J K Galbraith RIP

He was the tallest economist in modern history towering as he did above his peers at almost seven feet. He was Canadian, giving him a unique view of American capitalism.

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

Embodying all the social democratic traditions this country offers as well as our most important export to that country; humour.

His brilliant deployment of subversive weapons -- irony, satire, laughter -- did not always please the more sedate members of his profession. But it vastly pleased the rest of us. Ken used the whiplash phrase and the sardonic thrust for several purposes: to reconnect academic economics, walled off in mathematical equations, with human and social reality; to rebuke the apostles of selfishness and greed; and to give the neglected, the abused and the insulted of our world a better break in life.
JK Galbraith's Towering Spirit

His most definitive work was on the Wall Street Crash as well as his critique of the supply side school of economics of the Von Mises and Hayek and their bastard son Milton Friedman; his most popular book The Affluent Society.

It was his smallish 1958 book, The Affluent Society, that earned Galbraith his popular reknown and professional emnity. Although the thesis was not astoundingly new - having long been argued by Veblen, Mitchell and Knight - his attack on the myth of "consumer sovereignty" went against the cornerstone of mainstream economics and, in many ways, the culturally hegemonic "American way of life". John Kenneth Galbraith

Forsaking Galbraith's good sense by Rick Salutin

It's too bad John Kenneth Galbraith died last Saturday at 97 — just before the Conservative budget. He'd have been the ideal commentator. He said it all nearly 50 years ago, in The Affluent Society. Today it's called the Humming-Along society as in: “The economy is humming along.”

His thesis was: Despite so much abstract wealth, most citizens in our affluent society lead impoverished lives. That's because the wealth gets frittered away in private consumption while the common goods that render life full — education, health, culture, even the air — are neglected since they tend to be in the public realm. The Harper budget is a fine example. It fritters away the potential in tax breaks to individuals.

In praise of ... JK Galbraith

Not that Professor Galbraith exonerated his calling. "Economics," he wrote "is a subject profoundly conducive to cliche, resonant with boredom." Yet Galbraith was the living refutation of that. Consistently in his lectures and writings he put great themes into the language, themes which lit up the study of economics for those who had never been taught it. The most compelling of these, which even a cursory daily look displays, was the co-existence of private affluence with public squalor.

A second, no less abundantly evident in this age of "must have", was the manufacture by producers of desires which consumers then dutifully come to believe are real needs. A third was the convenient view, so entrenched in the 1980s, that while the rich ought to be given more to make them work harder, giving more to the worst-off would only make them work less. Hypocrisy will sleep more sweetly tonight for the knowledge that Galbraith is no longer around to look down from his very great height and skewer it.

I rather like his quotes on economics. They were like those of GB. Shaw who once said; If all the economists in the world were laid end to end they would still not reach a conclusion.

"Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists"The legacy of JK Galbraith

"In economics", he once said, "the majority is always wrong."

He was particularly outspoken about the folly of economic forecasting: "The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable." The Wisdom Of JK Galbraith

Who will inherit the mantle of JK Galbraith? Ironically this particular Gaurdian article on Galbraith forgets to mention his son and namesake James Galbraith.

His BBC TV series in the seventies, based on writings is also a book; the Age of Uncertainty, showed rows and rows of thousands abandoned tanks in the US at the height of the Viet Nam war, giving a visual image of the very nature of what Schumpeter called creative destruction and what Galbraith called the waste of capitalism, military production.

His New Industrial State (1967) expanded on Galbraith's theory of the firm, arguing that the orthodox theories of the perfectly competitive firm fell far short in analytical power. Firms, Galbraith claimed, were oligopolistic, autonomous institutions vying for market share (and not profit maximization) which wrested power away from owners (entrepreneurs/shareholders), regulators and consumers via conventional means (e.g. vertical integration, advertising, product differentiation) and unconventional ones (e.g. bureaucratization, capture of political favor), etc. Naturally, these were themes already well-espoused in the old American Institutionalist literature, but in the 1960s, they had been apparently forgotten in economics John Kenneth Galbraith

Others have written his obituary even his opponents have been glowing in their faint praise of this great Canadian.

Despite his liberal views, Mr. Galbraith was befriended by conservative intellectuals such as William F. Buckley Jr. and economist Arthur Laffer. "The world is not just made up of people who turn out to be right," Mr. Laffer said. "It is the debate that's critical. ... It is the debate that moves the world forward. And there is no one better to debate than John Kenneth Galbraith."
JK Galbraith's 'genius' recalled

John Kenneth Galbraith, 1908-2006

GLOBE EDITORIAL

J.K. Galbraith, 1908-2006

May 1, 2006

THEY CALL IT the dismal science, but in the hands of John Kenneth Galbraith, economics was neither dismal nor much of a science. He turned his knowledge of economic basics into social criticism for a country that emerged from the sacrifices and privations of the Depression and World War II hell-bent on enjoying its newfound prosperity. ''Technical economists," as he once called them, might win the big prizes, but his wit and the Olympian perspective afforded in part by his 6-foot, 8-inch height won him both millions of readers and the confidence of Democratic presidents like John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton, and would-be presidents like Adlai Stevenson, Eugene McCarthy, and George McGovern.

The worldview of Galbraith, who died Saturday at 97 in Cambridge, was grounded in the waste-not, want-not ethic of an Ontario farm. He used education, first at a local college and then at the University of California at Berkeley, to move from that life to one of government service and a longtime professorship at Harvard. The experience helped to make him a believer in the power of government to use its resources not just to avoid the kind of economic collapse that brought on the Depression but also to create the schools, public transportation, and other civic institutions that can even out social inequality.

Say nothing but good of Galbraith

A theme of the posthumous attack on Galbraith was that monetarism had won the intellectual battle: that Friedman was right and the Keynesian Galbraith wrong. There was also the usual snide stuff that Galbraith, who had set out to be a populariser, was not 'really' an economist - because he did not rely on mathematical models. Well, Galbraith may not have followed modern economics down the narrow paths of econometrics; but he was every inch an economist and was not made president of the American Economic Association for nothing. He was quite simply the most famous, most widely read, most popular (and tallest) economist in the world. For some members of his profession this was, of course, unforgivable.

Professor Amartya Sen, our distinguished Nobel Prize winner in economics, was mindful of the resentment in his profession when he said some years ago: 'Galbraith's contribution still doesn't get enough praise.' As Galbraith's biographer Richard Parker pointed out, Galbraith realised the (often unrealistic) assumptions of classical economics were all very well, but it was important to connect the atomistic world of 'perfect competition' with the balance of power in societies.

A theme of Galbraith's major works - most notably in American Capitalism, The Affluent Society and The New Industrial State - is the need to beware the accretion of excessive economic power, not least to the business corporation. He was a Keynesian, with a deep understanding of the limitations of markets.

His concern about the coexistence of 'private affluence and public squalor' was well founded, and no less relevant today. Always on the left, a liberal in US terminology, Galbraith championed the underdog and was scathing about those economists who had a religious faith in the ability of 'markets' to produce a fair outcome in society.

John Kenneth Galbraith, 97, Dies; Economist Held a Mirror to Society

From the 1930's to the 1990's Mr. Galbraith helped define the terms of the national political debate, influencing both the direction of the Democratic Party and the thinking of its leaders.

He tutored Adlai E. Stevenson, the Democratic nominee for president in 1952 and 1956, on Keynesian economics. He advised President John F. Kennedy (often over lobster stew at the Locke-Ober restaurant in their beloved Boston) and served as his ambassador to India.

Though he eventually broke with President Lyndon B. Johnson over the war in Vietnam, he helped conceive of Mr. Johnson's Great Society program and wrote a major presidential address that outlined its purposes. In 1968, pursuing his opposition to the war, he helped Senator Eugene J. McCarthy seek the Democratic nomination for president.

In the course of his long career, he undertook a number of government assignments, including the organization of price controls in World War II and speechwriting for Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Kennedy and Johnson.

He drew on his experiences in government to write three satirical novels. One in 1968, "The Triumph," a best seller, was an assault on the State Department's slapstick efforts to assist a mythical banana republic, Puerto Santos. In 1990, he took on the Harvard economics department with "A Tenured Professor," ridiculing, among others, a certain outspoken character who bore no small resemblance to himself.

At his death, Mr. Galbraith was the Paul M. Warburg emeritus professor of economics at Harvard, where he had taught for most of his career. A popular lecturer, he treated economics as an aspect of society and culture rather than as an arcane discipline of numbers.

GOOGLE News coverage of Galbraiths death.

John Kenneth Galbraith - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Conflict and Conversion: Henry S. Dennison and the Shaping of J.K. Galbraith's Economic Thought

Journal article by Kyle Bruce; Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 34, 2000

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Bella Ciao

While wandering the WWW I came across this news site from the European Left; Bella Ciao which I have added to my side bar under News. Never can have too much alternative news from the left.



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Daniel Barenboim's Dream

I watched a special today on BBC World on the great classical pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim. It was an inspiration.

Daniel Barenboim: The Power of Music

Saturday 6th May at 1230 GMT & 1930 GMT and on Sunday 7th May at 0730 & 1730 GMT.

BBC arts correspondent Razia Iqbal reports on her travels with the world famous Israeli conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim. Barenboim who considers music "an international language" that can cross barriers, visits Jerusalem and Ramallah, where he talks about the role of music in society and politics.

He is not only great because of his status as a muscian but as a pro-Palestinian Jew who is not a Zionist. His personal efforts to create a harmonious community co-exsitance between Jews and Palestinians in Israel has created a musical orchestra that belies the hostility between these competing States.

Anyone who has heard his extraordinary West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, an ensemble made up of Arab and Israeli musicians, cannot fail to be moved.

Here is peaceful collaboration in action; young people from communities which, though apparently hopelessly divided, have come together to make music and, in the process, understand more about each other and each other's cultures.

'No matter how great an individual you are, music teaches you that creativity only works in groups,' says Barenboim, 'and the expression of the group is very often larger than the sum of the parts.' Barenboim's harmonious message goes beyond classical music

Ah yes cooperation, collectivism, all that stuff the right wing likes to denounce. But that reality shows is the only way we function as social beings. And the only way we will ever overcome hatred, prejudice and war. The individual as social being, as the sum of all their social parts, reflected in us. In our freedom. And freedom for Barenboim is essential. It is the source of his dream.

Cooperation and collective endeavour to dare to believe in a differnt Palestine and Israel. One that reflected his and his close friend, Palestinian academic Edward Said, common understanding. That only through dialouge, in this case music reflecting ideas, can there be understanding and peace.

Also a highlight of Voices Forward, the recent film fest that aimed to promote Israeli and Palestinian dialogue -- conductor Daniel Barenboim and the late writer Edward Said create the Middle East's most unique peace initiative: An orchestra made up of young Arab, Palestinian and Jewish players. TORONTO JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Globe and Mail, Canada - 5 May 2006

Barenboims Dream is not his alone but one he shared with Said and that is shared by those of us who oppose the current State of affairs in Israel and Palestine.

I Have a Dream

Only twenty-four hours. To change the world you must stick to this timetable. In my dream, I am Prime Minister of Israel. My baton conducts a magnificent new symphony- a Treaty celebrating the harmonious co-existence of Israel and Palestine. In this work I will accomplish what has been impossible until now - the equal rights of these two peoples in the Middle East. The theme of the overture has Jerusalem as the common capital city. This Holy Town should immediately become a shared home for Christians, Muslims and Jews. For me, Jerusalem is a city that still resonates with a history from beyond the ancient civilizations of Rome and Athens.

It is Thursday morning, eight am. A sunny sky, the air mild. It's a pleasant autumn day that has an air about it of history in the making. The philosopher Baruch Spinoza knocks at the door of my residence, diagonally across from the wall of prayers. Though he has been dead for 300 years I have selected him as my advisor. He has brought my favorite food, hummus. There is also fresh pressed orange juice and strong coffee.

Just as we finish strengthening ourselves the phone rings. It is my friend Edward Said. In real life he is Professor of Literature at Columbia University, but in my dream he has been selected by the Palestinians to sign the peace treaty. 'Hey', I say to him, 'where are you? We want to make peace today, and you're going to be late?' When he finally turns up, all three of us know that there will be no turning back. To start with we decide that the Peace-treaty will be enacted from the 15th of May: because on this day fifty-one years ago both our peoples were at war. For the Jews it was the War of Independence, for the Palestinians it was the 'Alnakbah' - ' the Catastrophe.' From tomorrow this anniversary of war will only be known as the 'Day of Peace'.

Three conditions must be met, or the Treaty will not be worth the paper it is written on. Firstly, both nations are obligated to work together. This cooperation will be so tight that not only our economic futures, but also our cultural and scientific futures, will be interwoven. This ensures that Palestine and Israel will be as close-knit as a family. It also implies solidarity. For example, what is to be done with the money European banks stole from the Jews during the Fascist era? My dream is, if there are no survivors to whom to give the money, then Israel should spend the millions of dollars on Palestine refugees.

Secondly, I am in favour of arming both nations. Israel must remain vigilant against the Arab world – but so should Palestine, (at least for her own peace of mind). It will be very difficult for the ultra-religious Jews to accept this. I'll take options in my treaty to separate Church and State – like in the rest of the Western world. I would do everything for the religious and for the study of religion. After all, Judaism is almost a science, and the Talmud is much more than just a text we declaim. But what will I do about the spectre of radical religious groups…?

Of course this runs counter to the State ideology of Israel, Zionism will hold no cant with discourse when it can run around screaming Anti-Semitism at it's critics. And heaven forbid you be a Jew who castigates the State for being less than free and democratic. Let alone culturally open.

DANIEL Barenboim is a Jewish conductor who attracts lightning, most recently when an Israeli minister called him "a real Jew-hater, a real anti-Semite". He has been accused of worse and it makes him angry. But right now he has another bee in his bonnet.

"I am very unhappy, and have been for a long time, about the place of music in society," he says. It makes him so exasperated that he has devoted a series of broadcast talks, commissioned by the BBC for its Reith Lectures (the equivalent of the Boyer Lectures), on the subject. He began pianissimo in London early last month and built his theme during the ensuing weeks in Chicago, Berlin, Ramallah and finally Jerusalem.

After breaking an Israeli cultural taboo by giving a performance in Jerusalem of Richard Wagner, whose music sometimes accompanied Jews to the Nazi gas chambers, he was accused of cultural rape.

"Someone had to explain to me the meaning of that expression," he says wryly. While acknowledging Wagner was a virulent anti-Semite, Barenboim contends that he was not responsible for Auschwitz.

Last summer, his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra of young Israeli and Arab musicians set alight the Proms in London before playing in Ramallah, the Palestinian town under virtual occupation in the West Bank.

He feels less at ease in Israel, where he lived briefly as a child, than in Germany, where he runs the Berlin State Opera and is a champion of German music. He is also completing his few months as musical director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

So what is his beef about music's place in society? "My main grievance is that music is not any more part of the general culture," he replies. "When you go to kindergarten and school, you don't come into contact with classical music. No one seems to think it's as important to know your Beethoven as your Shakespeare or Goethe." Music to mend a broken world

Daniel Barenboim - The Paradox of the Peacemaker

By Norman Lebrecht / November 6, 2002

There is no bigger name or more complex paradox on the modern concert platform than the Argentine-born Israeli pianist-turned-conductor and peace campaigner, Daniel Barenboim.

Publicly, Barenboim is a paragon of liberal enlightenment. He has brought together an orchestra of young Israelis and Palestinians in Weimar, beneath the shadow of the Buchenwald death camp, and bravely given recitals in the insurrectionist West Bank towns of Ramallah and Bir Zeit. He has just brought out in America a book of conversations with the New York-based Palestinian academic Edward Said, whom he describes as 'my most intimate friend'.

In Jerusalem he declared that prime minister Ariel Sharon would be unwelcome at his concerts. The Israeli right clamoured for his arrest over curfew violations and hecklers in a restaurant called him 'traitor' (his wife, Elena, loyally pelted them with salad vegetables). But when the Madrid government awarded him Spanish citizenship last month, Barenboim insisted that he would continue to travel the world on his restrictive Israeli passport.

In Germany, where he heads the Berlin state opera, he is a symbol of anti-racism. In the US, as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, he successfully premiered a memorial symphony for Aids victims and a celebration of Afro-American creativity.

Barenboim's own web page testifies to his enlightenment politics, influenced as they are by Spinoza another Jew who was hated by the Jewish establishment of his day.

What is interesting is that I have been reading Toni Negri's study of Spinoza in light of Marx. And Spinoza was one of the most important early philosophers to the young Hegelians, as Marx and Engels point out in the Holy Family. He remains one of the most over looked and under rated of philosophers by those in academia even today.

And it could well be because of an inherent anti-semitism that underscores the dismissal of his work on Freedom. He was after all an athiest, and a defender of athiesm while it was still a hanging offense in England. While a materialist philosopher, he also embraced a metaphysics that undercuts the empiricism of the later English and German philosophers.

That metaphysics, which Negri tackles, is one of Freedom. And it is just this appeal to Freedom that Barnenboim uses as the basis of his critique of Zionism and it's State in Istrael.

The Purpose Of The State Is Freedom

Daniel Barenboim on the relevance of Spinoza's Ethics to the conflict in the Middle East - and music

I read Spinoza's Ethics for the first time when I was 13 years old. Of course we studied the Bible at school - which for me is the ultimate philosophical work. However, reading Spinoza opened up a new dimension for me. I am still dedicated to it. Spinoza's simple principle 'man thinks' has become an existential mindset for me. My copy of Ethics has become dog-eared and torn. For years I took it with me on my travels and in hotel rooms or intervals in concerts I became absorbed by many of the principles.

Spinoza's Ethics is the best training ground for the intellect, because Spinoza like no other philosopher teaches us the radical freedom of thought. Only an individual who reflects on all consequences in life is able to find a form of happiness. This awareness has become a kind of pre-Freudian self-analysis for me. Spinoza helps me to see myself objectively. This makes life bearable even in experiencing suffering; and with the teachings from the Ethics the world is perceived as manageable.

The great Voltaire once accused Spinoza of 'abusing metaphysics'. Is not the uncompromising nature of metaphysics more important today than ever? Has not liberated thinking become the most valued freedom at a time when political systems, social constraints, moral codes and political correctness often control our thinking?

Spinoza would not tolerate restrictions, imposed by any political or religious system or by any moral attitude. He struggled for the ideal of free thought. Hardly any other philosopher made so many enemies. He was labelled 'a troublemaking Jew', banned from the synagogue and from the academic establishment. Even his pupils would acknowledge him in private. And when Karl Ludwig asked the impoverished lonely philosopher to lecture at the University of Heidelberg, he turned him down. Spinoza could not guarantee that his thinking would not threaten 'widely accepted religious concepts'. The philosopher in him preferred the quiet retiring life to a bourgeois career.

Spinoza had no particular interest in music. Nonetheless, his logic was influenced by his approach to music. My father, who studied philosophy, was the first to introduce me to Spinoza. He advised me to look at scores philosophically and rationally. Spinoza's principle that reason and emotion cannot be separated, became for me a primary approach to music. I believe that one can approach a concept and a piece of music only if the logical structure can be established simultaneously with the emotional content.

I think back to the last discussion I had with the great conductor Otto Klemperer. We talked about Spinoza and he said "Spinoza's Ethics is the most important book ever written". Klemperer was, as we know, Jewish. At the age of 22 he converted to Christianity because he believed that only as a Christian could he conduct Bach's St Matthew Passion. Many years later, after the War, when Klemperer had already reached old age, he converted back to Judaism. And the reason he gave was Spinoza's Ethics. Perhaps the most important Jewish philosophy. Questions about Jewish ethics and morals and "What is being Jewish?" were long identified as being a minority. The traditional thinking and perceived identity of the Jewish people in its 2,000 year history was as a minority. Historically the Jews were integrated into social and cultural life but tragically persecuted under the Spanish Inquisition and the tyranny of Adolf Hitler. What is special about Spinoza's philosophy is that, despite persecution, abuse and alienation, his thinking was never based on the premise of Jews being a minority. That is precisely why his philosophy is so contemporary, now that the Jewish people have their own state, i.e. are no longer a minority. Spinoza's Ethics remains a potent formula for creating intellectual and moral unity among the Jews.

When in 1948 the Jews achieved statehood, the minority became a nation. This development was at the core of a profound change of identity. However, only 19 years later, the Jews in Israel had to meet a new challenge: the former minority suddenly found it had control over another minority, the Palestinians. This second transition has not yet been achieved. I would go so far as to say that it has not yet actually started. Even today, many Jews in Israel are still not real patriots, concerned with the good fortune of all inhabitants of Israel; they have taken on naïve nationalism. Spinoza once stated 'the purpose of the State is in true freedom'. I wonder how far Israel has progressed with the State on the one hand and with freedom on the other. Spinoza speaks of the equality of mankind - the idea of the ruler and the ruled are foreign to him. Israeli democracy has not yet solved the problem of a state where minorities are suppressed yet freedom for all is the key goal. We are still living in a two-class democracy.

I am convinced that the Jews in Israel must come to a conclusion about their position before the conflict in the Middle East can be resolved. Jewish humour demonstrates that this is not yet the case. The humour of a minority demands courage. A Jew who throws a piece of stale bread before the feet of a Gestapo officer in the Warsaw Ghetto and says "that's good enough for a non-Jew!" is displaying courage. A Jew who throws a piece of stale bread before the feet of a Palestinian and uses the same words, "that's good enough for a non-Jew" in Ramallah, demonstrates only primitive inhumanity.

In the Fifties, Spinoza's spirit was evident in Jerusalem - the city was the centre for Jewish intellectuals. Martin Buber and Max Brod taught there. I was living in Tel Aviv at the time. We were more practical - we built up the land, with hope and enthusiasm and created material value. The Hebrew University in Jerusalem provided the intellectual core of our lives. Now secular Jewry has left Jerusalem and the Orthodox Jews determine the spiritual climate; it is the reestablishment of the Spinoza philosophy in Jerusalem which is essential if progress is to be achieved in the conflict in the Middle East.

Spinoza suffered two experiences which are strongly evident today. Although a Jew, he was excluded from the Jewish community; he also became a victim of anti-semitism. A recent survey in Germany exposed the reality that a majority of Germans believe that the Jews were the greatest risk to world peace. Here a disturbing confusion has arisen: criticism of the State of Israel and anti-semitism. The one has become a reason for the other. There is every reason for criticism of the Israeli government -I have expressed it vehemently and often myself. To use this as a reason to fire anti-semitism is fatal.

Anti-semitism has no historical, political and certainly no philosophical origins. Anti-semitism is a disease. It is significant that Spinoza's ideas had an influence on what is regarded as typical German thinking today - on Feuerbach, Wagner and Nietzsche. How could Richard Wagner become an anti-semite while influenced by Spinoza? Anti-semitism definitely formed part of the profile of a German nationalist in the nineteenth century. Why did Wagner pursue this idea with such fervour? He could not draw these ideas from his spiritual father, the heir to Spinoza, Feuerbach. Wagner's anti-semitism, like any form of Jew-hating, had an irrational basis. He was too similar to his arch-enemies, the Jews Meyerbeer and Heinrich Heine. In the desire to belong to the chosen people, we have the dangerous separation of logic and private motives. Anti-semitism has no philosophical origins. It is a disease which we are not in any way adequately addressing.

A reading of Spinoza's Ethics makes this perfectly clear. It is as relevant today as ever. On the one hand it could be an opportunity for revelation to the reader - to logic and free thinking. On the other, it offers a philosophy for our laws of co-existence. With Spinoza's Ethics Israel could develop as a truly democratic state in which every part of the community defines its ethical values and the ultimate purpose of humanity.

Finally another Jew the marxist musicologist Sidney Finkelstein who promoted not only classical music but Afro-American music, Jazz, before it was popular, in his book How Music Expresses Ideas; says about the metaphysics of freedom

the ideas which music embodies are not the ideas which may be found in a scientific tract, but commentaries on a society showing what it means to live in it. They embrace developments in sensitivity, in the human's awareness of his own powers, and in the situation of internal freedom, as conditions change in the external world. In this way music joins the other arts in creating social consciousness, or the individual's awareness of the internal life he shares with society, and in revealing the internal history of society. The Experimental Years: A View from the Left

Finkelstein also wrote on the peasant origins of classical music. A source that Barenboim is trying to find in his search for Arab music of the Palestinian people for his youth orchestra to play.

It is not too difficult to understand why composers continue to this day to root themselves in the folk traditions of the nation. It is not only a way to enrich the musical imagination, it is also a way to identify with some of music's most progressive traditions. Obviously, as capitalism continues to destroy the social basis of folk music--the peasantry--it will be more and more difficult to find inspiration in the world that surrounds the composer. Singling out Bartok, the great communist musicologist Sidney Finkelstein addressed this theme in "Composer and Nation: The Folk Heritage in Music":

"Bartok represents the end of a period, and at the same time helps lay the ground for a new development. He is the greatest of those in his generation who saw the peasantry as Synonymous with the nation; a viewpoint no longer possible in the next generation. For the transformation of the countryside is a world-wide process. Whether under the conditions of capitalism or socialism, masses of peasants, farmers, farm workers and their children are entering city industrial life, and those that remain on the land are working under conditions of large-scale production that bring them close to the city working class. The cultural isolation of the countryside, which fostered the great oral tradition of folk music but the other side of which was poverty and illiteracy, is being broken down. Like the research of others in folk music, Bartok’s devoted and intensive effort to record and preserve the old forms of folk music came at a time when this music was losing its currency as a living oral tradition. And the preservation of this music gives it renewed life on a different level, for it becomes part of the conscious national heritage, lending its vitality to new forms of musical creation." Muzsikás and Bela Bartok

Finkelstein faced anti-semitism as well as anti-communist hysteria from the American right during his life time too.The Marxist Minstrels

An intolerance that is reflected today in the Zionist attacks on Barenboim. And by those who would create States that limit the freedom of the people.


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Arm da Bear

So just cause Yogi got a sweet tooth it's now a capital offense to go nabbing pic-nik baskets from the IGA. Gimme a break.

When you build cities in Wilderness expect that you will get visitors. And they may have a healthy disrespect for you.

Death warrant out for bear on the lam

A cake-loving bear that wandered into a Peace River IGA store will be killed if it is caught.

Peace River Fish and Wildlife officials now say the young, male black bear could be a threat to people and will have to be put down.

District officer Lyle Fullerton said while the act of walking into the store was unusual, it wasn't inherently dangerous.

However, the casual disregard it displayed for people in the store indicates it had become used to humans and was no longer afraid of them, he said.

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Republican Scandal And The CIA

Was the current scandal involving Jack Abramoff, Delay and the Republican Party the reason that Porter Goss up and quit as CIA Director?

CIA in disarray as Rumsfeld starts turf war with rival

There was also speculation yesterday that he may have gone partly as a result of a lobbying scandal involving some of his senior staff. An FBI investigation is under way into the activities of the agency's third ranking official, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo. He is accused of fraternising with a lobbyist who stands accused of hiring prostitutes for the entertainment of politicians. Administration officials firmly denied that Mr Goss's departure was in any way connected with that investigation.

Goss Going... We Should Have Seen It Coming

More important, intelligence has continued to generate controversy. In recent days, one high-ranking CIA analyst has been fired for leaking classified information, possibly including the use of foreign prisons as sites for CIA interrogation of terror suspects. The fired analyst has denied leaking that information and may have a legal case against the agency.

More recent yet are revelations that the CIA's number three official, Dusty Foggo, has links to a defense contractor convicted of bribing at least one congressman. Foggo reportedly attended parties organized by the contractor at which members of Congress and other insiders were offered a range of entertainments from poker to prostitution.

Oh that CIA up to its old trick's again, blackmail, poker and prostitutes. Geez its a sixties flashback.


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Friendly Iraqi's

Basra was the home of the occupation forces friendliest allies, the mythological Iraqi's who embraced their liberation by the US/UK invasion forces. Basra is a 'safe zone' no more

But I guess you can over stay your welcome. Iraqis Celebrate Downing of British Helicopter

At least four British servicemen are feared dead after an army helicopter was brought down, apparently by a shoulder-fired rocket, in the southern Iraqi city of Basra yesterday. It is one of the worst incidents to befall British troops since the 2003 invasion and would bring the UK military death toll to 108.

Immediately after the helicopter went down - on an unoccupied house in the city centre - British forces rushed to the crash site, close to the governor's office. Footage from state-run al-Iraqiya television showed orange flames reaching 20ft high and large plumes of black smoke curling into the sky. Water jets were being sprayed to try to quell the blaze. British troops were seen running through the streets and being stoned by Iraqis.

As soldiers in Warrior armoured vehicles cordoned off the area, hundreds of youths chanting "Victory to the Mehdi Army!" surrounded them, throwing rocks and then petrol bombs. The crowd also set at least one British armoured vehicle on fire, but the soldiers inside escaped unhurt. The soldiers fired weapons into the air in an effort to disperse the crowd, as smoke from burning tyres on the roadway drifted across the scene. British helicopter brought down in Basra, 'killing four'

Now the Brits have their own case of "Blackhawk Down". When will the Imperialist learn the lesson of Viet Nam, The Peoples Army Will Always Defeat The Man's Technology.

How Basra riots turned bloody

Last September, British forces arrested two officials of Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to al-Sadr, raising tensions. About a week later, militiamen and residents clashed with British troops after two British soldiers in local clothes were detained by Iraqi authorities before being freed in a raid by British forces.

The most senior Shia cleric in the region, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has proved a strong moderating influence but is engaged in a power struggle with al-Sadr and has not always been able to keep growing anti-coalition fervour among the local population under control.

Much of al-Sadr's strategy depends on drawing British troops out of their heavily defended bases and into the streets. Yesterday they came to him. Soon it was small arms as well as rocks that were being used and, though reports are unclear, with British officials denying using anything other than plastic baton rounds, it appears that rapid gunfights, as over as soon as they had begun, swept the rubbish-choked alleyways.

And the reason for the insurgency and resistance in Basra is the fact that the US occupantion forces intend on creating permanent bases there.

The latest revelations about US plans for permanent bases in Iraq has compounded the already very obvious fact that the US doesn't intend on ending its occupation either as the result of a timetable, or Iraqi political pressure or US domestic pressure. They intend to draw down forces and leave tens of thousands of troops stationed in permanent bases, thereby providing them with crucial leverage both in Iraq and in the Middle East as a whole. This would, so the US government hopes, provide a base for a potential attack on Iran or Syria. It would also keep the US-vetted Iraqi political class under thumb. Not only was this entirely predictable, but it was predicted, repeatedly. The US has been depositing bases across the planet like a so many cowpats for decades, and this escalated sharply in the post-Cold War era. Why would it be different with Iraq? Iraq: neither 'civil war' nor 'chaos'.

Any forces that would impose their will on other nations will certainly face defeat. ~General Vo Nguyen Giap (Vietnam)


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Correction

I stand corrected. I made an error in reporting that Mountain Crest beer was non-union and defining it as scab beer. Census Beer.

The error was honest as there was no union label on the Mountain Crest beer I have seen.

I recieved a polite email from Ravinder Minhas the owner of Mountain Crest informing me of my mistake. Very gentlemanly. No lawyers, no threats. But then again any publicity is good publicity, right.

I will correct the original article and delete the references to scab beer as well as post a correction to the article I posted at ViveCanada.ca

And while his beer may be union made, it is still made in the U.S. still making it a true NAFTA beer.

Eugene,

I read on a blog posted by someone (perhaps yourself) that Mountain Crest Brewing Company beers are produced by "SCABS" and/or NON-UNIONS. As a matter of clarification, our beers are brewed, packaged and shipped by UNIONIZED PEOPLE.

I found lot of comments interesting and amusing.

I also agreed with Einstein's comment "Unthinking respect for aithority is the great enemy of truth". So true and profound.

Thanks and regards

Ravinder Minhas
President, Mountain Crest Brewing Company/
President, Mountain Crest Liquors Inc.
Suite 3319, 3000 Citadel Meadow Point NW
Calgary Alberta Canada T3G 5N5
Tel (403) 547-1056 Fax (403) 770-8367
Websites: www.DamnGoodBeer.ca
and www.MountainCrest.ca

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Wal-Mart Drives Down Wages

And here is another good reason to boycott Wal-Mart as if one was needed. They drive down wages. In Canada. In competition with our large big box discount grocery chains. Its not just lower costs and lower prices folks, its driven by lower wages, and NO benefits.

But Wal-Mart is not the only villian in this story, they have pals in the bosses, in this case Loblaws and its big box retail outlet Superstore, and their union, UFCW.

Canada has too many grocery stores and the situation will only get worse as discounter Wal-Mart Canada Corp. and other non-union global retailers take a bigger bite of the market, Loblaw Cos. Ltd. chairman Galen Weston warns.

To take on the growing competition, Loblaw, the country's largest grocer, is racing to overhaul its systems. It is adding more general merchandise, lowering prices and rolling out more discount superstores. And the unionized company is in contract talks in a bid to gain pay concessions and level the playing field with non-unionized Wal-Mart. Loblaw profit slips on snags in overhaul

Loblaw operates at a competitive disadvantage to Wal-Mart in terms of labour costs, as the majority of Loblaw stores are unionized. The retailer has successfully negotiated to pay employees at its 80 superstores lower wages than at its traditional stores. Loblaw girds for battle

Canada's biggest supermarket chain says it wants to open more mid-sized conventional grocery stores in downtown Toronto to serve the booming condominium market. But Loblaw Cos. Ltd. said it must first strike more deals with its unions, similar to the ones it got for its Ontario superstores, to remain competitive with non-union rivals. Loblaw eyeing hungry condo dwellers

They already gained concessions from their union, the sell out UFCW. Last round of bargaining UFCW whined about Wal-Mart, whom they have tried to unionize, while accepting the Loblaw contract without taking it to the rank and file to vote on. The threat of Wal-Mart is enough to drive UFCW into concessions, not that it needs to be pushed hard.

Since the late eighties UFCW has accepted concession bargaining by Safeways, and others and as typical of this business union, despite membership opposition. In Alberta in the 1990's concession bargaining by UFCW with Safeways inspired Ralph Klein to attack public sector wages using UFCW's two tiered wage concession and wage roll back of 5% to Safeway's as an excuse, to roll back public sector wages by 5%.

While a union is better than no union, when it comes to UFCW all they care about is the union dues, as they have accepted increased part time two tiered wages, including lower wages for new employees. Why. Well they still get the union dues whether the workers are full time or part time. They are after all in the 'business' of being a union.

The imposition of bureaucratic rule has always required bureaucratic methods, including outright dishonesty. A recent example of this process is found in the attempt by leaders of the American Flintglass Workers Union, a small, relatively democratic union, to take that union into the United Food & Commercial Workers, one of the nation's most grotesquely bureaucratic unions. Merger might have made sense for this tiny union, but given the reality of the UFCW, it was clear the "Flints," as they call themselves, would lose some of their current democracy; e.g. the election of the union's ten national reps. To get it by, the pro-merger leaders called a special convention without making the terms of the merger available until the delegates arrived. Sensibly, the delegates voted the merger down by over three to one. In this case democracy prevailed over bureaucratic method.

The battle for bureaucratic unionism was won by the 1950s and the unions that emerged looked little like those that exploded on the scene in the mid-1930s. Reviewing in horror the transformation of so many unions, Sidney Lens wrote at the time (in The Crisis of American Labor) about the rise of full-time, appointed "reps" whose swelling numbers bolstered the domination of union politics by the top officials. There had always been authoritarian leaders, but for the newer industrial unions at least all of the armies of appointees were something new. This rising tide of bureaucratic business unionism brought with it the receding fortunes of the unions themselves. Four decades later, many of labor's friends and enemies alike assume that massive bureaucracy and top-down control are the natural state of the unions, possibly "the best" state.

Kim Moody Is Bureaucracy "Best" For Unions?

Also See:

Labor Notes Bookshelf - An Injury to All"Kim Moody's An Injury to All exhaustively documents the devastating effects of management's anti-union drive of the last fifteen years.

An Injury to All: The Decline of American Unionism. - book reviews

Confessions of an orthodox militant - and contentions - response to the review of author's 'Injury to All'; includes reply of reviewer Dana Frank

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Creationism=Paganism

I don't know whether to laugh or cry....whether to agree or be outraged....that paganism would be equated with protestantism....oh wait that is the historic basis for protestantism, as it was a 'protest' movement against the Holy Mother Church and competing Holy Roman Empires. It arose in the antinominalist movements which suckled at the breast of European paganism.


Luther and his princes used the pagan peasants as canon fodder in their political religious war for economic and temporal power.

But this is rather hilarious as a headline don't ya think....luckily most pagans have a good sense of humour unlike our fundamentalist protestant counterparts....

Creationism dismissed as 'a kind of paganism' by Vatican's astronomer

BELIEVING that God created the universe in six days is a form of superstitious paganism, the Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno claimed yesterday.

Brother Consolmagno, who works in a Vatican observatory in Arizona and as curator of the Vatican meteorite collection in Italy, said a "destructive myth" had developed in modern society that religion and science were competing ideologies.

He described creationism, whose supporters want it taught in schools alongside evolution, as a "kind of paganism" because it harked back to the days of "nature gods" who were responsible for natural events.

Of course in one fell swoop the Vatican astronomer has dismissed his historic political rivals as heretics, again. When in reality he should admit that if science and religion can co exist it is not in the Vatican or in Catholicism but in the philosophy of the enlightenment and America's founding fathers; Deism. Even God in her wisdom would agree with that.

“Spinozism dominated the eighteenth century both in its later French variety, which made matter into substance, and in deism, which conferred on matter a more spiritual name.... Spinoza’s French school and the supporters of deism were but two sects disputing over the true meaning of his system.... The simple fate of this Enlightenment was its decline in romanticism after being obliged to surrender to the reaction which began after the French movement.” Hobbes had shattered the theistic prejudices of Baconian materialism; Collins, Dodwell, Coward, Hartley, Priestley, similarly shattered the last theological bars that still hemmed in Locke’s sensationalism. At all events, for materialists, deism is but an easy-going way of getting rid of religion. Marx & Engels, The Holy Family

A tip o the blog to NewsTrolls

Also check out this blog on this topic and her article on the Sumerian origin of the old testament creation myth.



Go here for more Heretical fun

And see:

Intelligent Design

Creationism

Dialectical Science

Spinoza


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Softwood Redux

How did I miss this.....Hard feelings up north over softwood trade pact
I particularly liked this quote nothing like a little self aggrandizing back patting

Aboard Air Force One, en route back to Washington from the Gulf Coast, President Bush spoke with Harper, according to White House press secretary Scott McClellan. The two leaders congratulated each other on bringing the long-running dispute to an end, he said.

But a day later and a billion bucks shy this happens US files softwood appeal despite deal

B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell has threatened to withdraw his crucial support for the tentative Canada-U.S. softwood lumber truce after learning that the U.S. government has decided to legally challenge a Canadian victory before a NAFTA trade dispute panel.There were also indications Friday that other potential deal-breakers -- including a clause that could scuttle B.C.'s new market-based timber pricing system -- were embedded in the terms Ottawa and Washington agreed to Thursday. It could take months to flesh out the final agreement

And in case you mistakenly thought the Harpocrite was doing this for the good of Canada, or the industry well think again, he was looking to line his governments pockets. Lose a billion to the US but recoup a billion in taxes.

Stephen Harper's Conservative government stands to reap a windfall approaching $1 billion in taxes on duties being refunded to Canadian lumber producers under a controversial deal struck to end the softwood trade war with the United States.ut many lumber companies are now facing hefty federal tax bills — in some cases, as high as 35 per cent — on the duties as soon as they're refunded by Washington.Ottawa reaps windfall on wood pact

And since this now is a matter of money for his coffers, well the Softwood lumber debate in the house now becomes a Confidence Vote. Surprize, Surprize.

Because of those tax measures, the final trade deal will eventually face a confidence vote in the House of Commons. That means if opposition parties, which have criticized the framework deal, vote against the measure, it could bring down Harper's minority government and trigger a federal election.Ottawa reaps windfall on wood pact

Note to Blogging Tories the government, is the government, is the government, a rose by any other name.


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