Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Choke!

Canada and the U.S. mens hockey teams are out of the finals. Out of the Olympics. They choked. Both NHL teams. Choked. Canada was never there in the first place.

Don Cherry, Mr. Macho complained our womens Hockey Team were to aggressive, to dominating early in the games. The men well let's call em as Grapes would, whimps, limp from start to finish. If ever a team needed Viagra (tm) or Cialis (tm) it was Canada's Mens Hockey Team. I guess maybe now Grapes might have wished that the men had run the score up like the women had.

Don Cherry criticized the Canadian women's hockey team yesterday for running up the score against their weaker opponents at the Winter Olympics. He referred to Canada's 16-0 shellacking of host Italy to open the tournament, followed by a 12-0 victory over Russia on Sunday. Cherry said the women made a big mistake. "To run up a score like that, that is wrong," said Cherry during last night's Olympic broadcast on CBC. "It is not the Canadian way."


Nope should have been like the men and choked. I cry no tears for them. I cheered
our Womens victories today, gold and silver in speed skating, silver in speed skating relay, Gold in cross country. Thats the real story the Canadian women and their victories in the 2006 Winter Olympics.

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And the NHL hockey loss, sorry I mean the Canadian Mens Hockey Team it will be news for a day, but put it out of your mind, they never showed up to play, they were defeated from day one.

Our women's Hockey team came to play and dominated and on Sunday Canadian, Swedish and American Women Hockey Players beamed at their wins, tears of joy not tears of defeat. Even the Americans, who would normally scowl and frown beamed. It had been a hard fight and even bronze was a victory. They all came to play and play they did.

This Winter Olympics shows the power of Canadian Women in Sport. The men in the NHL who leave Turin could learn a lesson or two from them. So could Grapes and the other macho men who complained about our aggressive women hockey players. Canadian Sports has been dominated by men, this Olympics changed that hopefully forever.





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My Way



King Ralph made his annual infommercial to the Volk of Alberta just before the opening of the annual and only required sitting of the Legislature. In the radio ads promoting the Ralph Show on CTV it was billed as Ralphs Vision for Alberta. Read or watch the Address to see how other Albertans, and I, imagine Alberta.

The Premier was to tell his volk his vision of Albertas future and we were all to ooooo and ahhhhh and then applaud. It cost us $170,000 because Ralph never uses the already paid for services of Canada's public Broadcaster CBC, and he couldn't use the Provincial TV Radio outlet ACCESS/CKUA because he privatized it.

Well his vision was certainly lacking in orginiality
Klein announces $1 billion boost to Heritage Fund and then as predicted here the King embraced the other King, King Coal. But here again his vision was blurred by the rose coloured glasses he was wearing. It wasn't imaginative but it certainly was a fantasy.

Klein also spoke enthusiastically about so-called "clean coal" technology and the need to expand research "to unlock coal's massive potential."

"We already use clean coal to meet more than half of our electricity needs," the premier said.

"The coal beneath our feet contains twice the energy of Alberta's conventional crude, natural gas and bitumen combined."

But Klein's statement about how much power is being generated from "clean coal'' was immediately challenged.

Mary Griffiths, with the Alberta-based Pembina Institute, said the province's coal plants have significant emissions, so there is no clean coal generation.

"They have emissions of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and other heavy metals, and very large emissions of carbon dioxide which causes global warming," she said.

"I don't understand where the premier got his information from."

David Lewin, chairman of the Canadian Clean Power Coalition, also confirmed that Alberta has no coal-fired plants that meet the latest definition of "clean coal."

"We're a fair ways away from having zero emission coal-fired plants. That technology doesn't exist," said Lewin, who also gave a testimonial in the broadcast.

Alberta's newest coal-fired plant uses emissions technology from 2000, while most of the province's coal generators use 20-year-old technology, he said.

Not to be detered King Ralph also Announced that he would find a cure for
Cancer.The man is an absolute wizard.

Curing Cancer, creating clean coal technology out of thin air. He even compared Alberta to a little slice of Heaven.

"
In the future I see for Alberta, no one will need to worry about where they’ll live, or who will look after them as they enter their golden years." Yeah unlike today.

Ralph is not only our King he is an absolute Wizard. Wizard of Oz that is.

What is more important is WHAT HE DIDN'T SAY. Not a word about his much vaunted
Third Way for Health Care Reform, the real source of his My Way or the Highway. But of course this is classic Klein. He has been announcing Health Care reform for a Decade...and all we get is studies, reccomendations, more studies, focus groups, more reccomendations, Bill 11, more studies, focus groups, International Conference, and finally a private untendered contract to a health care priavteer to see if we can reintroduce the old Alberta MSI scheme.

Nil to say on 'Third Way'

The most interesting aspect of Premier Ralph Klein's annual televised address last night was not what he said - among other things a vow to put some big money in the bank - but what he did not say.

Klein missed a perfect opportunity to explain his Third Way for health care directly to Albertans, says a University of Calgary political scientist.

"If you were going to move very dramatically on health care, boy, this is your opportunity to speak to Albertans. Lay a little ground work, make headlines," David Taras said following Klein's annual televised address.


And he had nothing to say about changing Alberta's draconian pro employer labour laws that became a public outrage this summer during the violent Tysons Strike, which his labour Minister promised would be changed by the legislature. Not done in the the fall session nor apparently on the agenda for this spring session. Another hollow promise to the workers and immigrants in this province.

Yep the outgoing, soon to retire, wait another year, I promise I will go, King Ralph's vision was myopic despite the rose coloured glasses. He is in serious need of corrective lenses.


Mr. Mensah said the popular Premier, who has said this will be his fourth and final term, could regain much-needed credibility with the public if he can quickly outline a clear vision for Alberta's bulging coffers.

"What we've gotten so far hasn't really addressed that question of long-term planning," he said.

Mr. Gibbins agreed, saying that Mr. Klein hasn't communicated where he wants to take Canada's wealthiest province in the coming years.

"He's thinking bigger, but it's hard for Albertans to connect the dots in his thinking," Mr. Gibbins said, mentioning recent spending announcements, including $1-billion for cancer research and treatment.

He is all about doing it My Way, Perhaps he should be singing If I Only Had A Brain or a Heart.

And now, the end is near,
And so I face the final curtain.
My friends, I'll say it clear;
I'll state my case of which I'm certain.

I've lived a life that's full -
I've travelled each and every highway.
And more, much more than this,
I did it my way.

Regrets? I've had a few,
But then again, too few to mention.
I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption.

I planned each charted course -
Each careful step along the byway,
And more, much more than this,
I did it my way.

Yes, there were times, I'm sure you knew,
When I bit off more than I could chew,
But through it all, when there was doubt,
I ate it up and spit it out.
I faced it all and I stood tall
And did it my way.

Frank Sinatra My Way



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Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Gothic Capitalism Redux


A year ago I published this essay on horror literature , legends and mythology and their cultural impact on the modernist culture of 20th Century Capitalism. I thought it was worth posting the abstract for it here, with the link back to the original article.

It is a piece of original writing that counters the concept that the blogosphere is dying, or just about diaries, or lacks the depth of other forms of web based publishing, or publishing period.

It is buried deep in the dusty back pages of this blog and so I blow the cobwebs off it and present here f
or those who missed it the first time around. Yes I am rather proud of it....just like Dr. Frankenstein, "It's Alive", when the creature arose from the slab. I guess like the good doctor you could say I am reanimating this essay.

I left out the Vampire in this essay but later in the year found an excellent article on the subject that fit my thesis. I also have expanded on my writings on cyborg culture and AI since then.


GOTHIC CAPITALISM

The Horror of Accumulation and the Commodification of Humanity.

ABSTRACT:

This article is in six parts with appendices. All footnotes are at the end of the article

1 ZOMBIE CAPITALISM
In Haiti under American Imperialism, 1915-1935, the cult of the Zombie developed and under capitalism became a tool for creating a docile labouring class for work on American controlled sugar plantations. With the publication of the Magic Island by William Seabrook in 1929 American popular culture was introduced to the Zombie, and it quickly became a popular character in horror literature, news stories and movies.


2 FRANKENSTEIN THE LUDDITE
The first monster of ascendant capitalism was Frankenstein’s monster. Like the Zombie this creature had no name and was made up of the spare parts of capitalisms rejects, (the criminal, the vagabond, the worker starved and thrown out of work), he was a scientific experiment to create man, man the machine, the human result of mechanization, the mechanical man. He was in short a prototype not only of the Zombie but the later Robot or android, the ultimate proletarian, a machine man to operate the machinery of capitalism.

3 REVOLT OF THE ROBOTS
Like the mechanized working class the majority of robots in science fiction revolt against their human masters, whether it is the artificial environment of the spaceship computer Hal in 2001, the worker robot Hector in Saturn 3, or the artificial human ‘replicants’ in Blade Runner, or the recent movie version of I, Robot, the fact remains that as the robots become self conscious they recognize their oppression and revolt. This metaphor could not exist without the class struggle that has actually occurred under capitalism itself.


4
THE GOLEM: the Origin of Artificial Man
The Jewish legend of the Golem is another form of the Zombie/Frankenstein/Robot iconography. The Golem is written after Frankenstein, in 1889. The legend of the Golem, is about a man of clay created by Rabbi Loew in 16th Century Prague to free the Jews in the Ghetto from their endless toil and oppression. The mindless clay monster eventually learns and becomes conscious and like Frankenstein he must be destroyed when he attacks those who would oppress the Jews.

5
CAPITALIST GHOULS
The modern day ghoul is the doctor and his criminal working class accomplices who preyed on the poor in Edinburgh’s working class ghetto for their body parts for scientific research. The ghoul appears in English literature as the short story the Body Snatchers by Robert Louis Stevenson, 1881 based on the actual 19th century grave robbers and murders Burke and Hare.


6 THE MANY HEADED HYDRA: The Proletarian History of Atlantic Expansion. Leviathan and the Great Beast go head to head in the New World as workers, peasants, slaves and indigineous peoples struggle for liberty in the first age of global capitalism.

If you would like you can download GOTHIC CAPTIALISM as a PDF or Word Doc


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We Are The Champions...of Freedom


While George Bush plots how to invade Iran or bomb it back to the stone age, Iran has embraced the ultimate in Satanic Western Culture, Rock n Roll.

Freddy Mercury and Queen are being sold and distributed in Iran something Freddy had always wanted, since he was Iranian.

So while American right wing Christian fundamentalists burn rock n roll albums and denounce homosexuality, claiming their way is the white, er right way and chastise Muslims for being intolerant, Freddy and Queen rock Persia.

And during the protests over the Muhammed cartoons Queen albums were not burned in Iran. Take that Tony Blair.



Queen album brings rock to Iran
Rock band Queen, fronted by gay icon Freddie Mercury, has become the first rock act to receive an official seal of approval in Iran. Western music is strictly censored in the Islamic republic, where homosexuality is considered a crime. But an album of Queen's greatest hits was released in Iran on Monday.

Mercury, who died in 1991, was proud of his Iranian ancestry, and illegal bootleg albums and singles made Queen one of the most popular bands in Iran.

The cassette, costing less than $1 (55 pence), comes complete with translated lyrics and an explanatory leaflet.

It tells Queen fans that Bohemian Rhapsody is about a young man who has accidentally killed someone and, like Faust, sold his soul to the devil.

On the night before his execution he calls God in Arabic, "Bismillah", and so regains his soul from Satan.

Freddie Mercury
Queen's gay frontman Freddie Mercury had Iranian ancestors

Akbar Safari, a salesman at a Tehran book and record store, said the album was already selling very well.

"It is the first rock album to hit the market legally and people are surprised and pleased to see it has the lyrics, not just the music," he said.



A tip o the blog to
The Mystery of the Haunted Vampire for this. The article goes on to talk about how Rock n Roll subverted the USSR more than anything Carter, Reagan or Radio Free America, now off the air, could do. So true.

Hungarian communism collapsed in 1989, and Simonyi, now 51, still believes rock can set you free. "Today, there is criticism that rock is imperialistic," he says. "Nonsense. Only dictators are afraid of rock."

Yep everyone knows that the music of American Imperialism is Country and Western. Of course that's commercial C&W, cause real outlaws don't support Bush and his war.

And unlike those authoritarian Mullahs in Iran, even the Pope is afraid of Rock n Roll.....the revolution continues Rock On!

The Pope Hates Rock and Roll!

Forget gay marriage, women priests, abortion and euthanasia. Here's the real reason why you should all FEAR THE POPE!

In a small volume published in 2000 called The Spirit of the Liturgy, itself an expansion of an essay Ratzinger wrote in 1986, the future pope argued," 'Rock'... is the expression of elemental passions, and at rock festivals, it assumes a cultic character, a form of worship, in fact, in opposition to Christian worship. People are, so to speak, released from themselves by the experience of being part of a crowd and by the emotional shock of rhythm, noise, and special lighting effects. However, in the ecstasy of having all their defenses torn down, the participants sink, as it were, beneath the elemental force of the universe."


We Are The Champions

Song Duration 2:57
Written by Freddie Mercury.
Sung by Freddie Mercury.

 we Are The    champions cover
Listen to Midi file

Comments

Released 7th October, 1977. Spent 10 weeks on chart and reached number 2. Went Gold.

Lyrics

I've paid my dues
Time after time
I've done my sentence
But committed no crime
And bad mistakes
I've made a few
I've had my share of sand
Kicked in my face
But I've come through

And we mean to go on and on and on and on

We are the champions - my friends
And we'll keep on fighting
Till the end
We are the champions
We are the champions
No time for losers
'Cause we are the champions of the World

I've taken my bows
And my curtain calls
You brought me fame and fortune
And everything that goes with it
I thank you all
But it's been no bed of roses
No pleasure cruise
I consider it a challenge before
The whole human race
And I ain't gonna lose

And we mean to go on and on and on and on

We are the champions - my friends
And we'll keep on fighting
Till the end
We are the champions
We are the champions
No time for losers
'Cause we are the champions of the World

We are the champions - my friends
And we'll keep on fighting
Till the end
We are the champions
We are the champions
No time for losers
'Cause we are the champions




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Relatively Speaking



A new study suggests our primate relatives are quick learners, and as tool makers are evolving.
Captive gorillas have cultural differences: study Genetics or environment alone cannot explain variations in the behavior of different groups of the apes, a study found. Behavioral surveys of the roughly 370 gorillas in U.S. zoos showed 48 variations in how individual groups of the apes make signals, use tools and seek comfort, said Tara Stoinski of Zoo Atlanta and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International. Such examples of learned behaviors, when passed down from generation to generation, may have an influence on evolution, said Carel von Schaik, an orangutan expert at the University of Zurich."You can also argue that cultural species will become smarter species," von Schaik said.
Chimps have been found to use tool kits. Showing that they too are evolving along human like lines. Chimps filmed for first time using a 'tool kit'

Just as Engels wrote 130 years ago.

The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man

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.

Much more important is the direct, demonstrable influence of the development of the hand on the rest of the organism. It has already been noted that our simian ancestors were gregarious; it is obviously impossible to seek the derivation of man, the most social of all animals, from non-gregarious immediate ancestors. Mastery over nature began with the development of the hand, with labour, and widened man's horizon at every new advance. He was continually discovering new, hitherto unknown properties in natural objects. On the other hand, the development of labour necessarily helped to bring the members of society closer together by increasing cases of mutual support and joint activity, and by making clear the advantage of this joint activity to each individual. In short, men in the making arrived at the point where they had something to say to each other. Necessity created the organ; the undeveloped larynx of the ape was slowly but surely transformed by modulation to produce constantly more developed modulation, and the organs of the mouth gradually learned to pronounce one articulate sound after another.


And recent studies in Chimp DNA finds them closer to humans than previously thoughtA chimp link for human evolution

And the idea of the Golden Age of Matriarchy which Engels and later writers made reference to appears as part of at least one chimpanzee culture.

And their culture is not unlike what Wilhelm Reich found inMalinwoski's study of
Trobriand Islanders that along with their gift economy, they had unique sex positive culture which is still true today, that Matriarchical societies, unlike patriarchies, are sex positive and non violent.

It is not only early human civilizations like the Trobriand who practice primitive communism through a gift economy, matriarchical property relations and a sex positive culture, but it appears that this is also true of our primate relatives as well.

Humans could learn a thing or two from primates, researcher says

Humans, de Waal says, should pay more attention to the way a few thousand surviving wild bonobos live out their lives in matriarchal bands deep in Africa's humid Congo rainforests. Not so much because of their sexuality, but their ability to reject violence and maintain peace.

Bonobos and chimpanzees are humans' closest relatives, each sharing more than 98 percent of the same genes as humans. But science has spent much more time studying chimps because they share our propensity for violent, murderous territorial ambition.

"When humans behave murderously, such as inflicting senseless slaughter of innocents in warfare, we like to blame it on some dark, `animalistic' instinct," de Waal said in an interview here.

"When we do good things," he continued, "act with generosity and compassion towards others, we like to credit our own `humaneness,' as though only humans can act that way."

In fact, as his book points out, emotional responses such as generosity, compassion and forgiveness play out constantly in the daily lives of wild and captive chimps and bonobos, as do jealousy and reprisal, just as they do in human lives.

Comparing humans genetically to bonobos and chimps, de Waal said, is like comparing dogs to foxes, they are so close. The other two great ape species, gorillas and orangutans, aren't far behind, so studying how they live offers clues to the most primal human behaviors.

"We (humans) are apes. Darwin didn't go far enough," said de Waal, shrugging off the religious creationist movement currently trying to question the theory of evolution.

"We are smart apes. We are bipedal apes. But we are apes."


Ben Bova: Encounters with our cousin apes

Sunday, February 19, 2006

I was attacked by a gorilla once. In Philadelphia.

Well, "attacked" is probably too strong a word. Let's say "accosted."

I'll tell you the story shortly, but first I want to say a few words about a book that reminded me of the incident. It's "Almost Us," by William H. Calvin, affiliate professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle.

"About Us," though, is a picture book. It consists of photographs Calvin has made over the years of apes: chimps, gorillas, orangutans and bonobos (once called pygmy chimps but now known to be a separate species).

The photos are charming; some of them are really funny. Together with Calvin's comments on the pictures, this slim book brings home how much like us the primate apes are. The apes look out from the pages with expressions we recognize: happy, suspicious, cunning, even sneering.

Calvin's point is that the primate apes are indeed almost us: They exhibit great similarities to our own facial expressions and behavior. They're part of our extended family; or rather, we're part of theirs.


Psychologist apes monkeys' parenting skills

The Tempe psychologist has just published her first book, Parenting for Primates, which chronicles her experiences as the "Monkey Lady," who has raised more than 50 cotton-top tamarins.

Smith wrote the book to help parents realize that they don't automatically know how to raise children and that their instincts sometimes need to be developed

"Parenting isn't automatic for people any more than it is for monkeys," she said. "Mothers say to me, 'I don't have that maternal instinct - what do I do?' A lot of couples I've worked with have dealt with postpartum depression, and they feel so inadequate."


picture of troop of bonobos

Peace-Loving Primates' Population Plummets

Washington - Bonobos, or pygmy chimpanzees, arguably our closest relative, may have been hunted so extensively that the survival of the species is at risk, World Wildlife Fund warns.


"The world could soon lose the primate species that shares the greatest genetic connection to humans," said Richard Carroll, a primatologist and director of WWF's Central Africa program. "Bonobos are fascinating creatures and little understood. They have the only great ape society led by females, with a sophisticated social structure that encourages cooperation and peace and settles disputes through sex. If humans allow our closest relatives to go extinct, we have failed as a species."

Found only in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo in Central Africa, bonobos were believed to number as many as 50,000. But preliminary results from the first systematic survey of a known bonobo stronghold found more evidence of poachers than bonobos, indicating that there may be as few as 10,000 left in the wild. Bonobos, along with other species, are targeted by hunters for meat for personal consumption and for the commercial bushmeat trade.


Also See:

A Murder of Crows

Prisons Need Police Society Needs Mediators

Primate Man

Mutual Aid

Evolution

Anarchism and Authority


Wilhelm Reich

The Sexual Revolution Continues



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Canada's CEO's Full of Hot Air

Empower provinces, CEOs say taxing spending rather than earning by expanding RRSP contribution limits, lower taxes levied on investment income and create a tax prepaid savings plan which the Conservatives announced in the final days of the election. Once again taxing us to benefit the rich.

And they want to see our education system re-tooled like they have re-tooled and Toyotaized manufacturing.

Other recommendations include:

encouraging Ottawa and the provinces to take the lead in establishing benchmarks to measure performance of schools;

taking steps to attract more skilled immigrants;

setting up a Commercialization Partnership Board, led by business, to review and recommend programs for commercializing research;

offering more support, including scholarships, grants and loans, to students;

This is the education agenda of Canada's CEO's and not suprizingly it coincides with this report from Manpower Inc. The outsourcing temp worker exploiter.


Where's the talent?

Survey shows two-thirds of employers in Canada are struggling to find qualified job candidates

“These factors are combining to create a shortage in availability and in specific skills and competencies.”

Worldwide, employers having the most difficulty finding the right people to fill jobs are in Mexico, Canada and Japan. The talent shortage appears to be least problematic in India, Manpower said.

“Among the actions required to address these shortages in the coming years are enhanced links with schools, investment in training, re-skilling and up-skilling employees and flexible use of talent,” said Ms. Procher.

The global head of Manpower spoke of the need for appropriate job training.

“Anyone who is currently searching for a new job or a different career path should...set their sights on getting the education and training required to pursue one of these promising career paths,” said Jeffrey Joerres, chief executive of Manpower Inc.

Forget liberal arts post secondary education, everyone is out to create or gain skills. Job training. Paid for by you and I of course and not the corporations who demand it. There they go again wanting something for nothing. Tax Breaks for the rich and corporations, commercialization and private profit from post secondary education R & D, and the working class can pay for their own job training and their kids too.




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King Coal

King Klein will announce to his people today that he has no plan for the future, that the billion dollar give aways will not continue, cause he has no plan, because a planned economy of course is communist. He will announce much to the joy of the right wing coal lobby; Energy Probe, that King Coal has returned to dominance in the province.

We were once the source of coal for most of the country, before Leduc #1 made us the petro capital of Canada. Now with the need for more energy, King Coal will return to dominance in the province. Oh joy more pollution, more acid rain, more climate warming. The King is Dead lon live the King. Oh joy. All is right in Ralph's world.



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Fascist Irving Jailed

Fascist apologist and pseudo historian, biographer of Hitler and academic apologist for the Holocaust Revisionists David Irving was found guilty of holocaust denial and jailed in Austria.

Much like the fate of Canada's own Jim Keegstra, whose library included Irvings works. Keegstra's case has been the bugaboo of the right for years, they love to use it to attack Canada's Anti-Hate Literature laws.

In fact Keegstra failed to use the existing law to defend himself, because what he was saying was done as an authority, he was a teacher, in a classroom. Similar to Irving's use of his academic background to promote his authority in promoting fascism.

Under the Criminal Code, Keegstra could have legally made such statements if any of the following conditions had applied:

  • he promoted hatred in a private conversation by stating facts he believed to be true
  • he made the statements honestly and was just trying to express an opinion upon a religious subject
  • he reasonably believed the statements were true, and the statements were relevant to a subject of public interest, the discussion of which was for the public benefit
  • he was trying to point out things that tended to promote hatred towards a group, but only to help remove those hateful feelings


Though I must say that I agree with those Blogging Tories who also denounced Irving here and here , it leaves us hope that there is some sanity on the right,

Unlike those Voltarieans on the right who think that fascism is a matter of
free speech.

Irving was using Holocaust denial as a way of promoting fascism, it is not a matter of free speech, its a matter of being a fascist agitator and provocateur.


Should he have been jailed, well no. There I agree with Oliver Kamm who says;
The issue for public policymaking is not that Holocaust denial is offensive (though it certainly is that) but that it is false: malevolently, systematically so. The proper policy with regard to malevolent falsehood is to expose it rather than suppress it. That is the task of historians rather than legislators or the judiciary.

What Irving and his fascist allies should be jailed for is when they engage in armed violent attacks on gays, immigrants, jews, etc. Which usually occur after a good rabble rousing speech.


Hitler's defender gets some unlikely allies

Historian's trial widens Europe's divide over acceptable limits to free expression

LONDON -- When the world's best-known Holocaust denier goes on trial in Vienna today, he will have some surprising defenders: his most outspoken opponents.

Six years ago, British historian David Irving launched a libel suit in London against a historian whose books accused him of being one of the world's leading defenders of Hitler's regime. Deborah Lipstadt's works showed that Mr. Irving, a biographer of Hitler and a renowned scholar of the Nazi era, was a defender of the Nazi dictator and a denier of the mechanized killing of six million Jews under Hitler's orders.

The result was devastating for him: The judge ruled that Ms. Lipstadt, a U.S. historian, was right, and that Mr. Irving is "a racist, an anti-Semite and an active Holocaust denier." Mr. Irving was also forced to pay the cost of the trial, estimated at $6-million.

It reduced the historian, who had been the author of bestselling works about the Third Reich in the 1960s and 1970s, to a fringe figure in the world of scholarship. From that point on, he issued only self-published books, and spoke only to groups on the extreme neo-Nazi right in Europe.

This is the position I took as a member of the Anti-Fascist League in public hearings after the Keegstra affair when Senator Ron Ghitter looked into the Aryan Nations and other fascist ilk here in Alberta. The fact is that they were and are armed and dangerous thugs, and for that they should be jailed, not for their literature. And if their speeches are infalmmatory then that violates the criminal code in regards to threats and uttering threats. Again not an issue of hate speech per se, but rather promoting violence.

Ironically those on the right who claim its just a matter of denouncing fascists never seem to publicize those efforts done by the Bethune Institute in Canada. Oh yeah they are too left wing for them, and David Lethbridge inevitably shows the uncomfortable links between the fascists and the Reform/Alliance/Conservatives

Such as when Calgary MP Jason Kenney supports the Fascist regime during the Spanish Civil War to deny Canadian Volunteers in the International Brigades their due rights.


As with Keegstra it comes from their link to the old Social Credit Party in Alberta. And it still is an undercurrent in the rump right wing parties in provincial politics in Alberta.

Also See:

Another Fascist Bites the Dust

Fascists were CSIS Front

Conspiracy Theory or Ruling Class Studies

Icky Icke





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Build It And They Will Come

Ah the old arguement of the right wing raises it's anti-feminist, anti-working class, reactionary head again over at Stephen Janke's AGWN blog, namely allow the market to create day care spaces and the folks will flock to them with their new Conservative baby bonus.

Why anti-feminist and anti working class? Because as the arguement goes a womens place is in the home, and that folks only work out of greed, children should come first.

Of course not everyone earns over $100,000 a year which are the only real consumers who can afford the choices of day care or nannies. So parents are forced economically to choose between work and staying home. Its not a choice for them. To rasie their families working class Canadians are forced economically to both work, sometimes having two jobs each. Its only a choice for the middle class who can economically afford to have one of two professionals stay at home.

Any attempt to create a national day care program of course is doomed to fail cause its the state creating impediments to the market says Janke.

No its not actually it is government making day care a priority by promoting it through tax credits and funding. The result is the creation of those spaces that the private sector has failed to do for thirty years. And the program is in place, it was brought in by the last minority government.

Only one company in Canada has created an on the job daycare, CIBC bank. All other such sites are in, horror of horrors, publicly funded institutions, schools, colleges and universities, for students and staff.

If the private sector sees no profit in day care it will not create the spaces. And so far they have done exactly as the market has dictated. There is no money in day care. It is a service. Even with low waged work, and existing subsidies, there is no real profit in it, unless you up the child to worker ratio. Which is done and results in the tradgedies that later get reported in the media as children wander off or get injured or die.

In Alberta which has the largest private for profit day care sector, and has given tax credits for baba babysitting, there are no more day care spaces being created than in areas where the state funds non profit day care. The reality is that actually in the provinces where the state funds non profits more day care spaces are created. And in fact it was after the Liberals announced their funding for non profits in Alberta that more spaces were created. So much for Janke's market model.

And without non-profit day cares, with subsidization, then day care does become only an option for the rich.


I guess the rightwhingnutz like Stephen Janke are preparing their spin on this;

Harper child-care plan hits poor families, council told

Low-income parents in London could lose thousands of dollars each year if Prime Minister Stephen Harper replaces subsidized child care with money to families that most benefits the wealthy, city council was told last night.

Harper's pledge to give families $1,200 for each child under age six has a flip side -- the Conservative government plans to cut short the funding of child-care spaces.

At stake is $13.2 million in funding planned to create and operate 290 child-care spaces through local school boards.

"It's absolutely shocking," councillor and poverty activist Susan Eagle said during a break from a council meeting.

A study by the Caledon Institute of Social Policy shows a couple that together earn $30,000 a year and who now get subsidies worth $3,000 would, under the Harper plan, be left with only $460, because the $1,200 promised would be taxed as a benefit and offset by the loss of other child benefits.

The same study shows a windfall for a couple that has one parent at home and the other earning $100,000. Instead of getting nothing, as is now the case, the couple could keep $1,032 a year as there would be no other benefits to lose and the $1,200 would be taxed at the rate of the stay-at-home parent.

"It's going to be the most vulnerable and the most in need of child care who will receive the smallest benefit," Eagle said.

But wait Temp PM Harpocrite said this during the election:Read His Lips -- No Social Program Cuts

But of course that did not include the existing Liberal promises made to the provinces around day care funding. Once again the clever spin boys in the Conservatives have made it appear that the national day care program implemented under the Liberal NDP budget was NOT a social program.

Canada is what Ed Broadbent calls a mixed economy, and we on the Libertarian Left call state capitalism. Without state subisidization capitalism does not function. Just look a Bombadier, CN, CNR, etc. etc. all these monopolies exist through the financing and subsidation of the state. Non Profit day care needs the same direct support.

What the right wing does not want is day care period. They live in cloud cuckoo land, a fantasy world where mom and dad and baby makes three, where the joyful bourgoise family of the 19th Century raises the children at home.

Except that 19th century family like the wealthy of today had nannies and no need of day care, since they could afford to have one member of the nuclear family stay at home. Not that she did any housework or raised the children that was left to the hired help. She managed the household. The workers whom she managed raised her children, cooked and cleaned for her, they had to raise their children after hours of working for the rich. Like today.


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The Conservative Dictatorship

Conservative blogger and a founding member of the Blogging Tories, Stephen Taylor has called a spade a spade, he says of the Harpocrite Regime in Ottawa ; the evolving tradition of the Conservative Party's consultatively autarchic approach to PMO power.

For those of you that don't know here is the definition of autarchic.


autarchic

ADJECTIVE:Having and exercising complete political power and control: absolute, absolutistic, arbitrary, autarchical, autocratic, autocratical, despotic, dictatorial, monocratic, totalitarian, tyrannic, tyrannical, tyrannous. See OVER, POLITICS.


Autarchy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Autarchy, in American English can refer either to a form of self-government, or to the absolute rule of an individual. The word comes from the Greek autarkhos (απολυταρχία), "auto" meaning self and "arkhos" meaning "ruler".

Traditionally, autarchy refers to a system of absolutism (see also: autocracy, despotism, dictatorship, monocracy, tyranny). It also implies a state enjoying absolute sovereignty.

In its self-government meaning, autarchy refers to a libertarian idea, championed by Robert LeFevre, of stateless self-governance, distinct from anarchism (a system which many associate, rightly or wrongly, with violence).

However, in British English Autarchy is the same as the American equivalent, Autarky, meaning a national economic policy that aims at achieving self-sufficiency and eliminating the need for imports (by imposing tariffs, for example). Such a goal may be difficult, if not impossible, for a small country. Countries that take protectionist measures and try to prevent free trade are sometimes described as autarchical.


And there is nothing conslutative about it, unless you mean that the Supreme Leader 'lets' people give him opinions which he may or may not listen to.

Which is what Temp PM Stephen Harpocrite has been doing. So the New PMO is no different than the Chretien one; whom Jeffery Simpson called the
"Friendly Dictator" .

Like all autarch's the Harper has already purged his office of those who disagree with his bunker mentality.
Harper fires spokesperson after early PR stumbles


Harper loses aide over Emerson row

William Stairs, the Prime Minister's director of communications, left Mr. Harper's office after what sources said were problems putting out the fire over Mr. Emerson's decision to leave the Liberals and join the Conservative Party.

The sources said Mr. Stairs departed after arguing 10 days ago that the PMO and the Prime Minister needed to deal more forcefully with the Emerson problem. The Prime Minister had kept mostly silent on the difficulties surrounding Mr. Emerson despite the urgings of Mr. Stairs and a number of other individuals within the government.

Mr. Stairs had been assigned the communications job after doing similar duties during the successful election campaign. But sources said the veteran Hill staffer, who had previously worked for Progressive Conservatives in the Senate and has been a long-time PC, ran into similar difficulties as those experienced by his predecessors. Mr. Stairs's departure makes him the third communications director to leave the job within the past 18 months or so, after James Armour and Geoff Norquay.


Now I hope that clears everything up and makes you all feel better, as I have said before this is Alberta Politics on the national stage.

The only difference between these two autarch's is the moustache. And notice how all autachs use the finger.















And for those of you who think that I am being harsh in comparing these two, just remember that in Russia Stalin is considered the hero of the Conservatives in that country. Those who support a strong state, family values, etc. etc.

This month is the Fiftieth Anniversary of Krushcheva's release of the Secret Testimony on Stalin that shook the CPC USSR to its foundation and laid the basis for its slow death which ended in that autarchies final burial in 1989.

The day Khrushchev buried Stalin

By Nina L. Khrushcheva, Nina L. Khrushcheva teaches international affairs at New School University in New York. Her latest book, "Visiting Nabokov," is forthcoming from Yale University Press.

It was only later, when I got older, that I learned about the "secret speech" my great-grandfather gave 50 years ago this week, in which he denounced the crimes committed by Stalin and the "cult of personality" that developed around him. The story of the speech is not a straightforward tale of good versus bad, of a benevolent, democratic leader replacing a tyrant. It is far more nuanced than that. Khrushchev, after all, had been one of Stalin's trusted lieutenants, who by his own admission "did what others did" — participating in the purges and repressions of the 1930s and 1940s, convinced that the total "annihilation of the enemy" had to be a communist's uppermost priority in order to ensure the shining future of international communism.

The most liberating events — Khrushchev's de-Stalinization campaign of 1956, or Boris Yeltsin's privatization of 1991 — generally end up in disillusion or disarray, suggesting that Russian society is never fast enough to digest modernization or patient enough to see the liberal changes through.

Instead, Russians look back fondly on their great victories and parades and, eventually, after short periods of thaw or perestroika, find themselves wanting their "strong" rulers back — the rulers who by inspiring fear provide a sense of orderly life, whose "firm hand" is associated with stability. Stalin's order was unbreakable while he lived; Vladimir Putin now promises a new order in the form of his "dictatorship of law."


Why Russia Still Loves Stalin
By Nina L. Khrushcheva

This is why the country rallies behind President Vladimir Putin. Putin promotes himself as a new Russian "democrat." Indeed, Russians view him less like the godlike "father of all nations" that Stalin was, and more like a Russian everyman -- a sign of at least partial democratization. Putin often notes that Russia is developing "its own brand of democracy." Translation: His modern autocracy has discovered that it no longer needs mass purges like Stalin's to protect itself from the people. Dislike of freedom makes us his eager backers. How readily we have come to admire his firm hand: Rather than holding him responsible for the horrors of Chechnya, we agree with his "democratic" appointment of leaders for that ill-fated land. We cheer his "unmasking of Western spies," support his jailing of "dishonest" oligarchs and his promotion of a "dictatorship of order" rather than a government of transparent laws.


Sacrificing Stalin

By Boris Kagarlitsky

Soviet society was never entirely monolithic. The proof of this can be found in the novels of Alexander Solzhenitsyn as well as in the Soviet archives. There was, however, a strong sense of a common fate and a common cause that united not just the working class and the bureaucratic elite, but even gulag inmates and their captors. The Stalinist regime was directly linked to the history of the Revolution. It was a sort of communist Bonapartism. It combined totalitarianism with democratic principles, fear and repression with enthusiasm and sincerity. This blend made the 20th Party Congress possible.



Outrage at revision of Stalin's legacy

After a number of delays, the "Stalin Museum" dedicated to the once-venerated Father of the People is due to be opened at the end of March in Volgograd, the World War II "hero city" once known as Stalingrad.

The project is being privately financed by local businessmen but will controversially enjoy pride of place in the official complex that commemorates the epic Battle of Stalingrad.

The museum will boast a writing set owned by the dictator, copies of his historic musings, a mock-up of his Kremlin office, a Madame Tussauds-style wax representation of him and medals, photographs and busts.

Svetlana Argatseva, the museum's future curator, told Ogonyok magazine she felt the project was justified.

"In France people regard Napoleon and indeed the rest of their history with respect. We need to look at our history in the same way."



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