Post Office Matters

In the last few weeks, Canada Post workers started staging a series of rotating strikes across the country. They had been trying to negotiate with Canada Post management for quite a while on such matters as raises to cover the cost of living increases, sick leave etc. Essential services like social assistance cheques were still being delivered and mail was circulating, although slowly.

Canada Post responded by locking the workers out, thus shutting down the system completely.

Now Harper and his Con buddies have "stepped in" to order them back to work. With the "reverse Midas touch" that Harper has demonstrated so often and so well in the years he's occupied the throne, he has now caused negotiations to cease entirely.

Harper stepping in to fix anything is like setting an enraged bull elephant on the petunia beds, pretty much the same result of anything he and his colleagues have put their minds to (using the phrase loosely) in the last godawful five and a half years.

Bird and Fortune, two British comedians, discussed the privatization of the British post office in the early nineties, something that the howling nicompoops have avocated here in recent weeks.

Their conclusion? Privatizing the post office allows management to show their ruthlessness and greed, to say nothing of stupidity.

Ten minutes of wonderful dialogue.



Their site is here.

Harper's War Agenda

From Rabble.ca by Derrick O'Keeffe

Expanding foreign military bases serves Harper's war agenda

"Canadian fighter jets have flown more than 400 sorties over Libya thus far, and NATO's air campaign is intensifying. The Canadian planes have been operating from a NATO base in Italy. To fight wars from the air, you need to have the use of foreign bases.

Last week, Le Devoir broke the news that the Canadian government had completed agreements for new foreign bases in Jamaica and Germany, with talks ongoing to establish bases in Kuwait, Tanzania and several other countries."

The piece includes a link to the Canadian Peace Alliance and a statement against Canada's garrisoning of the planet.

"The Canadian Peace Alliance condemns the plans of the Harper government to establish new foreign military bases for Canada. This is a policy that has been in the works for some time but, like so much else about Canada's foreign policy, it was completely excluded from the discussion during the recent federal election

...The announcement about new foreign bases came at the same time as a request to keep Canadian Forces on the ground in Richelieu, Quebec to help with flood relief was being ignored. The Harper government continues to encourage costly and unnecessary deployments of the Forces abroad, while showing little interest in using its resources at home for disaster relief.

Foreign bases have nothing to do with Canadian security, and everything to do with the Harper government's desire to be able to participate in future military aggressions like the ones ongoing in Afghanistan and Libya."

Young woman urges a "Canadian Spring"

My admiration goes out to young people standing up to their elders (but rarely betters, whatever the Harper echo chamber may think of themselves) and their activism is one of the few things I can feel hopeful about in this era of unthinking Harperism.

Rogue page inspired by Arab uprising, wants Canadians to mobilize


During the throne speech of the new Harper "Majority" Regime - 40% of the vote, 25% of eligible voters - this young graduate who took a position as a page in the Senate, held up a home made red stop sign with the words "Stop Harper!". She was escorted from that august chamber - normally the meeting place of Harper-appointed yes-men and women - by a guy dressed in 18th century militaristic gear.

There was tut-tutting at the lack of security by a scared Con spokesman, his own insecurity whipped into view by the thought that a young woman armed with a sign was a danger to his own god-ordained right to dictate to Canadians what they had to do - or be charged with High Treason.

Funny how the Cons are all for freedom from dictators - or so they say - but can't see the autocratic agenda of their new Saviour is a danger to the country. Who, exactly, holds the treasonous agenda here?