Sach Dean

The Liberals have invited Howard Dean to speak at their Leadership Convention, this has raised all sorts of controversy in the blogosphere and MSM. Personally I think they missed an opportunity to blast the Conservatives with a far more effective speaker; Jeffery Sachs.

Sachs is outspoken critic of the IMF and World Bank promoting new formula to meet needs of international development. He is also outspoken about the need to address the crisis of climate change. That would be two hits against the Harpocrite government. Two more than Howard dean could deliver.

And as a former and now repentant neo-liberal he is highly critical of that agenda. Opps that would mean of course he was critical of Ignatieff. Hmmm maybe thats why they failed to invite him.


Also See

Liberal Leadership Race



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Wiccan Vets Face Discrimination

Widows Sue Over Wicca Symbol

The widows of two Wiccan combat veterans sued the government Monday, saying the military has dragged its feet on allowing the religion's symbols on headstones.The Department of Veterans Affairs allows military families to choose any of 38 authorized headstone images. The list includes commonly recognized symbols for Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism, as well as those for smaller religions such as Sufism Reoriented, Eckiankar and the Japanese faith Seicho-No-Ie.

The Wiccan pentacle, a five-pointed star surrounded by a circle, is not on the list, an omission the widows say is unconstitutional.

Wiccans worship the Earth and believe they must give to the community. Some consider themselves "white," or good, witches, pagans or neo-pagans. Approximately 1,800 active-duty service members identify themselves as Wiccans, according to 2005 Defense Department statistics.

The lawsuit was filed by four plaintiffs: Roberta Stewart, whose husband, Nevada National Guard Sgt. Patrick Stewart, was killed in combat in Afghanistan last year; Karen DePolito, whose husband, Jerome Birnbaum, is a Korean War veteran who died last year; Circle Sanctuary, a Wisconsin-based Wiccan church; and Isis Invicta Military Mission, a California-based Wiccan and pagan congregation serving military personnel.

It claims that the VA has made "excuse after excuse" for more than nine years for not approving the symbol and that by doing so, it has trampled on the plaintiffs' constitutional rights of freedom of speech, religion and due process.

Circle Sanctuary and Stewart began calling in 1997 for the VA to allow the symbol's use.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington, D.C.-based group representing the plaintiffs in court, is seeking an order compelling the VA to make a decision.

"After asking the VA on a number of occasions to stop its unfair treatment of Wiccans in the military, we have no alternative but to seek justice in the courts," said the Rev. Barry Lynn, the group's executive director.

So much for Americas Faith Based politics, we know which faith groups the Bush regime and its military support; WASPs.

Heck Eckankar is not even a religion it is a phenomena of the seventies, a makeover of Theosophy in the tradition of Lopsang Rampa.

Wicca is far older religion and more established, even if modern day Wicca began in 1954 with the publication of Gerald Gardners High Magicks Aid, when the British Governments removed witchcraft from the criminal code. Until then, like homosexuality, witchcraft was considered a hanging offense.

Of course the pentagram is controversial because Christains fear it. Conservative Christian Boycott of the U.S. Army

It is also used by Satanists.Hence the confusion. Though Satanism is also recognized as a valid religion by the U.S. military as is Wicca. They are two distinct religions.

This article talks about 'white' witches, there is no such a creature. That was is a myth out of the Wizard of Oz. You are a Wiccan or pagan or not. Nothing black or white about it.

Black magick is a racist term, used to differentiate between African based religions such as Voodoo, Santeria and European (white) Magick. If one uses white and black magick in a modern sense by Wiccans it is sometimes to differentiate themselves from Satanists. But in reality the terms mean negative or harmful magick versus useful or good magick. A hangover from the ninteenth century but that is an issue for another article.

The cheeky Aleister Crowley defined the Black Brothers as being the Catholic Church and their infernal rights. He had even a lower opinion of the Pentacostal evangelicals who allow themselves to be possessed by trickster spirits.

See:

Magick

Paganism

Witch

Occult

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Smoking Bans Hurt Business

Two interesting blog posts on the impact of smoking bans in Canada.

In Edmonton with the most draconian smoking ban in Canada bingos have lost $6 million dollars reports Surreality Times.

ST also exposes the taxpayer funded cabal behind the anti-smoking crusade. Who are pushing their agenda on the current crop of wannabe Ralphs.

Werner Patels takes up the issue of the Quebec smoking ban; Québec bar owners to go to court

The smoking ban in Edmonton will have a direct impact on casinos now that there is a new casino just outside the city limits which allows for smoking. Rivals say Enoch casino has advantage

Since the anti-smoking lobby is directly funded by taxpayers who smoke is it any wonder they want to increase tobbaco taxes?Anti-smoking Group Urges $2 Increase In Cost Of Cigarettes Gives them more money for their lobby industry, and it is a very lucrative industry for doctors and the government.

See:

Smoking


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A Libertarian Critique of Decentralization

In an interesting post on Imperialism by Roderick Long; What Empire Does to a Culture he makes a note of this libertarian critique of decentralization. It is interesting because of course this comes from an American right wing libertarian perspective, or we could say individualist persepective.

In light of the Conservatives plans to decentralize the Canadian state in favour of the provinces this becomes an important critique from the right. PM eyes formal limits on Ottawa's powers

Never trust capitalist instutions whether business or government when they adopt the language of liberation and libertarianism like decentralization, self-management, or empowerment, these terms get turned on their heads and are then used to mean extending exploitation further.

Libertarian blogger Lady Aster offers the following critique of decentralization:

I've long been skeptical about decentralisation; what I fear is that societies with premodern, traditional cultural values will impose their local prejudices ruthlessly without a check from a larger, more cosmopolitan society. I'm very glad for Lawrence vs. Texas, and terrified by South Dakota, and while I would support reduction or elimination of the state power I also believe state power is less destructive when it precisely isn't in the hands of local, traditional social authorities. Historically, tolerance has been a value nurtured by education, leisure, and urbanity and made politically necessary wherever a polity comprises a variety of constituent cultures. My experience leads me to believe that the rights of minorities, including immigrants (undocumented or otherwise) would not be better protected under decentralisation. … True, there are cases where the local society would pass better laws than the centralised state … But even so, my reading of history is that the general tendency is for cultural tolerance to flourish in urban centers. With this being the case, localism seems an idea with which I can have some anarchistic sympathy but which seems in practice a deadly threat to minorities, dissidents, and nonconformists of all types.

Long takes issue with her comments however I found them insightful and am sympathetic, since to me anarchism is not against governance, but in favour of a democratic form of direct governance. Of course we live in decidely social democratic country so even our libertarianism is tinged with the sense of the need for social justice, and that government should serve the people, something our southern neighbours have an inherent historical distrust of.

And because the current revolt of fundamentalisms of the right whether in the U.S. or in the Middle East, all hate the Metropole, urban pluralist secular culture, ironically since it is a creature of the bourgoise enlightenment and capitalism.

The State is a function which arose from the needs of capitalism. As Marx points out the progressive aspect of Empire in India for instance was that overcomes the old patriarchical village structures, while at the same time not going far enough due to its own self interest being to create colonies. Long agrees;

The protection offered by imperial centralism should also not be overestimated. The vision of the British Empire as a universal guarantor of free trade looks like a bad joke when one considers the mercantilist system of economic privilege that Britain upheld in India, for example. And in the United States the federal government presided happily over slavery for nearly a century before doing much about it, and then presided happily over the Jim Crow system for nearly another century before doing very much about that; moreover, the struggle against Jim Crow was initially waged at the grass-roots level by private citizens with relatively little federal support, and it was only after the civil rights movement had begun to take on steam that the federal government moved like the Owl of Minerva to position itself at the head of the movement.

Where he disagrees with Marx, is that as an American Liberatarian from the right he sees politics as a matter of free will, rather than the outcome of the development of capitalism itself. Marx on the other hand looked at politics as determined by the economic needs of capitalism. And in that these two anti-imperialist solitudes would never meet. Except they do in the libertarian miluex, which is what gives our politics left or right the best chance of speaking truth to power.

A tip o' the blog to Liberator for this.

See:

Libertarian

Marx

Anarchism


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Bring Back Slavery

Since Canadian Christians and other monothieists based on the Abrahamic traditions of the old testament claim Marriage is a Sacred institution and thus that justifies their attempts to overturn Canada's Same Sex Marriage laws then let them not be hypocrites.

It's time to bring back that other sacred institution of the Old Testament, slavery. Abolitionism was liberal heresy. It not only violated the sacred institution of slavery but it led to that other liberal heresy feminism.

Time to bring back the good old laws of the Old Testament. Otherwise social conservatives are just hypocrites not worthy of whistling Dixie.

The first instance of slavery in the Bible consists of Noah's punishment of his son Canaan for some serious sexual sin (the details of which are unknown): "Cursed be Canaan; a slave of slaves shall he be to his brothers."(Gen 9: 27). Slavery, then, was in the first Biblical instance a punishment for some grievous sin. Generally this was the rule of the Law, with an exception to be noted below. Thus theives and enemies of the Jews could be made slaves,(cf. Ex 22:2; 2 Chr 28:8-15) but a Jew who arbitrarily took a slave would be punished by death.(Ex 21: 16)

Slavery in the Bible

See Sabbatical year, Onesimus, Bible-based advocacy of slavery, in addition to the details of the Book of Exodus.

Old Testament or Tanakh

Leviticus draws a distinction between Hebrew debt slavery:

• 25:39 If your brother becomes impoverished with regard to you so that he sells himself to you, you must not subject him to slave service.
• 25:40 He must be with you as a hired worker, as a resident foreigner; he must serve with you until the year of jubilee,
• 25:41 but then he may go free, he and his children with him, and may return to his family and to the property of his ancestors.
• 25:42 Since they are my servants whom I brought out from the land of Egypt, they must not be sold in a slave sale.
• 25:43 You must not rule over him harshly, but you must fear your God.

and "bondslaves", foreigners:

• 25:44 As for your male and female slaves who may belong to you, you may buy male and female slaves from the nations all around you.
• 25:45 Also you may buy slaves from the children of the foreigners who reside with you, and from their families that are with you, whom they have fathered in your land, they may become your property.
• 25:46 You may give them as inheritance to your children after you to possess as property. You may enslave them perpetually. However, as for your brothers the Israelites, no man may rule over his brother harshly.

What the Bible says about slavery

Quotations by learned men from the 19^th century:

	"[Slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God...it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation...it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts." Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America. 1,2
	"There is not one verse in the Bible inhibiting slavery, but many regulating it. It is not then, we conclude, immoral." Rev. Alexander Campbell
	"The right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example." Rev. R. Furman, D.D., Baptist, of South Carolina
	"The hope of civilization itself hangs on the defeat of Negro suffrage." A statement by a prominent 19th-century southern Presbyterian pastor, cited by Rev. Jack Rogers, moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
	"The doom of Ham has been branded on the form and features of his African descendants. The hand of fate has united his color and destiny. Man cannot separate what God hath joined." United States Senator James Henry Hammond. 3

Quotation from the 21st century:

"If we apply sola scriptura to slavery, I'm afraid the abolitionists are on relatively weak ground. Nowhere is slavery in the Bible lambasted as an oppressive and evil institution: Vaughn Roste, United Church of Canada staff. Overview: The quotation by Jefferson Davis, listed above, reflected the beliefs of many Americans in the 19th century. Slavery was seen as having been "sanctioned in the Bible." They argued that: Biblical passages recognized, controlled, and regulated the practice. The Bible permitted owners to beat their slaves severely, even to the point of killing them. However, as long as the slave lingered longer than 24 hours before dying of the abuse, the owner was not regarded as having committed a crime, because -- after all -- the slave was his property. 4 Paul had every opportunity to write in one of his Epistles that human slavery -- the owning of one person as a piece of property by another -- is profoundly evil. His letter to Philemon would have been an ideal opportunity to vilify slavery. But he wrote not one word of criticism. Jesus could have condemned the practice. He might have done so. But there is no record of him having said anything negative about the institution. Eventually, the abolitionists gained sufficient power to eradicate slavery in most areas of the world by the end of the 19th century. Slavery was eventually recognized as an extreme evil. But this paradigm shift in understanding came at a cost. Christians wondered why the Bible was so supportive of such an immoral practice. They questioned whether the Bible was entirely reliable. Perhaps there were other practices that it accepted as normal which were profoundly evil -- like genocide, torturing prisoners, raping female prisoners of war, executing religious minorities, burning some hookers alive, etc. The innocent faith that Christians had in "the Good Book" was lost -- never to be fully regained.

See:

Marriage

Gay


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Boom Times For Canadian Capitalism

From the Globe and Mail comes this good news for capitalism in Canada.


Since 1977, the profit growth of the TSX composite is about 6 per cent a year, excluding some unusual items. It's not steady, naturally, because profits dive during recessions and then stage monstrous recoveries. But 6 per cent is the average.

Now here are the TSX profit growth figures for the past four years, based on data by RBC Dominion Securities' quantitative research group:

2003: 36 per cent

2004: 25 per cent

2005: 12 per cent

2006 (through October): 24 per cent.

Never in the 29-year history of the TSX composite have we witnessed a streak like this. (The closest thing to it was in the late 1970s oil and gold boom.) Perhaps it will continue, even in the face of a slowdown in the United States, and maybe 24-per-cent profit gains can be sustained for a long time to come. But then, there are also people who believe in Martian invaders, unicorns, and Jeb Bush for President in 2008

So ask yourself why the government is planning this...Flaherty plans eventual cut to capital gains tax


And don't cry me a river about how Canadian manufacturers are losing money and being forced offshore, they were doing that before the Loonie rose. Like Gilden which offshored its T-Shirt manufacturing into Haiti.

Manufacturers in Canada have been hurt by a rising currency and competition from cheaper rivals in Asia. The Canadian dollar has gained about 38 percent against the U.S. currency in the past four years. That's prompted exporters such as T-shirt maker Gildan Activewear Inc. and packaging producer Norampac Inc. to shut Canadian plants this year because the facilities had become too costly to operate.

And despite Gilden Active Wear (GIL) claiming to be hurt by the Canadian dollar it is not. As one investment newsletter points out it is a good investment In the apparel sector, Gilden Activewear (GIL), a maker of tee shirts, has sprinted from 15 two years ago to 46,

Another investment newsletter points this out about sweatshop Gilden;
Gilden Activewear (GIL)—Up 157% in 367 days

Gilden Corproate Profile For Investors


See:

Corporate Tax


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Microcredit For Some

Ottawa backs microcredit loans with $40-million This is good news, unfortunately it only applies to developing countries. What the government needs to do is adopt a Canada wide Guaranteed Income and provide microcredit loans to welfare and social assistance recipients.That would be real welfare reform. That would also allow all Canadians equality to succeed which is the current rhetoric coming from the government. Because training is not enough. Because as the ad says you need to have money in your pocket.

The government also wants to ensure all Canadians have equal opportunity to succeed, Flaherty said.That means providing incentives so people can upgrade their skills and technological training to be flexible in the changing economy.

See:

Microcredit

Social Wage

Free Trade


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Masturbation Is Murder

If we use the logic of the Catholic Church and the anti-abortion/anti-choice adovactes well then this new finding proves not only is male masturbation a sin but now it is murder as well.

You are killing the unborn. So stop it guys.

Scientists are discovering that as well as carrying the DNA that spells out the male's contribution to a new life, sperm carries RNA and proteins which have a direct influence on fertilisation and embryo development.

Of course masturbation was never a sin for women since its biblical reference was to a 'guy' named Onan. Nor does it lead to ejaculation of seed, so important to patricarchical religions, so ladies you may continue guilt free.

See:

abortion

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Solar Power Discombobulator

Fellow Progressive Blogger Murky View points out that commercial Solar Power available for home use is now becoming popular; Solar Industry takes LCD cues

And I had blogged about Canadian Tire providing both Solar and Wind generators for the home.

Now it turns out large scale commercial solar power is becoming cheaper, thanks to one of them science fiction devices a solar power concentrator, or as this guy would call it a discombobulator.


Cheap, Superefficient Solar

Solar-power modules that concentrate the power of the sun are becoming more viable.

The thinking behind concentrated solar power is simple. Because energy from the sun, although abundant, is diffuse, generating one gigawatt of power (the size of a typical utility-scale plant) using traditional photovoltaics requires a four-square-mile area of silicon, says Jerry Olson, a research scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, in Golden, CO. A concentrator system, he says, would replace most of the silicon with plastic or glass lenses or metal reflectors, requiring only as much semiconductor material as it would take to cover an area the size of a typical backyard. And because decreasing the amount of semiconductor needed makes it affordable to use much more efficient types of solar cells, the total footprint of the plant, including the reflectors or lenses, would be only two to two-and-a-half square miles. (This approach is distinct from concentrated thermal solar power, which concentrates the heat from the sun to power turbines or sterling engines.)

See:

Ambrose

Environment

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Rememberance or Revisionism

There has been a torrent of blogging on Rememberance Day and its importance this weekend. But unfortunately there is also a mistaken belief that all the wars fought were for Freedom and Peace. Such is not the case.

As I blogged here before WWI was an Imperialist war of aggression, a useless war, one that did not produce peace and freedom.

Our warmongering PM in his speech launching Veterans Week went back so far as to include the Boer War, our first expeditionary war, another example of an Imperialist War.

While it is important to remember and respect our veterans, who believed the State Propaganda of the day that they were fighting just wars, just as todays soldiers believe the State Propaganda about Afghanistan being a just war, this is no excuse to embrace warmongering revisionist history.

War is the health of the State. There are very few just wars.

Now what really gets my goat is when progressive, left wing bloggers also get sucked into saying this stuff. Forgetting their history. Espcially galling is when it is NDP bloggers who say this stuff. As one did in his blog. They forget the CCF/NDP opposed all wars, including WWII. And they opposed forced conscription. Thank goodness for that. As I wrote in reply to this particular Dipper there was only one just war for Freedom;

The Boer War was an Imperialist war of agression by Briatin and Canadians fought in that war. WWI was an Imperialist War. The Korean War was the first hot war of the Cold War. Viet Nam was not a war but a police action which Canadians fought in as volunteers and are now recognized as 'veterans' thoubh we did not decalre war on Viet Nam nor did Canada officially suppport that war.

The only anti-fascist wars that were fought by Canadians were the volunteers who went to Spain to fight in the Spanish Civil War, who were declared illegal combatants by the Canadian State and have never been recognized as veterans, and WWII.

The fight for freedom against fascism was the only just war of all these.

And the current Tory government has opposed recognizing the volunteers who fought in Spain against Fascism as veterans! So not all Veterans in the war for Peace and Freedom were recognized in Canada this weekend.

Even the Vets who did fight in WWII did not get fair treatment from the State.
The Merchant Marines were not recognized for forty years, because they were civilian volunteers. And like returning Vets after WWI those who fought fascism came home to find no State support for them. The Night War Vets Seized the Vancouver Hotel

Not only should we Not Forget but we should also Remember the cry; Never Again War!

See:

White Poppy Debate

White Poppies

WWI Xmas Mutiny

The Working Class Dies For Harper

Not MacArthurs Republican Party

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