We're Number One, We're Number One,

So this may be why this happened.

Not only do we have some of the highest home computer usage in the world, just behind Finland and Norway, (baby its cold outside, I think I'll go surfing) we have the highest usage of the internet. It now appears we also have most bloggers.

So depite all the brouhaha down south about the impact of political bloggers, their public penetration is minimal whereas ours is far greater. Which means not only in blogging, but all aspects of the new media on the internet. Have computer will surf. And Canadians do.

Over the last couple of days many of us blogging, have said the Federal NDP needs to change and transform its communications approach to the DIY reality of the WWW. And while many blog comments focused on the Director of Communications, which was the spark that lit the prairie fire, it really was all about feeling like we are in the hinterland.

Battling the Blogging Tories and Liberalblogs, in a thankless battle to get the messaging out with little or no support from the party. Rather blogging gets short shrift and disdain from its top strategy and communications wonk.

In light of this information the least they could do is create a blog. Then in a few years they will figure out aggregators.


A tip o' the blog to Giant Political Mouse

See

Bumph And Grind

Brad Lavigne

NDP

Internet

Blogging


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Punked

An email hoax, critical of Jack Layton is posted on the right wing SDA blog
And despite comments on her site that it is a hoax, she continues to post it with no disclaimer for at approximately 24 hours. Slimey Kate, slimey.
I originally wrote the above yesterday, pending posting, 11:40 PM Dec.20/2006

Update Dec. 21/2006
She finally admits it was a hoax but only credits her own commentators, not folks out here in the blogosphere that pointed out in the first place. Seems she is slow to read the comments till after the fact. Fact being that she didn't check her source or its authenticity. So if this is Kates citizens journalism I guess thats how its different from real, authentic, professional, journalism. Fact Checking.


See

SDA


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Canada's New National Portrait

Gallery. Which is why this is Funny It was either that or build a prison. Hey maybe it can double up. RH Stephen Harper National Portrait Gallery and Prison. Art has consequences.

See

Pay Back

Income Trust Payback

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Happy Solstice

The

Sun/Son

Returns.


And

Winter

Begins.










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The Problem Is Pagans

In the U.S Congress!!!

Discussion on the latest American religion and politics scandal, whats new, on CNN's Wolf Blitzer Situation Room.

Republican Spinmeister; "Bay" Buchanan blurted out her secret fear, the ultimate conspiracy theory, the problem with the Belt-way was all the Pagans in Congress

BEGALA: So, Carville is a Catholic. Ellison is a Muslim. And they were both in a synagogue at the same time. That is America.

(CROSSTALK)

BUCHANAN: Keith Ellison got -- actually received the endorsement of a Jewish newspaper.

I mean, this is a man that ran on a certain platform. He gathered people from all different faiths to support him. And he has every possible reason in this great country to represent that district.
His religion, to me, is a strength, his strength. I mean, I will tell you what I'm far more concerned about in Congress, is -- than a Muslim, is the pagans we have up there.

(LAUGHTER)

BUCHANAN: I think they are a greater threat to us than anyone who has some religious beliefs.

(LAUGHTER)

Pagans in Congress? Heck the right wing mudpuppies are upset over a Democrat Congressman wanting to swear his oath of office on the Koran. Pagans, sheesh, America is not that liberal.

Of course saying something completely outrageous and untrue sounds better if you also make it outlandish. I am not sure what she was getting at with her us and them designation of Congress, but maybe if she said "believers and unbelievers: she would come under scrutiny of Homeland Security.

Or if she accussed Congress of being full of atheists, well that would have been laughed off, not an athiest among them, they make sure we all know that.

Nope pagans it is. And of course coming from a Catholic we all know what that means; any one who is not a Papist. Glad to know she didn't really mean Pagans just Non-Catholics.



I was suddenly envisioning the new Congress making Halloween and May Day sacred holy days on par with Christmas, and bringing back the Wicker Man for George W. Bush.




Instead being in a Yuletide mood of joy and giving I recommend someone sit Bay down and make her listen to Dar Williams; The Christians and the Pagans.

Amber called her uncle, said "We're up here for the holiday,
Jane and I were having Solstice, now we need a place to stay."
And her Christ-loving uncle watched his wife hang Mary on a tree,
He watched his son hang candy canes all made with red dye number three.
He told his niece, "It's Christmas Eve, I know our life is not your style,"
She said, "Christmas is like Solstice, and we miss you and its been awhile,"

So the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table,
Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able,
And just before the meal was served, hands were held and prayers were said,
Sending hope for peace on earth to all their gods and goddesses.

The food was great, the tree plugged in, the meal had gone without a hitch,
Till Timmy turned to Amber and said, "Is it true that you're a witch?"
His mom jumped up and said, "The pies are burning," and she hit the kitchen,
And it was Jane who spoke, she said, "It's true, your cousin's not a Christian,"
"But we love trees, we love the snow, the friends we have, the world we share,
And you find magic from your God, and we find magic everywhere."

So the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table,
Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able,
And where does magic come from? I think magic's in the learning,
'Cause now when Christians sit with Pagans only pumpkin pies are burning.

When Amber tried to do the dishes, her aunt said, "Really, no, don't bother."
Amber's uncle saw how Amber looked like Tim and like her father.
He thought about his brother, how they hadn't spoken in a year,
He thought he'd call him up and say, "It's Christmas and your daughter's here."
He thought of fathers, sons and brothers, saw his own son tug his sleeve, saying,
"Can I be a Pagan?" Dad said, "We'll discuss it when they leave."

So the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table,
Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able,
Lighting trees in darkness, learning new ways from the old, and
Making sense of history and drawing warmth out of the cold.

Yep, that should clear things up for her. Since we share a common ethic.

Pagans in Congress what a fantasy.

If that were to occur you would have a government of true federalism, and natural justice.

Yep pure fantasy.

McCloskey, Deirdre N. The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce. 634 p., 3 line drawings, 8 tables. 6 x 9 2006

Cloth $32.50 0-226-55663-8 Spring 2006

For a century and a half, the artists and intellectuals of Europe have scorned
the bourgeoisie. And for a millennium and a half, the philosophers and theologians of Europe have scorned the marketplace. The bourgeois life, capitalism, Mencken’s “booboisie” and David Brooks’s “bobos”—all have been, and still are, framed as being responsible for everything from financial to moral poverty, world wars, and spiritual desuetude. Countering these centuries of assumptions and unexamined thinking is Deirdre McCloskey’s The Bourgeois Virtues, a magnum opus that offers a radical view: capitalism is good for us.

McCloskey’s sweeping, charming, and even humorous survey of ethical thought and economic realities—from Plato to Barbara Ehrenreich—overturns every assumption we have about being bourgeois. Can you be virtuous and bourgeois? Do markets improve ethics? Has capitalism made us better as well as richer? Yes, yes, and yes, argues McCloskey, who takes on centuries of capitalism’s critics with her erudition and sheer scope of knowledge. Applying a new tradition of “virtue ethics” to our lives in modern economies, she affirms American capitalism without ignoring its faults and celebrates the bourgeois lives we actually live, without supposing that they must be lives without ethical foundations.

High Noon, Kant, Bill Murray, the modern novel, van Gogh, and of course economics and the economy all come into play in a book that can only be described as a monumental project and a life’s work. The Bourgeois Virtues is nothing less than a dazzling reinterpretation of Western intellectual history, a dead-serious reply to the critics of capitalism—and a surprising page-turner.

CRITIQUE AND COMMENT

Towards Embodied Justice: Wrestling with Legal Ethics in the Age of the 'New Corporatism'

MARGARET THORNTON

[This article considers what feminist ethics might be able to offer public law and challenges the idea of ‘public’ law when strategically invoked by private interests. The article argues that ostensibly neutral phenomena, such as the public law–private law distinction, norms of universality and adversarialism are key technologies of power that facilitate the ‘new corporatism’. It is suggested that ‘care’, which is commonly assumed to be a corollary of feminist ethics, is problematic because it is associated with what is termed the ‘fictive feminine’, an impoverished notion of femininity within the popular imagination. An ethical feminist consciousness can nevertheless contribute to a new vision of justice by incorporating the perspective of the ‘other’, which involves effecting a dialogue between the universal and the particular.]

Pagan Virtue: An Essay in Ethics by John Casey at Questia Online ...

Man as person is absolutely free to choose his
destiny, his values, even his nature. His existence as a person, and
hence as a moral being, is not determined by something called
'human nature'. Morality must be concerned with man in his
freedom, and the moral law is the law of freedom. Ideas such as
these we can associate with Spinoza, Kant, and Sartre. Kant argued
that since the moral law must apply to all rational beings generally,
then it must apply to man simply as a rational being. No truly
moral command could be based on man's 'empirical' nature -- upon
particular desires, strengths, or skills.

In fact, the concept of a person, and its consequences for values,
is a focus of ideological disagreement. 'There is neither Jew nor
Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor
female: for ye are all . . .' ⁵ persons. To insist that someone is above
all a person is to insist that all these other characters he may have
are irrelevant to that distinct pattern of response that is appropriate
to rational beings. To say that someone's colour, or sex, or caste is
irrelevant to his personhood is usually to say that it is inappropriate
or wrong to withdraw certain sorts of consideration from him
because of these features or accidents of birth, or to accord certain
sorts of consideration to him because of them.

Pagan Virtue: An Essay in Ethics. (book reviews)

This book presents the author's reflections on the "pagan" cardinal virtues of courage, temperance, justice, and practical wisdom (phronesis) as depicted by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics. Casey sees these virtues as pagan because they "are undeniably worldly . . . , include an element of self-regard, and . . . rely on material conditions for their fulfillment" (p. viii). Christian virtue, by contrast, centers on the next world, emphasizes humility, and is independent of the vagaries of fortune because it depends (as Kant articulates in the Grundlegung) ...

The Sense of the Past:
Essays in the History of Philosophy

Bernard Williams
Edited and with an introduction by Myles Burnyeat

Bernard Williams' insistence that morality is about people and their real lives, and that acting out of self-interest and even selfishness are not contrary to moral action, is illustrated in his "internal reasons for action" argument, part of what philosophers call the "internal/external reasons" debate.

Philosophers have tried to argue that moral agents can have "external reasons" for performing a moral act; that is, they are able to act for reasons external to their inner mental states. Williams argued that this is meaningless. For something to be a "reason to act," it must be magnetic; that is, it must move us to action. How can something entirely external to us – for example, the proposition that X is good – be magnetic? By what process can something external to us move us to act?

Williams argued that it cannot. Cognition is not magnetic. Knowing and feeling are quite separate, and a person must feel before they are moved to act. Reasons for action are always internal, he argued. If I feel moved to do X (for example, to do something good), it is because I want to. I may want to do the right thing for a number of reasons. For example, I may have been brought up to believe that X is good and may wish to act in accordance with my upbringing; or I may want to look good in someone else's eyes; or perhaps I fear the disapproval of my community. The reasons can be complex, but they are always internal and they always boil down to desire.

With this argument, Williams left moral philosophy with the notion that a person's moral reasons must be rooted in his desires to act morally, desires that might, at any given moment, in any given person, be absent. In a secular humanist tradition, with no appeal to God or any external moral authority, Williams' theory strikes at the foundation of conventional morality; namely, that people sometimes do good even when they don't want to.

See

Pagan



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Santa's Sweatshop

Of course while Ms. Claus gets exploited so do the elves,after all they represent a classic icon for child labour don't they. Santa's Sweatshop.
Producing all those sweatshop toys for girls and boys, in the developed world. But you can now shop sweatfree.

Thai toy shop fire kills six. 15/01/2005. ABC News Online

American Apparel's decision to sell out is another example of an ethical brand going multinational.

At the American Apparel store on New York's Fifth Avenue this week, there was a Christmas shopping buzz as customers rifled through brightly coloured racks of t-shirts, underpants and bras. Helpful little cards advised on suitable presents: a pair of baby rib briefs, for example, for your "favourite boy".
The boss of the underwear chain is getting a rather more substantial Christmas gift. Dov Charney, who founded American Apparel in 1997, will receive $200m in shares under a $383m takeover announced yesterday by a financial buyer, Endeavour Acquisition Corporation.
Although eye-watering, Charney's windfall is hardly unusual in present business climate of daily multi-billion pound private equity buyouts. But this is no ordinary takeover.
Ever since its inception, American Apparel has trumpeted its small-scale values. All the manufacturing is done in a factory in downtown Los Angeles where production line staff typically earn between $12 and $18 an hour - not a fortune, but well above the industry average and a good deal more than the people who stitch Gap underpants together in Indonesia.
American Apparel trumpets its vertically integrated, sweatshop-free business model at every opportunity. Charney, who sports a handlebar moustache and once appeared bare-bottomed in an advertisement, has a strong sense of counter-intuitive cool and likes to upset Californian politicians by campaigning for free immigration.
Yesterday's deal, however, is intended to transform American Apparel into a global player. The new owner, Endeavour, intends to open 800 stores, half of which will be outside America, to add to the existing chain of 145.
American Apparel appears to be joining a long list of once ideological "ethical" names which have succumbed to the multinational shilling. Body Shop's founder Anita Roddick found a takeover by L'Oreal impossible to resist - just as Pret a Manger opted for a partial sale to McDonalds, the organic chocolate maker Green & Black's was gobbled by Cadbury Schweppes, and ice-cream king Ben & Jerry's was bought by Unilever

The War of the Christmas Trees

The National Christmas Tree Association's Web site claims that real tree sales outnumber sales for artificial trees 32.8 million to 9.3 million. But artificial trees are used year after year, and studies commissioned by the artificial tree industry show that 57 percent of all Americans actually own fake trees.

Further, the NCTA claims that plastic trees are made in Chinese sweatshops, harbor cancer-causing and poisonous chemicals, and can go up in flames at the strike of a match.

Real trees, it says, are renewable, recyclable and biodegradable. Nurseries proudly tell customers that one evergreen tree produces enough daily oxygen for 18 people.

Sweat-free carols at Melbourne fashion retailer
by pc Tuesday December 19, 2006 at 07:06 PM

As in previous years, the FairWear anti-sweatshop campaign took its Christmas sweat-free carols to town, visiting this year fashion retailer Rich, one of far too many who have so far refused to sign up to the Homeworkers Code of Practice ...

click to enlarge

After a quick rehearsal in the Mall, the 'choir' made its way into the up-market shopping mall that has replaced the old Post Office in Melbourne's landmark GPO building and lined up in front of the fashion display for a rendering of modified version of three well-known carols - Jingle Bells (Sweatshop workers all deserve/their Christmas bonus pay - HEY!), God Rest Ye Weary Laborers (O tidings of justice and rights/ human rights, O tidings of justice and rights!), and the classic Twelve Days of Sweat Shopping (On the eleventh day of shopping, my true love bought for me,/ tax breaks for sweatshops, workers without unions, sexual/harassment, cancer-causing fumes, twelve-hour days,/six cents an hour,/RAM-PANT COR-PORATE GREED!/pre-sweated pants, slave labour shoes, toys made by kids,/all gifts made in sweatshops right here).
The performance was then repeated on the steps outside, much to the fascination of the crowds waiting to view the Myer windows...
After the performance, members of the 'choir' handed out useful wallet-sized cards listing companies certified to use the NoSweatshop label on their Australian Made clothing. Visit the website for details:

http://www.fairwear.org.au

Anti-Sweatshop Christmas Carols

Away in a Sweatshop
to the tune of Away in a Manger

Away in a sweatshop where no one can see
The immigrant seamstresses work constantly.
Conditions are awful, the pay is absurd
The boss he will fire them if they say a word.
Away in a fact'ry, an ocean away
Young girls making shoes for a dollar a day.
But please don't complain about worker exploitation
Cause this factory's in a Most Favored Nation.
Away in the Congress, the Senators fat
Count up their PAC dollars, pass NAFTA and GATT.
They couldn't care less about workers in need
These corporate whores traded their conscience for greed!

Slaving in a Sweatshop Wonderland
to the tune of Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Door bell rings, are you listening?
On your brow, sweat is glistening.
You're working tonight; it just isn't right,
Slaving in a sweatshop wonderland.
Gone away are the good jobs
Here today are the sweatshops
They want you to sew
Seven days in a row
Slaving in a sweatshop wonderland.
In Toronto, Woolworth has used sweatshops
And they've paid the lowest rates in town.
Ask about a union, they'll say no ma'am.
Homeworkers do the job for the poorest pay around.
Later on, they'll conspire
How to raise prices higher
The plans that they've made
Won't make us better paid
Slaving in a sweatshop wonderland.
Door bell rings, are you listening?
On your brow, sweat is glistening.
You're working tonight; it just isn't right,


And this little missive from the Right makes the point too..


Will the Feds Bust Santa Claus?
by George Getz

When Santa Claus comes to town this week, he'd better watch out -- because the federal government may be making a list of his crimes (and checking it twice), the Libertarian Party warned today.

"Hark the federal agents sing, Santa is guilty of nearly everything," said Libertarian Party press secretary George Getz. "The feds know when Santa's been bad or good -- and he's been bad, for goodness sakes."

Does Santa belong in the slammer? Instead of stuffing stockings, should he be making license plates?

Yes, said Getz, if he's held to the same standards as a typical American. For example:

* Every December 25, the illegal immigrant known as Santa Claus crosses the border into the United States without a passport. He carries concealed contraband, which he sneaks into the country in order to avoid inspection by the U.S. Customs Service. And just what's in all those brightly colored packages tied up with ribbons, anyway? The Drug Czar and Homeland Security want to know.

* Look at how this international fugitive gets around: Santa flies in a custom-built sleigh that hasn't been approved by the FAA. He never files a flight plan. He has no pilot's license. In the dark of night, he rides the skies with just a tiny bioluminescent red light to guide him -- a clear violation of traffic safety regulations.

* Pulling Santa's sleigh: Eight tiny reindeer, a federally protected species being put to hard labor. None of these reindeer have their required shots, and Santa's never bothered to get these genetically- engineered animals registered and licensed. It's no wonder: He keeps them penned outside his workplace in a clear violation of zoning laws.

* But Crooked Claus the Conniving Capitalist harms more than just animals -- he's hurting hard-working American laborers, too. Isn't Santa's Workshop really Santa's Sweatshop, where his non-union employees don't make minimum wage and get no holiday pay? Add the fact that OSHA has never inspected the place, and you have a Third-World elf-exploitation operation that only Kathy Lee Gifford could love.

* No wonder Santa is able to maintain his monopoly over the toy distribution industry: He's cornered the Christmas gift market. Santa dares to give away his products for free in a sinister attempt to crush all competition -- just like Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Antitrust Lawsuit Memo to the feds: Is Santa Claus the Bill Gates of Christmas?

The bottom line, said Getz: "It might be tough sledding for Jolly St. Nick this Christmas if the government decides to prosecute him.

"We're just surprised it hasn't already happened. After all, Santa Claus is everything that politicians aren't: He's popular, reliable, and gives us something for nothing every December 25th -- instead of taking our money every April 15th."
See

Sweatshop

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Ms Claus Gets No Coin

Here is another reason why we need a social wage in Canada, one that would include wages for housework. Single family tax credits are for the rich, we need a real living wage for all workers including homeworkers.

Deck the halls with unpaid labour

For a certain Bethlehem-born babe, seasonal swag is all about gold, frankincense and myrrh. But for personal saviours closer to home - namely, Canadian moms - a new survey suggests the more appropriate gift is $10,017.

That's what the average mother would collect if her holiday efforts were remunerated in current market terms, according to data from Service Canada and the British drugstore giant Boots.

The five-figure payday draws from a British survey of 2,000 mothers of children age 16 and younger, each of whom was polled on the number of holiday hours she spends wearing 11 seasonal hats: costume designer, craftsperson, personal shopper, event planner, financial manager, public relations officer, interior designer, chef, chauffeur, nanny and housekeeper. Compensation was then determined using Canadian labour market information from Service Canada for each of the jobs.

See:

Kids Are Commodities

Indentured Servitude

Build It And They Will Come

New Meaning for Nanny State

From Nanny State To Ikea

Living Wage


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