Harpers Anti-Federalism

Well the Conservatives under Harper have shown their true nature, they are definitely NOT a federalist party. Conservatives pull plug on federalist agency
This allows them to satisfy their anti-bilingual Western right wing rump and consolidate the BQ's support for their minority government."Last night, Bloc Quebecois party whip Michel Guimond welcomed the news."We are happy that the contributions of citizens will no longer serve to finance this partisan organization, which has had its credibility called into question so many times," Guimond said."

Tories axe unity council funding
Toronto Star -
OTTAWA—The Conservative government is cutting off funding for the Canadian Unity Council, one of the most venerable Quebec-based federalist organizations, as part of a broader review of the way Ottawa promotes the federation.

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Softwood Redux

Another NAFTA victory for Canada over the softwood dispute with the U.S. and as usual another challenge by the U.S. protectionist lobby. Over to you Mr. Harper.

Canada wins final lumber ruling
National Post - 19 hours ago
WASHINGTON - Canada hailed a major victory yesterday in the long-running softwood lumber battle with the United States after a NAFTA panel made a final ruling in its favour. Spokesmen for the Canadian lumber ...
NAFTA panel ruling removes softwood duties if US doesn't appeal CBC News
Canada wins second NAFTA decision on softwood tariffs


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Is Paris Burning

France's global warning Once again, French students are leading the march - this time against an unpopular employment law - but these protests are also about the country's future on an increasingly globalised planet, writes Alex Duval Smith in Paris

Sunday March 19, 2006
The Observer

It was the same bright spring sunshine and the same familiar elegant landmarks, but the hundreds of thousands of young demonstrators on the streets yesterday were a whole new generation. Almost 40 years since the great student protests of 1968, France's students are again manning barricades, café tables are being thrown at police riot shields, and tear gas hangs over the Left Bank.

France was again showing its revolutionary fibre and, in the republican tradition, it looked last night as though victory was close to being with the people.

Flames erupt from a car and a motorbike in front of a hotel during clashes between youths and police that followed a student protest against the First Employment Contract (CPE), in Paris, March 16, 2006. REUTERS/Charles Platiau


It was only months ago that the sans papier, the immigrant youth outside of Paris began their protests with the burning of cars.

The torching of the French banlieues as both sequel to the No vote of May 2005 and symptom of a wider Western malaise. Rejection of official pieties of integration, and flames of revolt against an automated Europe. Jean Baudrillard: The Pyres of Autumn

Today half a million families along with students and trade unionists demonstrated across France peacefully against the new French Labour Law.

The best coverage was on BBC World News TV which distinguished between the demonstrations during the day, peaceful, with the later night time police instigated rioting. It was like night and day.Riots erupt after French protests BBC

The 24/7 cable news stations in the U.S. covered it as if only the rioting had occured. Why am I not surprized. Student-Worker Protests in Paris Turn Violent
FOX News

Also See:

May 68 Redux

Tout va Bien

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Horowitz the Trot

David Horowitz is a classic case of the the Trotskyist who becomes his opposite. The New Left idol who no longer idolisized becomes the 'other', in order to become famous once again. It happened with Shactman and Burnham, in whose shoes Horowitz has stepped. Nothing new here, except of course his whining and historical revisionism.

Such as this recent quote from the dweeb;

"If not for the sacrifices of white soldiers and a white American president who gave his life to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, blacks in America would still be slaves. If not for the dedication of Americans of all ethnicities and colors to a society based on the principle that all men are created equal, blacks in America would not enjoy the highest standard of living of blacks anywhere in the world, and indeed one of the highest standards of living of any people in the world. They would not enjoy the greatest freedoms and the most thoroughly protected individual rights anywhere. Where is the gratitude of black America and its leaders for those gifts?"

And to think Horowitz was the darling of the White Left who identified with the Black Panthers, back when he was editor of Ramparts. And then after his breakdown, and drift into paranoia claiming the Panthers were out to kill him he becomes a born again Conservative.

Of course he convienently forgets his Civil War history. Including the fact his White President, Lincoln, freeing the slaves, which of course he was reluctant to do, was only accomplished when the Federal Government needed more troops for the final big push on the Confederate army. Guess Horowitz missed the movie Glory.


What twit. But thats what you get from Trots who become Neo-Cons. Emphasis on the con. As in con artists.

In this case Horowitz the red diaper baby came from Stalinism, remained a Stalinist, despite toying with Trotskyism, so its no wonder he became a red baiting neo-con, and a white supremicist.


In addition to political alchemy, Horowitz has another new fixation: race, exemplified by his recent book, Hating Whitey and Other Progessive Causes. Last August, in a piece titled "A Real, Live Bigot," Time columnist Jack White took issue with an essay Horowitz wrote for Salon. In that piece, Horowitz excoriated the NAACP's class-action suit against gun manufacturers and wondered, "Am I alone in seeing this as an absurd act of political desperation by the civil rights establishment? What's next? Will Irish-Americans sue whiskey distillers, or Jews the gas company?" White, who is African-American, retorted that Horowitz's column was so repellent that it "made the anti-black rantings of Dinesh D'Souza seem like models of fair-minded social analysis."


He has become his own enemy, and his rantings are an attempt not to atone for his Left wing past, but to claim he always was a conservative. He has gone from Red to Red Neck.

In his book Hating Whitey, Horowitz dismissed Dr. Cornel West as "an intellectual of modest talents whose skin color has catapulted him into academic stardom with a six-figure income."

Do I detect the tone of green with jealousy in this statement? Of course.

A tip o' the blog to A Class Act.

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Water War

Politcal power grows out of the barrel of the gun. Mao Tse Tung

OROPOYI, Kenya - Akiru Lomukuny's clan already has seen one boy killed, a girl raped and dozens of women beaten just for trying to get a drink of water. Now, she says, things are about to get a lot worse.Generations of east Africans have clashed sporadically over cattle, pasture and, most importantly, water. The drought sweeping the region is making the fight for resources more desperate.

"The route through Uganda is like going between two dogs," Lomukuny said. "During the migration, the fighting is perpetual, all the way through, until we find a place to settle."

She said the biggest concern was the supply of bullets, because unlike in Uganda, the Kenyan government doesn't provide the nomadic tribes with arms and ammunition. She said if the government would only give them more well water, things would be different.

But Lomukuny said her clan has to take its chances and cross the border.

"I don't care if I lose a child, or my husband, it is a desperate state now," she said. "We have to go."

She looked a reporter straight in the eye.

"If you want to help me," the grandmother said with immense dignity. "Give me a gun."

Starving Kenyans are on the brink... "The Kenyan government has declared a national emergency. Dozens of people have already died in northeastern and eastern Kenya, while dead cattle and other animals dot the landscape. The UN estimates that hunger and thirst killed hundreds of people and tens of thousands of livestock in Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia."


A tip o the blog to News Trolls for this.

Also See: Free Trade; Hong Kong & Somalia




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Gag Order Over Tax Increases?

King Stephen the Harpocrite has taken his cone of silence politics to their ultimate conclusion, he is now silencing his Ministers so that everyone is singing from his songbook.

Harper's new gag order
London Free Press - 4 hours ago
Retreating into a bunker mentality, the new prime minister has proclaimed that his office must approve all information, comments and even letters to the editor from government officials and cabinet ministers,

This is good old fashioned Alberta-Style politics, so reminiscent of another King.

King Ralph.

Alberta ministers must quit early to seek Klein's job CBC News


Could this new Stalinism in the PMO be because the Tories intend to introduce TAX INCREASES in their new budget?

So says the Canadian Taxpayers Federation;

Yet to finance their tax cut package (highlighted by the GST reduction), the Conservatives have said they’ll raise the bottom income tax rate back up to 16 per cent from 15 per cent. They’ll also cancel the $500 increase in the BPE. This increase would kick in for 2006 and not affect the income tax cut granted for 2005. Nonetheless, should Mr. Harper go this route, he will correctly be labelled a tax-hiker, and rightfully incur the wrath of taxpayers.


More Stories On: Harper


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The Other Seal Hunt

Stageleft has published a particular nasty racist little email that was sent to some Northern folks, the Inuit. It attacks them for seal hunting.

The Inuit who also are affected by the anti-seal hunt activists they have produced a new pro sustainable development video promoting the Seal Hunt in the North as part of a sustainable fishing/hunting economy.

But of course their video is nothing like the corporate campaign the Green NGO's do because of their deep pockets. Pockets filled annually by the fundraising campaign around the seal hunt.

In 1974 IFAW hired the same advertising agency as Coca-Cola to co-ordinate a $100,000 "Stop the Seal Hunt," campaign. Seal pup products are now banned in Europe and the U.S. Marine Mamal protection Act prevents any importation of seal products into Canada's largest trading partner. With annual revenues of $60 million a year and support from U.S., Canadian and European celebrities, the IFAW represents a publicity juggernaut, Simpson said.

The Reality

The Propaganada Image




Amongst Northern peoples, those in the Circumpolar Arctic, sealing is part of the traditional economy. The Green NGO's like to claim that the Inuit and other aboriginal peoples are simply dupes of the fur industry! The fact that traditional hunter gatherer economies are based on hunting, duh oh, might have something to do with it of course doesn't cross their minds.

This is a morality play about the angst people in the south feel about the North, urban sophisticates living in the metropoles versus the rural rubes and rednecks who live in the Southerners much cherished 'wilderness".

Its people in the south versus Peoples in the North, and by the way the Newfoundland Hunt is in Labrador where it is part of the traditional way of live of the aboriginals who live there as well as the Fisher folk from the Rock.

Its about old economies based on fishing and hunting which are suffering from underdevelopment, but that underdevelopment, is in the eye of the beholder, sustainable fishing and hunting economies can exist. But not for PETA and others who want to end all use of animals so we can become vegans.

Unfortunately the Green moralists believe that the Hunting and Fishing Folk should pay the price for urbanites to wander in a people-less wilderness.

McCartney called the hunt "barbaric" and a "stain" on the country, and urged Ottawa to replace it with subsidies for fishermen and an eco-tourism industry.

It comes from all those cutesy wilderness movies put out by Walt Disney that generations have grown up on. The ones with the anthropomophic animals that talk. Which maybe why Ms.McCartney almost got bit by a baby seal, because she was probably trying to have a conversation with it.

POSED UNPOSED

Tom Hanson, Associated Press

A seal pup tries to nip at Paul McCartney and his wife Heather as she tries to pet it on the ice floes.

Paul McCartney and his wife Heather pose with a seal pup as part of a high-profile publicity stunt.
(CP Tom Hanson)

He and his wife posed for photographers while petting whitecoat pups, which are illegal to target.

And its nice to see someone put the Seal Hunt in context;

Seal hunt pales next to Iraq slaughter: senator

Also See:

Seal Hunt Articles 2006

Seal Hunt Articles 2005:

Green Opportunism

Green Party Seal Hunt Flippers

SEAL HUNT DEJA VU

Did Viagra impact the Seal Hunt

A Rational Observation on the Seal Hunt


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V for Anarchy

V for Vendetta is out today, not Guy Fawkes Day but not far off, as it is Saint Paddy's day.

And the links between V and the IRA struggle back in 1916, could be made.

As could links to the current State of Terror that we are facing with our new Security States. Those in power who claim that we are under attack and thus must give up our civil liberties for the good of the State.

Now while this V guy is kinda of violent, he is the opposite of our poor Windsor Smith in 1984. Servility or Liberty.

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.” Thomas Jefferson

Which makes this review from CTV all the more interesting in that it is well balanced.

At the center of the story is the mysterious V, (Hugo Weaving, The Matrix, Lord of the Rings) a Guy Fawkes mask wearing anarchist who saves a woman named Evey from being raped by state police. After their chance encounter, V inspires her to join his crusade to restore civil liberties through acts of terrorism.

"It's less of a message and more of a question which is 'when if ever is violence justified'? And you can say that there are certain situations when it is justified," Natalie Portman, who plays Evey, told eTalk.

Vendetta explores the idea that one person's terrorist may be another person's freedom fighter.

The debate over the politics of the deed versus mass mobilizations will be taken up again as they did over the Black Bloc.Already some anarchists are planning to leaflet the movie to use it as a chance to clarify that Anarchy really is. Good on them. It will help counter the Anarchist as Terrorist mythology.

THE TERROR LAST TIME
New Yorker, United States - 5 Mar 2006
... When the war was over, his politics shifted. ... Merely by virtue of what the Haymarket eight had said and written about anarchism and dynamite, they were ...

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May 68 Redux

The streets of Paris have ignited in days of rage as students strike against the new employment laws. Reminding us once again of the Paris Maydays of 68. Complete with cops attacking protesters. It's a Flashback; Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

About 250,000 students took to the streets of major cities. Some wore black garbage bags to symbolise their charge that the Government treats young people as disposable workers.The student rallies have worried the Government because of their rapid spread, the threat of participation by trade unions and the historical power of students in France. A student protest that began at the Sorbonne in 1968 led to the resignation of the President, Charles de Gaulle.

France's newly passed labour law

Due to come into effect next month, it will make it easier to hire and fire young people at a time when the youth unemployment rate averages 23 per cent.

The protesters' anger focuses on provisions that will allow companies to fire employees under 26 at any time during their first two years of work, without cause.

"They're offering us nothing but slavery," said Maud Pottier, 17, a student at Jules Verne High School in Sartrouville, north of Paris.

"You'll get a job knowing that you've got to do every single thing they ask you to do because otherwise you may get sacked. I'd rather spend more time looking for a job and get a real one."

Business leaders complain that existing French labour laws make it virtually impossible to dismiss incompetent employees without giving them prohibitively costly severance package

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Philosophy Update

I have updated links in my blog article; A Philosophical Dilemma

I have included a link to Tony Negri's work on Spinoza; The Savage Anomaly
THE POWER OF SPINOZA'S METAPHYSICS AND POLITICS

This is an online edition of the full length book.

As well I have included a link to Eric Hollands article Spinoza and Marxism. Enjoy.



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