Blaming Others

The reason for the failures in Iraq are not George Bush's fault they are the fault of others.

Just whose brilliant idea was it to disband the Iraqi army? The former U.S. boss of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, says President Bush knew about and supported his plans to dissolve Saddam's military, according to letters he released to the New York Times yesterday.

Annoyed that Bush was quoted in a recent book as suggesting that he had gone a bit Rambo out in the desert, Bremer disclosed his spring 2003 correspondence with the president.

The impetus for Bremer's action was Bush's interview with Robert Draper, author of the new book "Dead Certain," in which the president sounded as if he had been taken aback by the decision.

"The policy had been to keep the army intact; didn't happen," Bush told Draper. When Draper asked how he had reacted when the policy changed, Bush replied, "Yeah, I can't remember. I'm sure I said, 'This is the policy, what happened?'"

Rumsfeld also serves as a major, if absent, character in today's sweeping USA Today investigation tracking the Defense Department's slowness to equip the troops in Iraq with protective gear like body armor and devices to jam signals from detonators.

Even as the president and Pentagon officials claimed they were doing all they could to get these items for the soldiers, the paper digs up documents suggesting that "the military cut or underfunded several programs and moved so slowly and grudgingly that members of Congress" had to step in with "extraordinary measures."

Interviewed officials complained of a refusal among top military brass at the beginning of the war to believe that the fighting would be anything but brief. Once things started to get bogged down, there was a "peacetime mentality" guiding acquisition of "up-armored vehicles," the paper reports.

In one particularly striking example, Pentagon officials "balked at pleas from battlefield commanders and their own analysts to provide the lifesaving MRAP, or Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, for patrols and combat missions." Only after Rummy left and Robert Gates took over did the Pentagon embrace the MRAP.

Draper's account of the bulk of Bush's presidency sheds light on a loyal and secretive inner circle that, at least privately, was not always on the same page. Draper tells of an April 2006 dinner at which Bush asked aides for a show of hands on whether his divisive defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, should be fired.

The vote: 7-4 to get rid of him, with Bush siding with those who wanted him kept on for the time being. Rumsfeld was replaced after the elections that fall switched control of the House and Senate to Democrats.

White House aides who wanted Rumsfeld out were privately dismayed when retired generals called publicly for his ouster, fearing that would steel Bush's resolve to keep his defence chief, the book says.

Bush, without addressing that meeting, suggested to the author that the ex-generals did get under his skin. "My reaction was, 'No military guy is gonna tell a civilian how to react,"' he said.

Just like his failure to deal with Hurricane Katrina.

The latest book published about George W Bush reveals that the US president was not fully engaged in key policy areas, including the disbandment of the Iraqi army and the build-up to Hurricane Katrina.

At a briefing at his Crawford ranch the day before the hurricane made landfall, Mr Bush was "gassed" after an 80-minute bike ride and asked no supplementary questions following a briefing from advisers. He merely assured them the federal government was prepared to help.

SEE:

Daddy's Boy

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Katrina, New Orleans, FEMA, Bush, fraud, rebuilding, Hurricane, Gulf Coast, USA, disaster, 9/11, relief,
Rita, hurricanes, USA, weather, climate-change, environment,
FEMA, Bush, America, Empire, reconstruction, New, Orleans, Louisiana, delta, Gulf-Coast,
Corruption, Halliburton, Bechtel,
Politics, SOTU, State of the union, President Bush,
Iraq, contractor, privatization,
Bush, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney, USA, war, KBR, Halliburton
Corruption, Halliburton, Bechtel,
Politics, SOTU, State of the union, President Bush,
infaltion, recession, USeconomy, USA, economy, banks, war, costofwar, Iraq, Afghanistan, military, deficit, debt, Bush, WhiteHouse, economics, Halliburton, Bechtel,
Inspector-General, USA, Iraq, insurgency, Iran, IED, GAO, crony-capitalism, subsidies, war-profiteering, taxpayers,

Daddy's Boy

So come January 2009 what will Ex-President Bush be thinking about? His failed war in Iraq? His failed war on Terrorism? All the homes not built in New Orleans? Crumbling American infrastructure? Nope. True to form he will be thinking of how he can make a buck off being an Ex-Pres. Just like Daddy does. And of course he has to keep up with the Clinton's.

After he leaves office, President Bush is quoted as telling Draper that he wants to build what he calls a "Fantastic Freedom Institute" in Dallas. He describes it as being a place where young leaders can come, write and lecture.

But first, Bush tells Draper, he wants to make some money to "replenish the ol' coffers,” noting he can make "ridiculous” money on the lecture circuit.

“I don't know what my dad gets. But it's more than 50, 75 [thousand] … Clinton's making a lot of money," the president is quoted as saying.

Given his failed presidency the only place that would welcome him on the lecture circuit is Albania.

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Katrina, New Orleans, FEMA, Bush, fraud, rebuilding, Hurricane, Gulf Coast, USA, disaster, 9/11, relief,
Rita, hurricanes, USA, weather, climate-change, environment,
FEMA, Bush, America, Empire, reconstruction, New, Orleans, Louisiana, delta, Gulf-Coast,
Corruption, Halliburton, Bechtel,
Politics, SOTU, State of the union, President Bush,
Iraq, contractor, privatization,
Bush, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney, USA, war, KBR, Halliburton
Corruption, Halliburton, Bechtel,
Politics, SOTU, State of the union, President Bush,
infaltion, recession, USeconomy, USA, economy, banks, war, costofwar, Iraq, Afghanistan, military, deficit, debt, Bush, WhiteHouse, economics, Halliburton, Bechtel,
Inspector-General, USA, Iraq, insurgency, Iran, IED, GAO, crony-capitalism, subsidies, war-profiteering, taxpayers,

Double Trouble

Two Hurricanes have hit Mexico and Nicaragua , but don't expect the folks at CNN and Fox who do their Wild Weather/Wicked Weather reports to make much about this since all they care about is their gulf coast. There will be no wall to wall coverage, just updates.

Oh yes and remember last year when the hurricane season was milder and all the climate change deniers rejoiced at how wrong predictions were for a nasty hurricane season. Well this year it is a nasty hurricane season as predicted due to climate change. However since they have not hit the U.S. corporate America could care less.

The U.S. still has not paid up its funding obligations to Nicaragua after Hurricane Mitch.

Hurricanes swept ashore in Nicaragua and Mexico within hours of each other Tuesday, the first time Atlantic and Pacific hurricanes have made landfall on the same day since the National Hurricane Center began keeping records in the 1940s.

Felix arrived first, punishing sparsely populated northern Nicaragua with 160 mph winds before dawn, then plowing inland across Honduras, threatening floods and mudslides in a region still recovering from Hurricane Mitch, which killed nearly 11,000 people in 1998.

More than 1,900 miles away, Henriette swelled to hurricane strength Tuesday afternoon and roared onto the southern tip of Mexico's Baja Peninsula, an area thick with some of Latin America's swankiest hotels and vacation homes.

Tuesday was historic for two reasons: It was the first time on record that two Category 5 Atlantic hurricanes made landfall in the same year, with Felix coming two weeks after Hurricane Dean slammed into southern Mexico.

And Atlantic and Pacific hurricanes had never made landfall on the same date, according to records that began in 1949.

A NOAA map on Tuesday shows hurricanes Henriette, left center, and Felix. There were no reports of serious damage from Henriette, but Felix cut a swath of destruction as it headed into Honduras.

This storm will now be true test of the Harpers Development Agenda with his new found interest in Latin America and the Caribbean. Lets see how quick he responds to this disaster.

As they say there is always a silver lining in every storm cloud this case Alvaro Orozco who has gone into hiding, may not be deported to Nicaragua since his home may not be there anymore. Wishful thinking.




SEE:

Hurricane and Howard Dean

Mother Prevails

Remember Katrina and Rita?

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
US, Mexico, hurricane, Nicaragua, Hurricane Dean, Hurricane Felix, Hurricane Henriette,

Shark Bait

More stupid human speciesism.

Since all sharks look the same.

Lucky for the shark there was a 'Life' guard at the beach to save his life.

These are Michael Coren's kind of folks, beating up on a poor shark.

When a Coney Island lifeguard spied a shark near an upset group of swimmers, he did what he thought was right: He rescued the fish

Marisu Mironescu, 39, said he was prompted to action Monday after seeing about 75 to 100 people circling the 60-centimetre sand shark off the beach and "bugging out."

"They were holding onto it and some people were actually hitting him, smacking his face," said Mironescu. "Well, I wasn't going to let them hurt the poor thing."

He grabbed the largely harmless shark in his arms and carried it, backstroking out to sea, where he let it go. "He was making believe like he's dead, then he wriggled his whole body and tried to bite me," Mironescu said.

The rescue ended a holiday weekend that began with another city shark scare Saturday, when a 1.5-metre thresher shark washed up on Rockaway Beach, sending hundreds of swimmers out of the water.

And size does matter. Five feet is a lot bigger than 3.5 feet.

At least these New Yorkers did do the 'right thing'. Since sharks are an endangered species thanks to stupid humans.

A five-foot-long thresher shark that washed up on a crowded city beach this weekend — and was pushed back into the sea by beachgoers — is dead.

Rockaway Beach was back open Sunday, a day after a shark sighting shut it down.

Park officials say a shark washed up on the shore Saturday near Beach 109th Street. Some New Yorkers approached the creature and pushed it back into the water.

The Parks Department ordered swimmers back on the shore and closed the beach and surrounding bay for the rest of the day.

Sunday morning, a dead thresher shark, five feet in length, washed up on the shore at Beach 113th Street. Parks officials say they believe it was the same shark as Saturday.

An expert from the New York Aquarium told the New York Post that thresher sharks don't attack nearly as often as the famous Great White, although swimmers have been injured by their tails.

Thresher Shark

The genus and family name derive from the Greek word alopex, meaning fox. Indeed the long-tailed thresher shark, Alopias vulpinus, is named the fox shark by some authorities.

All three thresher shark species have been recently listed as vulnerable to extinction by the World Conservation Union (IUCN).

Sand Shark

The sand tiger (Carcharias taurus) is a coastal shark often encountered by shore fishermen while fishing for striped bass and bluefish. Please note that this species is protected by both State and Federal laws .

Sand tigers have two dorsal fins of equal size and are grayish brown in appearance, often with dusky spots on their sides and tail. They are most often confused with smooth dogfish (Mustelus canis), but sand tigers have very noticeable long thin teeth while smooth dogfish do not. The spiny dogfish (Squalus acanthias) is another small coastal shark, but can easily be distinguished from a sand tiger by its two dorsal fin spines and the lack of anal fin. If you accidentally catch a sand tiger,you should take care to return it to the water unharmed.

SEE:

Prison Zoo Complex

They Walk Among Us

Nessies Relative

Nessie?

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
frilled, shark, prehistoric shark, , rare, animals, biology, marine biology, fish,
New York, sand shark, thresher shark, Coney island, lifeguard, sharks

Senator Craig Lies, Again

I am resigning he said, but apparently he had his fingers crossed. Ok he ain't gay, he didn't solicit sex in a public washroom, and he is not resigning. Wow just for lying he should be run out of town on a rail way before the end of the month.

But the pièce de résistance is that he is so incompetent he left a message about his clever subterfuge on a complete strangers answering machine.

U.S. Sen. Larry Craig says he might reconsider his decision to resign if he clears his name in his arrest for disorderly conduct in a restroom sex scandal.

That’s why Craig chose his words carefully during his resignation speech Saturday in Boise, according to a voice mail message he mistakenly left on a stranger’s phone. In the message obtained by the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, Craig tells a man named “Billy” that his choice of language is deliberate because it leaves the door open for him to stay in office.

In the message, Craig mentions that he has the support of Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., a backer who Craig saw as pivotal for giving his efforts political legitimacy.

The day after Craig’s resignation speech, Specter went on Fox News Sunday. “I'd still like to see Senator Craig fight this case," Specter said. "He left himself some daylight, when he said he "intends" to resign in 30 days. I'd like to see Larry Craig go back to court, seek to withdraw his guilty plea and fight the case.”

The voice is indeed Craig’s, spokesman Dan Whiting said. Whiting would not say who “Billy” is. Later that day, Craig announced that he had hired high-profile criminal defense lawyer Billy Martin, whom Craig hired to help him unravel the guilty plea Craig filed last month.

Whiting confirmed in an e-mail that his boss “intends to resign on Sept. 30th. However, he is fighting these charges, and should he be cleared before then, he may, and I emphasize may, not resign.”

H/T to Cowboys For Social Responsibility.


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Congress, Senator, Minneapolis, resignation, Idaho, Larry Craig, Ethics, Arlen Specter, Republicans, sex-scandal, US, politics, gay, homosexuality, sex

Patels Panics

I got this message from Herr Werner Patels on MyBloglog account.

Please be advised that Eugene Plawiuk will be reported to the authorities for criminal libel and harassment this week. A report about this will also be sent to his union and the school he works at, since he is clearly not fit to be around children.

It appears that bi-polar blogger Patels is panicking, first he erased his offending web pages on Alberta Spectator blog where he attacked Montreal Simon and Red Tory last month, then he created a new set of multi-blog personalities called Eye On. Including Eye On Blogosphere.(aka Eye on Blogs)

What Eye on the Blogosphere is about

1. cyberbullying
2. freedom of speech
3. harassment
4. libel
5. political blogging

1. 
   

Ironically his attack on them was the result of one of his purged posts (available thanks to Google Cache) where he said this;

As I wrote here a while ago, there seems to be a trend (primarily among lefties and/or Liberals) to muzzle bloggers by slapping them with lawsuits. Funny how you never hear about conservatives suing bloggers (unless I missed something, so if you have information on such a case, please do drop me a line in the comments section below).

Ah hem, well I for one would like to report Werner for threatening to do this, I am not sure he is a conservative, but he is a whingnut. Of course his threat to me is not the first time he has said he would sue me. Or report me to my employer which he has also threatened to do to me and other bloggers in the past.

Now in the midst of his latest revisionist rewriting of the story of his cyberstalking, he has created another blog called Common Sense Musings. Which used to be his Ideas And Issues Blog. And was the original URL setting for Alberta Spectator.

Common Sense Musings provides snapshots of the world we live in. This blog is about finding common sense, or rather, an attempt to instill some common sense, as well as about ideas and the issues that matter.

Of course with multiple blog personality Werner his opinions are as far from commonsensical as one can be.

At this site he reposts his posts from his other blogs. In this particular case he has reposted his revisionist history of his cyber-stalking and blog attacks on Red Tory and Montreal Simon with a passing reference to yours truly whom he calls and extremist leftist. It is the same story he published on the weekend in his new Eye On Blogs. Which I commented on .

Unfortunately he has purged all his posts at Eye On Blogs and reposted his new sanitized version at his Common Sense Musings.

I guess he figures if he says something over and over again on various of his blogs which he sanitizes then folks will be fooled into believing he is a reasonable, rational, fellow.

He also rewrote his article on Michael Coren, at yet another of his blogs purging any reference to me. The original article was posted on the now purged Alberta Spectator, there he had linked to my original article on Coren and recognized I had blogged on this first, he gave me a H/T.

• 

  On animals, mental disease and Michael Coren

  8 days ago in Alberta Spectator · Authority: 122

  we can eat them, wear their skins, experiment on them if we can thus improve the human condition. Clearly, if there's a mentally ill individual, it's Coren, but not people who really and truly understand animals and what they're all about. Hat tip to Eugene Plawiuk for alerting me to the story. Cross-posted from A Writer's Musings Alberta Spectator

As for criminal libel there is no such a creature, there is slander and libel and it is covered in a section of the criminal code. It is not a felonious offense so it is a civil matter which is resolved through a suit in civil court.

And purging your offensive articles, will not save your ass if you are sued.

Please have your lawyers contact my lawyers;
Hungadunga, Hungadunga, Hungadunga, Hungadunga and McCormack.




Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Werner Patels, blog, blogging, bloggers, cyberstalking, cyberbullying, blogger

No Boom For Canadian Workers

What Time Is It?

Time For the Four Hour Day.

Employees burn while the economy booms With Canada's unemployment rate hovering at its lowest level in 30 years, you'd think all would be harmonious in the labour market. But while more of us are working, a new study from the Canadian Policy Research Networks shows many of us aren't happy with the quality of our jobs. Despite the current economic boom, real wages have increased only slightly since 1980. And it's also becoming more difficult to balance work and home life.One in five Canadians are dissatisfied in that regard, a 20 percent increase from 1990 to 2001.Working overtime is part of that equation. Almost a quarter of those questioned reported working overtime, and about half of that extra work was uncompensated. Teachers lead the way in unpaid overtime, at 34 percent. And work schedules are problematic as well. Both long work weeks and short work weeks are on the rise, meaning some workers have no time, while others are always strapped for cash.

Only one in three Canadians is ”very satisfied” at work and the country will face difficulties attracting new workers, according to a study published on Monday.

“It should be of concern that only about one-third of all workers are very satisfied with their jobs and that fewer than one in five employees are very positive about multiple dimensions of job quality,” the Canadian Policy Research Network said in its report.

“The report provides solid Canadian evidence that the nature of a job and the environment in which people work are critical to achieving employee satisfaction,” the report’s author Graham Lowe wrote.

What workers want: It's time to raise the bar

My research for a Canadian Policy Research Networks report, "21st Century Job Quality: Achieving What Canadians Want," examined dozens of job-quality measures to reach this conclusion. The biggest change since the early 1990s has been a 45-per-cent decline in unemployment. However, the hiring binge has not increased the proportion of full-time, continuing jobs.

Precarious employment persists. While more people work shorter weeks, the longer work week (more than 40 hours) has increased. Employers have been slow to adopt or offer flexible hours and schedules, something workers of all generations want. Information technology, and growing concern for the environment, should make telecommuting an easy move, but if this happens at all, it usually involves unpaid overtime on evenings and weekends. Basic benefits are being cut back, notably employer pension plans and supplementary medical insurance.

SEE:

Productivity and Wages

$63.90 Per Hour

The End Of The Leisure Society

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Canada, work, leisure, working hours, leisure time, overtime, Veblen, crisis of leisure time,
workers, variable costs, labour, labor, Marx, variable capital, labour theory of value, social-factory, proletariat, capital, capitalism, profit, working conditions, service workers

Curses!

It appears though that Wicca has made it into the Big Leagues in America. As in Major League Baseball. Not so strange since most sports types are superstitious and after all witchcraft and magick is commonly used in Soccer.

Garner can’t find right voodoo doll

Looking for a way to slow down Chicago Cubs ace Carlos Zambrano, Houston Astros manager Phil Garner decided to try voodoo.

“I’m confused,” Garner told Chicago’s Daily Southtown. “I went online and looked for my voodoo guy and I’m going to have to pick one and try to get it. Most of these curses are against lovers … I’ve got to find one that puts a curse on a baseball player.”

Of course there are other ways to curse a ball player.

“It wasn’t voodoo. I stayed away from the voodoo. I can’t go into the details. I’ll just have to tell you Wicca (a form of witchcraft),” Garner said to the Houston Chronicle, explaining his latest plan.

But Voodoo ain't Wicca. The former does claim on occasion to use curse magick the latter says it doesn't.


Voodoo is Black Magick, as in originating in Africa, while Wicca claims to be White Magick, as in Eurocentric.

A Witchcraft suppression bill, currently being drafted by the Mpumalanga legislature, has struck fear into the hearts of South Africa's witches, who fear the dark days of medieval witch-hunts may soon return.

The bill, leaked in June to the South African Pagan Rights Alliance (Sapara), threatens to undermine the freedoms and rights of a religious minority by criminalising and prohibiting their right to exist and practise their religion, says Sapra convener Damon Leff.

The draft, titled the Mpumalanga Witchcraft Suppression Bill 2007, states in its introduction that it is "to provide for the suppression of witchcraft in the province".

In Chapter 6 it states any person who "professes a knowledge of witchcraft or the use of charms" or "for gain pretends to exercise or use any supernatural powers, witchcraft, sorcery or enchantment" shall be guilty of an offence.
One of the major causes of the Western pagans' upset, according to Leff, is the failure of the bill to recognise the doctrinal and ethical gap between Western pagan and some forms of traditional African witchcraft.

And according to Vos, by lumping the two religions together the bill has overlooked how differently they approach the issue of ethical responsibility.

"While in rare cases (some in Mpumalanga) murder has been committed to get hold of human tissues, such as hearts and genitals for muti practices, the furthest a Western pagan would go is to collect human hair and nail clippings," he claimed.

Another serious criticism Western pagans in the country harbour is the bill's stereotyping of witches and witchcraft as being harmful and dangerous to their community.

The bill defines witchcraft as "the secret use of muti, zombies, spells, spirits, magic powers, water, mixtures, etc, by any person with the purpose of causing harm, damage, sickness to others or their property".

Leff has asked the Mpumalanga advocates to replace it with the definition: "a religio-magical occupation that employs the use of sympathetic magic, ritual, herbalism and divination".

AIDS, Witchcraft, and the Problem of Power in Post-Apartheid South Africa

As an epidemic of AIDS sweeps through this part of Africa, isidliso is the name that
springs to mind amongst many in the epidemic’s path. To the extent that this occurs, the epidemic of HIV/AIDS becomes also an epidemic of witchcraft. But the implications for a witchcraft epidemic are quite different from those of a public health crisis, at least as such things are conventionally conceived in western discourses of social and political management.

In this paper I will examine some of the implications of interpreting HIV/AIDS
infection as witchcraft and ask what they might mean for the legitimacy of public power in post-apartheid South Africa. For when suspicions of witchcraft are in play in a community, problems of illness and death can transform matters of public health into questions of public power, questions relating to the identification and punishment of persons deemed responsible for bringing misfortune to the community, that is: witches.

So instead of using pins in dolls to curse his opponent perhaps Garner should have found a witch who was good at casting Lucky Mojo Spells.

Like this guy.

Wiccan Wins Lottery

Wiccan instructor Elwood "Bunky" Bartlett says a New Age book store made it possible for him to become an overnight multi-millionaire.

The Maryland accountant, who claims to hold one of four winning tickets sold for Friday night's estimated 330 million dollar Mega Millions jackpot, says he made a bargain with the multiple gods associated with his Wiccan beliefs: "You let me win the lottery and I'll teach."

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Huston Astros, MLB, baseball, Phil Garner, USA,
sports, , witchcraft, magic, magick, South Africa, sorcerer, rituals, AIDS, superstions,

Michael Crichton Climate Change Denier

In an essay on his home page Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park, compares the current debate around Climate Change with the Scientific movement for eugenics and Lysenkoism. He calls it the politicization of science. Well duh science has always been the handmaiden of the ruling class.

"Once again, the measures being urged have little basis in fact or science. Once again, groups with other agendas are hiding behind a movement that appears high-minded. Once again, claims of moral superiority are used to justify extreme actions. Once again, the fact that some people are hurt is shrugged off because an abstract cause is said to be greater than any human consequences. Once again, vague terms like sustainability and generational justice --- terms that have no agreed definition --- are employed in the service of a new crisis.

I am not arguing that global warming is the same as eugenics. But the similarities are not superficial. And I do claim that open and frank discussion of the data, and of the issues, is being suppressed. Leading scientific journals have taken strong editorial positions of the side of global warming, which, I argue, they have no business doing. Under the circumstances, any scientist who has doubts understands clearly that they will be wise to mute their expression. "

Michael Crichton© 1997-2007 Constant C Productions. All rights reserved.

However in describing those who oppose the science and politics of climate change as brave 'authentic', 'objective' scientists whose voices are being suppressed he overlooks their politics, and their political agenda. Which is not the defense of science, or even technology but of capitalism as it currently exists.

As much as Crichton is a popular author, and one who opposes attempts to patent genes, on the issue of Climate Change he ends up using the arguments of the political right who have made the eugenics argument their way of slagging feminism and the left and now those who defend the science of global warming.

What they fail to do, as does Crichton, is differentiate between the moralist reform movements of the fin de sicle 19th Century (the temperance movement) which sought to keep women in the home and those progressive movements that sought greater liberty for women. Both were precursors to modern feminism and the progressive movements for social reform. But they were politically different, and thus to confuse the two is at best poor scholarship at worst deliberate political obfustication.

In his essay Crichton ultimately sounds like that other defender of science and technology and opponent of the conspiracy theory of Climate Change; Lyndon LaRouche.

In the first half of the 20th century, eugenics in action largely meant governments sterilizing or murdering people they didn't like. (Lenin, Stalin, and Mao slaughtered even more tens of millions in the name of equality than Hitler murdered in the name of inequality. And, as Aleksandr Solzenhistyn has pointed out, the doctrine of "class origins" transformed "egalitarian" mass murder into ethnic genocide since there is no sharp line between family and race.)

Progressives, Eugenics, Women and the Minimum Wage
Stephen W. Carson

American intellectual life in the early 20th century has a dirty secret and its name is Eugenics. Alex Tabarrok points out an excellent article by Thomas C. Leonard on Protecting Family and Race: The Progressive Case for Regulating Women's Work (PDF). Leonard makes the point that Progressive support for exclusionary labor legislation for women, including the minimum wage, was based among other things on ensuring "that women could better carry out their eugenic duties as 'mothers of the race'". Though most know that eugenics had some sort of open popularity prior to the Nazis giving it a bad name, few know how thoroughly it was supported by all the "best and brightest". Here's a partial list from Leonard's paper: Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, Sidney Webb, George Bernard Shaw, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence and economist Irving Fisher.

Progressives, in part for eugenic reasons, wanted to make women and other groups unemployable. Their chosen tool: the minimum wage.

...these progressives argued that minimum-wage-induced disemployment was a social benefit. Legal minimum wages and other statutory means of inducing undesirable groups to leave the labor force were, in the progressive view, a eugenic benefit.

The Progressive Case for Regulating
Women’s Work

By THOMAS C. LEONARD*

ABSTRACT. American economics came of age during the Progressive Era, a time when biological approaches to economic reform were at their high-water mark. Reform-minded economists argued that the labor force should be rid of unfit workers—whom they labeled “unemployables,” “parasites,” and the “industrial residuum”—so as to uplift superior, deserving workers. Women were also frequently classified as unemployable. Leading progressives, including women at the forefront of labor reform, justified exclusionary labor legislation for women on grounds that it would (1) protect the biologically weaker sex from the hazards of market work; (2) protect working women from the temptation of prostitution; (3) protect male heads of household from the economic competition of women; and (4) ensure that women could better carry out their eugenic duties as “mothers of the race.” What united these heterogeneous rationales was the reformers’ aim of discouraging women’s labor-force participation.

Eugenic thought crossed national borders, and it also traversed an extraordinary range of political views. Ideologically, the eugenics movement attracted reactionaries, such as Madison Grant, author The Passing of the Great Race, and key movement figures, such as Francis Galton, founder of modern eugenics, and Charles Davenport, head of the Eugenics Record Office at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, who can be described as social conservatives. But eugenics also won advocates of very different politics, such as Margaret Sanger, the birth control advocate who began intellectual life as a radical anarchist (a protégé of Emma Goldman), Fabian socialists such as Karl Pearson, Sidney Webb, and George Bernard Shaw, and the sui generis feminist, economist Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

Love and Eugenics in the late Nineteenth Century
Angelique Richardson

Developed by Charles Darwin's cousin Francis Galton in the 1860s, and drawing on theories of evolution, eugenics looked to provide solutions both for the problems of the urban poor and for the challenge of maintaining national supremacy. Richardson shows how these theories had particular resonance for a number of intellectually and politically concerned women in the period, who firmly believed that "the women of Britain could best serve the race, the country, and their own interests through the rational selection of a reproductive partner" (p. 215). This was the view that time and again comes across in the fiction of some of the best known New Woman Authors, particularly Sarah Grand and George Egerton (although, as she shows, resistance to eugenics is an important aspect of Mona Caird's work). Richardson's achievement is to get us to recognize this fact and its implications, as well as the part played by their writings in the late-century debates between the hereditarians and the environmentalists. This is a bravely revisionist reading, which will give considerable pause for thought to all those who have enthusiastically embraced and celebrated the progressive, protofeminist aspects of the New Woman movement. One understands freshly that the resistance to romance which can be found in so many of the New Woman novelists and polemicists is less a defiant call for woman's autonomy and self-determination than a demand for rational reproduction. Richardson exposes not just the class biases, but in some cases the antihumanitarianism of these writers.

In the first volume of The History of Sexuality Michel Foucault deemed eugenics one of the ‘two great innovations in the technology of sex of the second half of the nineteenth century’. Richardson’s book is a notable aid to our understanding of the scope and importance of Foucault’s remark and the continuing significance of eugenics as a language of modernity. Much scholarly work in recent years has emphasized the pervasive anxiety about degeneration and decline characteristic of the period, in which eugenic thinking played a central part, but Richardson also shows the tremendous eugenic optimism felt by many of its enthusiasts: able to reverse Malthus’s cruel laws, eugenics promised a new and clean way to social perfection … In charting this ground, Richardson leaves us in no doubt about the class violence endemic to eugenic discourse in the period. That advocacy of eugenics was most enthusiastic within collectivist politics is now well known, but illuminated further here, especially in the final chapter on Mona Caird. Biological determinism, Richardson argues, ‘was underpinned by the paralysis of the individual’; at the heart of the eugenic project of this period is a critique of liberal individual, exemplified here by one of the book’s good men, John Stuart Mill. In her suggestive interpretation of this troubled alignment between left politics and the eugenic fantasy of state-managed human reproduction as a means to squeeze suffering out of the social body, Richardson reminds us that individualism ‘was not anathema to Marx’. Mill’s own contribution to the opposition to eugenics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is an individualism that shares with Marx a commitment to ‘autonomy, activity, true consciousness, and sociality.’

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
climate change denier, climate change, environment, global warming,
Kyoto, UN, IPCC,
Michael Crichton, Lysenkoism, eugenics, flat earth, Lyndon LaRouche, right wing, conspiracy, conspiracy theory, climage change denial,

Wicca Bashing

Harry Potter is a NOVEL representing a traditional fantasy world of magic versus a materialistic rationalistic scientific world. In other words its a world where magic works outside of science.There is no particular spirituality or religion professed or discussed. Just the good old morality of good versus evil, which is the basis of all religions.

However in North Carolina the Christians use it to Wicca Bash.

BRUNSWICK COUNTY

Religion arises in book policy talks

The Brunswick County Board of Education is considering setting a procedure for students' parents to use if challenging books available at school libraries.

That revived an old issue at the board's Curriculum Committee meeting Tuesday.

Board member Shirley Babson said parents have told her the Harry Potter series might represent a particular religion. That remark led board member Jimmy Hobbs to refer to a controversy that took place last year, when the board voted to allow Bible distribution at local high schools and then backed down. One of the groups that led the opposition was the Wiccans, Hobbs said.

Wiccans believe in rituals and charms. Some religious groups have said they fear the wildly popular Harry Potter, with its fictional accounts of witchcraft, can encourage children to practice Wicca.

"When distributing materials, we should be careful with not being biased," Hobbs said. "Is Wicca being allowed, in other ways, to the exclusion of Christian literature?"

Director of Student Services Reeda Hargrove, who presented the policy at the meeting, said Harry Potter "wasn't even in my thought process."

The new procedure will be considered by the schools' Policy Committee when it meets at 9 a.m. Sept. 5.

- Ana Ribeiro

Wicca bashing using Harry Potter is not confined to the U.S.

A Pentecostal teaching assistant who quit her job at a foundation primary school after she was disciplined for refusing to hear a child read a Harry Potter book is seeking compensation for religious discrimination. She claimed that the book glorified witchcraft.

Sariya Allen, whose case is expected to end today at the south London employment tribunal in Croydon, claims Durand primary school in Stockwell discriminated against her as a born-again Christian and put her at a disadvantage compared with teaching assistants who were not of her faith. After three years in the job, she quit in July and is now jobless.

The difference here is that lots of novels deal with magical reality, in fact that is the nature of a novel. It is a magical reality, another world to step into and experience.

While the Bible is a religious text, a holy work, a philosophical text dealing with cosmology and morality. Which is taken literally by some folks as the word of their G*D. Now if what these folks are saying is that it is a novel, and should be included with other novels in school libraries well that's a different story.

This is just another example of the dominant religious meme/ideology creating fear over perceived challenges to it's cultural hegemony.

Christian Censorship of Harry Potter: Schools, Libraries, and Free Speech .

Laura Mallory v. Harry Potter 3 - Offbeat

Is Harry Potter Evil?

Not all Christians consider Harry Potter a dangerous icon of witchcraft.

As the old textbooks of rhetoric stated, the "intentio auctoris", the intention of the author, may in the end be different from the "intentio operis", the objective intention or direction of the work. Giacomo Cardinal Biffi wrote a fascinating book about finding Christian values in "Pinocchio", whose author was a non religious secular humanist. Rowling writes in a recognizable British tradition including such Christian storytellers as J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, and the influence is apparent, no matter what Rowling's personal position. Until some years ago, it was perhaps even too easy to find a "Christian hero" almost everywhere in the non-Christian world. Literature, however, is full of such heroes, whose values are so human that they may be regarded as at least pre-Christian. Christian parents are certainly well advised, in a world of confusion, to discuss with their children the books they read (not to mention TV shows). But, should I cast a vote in a poll similar to the one taken in Georgia, I would vote for Harry Potter, and would do so as a parent and a Christian, not only as a scholar of religion. He is the last scion of a more than respectable British literary tradition, and a healthy reading for children of all ages.

SEE:

Bush Apologizes to Witches

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
pagan, paganism, witch, J.K.Rowling, Harry Potter, novels, paganism, ,
US, UK, Wicca, school, pagans, witchcraft, neo-pagans, censorship, books, Christians, magic, Britain, library, religion,

Blade Runner

Blade Runner along with Alien were groundbreaking movies by Ridley Scott.

Unfortunately I have to disagree with him about excising the voice over from his 1992 Directors Cut of Blade Runner.

I found it less satisfying than that with the voice over, though I agree with him that the 'happy ending' in the original sucked.

He has reissued it again for release this fall containing 5 DVD's. And the narration is still excised. So I will see if it really captures the Noir genre it comes from which did often use voice overs.

There is no rambling voiceover by Ford, which the film’s distributors, Warner Bros, originally insisted on for the hard-of-thinking. Here Rick Deckard keeps his thoughts to himself and is infinitely more interesting for it.

This simple conceit makes the film a colder and lonelier place. It was always ravishingly dark. Scott’s vision of Los Angeles in 2019 is the ultimate movie dystopia: a fabulous hell of skyscrapers and monolithic Fritz Lang factories. The sky is cluttered with fuming aircraft and floating neon adverts. It never stops raining on the cramped and seedy streets, and everyone, apart from Ford, smokes like a chimney.

What does it mean to be human in such a diseased world? This is the thrust of Scott’s film noir, which has aged quite brilliantly.

Blade Runner's new cut

Twenty-five years after "Blade Runner" was panned by critics and pulled from theaters, British director Ridley Scott savors revenge with the final cut of the science-fiction film now considered a cult classic.

Presenting the new version of what he considers his most accomplished movie, Scott recalled the difficulties he had when he first pitched the work to Hollywood.

The response at early sample screenings before the official release in June 1982 was so weak that the producers forced Scott to add voice-overs to the film and change the final scene to make it a more "happy ending."

"I thought I'd really nailed it, I really thought I'd nailed it. And the person I used to show it to was my brother (director Tony Scott). And my brother, he loved it so much. Then we preview, and the previews are really, really bad, and my confidence is really dented," said Scott.

The reworking of the film led to "voice overs which started to explain what was about to happen, who the characters were and who was going to do what to who, which is the antithesis of a good movie making process," he said.

Over the years, five versions of the film have been released, including a director's cut in 1992. But Scott said the "Final Cut" -- which will be issued as a collector's DVD edition later in the winter -- was "really as it was intended to be."

So what did you really want to have in your Final Cut?

Ridley Scott: Well, certainly get rid of the voiceover once and for all. If you get rid of the voiceover, then you do not want the ending. This is a film noir. It's an Elmore Leonard kind of influence or Philip Marlowe. This is a Marlowe-esque kind of story which of course is Mr.Dick and Mr.Fancher. Do Androids [Dream of Electric Sheep] has about 17 stories in the first 25 pages, so there was a big distillation right down to the bottom line of what this is about. That was the agony and the ecstasy of working with Hampton and Michael Deeley way back when. We were trying to get this down to a screenplay that we could make. I was completely for voiceover. There was all this bullsh*t saying I was against voiceover. Absolute horse twaddle. I was there and when Harrison and I would talk about this saying, "You like this?" I said, "Well, I think there's a possibility that if we're confusing the audience who are saying, 'What's cityspeak? What is this? What is that?' We may have to explain a few things. If we can get the right words, then it could work." Because three years earlier, there was a film called Apocalypse Now where you have an incredibly important voiceover which is the entire internalization of Martin Sheen's part, who is a man who seems to be a nihilist where you would not know what he's thinking if he didn't have that voiceover. The voiceover was brilliantly written and brilliantly delivered by Martin Sheen. So I hung my hat on that thinking that it may be a possibility, because also it's Philip Marlowe, because also it's Elmore Leonard and Mr. Dick, Philip Dick. But that's the style. He's a cop. He's a dark cop who's a bit of an alcoholic. He's a nihilist who hates himself and hates his job. Sounds like Elmore Leonard to me. And therefore out of it should come a great voiceover. We couldn't crack it. And Harrison really tried and I really tried and I think the voice was becoming over explanatory. When all you're going to do is sit there and actually see how it evolves, or you work it out, 10 minutes off. A film should always be ahead of the audience, not the audience parallel to the movie.

Crave Online: There is a work print on the DVD which has a better voice over than the theatrical cut.

Ridley Scott: Yeah, it's okay. It felt like it could come in and it could be okay, and Harrison's got a great voice and a very listenable to voice, a very deep voice. But we couldn't get the words quite right so that Harrison felt comfortable, so it really did feel like him inside. Most of it was very tricky.

Another issue with the original release was the failure to release the awesome groundbreaking electronc sound track by Vangelis.

Android Love Cry

Just as a graphic novel will never be awarded the book of the year honors, Android Love Cry will never be acknowledged as album of the year. Why? Think about science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. Science fiction is your first clue, we don’t suppose great literature can be science fiction, but Dick wrote some fantastic fiction, even a story (forty years before Philip Roth) pondering what if the Nazi’s had won W.W.II and occupied the United States. But you’ll never see his name listed with the greatest writers of his time, although his works have been turned into motion pictures including; Minority Report, Total Recall, Paycheck and Blade Runner.

What does Blade Runner have to do with Android Love Cry from Tigersmilk? The original title of the 1982 Ridley Scott film was Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and certainly the music made by this trio could be the soundtrack for a modern remake of the film.

These thirteen pieces lead you into flights of imagination—story lines appear, old science fiction movies like Silent Running, The Andromeda Strain or The Omega Man rerun in your head. But this music isn’t your “Hearts of Space” smooth ambient sounds. This trio meshes improvisation seamlessly with the science. Bassist Roebke is quite adept at adapting his double-bass to his partners and their effects. Although the highlight of the disc might be the 56-second “Circuit Overload Demise,” where he opens with a monstrous attack of bass energy before playing against drummer and computer plunks, the display of control and power is awe-inspiring.

And Scott has announced the death of Science Fiction Film...

Ridley Scott says 'Sci-fi films are as dead as Westerns’

Me thinks he speaks tongue in cheek considering his latest movie is a Western. And in this case he can't complain if it bombs, he didn't direct it. And like Blade Runner it appears it too will be cursed by the critics. Much like Michael Cimino's over budget ill fated 'Heavens Gate'.

Brad Pitt plays legendary outlaw Jesse James in the Warner Bros. release;
The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford

Whether it directly resembles them or not, this impeccable new picture is at one with the adventurous spirit that produced such films as "McCabe & Mrs. Miller," "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid," "Bad Company," "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," "Jeremiah Johnson," "The Outlaw Josey Wales," "Days of Heaven," "The Long Riders" and, yes, "Heaven's Gate," rather than with anything being made today.

Shot two years ago and long delayed in editing, pic marks an enormous advance for Dominik beyond his 2000 Aussie prison crimer "Chopper." Elegant, artful and consumed by a fascination with American history and Western lore, his adaptation of Ron Hansen's popular 1983 novel retills the once overworked ground of outlaw legend so thoroughly that it has become fertile once again. Pic's hefty 160-minute running time will no doubt cause carping in some quarters, but this is one film whose length seems absolutely right for what it's doing.

"Assassination of Jesse James" a celluloid crime

Coming from the production companies of the film's star, Brad Pitt, and Ridley and Tony Scott and based on Hansen's well-received novel, the film's pedigree probably means a solid opening week. However, word-of-mouth might kill the movie faster than Robert Ford killed Jesse James.

SEE:

LEM RIP

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Ridley Scott, Alien, Blade Runner, science fiction, government, film, movies, Phillip K. Dick, Vangelis, hollywood, Sci-Fi,
Film Noir