Friendly Iraqi's

Basra was the home of the occupation forces friendliest allies, the mythological Iraqi's who embraced their liberation by the US/UK invasion forces. Basra is a 'safe zone' no more

But I guess you can over stay your welcome. Iraqis Celebrate Downing of British Helicopter

At least four British servicemen are feared dead after an army helicopter was brought down, apparently by a shoulder-fired rocket, in the southern Iraqi city of Basra yesterday. It is one of the worst incidents to befall British troops since the 2003 invasion and would bring the UK military death toll to 108.

Immediately after the helicopter went down - on an unoccupied house in the city centre - British forces rushed to the crash site, close to the governor's office. Footage from state-run al-Iraqiya television showed orange flames reaching 20ft high and large plumes of black smoke curling into the sky. Water jets were being sprayed to try to quell the blaze. British troops were seen running through the streets and being stoned by Iraqis.

As soldiers in Warrior armoured vehicles cordoned off the area, hundreds of youths chanting "Victory to the Mehdi Army!" surrounded them, throwing rocks and then petrol bombs. The crowd also set at least one British armoured vehicle on fire, but the soldiers inside escaped unhurt. The soldiers fired weapons into the air in an effort to disperse the crowd, as smoke from burning tyres on the roadway drifted across the scene. British helicopter brought down in Basra, 'killing four'

Now the Brits have their own case of "Blackhawk Down". When will the Imperialist learn the lesson of Viet Nam, The Peoples Army Will Always Defeat The Man's Technology.

How Basra riots turned bloody

Last September, British forces arrested two officials of Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to al-Sadr, raising tensions. About a week later, militiamen and residents clashed with British troops after two British soldiers in local clothes were detained by Iraqi authorities before being freed in a raid by British forces.

The most senior Shia cleric in the region, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has proved a strong moderating influence but is engaged in a power struggle with al-Sadr and has not always been able to keep growing anti-coalition fervour among the local population under control.

Much of al-Sadr's strategy depends on drawing British troops out of their heavily defended bases and into the streets. Yesterday they came to him. Soon it was small arms as well as rocks that were being used and, though reports are unclear, with British officials denying using anything other than plastic baton rounds, it appears that rapid gunfights, as over as soon as they had begun, swept the rubbish-choked alleyways.

And the reason for the insurgency and resistance in Basra is the fact that the US occupantion forces intend on creating permanent bases there.

The latest revelations about US plans for permanent bases in Iraq has compounded the already very obvious fact that the US doesn't intend on ending its occupation either as the result of a timetable, or Iraqi political pressure or US domestic pressure. They intend to draw down forces and leave tens of thousands of troops stationed in permanent bases, thereby providing them with crucial leverage both in Iraq and in the Middle East as a whole. This would, so the US government hopes, provide a base for a potential attack on Iran or Syria. It would also keep the US-vetted Iraqi political class under thumb. Not only was this entirely predictable, but it was predicted, repeatedly. The US has been depositing bases across the planet like a so many cowpats for decades, and this escalated sharply in the post-Cold War era. Why would it be different with Iraq? Iraq: neither 'civil war' nor 'chaos'.

Any forces that would impose their will on other nations will certainly face defeat. ~General Vo Nguyen Giap (Vietnam)


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Correction

I stand corrected. I made an error in reporting that Mountain Crest beer was non-union and defining it as scab beer. Census Beer.

The error was honest as there was no union label on the Mountain Crest beer I have seen.

I recieved a polite email from Ravinder Minhas the owner of Mountain Crest informing me of my mistake. Very gentlemanly. No lawyers, no threats. But then again any publicity is good publicity, right.

I will correct the original article and delete the references to scab beer as well as post a correction to the article I posted at ViveCanada.ca

And while his beer may be union made, it is still made in the U.S. still making it a true NAFTA beer.

Eugene,

I read on a blog posted by someone (perhaps yourself) that Mountain Crest Brewing Company beers are produced by "SCABS" and/or NON-UNIONS. As a matter of clarification, our beers are brewed, packaged and shipped by UNIONIZED PEOPLE.

I found lot of comments interesting and amusing.

I also agreed with Einstein's comment "Unthinking respect for aithority is the great enemy of truth". So true and profound.

Thanks and regards

Ravinder Minhas
President, Mountain Crest Brewing Company/
President, Mountain Crest Liquors Inc.
Suite 3319, 3000 Citadel Meadow Point NW
Calgary Alberta Canada T3G 5N5
Tel (403) 547-1056 Fax (403) 770-8367
Websites: www.DamnGoodBeer.ca
and www.MountainCrest.ca

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Wal-Mart Drives Down Wages

And here is another good reason to boycott Wal-Mart as if one was needed. They drive down wages. In Canada. In competition with our large big box discount grocery chains. Its not just lower costs and lower prices folks, its driven by lower wages, and NO benefits.

But Wal-Mart is not the only villian in this story, they have pals in the bosses, in this case Loblaws and its big box retail outlet Superstore, and their union, UFCW.

Canada has too many grocery stores and the situation will only get worse as discounter Wal-Mart Canada Corp. and other non-union global retailers take a bigger bite of the market, Loblaw Cos. Ltd. chairman Galen Weston warns.

To take on the growing competition, Loblaw, the country's largest grocer, is racing to overhaul its systems. It is adding more general merchandise, lowering prices and rolling out more discount superstores. And the unionized company is in contract talks in a bid to gain pay concessions and level the playing field with non-unionized Wal-Mart. Loblaw profit slips on snags in overhaul

Loblaw operates at a competitive disadvantage to Wal-Mart in terms of labour costs, as the majority of Loblaw stores are unionized. The retailer has successfully negotiated to pay employees at its 80 superstores lower wages than at its traditional stores. Loblaw girds for battle

Canada's biggest supermarket chain says it wants to open more mid-sized conventional grocery stores in downtown Toronto to serve the booming condominium market. But Loblaw Cos. Ltd. said it must first strike more deals with its unions, similar to the ones it got for its Ontario superstores, to remain competitive with non-union rivals. Loblaw eyeing hungry condo dwellers

They already gained concessions from their union, the sell out UFCW. Last round of bargaining UFCW whined about Wal-Mart, whom they have tried to unionize, while accepting the Loblaw contract without taking it to the rank and file to vote on. The threat of Wal-Mart is enough to drive UFCW into concessions, not that it needs to be pushed hard.

Since the late eighties UFCW has accepted concession bargaining by Safeways, and others and as typical of this business union, despite membership opposition. In Alberta in the 1990's concession bargaining by UFCW with Safeways inspired Ralph Klein to attack public sector wages using UFCW's two tiered wage concession and wage roll back of 5% to Safeway's as an excuse, to roll back public sector wages by 5%.

While a union is better than no union, when it comes to UFCW all they care about is the union dues, as they have accepted increased part time two tiered wages, including lower wages for new employees. Why. Well they still get the union dues whether the workers are full time or part time. They are after all in the 'business' of being a union.

The imposition of bureaucratic rule has always required bureaucratic methods, including outright dishonesty. A recent example of this process is found in the attempt by leaders of the American Flintglass Workers Union, a small, relatively democratic union, to take that union into the United Food & Commercial Workers, one of the nation's most grotesquely bureaucratic unions. Merger might have made sense for this tiny union, but given the reality of the UFCW, it was clear the "Flints," as they call themselves, would lose some of their current democracy; e.g. the election of the union's ten national reps. To get it by, the pro-merger leaders called a special convention without making the terms of the merger available until the delegates arrived. Sensibly, the delegates voted the merger down by over three to one. In this case democracy prevailed over bureaucratic method.

The battle for bureaucratic unionism was won by the 1950s and the unions that emerged looked little like those that exploded on the scene in the mid-1930s. Reviewing in horror the transformation of so many unions, Sidney Lens wrote at the time (in The Crisis of American Labor) about the rise of full-time, appointed "reps" whose swelling numbers bolstered the domination of union politics by the top officials. There had always been authoritarian leaders, but for the newer industrial unions at least all of the armies of appointees were something new. This rising tide of bureaucratic business unionism brought with it the receding fortunes of the unions themselves. Four decades later, many of labor's friends and enemies alike assume that massive bureaucracy and top-down control are the natural state of the unions, possibly "the best" state.

Kim Moody Is Bureaucracy "Best" For Unions?

Also See:

Labor Notes Bookshelf - An Injury to All"Kim Moody's An Injury to All exhaustively documents the devastating effects of management's anti-union drive of the last fifteen years.

An Injury to All: The Decline of American Unionism. - book reviews

Confessions of an orthodox militant - and contentions - response to the review of author's 'Injury to All'; includes reply of reviewer Dana Frank

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Creationism=Paganism

I don't know whether to laugh or cry....whether to agree or be outraged....that paganism would be equated with protestantism....oh wait that is the historic basis for protestantism, as it was a 'protest' movement against the Holy Mother Church and competing Holy Roman Empires. It arose in the antinominalist movements which suckled at the breast of European paganism.


Luther and his princes used the pagan peasants as canon fodder in their political religious war for economic and temporal power.

But this is rather hilarious as a headline don't ya think....luckily most pagans have a good sense of humour unlike our fundamentalist protestant counterparts....

Creationism dismissed as 'a kind of paganism' by Vatican's astronomer

BELIEVING that God created the universe in six days is a form of superstitious paganism, the Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno claimed yesterday.

Brother Consolmagno, who works in a Vatican observatory in Arizona and as curator of the Vatican meteorite collection in Italy, said a "destructive myth" had developed in modern society that religion and science were competing ideologies.

He described creationism, whose supporters want it taught in schools alongside evolution, as a "kind of paganism" because it harked back to the days of "nature gods" who were responsible for natural events.

Of course in one fell swoop the Vatican astronomer has dismissed his historic political rivals as heretics, again. When in reality he should admit that if science and religion can co exist it is not in the Vatican or in Catholicism but in the philosophy of the enlightenment and America's founding fathers; Deism. Even God in her wisdom would agree with that.

“Spinozism dominated the eighteenth century both in its later French variety, which made matter into substance, and in deism, which conferred on matter a more spiritual name.... Spinoza’s French school and the supporters of deism were but two sects disputing over the true meaning of his system.... The simple fate of this Enlightenment was its decline in romanticism after being obliged to surrender to the reaction which began after the French movement.” Hobbes had shattered the theistic prejudices of Baconian materialism; Collins, Dodwell, Coward, Hartley, Priestley, similarly shattered the last theological bars that still hemmed in Locke’s sensationalism. At all events, for materialists, deism is but an easy-going way of getting rid of religion. Marx & Engels, The Holy Family

A tip o the blog to NewsTrolls

Also check out this blog on this topic and her article on the Sumerian origin of the old testament creation myth.



Go here for more Heretical fun

And see:

Intelligent Design

Creationism

Dialectical Science

Spinoza


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Softwood Redux

How did I miss this.....Hard feelings up north over softwood trade pact
I particularly liked this quote nothing like a little self aggrandizing back patting

Aboard Air Force One, en route back to Washington from the Gulf Coast, President Bush spoke with Harper, according to White House press secretary Scott McClellan. The two leaders congratulated each other on bringing the long-running dispute to an end, he said.

But a day later and a billion bucks shy this happens US files softwood appeal despite deal

B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell has threatened to withdraw his crucial support for the tentative Canada-U.S. softwood lumber truce after learning that the U.S. government has decided to legally challenge a Canadian victory before a NAFTA trade dispute panel.There were also indications Friday that other potential deal-breakers -- including a clause that could scuttle B.C.'s new market-based timber pricing system -- were embedded in the terms Ottawa and Washington agreed to Thursday. It could take months to flesh out the final agreement

And in case you mistakenly thought the Harpocrite was doing this for the good of Canada, or the industry well think again, he was looking to line his governments pockets. Lose a billion to the US but recoup a billion in taxes.

Stephen Harper's Conservative government stands to reap a windfall approaching $1 billion in taxes on duties being refunded to Canadian lumber producers under a controversial deal struck to end the softwood trade war with the United States.ut many lumber companies are now facing hefty federal tax bills — in some cases, as high as 35 per cent — on the duties as soon as they're refunded by Washington.Ottawa reaps windfall on wood pact

And since this now is a matter of money for his coffers, well the Softwood lumber debate in the house now becomes a Confidence Vote. Surprize, Surprize.

Because of those tax measures, the final trade deal will eventually face a confidence vote in the House of Commons. That means if opposition parties, which have criticized the framework deal, vote against the measure, it could bring down Harper's minority government and trigger a federal election.Ottawa reaps windfall on wood pact

Note to Blogging Tories the government, is the government, is the government, a rose by any other name.


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Orientalist Anarchists

Found an interesting interview with an Iranian Anarchist

and a blog by a Bangladesh Anarchist;

• Tasneem Khalil A journalist from Dhaka, Bangladesh. Endorses and advocates Libertarian Socialism and Free/Open Software & Publication. Subjects of interest primarily include Culture, Humanity, Alternative Media, Propaganda and Politics.

For a different view from this part of the world check them out.

I used Orient as in Edward Saids; Orientalism.

Al-Ahram Weekly | Opinion | Preface to Orientalism
Edward Said - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Also see my articles:

My Favorite Muslim

The Need for Arab Anarchism

Ibn Khaldun 14th Century Arab Libertarian

Can you be a Muslim Anarchist?

Antinominalist Anarchism

My Final Comment on the Cartoon Controversy

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Desert Iraq for Afghanistan

You tell em Jack. But wait if the American deserters come up here do ya think they will sign up for our humanitarian operations in Afghanistan? And where will our troops go when they desert from Afghanistan?

Canada should welcome US deserters, Layton says
American deserters dodging military duty in Iraq share Canadian values and should be welcomed in this country, NDP Leader Jack Layton says."It makes a lot of sense to welcome these young people, recognize that they've taken a position that's exactly the same position that Canadians took," he said yesterday. "It would be inappropriate to send them back in my view ... We're glad they've chosen our country." Layton urged the Conservative government to grant sanctuary to young soldiers, noting Canada became a safe haven for Americans seeking to avoid the Vietnam draft more than 30 years ago."We should be looking at it," he said. "These young people are courageous individuals. They've made a decision of conscience."Layton denied that it would upset ties with the U.S. if Canada suddenly became a place of refuge for those fleeing that country's unpopular war."There are tens of thousands of people and their families now all across our country who came to us in an earlier period around the Vietnam War. I don't think that disrupted relations between the two countries."His comments followed an Ottawa visit by Cindy Sheehan, who has become an outspoken anti-war campaigner after the death of her son Casey in Iraq. She used a Parliament Hill news conference yesterday to urge Canada to offer sanctuary to U.S. deserters.

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Revisionist History

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation, (a lobby for business not citizens, a private association who appoints its directors does not elect them) is now blogging. Be still my beating heart, another right wing blog.

This one though engages in one of those extreme historical revinisionism, one that should send our pal Warren Kinsella into a paralax of outrage. But will it?

Anyways the CTF blog equates the Holocaust with the Cuban Revolution. Yep. All those Batista Cubans, American mafia types, CIA and ITT folks and hoteliers, the rum runners and pimps, all those nice folks were supposedly executed by Che.

In reality, pre-revolutionary Havana was a brothel and casino for US
playboys, the Mafia and a rich Cuban elite.

Well you wouldn't know it from the CTF article that just over a thousand members of the military and secret police were tried for crimes against the people and executed. Note just over 1000. Armed thugs who oppressed the people. But these twits say this;

Che's slaughter of (bound and gagged) Cubans (Che was himself an Argentine) exceeded Heinrich Himmler's prewar slaughter of Germans – to scale, that is. Nazi Germany became the modern standard for political evil even before World War II.

Clever that, pre war slaughter of Germans, no reference to Jews. Oh wait yes he does.

Political executions up to the time might have reached a couple thousand, and most of these were of renegade Nazis themselves during the indiscriminate butchery known as the "Night of the Long Knives." The famous Kristallnacht that horrified civilized opinion worldwide caused a grand total of 71 deaths. This in a nation of 70 million.

And the point is, Castro and Che are nasty. Well lets see how many Cubans died of malnutrition, starvation, police burtality under Batista and other former dictators working for the United Fruit Company? Lets compare apples and apples not rehtorical attempts to; lessen the horror and impact of the Nazi's, or compare Cuban nationalism with Nationalist Socialism in Germany.

Batista was the U.S. government's "man in Havana," even though U.S. officials knew that he was a brutal, antidemocratic, corrupt tyrant in full partnership with Mafia murderers and drug dealers. None of this mattered to Washington policymakers. What mattered was that as "our man in Havana," when Batista received orders from Washington, he obeyed.A Libertarian Visits Cuba, Part 1

No lets look at Latin America and the the US policy of imperialism in the region.

US Imperialism which began in the region with Monroe Doctrine and the colonization of Cuba, Nicarauga and other countries by the Confederate States as slave economies, became the basis of the sugar plantations and fruit production of the post WWII economies in the region.

How many Guatemalans have been murdered since the CIA and United Fruit company engineered the coup there in 1954, prior to the Cuban Revolution. This set the tone for the struggles of national liberation in the region. The revolutionaries knew that death was certain at the hands of the US and CIA and their front regimes.

Unfortunately, the CIA “success” in Iran, which produced the CIA’s ouster of Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, bred a CIA “success” in another part of the world, Latin America. One year after the 1953 coup in Iran, the CIA did it again, this time in Guatemala, where U.S. officials feared the communist threat even more than they did in Iran.An Anti-Democracy Foreign Policy: Guatemala

How many Chileans died at the hands of Pinochet whose coup was organized by the US State Department and the CIA.?

How many Argentinians were 'dissapeared' under the US client regime of the Argentinian Generals?

And how many Cubans have been killed by the Cuban exile community and their links to the fascist movements in Latin America and around the world. Many of those same groups being made up of ex Nazi's and notorious Anti-Semites like the World Anti-Bolshevik League.

Many of our leaders seem to view Florida's Cuban conservatives, including the assassins and terrorists among them, as People Who Vote. - Alice Walker, introduction, The Sweet Abys

And how many CIA attempts were there on Castro from the very begining of the revolution. Enough to make anyone paranoid.

Yep what Che and Castro did was unconsionable, but understandable under the circumstances.

Hundreds of suspected Batista-era agents, policemen and soldiers were put on public trial for human rights abuses and war crimes, including murder and torture. Most of those convicted of murder were executed by firing squad, and the rest received long prison sentences. One of the most notorious examples of “revolutionary justice” being the executions of over 70 captured Batista regime soldiers, directed by Raúl Castro after capturing Santiago. Guevara was appointed supreme prosecutor in La Cabaña Fortress. This was part of a large-scale attempt by Fidel Castro to cleanse the security forces of Batista loyalists that could launch a counter-revolution. Many others were dismissed from the army and police, and some high-ranking officials in the ancien régime were exiled as military attachés.

In 1961 after the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the new Cuban government also confiscated all property held by religious organizations without compensation including the Roman Catholic Church. Hundreds of members of the clergy, including a bishop, were permanently expelled from the nation, with the new Cuban government being officially atheist.

• Cuban Revolution

What the vast right wing conspiracy of the CIA and its fascist allies in the Anti-Bolshevik movement during the cold war did was far closer to the tactics and poltics of Himmler and Hitler than anyting the Che or Castro did.

A revolution implies violence, but a coup implies a regime of violence. The former is caused by the State and its military and the ruling class organizing violence against the people. The latter is the States policy in order to repress the freedom of workers, peasants and the middle class.

Yep a little reading can be a dangerous thing. And in this case the anonymous blogger at the CTF blog read one little right wing article and based his falacious argument on it. Well here is some reading for him to correct the stupidity of his article.


A tip o the blog to Calgary Grit for this.



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Spam Attack

This is rich.

Blue Security Shifted Attack, Brought Down Blogs

This is a wild tale of a denial-of-service attack, allegedly orchestrated by a big time spammer against an anti-spam security company that brought down a blogging site.

The denial-of-service attack that crashed TypePad and LiveJournal this week was caused by anti-spam company Blue Security, which pinned the target on the blog in an attempt to save its own servers, analysts said Thursday. Blue Security denied that it knew the attack would crash its blog host.

And this is richer.

Spyware pusher shut down and fined $4 million
ZDNet -\
Just released by the FTC - Sanford Wallace (nicknamed Spamford for his history of spamming) and his company Smartbot.net have been ordered to shut down operations and give up $4,089,500 of their ill-gotten gains.

FTC Orders Wallace To Pay $4 Million For Spyware Scam

Users were duped into thinking they needed software being sold by "Spam King" Sanford Wallace because he exploited an Internet Explorer vulnerability to install real spyware on their PCs.

Spam is capitalism unleashed on the internet. Which is why I keep getting those emails about increasing my penis size, nasty russian girls willing to do anything and security updating of my Chase Manhattan bank account.


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Climate Change...On Jupiter

Uh oh this will give Rona Ambrose and the Conservatives another excuse to not deal with climate change here. I can hear the right wing deniers now; "see its natural".

New storm on Jupiter hints at climate change

A storm is brewing half a billion miles away and in a rare event, astronomers get to watch it closely.

Jupiter is growing a new red spot and the Hubble Space Telescope is photographing the scene. Backyard astronomers have been following the action, too.

The global change cycle began when the last of the white oval-shaped storms formed south of the Great Red Spot in 1939. As the storms started to merge between 1998 and 2000, the mixing of heat began to slow down at that latitude and has continued slowing ever since.


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Desert Moon

Titan, the planet Saturn's most mysterious moon, now poses a fresh puzzle: mile upon mile of rippling dunes similar to the desert sand dunes of the Sahara or Arabia have been discovered on its tarry surface -- but what they're made of nobody knows. Dunes gird Saturn moon

Cassini Flies By Saturn's Moon Titan, Sees More Craters

NASA and Partners Release New Movies Of Titan

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Grandinite Scoop

Grandinite scoops the MSM with a cellphone photo and on the spot report of IBEW members holding an information picket in Calgary at the offices of CNRL who are wanting to bring in temporary workers into Fort McMurray.


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Happy Marxmas

Today is Herr Doctor Professor Karl Marx's 188 birthday.

Happy Marxmas.

Karl Marx: The Story of His Life, 1918

"Je ne suis pas Marxiste."
--Karl Marx, 1818-1883

And the good doctor in his Phd Thesis Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy by Karl Marx posits an early theory of quantum mechanics as dialectics.

Betcha didn't know that.

"Just as we have seen that necessity, connection, differentiation, within itself, is transferred to or rather expressed in the atom, that ideality is present here only in this form external to itself, so it is with motion too, the question of which necessarily arises once the motion of the atoms is compared with the motion of the Cata tas sugcriseis [composite] bodies, that is, of the concrete. In comparison with this motion, the motion of the atoms is in principle absolute, that is, all empirical conditions in it are disregarded, it is ideal. In general, in expounding Epicurean philosophy and its immanent dialectics, one has to bear in mind that, while the principle is an imagined one, assuming the form of being in relation to the concrete world, the dialectics, the inner essence of these ontological determinations, as a form, in itself void, of the absolute, can show itself only in such a way that they, being immediate, enter into a necessary confrontation with the concrete world and reveal, in their specific relation to it, that they are only the imagined form of its ideality, external to itself, and not as presupposed, but rather only as ideality of the concrete. Thus its determinations are in themselves untrue and self-negating. The only conception of the world that is expressed is, that its basis is that which has no presuppositions, which is nothing. Epicurean philosophy is important because of the naiveness with which conclusions are expressed without the prejudice of our day."

Also See: Heisenberg's Physics and Philosophy


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Humanitarian War

US Progressives For War have a new Kosovo in their sights; Darfur. While opposed to the war in Iraq and so so about the continuing war in Afghanistan now they want the US , and of course Canada, to enter the conflict in the Sudan, specifically to defend the victims of ethnic cleansing in Darfur.

`It's always in Canada's interests to try to elevate... humanitarian rights.'
Peter MacKay, foreign affairs minister

A conflict that the international community has exasperated by its lack of involvement but its overflowing of crocodile tears. And would the discovery of oil reserves in the region and its neighbour Chad have anything to do with this? Nah.

Sat Apr 29, 1:40 PM ET

Laura Cacho of Working Assets hands a protester a sign during a mass rally against the war in Iraq on Saturday, April 29, 2006 in New York, NY. (AP Photo/Adam Rountree)

The international community has had plenty of opportunity to intervene with armed force, to create a barrier between the refugee camps and the conflicting forces in the region. But like Rawanda the original colonial powers in the region pull the strings behind the scenes, exerting their great power influence over the region. In this case the US and Canada have less to say about this than say oh Britain and France the original Imperialist powers in the region.

The Sudan Wars were a series of conflicts in the Sudan part of Africa in the late 19th Century. The conflicts erupted between the British and the Muslims Africans in the Sudan in 1881 because of religious disputes and the British attempt to end the "new" slavery trade. Muslim fundamentalists instigated a rebellion against the British, driving them and their Egyptian armies from Sudan. Britain atoned for the loss in 1898, militarily reclaiming control of the Sudan. Following this engagement, competition between Britain and France for the south of Sudan led to military conflict, ended by diplomatic avenues which partitioned the disputed area. Both events demonstrate the intensifying struggle to control Africa, and the conflict between the European powers in the race of imperialism. This conflict gave rise to the beginning of World War I. Sudan Wars

French Equatorial Africa (Introduction)
Chad • Congo • Gabon • Central African Republic

French Equatorial Africa was a former administrative grouping of four French territories in west central Africa. It was first formed in 1910 by the federation of three French imperial colonies — Gabon, Middle Congo, and Ubangi-Shari-Chad — comprising a total area of 969,112 square miles (2,500,000 sq km). Chad was separated from Ubangi-Shari in 1920 to form a fourth colony.

In 1934, French Equatorial Africa was transformed into a unified territory of France, but in 1946 it was re-divided into four separate overseas territories (TOM — territoires d'outre-mer).

The federation ended in 1959 after the territories had chosen — in 1958 — to become self-governing republics of the French Community. Middle Congo was renamed Republic of the Congo, and Ubangi-Shari became the Central African Republic. All four republics attained their independence in 1960.

In the case of Africa, this human element is seen in the variety of forces that affected or moulded her history and experience. Lydia Polgreen summarized the roots of Africa’s present burden: Africa was a land carved for a colonial feast. For her, “it is a truism of Africa that the borders bequeathed by white colonial powers, drawn in the 19th-century scramble for Africa at the convenience of London, Paris and Brussels, became the Blackman’s burden”. And if the inherited colonial- nation state has been the Blackman’s burden, it has also been the African despot’s best friend, a powerful tool when wielded by crafty hands. In fact, the excesses of African dictators, from Mobutu Sesse Seko to Robert Mugabe, from Sani Abacha to Charles Taylor, were enabled, to a greater or lesser degree, by the inherent conflicts created by artificial state boundaries that allowed a powerful central government to play tribal, ethnic and religious groups against one another. Aligned to that, colonialism destroyed some African cultural values and structures that would have conduced to the emergence of accountability in governance. This is well depicted by the fact that until now as Ali Mazrui argued, “Africa has borrowed Western tastes without Western skills, Western consumption patterns without Western production techniques, urbanization without industrialization, secularization (erosion of religion) without scientification.” African Poverty as Failure of Leadership

Beware of war for humanity or humanitarianism, behind the rehtoric lies the profit motive. And it is the only motive that drives war, whether for good or evil.

What the postcolonial left who oppose intervention and the liberal internationalists who support intervention in Darfur (but oppose it in the Middle East) share is a common concern about the conditions of the Third World. They are likely to agree that the West is fully or partially responsible for the deterioration of those conditions. Unlike those on the right like the current President of the U.S., their foreign policy ideas transcend crass national self interests and are burdened by their moral consciences. Where they disagree however is in what role the West can play in alleviating the global south’s conditions. Where the liberals want the West to intervene to save the poor Africans from killing themselves (which can be understood in a post-Rwanda context as either humanitarianism or on the other extreme, a neo-imperial continuation of the white man’s burden), the postcolonial left want the West out of the third world. Since the West is responsible for the poverty, war and low rates of democratic and human development in places like Africa, the Middle East and beyond – vis-à-vis colonialism and neo-colonialism – they should just butt out. SkarredBlog

Also See: War and the Market State

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Shocking Canadiana

Well Canadian architect and Cape Breton historian, Paul Chiasson has released his book on the Chinese Discovery of Canada; THE ISLAND OF SEVEN CITIES One of several books and documents that have been released in the past year saying that the Zheng He expeditionary force found North America in 1421. While he was Chinese and it was a Chinese armada he led, Zheng He was a Muslim, so one could say a Muslim discovered North America

The map clearly shows the Americas and Africa
Photo:The Economist/PA

Enlarge Image

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Bermuda Triangle

Who says there is nothing new under the sun? Or in this case in the ocean where the sun never shines.

Monsters from beneath the Bermuda Triangle
In the permanently dark waters beneath the Bermuda Triangle, scientists have uncovered a remarkably diverse range of extraordinary sea creatures. Retrieving tiny sea animals - zooplankton - at depths of up to three miles, and even reading their genetic codes on a rolling sea, scientists carrying out a census of marine life have revealed new details about the role of these fragile creatures in the climate and food chain, from fish to whales.

And of course food for Cthulu's relatives.



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Bear Pickens

Our friend from Peace River, Ursus Major woke up this morning and went for something to eat.

A black bear wandered into a grocery store in Peace River, Alta., late Tuesday, with one thing on his mind. Sweets"He jumped up into the bakery case, he tested a few things out and he really liked the strawberry mousse,'' said store night manager Trevor Allen.

He is still at large. Alberta Wildelife have issued a description of the culprit and his partner.

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Canada's Prison Indsustrial Complex

The Harpocrites Bushite plan for crime in Canada is two fold. One is to sacrifice child care for more prison spaces...Tory plan will create jail spaces at expense of day-care spaces ... The other is to create a privatized prison industry in Canada like that which has grown in the United States. Creating more jail spaces than school spaces.

Private prison operators waiting to cash in on Harper policies Unfortunately Canada has found out again thanks to the Harris government that this is another Harpocrite plan doomed to failure, just like their day care plan, Ontario jail privatization project fails

Harpers call to continue criminlization of marijuana and other drugs is a further example of his Republican North politics. It was the War on Drugs that opened up and exapanded the American privatized prison industrial complex that now dominates in that country.Tory policies would create prison boom: experts

And Harpers get tough on guns populist campaign coincides with his get tough on drugs and crime leading to increased spending in one of the most regressive forms of social programs, prisons.

The U.S. War on Drugs: Political Economics of a New Slavery

Compiled by Drug Policy Alliance. August 2001.

---

The U.S. "war on drugs" is big business -- a multi-billion dollar public/private venture that radically inflates the value of illegal drugs and is used to criminalize the poorest people of color, trapping them in a vicious cycle of addiction, unemployment and incarceration:

• $27 billion for interdiction and law enforcement, $1.3 billion for Plan Colombia in 2000.
  
• $9.4 billion in 2000 to imprison close to 500,000 people convicted of non-violent drug offenses, 75% of whom are Black.
  
• $80 to $100 billion in lost earnings.
  
• Untold billions in homeless shelters, healthcare, chemical dependency and psychiatric treatment, etc.

• 
  

It behooves us on the left to take up the call made by Angela Davis and others who call for an end to Prisons and the Prison Industrial Complex. Something Anarchists such as Kropotkin and Berkman have advocated at the turn of last century.

Resources on Prison Privatization

The Raggedness of Prison Privatization:
Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States Compared

PRIVATE ADULT PRISONS:
WHAT DO WE REALLY KNOW AND WHY DON’T WE KNOW MORE?*

New Internationalist: Crime pays: well, it does if you run the prison

Grassroots CCA Prison Report 2003

The modern private prison business first emerged and established itself publicly in 1984 when
the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) was awarded a contract to take over a facility in
Hamilton County, Tennessee. This marked the first time that any government in the country had
contracted out the complete operation of a jail to a private operator.1 The following year, CCA
gained further public attention when it offered to take over the entire state prison system of
Tennessee for $200 million. The bid was ultimately defeated due to strong opposition from
public employees and the skepticism of the state legislature.2 Despite that initial defeat, CCA
since then has successfully expanded, as have other for-profit prison companies. As of
December 2000, there were 153 private correctional facilities (prisons, jails and detention
centers) operating in the United States3 with a capacity of over

Private Prisons: Profits of Crime

Private prisons are a symptom, a response by private capital to the "opportunities" created by society's temper tantrum approach
to the problem of criminality.

The big business of prisons

By Eve Goldberg and Linda Evans

More than 1.8 million people are currently behind bars in the US -- the highest per capita incarceration rate in the history of the world. In 1995 alone, 150 new US prisons were built and filled.

Privately managed prisons go before the review board

With 1.5 million people behind bars, the United States imprisons a larger share of its population than any other nation. Indeed, the rate of incarceration in the United States has grown much faster than the population in the past decade, leading to serious overcrowding in local, state and federal al prisons. Federal facilities are operating at 160 percent of capacity, while state facilities are at 117 percent, despite a desired capacity rate of percent that allows for periodic maintenance and repairs, special housing for protective custody, disciplinary cases and emergency needs.

The cost of confining inmates in the United States almost doubled in the past five years, reaching $50 billion lion annually, or $33,334 per inmate, per year. Estimates show that one 700-bed bed jail and one 1,600-bed prison need to be opened every week just to meet the rising demand. The projected annual construction cost of this is $5.98 billion.

But, with the political climate favoring decreasing taxes and reducing the size of government, it is unlikely that cities and counties will be able to build and manage many more prisons.

At the same time, the war on drugs and the get tough, policies, like the "three strikes" laws, will yield even greater numbers of inmates

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Who Speaks For Canadian Women

Well not Real Women no matter how much they insist on it. They speak for right wing fundamentalist protestant women, a minority if ever there was one, except in the rank and file of Harpers Reform/Alliance/Conservatives. Their agenda, pretty clear;

Real Women’s letter to MP’s has called upon the Harper government to defund the powerful radical feminist lobby that allows only one interpretation of women’s rights and equality to be represented.

Lorraine McNamara, Real Women’s National President, writes, “The feminist ideology does not now, and never has had the support of the vast majority of Canadian women.”

McNamara writes, “Feminist groups have few, if any, members, and are, in effect, mostly phantom organizations sustained only by the funding they receive from the Status of Women. Since these organizations represent no one but the women who run them, they should not receive financial support from the Canadian taxpayer.”

Also see:

History of the WRF

Catholic Hajib

Whose Family Values?

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Must Be Nice

Senior tobacco exec won't go to jail in massive fraud caseA former tobacco company executive will not serve any jail time after pleading guilty to conspiring to smuggle cigarettes, and defrauding the Canadian government of more than $1 billion in taxes, CBC News has learned.

Gee doesn't he qualify for the Tories new get tough on crime laws. What no minimum mandatory sentence. Nah, he's rich.

And RJR/BAT profits are rising on the basis of their criminal activities. Pennsylvania Attorney General Corbett files suit to recover additional tobacco funds



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