Sunday, May 29, 2011

refWrite was closed for the Memorial Day weekend still in process, but I snuck into the office, driven by the urge to write.

----------------------------------------------

The Owlbirdbet™ is far from dead.

-- Owlb

Not just US troops will be honored Memorial Day
(Montgomery Advertiser, Montgomery, Alabama, May 29, 2k11)

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

EconomicsUSA: Calendar: National Small Business Week



-- Vertical Response video posted by EconoMix

PoliticsBorder: Egypt-Gaza: Open border established for Hamas terrorists

Washington Post (May25,2k11)


Egypt to permanently 

open Rafah border 

crossing for 

Palestinians, easing 

Gaza blockade


but Israel is thereby threatened by the Hamas 
terrorists now governing the Gaza political 
entity.

-- Wapo headline posted by Politicarp with my comment in red.

Monday, May 23, 2011

PoliticsSpain: Local elections: Socialists drummed out of govtl and social control

Reuters via The Raw Story (May23,2k11)

------------------------

Spanish Socialists hammered in election after a week of protests | The Raw Story


The center-right opposition Popular Party (PP) won its 
best result in municipal elections since Spain returned to democracy 
in 1978 after the Franco dictatorship.


-- stuff posted by Politicarp

SociaicsUSA: Marriage: Defended by Minnesota House of Representatives, despite huge crowds produced by Gay activists ...

The Uptake's Minnesota House of Representatives demo (May21,2k11)



Watch live streaming video from uptakemnhouse at livestream.com


Angry squadron of Gay activists tries to "jam out" the Republican-majority spokespersons of the House of Representatives of the State of Minnesota, USA.

-- Livestream video from Minnesota House of Represenatives posted by Politicarp, with my own summative snip-comment point about what we see in the video.

-- again, Politicarp

PoliticsSpain: Socialists: Thrown out by mayoral elections, local politics underwent a seismic shift

The Raw Story (May23,2k11)




Spanish Socialists hammered 


in election 


after a week of protests





Monday, May 23rd, 2011 -- 8:26 am



MADRID (Reuters) - Spain's ability to meet deficit reduction targets was thrown into doubt on Monday after voters angry over austerity and the EU'S highest jobless rate gave the ruling Socialists a fierce drubbing in local elections.
A week of protests by youth fed up with the stagnant economy and a 21.3 percent jobless rate preceded Sunday elections that left the Socialists without a single important mayor's office and only a handful of Spain's 17 regional legislatures.
Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero on Sunday night conceded the worse-than-expected defeat but said he planned to stay on to the end of his term in March next year.
Read more ... click the time-stamp below...

PoliticsMinnesotaUSA: Reaction: Defense of Marriage Law passes

The Uptake's Minnesota House
after Defense of Marriage Act
passed into law (May21,2k11)


Watch live streaming video from uptakemnhouse at livestream.com

Reactionaries dominate the scene, unwilling to acknowledge that the state is called to protect 1woman1man marriage.

-- Politicarp

Saturday, May 21, 2011

PoliticsUSA: Secret Service: Down and dirty?

Fox News (May18,2k11)
by Mike Levine


All that twitters a tweet 
may have to repeat,
or delete.


-----------------------------




Control. Alt. Delete!

Little more than a week after the U.S. Secret Service launched its official Twitter account, the federal law enforcement agency has had a major system failure.

Shortly after 3 p.m. Wednesday, the Secret Service's account declared on the social media site: "Had to monitor Fox for a story. Can't. Deal. With. The. Blathering."

The posting was quickly removed, but within a half-hour dozens of other Twitter users had already begun re-posting -- or "re-Tweeting" -- the message.

"Love the Secret Service tweets!" one Twitter user said.

Earlier in the day, Fox News had been covering the story of Vito LaPinta, the 13-year-old from Tacoma, Wash., who was recently visited by a Secret Service agent for posting a message on Facebook suggesting President Obama should watch out for terrorist attacks in the wake of Usama bin Laden's killing. LaPinta's mother was not present when the Secret Service interviewed her son, a move she decried as inappropriate.
Read more ... 



EconomicsEurope: Greece and Portugal: Defawlt on bail-out repayments elicits call for expulsion from EU

---------------------------


Financial Times email newsletter (May12,2k11)





Greece and Portugal should both go gracefully
Even as the ink is drying on Portugal’s European Union and International Monetary Fund bail-out agreement, evidence is mounting that last year’s bail-outs of Greece and Ireland have failed.

Far from improving their access to the financial markets, Greece and Ireland face record borrowing costs. Notwithstanding the slightly less draconian terms of Portugal’s agreement, it will surely suffer a similar fate.

The EU will try to get away with “soft” restructurings, involving a combination of longer maturities and lower interest rates. But this will not work and by 2013 there will be no viable alternative to “hard” restructurings (default), comprising debt write-downs of 50 per cent or more. Unfortunately, in the case of Greece and Portugal at least, even this will not guarantee continued membership of the euro.
http://link.ft.com/r/8P1R88/XTU6HO/70OUJ/HD77WD/EWZXLG/CM/h?a1=2011&a2=5&a3=12
FT email newsletter (May17,2k11):



Merkel rejects Greek debt restructuring
The German chancellor spells out her strong opposition to restructuring debt in any eurozone state, as finance ministers press Greece to accelerate its sell-off programmehttp://link.ft.com/r/CTBPCC/IYX1T1/6O6PS/3OTO6X/40BWM9/XL/h?a1=2011&a2=5&a3=16</blockquote>




The situation is dire for the economic recovery of both Greece and Portugal.  And the man most responsible for the International Monetary Fund's role in ensuring both countries, both countries having now defawlted, has resigned after scandal.  A new head of IMF has been designated, she being also from France and having been active in the bail-outs of the two countries which have failed to meet their obligations.

This is a dire situation for the global economy.  The USA trend toward a similar status, by defawlting on its national-debt interest payments, looks even bleaker against this portentous background.

-- EconoMix

Thursday, May 19, 2011

JuridicsCanada: Supreme Court: Quebec's totalitarian educational bureaucracy under provincial Liberal govt seeks religious formative control over children, alienates parents from their authority, responsiblity and r+ts

Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (May19,2k11)

The Supreme Court of Canada heard a vitally important case, the Drummondville Case, that pits the atheism-driven Quebec educational establishment -- with its entrenched bureaucracy, tax revenues, and provincial Liberal govt backup, ultimately the police power -- against numerous Quebec families, both francophone and anglophone, both Catholic Christians and Protestant Christians (perhaps some Jews too, perhaps some Muslims),  who want sufficient religious freedom to determine the spiritual quality of their children's teachers,  schools convenient to their homes and guided by the same norms of integral faith, life, and education for their children.  A curriculum appropriate to the children of such parents, not the normless secularist dehumanization proferred by the one-religion-serves-all, the statist-religion without God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which clone-factory approach of the educational bureaucrats the govt ministry has put in place.  An integral philosophy of education to articulate an alternative option to pseudo-democratic state-sponsored thawt which is a monopoly in Quebec's teacher training institutions.

In Quebec, the main historical religious background has been Roman Catholicism, but Catholics are divided and many of them extensively secularistic in that sociocultural environment so that, for some, God matters very little to life and well-being, and other Catholics stand for a better lifeview and approach to the education of their children -- as a r+t !.

MediaCanada: SunNews TV: New network about to launch under "populist" label but featuring extreme r+twinger Ezra Levant

----------------------------
YouTubeServices video via yUT2ube channel,
refWrite's  video partner




-- posted by Politicarp

Friday, May 13, 2011

EconomicsEgypt: Background: An on-the-ground survey of Egypt's situation today

-----------------------------
Wall Street Daily (May12,2k11) -- 
this ain't the Wall Street Journal - EconoMix
WSD is an investment email newsletter edited by Louis Basenese

My Report from the Heart 

of Egypt's Historic Revolution

by Karim Rahemtulla, 
Director of Options/Emerging Markets, The White Cap Research Group

When I told my friends six weeks ago that I was going to Cairo, many cautioned me against it.

After all, the country was fresh off the fierce political uprising that ousted former president, Hosni Mubarak. To this day, the region remains in flux and intensely volatile.

I must confess that when storms delayed my departure from Florida, causing me to miss three connections, I wondered if it was a sign of foreboding. My trepidation was even more palpable when I hit the streets of Cairo.

Here's what I discovered - and what the aftermath will mean for both Egypt and investors alike.


The Buzz on the Street



I landed seven hours late in Cairo at 9:00 PM. The airport was empty - an eerie feeling in a strange land experiencing a revolution.

Taking no chances, I'd already arranged transportation to my hotel. The cabbie - a young man - took us through construction sites and debris-strewn dirt roads, in order to avoid armored checkpoints.

I asked him what he thought about the uprising. Using broken English, he said, "Mubarak a bad man." He told me he valued his job, but if he made $100 per month, he'd feel fortunate.

When I reached the hotel - the beautiful Kempinski on the Nile - I was the only guest in the lobby. No wonder I scored such a good price - revolution rates!

The next day, a local guide took me to non-touristy places off the beaten path, so I could get a genuine feeling for the mood.

I wanted to meet the locals in Old Cairo... desert-dwelling Bedouins... and, through my contacts, the head of the Egyptian Stock Exchange.

The backstreets of Old Cairo are filthy. The smell from garbage, livestock and sewage was overwhelming. I'd experienced that same smell of poverty before in Asia, South America and Africa. (Poverty affects around 40% of the Egyptian population.)

I met some locals at a tea shop and was served hot tea and a hookah - a water pipe designed for smoking. One of the locals - a 60-something butcher - inhaled and proclaimed himself the local hookah-smoking champion, as he blew a long wisp of smoke.

He was just as happy as the cabbie about Mubarak's demise, saying, "It's bad for business now because people have been shut in for weeks, but we'll get our money back from that thief."

The others shared his view, except for one person, who conceded that Mubarak was "the devil we know," yet he was also sympathetic to the uncertain future for Mubarak's children. It doesn't matter where you are in the world, people are always concerned about their children's well-being.

My next stop was Tahrir Square - the focal point of the revolution.

Into the Heart of the Uprising

The 'square' isn't much more than a traffic intersection, really. Nothing like Red Square or Tiananmen Square. It just appeared more organized because the protestors used the surrounding buildings as boundaries.

There were a few civilians, a couple of armored personnel carriers and a lot of military. Make no mistake, in Egypt, the military is in charge.

My driver, who also drove for ex-president, Anwar Sadat, sadly pointed out the smoldering ruins of the Democratic Party Building, overlooking the square. It was Mubarak's party headquarters. "This would never have happened under Sadat. He was a good man, not afraid to be among the people. We never see Mubarak in public, he's a crook."

Then it was on to the Egyptian Stock Exchange, where I met the new Chairman, Mohammed Abdel Salam.

My Meeting With the Chairman of the Egyptian Stock Exchange

My first impression of the exchange? Maximum security.

Sub-machine gun-wielding soldiers guarded the entrance, and an armored personnel carrier was ominously parked across the street.

My first question to Chairman Salam regarded the seemingly premature re-opening of the exchange just a few days earlier. He admitted being under extreme pressure to open, due to a deadline imposed by Morgan Stanley's Index, which tracks emerging market shares.

You see, if the exchange hadn't opened that week, Egypt would have lost its spot in the Index, triggering severe capital outflows. Given that inflows from foreigners have exceeded outflows since the exchange's inception, nobody wanted such a favorable trend to end.

My takeaway from the trip? Egypt is in turmoil, but has huge potential...

The Move Egypt Must Make Now

For example, with major ports on the Red Sea and Mediterranean, plus the Nile and Suez Canal, Egypt possesses key trade routes. The country also boasts strong natural resources and agriculture.

However, to maximize its potential, Egypt must shake off the Mubarak hangover and start fresh. And that means forming a real government, not some temporary, power-sharing arrangement. It's important to remember, too, that while Egyptians are religious, the revolution was due to financial reasons, not religious ones. And until money starts flowing into the hands of Egypt's citizens - away from corrupt policymakers - for infrastructure projects, education and tourism, Egypt will underachieve.

It certainly won't attain first-world status - an honor it held over 5,000 years ago when it dominated much of the civilized world - until this new government takes root.

Teetering on the Brink of Global Chaos?

Egypt's potential is also set against the turmoil in the entire region. The 'Arab Spring' is in full bloom - from chaotic Libya in the West to Saudi Arabia in the East. Having crisscrossed the region for thousands of years, the desert-dwelling Bedouins I met are nervous about unrest spreading further.

Naturally, such volatility has huge implications for the oil market and global economy. In fact, any negative effects on oil production would make driving unaffordable for most of us, and non-Arab economies would come to a screeching halt. It could also trigger the start of a new global conflict (dare I say World War III?). Few could afford to be involved in such a conflict, yet - given its oil - the price of not being involved could be even greater.

Ahead of the tape,

Karim Rahemtulla
 

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

EconomicsIndia: Africa: 1 billion population object of India's investors

-----------------------------
Business Today (May11,2k11)

We've all heard of China's entrepreneurs and state companies investing in and developing within Africa, a wide array of industrial and commercial activities.

Now India's money and expertize is heading in the same direction, aided and abetted by Africa's several thousands of Indian immigrants.  "Indian businesses are using the expatriate Indian network to tap the business opportunities in Africa," says Business Today.
Africa appeals to potential investors for a host of reasons, as demonstrated by numerous studies. Not surprisingly, natural resources have been the catalyst for Africa's growth. The continent has the widest range of minerals, from gold, platinum and diamond to chrome, coal, cassiterite and coltan.

The continent has grown steadily at about 5.6 per cent between 2001 and 2008, thanks to a combination of structural economic and political reforms, stable macroeconomic conditions and increased foreign direct investment, or FDI, inflows - which quadrupled from just over $50 billion in 2003 to over $200 billion in 2008 - mainly from emerging economies.

At the World Economic Forum, discussions revolved around how 40 African multinational corporations, labelled together as African Challengers, outperformed the Nikkei 225, DAX 30 and the S&P 500 on revenue and profit margins from 2003 to 2008. The African Challengers came from sectors in which Africa is least developed. The largest proportion of these fast growing companies are in information and communications technology, financial services and logistics, besides mining and natural resources. In short, where there are challenges in Africa, there are also investment opportunities - and not just in natural resources.  
See the picture gallery in BBC News - Africa (May10,2k11).

Question: do the "natural resources" figures include agricultural commodities.  Probably not.  I ask becawz I'm interested in cocoa, an agricultural commodity that Ivory Coast (Cote d'Ivoire) specializes in, producing arguably the world's best beans, a type of cocoa bean that goes into chocolate goods of the h+est quality.


Hope the Indian investors don't get a corner on that market and on the cocoa futures that were disrupted for a long while this year, due to political tangles and strife in Ivory Coast.  Cocoa is good for eyes+t and other bodily-mental functions.

"One in three Africans -- 313 million people -- are now defined as middle class, according to African Development Bank, which has been studying people across the continent.  Photographer Philippe Sibelly has been documenting Africa's middle classes for his project The Other Africa, intended to show there is more on the continent than poverty and conflict."

-- EconoMix

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

PoliticsSingapore: Democracy: Breaking the stranglehold of 1-party rule



Defeated candidate describes
Singapore's 'democracy'


Guardian UK by candidate Chee Soon Juan



Something extraordinary happened in Singapore in May 2011. It was not that the prime minister dissolved parliament and called for general elections. Neither was it that, for the first time since independence, a majority of Singaporeans got to vote.
Instead, a populace finally tired of living under an authoritarian system and of constantly being told how good their rulers were and that their rule was a right and not a privilege.  Read more ...



PoliticsEgypt: Sectarian violence: Burning of Coptic churches, Copts fite back

-------------------------
BBC News (May,2k11)  Recommended by refWrite:
Click-up and read the complete news item.

Egyptian Copts

Egyptian copts protest in Cairo following the burning 
of a Christian church in Imbaba district of the cirty. 


Egyptian press fears 

communal chaos



Egyptian newspapers have published angry comment on the Muslim-Christians clashes in recent days in Egypt. More than 180 people were wounded in clashes on Saturday after conservative Muslims attacked a Coptic church in the Imbaba area.
Both official and independent newspapers fear that remnants of the ousted Mubarak government, religious extremists or unspecified foreign forces are trying to undermine moves to democracy by stoking communal violence.
Several papers accuse the authorities of leniency towards "thugs", and one demanded the death sentence for desecration of places of worship.

JuridicsUSA: Labor: Curbing the reach of unions to impinge the freedom of association / nonassociation

------------------------------
Wall Street Journal (May9,2k11) via Workforce (SmartBrief) May9,2k11)


Bills Try to Curb 

Reach of Unions


by Kris Maher and Amy Merrick

Lawmakers in New Hampshire and Missouri are advancing so-called right-to-work bills that would allow private-sector workers to opt out of joining unions, the latest such efforts to curb labor unions in the legislative season that in many states is now entering the home stretch. 

The measures, if successful, would mark the first expansion in a decade of right-to-work laws, which are on the books in 22 states.

Lawmakers in New Hampshire, where Republicans took control of both chambers last fall, passed a right-to-work measure last week. Its success will hinge on whether the state House of Representatives has enough votes to override a promised veto by Democratic Gov. John Lynch. If the bill passes, New Hampshire would become the first right-to-work state in the Northeast, historically a union stronghold.

In Missouri, the sponsor of a state Senate right-to-work bill is trying to shape a compromise in the final days of the legislative session.
Read more ...





Monday, May 09, 2011

JuridicsUSA: Labor: States r+ts and r+t to work legislation target of NLRB suit

------------------------

On Apr21,2k11, the National Labor Relations Board, a Federal USA agency,  brawt suit on behalf of the International Association of Machinists (District 751) based in Seattle, Washington, the largest union at Boeing Companies's facilities of manufacture and assembly in the Puget Sound area.  Perhaps the leading product there was the old-line of 787 Boeing airliners.  See:  NLRB suit against Boeing asks return of state jobs, Seattle Times via Wenatchee World.

A week later, the headlines read States blast NRLB suit (Post and Courier, Charleston SC).  The nine states involved, led by South Carolina, all have what is called "r+t to work" laws (a total of 22 out of 50 USA states have such laws), this legislation stipulating that no one may be denied employment becawz of refusal to join a union.  This r+t  is recognized internationally by the UN Declaration of Human R+ts where freedom of association and, the corollary, freedom of non-association are guaranteed. 

Read more .... click the t+mstamp below ...

Saturday, May 07, 2011

PoliticsIsrael: Calendar: The Jewish State of Israel will be celebrating it 63rd Independence Day on May 11, 2011

---------------------------------



-- an Aish.com video

This year Holocaust Remembrance Day was observed on May 1, 2011.
Memorial Day will be observed May 9, 2011.
And Israel's Independence Day will be celebrated on May 11, 2011, marking the Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel in 1948.

-- Politicarp for refWrite

Thursday, May 05, 2011

PisteuticsUSA: Calendar: National Day of Prayer combines today with Memorial of 9/11 victims and Celebration of Justice brawt by Heroes who removed terrorist mastermind

--------------------
About.com (May4,2k11)
by Mary Fairchild



...May 5, 2011, is the National Day of Prayer.  This year's observance marks the 60th annual national prayer event.  As in the past, Christians and adherents of other faiths are invited on this day to voluntarily pray according to the conventions of their own beliefs.  The theme for 2011 is Psalm 91:12,  "I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust."

Since 1952 when the National Day of Prayer was officially created by a joint resolution of the US Congress and signed into law by President Harry Truman, every president has signed a National Day of Prayer proclamation.  This year President Barack Obama recognized the significant role prayer has had in the lives of the American people, saying, "Throughout our history, Americans have turned to prayer for strength, inspiration, and solidarity.  Prayer has played an important role in the American story and in shaping  our Nation's leaders."


refWrite editorial comment:  Many meetings are being held thru-out the nation today.  Some are limited to one liturgical community to pray for the USA, for divine guidance of its leadership at all levels, for thanksgiving to Almighty God "according to the conventions of their own beliefs" in many cases," and to pray for a national movement of repentance for the nation's sins, a national movement of humbling before the Lord ("humiliation" as our ancestors often called it).

Many others join with persons of other faiths (and possibly some of no faith, a no-god) to pray in the same place where each choses the belief-words according to his or her tradition and commitment.

Today, a day which has become another day of mourning for the victims of 9/11 2011, is an especially strong expression of the American civic religion becawz of the participation of many religions and people of even other religions, also atheists and agnostics.   The grief is a national grief, of a religiously diverse people.  But today of all National Prayer Day observances,  the national grief is accompanied by a national joy of release from the terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden and a national joy celebrating especially the heroes who  brawt this unjust man to justice.

President Obama who followed his predecessors in proclaiming this National Prayer Day flew to New York City and the Twin Towers of World Trade Center.  He is there now.  May God be praised, may the heroes of justice be celebrated, and may those struck down in 2001 be remembered again on this Tenth Anniversary of their deaths, so unjust.

-- Politicarp for refWrite 


Tuesday, May 03, 2011

Pisteutics: Justice: USA killing of Osama bin Laden by Navy Seals was just, says Gideon Strauss

----------------------------

Dr Gideon Strauss is CEO of the Center for Public Justice, a Christian political thinktank in the Washington DC area.  He developed some thawts, relying on Scripture, on the USA military execution of the mass murderer Osama bin Laden who was mastermind of the 9/11 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, NY; the Pentagon, Arlington Virginia; and the further planned attack on the Capitol in Washington that was prevented by airplane passengers who sacrificed themselves by deflecting the terrorist flite path of the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93, apparently on its way toward the Capitol or the White House.  They achieved their heroic goal by crashing their plane in a field near Shanksville, Somerset County, Pennsylvania.  In all three locations, the death toll totaled 2,977 victims, and 19 assassins who were deployed for this purpose by Osama bin Laden.  OBL was also responsible for several other mass murders in scattered places around the world; he was an ally of the Taliban in subjugating Afghanistan to a severe regime of Sharia Law, repression of women, and many other heinous perversions of justice.

Dr Strauss's article amounts to a guide for the perplexed and those in mourning, even shock, due to the atrocities of this man.  Christianity Today (May2,2k11)

Hat Tip to Steve Bishop, editor, The Reformational Daily

-- Politicarp

PoliticsCanada: Election Results: Conservs get majority, NDP official opposition, Libs now a rump, Bloc decimated, Greens in by 1 seat

------------------------
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's
CBC News (May3,2k11)

refWrite editorial comment:  As of yesterday's federal elections, Canada now has a majority government, a majority if we count not the popular vote, but if we count instead the number of seats won in the Parliament's House of Commons, party by party.  There were four parties in the last Parliament, now augmented by a fifth party, the Green Party of Canada, which won 1 seat (the Saanich - Gulf Islands riding in the province of British Columbia).

A majority government, won by the Conservative Party of Canada under Prime Minister Stephen Harper yesterdat, will bring stability and will secure a full four year term -- unless the Prime Minister decides to call one sooner.  PM Harper will probably not pull the plug early, since he has been granted in his past winning election campaigns (2006, 2008) only minority governments which served at the whim of the other three parties -- all three having been leftist.  What's especially interesting is that yesterday Jack Layton's New Democratic Party, arguably the most leftist and socialist of the three, now four, opposition parties (which together received a majority of the popular vote) has become the 2nd-place party in regard to seats in the Commons, thus becoming what we call "the official opposition."  He accomplished this, as predicted here, by cutting the previous 2nd place party, the Liberals, down to a rump (falling from 76 in 2008 to 34 today.  Even more interesting was the movement of Lib voters away from that party in Québec where they landed on the doorstep of the NDP,  and Ontario where they fled a feared national victory of the NDP and so headed strait into the arms of the Conservs.

The CBC chart to the left shows how the NDP which was in 4th place before this election, in a sudden upsurge attracted the leftwing votes of the Liberals and decimated the ranks of the previously 3rd place Bloc Québecois, a separatist party which dropped from 49 seats in 2008 to yesterdays win of only 4 seats.

Ironically, the NDP's decimation of the Bloc brawt the newly-elected Québec NDPers into their new party and new caucus in the Commons, while at the same time the NDP lost some of its  veteran parliamentary members from Ontario.  To put the situations in the most mild terms, the influx of ex-BQers who speak French, mostly coupled with the outflow of English-speaking NDPers in its Ontario parliamentary ranks, has created a cuturally schizophrenic new New Democratic Party over which Jack Layton must preside; he will undoubtedly face a clash among his forces -- those who will push for Québec interests and its so-called "special status within Canada" (based on language difference), and those English-speaking NDP parliamentarians who will resist this push and work from the concept of equality as against special privilege (for Québec).   There are at least some strong sympathies among apparently ex-BQ voters in the freshman cohort of the new New Democrat caucus in the Commons, Québec freshmen described by some TV commentators as "autonomists" -- they want an autonomous Québec within Canada.  Old-style NPers, on the other hand, may balk at the anticipated demands from the soft-separatism of the new Québec NDPers.

The anticpated tension within the NDP will not occur utterly without precedent in Canadian political history.  A prime example may well be the case of the r+twing Social Credit Party (Socred) that began in the province of Alberta, where it had developed out of ideas for economic reform originating with the English engineer C. H. Douglas (1879-1952).  In depression-conditioned Alberta, Social Credit in 1935 fielded 46 candidates and won 17 seats in the federal House of Commons. It also formed the Alberta provincial govt  (1935-1943) of William Aberhart the radio evangelist, with a largely Protestant Christian base but was already abandoning its originator's "funny money" policy. The national federal Social Credit Party of Canada was founded in 1944.  After electing a small caucus to the Federal Parliament, in due time some Québec populists found sufficient agreement with points of policy advocated by the anglophone Social Crediters, to unleash themselves among the largely Catholic and French-speaking population in Québec where they to elected francophone Social Crediters to form a wing of Social Credit in Canada's House of Commons.  Réal Caouette became the leading figure in Québec's version of créditisme, once he had been first elected to the federal Parliament in 1946.  In 1959, Robert Thompson become national leader of the Socreds and was well spoken-of  by all parliamentary party leaders.
In the 1962 election, Social Credit won 26 seats in Quebec. Caouette himself returned to Parliament as the MP for Villeneuve, a riding he held for the rest of his life (though it was renamed Témiscamingue in 1966). The party won only four seats in the rest of Canada, forcing Thompson to appoint Caouette as the party's deputy leader. Holding the balance of power in the House of Commons, Social Credit helped bring down the Progressive Conservative minority government of John Diefenbaker. However in the 1963 election, Social Credit was reduced to 24 seats nationwide.

Caouette fought for bilingualism in the House of Commons, winning a symbolic victory when he got the Parliament's restaurant to produce bilingual menus.[1] In this, he anticipated the official bilingualism policy that would later be put into effect by Pierre Trudeau.
Caouette believed that since the party was most successful in Quebec, he should be leader of the party instead of Thompson. As well, Caoeutte and his followers remained true believers in the social credit monetary theories of C.H. Douglas while Thompson and the Social Credit Party of Alberta had largely abandoned the theory. Thompson refused to step aside, leading Caouette to leave the party, along with the rest of Quebec wing in 1963, to establish the Ralliement des créditistes as its own political party, independent of Social Credit.
In the 1965 election, Caouette's Ralliement won nine seats, while Social Credit led by Thompson won five seats. In the 1968 election, Caouette's party won 14 seats while Social Credit won none.  (Wikipedia)
Any argument from historical analogy can only hold in certain respects regarding a current event and its suggested historical antecedant / analogue.  My main point, of course, is simply that Jack Layton has a difficult job on his hands.  My secondary point is that the cultural milieux of Québec gives Mr Layton little ground for relishing the youth, inexperience, and in some cases lack of fluency in French of his new caucus members from Québec -- where his numbers skyrocketed from 1 to 58 (58 out of a total of 102 in the full caucus).   Mr Layton's caucus size, minus its 58 Québec numbers, is 44, which may be the statistical marker of a sociological faultline that even the amazing Jack Layton can't talk away.

-- Politicarp

Harper: Majority win 

turns page on uncertainties




Layton seizes Opposition; Duceppe, Ignatieff defeated as parties devastated






Posted: May 2, 2011 9:19 PM ET



Last Updated: May 3, 2011 12:29 PM ET 




Canadians can now "turn the page on the uncertainties and repeat elections of the past seven years," Stephen Harper said Monday night as voters delivered the Conservative leader his first majority government and brought a dramatic and unpredicted realignment to the country's political landscape.
The re-elected prime minister told the country that government affairs will begin "as early as tomorrow" with a plan for creating jobs and growth without increasing taxes, immediate help for families and seniors and eliminating the deficit while maintaining health-care transfers to provinces and territories.
"And friends I have to say it — a strong, stable, national Conservative majority government," Harper told a cheering crowd in Calgary, a reference to his oft-repeated refrain during the campaign.
Meanwhile, NDP Leader Jack Layton will now become Official Opposition leader and replace Michael Ignatieff, who himself was defeated in his own Toronto riding. Ignatieff took responsibility for the Liberals' historic electoral loss. Ignatieff's Liberals — often touted as Canada's "natural governing party" — placed a distant third behind Layton's party.
With 99 per cent of polls reporting, the Conservatives won 167 seats, followed by the NDP with 102, Liberals with 34 and the Bloc Québécois with four and the Green Party with one. A party needs to capture 155 seats to win a majority in the House of Commons.
Despite his majority victory, Harper pledged to work with other parties and praised their efforts over five weeks.