Speculation is rife that the Alberta Tar Sands, what Naomi Klein calls the apex of disaster capitalism, will serve as the location for The Hobbit's Mordor scenes. You can watch what seems to be a Peter Jackson's video blog here, an Alberta government's film site here. Already a facebook group has emerged condemning it. (See here)

Update: Alvaro's deportation was stopped. See here. 

I just returned from an event hosted by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty in honour of the ongoing work of John Clarke.

In closing remarks, Liisa said OCAP is a place where poverty is not a place of shame, its a place of empowerment.

Its time we start talking about living without immigration status, about so-called illegality, as a place of empowerment, and not a place of shame.

Many have written about what we can expect from Harper and the austerity agenda. You can read more here, here, here and so on. Many have also written about what we should do.

The Tories just put out an attack ad against the Liberals. Other than the obnoxious music which I find terribly distracting, the Tories make four claims in 31 seconds. Let's talk about them:

1. Canada wants to welcome those who want to build a better future.

Canada has a temporary immigration system. More people come in as temporary workers then as permanent residents. The refugee acceptance rates have dropped 60% just this past year. Over half a million people are living without any immigration status. Living in exploitable conditions, paying in to taxes for a social services system you cannot access is not a "better" future. The only future the Canadian immigration system cares about is the future of corporations maximizing profit.

How soon we forget that only two years ago, the issue that dominated the election debate was whether people like me should be allowed to get married. Of course, all of the usual suspects lined up to pontificate about how this represented the end of the Canadian family. Several hundred gay marriages later, I am happy to announce that heterosexuality is alive and well, even if Harper and Dion are still fighting to one-up each other as the most fatherly, Leave It To Beaver types.

Maybe my partisan ideals have faded with a little age and experience, but I am now firmly in the Anyone But Harper camp, and am greatly relieved to hear that the NDP has tentatively opened the door to working in coalition with the Liberals after the election. Of course, Jack Layton is still pretending that he actually has a chance of becoming Prime Minister, and I am not sure if that strikes me as hope or hubris.

You'll have to excuse me if I have to duck out to puke a little bit each time I see Harper trot out his family - as if this enough proves that he is a decent guy with everyone's needs at stake who is qualified to continue to lead the country. We get it. His children and wife are blond and idyllic. He is the masculine head of household, wearing a sweater to soften his look and convince us that he has a warm, nurturing side. Kind of like to ubiquitous photo of him with one of the kittens that Laureen fosters (poor kitten!).

It’s odious the way political parties talk about art and culture. Like the Conservatives, they think it’s a waste of money (unlike, of course, the waste of money on subsidies for big business). The Liberals and the New Democrats, they think that they have to justify it in some actuarial way. To combat the argument that paying for the development of artists is a superficial, even frivolous, act and not a civic one, the ‘progressives’ counter by saying the ‘return on investment is phenomenal’. In other words we can make money out of it. That’s the dreary world of the Conservatives and I’m not sure what it profits to enter its short, brutish thesis.