Halloween Week: the Beginning

... or something.


Lots going on at the Fur.

For example:

Former Prime Minister Jean Chretien advises PM-Elect Trulander to do as his father did and "talk to everybody":

Former Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien says he hopes Justin Trudeau will engage in a dialogue with a variety of international leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin.

During an interview with CTV's Question Period, Chretien suggested the incoming prime minister's father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, maintained an open approach when speaking to world leaders including Cuba's Fidel Castro.

"Mr. Trudeau could talk to anybody because he kept his independence," he said.

Chretien also advised Justin Trudeau to "talk to everybody."

Former Prime Minister Chretien was the head of Ad-Scam, the scandal that brought in the Harper government in the first place, and took a lucrative job with a petroleum company after abandoning Zehra Kazemi.

As for Pierre Trudeau, well, let's just say he never met a dictator he didn't like.

The future Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau came in 1960 and co-wrote a starry-eyed book, Two Innocents in Red China, which rejected reports of famine.

(Chung, Jung, and Jon Halliday. Mao: The Unknown Story. 1st ed. New York: Knopf, Borzoi, 2005. 460.)

Riding the coattails of the successful collectivization of 1955-1956 and the plentiful harvest of 1957, Mao announced a five-year plan (i.e., The Great Leap Forward) to the People’s Commune in 1958. Mao continually increased the agricultural production quotas due to early bountiful yield of crops. Whereas the early bounties were produced by sound pre-Maoist agricultural methods, the farming methods imposed by Mao, which included natural collectivization— growing incompatible seeds together—, were an unmitigated disaster that led to mass starvation. The five-year program, which only lasted three years, ended in utter catastrophe, inducing a famine that produced an estimated twenty to forty-three million deaths. This manmade famine was a result of Chairman Mao and his commissars implementing policies based on their ignorant notions of farm production. Mao was under the false impression that nature could be run in a non-symbiotic fashion. Indeed, Mao once quipped that “Happy plants grow together.” It was this utopian naivety that grounded Mao’s five-year project, and the manmade famine that followed.

With scant regard for [Hubert] Matos' previous exemplary conduct as a freedom fighter, [Fidel] Castro subjected him to a Moscow-style show-trial in Havana and intervened personally against his former ally. Castro stood up in court and brought tremendous pressure to bear on the judges, say: "I'm telling you that you must choose: it's Matos or me!" He also prevented witnesses for the defense from testifying. Matos received a twenty-year sentence, which he served to the last day. Several people close to him were also sent to prison.

(Fontaine, Pascal. The Black Book of Communism, 3rd printing. Harvard. 2000. 653)

Like father, like son.



Does anyone remember when Alberta was an economically viable province?

The collapse of crude oil prices that had former Progressive Conservative premier Jim Prentice warning Albertans to brace for a $7-billion hole in provincial revenues will result in his NDP successors tabling a budget Tuesday that forecasts the largest-ever deficit in the province’s history.

Finance Minister Joe Ceci hinted this week the deficit will be just shy of $6.5 billion — nearly $1.5 billion more than Prentice forecast last March in a budget that was never passed.

NOW she'll get the wrath:

Ontario elementary school teachers and some support staff engaging in work-to-rule campaigns could soon see their paycheques docked, Premier Kathleen Wynne says.

The one thing Liberal-voting, heavily-unionised teachers love above all else is money. Kathleen Wynne has put her foot in it by threatening teachers' wallets.



Culture matters, Quebec:

Since puppy mills and the mistreatment of pets are one of the main concerns of the new law, activists have speculated that it will do little to change the treatment of animals raised for food. The bill, however, is spearheaded by Quebec agricultural minister Pierre Paradis, who according to the CBC said he expected to hear from groups concerned with kosher and halal slaughtering techniques. He believed at the time that kosher ritual practices would not break the new law, but that some halal slaughters would. "Slow death is not acceptable under the new legislation,” the minister said. “That will have an impact on those who don't find the equilibrium between religious beliefs and respect for animals.”

And now, listen to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" as read by nine different celebrities.

For one's listening pleasure, a Russian lullaby: