May Day Redux

Rabble.ca has published an excellent essay on May Day versus Labour Day, by Canadian Marxist Leo Panitch. He refer's to Bryan Palmers book; Cultures of Darkness:

Palmer was a student of E.P.Thompson's (The Making of the English Working Class) and is a leading Canadian Labour Historian. Panitch sums up Palmers thesis which coincides with mine, click on the title to read it.

Debate on the origins of May Day is conducted in the truncated Babble.ca


What Palmer says about May Day fits well with my Origins and Traditions of May Day

This radical May Day tradition is nowhere better captured than in Bryan Palmer's monumental book, Cultures of Darkness: Night Travels in the Histories of Transgression [From Medieval to Modern] (Monthly Review Press, 2000). Palmer, one of Canada's foremost Marxist labour historians, has done more than anyone to recover and analyze the cultures of resistance that working people developed in practicing class struggle from below. He's strongly critical of labour-movement leaders who've appealed to those elements of working-class culture that crave ersatz bourgeois respectability.

Set amid chapters on peasants and witches in late feudalism, on pirates and slaves during the rise of mercantile imperialism, on fraternal lodge members and anarchists in the new cities of industrial capitalism, on lesbians, homosexuals and communists under fascism, and on the mafia, youth gangs and race riots, jazz, beats and bohemians in modern U.S. capitalism, are two chapters that brilliantly tell the story of May Day.

One locates Haymarket in the context of the Victorian bourgeoisie's fears of what they called the “dangerous classes.” This account confirms the central role of the “anarcho-communist movement in Chicago [which] was blessed with talented leaders, dedicated ranks and the most active left-wing press in the country. The dangerous classes were becoming truly dangerous.”

The other chapter, a survey of “Festivals of Revolution,” locates “the celebratory May Day, a festive seizure of working-class initiative that encompassed demands for shorter hours, improvement in conditions, and socialist agitation and organization” against the backdrop of the traditional spring calendar of class confrontation.

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
rabble.ca, Panitch, Palmer, Thompson, MayDay

Tories Are Boozers

I don't klnow what it is about the Tories but they seem to have an inordinate fondness for booze, take King Ralph. Well in the new Federal Budget they made a big deal out of dropping excise taxes for Canadian wineries and Beer Microbreweries. Just in time for Canada Day, hic.

— Effective July 1st, 100-per-cent Canadian wine produced by small vintners will be exempt from duty.

— Effective July 1st, the rate of excise duty on beer produced by small brewers will be reduced.

Text of James Flaherty's budget speech

So I guess that makes the Liberals and NDP Pot Heads.



Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Canada, Budget, Federal, goverment, Conservatives, Flaherty, tax-breaks

The Man Who Would Be King

A tip o' the blog Steve Janke for this. It gives new meaning to that old conservative phrase; For King and Country. Well we know he is an autarch.

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Harper, PM, PMO, Canada, politics, conservatives, government

Tories Good News Budget

They kept their promises even the ones that we don't like. But over all the budget aimed its tax cuts at the working class, the first budget in twenty years, yes including the Mulroney years, to do so.

As I predicted the BQ will back the Tories on the budget.

Honk For Public Day Care

Harper Plays Charest

They will hold their noses as Duceppe says and vote for the Budget, which the Liberals and NDP will oppose.

The budget gives tax breaks to workers with all of us getting a $1000 tax credit for home purchases of computers etc. apprenticeship tax breaks, tool tax breaks, child athletics/sports tax break, etc. The savings to workers, pensioners, and even small business offset the corporate tax cuts in the budget. It also cut off low income earners from income tax, As a result, about 655,000 low-income Canadians will be removed from the tax rolls altogether.

It is a blue collar budget, not a champagne budget, one aimed at staying in power for the rest of the year. The Liberals call it a political budget, which it is,there is something for everyone, a chicken in every pot, a way of forstalling another election. It is not so much a Conservative budget as a populist one. Expect the Tories poll numbers to jump accordingly.

The real Conservative budget will be revealed next year. For now we can celebrate a budget that gives us back some of our money, while surpluses remain for social spending.

That issue will be the fight the Conservatives will face over the next year, how to spend the surplus on social programs, and which social programs. How they will deal with the environment and with the fiscal imbalance.

On childcare they have sweetened the pot by claiming they will look at funding daycare spaces, how well that is still to be determined, and so the public pressure has to continue, they have weakened already on their corporate tax credit for daycare by saying this.

As for the Liberals promises, well they weren't worth the paper they were written on once the election was called.



Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Canada, Budget, Federal, goverment, Conservatives, Flaherty, tax-breaks

The Capitalist System

Long Live May Day

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
IWW, MayDay

Sex Workers Want A Union

Sex Workers across the world are protesting today demanding the right to unionize. It's May Day.

India
Kolkata sex workers seek recognition as labourers

Taiwan

Prostitutes to ride for more rights

OLDEST PROFESSION: Sex workers will appeal to the government today to decriminalize their way of earning a living and will announce the formation of a labor union

Sex workers call for an end to policemen 'fishing'

Canada
Canadian prostitutes bought, sold and forcibly moved, study shows


Also See:

Legalize & Unionize the Sex Trade

Whose Family Values?

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
prostitutes,, sex-workers,, union,, labour,, MayDay,, protest, Canada, India, Asia

Russia Celebrates May Day

No tanks, no commisars, finally Russia has a real May Day. And real workers and commies celebrating and demanding the end of Mafia Capitalism.
Ivan Klyuchenko, a 17-year-old starting university this year, said: "Our industry is in ruins and wages are pitiful. A lifetime of work is not enough to buy a room in a Moscow suburb."
Trade unions, Communists march through Moscow on May Day



Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Russian, unions, MayDay, May1st, wokers, communists

Carnival of Investing

Ah shucks what can I say I posted my article; Income Trusts are a Ponzi Scheme to Canadian Capitalist and he has kindly published it in his 20th edition of the Carnival of Investing.

Call it contributing my two bits worth. And rather ironic that a lefty gets published in a Capitalist Blog.

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Canadian-Capitalist, Canada, investment, capitalism, carnival-of-investing, blogs, bloggers, blogging

Census 2006 Count Me Out

In the 1980's a scandal erupted that Census Canada/Statistic Canada had given information to the RCMP as part of their spying on Canadians operation.

This was the time when the RCMP were exposed for infiltrating unions, burning barns, infiltrating the left and anti-war movements, universities and the Quebec nationalist movements. The Canadian Census was supposed to be secure and confidential. And it was a crime not to fill in your census form.

Well I refused, and when I got called from the irate bureaucrat from Stats Canada informing me that I had to comply I replied I would be happy to if he in writing could assure me that my information was secure and not subject to being handed to the RCMP. Well all a fluster he informed me my information was secure, and I assured him I would only believe him when I had it in writing. Suffice it to say he did not provide me with that assurance in writing. Nor did he press charges.


Today Statistics Canada has contracted out its data collection to Lockheed Martin, yes that Lockheed Martin the company that advertises on US television about how it is Defending America.

This means our data is not secure. Vive Canada.ca has launched a campaign to halt this contracting out and failing that are calling for Non Participation in the 2006 Census.

Count Me Out!

Lockheed Martin (the biggest U.S. weapons contractor and in fact the biggest weapons contractor in the world) is working on the next Canadian Census. That's because Statistics Canada chose to contract out the part of the census dealing with software, hardware and printing to Lockheed Martin--despite the fact that Stat Can promotes itself at home and internationally as a leader in information gathering.

What this means is that your tax dollars for the census will go to a non-Canadian corporation. It means that Canadian jobs will be lost due to the automation of the census. And it means that a large part of the census will be handled by a corporation that makes weapons of mass destruction. A corporation that reaps huge benefits financially from the war in Iraq, a war that Canadians rightfully oppose. A corporation that works behind the scenes to influence U.S. public policy to help maximize its own profits. A corporation that is leading the development of the Star Wars missile-defense program for the Pentagon. A corporation that is consistently rated one of the worst corporations in the world for various reasons including human rights abuses. And a corporation that might invade your privacy.

Say no to Lockheed Martin's involvement in the Canadian census. Say yes to Canada. Join Canadians across the country and BOYCOTT the census.

We offer suggestions for several different actions you can take, from sending an email form letter, to simply completing only the paper census rather than the online census, to a full boycott. To find out how you can take action, just click here: census.vivelecanada.ca

To access only the email form letter, click here: census.vivelecanada.ca/letter.php

For more information on the issue, visit: The Census Issue

And please visit our partner site on this action, CountMeOut.ca

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Stats-Canada,, Census, Census2006,, Lockheed,, contracting-out,, RCMP,, security,, privacy,, Canada,, government

Carnival of Socialism is Out

The Carnival of Socialism is now online here. Enjoy




Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Marxism,, , Socialism,, , carnival,, , France,, , Nepal,, , post, modernism,, , Maoism,, , CPE,, , class, consciousness,, , Newton’s, law