Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Harpers Shoe Fetish


What is it with autocratic right wingers and their shoe fetishes?

Long kept under wraps, the plan codenamed the Shoe Store Project – is in the works by the Privy Council Office and the PMO to establish a new government-controlled media briefing centre near Langevin Block.



Mila Mulroney came "close to breaking down," according to Newman, after reading Stevie Cameron's story on the PM's reported Gucci shoe collection.

In 1987, a Globe and Mail investigation revealed that the Mulroneys had borrowed $300,000 from the Tories to renovate 24 Sussex Drive. It was just one of many stories about Mila's love for shopping and her supposedly profligate spending. She earned the unfortunate nickname Imelda (after Imelda Marcos) for her reportedly large collection of shoes.

The world's best-known shoe collector, former Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos, has opened a museum in which most of the exhibits are her own footwear.

The Marikina City Footwear Museum in Manila contains hundreds of pairs of shoes, many of them found in the presidential palace when Imelda and her husband, President Ferdinand Marcos, fled the Philippines in 1986

The court was also told about how Helmsley
would frequently put shoes she had bought herself on the business accounts, wear them, then take them back to the store and demand a refund.

There was that now- famous "birthday party for Barbara Amiel"
at New York's La Grenouille, the collection of handbags by Hermes Birkin, or Renaud Pellegrino, including one that cost $42,870 (£21,079), and the 100 pairs of Manolo Blahnik shoes.

Ever since leaving the environment portfolio, Rona Ambrose has unleashed her sense of humour and some fierce shoes -- that night she wore Kenneth Cole leopard print footwear with a blood-red heel.
http://cache.viewimages.com/xc/3252368.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=12F00EB112845DEC2F5BC03E3726BDEBA55A1E4F32AD3138

Oh by the way the PMO now says they have closed the shoe store.



SEE:

The Cone of Silence Over Kyoto



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Unions=Competitiveness


Yep I know it appears counterintuitive but it' s true. Labour and Capital go together like a horse and carriage. Labour produces capital and so a merger like this is the very anti-thesis of the term One Big Union.

In order to be competitive Mr. Anti-Union has made a satanic pact with Mr. Union.

In this case its the grandest merger of them all, between Frank Stronach's Magna and Buzz Hargrove's CAW.

In the global economy corporations and unions are swept up by merger and acquisitions mania. However usually it was corporate mergers or union mergers, now we have a union-corporate merger in order to compete in the global market.

After all that is why they are called 'business' unions. They sell workers labour to the boss.

Auto parts entrepreneur Frank Stronach and Canadian Auto Workers leader Buzz Hargrove have signed a deal allowing the union to organize at Magna International, citing the need to work together in non-traditional ways.

Hargrove said that the two sides have been working for years on developing non -adversarial relationship to help deal with challenges from offshore manufacturers.

Stronach, who founded the company and grew it into Canada's largest auto parts manufacturer, says society needs "checks and balances" and unions help balance the profit motives of companies.


Buzz has now really joined the Liberal family. Literally. After all they both hate Harper.

Canadian Auto Workers leader Buzz Hargrove says he's at least partly to blame for it taking so long to unionize the workers at Magna International . "It's probably more my fault than it is Frank Stronach's," Hargrove said today at a signing ceremony with Stronach, Magna's founder, at the auto parts manufacturer's headquarters in Aurora, Ont.

Frank Stronach, the founder and chairman of the auto parts maker Magna International, urged his 18,000 hourly employees in Canada on Monday to join the Canadian Auto Workers.

Mr. Stronach’s endorsement followed two years of talks that concluded Monday with a formal agreement on how the union would organize the company’s employees. Under its terms, the C.A.W., Canada’s most prominent union, agreed that Magna’s workers would not strike and the company, in turn, waived its right to lock out employees.

The unusual agreement developed from an unsolicited approach Mr. Stronach made to the union’s president, Basil E. Hargrove, in October 2005.

At the expense of the workers he represents.

Magna's union deal: no strikes



Gee that's what Sam Gompers father of business unionism said too;

The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit
The more thoroughly the workers are organized and federated the better they are prepared to enter into a contest, and the more surely will conflicts be averted. Paradoxical as it may appear, it is nevertheless true, that militant trade unionism is essential to industrial peace.

What we have endeavored to secure in industrial relations is industrial peace.
Hey Buzz whatever happened to; "workers control of the means of production?"

Guess Sam Gindin will have to quit ghost writing his socialist articles in the Monthly Review.

Magna, union in `template' pact
CAW secures representation at auto-parts giant in return for suspending workers' right to strike

Magna International Inc. and the Canadian Auto Workers have reached an unprecedented deal that will make union organizing easier at the company's plants here but eliminate the right to strike for several years.

Under the deal, the Aurora-based auto-parts powerhouse will allow workers to decide on union representation at each plant by voting on tentative contracts, instead of experiencing the divisiveness of organizing drives and lingering acrimony.

The deal follows an initiative by Magna chair Frank Stronach more than 1 1/2 years ago to develop a "Framework for Fairness" so the company could improve productivity, innovation and labour relations in North America amid growing competition offshore.

It will give the CAW a major opportunity to gain thousands more members in a sector where its traditional membership and clout have plunged over the past two decades, at slumping General Motors, Ford and Chrysler.

Magna operates 61 manufacturing plants with 20,700 workers in Canada, mostly in southern Ontario.

The union currently represents only about 1,000 workers at three Magna plants.

One reason the CAW never broke into Magna, despite numerous attempts, is that employees were happy with Magna's deferred profit-sharing plan, recreation areas, and daycare facilities, Mr. Lilley said.

For more than a year however, Mr. Stronach has been talking about letting both the Canadian Auto Workers and the United Auto Workers unions in as a way to put aside old management-labour divisions in the North American auto industry and ensure its survival. The hope is that the newfound co-operation could foster a new work model -- and keep auto parts and automaking jobs that might otherwise move to other continents. As Dan Luria, an analyst at the Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center put it, Mr. Stronach "wants to be able to say he remade labour relations in North America."

Unions such as the CAW have become more pragmatic by promoting productivity and other business goals at the same time Magna has warmed up to organized labour, one analyst said yesterday.

It's the final nail in the coffin of the labour movements failed anti-NAFTA campaign.

This merger between the CAW and Magna gives new meaning to North American Union and deep integration.


In practical life we find not only competition, monopoly and the antagonism between them, but also the synthesis of the two, which is not a formula, but a movement. Monopoly produces competition, competition produces monopoly. Monopolists are made from competition; competitors become monopolists. If the monopolists restrict their mutual competition by means of partial associations, competition increases among the workers; and the more the mass of the proletarians grows as against the monopolists of one nation, the more desperate competition becomes between the monopolists of different nations. The synthesis is of such a character that monopoly can only maintain itself by continually entering into the struggle of competition.
Karl Marx
The Poverty of Philosophy
Chapter Two: The Metaphysics of Political Economy


See:

Unions the State and Capital

Chrysler Made In Canada?

Buzz the Protectionist

Steel Merger

Union M&A

Mittal Plays Monopoly

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Monday, October 15, 2007

Sticken It To The Stickman

Don Iveson celebrating his win.
A 28-year-old newcomer has humbled one of Edmonton's best-known politicians

Tonight I joined Daveberta and the Don Iveson campaign for Ward 5 Councilor at the Black Dog on Whyte. What a party. The gang that ran his campaign are all young, university students. They cajoled him to run, they knocked on doors they ran his campaign and in doing so they trounced an incumbent; Mike Nickel the Stickman.

The Stickmen, were anonymous (wink, wink, nudge ,nudge, everyone in the media knew who they were) sleazy political backstabber's. Led by Nickel and a couple of other rich business pals, they attacked and slandered former Mayor Jan Reimer (Edmonton's first woman Mayor who was also an NDP mayor) with anonymous billboard campaigns that managed to get her defeated, narrowly, by their pal Conservative tire salesman and city booster Bill Smith.

Nickel aspired to be Mayor, but settled with being City Councillor last election. His claim to fame as a councilor has been as the mouthpiece for his pals in the Canadian Taxpayers Federation on city council and his biggest cheerleader is Kerry Diotte at the Edmonton Sun.

Wanna build a bigger better art gallery? Forget about such a waste of money says Nickel fix the potholes, forgetting that potholes will have to be fixed again in two years. NYC has potholes too, but nobody cares cause they go there to see the Guggenheim, MOMA, the Empire State building, edifices of culture and architecture. No one comes back from NYC and says wow their streets are paved.

City councilors gave themselves a pay raise. Nickel and his CTF pals and Diotte launched a very public campaign to have council reconsider the raises. Wow using the Sun and all their pull in the city they got a few thousand signatures. Mike gets some press and the issue dies. Oh yes and Mike accepts his raise.

Substance was never Nickel's big suit. Political opportunism, partisan politics, and cheap shot sound bites attacking his fellow councilors to get in the news are what he was all about.

And he lost tonight. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

He lost because his was the politics of protest, right wing protest. Offer no alternatives, no solutions, just bitch and complain, and say look at me.

Don Iveson and his crew of youthful activists ran a campaign of substance and one based on creating a sustainable city. They should be congratulated. No slimy anonymous billboard attacks by them. No slagging their opponents. No grandstanding. Just good old door knocking, leafleting, and getting signs on fences and lawns.

Nickel ran on his laurels, which folks in Ward 5 found lacking. He was all about the politics of Me, and not the politics of community. Which is why he is crying in his beer tonight while those of us at the Black Dog are toasting a victory.

Hey guys and gals congrats. Ya stuck it to the stick man.



SEE:

Municipal Elections




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Grizzly Death

Bloggers Unite - Blog Action Day

Thanks to efforts of environmentalists and Bill Bonko the Liberal MLA, who acted on my suggestion that environmentalists buy Grizzly Hunt lottery licenses and not use them to protest the hunt, the annual Alberta sport hunt (massacre) of Grizzlies was ended. But Grizzlies are still endangered. There are now only 345-500 of them left in the province.

Unfortunately the department in charge of declaring them an endangered species is run by the Great white-hunter reactionary Ted Morton.

Alberta wants kids to get hunting

Declaration of protected spaces is not on his agenda either as he promotes sustainable resource development, which means more intrusion and encroachment into Grizzly habitat for industrial development.

Alberta suspended the annual spring grizzly hunt for three years in 2006 when initial numbers suggested the population was well below the 1,000 bears that had previously been estimated.

But grizzlies are still dying from what biologists term "human-caused mortality." They say that must be addressed soon if grizzlies are to survive.

"We've suspended the hunt, but hunting really isn't the issue," says mountain park carnivore expert Mike Gibeau.

Most grizzlies are shot in self-defence, or are mistaken for black bears. Some are killed legally by aboriginal hunters, others are shot by poachers or thrill-killers.

Some die in highway or railway accidents. Some are destroyed when they become nuisance bears and pose a threat to public safety by barging into people's yards to feast on everything from garbage and grain to apples and pet food.

The national parks aren't safe havens for grizzlies, either. More than 50 have died in Banff, Yoho, Kootenay and Jasper since 1990, mostly in highway and railway accidents or because they posed a threat.

Many Albertans believe that if Alberta loses its grizzlies, it loses the wilderness. The grizzly is seen as an icon of the wild, but more importantly, it is an umbrella species. If its space is protected, other plants and animals will have space to thrive as well.

Officially, grizzlies are considered "a species that may be at risk."

But the Alberta Endangered Species Conservation Committee recommended in 2002 that grizzlies should be designated a "threatened" species under the provincial Wildlife Act. That was based on estimates that there were only 1,000 grizzly bears left in Alberta.

The government has yet to move on that recommendation despite recent surveys that now suggest the number could be less than half that.

Alberta Sustainable Resource Development established a 15-member Grizzly Bear Recovery Team to study the issue and draft a strategy to ensure grizzlies aren't wiped out, as they have been in neighbouring Saskatchewan and jurisdictions further east.

The team presented its report and recommendations in 2005. Sustainable Resource Development Minister Ted Morton is expected to announce his department's response to the plan in the near future. Critics say implementing the plan is long overdue.

Grizzlies live in a narrow band along the province's western boundary, primarily between Highway 16 and Highway 3.

Recent DNA testing has produced estimates that there are about 180 bears in that area, outside the mountain parks, and about 160 bears inside the parks, for a total of about 340 grizzlies. Counts of bears south of Highway 3 and north of Highway 16 haven't been completed, but those areas are not expected to yield high numbers.

"We've been far too casual about the shootings and the deaths of bears," laments Jim Pissot of Defenders of Wildlife Canada. "Now that we're aware that there are far fewer than 500, the onus is on the minister to take immediate steps to protect habitat and bears."

Bear biologists say roads are the biggest factor in grizzly deaths. Most human-caused deaths occur within 500 metres of a road.

As a Republican from California I am sure Mr. Morton would appreciate the Alberta revision of the American second amendment;


























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Policing Mental Illness

Once again we have incompetent untrained police dealing with folks who suffer from mental illness. The result is nearly always tragic. This is apparently becoming more of a problem as folks travel by air, in airports which are now modeled on old style State Security Gulags.

Vancouver RCMP uses Taser and kills man at Vancouver Airport


And this brings up again the dangers of tasers which can be another form of lethal force despite claims to the contrary.


Don’t Faze Me, Bro? Taser Business Rolls

OC inmate dies after being struck by Taser gun
A 28-year-old transient incarcerated at Orange County Jail for drinking in public has died after being subdued with a stun gun, authorities said Saturday.

"He was scheduled to be released today," said Damon Micalizzi, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department. The man's name was withheld pending notification of relatives.

The death was the county's second associated with a Taser gun in a little more than a month.

Officer injured in Taser demonstration

A police officer in the US who volunteered to be the subject of a Taser demonstration has suffered possibly lasting damage, including spine fractures after receiving a five-second discharge, according to a respected medical journal.

The 38-year-old victim was rushed by ambulance to hospital where a scan showed he suffered compression fractures in his spine caused by muscle spasms triggered by being Tasered in a training class.

Nine weeks after his injury he has continued to report significant pain.

Student shocked by school officer's Taser

Did a local school district police officer go too far by shocking an unruly student with a Taser? Some Katy ISD parents are sounding off.

Taser-happy?

The problem is a mind-set that excuses stun-gun abuse

Police Tasers, or stun guns, are the common denominator in a growing list of questionable, sometimes outrageous, incidents of police violence on individuals who appear to pose little danger, and on whom, in the same situations, the police would never take out a gun.

The case of David Shea (see box at right), whom Volusia County Sheriff's deputies Tased repeatedly, in his home, is just one such incident. The case of the University of Florida student who was Tased during a town-hall meeting last month is another. The case of a Flagler County special education student Tased for refusing to leave a classroom last year is another. The list quickly grows long. So does the list of names of victims, now longer than 200, who died when electrocuted by Tasers. The company that makes the guns, and the police agencies that use them, insist the weapons are nonlethal, that the deaths are the result of other causes -- drugs in the victims' systems, for example.


A lesson learnt from Gotbaum case – do not travel by air unless you have to and never lose your patience because they can do anything they like

Commentary: Lacking Mechanisms to Deal With the Mentally Ill

I couldn’t help being shaken by the “accidental death” of Carol Ann Gotbaum, in a holding cell at a Phoenix airport. From what I can gather, she acted in an erratic and irate manner, a similar manner to a mentally ill person in crisis. It brought back memories of friends and acquaintances who are mentally ill and who died either while being restrained or in some other way because of the illness.

It is a universal story that goes along with mental illness that police or other authorities often treat an ill person roughly, and sometimes in a humiliating or even dangerous manner. I have heard a story of a young man in custody who died in the transport van due to overheating. I can remember three other mentally ill who died of a heart attack, either because of their psychotic episode or because of the health problems associated with their medication. I know of several others who committed suicide. Mentally ill people have died while tied down on a four-point restraint table; repeated checking is legally required in California to prevent this. It doesn’t always work.

TOO MUCH DEADLY FORCE?

ANOTHER POLICE SHOOTING FATALITY - AND THE SAME QUESTIONS REMAIN

ONLY A FEW people know what really happened Monday inside Ronald Timbers' home in Crescentville.

And one of them is dead.

Did Timbers, 15, pose such a threat to police and his mother that police had to shoot him in the chest and kill him? Did they try to talk him down and de-escalate the situation? Was he shot at the top of the stairs while holding a clothes iron, or when he charged down the steps toward the police, the iron held over his head like a weapon?

Man shot by police after Aug. chase dies

L.A. police shoot, kill mentally ill man


SEE

Cops and Tasers

Ban Tasers

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This Is Better Than Rent Controls?

Instead of accepting the Government appointed Public Panel on Affordable Housing recommendation that the province introduce rent controls, the government instead did what it loves to do; create a subsidization fund. And as usual with the these kind of Tory schemes this of course was so loosy goosey that it was open to abuse. Not by the users but by the bureaucrats in charge.

And while the internal audit by the department found no fraud, which is irrelevant, what they found was business as usual in this Tired Old Tory government.

And note that the average payment made was $827 dollars while provincial average rental rates are over $1000 per month for a one bedroom apartment. Not only a drop in the proverbial bucket, but less than what is needed for one months rent. And for the rest of the eleven months of they year......nothing. And this is better than rent controls, ha, ha!

Nearly three-in-10 claims granted from a fund to help stave off homelessness were improperly approved -- but no fraud has been found, a provincial audit has concluded.

An internal investigation into the $7-million fund -- which is expected to balloon to $21 million by the end of the year -- found more than $60,000 of the nearly $200,000 put under the microscope was handed out without proper checks and balances.


The Government of Alberta, through Municipal Affairs and Housing, introduced

the Homeless and Eviction Prevention Fund (HEPF) in response to the
recommendations of the Alberta Affordable Housing Task Force. Alberta
Employment Immigration and Industry (AEII) began delivering the program on
May 11, 2007. The program is designed to assist Albertans at risk of losing their
homes due to rent increases and to assist those who require assistance in
establishing a residence.

On July 17, 2007 Global News aired a story alleging that the HEPF was being
abused by individuals presenting inadequate and fraudulent documentation for
rent increases, eviction notices, and utility arrears, and that AEII staff were not
taking sufficient steps to verify the authenticity of the claims. On July 18, 2007,
Minister Evans asked the department’s internal auditors to undertake a review of
the administration of the fund to ensure accountability for the program’s
procedures.

2. Program Description
The Homeless and Eviction Prevention Fund (HEPF) is designed to assist
Albertans with limited resources who are at risk of losing their homes due to rent
increases and to assist those who require assistance in establishing a residence.
The authority to determine eligibility and to provide benefits under the HEPF is
provided under the Income Supports, Health and Training Benefits Regulation.Review the administration of the HEP Fund to ensure compliance with
program directives, policies, and procedures regarding client’s eligibility and
entitlements.

During this period, payments from the HEP Fund totalled $4,866,406 for 5,880 clients for an average of $827 per client


Of the 239 files reviewed from all regions of the province, 171 files (72%) were
processed in accordance with program directives, policies, and procedures. The
documentation (eviction notices, tenancy agreements, notices of arrears, clients’
bank statements, etc.) in these files and staff comments entered into LISA were
sufficiently detailed to support the HEP Fund benefits issued.

In the remaining 68 files the following observations were noted:

• There were 51 files, totalling $50,462 where there was incomplete
documentation detailing the client’s situation for the auditor to confirm that the
client qualified for benefits from the HEP Fund.

• There were 14 files where benefits issued from the HEP Fund were incorrectly
determined resulting in overpayments totalling $6,357. Included in this group
was one case where $3,923 (62% of total overpayments) was incorrectly issued
to cover mortgage arrears. This occurred within 10 days of the start of the
program which suggests the worker may have inadvertently applied the
Income Support policy which allows shelter benefits to be applied to mortgage
arrears.

• Three files totalling $5525 were identified by the audit team for supervisor
review and possible referral to the Investigation and Review Branch. It was
noted that two other files ($2524) of the 171 files processed correctly had
already been referred to the Investigation and Review Branch prior to the
commencement of the audit.


See

The Autumn Of Our Discontent

Transparency Alberta Style

Pay 'Em What They Want

And New York Has Rent Controls

Stelmach Blames Eastern Bums

He Can't Manage

Drumheller Bell Weather

Stelmach Tanks

Alberta Deja Vu

Padrone Me Is This Alberta

Income Trusts

Housing


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The Autumn Of Our Discontent


It appears that the Alberta Advantage is not all it is trumped up to be. At least to Martha and Henry. I guess we are all malcontents now.

a portrait of disquiet reflected in a new Harris-Decima survey of western Canadians conducted for The Canadian Press.

The online survey looked at the attitudes of 1,400 westerners, but found the most angst and unhappiness in Alberta, the province that leads the nation in growth and per capita wealth.

One in four Alberta respondents said they found people in the province generally grumpier and less civil compared with two years ago.

And despite multibillion-dollar budget surpluses and a provincewide construction boom to try to accommodate the teeming inflow of newcomers:

-24 per cent said the post-secondary education has worsened.

-28 per cent said grade-school education has deteriorated.

-51 per cent said their community has not improved or, in some cases, even worsened.

-70 per cent said there has been no improvement in their family's health and well-being.

The survey, conducted Sept. 10-12, is considered accurate within 2.6 percentage points 19 times out of 20. When just the 350 Alberta respondents are counted, the sampling error is plus or minus 5.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

So I guess a Fall/Winter election is not a good idea for Prince Eddie.

Don't Let Big Oil Set Our Royalty Rates make sure Ed hears from you

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Dialectics, Nature and Science

Bloggers Unite - Blog Action Day

A defense of dialectical materialist science.

Notes and Fragments for Dialectics of Nature. Engels 1883

Dialectics in Nature?

Is Nature Dialectical?

Dialectics and Modern Science

Towards a New Dialectics of Nature

JOSEPH DIETZGEN (1828-1888)

Joseph Dietzgen Internet Archive, also see: Joseph Dietzgen and the History of Marxism
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Ambartsumian, Arp and the Breeding Galaxies

Apeiron, Vol. 12, No. 2, April 2005

In the case of terrestrial nature we observe that matter, life, history
and thought evolve through a series of revolutionary changes
(qualitative leaps) according to the dialectical law of the negation of
the negation or a triad of thesis—antithesis—synthesis mediated by
chance and necessity, and brought forth through the conflict of the
opposites or the contradiction of heredity and adaptation in its very
own units. Chance is blind only when it is not realized in a necessity.
If a seed from a plant falls on a stone or by chance carried to the
moon, it will not grow there, because there is no necessity for it, i.e.,
no scope of its further development. So this chance is sterile and
things end there. But when a chance brings the same seed into a fertile
soil, it develops due to the exacerbation of the conflict of the
opposites within the seed, it negates itself into a plant, which in turn
negates itself (the negation of the negation) to give an increased
quantity of the seed itself. All change, motion, development in this
view proceeds through nodal points or leaps (governed by specific
laws) where dialectical opposites either mutually annihilate each other
or are sublated (aufheben) into a new synthesis and so on (the
negation of the negation) and where changes in quantity leads to a
qualitative change and vice versa. It is the task of natural science to
discover these specific laws and not to impose laws on nature created
in the brain of man.

A dialectical view of the universe as proposed recently (Apeiron,
Vol 10, No. 2. 165-173(2003)) can provide a plausible basis for an
understanding of the evolution of the galaxies in particular and the
phenomenology of the cosmos in general. According to this view,
matter in the form of elementary particles comes into being and
passes out of existence (with a finite amount being present at any
particular time) as a dialectical and quantum mechanical necessity in
the universe, which is void and infinite in space and time. Persuasive
evidence from quantum electrodynamics suggests that virtual
particles inhabit empty space with an increasing concentration close
to an atomic nucleus. Some of these virtual particles can become real
(and the real pass back to virtual) as chance events and necessities, by
tunneling effects, and/or as pair production by quantum fluctuation in
the vacuum and so on, to give rise to both matter and antimatter. Out
of the innumerable possibilities, the law of chance and necessity
determines which particles eventually prevail. Chance accumulation
of matter and/or antimatter at certain points can then provide the seeds
for further growth and development of galaxies, following physical
laws. Since the appearance/disappearance of matter is enhanced
where mass concentration is high, the galactic centers form the most
active sites where new matter accumulates and these centers become
the theatre where other random and periodic cosmic events can
manifest themselves, such as those that we see as the Active Galactic
Nuclei (AGNs), quasars, etc. This basic process then can form the
fundamental dynamics through which the universe evolves.
Everything in this universe from the galaxies to man are

Dynamic logic:

At the dawn of science, Heraclitus introduced the concepts of becoming and union of opposites as principles that govern reality and hence should govern thought. Similar process views had been developed by Buddhist and Taoist philosophers ("Tao," becoming as the cosmic law, is the Chinese equivalent of logos). The recognition of evolution in cosmology, biology, and history, has recreated an interest in the process approach. Evolutionary science requires a process logic that deals with action and change, not stable entities; with actual oppositions, not abstract separation of opposites; and with creative processes in nature and thought, not only linearly determined causality and implication. Quantum mechanics also suggests a departure from traditional logic insofar as it postulates that (1) the universe is made up of quanta of action (Plank constant); (2) particle and wave properties coexist (principle of complementarity) [1]; and (3) interactions create qualitative, non-linear leaps.

Although process philosophies have been also developed by Spencer, Whitehead and Teilhard du Chardin, a process approach to logic is largely limited to the dialectics developed by Hegel. Dialectic logic, which in our century came to be fostered almost exclusively by Marxist thinkers, had the advantage of recognizing empirical facts essential to scientific understanding which are obscured and denied by mathematical logic, namely, the ever present becoming (so an entity becomes unequal to itself), the existence of coexisting opposites in nature, history, and mind (denied by the principle of no contradiction), and the existence and generation of a multiplicity of alternatives (excluded as third cases). On the other hand, dialectic logic was not mathematically formulated except in very partial ways, and by a limited number of thinkers [11, 17, 26-28]. Some systems theorists [42] and trialectics [14] have explicitly incorporated dialectic logic. Temporal [25], and fuzzy [16] logic, may also be understood as partial formalizations of dialectic logic under another name.

The Dogmatic Dialectic and the Critical Dialectic

Scientific research can in fact be unaware of its own principal features. Dialectical knowledge, in contrast, is knowledge of the dialectic. For science, there is not any formal structure, nor any implicit assertion about the rationality of the universe: Reason is developing and the mind prejudges nothing. In complete contrast, the dialectic is both a method and a movement in the object. For the dialectician, it is grounded on a fundamental claim both about the structure of the real and about that of our praxis. We assert simultaneously that the process of knowledge is dialectical, that the movement of the object (whatever it may be) is itself dialectical, and that these two dialectics are one and the same. Taken together, these propositions have a material content; they themselves are a form of organised knowledge, or, to put it differently, they define a rationality of the world.

Igor I. Kondrashin - Dialectics of Matter (Part I)

"The universe always contains the same quantity of motion." - R. Descartes.
"The motion is the only way of existence of matter. There was nowhere and never and there is no matter without motion... Matter without motion is as inconceivable as motion without matter. Therefore the motion is as increatable and undestroyable as matter itself - ... : the quantity of existing motion in the universe is always the same." - F. Engels.
"There is nothing in the universe except matter in motion." - V.I. Lenin.
These three postulating quotations put the corner-stones to our cognition of the general theory of evolution of the universe.
So Matter is the objective reality, the nature of which are different forms of motion, being itself her attribute. Hence there is nothing in the universe except motion, all existing construction material is motion. Matter is woven with motion. Any particle of any substance is a regulated motion of micro motions; any event is a determinated motion of elements of the system of motions. It is possible to resolve mentally any phenomena, events or substance into different forms of motion as well as out of different forms of motion in conformity with certain Laws it is possible to synthesize any phenomena, event or substance of Matter. Therefore in order to know how it happens it is necessary to learn the Laws, that regulate different forms of motion of Matter.

Dialectic, Systems, and Organization: The Philosophical Implications of the New Science

By Anthony Mansueto

Abstract:

There has been growing interest in recent years in the philosophical implications of complex systems theory and such related disciplines as cybernetics, artificial life, and artificial intelligence. Among theorists working in this area, there is a growing tendency to regard complex systems theory as providing scientific sanction for what amounts to a sophisticated neoliberal philosophy centered on "the spontaneous emergence of higher levels of organization or control (metasystem transitions) through blind variation and natural selection (Principia Cybernetica Project, Symposium on the Evolution of Complexity, Call for Papers)." This interpretation of complex systems theory has its roots in the "negentropic" or "information theoretical" interpretation of organization first advanced by von Neumann, Shannon and Weaver, and finds parallels in the positivistic interpretation of the new physics advanced by Frank Tipler (1986, 1989) among others.

This paper will argue that the neoliberal interpretation of complex systems theory is marked by serious errors. Neoliberal interpereters of complex systems theory fail to situate the new discipline properly in the context of equally important developments in physics (unified field theories) and biology (especially postdarwinian theories which stress the role of problem solving genetic algorithms and symbiosis, as against blind variation and natural selection in the evolutionary process). There are powerful theoretical and empirical grounds to support the idea that competition and natural selection (whether in the ecosystem or in the marketplace) are not only an inadequate basis for explaining development, but in fact hold back the emergence of dynamic, organized complexity.

The paper will advance an alternative dialectical interpretation of the new science (including complex systems theory). Specifically it will argue for

a) a radical, dialectical holism which recognizes being as system, structure, and organization, and treats "things" (particles, individuals) as merely the nodes at which complex relationships intersect,

b) a cosmology which stresses the role of underlying, implicit structures, complex relational interaction, and emerging conscious creativity rather than blind variation and natural selection as the motive force behind the emergence of complex organization and thus the whole cosmohistorical evolutionary process, and

c) a theory of value grounded in the immanent teleology of the cosmos itself, in which complex organization, and not the survival of particular elements, is the telos and thus the highest value of the system.


A Philosophical Naturalism

With a few notable exceptions, the Platonic dualism of identity and change reverberated in one way or another throughout Western philosophy until the nineteenth century, when Hegel's logical works largely resolved this paradox by systematically showing that identity, or self-persistence, actually expresses itself through change as an ever-variegated unfolding of "unity in diversity," to use his own words.2 The grandeur of Hegel's effort has no equal in the history of Western philosophy. Like Aristotle before him, he had an "emergent" interpretation of causality, of how the implicit becomes explicit through the unfolding of its latent form and possibilities. On a vast scale over the course of two sizable volumes, he assembled nearly all the categories by which reason explains reality, and educed one from the other in an intelligible and meaningful continuum that is graded into a richly differentiated, increasingly comprehensive, or "adequate" whole, to use some of his terms.

We may reject what Hegel called his "absolute idealism," the transition from his logic to his philosophy of nature, his teleological culmination of the subjective and objective in a godlike "Absolute," and his idea of a cosmic Spirit (Geist). Hegel rarefied dialectical reason into a cosmological system that verged on the theological by trying to reconcile it with idealism, absolute knowledge, and a mystical unfolding logos that he often designated "God." Unfamiliar with ecology, Hegel rejected natural evolution as a viable theory in favor of a static hierarchy of Being. By the same token, Friedrich Engels intermingled dialectical reason with natural "laws" that more closely resemble the premises of nineteenth-century physics than a plastic metaphysics or an organismic outlook, producing a crude dialectical materialism. Indeed, so enamored was Engels of matter and motion as the irreducible "attributes" of Being that a kineticism based on mere motion invaded his dialectic of organic development.

To dismiss dialectical reason because of the failings of Hegel's idealism and Engels's materialism, however, would be to lose sight of the extraordinary coherence that dialectical reason can furnish and its extraordinary applicability to ecology--particularly to an ecology rooted in evolutionary development. Despite Hegel's own prejudices against organic evolution, what stands out amid the metaphysical and often theological archaisms in his work is his overall eduction of logical categories as the subjective anatomy of a developmental reality. What is needed is to free this form of reason from both the quasi-mystical and the narrowly scientistic worldviews that in the past have made it remote from the living world; to separate it from Hegel's empyrean, basically antinaturalistic dialectical idealism and the wooden, often scientistic dialectical materialism of orthodox Marxists. Shorn of both its idealism and its materialism, dialectical reason may be rendered naturalistic and ecological and conceived as a naturalistic form of thinking.

This dialectical naturalism offers an alternative to an ecology movement that rightly distrusts conventional reason. It can bring coherence to ecological thinking, and it can dispel arbitrary and anti-intellectual tendencies toward the sentimental, cloudy, and theistic at best and the dangerously antirational, mystical, and potentially reactionary at worst. As a way of reasoning about reality, dialectical naturalism is organic enough to give a more liberatory meaning to vague words like interconnectedness and holism without sacrificing intellectuality. It can answer the questions I posed at the beginning of this essay: what nature is, humanity's place in nature, the thrust of natural evolution, and society's relationship with the natural world. Equally important, dialectical naturalism adds an evolutionary perspective to ecological thinking--despite Hegel's rejection of natural evolution and Engels's recourse to the mechanistic evolutionary theories of a century ago. Dialectical naturalism discerns evolutionary phenomena fluidly and plastically, yet it does not divest evolution of rational interpretation. Finally, a dialectic that has been "ecologized," or given a naturalistic core, and a truly developmental understanding of reality could provide the basis for a living ecological ethics.


"The Attack on Mead and the Dialectics of Anthropology" (1990)

The well-publicized attack by Derek Freeman (1983) on the Margaret Mead study of Samoa (1928) has raised a number of questions about anthropological research and communication, ranging from professional ethics to the dialectical understanding of science. These questions involve substantive matters as well as methodological canons. Now we have the long-awaited assessment of the Mead-Freeman controversy by Lowell Holmes (1987), a valuable intervention that provides answers to a number of these questions, especially those relating to professional and substantive issues. Their two books are briefly reviewed in panels on the facing page. Here we focus on some areas of philosophical interest in the development of U.S. anthropology: the history and role of the doctrine of `falsifiability' in anthropology and in the sciences in general, the relationship between Boasian anthropology and biologism, and the relation between both these doctrines and historical materialism.

To anticipate somewhat, we will first show how the `falsifiability' canon has a longer and perhaps more interesting history than the popular accolades to Karl Popper would acknowledge, and that it entails a dialectical conception of science and its development. Next, in light of these dialectical considerations, we will show that Boasian anthropology is indeed the negation -- the simple negation -- of biologism. While giving our attention to such biologistic contemporaries of Franz Boas as Herbert Spencer and Karl Pearson, we remark that today's chic variant of the same biologism is called "sociobiology." Finally, the dialectical negation of both these doctrines (biologism and Boasian anthropology) is shown to be social evolutionism and its philosophical recapitulation, historical and dialectical materialism.

Thus, as class struggle intensified during the later decades of the 19th Century, we see that Socialism, Marxism, historical materialism, Morgan's social evolutionism, etc. -- virtually any aspect of science revealing the significance of dialectics -- all became increasingly disreputable in `higher circles.' And their reputations in those circles only worsened with the onset of the general crisis of capitalism and the Bolshevik Revolution. As evidence of the latter, we find the persons and the periods hopelessly confounded. For instance, we find Engels described as "the most explicit Bolshevik spokesman" (Leslie and Kerman, 1985:116), though he died in 1895, some years before the 1903 split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. The primary task of `reputable' academics in the West -- and even aspiring academics -- came to be the promotion of doctrines and Metaphysical Worldviews which did not threaten the bourgeois order. Thus the popularity for both the two competing approaches of Boasian anthropology and biologism.

All this bears on our understanding and practice today, as the 20th Century wanes and along with it, Imperialism as well. As we have seen throughout this essay, it is essential to recognize the dialectical considerations and implications of science and its development. We must first assess the ideological significance of a discipline such as anthropology -- as well as its artifacts (e.g. monographs, essays, etc.) -- in class terms, and only then weigh the merits of the controversies between the several forms of apologetics and obfuscations. And that caveat seems to bear on our understanding of the anthropology of the 1980's no less than that of the 1880's.

SEE:

Engels Was Right

Dialectics of Extinction

(r)Evolutionary Theory

Dialectical Science-JBS Haldane


Dialectical Anthropology-AP Alexeev

Design Yes But Not ID

A Lesson in Mutual Aid

For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing

Goldilocks Enigma

9 Minute Nobel Prize


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