Bye Bye Rob Ford, Hello Karen Stintz

There is the sound of champagne corks being popped and cheers in the streets. Everyone smiles at each other and winks, knowing that soon it will all be over. The hated burgermeister is falling and no one, except perhaps his family, will be sad to see him go. And he has been felled by none other than that champion of democracy, Toronto Police Chief William Blair.

Oh, wait a second. Bill Blair? The same Bill Blair who led the cops in their assault on G20 protesters a couple of years ago? The same Bill Blair who wheeled out props – a la the “Miami model” of protest disruption - and used “kettling” to corral not only peaceful demonstrators but unlucky passersby for hours without food or water? The same Bill Blair whose cops shot a man nine times on a streetcar before tasering him?

Something is rotten in Denmark.

I have watched the left go absolutely bananas with delight in the past week as the official right wing in Canada has imploded. Well, imploded is too strong a word, the game is hardly over for Harper as of this morning. And I’ve also been happy to see the vultures turn on each other. I mean, these guys are scumbags, lets face it. But it has been with growing trepidation.

At the federal level, Stephen Harper’s troubles have nothing to do with his murder of thousands of Afghans in support of NATO’s attempt to subdue that country. It has nothing to do with his shutdown of the national daycare plan that Paul Martin put in place to try and save his own skin, or his scuppering of the deal he made with first nations people. Nor does it have anything to do with his policy record of the past decade – his cuts to cultural funding, his government’s attacks on funding for international women’s organizations that support choice on abortion or domestic religious groups like KAIROS that support Palestinian rights. It has nothing to do with his unbridled support for big oil and their enthusiastic destruction of the environment of Alberta and, indeed, the whole world with the tar sands. Nothing to do with his support for fracking to recover natural gas. The list goes on as to the odious reasons why Harper should be unceremoniously turfed from office.

Not one of those reasons has come up. And the same can be said for Rob Ford. Ford privatized west end garbage collection, leading to a degradation in working conditions for sanitation workers, and worse service. He tried to close libraries and de-fund childcare subsidies for single parents and poor families. He has attacked cyclists and environmentalists. He shut down the much needed transit plan for the city to wage an ideological fight for subways vs LRTs.

No, the reason why Harper is in trouble is a stupid, piddling, little scandal – a couple of his senators took extra expenses – a time honoured tradition in Canada’s undemocratic chamber of “sober second thought” (oh, the delicious irony of that title as I watched Duffy roast Harper last week). His office then tried to head off the scandal by covering the expenses of Mike Duffy. Aboriginal people are living in conditions worse than the developing world on many reserves and working class people can’t afford daycare – and I care that Duffy took an extra $100K?

Sure, it is Harper’s famous arrogance and micromanagement that is bringing him down. And if he goes the way of Brian Mulroney 20 years ago I won’t shed a tear. But we all ought to remember how that celebration ended. The Tory party was destroyed, not by the left, but because it was so thoroughly rotten and hated by both left and right (the right because Mulroney supported concessions to Quebec viz Meech Lake Constitutional Accord). It gave the Liberals 4 terms in office under Jean Chretien and Paul Martin. And it gave Canada the harshest austerity regime in the western world under Paul Martin. The fact that it was not a shift to the left was also expressed in the fact that out of the ashes of the Tories arose an even more right wing party, Reform – whose ultimate victory was that they got to remove the words “progressive” from the “Progressive Conservative Party of Canada” (confirming that they are, in fact, against any progress). In Ontario the NDP was decimated for a generation (by their own right wing policies, it should be said) and replaced by the rabidly right wing Tories under Mike Harris.

Not that the present round of defenestrations will necessarily end the same way. But people need to sober up and take a look at who is putting in the knife and why. That will tell us a bit about why it is happening and why now.

In Toronto the city elite have always hated Rob Ford. Their horse was George Smitherman – a smooth, connected lawyer with right wing politics and a progressive gloss because he’s openly gay. He would have had an easier chance of maintaining consensus while implementing austerity. Ford is a bumbling, personally troubled, brash populist with few political skills beyond brawling and personal insults. His agenda is no different than Smitherman, except in the details (in particular his weird opposition to a transit plan that was supported by the Chamber of Commerce, because gridlock is a big, costly headache for Ontario capitalists). At first, after the election, the city elite reached out to Rob Ford and tried to work with him. Some media supported him, just as they had supported Mike Harris years earlier because sometimes a right wing populist can break the logjam of “business as usual” to put things on the “right track” by harnessing popular anger in a pro-capitalist direction.

But Ford was too erratic, too self-serving, too unable to build a coherent team with a coherent agenda to get through what is needed from the point of view of Toronto’s corporate elite. And they hate him because he’s a trashy, nouveau riche, petty bourgeois piss-tank who won’t play ball the way they want him to. He gets drunk in public and is rude to people. He hangs out with trash and thugs. He behaves in ways that remind them too much of the dirty unwashed masses. That’s why the focus of attacks on Rob Ford has almost always revolved around his personal behavior. Does anybody think that it’s an accident that the police released a photo of Rob Ford taking a piss in a public park? Jesus, I’ve taken a piss behind buildings more than once – because there’s no freaking public washrooms anywhere in the city. Or, horror of horror, Ford has to sneak around to buy drugs? Um, I don’t know if any of you have ever smoked pot but you don’t buy it at the corner store either (and for all we know it could have been pot that Lisi was dropping in Ford’s car – not that I particularly care). Is Rob Ford a hypocrite on these things? Would he attack drug users and homeless people who are forced to piss behind buildings? Of course he would but just because he’s an asshole doesn’t mean I have to be. Build more public washrooms for crying out loud. Decriminalize drug use.

It’s so blindingly obvious I can’t believe the left doesn’t see this. When I talk to working class people who aren’t leftists it’s obvious to them. They know that Rob Ford is being attacked because he looks and sounds like them – he has family problems and swears and drives an SUV and he drinks too much and has trouble keeping it together. Surprise, surprise, so do most working class people (not exactly that constellation of challenges but similar ones). That the left hops on board this attack uncritically and says, frankly, the snobbiest, most elitist crap in attacking Rob Ford does the left no favours. The right wing will win on this terrain. I saw people laughing at Rob Ford yelling at reporters who were at his house and wouldn’t get off his property yesterday. I hate Rob Ford but I was sympathetic to him to be honest. The media are vultures and I’d have lost my shit if I were him too. I don’t find public dismemberment of anyone a pleasure to watch and while the left might think it’s fun because he’s so odious you ought to remember: this isn’t about you, it’s about the confidence of ordinary people to take control of their lives. Public humiliation of Rob Ford in this way isn’t going to raise their confidence in themselves. It’s going to further cement the idea that only rich, slick and connected operators – like Smitherman – are fit to run the city and the country. Notice the different coverage of Smitherman's family challenges about a month ago - his husband disappeared on some kind of binge, part of a long term problem apparently, and the police were called in - to Ford's troubles. Nobody laughed at Smitherman (nor should they, not for that). That’s why this idea that “Ford Nation” are stupid or brainwashed because they continue to support their man is so odious to me. On this one thing they are right – this is a concerted attempt to oust their man by city elites (though they are wrong that it has anything to do with the left).

Or Karen Stintz. Does anybody think that it’s an accident that Ford’s legal dossier was leaked now? Does anybody think that it’s odd that the police – on the basis of a newspaper report with no physical evidence – put their top investigators on the case to nail Ford? Since when have the police followed a politician to reveal his personal foibles or cared about political corruption? I mean, they released a report that doesn’t demonstrate any proof of illegal activity on the part of Ford. If they had any proof they would have arrested him. This is about destroying Rob Ford while there is still enough lead-time before the next municipal elections to rebuild the right wing on city council. This is about giving Karen Stints – who, coincidentally, announced her candidacy last week – a clear shot for the mayoralty. Stintz is also a Tory but one who knows how to work with city capitalists and who saved the transit plan from Rob Ford. And she doesn’t get drunk in public.

I would argue that a similar process is under way at the federal level. Not that there is a conspiracy (I do think that there’s a conspiracy to destroy Rob Ford, by the way) but rather a sense of malaise amongst the elite at the effectiveness of Stephen Harper. Let’s face it, Harper never really represented more than a fraction of Canadian capitalists. But he was the best alternative on offer after the meltdown of the Liberals because of corruption and infighting. But now the Liberals have recovered and Justin Trudeau is a rising star – while Harper’s star is on the wane. Everybody prefers consensus. This is true of workers as much as it is of capitalists. That’s always been the power of the Liberals – to implement the ruling class agenda through consensus, whenever possible, rather than conflict. That’s why they are Canada’s “natural governing party.” The Tories are the fallback position for Canada’s capitalists (and workers, traditionally). With a recovered Liberal Party and people getting tired of Harper’s open Machiavellianism and not-so-hidden right wing extremism, it looks like there might just be an opportunity to restore the historic coalition that the Liberals represented. Harper is now discovering just how shallow his support was in most of the country.

Will any of this benefit the left? Let's be frank, the union movement has done zero to resist austerity (outside of a few pockets of heroic, sectional struggles). Ford privatized garbage collection and there was not even an information picket. There were a few demonstrations against Ford on an anti-austerity platform and the strike by library workers – that was quickly settled, wisely, by Ford’s people before it could become a focal point. But that’s it. The Occupy movement was great - but it was small (compared to the tasks) and short-lived. It never generalized into a sustained movement.

Since the decline of the anti-war movement there has been almost zero public opposition to Harper’s agenda. And, of course, the ever-craven federal NDP under the leadership of ex-Liberal Tom Mulcair, is rushing to prove that they are the new Liberal Party of Canada. We’ll see how that goes for them. Even in Quebec, the PQ, which benefited from the brilliant student movement has managed to turn the debate away from austerity and towards attacking Muslims.

These are, in short, challenging times. And the over-the-top celebrations by the left at the predicaments of Ford and Harper is a sign of desperation. We’ll take any crumbs of hope that fall from the table. Sure, it’s true that splits in the ruling class can be to our benefit but it would be silly to think that the ruling class is split in Toronto. They are united in wanting Ford out – Blair is simply fronting for them. I expect that Ford will be getting some phone calls to offer him a cushy parachute if he jumps now along with a reprieve from criminal charges. The particular madness that is Alberta politics is, of course, always a problem for Canadian capitalists but when the Toronto Sun comes out for Harper’s neck don’t kid yourself that there isn’t a growing consensus at the national level.

So, the left shouldn’t pretend that this defenestration has anything to do with us or with workers or social programs or any of that good stuff. This is a night of the long knives, a ruling class drama that is entertaining, perhaps, but will do little to strengthen the ability of our side to take back that which was taken from us. And, in the case of Ford, the snobbery can actually damage our side’s confidence.

I Heart Rob Ford

Well, well, well, it’s been quite a week or two. Rob Ford supposedly smoking crack on video. Doug Ford’s past as a supposed hash dealer exposed – along with the drug related charges and violence connected with his other siblings. This follows and endless string of scandals, foibles and general foolishness on the part of the mayor of Toronto. What fun!

 There has been lots of handwringing about Ford embarrassing our great city on the world stage. We need a better mayor, they say. Nonsense, I say. Of course, we could use better political leadership. But that wasn’t what was on offer in the last election. We had the choice between Ford and Smitherman. And Smitherman is a right wing liberal who just happens to be a) gay and b) a very smooth operator. If Smitherman had been elected he would have been just as much of an austerity mongering hatchet man as Rob Ford. The difference would have been that he would have been effective. The incompetence of Rob Ford has ensured that his wacky agenda has been derailed at every turn – even by this largely spineless council (remember the unanimous vote to commend the police for their handling of the G8 fiasco?). Fools give confidence to the weak. Sad but true.

The other element that is heartening is that, ignoring Rosie DiManno’s jibes about Ford’s supporters being mindless dupes, working class people have not been that impressed by the scandal-mongering of the media. Doug Ford, scumbag that he is, is partly right that the media are going after the Ford brothers because they can’t touch their politics. The media by and large don’t disagree with their austerity agenda. They hate them because they have the kinds of personal “flaws” that plague many working class families. We all have relatives who struggle with substance abuse, mental health issues, etc. etc. So, when the media attack Ford for these things people feel like the elite are snobbishly attacking them – and they are. Remember all the brouhaha about Bill Clinton screwing around with Monica Lewinsky? Nobody cared. It had no impact on his popularity. The left shouldn’t fall into the trap of this kind of moralistic snobbery, which does little to build the left or opposition to the right. Stick to principles.

And, most deliciously perhaps, is that Rob Ford’s incompetence has helped deepen that growing crisis of the right. The expenses scandal that is engulfing the Harper Tories and the meltdown of the Ford mayoralty could be the tipping point that devastates the right wing in Canada in the way that the sponsorship scandal unwound the Liberals. The only real obstacle is the tepid opposition of the NDP, which has waged their usual race to the middle in order to appear respectable enough to govern. That worked really well in the BC election where a double-digit lead was thrown away. But the NDP are like the embodiment of that old definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over and expecting to get a different result. If the left actually stood up and fought the right they would galvanize people to join them. By refusing to be any different the NDP merely ensures that they will fail endlessly. Let’s hope that someone talented steps into the breach, at least in Toronto, and wipes out Ford Nation. My biggest fear is that the left will all fall in behind Karen Stintz and her centre-right agenda. Stintz might win but we’ll hardly be better off (transit aside) and we’ll have far less entertainment.

Canadians Don't Trust Canada

Sao Paolo, Brazil - 140 people have died in the last two weeks in battles between
police and inner-city gangs. Be hard to be held in lower esteem.

This was an interesting poll in The Globe and Mail this morning. It seems that out of 26 countries in both hemispheres of the Americas, our very own Stephen Harper ranked as the national leader who was least trusted by the population. On top of that Parliament, political parties and the mass media were also not trusted by massive majorities.

The survey found only 16 per cent of Canadians place “a lot of trust” in their Prime Minister, putting Stephen Harper near the bottom among all leaders in the Americas.
“In an international context, Harper has a lower level of trust than almost every other national leader in the hemisphere,” Mr. Neuman said.
The levels of trust are also low for the Canadian Parliament (17 per cent), political parties (10 per cent) and mass media (6 per cent).

It's good to see that the population here hasn't lost their critical faculties after nearly a decade of the Tory rule - mind numbing and dishonest as it is. However, it's not like Harper has gone out of his way to be, you know, trustworthy. He has lied and covered up decisions of his government - from the F-35 boondoggle to handing over Afghans to be tortured. In fact lying seems to come second nature to the Tories. And when challenged on an issue, they throw mud at opponents rather than engage the issues - who can forget "Taliban Jack" that was thrown at NDP Leader Jack Layton for his anti-war position or the slander thrown at present NDP Leader Tom Mulcaire for suggesting that oil producers ought to pay the real cost of the tar sands.

The growing list of public shenanigans has grown quite long - using robocalls to misdirect voters; putting out a pamphlet to caucus members on how to disrupt and derail the work of Parliamentary committees - one can only imagine the kind of behind the scenes dishonesty that hasn't come to light. Harper has Brian Mulroney's arrogance and corruption. With any luck he and his party will suffer the same fate.

What was also interesting in this article though, was the lack of trust in all the main institutions of Canadian life. Not just those listed above but also the military (53 per cent) and the RCMP (36 per cent). Amusingly, the G & M (which suggests that Harper and Parliament aren't trusted because he was forced to endure six years of minority government), spins these numbers as though they represent a strong endorsement.

At the same time, Canadians are holding on to their positive views of the Canadian Forces and the RCMP, an above-average appreciation of their law-and-order institutions.

Given that two of Canada's central symbolic pillars are the Dudley Do-Right Mounties, in their red jackets riding on a horse and the image of Canadian troops as peacekeepers in a conflict-riven world, this is hardly a ringing endorsement. In fact, its even less impressive that it's "above average" when you consider that the survey includes Haiti - run by former death squad leaders who overthrew their democratically elected president with US help - Colombia - which also has a long history of death squads - Honduras - where their elected president was overthrown by a right wing coup - Paraguay - ditto on the coup. The list could go on. If you can't come in above average against these regimes and their police forces, you're in big trouble.

No, what the survey indicates more than anything is that Canadians don't trust the institutions of the country. Stephen Harper and his gang of thieves has a lot to do with that. But they've had help along the way from a lot of other corrupt, unaccountable and out of touch institutions.

Why Are The Tories Pushing Canada Into Recession?

Remember how the Tories are the party you want to vote for in tough economic times because they're great managers and willing to make the tough decisions? Remember all that stuff?

Yeah, well, the Tories are poking holes in the Canadian economy faster than the rest of us can bail.

Two figures tell the tale. The first relates to the government's quiet austerity. At a time when, if anything, the economy faces contraction and deflation, the last thing you want to do is add momentum to that contraction and deflation. In fact the Tories promised a stimulus budget in the last election - they fought the election on that basis. But as soon as they were elected, it now turns out, the Tories scrapped the budget and started slashing. Is it any surprise that unemployment remains stuck at 7.4% and that the economy shrank in August?

Really, the only thing that has kept the economy on life support has been China's continued demand for resources and cheap money, that made it possible for workers with otherwise stagnant income (at best) to borrow & buy. But the Tories & Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney have put the kibosh on that strategy of ad hoc Keynesianism by making mortgages harder to get. There's still cheap money for the corporate sector - but they aren't buying and are, instead, simply banking hordes of cash. There's no stimulus to the economy from here.

The result: the housing sector, particularly the condo market are headed towards freefall with a 30 percent contraction in Toronto's condo market in the third quarter. Home sales nationally are off by 15 percent. With the industrial sector contracting, this is like solving the sickness of the economy by killing the patient. According to a CIBC report:

"A 5-per-cent per year drop in house prices, for example, would shed roughly a half-point off GDP growth through its wealth effect on consumer spending, given historical sensitivities," he added in his report. "The shift in the volume of construction will be even more consequential. If, as we expect, homebuilding returns to levels aligned with the longer-term trend in household formation, taking [housing] starts from the 220,000 per year range today to 180,000 by 2014, there will be a near 1-per-cent adverse swing in the contribution of homebuilding to GDP growth ... before allowing for any multiplier effects.

The same report forecasts growth of perhaps one percent, but given that August saw a .1 percent contraction, even that seems optimistic. If the housing market continues to contract, with house prices declining, that 1 percent prediction could easily be wiped out. The real question that arises is: why do the Tories want to push the country back into recession?

Tory Terrorists More Dangerous Than Child Pornographers

The Tories' "Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act" has more to do with suppressing dissent than with stopping child pornographers. I mean, where is the evidence that child pornography is such a major problem that it requires the introduction of a piece of legislation that is a serious intrusion into the right to privacy? Of course, the Tories have never been worried about statistics in their drive to conservatize the nation - a process similar to creating zombies in a lab, methinks. Remember Stockwell Day telling us we needed more prisons to house all those criminals for crimes that aren't being reported?

Nor is this particular clampdown separate from the recently released security reports that label Greenpeace and PETA as extremists and lump them and anti-capitalists (like me!) in with Nazis and terrorists.

“Multi-issue extremists and aboriginal extremists may pursue common causes, and both groups have demonstrated the intent and the capability to carry out attacks against critical infrastructure in Canada,” says a November, 2008, assessment prepared by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

Personally, I think that PETA are kind of bonkers but Greenpeace has the "intent...to carry out attack against critical infrastructure..."? Really?

What these both speak to is that the Tory agenda is one that makes a meaner, more desperate Canada. In a nation where austerity is the modus operandi of government and the lives of thousands, if not millions, are made more precarious as a result, there will be opposition. In a country where planet-destroying oil projects are the new model for economic growth, regardless of the cost in terms of environmental destruction and the health of rural and aboriginal communities - people will organize to prevent it from taking place.

No, if the Tories wanted to protect our children they wouldn't have scrapped the national childcare act when they were first elected - or for that matter the Kelowna Accord with Canada's aboriginal peoples that would have gone some distance to eliminating poverty on the nation's disgraceful reserves. If they wanted to keep Canadian infrastructure safe they wouldn't be giving tax breaks to companies like Caterpillar that are smashing our manufacturing capabilities and destroying jobs.

The Tories don't care about children, they bomb them in Afghanistan, close their daycares, and drive their parents into poverty. The Tories don't oppose terrorism, they support corporate terrorism and state terrorism. The Tories are the biggest threat we face.

Facing a backlash, Ottawa moves to retool cybercrime bill - The Globe and Mail:

'via Blog this'

Caterpillar Won Because Nobody Fought Hard Enough

It doesn't have to be this way. We built this country, this economy and this world. We don't have to mourn the loss of more jobs, this time sent to a union-busting "right to work" state, Indiana, for half the wages. It isn't inevitable that our wages, pensions, benefits - or social programs for that matter - are cut. Caterpillar didn't have to happen. It was a choice.

First and foremost it was a choice by Caterpillar. Let's be plain and honest here: Caterpillar bought the Electro-Motive Diesel (EMD) plant for one purpose only: to asset strip it. In this case, the most valuable assets were the intellectual property (IP) owned by EMD. IP is big news and big business these days. Apple is suing the makers of Android phones and the makers of Android phones are suing Apple in pretty much every jurisdiction on the planet. Why? IP. Google paid a whopping $12.5 billion to buy Motorola, a failing phone company, last year. Why? To get access to its IP so it wouldn't get sued, most likely by Apple.

Does anyone really believe that Caterpillar wanted anything other than that? Would a company that really wanted to keep a business rolling go into bargaining - only a year after purchasing the company – demanding a 50% wage cut, plus major concessions on pensions and benefits, refuse to budge on those outrageous demands, then lock-out the workers and, finally, shut the plant down permanently just five weeks later? They had the chutzpah to hold a 'job fair' in Indiana the same weekend that they shut down the plant, 36 hours after the governor of Indiana passed so-called "right-to-work" legislation making it harder to unionize in that state. I'm not a conspiracy theorist by any stretch but sometimes people plan to do evil long before they do it - and this was one of those times.

And it's not like it's the only time they have planned and executed evil. Caterpillar – one of the most profitable companies in the USA – brought in $4.9 billion in profit last year on sales of $60.1 billion. That was an 83 percent increase in profits from the year before. How did they make these bales of cash? I'll give you one hint:

On January 27, 2009, Caterpillar laid off 20,000 employees, which is some kind of record. The ostensible reason was to gird for the global recession. But in the short time since, Cat’s revenues have doubled, profits have quadrupled and its stock price has soared by 270 per cent. The recession has provided cover for countless firms squeezing more revenue from fewer and lower-paid workers.

Nor does Caterpillar's despicable behaviour end there. Back in 1991 they shut down a Brampton plant rather than pay decent union wages. A couple of years later they went after workers in Decatur, Illinois squeezing deep concessions after a lengthy battle. Nor is it only in the area of union busting that Caterpillar displays its nastiness. This is, after all, a company that has made huge profits selling bulldozers to the state of Israel that are used to destroy Palestinian houses.

[Caterpillar] supply equipment, like the D9 armoured bulldozer, which is used by the Israeli army to destroy Palestinian homes. The corporation refuses to acknowledge responsibility for the thousands of homes demolished in the West Bank and Gaza using Caterpillar equipment. The price of opposing bullies can be high: in March 2003, U.S. peace activist Rachel Corrie was crushed to death by a Caterpillar bulldozer driven by an Israeli soldier, as she attempted to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian family's home.

There can be no doubt that Caterpillar are terrible. But they have been aided and abetted by government at every turn and every level. This too was a choice. They could have fought for these jobs, demanded that Caterpillar not shut the plant down or seized their assets. They didn't and they won't. The Tories base in the resource rich west, which has benefited from the Chinese boom with rapid economic expansion. And the Tories love union busting, free market greed above all else. Insofar as they fight for anything beyond their own enrichment (or free helicopter flights in the case of Peter McKay) it is this.

It will hopefully come back to haunt Stephen Harper that only four years ago, in March 2008, he made a tour of the EMD plant to demonstrate how Tory tax cuts - in this case amounting to a $5 million windfall for Caterpillar – were creating jobs. But if there is a cost it won't be in lost sleep and don't expect any mea culpas from the Tories. Their response was to make the politically correct statement about feeling the pain of all those workers - and then blaming the provincial Liberals. The Liberals blamed the Tories. Whew. Now that we know neither of them are to blame. Nor should anyone be under any illusion that an NDP government would be much different. After all, the plant closure in 1991 in Brampton came under the tenure of the Ontario NDP at the height of its popularity. What did they do? Nada.

Knowing that there will be no help from any of the political parties will be important for workers in the present climate of public and private sector austerity that has seen big battles in recent times. There was last year's battle at Stelco against U.S. Steel and the recent lockout of Rio Tinto Alcan workers in Quebec. Workers at Stelco fought a rearguard battle in Hamilton last year to defend pensions - and will face 200 layoffs in April. The Tories last year forced the postal workers back to work with a worse contract than the one they struck against, then moved to legislate back Air Canada flight attendants, calling their jobs an essential service. This comes on top of big concessions squeezed from auto workers after the 2008 economic meltdown that drove Chrysler and GM into bankruptcy protection. Everywhere, employers are using the crisis - caused by employers - to make workers pay. And governments everywhere are helping them.

My guess is that everyone who is reading this will agree with everything I've said thus far. In fact, my guess is that I'm preaching to the converted. What is more controversial is what can be done. Because even though corporations and government are in synch when it comes to ruining our lives it still isn't inevitable.

In this battle workers only have unions to defend them. But the trouble is, the unions aren't doing very much at all. Certainly, some union locals are waging brave battles - the workers at Stelco braved picket lines for months. But lost have been the traditions that built the industrial unions in the first place - militant tactics, including sit-ins and picket lines that did more than hand out information to those that crossed them. The sort of passivity and reliance on polite bargaining in hotel rooms that has typified the union movement on this continent for so long worked (sometimes) in the 1950s and 1960s when the post-war boom kept the economy expanding and able to provide wage raises and benefits to workers. For a while we were shielded in Canada by our low dollar which made up for higher wages and better work conditions. But the dollar rose and China came on the scene, eliminating those competitive advantages. Suddenly our belief that Canadian unions were more progressive or more militant - which was the justification for the CAW's split from the UAW back in the 1980s - was shown to be a delusion. 

The salad days are gone and, sad to say, somebody forgot to tell the union leadership. Or rather, what they told them was that you can't win and the best that you can do is negotiate how clean is the straight razor that they use to slit your throat. It means that all the fights are given up before they're even begun. That's why the big solidarity rally on January 21 at EMD was moved 5 miles away from the picket line. If you can't win - why get everyone all riled up at the plant gate? What's more important is to appear respectable so that the employer will come back to the table and not give them the excuse to refuse to bargain. And, from the point of view of CAW President Ken Lewenza, the problem is not that EMD shut the plant and laid off the workers - it's that they didn't negotiate the closure with the union.

[Lewenza] said that during bargaining in December, he told the company’s negotiators: “If it’s in your business plan to close us, don’t punish us, let’s work out a closure agreement. They said: ‘We have no intention of closing the facility.’ ”

CAW once prided itself on being, unlike the UAW, the union that doesn't negotiate concessions. Not only did they accept concessions during the 2008 crisis, now here he is saying that they were ready, without a fight to accept the closure of a profitable plant. What this reveals more than anything is that workers have a twofold battle. Not only must they fight the employer, more often than not they must also fight their union leadership who are interested in negotiating "in good faith" not in kicking greedy boss ass. 

But the lesson that ought to be clear by now is that the bosses will keep on taking and taking and taking until they've squeezed every drop of blood from working people. The only thing that they are interested in is profits and until workers start to hit them in their profits - and hard - they will ignore all the niceties: the conciliation reports, the negotiating meetings, the grievances, even the rallies by thousands of supporters that are held miles from the site of the conflict. In Egypt they didn't negotiate the end of the dictatorship - they fought for it. And workers in Egypt's privatized industries haven't won the re-nationalization of their companies by mediated settlement - they went on strike and then won in court...and have had to strike to get the court decisions implemented. In China auto workers won big raises in recent years, not by waiting for employers to grant it to them but by staging a series of wildcat strikes in conditions where independent unions are illegal along with strikes. The lesson we ought to draw from Caterpillar and EMD is this: unless we fight like our lives depended upon it, they will take our lives away from us. That doesn't mean our side will win all the time but at least we'll know that if we lost we gave them everything we had.

Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister Drops The "H-Bomb"

I'm not talking about that other H-bomb, the one that the US government dropped on innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. No, I'm talking about Adolph Hitler, yes, that H-Bomb. Every time our leaders want to justify a war against another people they whip out the Hitler's name. He is our Great Satan, the face of incomprehensible evil. There is nothing to be understood about Hitler, he was made of pure brimstone and, therefore, whenever he is reincarnated - which happens fairly often - he must be wiped out utterly and completely.

It's rather convenient and closes the door off from any sort of critical thinking at a moment when critical thinking should be at an absolute premium - prior to war. So, it has been used to label Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, Robert Mugabe and that favourite of mine "Islamofascism", which tars an entire religious tradition with being Hitler. This time, of course, it is the incomparably stupid and opportunist Canadian foreign minister, John Baird, who whipped it out after his fanboy tour of Israel.

“Obviously when the influential leader of Iran said [Friday] that he wanted to remove a cancer from the Middle East and remove Israel from the map, obviously you can understand why the Jewish people, why Israel would take him seriously,” he said. “Hitler wrote Mein Kampf more than a decade before he became Chancellor of Germany and they take these issues pretty seriously here. But it’s not just an Israeli question. The fear in the Arab world, in the entire region, the Gulf, and the entire Middle East is palpable on this issue. And it’s increasingly a significant security threat for the West: for Canada, the United States and our allies in Europe.”

And there you have it. Israel equals the Jews, Iran wants to eliminate Israel therefore Iran wants to eliminate the Jews. Adolph Hitler wanted to eliminate the Jews. Iran is like Nazi Germany and its leadership is like Hitler. Bombs Away!

Except that it's rather more complex than our Tory friend, apparently, can fathom. First off there is no necessary identity between Jewishness and Zionism or Israel as John Baird - a tireless promoter of Israel - demonstrates. But, on the other side, Jews have been some of the most vocal opponents of Israel and its policies, from Norman Finklestein to Noam Chomsky to Shlomo Sand. Zionism and the founding of Israel was one amongst several political responses to anti-Semitism in Europe prior to World War Two.

Secondly, Baird demonstrates his inability to understand context. The Middle East is not Europe or North America, where Jews were historically terribly oppressed, particularly in Eastern Europe where pogroms were too often a matter of course - not to mention the ultimate pogrom, the terror of the Holocaust. That is not the history of the historic Jewish communities of the Middle East. The antipathy towards Israel is rooted rather in the fact that Israel is a settler-state, whose existence is founded upon the displacement of the indigenous Palestinian population and whose continued existence is premised upon its service to the American empire as a Sparta - an armed camp - to control uncooperative Arab regimes... like that in Iran.

Thirdly, Iran poses no threat to Europe or North America, unless we're talking about imperial interests in the Middle East. Iran's leadership are no radical democrats or serious anti-imperialists. They rule their country like our rulers rule theirs: in the interests of a ruling class who own and control all the levers of political and economic power. Iran has democratic elections - just like us. And it suppresses rights that are inconvenient, just like us. It's true that Iran is rather more repressive than, say, Canada. But it is a matter of degrees as the participants in the Occupy Oakland protests found out, or the G20 protestors in Toronto. But, in any case, even if Iran is qualitatively more repressive than North American governments it would be simple hypocrisy to suggest that we have any problems with dictatorships - after all, Stephen Harper has been touring China - a much more repressive regime - sucking up to any Communist Party bigwig that he could in order to sell our natural resources to them. Then there are "our allies" in the Middle East, like the Saudi dictatorship and the former dictator of Yemen. We have not a single problem with dictatorships.

And the idea that there is "palpable fear" in Israel is just so much bunk. How many countries has Iran attacked or invaded since the Iranian revolution in 1979? Zero. How many has Israel? Well, they bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 in a rather deja vu claim about it being intended for military purposes.

Iraq and France claimed that the Iraqi reactor was intended for peaceful scientific research.[8] Agreements between France and Iraq excluded military use. The American private intelligence agency STRATFOR wrote in 2007 that the reactor "was believed to be on the verge of producing plutonium for a weapons program". In a 2003 speech, Richard Wilson, a professor of physics at Harvard University who visually inspected the partially damaged reactor in December 1982, said that "to collect enough plutonium [for a nuclear weapon] using Osirak would've taken decades, not years". In 2005, Wilson further commented in The Atlantic: the Osirak reactor that was bombed by Israel in June of 1981 was explicitly designed by the French engineer Yves Girard to be unsuitable for making bombs. That was obvious to me on my 1982 visit.

In addition to the Iraq bombing, Israel invaded Lebanon (for the second time) in 1982 and again in 2006. They invaded Gaza in 2008-2009, leading to widespread human rights abuses and destruction - which the Palestinians have been prevented from repairing by the Israeli blockade. Of course, if we went back farther we'd see that since Israel's founding (and since the majority of Jews at the founding were Europeans, one could easily argue that this was the first invasion) it has invaded Syria in 1951, Egypt in 1956, and in 1967 Israel attacked Syria, Egypt and Jordan. It is also likely that Israel is involved in the present covert (and illegal) operations against Iranian nuclear scientists and infrastructure. It's also worth noting that this, the most belligerent country in the region, is the only one that has nuclear weapons.

So, John Baird's H-bomb is meant as nothing more than mere handwaving to distract us from the truth of the situation in the region. It's job is to put the question of Iran outside of rational discourse. To even question the bellicose rhetoric is an admission that you WANT TO KILL THE JEWS! The idea is so stupid as to be utterly laughable, were it not so terribly dangerous and were it not for the fact that they are playing with the lives of tens of thousands of people. But then, who would expect anything less from people who would use the memory of the Holocaust for such cynical ends.

Baird compares Iran’s threats to Hitler's racist book - The Globe and Mail:

'via Blog this'

Why Peter MacKay Is So "Highly Regarded"

I didn't hear Harper's weasel words defense of our frequent flying Defence Minister, the Honourable Peter MacKay, so I can't for certain. But I can only assume that Harper took a pause for breath between his description of MacKay's reason for using all those VIP flights, including on search and rescue helicopters, and his statement "that's why [MacKay] is so highly regarded." I only say that because when I want to tell a lie without exactly telling a lie that's what I do. If my boss says to me, "why didn't you get your work in on time?" I might reply, "Sorry. I broke my finger playing balloon volleyball and had to get a splint." Now, technically, I'm not lying. I was sorry. And I did break my finger playing balloon volleyball and had to get a splint. When I was ten years old.

Same thing here. MacKay does attend the repatriation of remains - though it is a lie that half of his flights were for repatriations. And MacKay is highly regarded. But they are unrelated. If you want to know why MacKay is highly regarded, you might get a sense from taking a look at who invites him to his exclusive, luxury cottage.

It’s the latest piece of bad news for the party’s Atlantic Canadian star, who has been criticized in recent days for enlisting a search-and-rescue helicopter to ferry him from a Newfoundland fishing camp vacation in 2010. The camp is partly owned by a family friend whom the Conservatives appointed as chair of a federal Crown corporation.

In other words, he is highly regarded for giving expensive appointments to his pals. Of course, the Tories protest, there is no conflict of interest here since MacKay didn't get a gift from the recipient of a cushy appointment to the top of a corporation. Except for a free fishing vacation. Isn't that a gift? Lord knows I wish someone would not give me a gift like this. I could use a little fishing. Did the non-gift include some single malt whiskey? A cigar or two perhaps? I'll take those non-gifts too.

The real point here is that these guys are a bunch of crooked liars. They will treat the government as their own personal property, whose perks they will dole out with aplomb to their fishing camp owning family friends. All the while they will assert that we ought to make do with less, slash social services, etc. etc.  And when they are caught using our tax dollars to hire search and rescue helicopters like you might call a taxi to come home from the bar, they will deny it. And we trust these people with government.

Harper invokes fallen soldiers in defending MacKay’s VIP flights - The Globe and Mail:

'via Blog this'

Harper's Unearned Economic "Credibility"

It's one of those "truths" in politics that is beyond questioning, like the "necessity" of an independent (i.e. free from democratic controls) central bank, but which, like everything else has evolved from a time when it wasn't actually the truth. I'm, of course, speaking of the popular idea that the Tories are "good economic managers". Underlying this prejudice is a more foundational idea that in tough times you need a government run by tightwads and hard-hearted bean counters. And nobody would ever accuse the Tories of being anything but hard-hearted. Thus comes the story the other day in the Globe & Mail that the Tories popularity is on the rise as Canadians switch from being concerned about health care (a left wing, touchy-feely issue) to jobs and the economy (a hard-headed, objective issue).

Now, it may well be true that the reason for the Tories' rise in fortunes this fall is that people believe they are best able to manage rough economic waters - though I personally suspect that it is more complex than that. But even if that is the case, it doesn't change the fact that this belief is simply wrong. Of course, the Tories are a party of big business and so are chock-a-block with (mostly) men in suits with MBAs and experience running companies and banks. Harper himself is an economist who formerly wrote policy for the conservative National Citizen's Coalition (which is, ironically not made up of citizens but of corporations). So, yes, we must grant that they likely know how to balance books, monitor supply chains and all sorts of other micro-economic administration. The trouble is the present crisis has been caused by (mostly) men in suits with MBAs who run big corporations and banks. Why should we trust the "business sector" when that is the origin of this crisis?

In fact, Harper appears to be channelling the ghost of Herbert Hoover with his insistent calls for debt reduction as a solution to the crisis. As has been pointed out by myself and many other, rather more important economists, like Paul Krugman, cutting government spending in the middle of a contraction in demand, i.e. a recession, is like pouring gasoline on the fire. That doesn't mean that debt isn't a problem but while debt is a problem it isn't the problem. The sovereign debt crisis and the debt ceiling battles in the US are symptoms of a deeper issue, which is the decline in the rate of profit. And the only way to solve that more fundamental problem is either to get rid of a system based upon production for exchange as commodities - capitalism - and replace it with an economic system based upon the democratic allocation of resources based upon need. Or to smash the living standards of the majority of people - the working class - in order to direct more money into profits.

I'll give you two guesses as to which is Harper's preferred solution.

In the Globe & Mail opinion piece by Harper that I linked to above, Harper's whole "plan" can basically be summed up as: keep doing the same thing that caused the mess, plus shore up the banks that over-extended themselves, plus attack working class living standards to increase competitiveness under the guise of "fighting the deficit/debt". Could this "work" - sure, I suppose so but not without big battles (people tend to resist big attacks on their living standards), lots of instability and the real possibility that the economic downward spiral that such a fierce attack on demand causes will not be offset by the effect of restoring the rate of profit. What's more, Harper's chest-thumping bravado about the state of the Canadian economy and state finances is disingenuous.

Canada's low state debt (not private sector debt - Canadians are in hock up to their eyebrows, as was recently pointed out by the IMF) is as much the result of Canada's peculiar position in the global economy as it is about what was done at the policy level. We are a small nation with a very big land mass, lots of natural resources and an advanced economy. The bread and butter of Canadian capitalism is global trade and investment. In recent years we have been cushioned from the decline of the US economy, our biggest trading partner, by the rise of China, which has a voracious appetite for Canadian resources such as lumber. Seeing natural resources as strategic to their own economic growth has also encouraged a boom in Chinese investment into Canada's resource sector. And China's boom is the result of heavy state intervention into the economy and financial sector, including keeping a tight rein on exchange rates to keep Chinese goods affordable in the West. In other words, China is doing precisely the opposite of what Harper is demanding. The failure of the Harper model and the success of the Chinese model doesn't exonerate capitalism as an exploitative, destructive and inefficient system but it does demonstrate that even on its own terms it is silly to think that the Tories are great economic managers. They are dogmatists whose "theories" have past their best buy date and are likely to deepen an already very deep crisis.

It’s time for Europe and the G20 to act decisively - The Globe and Mail

Stock Markets Have A Mood Disorder

There are so many ways that capitalism is absolutely irrational (not to mention inefficient at allocating resources) - the fact that the USA spends $1 trillion on "defence" while children die from lack of clean drinking around the world (or while growing numbers of American children live in poverty) is one that comes to mind. Or, how about the fact that $4 trillion was spent bailing out US banks that caused the near-meltdown of the global economy because of their barely legal and certainly unethical lending and debt packaging practices. This latter point is worth noting since it is the primary immediate cause of the present round of sovereign debt crises in Europe and the USA.

But those weren't the examples that came immediately to my head when I read this article in the Globe & Mail this morning. It seems that global stock markets are jumping for joy over a European plan to solve the Greek debt crisis. Except that there is no plan. All that European leaders have said is that there will be a plan. I also have a plan to make a million dollars this year and invite you to invest in me, in return you can stay at my mansion any time you like. You think I'm kidding?

Investor sentiment improved after European ministers told a meeting of global finance leaders in Washington over the weekend that they would take bolder and more decisive steps to pull Greece back from the brink of bankruptcy.

This, of course, has been typical behaviour over the last several months as we have gone from the flavour of the week, economy-saving plan to depression over the fact that the plan turns out to be voodoo or politically impossible or politically impossible voodoo (with no offense to voodoo, which has considerably more grounding in science than most economics). The real source of this gyrating sentiment is not the mental health of investors or their automatic betting, I mean investing, programs. The real source is that nobody knows what to do or what will work. Obama preaches stimulus spending. The Republicans preach restraint and austerity. Britain preaches austerity. Leading economists and bankers preach stimulus. Harper, never one to miss and opportunity to show leadership, preaches both austerity and stimulus, depending on whether you lead a government north of Italy or south.

I don't think anyone will accuse me of being a prophet when I say that within a week the stock markets will again be racing for the drain. After all, they have nothing to do with reason, planning or the real economy per se. They are nothing more than a high stakes casino where the odds are rigged against the little guy so that corporations and the rich can have one more way to fleece to mooks and line their profits. Not so different from the lottery, actually. The trouble for the big players is that they are looking increasingly like they might be hoisted on their own greedy petard. And that makes them sad. They won't be happy again until we are forced to pay for their gambling addiction and manic binges of irrational investment priorities.

Baird's UN Rant Is A Museum Piece

Baird was the attack dog for the Harper government at the UN yesterday with his meandering rant that read like it was written by the Israeli ministry of international propaganda. Claiming people and nations who didn't support Israel were akin to appeasers of fascism and communism, Baird demanded that Israel's struggle against extremism and terrorism be recognized, along with its struggle to defend its borders.

Huh?

Apparently nobody sent Baird the memo that Israel is illegally occupying other people's land, not the other way around. Nor that Israel has initiated more wars against its neighbours than any other country in the region. In fact, it would be worth pointing out that Israel, as a colonial settler state, constitutes in its majority people who are not indigenous to the region. They have, in other words, taken over someone else's land. This is all in the public record and non-controversial.

Baird knows this, as does Harper and Jason Kenney, who have both been on the trail this week attacking the Palestinian leadership for finally standing up and stating what has been obvious since shortly after the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993 - that negotiations with Israel are pointless appeasement. After all, Israel has accelerated its settlement building project since the Palestinians agreed to a negotiated solution to the Israel occupation, breaking both the spirit of the agreement and the letter of international law. As a result the two-state solution is all but dead as a realistic possibility, with close to half a million Israeli settlers now living in highly developed West Bank suburbs.

The reason for Baird's attack has nothing to do with ignorance and everything to do with playing to the band of Canada's homegrown Republicans. Most of the time foreign policy is a freebie, failing to rouse most Canadians to protest or even change the character of their vote. Harper and his cronies can say the most outlandish stuff, no doubt to many eye rolls and head shakes in the UN, because while the hard right in the Tories laps this stuff up with the Christian right believing that the ultimate domination of Jews over the ancient land of Israel will lead to the Return of Jesus (where he will then dispose of the Jews who fail to convert).

Playing to the Tories motivated, activist base at a time when Harper and Flaherty are intending on being "pragmatic" on government spending is a useful counterbalance to maintaining support where it really counts for the Tories. It's also true that these guys fully understand the important role that Israel plays as a watchdog for imperialism in the region. That role is under threat now more than at any time in Israel's history as a result of the Arab Spring, the mantle of which the Palestinian leadership of Mahmoud Abbas is now trying to seize for its own, rather more moderate ends. For Israel nothing could be worse than democracy in the Arab world. It has only been the restraints of domestic repression that have kept Israel from being utterly isolated in the region where the country is popularly seen for what it is: an invading, colonial regime with a racist disdain for the indigenous Arab population.

In addition to the explosive shifts in regional politics, there has also been the rise of Turkey, with a population the size of Egypt and a fast-growing economy. The US is also seeing a historic decline in its influence as its economic power  becomes relatively less important to the global economy and it has damaged its esteem and power of persuasion by its inability to get a handle on Afghanistan, the poorest nation on the planet. The rise of China is aiding this process as an alternative pole for developing nations. All this adds up to make Baird's speech look like the rantings of a cranky old man with a loose grasp on reality. But, then, that describes the core of Tory support so it will have done its job, even as it isolates Canada internationally as being led by extremists and, yes, appeasers.

Harper-nomics Is Recipe For Global Depression & Trade Wars

I feel like I'm repeating myself, having just written that the global crisis is not a crisis of debt but, rather, that the debt is a symptom of the long term decline in the rate of profit. Now, I read Stephen Harper and British Tory Prime Minister David Cameron blathering on about how "This is not a traditional, cyclical recession, it’s a debt crisis," as Cameron put it. The only logical conclusion, if that is the case, is to attack the deficit. And, sure enough, the prescription that they're offering is precisely that.

[Cameron[ urged action on three fronts: • Tackle debt and restore credibility and confidence; • Make it easier to do business and create jobs by freeing up economies; • Work together to boost world trade, starting with the Doha Round.

The translation of those innocuous words is rather more disastrous than they seem at first glance - austerity, de-regulation and more de-regulation. But, as the saying goes, doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is a sign of mental health problems. The present expression of the crisis was precisely the result of relying on debt to solve underlying structural problems - many of them the result of declining living standards that arose as either a direct result or side effect of past austerity that saw the chipping away at public services. When public services are cut, working people have to pick up the slack with stagnating or declining wages. They can only do so by going deeper into debt or, following the lead of the banks, by trying to boost income by taking advantage of speculative bubbles, either through various types of investment plans disguised as pensions or by cashing in an illusory increase in equity on their homes. In both cases, the chickens ultimately come home to roost - home prices stop rising as they reach the limits of what people can afford and, ultimately leading to a bursting of the price bubble, which causes more foreclosures, leading to a further price collapse and so on. And their pension plans - both private, corporate and, increasingly even public plans - go into crisis, having bet the farm on speculative bubbles and phoney investment "opportunities" sold by investment banks as collateralized debt obligations and other exotic and impenetrable "financial products" that were really just bags of shit painted with a smiley face on them. As far as deregulation is concerned, this is precisely what led to the financial crisis in the first place - as banks were able to package and sell garbage as well as themselves investing heavily in this toxic junk. Deregulation of the financial sector led (combined in many districts with previous cuts to taxes on the wealthy) directly to the present high levels of government (aka sovereign) debt. In other areas, deregulation means more Enrons - which combined with other electricity companies to jack up utility prices in California by illegally choking supply - or more Walkertons, where people died as a result of a water treatment system that was privatized to unqualified companies whose only interest was making money. With that kind of record, do you think that we'll be better off if we remove regulations from pharmaceuticals - which already buy positive research results - or nuclear energy (cough, cough, Japan), or the auto industry, or the food processing industry or... No, at best we'll end up with an economic recovery that is built on more danger and misery for ordinary people as companies produce what they want how they want with no reference to the quality, or safety of their goods. But, more likely the result will be that the Herbert Hoover Re-enactment Society will drive the global economy into a Great Depression Redux. You don't have to be a Marxist to know that smashing consumption at a time when business investment is contracting is about the most stupid thing that you can do. The great lesson of the Great Depression was exactly this: Hoover responded to the onset of the Depression with austerity, making it worse than it had to be. Roosevelt prematurely tried to rein in the deficit in 1937, leading to a steep decline in the economy until the approach of war led the US - and almost everyone other country - to pour resources into re-tooling entire economies towards war production, thus re-inflating consumption. Ultimately, the lesson from the Great Depression is that the real goal of idiots like Harper was to massively devalue the cost of commodities as a way to restore profits. Unfortunately for the mass of the population the main target of depreciation was wages and working conditions. The elephant in the room is China, with its decades long growth rates approaching (or surpassing) ten percent. Manufacturing is drawn to China like a moth to a backyard bug zapper because of the cheap price of labour, making it the envy of every corporation on the planet. And, for governments in developed countries, unwilling to invest in new infrastructure by raising taxes as an alternative way to compete, the idea of out-sweat-shopping China is appealing. Certainly China's living standards are rising at rates that would make western workers, with their stagnant living standards, drool. But they are rising from such a low rate that even after more than two decades of constant growth - at rates lower than the overall rate of growth, it's worth saying - they are still a fraction of living standards in the west. And that presents a problem not only for western workers who can't compete with such low wage rates. It also presents a problem for western capitalists. If the rise in China's living standards aren't enough to meet those of western societies in time to save their economies, then the living standards of western economies must be depreciated rapidly in order to compete with Chinese labour. This is the real meaning of calls to "boost world trade." They will boost world trade by making goods from the west cheaper and they will be made cheaper by reducing labour costs. While that seems horrific if you happen to be a member of the working class - i.e. of the majority - it would seem to a blinkered pro-capitalist politician to make a lot of sense. The trouble is, it won't work. It's an unbendable rule in physics that every action creates an equal and opposite reaction. China has a ruling class perhaps more cognizant than most about its long term interests. It is their intention to allow a slow and controlled rise in living standards as their economy approaches "development", rather than being a "developing economy". Their recent acceptance of a rise in their currency is an expression of this goal. But not only will the immediate effect of Harper's & Cameron's austerity recipe increase the possibility of a series of profound financial and economic collapses, they will be met be a reaction from China that will attempt to neuter the effect of a rapid decline of living standards in the west. History never repeats itself exactly but, in this case, austerity must be understood as a trade war by other means. AFTERWORD: As a side note, another option to which ruling classes have traditionally turned has been protectionism. At present the dominant thrust - with memories of World War Two, which emanated from protectionist responses to the Great Depression - has been towards austerity and deregulation as an alternative to protectionism; a sort of race to the bottom model. But the protectionist model is also a dangerous game to play and so it is deeply disheartening that the Ontario NDP in the present provincial election has made "Ontario first" a central plank of its job creation platform. First of all, on its own this will have negligible effect. But secondly, it's not the case that a government gets to impose protectionist measures and there is no reaction. Of course the WTO would step in but Ontario gets significant inputs and products from countries around the world and a trade war with a minor economy like Ontario's would be economically and politically devastating. It also suggests that the problem is a regional and not a class one, as though Quebec train manufacturing workers are less deserving of work than Ontario train manufacturing workers. It is fundamentally a politic built upon a passive acceptance of the status quo. It is not left wing at all and has no role for working people - across provincial, let alone national boundaries - struggling together to defend their living standards from the corporate predators and their representatives like Stephen Harper. That is, of course, the perspective of union bureaucrats who would rather the NDP pass meaningless legislation than mobilize their members but it is a disaster for working people.

Debt Is Not The Cause Of The Crisis

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Stephen Harper are all over the media attacking European Union politicians for failing to take decisive action to deal with the "debt overhang", particularly in places like Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy. This failure of political leadership they contend is at the core of the problems facing the world economy.

Mr. Flaherty said a failure to adequately address Greece’s debt problems puts the global economy at risk, sharpening his criticism again as he and other top Canadian officials have in recent days.

This is what you call missing the point. The problem is not the debt it is the undemocratic priority-setting imposed by global financial traders, ratings agencies and businesses. The same people who almost destroyed the economy in 2008 by creating an unregulated shadow banking sector that was little more than a giant ponzi scheme are now demanding the economic priorities of sovereign nations be determined by them. The lunatics are truly running the asylum. Not only has this crew demonstrated that it doesn't have the interests of the economy at heart, rather they are interested in wringing profits out of every pore of a country then moving on to the next. They don't care about investments in productive or socially necessary infrastructure. The determinants of good or bad, efficient and inefficient bear no resemblance to common sense understanding of those terms. It is entirely determined by their accumulation of wealth.

But even that is really just a symptom of deeper problems. In Europe, it is true that Greece and some other countries have high levels of public sector debt. But it is to miss the point entirely - as I've argued more than once - to look only at public sector debt. It is total debt within an economy that shapes the likelihood of whether there will be investment to stave off a recession or protracted stagnation. In the USA the federal government has a debt of $14 trillion. That's a lot, representing about 100% of GDP. But it is dwarfed by the $36 trillion in private sector debt that has ensured that monetary policy - basically pushing down both long and short term interest rates to close to zero - has next to know impact on economic growth. There is literally no room left on the credit cards, lines of credit or mortgages of the nation. The parrot is dead.

And total debt loads themselves are a reflection of the fact that profit rates have been falling almost steadily for the past thirty-five or forty years. In the first instance, the decline in profit rates led governments to embark on an assault on working class living standards that has led to stagnant or declining wages and the de-unionization of the workforce - most spectacularly in the United States where the private sector is basically union free.

And for the first time on record, family incomes are actually falling. New figures this week from the U.S. Census Bureau show that the median income for working-age households fell 10 per cent between 2000 and 2010, even as women worked more hours...
Experts say the seeds of this lost decade were planted long before the recession. Wages fell out of step with rapidly rising productivity and soaring corporate profits in the 1980s, and the gap has been growing wider ever since. The average real wage for working men is now lower than it was in 1973.

But in an economy which is 70% consumer spending, this decline creates a roadblock to further growth. To overcome this workers were encouraged to take on ever more debt. Alan Greenspan kept interest rates low, fuelling speculative bubbles, first in tech then in housing, that gave the illusion of growing incomes. Inevitably, that bubble would burst and leave a wasteland of debt, foreclosed homes and unemployment.

Since the decline in living standards was itself an expression of the problems in the core economy, it is not surprising that debt levels rose across the economy as a whole as profit rates stagnated. In particular, with pressure to move in the direction of a "financialized" economy, debt levels in the financial sector went through the roof. Looking at the graph of US data above you can see that while all levels represented - non-financial business debt, federal government debt, household commercial credit debt - have risen since 1953, they have risen astronomically in the financial services sector, particularly beginning in the early 1970s when profit rates really took a hit. If we look at debt in terms of billions of dollars, as opposed to comparing the change in levels over time, we see in a more pronounced form the very real reason for government debt.

This graph includes financial sector debt, non-financial business sector debt, corporate debt, state & local government debt and federal government debt. As you can see, at the start of Bush Jr's term in office, federal government debt had stopped growing. Bush, of course, slashed taxes for the wealthy and ploughed money into foreign wars, which led to the return to deficit and debt growth. But, even with costly tax breaks to the corporate sector, business debt continued to rise - particularly financial sector debt. Now, look at the grey line around 2010, which indicates the 2008 financial crisis and recession. Notice how financial sector debt declines dramatically while federal government debt skyrockets? What this indicates is that the federal government saved the banking sector from itself by taking on toxic debt. This pattern was repeated in country after country. Those same bankers - who resisted all efforts to regulate them post-2008 (largely successfully) are now howling about the high levels of "sovereign debt."

The upshot is that we are expected to pay for the disaster that they caused with further reductions in our living standards - that's what Flaherty and Harper are going on about: screwing us. The irony, of course, is that smashing Greece's economy into tiny little bits - and doing the same to every other economy upon which they've set their sights - will not solve the problems. They will make them worse. People will need more, not less debt, or they will simply stop spending, causing an economic contraction. They aren't stupid - they know this. The point of the austerity exercise isn't about economic efficiency per se. The hope of people like Flaherty and Harper is that a decisive defeat for workers in Greece and beyond will drive down living standards sufficiently to restore the rate of profit - which, in the graph above, can be seen on a long decline from the mid-1960s. The question is not whether their goal is about making us pay for their crisis. It is whether or not they will be successful.

Tories $20 Million Auditors Are Serial Fraudsters

If you're the government and you want to find "gravy" - to pick a random metaphor - that you can eliminate in the provision of services in order to reduce the deficit, what do you do? Why, you hire an auditor of course. An auditor has specially trained staff and expertise in finding "savings" and "non-essential" line items that can be eliminated. Their word and reputation, built up over innumerable clients provide you with an objective measure of what is essential and what isn't. Stephen Harper's Tories are paying $20 million to Deloitte Inc (aka Deloitte Touche Tomatsu Ltd) to review government departments and programs and come up with $4 billion in savings from an $80 billion budget. Deloitte was one of just a few firms that were invited to submit proposals, presumably based upon their past record of impressive results. As Finance Minister Jim Flaherty put it:

“The fact is that we feel we need to have outside advice. It isn’t good, quite frankly, for a government to just look at itself. There’s a lot of expertise in Canada on the subject of public-sector productivity, for example, and we look forward to having the advice of, in this case, Deloitte,” he said.

Well, maybe not quite.

The trouble is, Deloitte has a long string of rather shabby auditing practices. In fact, as late as the end of August a Quebec judge ruled that a class action suit could go ahead in which Deloitte is one of the accounting firms being sued, along with the Mount Real investment company. Mount Real was a ponzi scheme that ripped off unsuspecting investors to the tune of $130 million, including many people's retirement savings. Don't get me wrong, I understand that everyone makes mistakes it just seems to me that for an auditing company to fail to notice and report on the fact that a large investment company is, in fact, a shell game, is a sign that they aren't very good at their job. You might even suggest that they aren't worth $90,000/day. On the other hand, perhaps the federal Tories are just following the example of Mayor Rob Ford, who hired KPMG to provide a similar audit of Toronto finances, even though KPMG's most notable success is its string of failures, frauds and lost law suits.

And if you think that it stops at the Canada-US border, you'd be wrong. In fact, just last week the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) in the US filed a subpoena against the recalcitrant auditor, which has refused to cough up important documents to the federal regulatory body.

DTT was the auditor of China's infamous alleged fraud Longtop Financial Technologies (LFT)-- a software firm that sells its product to firms in the banking and insurance sectors in China.

This refusal might lead one to suspect that Deloitte is worried about being exposed for fraudulent accounting practices on behalf of the company that contracted them. After all, Deloitte was forced to pony up $50 million in damages for their role in covering up the massive Adelphia scandal that saw the owners illegally and secretly loaning themselves money from company funds to the tune of billions. And in 2008 Deloitte also faced a $1 billion lawsuit by the liquidators of the Bear Stearns mortgage funds. Bear Stearns went belly up in March 2008, before Lehman Brothers followed suit in September, as a result of being loaded down with toxic debt from the subprime market, which it was also packaging and selling to anyone who would buy it.

The suit charges that the company, the fund managers, and Deloitte violated their fiduciary and professional duties. The suit said Deloitte's preparation of the funds' audits was "at a minimum negligent."

Back in Canada in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Deloitte was also called on the carpet for covering up the shabby state of finances at Livent, the entertainment company owned by Garth Drabinsky. Livent went belly up and the bankruptcy receiver launched a $450 million lawsuit against the auditors for reasons that will sound familiar.

The Post says the lawsuit alleges negligence, breach of duty, breach of fiduciary duty, and.or breach of contract on the part of Deloitte & Touche. Documents filed by the receiver reportedly claim Deloitte & Touche failed to uncover financial and accounting irregularities at Livent, and that Deloitte signed off on Livent financial statements that it knew were "materially false and misleading".

As shocking as this short list is, it isn't by any means exhaustive - there was Deloitte's role in AES, the electricity company that cooked its books with hidden loans a la Enron, or their role in helping to inflate the profit numbers at now-bankrupt telecom giant Nortel for which they also faced a lawsuit. All of which might lead you to ask yourself why the media has failed to pick up on any of this and, more importantly, why the federal government would hire an auditing firm with a record of aiding their clients in the commission of fraud, which sometimes - as in the Mount Real ponzi scheme - led to the loss of life savings by tens of thousands of ordinary people.

The media, of course, has their own reasons for perpetuating a memory hole, down which all history of past crimes disappears. But neither is it incompetence that the Tories would hire these crooks. Fraud and manipulation is exactly what they want from an auditing firm. As with the ratings agencies, auditors don't exist for the purpose of objective measurement of financial viability or good quality accounting practices. They are there to provide whatever their clients want. When the investment banks hired ratings agencies to look at their investment packages, they pronounced utterly worthless "collateralized debt obligations" as triple-A investments. When those same corrupt investors want governments to sell off state assets at fire sale prices - they downgrade state debt that has considerably more inherent value than the sub-prime crap or even the vastly larger private sector debt load. When failing companies want to cover up internal financial crises, auditors like Deloitte know how to cook the books. When governments want them to spin cuts as efficiencies, they know how to do that too. They are, in short, the most craven example of how math and business "science" are in fact nothing more than tools of the rich and powerful to screw the poor and powerless. And for that service - from the perspective of Tories and corporate CEOs - they are indeed worth $90,000 per day. From the perspective of the interests of the vast majority of the population they are crooks of a much greater magnitude than any bank robber. They ought to be shut down, their assets liquidated and their executives sent to the hoosegow for a very long time.


And, speaking of the role that auditors play on behalf of conservative governments which want to sell of assets, check out this video of Toronto Councillor Adam Vaughan grilling KPMG on their past record of recommending service privatizations:

China & Canada: It Was Never About Human Rights

There's much foofaraw in the media about the visit by Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird to China. Are we now neglecting human rights in the interests of profit? Have we stopped supporting liberation struggles, like those of Tibet? NDP Foreign Affairs critic Paul Dewar suggested that the Tories lacked "coherence" in their policy, focusing now on profit whereas before it was all human rights. He raised the "constructive engagement" of Richard Nixon as a model. Nixon?!

Well, I think there's a third axis of consideration that the polarity of profit vs human rights fails to take into account that has everything to do with geopolitical considerations that can't be simply reduced to profit.

First off, let's not kid ourselves, human rights have never been of any real consideration when it comes to Canadian trade or foreign policy. We have a free trade agreement with Israel - even as it builds illegal settlements and kills civilians with the same routine effort as a someone mowing their lawn. We traded with Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship. Likewise with the brutal dictatorship of Suharto in Indonesia. We supported the overthrow of the elected government of Aristide in Haiti and help to enforce the suppression of Lavalas, the most popular political party in the country - for what crimes I'm not sure (I guess the crime of not being sufficiently subordinate). We backed Mubarak in Egypt and the Saudi monarchy that won't allow women to drive and kills people with beheading. Hell, until three months ago we were trading and investing with Gaddafi in Libya.

No, human rights has nothing to do with it. It is merely a convenient fig leaf to cover other intentions. After all, who can say no to human rights? And, it's true, in places like China human rights are suppressed in regular and brutal ways. So, there is the ring of truth to such claims. But, as usual, the biggest lies are always dressed up in the brightest colours of truth to hide the ugliness of what's really going on.

Afghanistan is a fine example of this. The official line is that we're there to aid in democracy, defend the rights of women, human rights, development, etc. etc. Yet this doesn't square with our actual policy on the ground, which involves propping up and funding warlords and drug dealers who think human rights means the right of some humans (them) to kill, rape, and rip-off other humans. As was clear from the revelations regarding Canada's cover-up of routine torture of suspects, we happily went along with that conception. But it would also be wrong to think that there is some kind of one to one relationship between what we're doing in Afghanistan and some immediate financial interest. It would be more immediately profitable to run the gas and oil lines from Kazachstan through Iran, which already has pipe infrastructure - but Iran is an "enemy" and so, instead, extra money must be spent to run it through Afghanistan then Pakistan. It's also about "containing" China, which is a neighbour on the other side of Afghanistan. Afghanistan is thus of strategic interest.

Our relationship with China is not dissimilar and reflected our synchrony with US foreign policy on this issue. US pressures on China are about jockeying and geopolitics. It's about the US reminding China who is the boss in subtle ways - and that the relationship between the two countries is not that the US couldn't do without. What has shifted for Canada is the growth in Canadian trade with China, which is sucking up softwood lumber at a ferocious pace. Softwood lumber exports to China are now greater than such exports to the US. China has also become a significant investor in Alberta oil and gas production, as well as mining and smelting. And with the decline in the US dollar relative to the Canadian dollar, our trade with the US has been harmed. After years of running significant trade surpluses, Canada began to run trade deficits starting in 2009. As a trading nation there is pressure to find more markets - and if the US can't be that market, Canadian manufacturers and resource companies need to find one elsewhere. The decline in US/Canada trade reduces the incentive to follow US foreign policy quite so closely, which is why Obama met last week with the Dalai Lama and Harper & Baird didn't mention Tibet once. This shift is, in general, part of the shift to a less stable, multi-polar world. Harper's obsession with Arctic sovereignty and the increase to military spending are also part of this. While the US remains - and likely will for sometime - the pre-eminent world power, with military spending at levels that dwarf any other power, it nonetheless faces challengers, for instance China's move into Africa. It can't simply be assumed that hitching your wagon to the Yanks will get you what you need. Canadian imperialism wants to have a little more freedom of action. Baird's visit and honey-coated words for the Canada/Chinese relationship is part of that. It is just as cynical and corrupt as was our previous relationship.

Calling China an ‘important ally,’ Baird turns cold shoulder to fugitive - The Globe and Mail

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty Is An Asshole

Hey, sometimes you want to be all intellectual and stuff; analyze underlying trend and put it in its proper context to provoke scholarly debate. But some shit just deserves to be called by its regular name.

This guy was all for spending $1 billion on a security boondoggle for the G20. He supports the billions spent in Afghanistan to kill people and prop up warlords and drug traffickers. He is happy to provide subsidies to the oil sands - perhaps the most environmentally destructive petro project on the planet. And, he and his Tory government get boners at the thought of blowing $30 billion for a fighter jet that doesn't even work. But provide stable funding to a proven theatre festival that draws crowds of thousands every year and contributes to the cultural landscape of Toronto? "Don't count on it."

Where I come from, that makes him an asshole and, just in case they haven't, someone needs to tell him that.

Flaherty to cultural institutions: Annual funding? Don’t count on it - The Globe and Mail

The Tories Sneaky Social Engineering

I often thought that the right wing canard directed against the left that we were interested in "social engineering" was one of the more banal and pathetic insults that they tossed around. It presumed a "natural" state of human nature, any deviation from which would be detrimental to progress. Of course, human nature is conveniently defined in terms that suit the right and usually owe more than a little to Hobbesian notions of humans as inherently competitive, greedy, and so forth.

Really, of course, they were always just talking about themselves in two senses. The rich, who are the source of right wing ideology and the ones who actually benefit from it, do relish greed - though evidence from history suggests that to satisfy their greed, the rich do everything possible to eliminate any existing or potential competition, either by destroying or buying rivals or conspiring with them to jig markets to their benefit.

And in actual fact it is always the right who try to regulate human behaviour and human thought to exclude anything that challenges their domination or their ideas of what constitutes human nature. It is the right who try to suppress alternative forms of love and family - they oppose gay marriage. They constantly seek to undermine trade union rights - when trade unions were the spontaneous (more or less) act of working people to defend their standard of living. The right opposes abortion. The right inevitably supports overthrowing government that don't do what we like. The right supports the cops.

So, it should be no surprise that Stephen Harper's Tories should follow this pathetically predictable path of suppressing free thinking. And it is no secret that Harper and his ilk want to transform liberal-minded Canada into a bastion of social and economic conservatism. The trouble is, the population are not as right wing as Stephen Harper and his ilk. What's more, since they are subject to some form of democratic accountability, Harper has been forced to downplay the public discussion of their real agenda, to deny it even, so that people don't get spooked by their agenda of making us all into right wing drones. But, behind the scenes, the Tories use the many levers, particularly financial ones, to penalize and crush anyone who challenges their agenda.

There is something to be said for the Globe headline that calls a play about one person's real relationship with a man who was convicted as part of the Toronto 18 "terrorist" conspiracy a "terrorist play". That's one of those set-up labels that is designed to illicit a bias response, like "accused wife abuser" or "Jamaican immigrant". Nonetheless, the story is interesting because it fits with a pattern of social engineering through stealth - like with the Tories' elimination of funding for KAIROS (a religious charity) because of their support for the Palestinians. Then there were the attempted changes to tax laws that would deny tax credits to film productions whose content it deemed offensive. In this instance, Heritage Canada has slashed almost $50K from Summerworks, a popular theatre festival in Toronto. Everybody knows that the reason they did it is because of the play about the Toronto 18 - or rather the failure of that play to portray the issues in the form of a good vs evil comic book. But the Tories simply lie and - like with KAIROS - state that the decision is merely an administrative one about funding.

What is clear is that the Tories can't bear the thought of a free-thinking population or of culture that fails to pass their parochial standards of morality and decency. That they have to be sneaky about it is heartening in one sense because it demonstrates that they are out of sync with the majority of Canadians. Hopefully their lies and subterfuge will catch up with them and they will, like Mulroney, be punished by Canadian workers - both at the ballot box and in the streets. Meanwhile, let there be no doubt - the Tories want to control what you think. They just don't have the guts to say it to your face.

Ottawa cancels funding for Toronto theatre festival that presented terrorist play - The Globe and Mail