Cheap Smokes

Lot's of folks get upset when gas prices go up. Amongst those of us who smoke we are always looking for a deal just like them folks buying gas.

And thanks to the competition to get our bucks the oligopolies that are Big Tobacco are willing to provide us with cheaper and cheaper smokes. as the State taxes and taxes them, while the Anti-Smoking lobby fumes and fusses over ways to stop us smoking.

For you smokers in Alberta, and this applies in other areas of Canada as well, here are two cheap brands.

The new kid on the block this month is John Player Standard; Blue and Silver, they have eliminated the term 'light' (due to a court ruling saying it was deceptive advertising which it is since the light brands had MORE nictone than the standard) . Which retails in some parts of Alberta for $62 a carton, GST included,whether in 20's or 25's.

The next cheapest is my favorite union label brand, Canadian. It carries the union bug for the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco workers & Grain Millers union. Which is $64 a carton 20's or 25's, GST included.

So while other brands for sell for anywhere from $7.50-$9 a pack before GST, these are selling for just over $6 a pack. That's like the price from a decade ago!

And the reason for these cheap brands? Why competition. The very nature of the market and capitalism.

Press release: 22 per cent of cigarettes smoked in Canada are illegal

Hot trail leads to cigarettes -ON

Sun, March 4, 2007

By JOE MATYAS, SUN MEDIA

The search for cheap smokes in the area includes smuggling and contraband

Every three weeks or so, Rita and her spouse take a half-hour drive from London to a local First Nations community to buy cheap cigarettes.

In Rita's house, every penny counts. With a modest family income, $70 for a carton of brand-name cigarettes is a steep price to pay for "one of the simple pleasures of life." On the reserve, Rita can buy 200 no-name, untaxed, machine-rolled cigarettes with filter tips in a plastic bag for about $8.

In Edmonton cigarettes still retail in bars, lounges and cigarette machines for price c$10-$12 a pack, despite a wide variety of cheaper brands being available. That' a 100% mark up! Why doesn't Jim Flaherty say something about that, eh?
After all tobacco is a domestic product and industry in Canada.

In 2001, the total revenue from tobacco exports to the USA and the E.E.C combined is over $140 million (140, 535, 000). In other words, Canada sells far more tobacco domestically than is exported abroad. Three large tobacco companies dominate the cigarette market in Canada: Imperial Tobacco Canada Limited, Rothmans, Benson & Hedges Incorporated, and JTI-Macdonald Corporation. In 1999-2000, their combined net sales was approximately $3 billion. Imperial is the largest, followed by RBH and then JTI-Macdonald. Health Canada’s Tobacco Control Programme has compiled cigarette sales data for 2001-2002 on the three major cigarette companies for each province and the total for Canada. For the year ending December 2002, the “big three” combined sales was $3.2 billion

Oh right of all the horrors of capitalism, smoking is the worst.


SEE:

Casablanca R Rated

Anti-Smoking Hypocrites

Punishing the Victim

Forget Cigarettes Ban Asbestos

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The Return of Harry Strom

Fellow progressive blogger Ken Chapman whom the National Post called a Left Wing Conservative says that Farmer Ed's TV speech last night is the return of the Progressive Conservatives. What he really means is the Peter Lougheed Conservatives.

Premier Stelmach Brought Progressive Conservative Politics Back to Alberta Tonight

Well it sure did sound like the platitudes voiced by the old Lougheed government. However he is so bland and boring that despite the Lougheed platitudes he is actually the ghost of Harry Strom.

Nice try Ken. But you can't make a purse out of a sows ear. Or compare the dynamism that was Alberta in 1971 under Lougheed with the dour dull plodding regime of Tired Old Tories that now rules. Nice try though. And congrats for getting quoted in the Pest.



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God bless Alberta

Taking a tact used by Stephen Harper this is how Farmer Ed ended his TV broadcast last night with this little homilie; And God bless Alberta. Hoping to appeal to Ted Morton's supporters I suppose. Since we are an oil state he should have been more inclusive and also said Allah bless Alberta, heck even Yod Heh Vau Heh bless Alberta as a sop to Ezra and his pals. All these are just another way of saying God. Whoever she is.

On the other hand the God of Capitalism is Mammon, and considering Ed is the servant of Big Oil perhaps that's whom was referring to.




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Alberta Election In The Offing

Here is the slogan Alberta CEO Ed Stelmach and his Tired Old Tories will be using in the upcoming election he prepared us for in his Ed TV show last night; The Future Is Bright" and " Our Future is Secure"

The future of our province is indeed bright."

We will secure Alberta’s future.

We need new ideas — new attitudes — to secure Alberta’s future.

In the case of the last slogan there was nothing new in his speech last night, no new ideas, nor any new commitments. It was Forward To The Past. It was a pre-election announcement speech. And it didn't fail to disappoint.

Add these possible Election slogans;

we will get it done!

sound and practical environmental vision.

And this one; Strong communities built with strong families.

Strong communities are much more than roads and buildings.

They’re built with strong families.

Suddenly I am having a flashback to 1971 and Peter Lougheed.

Central to our future prosperity is a commitment to add value to our traditional strengths in energy, agriculture, forestry, tourism, and health sciences.

We must build on those strengths, and develop new areas of promise.

This will involve making choices — and even taking some risks.

But being timid and doing nothing is a far greater threat to our future.

The diversification of our economy will be driven by the creativity and innovation of Albertans.

While we all waited with baited breathe in anticipation of the much predicted announcement on Oil Royalties, it didn't come last night. Near the end of his forty minute snoozer that we got told that the government would take decisive action but we have to wait till later today to find out what it is says Mr. Ed. Big Oils Talking Horse.

As I’m sure you know, the review panel delivered their recommendations a few weeks ago. I made their report public as soon as we received it — so that it could receive the widest possible public debate.

And that’s certainly happened.

We’ve taken the time to give this important issue the serious thought Albertans would expect from their government.

And we’ve taken the time to get it right.

Now we’re ready to take decisive action.

Tomorrow we’ll be releasing details of a new royalty framework. One that delivers the fair share Albertans rightly expect from the development of their resources.

The Royalty report was released a month ago, giving the Big Oil Lobby lots of time to create a climate of fear. And Ed is trembling. And what do you think he will announce. Well it won't be anything the Royalty Report recommends. As he told us in his wrap up. And of course he will be announcing his historic betrayl of the Volk of Alberta in Calgary with the Petro-Towers of Big Oil as his backdrop.

A province where government gets out of your way — and where you can keep the fruits of your hard work.

That’s my promise as your Premier.

So if you snoozed through his bland, milquetoast TV show last night you didn't miss anything. It was all platitudes and homilies spun by Farmer Ed. Paid for by you and I as it was broadcast on CTV. And it didn't get broadcast on radio.

Also passing strange it was not broadcast on the hour. It wasn't broadcast at 6pm or 6:30 pm but at 6:40. So if you were channel flipping looking for it well it was easy to miss, just like so much this Tired Old Government does. It came right after the weather report which reflects the farmer mentality of our Premier.

He is a lame duck Premier like his historic predecessor that other farmer Premier; Harry Strom. And his decision on Royalties will determine if he will repeat Harry's folly. So far he has been true to script.

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Canadian Blue Lemons Closed To The Public

Brian Lemon of Canadian Blue Lemon spends his time attacking the Liberals and liberal bias in the media.

Canadian Blue Lemons

Brian Lemon

Liberal Party::Criticism [27%]

But last weekend he changed his tune and attacked the Harpocrites in Ottawa and their Blogging Tory sycophants.

Now it seems Blogging Tory Canadian Blue Lemons seems to have closed his blog in response to the popularity his comments have garnered from fans amongst Progressive and conservative non-BT Bloggers. Too bad.

This blog is open to invited readers only

Canadian Blue Lemons
http://canadianbluelemons.blogspot.com/

It doesn't look like you have been invited to read this blog. If you think this is a mistake, you might want to contact the blog author and request an invitation.

Probably because he said this;

"The problem is that the Conservative Party of Canada as it is, is pretty much run by rural, white men as the Reform Party was. Old Reformers that we thought had retired to mansions in Beverly Hills or Phoenix. Men who only ever visit a big city to raise money. I was bothered by claims by two old white farts - Tom Flanagan and Doug Finley - seeming to take credit for Blogging Tories."

Censorship is a terrible thing.

Could the powers that be have sent him a note from the PMO? Or Mr. Flanagan's lawyers? Could the echo chamber on the right have so over reacted that he felt the need to shut down? Inquiring minds want to know.

Lemon of Canadian Blue Lemons has posted some really, really good critiques of the Conservative Party of Canada over the past week or so and judging by the comments he’s getting it’s come as a slap in the face for a few of his loyal readers.

Self censorship is worse, because we will never know why he closed his blog to the public and his new adoring fans. And it's even more ironic when you consider he posted this today.

Blog Flux Site Details Current Rank: 88 (Politics)
URL: http://canadianbluelemons.blogspot.com
Site Description: A forum to express opinions on the thoughts and actions of do-gooder liberal humanists who know all the answers but very few of the questions and know what's best for everyone not having asked anyone.
Date Joined: Oct 24, 2007

Yep self censorship is a terrible thing to behold. So here is the whole of his post courtesy of Google Cache.

Friday, October 19, 2007

Lemon: Old Reformers Run Conservative Party

Before I go any further with this, I wish to declare that I am a Conservative and that I am a strong supporter of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

I once was a Liberal and when I left the party in 1996 (for what were good reasons), like an ex-smoker, I became a fanatical opponent. In Canada this means I became a Reformer (being a Tory wasn't within the definition of reason at the time). The union of the post-Reform Alliance with the Progressive Conservative Party to create the CPC offered great promise; I could be for responsible, fiscally efficient government but also allow for my belief in living and letting live.

I was okay with this and have been a partisan Tory ever since. Until I opened the book and looked beyond it's cover.

This didn't happen until an election was won, barely, a new campaign was underway and I started looking at the real politics behind the noise. I wondered why the Conservative Party has not gained a national consensus to rule the country in perpetuity. With an incompetent Liberal Party following a corrupt Liberal ruling party, what stopped Canadians from electing 200 or more CPC MPs?

With an outstanding Prime Minister and a spectacular Speech from the Throne I wondered why the public were still reticent to plunk blue signs all over their lawns. Why didn't Canadians embrace the CPC the way I did?

The problem is that the Conservative Party of Canada as it is, is pretty much run by rural, white men as the Reform Party was. Old Reformers that we thought had retired to mansions in Beverly Hills or Phoenix. Men who only ever visit a big city to raise money. I was bothered by claims by two old white farts - Tom Flanagan and Doug Finley - seeming to take credit for Blogging Tories.

I remembered the "Wisdom of the Masses". People can sense a problem without knowing the details.

I checked out the website. There are 18 members of the CPC Council. 18 are white. 3 are women. 3 have French names.

This is the organization that runs the Conservative Party. So much for inclusion.
The President is a plumber from a Manitoba town of 1500 surely honest souls. Another member is a fish monger from BC. Another, seemingly, an eternal Conservative volunteer from Edmonton. A fourth a farmer for 35 years in Saskatchewan. You can check out the rest on your own - many don't have a search result on Google which speaks volumes on its own. There are a handful of people who are big city urban. Providing you only have three fingers on your hand.

Want Proof? Click here. In the CPC Council you are not allowed to not toe the line. Small town Manitoba trumps big city Montreal.

The Campaign Director, Doug Finley, was a former Reformer who is the husband of the MP from Haldimand Norfolk (wherever that is). He was behind the minority that turned into a defeat in 2004 and the majority that turned into a minority in 2006. Reports are out there that reports on Mr. Finley's background in Scotland as a Marxist and a Separatist, and as the searcher for desperate political campaigns in need. He scored big with the new Tories. He was the force behind Garth Turner's expulsion from caucus (which I supported). He was also mentioned in this article in The Post that dealt with bribery allegations in Ottawa. Stories I read lead me to believe that Finley thinks that this is his party and that Stephen Harper is just a tenant.

These are the people behind the crown. Those who decide what policies that the Party should run with and who should be the party's candidates.

And, frankly, this is not a governing Council that I can support.

As a Conservative I expect a party with no hint of behind the scene deals conducted by staff. I expect absolute egalitarianism - acceptance of any member of the Party as an equal. I expect the composition of the Council to fairly represent needs and preferences of all Canadians. I expect inclusion. And this gang ain't it.
It's the same group that was rejected by Canada a few years ago.
Allegations of "Hidden Agendas?" Small wonder with Finley et al in control.

Posted by Lemon at 9:10 PM 30 comments

SEE:

Leo Strauss and the Calgary School

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Carmen

Went to the Edmonton Opera's presentation of Bizet's Modernist Opera; Carmen last night. It's one of my fav's. it's an opera that has all of my favorite themes; the rise of the proletariat who are cigarette factory girls, who smoked on stage, wanted to light one up in solidarity.

Carmen is a scarlet woman, a gypsy and a witch, she is an independent proto-feminist declaring her belief in free love. She is a threat to the patriarchal male and thus she must be destroyed. It was a social statement that still carries much meaning even today.

And it's an Opera that has more hit singles than the average rock n roll album.

The opera was premiered at the Opéra Comique of Paris on March 3, 1875. For a year after its premiere, it was considered a failure, denounced by critics as "immoral" and "superficial".

The story concerns the eponymous Carmen, a beautiful gypsy with a fiery temper. Free with her love, she woos the corporal Don José, an inexperienced soldier. Their relationship leads to his rejection of his former love, mutiny against his superior, turn to a criminal life, and ultimate jealous murder of Carmen. Although he is briefly happy with Carmen, he falls into madness when she turns from him to the bullfighter Escamillo.

Georges Bizet’s opera, Carmen, is one of the most beloved operas of all-time. It is a French opera with a libretto by Henry Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy that is based on the novel by the same name, written by author Prosper Mérimée. Bizet found great opposition to the work, as many at the time found the plot of the opera to be “immoral.” Carmen, first performed in 1875 at the Opéra-Comique in Paris in 1875, broke new dramatic ground for French opera as it moved away from opera buffa, or comic opera, towards a more profound and tragic story. Bizet did not live to see that his work, once highly controversial, was to become one of the most often performed operas in the world.

Fans (Malcolm McLaren album) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Most people, if they get the chance, have to settle for one great achievement in the cultural arena. Not for Malcolm McLaren. Besides being an imperialistic cultural plunderer (a non-judgmental designation), he is one of rock's true visionaries. His role in the formation and promotion of the Sex Pistols has been construed as everything from inspired instigator to Machiavellian manipulator, and his solo career has been as influential as it has been criticized: he tends to bring out the moral indignation in people. A brilliant carpetbagger whose precise talents — beyond aestheticism and the canny ability to peg influential trends in a wide panorama (fashion, retail, politics, music, art, film, literature) early enough to exploit them as a pioneer rather than a bandwagon-jumper — are difficult to pin down, McLaren has made himself the star of his own entrepreneurial undertakings. Despite the odds stacked against him mounting a successful recording career (that he's not exactly a musician is high on the problems list), McLaren has crafted a bizarrely significant oeuvre of high-concept adventures. It's hard to say just what McLaren does as an artist. He's more an assembler than a creator, piecing together artifacts from various musical cultures in such a way that, at the end of the day, his own input seems invisible. And yet his perspective as hip outsider has continued to provide a link between his Anglo-American audience and Third World forms. If McLaren's a musical tourist, these records are his home movies.

His next venture was exponentially more improbable. Feeding classic opera into a hip-hop blender, McLaren came up with the surprisingly entertaining Fans. McLaren mainly uses opera for its recitative form and story lines (namely Carmen, Madam Butterfly and Turandot) and, damn it, the thing works more often than not.

Opera and Pop Culture

When Luciano Pavarotti recently passed away, opera lost not only a magnificent voice, but also an ambassador. While the average person (myself included) has a limited knowledge of opera, the world knew Pavarotti. Millions of people watched “The Three Tenors”, whether in thrilling live performances or via video and television. But Pavarotti also stepped out of the opera world to enter the realm of pop culture. Take a jog through the internet and you’ll find performances with James Brown, U2 and the Spice Girls. His various television appearances include Saturday Night Live and he even starred in a movie (the critically lambasted film “Yes, Giorgio”). And that got me thinking about an experiment that tried to weld together opera and pop culture.
In 1984, the single “Madame Butterfly” hit the Top Twenty charts in England and with it, the release called “Fans”. The mastermind behind “Fans” was Malcolm McLaren, an artist who had a bit of notoriety in his career. McLaren was the manager of the Sex Pistols and depending on the point of view, was involved with the formation and promotion of the band. Malcolm also handled Adam Ant, raiding his backing band to put together Bow Wow Wow. But when the 1980s rolled around, McLaren decided to become an artist himself.
“Fans” was an interesting hybrid of opera and hip-hop. This was hip-hop circa 1984 and he relied more on the beat than anything. With the hip-hop backdrop, McLaren would mix it together with the story line and arias of famous operas. Simple programmed drum beats along with a synthesized melody and an operatic soprano or tenor floating on top of it.
“Fans” was a fairly short undertaking as the album consisted of only six tracks clocking in at just over 30 minutes. McLaren stayed with familiar operas with five of the tracks based on Puccini operas (two from “Madame Butterfly”) while the remaining track used Bizet’s “Carmen” as a starting point. To further flesh out the album, McLaren adapted the storylines into English, then personally provided narration (he left the actual singing to the professionals) as he takes the role of several characters.

In hindsight, opera and hip-hop seem to be a good match because of the element of tragedy that exists in both. However, the overall experiment turned out to be a partial success, mostly in England. The single “Madame Butterfly” received some praise from the critics and as earlier mentioned, was also a hit. However, critics weren’t as nice about “Fans”, considering it simply padding for the single. That wouldn’t stop McLaren from continuing his musical career as he had a few more hits in the U.K. although he left opera behind.

The concept of the East Village Opera Company is totally fresh, but not unprecedented in pop. In 1985, for example, former punk-rock impresario Malcolm McLaren released Fans, an album of "hip-hopera" that brought funky beats and electronic programming to the works of Puccini and Bizet. But EVOC is a whole new thing: an integrated, eleven-strong working band dedicated to rocking the opera and electrifying the classics, as the ensemble has been doing to spectacular effect ever since its New York stage debut in the spring of 2004.

SEE:

Labour, Opera and Anarchy

Acoustic Ecology

What's Opera Doc

Tax Time and Walpurgisnacht

Daniel Barenboim's Dream

Classical Rock

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Cinema of Anarchy

This week we are blogging about Revolutionary and Anarchist films, movies, DVD's etc. at the Carnival of Anarchy.

I have posted on some of my favorite films and libertarian perspectives on Film. And will continue to do so through the week.



See my previous posts on Carnival of Anarchy.

See:

Battleship Potemkin

Sacco and Vanzetti

V for Anarchy

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History Of Slave Ships

Atlantic Historian (history of the sea and colonization) Marcus Rediker, who authored the 'must read ' The Many Headed Hydra, has a new book out on Slave Ships since this is the 300th anniversary of the beginning of the end of Slavery.

For capitalism to expand, forced conscripted labour would be replaced with a new form of exploitation; wage slavery. Which itself was evolving from both indentured servitude and slavery during this period.

Rediker takes a libertarian socialist view of the Atlantic trade and its importance in the creation of global capitalism continuing the social/labour history tradition developed by E.P. Thompson in creating approachable and readable works.

Over more than three centuries, more than 12 million Africans were loaded on ships, bound for the Americas to be slaves.

Aboard the slaver, or Guineaman, as the vessels were also known, the kidnapped Africans frequently had to travel in living quarters as cramped as coffins, and suffered savage beatings, outright torture and death to quell uprisings and forced dancing to keep them fit.

While the plantation system and other aspects of slavery have been widely studied, the history of the slave ship itself is largely unknown, says historian Marcus Rediker, author of "The Slave Ship — A Human History."

"What I'm basically interested in is how captains, ship captains, officers, sailors and the slave interacted with the slave ship. What was the actual reality? Of course, it was quite horrifying," said Rediker, a University of Pittsburgh history professor. "In many respects, the development of the Americas through slavery and the plantation system is unthinkable without the slave ship."

For a couple hundred years, most people thought they knew what happened during the Atlantic crossing, Rediker says. Abolitionists had produced evidence of life aboard slave ships, but many scholars were suspicious of what they'd gathered, thinking it propaganda.

Perhaps the most significant reason for lack of scholarship, he says, is an assumption that "history happens on land, that the landed masses of the world are the real places and that the seas in between are a kind of void."

Marcus Rediker escapes the 'the violence of abstraction' in this history of slave ships that richly mines the extant writings of captains, sailors and slaves.

But, as promised, this account of life aboard the "vast machines" is not told with charts and tables. The slave ship, as a floating factory, prison and weapon, was recognized by all as a world-altering technology. Rediker's sources include parliamentary hearings, abolitionist pamphlets and the extant writings of captains, sailors and slaves. Chained below decks aboard what some imagined were "houses with wings," Africans were already, according to Rediker, forging new communities.

The slave ship ranged in size and design from 11-ton sloops, capable of carrying 30 slaves, to 566-ton behemoths, capable of carrying 700 to 800 slaves. Such variety belies the slow pace of innovation within the trade. In spite of its centrality to European ventures abroad, the great minds of the Enlightenment added to the slave ship -- over the course of 100 years -- copper-sheathed hulls (to protect against shipworm), ventilation and netting to catch those who tried to jump overboard. Liberté, égalité and fraternité came separately.

Much of Rediker's book also concerns the lives of sailors, the trade's "white slaves." Many were compelled to sea by debt, others by trickery. Half were cut down within months by West Africa's endemic parasites. Those who survived disease had to endure the cruelty of captains driven mad by profit. Some escaped, only to be caught and sold by African traders. Others became pirates. But all were lucky compared with the chronically ill, penniless sailors who, cheated of wages and their passage home, littered 18th-century ports from Kingston to Charleston.

Rediker looks not at that bigger picture but at the slave ship itself, as a microeconomy where the captain was chief executive, jailer, accountant, paymaster and disciplinarian, exercising these roles by maintaining, from his spacious captain's cabin in a very unspacious ship, the mystique of what later military leaders would call command isolation. Slave ships are, after all, a far larger part of our history than we like to think. Our normal picture of an 18th-century sailing vessel is of one filled with hopeful immigrants. But before 1807, ships carried well over three times as many enslaved Africans across the ocean to British colonies as they did Europeans.

Not only was the business a booming one, it was, until pesky abolitionists started making a fuss in the 1780s, considered highly respectable, as central to the Atlantic economy as is something like oil today. "What a glorious and advantageous trade this is," wrote James Houston, who worked for a firm of 18th-century slave merchants. "It is the hinge on which all the trade of this globe moves." John Newton, who later wrote the hymn "Amazing Grace," spent part of his youth as a slave-ship captain and believed that because of the long periods of time at sea, there was no calling that afforded "greater advantages to an awakened mind, for promoting the life of God in the soul."

Slave ships were death ships for crew and captives

Monday, October 01, 2007

By Mark Roth, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The typical slave ship began its life as a merchant vessel, and was refitted later for its grim purpose.

The primary remodeling, which often occurred on the outward leg of the voyage, was to build walls below decks to separate men and women, and then build horizontal platforms halfway between the first and second decks on which to stack the slaves.

The height between the first and second deck usually was only about 5 feet before the remodeling, said Marcus Rediker, University of Pittsburgh history professor and author of "The Slave Ship: A Human History." Once the platforms were built, headroom was about 2¹/₂ feet.

"This produced crowding of a kind that is almost incomprehensible," he said. "One of the things that struck almost everybody about a slave ship was the stench of it.

"It was said in Charleston, S.C., that when the wind was blowing off the water a certain way you could smell a slave ship before you could see it. It was a function of sickness, vomit, diarrhea, death and also the way the human body perspires in the condition of fear."

And while it is true that some slave ship seamen joined the crew because they were sadistic or wanted sexual access to African women, many of them were victimized almost as badly as the slaves, Dr. Rediker said.

"One of the great mysteries I wanted to explore was how sailors were recruited to slave ships when they knew the conditions were going to be horrible and the death rates were going to be high."

He discovered that in many cases, ship captains would get sailors to run up debts in taverns, and then would pay off the tavern owners with some of the sailor's advance wages in return for the sailor being handed over to work on the crew.

Slave ship captains also would offer sailors advance wages worth $800 to $1,200 in today's money or to pay part of the sailors' salaries to their wives once a week.

Once they were onboard, many crewmen were treated almost as brutally as the slaves. For a huge variety of infractions, they were whipped, chained, denied food, stabbed and even shot.

In fact, the death rate among slave ship crews was almost as high as among the slaves, Dr. Rediker said, and hit 5 percent even on the healthiest of voyages.

The slave trade was required to create vast accumulations of capital. And it is directly tide to British expansion and so called Free Trade.

People in Norfolk are about to have their eyes opened to the county's role in the transatlantic slave trade.

If you think of the trade in enslaved Africans using British ships, Liverpool, Bristol and London spring to mind. But project historian Richard Maguire is about to shock Norfolk people with the deep links he has unearthed concerning the role the county played in the trade - and its abolition.

His research culminates in an exhibition at the Norfolk Record Office at County Hall from Monday.

He said: “The original idea was to look at something that was never looked at before - Norfolk's connections to transatlantic slavery.

“People have always tended to assume that the slave trade was exclusive to Liverpool, Bristol and London. But research we have done at the Record Office has revealed there to be a goldmine of information relating to Norfolk. Norfolk was connected at all levels of the trade - slave ships left King's Lynn for Africa, county people owned slaves and invested in plantations and traded slaves from here. But on the other hand Norfolk people from the 1780s onwards were equally involved in calling for the end of the slave trade.

“We are trying to give people an understanding of part of the history that nobody knew about before.”

The exhibition also reveals black people have lived in Norfolk since the 17th century. Documents on show reveal that a black man lived in King's Lynn in 1673, a black woman Rachel was baptised in Diss in 1799, and Elizabeth Buxton, from Stradsett, left £10 to her black servant in her will of 1729. Other documents reveal the inhumane treatment slaves received from owners, and a list of the enslaved people on the Hanson Plantation, Barbados, owned by Sir John Berney of Kirby Bedon Hall, lists black people as stock alongside cattle.

And in a related story a freedom ship may be at the bottom of Lake Michigan.

A fantastic story is unfolding along the Lake Michigan shoreline in Indiana.

It involves a 150 year old shipwreck, a Porter County Historian, fugitive slaves and The Underground Railroad.

Legend has it a wooden schooner would stop on the shore in Indiana to pick up fugitive slaves and take them to Chicago where they would hide on ships bound for freedom in Canada.

After the 1850 Compromise was passed it became dangerous to help escaped slaves even in free states like Illinois and Indiana.

According to the law you could be prosecuted, fined and even thrown in jail. The mysterious ship met with a tragic fate.

Now a team of researchers is racing against time and the elements to solve this mystery and prove this was the legendary ship used to smuggle fugitive slaves to freedom.

Again the idea of piracy and privateers arising from the Atlantic Slave trade to become the basis of capitalism in the new world plays an important role later in the industrial revolution created by the American Civil war.

Just as it is important today in the creation of what Phillip Bobbitt calls the New Market State. Which we see in the rise of gang (pirate) controlled countries like Somalia and Jamaica.

Piracy was the origin of capitalism as it evolved within the declining feudal economies of Europe.

The history of capital is not merely the history of wealth accumulated by a few families who hand it down, it is the history of the worlds wealth created by slavery, indentured servitude, serfdom and its transition through the creation of labour saving machinery to replace the degradation of humans to become the degradation of work.

See:

Abolishing Slavery In Canada

Edward Gibbon Wakefield

Jamestown; the beginning of Globalization

Jamestown; The Birth of Capitalism

Commodity Fetish a Definition

Black History Month; P.B. Randolph

Black Like Me

The Era Of The Common Man

1666 The Creation Of The World

Libertarian Anti-Imperialism;William Appleman Williams

Libertarian Dialectics

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capitalism,, history,, slavery,, primitive, accumulation, of, capital,, Atlantic, History,, Britain,, workers,, proletariat,, socialism,, labour, history,, labor, history,, Nova Scotia, Black Loyalists,, colonialism,, American, colonies,,
The Slave Ship — A Human History, R.Buckminister.Fuller, The Many Headed Hydra, pirates, piracy, freebooters, capitalism, free-association, Marcus Rediker, anarchism, anarchy, libertarian, libertarianism, left-libertarian, primitive-accumulation-of-capital

War On Satan the Sodomite

African Anglican bishop: homosexuals "insane, satanic"

As I said here religious fundamentalists of all stripes have declared war on Satanism and the result is always scary.

SODOMITES
A proverbial term of reproach applied to those who practiced
sodomy (ritual homosexuality)

Papal Bulls dealing with heresy equated sodomy with sorcery.
Which were always a double edged sword. Before we had real witch-hunts we had the political campaigns using accusations of heresy, sodomy and sorcery.

The King of France issued charges of sodomy, simony, sorcery, and heresy against the pope and summoned him before the council. The pope's response was the strongest affirmation to date of papal sovereignty. In Unam Sanctam (November 18, 1302), he decreed that "it is necessary to salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman pontiff." He was preparing a bull that would excommunicate the King of France and put the interdict over France, and to depose the entire clergy of France, when in September of 1303,

The Pope survived however the Knights Templar were not so lucky. Sodomy and sorcery were seen as capital offenses as King Edward the Second would discover.

The chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker, written about thirty years later, mentions Edward's ill-treatment. He was held in a cell above the rotting corpses of animals, in an attempt to kill him indirectly. But Edward was extremely strong, fit and healthy, and survived the treatment, until on the night of 21 September 1327, he was held down and a red-hot poker pushed into his anus through a drenching-horn. His screams could be heard for miles around. Here are some other ideas on the story: - Mary Saaler, in her 1997 biography of Edward II, quotes Adam Murimith's comment that Edward was killed per cautelam, by a trick, and wonders if this phrase became corrupted to per cauterium, a branding-iron. - Pierre Chaplais and Ian Mortimer have commented on the death of King Edmund Ironside in 1016, said to have been murdered in a similar way to Edward, while sitting on the privy. The story was often repeated in thirteeth-century chronicles. - And finally, Edward's brother-in-law the earl of Hereford was killed at the Battle of Boroughbridge in 1322 when he was skewered through the anus by a spear pushed up through the bridge. It's my belief that the grotesque 'anal rape' narrative of Edward's death (Dr Ian Mortimer's phrase) is nothing more than a reflection of the popular belief that Edward was the passive partner in sexual acts with men, and that this means of death represented Edward receiving his 'just desserts'. The deaths of the earl of Hereford and Edmund Ironside may have provided the inspiration for this. Similarly, the castration (or emasculation) of Edward's favourite, the younger Despenser, in November 1326, was said by the chronicler Jean Froissart to be a punishment for his sexual relations with Edward. Whether this is true or not is impossible to say, but I think the narratives of both men's deaths reflect the widespread belief that they had sexual relations and were punished for them. Often, a story that begins as a joke or a rumour takes on the aura of 'truth' - such as the death of Edward's descendant George, Duke of Clarence, who died in the Tower of London in 1478. He is supposed to have drowned in a 'butt of malmsey'. It's difficult to ascertain whether this is the truth, or merely reflects his reputation as a drunkard.

After the Reformation the Protestant Churches criminalize heresy with the same result.
Rennsiance England saw the continuation of persecution of gay men as heretics, sorcerors and sodomites.

In Reformation England and France, Protestants and Catholics hurled accusations of homosexuality at one another. Although homosexuality was largely ignored in England until the seventeenth century, burnings continued in France. Still, several monarchs and many aristocrats were perceived by their contemporaries as having same-sex relationships, including Kings Henry III and Louis XIII, Philippe d'Orleans, and four of Louis XIV's generals. As for England, Crompton argues, against many biographers, that James I and William of Orange had male favorites. After William's reign, however, toleration of homosexuality decreased in England and hangings became more and more frequent. Meanwhile, French Enlightenment thinkers began to question state enforcement of church-based morality and whether “victimless” crimes should be prosecuted at all.

The 1791 Code Pénal de la Révolution made no mention of sodomy, making France the first western European nation to decriminalize homosexuality.

"Buggery, sodomy" , male to male sex was never seen as consensual but as being Satanic. The person was possessed overwhelmed, seduced, enticed.

As we moved into more modern times this last vestige of medieval religious fear of the other was then transformed from a heresy equated with fascination, spell casting and sorcery, the idea of the magickal use of ones will to dominate another into the more modern idea of male rape. In patriarchy one can only be taken by someone more masculine. Homosexuality as buggery was the very essence of masculinity.

Pennsylvania, 1786. In a sweeping liberalization of the legal system, the state of Pennsylvania removed capital punishment for many crimes including burglary, robbery, sodomy, and buggery (in Pennsylvania at the time, "buggery" referred to sex with animals). These formerly capital crimes had their sentences reduced to the forfeiture of all property and a period of servitude not to exceed 10 years.

Pennsylvania's enthusiasm for legal reform came from an abhorrence of the English legal code which legislators felt was forced on the colonies before the American Revolution of 1776. In an effort to cast off the legal vestiges of British rule, they began a movement toward legal reform that led to the elimination of capital sentences for most crimes.

All homosexual sex was seen as rape by any other name, despite the revolutionary movements of the Enlightenment the medieval fear of homosexuality as something dark, satanic, remained in British law which of course influenced law in Canada.

In 1859, offences punishable by death in Canada included: murder, rape, treason, administering poison or wounding with intent to commit murder, unlawfully abusing a girl under ten, buggery with man or beast, robbery with wounding, burglary with assault, arson, casting away a ship, and exhibiting a false signal endangering a ship.

Before 1859, Canada relied on British law to prosecute sodomy. In 1859, Canada repatriated its buggery law in the Consolidated Statutes of Canada as an offense punishable by death. Buggery remained punishable by death until 1869. A broader law targeting all homosexual male sexual activity ("gross indecency") was passed in 1890. Changes to the criminal code in 1948 and 1961 were used to brand gay men as "criminal sexual psychopaths" and "dangerous sexual offenders." These labels provided for indeterminate prison sentences. Most famously, George Klippert, a homosexual, was labelled a dangerous sexual offender and sentenced to life in prison, a sentence confirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada. He was released in 1971.

Canadian law now permits anal sex by consenting parties above the age of 18, provided no more than two people are present. The bill repealing Canada's sodomy laws achieved royal assent on June 27, 1969. The bill had been introduced in the House of Commons by Pierre Trudeau^[10], who famously stated that "there's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation" ^[11]. In the 1995 Ontario Court of Appeal case R. v. M. (C.), the judges ruled that the relevant section (section 159) of the Criminal Code violated section 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms when one or both of the partners are 16 to 18 years of age; this has not been tried in court again.

A similar decision was made by the Quebec Court of Appeal in the 1998 case R. v. Roy.

To be a poof, a queer, a three dollar bill, a fairy, a faggot, etc. was to be destined for the gallows. And it was no less a social and moral offense to decent society when the death penalty was finally removed.

Everett George Klippert (1926 - 1996) was the last person in Canada to be arrested, charged, prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned for homosexuality before its legalization in 1969; the reforms which led to Canadian legalization of homosexuality were a direct result of the Klippert case.

Klippert, a mechanic in the Northwest Territories, was first investigated by police in connection with an arson in 1965. Although he was not found to have had any connection with the fire, Klippert voluntarily admitted to having had consensual homosexual sex with four separate adult men. He was subsequently arrested and charged with four counts of "gross indecency".

A court-ordered psychiatrist assessed Klippert as "incurably homosexual", and Klippert was sentenced to "preventive detention" (that is, indefinitely) as a dangerous sexual offender. Klippert appealed to the Court of Appeal for the Northwest Territories; his appeal was dismissed. He then appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada; his appeal was dismissed in a controversial 3-2 decision.

The day after Klippert's conviction was upheld, New Democratic Party leader Tommy Douglas invoked Klippert's name in the Canadian House of Commons, stating that homosexuality should not be considered a criminal issue. Within six weeks, Pierre Trudeau presented an omnibus bill (C-150) which, among other things, decriminalized homosexual acts between consenting adults. The law passed, and homosexuality was decriminalized in Canada in 1969.

Klippert, however, remained in prison until July 21, 1971, whereupon he was released. He lived twenty-five more years before his death from kidney disease in 1996.

And this fear, this law, this history remains the basis of homophobia in patriarchal society today. Homophobia is based upon the fear of man penetrating man, as this law shows. It shows that homosexuality was recognized as a sexual / gender reality but at the same time denied as an aberration of the norm. The norm being of course patriarchal masculine domination, the man on top. Anything else was to be the other, a woman, to be feminized.

Anti-homosexual laws were specific; buggery = male rape. No man could admit to accepting or enjoying being the other. In fact if he did he must be killed, as was the case with Shakespeare's contemporary Marlowe. He too was accused of Satanism, as the author of Faustus, and for his atheism. And like King Edward II he got his just deserts.

• The most graphic is the testimony of Richard Baines, an informer who made a long list of allegations against Marlowe after his arrest in Flushing (see above). Most of these allegations concern Marlowe's atheism, but Baines also claimed that Marlowe said "all they that love not tobacco and boys were fools" and that "St John the Evangelist was bedfellow to Christ and leaned always in his bosom, that he used him as the sinners of Sodom".

All homophobia is based on this cultural / social construct. It is the fear of being buggered not the fear of being a bugger.

Sodomy: Myth or Reality?

This article describes some of the influences that religious and moral views
have had on our laws and society. It will also discuss how the gender and sexual
views of today mostly arise from our religious past. As a result of some of
these interpretations, not only females but non-traditional outcast groups, such
as homosexual, transsexual, and transgender individuals have been subject to
hundreds of years of prejudice and subsequent persecution.

And the equation of Satanism with homosexuality remains as the subtext of of fundamentalist discourse even today.

Our sodomite conspirators have demonstrated the sorcerer's mastery of deception by legitimizing the pervert "out" from the closet and with the other hand, closeting the truth.

In order to establish the link between abortion and sodomy one must understand the essence of sodomy. The term sodomy is a take off from the warped lust portrayed in Genesis 19:4-5

"Before they went to bed, all the townsmen of Sodom, both young and old--all the people to the last man--closed in on the house. They called to Lot and said to him, "Where are the men who came to your house tonight? Bring them out to us that we may have intimacies with them." "

As horrendous as abortion (the murder of the most innocent of all human beings) is, sodomy is the far graver sin. Acts of sodomy produce no eternal spirits that have the opportunity to enter Heaven. With abortion there is an eternal spirit –produced at the instant of conception– who will have the opportunity to choose between good and evil in non corporeal¹ form and thus will be able to accept or reject eternal life.

Allah will not like looking at those who do sodomy

See:

The Yezedi

Satan Made Him Do It

Black History Month; P.B. Randolph

Bulgarian Women Abused

My Favorite Muslim

Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani

Antinominalist Anarchism

New Age Libertarian Manifesto

Heresy

Gnosis

Gnostic




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