State Terror Sri Lanka

Tamil aid workers in the Tamil provinces in Sri Lanka killed by Sri Lankan government troops. Hello. Now who are the terrorists?

ASSASSINATION OF 17 CIVILIAN AID WORKERS IN MUTTUR ON 4 AUGUST 2006 UN Report

Monitors Say Troops Killed Aid Workers in Sri Lanka

Lakruwan Wanniarachchi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

At a memorial service on Aug. 11 in Trincomalee, a mourner put flowers on photos of 17 Action Against Hunger workers killed early this month.

By SHIMALI SENANAYAKE and SOMINI SENGUPTA

Published: August 31, 2006

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Aug. 30 — In a searing indictment of the Sri Lankan government, Swedish-led cease-fire monitors on Wednesday accused government security forces of killing 17 aid workers early this month in Mutur in one of the worst attacks against humanitarian workers worldwide in recent years.

INTERVIEW-Sri Lanka must guarantee aid worker safety-UN envoy

COLOMBO, Aug 31 (Reuters) - Sri Lanka must guarantee the safety of hundreds of humanitarian staff involved in tsunami relief and conflict projects, a United Nations envoy said, after truce monitors accused the military of killing 17 aid workers. The execution-style murders of local staff of aid agency Action Contre La Faim this month as a new bout of civil war flared in northeast Sri Lanka have triggered international outcry. Nordic truce monitors formally blamed the security forces on Wednesday. "The assassination of tsunami aid workers is a shocking and gross violation of international human rights and humanitarian principles," Eric Schwartz, former U.S. President Bill Clinton's deputy United Nations special envoy for tsunami recovery, told Reuters in an interview in Colombo late on Wednesday.

Also See:

A new twist on Computer Crime

Sri Lanka A Marxist View

Paper Tigers

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More Corporate Welfare For Big 3 Auto

Once again, the McGuinty government and Buzz Hargrove are stepping up to the plate to fund outmoded automobile production with your hard earned cash. This week it is Ford last week it was GM. Saving jobs in the buggy whip industry as they say.

And guess who is the CAW's new found partner, notoriously anti-union outsourcing giant Magna International, Belinda Stroanchs daddies business. Guess being pals with Paul Martin last election got Buzz an in good with Belinda's daddy.

Where is the green program for a sustainable auto industry? Nowhere as long as these boys continue to hand cash out to failing American Auto Companies who have forgotten 'quality' is job #1`, and have no rational plan for their declining market share except to cut jobs willy nilly across North America.

In this case Quality being a consumer auto that is energy efficient, a hybrid. Another chance to green industry and develop an industrial ecology strategy for Ontario is blown.

Also See:

GM

Social Ecology

Ford

CAW

Buzz


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GMO News Roundup

The saying used to be what's Good For GM is Good for America. Today it's what's good for GMO is good for American corporate agribusiness, and bad for the rest of us.

And GMO crops are being expaned in use beyond just food production, into the new arena of State sponsored corporate welfare; alternative fuels. Same gang of corporate monopolies who get agriculture subsidies will now get energy subsidies.

Canada, the U.S. and Argentina are heavily promoting GMO at the behest of the agribusiness corporations. A recent WTO ruling in favour of GMO's will encourage expansion of biotech by these countries at the expense of their own farmers and farmers in the developing world.

With increased resistance to commercial herbicides, weeds are ruining crops world wide pushing farmers to seriously consider GMO crops. It's a catch 22 for small farmers who are pushed to bankruptcy by increasing production costs.

Here is a Roundup(tm) of news stories on Genetically Modified foods and biotech.


Monsanto Whistleblower Says Genetically Engineered Crops May Cause Disease
It turns out that the damage done to DNA due to the process of creating a genetically modified organism is far more extensive than previously thought. GM crops routinely create unintended proteins, alter existing protein levels or even change the components and shape of the protein that is created by the inserted gene. Kirk's concerns about a GM crop producing a harmful misfolded protein remain well-founded, and have been echoed by scientists as one of the many possible dangers that are not being evaluated by the biotech industry's superficial safety assessments.

Diving into the gene pool
A new generation of genetically engineered plants and animals is moving from laboratories to fields and farms. Scientists are enhancing the nutrition and heartiness of some crops. Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly looking to mass-produce drugs in plants and animals. And scientific advances may soon allow herds across the U.S. to grow faster and feature novel traits. Already, biotechnology has dramatically changed agriculture across the land. No genetically modified crops were grown commercially in the U.S. before 1996.


Understanding food intolerance

As well, current plans for genetically modified crops with higher salicylate levels will create huge problems for food intolerant consumers, in the same way that the widespread use of vacuum packed meat with higher levels of biogenic amines is leading us to seek independent butchers who sell fresher meat.

Scientific references concerning food intolerance at www.fedup.com.au show that there is plenty of science but not enough knowledge of this growing problem. Correctly understanding the three concepts above will allow regulators and industry to better grapple with the issues.

Modified yeast may take headache out of red wine

The U.S. wine industry has entered the world of genetic engineering as some vintners experiment with a strain of yeast designed to eliminate chemicals in red wine that are believed to trigger headaches, including migraines, in some people.

Scientific research, much of it conducted at the University of California at Davis, has long played an important role in improving the quality of grapes and wines produced in California and around the world. But genetic modification -- in this case inserting two genes into the DNA of a yeast species -- marks a new threshold for the industry.

As a result, the new biotech yeast is getting a wary reception in a wine industry that sells itself on its artisan reputation and is anxious not to ruffle export markets touchy about genetically modified foods. Experts also say the new yeast alters the flavor of wine.

Genetically altered cattle - what's at stake?

At the conference, CSIRO, which has been at the forefront of cattle-gene research for more than 10 years, announced it had taken an equity stake in Genetic Solutions, a global leader in the commercialisation for gene technology for the beef industry. The company has pioneered live DNA tests for beef eating qualities and a DNA test which provides paddock to plate traceability for the beef industry.CSIRO Commercialisation GM Jan Bingley said, within the next five years, groups of 50 or more DNA markers will be available for the cattle industry.

One way to get rid of insect pests may be to build a better bug

But the idea of rendering mosquitoes incapable of transmitting harmful diseases to humans is quite real and is, in fact, at the forefront of a young and still-metamorphosing effort to create a whole menagerie of genetically modified, or GM, insects.

"It's early days," said Fred Gould, a professor of entomology at North Carolina State University. "The labs working on this are scattered and mostly academic. There isn't a lot of big money involved, not like in genetically modified food crops where companies like Monsanto are funding a lot of research. GM insects don't draw the same attention, but some of them may prove to be a great solution in certain situations. A few GM insects could do a lot."

Soybeans sprout new alliance

Bunge North America Inc., based in Maryland Heights, and DuPont's Agriculture and Nutrition group are teaming up to see just how much can be squeezed from a soybean.

The companies, which three years ago formed St. Louis-based Solae Co. to improve soy foods and created the Bunge DuPont Biotech Alliance, said Tuesday their focus is moving beyond human food.

The biotech alliance will find ways soybeans can yield oils for industrial use, greater quantities of biodiesel fuel and more nutritious animal feed, said Erik Fyrwald, group vice president of DuPont Agriculture and Nutrition. Resulting products will carry a new brand name, Treus -- pronounced TREE-us.

Bunge and DuPont are not alone in seeing green in soybeans.

Monsanto Co. of Creve Coeur, the world's leading developer of biotech crops, is pursuing many of the same targets. Other competitors are Syngenta AG, a Swiss agribusiness, and Bayer CropScience of Raleigh, N.C., a unit of German conglomerate Bayer AG.

Soybean growers, too, are promoting novel and increased uses of their crop. The United Soybean Board funds research and marketing efforts. Grower cooperatives are among producers and innovators in biofuels.

Genetically modified tree could be used for cellulosic ethanol
A tree that can reach 90 feet in six years and be grown as a row crop on fallow farmland could represent a major replacement for fossil fuels. Purdue University researchers are using genetic tools in an effort to design trees that readily and inexpensively can yield the substances needed to produce alternative transportation fuel.

BASF requests trial of GM potatoes

BASF is proposing to grow potatoes that have been genetically modified to give them resistance to late blight, a fungal disease. The potatoes will contain a natural trait, resistant to the blight, found in wild potatoes. Late blight was responsible for the devastating potato famine in Ireland that was thought to have caused the death of up to 1m people and sparked the mass migration of Irish citizens across the globe.

American farmers sue Bayer over GM rice
Last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that U.S. commercial long-grain rice supplies are contaminated with "trace amounts" of genetically engineered rice unapproved for human consumption.

USDA Hides Another Biotech Disaster

Bumpy road ahead as Asia pushes transgenic rice

Environmentalists hail Hawaii biopharming ruling

A federal judge has ruled that a federal agency should not have allowed genetically modified crops to be planted in Hawaii without first determining their potential impact on endangered species or the environment — a ruling that, some say, sets a major precedent in the national battle over genetically-modified organisms, or GMOs. Local and national environmental groups had sued the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) after it gave permits to several companies hoping to investigate the medicinal applications of genetically-modified crops, known as biopharming, on Kauai, Maui, Molokai, and Oahu. The crops have already been harvested and the permits have expired, and in its response to the lawsuit, APHIS had asserted that the case had no merit because no protected species or habitat was actually harmed. In his ruling, however, U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright minced no words in blasting the government agency for shirking its duties. "APHIS’s utter disregard for this simple investigation requirement, especially given the extraordinary number of endangered and threatened plants and animals in Hawaii, constitutes an unequivocal violation of a clear congressional mandate." Seabright also said the "no harm, no foul" defense was "absurd."

From 2001 to 2003, four companies — ProdiGene, Monsanto, Garst Seed, and the Hawaii Agriculture Research Center (HARC) — planted corn and sugarcane that had been genetically modified to produce experimental drugs. The hope was to find new ways to fight AIDS, Hepatitis B, and cancer. They did so after receiving permits from APHIS.

Genetically Modified Grass Escapes Golf Courses, Grows in Wild
Grass that was genetically engineered for golf courses is growing in the wild, posing one of the first threats of agricultural biotechnology escaping from the farm in the United States, a new study says

Mother Nature Is No Lab

Genetically modified crops may not fall into the category of "misfortunes." But the USDA's oversight of these crops leaves a lot to be desired. Once these crops are released into the world, there is no going back.

On Aug. 10, a U.S. District Court judge in Hawaii had harsh words for the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, which grants permits for genetically engineered crops. The judge concluded that the agency allowed such crops to be planted on four islands without first determining whether they posed a threat to the 329 endangered or threatened species that call Hawaii home. The modified crops consisted of corn and sugar cane that were genetically tweaked to produce human hormones, drugs and ingredients for vaccines against AIDS and hepatitis B.

The judge called USDA's regulatory heedlessness "arbitrary and capricious" and "an unequivocal violation of a clear congressional mandate."

Indian Farm Suicides Surge as Costs Push Poor to Debt Despair

The number of suicides among India's 235 million farmers is rising as seed and pesticide costs increase and the rural economy provides few other job opportunities. More than 18,000 farmers may kill themselves this year, the most ever recorded by the government, said Devinder Sharma, chairman of the farm lobby group Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security.

New laws that have opened agriculture to market forces are locking farmers into a cycle of debt, Vandana Shiva, a physicist and social activist, wrote in a report.

`Corporate Feudalism'

Private companies are replacing state-regulated wholesale markets. The companies sell seeds and fertilizer through ``landlords and moneylenders,'' who extend credit to illiterate farmers, exacerbating debts, she said.

``Corporate feudalism is leading to an epidemic of suicides,'' said Shiva, who runs the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in Uttaranchal state.

Cotton fields forever

Are GM (genetically modified) crops going to be a boon or bane for the country? The confusion arises from the mixed signals one gets about BT cotton, the first GM crop introduced in the country.

On the one hand, there are statements from "official" agri-scientists like CD Mayee, chairman of the Agricultural Scientists' Recruitment Board, who has pointed out that a nationwide survey of more than 3,000 farmers by AC Nielsen found that among the farmers who planted BT cotton in India, the crop yield increased by 29 per cent, the use of pesticides was reduced by 60 per cent and incomes increased by about 78 per cent, compared to those farmers who stuck to traditional varieties.

Then, in a speech, Union minister for commerce, Jairam Ramesh, was at pains to point out that in the past five yeas the country had witnessed a quantum jump in cotton production from 167 lakh bales in 2000 to 243 lakh bales in 2005. He attributed the increased growth to factors such as better supply of water and use of biotechnology, which implies BT cotton.

On the other hand, there have been a plethora of articles denouncing BT Cotton, usually written by activists who, to bolster their case, have connected its alleged ills to the wave of suicides by cotton farmers in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. This is debatable, because there is sufficient evidence that many such suicides were also due to overwhelming debts incurred because of poor yields owing to successive years of drought and the government’s poorly managed monopoly procurement scheme, which kept prices of cotton low.

Expert group to go into farmers' indebtedness

In his one-and-a-half-hour long reply, Mr. Pawar said the crisis in the farm sector was due to low investment, low productivity, the shrinking size of the landholdings, drought, crop failure, inadequate irrigation, burden of loan on farmers, defaulting farmers turning to private money-lenders with high interest rates, unremunerative prices for produce, lack of market access and lack of supplementary incomes for farmers.

He said suicides by farmers was not a recent phenomenon but before 1995 there was no separate record on them. After 1995, the Home Ministry records showed that of the one lakh suicides every year, 12 to 16 per cent were from the farming community. Suicides were happening in every State but in the last two years the suicides in six districts of Vidarbha in Maharashtra, six in Karnataka, three in Kerala and 16 in Andhra Pradesh had been highlighted. "Often the money taken for crop loan is diverted for social needs like education, health and weddings. However, since complaints had been received from several parts of the country, the Radhakrishnan Expert Group has been set up."

The Minister defended genetically modified crops and seeds. He favoured a policy of need-based imports and exports in the agriculture sector and defended the use of genetically modified crops and seeds. "We must conserve the traditional seeds but should modify and adapt to the changes in the world to raise productivity. That is why we are amending the Seeds Bill."

The Assault on Iraqi Agriculture ---
U.S. Agribusiness Targets the Fertile Crescent
By Daniel Stone

Blessed with abundant fertile land and water, Iraq, the cradle of civilization, the center of the Fertile Crescent of ancient Mesopotamia, the birthplace of agriculture 13 centuries ago, has, in the past, not only been able to feed itself, but to supply other areas of the world with its bountiful harvest of grains, pulses, dates and vegetables.
How unfortunate that now these proud people are receiving most of their food as "aid." Over the past 20 years, due to the Iraq-Iran war, the two U.S. Gulf "wars," and the brutal, illegal, U.S.-driven sanctions over 13 years, during both Republican and Democratic administrations, Iraq's agricultural sector has been devastated.

U.S. Policies --- GMOs and the Detrimental Effects of Order 81

After the so-called "transfer of sovereignty" in June 2004, when former Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) administrator L. Paul Bremer III left Baghdad, he left behind the 100 orders he enacted as head of the occupation authority in Iraq. Of Bremer's 100 Orders, Order 81 contains the edicts (paragraphs 51 - 79) pertinent to agriculture. Order 81, while claiming otherwise, will actually reduce biodiversity and thus lead to a monoculture susceptible to disease, increase chemical use, and pave the way for Genetically Modified Organisms ("GMOs") to dominate food production in Iraq.

In fact, Order 81 was written to promote the patenting of seeds and the sale of GMOs. Before the U.S. illegally invaded and occupied Iraq, it was not legal to patent seeds. Now, under U.S. decree, to patent varieties of seed, all that is necessary is to be the first to "describe" or "characterize" them. Even though technically, the Iraqi farmer is not being stopped from saving and sharing seed from traditional crops at this time, nevertheless there is now also nothing stopping Monsanto, Cargill, Dow, Syngenta, Bayer and other multinationals from "describing" or "characterizing" those traditional seeds, and thereby patenting those seeds in the future. And, when they do, the Iraqi farmer then will be prohibited from saving and sharing those seeds that have been passed down from generations, and will have to buy them from "the company store," "trapped into a high-cost cash crop economy from which he will find it impossible to escape."9

Iraqi farmers can be sued now by Monsanto "if their non-GMO crops are polluted by GMO crops planted in their vicinity."

Monsanto Buys ‘Terminator’ Seeds Company

The United States Government has been financing research on a genetic engineering technology which, when commercialized, will give its owners the power to control the food seed of entire nations or regions. The Government has been working quietly on this technology since 1983. Now, the little-known company that has been working in this genetic research with the Government’s US Department of Agriculture-- Delta & Pine Land-- is about to become part of the world’s largest supplier of patented genetically-modified seeds (GMO), Monsanto Corporation of St. Louis, Missouri.

Relations between Monsanto, Delta & Pine Land and the USDA, on closer scrutiny, show the deep and dark side of the much-heralded genetic revolution in agriculture. It proves deep-held suspicions that the Gene Revolution is not about ‘solving the world hunger problem’ as its advocates claim. It’s about handing over control of the seeds for mankind’s basic food supply—rice, corn, soybeans, wheat, even fruit, vegetables and cotton—to privately owned corporations. Once the seeds and their use are patented and controlled by one or several private agribusiness multinationals, it will be they who can decide whether or not a particular customer—let’s say for argument, China or Brazil or India or Japan—whether they will or won’t get the patented seeds from Monsanto, or from one of its licensee GMO partners like Bayer Crop Sciences, Syngenta or DuPont’s Pioneer Hi-Bred International.

The WTO Rules on Genetically Modified Organisms

There are two potentially significant implications that arise from this decision. First, the decision may be used as precedent for the proposition that the precautionary principle is not a valid basis for measures relating to human and environmental health. Second, it may now be in doubt whether future WTO Panels have to balance WTO rules with obligations created by other international treaties.

The Panel dismissed the EC’s argument that its regulatory procedures were consistent with the precautionary principle. The EC had argued that there was still scientific uncertainty as to the effects of GMOs on human health and environmental well-being and that, under Article 5.7 of the SPS, this permitted precautionary measures such as import restrictions until better evidence is available. The Panel had a different technical interpretation of Article 5.7 but, more importantly, it ruled that the precautionary principle was too controversial and unsettled a concept to be deemed a general principle of law. In this, the Panel relied on the earlier EC – Hormones Appellate Body decision, which also noted that it was unclear whether the precautionary principle had been widely accepted by WTO members as a principle of general or customary international law.

By so ruling, the Panel interpreted the obligations of the SPS agreement without reference to any precautionary principle and reaffirmed that a restrictive measure said to be based on health or environmental concerns will have to be justified by science, and not by mere concerns or desires to be prudent.

If taken as precedent, this position could affect the regulation of many other industries. For example, the EC has proposed draft rules for testing the effects of certain industrial chemicals for their public health consequences. If those rules incorporate the precautionary principle, any resulting restrictions could be challenged for not being based on hard scientific evidence.

The Panel took a firm and arguably inconsistent approach to the effect of other international treaties on its interpretation of WTO rules. The Panel ruled that it only had to rely on other treaties if it found them useful, and that it was under no circumstances obliged to do so. Despite the fact that the Cartagena Protocol, ratified by 132 countries (although, as noted above, not by the Complaining Parties), is a comprehensive agreement specifically addressing genetically modified organisms, the Panel found that it did not need to consider it in interpreting the SPS Agreement. As part of its reasoning, the Panel found that, because the Complaining Parties were not parties to the Cartagena Protocol, the treaty was not applicable in their relations as WTO members.

A significant international legal debate exists regarding the relationship between the WTO and multilateral environmental agreements, such as the Cartagena Protocol. In previous WTO case law, such international agreements have been considered as part of the WTO-compliance analysis. The EC – Biotech ruling may signal that other treaties are only relevant when all parties to the dispute, or even possibly all WTO members, are parties to the other treaties. One strategy to minimize exposure to other countries’ trade restrictions would therefore be to withdraw from, or not sign on to, treaties which contemplate trade-limiting obligations or powers.

Also See:

Food

Agribusiness

Farming



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Libertarianism

In preparation for my workshop at the Edmonton Anarchist Bookfair this weekend I came across this; P.J. Proudhon's definition of libertarianism, the supersession of both communism and property/invidualism in favour of the law of liberty, from What Is Property.

Then, no government, no public economy, no administration, is possible, which is based upon property.

Communism seeks equality and law. Property, born of the sovereignty of the reason, and the sense of personal merit, wishes above all things independence and proportionality.

But communism, mistaking uniformity for law, and levelism for equality, becomes tyrannical and unjust. Property, by its despotism and encroachments, soon proves itself oppressive and anti-social.

The objects of communism and property are good — their results are bad. And why? Because both are exclusive, and each disregards two elements of society. Communism rejects independence and proportionality; property does not satisfy equality and law.

Now, if we imagine a society based upon these four principles, — equality, law, independence, and proportionality, — we find: —

1. That equality, consisting only in equality of conditions, that is, of means, and not in equality of comfort, — which it is the business of the laborers to achieve for themselves, when provided with equal means, — in no way violates justice and équité.

2. That law, resulting from the knowledge of facts, and consequently based upon necessity itself, never clashes with independence.

3. That individual independence, or the autonomy of the private reason, originating in the difference in talents and capacities, can exist without danger within the limits of the law.

4. That proportionality, being admitted only in the sphere of intelligence and sentiment, and not as regards material objects, may be observed without violating justice or social equality.

This third form of society, the synthesis of communism and property, we will call liberty.^[12]

In determining the nature of liberty, we do not unite communism and property indiscriminately; such a process would be absurd eclecticism. We search by analysis for those elements in each which are true, and in harmony with the laws of Nature and society, disregarding the rest altogether; and the result gives us an adequate expression of the natural form of human society, — in one word, liberty.

Liberty is equality, because liberty exists only in society; and in the absence of equality there is no society.

Liberty is anarchy, because it does not admit the government of the will, but only the authority of the law; that is, of necessity.

Liberty is infinite variety, because it respects all wills within the limits of the law.

Liberty is proportionality, because it allows the utmost latitude to the ambition for merit, and the emulation of glory.

We can now say, in the words of M. Cousin: “Our principle is true; it is good, it is social; let us not fear to push it to its ultimate.”

Man’s social nature becoming justice through reflection, équité through the classification of capacities, and having liberty for its formula, is the true basis of morality, — the principle and regulator of all our actions. This is the universal motor, which philosophy is searching for, which religion strengthens, which egotism supplants, and whose place pure reason never can fill. Duty and right are born of need, which, when considered in connection with others, is a right, and when considered in connection with ourselves, a duty.

And for those familar with Thelema and Aleister Crowley there is a similarity between Proudhon's definition of Liberty and that of Liber Oz.

Liber LXXVII

"the law of
the strong:
this is our law
and the joy
of the world." AL. II. 2

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." --AL. I. 40

"thou hast no right but to do thy will. Do that, and no other shall say nay." --AL. I. 42-3

"Every man and every woman is a star." --AL. I. 3

There is no god but man.

1. Man has the right to live by his own law--

to live in the way that he wills to do:
to work as he will:
to play as he will:
to rest as he will:
to die when and how he will.

2. Man has the right to eat what he will:

to drink what he will:
to dwell where he will:
to move as he will on the face of the earth.

3. Man has the right to think what he will:

to speak what he will:
to write what he will:
to draw, paint, carve, etch, mould, build as he will:
to dress as he will.

4. Man has the right to love as he will:--

"take your fill and will of love as ye will,
when, where, and with whom ye will." --AL. I. 51

5. Man has the right to kill those who would thwart these rights.

"the slaves shall serve." --AL. II. 58

"Love is the law, love under will." --AL. I. 57

Also See

Proudhon

For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing

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liberty, libertarian, Proudhon, Thelema, Crowley, property, individualism, communism

A Pigs Ear

The Right Whing Blogger Joe Fetus, who claims to be a woman (sic) likes to call the Canadian Status of Women, SOW. Get it. Then she/he complains that I am a left wing Chavuinist, whatever that is.

But somewhere along the way, to be a feminist meant to adopt the belief in legalized abortion, acceptance of homosexual behaviour, moral relativism, political correctness, androgyny and so forth.

She/he complains about androgeny and yet posts as Joe Fetus, hmm someone here is confused.

Wherein she/he says;

On many points, most so-con women and feminists agree. Once upon a time, many so-con women of today would have been the feminists of yesteryear.
Let me dispel some of the myths. Many of us are college-educated. Many of us have jobs outside the home-- sometimes full-time, sometimes part-time, sometimes with a stay-at-home husband, and sometimes not. Most of us prefer to stay home, because we believe that no one can be a full-time substitute for mom.

Which of course Joe or Jane Fetus failed to read my linked post. In my post on Whose Family Values I deal with this in depth.


The Feminists of yesteryear she/he refers to were social reformers, middle class women who had maids and servants they bossed around. In having free time, these bourgoise women made social reform their concern. In particular they focused on ending the saloon bar culture of the working class, blaming alcohol for the violence women faced in the home. Of course the long hours of work and poverty experienced by the working class was not the source of family violence, it was alcohol.

Such middle class temprance movements then expanded to attacking working class women forced into the sex trade. Such so called feminists are with us today as Social Conservatives (Joe/Jane Fteus calls them So-Cons) and they again take the moral high ground when denouncing pornography, prostitution, etc. Not looking at the source of that exploitation which is capitalism.


As for having the 'choice' to work or not work, let me repeat what I said in Whose Family Values

Like the middle-class women of the 19th century, who had time to raise her family thanks to nannies and servants, today that same professional class returns to the bosom of the nuclear family, as stay at home moms. Only because they and their husbands are professionals earning incomes that can support both of them. and of course can afford the indentured servitude of a live in nanny.

It is they who promote the ideal of the family values of the stay at home mom, and call for tax credits for this voluntary bourgeois vocation. Of course these same stay at home moms of the professional classes also have maids, and nannies (indentured servants from the Philippines instead of Ireland). They see little need for socialized daycare, or for a living wage for the proletarian family whether it be a single mother family, a heterosexual or lesbian family. And like their moralist predecessors they couch their version of the bourgeois nuclear family in terms of Christian family values.

The fact is simple, that in previous centuries and in many cultures other than that of the WASP middle class in North America, child rearing is a collective process, involving the extended family. And it still is today in many cultures.
Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers and sisters, all raise the family children.

Of course in atomized capitalist culture, where private property has dominated the social relationships destroying the communal and replacing it with the nuclear family (the source of all psycho-social disfunction) of bourgoise individualsim, the ideal is the myth of the stay at home mother.

Such mothers, only stay at home long enough till the child is two years old. Sometimes even less time. Working class families cannot afford the nannies of the middle class, nor can single mothers afford the insanity of living in isolation unable to socialize with others because of her imprisonment at home with her child. The drugging of women in the Sixties in order to deal with this isolation and depression, now called post-partum depression, created a Valium culture.

It was this very isolation of women that led to the rise of genuine feminist groups,
the conciousness raising, where women met and shared their stories of oppression.

Women are not individuals anymore than I am as a Man. Our gender roles are socially constructed. It is when we express ourselves as individuals, and break out of these roles that we become authentic human beings. All other forms of so called individualism are that of the consumer in capitalist culture, they are not authentic individualism, they are about consumer choices, not liberation.

Social Conservatives female or male do not want liberation, they want the status quo at best, at worst a return to some mythic 1950's America.



Also See:

Feminism

Wilhelm Reich


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Hamilton Eskimos Edmonton Ti-Cats

Yep the purge is on in Hamilton, but they still have not figured out that purge is not a purge unless you get rid of the whole rotten gang, In this case of ex-Eskimos who seem to be marking time till they retire. I am speaking of Lancaster, Maas, and Vaughn. Whose lack of play lost them the game the other night. Riders run over struggling Ti-Cats

There inablility to win is only matched by the real thing, the current Edmonton Eskimos. A team which suffers from an overpaid QB and a wet behind the ears coach.

Sigh I guess I will have to cheer for that other Eskimo team; The Stampeders.

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The War Against The Metropolis

The transition from Culture to Civilization was acocmplished for the Classical world in the fourth, for the Western in the nineteenth century. From these periods onward the great intellectual decisions take place, no longer all over the world where not a hamlet is too small to be unimportant, but in three or four world-cities that have absorbed into themselves the whole content of History, while the old wide landscape of the Culture, become merely provincial, served only to feed the cities with what remains of its higher mankind. World-city and province--the two basic ideas of every civilization--bring up a wholly new form-problem of History, the very problem that we are living through today with hardly the remotest conception of its immensity. In place of a world, there is a city, a point, in which the whole life of broad regions is collecting while the rest dries up. In place of a type-true people, born of and grown on the soil, there is new sort of nomad, cohering unstably in fluid masses, the parasitical city dweller, traditionless, utterly matter-of-fact, religionless, clever, unfruitful, deeply contemptuous of the countryman and especially that highest form of countryman, the country gentleman. This is a very great stride towards the inorganic, towards the end--what does it signify?

The world-city means cosmopolitanism in place of "home" . . . To the world-city belongs not a folk but a mob. Its uncomprehending hostility to all the traditions representative of the culture (nobility, church, privileges, dynasties, convention in art and limits of knowledge in science), the keen and cold intelligence that confounds the wisdom of the peasant, the new- fashioned naturalism that in relation to all matters of sex and society goes back far to quite primitive instincts and conditions, the reappearance of the panem et circenses in the form of wage-disputes and sports stadia--all these things betoken the definite closing down of the Culture and the opening of a quite new phase of human existence--anti-provincial, late, futureless, but quite inevitable.

Sections from Spengler, The Decline of the West: Introduction: Civilization

As I discussed previously the current decline of the West is its war on the urban culture that capitalism creates. Al Qaeda attacked New York the ultmate world city. Wars are conducted against ancient cities like Baghdad, or modern capitalist metropols like Beirut.

Capitalism and its competing capitals in this current age of Imperialism move into empty space, that is they move the pesants and farmers out of the space into the cities. Supercities are being created around the world filled with the displaced, who are transformed into workers and the unemployed; the migrants/multitude.

Spenglers thesis is that while decline is inevitable in Civilization (and by this he meant Western Capitalist Civilization) in its death-throes it returns once again to its patriarchical warrior tradition of the fuerher prinziple, the stronger leader.This is clearly evident in capitalisms failure in Russia, and the return of the Tzar in Comrade Putin.

The idealist of the early democracy regarded popular education as enlightenment pure and simple---but it is precisely this that smooths the path for the coming Caesars of the world. The last century [the 19th] was the winter of the West, the victory of materialism and scepticism, of socialism, parliamentarianism, and money. But in this century blood and instinct will regain their rights against the power of money and intellect. The era of individualism, liberalism and democracy, of humanitarianism and freedom, is nearing its end. The masses will accept with resignation the victory of the Caesars, the strong men, and will obey them. Life will descend to a level of general uniformity, a new kind of primitivism, and the world will be better for it...Modern History Sourcebook: Oswald Spengler: The Decline of The West

This is the very ideology of the American Neo-Cons who follow in Spenglers pessimistic politics with the logic of the need for rule by a Strong Man as espoused by Struass and the Struassarian school.

A logic currently holding sway over our PM as well and the would be Leader of the Liberals, Michael Ignatieff.

Ironically instead of seeing the expansion of the metropolis as the highest form of capitalist civilization, Spengler fears it. Like Burke, he sees it as the begining of the decline. Like Burke he affects the logic of the country gentleman seeing the city as the den of iniquity. He sees the city as decadent.His is the anti-capitlaism of the aristocracy.

In reality it is a mere similcarum of the real decadence that is occuring as the logic of capitalism bares its creative destructive visage for the world to see. It is the decadence of captialism which again places before us the ultimate question; Socialism or barbarism.

“The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind.

“The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.

“The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the world market, given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of reactionaries, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.

“The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.

“The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.

“The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class interest, one frontier, and one customs tariff.” [Communist Manifesto]

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Noble Savage

While it is popular for leftists and anarchists to embrace the Noble Savage ideology of Rosseau, the reality is that Indigenous peoples were no more or less noble than anyone else.

The Six Nations decimated the Huron peoples in a mass genocide.

And the West Coast Salish and other civilized aborginal cultures functioned through slavery.

A reading of Oswald Spenglers
Decline of The West is much needed by some folks on the left.

With his investigation of slavery on the Northwest Coast of North America, Leland Donald makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the aboriginal cultures of this area. He shows that Northwest Coast servitude, relatively neglected by researchers in the past, fits an appropriate cross-cultural definition of slavery. Arguing that slaves and slavery were central to these hunting-fishing-gathering societies, he points out how important slaves were to the Northwest Coast economies for their labor and for their value as major items of exchange. Slavery also played a major role in more famous and frequently analyzed Northwest Coast cultural forms such as the potlatch and the spectacular art style and ritual systems of elite groups. Aboriginal Slavery on the Northwest Coast of North America

Northwest Coast societies, at the beginning of the Modern period, were stratified. The coast's élite wielded power over a class of slaves whose labour produced at least some of the wealth upon which high status depended. While it is possible to trace the development of an élite on the northern Northwest Coast back 3000 calendar years, if not more, documenting the presence of slavery has proven far more intractable. Understanding the evolution of slavery is dependent on our understanding of the archaeology of élite formation, labour, warfare and gender. Three key lines of evidence for slavery are burial practices, evidence of warfare and raiding and evidence about changing labour demands. Slavery plausibly developed during either of two periods: c 1500–500 BC or c. AD 500–1000. The data at present do not allow us to eliminate either. Each has interesting implications for our understanding of the evolution of stratification.Slaves, chiefs and labour on the northern Northwest Coast


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Albertas New Marriage Law

Introduced as a private members bill by Ted Moron the Legislature in Alberta today voted unanimously to protect choice in marriage for Albertans.

The bill, 208.1 will allow Albertans to not have heterosexuality and heterosexual marriage taught in schools, and will allow marriage commissioners and churches, synagoges, temples etc. to opt out of marrying heterosexual couples.

This is a great victory for choice fellow Tory Leadership candidate Lyle O'Berg said; "I'm in favour of his bill, because no one should have the ability to make anyone do anything against their will,"



Also See:

Ted Morton

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Total War

Enough already.

Afghanistan is about WAR
not PEACEKEEPING.

Its about defending a corupt City-State; Kabul which is surrounded by enemies.

It's about maintaining a country with a porous border with Pakistan.

It's about being a cop between warring clans/gangs.

Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe called on the Harper government Monday to address the effectiveness of the Canadian mission in Afghanistan in light of reports regarding the resurgence of the heroin trade in the battle-scarred country.Duceppe says Afghanistan mission falls short


The unfinished war in Afghanistan has taken a turn with the expansion of the supposedly defeated Taliban into neighboring Pakistan. The latest expression of concern over the new threat came last weekend from Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende as 1,400 Dutch troops moved into Afghanistan to help counter the Taliban-led insurgency. He told a press briefing that part of the challenge was "people coming from Pakistan." He urged that the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan jointly address the problem. Taliban at the Border

Now, as the administration of US President George W Bush hands off "peacekeeping" to NATO forces, Afghanistan is the scene of the largest military operation in the history of that organization. Personal e-mail brings word from an American surgeon in Kabul that her emergency medical team can't handle half the wounded civilians brought in from embattled provinces to the south and east. American, British and Canadian troops find themselves at war with Taliban fighters - which is to say "Afghans" - while stunned North Atlantic Treaty Organization commanders, who hadn't bargained for significant combat, are already asking what went wrong. Why it's not working in Afghanistan

There is a full-scale war going on in Afghanistan, shattering British government claims that its troops would act as “peacekeepers”.

Every day the agony of the Afghan people intensifies and more British soldiers are killed or wounded.

Twenty one British soldiers have died in Afghanistan since 2001. But, by Tuesday of this week, eight of those deaths had come in August alone.

The scale of suffering inflicted on the Afghan people is far greater still. More than 1,600 people have died in the past four months.

Far from being an amiable “security mission”, Nato’s offensive in Afghanistan has now embroiled British troops in some of their fiercest fighting for half a century.

British freighters packed with weaponry and ammunition arrive in the country five times each week. Last week alone over 80 tonnes of munitions arrived.

But the more troops go in, the more the violence escalates.

The nightmare of occupation in Afghanistan

With Canadian forces unable to tell friend from foe in Afghanistan there is only one solution.

Total War.

Round up all men and boys in the villages regardless of age, ship the women and girls to the safety of Kandahar and Kabul. Burn all opium crops, destroy all the villages, shoot all males as the enemy.

Victory is ours.

"I ask you: Do you want total war? If necessary, do you want a war more total and radical than anything that we can even imagine today?"

Any one who is opposed to this final solution is a bloody whimp liberal or a cautious conservative armchair warrior. After all it worked in VietNam until the liberals in the Pentagon whimped out for an airwar. The only way to introduce capitalism and democracy in Afghanistan is Total War!

The claim that capitalism is a total war, and this is its essence, is more or less accurate. Capital, in classical Marxism must always expand insofar to new markets and to create new commodities. Capital presupposes an empty space that is open for which it can grow and spread. Yet, the space for which it can grow is never empty. People, environment, societies, culture, etc generally impede its growth. Sartre and Vietnam


With thanks to J. Swift for the inspiration





See: Afghanistan



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