It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Elizabeth May Closet Liberal
Like how the NDP brought down the government last year just when the International Climate Change Conference was happening, why that's straight off Scott Reids talking notes for the 2006 election. A challenge that the Liberals have used for the past year in attacking the NDP.
And how the NDP and Conservatives are collaborating on the Climate Change Accord in order to prop up the Harper government. Straight from the Liberal press clippings.
Clearly she see's Jack Layton and the NDP as her biggest threat.
She admited that the Greens took votes from the NDP and Conservatives in the London byelection. And she is thinking of running again there.
Is there a potential merger here between the Greens and Liberals......since they share the same talking points and share a common opponent; the NDP.
Luckily Jack and the NDP can take credit that they get things done in parliament, something neither Green Party or the Liberals can.
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UKRAINITZKI RIZDVO
Well at least here in Western Canada, the largest North American Diaspora of Ukrainians, who kept and grew their identity while in exile. In the rest of the world it is Epiphany and the Orthodox Christmas.
Ukrainian Christmas is of course not a Christian celebration at all but rooted in the old pagan traditions. The twelve course dinner we eat is vegetarian, saving of the meat slaughtered at harvest, for the mid winter, late Feburary early March coinciding coincidentally with Easter/Spring. It represents the circle of the year quartered.
My relatives once explained the twelve seasons were the Apostles. A bit of syncretism if not outright recuperation by the dominant Religious State/State Religion.
In reality it is part of the pagan roots of all Ukrainian culture and its motifs.
The twelve course meal is celebrated with friends, relatives and the community, with local carolers visiting, not unlike Mummers in Newfoundland, and a priest blessing the house with water, salt and a evergreen branch.
The meal itself is part of the old pagan gift economy, where we shared the wealth of the harvest at this dark cold part of the year, feasting in preparation for the spring.
The symbolism of the birds on the babkas and paskas, the sacred breads of the sun which are made from the wheat, the life of the earth, are with us still and used at Christmas, Easter, for weddings and funerals.
Rich in pagan heritage, Ukrainians are again embracing their pagan past, and its vital link with today.
So from a heathen and a pagan I say to you,
Recited After Caroling
vinchovanye from the Carpathian Mountains (rec. by Vol. Shukhevych. Hutsul'shchyna. Lviv: NTSh, 1904. v.4)
English Translation: (two separate very old greetings combined)
Wishing all of you health, wealth, happiness, bliss,
for you and your family, your garden, your farm animals,
even your bees, and may there be a wedding soon in your family!
Dai zhe ty, Bozhe, ta v khati sytno,
U khati sytno, na dvir prybytno.
Dai zhe ty, Bozhe, na khati zilia,
Na khati zilia, v khati vesilia!
V pasitsi bzholy yz royechkamy,
Yz royechkamy, paroyechkamy!
Oi dai Bozhe!
Vinchuyemo ty sh'ystiem-zdorovyym,
Sh'ystiem-zdorovyym, Rizdvom Khrystovym!
Dai zhe ty bozhe, v horodi zelo,
V horodi zelo, v khati veselo!
Podai zhe, Bozhe, vsim zdorovyuchko,
Na khudobochku, na dvir sh'yst'ychko,
Na khudobochku, na rohovuyu,
Na chel'ydochku, na domovuyu!
Oi dai Bozhe!
A Merry Ukrainian Christmas to all
On Christmas Eve, called "Sviat Vechir" (Holy Eve) in Ukrainian, the family gathers together to share a traditional meal and to sing carols. It is customary to wait until the evening star appears in the sky, as this is thought to represent the star of Bethlehem which guided the Wise Men to the Manger. The meal is called "Sviata Vecherya" which means "holy supper".It is always a lenten meal as there is a fasting time which leads up to the Feast of Christmas on the 7th. The most important food which must be present and usually sits in the center of the table is called "Kutia". It is a sweet pudding made of boiled wheat, honey, nuts and poppy seeds. The other traditional food is a fruit compote of simmered dried fruits called "Uzvar". These two foods symbolize the bounty of the harvest and offer a prayer for a plentiful harvest to come in the New Year.
A chair and place setting is usually left empty to symbolize the hope that the souls of deceased relatives will visit and partake of the holy meal along with the family. Pagan Ukrainians worshipped their ancestors and believed that their spirits could be propitiated in order to benefit the family.
Tree of Life
"The Tree of Life, the Sun, the Goddess: Symbolic Motifs in Ukrainian Folk Art," now at the new Ukrainian Museum, taught me how to "read" a bride’s costume. It allowed me to see symbols that evolved from at least as far back as the Linear and Trypillian cultures from 6000-3000 BCE.All these pagan symbols reside in textiles and ornaments dating from the late 19th to early 20th century from a country that was converted to Christianity in 988 CE.
The goddess motif, a torso, often vegetative with curved arms held on either side of the head, can be found on the bottom edge of a cream-colored coat (svyta) from the 1920s or recognized in more abstract forms on painted Easter eggs (pysanky). A goddess figure often shows up in textiles as rhomboids, where hook-like extensions take the place of uplifted arms. In the same manner, she appears in sashes and in the embroidery on the sleeves of women’s shirts and ritual cloths.
The tree-of-life designs play an important role in many cultures. A pillar or tree, an axis mundi, is seen as connecting the world above (gods or benevolent spirits), the earth (man’s domain) and the underground (ancestors or evil spirits).
In Ukrainian folk art, the tree-of-life is often found on ritual cloths, usually with red embroidery on a white ground. These cloths were found everywhere in traditional villages. Some were hung in houses at weddings and births; others were placed on coffins; still others were put atop markers at the edge of small towns to welcome visitors. One ritual cloth (rushnyk) from the 1930s is a riot of tree-of-life motifs along with other fertility symbols -- flowers, vines and birds.
Unveiling the Mother Goddess from her
It is awesome to think that while Sumerian culture had only begun developing and when the Egyptian pyramids were yet to be built, dozens of Trypilian towns in Ukraine had already sunk into oblivion and their ruins were covered with the grass of the forest-steppe stretching between the Dniester and Dnipro rivers.
Moist Mother Earth - Slavic Myth and Religion
These old Ukrainian fertility gods are located in Kyiv at the Ukraine History Museum, near St. Andrew’s church. (The statues are outdoors, and have been placed under the hoods in order to reduce wear from the elements.) Many--perhaps even most--religions and churches encourage fertility. Historically, fertility was an important way to maintain the continuity of the community. This tradition continues today, of course.
Scythia and the Scythians - Encyclopedia of Ukraine
The AnthropogeneThere was a time when cities were being built in the Southern Ukraine long before the kingship descended to Eridu in
Around 5400 BC there must have been a great forest in the Southern Ukraine and while this is pure speculation, the people of the Black Sea Diaspora must have made made their migratory ingress into these territiories, moving up the great rivers of the Danube, the
In case the term Black Sea Diaspora doesn't mean anything, we now know that around 5600 BC the
Yara's Forest Song Reviews
"Just as every tree is different in a forest and you have to learn to recognize it, so every person is different and has its own place, time and unique voice which you must also learn to recognize. The idea that today we are destroying the forest, uprooting trees, and uprooting humanity, is central to the production of Lesia Ukrainka's Forest Song, the Ukrainian-America collaborative project of the Yara Arts Group from La Mama Theatre in New York and the Kurbas Theatre from Lviv..Lesya Ukrainka - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Larysa Petrivna Kosach-Kvitka (February 25, 1871 [O.S. February 13] – August 1, 1913 [O.S. July 19]) better known under her literary pseudonym Lesya Ukrainka , was one of Ukraine's best-known poets and writers and the foremost woman writer in Ukrainian literature. Ukrainka also wrote epic poems, prose dramas, prose, several articles of literary criticism, and a number of sociopolitical essays. She was best known Lisova pisnya (1912; The Forest Song), whose characters include mythological beings from Ukrainian folklore. Ukrainka actively opposed Russian tsarism and was a member of Ukrainian Marxist organizations. In 1902 she translated a Communist Manifesto into Ukrainian. She was briefly arrested in 1907 by tsarist police and remained under surveillance thereafter.And the ancient godess returns in modern form;Yulia Tymoshenko: Goddess of the Orange Revolution As I also commented on here.
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Merry Ukrainian Christmas
Yes Colby Cosh there is such a thing as Ukrainian Christmas
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Palace Casino Strike
There is an ongoing strike at the Palace Casino in West Edmonton Mall. It is another strike in Alberta by workers for a 'FIRST' contract. We are one of the few provinces that does not automatically give workers a first contract once they successfully win union recognition. Nope, you can join the union and then have to fight to get a contract.
Which means that first contract strikes are dragged out by management, as they are in this case. The strike started back in September.
Well this is an ugly little strike because while the Palace is operated by a private company, in fact it is run by a tax avoiding Income Trust, it functions with State support and sanction. After all the Alberta government makes more money off gambling than off the Oil Sands.
B.C. Business Magazine says Gateway Income Trust, based in Burnaby, B.C., was the third most profitable business in that province last year, posting profit of close to $20 million in the first half of 2006. The company also operates the Baccarat Casino in Edmonton.
And UFCW the union involved is faced with non-profit groups and charities needing to use the casino to raise funds for things like school books, yep in Alberta the biggest users of casino fundraising are school parent groups trying to offset the provincial governments underfunding of public schools.
And it appears management at the Palace is googling Doug O'Halloran, who is President of UFCW. And how do I know this, well they visited my blog.
static-68-179-10-233.ptr.terago.ca (Palace Casino)
Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, 0 returning visits
Date | Time | WebPage |
6th January 2007 | 15:40:16 | plawiuk.blogspot.com/2005_10_09_plawiuk_archive.html www.google.ca/search?q=doug%2Bohalloran&hl=en&rls= SUNA%2CSUNA%3A2006-16% 2CSUNA%3Aen |
Instead of googling UFCW the Palace Casino management should be bargaining with their workers.
Once again this shows that the Alberta Labour Relations Board is the tool of the bosses, and labour should abandon it for Direct Action.
Every strike is a battle in the Class War!
The IWW Edmonton holds public solidarity pickets every Sunday afternoon at 2pm at West Edmonton Mall to support the striking workers, join them.
"The longer the picket line the shorter the strike."
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State Capitalism in the USSR
There are varying conflicting debates on the left as to when the Soviet Union became State Capitalist.
Of course amongst the Trotskyists it was always a Degenerated Workers State, even under Stalin.
The theory of Bureaucratic Collectivism, State Capitalism, etc. all evolved out of the debates with Trotsky in the Fourth International during the 1940's by various factions.
Outside of the Trotskyists, Council Communists or Left Communists, as Lenin called them, already defined Bolshevism as State Capitalism and in some cases Nationalist Socialism, as Otto Ruhle did.
Anarchists point out that Lenin himself described the Soviet Union as State Capitalism;"socialism is nothing but state capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole people,"
Rosa Luxemburg herself a contemporary in the Social Democratic Movement with Lenin, accused the Bolsheviks of creating State Capitalism in the Soviet Union.
This new type of capitalism--properly called state-capitalism--persists to the present day in the ideological dress of 'socialism."
Well here is an interesting historical flashback from Time Magazine, I found on the web. We can officially date State Capitalism as being fully implemented under Stalin in the summer of 1931. Though it was already evolving from earlier decisions the Bolsheviks made.
TIME.com: Stalin Shifts the Helm -- Jul 13, 1931
Captain Lenin, Captain Trotsky and today Captain Stalin have never been afraid to alter Russia's course—the course of over one-seventh of the world—by a sudden titan's tug at the helm. Last week Captain Stalin tugged.
He issued no decree. He permitted the Press of Russia to disclose a speech he had made June 23 to a group of Soviet industrial executives. So awful is Comrade Stalin's power that not one of his many hearers had publicly breathed a syllable. His words, according to Moscow correspondents, will soon be law:
¶ "We have not yet reached our Communist goal," said Stalin with devastating simplicity. "Meanwhile emergency measures are necessary. ... It is unbearable to see a locomotive driver receiving the same wages as a bookkeeper!"
The wages of Soviet locomotive drivers and other skilled proletarians will be raised, Stalin indicated, above the wage level of unskilled proletarians and despised white collar yes-men. Up to last week the theory of Soviet wage scales (varied some-what in practice) was approximate wage equality between the skilled and the unskilled. With a mighty tug Stalin seemed to shift the whole Soviet wage structure —in a direction seemingly opposite to Communism.
¶"Break up the family!" was one of Russia's bywords when she went on the Five-Day Week (TIME, Oct. 7,1929). Factories began to run every day of the week with four-fifths of their personnel, the other one-fifth resting. Thus each man or woman has, under the present Five-Day week, one day of rest after each four of work; but the "rest day" of husband and wife may not be the same, thus tending to disrupt the family.
J. Stalin, happy family man, now said that factories in which the Five-Day Week does not seem to work well should return to the old system of five days' work and the same rest day for everyone at once.
¶. Still more striking was the Dictator's word that management of factories a la Soviet by voting councils of the workers must in some degree give way to management by a manager with power to manage and responsibility to show a profit. Obviously this is "State Capitalism." The State being the owner for whom the manager must earn a profit.
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Saturday, January 06, 2007
BioFuel and The Wheat Board
Ethanol's roots in ADM lobbying
Grist features the origins of U.S. government subsidies for ethanol fuels and their benefits to Acher Daniels Midland (ADM) and its former CEO Dwayne Andreas (the man who provided the $25,000 for the Watergate 'plumbers'). Includes links to the 1995 Cato Institute study of Carter administration support to ADM, as well as this year's study by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, Biofuels - At What Cost? (Oct. 25, 2006).
The latter estimates federal support for ethanol to total between $5.5 billion and $7.3 billion each year, and the benefits to ADM which (according to the article) contols about 1/3 of the ethanol market.
The article suggests that the federal government could do more to fight greenhouse gases (GHG) if it used the money to buy carbon offsets. Of course, that's not the administration's goal in supporting ADM and ethanol, is it?
Also check out this World May Be Facing Highest Grain Prices in History
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Hedge Funds, Junk Bonds, Ponzi Schemes
Or as Marx put it M-C-M, which spells Bubble, as in South Sea Bubble.
Capitalism now is one large Ponzi scheme fraud is to capitalism as apple pie is to America. Remember Junk Bonds..... Contrary to the predictions of the politicians and their consultants, though, junk bonds soon revived and became a staple of American finance.
And the lastest fraud being perpetrated is the unregulated Hedge fund and Private equity market financing.
"The upper class is now serviced by a vast and growing industry, loosely called Private Equity.
The job of the private-equity investor is -- again, speaking loosely -- to exploit the idiocy of the ordinary investor, and the corporate executives and mutual-fund managers who purport to serve him."
~ Michael Lewis, Bloomberg News, 12 December 2006
Tipping Point for the Ministry of Truth?
"Large amounts of risk, particularly credit risk, have become concentrated in the hands of relatively few derivatives dealers, who in addition trade extensively with one another." - Warren Buffet
Here we learn that hedge funds account for 32 percent of credit-default swap sellers and 28 percent of buyers, up from 15 percent and 16 percent in 2004, according to a British Bankers' Association report last month. They are second to banks in each category. Pension funds and mutual funds make up 7 percent of the sellers and 4 percent of the buyers.
The Cozy Hedge Fund-Pig Man Relationship
Readers know that I have developed a theory that suggests hedge funds (Riskloves) and possibly foreign central banks (FCBs) have been the key facilitators of, and will ultimately be the bag holders for, the securities and credit bubble. The key to understanding this relationship as it pertains to Riskloves is to recognize that most of their incentives are front loaded and geared towards extreme risk taking. When a Ponzi unit security is created or securitized that’s the moment that fees are generated for the financial sphere (Pig Men). The Pig Men also collect more soft dollars “doing business” with the Riskloves. The Riskloves (and increasingly the FCBs) then take the securities. Then once the security is created, it enters into the never never land of Ponzi toxic waste, where it is blessed by another cozy player, the credit agencies. Once blessed, then these securities can be pawned off on pension and public funds, in what can only be described as a circle jerk.
A Minsky-like Restatement of Keynes Market Irrationality Warning
"The market is a complex, adaptive social system, is therefore not prone toward equilibrium, but instead subject to phase shifts, cycles, and transfomation. Groups of people who play in the market are prone to cycles of irrational exuberance and irrational pessimsim."