Chuck Jones Explains It all

Thumbing through the Edmonton Sun I came across this article on pop culture icons of Christmas....

Four decades later, animated treasure's still got spirit

By BILL BRIOUX, SUN MEDIA

Why, after 40 years, do the Grinch, Charlie Brown and Rudolph stay at the top of our annual Christmas lists?

Did Christmas end in 1966?

They all premiered during my "wonder years," when I was seven, eight, nine. Back then, you believed in Santa Claus.

Are these holiday shows that won't go away just more evidence of Boomers imposing their cherished kiddie culture on future generations? Perhaps, except today's children seem just as enchanted by Rudy, Chuck and the Grinch as I ever was. Christmas might not come from a store, as the Grinch discovers, but it seems to belong to a simpler, hand-crafted age.

With all the advances in computer-generated animation, you'd think a Merry Shrek-mas would have run Rudolph and his clunky stop-motion pals out of town by now, or that The Simpsons would have supplanted Snoopy each December. Instead, eggnog and Yule log still equal analogue. There's nothing Ho-Ho-Hi-def about Christmas on TV

.Bill asks an important question why are these classic cartoons, each of which is actually only a half an hour in length, still so popular, so captivating? Well Chuck Jones the illustrator, animator, and Director of the Grinch, and many a Bugs Bunny cartoon, provided the answer back in the early 1970's.

I was a founding member of the Edmonton Science Fiction and Comic Arts Society, and early on in our existence we showed old classic Sci-Fi and Horror films; Cabinet of Dr. Calgrari, Metropolis, Nosfertatu, and classic Bugs Bunny Cartoons, etc. Stuff we had all heard and read about and never actually seen.

So we subjected Edmonton to our tastes in movies and sci fi. Anyways we lucked out and were able to book Chuck Jones to come to Edmonton and speak on the history of Cartoons, they were never called 'toons then if anything Chuck called them animations, or animated art. Emphasis on the 'art'.

The secret was revealed to us pasty faced SF geeks in awe of the Great One. Chuck brought his own collection of great old Warner Brothers Classics, Looney Toons, Bugs, the whole raft.

In a two hour lecture worth every cartoon he showed, he talked about the studio system, the gang that made the cartoons, the whole culture of animation in the fifites and sixties.

And two points stood out.

One the Warner Brothers Studio system allowed Chuck and the gang the
autonomy to make cartoons, cause Warner was clueless about their animation studios. Jim Warner actually thought they made Mickey Mouse.

Hence the wonderful parody of him in the classic Daffy Duck as the Scarlet Pumpernickel, where he presents his story line to Warner, who is a shadowy figure offstage.

Daffy and the Bugs gang, including Jones and the whole Warner Brothers animation studio, were slagging the boss on celluloid that would live forever.

This was the era of Sesame Street, of 'childrens' programing on TV, where upon liberals would put into practice the latest childhood development theories and subject us to them. Chuck hated that crap. And said so.

For Jones and the whole Bugs crew, Tex Avery, Bob Clampet, Fritz Ferleng, and the man of a thousand voices; Mel Blanc, at Warner Brothers, some of the most brilliant animators America has ever produced, the whole point of their comedy was that THEY WERE NOT WRITING FOR CHILDREN. Full stop. Period. They were writing and illustrating the comedy routines for themselves, to crack each other up, if they succeeded, the joke was put onto celluloid forever.

They were not talking down to their audience, because they were the audience!

If a joke did not crack them up it didn't go in. Thus the Studio system allowed them to produce adult humour that would live forever, because they were exiled to the back lot at Warner Brothers.

It allowed Jones and company to change our popular culture forever. We learned the joys of classical music and Opera, surrealism in art, popular jazz, and that real comedy could have no dialouge except for;

Hello My Baby, Hello My Darling, Hello My Ragtime Gal, RRRRRIBBITT. As we learned from Michigan J. Frog.

These were Cartoons for Adults. If children understood them great, a bonus, but they were cartoons made for Adults by Adults.

And the result was generation after generation of children who learned the secret meaning behind these amazing cartoons. That the humour and meaning was layered, that it meant one thing when you were five, another when you were, ten , and another when you were twenty.

And so we watched Adult cartoons, aimed at adult cinema audiences, since Looney Toons began as a serial cartoon to introduce the main feature picture in movie theatres.

By the sixties with the advent of TV the serials were now our Saturday Afternoon cartoons. A joy to watch and learn from. Every year growing up I grasped more and more of the naunces and subtlties of these cartoons. You learned as you watched them. They were never boring, they taught you. Because they were Adult cartoons.

They did not treat the viewer as a simpleton, a child, they had no message of character development to give us, except for the character development of the cartoon characters themselves.

And they challenged us to think. Why was Peter Lorre in early Bugs cartoons, cause he was the popular character in the thirties and forties horror films that Jones and Company were parodying.

Thanks to Jones and company, we were never subjected to Kiddie Toons or animated drivel we were treated to intelligent cartoons. And we love them still.


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
, Chuck Jones, Tex Avery, Wiley E. Coyote, Road Runner, Bob Clampet,, Fritz Ferleng,, Mel Blanc, , Warner Brothers, cartoons, Bugs Bunny, DaffyDuck, Grinch, Christmas, opera, classical music, ElmerFudd, Michigan J Frog, toons, animation,

In Canada Work Kills

A new study issued today says that five Canadians die every day on the job. That is 1100 workers every year killed on the job.That does not include the number injured on the job or who suffer the health affects from workplace dangers.

On December 12, 2006, the CSLS released a new research report “Five Deaths a Day: Workplace Fatalities in Canada, 1993-2005 ”. This report provides a detailed analysis of the characteristics of persons who die on the job and the reasons they die in order to help gain a better understanding of developments over time in this key indicator of job quality and labour market well-being. Two key messages emerge from this study. First, despite the problems associated with the definition and measurement of workplace fatalities, the number and rate of workplace fatalities in Canada, even from accidents, is unacceptably high. Second, insufficient progress is being made in reducing the number and rate of workplace fatalities. Canada can do much better. The Executive Summary is available in English and French in the CSLS Research Reports section of the website. Please Click here for the Press Release in English and French .

It is the silent crime of capitalism, and no one is ever jailed for the murder of Canadians on the job. Something we should all be MADD about.

In fact it is finally a criminal offense in Canada to knowingly kill workers on the job, as a result of the Westray Mining Disaster. However the key word here is 'knowingly'. As in deliberate negligence. Run of the mill negligence due to speed up, ignoring safety regulations, etc. means you may get a fine under provincial labour laws. But the bosses never go to jail for murder. They would spend more time in jail for hitting someone with their car while driving drunk. Despite the Westray law, the Criminal Code has yet to be amended to protect workers.

Labour standards in Canada are a provincial matter, and the Federal government Department of Labour has never addressed the issue even when it affects its own employees under the Federal Labour Code.

And we continue to die from Asbestos poisioning, as Canada promotes Asbestos use internationally with your tax dollars, in opposition to the international campaign to ban asbestos.

And don't expect the BQ to speak out on the Asbestos issue, they will simply ask the Feds for more handouts since all the Asbestos comes from Quebec.

As usual workers are expendable, now if they were consumers they would be protected. Wait a minute every worker is a consumer. But anti-smoking, anti-drunk driving campaigns and the like get Federal funding and popular support while workplace deaths and injuries get ignored. Business as usual.

So the next time someone says unions are outdated, a thing of the past, remind them that workers in Canada would have no health and safety protections without them. That until the last boss go to jail for killing workers, the union will roll on.

Workplace deaths spiking, study finds

The number of work-related fatalities is Canada is rising sharply, revealing a dark side to the boom in the oil fields, mining and the construction sector.

It also reflects a steady increase in the number of workers dying from long-ago exposure to dangerous products such as asbestos, according to a report being released today by the Centre for the Study of Living Standards

In 2005, the number of workplace fatalities totalled 1,097, an average of five every working day, said Andrew Sharpe, executive director of the CSLS.

The 119-page report, titled Five Deaths a Day, shows the number of work-related deaths has risen 45 per cent, to 1,097 last year from 758 in 2003.

"The numbers and rates of workplace fatalities are troubling," he said. "Other countries are making progress in this area but we're not

In fact, only four other countries have higher rates of workplace fatalities than Canada -- South Korea, Mexico, Portugal and Turkey.

Dr. Sharpe cautioned, however, that the lack of standardized measurements makes direct comparison between countries difficult. What is more important, he said, is the trend.

"In almost all other industrial countries, workplace fatalities are going down, but not in Canada."

He said one explanation is that Canada's "goods-producing sector" is booming, and it represents a much larger percentage of the economy than in most countries.

In fact, the industries where workers have the greatest risk of dying on the job are those that typify Canada's image: fishing, mining, forestry and construction.

Canadian workers are also paying the price for the widespread use of asbestos and its continued mining and export. Almost two-thirds of occupational exposure deaths were related to asbestos.

'We have also linked the increase in workplace deaths in Canada to asbestos exposure,'' says the Centre for the Study of Living Standards report, which is critical of Canada's continued mining, use, and exportation of a substance that many other industrial countries have banned. ''Indeed, Canada refuses to sign an international agreement to ban the export of asbestos,'' it adds.

NDP MP Pat Martin, a former asbestos miner, expressed shock at the increase in workplace deaths and the role of asbestos in that increase, and anger at the Canadian government's support for the asbestos industry.

''Asbestos is the greatest industrial killer the world has ever known,'' said the Manitoba MP, who still undergoes yearly tests on his asbestos scarred lungs. ''And Canada is in complete denial of the health risks.''

The asbestos mines in Quebec are mostly located in economically depressed areas, and critics suggest the government has taken a stand against closures for that reason.

''We're still the second largest producer and exporter of asbestos in the world but we won't say 'boo' because all the mines are in Quebec,'' Martin said. ''It's appalling.''

The industry is a money loser but is subsidized by the federal government, a subsidy which Martin said was just doubled.

According to government documents, federal payments to the Asbestos Institute rose to $250,000 this fiscal year from $125,000 last year.

The contribution, according to the estimates, is to "foster the international implementation of the safe and responsible use of chrysotile asbestos."

CBC News Indepth: Workplace safety

Annual job-related deaths (worldwide): 1.9 million-2.3 million

Annual deaths caused by work accidents (worldwide): 355,000

Annual deaths attributed to job-released diseases (worldwide): 1.6 million

Annual number of cases of job-related disease (worldwide): 217 million

Percentage of annual GDP (worldwide) lost to accidents and work-related diseases: 4

Workplace deaths in Canada (2004): 928

Annual cost to Canadian economy of stress-related injuries: $16 billion - $33 billion

Sources: International Labour Organization, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

WORKPLACE INJURY IN CANADA

On average, one worker in 12 is injured at work. Workers compensation boards recorded 953 work-related deaths in 2003. The boards typically record one million injuries every year. Every year, nearly 17,000 teen workers are injured. The back is the part of the body most commonly injured – 29 per cent of injuries.

Que. labour union decries surge in workplace deaths

The Canadian Press

Published: Monday, March 13, 2006

MONTREAL -- The Quebec Federation of Labour has denounced last year's 20-per-cent increase in the number of workplace fatalities.

The union said 225 workers died last year. It's a situation that must prompt the province's health and safety board to treat the situation seriously, QFL president Henri Masse said at a news conference.

The statistics weren't an aberration because 34 deaths occurred in January and February 2006, a 52-per-cent increase over 2004 and 2005, he said.

Union official Richard Goyette said it's time to punish negligent employers.

The union is seeking the imposition of hefty fines against companies that are delinquent in safety matters. The maximum fine is $20,000, compared to $1 million at the federal level, $500,000 in Ontario and British Columbia, and $250,000 in most other provinces.

``It's a real bargain for delinquent employers and it doesn't incite them to improve prevention,'' said Michel Arsenault, Quebec director of the metalworkers' union.

The unions also want the addition of more government inspectors.

"Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living" -- Mother Jones

We count it death to falter, not to die

Erected and dedicated October 12, 1936, in honor and to the everlasting memory of Mary "Mother" Jones, "General" Alexander Bradley and the martyrs of the Virden Riot of 1898. By the members of the Progressive Miners of America and the Women's Auxiliary of the Progressive Miners of America, assisted by many loyal and devout friends, sympathizers, and labor and fraternal organizations.

Mary "Mother" Jones

When the sun, in all his state,
illumed the eastern skies,
she passed through glory's morning gate,
and walked in paradise.

Sleep the sleep of the noble blest,
for in life you sacrificed and gave.
We pledge to fill your last request,
"Let no traitor breathe o'er my grave."

See

Work Kills



Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
work, workplace, death, injuries, workers, asbestos, Canada, labour, labor, unions, Westray, law,

Corporatism

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini

Corporatism is a form of class collaboration put forward as an alternative to class conflict, and was first proposed in Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, which influenced Catholic trade unions that organised in the early twentieth century to counter the influence of trade unions founded on a socialist ideology. Theoretical underpinnings came from the medieval traditions of guilds and craft-based economics; and later, syndicalism. Corporatism was encouraged by Pope Pius XI in his 1931 encyclical Quadragesimo Anno.

Gabriele D'Annunzio and anarcho-syndicalist Alceste de Ambris incorporated principles of corporative philosophy in their Charter of Carnaro.

One early and important theorist of corporatism was Adam Müller, an advisor to Prince Metternich in what is now eastern Germany and Austria. Müller propounded his views as an antidote to the twin "dangers" of the egalitarianism of the French Revolution and the laissez-faire economics of Adam Smith. In Germany and elsewhere there was a distinct aversion among rulers to allow unrestricted capitalism^{[citation needed]}, owing to the feudalist and aristocratic tradition of giving state privileges to the wealthy and powerful^{[citation needed]}.

Under fascism in Italy, business owners, employees, trades-people, professionals, and other economic classes were organized into 22 guilds, or associations, known as "corporations" according to their industries, and these groups were given representation in a legislative body known as the Camera dei Fasci e delle Corporazioni. See Mussolini's essay discussing the corporatist state, Doctrine of Fascism.

Similar ideas were also ventilated in other European countries at the time. For instance, Austria under the Dollfuß dictatorship had a constitution modelled on that of Italy; but there were also conservative philosophers and/or economists advocating the corporate state, for example Othmar Spann. In Portugal, a similar ideal, but based on bottom-up individual moral renewal, inspired Salazar to work towards corporatism. He wrote the Portuguese Constitution of 1933, which is credited as the first corporatist constitution in the world.

When you get rid of the paramilitary uniforms, the swaggering macho bravado, fascism is merely corporatism. And like its economic predecessor Distributism it shares a Catholic origin, a fetish for private property, and being a Third Way between Capitalism and Socialism. After WWI Corporatism, Distributism, and Social Credit, evolved as economic ideologies opposed to Communism and Capitalism.

Corporatism is sometimes identified as State Capitalism which it is a form of. However State Capitalism is a historic epoch in Capitalism that developed as a response to the Workers rebellions world wide between 1905-1921, in particular the Bolshevik Revolution. The epoch of State Capitalism begins with Keynes rescue of capitalism by using the State to prime the pump and to provide social reforms in response to the revolutionary workers movement.

Key features of the theory of state-capitalism.

1. A new stage of world capitalism
Dunayevskaya wrote that: “Each generation of Marxists must restate Marxism for itself, and the proof of its Marxism lies not so much in its “originality” as in its “actuality”; that is, whether it meets the challenge of the new times” The theory of state-capitalism met the challenge of the day in its universality, it was not narrowed to a response to the transformation of the Russian Revolution into its opposite, but of a new stage of world capitalism. She argued that: “Because the law of value dominates not only on the home front of class exploitation, but also in the world market where big capital of the most technologically advanced land rules, the theory of state-capitalism was not confined to the Russian Question, as was the case when the nomenclature was used by others.”

Whilst later theoreticians such as Tony Cliff, turned to the writings of Bukharin on imperialism and state-capitalism, adopting his linear analysis of the continuous development from competitive capitalism to state capitalism, Dunayevskaya explicitly rejected such an approach:

“The State-capitalism at issue is not the one theoretically envisaged by Karl Marx in 1867-1883 as the logical conclusion to the development of English competitive capitalism. It is true that “the law of motion” of capitalist society was discerned and profoundly analysed by Marx. Of necessity, however, the actual results of the projected ultimate development of concentration and centralization of capital differed sweepingly from the abstract concept of the centralization of capital “in the hands of a single capitalist or in those of one single corporation”. Where Marx’s own study cannot substitute for an analysis of existing state-capitalism, the debates around the question by his adherents can hardly do so, even where these have been updated to the end of the 1920’s”

Dunayevskaya went so far as to argue that to turn to these disputes other than for “methodological purposes” was altogether futile; and it is with regard to the dialectical method that Dunayevskaya stands apart from other approaches to this question. The state-capitalism in question is not just a continuous development of capitalism but the development of capitalism through the transformation into opposite. In the Marxian concept of history as that of class struggles, there is no greater clash of opposites than “the presence of the working class and the capitalist class within the same modern society”. This society of free competition had developed into the monopoly capitalism and imperialism analysed by Lenin in 1915, simultaneously transforming a section of the working class itself and calling forth new forces of revolt, making the Russian Revolution a reality. The state-capitalism Dunayevskaya faced emerged as the counter-revolution, which grew from within that revolution, gained pace. With the onset of the Great Depression following the 1929 crash, argued Dunayevskaya the “whole world of private capitalism had collapsed”:

“The Depression had so undermined the foundations of “private enterprise”, thrown so many millions into the unemployed army, that workers, employed and unemployed, threatened the very existence of capitalism. Capitalism, as it had existed – anarchic, competitive, exploitative, and a failure – had to give way to state planning to save itself from proletarian revolution”.

This state ownership and state planning was not a “war measure”, but rapidly emerged across the industrially advanced and the underdeveloped countries. State intervention characterised both Hitler’s Germany, with its Three Year Plans, as a prelude to a war to centralize all European capital, and the USA where Roosevelt launched his ‘New Deal’. This tendency did not decline after the war but accelerated such as under the Labour Government in Britain. Dunayevskaya argued that the “true index of the present stage of capitalism is the role of the State in the economy. War or peace, the State does not diminish monopolies and trusts, nor does it diminish its own interference. Rather, it develops, hothouse fashion, that characteristic mode of behaviour of capitalism: centralization of capital, on the one hand, and socialization of labour on the other.”

This was a world-wide phenomenon and whilst it was true that Russian state-capitalism, “wasn’t like the American, and the American New Deal wasn’t like the British Labour Party type of capital, nor the British like the German Nazi autarchic structure”. It found expression not only in the countries subjugated by Russian imperialism in Eastern Europe and in Communist China but also in the newly independent states following the anti-colonial revolutions.

Despite the varied extent of state control over sectors of these economies taken as whole all revealed we had entered a new epoch in history, differing from the period of Lenin’s analyses, as his was from that of Marx’s own lifetime. What Marx had posed in theory of the centralization of capital “into the hands of a single capitalist or a single capitalist corporation” had become the concrete of the new epoch.

While references to State Capitalism began in an attempt to define the post revolution Russia, and later in response to the rise of Fascism and the American New Deal, what was overlooked by traditional political Marxists was that State Capitalism was not just a feature of a particular kind of Capitalism but was a historic shift in capitalism. It was a shift that Left Wing Communists identified as the period of decline of capitalism, rather than its ascendency. A period of capitalist decadence. During the boom times of the fifties, sixties this seemed to be an outrageous assumption. Capitalism was booming, wages were increasing, a consumer society was being created that the world had never seen before. And yet by 1968 that was all to fall apart as the world under went a revolution not seen since 1919. And while that revolution failed to challenge capitalism it showed that it was rotten to the core.

The Seventies and on saw capitalism lurch from crisis to crisis, starting with the Oil Crisis of 1974. Massive inflation, wage and price controls, the decline of the world economy ending in the Wall Street crash of 1984. Truly those who said that capitalism was in a period of decadance were now having the last laugh.

State capitalism

On the economic level this tendency towards state capitalism, though never fully realised, is expressed by the state taking over the key points of the productive apparatus. This does not mean the disappearance of the law of value, or competition, or the anarchy of production, which are the fundamental characteristics of the capitalist economy. These characteristics continue to apply on a world scale where the laws of the market still reign and still determine the conditions of production within each national economy however statified it may be. If the laws of value and of competition seem to be ‘violated’, it is only so that they may have a more powerful effect on a global scale. If the anarchy of production seems to subside in the face of state planning, it reappears more brutally on a world scale, particularly during the acute crises of the system which state capitalism is incapable of preventing. Far from representing a ‘rationalisation’ of capitalism, state capitalism is nothing but an expression of its decay.

The statification of capital takes place either in a gradual manner through the fusion of ‘private’ and state capital as is generally the case in the most developed countries, or through sudden leaps in the form of massive and total nationalisations, in general in places where private capital is at its weakest.

In practice, although the tendency towards state capitalism manifests itself in all countries in the world, it is more rapid and more obvious when and where the effects of decadence make themselves felt in the most brutal manner; historically during periods of open crisis or of war, geographically in the weakest economies. But state capitalism is not a specific phenomenon of backward countries. On the contrary, although the degree of formal state control is often higher in the backward capitals, the state’s real control over economic life is generally much more effective in the more developed countries owing to the high level of capital concentration in these nations.

On the political and social level, whether in its most extreme totalitarian forms such as fascism or Stalinism or in forms which hide behind the mask of democracy, the tendency towards state capitalism expresses itself in the increasingly powerful, omnipresent, and systematic control over the whole of social life exerted by the state apparatus, and in particular the executive. On a much greater scale than in the decadence of Rome or feudalism, the state under decadent capitalism has become a monstrous, cold, impersonal machine which has devoured the very substance of civil society.

The epoch of State Capitalism as the historical reflection of the decline of capitalsim, its decadence, continues to this day. Called many things, globalization, post-fordism, post-modernism, it is all the same, the decline of capitalism. Global warming, the gap between rich and poor, nations and peoples, shows that capitalisms rapid post war expansion has reached its apogee and is now desperately scrambling to run on the spot.

Despite the so called neo-liberal restoration of the Reagan,Thatcher era. They simply reveresed the Keynesian model, by using the state not to prime the pump through social programs or public services but through tax cuts and increasing militarization/military spending. In fact one of the often overlooked aspects of the success of post WWII Keynesianism was what Michael Kidron called the Permanent War Economy.

Corporatism is the capitalist economy of the U.S. Empire, as seen in its continual permanent war economy that has existed since the end of WWII and continued with wars and occupations to enforce its Imperial hegemony across the globe. America is Friendly Fascism.

The Explosion of Debt and Speculation

Government spending on physical and human infrastructure, as Keynes pointed out can also fuel the economy: the interstate highway system, for instance, bolstered the economy directly by creating jobs and indirectly by making production and sales more efficient. However, spending on the military has a special stimulating effect. As Harry Magdoff put it,

A sustainable expanding market economy needs active investment as well as plenty of consumer demand. Now the beauty part of militarism for the vested interests is that it stimulates and supports investment in capital goods as well as research and development of products to create new industries. Military orders made significant and sometimes decisive difference in the shipbuilding, machine tools and other machinery industries, communication equipment, and much more....The explosion of war material orders gave aid and comfort to the investment goods industries. (As late as 1985, the military bought 66 percent of aircraft manufactures, 93 percent of shipbuilding, and 50 percent of communication equipment.) Spending for the Korean War was a major lever in the rise of Germany and Japan from the rubble. Further boosts to their economies came from U.S. spending abroad for the Vietnamese War. (“A Letter to a Contributor: The Same Old State,” Monthly Review, January, 1998)

The rise of the silicon-based industries and the Internet are two relatively recent examples of how military projects “create new industries.” Additionally, actual warfare such as the U.S. wars against Iraq and Afghanistan (and the supplying of Israel to carry out its most recent war in Lebanon) stimulates the economy by requiring the replacement of equipment that wears out rapidly under battle conditions as well as the spent missiles, bullets, bombs, etc.

To get an idea of how important military expenditures are to the United States economy, let’s look at how they stack up against expenditures for investment purposes. The category gross private investment includes all investment in business structures (factories, stores, power stations, etc.), business equipment and software, and home/apartment construction. This investment creates both current and future growth in the economy as structures and machinery can be used for many years. Also stimulating the economy: people purchasing or renting new residences frequently purchase new appliances and furniture.

During five years just prior to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (through 2000), military expenditures relative to investment were at their lowest point in the last quarter century, but were still equal to approximately one-quarter of gross private investment and one-third of business investment (calculated from National Income and Product Accounts, table 1.1.5). During the last five years, with the wars in full force, there was a significant growth in the military expenditures. The housing boom during the same period meant that official military expenditures for 2001–05 averaged 28 percent of gross private investment—not that different from the previous period. However, when residential construction is omitted, official military expenditures during the last five years were equivalent to 42 percent of gross non-residential private investment.*

The rate of annual increases in consumer expenditures fall somewhat with recessions and rise as the economy recovers—but still increases from year to year. However, the swings in private investment are what drive the business cycle—periods of relatively high growth alternating with periods of very slow or negative growth. In the absence of the enormous military budget, a huge increase in private investment would be needed to keep the economy from falling into a deep recession. Even with the recent sharp increases in the military spending and the growth of private housing construction, the lack of rapid growth in business investment has led to a sluggish economy.

See

State Capitalism




Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
corporatism, fascism, statecapitalist, statecapitalism, Negri, Rhule, Marx, Russia, US, Kidron, Magdoff, Dunaveskaya, JohnsonForrestttendency, CLRJames, Tronti, Keyenes, keyenesian, ecomonics, decadence, capitalism, fordism, post-fordism, Russianrevolution, 1968, militarism, neo-liberal, Mussolini, Distributism, SocialCredit, WWI, Catholic, communism, socialism

Allendes Ghost

There is a spectre haunting Latin America


PINOCHET ESCAPES JUSTICE IN DEATH BUT ALLENDE'S SPIRIT LIVES ON IN LATIN AMERICA

Allende's ideals of democratic socialism are now spreading like wildfire around Latin America.

See:

Left Wing Pragmatism

Latin America

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
LatinAmerica, Allende, Chile, Pinochet, Marx, communism, socialism

Distributism

I have discussed Distributism here on a number of occassions, its influence on Social Credit and on current Green Party Leader Elizabeth May.

Here is a definition of it from an interesting article on C.K. Chesterton and Dorothy Day, Catholic advocates. If Capitalism is Protestantism, and Socialism is Pantheism, then Distributism is the Catholic alternative.

Distributism

The economic philosophy of both The Catholic Worker and Chesterton was distributism and at the heart of distributism is private property. The word distributism comes from the idea that a just social order can be achieved through a much more widespread distribution of property. Distributism means a society of owners. It means that property belongs to the many rather than the few. It is related to the idea of subsidiarity, emphasized in all papal encyclicals relating to social teaching and economics. Subsidiarity, in the words of the Quadragesimo Anno, means that "It is an injustice and at the same time a great evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social and never destroy and absorb them."

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
ElizabethMay, A.R.Orage, New Age Magazine, Social Credit, Distributism, Catholic, C K Chesterton, Dorthoy Day, Catholic Worker, economics, socialism, capitalism

Pat Robertson Bev Oda

I found a great Feminist Blog from New Zeland whose header has the following quote;

"The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians." Pat Robertson - 1992 Republican National Convention

Hmm sounds like the current Harpocrite Government reasons to eliminate the Status of Women.

See

Pat Robertson

Feminism

Status of Women

Bev Oda

Tory Cuts

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Canada, Ottawa, Conservatives, Bev Oda, Minister of Multiculturalism, Harper, Government, women, Status of Women, Minister,uts, budget, advocacy, lobbying, Canada,feminism, politics,
Pat Robertson, US, Religion, Christianity, Evangelicals,

Tags
Pat Robertson
Religion
Christianity
USA
Evengelical
Republican Party
Christian Coalition
Moral Majority
Religious Right
USA

Conspiracy Theory of the Week

Oh this is too good to pass up passing on.

Was Aleister Crowley Barbara Bush's Daddy?

After all her son thinks God talks to him.....Could such a delusion be because he is the grandson of the Great Beast...

Silence or Sign of Harpocrates (0=0):

Heels together, with feet at 90 degree angle

Left foot points forward

Left arm hangs at side

Right index finger or thumb is held to lips

The following sequence of actions is recommended for the output of godly form:

1. Shut eyes. By internal sight again you will be connected by several instants with the godly form, which you previously accepted. Create the means of deity, who wraps your sensual sphere (aura) again. You will turn attention to all details, colors and other special features of godly form.

2. Make one step back, leaving from the means. Making this, cease to identify itself with the godly form completely, after separating itself from the means.

3. Make a sign of silence, and remain in this position, until you scatter means. Again represent god, who is raised before you, by internal sight. Slowly visualize, as godly form gradually it is scattered and grows dim, until finally it disappears.

The Golden Dawn insisted that the sign of silence should always follow the sign of the enterer. Like the enterer there is no single way of performing the sign of silence. One may use a finger of either the right or left hand, the right hand shows the violent action of Geburah, while the left hand indicates the more passive force of Chesed. Thus if one wishes to withdraw oneself from contact with external powers one uses the left hand, while if one wishes to cast these forces away from oneself one uses the right hand. A perfect example of this second form of activity can be seen in the opening of Liber XXV: The Star Ruby in which the operator casts down his right forefinger from his lips, crying "Apo pantos Cacodaimonos." The choice of the forefinger her symbolizes the powers of water and thus lethargy, and this is appropriate for this operation as one is moving from inaction to action. More generally in performing the sign of silence either the thumb should be used to show the forces of spirit, or the forefinger as it’s watery nature is consonant with the nature of Hoor-Par-Kraat. As with the enterer the elemental attributions of the fingers can be used for more specific applications of the sign, however they can require a certain degree of manual dexterity on the part of the operator.

By the exercise of the Four Powers of the Sphinx, the Adept attains the Fifth Power, the indwelling of Spirit and the realization of the god within. Eliphas Lèvi came to a similar conclusion in The Great Secret:

“The great secret of magic, the unique and incommunicable Arcana, has for its purpose the placing of supernatural power at the service of the human will in some way.
To attain such an achievement it is necessary to KNOW what has to be done, to WILL what is required, to DARE what must be attempted and to KEEP SILENT with discernment."
See

Crowley

Thelema

Bush

Conspiracy Theories

666


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Barbara Bush, Bush, 666, Aleister Crowley, Crowley, Sign of silence, God, AA,
Magick, conspiracy,
conspiracy theory, Alesiter Crowley and Barbara Bush, OTO, Thelema, Frank Harris, Nellie O'Hara, PaulinePierce, BarbaraPierce,
Wickedest Man in the world, The great beast,

Celebrating Capitalism

Should Capitalism have its own holiday? A day of unabashed spending and exploitation. Well why not. After all workers have MayDay, and Culture Jammers have Don't Buy Anything Day, and well groundhogs have Groundhog day.

So why not a day to celebrate Capitalism. I remember this was attempted locally back in 2001. And all four members of the University of Alberta Ayn Rand Objectivist club showed up. But it looks like some folks are trying again.

Celebrate Capitalism (tm) - International Capitalism Day 2007

National Day of Capitalism

Of course it would help if they maybe communicated with each other. No wait that would mean cooperation the very anathema of competition, the underpining of all capitalist ideology. Of course as wannabe captialists they are not asking taxpayers to recgonize the day officially because well that would be a contradiction. After all the real motto of the day should be We Owe We Owe Off To Work We Go.

Weber - Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism

In fact, the summum bonum of this ethic, the earning of more and more money, combined with the strict avoidance of all spontaneous enjoyment of life, is above all completely devoid of any eudaemonistic, not to say hedonistic, admixture. It is thought of so purely as an end in itself, that from the point of view of the happiness of, or utility to, the single individual, it appears entirely transcendental and absolutely irrational.Man is dominated by the making of money, by acquisition as the ultimate purpose of his life. Economic acquisition is no longer subordinated to man as the means for the satisfaction of his material needs. This reversal of what we should call the natural relationship, so irrational from a naive point of view, is evidently as definitely a leading principle of capitalism as it is foreign to all peoples not under capitalistic influence.


Hey I remember when Hippies were opposed to mindless materialism and capitalism, my how times have changes.





And controversy abounds. When is Capitalism Day?

November 25?

As Capitalism Day (the first Sunday of December each year) is shortly after Thanksgiving Day and straight after Christmas Shopping Day, this is a nice tie in (pardon the pun) to Christmas and all that Christmas represents.

Or is it December 1?

Which is my birthday and of course World Aids Day. The latter may be the reason Celebrate Capitalism day got less notice and folks thought of moving it.

Or is it December 25?

X-Mas: Not just for Jesus - The Stanford Daily Online

Maybe Capitalism Day really is celebrated every New Years Eve

How about on Earth Day?

Or in June? This would make sense considering its the month of the Birth of the chronicler of Capitalism; Adam Smith.

Of course it could be February 2 the birthday of the Bitch Goddess of Capitalism Ayn Rand.

Heck why not make it September 29 on Von Mises birthday. After all the Austrian School calims to be the last best hope for victory against the ravages of working class power.

Finally when Prodos called his first International Walk for Capitalism, the turn out in Canada was overwhelming as reported here....wow a whole 30 folks marched in Kingston to support Captialism, they were followed by Top Hatted protestors, but lookee who was out supporting the Glorious Capitalist Revolution....

CANADA . . .

Bill Hall of the local CKWS News, Youth for Liberty member Adam Daifallah and Paul Quick (one of the counter-demonstrators) take advantage of a photo-op during the Walk for Capitalism in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.


After all the debate on dates to celebrate Capitalism why bother? We live in a capitalist society, which through our mass consumption celebrates it every day.
No need for a special day for Capitalism, every day is a celebration of capitalism.


What we really need to celebrate is life after capitalism.

Capitalism: See what people are saying right now on Technorati

Capitalism and Freedom - Factbites

See

Capitalism



Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Adam Daifallah, capitalism, capitalism day, celebrate capitalism, Von Mises, AdamS mith, Prodos, International Walk for Capitalism, Weber, Canada, Australia, USA, National Capitalism Day, Ayn Rand, Adam Smith, December 1, December 25, June, New years eve, Xmas,