Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Right Whing Whine About Media Bias

I love the right wing punditocracy at the Sun chain, (and the National Post and Margrete Wente at the Globe and Mail, Lorne Gunter at the Edmonton Journal, and the editorial interference of David Asper in his Canada.com chain, etc. etc.) Slow news day, got nothing else to say well you can always bring up the old 'red' herring of the left liberal bias in the media, a media they now dominate but apparently not enough. Here is yet another example of their twisting the facts to fit their case:

Liberal bias? It's not just the CBC-By LORRIE GOLDSTEN
Here's something you may find interesting regarding the ongoing controversy over liberal media bias in Canada.

There is no controversy over this, its only an issue in the minds of rightwhing pundints who have nothing else to write about

According to a recent study by two Ryerson University journalism professors:

* Almost half of all Canadian television news directors, the individuals who have the most influence in determining what political news is covered on your favourite nightly newscast and how it is reported, vote Liberal.

ok so the other half votes against the Liberals. Wonder how the Sports departments in the media vote.....if Don Cherry is any example its definetly NOT Liberal...hey he works for the CBC.....

* A TV news director working at the tax-funded CBC is almost three times more likely to vote for the NDP in federal elections, compared to his or her counterpart in the private sector.

surprize surprize most of them live in urban Toronto, what do you expect from living in Danforth .

* When this research was compiled in 2002, just over one in 10 (11.4%) of all private sector news directors said they would vote for the Canadian Alliance. However, not one news director at the CBC described himself (or herself) as an Alliance voter.

Nope but they sure are hiring alot of Alliance commentators for the CBC in the past twenty years. While unions and the left get short shrift in the private media consortiums.

These findings are contained in "The Canadian News Directors Study", an informative survey of the political leanings and demographics of TV news directors, conducted by Marsha Barber and Ann Rauhala. The results were published in the May 2005 issue of the Canadian Journal of Communication.

The article is available with a subscription to the Journal, the abstract for the study says the following

The Canadian News Directors Study: Demographics and Political Leanings of Television Decision Makers

Marsha Barber, Ryerson University

Abstract: This is the first academic study to attempt to understand more about the men and women who make key decisions in television newsrooms across Canada. The authors surveyed all television news directors across the country.

The research reveals that, unlike in the United States, the voting patterns of news directors mirror those of the general Canadian population.
Opps Lorne forgot to mention this little fact, that the Canadian media reflects Canadian society, so when the rightwhingwhiners complain about liberal left media bias what they really are saying is that they hate the fact Canada is a social democratic left liberal society...to bad so sad move south...


It reveals that news directors are more secular than those in the general population. Which means they are less tolerante of bias, which of course is positive unless you have a political ideology like Lorne, then this is another example of liberalism

The research also uncovered significant demographic differences between CBC and private sector news directors. No surprize, as Lorne points out the private sector media is more biased in FAVOUR of business, the Reform/Alliance/Conservatives, and anti-union, anti-feminist, anti-gay, just look at the Sun chain or QR77/Ched radio network in Alberta

Finally, it suggests that women and ethnic minorities are dramatically underrepresented in senior positions. opps gee Lorne didn't mention that I guess that's less important than a mythical liberal left bias in the media.

Man these rightwhingwhiners would make Rumplestiltskin jealous in how they weave their liberal left media bias out of the flimsiest of evidence. Its the Lubor Zink school of journalism that now dominates Canada's media not the liberal left. But shhh don't tell them that they love to be an oppressed minority

Oh and by the way 95% of columinsts with the Sun Chain support the Conservatives or parties to the right of them. Ok thats not a empirical estimate, it's my biased view from reading their columns, and its about as valid as theirs about the domination of the media by the liberal left..

The Sun chain originated in the wake of the death of the Bassett meida Empire flagship newspaper the Toronto Telegram. And the Telegram had a right wing bias which the Sun has inherited and expanded. As has its doppleganger the National Post.

I will reveal to you, here, tonight -- for the first time anywhere -- how the entire modern history of Canadian journalism was played in a condensed preview form, inadvertently and unknowingly, at the Toronto Telegram in the 1960s;

Bassett was just not a natural-born converger. He was born divergent. On his op-ed page ran a marvellous mish-mash of divergent opinions from Doug Fisher to Lubor Zink. There was no prevailing voice. He would say: "Page six is mine!" And that was where he propagated a mainly right-wing view of society. But that view emphatically included a strong belief in diversity of opinion. So over the gutter on seven, anything went -- and it confused the daylights out of a lot of readers.

They would phone and say: "What are you guys in favour of anyway?" And they would point out that over at the Star, opinions were pretty carefully converged so that they didn't stray too much from a general Liberal-at-election-NDP-between sort of stance, with no errant Zinks wandering page seven to confuse people -- and erode circulation. The great Duncan MacPherson once thanked the Star, as he accepted his millionth cartoonist's National Newspaper Award (the only one that we could hardly ever win), for always giving him "Liberal freedom of expression."

We all accepted the fact that a somewhat unfocused image hurt our circulation, and that this was a price we paid for embodying freedom of expression. But it still smarted when Bassett's conscience led him to end his support of John Diefenbaker -- whose remaining devotees in their thousands flooded our switchboard with cancellations.

The point is that we offered a multiplicity of voices although we were only one paper. And the reason for that was that the publisher, who was a professional journalist before he was a businessman, felt a need to do so driven by his personal, professional ethic.
Andrew W. MacFarlane Professor Emeritus and Founding Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism, UWO. November 4, 2000
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Corporate Welfare for Big Oil

Yesterday was a baaaaad day for big oil, at least in the media as the following stories will show. But it was good day for the public, it was finally revealed for all to see that Corporate Tax Breaks are simply Corporate Welfare. When they say gimme more, gimme a tax break, they are taking money out of the public purse for private profit. And not only that they cheat on their taxes too....no say it ain't so.

Environmentalists: End tax breaks to oil sands
In the period 1996 to 2002, the federal government spent $7.9 billion on subsidies for oil and gas producers, including $484 million to the tar-sands operations, according to a study done for the Pembina Institute, a non-partisan think-tank based in Alberta. The full cost of a new tar-sands plant can be written off in its first year of operation, rather than being written off over the plant's useful life. The accelerated write-off has the effect of lowering the operator's tax bill. Federal Environment Commissioner Johanne Gelinas raised concerns about tax treatment of the oil and gas industry in her 2000 report, but concluded it was impossible to calculate the value of tax breaks from available data. A Finance Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said several of the industry's tax breaks have been ended since that report was issued. The official could not give the value of current tax breaks.

Tax breaks for Big Oil? When they are gouging us at the pump and well head? Say it ain't so! But it is. And that's your Canadian tax dollars going to pay welfare to Big Oil. It gets worse, they also screw Albertans out of royalty payments AND get a subsidy from the Alberta Government.

The Alberta Government can't seem to be able to keep track of the royalties big oil is supposed to pay. And they also subsidize big oil. Must be because in Alberta the government isn't in the 'business of being in business'. And apparently its not in the business of accounting for what its owed by big oil. Yep that's an effective way to protect the interests of Albertans who OWN the oil and gas. NOT.

So when it comes to the oil business its all back slapping between Tories in the oil patch and Tories in the government over lunch at the Petroleum club, so what if a few million goes missing or the Tories continue with an outmoded subsidy originally put into place in the 1980's when times were tough. Hey whose watching the farm ya have to ask. Well it ain't Ralph and his pals.
Lax checks on oil cheats
Hundreds of millions in fees at risk, Alberta watchdog warns
EDMONTON - Hundreds of millions of dollars of energy royalties that should go to the Alberta government could instead be flowing to oil and natural gas companies because of poor controls, Auditor-General Fred Dunn said Monday. His report also questioned the value of paying out $102 million in "financial assistance" last year to energy companies that are making record profits. With the oilpatch largely a self-reporting entity, the province can't always track oil and gas volumes back to the well head, Dunn said. And with certain wells paying different royalty rates to the government, companies could report volumes from a well that pays less, he added. "Clearly, the industry is very careful on making sure that they are going to be paying the lower royalty."

Ah yes self regulation, love that, it means trust the fox in the hen house when he says he ain't stealing no chickens. Tories in the Oil Patch control Tories in the Legislature, rather than visa versa. And we elect these guys to do what? Oh yeah make money off VLT's. And this is NOT a new problem....

Liberal energy critic Hugh MacDonald MLA for Edmonton-Gold Bar said the royalty-collection system has been a problem for more than a decade and he called the government "irresponsible" and "cavalier" in its approach to what it knows is a problem. MacDonald said the lax enforcement is a symptom of the government's blind faith in business to regulate itself. He also slammed the Alberta Royalty Tax Credit program that Dunn noted in his report seemed to have no purpose other than to "provide financial assistance to the oil and gas industry."

And this outdated Tax Break gets the attention of the usual suspects in the Tory cheerleading section of the Edmonton Sun....the boosters have been actually booing lately which is a nice change for them...... Sportsfisherman and Business Columnist, formerly the provincial and muncipal affairs columnist and former pro-Ralph booster, Neil Waugh writes: "But it only gets worse when Dunn finally gets an answer to the question auditors have been asking since 1992. What the heck is the royalty tax credit supposed to do? Especially when there are other royalty incentive programs for low-production wells. The response was so bizarre that Dunn feels he must put it in quotation marks just to prove he hasn't torqued it."It's to provide financial assistance to the oil and gas industry,"{Greg Melchin's energy department} Melchin's men beamed. You've got to be kidding, Greg.This year the Tories are doling out $102 million in oilpatch welfare at a time when oil is over $65 US a barrel, gas is $12 per gigajoule and energy companies are racking up record profits. Apparently, "extensive discussions" were held with the energy bureaucrats before they coughed up their totally unacceptable answer. " Not to be left out Editor and Chief Curmudgeon Paul Stanway writes: "At a time when most oil is selling for better than $60 US a barrel, and natural gas is going for a mind-boggling $12 per gigajoule, why is the Alberta government doling out $102 million in royalty tax credits to oil and gas companies? It's a good question, and the response from Alberta Energy was beyond lame. The tax credits are "providing financial assistance to the oil and gas industry," the department explained. Well, duh! But why are they providing this assistance? Now, here's a chunk of change the Klein government can be saving for the Alberta taxpayer right now. The tax credit scheme should be ended quicker than you can say "prosperity bonus.""

Whats interesting in both these stories is that NO ONE can tell how much BIG OIL IS GETTING IN TAX BREAKS! Or how much they are stealing at the well head by not paying the royalties they should!

The Alberta Tax Royalty Credit was instituted back in 1992, and as the Alberta Federation of Labour has shown, it is directly responsible for the deficit short fall the province experienced one year later. A deficit that became the excuse for the Ralph Revolution, the rolling back of public sector wages and reductions in funding to public services!

If the tax subsidy of the Alberta Government was $102 million last year, multiple that by 13 years since it was created and thats a cool 1.5 billion dollars given in tax breaks just by the Alberta Government to Tar Sands development, with nothing to show for it. Add to that a cool half billion in Federal tax subsidies and Albertans and Canadians have just paid to rent their own house.

Tar Sands financing is condominium financing. We got oil billions of dollars worth of oil in them thar Tar Sands so we pay Big Oil to extract it and then pay us wait for it in 10-25 years, after they become profitable, and we also give them subsidies to keep them happy, and all the time we DONT OWN ANY OF IT. Does this make any sense? Nope. WE NEED TO NATIONALIZE BIG OIL. Hey we practically own them anyway with all these subsidies.

And we know that it is not just the Tar Sands that are profitable so is gas well exploration, at $12 a gigajoule for natural gas, more rigs are drilling. And like the Tar Sands they are getting subsidies as well from the Alberta government. How much? We don't know, cause no-ones talking at Alberta Energy, Greg Melchin's energy department.

At the height of the forthcoming winter drilling season, when the 748-rig western fleet is expected to be virtually fully employed, completing a record year of more than 24,000 wells. About 75 per cent of the drilling is in Alberta. But the number of rigs is expanding in response to demand for more wells by exploration and production companies, with about three-quarters of the drilling aimed at natural gas. The western fleet, all owned by Alberta companies or international firms with Canadian operations based in the province, is forecast to grow to 780 rigs by the end of the year, up from about 550 in the 1990s.

So while the Feds and Alberta government subsidize big oil and gas at the well head what do they do about rising oil and gas costs? Well promise one time energy rebates err kickbacks to you and me. Big deal.

Feds to unveil home heating aid package
It was not clear how much of the $2 billion will be "new" money. The sum might include funds from the Kyoto implementation plan. It could also include $100 million for energy efficiency that was added to the budget last year as part of an NDP-Liberal deal to keep the minority Liberals in power. $250 heat rebates in works $250 bucks will do little to stop the gouging by Big Oil

Homeowners should expect to get burned over heating Rising oil and natural-gas prices combine with cold forecasts to drive soaring costs

Natural-gas prices have doubled in less than four months. And some commodity analysts say prices could be three times higher than in the spring if a prolonged cold snap hits North America.

Edward de Gale describes the situation as "a natural disaster waiting to happen."

"For many Canadians," Mr. de Gale said, "this is going to be a particularly cruel winter."

Heating bills may not start mounting immediately -- Environment Canada is predicting a balmy autumn for most of the country. But come December, central Canada, especially Ontario, is expected to face a winter colder than last year's, according to the department's long-term outlook. Even worse, Environment Canada's definition of a normal winter is largely derived from the more frigid seasons of decades past, meaning that the coming spring may be much colder than those in recent memory


They would be better able to deal with both the current gouging at the pump and the rising costs of gas powered utilities by NOT giving big oil corporate welfare. Then using those tax subsidies for reducing emissions and setting Kyoto standards. In Alberta's case we would not be paying increased utility costs if we Regulated the Industry, which was privatized/deregulated only few years ago, on the promise of .....wait for it......lower costs to consumers. Ha Ha Ha Ha. I can't stop laughing for crying.

Province extends natural gas rebate program for October
Alberta New Democrat Opposition Leader Brian Mason said last week Direct Energy's application to hike natural gas rates by 23% in October to $11.805 per GJ for Alberta North customers, and $12.262 per GJ for Alberta South customers is unacceptable. At the time Mason said rebates didn't kick in until November, and he urged the Energy and Utilities Board to reject the application. He noted the government's deregulation policy mandates Direct Energy to engage in "price-gouging," by requiring the monthly gas price to be based on the highly volatile spot market. Meanwhile, SaskEnergy customers in Saskatchewan will only pay $6.97 per GJ in October, a full 70 per cent less than Albertans, before the rebates announced today, Mason noted. Even with the new rebates, Albertans will be paying more than a $1 more a GJ for gas this month than their counterparts.


GREEN HOUSE GAS AND HOT AIR

But the tar sands are also a huge and growing source of greenhouse gas emissions, Already, Fort McMurray's two oil-sands plants are Canada's fourth-largest source of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.

All those tax breaks and profits guess who whines the most about Kyoto? Why Big Oil and their lackies in the Alberta Government. And guess who is NOT doing anything about implementing Kyoto? The Alberta Government. Instead of taxing Big Oil and setting emission standards Alberta is doing.....nothing. Oh yeah giving em tax breaks, subsidies, corporate welfare.....and complaining Kyoto will hurt the industry. So like they did with the Federal Gun Registry, they refuse to implement the Federal Kyoto Accords.

Provinces chided on climate change

By ALLISON DUNFIELD

Monday, October 3, 2005

Globe and Mail Update

The ways Canada's provinces are addressing climate change are "piecemeal, scattered, and in some cases, "non-existent," a new report from the David Suzuki foundation said Monday.

The study analyzed various provincial government policies on climate change and found that most did not have a specific plan to cut emissions of greenhouse gases.

The Suzuki Foundation undertook the study in part because although the Kyoto Protocol to reduce emissions was signed at the federal level, it is up to the provinces to implement the policies.

"The Canadian government has been rightly criticized for its inaction on climate change,” said Dale Marshall, a climate-change policy analyst with the Suzuki foundation who authored the report. “But provinces and territories have escaped the same criticism despite considerable inaction on their part.

"Canada's stalling on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions has as much to do with provincial opposition and intransigence as the federal government's lack of commitment or effectiveness.”

His report, All Over the Map, looked at where provinces are at in terms of their current emissions levels and then looked at their plans for reducing greenhouse gasses and evaluated their records.

Mr. Marshall found that New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and the Yukon have no climate change plans at all.

He called the plans put out by British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador "weak and vague."

Mr. Marshall also slammed Alberta and Saskatchewan for their oil and gas, and other, industry emissions, which are "skyrocketing" with no plans to place limits on them.

Although Ontario has low emissions per capita and has promised to remove coal-fired power plants, the report found, it has plan to address climate change and has weakened promises to cut electricity demand.

On the other hand, he lauded Manitoba, Quebec and Prince Edward Island for coming up with concrete ideas and for already taking action to reduce emissions.

He said that when the Kyoto protocol became law earlier this year, everyone assumed that reducing emissions fell on the shoulders of the federal government. In the report, however, he emphasizes that while that is partly true, some energy responsibilities fall under provincial jurisdiction.

For example, he said, it is the provinces that must ensure that buildings are up to code and increase energy efficiency. The provinces are also responsible for important changes related to climate change, such as management of natural gas and electricity.

They must therefore, he said, be on board to help citizens and businesses reduce usage.

For the most part, he said, provinces have failed to pay proper attention to the necessary reductions.

To meet its Kyoto target by 2012, Canada must cut emissions by 270 tonnes a year – 6 per cent below 1990 levels.

Canada agreed to decrease its emissions at a meeting in Kyoto in 1997. That agreement became international law in early 2005.

Kyoto signatories from all over the world meet in Montreal in December to discuss the next step in the process.

Yet business wants a level playing field when it comes to Kyoto. Yep if they have to be taxed and regulated everyone should be taxed and regualted, cause thats the only way to implement the Kyoto accords. Self Regulation as we see in Alberta does NOT work. Never has, never will. And business is the first to admit that. Regulate us they tell the state, cause without regulations we will cheat.

And who is NOT in favour of regulations? Why the Provincial Governments and even the Feds, who have no plan around Kyoto. And its not just in Canada, its an international problem with Kyoto as Guardian Columnist George Monbiot points out.

The State does not want to Regulate, because it has accepted the ideology of the marketplace, after having the right wing lobby them for thirty years, it is now the ruling ideology of the State. And now business is saying the opposite when it comes the Kyoto and Climate Change.

It would seem that I was wrong about big business

Corporations are ready to act on global warming but are thwarted by ministers who resist regulation in the name of the market

George Monbiot
Tuesday September 20, 2005
The Guardian

This was not, I now discover, the first time that the corporations have demanded regulation. In January the chairman of Shell, Lord Oxburgh, insisted that "governments in developed countries need to introduce taxes, regulations or plans ... to increase the cost of emitting carbon dioxide". He listed the technologies required to replace fossil fuels, and remarked that "none of this is going to happen if the market is left to itself". In August the heads of United Utilities, British Gas, Scottish Power and the National Grid joined Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace in calling for "tougher regulations for the built environment".

So much for the perpetual demand of the thinktanks to "get government off the backs of business". Any firm that wants to develop the new technologies wants tough new rules. It is regulation that creates the market.

So why won't the government act? Because it is siding with the dirty companies against the clean ones. Deregulation has become the test of its manhood: the sign that it has put the bad old days of economic planning behind it.




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Tuesday, October 04, 2005

A Day in the Life of Corporate Criminals

Business As Usual-a day in the life of white collar crime...the only crime that pays

The Canadian brokerage arm of Toronto-Dominion Bank will pay $375,000 in fines and investigative costs after the firm failed to disclose commissions to clients. TD Waterhouse Canada will pay $250,000 to settle the allegations, the Ontario Securities Commission said yesterday in a statement. It will pay $125,000 for the cost of the probe. TD (TSX) fell 18 cents to $57.32. Bloomberg

Regulator calls for liquidation of Norbourg
MONTREAL -- There is $130-million unaccounted for at Norbourg Asset Management Inc. -- almost double the initial estimate -- and Quebec's financial regulator yesterday called for the liquidation of the asset management company. The watchdog's chief executive officer, Jean St-Gelais, announced that he is launching a form of class-action lawsuit on behalf of Norbourg's 9,200 unitholders.The Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) said it's calling for the liquidation of Montreal-based Norbourg following the filing of a preliminary report from Ernst & Young, the company administrator since it was shut down in August. Norbourg's founder and controlling shareholder, Vincent Lacroix, was removed from his duties in August and his licence to act as an investment counsellor suspended amid allegations of fraud and embezzlement at the company. So far, Ernst & Young has uncovered $85-million of "irregular" transactions at Norbourg, of which $58-million have been traced to such items as acquisitions, withdrawals of funds and loans to company individuals, said
AMF executive vice-president Pierre Bernier.

Ravelston pleads not guilty to fraud chargesConrad Black's holding company Ravelston Corp. Ltd. has decided to end its legal wrangle with the U.S. Department of Justice by agreeing to enter a plea of not guilty to fraud charges in a Chicago court. Toronto-based Ravelston was put into receivership last April and in August the company was charged with seven counts of fraud in the United States, along with former Hollinger International Inc. executives David Radler and Mark Kipnis. The charges related to allegations the group orchestrated a $32-million (U.S.) fraud at Chicago-based Hollinger. Mr. Kipnis has pleaded not guilty. The charges against the company raised a myriad of legal issues for Ravelston's receiver, RSM Richter Inc., because the company has no operations in the U.S. and is operating under court protection in Ontario. The U.S. Attorney put pressure on the receiver to submit to the charges saying Ravelston would be a "fugitive of justice" if it failed to appear in court. Ravelston's move could be a boost to the U.S. Attorney's Office, which is still investigating Mr. Black and others at Hollinger. The company could now be forced to hand over hundreds of documents as part of the criminal court process. And, the receiver said, U.S. officials may also put pressure on Ravelston to settle the charges quickly. Mr. Radler, 63, pleaded guilty on Sept. 20 to one count of fraud under an agreement that calls for him to receive a reduced sentence. In return, he has agreed to co-operate fully with the criminal probe.
Conrad Black: The rise and fall of a media mogul

Crime does pay Crime does pay. At least it seems to pay as long as you steal from the federal government, or more specifically-- the taxpayers of Canada. Just ask Paul Coffin, the ad executive who pleaded guilty last week to 15 counts of fraud totalling $1.5 million of taxpayers money.

Former broker sentenced to 12 years CARLSBAD — Former stockbroker R. Gene Hornbeck was sentenced in district court Friday to 12 years in prison, to be followed by 12 years supervised probation. Hornbeck was convicted July 29 on counts of embezzlement more than $20,000, fraud more than $20,000, securities fraud and sale of unregistered securities

Questions over jail time for white-collar crimeRecent lengthy sentences for white-collar crimes have been seen, by some, as desperately needed deterrents after a deluge of corporate scandals. But the sentencing of Kozlowski, 58, comes at a time when a number of lawyers, including former prosecutors, are questioning whether such sentences are justified. Bernard Ebbers, the former chairman of WorldCom who was convicted of masterminding an $11 billion accounting fraud that bankrupted the company, was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Because Ebbers is 63, some have contended that the sentence amounts to a life term. Shortly before, John Rigas, the 80-year-old founder of Adelphia Communications, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for his role in looting and hiding debt, in a scandal that bankrupted the cable-television company. "You have to ask yourself whether the proof in these cases warrants such a sentence," said Otto Obermaier, a former U.S. prosecutor who worked on white-collar crimes from 1989 to 1993.

Does punishment fit the crime? Some say no

You bet it does. Especially in a country that has three strike law and the death penalty for the poor. And while a few high profile cases have made the news the majority don't get prosecuted, unlike the prosecutions of drug dealers, petty thieves, etc.

Report: White-Collar Prosecutions Slide The report found that while the information from the U.S. Attorneys showed the totals for white collar prosecutions had remained essentially unchanged from 2000 to 2003, the number of prosecutions declined about ten percent from 2003 to 2004. The report found that in 2003, the number of weapons prosecutions surpassed the number of white collar crime prosecutions.

White Collar Crime is not Victimless
Since the 1990s, tremendous growth of and involvement in the securities and commodities markets at the institutional, corporate, and private investor levels have led to great numbers of individuals involved in intentional corporate fraud and misconduct, particularly senior corporate executives. For example, the FBI is currently investigating over 189 major corporate frauds, 18 of which have losses over $1 billion. The erosion of public confidence in the management of public companies will, if left unchecked, have a negative impact on the stock markets and capital raising, which will in turn have a negative impact throughout the US economy.

Abort Every White Baby!Consider the fact that whites commit three times as many violent crimes as blacks every year, just in raw numbers. This is just for ordinary "street crimes" such as assault. The numbers become skewed out of this world when you consider "white-collar" crimes (typically, the collar isn't the only thing that's white). For instance, job-related accidents and illnesses claimed the lives of 70,000 Americans in 1992, a significant portion of which can be chalked up to white employers neglecting to comply with occupational health and safety laws. According to studies, up to 64,000 die every year due to pollution and other environmental hazards produced by industry. Another 21,700 die due to consumer product deaths, costing the nation $200 billion a year. Another $200 billion is lost annually due to white-collar embezzlement. These two statistics alone add up to over 26 times the amount of all the robberies and petty thefts committed every year combined! We should also not forget the ravages of the white-owned health care system and insurance industry. Around 18,000 adults are killed every year as a result of a lack of medical coverage. Over 25 thousand die as a result of unnecessary prescriptions and surgeries performed by mostly white doctors. All in all, corporate criminals take about ten times as many lives as street criminals. And I haven't even mentioned the white men who control the apparatus of state, which through war, sanctions, and other means kills hundreds of thousands, if not millions more. Over 100,000 civilians have died in Iraq alone, for example.
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Two Solitudes-In Amerika

In Canada we often speak of Two Solitudes, in reference to Quebec and the Rest of Canada (ROC).

In Amerika there are still two solitudes 140 years after Slavery ended. There are Two Americas, one Black and one White. And Afro-America is still poor, illiterate, and subject to the whims of capitalist exploitation as these two stories show. Idol Winner Fanatasia reveals the reality of being working class African American, making a sham of the so called American Dream. Sure she is America's Idol, if being illiterate and being raped is anyting to idolize. Yet it is the harsh reality of everyday life for working class women of colour in racist America. And typical of the American culture of 'you can make it if you work hard enough', she blames herself.

And the announcement of the layoffs of New Orelans city workers reveals the same false American Dream for working class Afro Americans. I guess they can blame themselves to for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or for not being one of George II's Texas pals, who get all the plumb jobs.

Say what was that promise George II made about rebuilding New Orleans? Oh did he forget to mention it will be by the private sector to benefit the private sector, with taxpayer money. With the layoffs of municipal workers in New Orleans, FEMA will be known as Firing Employees of Muncipalities in America.....The American Dream is only available for a few, they are White and Rich.

Idol winner Fantasia reveals she's illiterate

Fantasia Barrino performs on ABC's 'Good Morning America' in July, 2005.

Fantasia Barrino performs on ABC's 'Good Morning America' in July, 2005. (AP Photo/Jeff Christensen, File)


Associated Press

NEW YORK -- "American Idol" winner Fantasia Barrino reveals in her memoirs that she is functionally illiterate and had to fake her way through some scripted portions on the televised talent show, which she won in 2004.

"You're illiterate to just about everything. You don't want to misspell," Fantasia told ABC's "20/20." "So that, for me, kept me in a box and I didn't, wouldn't come out."

The 21-year-old R&B singer says she's signed record deals and contracts that she didn't read and couldn't understand. But the hardest part, she said, is not being able to read to Zion, her 4-year-old daughter.

"That hurts really bad," she said, adding that she is now learning to read with tutors.

In her memoir, "Life is Not a Fairy Tale," which she dictated to a freelance writer, Fantasia also said she was raped in the ninth grade by a classmate. She says the boy was disciplined, but she blamed herself for the attack.

She dropped out of high school that year and became an unwed mother at 17.

US housing official: rebuilt New Orleans will have fewer poor blacks

President Bush’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development acknowledged the administration’s real vision for New Orleans when he told reporters last week that the city would have far fewer poor black residents once reconstruction is completed.

In an interview with the Houston Chronicle, HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson predicted New Orleans would slowly bring back as many as 375,000 people, but that only 35 to 40 percent of the population would be black. Prior to Hurricane Katrina the city had nearly 500,000 residents, more than two-thirds of whom were African-American.

“Whether we like it or not, New Orleans is not going to be 500,000 people for a long time,” Jackson said. “New Orleans is not going to be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again.”



New Orleans lays off 3,000 city workers

Associated Press

October 4, 2005

NEW ORLEANS - Mayor Ray Nagin said Tuesday the city is laying off as many as 3,000 employees -- or about half its workforce -- because of the financial damage inflicted on New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina.

Nagin announced with "great sadness" that he had been unable to find the money to keep the workers on the payroll.

He said only non-essential workers will be laid off and that no firefighters or police will be among those let go.

[So sewer workers, truckers, paramedics, and other support staff aren't essential?! New Orleans is Not a City, it's a Police State! EP]

"I wish I didn't have to do this. I wish we had the money, the resources to keep these people," Nagin said. "The problem we have is we have no revenue streams."

Nagin described the layoffs as "pretty permanent" and said that the city will work with the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency to notify municipal employees who fled the city in the aftermath of Katrina, which struck about a month ago.

The mayor said the move will save about $5 million US to $8 million US of the city's monthly payroll of $20 million US. The layoffs will take place over the next two weeks.

Eased Out of the Big Easy
by Jesse Jackson

After his administration's incompetence and indifference had lethal consequences in Katrina's wake, President Bush has been scrambling to regain his footing. He's called for an "unprecedented response to an unprecedented crisis." In religious services at the National Cathedral, he called on America to "erase this legacy of racism" exposed by those abandoned in Katrina's wake. He's called on Congress to appropriate more than $60 billion in emergency relief and outlined a recovery program likely to cost up to $200 billion, or nearly as much as the Iraq War.

All this has led the press to compare his plans to Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal or Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. Don't fall for it. A close look at the Bush plan reveals that this is a bad deal from a deck stacked against the poor who suffered the most in Katrina's wake.

The first clue came from Bush's first act. He issued orders erasing the prevailing wage for work on rebuilding the Gulf, and his administration gave Halliburton a lucrative no-bid contract to begin the work. Then he designated Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana an enterprise zone, and, using emergency authority, waived all worker protections in the region -- protections for equal employment, for minority contractors, for health and safety, for environmental protection.

We're learning that when Bush promised to remove the legacy of racism in New Orleans, he meant he'd remove the poor who were victims of that racism. Bush's secretary for Housing and Urban Development, Alphonso Jackson, revealed that to the Houston Chronicle.

"Whether we like it or not, New Orleans is not going to be 500,000 people for a long time," the HUD secretary said. "New Orleans is not going to be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again." Jackson predicted New Orleans will slowly draw back as many as 375,000 people, but that only 35 percent to 40 percent of the post-Katrina population would be black. (Before Katrina, New Orleans was two-thirds black.) "I'm telling you, as HUD secretary and having been a developer and a planner, that's how it's going to be." Jackson revealed that he advised Mayor Ray Nagin not to rebuild the overwhelmingly black 9th Ward.

The people of the 9th Ward are the maids and waiters who serve New Orleans tourists. They are the musicians who give the city its blues. They are the cops and government clerks who are struggling to bring the city back. Half of the houses there are owned, not rentals. Many of these workers are dispersed -- dispatched to over 40 states. Many still are in shelters.

No one could figure out why the Bush administration wouldn't give the evacuees housing vouchers to rent housing in and around New Orleans. Instead, FEMA has ordered tens of thousands of trailers and is struggling to build trailer parks -- Bushvilles -- to shelve Katrina's victims.

Now we know. Bush's isn't planning urban renewal, he's planning urban removal. The administration has given the victims of Katrina a one-way ticket out with no plan for their return. Instead, the planners will turn New Orleans into a gentrified theme park. They'll rebuild the white communities -- even those like middle-class Gentilly and wealthy Lakeview that are as prone to severe flooding as the 9th Ward.

Congress should insist that Katrina's victims have a right to return -- and FEMA should develop a plan to make their return possible. They should have preference for the jobs that will be created in rebuilding the city. They should be provided vouchers to use for nearby housing. If necessary, local military bases should be opened, with public transportation to get them to and from work. They should be paid the prevailing wage, with decent health-care benefits. The people of the 9th Ward should decide the fate of their homes, not urban planners intent on building a New Orleans without its black people. If their neighborhoods are not rebuilt, then affordable and public housing should be built in other parts of New Orleans.

That's not what Alphonso Jackson and the administration are planning, so it will take street heat and congressional action to make them see the light. Katrina destroyed its victims' homes; we shouldn't let the administration make them exiles from their own city.

© 2005 Chicago Sun Times

Growing Gulf Between Rich and Rest of US
by Holly Sklar


Guess which country the CIA World Factbook describes when it says, "Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20 percent of households."

If you guessed the United States, you're right.

The United States has rising levels of poverty and inequality not found in other rich democracies. It also has less mobility out of poverty.

Since 2000, America's billionaire club has gained 76 more members while the typical household has lost income and the poverty count has grown by more than 5 million people.

Poverty and inequality take a daily toll seldom seen on television. "The infant mortality rate in the United States compares with that in Malaysia -- a country with a quarter the income." says the 2005 Human Development Report. "Infant death rates are higher for [black] children in Washington, D.C., than for children in Kerala, India."

Income and wealth in America are increasingly concentrated at the very top -- the realm of the Forbes 400.

You could have banked $1 million a day every day for the last two years and still have far to go to make the new Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans.

It took a minimum of $900 million to get on the Forbes 400 this year. That's up $150 million from 2004.

"Surging real estate and oil prices drove up several fortunes and helped pave the way for 33 new members," Forbes notes.

Middle-class households, meanwhile, are a medical crisis or outsourced job away from bankruptcy.

With 374 billionaires, the Forbes 400 will soon be billionaires only.

Bill Gates remains No. 1 on the Forbes 400 with $51 billion. Low-paid Wal-Mart workers can find Walton family heirs in five of the top 10 spots; another Wal-Mart heir ranks No. 116.

Former Bechtel president Stephen Bechtel Jr. and his son, CEO Riley Bechtel, tie for No. 109 on the Forbes 400 with $2.4 billion apiece. The politically powerful Bechtel has gotten a no-bid contract for hurricane reconstruction despite a pattern of cost overruns and shoddy work from Iraq to Boston's leaky "Big Dig" tunnel/highway project.

The Forbes 400 is a group so small they could have watched this year's Sugar Bowl from the private boxes of the Superdome.

Yet combined Forbes 400 wealth totals more than $1.1 trillion -- an amount greater than the gross domestic product of Spain or Canada, the world's eighth- and ninth-largest economies.

The number of Americans in poverty is a group so large it would take the combined populations of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas, plus Arkansas to match it. That's according to the Census Bureau's latest count of 37 million people below the poverty line.

Millions more Americans can't afford adequate health care, housing, child care, food, transportation and other basic expenses above the official poverty thresholds, which are set too low. The poverty threshold for a single person under age 65 was just $9,827 in 2004. For a two-adult, two-child family, it was just $19,157.

By contrast, the Economic Policy Institute's Basic Family Budget Calculator says the national median basic needs budget (including taxes and tax credits) for a two-parent, two-child family was $39,984 in 2004. It was $38,136 in New Orleans and $33,636 in Biloxi, Mississippi.

America is becoming a downwardly mobile society instead of an upwardly mobile society. Median household income fell for the fifth year in a row to $44,389 in 2004 -- down from $46,129 in 1999, adjusting for inflation. vThe Bush administration is using hurricane "recovery" to camouflage policies that will deepen inequality and poverty. They are bringing windfall profits to companies like Bechtel while suspending regulations that shore up wages for workers.

More tax cuts are in the pipeline for wealthy Americans who can afford the $17,000 watch, $160,000 coat and $10 million helicopter on the Forbes Cost of Living Extremely Well Index.

More budget cuts are in the pipeline for Medicaid, Food Stamps and other safety nets for Americans whose wages don't even cover the cost of necessities.

Without a change in course, the gulf between the rich and the rest of America will continue to widen, weakening our economy and our democracy. The American Dream will be history instead of poverty.

Holly Sklar is co-author of "Raise the Floor: Wages and Policies That Work for All Of Us" (www.raisethefloor.org). She can be reached at hsklar@aol.com.

© 2005 Holly Sklar

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Monday, October 03, 2005

A Peoples Program for Alberta

The Klein government has no new ideas of what to do with the growing surplus. Let alone any ideas about how to actually create an Alberta Advantage that benefit's the people of Alberta, and not just their Calgary Corporate Cronies, I thought I would offer my own Modest Proposal.

The government is asking for public input into changes in the Labour Relations Act, and the future of Post Secondary Education.

So here are mine. As well as proposals dealing with living wages, taxes, municipalities, cooperatives, investment funds, etc.

It's based on the simple principle:
Labour Produces all Wealth

 All Wealth Belongs to those who Labour

Flat Tax of 10% on all incomes of $100,000 and over

No Income Tax on anyone earning less than $100,000

All resource Industries will pay 60% royalty fees and 60% tax on all after sales profit.

ATB and Credit Unions will loan up to $10,000 to all Albertans who may wish to start a business, a coop etc. interest free for five years.

Elimination of the Labour Relations Board, all contract disputes will be decided by between unions, employers and independent mediation agreed to by each party.

Anti-Scab legislation, no employer has the right to hire replacement workers in advent of a lock out or strike.

A Living Wage $14 per hour. All employers will be responsible for paying all benefits for workers they employ.

Elimination of all Health Care premiums, and user fees, and a pharmacare, dental and hearing eye care plan for all Albertans.

A provincial retirement benefit plan to compliment CPP and OAS.

A provincial insurance corporation for all insurance in the province, drivers, personal, housing, tenant, non profit org., pets and farm animals.

A guaranteed income for all Albertans of $20,000 a year. COLA to the national poverty standard. Elimination of AISH and Welfare Programs.

Tripartite Apprenticeship programs developed with unions/professional associations and employers and the government to train in trades and all professions, to be inclusive of all Albertans regardless of race, sex, sexual preference, etc. Applies to High School programs and post secondary education programs.

Encourage Labour Sponsored Investment Funds for Venture Capital. A fund created by unions and professional associations through ATB or Credit Union, with secure investment guarantee from province up to $60,000 per investment. Applicable as tax credit provincially and federally.

Low cost housing projects developed through Venture Capital Fund and ATB/Credit Unions with investment guarantee from provincial government.

Full funding of public daycare, pre school education programs, K-12 education and Post Secondary education.

No tuition fees for post secondary education.

Public access to all post secondary programs.

Student loans with no interest for five years after graduation.

Transferable credits between all post secondary institutions in the province.

Tax Credit to Businesses that provide daycare for their workers.

Expand the legislature to have enough MLA’s for every 10,000 people. Proportional Representation. No bills can be passed without a vote in the Legislature. Guaranteed sittings of the Legislature for a minimum of 120 days per year.

Full public funding for all political parties, with campaign limits for spending.

ATB and credit union funding for worker, producer and consumer cooperative businesses, with provincial guarantees for up to $100,000 in start up funding.

Full funding for Women’s shelters in the province with requirement of family counseling for all Men involved in abusive relationships.

Legalization of prostitution, no one under 18 may work in the sex industry in Alberta. Regulation of the industry in cooperation with Sex Trade Workers Union.

All medical abortions will be paid in full.

All public utilities will be under community control. This will reduce provincial funding to cities.

Fully funded public transportation for cities, and intercity travel.

Provincial and municipal land banking for low cost housing.

Put the Alberta Stock Exchange under National Governance.

Alternative Energy Investment and Tax Credits.

Arts and Culture production Investment and Tax Credits.

Low interest loans for Community Redevelopment Programs, revitalization of decrepit urban space.

No Child Labour.Anyone younger than 16 cannot work (excluding paper routes and neighbourhood chores).

All Public Boards, Health Boards, University, Technical Colleges, etc. will be made up of elected representatives. In the case of Post Secondary Institutions this will include representatives of students, faculty. In case of other boards, it will include representatives of employee groups and the public.

No Private Parking. All parking will be the responsibility of the municipality, and funds from parking will go to the municipality.

All municipalities will hold open budget hearings, and planning sessions, infrastructure plans and budget plans may be voted on by referendum.

36 hour work week. All hours after that are overtime.

All Albertans will have the right to join a union, regardless of their employment status, including contract workers, sales people, taxi drivers, farm workers and nannies.

Upon successful organizing of 51% of workers in any particular industry a first contract will automatically come into effect between the union and the employer.

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First Tool Usage in Wild Gorillas Discovered


Our relatives are evolving. Like to hear how Creation Science, Intelligent Design, and all the other theistic deniers of evolution explain that.

One small step for Leah is a giant leap for wild gorillas
Now, for the first time, scientists have observed and photographed wild gorillas using tools, including the moment Leah - the nickname used by scientists - used a stick to test the depth of a pool before wading into it. Until she wielded her wading stick in a swamp, all other species of great apes, including chimpanzees, bonobos and orang-utans, have been observed using tools in the wild, but never gorillas. "This is a truly astounding discovery," said Dr Thomas Breuer of the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig."Tool usage in wild apes provides us with valuable insights into the evolution of our own species and the abilities of other species. Seeing it for the first time in gorillas is important on many different levels," Thomas Breuer, lead researcher of the Wildlife Conservation Society, said in a statement. On two separate occasions in the northern rain forests of the Republic of Congo, researchers observed and photographed individual western gorillas using sticks as tools, according to the study.

No need to postulate the existence of Intelligent Design or some disembodied God in the evolution of the species. The cognition of our nearest relatives, is being influenced over the centuries as they 'discover' and 'adapt' tool making.

The outrage is that they are still being poached and killed for their land, as meat, for their pelts, and in war zones like Rawanda. They are still treated as 'dumb' animals as native peoples were treated as 'savages'. 'brutes' by European colonialism.

Like the impact of Imperialism on indigienous peoples, the Gorrilas are subject to the effects of Speciesism in their mountain regions.

And speciesism is a result of the monotheistic dictum that Man is Created in the image of God (singular, male) and has dominion/domination of all the fish, fowl and beasts of the planet.

Let's note here as well that it is a FEMALE gorilla that has made this discovery. Tool making is not neccasarily a MALE occupation or discovery, This is also astounding in its obviousness and in the obvious obliviousness that male scientists have to this fact. Like our ancient ancestors being discovered around the world, most fossils are of women, not men. From 'Lucy' to Our Lady of Flores

Which should tell you something about evolution, that it develops along matrilinear lines, in other words it is matriarchical rather than patriarchical. And last time I checked ALL monotheistic religions in the modern world are Patriarchical, and deny that they had any social predecessors, especially a matriarchical/matrelinar one

Let us remember too that tool making is the most significant factors in human evolution of cognition. It reflects the role that labour had in moving from ape to hominid to homo sapiens..

The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man
Frederick Engels 1876
Many hundreds of thousands of years ago, during an epoch, not yet definitely determinable, of that period of the earth's history known to geologists as the Tertiary period, most likely towards the end of it, a particularly highly-developed race of anthropoid apes lived somewhere in the tropical zone -- probably on a great continent that has now sunk to the bottom of the Indian Ocean. [1] Darwin has given us an approximate description of these ancestors of ours. They were completely covered with hair, they had beards and pointed ears, and they lived in bands in the trees.

First, owing to their way of living which meant that the hands had different functions than the feet when climbing, these apes began to lose the habit of using their hands to walk and adopted a more and more erect posture. This was the decisive step in the transition from ape to man.

All extant anthropoid apes can stand erect and move about on their feet alone, but only in case of urgent need and in a very clumsy way. Their natural gait is in a half-erect posture and includes the use of the hands. The majority rest the knuckles of the fist on the ground and, with legs drawn up, swing the body through their long arms, much as a cripple moves on crutches. In general, all the transition stages from walking on all fours to walking on two legs are still to be observed among the apes today. The latter gait, however, has never become more than a makeshift for any of them.

It stands to reason that if erect gait among our hairy ancestors became first the rule and then, in time, a necessity, other diverse functions must, in the meantime, have devolved upon the hands. Already among the apes there is some difference in the way the hands and the feet are employed. In climbing, as mentioned above, the hands and feet have different uses. The hands are used mainly for gathering and holding food in the same way as the fore paws of the lower mammals are used. Many apes use their hands to build themselves nests in the trees or even to construct roofs between the branches to protect themselves against the weather, as the chimpanzee, for example, does. With their hands they grasp sticks to defend themselves against enemies, or bombard their enemies with fruits and stones. In captivity they use their hands for a number of simple operations copied from human beings. It is in this that one sees the great gulf between the undeveloped hand of even the most man-like apes and the human hand that has been highly perfected by hundreds of thousands of years of labour. The number and general arrangement of the bones and muscles are the same in both hands, but the hand of the lowest savage can perform hundreds of operations that no simian hand can imitate-no simian hand has ever fashioned even the crudest stone knife.

The first operations for which our ancestors gradually learned to adapt their hands during the many thousands of years of transition from ape to man could have been only very simple ones. The lowest savages, even those in whom regression to a more animal-like condition with a simultaneous physical degeneration can be assumed, are nevertheless far superior to these transitional beings. Before the first flint could be fashioned into a knife by human hands, a period of time probably elapsed in comparison with which the historical period known to us appears insignificant. But the decisive step had been taken, the hand had become free and could henceforth attain ever greater dexterity; the greater flexibility thus acquired was inherited and increased from generation to generation.

Thus the hand is not only the organ of labour, it is also the product of labour. Only by labour, by adaptation to ever new operations, through the inheritance of muscles, ligaments, and, over longer periods of time, bones that had undergone special development and the ever-renewed employment of this inherited finesse in new, more and more complicated operations, have given the human hand the high degree of perfection required to conjure into being the pictures of a Raphael, the statues of a Thorwaldsen, the music of a Paganini.
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Sunday, October 02, 2005

Another Fascist Bites the Dust

RON GOSTICK, R.I.P.

Actually its good riddance to this home grown Alberta fascist, who founded the Canadian Intelligence Service (sic), Canadian League of Rights, etc. etc ad naseum.

His eulogy is written by current fascist spokesman Paul Fromm and published here at the Australian League of Rights site, which is a creepy slimy fascist organization, that came about as part of the Right Wing League of Rights groups in Canada (Gostick was its founder), the US, and England. You can tell them by their motto:"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing" Edmund Burke

You have been warned. I publish this here because its important to learn the links that the right wing rump of the Reform/Alliance/Conservatives and their friends have to the fascist movement in Canada. Interestingly Gosticks death was over shadowed by that of Wolfgang Droege, leader of the Heritage Front, who died this spring.

Gostick's importance in the continuation of the post war fascist movement (packaging itself as an anti-communist movement during the long Cold War) of the right in Canada should not be underestimated. Often overshadowed by those high profile fascists in the media like Droege, James Keegstra, and Zundel whom would not have existed had it not been for Gostick and his pal Pat Walsh.

Their hatred of Trudeau and publication of scurilous attacks on him, as well as their unrepentant anti-semitism, pro-white/Celtic/Saxon, anti-bilingualism publishing lead to the creation of the anti-hate laws in Canada. They drew attention to themselves and their small publishing empire by their continued attacks on Trudeau.

Gostick and Walsh had the base of their operations in Southern Alberta, and Southern Ontario, in the farming and evangelical protestant communities. Today Southern Ontario is still a base for fascists like Paul Fromm.

In Canada itself, neo-fascist groups continue to organize. Over the past few months, in southern Ontario, the Canadian Heritage Alliance has developed as a youth organization with links both to former Heritage Front members and to long-time far-rightists, Paul Fromm and Marc Lemire. At the same time, a new group associated with White Power Skinheads, the Canadian Ethnic Cleansing Team, has emerged in the Kitchener-Waterloo area. In Calgary, there is a new presence of the National Alliance, a US-based international neo-Nazi organization; in Ontario and in BC, the white racist World Church of the Creator is showing renewed strength, while in Quebec, the Vinland Skinheads are organizing in both the Anglophone and Francophone communities. Fascism at the End of the Twentieth Century, David Lethbridge

In Southern Alberta Gostick and Walsh found a fertile base for their ideology, as it was also the home of Dutch Emirgres of the Calvinist Christian Reformed Church and the Mormons. Both of these sects viewed the choosen people as being 'white', the CRC was strongly affiliated with the aparthied State in South Africa.

They can be credited with having influenced Alberta Seperatism as the ideology that lay beneath the populist Western Canadian reformist veneer of Doug Christies Western Canada Concept (WCC), and Elmer Knutsen's Confederation of Regions Party,

A reading of any of the WCC or CRP publications from the seventies shows the same belief in creating a 'white only' ( Celtic/Saxon peoples), anti-Quebec/Anti-bilingualism/Anti-Multiculturalism Independent Alberta/Western Canada. These ideas today are still thinly vieled in the Alberta Seperatist movement.

A Separation Party of Alberta government will establish and administer its own immigration program and support an immigration policy based on acceptable applicants who will embrace our way of life and accept our standards of behavior and abide by our laws.

The reason for this calamity is that Family Class immigrants constitute
over 60% of all immigrants. Asians are displacing the founding race of
this country at an alarming pace specifically because we allow them to
bring in family members from Third World nations. Meanwhile, highly
qualified European workers have to go through the rigours of the points
system, where their eligibility is appraised according to their
proficiency in English or French and the correlation of their specific
occupational history to the list of underrepresented occupations established by
Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Family class immigrants, of course,
have no requirement to know English or French and their occupational
history is considered irrelevant. BC White Pride

Gostick and his gang were the fascist rump of the Social Credit party, which was always inherent in Major Douglas's Social Credit ideology. In Albera it was a direct result of the party moving from being a populist reformist movement in Alberta to taking state power under the direction of the Evangelicalists Bill Abreheart and then Ernest Manning. Manning's son Preston of course resurected his own right wing populist movement post WCC/CFR which became the Reform/Alliance/Conservative party.

I am surprised that Warren Kinsella, Mr. Right Wing Watch himself, missed this. But then again he is being busy with his efforts at self promoting and of course sucking up to the Tories, well I guess his anti-fascism is in the past replaced with his current neo-punk rocker career.......

Ron went to college in Calgary and took further business studies in Chicago. He joined the Canadian Army in 1941 and served as a court reporter in Ottawa and Toronto. Immediately after the war, Ron served as the General Secretary of the Social Credit Party of Canada. Party intrigues soured him on political parties. Major Douglas had warned against the formation of a Social Credit Party, believing that it would be better to spread the philosophy of economic reform, hoping that people of good will in many parties would adopt it. Ron began his publishing activities, at first distributing copies of his newspaper by motorcycle around Ontario.

A Social Creditor and journalist would seem to have made Ron fairly mainstream - at least not a subject for law enforcement scrutiny. However, his voluminous RCMP file, obtained some years ago by lawyer Barbara Kulazska reveals than his meetings were under Mountie surveillance as early as the late 1940s. Ron's Christian principles led him into many causes. He was a firm anti-communist at a time when trendy Canadians like Pierre Trudeau were open admirers of tyrants like Fidel Castro and Mao tse-Tung. When Rhodesia declared independence in 1965, he rallied to the cause of the Ian Smith experiment, grounded in Christianity and a gradual approach to Negro involvement. Ron strongly opposed the Pearson's pennant coup d'etat, the invention of a "new" Canadian flag and the abandonment of the Red Ensign, as a prelude to the changing of the country the flag symbolized, through massive Third World immigration, multiculturalism and the sacrificing of our sovereignty through internationalism. When Royal Canadian Legion Branch 333 became a hotbed of pro-Red Ensign sentiment, Dominion command in Ottawa, under political pressure, decreed that Ron Gostick must be purged as president or the branch would lose its accreditation. He was. Assisted by his longtime associate, former RCMP undercover agent Patrick Walsh, burly Irishman from Quebec City who spoke with a distinctly French accent, Ron warned repeatedly of communist infiltration and subversion in Canadian politics.

In the early 1980s, Ron warned of the dangers of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Far from granting us rights, it, in fact, restricts them. Under British Common Law, one had the right to do whatever one wanted, except what was expressly forbidden by law. Under the Charter the State grants citizens a seemingly impressive list of rights. Yet, this list can be and often is severely restricted by the courts - see, the many and growing limitations on freedom of speech. Other essentials, such as the ownership of property, aren't even listed as rights at all.

More recently, Ron formed the Third Option for National Unity Committee. He worried both about Quebec separatism and Western alienation. There was a third option, he argued, to the extremes of separation, of totalitarian interfering rule from Ottawa. That option was to return to the letter of the BNA Act which granted direct taxation, education, health and many other functions to the provincial governments. Federal usurpation of these powers was at the heart of the legitimate grievances of the Quebec nationalists and the Western separatists.
Paul Fromm

Phillip Butler of Australia
I first met Ron Gostick in London towards the end of 1966 as he was returning from Rhodesia. On behalf of the Canadian Friends of Rhodesia, he had presented the commander of the Rhodesian Armed Forces with monies raised to purchase fuel. The Candour League, headed by A.K. Chesterton had arranged the meeting. From then on Ron and the Gostick family played a big part in my life. I flew to Toronto and spent an incredible family-orientated Christmas with them. Australians can only dream of a "White Christmas", but that year in the little village of Flesherton, Grey County - approximately 100 miles north of Toronto - I was welcomed into a caring, jovial Gostick family gathering to share a truly "White Christmas". (SIC) [and he isn't talking about Snow, ep]
The office of Canadian Intelligence Publications is centred there, out of which grew the Christian Action Movement (CAM) and in turn - after much consultation with his close political and social crediter friend, Eric D. Butler of Australia - The Canadian League of Rights (CLR) was set up. In late 1969 I commenced a 20 year stint with the CLR as Ron's Deputy National Director.
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Saturday, October 01, 2005

Return of the City State

Cities crucial to Canada's success with emerging Indian, Chinese markets: PM

Ottawa's so-called new deal for cities recognizes the growing clout of large urban centres in a globalized economy, Martin said. "Statistically economic performance when you read about it is compared by country to country," he said. "But the fact is more and more competition is being waged by major metropolitan centres, our cities. "It is Vancouver against San Francisco; it is Montreal and Toronto against Shanghai and Bangalore." British Columbia has a natural advantage because its ports are the closest in North America to Asian markets. Martin's Liberal government has touted its new deal for cities policy as a recognition cities are Canada's economic centres of gravity. He's promised a reliable stream of money for them, as well as smaller communities, to rebuild crumbling roads, bridges, sewer and water systems, as well as bolster public transit.

A city-state is a region controlled exclusively by a city, and usually having sovereignty.

Colonies competing with the mother-land in its production of manufactured goods, such is the factor which will regulate economy in the twentieth centuryAnd why should India not manufacture ? What should be the hindrance ? Capital?--But capital goes wherever there are men, poor enough to be exploited. Knowledge?--But knowledge recognizes no national barriers. Technical skill of the worker?--No. The tendency of trade, as for all else, is toward decentralization.

Peter Kropotkin The Conquest of Bread 1906
CHAPTER XVI The Decentralization of Industry


Paul Martin has put the cart before the horse. In reality Cities in Canada and around the world pre-date the State. The brutal capitalist competition he forecasts between metropols, is the result of the expansion of state captialism world wide, where the hinterlands are being dispossesed of population forcibly emigrated to cities to become proletarians.

This is another aspect of capitalist globalization, the creation of super cities, which began 160 years ago as originally described by Engels in his, The Condition of the Working Class in England. The Metropols are reflections of the State and its Monopoly Capitalist mode of reproduction, they are not the City States of old, which had sovereignty and autonomy. They are the branch plants of the Nation State era of Monopoly Capitalism, transmission belts of power over the citizens, not power of the citizens. This then is the end of the era of colonialism, as national Capitols become Capital, as the City of London and New York once did with their stock exchanges and banking houses (hence the capitalist trade centre in London is known as 'the City' and in NY its 'Wall Street').

Martin is merely revealing the shift in global capitalism from the era of the nation state to the era of the metropolis. As capital has moved Westward through the eras of Imperial colonialism, nation state ( Hobsbawm), and the American Century it now ends up ironically in the Asian Pacific. What was begun 500 years ago with Columbus ends up with Capital now being situated in the newly industrializing nations of the Asian Pacific. Capital will now situate itself as National Capitol with competiton as Martin points out between the old world centres of London, New York, Toronto, against the new world captial(s) Peking, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore. What had been the nature of the city in the 19th Century is now writ large across the face of the world. The urban landscape of the working class in London in Engels time is now the urban landscape of Jakarta.

Condition of the Working Class in England, by Engels, 1845

The Great Towns

A town, such as London, where a man may wander for hours together without reaching the beginning of the end, without meeting the slightest hint which could lead to the inference that there is open country within reach, is a strange thing. This colossal centralisation, this heaping together of two and a half millions of human beings at one point, has multiplied the power of this two and a half millions a hundredfold; has raised London to the commercial capital of the world, created the giant docks and assembled the thousand vessels that continually cover the Thames. I know nothing more imposing than the view which the Thames offers during the ascent from the sea to London Bridge. The masses of buildings, the wharves on both sides, especially from Woolwich upwards, the countless ships along both shores, crowding ever closer and closer together, until, at last, only a narrow passage remains in the middle of the river, a passage through which hundreds of steamers shoot by one another; all this is so vast, so impressive, that a man cannot collect himself, but is lost in the marvel of England's greatness before he sets foot upon English soil.

But the sacrifices which all this has cost become apparent later. After roaming the streets of the capital a day or two, making headway with difficulty through the human turmoil and the endless lines of vehicles, after visiting the slums of the metropolis, one realises for the first time that these Londoners have been forced to sacrifice the best qualities of their human nature, to bring to pass all the marvels of civilisation which crowd their city; that a hundred powers which slumbered within them have remained inactive, have been suppressed in order that a few might be developed more fully and multiply through union with those of others. The very turmoil of the streets has something repulsive, something against which human nature rebels. The hundreds of thousands of all classes and ranks crowding past each other, are they not all human beings with the same qualities and powers, and with the same interest in being happy? And have they not, in the end, to seek happiness in the same way, by the same means? And still they crowd by one another as though they had nothing in common, nothing to do with one another, and their only agreement is the tacit one, that each keep to his own side of the pavement, so as not to delay the opposing streams of the crowd, while it occurs to no man to honour another with so much as a glance. The brutal indifference, the unfeeling isolation of each in his private interest, becomes the more repellent and offensive, the more these individuals are crowded together, within a limited space. And, however much one may be aware that this isolation of the individual, this narrow self-seeking, is the fundamental principle of our society everywhere, it is nowhere so shamelessly barefaced, so self-conscious as just here in the crowding of the great city. The dissolution of mankind into monads, of which each one has a separate principle, the world of atoms, is here carried out to its utmost extreme.

Hence it comes, too, that the social war, the war of each against all, is here openly declared. Just as in Stirner's recent book, people regard each other only as useful objects; each exploits the other, and the end of it all is that the stronger treads the weaker under foot; and that the powerful few, the capitalists, seize everything for themselves, while to the weak many, the poor, scarcely a bare existence remains.

What is true of London, is true of Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, is true of all great towns. Everywhere barbarous indifference, hard egotism on one hand, and nameless misery on the other, everywhere social warfare, every man's house in a state of siege, everywhere reciprocal plundering under the protection of the law, and all so shameless, so openly avowed that one shrinks before the consequences of our social state as they manifest themselves here undisguised, and can only wonder that the whole crazy fabric still hangs together.

Since capital, the direct or indirect control of the means of subsistence and production, is the weapon with which this social warfare is carried on, it is clear that all the disadvantages of such a state must fall upon the poor. For him no man has the slightest concern. Cast into the whirlpool, he must struggle through as well as he can. If he is so happy as to find work, i.e., if the bourgeoisie does him the favour to enrich itself by means of him, wages await him which scarcely suffice to keep body and soul together; if he can get no work he may steal, if he is not afraid of the police, or starve, in which case the police will take care that he does so in a quiet and inoffensive manner. During my residence in England, at least twenty or thirty persons have died of simple starvation under the most revolting circumstances, and a jury has rarely been found possessed of the courage to speak the plain truth in the matter. Let the testimony of the witnesses be never so clear and unequivocal, the bourgeoisie, from which the jury is selected, always finds some backdoor through which to escape the frightful verdict, death from starvation. The bourgeoisie dare not speak the truth in these cases, for it would speak its own condemnation. But indirectly, far more than directly, many have died of starvation, where long-continued want of proper nourishment has called forth fatal illness, when it has produced such debility that causes which might otherwise have remained inoperative brought on severe illness and death. The English working-men call this "social murder", and accuse our whole society of perpetrating this crime perpetually. Are they wrong?

True, it is only individuals who starve, but what security has the working-man that it may not be his turn tomorrow? Who assures him employment, who vouches for it that, if for any reason or no reason his lord and master discharges him tomorrow, he can struggle along with those dependent upon him, until he may find some one else "to give him bread"? Who guarantees that willingness to work shall suffice to obtain work, that uprightness, industry, thrift, and the rest of the virtues recommended by the bourgeoisie, are really his road to happiness? No one. He knows that he has something today and that it does not depend upon himself whether he shall have something tomorrow. He knows that every breeze that blows, every whim of his employer, every bad turn of trade may hurl him back into the fierce whirlpool from which he has temporarily saved himself, and in which it is hard and often impossible to keep his head above water. He knows that, though he may have the means of living today, it is very uncertain whether he shall tomorrow.

Meanwhile, let us proceed to a more detailed investigation of the position in which the social war has placed the non-possessing class. Let us see what pay for his work society does give the working-man in the form of dwelling, clothing, food, what sort of subsistence it grants those who contribute most to the maintenance of society; and, first, let us consider the dwellings.

Every great city has one or more slums, where the working-class is crowded together. True, poverty often dwells in hidden alleys close to the palaces of the rich; but, in general, a separate territory has been assigned to it, where, removed from the sight of the happier classes, it may struggle along as it can. These slums are pretty equally arranged in all the great towns of England, the worst houses in the worst quarters of the towns; usually one- or two-storied cottages in long rows, perhaps with cellars used as dwellings, almost always irregularly built. These houses of three or four rooms and a kitchens form, throughout England, some parts of London excepted, the general dwellings of the working-class. The streets are generally unpaved, rough, dirty, filled with vegetable and animal refuse, without sewers or gutters, but supplied with foul, stagnant pools instead. Moreover, ventilation is impeded by the bad, confused method of building of the whole quarter, and since many human beings here live crowded into a small space, the atmosphere that prevails in these working-men's quarters may readily be imagined. Further, the streets serve as drying grounds in fine weather; lines are stretched across from house to house, and hung with wet clothing.


PLANET OF SLUMS

MIKE DAVIS

New Left Review 26, March-April 2004

Future history of the Third World’s post-industrial megacities. A billion-strong global proletariat ejected from the formal economy, with Islam and Pentecostalism as songs of the dispossessed.

Sometime in the next year, a woman will give birth in the Lagos slum of Ajegunle, a young man will flee his village in west Java for the bright lights of Jakarta, or a farmer will move his impoverished family into one of Lima’s innumerable pueblos jovenes. The exact event is unimportant and it will pass entirely unnoticed. Nonetheless it will constitute a watershed in human history. For the first time the urban population of the earth will outnumber the rural. Indeed, given the imprecisions of Third World censuses, this epochal transition may already have occurred.

The earth has urbanized even faster than originally predicted by the Club of Rome in its notoriously Malthusian 1972 report, Limits of Growth. In 1950 there were 86 cities in the world with a population over one million; today there are 400, and by 2015, there will be at least 550. Cities, indeed, have absorbed nearly two-thirds of the global population explosion since 1950 and are currently growing by a million babies and migrants each week. The present urban population (3.2 billion) is larger than the total population of the world in 1960. The global countryside, meanwhile, has reached its maximum population (3.2 billion) and will begin to shrink after 2020. As a result, cities will account for all future world population growth, which is expected to peak at about 10 billion in 2050.


Sinister Paradise

Does the Road to the Future End at Dubai?
By Mike Davis

Welcome to paradise. But where are you? Is this a new science-fiction novel from Margaret Atwood, the sequel to Blade Runner, or Donald Trump tripping on acid?

No, it is the Persian Gulf city-state of Dubai in 2010.

After Shanghai (current population: 15 million), Dubai (current population: 1.5 million) is the world's biggest building site: an emerging dreamworld of conspicuous consumption and what locals dub "supreme lifestyles."

Dozens of outlandish mega-projects -- including "The World" (an artificial archipelago), Burj Dubai (the Earth's tallest building), the Hydropolis (that underwater luxury hotel, the Restless Planet theme park, a domed ski resort perpetually maintained in 40C heat, and The Mall of Arabia, a hyper-mall -- are actually under construction or will soon leave the drawing boards.

Under the enlightened despotism of its Crown Prince and CEO, 56-year-old Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the Rhode-Island-sized Emirate of Dubai has become the new global icon of imagineered urbanism. Although often compared to Las Vegas, Orlando, Hong Kong or Singapore, the sheikhdom is more like their collective summation: a pastiche of the big, the bad, and the ugly. It is not just a hybrid but a chimera: the offspring of the lascivious coupling of the cyclopean fantasies of Barnum, Eiffel, Disney, Spielberg, Jerde, Wynn, and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

Canadian Cities: Self Government or a Third Level of the State?


Cities should be given wider tax powers, more autonomy:Canada West report

EDMONTON (CP) - With Western Canada's resource-rich economy firing on all cylinders, a report released Thursday suggests large cities should be given wider powers to tax residents and a louder voice at the table on provincial issues.

The Alberta-based Canada West Foundation suggests the West's six largest cities - Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, Regina and Winnipeg - have become engines of economic growth and should therefore be given more autonomy and wider taxing powers to help fix crumbling infrastructure and provide a better standard of living to residents.

The foundation says property taxes are no longer enough to fund pot-hole filled roads and creaky old sewer systems, noting that, in 2003, all six cities were forced to postpone $500 million in infrastructure improvements due to a lack of cash.

"Evidence is mounting that our big cities are slowly starving for want of adequate revenues," the report states.

"To compete internationally, Canada needs a high quality of life in its biggest cities to both attract and retain those who work in . . . industries that can locate virtually anywhere in the world to do almost anything," it says.

Calgary Mayor David Bronconnier and Edmonton Mayor Stephen Mandel agreed it is unfair that other levels of government are rolling in multibillion-dollar surpluses, yet municipalities have to raise taxes to fix roads and pay for transit.

"You have two other orders of government that are sitting there with major, multibillion-dollar surpluses, (and) you have two local governments that are starved for cash," said Bronconnier of the situation in Alberta's two largest cities.

Bronconnier has called on the province to cap the education portion of property taxes. Mandel said that would inject another $260 million into his city's coffers and $470 million into Calgary's.

But Bronconnier said he doesn't think that Calgary can wait for Premier Ralph to retire to have its problems fixed.

Klein has been critical of the cities' repeated calls for more cash.

"We're not here to take advantage of the province and say to them, 'look, we want all your money,' " said Mandel. "We're willing to take responsibility for it, but we have to have the opportunity to fix the problems. We have affordable housing problems in Edmonton, we have homeless problems in Edmonton. We understand them. We can fix them much quicker. We can get to the root of it much faster."

The foundation also urged provincial governments to consult more with large urban centres when drafting provincial policy and calls for a new fiscal framework that would give cities more power to deal with local concerns.

The report details that while many provincial governments in Western Canada have taken steps to improve revenue sharing, only Manitoba municipalities are allowed to impose their own taxes on lodging, restaurant meals, liquor and a land transfer tax.

Cities in Sweden and Germany are allowed to levy local income or corporate taxes, while U.S. cities tend to rely more heavily on sales taxes to generate revenues, the report points out.

"A new fiscal framework would help big cities build greater self-reliance, increase electoral accountability and allow more community control," it says.

The think tank's latest report argues the federal government, "realizing that national political borders are becoming less and less relevant," is already "courting" large urban centres with federal dollars and the provinces should do the same.

It warns provinces could be seen as out of touch if they don't build new partnerships with urban centres, adding provincial governments should lead or "get out of the way" on the issue.

© The Canadian Press, 2005

The State in Canada, both Federal and Provincial are tyrannys of power over cities that they have emasculated since the founding of the great Con of Federation in 1867. To now bequeath some small tax break or funding grant back to the cities is to maintain the economic and political servitude of the cities.

Cities were constituted in Canada before the Federal state was. Based on the British law of municipal independence, a hold over from the ancient Guild days, the incorporation of the city pre dates the State.

It is changed by the English state under Elizabeth as she reigns over the independent Aldermen and Mayors elected by the Guilds, and imposes taxation and wage laws as well as reducing the municipal autonomy as zones of free trade.


Kropotkin The State It's Historic Role

With these elements - liberty, organization from the simple to the complex, production and exchange by the Trades (guilds), foreign trade handled by the whole city and not by individuals, and the purchase of provisions by the city for resale to the citizens at cost price - with such elements, the towns of the Middle Ages for the first two centuries of their free existences became centers of well-being for all the inhabitants, centers of wealth and culture, such as we have not seen since. One has but to consult the documents which made it possible to compare the rates at which work was remunerated and the cost of provisions - Rogers has done this for England and a great number of German writers for Germany - to learn that the labour of an artisan and even of a simple day-laborer was paid at a rate not attained in our time, not even by the elite among workers. The account books of colleges of the University of Oxford (which cover seven centuries beginning at the twelfth) and of some English landed estates, as well as those of a large number of German and Swiss towns, are there to bear witness. In those cities, sheltered by their conquered liberties, inspired by the spirit of free agreement and of free initiative, a whole new civilization grew up and flourished in a way unparalleled to this day. All modern industry comes to us from these cities.

In three centuries, industries and the arts attained such perfection that our century has only been able to surpass them in speed of production, but rarely in quality, and very rarely in the intrinsic beauty of the product. All the arts we seek in vain to revive now - the beauty of a Raphael, the strength and boldness of a Michelangelo, the art and science of a Leonardo da Vinci, the poetry and language of a Dante, and not least, the architecture to which we owe the cathedrals of Laon, Rheims, Cologne, Pisa, Florence - as Victor Hugo so well put it “le peuple en fut le maçon” (they were built by the people) - the treasures of sheer beauty of Florence and Venice, the town halls of Bremen and Prague, the towers of Nuremberg and Pisa, and so on ad infinitum, all was the product of that age.

The role of the nascent State in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in relation to the urban centers was to destroy the independence of the cities; to pillage the rich guilds of merchants and artisans; to concentrate in its hands the external commerce of the cities and ruin it; to lay hands on the internal administration of the guilds and subject internal commerce as well as all manufactures, in every detail to the control of a host of officials - and in this way to kill industry and the arts; by taking over the local militias and the whole municipal administration, crushing the weak in the interest of the strong by taxation, and ruining the countries by wars.

In Canada the municipal corporation, the City, pre-dates provincial governments and even the Federal State. However their corporate power (sovereignty) is reduced after confederation. The Candian State imposes provincial governments on city corporations, without any recognition of their role in Confederation. Confederation is a con imposed on the corporate city's without their input.
Thus the Federalist system in Canada is a parlimentary system from England imposed on us, and in no way is a true confederation of peoples. What had been a form of independent self government, cities in Canada are now merely a 'third level of government' the beggar at the bottom of the tax hierarchy of the Canadian Federal/Provincial State.

The Anarchist Sociology of Federalism

In the great tide of nationalism in the nineteenth century, there was a handful of prophetic and dissenting voices, urging a different style of federalism. It is interesting, at the least, that the ones whose names survive were the three best known anarchist thinkers of that century: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Michael Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin. Proudhon, who devoted two of his voluminous works to the idea of federation in opposition to that of the nation state. They were La Federation et l'Unite en Italie of 1862, and in the following year, his book Du Principe Federatif. And beyond this, he profoundly mistrusted the liberal anti-clericalism of Mazzini, not through any love of the Papacy but because he recognised that Mazzini's slogan, 'Dio e popolo', could be exploited by any demagogue who could seize the machinery of a centralised state. He claimed that the existence of this administrative machinery was an absolute threat to personal and local liberty. Proudhon was almost alone among nineteenth century political theorists to perceive this:

"Liberal today under a liberal govermnent, it will tomorrow become the formidable engine of a usurping despoL It is a perpetual temptation to the executive power, a perpetual threat to the people's liberties. No rights, individual or collective, can be sure of a future. Centralisation might, then, be called the disarming of a nation for the profit of its governrnent ..."

Everything we now know about the twentieth century history of Europe, Asia, Latin America or Africa supports this perception. Nor does the North American style of federalism, so lovingly conceived by Thomas Jefferson, guarantee the removal of this threat. One of Proudhon's English biographers, Edward Hyams, comments that: "It has become apparent since the Second World War that United States Presidents can and do make use of the Federal administrative machine in a way which makes a mockery of democracy". And his Canadian translator paraphrases Proudhon's conclusion thus:

"Solicit men's view in the mass, and they will return stupid, fickle and violent answers; solicit their views as members of definite groups with real solidarity and a distinctive character, and their answers will be responsible and wise. Expose them to the political 'language' of mass democracy, which represents 'the people' as unitary and undivided and minorities as traitors, and they will give birth to tyranny; expose them to the political language of federalism, in which the people figures as a diversified aggregate of real associations, and they will resist tyranny to the end."

An excellent work on the City as autonomous corporate political entity and its devloution into municipal corporatist arm of the Federal/Provincial State in Canada is Cities Without Citizens. The Modernity of the City as a Corporation, Engin F. Isin.

An example of this is Edmonton. Edmonton as a corporate entity existed prior to even the creation of the North West Territories, by the CPR and the Mercantilist State in Ottawa. Edmonton was a corporate entity created as a fur trading post for both the Crown Monopoly Hudson Bay Company and the free trade share capitalist Northwest Company. (See Appendix on Edmonton, all references below are to data in the appendix )

Edmonton predates the historical State in Canada. Founded by the Crown monopoly HBC it becomes a free market Fort. Pitched canon battles occured across the North Saskatchewan river between the rival fur trading companies, with the NW Company unable to defeat the mercantilist HBC.

Instead they come to a common agreement to share Fort Edmonton and its economic base, with the free market capitalist NW Company becoming the dominant company .

As the history of the Indian territories shows the expansion westward created a new culture in Western Canada, the Metis, as the fur traders brought with them other non-indigenous native trappers, and married into local and regional native families. It is this culture of independence, autonomy, and adaptation that would prevail through out the West, and clash with the Imperial Mercantilist culture of Toronto and Ottawa. It is in this new culture that the origins of the Metis rebellion of Gabriel Dumont and Louis Riel would lay. The Fur Trade in Western Canada created a unique culture of integration of Western Europeans with Indians, a culture that was NOT white.

 Like the later CPR the Hudsons Bay Co. would be the very model (as Gilbert and Sullivan would say) of a Crown Mercantile Monopoly. The NW Company as a share capitalist enerprize would be forced to merge with HBC due to the State refusing to recognize their land claims, in favour of its own Monopoly of course.

This is the history of Edmonton, Alberta and the Western Expansion of the British Colonial State and its monopoly corporation the HBC. It is the model that would influence future of the Canadian Mercantilist State and its Crown Corporations, especially the railways.

While the HBC had a monopoly on lands in the Edmonton area they sold it to the Federal Government who in turn sold these lands to the CPR. The government offered the land to immigrants in order to facilitate the expansion of the railroad westward. This was essential to the development of the West as a source of 'hewers of wood and drawers of water' for the Mercantilist Canadian state. The CPR would continue to dominate the West with its monopoly on land granted by the Canadian State. It would be the railroad, not the Candian State, that opened the west to further Central and Eastern European immigrants at the turn of last century.

A free market share capital Capitalist political economy was stillborn in Canada. Instead Canada was the model of State Monopoly Capitalism from its birth.

Economics, Politics and The Age of Inflation. Paul Mattick 1977

Chapter 4
On the Concept of State-Monopoly Capitalism

In the first instance the term monopoly capitalism is no more than a correct description of existing society. Capitalism is pleaded by monopolies and in large part determined by them. The state, whose function is to protect the social structure, is thus tile state of monopoly capital. This is by no means a new phenomenon in capitalist society: it has always been a feature of capitalism, if not as pronounced in the past. According to Marx, who has given us the best analysis of capitalism, capitalist competition presumes monopoly, i.e., capitalist monopoly over the forces of production. The antagonistic class relations that result from this require control of the state, which at the same time represents the national interests of capital at the level of international competition.

A capitalism of pure competition exists only in the imagination and in the models of bourgeois economics. But even bourgeois economists speak of natural monopolies and monopolistic prices. Although, granted, monopolies are not subject to the laws of the market, they are still held to be unable to shake these laws to any notable extent. Only in recent times, with whole branches of industry monopolized, has bourgeois economics been forced to deal with imperfect or monopolistic competition in its theories and to go into the changes monopoly has wrought in the market. What for bourgeois economics marked a theoretical turn had in Marx’s analysis of capital always been seen as an inherent tendency in capitalist accumulation. Capitalist competition leads to capital concentration and centralization. Monopoly was born of competition, and out of it grew monopolistic competition. Marxist theory has also always ascribed a more important role to the state than the bourgeois world was willing to acknowledge, not only as an instrument of repression but also as the organized powered mainstay of capitalist expansion.

If a form of monopoly capitalism was always present within the Canadian State as Mattick points out, then the modern form of State Monopoly Capitalism of the 2oth Century was already embryonic in the Canadian Federal Mercantilist State since the advent of the HBC and the later CPR.

In preverse tribute to Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent we can say that the 20th Century was Canada's Century, in that the rest of the post depression world adopted the poltical economic model that Canada had practices since confederation.

A Neo-Conservative State is Still the State

In Alberta school boards as an arm of the municipal corporation existed prior to the founding of the Province a hundred years ago. During the 1995 Ralph Revolution in Alberta, the state under a neo-liberal right wing government consolidated it's control over these independent democratically elected bodies by taking away their independent ability to tax. An ability that was theirs since their founding by the citizens of Edmonton and Strathcona in 1881.

The changes in education that were introduced by the State in Alberta, a neo con state were all based on the latest attempts to marketize public education, vouchers, school based management, increased funding to private schools, charter schools. Along with these mandated changes, funding control was stripped from the school boards and placed in the hands of the State. The state also eliminated school boards in a centralizing attempt at consolidation.


This was challenged in the courts by the Public School Board Association of Alberta. The court in Alberta upheld the Provinces right to overturn the rights of school boards. The PSBAA and other school boards appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada claiming that this was one of the most 'It will come to be known as one of the three or four most important constitutional cases since 1867'. The court ruled in 2000 against them in favour of the State. No surprize there, as the court is the judicial arm of the State. It is worth quoting their decision and reasons for it at length:

The School Amendment Act, 1994 and the Government Organization Act, together with the Framework for Funding School Boards in the 1995-96 School Year, introduced a new school funding scheme. The Alberta Government chose to pool all revenues in a central fund and to distribute funding to school boards in a provincially stipulated per-student amount multiplied by the number of students enrolled within each board's jurisdiction. With one exception, public school boards may no longer retain money raised through direct taxation. As a result of their constitutional status, separate school boards could and did opt out of the fund and continue to requisition taxes directly from ratepayers. Separate school boards, however, may not retain an amount less than or greater than the allotment they would have received from the fund. In the event of a deficiency, an opted-out board receives a payment from the fund and, in the event of a surplus, opted-out boards must remit to the fund any amount in excess of the allotment they would have received had they participated in the fund. All boards also receive provincial grants determined by the Framework based upon three blocks: instruction, support and capital. Each school receives the same allotment per student for basic instruction. Additional funding is provided to equalize the effect of school-specific factors. Several school board associations and others challenged the constitutionality of the scheme arguing that school boards had a constitutional right to reasonable autonomy, that the new scheme discriminated against public school boards, and that it violated a constitutional principle of mirror equality that guarantees equivalent rights to public and separate school boards. The trial judge rejected the reasonable autonomy and discrimination arguments but accepted the mirror equality argument, finding the scheme invalid to the extent that it does not allow public school boards to opt out of the funding scheme. The Court of Appeal upheld the trial judge's decision on the reasonable autonomy and discrimination issues but held that s. 17(1) did not import a principle of mirror equality and found the new scheme constitutional.

Held: The appeal should be dismissed. The new school funding scheme is constitutional.

School boards do not enjoy reasonable autonomy from provincial control. School boards are a form of municipal institution and are delegates of provincial jurisdiction under s. 92(8) of the Constitution Act, 1867. Municipal institutions do not have an independent constitutional status. School boards are subject to legislative reform even though they are unique vehicles through which denominational rights are realized. Under s. 93 of the Constitution Act, 1867, the provinces have a plenary jurisdiction over education. A claim to an institutional sphere of reasonable autonomy is inconsistent with, and would impair, this plenary power. Section 17 of the Alberta Act does not alter this position. Alberta may alter educational institutions within its borders, subject only to those rights afforded through the combined effect of s. 93 and s. 17. Moreover, no constitutional convention demonstrates reasonable autonomy. The historical evidence indicates that significant centralized control existed when Alberta joined Confederation and the grant to the provinces of plenary jurisdiction over education suggests that the framers of the Constitution did not feel bound by convention to restrict the provinces to historic structures or models. Legislative reform since Alberta joined Confederation denies the existence of a belief in binding models of education. The new scheme therefore does not violate a constitutional principle or convention of reasonable autonomy.

This is significant in that it shows that the State in Canada views itself not as a constiuent assembly of the people or even a confederation of the people, but as a power over and above the people on its own behalf, as if it had always existed in perpetuity. When Alberta 'joined' confederation, it was granted provincial status as was Saskatchewan a hundred years ago, with the break up of the North West Territories as a territorial government ruled by Manitoba. The provincial status was granted by the Mercentalist State in Ottawa. A state which Quebecois Premier Papineau denounced at the time of its founding as being a 'con' federation, a state created in the backrooms of Ottawa by the then ruling class of the day without the consultation of the people. And the con contiues.

The neo con state of Ralph Klein and his Tories went further in 1995 in consolidating their state power over municipalities, by eliminating elected health boards and creating large centralized boards with appointed hacks to run them.

This consolidation movement by the right in Canada, also occured in Ontario under Mike Harris. Who moved to create supercities, in this case the super city of Toronto. The same movement would occur in Quebec under the then PQ government of Lucien Bouchard, an former cabinet minister in the Tory Federal Government of Brian Mulroney.

The move to consolidate municipalities, health and school boards, ran contrary to the psued0-libertarian ideology espoused by the neo-cons like Klein and Harris.

It was social engineering from the Right, since resistance at the local level to state attempts to privatize public services, was popular and growing the way to defeat it was to eliminate local control and autonomy. In order to introduce a radical economic reform such as the neo-con agenda the State removed any forms of popular representation that could become a popular opposition to its plans.

 'The birth of bio-politics':
Michel Foucault's lecture at the Collège de France on neo-liberal governmentality
Thomas Lemke, Economy and Society, Volume 30, Number 2, 1 May 2001, pp. 190-207(18)
This paper focuses on Foucault's analysis of two forms of neo-liberalism in his lecture of 1979 at the Collège de France: German post-War liberalism and the liberalism of the Chicago School.

The neo-con corporatist state in Alberta and Ontario forced muncipalities and public sector services to contract out and privatize by centralizing economic and political power in their hands and downloading their economic shortfalls to these levels of governance. In Alberta that led to a $7 billion dollar shortfall in infrasturcture funding which was used to pay off the provincial debt, while the provincial government insisted the way to make up for it was that the public sector should begin using Public Private Partnerships (P3's).

The most authoritarian methods of State power were used to implement a 'market' model of public service. The privatization of the the public sector could only be done top down, with a ruthless crushing of resistance by the use of state power by those who espoused minimalist government. The contradiction of the neo con agenda is plain to see. The state acts in a ruthless authoritarian fashion to restructure civil society into a market place for its corporate partners. The politcal manifestation is one of corporatist state capitalism-fascism not libertarianism.

The Real Threat of Fascism
by Paul Bigioni
It is always dangerous to forget the lessons of history. It is particularly perilous to forget about the economic origins of fascism in our modern era of deregulation. Most Western liberal democracies are currently held in the thrall of what some call market fundamentalism. Few nowadays question the flawed assumption that state intervention in the marketplace is inherently bad. As in Italy and Germany in the 20’s and 30’s, business associations clamor for more deregulation and deeper tax cuts. The gradual erosion of antitrust legislation, especially in the United States, has encouraged consolidation in many sectors of the economy by way of mergers and acquisitions. The North American economy has become more monopolistic than at any time in the post-WWII period. Fewer, larger competitors dominate all economic activity, and their political will is expressed with the millions of dollars they spend lobbying politicians and funding policy formulation in the many right-wing institutes which now limit public discourse to the question of how best to serve the interests of business. The consolidation of the economy, and the resulting perversion of public policy are themselves fascistic. I am quite certain, however, that President Clinton was not worrying about fascism when he repealed federal antitrust laws that had been enacted in the 1930’s. The Canadian Council of Chief Executives is similarly unworried about fascism when it lobbies the Canadian government to water down our Federal Competition Act. (The Competition Act regulates monopolies, among other things, and itself represents a watering down of Canada’s previous antitrust laws. It was essentially written by industry and handed to the Mulroney Government to be enacted.)

At present, monopolies are regulated on purely economic grounds to ensure the efficient allocation of goods. If we are to protect ourselves from the growing political influence of big business, then our antitrust laws must be reconceived in a way which recognizes the political danger of monopolistic conditions. Antitrust laws do not just protect the marketplace, they protect democracy.

Our collective forgetfulness about the economic nature of fascism is also dangerous at a more philosophical level. As contradictory as it may seem, fascist dictatorship was made possible because of the flawed notion of freedom which held sway during the era of laissez-faire capitalism in the early twentieth century. It was the liberals of that era that clamored for unfettered personal and economic freedom, no matter what the cost to society. Such untrammeled freedom is not suitable to civilized humans. It is the freedom of the jungle. In other words, the strong have more of it than the weak. It is a notion of freedom which is inherently violent, because it is enjoyed at the expense of others. Such a notion of freedom legitimizes each and every increase in the wealth and power of those who are already powerful, regardless of the misery that will be suffered by others as a result. The use of the state to limit such “freedom” was denounced by the laissez-faire liberals of the early twentieth century. The use of the state to protect such “freedom” was fascism. Just as monopoly is the ruin of the free market, fascism is the ultimate degradation of liberal capitalism.

In the postwar period, this flawed notion of freedom has been perpetuated by the neo-liberal school of thought. The neo-liberals denounce any regulation of the marketplace. In so doing, they mimic the posture of big business in the pre-fascist period. Under the sway of neo-liberalism, Thatcher, Reagan, Mulroney and George W. Bush have decimated labor and exalted capital. (At present, only 7.8 per cent of workers in the U.S. private sector are unionized – about the same percentage as in the early 1900’s.) Neo-liberals call relentlessly for tax cuts which, in a previously progressive system, disproportionately favor the wealthy. Regarding the distribution of wealth, the neo-liberals have nothing to say. In the result, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. As in Weimar Germany, the function of the state is being reduced to that of a steward for the interests of the moneyed elite. All that would be required now for a more rapid descent into fascism are a few reasons for the average person to forget that he is being ripped off. The racist hatred of Arabs, fundamentalist Christianity or an illusory sense of perpetual war may well be taking the place of Hitler’s hatred for communists and Jews.

ANARCHY -THE PEOPLE ARE SOVEREIGN
IN THE LIBERTARIAN CITY STATE

The city is where we live, we do not occupy the country be it Canada, or Quebec. We do not occupy our Provinces, or states. These are merely geographic designations as Proudhon points out.

We live in communities. It is here where self government originated and was destroyed by the State. The State as a historical entity has always opposed self governance in favour of rule over, domiance of, the people with the motto "Law, Order and Good Government" or other such tripe. As soon as Law and Order are introduced we know that we are subjects of a Burkean state. Self government is liberty and order; the best government. " Liberty is the Mother not the daughter of Order" Proudhon.

The Liberalism/Conservatism Of Edmund Burke and F. A. Hayek:A Critical Comparison
Edmund Burke, the passionate defender of the "ancient principles" of his forebears, might be surprised to discover that he originated a new school of political thought. By all accounts, however, he is the "modern founder of political conservatism," and generations of ‘conservative’ thinkers have found his life and work a rich source of philosophical and practical wisdom. Burke, of course, was a statesman and not a political philosopher, and he never produced anything that may be regarded as a systematic political treatise. Nevertheless, he embraced a consistent political creed that governed his actions throughout his life. The thesis of this essay is that Burke’s implicit political creed is, in all essential respects, the doctrine articulated by the twentieth-century social philosopher F. A. Hayek. Hayek’s aim, he said, was to "restate" or systematize those basic principles whose observance generated and sustain Western constitutional government and the free society. The "classical liberal" principles articulated by Hayek were also those that inspired and guided Burke. Burke and Hayek, in short, represent the same political tradition. Not only do they subscribe to the same substantive political philosophy, but they hold similar views regarding the nature of society, the role of reason in human affairs, the proper tasks of government, and, to a certain extent, the nature of moral and legal rules. Although there are differences between their views as well, differences that stem from Burke’s orthodox Christianity on the one hand and Hayek’s religious agnosticism on the other, the area of substantive agreement between their respective views is far greater than that of their disagreement. The heart of the matter is that both Burke and Hayek remained, as Hayek put it, "unrepentant Old Whig[s]" to the end.

When the politicians speak of Law and Order and Good Government they are speaking of the power of the ruling classes and their state over the people. It neccistates the creation of laws of privatization, destruction of common ownership, creation of police and judiciary to protect private property, against the commonwealth of the people.

Capitalism originated in the agricultural revolution in England that neccitated the privatization of the commons by encroachment laws. Todays neo-cons use the full force of the state to impose privatization on civil society, they do so with the ruthless cooperation of their business allies and ideological stooges. Regardless of their sops to the idea of a free market their actions reveal them to be good old coroprate statists, fascists by any other name. Whether they run to take over school boards, or provincial governments, once in power they use it to restrict any possible form of self governance or autonomy of civil society in favour of state imposed privatization.

Their greatest fear is real libertarian self governance, anarchy. For real authentic self government is the basis of community and commonwealth, authentic libertarianism. While the neo-con so called market economy is the basis of private cops, private services, privatization of everything for the benefit of the few.

When we have self governing communities and industries organized within a municipal federation is when we will have the basis for a new and authentic Federalism. And then we shall have authentic anarchy. It is no contradiction then to say that 'self government=anarchy'.

Libertarian Municipalism: The New Municipal Agenda by Murray Bookchin

MUNICIPALIZATION by Murray Bookchin

WHAT IS ANARCHISM?

(excerpted from Peter Kropotkin's entry on anarchism in the Encyclopaedia Britannica's 11th edition [1910-11])

As to their economical conceptions, the Anarchists, in common with all Socialists, of whom they constitute the left wing, maintain that the now prevailing system of private ownership in land, and our capitalist production for the sake of profits, represent a monopoly which runs against both the principles of justice and the dictates of utility. They are the main obstacle which prevents the successes of modern technics from being brought into the service of all, so as to produce general well-being. The Anarchists consider the wage-system and capitalist production altogether as an obstacle to progress. But they point out also that the state was, and continues to be, the chief instrument for permitting the few to monopolize the land, and the capitalists to appropriate for themselves a quite disproportionate share of the yearly accumulated surplus of production. Consequently, while combating the present monopolization of land, and capitalism altogether, the Anarchists combat with the same energy the state, as the main support of that system. Not this or that special form, but the state altogether, whether it be a monarchy or even a republic governed by means of the referendum.

The state organization, having always been, both in ancient and modern history...the instrument for establishing monopolies in favour of the ruling minorities, cannot be made to work for the destruction of these monopolies. The Anarchists consider, therefore, that to hand over to the state all the main sources of economic life--the land, the mines, the railways, banking, insurance, and so on--as also the management of all the main branches of industry, in addition to all the functions already accumulated in its hands (education, state-supported religions, defence of the territory, &c.), would mean to create a new instrument of tyranny. State capitalism would only increase the powers of bureaucracy and capitalism. True progress lies in the direction of decentralization, both territorial and functional, in the development of the spirit of local and personal intitiative, and of free federation from the simple to the compound, in lieu of the present hierarchy from the centre to the periphery.


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