Keeping the 'X' in X-MAS

Today is Solstice, the longest night of the year, when candles and sacred fires were lit by our ancestors to keep away the dark and to hope for the return of the sun. For those of the Jewish faith and tradition it is Chanukah, which they too celebrate with a festival of lights.

Today is the first day of Winter, and by now the feasting of Harvest and Samhain is forgotten. The foods preserved for the long winter season are now unpacked and a feast is held for the people will eat little but preserves until spring allows for new growth and the season of planting. It was also a time of sharing even with the lowest and poorest.

The annual renewal festival of the Babylonians was adopted by the Persians. One of the themes of these festivals was the temporary subversion of order. Masters and slaves exchanged places. A mock king was crowned. Masquerades spilled into the streets. As the old year died, rules of ordinary living were relaxed.

Amongst the ancient Romans this was the Season of Saturnalia when slaves were freed and the Emperor was mocked by a fool king. Twas a festivity that we now often celebrate at New Years, when drag and cross dressing occured much like that which occurs during Mardi Gras. The Carnival, the reversing of the social roles, where the poor were uplifted and the high and mighty buffoned. These were the pagan feast days before the advent of Christianty which appropriated them for their own mythology. For a very funny cartoon about the Pagan Origins of Christmas check this out.

The Saturnalia was the most popular holiday of the Roman year. Catullus (XIV) describes it as "the best of days," and Seneca complains that the entire city is in a bustle (Epistles, XVIII). Pliny the Younger writes that he retired to his room while the rest of the household celebrated (Epistles, II.17.24). It was an occasion for celebration, visits to friends, and the presentation of gifts, particularly wax candles (cerei), perhaps to signify the returning light after the solstice, and sigillaria. Martial wrote Xenia and Apophoreta for the Saturnalia. Both were published in December and intended to accompany the "guest gifts" which were given at that time of year. Aulus Gellius relates in his Attic Nights (XVIII.2) that he and his Roman compatriots would gather at the baths in Athens, where they were studying, and pose difficult questions to one another on the ancient poets, a crown of laurel being dedicated to Saturn if no-one could answer them.

During the holiday, restrictions were relaxed and the social order inverted. Gambling was allowed in public. Slaves were permitted to use dice and did not have to work. Instead of the toga, less formal dinner clothes (synthesis) were permitted, as was the pileus, a felt cap normally worn by the manumitted slave that symbolized the freedom of the season. Within the family, a Lord of Misrule was chosen. Slaves were treated as equals, allowed to wear their masters' clothing, and be waited on at meal time in remembrance of an earlier golden age thought to have been ushered in by the god.

Today some complain that the Christ is missing in Christmas, and complain about the loss of sacredness in this. But the Christmas tree has nothing to do with Christ but with ancient Gallic, Celtic and Germanic winter festivities around Solstice for through out the dark winter it stays green, the very source of eternal life and hope for the return of the Sun.

This belief was adapted by Christianity to equate the Sun, with the Son, of god. Hence Roman Emperor Constantine accepted Christianity and made it the State Religion of Rome, orginially worshiped Sol In Victus, it was not to much to change his Sun worship into the worship of INRI, the Son of God. And so Christianity went from the religion of slaves, and thus lost its connection with its Judiac origins, and became Romanized, the State Religion. Once it became a state religion it no longer spoke with the voice of the Rebel Jesus.

The fourth-century Roman emperor Constantine, who first moved the celebration of Christmas to December 25. The authors claim that Constantine followed the cult of Sol Invictus, a monotheistic form of sun worship that originated in Syria and was imposed by Roman emperors on their subjects a century earlier.

"His primary, indeed obsessive, objective was unity -- unity in politics, in religion, and in territory. A cult or state religion that included all other cults within it obviously helped to achieve this objective...In the interests of unity, Constantine deliberately chose to blur the distinctions among Christianity, Mithraism [another Sun cult of the time] and Sol Invictus..."

That's why Constantine decreed that Sunday -- "the venerable day of the sun" would be the official day of rest. (Early Christians before then celebrated their holy day on the Jewish Sabbath -- Saturday.)

That's also why -- by his edict, the book claims -- the celebration of Jesus' birthday was moved from January 6th (Epiphany today) to December 25, celebrated by the cult of Sol Invictus as Natilis Invictus, the rebirth of the sun (confused yet? don't be!)

And are you wondering about the concept of the 12 Days of Christmas? The midwinter festival of the ancient Egyptians celebrated the birth of Horus (the prototype of the earthly king) son of Isis (the divine mother-goddess). It was 12 days long, reflecting their 12-month calendar. This concept took firm root in many other cultures. In 567 AD, Christians adopted it. Church leaders proclaimed the 12 days from December 25 to Epiphany as a sacred, festive season.

Later protestant sects such as the Calvinsts and some Lutherans see in the celebration of Christmas and the Christmas tree, heathen paganism, and will not have a tree in their houses. Some churches and sects such as the WorldWide Church of God, with their Back to the Bible hour, refuse to celebrate Christams as a heathen pagan rite as do the Jehova Witnesses and other Anabaptist sects.

Is Christmas a Sin?

Some Christians believe that Christians should not observe Christmas. Some object to the commercialism of the holiday; others object to its origins. Until 1995, we in the Worldwide Church of God did not approve of Christmas. Our approach now is much more favorable.

In order to understand our approach to this subject, it is helpful to trace some of the history of Christmas avoidance, particularly its roots in Puritanism.

The Puritans believed that the first-century church modeled a Christianity that modern Christians should copy. They attempted to base their faith and practice solely on the New Testament, and their position on Christmas reflected their commitment to practice a pure, scriptural form of Christianity. Puritans argued that God reserved to himself the determination of all proper forms of worship, and that he disapproved of any human innovations – even innovations that celebrated the great events of salvation. The name Christmas also alienated many Puritans. Christmas, after all, meant ``the mass of Christ.'' The mass was despised as a Roman Catholic institution that undermined the Protestant concept of Christ, who offered himself once for all. The Puritans' passionate avoidance of any practice that was associated with papal Rome caused them to overlook the fact that in many countries the name for the day had nothing to do with the Catholic mass, but focused instead on Jesus' birth. The mass did not evolve into the form abhorred by Protestants until long after Christmas was widely observed. The two customs had separate, though interconnected, histories.

As ardent Protestants, Puritans identified the embracing of Christianity by the Roman Emperor Constantine in the early 300s as the starting point of the degeneration and corruption of the church. They believed the corruption of the church was brought on by the interweaving of the church with the pagan Roman state. To Puritans, Christmas was impure because it entered the Roman Church sometime in this period. No one knows the exact year or under what circumstances Roman Christians began to celebrate the birth of their Lord, but by the mid-300s, the practice was well established.

No evidence exists that the Christian leaders who began this practice consciously wanted to compromise with paganism. They may simply have wanted to celebrate the birth of Jesus. However, modern scholars generally agree that the date they chose for Christmas was influenced by a pagan celebration on or about that same date honoring the "Invincible Sun." Consequently, many customs unrelated to the birth of Jesus that commonly characterize modern Christmas celebrations were also present in pre-Christian pagan celebrations. This syncretistic character of most forms of Christmas celebration was enough for Puritans to avoid the holiday as a compromise with the pure exercise of Christian faith.

Today, there are no churches that call themselves Puritans. Yet their theological descendants – Presbyterians, Congregationalists and many Baptists – remain. Gone, except among their most fundamentalist offspring, is any concern about Christmas. Yet their history of attitudes toward Christmas is important for understanding our own story.

So not all Christians celebrate the Solstice Season as the birth of their god. So when some American Protestants want to put the Christ back in Christmas they do not speak for all Christians, nor is it just the 'liberal' ACLU that opposes Christmas, so do their own religious sects.

What 'War on Christmas'?

By Ruth Marcus
Washinton Post
Saturday, December 10, 2005; Page A21

I've been hearing about this "War on Christmas," so I headed to the Heritage Foundation the other day for a briefing from one of the defending army's generals: Fox News anchor John Gibson, author of "The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought." Gibson -- and Bill O'Reilly, his comrade in the Fox-hole -- see this as a two-front war: Assaulting Christmas from the government end, they say, are pusillanimous school principals, politically corrected city managers and their ilk, bullied by the ACLU types into extirpating any trace of Christmas from the public square. Battering the holiday from the private sector are infidel retailers such as Target and Wal-Mart, which balk at using the C-word in their advertising in favor of such secularist slogans as "Happy Holidays." The assault, Gibson told the Heritage crowd, has reached a "shocking level this year."

Christian bloggers answer the question 'What War on Christmas?'

Their rantings against Happy Holidays or Seasons Greetings are equally falacious. Holidays is Holy Days, and certainly this is the season of Holy Days, Solstice, Chanukah (the festival of lights, Kwanzai (a new Afro American celebration of Solstice) and Christmas.

O'Reilly retreats in "war on Christmas," declaring: " 'Happy Holidays' is fine'

Summary: On The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly apparently reversed his previous position that the phrase "Happy Holidays" is offensive, stating, " 'Happy Holidays' is fine, just don't ban 'Merry Christmas.' " O'Reilly has previously claimed the term "Happy Holidays" is offensive to "millions of Christians" and 'insulting to Christian America."

And Happy Yule is just as fine to say, as it was the term for the season in Scandinavia and later used in Christian England and amongst the Christianized Saxons and Slavs, such as King Wenceslas. Listen to the carol.

Under attack from the politically correct, Christmas finds an ally in Trevor Philips, Chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, I am baffled after reading about the recent "bans on Christmas" by companies and local authorities across the country. A ban on Christmas isn't just silly and offensive to those who profess to be Christians. Most people of other faiths are bemused that we should even question it.

So Merry Christmas from a Heathen Pagan. Tis the season of solidarity and communalism, of fraternity and sharing, and that is what makes it holy, not the diety that it may be named for. It is a celebration of community. And even the Rebel Jesus would have approved.

The Rebel Jesus Jackson Browne

Original recording from the chieftain’s album the bells of dublin All the streets are filled with laughter and light And the music of the season And the merchants’ windows are all bright With the faces of the children And the families hurrying to their homes As the sky darkens and freezes They’ll be gathering around the hearths and tales Giving thanks for all god’s graces And the birth of the rebel jesus Well they call him by the prince of peace And they call him by the savior And they pray to him upon the seas And in every bold endeavor As they fill his churches with their pride and gold And their faith in him increases But they’ve turned the nature that I worshipped in From a temple to a robber’s den In the words of the rebel jesus We guard our world with locks and guns And we guard our fine possessions And once a year when christmas comes We give to our relations And perhaps we give a little to the poor If the generosity should seize us But if any one of us should interfere In the business of why they are poor They get the same as the rebel jesus But please forgive me if I seem To take the tone of judgement For I’ve no wish to come between This day and your enjoyment In this life of hardship and of earthly toil We have need for anything that frees us So I bid you pleasure And I bid you cheer From a heathen and a pagan On the side of the rebel jesus.

A Culture of Entitlement

The panel Mike Duffy's Countdown tonight was Rona Ambrose for the Conservatives, Belinda Stronach for the Liberals and former party leader Alexa McDonough for the NDP. Mike interupted them to say he got a reply from the Liberal War Room saying yes Liberal staffers who had volunteered for the campaign would be going back to their government jobs this week since the Liberals are not campaigning. And since they were on a leave of absence they could do this. The catch is that being on a leave of abscence meant the Liberals paid them, going back to work, which actually is paid holiday time, you and I pay them.

Political Staples has the whole sorid story. With links to All things Canadian who has the video evidence.

I think all three of us, Staples, Canadian and I, must have looked like Rona and Alexa. Disgusted. Belinda proved to be a quick learner as a party flack, saying it was all quite proper and done within government procedures.

Alexa actually fumed, and Rona let her, cause she went on a veritable tirade about how unprincipaled this was, unethical, culture of entitlement, and well plain stupid. And did I mention unethical.

It's not about doing the right thing its about being seen to do the right thing. And this is defintely the wrong thing to do right now. No wonder the Liberals want tougher gun laws they keep shooting themselves in the foot.

In Solidarity With S'amuna' Peoples

I have made this graphic link in Solidarity with Somena's campaign on behalf of the S'amuna' Peoples and against Wal-Mart. Feel free to cut and paste it to your blog.


Wal-Mart Is Desecrating
The S'amuna' Peoples
Sacred Burial Site
And Despoiling Our Lands!

You are on the bus or off the bus

Ken Kesey in the sixties,who with his Merry Pranksters who traveled across Amerika in their hippie painted bus, used to say; "you are either on the bus or off the bus" . The same could be said about Jack Layton's visit to Edmonton. Well actually he didn't visit Edmonton, his bus did.

You see Jack ,like the Harper visited Alberta on the weekend. Guess the press coverage and blogging about how the party leaders were overlooking little ol' Alberta lit a fire under them.

Anyways Jack flapped into Calgary by airplane for a quickie photo op and airport rally on Sunday. Wait, Calgary?! What the heck is with that? Last election the NDP vote was neck and neck with the vote for the Green Party in Calgary.

In Calgary it was a pit stop, he shook hands and waved and got back on the plane. He didn't even make a speech worth a press release. In fact in another pit stop in little ol Castlegar B.C., home of the last of Canada's hippies hmm maybe thats the Kesey connection, he did give a speech.

While in Edmonton we have a two way race in Edmonton Strathcona between Linda Duncan of the NDP and the Conservative incumbent Rahim Jaffer. In fact Jaffer is not touring Canada because he knows its the fight of his life. But does Jack come here? Nope all we got was his empty campaign bus.


A tip o' the blog to Waking Up On Planet X for this

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China Boom

It's not just the Federal Liberals or the Alberta government that have a hard time telling the truth about their surpluses. Now it appears China has the same problem. It must come from the embarassment of riches they all are awash in. By underestimating capital growth, and income, governments can claim to be 'surprized' when they have surpluses, this is the hold over from the deficit conciousness that was beat into them in the ninties by the neo-con's. Now the neo-con's are singing another tune in the U.S. Deficits are ok by them, thats cause while China, Alberta and Canada boom the US economy is a fiscal basket case of trillions of dollars in debt. China this morning announced a surplus that puts it ahead of the UK in the world economy. Thanks to it rapid adaptation to Fordist production, and it's being the global sweatshop to the world.

China's economy took another Great Leap Forward -- this one overnight.

The economy is 17 percent larger and growing faster than previous estimates, according to a year-long census released in Beijing today that revealed millions of previously unaccounted- for businesses. The findings may vault China three places on the list of the world's largest economies, to No. 4, ahead of the U.K.

Service companies in areas such as retailing, real estate and insurance accounted for 93 percent of the additional output uncovered by the census.

The services industry accounted for 40.7 percent of gross domestic product last year, up from 31.9 percent previously, the government said. That still leaves China trailing countries such as Russia and South Africa, where services make up more than 60 percent of output.

Free Market Reforms

Services ``have been growing much faster than the rest of the economy,'' said Ha Jiming, chief economist at China International Capital Corp., China's largest investment bank. ``This all argues for higher growth this year and for the next few years.''

The share of primary industry, which is mostly agriculture, fell to 13.1 percent of GDP from 15.2 percent, today's release said. Secondary industry, mostly manufacturing and construction, declined to 46.2 percent from 52.9 percent.

Internationalist Perspectives

One of the more interesting groups of Left Communists I correspond with in our little milieu is Internationalist Perspectives. The latest issue of their journal is an exciting debate on the nature of capitalist decadence and the contraditicions between capital for profit and technology that allows for production of abundance for all. I am simplifying the debate. However it's a 'real good read' as they say and my hard copy is well thumbed. Portions of the journal IP #42 are now available here. I have refered to their ideas in some of my articles here.

Intelligent Design is just another word for......

Creationism; the religious belief that the world is flat, that men lived with dinosaurs and the world was created 4,400 years ago.

In a landmark case that will be the Scopes trial for ID, a U.S. judge has ruled that ID is not science nor a scientific theory equivalent to evolution, and cannot be taught in public school science classes.

"Intelligent design" cannot be mentioned in biology classes in a Pennsylvania public school district, a federal judge said Tuesday, ruling in one of the biggest courtroom clashes on evolution since the 1925 Scopes trial.

The Dover Area School Board violated the Constitution when it ordered that its biology curriculum must include "intelligent design," the notion that life on Earth was produced by an unidentified intelligent cause, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III ruled Tuesday.

The school board policy, adopted in October 2004, was believed to have been the first of its kind in the nation.

"The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy," Jones wrote. "It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy."

And there I thought lying was a sin.I guess its just a little sin, not really a cardinal sin.

Wal-Mart A Toxic Success

NEWZ FLASH!

This just in the products you buy from Wal-Mart may be contaminated with toxic waste.

Wal-Mart is target of criminal probe over waste
According to the Wal-Mart, the government is looking into whether the company improperly used its own trucks to transport material deemed hazardous to centralized facilities, rather than using certified hazardous waste carriers to ship that material directly to designated disposal sites.

Yep that means all those low cost deals you got, well they may be low cause you spent your bucks on contaminated goods. But it gets better, you see Americas #1 Corporation is also Americas #1 Corporate Criminal.

The investigation is the latest in a series of legal troubles for Wal-Mart, which is also defending the largest-ever class-action lawsuit, which charges it with discriminating against women in pay and promotions.

Wal-Mart faces dozens of lawsuits accusing it of violating wage-and-hour laws, and earlier this year settled a federal investigation into the use of illegal immigrants to clean its stores.

Wal-Mart spokeswoman Sarah Clark said a number of goods, including hair spray, paint, aerosol cans and charcoal, are classified as hazardous.

All corporations repeat the history of capitalism itself., They replicate that through the primitive accumulation of capital, capitalisms origin in piracy and theft of property from the commons, as they grow into monopolies they become more 'legitimate', because in the process they create the State; pro business regulations and laws that they need for expansion locally, nationalionaly and internationally like the WTO. Contrary to the Right Wing view that somehow the State is seperate from the market, the State is the creature and creation of capitalism.

Wal-Mart Hopes WTO Will Help It Open a Door

Big retailers will seek to alter a services pact. Local officials fear a loss of power to limit firms.

Retailers will head to Hong Kong to try to persuade negotiators to fashion a trade pact that would make it more difficult for governments to restrict foreign-owned stores, banks and telecommunications companies. But critics, who include state Sen. Liz Figueroa (D-Fremont) and Los Angeles City Councilman Eric Garcetti, call the move a stealth attack on grass-roots democracy. They fear that the proposals to change the WTO's 1994 General Agreement on Trade in Services would make it easier to attack dozens of U.S. laws designed to restrict the growth of big-box retailers. That agreement was designed to open up trade in services such as retailing, accounting, medicine and entertainment that weren't covered under previous trade pacts. Under the WTO, only governments can challenge other countries' laws. So firms that believe they are being treated unfairly must persuade their governments to take up their case. Dismantling trade and investment barriers is a key concern of Wal-Mart, which has become a leading target of globalization critics around the world. The fiercest battles have been in the U.S., where dozens of municipalities have passed laws aimed at limiting the retailer's expansion. But the company has also seen its growth slowed by government restrictions in Canada, China, Britain, Germany and Japan.

Is There a Silver Lining to the WTO Talks? No

Well frankly no. The agreement on services that passed this weekend opens up the global market place for more privatization of public services including Water. And the limited restriction on agricultural subsidies passed today is a pyrhic victory for the poorest nations of the world, they have been sacrificed once again but not by the US or EU but by their allies like China, India and Brazil!

This time, the developing countries came determined to make their voices heard and make a strong case for their interests. They made it. (China Daily)

Considering that both the EU and US are more interested in their global agribusiness giants than small farmers, the real outcome of these talks are on the folks who till the land they have been sacrificed for the long term interests of corporate Europe and America and the interests of the newly industrialized economies.

Mainland farmers `neglected' in reforms

Chinese academics said Friday that the mainland government has neglected farmers' interests in the country's rush for World Trade Organization membership, although they have no detailed proposals to improve the farmers' lot.

Guang Xia, a schoolteacher from Guangxi province doing research on agriculture, said China's heritage of tiny farm plots has made it hard for products such as grain and cotton to compete with imported goods produced by foreign agribusiness concerns.

Farmers, he said, were used to obeying government orders on what to plant. "They are slow to respond to international market changes. Plus, the government provides little support to farmers, compared with the European Union and the US."

The government, headed by President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, has sought to solve rural problems by reducing taxes and introducing other measures, Tang said, "But that's not enough. They could provide more subsidies and give more support to farmers, or it will bring turbulence to the society."

And while the trade agreement on agriculture was a partial success more liberalization of trade has been left for yet another round of bargaining. One that will determine how much of the newly industrialized world and developing nations must open up to Transnational Corporations from the U.S. and E.U.

Agreement leaves toughest trade issues unsolved

The most tangible outcome was a promise by the WTO’s wealthiest members to end tariffs on imports from 32 of the world’s poorest nations, such as Bangladesh and Rwanda. While symbolically important, the pledge contains room for exemptions for the most sensitive products, such as clothing and sugar. US lawmakers and corporate lobbyists complained that a problematic trend is emerging where the US is being forced to make concession after concession, while large developing nations such as India and Brazil offer nothing. Montana’s Max Baucus, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement. ‘‘ And to be frank, the deal in Hong Kong does very little to advance key US interests.”

Ah cry me a river, you know something has come out of this that advantages Americas real competitors, the G20 newly Industrialized countries, when the US whines. However we should be cautious, for the competing capitals in the world of global capitali, are interested in profit and exchange value not the survival of human beings and authentic human sustainable development. They are interested in the creation of the Market State. As an editorial in the Arab News from Saui Arabia suggests;

For all the political posturing in Hong Kong, the nature of the problem is clear and neither the Americans nor the Europeans denied it. Their promise to end export subsidies by 2013 is hedged with conditions and is not satisfactory. However, by conceding that date, they have also conceded the principle. Now it is up to them to sell the deal to their constituencies who will, in fact, benefit from cheaper food. The real champions of subsidies are of course the producers, be it of steel or soya beans. It is time that lobbyists were shown the door because there is a greater worldwide benefit at stake. Subsidies not only cost local taxpayers, they cost the people in the countries that could compete more cheaply, if only the market were not distorted and protected by politically motivated government handouts.

Media coverage of the negotiations in Hong Kong was remarkable for the fact that it missed one crucial point. What everyone was actually talking about was business. Any businessman worth his salt knows that everything is negotiable. Commerce is in the end all about price. Politicians and bureaucrats tend to make the worst of businessmen. They are long on economic theories and short on the sort of practical knowledge you would expect to find in the humblest souq. Therefore they are perhaps not the best people to be talking about trade. But if the WTO did not exist, we would have to invent it, because the world’s businessmen have to operate within rules and regulations to ensure that deals are honest and fair.

If producing goods for export are not matched with a local sustainable agricultural base, a local market for use rather than export, then we will simply face the same conditions we currently do in the poorest nations of the world, famine, death and disease. And the WTO trade agreements do not focus on this problem, rather they focus on the trade in goods. The preconditions for such trade of course is the further privatization and expansion of capital investment opportunities for the Transnational corporations such as ADM.

Where a local village grows and processs maize for export through a cooperative, they are being supplanted by investor run corporations competing for the same export contract. In African countries where this has occured the corporation model has failed, but the impact on the village has led to disaster and can lead to famine, and ruination of crop cycles, especially if the corporate model introduced fertilizers for faster growth production for export.

Gains at HK trade talks "limited": UN chief

"He recalls that trade is no less important than aid for successful development, and that without open markets and fair competition few countries will have a real chance of meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015," the spokesman said. The MDGs are a series of targets for reducing extreme poverty and other ills set at the 2000 UN summit.

This round of talks has been a matter of the interests of competing capitals within the global capitalist market place. Their interests are not international solidarity with the less advantaged nations that they leave behind, they are seeking their own advantage within the global capitalist marketplace. If that means sacrificing the least able to negotiate so be it. Welcome to the world of bargaining in the era of Imperialism.

SMOKE AND MIRRORS

The text included a deadlock-breaking pledge from the EU to end farm export subsidies -- the top demand of developing countries -- by 2011. But development campaigners dismissed this as "smoke and mirrors".

The deal was cooked up by an "unholy alliance" of the United States, the European Union and WTO head Pascal Lamy, a former EU trade chief, said the Asia-based Focus on the Global South.

But the grouping, head by Philippine economist Walden Bello, also attacked India and Brazil, leaders of the G20 developing country group that emerged at a failed WTO conference in 2003, for their role in Hong Kong.

"India and Brazil have led the developing countries down the garden path in exchange for some market access in agriculture for Brazil, and services outsourcing for India," said the grouping's spokesperson Aileen Kwa.

"This text is a recipe for disaster, and many developing countries will not be able to convince people back home that they have come back with a good deal," Bello said.

Brazil's Foreign Minister Celso Amorim and India's Trade Minister Kamal Nath -- who represented the G20 in talks with the EU and the United States before and during the conference -- were swapping compliments about what they had achieved "to cover up the fact that they have agreed to a disaster," he said.

This was another clear barb at India and Brazil, accused by some in the EU -- and echoed by the Global South's Bello -- of primarily pursuing their own interests as large, middle-income trading powers at the expense of really poor nations.

In fact India wanted to see the services agreement passed, an agreement that will impact harshly on the devloping world because it will result in further privatization of Water ,because they want to see further expansion of outsourcing of IT services to their country. In order to pass that agreement at this round of the WTO they also had to pass a begining agreement on reducing agricultural subsidies.

China, Brazil and India, the newest of the developing industrialized countries are now pushing their weight as capitalist states against the US and EU. And like all competing capitals, they are no more interested in sustainable development than their larger Imperialist competititors. As China has shown with its whipsawing of the African Textile industry.

China used the WTO restrictions on its marketing of textiles to expand its factories offshore in Africa. When the WTO regulations ended last January, their factory owners shut up shop in various African countries and went back home. China wants to replace all other developing countries as the cheap source of manufactured goods in the world. China set to become world's sweatshop, report warns - Andrew Taylor

Also see: WTO Who Cares?


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Religion Threatens Human Life

Evidence shows that the cuts in cleaning staff in hospitals in the ninties, as well as the contracting out of that work, has resulted in more and more opportunistic diseases in hospitals. Including killer Staphylococcus infections, and it impacted on the rapid spread of SARS.

As a result health organizations around the world are promoting the use of alcohol based hand cleaners as well as regular hand washing.

Since the middle ages there have been religious strictures and taboos around cleaning and cleanliness, it wasn't always beleived that cleanliness was next to godliness. In fact the plague was spread as rapidly as it was due to the filth that early Christendom lived in.

It now appears that once againreligious superstitions and dogmas threaten human life on planet earth.

Staff in hospitals around the world are spreading germs and diseases by not washing their hands enough and religion is one of the factors in the problem, an international conference has been told.

"Every year the treatment and care of hundreds of millions of patients worldwide is complicated by infections acquired during health care in hospitals," said Benedetta Allegranzi, a World Health Organisation (WHO) consultant from the University of Verona in Italy.

Allegranzi told the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy that too few doctors, nurses and other hospital workers follow hygiene rules.

Cultural and religious factors "strongly influence" the lack of hand washing, she added.

Anti-Abortion Movement Calls This Success

In the U.S.legislative changes (parental notification) and lobbying by the Anti-Abortion movement, the physical and deadly attacks on abortion clinics and doctors by religious terrorists, along with the neo-con welfare reforms introduced by Clinton aimed a single mothers, has resulted in this...... Survey Shows Unwanted Births Up

More American women are having babies they didn't want, a survey indicates.

U.S. women of childbearing age who were surveyed in 2002 revealed that 14 percent of their recent births were unwanted at the time of conception, federal researchers said Monday.

In a similar 1995 survey, only 9 percent were unwanted at the time of conception.

The latest findings are consistent with the falling rate of abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a New York-based nonprofit group that researches reproductive health issues.

Finer suggested the shift may reflect not only a diminishing demand for abortions, but also a decline in abortion providers, Finer said.

The number of U.S. abortion providers fell steadily in the last decade, from 2,400 in 1992 to 1,800 in 2000. The reason is not clearly known, although increasing government restrictions of abortions have made it increasingly difficult to provide the procedure, Finer said.

The proportion of unwanted births at time of conceptions was highest among girls under 18 — 25.4 percent. It was lowest among women 30 to 44 — 10.4 percent.

The proportion was higher for black women (26.2 percent) than for Hispanics (16.8 percent) and whites (10.7 percent).

More information: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs

The Blue Origin of the Red States

A lot is made of how the U.S. Democratic party needs to restore its connection with the South. How it has to win over the Red States, and win back its Dixiecrat base. Well once upon a time, waaay back during the American Civil War, the Republican Party of Lincoln, not Bush, was anti-slavery pro union (as in labour unions), pro-sufferage for blacks, workers and women and federalist. The Democrats were the party of corruption and white supremacy as this news story shows. My how times have changed.

Report Calls 1898 N.C. Riot an Insurrection

WILMINGTON, N.C. - Violence in 1898 that resulted in the only known forceful overthrow of a city government in U.S. history has historically been called a race riot but actually was an insurrection that white supremacists had planned for months, a state commission concludes.

The violence in Wilmington, which resulted in the deaths of an unknown number of black people, "was part of a statewide effort to put white supremacist Democrats in office and stem the political advances of black citizens," the 1898 Wilmington Riot Commission concludes in a draft report.

Afterward, white supremacists in state office passed laws that disfranchised blacks until the civil rights movement and Voting Rights Act of the 1960s.

The irony in this story is that the researcher for this project is Jeffery Crow and the White Supremacist laws that he was researching are called Jim Crow.

It took the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act to restore blacks' voting rights, Jeffrey Crow said. But he noted that Congress argues about the Voting Rights Act every time it comes up for renewal.

"More than a hundred years later, we're still trying to resolve the issues," Crow said. "It's extremely important that people understand history."

On the Net:

Riot Commission:

http://www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/1898-wrrc/

Scott all is forgiven

Well here's a quote from WonderWoman over at Canaukistan Chronicles literally oozing with vile contempt for humanity with several good ol' stereotypes thrown in courtesy of watching too much Law and Order. Instead of Beer and Popcorn we get Crack and Day-Care. Go figure.

This certainly shows that its not just Scott Reid who can stick his foot in the prairie cow pie. Mind you WW doesn't work for the Conservatives, she is just a cheerleader from the sidelines.

They call us moonbats, well that is the kettle calling the pot black since clearly WW and CC are the lunatic fringe, period.

12/17/2005

Clarifying the debate

Layton and the real socialists don't have anything new, either. With them, the menu offers nothing but tax and spend, with a fresh helping of national guilt for anyone who balks at allowing crack-head welfare moms to shoot-up in the safety of a taxpayer-funded safe-injection site - and probably a taxpayer-funded universal daycare slot to stash the kiddies in, while mommy visits the dealer.

Why do I read this shite anyways? Just curious as to how low certain so called human life forms can stoop, I guess. And we all know what happened to dat cat.
He got pissed off...which keeps these nutbars happy.....Remember kids, if the MoonBats aren't pissed, you aren't doing it right!

The Red Green Show

Yep Jim Harris Red Tory ,as the Blogging Tory's call him, and his inner ciricle have hijacked the Green Party, as I have blogged here before. Along with announcing support for policies not passed by the members, the cabal around Jim are now in a fix with Elections Canada. Le Scandale nes pas. And as usual with Jims ego, they are more Tory than sorry.

Macleans the New Alberta Report

Welcome to Ken Whytes world one of numerous ex Alberta Report employees and owners currently writing for the MSM (Lorne Gunter, the Byfields, etc.) has now taken Macleans to ever new lows, once associated with the rightwhingnut scandal rag from Alberta the Report.

Yep once the prestigious editor of the National Post hired by alleged racketeering crook Lord Black, Whyte now edits Macleans. In a toff to his old boss he has Mrs. Lord Black (Barbara Amiel) on staff as a columnist. She who allegedly drove her husband into a life of crime to keep her in the lifestyle she felt she was suited too. Mrs. Lord Black is long time fop for the rightwhingnuts and board member of the rightwhing thunk tank the Fraser Institute.

But this weeks issue exposes Macleans as just another issue of the Alberta Report little Kenny used to edit. Change the banner logo with the Report and the headline sez it all. "Let's Send Svend Packing". Humourous, no? No. Its a homophobic attack on Svend, cleaned up of the Mark Steyn prejorative of calling Svend a gay kleptocrat, (from his safe haven in exile in the U.S. where he can't be touched by Canada's hate laws) but saying the same thing.

But we are wholly unconvinced that Robinson is a changed man, or that his return to Ottawa is in the best interests of Canadian voters.

Of course he has not changed, despite Kens litany of supposed crimes committed by Svend the real issue is that he is still gay and a gay advocate. And interesting while focusing on his attempt to get the word 'god' struck from the Constitution, Ken fails to mention what really got his rightwhing pals in a tizzy; his success in getting sexual orientation included in the hate literature law. Yep Ken is careful not to out Svend and face his rath. Rather he cleverly skirts the issue.

The Editorial written by Whyte comes from the Alberta Report school of journalism, huffy puffy self righteous indignation and psuedo outrage. Full of vile rancour dripping off the page cause Svend is a ho-mo-sex-ual. Its not really about the fact he stole anything, or that he is an NDP politician, nope its cause he is a ho-mo-sex-ual. Ken Whyte has something personal against Svend.Like the rest of his ilk at Alberta Report they have always had this thing about being manly men, no homo-sex here please, we are from St. Johns.

You see the magazine was orginally funded by the private St. Johns Boys School, a protestant religious school which Ted Byfield was an influential member of.
And well, only manly men go out and teach boys how to mountain climb, shoot white water, and if they get up to no good, well a good paddling on the bottom will straighten them out. Manly men. No homos or queers here.

Yep and lets not even get into the subject of feminism, well its ok if you are a feminist like say Mrs. Lord Black or even housefau columnists like Margret Wente and Diane Francis, ex Americans come to lecture Canadian ladies on why they should stay home and enjoy the good life like Mrs. Lord Black does. Cause if you don't you will become a lesbian.

Yep sex was always on the minds of folks at Alberta Report. You could say it was their obsession. They weren't pro life, heavens no bring back the death penalty, they were anti abortion, cause that was what happens when you have sex out of wedlock. Yep there's that sex thingee again.

The magazine itself was a roaring succcess in Alberta, every dentist office had a copy. Mind you the magazine went bankrupt three times, and was bailed out by Alberta Taxpayers at least once through the Alberta Venture Capital fund. Funny that, sorta like the Fraser Institute being a charity so its elite members can write off their donations for tax credits.

Anyways the sorid little tale of Alberta Report is that it was the first real Canadian Conservative redneck rightwhing weekly. And even the new Western Standard and the psuedo Report (aka Canada Report) pale in comparison for the really off the wall pronouncements made by the Byfields and their edotroial syncophants.

It appears that Macleans is another attempt by Ken Whyte to shape a publication into his old familar home, Alberta Report. The attack on Svend is a clarion call that the new Macleans is the Voice of the rightwhing in Canada. Even though the real crime story in Canada this week was all about Lord Black, but after all his little woman writes for Ken. Well you can expect Macleans under Ken to end up like Alberta Report, in your local dentists office.

MEDIA WATCH: THE ELECTION

It's just news, not brainwashing

By CHRISTOPHER DORNAN

Saturday, December 17, 2005

Globe and Mail

The thing about the networks, though, is that they all insist they have no partisan agenda. On that score, if nothing else, you have to admire the honesty of the new Maclean's magazine under publisher-editor Ken Whyte. It makes no secret of where its preferences lie. The current issue features a cover shot of NDP candidate Svend Robinson and the headline "Svend him packing." A subhead urges Vancouver Centre voters to "please do the rest of Canada a favour."

"Svend him packing" is a brilliant headline, and if you're of that cast of mind, the new Maclean's will drop into your lap as though the national media have finally come to their senses. If you're not of that cast of mind, you will be repelled by it. It's too personal, too abrasive. You will not be inclined to buy a magazine with that kind of attitude. You might not be inclined to work there either.

So Maclean's, I guess, has decided to stake its future on a core readership of worked-up right wingers, convinced that a right-good read is key to growing that constituency. Good luck to them. Maybe it will work this time. As a business strategy, it didn't work at the last three publications where Ken Whyte had a guiding hand: the National Post, Saturday Night magazine and Alberta Report.

But, then, Ken Whyte is fighting for his life, no less than any candidate on the hustings. And his poll numbers aren't looking good. In the Decima-Carleton survey, when asked where they turn for election news, respondents mentioned everything from their local dailies to Internet blogs. National weekly newsmagazines weren't even a blip.

Christopher Dornan is the director of the Carleton University School of Journalism and Communication. The Decima-Carleton poll results can be found at

http://decima.ca/en/lab/election2006/

and http://www.carleton.ca/sjc

Is Haiti a Canadian Colony

Foreign Affairs is getting short shrift this election being focused mainly on what Tweedledee Martin and Tweedledum Harper said about the Iraq war. We at least know the NDP opposed it from the begining. Thats a given. So lets move on to something more important and less well discussed.

A subject so touchy with the Liberal government that it got a Martin heckler arrested and jailed in Halifax. The heckler was author and film maker, Yves Engler, a member of the Canada Haiti Action Network who has documented UN and Canadian abuses of civilians in Haiti.

It's the Ugly Canadian news story that is buried in the back pages of the Canadian Press. Now why might that be? After all we went into Haiti at the request of the UN and Americans to help those poor people under the horrible democratically elected government of Aristide. Or did we?

Ecuador's New Canadian Ambassador Helped Plan Haiti Coup

Christian Lapointe helped co-ordinate and attended the meeting, as did future (and present) Ambassador to Haiti Claude Boucher, who is known to be close to elements within the elite Group of 184 political opposition to Lavalas and is virulently anti-Aristide.

Documents obtained via Canada's Access to Information Act reveal that Lapointe was in on key high-level deliberations that may have involved the topic of Haiti's regime change. Lapointe himself may have censored the portions of these documents that could prove the international community's plans to overthrow the government of Jean Bertrand Aristide more than one year before the regime change took place. According to an officer within the Department of Foreign Affairs Access to Information and Privacy division, Lapointe was the final person through which the Ottawa Initiative on Haiti documents had to pass prior to being released. Another officer referred to approximately 1,000 pages pertaining to the Ottawa Initiative on Haiti meeting. Only 67 pages were released.

Montreal has a huge and influential Haitian community, largest probably in North America. The Canadian government announced its first woman of colour as GG and she too is Haitian. What did this signal to Haitians in Canada and in Haiti?

Gildan the worlds number two T shirt manufacturer is located in Montreal but offshores its production to the caribbean. Recently found to be using sweat shops in these regions, it was given a clean bill of health by Anti Sweat Shop campaigns.
Except that it has now reduced production in those plants and expanded its operations in Haiti with no anti-sweat shop vigilance.

The Canadian Corporate/State Nexus In Haiti by Anthony Fenton

Haiti's de facto government will soon announce the appointment of Robert Tippenhauer as its new ambassador to Canada. Previously, Tippenhauer was the President of the first-ever Haitian-Canadian Chamber of Commerce. He says he will be arriving in Canada shortly after the early June visit to Haiti of Quebec Premier Jean Charest. Should the Canadian government accept Tippenhauer's credentials, it will mark Canada's clearest official alignment with Haiti's right-wing elites.

Of the many reconstruction projects that are being created, Tippenhauer feels that "considering the active role that Canada is playing with their lead role in the transition, Canadian firms should have a first look at these projects." On Canada's leadership role, Tippenhauer made the point that Canada had "one the most active ambassadors here." Tippenhauer further lauded Canada's "constant interest in Haiti," stating "the mere presence of these officials is good for us."

Some of the incentives offered to companies like SNC, and Gildan Activewear, who Tippenhauer estimates employ 5,000 people between their independent factory (which is next to Tippenhauer's Dollar Rent-a-Car) and Andy Apaid's factories; Apaid has been Gildan's primary subcontractor in Haiti for many years, according to a Gildan spokesperson.

Is Haiti Canada's new colony, and in reality are we her Imperial master. Turning a blind eye to Canadian war crimes in Haiti.Were we really invited into Haiti as part of a coalition or did we actually mastermind the whole thing. Inquirying minds want to know, and the evidence is piling up that Haiti is a Canadian Colony. That the Liberal Government was off the hook in Iraq because we had our own little coup de dat to run in Haiti.

Canada in Haiti: Considering the 3-D Approach. November 3-4 2005
Waterloo, Ontario The second half of the conference title – “Considering the 3-D Approach” – is a direct reference to the Canadian government’s 2005 International Policy Statement (IPS), which advocates a three-pronged strategy to Canadian involvement in Canada in Haiti: that blends Canada’s diplomatic, defence and development presence in order to form a coordinated engagement

A Tip o' the Blog to Greg Farrants who has been doing exemplar work around Solidarity with Haiti both in Redmonton and across Canada.

And a tip o' the blog to Lazylafargue.

There is currently circulating a letter to condemn the political detentions in Haiti, and the detention of AI "Prisoner of Conscience" Father Jean-Juste in particular. It is addressed to Jack Layton, of the NDP you can forward your own copy to Jack . While the original focus of this letter was to get Haiti mentioned in last weeks debates there are still two more debate coming up.

Haiti: The Liberals' Untold Scandal

For the people of Haiti, all of this has meant a return to conditions reminiscent of the years of military dictatorship. Haitian Police routinely conduct deadly raids within the poorest neighborhoods, shooting scores of civilians and Aristide sympathizers. According to the Catholic Peace and Justice Commission, over 700 political prisoners fill Haiti’s jails, including catholic priest Father Gerard Jean-Juste, deemed a “prisoner of conscience” by Amnesty International. Jean-Juste was barred from running in Haiti’s upcoming Presidential elections due to his imprisonment.

Meanwhile, Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew has referred to reports of such abuses as “propaganda,” while Paul Martin has publicly stated that “there are no political prisoners in Haiti.”

Unlike the Gomery Inquiry, the Liberal scandal in Haiti has cost perhaps thousands of lives. Why, then, has it been left completely off of the political radar of these elections?

From Gaza to Cold Lake AB

A tip o the blog to lazylafargue who had excerpts of this article up on their website. It was recently published in the December issue of Briarpatch magazine and is posted on-line here.

Out of two hundred warplanes that took part in Exercise Maple Flag 2005 in Cold Lake, Alberta in May, only ten were Israeli F-16s. It would be easy to miss their significance. Yet, when Canadian forces extended an invitation to the Israeli Air Force for the first time in thirty-eight meetings of the Maple Flag war games, it signalled, according to military planners, a marked shift in Canadian military and political policy in the twenty-first century: good night Battle of Britain, good morning Gaza.

What is also significant is that once again First Nations people were displaced under the Federal Government, to expand the use of this 'empty frontier' by the Department of Defense. It was the Cold War and the era of the Dew Line, and the expansion of NATO literally cold war excercises in Northern Canada, both in Goosebay Labrador and Cold Lake, Alberta. Lands of the Dene and Cree.

The dense forest and running streams tamed by this feat of engineering were the prodigious trapping, hunting and fishing lands of the Dene Suline, now known under the federal government's band council system as the Cold Lake First Nations. In 1952, the Dene were cut off from their traditional lands and the population ultimately expelled. The nearby Canoe Lake Cree Nation faired little better, losing seventy-five percent of their homelands to the weapons range.

Some fifty years after the land grab, the Canadian government settled claim with the Cold Lake First Nations, paying out a total of $2500 to each band member and $7000 to each elder, with an additional twenty million dollars put in a development trust fund. That settlement amounts to about nine dollars per acre (roughly $22 a hectare), and not more than $150 per person for each year of their displacement. Such is the stage for Exercise Maple Flag, a six-week set of war games designed to provide training in the context of hyper-realistic simulations of aerial combat operations abroad.

What is ironic is that our treatment of First Nations peoples historically is the model used by South Africa for its Aparthied regime and that Israel uses for its model for Occupied Palistine. So I guess the Isreali airforce felt right at home at Cold Lake.

Bring on the Clones

Found this interesting left blog from South Korea (what did you think there could be a blog from North Korea let alone a left wing one?) covering the news reporters as well as the news about the cloning scandal in South Korea. Do I need to point out that this project between Americans and South Korea is another example of the failure of P3's and the privatization of university R&D who are in a rush to patent lifeforms. Science in the service of capital.

Liberals Want Your Handguns

Collectors of antique and rare handguns will have to surrender their weapons in buy-back programs under the Liberal plan.

In a related story the Liberals are looking for more gun collectors who have had their collections stolen so they can continue to blame them for the increase in gun crimes in Canada.

"Many gun crimes are being committed with stolen guns that are registered," Liberal spokesman Ken Polk told the Citizen last week. "If we eliminate that class of weapons, it will naturally help resolve that category of violent crime."

If you have had handguns stolen from your private collection please contact the boy at the back of the bus; Scott Reid.

Ed Sez: Gun Ban Useless

NDP Candidate and former GG, Ed Schreyer laughed out loud over the suggestion that the Liberals ban on handguns will solve crime in Canada. "They have been banned since 1934, its not a solution to a complex problem like crime." He told Craig Oliver on CTV's Question Period.

Nice to know that another Western Canadian NDP candidate running in a rural riding recognizes how out of touch the gun control lobby and the Toronto Liberals are. He actually said the Liberals had blown it over the Firearms registry and gun control. "I have represented Selkirk before you know, and I know what I am talking about."

I was waiting for him to pull a Charlton Heston though. Would love to see that. Ed Schreyer brandishing a long rifle belonging to Gabriel Dumont from the Riel Rebellion quoting him; "That we have a fair and full representation in the Canadian Parliament". See the Dippers support legal responsible gun ownership, now back off Blogging Torys.

Note To Bill Blaikie :)

CTV Question Period today had a mini debate between the three party Deputy Leaders, Peter McKay of the Conservatives, Anne McLellan of the Liberals and Bill Blaikie of the NDP. You can watch it Here Bill its ok to smile. Really. You look dour, like you lost the race for party Leader...oh ya you did. And boy why so glum chum....certainly doesn't give the party a winning look. So smile damn ya smile. :)

After Montreal A View From the Past

The Montreal Climate Change Conference is over. In a certain sense it is the completion of a cycle that began in Montreal over a decade ago. The Original Rio Conference on the Environment which led to the Kyoto Accord, and this Kyoto 2 conference was the brain child of Canadian Maurice Strong.

He was and is a significant mover and shaker in both Montreal and Ottawa, Strong was head of the Power Corporation, and he was the original conference chair for Rio. It was appropriate that it ended in Mr. Strongs home province from whence it began. Mr. Strong pushed the environmental issue for business purposes, his is the environmentalism of the Hydro business, which includes the promotion of clean energy from nuclear power. And as a former head of Power Corp he was well connected with the Liberal Party. One of the reasons that Kyoto has been pushed by the Liberals is Strong.

It was also appropriate that given the current situation of crisis in the UN, that Mr. Strong was absent from the conference since he has been linked to the UN Food for Oil scandal in Iraq.

Mr. Strong's many accomplishments as a member of the Canadian ruling class are too detailed to go into here now, but he represents the rising ruling class of Trudeau Liberals in Quebec who foreswore seperatism for integration in the corridors of power, and in so doing strengthened both the Quebec and Canadian State in the 20th Century.

But the Climate Conference in Montreal, led to nothing new, Kyoto 2 is business as usual. The US didn't asign on, no big deal, they are still developing their own asymetrical approach to climate change. Capitalism can adjust to increased production and sharing of green credits, of carbon sinks, of new adapatable technologies, of capitalist business offering alternative green energy like wind power, (the wind power associations of Canada say No Government hand outs Please, we are businessmen).

Has the revolutionary potential of the ecology movement come and gone, despite the stuffed bears, and dancing flowers in the mass protests in the streets of Montreal outside the confernce, the tear gas did not choke or gag these protestors. Theirs was the quiet concern of millions of us, about our future. They were well behaved as were the police and the State. It was all very serious. Very scientific, very political.

But what has changed since Rio, since Kyoto 1? Capitalism has adapted. Has it come to the self recognition that its continued existance threatens our very home world? I think not.

For capitalism is us, and we have yet to put the wrench in the wheels that drive the marketplace. And this goes beyond the liberal ideology that we need to consume less. The very fact is that the contradiction of advanced capitalism is that it now is holding back a technology and productive capacity to provide abundance for all, because it is chanelling production into profit.

And in doing so it has failed to recognize the use value of recycling, reusing, and reduction. Instead we are producing more and more throw away items. The revolutionary idea of ecology so prevelant in the 1970's is not the Green Party or green conciousness, never was, never will be. Join the Audboun Society if you want that.

Nope as Murray Bookchin has pointed out Radical Ecology is part and parcel of the Anarchist understanding of the crisis of advanced capitalism. His works on Social Ecology and the Limits of the City were breakthrough works that have yet to be matched by many modern writers, for their far flung critique.

Several other European Leftists such as Andre Gorz also noted the signifigance and importance of an ecological critique of political economy for the Left. His most poular essay online is; Social Ideology of the Motorcar

But one of the Leftists to predate both Gorz and Bookchin was Pierre Cardin, one of many psuedonyms for Cornelius Castoriadis one of founders of the French ultra-left groups Socialism or Barbarism, which in England was known as Solidarity. They have published numerous works during the sixties that were staples for Left Wing Anarchist reading.

Notes From the Underground

Mr. Castoriadis's life combined high intellectual seriousness with intense political infighting. When he arrived in France from Greece in 1945, at the age of 23, he had already translated the work of Max Weber into Greek. He was also a veteran of the Trotskyist movement, which both the fascists and the communists were seeking to "liquidate," to use their polite term for "exterminate."

In 1948 Mr. Castoriadis found work at what would later become known as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, while also leading a small post-Trotskyist group called "Socialism or Barbarism," which published a journal by the same name. (Thus, Mr. Castoriadis was conducting statistical analyses of capitalism while preparing at night and on weekends to overthrow it.) "S. ou B.," as its comrades called it, never had more than a hundred members. It published a newspaper, Workers' Power, that circulated in some factories, but much of the group's energy was devoted to theoretical debates. As Mr. Castoriadis grew critical of Marxism itself, for example, he was opposed within the organization by a young philosophy professor named Jean-François Lyotard. (Ironically, Mr. Lyotard would later become prominent as a postmodernist who rejected Marx's "grand narrative" of history.)

The group's impact on radical students and activists around the world was disproportionate to its size. And its influence continued to grow even after S. ou B. dissolved in 1965. In the late 1970s, it became fashionable in some circles to claim to have once been a member. It was a development that amused Mr. Castoriadis. "If all these people had been with us at the time," he said, "we would have taken power in France sometime around 1957."

Emerging from the political underground, Mr. Castoriadis became a psychoanalyst, and also began teaching a seminar on philosophy at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, in Paris. He published numerous books reflecting an encyclopedic range of interests and an unblinking skepticism toward the "generalized conformism" of contemporary society. After decades of denouncing the Soviet Union as a monstrosity, he never became enthusiastic about the existing Western order. At a 1997 conference organized in Prague by President Václav Havel of the Czech Republic and the writer Elie Wiesel, Mr. Castoriadis described capitalism's "expectation of an unlimited expansion of material so-called well-being" as "obviously the most absurd of all Utopias ever formulated by the most sanguine Utopians." He also urged the adoption of a "new type of human life ... a frugal life, as the only means to avoid ecological catastrophe and a definitive zombification of human beings, endlessly masturbating in front of their television screens."

When he died at the end of that same year, Mr. Castoriadis left an apartment filled with manuscripts, including an enormous mass of lectures from his seminars on philosophical and psychoanalytic topics -- material indispensable to understanding his thinking on the question of human creativity. He left a widow, two daughters, and a network of comrades and admirers around the world.

Castoradis work included the following interview. It comes from a massive if somewhat controversial work online, THE RISING TIDE OF INSIGNIFICANCY

I originally had looked at copying some quotes from it as I felt that it was as relevant today, as when it was done back in 1993, perhaps moreso in light of the failure or success of the Montreal Conference, depending of course if you think anything actually occured there.

Instead I beleive it is time for us to reassess the NGO/Green/Animal Rights/ movements that claim to be anarchist, because they engage in Direct Action to meet their reformist ends. Castoradis makes many a cogent point especially about Green Politics, which looked far more radical then than now, in light of the Red Tory's that run Canada's Green Party.

One point I believe he is incorrect on, but that has been a common misinterpretation, is that Marx and Engels were anti-environmental pro productionist apologists. This I believe has been significantly challenged of late by John Bellamy Foster in the pages of Monthly Review and has been the focus of one of his recent books. While Castoradis denounced the expansive production of capitalism, I believe that Bookchin hit on the head when he announced the politics of post scarcity anarchism. But that is another debate for another time, as Homes said to Watson about the Giant Rat of Sumatra.

So here is some food for thought, and as usual I look forward to a spirited debate and your comments. Footnotes are at the end. Because of its length I have posted off site here:

THE REVOLUTIONARY FORCE OF ECOLOGY.doc
Interview With Cornelius Castoradis (Pierre Cardin)

Liberal Genocide; The Lubicon

Back in the early 1970's the University of Alberta student newspaper the Gateway was a radical collective of left and right wingers, all opposed to the War in Vietnam and pro-student democracy. This was part of the move to democratize institutions and work places that was the New Left. The university took exception to their publishing the FLQ manifesto during the October Crisis, and offence to their front page picture of Uncle Sam humping a Canadian Beaver with the headline Fighting for Peace is like F***ing for Virginity. This got the paper banned and the collective was disqualified from running the paper.

I was still in high school, and part of the high school student radical movement, we also produced our own underground newspapers, as well as a Radio Program on CKUA and were active in the embryonic Video Guerrilla movement.. We produced an underground paper for the city that was called The Orb, much like the Georgia Straight, and had followed after the demise of the city’s first underground paper, the Rice Street Fish Market.

The Gateway staff did something unheard of and never done before or since, they took the paper, its advertising revenues and its membership in Canadian University Press (CUP), off campus. They killed the Gateway on campus and were reborn as a radical people’s community newspaper called, appropriately; Poundmaker; named after the Cree Chief who fought with Riel. Those of us working on The Orb, who were also doing a Peoples Defence Fund, providing the inner city youth, poor, and druggies with free legal aid, were approached by the Poundmaker folks to join forces in one newspaper. So we did.

One of the people in the collective was Bob Beal, a noted journalist and Prairie Historian, who has co authored one of the best books on the Riel Rebellion; Prairie Fire.

The paper identified a common struggle in Alberta, between workers fighting to unionize the then embryonic Tar Sands, the native peoples struggles in the same region, and the corporate dominance of Alberta under the new Lougheed Government. One of the stories that we broke that made the news was the disaster at Buffalo Lake, the outbreak of TB and the extreme poverty of the Woodland Cree people who belonged to the Lubicon Nation.

Because the paper also had members of the collective working for the Mainstream Press we were able to get national coverage of this disaster. A disaster of the then genocidal policies of the Department of Indian Affairs of the Trudeau Liberals, under the Minister of the day; Jean Chrétien. It was a paper policy of assimilation at all costs and here it was in all its horrible reality Northern Alberta. The independence of the aboriginal peoples was being denied by the Liberal Government of the day, and native resistance was growing to the policies of assimilation or death.

The Lubicon have been without treaty rights and denied a historical and geographical existence because they remained autonomous from Treaty 6. There are other aboriginal groups across Canada who remain autonomous, outside of the treaties, though small in number they actively supported the American Indian Movement, and in Alberta they developed their own schools, and community services, without State funding or regulation. And during the seventies one of these autonomous aboriginal communities gave ‘sanctuary’ to Leonard Peltier who was later illegally kidnapped from this autonomous zone by the RCMP on behalf of the FBI.

The Lubicon and their rights to the land, land they never gave up, land that has been sold by the Federal and Provincial governments to the Oil Companies and to the Logging industry, remains the longest unresolved land deal in Canadian history.

And it belies the current Liberal governments claim to be dealing with Aboriginal rights. The recent Aboriginal round table and the accord, was between federations of treaty Indians, and Métis who the colonialist Department of Indian Affairs approves. Who led these 'first peoples' discussions, who set their agenda, none other than Phil Fontaine, Liberal flack and President of the AFN, a comprador ogranization that is just an extension of the Department of Indian Affairs. Nothing was said, or done for the Lubicon.

Blogger Dr. Dawg has done an exceptional job on documenting this history of injustice, and yes modern day genocide by the Liberal Government in its treatment of the Lubicon. I thought I would end this article and quote his closing comments from his excellent article; Paul Martin: Crossing the Lubicon

It is an issue as important as that of the recent disasters on reserves over the unhealthy living conditions they have been left in. And unless a boycott campaign, such as was launched by the Friends of the Lubicon, draws attention to them, the Federal Government continues to ignore the Lubicon, and continues to perpetuate this injustice.

Dr. Dawg says it’s an issue for this election. I agree. It is a disgrace, and it exposes the real scandal that is the historical role of the Liberal Government and its policies towards Canada’s aboriginal peoples; Assimilation or Death.

Successive federal governments have intervened shamelessly to break the Lubicon resolve. Using its power to create Indian bands under the Indian Act, the Liberal government under Prime Minister Jean Chrétien invented two other bands, hoping to lure away Lubicon; the members of one band, the "Woodland Cree," had been promised $1000 each if they voted for a federal offer of a pitifully inadequate reserve, but they later found out that this would be deducted from their welfare payments.

This brings us almost to the present day, and Paul Martin's shameful continuation of this miserable tradition. He promised to start negotiations with the Lubicon by the end of March 2004, but this never took place, and federal officials claim that they have been given no mandate to negotiate. It's been bad faith all the way with Mr. Dithers.

Amnesty International has denounced Canada for its treatment of the Lubicon; and the UN Committee on Human Rights, which heard the Lubicon complaint and found against Canada in 1990, repeated its concerns only last month.

Decency demands that we make Martin and his Liberal "team" accountable for this outrage during the current campaign campaign. But we ought to be even-handed about it. We should embarrass the Conservatives, whose own record has been nothing to be proud of on aboriginal affairs, and we should force the NDP to put this issue on the front burner. The survival of the Lubicon--those who are left--depends upon it. Let's stand up for them before it's too late."