Showing posts with label libertarian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label libertarian. Show all posts

Thursday, March 20, 2008

The Father of the Neo-Cons Dies

William F. Buckley passed away late last month. And in his passing the liberal media myth that he was the 'public intellectual of American Conservatism', continues. The laudatory obits forget top mention he was not a public intellectual but a scion of Big Oil, with aristocratic pretensions which were mistaken for intellectualism.

His Catholicism was a pining for the old world, Old Europe and its pre-revolutionary, pre-modernist, social order. On the other hand those on the far right knew him for what he was as this John Birch Society obituary reveals;

The fact of the matter is that Buckley, far from being the father of anything resembling true conservatism (as best exemplified by Senator Robert Taft, who was denied the Republican nomination in 1952 by Buckley's philosophical brethren), was merely a very capable quarterback for a team of neoconservatives (neocons) who had graduated from the World War II-era OSS into the CIA, bringing their anti-Stalinist, but definitely Trotskyite, ideas with them. The repackaging of this anti-American philosophy as "neoconservatism" rivaled any campaign Madison Avenue ever concocted for a "new" detergent that would get your clothes whiter and brighter.

The original OSS/CIA neocons, including the aforementioned Willmoore Kendall, spotted young Bill Buckley when he was on the staff of the Yale Daily News, and tagged him as a likely rising star of their movement. (Buckley, of course, was also tapped to join the secretive Skull and Bones society while at Yale, as had both presidents Bush and Senator John Kerry.) At Kendall's urging, Buckley joined the CIA after graduating from Yale. Through Kendall, Buckley became acquainted with James Burnham, another OSS/CIA veteran who would become a prominent figure at National Review. So strong was the CIA connection that the brilliant economist and former contributor to Buckley's magazine, Murray Rothbard, said in 1981: "I'm convinced that the whole National Review is a CIA operation."

He his lauded for his debating skills, the laconic eyebrow that would rise, the Bostonian drawl all a pretense aimed at creating the illusion that he was the master debater. Like his Catholicism, it was all for show.


Buckely's Firing Line was the model for later public affairs debate shows like Cross Fire. However unlike Firing Line these later versions simply declined into shouting matches. Despite the pretenses and his dismissive attitude towards opponents Buckley at least used reason in his debates with opponents. The new turks of the neo-con establishment have adopted his dismissive style, but added shouting and rank rhetoric to make their points.

He was perhaps the last real American voice of the neo-con right in America, having been replaced by ex pat Canadians like Charles Krauthammer and David Frum. Ironic that the new spokesmen for the American right are ex-Canadians.
They of course moved south because the right in Canada is not the mainstream of our body politic (which is social democratic an anathema that Frum and Krauthammer revile) as it is in America. The other irony is that the Buckley neo-con establishment has replaced the Democrat establishment as the voice of the American Empire.

And this right wing voice of the American Empire has its echo chamber in Canada, it is the core of the Harper Conservative Party. In fact one can find a little Buckley in the imperious and dismissive attitude of our autarkic PM.

SEE:

The Fifth International

Leo Strauss and the Calgary School

Post Modern Conservatives

Why The Conservatives Are Not Libertarians


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Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Ron Paul Spoiler


There it was flashing on CNN and MSNBC, Ron Paul came in second in Montana, and as usual no comment from the pundits. And then he came in third in North Dakota. Silence. Ron Paul is still in the Republican race, a spoiler for a fight and spoiling to continue his fight against American Imperial aspirations. Go Paul Go. And notice even Coulter, Limbaugh and company don't dare take on Paul. Who is after all Mr. Conservative.



Paul did better in the Northern Midwest caucus states,
placing second in Montana, third in North Dakota and fourth, but with 15 percent of the vote in Minnesota. He also placed third with 17 percent at the Alaska Republican caucus and, despite a fourth place finish in initial voting, got 3 national convention votes in a backroom deal with former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee in West Virginia.

Missoula GOP chooses Paul
By CHELSI MOY of the Missoulian

Diane Rotering casts her ballot for a presidential candidate at the Missoula County Republican caucus Tuesday night. Rotering, a designated caucus voter, cast her ballot for Ron Paul, who won the county by only three votes over Mitt Romney. “It's just awesome,” says Rotering. “(The caucus is) sort of like the Super Bowl: well-played and a good clean win.”
LINDA THOMPSON/Missoulian

Missoula County Republican caucus voters threw their support to maverick presidential candidate Ron Paul on Tuesday night, giving the Texas congressman a three-vote victory over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

An organized youth vote filled Missoula's empty precincts, helping Paul win 45 of the 97 votes cast at the caucus. Romney won 42 votes, while Sen. John McCain of Arizona had seven and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee had three.

About 300 people turned out at Missoula's DoubleTree Hotel for the historic event, many of them sporting red - the color of the Republican Party. The turnout far surpassed the expectations of Will Deschamps, chairman of the Missoula County Republican Central Committee.

The Ron Paul National Delegate Count is now 42 or more, and the campaign intends to press on to the Republican National Convention.


And here is some good advice; Paul supporters, if you learn anything from this election, it should be this: Stop wasting your damn time waving signs on street corners. Canvassing and phone-banking aren't fun, but they win elections.

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Saturday, January 26, 2008

Blogging For Choice IV

As we approach the twentieth anniversary of the Regina vs. Morgentaler Supreme Court decision the papers are full of coverage of this monumental legal and legislative decision. Colby Cosh in todays National Post chastises the right wing moralists like Frum and Kay who whined about this in the same pages recently. He declares the court decision a victory for Anarchy, Cosh is a libertarian after all. And tongue in cheek he correctly points out the decision left it up to the State to now decide what laws around abortion it wanted to create, and the State in its wisdom decided to abdicate.


Even Justice Bertha Wilson, whose solitary contribution to the majority finding became the cornerstone of a feminist legacy, was unambiguous about this. She described the protection of the fetus as "a perfectly valid legislative objective," offered that "The value to be placed on the fetus as potential life is directly related to the stage of its development during gestation" and said that "The precise point in the development of the foetus at which the state's interest in its protection becomes 'compelling' should be left to the informed judgment of the legislature, which is in a position to receive submissions on the subject from all the relevant disciplines." Do those sound like the words of an estrogen-crazed baby-devourer?

All the court really did was get rid of a senseless morass of dilatory regulation whereby a woman's choice was limited not by a real, rational guideline, but by the local availability of willing physician-monopolists and the whims of hospital committees. The position taken by moderate pro-lifers today is, ironically, more or less exactly that of Bertha Wilson: i.e., that there should probably be some legislative decision, binding upon the whole country, concerning the exact moment when a fetus becomes an individual person for medical purposes. Only a radical, total opponent of abortion could conceivably advocate returning to the broken pre-1988 system, and only as a sly, unfair means of saving some fetal lives.

And this fact really confirms the fundamental wisdom of the Morgentaler decision. The overturning of the old legal regime was decided on a 4-2 vote, with Justices W.R. McIntyre and Gerard La Forest in dissent. The pair wrote that "there is no evidence or indication of general acceptance of the concept of abortion at will in our society." This must now stand as one of the great inadvertent jests in the history of the court. For the 20 years since their statement, abortion at the will of the mother is just what we have had. The number of people who have proven themselves actually willing to do something about the situation, as opposed to merely inveighing against it as an occasion for outraged verbiage, is minuscule. Domestic politicians of all parties recoil in fear, almost uniformly, at the suggestion that any abortion might ever be prevented by the force of law. And even criticism from other Western countries, which all regulate abortion themselves, has been rare verging on nonexistent.

This is where we are. This is what we wanted, whether we admit it to ourselves or not. And this is as it should be, with the final decision in the hands of the one who must chance the hazards and agony of birth. Long live Morgentaler! Long live anarchy!

As usual the fetus fetishists who proclaim their love of life decided to threaten Dr. Morgentaler's life, again, at the public meeting where the 20th Anniversary decision was being celebrated last night.


Morgentaler escorted from gathering marking 20th anniversary of historic abortion ruling

Jan 26, 2008

Two standing ovations and one death threat.

That's the reception Dr. Henry Morgentaler received at a University of Toronto symposium yesterday marking the 20th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court ruling overturning Canada's abortion law.

"Over the past 37 years I have dedicated myself to the struggle to achieve rights to reproductive freedom and to provide facilities for women," Morgentaler told the symposium, held by the law faculty. "This struggle gave meaning to my life."

He said the Jan. 28, 1988, decision was the impetus for him and other physicians to establish abortion clinics across Canada.

"I am proud to have played such a pivotal role in the decision."

Ah yes and here is the contradiction the very Progressive and Left Wing forces that have supported Morgentaler then and over the years are the same folks who oppose the privatization of Health Care, which is what has made Morgentaler's business prosper over the years.

Morgentaler Clinics provide private health care, the state in its wisdom abandoned any legislation that would provide for abortions being fully funded and delivered in a local hospital. That's the other side of the anarchy coin of abortion in Canada. The Supreme court flipped that coin to the State and the State refused to make a call. The result is in effect no real choice for women, either give birth or pay for an abortion out of pocket.



"The Morgentaler decision was huge in that it has undoubtedly saved the lives and protected the health of countless women," said Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation (NAF). "No longer did women have to jeopardize their lives or health in order to end an unwanted pregnancy."

The NAF represents abortion providers in Canada and the United States and works to ensure abortion is safe, legal and accessible to promote health and justice for women, she said.

The decision also allowed for abortions to be a publicly funded medical procedure. However, Saporta said many women still face barriers in accessing therapeutic abortion services, particularly because it is not on the interprovincial billing agreement.

Women living in rural areas, such as Chatham-Kent, have difficulty accessing abortion clinics because the majority of abortion care is located in urban centres.

"Some women are traveling 60 miles or more. It can often be a significant barrier for some women that cannot be overcome," said Saporta, adding the closest abortion clinics are in London,Toronto and Detroit.

There are no therapeutic abortion clinics currently operating in Chatham-Kent, however the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance does perform medical abortions if it is necessary for the health of the mother.

"The obstetricians and gynecologists within Chatham-Kent do not include abortions within their scope of practice," said Kim Bossy, director of communications and community relations at CKHA.

The Chatham-Kent Public Health Unit provides women with information on options available to them regarding unwanted pregnancies and remains neutral in the decision, said Kelly Farrugia, school age health program manager.

"Our policy is to review all the options for unplanned pregnancies," she said. "I think every woman has their own reasons why they choose the option they do."



The Morgentaler decision: Choice? What choice?
Two decades after the landmark ruling on abortion rights, poor access and a lack of treatment alternatives still hamper a woman's ability to choose

ANDRÉ PICARD

From Thursday's Globe and Mail

January 24, 2008

While there are, theoretically, no restrictions on abortion, the number of abortions has not increased.

In fact, the number of abortions has held steady over all, and the teen abortion rate has actually fallen.

Each year in Canada, there are about 330,000 lives births and 110,000 abortions.

Despite what you see in Hollywood movies, the vast majority of those having abortions are not teens, but women in their 20s and 30s. They have, almost universally, exercised their freedom of choice judiciously, law or no law.

While the highest court ruled that the state has no place in the uteruses of the nation, the state does have a role in the provision of medically necessary health services, of which abortion is one.

Yet our health system - from the politicians who oversee it to the policy makers and administrators through to the physicians and nurses who should provide non-judgmental care in public institutions - has largely failed women who seek abortions.

The failings are many and varied, but revolve principally around lack of access to timely care.

In short, the arbitrary rules that have crept into the system in the past two decades make a mockery of the Supreme Court ruling.

In Canada, fewer than one in five hospitals perform abortions. One province, Prince Edward Island, offers no abortion services at all. Another, New Brunswick, has created unjustified (and likely unconstitutional) barriers to access, requiring referrals from two doctors.

In the nation's capital, Ottawa, the wait time for an abortion stretches to six weeks, a perversity. (If there is one area of care for which there should be a wait-time guarantee, it is abortion, obviously a time-sensitive procedure.)

But the greatest injustice is that faced by Canadian women living outside major metropolitan centres, particularly those in the North.

Virtually every hospital and clinic offering abortion services in Canada is located within 150 kilometres of the U.S. border, and there is not a single abortion provider north of the Trans-Canada Highway in Ontario.

A woman in northern Manitoba, for example, needs to travel about 20 hours to access the nearest in-province abortion provider. For women in the three territories, travel can be an insurmountable obstacle.

Abortion should be covered by medicare but, in reality, it is expensive. If a woman opts for an abortion in a private clinic - something that is often necessary given the lack of service offered in hospitals - she must pay out of pocket and be reimbursed. (This policy was recently struck down by the courts in Quebec, which deemed that medicare should foot the bill, regardless of where the procedure is done.)

Worse yet, if a woman travels out of province or to the United States - which, again, many women are forced to do because of lack of timely access domestically - she will not be reimbursed at all.

Further, Canadian women wanting to terminate a pregnancy have no option other than surgical abortion.

Drug-induced abortion - the method of choice of about one-third of women in Europe and the United States - is not even available in Canada. Mifepristone (brand name Mifeprex, also known as RU-486) is a safe, proven alternative, and its lack of availability in Canada is a scandal.

Between the legalization of abortion in 1969 and its complete decriminalization in 1988, women fought many tough battles.



NO ACCESS, NO CHOICE

Abortion

CHLOÉ FEDIO / Vue Weekly

In 1983, political activist Judy Rebick became the unintended victim of assault when a man brandishing garden shears lunged at Dr Henry Morgentaler at the opening of his Toronto abortion clinic. She blocked the attack and Dr Morgentaler emerged unscathed, but the incident is just one of several threats Rebick has endured because of her involvement in the pro-choice movement.
Despite it all, Rebick refused to be intimidated in the debate that continues to elicit contention to this day.
“I learned a lot from Dr Morgentaler, because he’d gone to jail—he almost died in jail. He was constantly a target of attack, constantly a target of threats and so on, and his attitude was, if you do this work this is part of the price you pay,” Rebick said.
Rebick was part of the Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics, the group that encouraged and helped Dr Morgentaler open his Toronto clinic.
“It’s probably one of the proudest things I’ve done in my life. There is a certain amount of courage involved, but it was also such a splendid victory,” said Rebick. “When we started, everyone was against us—the courts were against us, the cops, the government. It was really a magnificent battle.”
In 1969, Dr Morgentaler broke the law to open Canada’s first abortion clinic in Montréal, becoming one of the country’s most controversial figures. But it was only after police raided his newly-opened Toronto clinic in 1983 that he became the central figure in an historic case that paved the way for reproductive rights in Canada.
Before the decision, abortion was only legal in a hospital, and only if approved by a three-doctor therapeutic abortion committee. But on Jan 28, 1988, the Supreme Court struck down that law as unconstitutional, ruling that it infringed upon a woman's right to “life, liberty and security of person.”
But 20 years after the lifting of federal legal restrictions on abortion, women across the country still face significant challenges in accessing the procedure.
Patricia Larue, executive director of Canadians for Choice, a non-profit charitable organization based out of Ottawa, explained that abortion services in Canada are concentrated in urban areas, forcing many women to travel great distances to gain access to the procedure.
“Most of the places that offer abortion services—clinics or hospitals—are located in the south of the country, about 100 kilometres north of the American border. So for women living in the north, or even central Canada, it’s really difficult to have access to a place where they can go for an abortion,” Larue said.
Edmonton is the sixth largest metropolitan region in Canada, with a population of over one million, but there’s only one abortion clinic in the area. In May 2005, the Royal Alexandra Hospital stopped performing the procedure, leaving the Edmonton Morgentaler Clinic with the brunt of the responsibility in northern Alberta. Dr Christa Delacruz, who operates out of Grande Prairie, also provides abortions, but access outside of the major urban centres of Edmonton and Calgary is extremely limited.
Larry Brockman, the executive director of Planned Parenthood Edmonton, explained that having a single abortion provider in Edmonton can cause a backlog, increasing wait times for women seeking the service. He said the single point of access can also allow anti-abortion groups to concentrate their efforts.
“There is from time to time, lobbying or civil action that takes place that attempts to block access of women to abortion,” Brockman said. “It’s a concern that now it’s reduced to one site—it’s a little easier for protest groups to focus on one site.”
Corrie Mekar works on the front lines at Planned Parenthood Edmonton, dealing directly with women who are considering an abortion. She said the recent surge in population, coupled with the single point of access, is causing a strain on abortion services in Edmonton.
“You can kind of talk about abortion in terms of every other type of service that’s out here in Edmonton right now, with the influx of people coming in,” Mekar said. “Our population has exploded because of the economic boom, and because of that I think they’re having trouble with health everywhere, and this is no different.”
Since Jul 1, 1996, all abortion fees in Alberta are covered for any woman with Alberta Health Care or Saskatchewan Health Care coverage. But Brockman explained that women from other Canadian provinces sometimes face challenges with coverage in Alberta, while recent immigrants are left to foot the bill on their own.
Howard May, spokesperson for Alberta Health and Wellness, explained that Alberta Health Care covers the doctor’s fees and hospital costs of medically required abortion outside the province, but won’t cover the facility fee if the abortion is done in a private clinic. He said that under federal legislation, abortions are not included in the multi-province reciprocal billing agreement.
“The rationale behind the exclusion from the reciprocal agreements is that provinces and territories have different rules and regulations regarding the coverage of abortions,” said May. “Some will only cover the costs if the abortion is provided in a hospital. Others require the recommendation of two physicians.”
The cost of an abortion at the Edmonton Morgentaler Clinic ranges from $400 to $800, depending on how far along a woman is in her pregnancy.

There is an alternative, it is for public hospitals to adopt the Morgentaler method and provide fully paid for abortions including pre and post therapeutic consultations. That is the new struggle facing us twenty years later.

Let us not cheer Dr. Morgentaler who acted out of his own self interest and has gained wealth and fame as result and who has undermined the public health system in Canada as a result of the Supreme Court decision.

The Morgentaler decision in effect left women with no choice but of paying for abortions out of their own pocket, furthering the femininzation of poverty. Those who can afford do so, those who cannot have their choices restricted. Which is why you see no real increase in abortions in Canada over the past twenty years.

The struggle continues, and it is the struggle for womens reproductive rights; not just the struggle for abortion or to defend Dr. Morgentaler, as the struggle for reproductive rights was reduced to for twenty years before the SCC decision.

The struggle for womens reproductive rights is the struggle for more than just the right to abortion as I have outlined in my first post.

And that struggle can only be won without and despite Dr. Morgentaler. It is time for the Progressive and Left activists to divorce themselves from Morgentaler and his legacy; the privatization of health care.


SEE:


Blogging For Choice III


Blogging For Choice II

Blogging For Choice



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Thursday, January 24, 2008

Blogging For Choice III

As follow up on my previous Blogging For Choice articles; I and II here is more evidence that the Supreme Courts decision over abortion left the door open to privatization of health care in Canada, in particular the privatization of abortion services.

That meant a restriction of genuine choice for women who need or want abortions to using Morgentaler Clinics or else leaving their provinces for clinics in other provinces or in the U.S.


Many Canadian women lack access to reproductive health services




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Blogging For Choice II

I got chastised for having assumed that Blogging For Choice was all that was occurring around the upcoming 20th Anniversary of the Morgentaler Decision that saw the Supreme Court abandon all laws aground abortion.

I stand corrected it appears there will be blogging bursts and public events occurring around this. In fact
Antonia Zerbisias kicked it off on her blog last weekend

However one of points which I raised in my post and my comments in response to my commentators remained unanswered. So I will ask it again. Why is it that 20 years later Morgentaler has a great private medical business going, and women still do not have access to publicly funded abortions.


Toronto, Friday, January 25, 7:30pm. Fundraising Reception for National Abortion Federation Canada ’s Patient Assistance Fund. Many women lack the resources to pay for costs associated with abortion care, such as transportation, childcare, and medications. Also, some women cannot access medical coverage and require financial support. Donations to this fund will allow NAF Canada to provide financial assistance when it is urgently needed.
And once this money is raised will it be used to lobby for womens right to free publicly provided abortions? No of course not it will be used to top up Morgentaler's private clinic fees. The Left and the Womens movement need to move beyond supporting Morgentaler and demand fully funded abortions to be provided by public hospitals.

On the other hand the libertarian right need to advocate for choice, after all thats the credo of the right, by defending a woman's right to choose against their social conservative allies and defend Dr. Morgentaler since his clinics provide an example of a privatized alternative to the public system that has worked quite effectively for twenty years.

That is the real debate that would move this beyond the moral pretenses of the religious right which have shaped the debate since the Supreme Court decision twenty years ago.

Twenty years ago the movement for Womens Reproductive rights got side tracked into a single issue campaign around abortion and then that became reduced to the defense of Dr. Morgentaler. An honest assessment of that needs to be done twenty years later by the Feminist movement, the Left and the Libertarians.

A possible reconciliation between these two apparently contradictory positions would be the creation of co-operative Womens Health Clinic. Medical practitioners would be on salary, workers in the centre would be on the co-op board, a combination of Doctors and Nurse Practitioners, as well as specialists Gyn-Ob would work in the clinics as well as Mid Wives. The centre would provide contraceptive and family planning information, natural child birth options as well as a full delivery centre and abortion services. As well a health spa could be part of the services provided, using the European methods of non-osteopathic therapies, as well as having certified acupuncturists, massage therapists and naturopath's available. In other words a holistic approach to womens health and especially reproductive health.Those services could be covered by benefit plans when not covered by Medicare. Extra costs that are not covered by medicare, benefit plans, or third party insurance, could then be covered by annual membership fee.

Finally let us look at the root of the problem of abortion. The failure of contraception and family planning.

Here is an interesting post I came across that points out a significant challenge to popular misconceptions about teen pregnancy.

Teen Pregnancy Does Not Perpetuate Poverty

I just read an interesting article about a study by Frank Furstenberg that shows that teen motherhood does not perpetuate poverty.

According to the 30-year-study, postponing motherhood does not have a significant impact on a person’s chances of escaping poverty. For all intents and purposes, impoverished girls who bear children tend to do just as well economically and educationally as the ones who do not.

In other words, poor teens tend to get pregnant more often, but teenagers who get pregnant have the same odds of educational and financial success as the ones who do not.

Mainly, the economic conditions in which a person grows up determine their odds of ending up poor. Whether or not the person gets pregnant as a teenager has little affect.

Although the findings go against the common perception, I guess it makes sense. A poor girl will likely end up in poverty later in life regardless of whether or not she gets pregnant as a teenager. A wealthy girl’s parents can still ensure her success with their money even when the girl gets pregnant as a teenager.

I still see teen pregnancy as a significant mistake, but we have such a classist society that making mistakes has little statistical effect on who ends up poor and who does not. While we need to help people not make mistakes, we have to find a way to eliminate the classism of our society to ever end poverty.


Jamie Lee Spears is a perfect example of the challenge of teen pregnancy, and of unplanned unwanted pregnancies. But unlike working class and poor teen age girls, she is rich. Of course that does not mean she will make a good or responsible mother, just look at her sister.

However her pop star status makes it seem like its a lesser sin to have pre-marital sex if you are willing to stay pregnant and keep your child. This leads to a social acceptance of teen pregnancy, rather than teen sex per se, that is teen sex with protection to avoid pregnancy. That would never do. She of course has become a poster girl for the right wing anti-abortion hypocrites.

The Anti-Abortion movement opposes all forms of family planning and contraception, they oppose public health and sex eduction as well a relationship education based on humanistic principles. They demand sex education be moral education based on their particular religious view in opposition to ethical humanist sexuality/relationship education.

They push abstinence as an alternative to contraception, in perpetual denial that teens are sexually active. They deny the pleasure principle which challenges their ideology of sex for reproduction only. They hate the sexual revolution that occurred in the sixties with advent of the development of the birth control bill, which allowed for sex for pleasure rather than reproduction. In fact they continually blame the sexual revolution and the pleasure principle it embraced as the cause of all social evils.
In doing so the followers of the patriarchal Abrahamic religions deny the fact that in their holy book the pleasure principle was first espoused.


And here again is where the Left and the Libertarian wings of feminism can align; the need for making informed responsible choices. The right loves choice and of course responsibility, versus rights. Yet when it comes to human sexuality and relationships they deny the very information needed and access to contraception, that would allow for an informed responsible decisions by anyone intending on having sex. Hence their continued attacks on planned parenthood.

Thus they create the conditions for the continued emotional plague where we see teens taking the lives of other teens because of their emotional immaturity in dealing with jealousy, or we see young women giving birth in denial and abandoning their babies. Such is the moral consequence of the anti-abortion advocates of abstinence, which is simply denial of reality. Teens and adults have sex, for pleasure, not for procreation.

Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings

can master their sadistic destructiveness.

Wilhelm Reich, on Sigmund Freud's hope






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Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Blogging For Choice

Blog for Choice Day

This is a belated Blogging For Choice article. Yesterday members of the
Progressive Bloggers joined their American counterparts in Blogging For Choice.

While Americans focus on Roe vs Wade in Canada the Supreme Court ruled more broadly in abolishing abortion as a crime. This year is the 20th anniversary of that decision. And it took an American campaign to draw Canadian bloggers attention to this fact. While the media have covered the 2oth Anniversary of this historic decision the Pro Choice movement in Canada, such as it is, remains silent, and politically absent from the ensuing debate.

On the other hand the Anti-Choice advocates have used it to renew calls for the Federal Government to limit abortions using the back door of a private members bill to make it a double crime of murder when a mother and her unborn child are both killed.

Any reference to this latest attack on a womans right to chose abortion was sadly lacking in most of the posts at Progressive Bloggers. Focusing again on Roe vs. Wade rather than the 1988 Canadian decision. At least the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada has provided some talking points on "Unborn Victims of Violence Act."


The Pro-Choice movement basically died twenty years ago with the SC decision. Feminists in CARAL the Canadian counter part to NARAL the American Pro Choice lobby, folded up their Abortion Rights tent and moved on to other issues; pornography, violence against women, etc.

And what did Canadian women get with the SC decision, well not access to publicly funded abortion that's for sure. What they got was privatized abortion clinics run by Dr. Morgentaler. In fact Morgentaler has always been an advocate for privatized medicine, he has always claimed his clinics deliver abortion services better than public hospitals. Ironic that. And where provinces or publicly funded hospitals did not provide abortion services, such as those hospitals run by the Catholic Church, Canadian women were still forced to go to the U.S. to get abortions.

Such was the case in Alberta for many years, and still is today. There are no abortions done in Alberta hospitals, instead Alberta Health Care contracts out the operation to Morgentaler's clinics, but does not pay his full fee.

There is an irony for you. Morgentaler has long advocated the neo-con idea of private medical services being better than publicly provided ones, his right wing opponents, as well as his feminist proponents, miss his nuanced fiscal conservatism. The right wing abandons its fiscal conservatism in favour of a political morality driven by the Church. The left wing mutes any criticism of Morgentalers pro privatization pitch because they favour a womans right to choose.

Well heck why not support the right to choose home-schooling, or the right to choose to belong to a union, or well you get the idea. Logical consistency on either side of the debate is seriously lacking.

The failure of the libertarian right in Canada was to allow the social conservatives to take this issue from them. Instead of defending a womans right to choose, and to embrace Morgentaler's private clinic alternative they instead abandoned themselves to the neo-cons and paleo-cons.

The failure of the Left and the Feminist movement was to embrace abortion and Morgentaler as single issues. Once the Supreme Court decision passed, there was no cause any longer. Instead of broadening the Pro Choice movement to include all aspects of womens reproductive rights including the right to sex education, contraception, birthing alternatives such as mid-wifery, etc. Instead as we have seen CARAL devolved into the Abortion Rights Coalition.

Womens Reproductive Rights are far broader than just abortion. It includes also the right to choose birthing options. Provinces that had restrictive access to abortion also in many cases failed to paid for Midwives. Such was the case in Alberta for many years. Linking these two issues together shows that womens health is a public health issue. The right to publicly funded medical services.

Various benefit plans in unionized work places are also affected when it comes to womens reproductive choices. Those that cover Catholic public services and public sector workers will not allow payment for contraceptives or abortions, leaving women to have to pay out of pocket for these essential medical services. Yet unions are silent on this issue afraid to challenge the service providers because of the ensuing controversial debate it will cause in the membership.

We may have come a long way twenty years ago, but in the ensuing twenty years we have not gone anywhere when it comes to providing publicly funded abortions in our hospitals.

In effect what this has meant is that in Canada there are more third month terminations than ever before. And issue that the social conservatives make much hay with. Or attempt to. Not because of the Supreme Court decision but because the left and feminist movement abandoned the fight to demand publicly funded abortions be covered by medicare and preformed in our publicly funded hospitals rather than in Morgentaler's private clinics.

The Libertarian Right in Canada abandoned the fight in the right wing mileux as well, they abandoned a key individual right, a woman's right to choose, in order to align with their neo-con and social conservative allies to gain political power at any cost. As can be seen with the launch of this new non-religious right wing anti-abortion lobby.


The right to choose is broader than just the right to choose an abortion it is the right to choose to have sex or not, to have safe sex, to have access to public humanist sex education, to have access to contraception for men and women, to have birthing choices, to have the right to have reproductive medical services fully paid for by Medicare or by benefit plans, etc. A new movement is needed in Canada to demand these rights a movement of the libertarian Left and Right.



"Love, work and knowledge are the well-springs of our life. They should also govern it."

- Wilhelm Reich





See:

Feminizing the Proletariat

Whose Family Values?

The Sexual Revolution Continues

Unsafe Abortions Continue

God Is Pro Abortion

Abortion, Adoption, or Abandonment


Procreation To Save The White Race

Abortion Not A Sin

Pro Life?

Grandmother of Second Wave Feminism Dies

Right to Life = Right To Work



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Friday, January 11, 2008

Smearing Paul

I came across this article on Ron Paul being associated with the American Nazi party, posted on Indymedia. It is innuendo and a drive by smear.

Like this one or this one. We can expect to see more of them in the coming days resurfacing as Paul's campaign gains momentum and becomes more visible in the MSM.

Now the smear campaign makes it into the main stream press. It began last fall and gained more attention during the New Hampshire primary .The smear campaign comes from the left and the right.

First, the New York Times claims that Ron Paul is in cahoots with KKK racists. Then they retract the story because the paper failed to properly investigate its own story. Jamie Kirchick of the pro-war publication "New Republic", owned in part by Roger Hertog (a neoconservative), went on Tucker Carlson's show tonight to supposedly prove that Ron Paul is a racist, that he called Martin Luther King horrible things and is a secessionist (i.e. he probably supports slavery as well).

On the Tucker Carlson Show, The New Republic’s Jamie Kirchick accused Ron Paul of engaging in a massive conspiracy to propagate a racist agenda by speaking to white supremacists in code. He explained that when regular viewers and Paul supporters think they are hearing a typical stump speech or a press interview, they are actually the witless pawns of Paul and his real, intended audience. Sure, it sounds like Paul is spreading a message of freedom and liberty, but Kirchick insists that Paul has woven an encoded message of hate into his live-and-let-live platform. Kirchick did not explain how he managed to crack the code. Nor did he explain why Paul chooses to spread his message this way rather than, you know…using telephones.

Alyssa Lopez | January 8, 2008, 1:40am |
#James Kirchick is a Giuliani supporter



Of course American politics is the politics of conspiracy and conspiracy theories, has been since the founding of the republic. You can't have a revolution after all without a conspiracy of equals.

And of course Paul like other fringe political candidates has support amongst well the fringe, where conspiracy theories abound like jelly beans. And some of these folks are racist, antisemitic, red necks. But that doesn't mean Paul is.
After all he is a genuine libertarian not a poser like Ted Morton.

But to smear his libertarian politics as racist or Nazi is to misunderstand American libertarianism. It is a desperate attempt to equate libertarianism with secessionist white nationalism, etc. deliberately divorcing it from its roots in the traditions of Lysander Spooner, Josiah Warren, Benjamin Tucker,Lucy Parsons, Voltairine de Cleyre , Emma Goldman, etc.

And later in the Sixties with the New Left Alliance of Murray Rothbard and Sam Konkin with the likes of Carl Davidson and Carl Oglesby of the SDS. This is tradition that Paul comes from, not the Ayn Rand Objectivism of the right wing conservative establishment as exemplified by Allan Greenspan.

It is the same smear that has been used against other anarchists be it Proudhon, who was accused of antisemitism and mysogny, or Bakunin, again antisemitism. Or Aleister Crowley, who deliberately and with calculated glee made outrageous sexist and racist statements to upset the staid Edwardian bourgeois. Rather than argue their ideas, one focuses on their political foibles. In Bakunin's case his fatal alliance with Nechayev. Antisemitism is also a smear that has been used against Marx to devalue his theories. It is the oldest canard and apparently still a useful one.

This smear campaign against Paul can be seen in the same light. On the right it is the desperation of the War Mongering Imperialist establishment. On the left it is fear of his growing popularity amongst the anti-war left, progressives and liberals.

Ron Paul Statement on The New Republic Article Regarding Old Newsletters

Tue Jan 8, 2008 4:26pm EST
ARLINGTON, Va.--(Business Wire)--
In response to an article published by The New Republic,
Ron Paul issued the following statement:

"The quotations in The New Republic article are not mine and do
not represent what I believe or have ever believed. I have never
uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts.

"In fact, I have always agreed with Martin Luther King, Jr. that
we should only be concerned with the content of a person's character,
not the color of their skin. As I stated on the floor of the U.S.
House on April 20, 1999: 'I rise in great respect for the courage and
high ideals of Rosa Parks who stood steadfastly for the rights of
individuals against unjust laws and oppressive governmental policies.'

"This story is old news and has been rehashed for over a decade.
It's once again being resurrected for obvious political reasons on the
day of the New Hampshire primary.

"When I was out of Congress and practicing medicine full-time, a
newsletter was published under my name that I did not edit. Several
writers contributed to the product. For over a decade, I have
publically taken moral responsibility for not paying closer attention
to what went out under my name."




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Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Who's the Loser?

The LA Times doesn't like Ron Paul. In this blog post they claim he 'lost again' last night in New Hampshire. Fact is he virtually tied with Giuliani.

How come they didn't post Giuliani loses again? His is after all the campaign that claimed to be inevitable, he claimed to be a contender. Ron Paul never did. And last night that one percent difference between his fifth place and Giuliani's fourth was a mere 2223 votes.Giuliani spent millions on ads in New Hampshire compared to Paul.

Rudolph’s camp knew he couldn’t win,
so they used the effective strategy of downplaying his loss by claiming that the candidate didn’t make any real effort in New Hampshire. The media, however, today exposed some interesting facts about Guiliani’s efforts in New Hampshire. Guiliani not only made more campaign appearances in New Hampshire than any other candidate but he spent more money in the state than all over candidates except for Mitt Romney. That Ron Paul virtually tied Guiliani is an incredible political feat and the Paulites of New Hampshire should be wildly applauded. Had it not been for Paul activists, the candidate would have finished around Hunter’s 1%.


And Paul beat Giuliani in Iowa. And Paul has delegates while Giuliani has none.

Mr. McCain received 37% of the vote, in comparison to 32% for Mr. Romney. Mr. Huckabee garnered 11%, and Mr. Giuliani beat Ron Paul by one percentage point, 9% to 8%. Senator Thompson captured just 1% of the vote.




Huckabee
26,035
11%
1

Giuliani
20,054
9%
0

Paul
17,831
8%
0

Thompson
2,808
1%
0

Hunter
1,195
0%
0

Jan 8 Del
Del*
24
4
18
1
10
7
2
0
1
0
*Pledged delegates to date. Republican Scorecard lists all Republican delegates, including unpledged RNC members.
And Paul beat the last best conservative hope the media has been pushing; Fred Thompson. Whom he also beat in Iowa. And he is tied with Thompson in SC where Fred promises to make his final stand; ala the Alamo.

This is probably the real reason the liberal LA Times is pissed off about 'loser' Ron Paul, he is still in the race and they will have to continue writing about him.

Ron Paul: N.H. no reason to let up

January 8, 2008

CONCORD, N.H.—His didn't upstage the Republican frontrunners in New Hampshire, but Ron Paul said Tuesday he will continue on, raising issues that have riled many other Republicans and raising record amounts of cash on the Internet.

"There's really no reason for us to be letting up. It's really only the beginning," the Texas congressman told a raucous crowd of campaign workers and supports in Concord.

Paul, an outspoken critic of the Iraq war, was on track for fifth place with about 8 percent of the vote. He had hoped to better his 10 percent showing in the Iowa caucuses last week.

The libertarian-leaning doctor who says the Republican Party has lost its way said his campaign will gain strength as more voters hear his message of individual liberty and a strict interpretation of the Constitution.

"There is no doubt in my mind that we're on the right track. We're moving," Paul said.


He credited much of his support to young people, and an intense Internet campaign that saw him raise record amounts on the Web in the last three months.



Just like the right wing bloggers are gleefully cheering his loss in New Hampshire. They too suffer from Paulitis. But he just isn't going away or giving up, and good for him because unlike Kucinich this gadfly is getting press and will get more. He is far from irrelevant. Ron Paul is good for shaking up the conservative and Republican establishment in America and pissing off liberals who can't figure out his popularity.

These same folks also don't get Huckabee and his success either. They dismiss the populist as simply a born again phenomena, missing his appeal to the blue collar Republican base.

Working class America with all its peccadillo's and quirks is voting for change, both in the Republican and Democratic party's. And not just a change of leaders but a sea change in the politics of the two ruling party's of the ruling classes.


SEE

New Hampshire Polling Puts Paul Fourth

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Tuesday, January 08, 2008

New Hampshire Polling Puts Paul Fourth

This is the Real Clear Politics conglomerate poll of New Hampshire polling. So let's ask ourselves if Paul is beating Thompson in all polls and in a virtual dead heat with Giuliani why is the media ignoring him? And it's not just Fox News, its all the media pundits, sans Jay Leno. And after today when he comes in fourth again, as he did in Iowa, will they still continue to ignore him?

New Hampshire Republican Primary

Tuesday, January 8 | Delegates at Stake: 24



Polling Data
PollDateMcCainRomneyHuckabeeGiulianiPaulThompson
RCP Average01/04 - 01/0633.528.711.48.77.42.7
CNN/WMUR/UNH01/05 - 01/0631261310101
Suffolk/WHDH01/05 - 01/06273091082
Marist01/05 - 01/06353113584
Rasmussen01/05 - 01/063231111083
Franklin Pierce01/04 - 01/0638299872
USA Today/Gallup01/04 - 01/06343013883
Strategic Vision (R)01/04 - 01/06352713875
Reuters/CSpan/Zogby01/04 - 01/06342910963
American Res. Group01/04 - 01/063527121072
FOX News01/04 - 01/06342711952



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