Don't give in to anti-Bloc paranoia!

Was listening to Rex Murphy today on the CBC's "Cross Country Checkup" and on more than one occasion he made reference to a Liberal/NDP coalition requiring the support from a party that "plans to breakup the country". He seemed to actively encourage that kind of talk from callers.

Frankly I'm sick of hearing about the separatist bogeyman.

Hello! I've got news for everyone!

Canada is not the only country in the world with a "separatist" party in its parliament.

I just so happened to be in Barcelona, Spain last March during their election campaign.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) government was re-elected. It's a minority government and guess who's support they rely on? THE SEPARATISTS!

Only thing is Spain doesn't just have one separatist party in the Cortes (Parliament), they have a whole bunch of separatist parties. They have Catalan separatists, Basque separatists, Galician separatists and even Canary Island separatists.

And the separatists themselves don't have just one party. The main Catalan separatist party "Convergencia i Union" (CiU) is itself a coalition of two Catalan separatist parties. (The party banners you see in this street scene photo of Barcelona are from the CiU) Then of course there's the "ERC"...the "Republican Left of Catalonia".

On top of that there are a whole bunch of separatist and regional parties that didn't manage to get anyone elected.

Yet, Spain hasn't fallen apart.

Even in the UK there are separatist and regional parties...like the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP), Plaid Cymru (Welsh Nationalists), and from Northern Ireland, the Democratic Unionists, Ulster Unionists, Sinn Fein and the Social Democratic & Labour Party.

Life goes on! Governments implement their policies.

Even if the Parti Quebecois wins every seat in the upcoming provincial election, holds a referendum and gets a 99.9% vote in favour of sovereignty-association, Quebec is still going to be on the other side of the Ottawa River.

Hell, the federal government does so little these days that quite frankly, there isn't much to "separate from".

The reformatories are also playing the "western alienation" card.

In two of the four western provinces, the majority of folks didn't vote for Harper's party. Less than half of British Columbians voted reformatory (44.5%). Only 48.8% of Manitobans voted reformatory.

In Alberta, the 35% of the electorate who didn't vote reformatory are represented by a single NDP MP. In Saskatchewan, the 46% of the electorate who didn't vote reformatory are represented by a single Liberal MP.

So not all western Canadians are reformatories! They're simply being drowned out in the mainstream media by right-wingers.

So who's trying to "break up the country"? Harper and his minions as they desperately cling to power. But it looks like it ain't gonna work this time. Bye bye Stevie!

Harper...going...going...almost gone!

Even though the Harper government has backed down on most of the provisions in their "Economic Statement", the opposition parties are sticking to their guns...the Liberals have developed a spine...or at least a temporary one.

A new organization has emerged online called "Canadians for a Progressive Coalition". Sounds like a good idea to me!

Here's their "Youtube" video:

A Holiday Gift from the Opposition MP's?

Well, it looks like Canadian politics is about to get interesting.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is using his latest "economic statement" in the midst of what's looking like the biggest economic meltdown since the 1930's depression to push through some very right-wing policies.

According to the latest from the CBC, negotiations are underway between former Prime Minister Jean Chretien and former NDP leader Ed Broadbent around the possibility of defeating the government and forming a Liberal/NDP coalition with the tacit support of the Bloc Quebecois.

It's very clear that in order to avoid a major economic disaster, we need a government that's willing to bring in some expansionist "New Deal" type economic policies.

Harper and Flaherty have made it clear that a "New Deal" isn't on.

Putting Harper and Flaherty out of business would be the best gift the opposition parties could give Canadians this holiday season! Afterall, in the last election 62% of Canadians didn't vote for these folks.

Going home...to the picket line!,

This afternoon I spent some time at "home".

Only this particular time I was at home at Toronto's South Central Postal Facility with some very special "relatives"...my brothers and sisters in the Union of Postal-Communications Employees/PSAC. They held a "picket line barbeque" with lots of folks there from the labour and social movements.

It was thirty years ago that I started working there and not too long afterwards as a naive young "20-something" began my life in the labour movement.

As a young activist, I'd been on plenty of picket lines and at plenty of demonstrations. But it was at South Central where for the first time I was on my "own" picket line back in the autumn of 1980. It was a time of double digit inflation and we were being offered single digit pay increases...so we walked out. In the end, we got that double digit pay increase.

When I look back, I owe these folks alot. They may not realize it, but they taught me alot about the practicalities of pulling folks together and taking on a rather nasty employer. The art of "people politics".

I got a chance today to reminisce with my old brother Steve. We shared coffee breaks together for years and argued about all the world's problems. We disagreed on just about everything. But there was always one thing we agreed on...fighting the bosses.

When you're organizing a people's fightback the most important thing is to look for common ground... the things we agree on. Usually the things we disagree about are really not all that important.

Of course I left Canada Post and my UPCE/PSAC membership a very long time ago. But the lessons I learned often through trial and error...and probably mostly error...will be with me forever.

Today, my "homies"...my brothers and sisters of UPCE/PSAC are in a very important fight that in the end will impact all working people in this country.

On the surface, it's a fight about sick leave. But in the bigger picture, it's a fight to maintain the little financial integrity that's left in Canada's Employment Insurance (EI) system.

The EI sick benefit system is meant as a "floor" so that those who work for smaller or less wealthy employers can at least get a minimum of 15 weeks sick pay.

Large employers like the Canada Post Corporation are expected to pay for their employees sick leave benefits.

But, Canada Post wants to dump a major share of their sick leave costs onto the publicly-funded EI system. Canada Post remains a profitable company. It can well afford to pay the costs of its employees sick leave. It doesn't need corporate welfare.

Canada Post has decided to take on its smaller bargaining units first. So UPCE/PSAC is first up at bat and has decided to take a stand. Next up, is the normally "pussycat" supervisory union, the Association of Postal Officials of Canada (APOC).

Once they've crushed these unions, Canada Post will take on their largest opponent, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW).

If Canada Post succeeds in using the EI fund as a sick leave "piggy bank", it will be open season on every single group of workers in the country that has a sick leave plan.

In my "post Canada Post world", I've been watching the steady erosion of the EI system. I've dealt with I don't know how many thousand unemployed workers over the years who've seen their benefits slashed and burned by successive Liberal and Tory governments.

The most savage EI cuts were implemented by then Liberal Finance Minister Paul Martin back in the 1990's. A massive surplus was built up in the fund. Then, in Stephen Harper's last pre-election budget he pocketed the $50+ billion dollar surplus.

So for the last decade and a half, governments have been undermining the EI system. Now employers are trying to get their paws into the system and undermine it even further...at a time when most of the world is heading into a recession...and maybe even a depression.

On the backburner is another issue. Although Prime Minister Stephen Harper is making "Keynsian" noises these days, we all know that deep down inside he's a hard core Friedmanite". He'd like to privatize Canada Post. So, cutting down sick leave costs will help fatten up Canada Post for a potential buyer.

So to Tom, Steve, Dolores, Mary Lou, Diane and all my other "homies"...stay tough and hang in there! Your fight is a fight for everyone. The labour movement is behind you.

To Canada Post? Pay your own god damned sick leave! And by the way, you still owe me some money from the twenty+ year old equal pay complaint.


P.S. This post was "fueled" by a large mocha and a bottle of Steam Whistle Beer supplied by my wonderful friends at "The Last Drop Cafe"...Coxwell & Sammon in Toronto. Very friendly neighbourhood atmosphere, great coffee and free wifi...what more could you ask for?

Harper signs free trade deal with murderous Colombian government

What do you do to a government that murders more trade unionists than any other country on the planet? If you're name is Stephen Harper you sign a free trade deal with this government.

That's the first major foreign policy decision of Harper's recently re-elected Conservative government. They "did the deal" while most folks weren't paying any attention.

The deal is subject to ratification in the Canadian parliament. Let's hope that the normally spineless Liberal Party...currently tied up in a leadership race, joins with the New Democratic Party and the Bloc Quebecois to block ratification.

Love digital audio and video? You'll love VLC Media Player!

I've got to admit that I absolutely cringe when I see folks play digital audio and video with bloated proprietary software like Windows Media Player, Real Player and Apple Quicktime.

It's loaded with ads trying to get you to buy various digital media content or to purchase subscriptions for online services.

Often it "phones home to Mama" reporting what file you just played even though it's just a file that's on your local hard drive. It bugs you to install updates and upgrades and often won't work until you've dealt with the latest dialogue box that's popped up on your screen.

Me, I just want to play the bloody file or audio/video stream! Leave me alone!

Thankfully, there's one programme that allows me to do just that...VLC Media Player! You can download it from http://videolan.org/vlc .

"VLC Media Player" is "free as in freedom, free as in free beer" and is licensed under the GNU General Public License.

VLC is available for just about any operating system you can think of including Microsoft Windows, MacOSX, GNU/Linux, various versions of Unix, Syllable and even a more or less obsolete operating system like BeOS.

VLC will play just about any audio or video file or stream that you might like to throw at it. You'll find a list of what's supported in the most current version (0.9) here. The only major file format that it doesn't support is Real Audio and Video...but if you're a Windows user, there's a free software solution here.

It's a small rather stripped down rather "unflashy" application that won't overload your computer. But it does the most important thing. It plays the bloody file without bugging you!

While it's not obvious, if you poke around inside the menus you'll find links to hundreds of "Shoutcast" radio, TV and podcast streams. Just go to "View", "Playlist", then in the dialogue box go to "Manage", and go to "Services Discovery". Exploring all of these Shoutcast streams will keep you busy for weeks!

If you're a bit geeky, you can even use VLC Media Player as a streaming server.

One of the other cool things about free software is that folks are free to build new software applications using software code from another application. That's exactly what's been done with the "Miro" internet TV application. It was built using the source code from VLC. But I'll leave that for a future post!

In the meantime, have fun with VLC Media Player!

Oops... AVG accidentally kills Windows

"AVG", a popular anti-virus software programme from Czech software vendor "Grisoft" kills the Microsoft Windows XP operating system after you install a recent update according to this article on "APCMag.com". According to the article, this "only" happens on the French, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish editions.

Hmmm...according to Wikipedia there are about 322 million Spanish speakers, 177 million Portuguese speakers, 64 million French speakers, 61 million Italian speakers and 20 million Dutch speakers. Presumably some of these folks use computers.

Although the article expresses relief that the problem doesn't affect English language users, there are more speakers of these other languages than there are English speakers. So it sounds like a pretty big problem to me.

Users of Microsoft operating systems have grown "used" to the fact that viruses and assorted malware are a "normal" part of computing. They've grown used to running resource hogging security applications that require ever more powerful computers...and that's before you can actually do any work on your computer.

And, a programme that's supposed to protect your Windows operating system from "bad stuff" actually does something very bad to your computer (aside from "normal stuff" like hogging system resources).

While no computer operating system is perfect, users of non-Microsoft operating systems generally don't have these kinds of problems. They don't have to run these intrusive resource hogging security software programmes. Viruses and malware are the exception to the rule...not the rule.

Isn't it about time to end this abusive relationship with Microsoft software?

There are dozens of "free as in freedom", "free as in free beer" GNU/Linux based computer operating systems available today. Isn't it about time to take a look at the alternative?

Thoughts on Obama

Like most of the planet, I was incredibly happy at the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States of America for a number of reasons.

As the USA's first black president, it means there's been at least some sort of conclusion to the American Civil War...although it's taken nearly a century and a half.

It's marks an end to the eight year reign of error and terror of Bush-Cheney.

It comes at a time when the global banking system is near collapse under the weight of the high risk mortgage scandal in the U.S. The thirty year rule of the economic policies of Von Hayek and Milton Friedman are thoroughly discredited in the eyes of most of the world's people. Mainstream journalists are starting to talk about Keynes again.

When the Republicans accused Barack Obama of being a "socialist", Obama was easily able to dismiss them by asking whether he was a socialist just because when he was a kid he shared his peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I thought it was brilliant.

Of course President-elect Obama isn't a socialist. I know because I have no problem at all wearing that label. Obama definitely isn't me.

It's really easy to be cynical. I know that many on the traditional left are. This is the USA...the most socially and politically conservative of any of the advanced capitalist countries.

I don't expect miracles.

What I do hope is that it opens up some space for more progressive political ideas to flourish.

I hope that the largely internet-based movement of young people doesn't go away and keeps the heat on President-elect Obama to follow through on some of his more progressive policy announcements.

I hope that he follows through and ends the war in Iraq. I also hope that he doesn't follow through with his promise to beef up the U.S. presence in Afghanistan.

I hope that the U.S. becomes a little bit less imperialistic and starts to cooperate with other countries rather than dictate to them.

I hope that President Obama follows through and signs the Kyoto protocol.

I hope that President Obama has the courage to ignore the folks on Wall Street and implements some more "New Deal" oriented economic policies.

I hope that President Obama is a little bit friendlier to labour and starts making it easier for U.S. workers to join unions.

Reality being what it is, any major downturn in the U.S. economy is going to pull the rest of the world down with it. But if at least to some degree Obama is able to turn things around, he'll pull the rest of us up again.

Maybe this is too much to hope for...maybe it isn't. One thing is certain. The ruling elites are going to do their best to make sure that nothing much happens. The challenge for the rest of us is to keep the pressure on and make sure that things do happen.