Reprint Paul Goodman

Anarchist psychologist, philosopher and counter culture maven Paul Goodman's books are now out of print. A new biographical movie is out about this important but overlooked activist writer. A documentary on Goodman is being made and the folks who made the movie are now on a campaign to get Goodman's works reprinted by Random House. They are also trying to raise money to finish the film.

Please tell Random House editor JUDY STERNLIGHT -- Jsternlight@Randomhouse.com -- that you agree with Marcus Raskin's letter below urging them to reprint Paul Goodman's work and to bring out an "Essential Paul Goodman."

Thank you very much.

Jonathan Lee

---

February 20, 2007

Judy Sternlight
Random House

Dear Ms. Sternlight:

There is a tradition of greatness in American thought and letters which must be kept alive. It revolves around a moral impulse, a personal commitment to creativity and freedom, a vast knowledge of the past and present. And a strong nose for bull shit.

Paul Goodman is part of that tradition and in fact he was crucial in keeping it alive during his immensely productive life. Jason Epstein, his editor and publisher understood that impulse and was, as you know, his champion at your house. No doubt there will come a time when this "American Master" will receive his due. But that is only part of the story. This present, say the 21st century, is in desperate need of insight and thought from those who struggled and lived lives of nobility and brilliance. This, Ms. Sternlight is a dark time and Goodman in his work and life kept a candle lit which helped one generation find itself whether in letters, education, politics, and gender freedom.

Goodman was a colleague of mine, dedicated a book to me and made his voice heard among many in the establishment and of course among students. There is no doubt that his voice and his straightforward writing would resonate with a new generation of young. This I know first hand as a professor at George Washington University, the co-founder o the Institute for Policy Studies, author and editor of some 20 books-two from Random House.

Further, there is an entire generation of people from the sixties who are in teaching positions at universities and schools who grew up escaping absurd lives because of his work. The republication of Paul's books makes enormous commercial sense besides being a literary necessity.

Sincerely,

Marcus Raskin
Institute for Policy Studies, Washington, DC


See:

A Little Eros For Valentine's Day

Mirror Mirror On The Wall

SOME REMARKS ON WAR SPIRIT

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The Tao Of Anarchy

Anarchist writer and professor Crispin Sartwell has published his own version of the Tao Te Ching. It is an accessible and modernized interpretation of this classic work of anarchism.

41

When the wise study about the Tao,

they slog through its lessons with appropriate diligence.

When the sort-of-wise hear about it, they grasp it and lose it.

If they didn¹t lose it, they couldn¹t try to find it.

When the fool hears about the Tao, he laughs and laughs.

That is the Tao.

The Tao sees darkness as though it were light,

sees retreat as progress,

knows that that the rough conceals the smooth,

that the truth appears in fragments,

purity within defilement,

goodness as incoherence,

integrity in letting go,

simplicity in ramification.

A perfect square is a circle.

A perfect circle is boundless.

A perfect note is enwrapped in the silence.

The world has no form.

Is the Tao hidden?

It forms and fills us.

It empties and releases us.

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Why Managers Need Unions

COMPENSATION

Managers' overtime victory short-lived

Manitoba quickly closes loophole that handed supervisor a win

VIRGINIA GALT

WORKPLACE REPORTER

The hopes of overworked managers everywhere were briefly raised yesterday when a scrappy former store supervisor from Winnipeg won a victory at the Supreme Court of Canada in her fight for overtime pay.

Before they could even think about collecting countless hours of back pay, however, it became apparent to even the most sleep-deprived manager that the window of opportunity opened by the ruling is about to slam shut.

Effective April 30, the Manitoba government will fall in line with all other Canadian jurisdictions and exempt management employees from overtime-pay provisions in their labour laws.

Sharon Michalowski will bank more than $10,000 in overtime pay she has been battling to get from Nygard International Ltd. since 2003. She says her protracted fight has made her the "the poster girl" for other managers who hoped her case would set a precedent.

Even before the Nygard case had worked its way through the courts, employers in Manitoba -- alarmed by the possible implications -- persuaded the provincial government that managers are generally paid better than other employees, have more power to set their own working conditions and, therefore, should not qualify for overtime pay.

Yeah right they are as exploited as the rest of the employees. Managers need to be unionized with the rest of the workers in a shop. The NDP government should be ashamed of itself for being sucked into this claptrap from the bosses. The difference between a Manager and the rest of the workers in most shops is the colour of their shirts, or that they have to wear a tie. Power to set their own working conditions, yeah right....which means that instead of being paid for Overtime they are owed they can flex their work hours, but of course that never really happens at all, instead they just accrue and accrue more unpaid OT. And if they get time off its at straight time, and at the bosses convenience.

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Why The Conservatives Are Not Libertarians

You are not a libertarian when you promote the Security State and Law and Order;

It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.

Moreover, it follows that with any exercise of State power, not only the exercise of social power in the same direction, but the disposition to exercise it in that direction, tends to dwindle. Mayor Gaynor astonished the whole of New York when he pointed out to a correspondent who had been complaining about the inefficiency of the police, that any citizen has the right to arrest a malefactor and bring him before a magistrate. "The law of England and of this country," he wrote, "has been very careful to confer no more right in that respect upon policemen and constables than it confers on every citizen." State exercise of that right through a police force had gone on so steadily that not only were citizens indisposed to exercise it, but probably not one in ten thousand knew he had it.

Albert Jay Nock: Our Enemy, the State, 1935, Chap. 1

See:

Leo Strauss and the Calgary School

Post Modern Conservatives.

Paranoia and the Security State

Our New Police State

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The Cone of Silence Bank Presidents and the RCMP

Funny but Bank Presidents sound just like the RCMP Superintendent and Commissioners when it comes to telling the truth to Parliamentary Committees.

Deputy Commissioner George, who was suspended from duty after a previous appearance before the committee, was rebuked by MPs, who said her testimony has been evasive and incomplete.

Staff Sgt. Frizzell said the pension investigation took an unexpected turn when documents were uncovered suggesting insurance funds were being diverted with Deputy Commissioner George's approval.

But he was ordered off the case before he had a chance to follow the trail, he said.

She said she had nothing to do with the winding down of the pension-fund investigation, or the issuing of a "cease and desist order" to Staff Sgt. Frizzell directing him to return to other duties.

She did not rule out the possibility that she might have seen documents related to transferring insurance funds to the pension fund.

She did not recall this, but she said she relied on advice from another senior Mountie with expertise in insurance and financial matters that there was nothing untoward with the life-insurance funds.

Back off on ABM legislation, banks warn MPs

Whenever members of the Commons committee probing ATM fees tried to peer inside the world of banking, they were met for the most part with blank expressions or no comments."We won't comment on that," said the Royal Bank's Jim Westlake, group Head, Canadian Banking, when asked about profit margins on the ATM fees.

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The PM's Psychic

Now we know why the Conservatives don't answer questions in QP. They expect the Opposition to know them cause they are psychic.

The use of psychics and witchdoctors to affect sports teams world wide is well known, and of course they are used in North America for the same reason in politics.

Michelle Muntean, a former stylist for CTV News, fusses over Harper's hair, selects his clothes, and even accompanies him on official trips -- most recently to France for the Vimy Ridge Memorial ceremony.

She's also been known to give her clients spiritual advice, leaving some critics wondering if Harper is getting more than fashion advice.

"What is wrong is the use of public dollars to pay for a stylist or a psychic," said New Democrat MP Judy Wasylycia-Leis.

Former prime minister Mackenzie King famously communicated with his dead relatives and dog, and believed his dreams were a good way to contact the spirit world.

Of course as usual the PMO is evasive not only about her roll as a taxpayer funded stylist but now as a psychic.

It appears the opposition has been looking under the wrong heading to find out where she is in the employment list for the PMO. Apparently she is actually a valet.

But Harper's communications director Sandra Buckler said Muntean does not discuss psychic matters with either the prime minister or his wife.

"She doesn't," said Buckler.

"I don't care what she is. She is very helpful. She carries the bags, she opens the door. She is very nice."

The use of psychics of course does conflict with the Conservatives espoused religious fundamentalism.

Though religious revivalism itself is really not much different from occultism, speaking in tongues, spirit possession, playing with snakes.

The involution of the African city, notes Mike Davis (Planet of Slums, Verso, 2005) has as its corollary not an insurgent lumpenproletariat but rather a vast political universe of Islamism and Pentecostalism. It is this occult world of invisible powers—whether populist Islam in Kano or witchcraft in Soweto—that represents the most compelling ideological legacy of neoliberal utopianism in Africa.

Pentecostalism is spiritualism for Christians. After all the Pentecostal founder of social conservative fundamentalism Sister Aimee Semple McPherson was Canadian.

H/T to Impolitic


See:

The PM and the Stylist

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420

Note the Time. Instead of 420 being a reference for pot maybe it should be used for LSD.

And Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds (LSD) is now officially 64.

At 4:20 in the afternoon, on April 19th, 1943, the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann deliberately ingested 250 micrograms of LSD-25, a substance he had discovered during experiments with alkaloids of the fungus ergot.

Despite the vanishingly small dosage, he soon found himself stricken with dizziness, euphoria, and an inescapable compulsion to laugh. Within the hour, he could barely write or speak intelligibly, and fearing he'd poisoned himself, rode his bicycle to his nearby home, called a doctor, asked for a glass of milk and collapsed on a sofa. What happened next is best described by Hofmann himself, from his autobiographical book, LSD - My Problem Child:

After a doctor arrived and examined him, finding no physical abnormalities besides extremely dilated pupils, Hofmann realized he wasn't in danger of losing his mind or dying and his experience suddenly took a turn for the better:

Now, little by little I could begin to enjoy the unprecedented colors and plays of shapes that persisted behind my closed eyes. Kaleidoscopic, fantastic images surged in on me, alternating, variegated, opening and then closing themselves in circles and spirals, exploding in colored fountains, rearranging and hybridizing themselves in constant flux. It was particularly remarkable how every acoustic perception, such as the sound of a door handle or a passing automobile, became transformed into optical perceptions. Every sound generated a vividly changing image, with its own consistent form and color.

H/T to Access to Awareness



See:

Rochdale Deja Vu

Psychedelic Saskatchewan

The Misuse of Acid

Cuckoo Clock Economics

Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out

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Smokers and Smokestack Industries

While opposing any form of carbon tax on Greenhouse Gases the Stelmach government in Alberta increases taxes on smokers.

The lone tax increase: Tobacco

Taxes for smokers not smoke stack industries is their motto.

The Ed Stelmach government's first Alberta provincial budget hikes spending by 10%, but has few new initiatives to show for it.Average Albertans will get modest tax relief of about $50 a year, but smokers were hit with a 63-cents-a-pack hike in cigarette taxes as of midnight Thursday, making tobacco taxes in Alberta the highest in Canada.



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The PM and the Stylist

Does Harpers taxpayer funded stylist help him exfoliate?

NDP submits formal request for answers on Harper's stylist

How much does former CBC makeup artist get paid to advise PM on image?

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis (Winnipeg North, NDP):

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister’s fashion consultant travels with him around the world at the taxpayers’ expense. Really. Is it hard to choose the right Conservative blue suit? Did the Prime Minister have trouble sleeping at night, wondering whether he should wear light blue or dark blue socks? To my mind, ordinary people have other priorities.

Can the Prime Minister tell us who pays for his new fashion consultant and how much it costs?

Hon. Peter Van Loan (Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister maintains a tour staff, as do all prime ministers. In fact, I believe members will find that this Prime Minister has a smaller tour staff than all his Liberal predecessors.

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis (Winnipeg North, NDP):

Mr. Speaker, I think a lot of ordinary Canadians are asking why the Prime Minister even needs a stylist.

I am certain that after the disastrous cowboy photo op, prime ministerial lint and stray hairs are at the top of the PMO agenda. Perhaps a one-time consultation but a travelling assistant devoted to tie choices?

The Prime Minister is wasting taxpayer dollars on his own ego. In fact, it was the Prime Minister who harangued his former colleague, Preston Manning, about a $31,000 clothing allowance.

What has changed? Why is it okay now when it was not okay a few years ago?

Hon. Peter Van Loan (Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, a lot of ordinary Canadians are wondering what I am doing answering questions about style and fashion. However, I can assure the House that the Prime Minister pays for all his clothes, unlike some of his predecessors.

Taxpayers paying for Harper's image adviser, Tories admit

It turns out that taxpayers are picking up the tab for Prime Minister Stephen Harper's personal primper.

After two days of ducking media and opposition questions, the Conservatives finally revealed Wednesday that Michelle Muntean is on Harper's government staff. But the revelation raises two more big questions: How much is she being paid? And why is there no government record of her employment.

Harper has been travelling with his personal image adviser for major domestic and international events - most recently at ceremonies at Vimy Ridge in France last week. Muntean helps him perfect his look, including managing his wardrobe and general grooming.

News that Harper uses a style maven had the opposition both frothing and laughing.

See:

Obesity Is A National Problem

Fat Boy Needs Election

Button Up

Baby Fat

Conservatives Take Fashion Lead

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Broken Railroad

Sure blame the workers for your broken railroad,
when it's you that broke it.


Hunter Harrison, CN chief executive, at the company's annual general meeting.
Mr. Harrison said yesterday that after eight months of talks, the union and railway are no closer to a settlement.

And the Liberals and Conservatives in the Senate obliged sourpuss;

Senate passes CN Rail back-to-work bill

See

CN Strike No Hinderance To Honorary Degree

CN not hurting

Could CN Bring Down Harper?

Scab Trains Go Off The Tracks

CN Whines

CN Wildcat

American Union Bosses

CN

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Senator Brown

The appointment of 'elected' Senator Bert Brown by his old pal our PM, Stephen Harper, is a pale horse compared to the old Reform call for a Triple E senate Brown and Harper used to call for. It is based upon the passing of the Conservatives Senate Reform Bill C-43. Of course Harper as PM can appoint Browne without Bill C-43 but he qualified his appointment as being tied to the bill now in the house.

The Senate (14:50)

Mr. Kevin Sorenson (Crowfoot, CPC)

Right Hon. Stephen Harper (Prime Minister, CPC)

Though Ottawa has no obligation by law to appoint the senators from Alberta's "elected" list, Harper was happy to do so to better publicise his campaign for an elected Senate.

Under Harper's Bill C-43, all senators will be appointed based on "popular consultations" with the provinces before they are inducted into the Red Chamber.

"Alberta did some time ago hold a popular consultation for the filling of a Senate vacancy. When that seat comes due, I will recommend to the Governor General the appointment of Mr. Bert Brown," said Harper.

While the Conservatives are claiming that Bert got over 400,000 votes ( they even lie about that he only got just over 300,000) . And while he ran three times, he actually was in a dead heat with Betty Unger. So Harper had a choice between his old pal or Unger.

The real story is how many folks voted against the phony senate elections held in 2004. In fact the vast number of Albertans abstained from voting or spoiled their ballots,for the right wingers running for Alberta Senator.

Nearly one in five ballots spoiled in Alberta Senate elections

More than 170,000 Albertans, or nearly 19.3 per cent of the total number of those who went to the polls on Nov. 22, rejected or spoiled their ballots.

Alberta's chief election officer Brian Fjeldheim said 85,937 people declined to take a senate ballot, and another 84,643 either filled them out improperly or intentionally marked them so they couldn't be counted.

Voter turnout for the overall election was at a historic low of about 46 per cent, while the senate election turnout was around 35 per cent.

For example in one riding in Northern Alberta the total votes spoiled, rejected, or declined came to 8147, while those who cast votes came to 19,154 split between ten candidates. Clearly the majority was with those who rejected this phony election. No one candidate got anywhere near the number of the total protest non vote.

This was in fact the third time we had Senate elections in Alberta. And Bert is the second such senator appointed to the Senate. The last one was Stan Waters another of the Reform party hacks, who was appointed by Brian Mulroney.

It was almost a decade between elections for Senators in Alberta. The first time when Waters and Brown got elected it was all for show, that the Klein regime was onside with Mannings Reformers. It was a political protest to push the Triple E Senate idea.

Then eight years later, with little reason to call one, a Senate election was tacked onto the provincial municipal elections, the Klein regime also tacked on elections for regional Health Boards. That Senate election had more independents then the previous or the later election.

Ironically those Health Board elections were overturned within a year, the elected board members fired and replaced with Klein government appointees. So much for democratic reform.

The election in 2004 for Senators saw right wingers and only right wingers run. In fact the provincial P.C.'s were reluctant to back anyone, or run anyone, until forced to by their pals on the right.

It is all a clever mirage of pseudo democracy by a province that suffers from a democratic deficit as a one party state. Irony abounds. Here we have the Alberta Reformers wanting democracy in Ottawa when it is lacking at home.

Harpers Bill C-43 continues this made in Alberta pseudo democratic reformism. It is all about appearances not real Senate reform. First Harper appoints an unelected Montrealer to be in Cabinet as Public Works Minister by appointing him to the Senate. Thus his minister can avoid public questioning in the house.

Next he calls for term limits for Senators, then he calls for a bill that would encourage the PM to appoint elected senators, when only one province has made this an issue and ever held an election. The rest of Canada could care less. And for good reason.

The senate is an anachronism that actually disenfranchises Canadians regardless of whether Senators are elected or not. And nothing in Harpers phony senate reform bill will change this basic fact.

According to the Constitution, anyone appointed to the Senate must be over the age of 30, a resident of the province they represent and own property worth $4,000, above their debts.

Renters and young people need not apply for the job.



See:

Deforming The Senate

Senate Reform

Abolish the Senate 1

Democracy Is Messy

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Abolish the Senate
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No New Apartments in Alberta

Boardwalk REIT claims it would have to raise rents to $1650 a month in order to have enough cash to build new apartments in Alberta, thus its opposition to rent control. However Boardwalk has not built any apartments, as a REIT it buys up existing properties.

Meanwhile the Stelmach government ignores the recommendations of its own public committee to implement rent controls. Claiming it would discourage apartment construction.

Except all current conversions and construction of multiple person dwellings are not apartments but condos, cause thats where the money is.

Developers have not been building rental units in Alberta, even without rent controls. Despite the rapid growth in the Edmonton area, there were 5,050 fewer rental units last year than in 1987, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.

See:

Inflation In Alberta

Housing


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Tigers As Commodities

The destruction of the wild for expansion of Palm Oil production in Asia is the greatest threat to the last refuge of the wild Tiger.The Ape Will Lie Down With The Tiger That and the Chinese taste for Tigers.

China criticised for 'tiger wine'

BBC[Wednesday, April 18, 2007 15:49]

A recent poll declared the tiger the world's most popular animal China has come under fire for allowing tigers to be bred for the production of so-called "tiger bone wine". The drink is reportedly made by steeping tiger carcasses in rice wine. Those who drink the wine believe it makes them strong. Chinese delegates at the International Tiger Symposium in Nepal are arguing for the lifting of a current ban on the trade in tiger bones and skins. But other Asian nations with threatened tiger populations want the ban to stay. Emotive issue There has been a forceful exchange of views on the issue at the symposium, according to the BBC correspondent in Kathmandu, Charles Haviland. Experts say there are several reasons why tiger numbers have drastically declined, but just one has grabbed the limelight, our correspondent says. The argument centres on the existence of so-called "tiger farms" in China, which have bred thousands of captive tigers with the ostensible purpose of entertaining visitors. But the conservation group WWF, which is chairing the symposium, says these farms are fronts for the production of tiger bone wine. WWF also says the captive tigers cannot survive in the wild, and believes the production of wine and underhand trade in skin and bones also threaten to make wild tiger poaching more lucrative. A senior WWF official said the discussions were heated, with Chinese academics saying their country should lift its ban on the trade in tiger parts. But experts from states like Nepal and Bangladesh, which have threatened tiger populations, are urging that the ban should remain. On Wednesday, a more formal forum of government delegations will begin discussing the fate of the majestic beast, which a recent television poll declared to be the world's most popular animal.

Businesses call for lift on tiger parts ban

Kathmandu - The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has expressed concerns over a campaign by Chinese businessmen to lift a ban on the trade of tiger parts, Kathmandu media reported on Wednesday.

"Since China is the biggest market of tiger parts, the lifting of the ban will affect conservation efforts," the English-language Himalayan Times quoted Sue Lieberman, the director of the WWF's global species programme, as saying. "This is going to be the real and biggest threat for the tigers and the tiger conservationists."

Businessmen are reportedly putting pressure on the Chinese government to lift the ban and are also stepping up their campaign on the international community to allow China to commercially breed tigers for their body parts.

International trade in all tigers and tiger products is banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

However, wildlife organisations said illegal trade in big cat skins and body parts is worth about $8-billion a year. The tiger body parts are in high demands in China and other East Asian countries for their perceived medicinal value.

The concern expressed by the WWF coincided with the start of an international tiger symposium in Kathmandu that was being attended by tiger experts and conservationist from 12 nations, including China.

The symposium is to discuss tiger conservation in 10 Asian countries and draw up strategies to protect tigers, which are considered an endangered species.

The WWF estimated 5 000 to 7 000 tigers live in the wild, of which about 4 000 are royal Bengal tigers found in India, Nepal and Bangladesh.

The WWF said that over the past 100 years, tiger numbers have declined by 95 percent and three sub-species have become extinct - with a fourth not seen in the wild for more than 25 years.

The latest government figures from Nepal said about 370 tigers live there in the wild, distributed in Chitwan National Park in central Nepal and Bardiya National Park in western Nepal. - Sapa-DPA

Beasts of burden

As with humans, those animals that cannot profitably be integrated into the productive process are simply discarded. Domestication has focused on a narrow number of species; others not entirely domesticated have been preserved for recreational slaughter - such as deer. But many other species have been exterminated altogether, threatening the biodiversity of the planet. In ‘colonial India and Africa, the flower of British manhood indulged in veritable orgies of big game slaughter’. In north America, the wolf ‘became the symbol of untamed nature’ and was exterminated in most areas, as earlier in Europe, while between 1850 and 1880, 75 million buffalo were killed by hunters (Thomas). In each case, mass slaughter was seen as part of the divinely sanctioned transformation of wilderness into civilisation.

The same mania of extermination fuelled the hunting of humans defined as animals, such as the Aboriginal peoples of Australia, or the indigenous population of the Philippines, the subject of ‘goo-goo hunts’ after the US conquest of 1898.

Many other animal species have disappeared because of the destruction and fragmentation of their habitat. The animal industry is often directly involved in the wrecking of fragile local ecosystems, particularly when forests are cleared to make way for grazing land.

Today we are used to seeing the last survivors of endangered species conserved in zoos. The origin of these zoos formed part of the same colonial mentality that exterminated so many creatures: ‘the spectacle of the zoo animal must be understood historically as a spectacle of colonial or imperial power’ (Baker) with the captive animals serving as ‘simultaneous emblems of human mastery over the natural world and of English dominion over remote territories’ (Ritvo).

Anthropocentric humanism has been detrimental to humans as well as animals: ‘The brutal confinement of animals ultimately serves only to separate men and women from their own potentialities’ (Surrealist Group, cited in Law). What Camatte calls ‘the biological dimension of the revolution’ will involve the rediscovery of those aspects of humanity, some labelled as ‘bestial’, that have been underdeveloped by capital such as rhythm, imagination and wildness.

One consequence of this would be that humans would no longer see themselves as always above and distinct from other animals: ‘Communism... is not domination of nature but reconciliation, and thus regeneration of nature: human beings no longer treat nature simply as an object for their development, as a useful thing, but as a subject... not separate from them if only because nature is in them’ (Camatte).

See:

Tiger Tiger Burning Bright

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You Talkin' To Me

The emotional plague continues to reveal itself in America where Gore Kulture meets everyday life.

"You talkin' to me?" Alone in his apartment, Travis postures and practices his moves in front of the mirror.


A picture from Kimveer Gill's Blog The Dawson College killer.

Could "Ismail Ax" Be A Part Of This Picture (NBC)

For two days the world has been searching for the meaning of the phrase "Ismail Ax."
Those two words, written in red ink on one arm of Cho, the 23-year-old Virginia Tech student behind the campus shooting spree which killed 32 students, set off a massive Internet hunt by the public Tuesday for clues to what might have motivated the nation's worst mass killings.

And today a theory has emerged proposing an answer which shows the killer's sick sense of humour - that it is a web language term used to signify a query.

Cho was a keen internet user who dubbed himself "?" in email and web conversations.

A web-savvy source told The Daily Telegraph Online today Ismail is a term used in text tagging - a way to tag words for searchability online.

"He was already known for signing his name as a question mark," the suorce said. "And the meaning of this tag represents question. The name Ismail itself represent question."

One of the photographs in the Virginia Tech killer's "multimedia manifesto" may have been inspired by a bloody South Korean movie.

"Oldboy," from the respected director Chan-woo Park, is about a man unjustly imprisoned for 15 years. After escaping, he goes on a rampage against his captor. In one scene, he dispatches more than a dozen henchmen with the aid of a hammer.

In the package of materials that Cho Seung-Hui sent to NBC News, one photo shows the killer brandishing a hammer in a pose similar to one from the film.

"Oldboy," the second film in Park's "Vengeance Trilogy," won the Gran Prix prize at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.

The connection was spotted by Professor Paul Harris of Virginia Tech, who alerted authorities, according to London's Evening Standard. The similarities have prompted speculation, especially in online forums, that Cho's entire massacre may have been inspired by "Oldboy.

Dr. James Gilligan, who has spent many years studying violence as a prison psychiatrist in Massachusetts, and as a professor at Harvard and now at N.Y.U., believes that some debilitating combination of misogyny and homophobia is a “central component” in much, if not most, of the worst forms of violence in this country.

“What I’ve concluded from decades of working with murderers and rapists and every kind of violent criminal,” he said, “is that an underlying factor that is virtually always present to one degree or another is a feeling that one has to prove one’s manhood, and that the way to do that, to gain the respect that has been lost, is to commit a violent act.”

"We see that the compass of the emotional plague coincides approximately with the broad compass of social abuse, which has always been and still is combatted by every social freedom movement. With some qualifications, it can be said that the sphere of the emotional plague coincides with that of "political reaction" and perhaps even with the principle of politics in
general. This would hold true, however, only if the basic principle of all politics, namely thirst for power and special prerogatives, were carried over into those spheres of life which we do not think of as political in the
usual sense of the word."

"Those who are truly alive are kindly and unsuspecting in their human relationships and consequently endangered under present conditions. They assume that others think and act generously, kindly, and helpfully, in accordance with the laws of life. This natural attitude, fundamental to healthy children as well as to primitive man, inevitably represents a great danger in the struggle for a rational way of life as long as the emotional plague subsists, because the plague-ridden impute their own manner of thinking and acting to their fellow men. A kindly man believes that all men are kindly, while one infected with the plague believes that all men lie and cheat and are hungry for power."

The Emotional Plague /Listen Little Man by Wilhelm Reich
"

See:

Nazi Gay Killer Wanted to be a Cop

The Real Crime In Canada

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Kimveer Gill, Cho Seung-Hui, Dawson College, Virginia Tech, College shootings, Montreal, Massacre, shooting, crime, Columbine, video, videogaming, movies, firstpersonsooters, Reich, emotional plague

Mother Nature Ends Seal Hunt

Those that oppose the seal hunt can say thanks mom, and the rest of us can pray for the sealers. Of course the anti-hunt activists skedaddled off the ice, leaving the fishers to fend for themselves.We're just sealers, not savages

CTV.ca

Sealing vessels remain stuck on ice off NL
CTV.ca - 47 minutes ago
ST. JOHN'S, NL -- As many as 100 sealing vessels remain stuck in pack ice off Newfoundland's northeast coast and southern Labrador, amid concerns of shrinking food and fuel supplies.
Crushing ice imprisons sealing ships Globe and Mail
Crews evacuated from ice-gripped vessels St. John's Telegram

Crushing ice imprisons sealing ships
Globe and Mail, Canada - 6 hours ago
The sealers were homebound after last week's hunt, an event that draws animal lovers from around the world to protest against the annual slaughter. ...
Sealers put on ice Guelph Mercury (subscription)
Canadian Seal Hunters Trapped by Ice Forbes

CTV.ca

Protesters pull out as poor ice slows sealers off Nfld. Globe and Mail, Canada - 17 Apr 2007 Sealers and animal-welfare activists had been bracing for potentially violent confrontations on the ice floes, but poor ice conditions and a lower harp-seal ... Anti-Seal Hunt Activists Go Home All Headline News

See:

Attacking the Fishers

A Word From Our Sealers

Not So Cute Seals

Seals Threaten Fish

Royal Newfoundlanders Died For the Seal Hunt

Your Anti-Sealing Donation At Work

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seals, sealing, seal-hunt, anti-sealing, Newfoundland, Canada, Watson, HSUS, IFAW, Nova Scotia, cod, fish, grey seal, fishers, fishermen,