Showing posts with label Fraser Institute. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fraser Institute. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 01, 2011

20 Years Of Neo Conservative Propaganda

After twenty years of the 'new' right political dominance of the media messaging about political economy are you surprised?!

More than half of Canadians think a family of four can get by on $30,000 a year or less, while a similar number believe that if poor people really want to work, "they can always find a job."


Which leads to: Neighbours dismayed woman forced to live in garage


Det. Sgt. Mike Stones said the woman appears to suffer from dementia and was declared legally incompetent in the fall. His son was named as her guardian. Since then, she has been living in “deplorable” conditions in the attached garage of her son’s home, said Stones.
This is the face of poverty in Canada, which the Fraser Institute statistically denies.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Obama Embraces Neo-Con Agenda

President Obama continues to embrace a conservative reformist agenda with his Monday fiscal summit and his speech to the congress last night. In particular in education he has embraced merit pay and he told congress his administration wishes to expand charter schools. This later move has been the child of the Cato institute in the U.S. and the Fraser Institute in Canada. It is the bugaboo of the neo-con revolution, market delivery of public education by private companies. Setting up competitive private schools in competition with public schools. It as been tried in Alberta and B.C. and has not delivered any greater success in student achievement than public schools. Where it has succceeded is due to a simple fact; smaller class sizes which results in more indidivdual student attention.
At his Monday joint summit meeting, proposals for education reform included merit pay, despite union opposition to this idea, While on the surface merit pay may appear a good idea, it is all in the details. Who decides what merits the pay increase? Is it test scores? Is it an evaluation by students and parents? If it is the former test scores do not reflect real cognitive learning, rather they reflect the limited ability of rote learning; memorising anwsers to test questions.
The Obama administration is embracing other neo-con ideas as well in the areas of health care and social security reform. They begin with the premise that some one is ripping off the system, and a review of health care rip offs was announced to congress by Obama. He also promised that younger American workers would be able to supplement their social security with a persoanl tax free retirement investment plan. Where have we heard this before? Why from the Bush and Clinton administrations of course.
Like Clinton before him, he is a classic liberal, and as I have pointed out here before, classic liberals are embraced by libertarians, radical republicans and liberals. That he is willing to embrace ideas of the neo-con era, shows he truly is bipartisan

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Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Class War Returns


Once again the right wing in Canda has declared class war, on the heals of the attacks on public sector workers by the Harpocrite government.


Premier Ed Stelmach's government should expand no-strike legislation for public-sector employees to blunt the unions' main bargaining tool in contract negotiations, says the Alberta director for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. Such a move, said Danielle Smith, would help deflate public sector payrolls. A national CFIB study examining the gap between wages paid in the public and private sectors at all three levels of government shows on average, public employees earn considerably more, especially when pensions and benefits are included. Federal employees get 17.3% more; provincial 7.9% more
A hiring freeze to shrink public payrolls or expanded no-strike legislation could help achieve that, she said. Now the question arises how politically realistic such measures are, given at the federal level, expanded non-strike provisions, as suggested by the Tory minority government, helped precipitate a putsch by the Opposition.


Dannielle Smith is a Calgarian like the PM, a former Fraser Institute student, a scab during the Calgary Herald Strike, a fellow traveler of the Canadian Reform/Alliance/Conservative party, do ya think this survey may have been leaked to the Harpocrites earlier than its release today to justify their attack on the public service unions in the fiscal update?

Once again the right wing ideolouges promote class war while claiming to speak for taxpayers, who really are not taxpayers but business interests who pay little or no taxes. The real taxpayers are the working class, especially those who are unionized and pay the highest taxes!

SEE:
Harpocrites Declare Class War
Wage Controls

Monday, November 24, 2008

Neo-Cons Have No New Ideas

The neo-con federal government of Harper and Flaherty have no new ideas, just the same old ideology. After lambasing Harper for his flip flop on the deficit, and his denial that Canada is in a recession, Don Martin in his column today says;

"Be it campaign deception or denial, having tens of thousands suddenly face the loss of jobs, savings and perhaps their homes has twisted Harper's old beliefs into policy pretzels. For this Conservative government, the age of ideology is over -- technically and realistically."

Unfortunately Don the Conservative Government has not given up on its neo-con ideology as we witness in this announcement by Jim Flaherty.

Flaherty aims to boost economy with P3 projects
Ottawa wants to build billions of dollars of bridges, hospitals and other infrastructure as a way to lessen the blow from the financial crisis, finance minister Jim Flaherty said Monday.
Speaking at a conference in Toronto, Mr. Flaherty said investments in infrastructure will be "a key part" of the government's strategy to stimulate the economy.
But some observers say there's a problem with the plan. The government wants to deliver the projects through so-called public private partnerships (P3) where projects are built and financed by the private sector but according the government's requirements. But while the P3 model has gained acceptance in much of the world, there is rising concern that the credit crunch has made it almost impossible to finance new P3s.
Because of the financial crisis, finding willing lenders has become a lot more difficult and when they can be found the cost of capital for even triple-A borrowers is much higher than even a few months ago, said Alban de La Selle, a senior executive at Dexia Credit Local SA, a leading European bank.
"Lenders [on infrastructure projects] have become significantly more cautious," according to a recent report by PricewaterhouseCoopers. "... infrastructure finance raising is likely to be challenging for some time to come and the business risk of these transactions is certainly higher."
But the financial turmoil may have thrown a monkey wrench into the mechanics of P3s by making the financing so much more difficult.
Mr. de La Selle said one way to overcome the problem would be for the government to provide the financing itself. Since governments are among the few players that can get the benefit of lower borrowing costs, that advantage could be brought into play in doing P3s, he said. For their part, the private sector partners would guarantee to repay the debt.


So instead of the government funding infrastructure projects, the Harpocrites want to fund the private sector to do it for them. Ironically currently P3's in Canada are funded by public pension money, there are very few private P3's.

The Harpocrites had an opportunity to build a P3 project; the National Porttrait Gallery but they canceled it last week.

Earth to Flaherty,hello we are in a recession if not a depression and companies are hoarding capital not spending it. So instead of expanding the public sector the government will be choosing winners and losers in the private sector to build infrastructure. And these companies will promise to repay the debt, which will only happen if they survive this depression. Throwing good money after bad.

And he made his announcement at a conference on P3's sponsored by the right wing business lobby the Fraser Institiute.

So much for the Harpocrites abandoning their neo-con ideology, even in this recession they scramble to keep faith with the right wing ideology that got us in this mess in the first place.

Speaking to a Fraser Institute dinner, the finance minister committed to increased spending by Ottawa, if it is needed. Flaherty stressed at the luncheon the importance of infrastructure spending by the federal government, notably in partnership with the private sector. He announced $1.25 billion in startup funding for P3 Canada Inc., an entity that will work on public-private projects.
Thank goodness for this opportune recession, even if it is still "technical," as Finance Minister Jim Flaherty insisted at a downtown conference yesterday. If it weren't for whatever it is, nothing would get done.
The legacy of good times lasting more than a decade is a mountain of unfunded priorities for public spending. It took recession, or perhaps only the vivid perception of it, to focus government attention on what it should have undertaken years ago.
Focus is too soft a word to describe the sudden conversion of our former fiscal conservatives to counter-cyclical spending. Yesterday, a previously dismissive Mr. Flaherty let the world know he was jumping into the pothole business with both feet.
Infrastructure spending "will be a key component of our future success," he told a conference on public-private partnerships, and a "key component" of his government's planned economic stimulus. Although ideological conservatives may worry about burdening future generations with unsustainable debt, real Conservatives are now committed to spending their way out of recession.
And nobody is cheering louder than the crowd that brought us collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps. With the market for such innovative products seized up worse than a rusty Ford, government has become the only source of cheap credit for anything. Ergo, everybody loves infrastructure. Well-dressed converts flocked to Mr. Flaherty's speech yesterday like contrite sinners to a revival meeting.

Instead, governments should activate construction projects that are already on the drawing-boards, and have been waiting for funding. Canada's infrastructure suffered much depreciation during the fiscal restraint of the 1990s, and did not catch up in the balanced-budget period. The wear and tear are showing.

SEE:
Your Pension Plan At Work
A Critique of P3's From The Right

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Friday, October 31, 2008

C.D. Howe Canada's Grand Poobah


There is great irony in the fact that one of Canada's foremost establishment right of centre think tanks the C.D. Howe Institute which often promotes a neo-con agenda is named after one of Canada's foremost Pooh-Bahs of State Capitalism.
Grand Poobah is a term derived from the name of the haughty character Pooh-Bah
in
Gilbert and
Sullivan
's The Mikado. In
this
comic opera,
Pooh-Bah holds numerous exalted offices, including Lord Chief Justice,
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Master of the Buckhounds, Lord High Auditor, Groom
of the Back Stairs, and Lord High Everything Else. The name has come to be used
as a mocking title for someone self-important or high-ranking and who either
exhibits an inflated self-regard, who acts in several capacities at once, or who
has limited authority while taking impressive titles.


NANK. Ko-Ko, the cheap tailor, Lord High Executioner ofTitipu! Why, that's the highest rank a citizen can attain!
POOH. It is. Our logical Mikado, seeing no moraldifference between the dignified judge who condemns a criminal todie, and the industrious mechanic who carries out the sentence,has rolled the two offices into one, and every judge is now hisown executioner.
NANK. But how good of you (for I see that you are anobleman of the highest rank) to condescend to tell all this tome, a mere strolling minstrel!
POOH. Don't mention it. I am, in point of fact, aparticularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamiteancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you thatI can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomicglobule. Consequently, my family pride is somethinginconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering. But Istruggle hard to overcome this defect. I mortify my pridecontinually. When all the great officers of State resigned in abody because they were too proud to serve under an ex-tailor, didI not unhesitatingly accept all their posts at once?
PISH. And the salaries attached to them? You did.
POOH. It is consequently my degrading duty to serve thisupstart as First Lord of the Treasury, Lord Chief Justice,Commander-in-Chief, Lord High Admiral, Master of the Buckhounds,Groom of the Back Stairs, Archbishop of Titipu, and Lord Mayor,both acting and elect, all rolled into one. And at a salary! APooh-Bah paid for his services! I a salaried minion! But I doit! It revolts me, but I do it!
NANK. And it does you credit.
POOH. But I don't stop at that. I go and dine withmiddle-class people on reasonable terms. I dance at cheapsuburban parties for a moderate fee. I accept refreshment at anyhands, however lowly. I also retail State secrets at a very lowfigure. For instance, any further information about Yum-Yumwould come under the head of a State secret. (Nanki-Poo takes hishint, and gives him money.) (Aside.) Another insult and, Ithink, a light one!


The C.D.Howe Institute flies in the face of the endeavours of Howe, who as Minister of Everything, oversaw the development of public and crown corporations in Canada. Federally funded, not joint private public partnerships, which of course would have demanded private capital to develop. With the victory of neo con agenda in the ninties promoting privatization of public and government infrastructure the C.D. Howe institute gave establishment legitimacy to the efforts of other right wing lobbyists and thnk tanks like the Fraser Institute and its east coast doppleganger; the Atlantic Institute of Market Studies , and the newly minted Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

The C.D. Howe Institute
(formerly the Howe Research Institute), is a nonprofit policy research
organization established in 1973 by a merger of the Private Planning Association
of Canada, formed in 1958, and the C.D. Howe Memorial Foundation. It is located
in Toronto. Its principal source of funding is the fees contributed by a
membership that includes corporations as well as individuals with a background
in business, the professions or academia. The institute's staff is responsible
for the preparation of the annual Policy Review and Outlook and various other
publications on topical issues. The institute also commissions leading
researchers (academics for the most part) to write papers and monographs on a
wide range of topics such as fiscal and monetary policy, trade policy, social
policy, the environment, federal-provincial relations and constitutional reform.
Although the main focus of the institute's research program is the economy, the
range of topics it has covered over the years is very wide and occasionally
extends to non-economic issues such as culture and ethnicity.


The right wing agenda saw public policy as moving from the State capitalizing public services and infrastructure and moving towards selling off those assets to deal with its debt and deficit crisis. Public good was now replaced with state funding for private profit. Howevere now that we face the economic melt down that this ideology resulted in we will see if this think tank of Canada's establishment changes it's tune. Why do I find that unlikely.


C.D. Howe Institute
Benefactors Lecture, 1997

D.G. McFetridge
Professor and Chair,
Department of Economics,
Carleton University
Toronto, October 22, 1997
Sponsored by Dofasco Inc.

The formation of public policy can be viewed from a number of perspectives.
Some see it largely as the outcome of tradeoffs between contending
interest groups; policy changes reflect nothing more than the ascendancy
of one interest group over another. To others, including the
C.D. Howe Institute, ideas matter. A good idea, well explained, can
overcome the power of even an entrenched interest group.
If ideas do matter, there is certainly merit in bringing the evidence
on the economic benefits of privatization to public attention. Privatization
is about more, much more, than selling off the bus company. It is
about institutional design, and in some countries (New Zealand, for
example) it has involved considerable reflection on just what should be
expected of government.
What we have come to call privatization is part of a larger process
of institutional change involving commercialization, contracting out,
and regulatory reform as well as the sale of state-owned enterprises to
the private sector. The literature on this process is vast but of uneven
quality.
The evidence on conventional contracting out, especially by municipal
governments, is unambiguously positive: it reduces the cost of
providing the services involved. There is more skepticism and less
evidence on the consequences of contracting for social services and for
the joint supply of infrastructure and services (public/private partnerships).
These instruments are likely to present serious—but not necessarily
insoluble — contract design problems. They may require the
government to be an active and strategic purchaser in ways not envisaged
by privatization zealots. Nevertheless, the potential economies,
especially in the accumulation and use of knowledge, make continued
experimentation worthwhile.
With respect to the entire process of commercialization, regulatory
reform, and the sale of state-owned enterprises to the private sector, the
weight of the evidence to date is that it has been beneficial. The precise
contribution of the change in ownership to the gains that have resulted
from the process as a whole is difficult to identify. One can argue,
however, that privatization is an essential part of the process in that it
provides the impetus for commercialization and makes regulatory reform,
especially regulatory forbearance, possible.
Whether or not privatization is a necessary part of the process, once
commercial objectives have been adopted and regulatory reform has
allowed competition or potential competition to exert its disciplining
force, there is little, if anything, to be gained from continued state
ownership — provided that the government sells its interest at a price
equal to the present value of the income it might expect to derive from
continued ownership.
Although the international experience with process ofcommercialization,
regulatory reform, and privatization has been favorable and
there are good conceptual arguments for privatization itself, the case for
individual privatizations must still be made on the merits. The body of
existing evidence is not so strong or so detailed that it can be taken to
imply that, say, the province of Saskatchewan would necessarily realize
significant economic benefits from privatizing its electric power or
telecommunications utilities.
The theoretical and empirical literature on privatization reminds
us to remain open to the potential benefits of employing decentralized
market or market-style incentives in place of hierarchy and command
and control. The ongoing international experimentation in institutional
design has been worthwhile and is clearly worth pursuing further.
The literature also teaches that privatization is frequently not about
pushing a button and getting less government. Unless the political
forces that brought about government intervention disappear (and they
may in some cases), privatization will be about getting different government,
rather than less government. It may involve catering to a different
set of interest groups or catering to the same interest groups in a
different way. It may involve the same or similar political activity
in different forums. It is often not simply a matter of opting for the
invisible hand.

C.D. Howe was a cabinet minister for 22 years, first in the government of Mackenzie King, and then in the government of Louis St. Laurent. Nicknamed the "Minister of Everything," C.D. Howe was forthright and forceful, and more interested in getting things done than in policy. He mobilized Canada for World War II, turning the Canadian economy from one based primarily on agriculture to one based on industry, and after the war turned it into a consumer economy spurred by veterans.

Career Highlights of C.D. Howe:
created a national air service, Trans-Canada Airlines (later Air Canada)
created the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) as a
Crown corporation
created the National Harbours Board
restructured the debt-ridden Canadian National Railway (CNR)
established the St. Lawrence Seaway
established Canada's nuclear industry
initiated the Trans-Canada Pipeline
Professional Career of CD Howe:
Engineer
Taught at Dalhousie University in Halifax
Businessman - designed and built grain elevators
Political Affiliation:
Liberal Party of Canada
Riding (Electoral District):
Port Arthur (Ontario)
Political Career of CD Howe:
C.D. Howe was first elected to the House of Commons in 1935.
He was appointed Minister of Railways and Canals and also Minister of Marine. The two departments were soon combined into the Ministry of Transport. C.D. Howe oversaw the reorganization of Canadian National Railways, and the creation of the National Harbours Board and Trans-Canada Airlines, the forerunner of Air Canada.
In 1940, C.D. Howe was appointed Minister of Munitions and Supply in charge of war production for Canada. As head of the War Supply Board, and with the authority of the War Measures Act, C.D. Howe created a huge rearmament program using "dollar-a-year men," business executives called to Ottawa to reorganize the economy. The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, which created more than 100 aerodromes and landing fields and trained over 130,000 airmen, was one of the results.
In 1944, C.D. Howe was appointed Minister of Reconstruction, and then Minister of Reconstruction and Supply, and began turning the economy toward consumer needs.
C.D. Howe became Minister of Trade and Commerce in 1948.
In 1951, with the growth of the Cold War, C.D. Howe became Minister of Defence Production as well as Trade and Commerce and oversaw the growth of the Canadian aircraft industry.
In 1956, C.D. Howe forced the plan for the Trans-Canada Pipeline, a gas pipeline from Alberta to central Canada, through Parliament but paid heavily when the Liberal government lost the next election and he lost his seat.
C.D. Howe retired from politics in 1957 at the age of 70.

C. D. Howe
C. D. Howe was known for getting things done.
That made him exactly the type of leader Canadians needed to channel their domestic energies into military might during the Second World War.
Clarence Decatur Howe is best remembered as Prime Minister Mackenzie King's right-hand man. When King decided to meld responsibility for railways, marine transport and civil aviation into one powerful Ministry of Transport in 1936, the prime minister put Howe in charge.
Not only did Howe's achievements in transport help ready Canada's transportation systems for the massive load they would have to carry during the war, but the transportation policy expertise he acquired left him well-prepared to direct the all-important Ministry of Munitions and Supply during the war.
Howe was, as he put it, a "Canadian by choice." A carpenter's son, he was born in Waltham, Mass., in 1886, moving to Canada in 1908 to teach civil engineering at Dalhousie University in Halifax. He later established a consulting engineering firm that specialized in grain elevators.
King brought Howe into politics in 1935 and he immediately began to cut a swath through bureaucracy, refusing to be bound by tradition and red tape, seeing himself much more as an implementer than a policymaker.
Howe was particularly interested in establishing a strong Canadian presence in the growing field of civil aviation.
He was instrumental, before and after the war, in establishing or expanding Trans-Canada Air Lines, the National Harbours Board, Canadian National Railways, the St. Lawrence Seaway, the TransCanada Pipeline and even the CBC.
Canada's first Minister of Transport took over a Canadian transportation system that was fragmented and outdated.
He centralized the administration of ports and reformed the debt-laden CNR, increasing efficiency and accountability that would be so important during the war.
Unemployed workers of the "Dirty '30s" were mobilized to build airstrips across the country and Trans-Canada Air Lines, Air Canada's predecessor, was established as a Crown corporation.
All these measures helped to pull the country's transportation network out of the Depression, preparing it for the incredible challenge that it would face in 1939-45.
When Canada entered the war in September 1939, Howe retained the Transport portfolio but was also asked to take on Munitions and Supply.
One of Britain's first requests was that Canada play host to the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, which would train nearly 50,000 pilots and groundcrew by war's end.
Howe left Transport to concentrate on Munitions and Supply in July 1940, but continued to prod the transportation sector for the extraordinary performances he was demanding of other Canadian industries.
Before the end of the war in 1945, railway traffic had tripled in Canada as food, munitions and other war supplies were rushed to Atlantic ports.
Howe was criticized for forging ahead with little regard for costs, but the results he engendered soon silenced his critics. Costs wouldn't matter if the war was lost, he told colleagues, and in victory, costs would be forgotten.
The war, of course, was won and the relentless energy of Canada's first Minister of Transport played a major role in the victory.
Canada's other wartime ministers were P. J. A. Cardin, 1940-42; J.-E. Michaud, 1942 - April 1945, and Lionel Chevrier, April 1945 - June 1954.
SEE:
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Saturday, November 03, 2007

Sunday, September 02, 2007

Canada Goes To Pot


Canada is a nation of pot heads.
\Marijuana use in Canada is the highest in the industrialized world and more than four times the global rate, according to a report from the United Nations.

Forty per cent of Canadian cannabis is produced in British Columbia, 25% in Ontario and 25% in Quebec, the report noted.

 Health

- One in 10 Canadian women uses marijuana.


Experts and activists are not concerned about the high rate of Canadian marijuana use reported in 2007 UN World Drug report —even though young people are the largest users of the drug.

The report states that 16.8 per cent of Canadians between the ages of 16 and 64 used marijuana in 2004. Canada is ranked fifth in marijuana use and the country’s usage percentage is four times the world average of 3.8 per cent. To compare, the report found that 12.6 per cent of people in the United States and 6.1 per cent in Holland have used the drug.

Richard Mathias, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s faculty of medicine, said he is pleased with the results from the report and is not worried about the high numbers of young people using the drug.

“I think that marijuana is a safer drug than some other options and I know that youth is a difficult, highly stressful time and it is to be expected that youth will explore and that’s good,” he said. “I teach these kids. They’re not criminals.”

A study conducted in 2002 by Carleton University professor Peter Fried also concluded that only heavy pot smokers are negatively affected by marijuana use. Fried’s 70-person study found that only heavy marijuana users between the ages of 10 and 20 had a decline in their IQ scores. The rest saw an increase in their scores.

The study also found that those who smoked heavily and later quit returned to their former IQ level.

Eugene Oscapella, an Ottawa-based lawyer who specializes in drug policy issues, said the UN report shows that the legal status of marijuana in a given country seems to have little bearing on consumption rates.

The report found that only 6.1 per cent of people in the Netherlands, where marijuana use has effectively been decriminalized, reported trying pot.

This shows decriminalization has no bearing on rates of use, and Canada shouldn't be so afraid to follow the Dutch lead, Oscapella said.

"The criminal law does not prevent people from using marijuana, nor does legalization force people to use it," he said.

Jean Chretien's Liberals first introduced a bill to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana in 2003, but it was never brought to a final vote. Stephen Harper's Conservatives killed the bill when they came to office in January 2006.

Oscapella added that Canada should be focusing its resources on the root causes of drug abuse, rather than persecuting people for possession.

"It is a health and a social issue," he said. "The criminal law is not the appropriate mechanism for dealing with drugs in the vast majority of cases."


Marijuana and tobacco use among young adults in Canada

The authors characterized marijuana smoking among young adult Canadians, examined the co-morbidity of tobacco and marijuana use, and identified correlates associated with different marijuana use consumption patterns. Data were collected from 20,275 individuals as part of the 2004 Canadian Tobacco Use Monitoring Survey. Logistic regression models were conducted to examine characteristics associated with marijuana use behaviors among young adults (aged 15-24). Rates of marijuana use were highest among current smokers and lowest among never smokers. Marijuana use was more prevalent among males, young adults living in rural areas, and increased with age. Young adults who were still in school were more likely to have tried marijuana, although among those who had tried, young adults outside of school were more like to be heavy users. Males and those who first tried marijuana at an earlier age also reported more frequent marijuana use. These findings illustrate remarkably high rates of marijuana use and high co-morbidity of tobacco use among young adult Canadians. These findings suggest that future research should consider whether the increasing popularity of marijuana use among young adults represents a threat to the continuing decline in tobacco use among this population.

We have a large scale industry in producing illicit and licit marijuana. The latter for medicinal purposes. We have approved marijuana and its byproducts for medicinal uses.

Since the 1970's when the LeDain Commission recommended decriminalization to today when the right wing think tank the Fraser Institute recommends decriminalization for controlling grow ops and increased tax income.

Canadians favour decriminalization. However the Harpocrites ignored their old Fraser pals as they ignore 'polls' and once elected declared war on pot. Quietly without much fanfare, what had been Liberal policy waiting for a vote was squashed.


“We will not be reintroducing the Liberal government’s marijuana decriminalization legislation,” Harper announced at a Canadian Professional Police Association meeting. “I thought we might find a receptive audience here,” he added, according to a Reuters report.


The Harpocrites would rather pander to their regressive base with a phony war on drugs, blaming as they do the rise in crime and pot smoking on the Liberals, pathetic.

In view of the former Liberal government's determination to medicalize and legalize marijuana, it is not surprising that, according to a study of young people in Canada released in 2004, our youth now hold the distinction of topping all nations (Switzerland was second) in frequent marijuana use. The lead researcher for this study, Dr. William Boyce of Queen's University, stated that the increased use of marijuana in Canada was tied to the three As - affordability, availability and acceptability. He stated, "in Canada, I think all three of those things come together so that it's actually used quite a bit by kids here. It's not so expensive, it's definitely available and with the legislation introduced in the last Parliament - and perhaps again in this one - that decriminalizes marijuana use, it certainly provides a signal to kids that this is not a highly illegal activity."

Thank heaven, the Conservative government is now providing a different message to our youth on marijuana use.

Please write to Prime Minister Harper and Minister of Justice Toews to thank them for the planned enforcement of the present marijuana laws rather than legalizing its use. Their actions will make a significant difference to our nation's youth. Please also request that marijuana use for so-called medical reasons be stopped if and until such time that it can be scientifically determined that its use has in fact, medical benefits.

The Harpocrites have adopted the oh so successful American War On Drugs Policy. And they have included marijuana as a key element of their new anti-drug campaign. Look forward to more regressive stupidity in the fall sitting of the house as the Minister of Health declares a drug panic.

Clement to MDs: Get tougher on illicit drugs

Federal Health Minister Tony Clement delivered a tough, anti-drug message to doctors yesterday, saying young people need straight talk about the dangers of illicit drugs, including marijuana.

"The messages young people have received during the past several years have been confusing and conflicting to say the least," Clement told the annual meeting of the Canadian Medical Association in Vancouver.

"We are very concerned about the damage and pain that drugs cause families and we intend to reverse the trend toward vague, ambiguous messaging that has characterized Canadian attitudes in the recent past," he said.

Ottawa plans a campaign emphasizing the dangers of all illicit drugs in any quantity, Clement said. "We will discourage young people from thinking there are safe amounts or safe drugs."

Meanwhile the Police and Senate disagree with the Harpocrites new War On Drugs.

Victoria's No. 2 cop testified in B.C. Supreme Court yesterday that neither the Vancouver Island Compassion Society nor its distribution of medical marijuana has ever been the subject of a criminal investigation.

Deputy Chief Bill Naughton said the society's Cormorant Street office of the Vancouver Island Compassion Society has not generated any complaints, adding marijuana ranks behind drugs like cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin in terms of Victoria police priorities.

"The enforcement of federal laws against marijuana takes a back seat," said Naughton, who was subpoenaed by the defence in the trial of Michael Swallow, 41, and Mat Beren, 33.

Also testifying yesterday in Victoria was Senator Pierre Claude Nolin, who chaired the Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs, which called in 2002 for the legalization of marijuana in Canada.

Nolin told the court the regulations, as they currently exist, are an obstacle to Canadians who want access to medical marijuana.

He said the rules ask doctors to be "gatekeepers" for access to legal marijuana. It's a role doctors don't want, and so Canadians are being denied access to a medical product.

"[The] medical profession is reluctant, generally reluctant," he said. "They don't want to be the gatekeepers, they don't want that responsibility."

Heck even the da Judge disagrees with the Government.

Rolling a joint might require the removal of stems and seeds, but the legal limbo in which pot smokers in Canada find themselves is far from clear-cut.
On July 13, an Ontario Court judge in Toronto acquitted Clifford Long, who was charged with possession of 3.5 grams of marijuana.
The court held that Canada's marijuana possession laws are unconstitutional. Justice Howard Borenstein cited a seven-year-old Ontario Court of Appeal case, which also described the possession law as unconstitutional, due to its ambiguity on medical marijuana.
Long argued in court that since the government of Canada allowed for medicinal use, but did not change the law on marijuana to accommodate this policy change, then all possession laws should cease to exist.

While the Harpocrites declare a War On Drugs, including marijuana, at the same time they approve big pharma profiting off Medical Marijuana.

GW Pharmaceuticals plc (AIM: GWP) and Bayer Inc., a subsidiary of Bayer AG, announce that Health Canada has approved Sativex®, a cannabis derived pharmaceutical treatment, as adjunctive analgesic treatment in adult patients with advanced cancer who experience moderate to severe pain during the highest tolerated dose of strong opioid therapy for persistent background pain.


While local marijuana growers are limited in providing medical marijuana to one or two Canadians. Clearly the Harpocrites missed the point of the Fraser Institute Report. Local grow ops legally functioning can produce medical as well as recreational marijuana that then could be taxed. Quality and consumer protection, would be assured.

A Vancouver Island grower of organic marijuana is being inundated with pleas for pot from disease sufferers, but Health Canada says he can supply only one person, a provincial court trial has been told.

Eric Nash said he wrote to Canadian Health Minister Tony Clement with a list of 121 people, all approved by Health Canada to use marijuana as medicine and asking him to grow it for them. One of them was a former RCMP officer diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

But Nash said regulations forbid him from growing for more than one person at a time. So his company, Island Harvest, can supply only two people, one each for him and his partner, although it could easily supply more.


And Tony's announcement of a new PR campaign in the War On Drugs looks suspicious in light of the governments failure to extend the license for the Vancouver Safe Injection Site.

The Canadian government is ramping up a massive anti-drug campaign, the first in 20 years, amid calls to keep open a Vancouver clinic that monitors heroin addicts as they inject themselves with the drug.

"Canada has not run a serious or significant anti-drug campaign for almost 20 years. The messages young people have received during the past several years have been confusing and conflicting to say the least," federal Health Minister Tony Clement said yesterday in a speech to the Canadian Medical Association in Vancouver.

Meanwhile, the Health Minister was vague about whether the Insite injection clinic in Vancouver would stay open. "There has been more research done, and some of it has been questioning of the research that has already taken place and questioning of the methodology of those associated with Insite," he said.

Isra Levy, president of the National Specialty Society for Community Medicine called for Insite to remain open in an interview with The Globe and Mail, stating that "illicit drug use is indeed a scourge, it's the cause of untold misery for those ill with addiction and their loved ones."

Is Harpers War in Afghanistan an excuse to expand his War On Drugs.....not only against opium but against the powerful Cannabis Indica and Afghani Hash....remember Afghani hash? It ain't been around in North America since the late Sixties and early Seventies when Hippies made their holy pilgrimage to Marrakesh and on to Afghanistan and back. It remains however a staple in Europe.

Hashish is produced practically everywhere in and around Afghanistan. The best kinds of Hash originate from the Northern provinces between Hindu Kush and the Russian border (Balkh, Mazar-i-Sharif). As tourist in Afghanistan it will be very difficult to be allowed to see Cannabis-Fields or Hash Production. The plants which are used for Hash production are very small and bushy Indicas. In Afghanistan Hashish is pressed by hand under addition of a small quantity of tea or water. The Hashish is worked on until it becomes highly elastic and has a strong aromatic smell. In Afghanistan the product is stored in the form of Hash-Balls (because a round ball has the less contact with air), however, before being shipped, the Hash is pressed in 100g slabs. Good qualities of Afghani are signed with the stem of the producing family. Sometimes Hash of this kind is sold as Royal Afghani. Color: Black on the outside, dark greenish or brown inside. Can sometimes look kind of grayish on the outside when left in contact with the air. Smell: Spicy to very spicy. Taste: Very spicy, somewhat harsh on the throat. Afghani can induce lots of coughing in inexperienced users.

Afghani
aka Afghanistan
Marijuana



Afghani Marijuana Strains - The origins of this seed strain come from Afghanistan and travel to Holland. Afghani has big round fat leaves and the same beautiful big fat buds. It usually has a rich smooth hash like heavy smoke taste. The Afghani marijuana plant tends to be very bushy and will yield large amounts of very sticky buds. Well known for excellent growth because it originated in mountainous conditions and over thousands of years a very stocky, sturdy and disease resistant plant was produced.


Well Cannabis in Afghanistan is back in a big way. As Canadian forces found last fall. Hey guys don't put that to the torch or ya' all will fall down.

Maj. Patrick Robichaud, commander of the operating base, this week characterized the security situation around Ma'sum Ghar as "fragile." He said Taliban insurgents appear to have taken advantage of a change in command among the Canadians and the Afghan National Army to slip back into the region. The insurgents are looking to strong-arm local farmers for a piece of the action in the impending marijuana harvest, said Maj. Robichaud.

Canadian troops fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan have stumbled across an unexpected and potent enemy — almost impenetrable forests of 10-foot-tall marijuana plants.

Gen. Rick Hillier, chief of the Canadian defense staff, said Thursday that Taliban fighters were using the forests as cover. In response, the crew of at least one armored car had camouflaged their vehicle with marijuana.

"The challenge is that marijuana plants absorb energy, heat very readily. It's very difficult to penetrate with thermal devices ... and as a result you really have to be careful that the Taliban don't dodge in and out of those marijuana forests," he said in a speech in Ottawa.


IMAGE: Soldier and marijuana forest


The United Nations has conducted surveys of poppy crops, but has not done so for marijuana plants. The focus on poppies possibly reflects the view of international donors that highly addictive heroin is the more urgent problem.

Marijuana plants are widely grown in at least three of the 16 districts in Balkh province, which is home to Mazar-e-Sharif. Local authorities have sent letters to villages urging farmers to stop growing the illegal crop, but they have yet to decide how and when they will crack down.

"The farmers have planted this stuff like smugglers," said Saheed Azizullah Hashmi, head of the province's agriculture department. "We don't know how much there is out there."

He said many people associated with the hashish trade were linked to the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. But marijuana plants thrived well before they held sway over much of Afghanistan, and local commanders with large land holdings reportedly benefit from its cultivation.

Rouzudin and his fellow farmers made no effort to hide their plants, which loom over nearby cotton bushes. The two crops are interspersed along the road leading to Shibergan, the headquarters of Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek commander and powerful political figure in the north.

Farmer Majid Gul said he can get 5 million Afghanis, or about $100, for 2.2 pounds of hashish, 200 times more than he could earn for the same amount of cotton.

"When we're ready to sell, people in big cars will come from the bazaar in town," he said. "We don't know who they are, we just want the money."

. For the decade before the Soviet army invaded in 1979, the teahouses of Afghanistan were the toking tourist's hangout of choice. And even during 23 years of war, when the Afghans fought the Soviets and then one another, the hash trade thrived. "Afghan black" remained a staple sale for cannabis dealers across the world. Mazar-i-Sharif gave its name to a particularly potent variety. And last year, in the final weeks of the Taliban, Amsterdam's coffee-shop owners even boasted they were doing their bit for the war on terror by buying blocks stamped with a golden Northern Alliance stencil reading "Freedom for Afghanistan."

Now, as Afghanistan emerges from war, dope farming has never been so good�and the drought never so bad. The Taliban banned hash production, but in the postwar chaos of lawless fiefdoms that dot the land, growers and traders across the country are finding themselves free once again to cultivate and export hashish without fear, and often with warlord protection. Moreover, the international perception that cannabis is a relatively benign drug�prompting some authorities across Europe and Australia to decriminalize its use�has persuaded drug-policing agencies to largely ignore it. So, while opium cultivation is monitored to the acre, neither Interpol, the U.N. Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention nor the U.S.'s Drug Enforcement Agency can offer even rough estimates for how much hashish Afghanistan produces or what the trade is worth. But around Mazar it's almost impossible to find a field where hemp is not being grown, either openly or poorly hidden behind watermelons or knee-high cotton plants. "Everybody's farming chaars now," says former Taliban fighter Faizullah, 27, watering a verdant six-hectare oasis of hemp surrounded by desert. Cannabis used to be outlawed by the Taliban. "But now," says Faizullah, "it's a free-for-all."

Harpers War On Drugs is doomed to fail, as has the American campaign. But this proves once again that he and his pals have abandoned any pretense to libertarianism, while embracing the traditional right wing screed of Law and Order Republicanism. Heck Canadians even support the medical use of opiates despite this governments opposition.

While in the U.S. Republican Presidential Candidate and Libertarian Ron Paul embraces his inner Canadian and calls for decriminalization, and an end to Americas war on drugs.
Why Is This Canadian Pot Dealer Campaigning for Ron Paul?


Also, a little known fact is that if Ron Paul got his way, there would be no federal war on drugs. He has called the war on drugs “as stupid as the war in Iraq”. He is uncompromisingly against federal laws banning medical marijuana, and completely opposed to the federal government coming in, when a state has legalized medical marijuana, and using force to nullify this legalization (such as has happened in California, where medical marijuana is legal, but the federal government uses force to effectively keep it criminalized. This would NOT happen under a Paul administration.)



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Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Groupthink

We sometimes overlook the most obvious connection between deniers, those who deny global warming, those who deny evolution and those who deny the holocaust.

They suffer from the same kind of
groupthink and conspiracy theories.

Its not denial they say, it's debate they want, the facts are not irrefutable, there is evidence to the contrary.

For a long time Bradley Smith has tried to present himself as an honest chap, a champion of intellectual freedom simply seeking an "open debate"about the "holocaust controversy [sic]." But this debate is a sham. The so-called holocaust controversy does not exist. It is the invention of a collection of long-time anti-Semites and apologists for Hitler.

On the surface
, Holocaust deniers portray themselves as individuals and groups engaged in a legitimate, dispassionate quest for historical knowledge and "truth."

Dressing themselves in pseudo-academic garb, they have adopted the term "revisionism" in order to mask and legitimate their enterprise. After all, the ongoing challenge to and revision of previously accepted historical interpretation is one of the hallmarks of the professional historian's craft.


Of course most holocaust deniers are right wing kooks that even other right wingers disavow or do they? Not so. Once upon a time they had powerful business backers, and in many cases still do today.

Like Robert Welch Jr. who founded the John Birch Society. Today the Birchites focus their criticism on immigration, legal or illegal and the UN. There are many in a variety of right wing movements, like the Minutemen, whose roots go back to the sixties and the World Anti-Bolshevik Movement which gave succour to post WWII fascists.

The right wing is inundated with conspiracy theorists, holocaust deniers and neo-fascists. And ideological differences aside they are part of the 'mainstream' right, they are backed by private business interests and the tactics they have developed over fifty years of lobbying in the United States remain the same.

Because they are effective. Deny that your opponents have evidence, claim something is a theory, not a fact and viola, their views are challenged for there creditability.

Thus the same argumentative tactic used to deny the holocaust is used to deny evolution and used to deny climate change. It is groupthink on the right. And the argumentative style does not change, the subject of the attack does.

And it is always tinged with conspiracy theory, that the scientific or historical facts are being foisted on us because it is consensus reality, consensus of those in power it is not the 'real thing'.

So all the historians that accept the holocaust are establishment historians not 'real' historians. Scientists that accept evolution or global warming are not 'real' scientists.


The only place that a climate change science consensus exists is in what Essex and McKitrick call 'Official Science', the collective voice of governments and other so-called 'science authorities'. But this is not real science.


The Climate Change Deniers have money and powerful connections they have used to discredit their opponents, in this case other scientists and academics. And sometimes do so to end careers, literally terrifying their opponents into silence. Certainly a form of fascism.


"There is a strategy to single out individuals, tarnish them and try to bring the whole of the science into disrepute," he says. "And Kevin [Trenberth] is a likely target." Mann agrees that the scientists behind the upcoming IPCC report are in for a rough ride. "There is already an orchestrated campaign against the IPCC by climate change contrarians," he says.

Many of the IPCC's authors, some of whom asked not to be named, say this is a smokescreen. They claim there is an extensive network of lobby groups and scientists involved in making the case against the IPCC and its reports. Automobile, coal and oil companies have coordinated and funded past attacks on them, the scientists say. Sometimes this has been done through Washington lobby groups such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), whose officers include Myron Ebell, a former climate negotiator for George W. Bush's administration. Recently, the CEI made television advertisements arguing against climate change, one of which ended with the words: "Carbon dioxide, they call it pollution, we call it life." CEI's past funders include ExxonMobil, General Motors and the Ford Motor Company.

The money trail

Some sceptical scientists are funded directly by industry. In July, The Washington Post published a leaked letter from the Intermountain Rural Electric Association (IREA), an energy company based in Colorado, that exhorted power companies to support the work of the prominent sceptic Pat Michaels of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Worried about the potential cost of cleaning up coal-fired power plants to reduce their CO2 emissions, IREA's general manager, Stanley Lewandowski, wrote: "We believe that it is necessary to support the scientific community that is willing to stand up against the alarmists... In February this year, IREA alone contributed $100,000 to Dr Michaels."


The Fraser Institutes response to the IPCC report was a long time in the making, and a coordinated effort between them and the anti-climate change lobby, the flat earthers, in the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Europe. And the organizations, front groups really, are all interconnected.

It was planned years ago, as new front organizations sprung up over the past three years in preparation for the IPCC report. While the Fraser Institute like its American counter-part the Cato Institute have existed since the seventies, groups like Canada's
Natural Resources Stewardship Project, and the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition are all relatively new lobbying groups. Even the older Friends of Science. was only created in 2002.

The push was on by the right and their big business backers when they saw the writing on the wall after Kyoto was signed. One faction of capitalism endorsed Kyoto, another was ambivalent, and a handful, but a powerful handful, vehmently opposed Kyoto.

Having lost the war they now engage in a protracted series of battles to attempt to inundate doubt in the public mind, using fronts like Junk Science.com and Fox News, various assorted right wing media mouthpieces in Canada, Europe and America. They know they have lost, but if in anyway they can hold back radical changes required to deal with the heat death of the planet, to save their industries they will. Victory to them is to delay change.

And they will never go away, another issue will come to the fore that they can delay, attack, undermine, and deny. And the consipiratorial politics of denial will once again be used.

The Right Wing exposes the Janus nature of the ruling class. One face appeals to the public as liberal, seeking to ameliorate the worst excesses of capitalism, the other jingoist, nativist, reactionary seeks to dominate through demagoguery and populism. One is enlightened capitalism the other is fascism. Both are false choices.

The alternative is, as it has always been for the past one hundred years, Barbarism or Socialism.



See:

Fraser Institute


Environment

Conspiracy Theory


Fascism

Anti-Semitism


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