembrance Day, and while this page recognizes the service and sacrifice of Canadian veterans and current military personnel, I will not be publicly observing the occasion.

There is an air of jingoism and manipulation surrounding this November 11 that this page finds disgusting and frightening. Watch as the Harper Conservatives try to bolster faltering public support for the mission in Afghanistan. Either the government has no idea what they're doing, or they're in denial that the real mission is to help secure oil pipeline construction from the equally reviled American occupation of Iraq. Already in the past few days, the Prime Minister has taken numerous photo ops with troops and cadets, while right wing mascot Don Cherry cheered him on during his visit to Parliament Hill.

It's obvious that Remembrance "Week" marks the kick-off of a Conservative propaganda campaign that would bring cheer to Karl Rove in his current hour of need. Cherry plans a "salute to the troops" during his Hockey Night in Canada appearance on November 11, which will no doubt slander peace activists and anyone else who isn't following along blindly. After Saturday, expect shots of soldiers in Kandahar watching the Grey Cup game, and a couple of weeks later wishing they could go home for Xmas, but they can't leave until the job is done, and as Harper keeps bleating with Goebbels-like precision, "Canadians don't cut and run". At this point the right wing noise machine will chime that only the Harpercons can accomplish this mission, and the public goes to the polls early next year feeling helpless and without a real choice.

This sense of militarist hegemony is backed up by that bastion of inebriation and intolerance, the Royal Canadian Legion. The Legion has decided that only they have the right to distribute replica poppies, and that the current round of white poppies in remembrance of civilian casualties are an abomination. This page has never had anything to do with the Legion, largely because my father (a WWII veteran) quit because they didn't want his African-Canadian friends (who were also veterans) joining him at the local branch for a beer. Correct this page if I'm wrong, but didn't Canadians sign up to fight in World War II to protect democracy, human rights, AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION, or am I missing something here? In trying to suppress the white poppy campaign, the Legion looks more like the enemies they were fighting than the heroes we should be saluting on Saturday.

I also won't be going to Tim Horton's, either. Is it just me, or does anyone else have a problem with sharing a remembrance Day symbol with the Taliban's #1 cash crop?

So's Your Mother

Previously on The bear604 Show:

What a load of crap this page is!!! It sounds like some wannabe from the 'Toronto Nation.'
# posted by Anonymous : 3:57 PM

This page tends not to respond to nasty comments and hate mail, but feeling less generous than usual, I'm going to make an exception in the case of "Anonymous":

First of all, congratulations on the discovery of your ability to operate a keyboard, and recognizing that you do in fact, have opposable thumbs. Your labeling of me as a "wannabe" from "Toronto Nation", is not only woefully inaccurate, it proves my point about the rabid and vicious identity politics that colour life in Canada from politics to pro football. This page is titled The 'bear604' Show, as opposed to The 'bear416' Show for a reason. For those of you scoring at home, the lifetime experience of this page with the city of Toronto is approximately a two-hour layover at Pearson International Airport. Furthermore, I don't see how I could be part of 'Toronto Nation' when I specifically cited "Leafs Nation" as one of the pro sports cults I've grown annoyed by. It's hard to believe that someone capable of using the internet can be that geographically inept.

Donkeys smack Elephants

Last night's results in U.S. Congressional elections were more or less expected, but after three straight election nights of throwing Cheetos at the TV and choruses of "what the f**k?", the results are certainly welcome for Americans tired of Karl Rove's Republican Noise Machine. As of press time, Democrats control the House and may yet take the Senate. To those of you north of the border unfamiliar with U.S. government, it doesn't mean that the Bush Presidency is over, but it does mean it's now forced to listen or run out its remaining two years in irrelevancy.

One thing that struck this page watching the Democrats' congressional pickups roll in was the number of times the CNN talking heads referred to winners as being "social conservatives". This may not necessarily be a bad thing - Evangelical Christians may have realized that they have more political clout if they stop tying themselves to Bush's phony wars on Terror, the Environment, and the Middle Class. If these Conservative Democrats can be convinced that issues like gay marriage and stem-cell research are left to the states like the Constitution says they should be, the country can move forward from the culture wars and Congress can do something meaningful, like raise the minimum wage and establish affordable health care.

Hopefully, the Democrats won't be too eager to accommodate social conservatives, as unfortunately illustrated at Senator Maria Cantwell's (D - WA) victory party.

Saskatchewan threatens national unity?

If you aren't convinced about the folly in Michael Ignatieff's call to formally recognize a Quebec "Nation", check out the mediocy in the nation's sports pages surrounding 'Rider Nation'. The runaway consensus of the Canada's sports media is that on the current road to the Grey Cup, only one team that matters, the Saskatchewan Roughriders, and that somehow the aspirations of 'Rider fans must to be accommodated for the current CFL season to be regarded as successful:

"If the Saskatchewan Roughriders can find a way out of the West Division, Winnipeg won't have a problem selling those 8,000 remaining Grey Cup tickets."
-Glen Suitor, TSN

"These playoffs will only be interesting if someone else besides the BC Lions can make an impact."
-Allan Maki, The Globe & Mail

"The league needed this."
-Chris Walby, CBC Sports, after the 'Riders victory over Calgary yesterday

Media talking heads insisting that a 'Nation' be accommodated for the good of everyone else. Where have we heard that before, and where has it led us?

The national media treated the Calgary Stampeders barring of 'Rider mascot "Gainer" the Gopher from the McMahon Stadium sidelines as a major controversy, when in fact, Gainer would have permitted to root from the stands, as opposed to being run over the Stampeders touchdown horse or a TV camera while wandering the unfamiliar sideline. After Saskatchewan's 30-21 victory yesterday, 'Rider coach Danny Barrett referred to Gainer as an integral part of 'Rider Nation'.

Never let the facts get in the way of compelling mythology: where have we heard that before?

This page is sick of 'Rider Nation', 'Leafs Nation', 'Red Sox Nation', 'Italia Nation' (World Cup '06 edition, as opposed to the actual nation of Italy) ... The point is, being a 'nation' doesn't mean you get to dictate terms to the home team (even if an inordinate number of Canada's sports media cut their teeth in Saskatchewan), it doesn't make you superior, it doesn't let you rewrite the rules of the game, and it doesn't mean you're entitled to all the attention, no matter how many of you there are or how loud you're yelling. If Canadians could be as obsessed about ideas as we are about identities, maybe this would be a 'nation' worth living in.

The Bitch List

Norman Spector was roundly criticized this week for his use of the word "bitch" to describe Belinda Stronach during a sound off with Bill Tielmann on CKNW.

This page is somewhat taken aback at the backlash against Spector. While I seldom if ever agree with anything he says, Spector sets himself apart from the other barking dogs on the Right in that he can debate competently, shows respect to his opponents, and can tell it like he thinks it is without resorting to screaming insults. Anyone who's heard with work with Tielmann or Moe Sihota knows that. People have said worse, but because Stronach is a media darling, she gets a free ride while Spector gets his ticket punched.

Maybe Stronach is a bitch, maybe she's not, but by no means should Spector be taken off the air or out of print because he thinks she is. For those of you scoring at home, in no particular order, here's who this page happens to think is a bitch: Ann Coulter, Condeleeza Rice, Rona Ambrose, Carole Taylor, Erin Airton, Anita Bryant, Margaret Wente, Christy Clark, Barbara Amiel, Barbara Yaffe, Margaret Thatcher, REAL Women....

The Bitch List, part 2

...Colin Hansen, Lorne Mayencourt, Phil Hochelstein, Bill O'Reilly, Glen Beck, Izzy Asper, Sam Sullivan, Tony Blair, Pat Robertson, Donald Rumsfeld, Jim Flaherty, Stockwell Day....

Hail to the Bus Driver

One would think that an arbitration hearing for a school bus driver in Issaquah, WA would be an unlikely venue for a pivotal First Amendment case, but like a lot of other abuses of democracy in George Bush's America, here it is: A school bus driver was fired in June because she gave the finger to the President and the Congressman riding with the President (Dave Reichert, R-WA) tattled to her employer.

Osama Bin Laden, take notes: the Leader of the Free World (tm) is now apparently so sensitive that he can be seriously injured by an outstretched middle digit. This page thought that Bush would have been used to being flipped the bird by now, given his (lack of) approval rating and historians preparing to declare him the worst President ever. According to the Issaquah School District, that isn't the case, so an American woman continues to be denied her right to drive children to school.

1776: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal... "
2006: "Go f**k yourself, even if you are the President"

APC Tricks City Hall & Treats Homeless

Yesterday afternoon, as Vancouver City Police were preparing to deploy the bulk of its forces against junior high school students tossing firecrackers, the Anti-Poverty Committee (APC) occupied a building near City Hall . The APC's announced plan to disrupt a City Hall meeting would more than likely have put down quickly with, and this page is sure that NPA cheerleaders in the media would have condemned the activists for going after a (duplicitous cipher of mayor who happens to be a) man in a wheelchair. Instead, the APC faked out the establishment and went after a high-profile location at Broadway and Cambie at the moment when everyone thought they would settle down for a while after police broke up the North Star Hotel squat last week.

This page salutes the APC's bait-and-switch tactics and their impeccable timing. The NPA is promising a five-point plan centered around emergency shelters and their BC Liberal puppet masters are grudgingly chipping in for rental subsidies, which in the end only subsidize landlords. Not good enough on both counts. When the APC first emerged in Vancouver, this page was concerned about some of their tactics (or lack thereof), such as staging a demonstration against police brutality at VPD headquarters: Why go out and round up protestors when they're willing to deliver? As the need for real Social Housing becomes more acute in Vancouver, it's encouraging to see a stronger, smarter APC staring down this fascist Monopoly board we call a city.

Traffic Retort

This page has grown annoyed enough about this emerging fact of life in Vancouver to post it here: why is it that anyone who drives an SUV has a wealth of information about construction delays, lane closures, etc., and anyone who doesn't gets to run a perpetual obstacle course? The automotivocracy makes sure that drivers are never inconvenienced, while those of us without vehicles are annoyed, confused, and occasionally stranded by poor planning and a lack of information.

If one walks, cycles, or takes transit, be assured that construction companies, municipal authourites and the media don't give a flying f**k about you. Sidewalks and stations are closed without a reason or a completion date. Notice only goes up at the site where the work is being done, confusing and inconveniencing riders and pedestrians.

Yesterday, this page saw the entrances and exits and Granville Skytrain station closed off except for the Dunsmuir Street access. I saw a man well into his 70's totter down stairs with a cane and stumble a few times to the point where I was sure he was going to fall. There was an elevator, but nowhere did it indicate the elevator went to the Skytrain platform he was trying to reach.

This page is sick and tired of being treated like pedestrian cattle, and has a few good places where Translink can stick its uninformative copies of The Buzzer.

No news is good news for our corporate overlords

Last Wednesday, Bill C-257 passed in the House of Commons by a margin of 167 to 101. This legislation prohibits the use of SCABS (or for the fascist toadies among you, replacement workers) during labour disputes in federally regulated industries. The Canadian Labour Congress estimates about 1 in 10 Canadian workers will be subject to Bill C-257, including workers in transportation and telecommunications.

One would think that potential impact, let alone the passing of a stridently pro-labour bill in Stephen Harper's Canada would generate significant media coverage. Outside of the CLC website and discussions at Rabble.ca, this page has seen no mention of C-257 anywhere since it was passed last week. This page suspects that the more deluded among the fascists consider anti-scab legislation as a minor annoyance until the Conservatives can sweep to power with a majority government, a prospect that grows more remote by the day.

It could very well be that the media's self-imposed blackout has to do with the media, particularly CanWest Global's dominance of the daily newspaper market. This is the same cabal who had no problems with buying a tarnished Calgary Herald that used "e-scabs" to e-mail their work across picket lines. It's also the same gang that tried to break strikes at the Vancouver Sun and Victoria Times Colonist with "British Columbia" editions of the National Post. They may also be waiting until the bill approaches third reading to unleash the apocalyptic editorials about how C-257 will destroy competitiveness. Of course, the Canwest papers became less competitive once the Globe & Mail realized they could do a BC edition of their own....

Return to Sender

Canada Post believes that if a religious group in Ontario is willing to pay for them for it, delivering hate literature to people in East Vancouver is "appropriate".

Last week this page saw an interview on CNN which illustrated the preferred communications strategies of the radical and religious right wing. Direct Mail was cited as an example of one of the means so-called "Christians" can bypass the "liberal" bias in the mainstream media and speak to their supporters. Distributing this material in some of Canada's most progressive neighbourhoods is more likely to harass and intimidate people than win them over.

This page salutes the CUPW members who stood up to Canada Post's toadying to the darkest, anti-human elements of the Stephen Harper regime, and refused to deliver this garbage. This page also wants the name and address of this alleged church, as I have a sizeable whack of gay porn and Dan Savage columns to unload on them.

Scary Movie

Gabriel Range's faux-documentary Death of a President opens tomorrow. The movie draws a parallel between the events that followed September 11, 2001 with those which will take place following the assassination of George W. Bush on October 19, 2007. Right wing critics are screaming that Range has concocted little more than a liberal revenge fantasy.

For those of you scoring at home, a liberal revenge fantasy would actually look something like this: the Democrats take control of the House and the Senate. The first order of business for the new Congress is Impeaching the President for disregarding FBI intelligence prior to 9/11, staging a pre-emptive war in Iraq on false pretenses, and the manipulation of elections in 2000 and 2004, just to name a few of the Articles of Impeachment.

That's actually a good tag line for next month's blockbuster that Americans will be lining up for: On November 7, don't get mad, get even...

Corky turns a little Green

BC NDP icon and Nelson-Creston MLA Corky Evans is advocating an alliance with the Green Party.

There are a lot of New Democrats, this page included, who are skeptical about the Greens. I find the belief among many of them that capitalism will save the environment misguided to the point of threatening. Their antipathy towards the Labour movement dissolved any hope of a concentrated fightback against the Campbell Lieberals after the 2001 election. Any Green who still believes unions run the NDP need to familiarize themselves with recent changes to membership policy, particularly the fact that Dave Haggard hasn't been one for years.

Now that the Jim Harrises and Adrienne Carrs have stepped aside, there may be a window of opportunity for New Democrats to reach out to the left wing of the Green Party, and remind them that B.C.'s environment was in much better hands before 2001. Some of us preferred Forest Practices Code with a few Pine Beetles to work out rather than the Forest industry promising to regulate itself, and closed containment fish farms instead of mutant salmon in open waters.

However, when Corky mentions that Greens in his riding voted Liberal to keep him from winning, it illustrates some Greens are more interested in being on the right side of Canwest Global's anti-NDP propaganda than the right side of the issues. Only Nixon could go to China, so I guess that only Corky could go to the Greens.

Firing at Random

Is Peter MacKay going to change his position on same-sex marriage? After calling Belinda Stronach a dog in the House of Commons, I don't see how he can hope for an opposite-sex one.

Single Residency Occupancy hotels (SROs) are starting to evict tenants to attract a "better" clientele in the run-up to the 2010 Olympics. Nothing says "world-class destination" like making more homeless people.

The U.S. congressional elections take place November 6. The verdict in the Saddam Hussein trial is scheduled to come down November 5. The Bush administration captured Saddam on a Sunday, and attacked Afghanistan on a Sunday to broadcast these achievements to the huge syncophantic audience watching the NFL for maximum propaganda value. Put this page down for Saddam in the gas chamber and the Cowboys by 2 over the Redskins.

Two people who pissed me off last week: Dennis Miller and Rona Ambrose. Dennis Miller hasn't been funny since becoming a Republican stooge. The Tories environmental plan is funny, but it's by no means a ha-ha funny.

I picked either the Mets or the Yankees to be in the World Series, which shows how little I know about baseball. However, this page is considerate enough not to disturb others with my flashes of ignorance, unlike Bill Bavasi and Mike Hargrove: how many power hitting first basemen who don't have power do the Mariners need?

Watch the new Battlestar Galactica before it loses its edge.

Boxes...need more boxes...

This page is in the process of moving to a new office, so regular programming won't be seen here until next week.

The Globe & Mail: BC edition...er, PG edition...er, R...

Dear Editors - I'm a 63 year old pedophile who was teaching upper class west side high school girls out in the woods, and I never believed any of these stories were true until one day...

What happened to these women who were children at the time was bad enough, but why does The Globe and Mail's coverage of the Tom Ellison trial have to read like something out of Penthouse Forum? I think the expression "2 counts of gross indecency, three counts of indecent assault and one count of sexual assault" says all that needs to be said.

A picture is worth a thousand words. In the case of the Globe, it takes just a few words to paint a humiliating picture for the victims and their families. I'm sure that soon enough, the above link will require a password - most internet porn does.

That's for the courts to decide

Gordon Campbell decided he was above the law when he refused to resign after his drunk driving conviction in Hawaii. In trying to add a principle of "sustainability" to the Canada Health Act, Campbell and the Liberals are trying to put themselves not only above Federal law, but the laws of mathematics. As it's already been pointed out, the CANADA Health Act is a Federal statute, and can't be rewritten in the legislature to appease private health care con artists like Brian Day. By this reasoning, British Columbians should be able to euthanize their parents to collect their inheritance early by applying the principle of "mercy" to the Criminal Code of Canada.

Day doesn't believe the CHA should be treated "like the holy scriptures", but at the same time, is happy to join Campbell in blissfully ignoring such fundamental law as "What goes up must come down." Just like they fabricated a "structural deficit" to make the NDP look fiscally dangerous even though they balanced their last two budgets, Gordo's Goodtime Bullsh*t Factory is now claiming that health care will soon take up 71% of the BC budget. How do they figure that? Well, if Campbell drinks a martini on Monday, and a couple of martinis on Tuesday, then book the idiot for a liver transplant because Liberal Math and its principle of perpetual exponentiality dictates he will have drank 465 dozen martinis over a month. Furthermore, vermouth may end up taking up 71% of Campbell's budget, but just because he spends a lower percentage on olives, it doesn't mean he's running out of olives and he has to cut back on vermouth.

Responsible health care and fiscal policy are based on the truth, not by throwing buzzwords at federal law to see if they'll stick, and not by throwing out fiscal context to let the numbers skyrocket and serve the right wing's privatization agenda.

Do as I say.

Let's review: UN weapons inspectors proved that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction in 2003. However, the Bush Administration justified the forgoing of brutally effective economic sanctions and the invasion of oil-rich Iraq on the grounds that they did have WMD. The U.S. dismisses criticism of the invasion at the United Nations and tries to establish its own "coalition of the willing".

North Korea detonates an atomic bomb in 2006, and the first response of the Administration is to press for economic sanctions against one of the poorest countries in the world. Instead of directly confronting Kim Jong Il's regime, the U.S. looks for support at the U.N.

Hypocrisy? No, that would be Mark Foley.

Alberta woman goes blind, loses sense of smell

Environment Minister Rona Ambrose claims that the most pressing issue facing the environment isn't climate change, it's air quality. In the same breath, Ambrose also claimed that her Conservative government, with its collective head so up the a*s of the oil and gas industry that you get a Tory membership with a 25 litre fill up, will do a better job on the environment than the Liberals. If smiling and nodding while Northern Alberta becomes a giant smoking crater, heat waves in Toronto and Montreal kill people, and Vancouver homeowners get beachfront property they didn't pay for is somehow better, then this page is willing to take a chance on what would be worse.

Given that everyone from to Canada's Insurance Industry to Alberta's own Department of Agriculture have at least clued into the severity of the climate change problem, it's disturbing that Ambrose and the Conservative's don't put it at the top of the agenda. Air quality would only be the most pressing issue if one happened to be near enough to the Environment Committee Room to subjected to the toxic whiff of corporate denial and bullsh*t emanating from the Environment Minister yesterday.

God help us all...except you

Canada's Reactionary Biblicofascist Conservative government is looking to erase any notion of a separation between church and state in its proposed Defence of Religions Act. According to the draft legislation, public officials will be legally able to discriminate against other Canadians based on their particular religious "orientation".

As I am sure readers of this page, there are a multitude of religious traditions in this country, many of which are odd with each other. Many Canadians are put off by these unending conflicts and subsequently don't follow any religious tradition. The public wasn't going to abide by Ontario courts judging cases by Islamic Sharia law: Why should should right-wing Christian Fundamentalist doctrine determine who someone on the public payroll will marry in a civil ceremony, or for that matter, determine which legal procedures a doctor will perform in a public health care system ?

If the state is willing to protect fanatical zealots who want to abuse public institutions to deny Canadians their rights to equality, liberty, and everything else guaranteed by the Charter, what else is the state willing to condone in defence of "religion"? Given the contradictions among Canada's religions, it would be inevitable that one religious tradition would prevail to the point of calling the shots. It must be going terribly in Afghanistan when Canada's government is sounding more like the Taliban than the Afghans are sounding like a functioning democracy.

If "Housing Matters", they would build some

The BC Lieberals latest exercise in moving money to make it look like they're on top of things is "Housing Matters BC", a $40 million subsidy program. While Rich Coleman says the subsidy will benefit 15,000 low income families across the province, it's really a back-door giveaway to developers and landlords. This is the same Liberal government who legalized 20% rent increases when they changed the Residential Tenancy Act, and closed Tenant Appeal offices across BC, it follows that Victoria would continue to screw over people who can't afford a down payment, or are too smart to try and buy their own place without one.

What is about the right wing that they think the public are such idiots that we can bought off for about a $100 a month? First it was the Conservatives "Universal Child Care" bribe, now Victoria follows suit: Coleman claims a family of five living in Vancouver and paying $875.00 a month will receive $110.00 a month in assistance. You show this page a family of five paying $875.00 for a place in this city, and I'll show you a guy walking up to their front door with a Condemned sign.

Throwing rent subsidies around will not help homelessness when there are not enough homes to begin with. Subsidies may (marginally) help somebody in BC keep their apartment, but will also inflate the rental market to keep someone else from finding one. The Vampires of Victoria will build 450 subsidized units this year for all of BC, but lowball estimates put Vancouver's homeless population alone at over 3,000 by the Lieberals iconic year of 2010.

For those of you scoring at home...

The above, for those of you who are regular readers, is this page's catch-all catch phrase. Unless you already know where it comes from, you will know if you're watching the Major League Baseball playoffs which begin today.

Looking at the field, this page saw only the Minnesota Twins and Detroit Tigers up close and personal this year. While those teams were good enough to hand my Seattle Mariners their collective heinies, I don't think either will be going all the way this year. The A's, Cardinals, Padres, and Dodgers have a few too many holes to fill as well. If you pick New York, you would be right, or at the least, demi-right.

This conversation is over. Already.

Gordon Campbell wants to have a "Conversation on Health Care" with the people of British Columbia. Just when this page thought the BC Lieberals were going into hiding after shutting down the Legislature for the rest of the year, Campbell's twisted, perverted version of democracy rears its ugly head.

The highlight of the $10 million "Conversation" is a series of regional forums, where interested participants are required to register on-line with the government, and from those registrations, invitations are sent out at "random". In today's Globe & Mail, a BC Health Coalition spokesperson describes the process as "suspicious". This page describes it as "obvious".

Remember another of the drunk driver's pet projects, The Citizen's Assembly on Electoral Forum? It had people chosen "at random" from all 79 ridings to pick a new system of electing MLAs. This page lives in Vancouver Mount Pleasant, a riding that has one of the lowest per capita incomes in BC, and about 70% of residents are visible minorities according to the 2001 census. We were "represented" by a WASP who spends most of his time in Whistler selling high-end furniture. That kind of recruiting (mixed with a manipulative parade of 'experts' and the worst groupthink this side of Reality TV) led to the Assembly rejecting what was easily the most popular electoral model, Mixed Member Proportional Representation and recommending the convoluted "BC-STV" system which serves to do the little than give the right wing a permanent lock on power. More like rigged than random.

You read it here first. If you register to participate in the "Conversation", you will be excluded if you are a member of HEU, BCNU, HSA, CUPE BC, or the NDP. Even if you are not a member of those groups, you will be excluded if you do not match the demographic profile that votes Lieberal. Most importantly, don't even think of being invited if you have studied anything about the benefits of Canada's public health care system - Campbell wants as clean (read: dumb) a slate as possible to fawn over the lackeys from American corporate health providers and the Fraser Institute.

The rest of us will be left to sit back and watch $2.5 million worth of TV commercials about how health care spending is out of control, complete with syncophantic squealing without context from Canwest Global's lie pushers. For those of you scoring at home, context here means that the Lieberals spend less on everything else and forego revenue by dishing out corporate tax cuts: Of course health care's piece of the pie is going to look the biggest when the rest of the pieces are being cut smaller and smaller!

Hopefully, like the Citizen's Assembly and the disastrous "consultation" on treaty negotiations with BC First Nations, there will be enough British Columbians to call the Drunk Driver's bluff and tell him there's a time and a place to discuss these kind of things, like in the Legislature. Now.

Breaking News: Racist Demagogues breathe air too

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed legislation which turns that state into its own Kyoto Accord. Committing to reduce greenhouses gases by by 25% before 2020 is a significant endeavour which no doubt required significant political courage on the part of the Governor.

Unfortunately, Schwarzenegger didn't find the same courage to grant clemency to Tookie Williams. Don't even think about nominating The Terminator for a Nobel Prize for his climate change effort when he had no qualms about having another Nobel Prize Nominee murdered by the State of California last year.

Billion Dollar Bastards: you call these "small" cuts?

Last week, this page promised to tell you this week what a deluded malevolent prick Stephen Harper is. Unfortunately, this page gets to deliver this week. As illustrated, what constitutes "small cuts" is really in the eye of the beholder. The Conservatives' yanking of a billion dollars in program spending may appear insignificant in Ottawa's big fiscal picture, but to the Canadians who rely on those programs, that billion was going a long way up until the axe fell.

canceling the Court Challenges program renders the Charter of Rights and Freedoms useless if one can't afford to access the Supreme Court of Canada to defend your Charter Rights. That move foreshadows the hate-minded agenda of a Conservative majority government, as do cuts to women's programs and research into medicinal marijuana use. A billion dollars is a small price to pay for the advance campaign to outlaw same-sex marriage, criminalize a woman's right to choose, and kick off a Reagan-style war on drugs that only drives dealers into a harder, more lethal trade and further underground.

Another area where a little goes a long way (at least all the way to Kandahar) is Canada's military. Remember how pleasantly surprised we were when the first thing out of the new PM's mouth was committing to asserting Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic? canceling a radar early warning proves the Conservatives never had any intention of following through on standing up to the Bush Administration. That commitment is just like their "commitment" to reducing hospital wait times or universal child care, so I guess that makes them equal opportunity offenders. The Arctic may be remote and inhabitable for most of us, but at least its Canadian territory and spending defence dollars there won't prop up the opium trade and America's perpetual war war machine like it will spending them in Afghanistan.

These "small" cuts show Canadians the big picture: this is a government intent on playing to its right-wing fundamentalist base and doubletalking swing voters in order to gain a mortal lock on Parliament. Hopefully, the cuts to Harper's caucus will be a little more severe after the next election.

The Green Carr parks

Adrienne Carr has stepped down as leader of the BC Green Party. This page is somewhat, if Green Party supporters will pardon the expression, stumped as to how to summarize her tenure as the party's leader. Under Carr, the Greens moved from fringe party status to... fringe party status in the course of two elections.

In 2001, the Greens fed on the anti-NDP electoral bloodlust and bragged openly about replacing the New Democrats as the Official Opposition. The boast flew in the face of a campaign dynamic that already handed Gordon Campbell's Liberals a majority, leaving Carr to sounding almost identical to Campbell: "We trust business to do the right thing" she said about pay equity. "Get back to work" she implored striking nurses. She backed the Liberals on taking away teachers' right to strike, and she wanted it taken from Translink bus drivers too. At the time, this page shredded many copies of the Vancouver Sun in fury, as the pundits chimed about the Greens splitting the "left-wing" vote. Rather than supplanting the NDP as the Official opposition, the Greens' ended up seatless and the vote splitting left British Columbia with no
Official Opposition.

Carr did, however, set the tone for the political left in BC in the four years that followed. Her petition to force a referendum on mixed member proportional representation put the issue of electoral reform front and centre, and in hindsight it was the right model, especially concerned to the Byzantine BC-STV model drawn up by a dubiously representative "citizens Assembly" who were hand-held throughout the process by Liberal supporters. The electoral damage leveled by the Greens at the NDP forced New Democrats to look in the mirror and recognize that the votes against Howe Street could no longer be taken for granted.

To this end, New Democrats realigned their relationship with the Labour movement, giving a stronger voice to progressive unions like CUPE BC and muzzling the IWA: tuning out BC's largest forestry union bought the NDP credibility on environmental issues. After enduring the combative Glen Clark and the defeatist closet Liberal Ujjal Dosanjh, The NDP took another page from the Green playbook and elected a strong, articulate woman of their own as party leader in Carole James. The move to the centre attracted strong candidates like Jagrup Brar and Gregor Robertson. During the 2005 campaign, the NDP usurped the Greens anti-polarization stance with the the slogan "Because Everyone Matters".

Adrienne Carr said that she wanted to move BC politics closer to the centre. She punched above her political weight, and unfortunately for herself and her party, the result was to squeeze the Greens out as both the Liberals and the NDP moved to the centre themselves. In 2001, the Greens had split votes in six ridings which cost the NDP official party status. On election night in 2005, the Greens had been marginalized to the point that Carole James was six seats away from becoming Premier.

Did Boeing make a splash or what?

This page is relishing a brief ray of sanity during our new dark ages. It could be that the Bush Administration is heartened by the gathering rumours of the death of Osama Bin Laden, or their realization that the human body is 70% water. Either way, the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Safety Agency are allowing liquids and gels on commercial flights as carry-on items again.

Since 9/11, have there have been any credible threats to commercial aviation in North America? Once you've sealed the cockpit door, put an armed air marshall on every flight, and racially profiled the passenger list, face it, anything else is politics. This time around, it looks like the politics of fear have reverted to the good ol' fashioned politics of pork. If Washington is looking for a deal on a high-tech border security system, would it not help to offer a company with a vested interest in commercial aviation a break at the security gates?

Fuzzy Bunnies are Nice

It has been suggested by some of this page's inner circle that recent editions of The bear604 Show have been too vitrolic, strident, petulant, bellicose, intemperate, and not very nice.

In response to these charges, this page presents the first in a series of features on Fuzzy Bunnies:

Fuzzy Bunnies are nice. They have floppy ears and love to hop around in the grass. Fuzzy Bunnies like to eat carrots and make Baby Fuzzy Bunnies. Everybody would love a Fuzzy Bunny for a pet. Fuzzy Bunnies make for very poor guard dogs, but they are ideal Nannies for Guinea Pigs and Gerbils.

This concludes the first part of The bear604 Show's look at Fuzzy Bunnies. Join us next week for the latest on Fluffy Kitties, Precious Puppies, and what a malevolent deluded prick Stephen Harper is.

The Buf Stops Here

Dan "Buf" MacLennan resigns as President of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE). Yesterday's article in the Globe and Mail declared MacLennan the "bad boy of Alberta labour". This page at one time was active in Alberta's labour movement, and met the outgoing AUPE President on numerous occasions. I found him not so much a 'bad boy' as a man who just didn't get it. Simple trade union concepts like "An injury to one is an injury to us all" or "solidarity" were completely lost on him.

After the 1993 Alberta election, President Carol Anne Dean fashioned AUPE into the only real Opposition to the "Klein Revolution". When MacLennan staged his coup in 1997, the union quickly threw out any notions of grassroots democracy, political action or social responsibility in favour of top-down, collaborationist business unionism. When the Klein Tories sought to privatize hospitals through Bill 11, only a handful of AUPE activists showed up at the Legislature rallies in Edmonton and joined the fight for public health care. Under MacLennan, the rest of AUPE treated the crisis as an opportunity for organizing health care workers, whether or not they were already members of another union.

This page shudders to think how MacLennan, if he was President of BCGSEU instead of AUPE, would have handled the fallout from the Campbell Liberals' Bill 29, which decimated the ranks of the Hospital Employees Union. Whereas George Heyman had the common sense and the wherewithal to tell the Liberals and the Health Authourities to step off, this page is certain that MacLennan would have been viciously elbowing Dave Haggard and the IWA out of position to sign up the 'new' cleaning and kitchen staff at BC hospitals.

It's ironic for Ralph Klein to say that MacLennan refrained from being "adversarial", when in fact, MacLennan's tenure as a prison guard set the tone for his adversarial, polarizing leadership. "Buf" surrounded himself with syncophants from his own Local 3 (Corrections), repeatedly called down members of the Provincial Executive who disagreed with him, traded on his personality cult with Alberta's right-wing media, and used the convention podium as a bully pulpit. Even if he relished playing the stereotypical "union boss", MacLennan seldom if ever went after employers. Instead, "Buf's" favourite targets were CUPE, the Alberta Federation of Labour and the NDP. MacLennan's lack of confrontation with employers could be because that in 2000, while his union was signing up record numbers of new members in a booming Alberta economy, AUPE was insisting on bargaining concessions from their own support staff.

As a result of his celebrity and reputation for being someone the Old Boys Club could play ball with, MacLennan's name was repeatedly mentioned in Alberta's political circles as a potential member of the Legislature or Parliament. It must be disappointing for his supporters to watch the President of Canada's largest public sector company union take on the role of a corporate head hunter. However, given his disdain for progressive trade union principles and his proven ability at hunting heads to swell AUPE's ranks, "Buf" is certainly the right man for the job.

Leave the man alone with his pain

This page is recovering from back spasms which were bad enough to hospitalize said page last weekend. Unless I find a keyboard I can use lying down, don't expect much by way of dispatches to this site for the next few days.

Note to ER attending physicians and pharmacists: warning a patient that medication may be addictive doesn't register if you tell them to take it for 2 or 3 days, but prescribe a supply that will last 2 to 3 weeks.

Conservative majority gunned down at Dawson College?

How many Conservative MPs does it take to screw in a light bulb? If your light bulb has just gone out and you're asking this question to Stephen Harper, don't expect a straight answer. Just like the Tories refused to grant a stay of execution to Vancouver's safe injection site while Toronto was hosting a major international AIDS conference, Harper has made it clear he won't be moved by yesterday's school shooting in Montreal to seriously address gun control.

While the Reform/Alliance/CRAP ancestors to the current Conservatives orchestrated the national chorus of bitching about the Liberals' particularly federal gun registry, the fact remains that most Canadians want some kind of gun registry, particularly in Quebec, which now has seen three different Montreal campuses (Ecole Polytechnique, Concordia, and Dawson College) terrorized by gunmen. Since it will take about a dozen new Conservative MPs from Quebec to screw in that light bulb in the next election , it's imperative for the Prime Minister to look like he's dealing with the firearms issue.

Unfortunately for yesterday's victims, their families, and all Canadians, Harper's promise of "more effective legislation" is no different than calling a token hundred dollars "universal child care". Harper has no policy vision beyond stealing the next election from an unsuspecting public who have yet to learn that catch phrases and manipulative rebranding aren't real policy. The Conservatives don't want to improve or replace the federal gun registry, they just don't want gun control but are too gutless to admit that to Quebec voters. Given the choice between Harper's doubletalk and Gilles Duceppe's vow to keep the federal gun registry, concerned Quebec voters may have the Bloc Quebcois pull the trigger on a future Conservative majority government.

NDP: "Support our Troops: Bring Them Home"

In pointing out that the best way to support Canada's Armed Forces is to remove them from the Afghan killing fields, Jack Layton and the New Democrats are liberating some valuable language from Stephen Harper's war party. During the first Gulf War, "Support our Troops" became code for "shout down the peaceniks before somebody actually starts to think about what's really going on!" The second Gulf War saw "Support our Troops" retain some of its original denotative quality, but only because the families of American soldiers had to buy body armour for them.

Corporate Canada considers "Support our Troops" to mean little more than a freeze-dried cup of Tim Horton's coffee and a pat on the back. Actually, make that a shove into an ill-defined combat mission that serves no purpose but to grease U.S. trade relations by positioning this country as serious about terrorism. Canada's corporate leaders have gone so far as to buy ads on the Washington D.C. Metro system showing Canadians doing their part in the "War on Terror". Is this about hunting down Osama Bin Laden, helping the Afghan people, or Bay Street and Calgary's Oilpatch showing the Bush Administration that we know how to play ball?

If you're looking for a way to support our troops yourself, this might be the best way possible.

How to screw the Mermaid

'Starbucks' now equates with coffee in the same way 'Tylenol' equates with painkillers or 'The Bush Administration' equates with evil. Somehow over the past couple of decades, the caffeinated corporate colossus has pulled a sort of reverse Wal-Mart: somehow they can run over the neighbourhood coffee shop and do it with a more expensive product.

The secret is in the branding: the Starbucks faithful believe their patronage gives them an urban hipster cache in the same way Starbucks' Seattle home evokes Kelsey Grammar's swanky TV apartment or Tom Hanks late night phone calls to Meg Ryan. This page spends a lot of time in Seattle, and the real Seattle has perpetual traffic jams, an army of panhandlers, a broken monorail, and an NBA franchise packing its bags for Oklahoma.

The real Starbucks equates not as much with coffee as they do with hypocrisy. No wonder the original store at Pike Place Market never joined the chain (the mermaid in their window is topless). For all of their progressive/liberal trappings, Starbucks only pays lip service to offering organic and fair trade coffee. The company may offer slightly higher wages and benefits than other service industry behemoths, but only as a last-ditch attempt to fight off organizing drives like those seen in Vancouver with the Canadian Auto Workers or in Chicago and New York with the IWW. If the Wobblies are coming back to sign up the baristas, the Mermaid seriously needs to surface and look at her reflection.

Which brings this page to the title paragraph of this piece. Starbucks management, through their more syncophantic employees, are complaining about customers cheating them by purchasing cheaper items (like espresso shots) and building their own versions of more expensive items (like lattes) using the free milk. This page applauds this kind of innovation: it saves money for the consumer and takes money from Starbucks. In Canada, Starbucks has a number of locations in Chapters bookstores, a retailer which also has a reputation for screwing over its employees and crushing mom and pop competition. After a five-finger discount latte, why not read a few best sellers and put them back on the shelf?

Quick! Look busy...and ethnic!

Vancouver is a cosmopolitan, diverse city with people from a wide variety of ethnic and religious traditions. Unless you're trying to impress a Federal Cabinet Minister.

How anyone could question Vancouver's ethnic and cultural diversity and crack the management ranks at City Hall is beyond belief for this page. If you're smart enough to give orders to municipal workers, you should be smart enough to know about Chinatown, Punjabi Market, Commercial Drive, the Powell Street Festival, Greek Days, Channel M, The rotating troops of ESL students, the lack of Conservative Members of Parliament...

It could be that the Fairview neighbourhood around City Hall is pricing itself into being another Shaughnessy, or the cancellation of last weekend's Vancouver Culturefest. For whatever reason, City of Vancouver officials felt they had to move a substantial number of visible minorities to the front of the shop and ask them to pretend that they worked there.

Federal Labour Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn had stopped by City Hall as he was in town to discuss diversity and multiculturalism with local officials. This page hopes that after this unnecessary and pathetic window-dressing exercise, a definition of tokenism was on the agenda for Blackburn's meeting.

Also on this day in history...

In Santiago, Chile on September 11, 1973 the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende was overthrown in a bloody coup d'etat led by General Augusto Pinochet. Much of the coup was organized and financed by the Central Intelligence Agency, acting on the Nixon administration's belief that a popular socialist government in South America undermined American authourity in the region.

General Pinochet would go on establish an brutal dictatorship which lasted 17 years, threw out democracy, catered exclusively to the rich, and killed over 3,000 of its own people: for those of you scoring at home, this page does count the "disappeared" in that number.

28 years later to the day, about the same number would be killed in Al-Qaida's terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In both instances, American interventionist foreign policy failed to take into account its own instability, leading to tragedy and violence.

Are ya ready for some BULLSHIT?!

The Walt Disney Company caused a stir in TV circles a few months ago when they announced that Monday Night Football was being moved from their major network ABC to cable sports outlet ESPN. ABC plans to air Desperate Housewives on Monday nights, but next week the network will be airing something truly desperate, opportunistic, manipulative, and vile.

America has become a veritable Fourth Reich under the Bush Administration, and beginning Sunday, Americans will have the propaganda to match. Josef Goebbels would have given a body part to produce something like The Path to 9/11, a miniseries which is little more than an infomercial for the War on Terror (tm) and a last-ditch attempt to turn the tide for the GOP in this fall's Congressional elections.

At the heart of this production is some deeply disturbing historical revisionism which places the bulk of the fault for 9/11 on the Clinton Administration, claiming that the former President was soft on terror. The real evidence illustrates anything but softness, and in fact, Slick Willie wanted wiretaps long before Dubya. Also, it wasn't Clinton puttering around his ranch in Crawford for the entire summer of 2001 and hanging up on the FBI.

After 9/11, the National Football League began treating their opening weekend as one big star-spangled orgy. Compared to the propaganda being offered on ABC, Sunday night's Colts-Giants tilt and the Vikings-Redskins/Chargers-Raiders double-header Monday night might seem almost countercultural, at least until the recruiting ads at every time out.

2026: Down with King Charles?

This weekend in Quebec City, New Democrats will debate the abolition of the monarchy in Canada. This page is certain that sometime over the next few days, this resolution will be used a few right-wing talking hotheads as an excuse to shut up Jack Layton about an exit strategy in Afghanistan.

Some elements within the NDP are trying to play down the resolution and hoping it won't reach the convention floor, believing it may come off with the same veneer of wackiness as when the party advocated withdrawing from NATO at a convention over 20 years ago.

Then again, what's wrong with being ahead of the curve once in a while?

Spinning Easy

Don has returned from his hiatus to bring us more Revolutionary Moderation, which is a good thing as this page is starting to get a little writers' block.