Farmers Reject Phony Plebiscite

That should be the headline in the papers today, but it isn't. The headlines are full of government spin on their failed barley plebiscite.

A total of 62 per cent of just over 29,000 farmers who cast eligible ballots said they wanted the board out of the barley market altogether, or for the board to participate in a competitive market. Another 38 per cent said they wanted to maintain the status quo.

Farmers overwhelmingly rejected Chuck Strahl's plebiscite as it was not sanctioned by the Wheat Board. About 86,000 ballots were mailed out based on crop insurance data.

Now at least in some reports those ballots were as high as 89,000. That means if 29,000 farmers voted even with my terrible reputation at math that works out to one third voted not even fifty percent as the government claims.

Strahl said KPMG, the firm that handled the plebiscite for the government, made every effort to ensure only eligible votes were counted. Voter turnout was just over 50 per cent. Strahl said many eligible voters said they didn't bother to vote because they only sell their barley to feed lots, not the wheat board.

So if two thirds of prairie farmers don't vote that means they support the status quo.

The real number that supports the Conservatives opposition to the existence of the farmer owned producer coop; the Canadian Wheat Board they can only muster up amongst their Reform Party base in Southern Saskatchewan and Alberta, 15.2% of the total who voted. Not even the total who could vote.

Contrary to Strahl's math; where he combines pro-choice with anti-Wheat Board,and proudly announces that his side won with 62%, Wayne Easterly the Agriculture critic for the Liberals was justified in pointing out that the numbers could equally show support for the Wheat Board 87.2%. Since those that answered question number two wanted both choice and the Wheat Board.

As Neil Waugh points out in the Edmonton Sun;

Another 15.2% said get rid of the board altogether when it came to the barley business. Still, it was enough to carry the day.

In the four western provinces, where the CWB monopoly rules, the overall result saw only 37.8% back the so-called "single desk," while pro choice hit 49.4%.

But when the Saskatchewan numbers were broken out - where 15,327 farmers voted - 45% chose to extend the monopoly.

In Manitoba, where it appeared a boycott was in the works, 50.6% of only 3,703 barley producer cast ballots saying leave it be.

In B.C., the vote was 49.4% pro choice. But only 156 ballots were in the boxes.

Interesting that Waugh fails to note the Alberta number of votes, in his article.
Well in all the rest of the provinces, total votes other than Alberta; 19,186 That leaves Alberta with less than 10,000 votes and Waugh fails to break them down.

They were 9,881 total votes. It was in Alberta that the plebiscite got 15% support for getting rid of the Wheat Board, the same number as the national result. In fact all of Strahl's numbers are for Alberta.

They are not the reality of the prairie position on the Wheat Board.

Farmer support for Option 1 the Wheat Board was;

Manitoba 50.6%
Saskatchewan; 45.1%
B.C.; 42%

Farmer support for Option 2 market to Wheat Board or on my own;
Manitoba; 34.5%
Saskatchewan; 42.1%
B.C.; 49%

In Manitoba and Saskatchewan the majority of farmers support the Wheat Board, their farmer owned producer cooperative.

Only in B.C. is it the reverse, but the government in its desperation looks at percentages instead of core numbers. B.C. only had 156 votes compared to Manitoba and Saskatchewan's 19,0000 votes.

That's because the Conservatives included B.C. making this not a prairie farm vote but a Western one.

Just as Alberta's vote skews the numbers.

For Option 1: 21.4%
For Option 2: 63.4%

Prairie farmers face their battle to maintain their producer cooperative not with Ottawa, but with Alberta and its party in Ottawa.

The government asked three questions. Period. And there was no clear winner. The government has to resort to arithmetricks.

The reality is that 57,000-60,000 farmers abstained from voting, a boycott was called, and they did not vote in the governments fixed plebiscite. That is twice as many as voted, and a clear rejection of Strahl and the Alberta Reform Party Farm lobby.

See:

Wheat Board

ind blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Canada, agriculture, wheat, WTO, G8, WheatBoard, farmers, Western-Canada, barley, wheat, Strahl, Government, Conservatives, Harper, Free-Trade, Klein, NDP, taxpayers, PR, propaganda,
Canada
Politics
Harper
CWB
Wheat Board
farming
Supply Side Management
Conservatives

ECHELON Spies on Greenpeace

The super secret joint US/UK/Canada/Australia/New Zealand military intelligence monitoring operation known as ECHELON, which I wrote about previously, is used to spy on commercial transactions as well as on Greenpeace and other Canadian based environmentalists!

This is from an official EU background report on ECHELON published in 2001.

A note CSE stands for Communications Security Establishment and is the intelligence and encryption section of the Department of Defense.

5.7.3. Mike Frost (former Canadian secret service officer)
Mike Frost worked for more than 20 years for the CSE, the Canadian secret service1. The
listening post in Ottawa was just one part of a worldwide network of spy stations.2 In an
interview with CBS, he said that all over the world, every day, telephone conversations, emails
and faxes are monitored by ECHELON, a secret government surveillance network.3
This also included civilian communications. In an interview he gave for an Australian TV
channel, he said by way of example that the CSE actually had entered the name and telephone
number of a woman in a database of possible terrorists because she had used an ambiguous
phrase in a harmless telephone conversation with a friend. When searching through
intercepted communications, the computer had found the keyword and reproduced the
conversation. The analyst was unsure and therefore recorded her personal details.4
The intelligence services of the ECHELON community also helped each other by spying on
each other's behalf so that at least local intelligence services could not be accused of anything.
For instance, GCHQ asked the CSE to spy on two British government ministers when Prime
Minister Thatcher wanted it to tell her if they were on her side.5

5.7.4. Fred Stock (former Canadian secret service employee)
Fred Stock says he was expelled from CSE, the Canadian secret service, in 1993 because he
had criticised the new emphasis on economic intelligence and civil targets. The
communications intercepted contained information on trade with other countries, including
negotiations on NAFTA, Chinese purchases of cereals and French arms sales. Stock says the
service also routinely received communications concerning environmental protests by
Greenpeace vessels on the high seas.6



1 Communication Security Establishment, subordinate to the Canadian Ministry of Defense, engaged in SIGINT
2 NBC TV interview '60 Minutes', 27.2.2000; http://cryptome.org/echelon-60min.htm
3 Rötzer, Die NSA geht wegen ECHELON an die Öffentlichkeit;
http://www.heise.de/bin/tp/issue/download.cgi?artikelnr=6633&rub_ordner=special
4 NBC TV interview '60 Minutes', 27.2.2000; http://cryptome.org/echelon-60min.htm
5 Interview on the Australian Channel 9 on 23..3.1999;
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Senate/8789/sunday1.htm
6 Bronskill, Canada a key snooper in huge spy network, Ottawa Citizen, 24.10.2000,
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/national/990522/2630510.html

In fact the startling conclusion they come to is that ECHELON is NOT used for military spying, security or anti-terrorism but is solely interested in intercepting private and commercial communications, in other words corporate secrets and corporate spying.

13.2. Conclusions
The existence of a global system for intercepting private and commercial communications
(the ECHELON interception system)

That a system for intercepting communications exists, operating by means of cooperation
proportionate to their capabilities among the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia and New
Zealand, is no longer in doubt. It has been established that this system is operated on the basis
of the UKUSA Agreement. That its name is in fact ECHELON seems likely in view of the
evidence, but this is a relatively minor detail. What is important is that its purpose is to
intercept private and commercial communications, and not military communications.

Which really should not surprise anyone, since President Dwight D. Eisenhower declared fifty years ago that America was run by the Military Industrial Complex,in this historic epoch of state capitalism.

All intelligence is corporate intelligence in search of advantages for a national capital against its competitors. War is military expansion of that capital in search of markets and resources.

This then is the real Anglo-American Imperium protecting its capital interests against the rest of the world. Three of the allies went to war in Iraq, and the other two abetted it.


H/T to Skillluminati Research a fun little conspiracy theory blog in the tradition of Robert Anton Wilson.

And a further H/T to Dream's End another fun little conspiracy theory blog

All courtesy of UFO Review and their news aggregator.

Which I would not have found it they had not picked up The Origin of American Conspiracy Theories

See

Spying

Statist Anti-Terrorism Act

Paranoia and the Security State

State Security Is A Secure State

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Echelon, CSIS, Spying, Canada, Day, Government, Conservatives, CSE, Canadian-Security-Establishment, DND, Air, India, terrorism, national-security, NARUS, NSA, Bush, CIA

The Origin of American Conspiracy Theories

Americans are fascinated with conspiracy theories, in fact they generate the majority of them. Along with religious revivalism, conspiracy theories are second nature in the body politic of America.

Here is a fascinating thesis that shows that the conspiracy theory meme began in America with its founding during the revolutionary war. And since then conspiracy theory has dominated American politics.

Be it in the religious revivalism of the 1800's, the anti-Masonry movement, or the later Know Nothings, through out the history of American politics conspiracy theories have abounded, and have had major political impact. They are as American as apple pie.

This is a PhD. Thesis and is a full length book available for download as a PDF.

Conspiracy Theory and the Society of the Cincinnati, 1783-1790


At the same time, I became aware of a tradition of radical political dissent in
modern America, an abundance of conspiracy theories that also extended into popular culture. It was the time of Timothy McVeigh and the militia movement, of Waco, Ruby Ridge, Pat Robertson, and the X-Files. Suddenly conspiratorial explanations for current and historical events seemed everywhere. From Richard Hofstadter’s writings I realized that conspiracy theories occurred in episodic waves throughout American history, and from Bernard Bailyn and Gordon Wood I learned that the founding fathers believed in a secret English plot against American liberty. I decided to investigate, but soon became aware that other scholars were already writing on conspiracy theories in post-World War II America. Clearly, I had to look off the beaten path for a case study in American political “paranoia.”

It was then that I remembered a somewhat obscure document from my studies
on the Connecticut ratification debates. Just before the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, Dr. Benjamin Gale, an eccentric physician from Killingworth, wrote a long letter to Erasmus Wolcott.

In this diatribe, Gale complained about the machinations of the Society of the Cincinnati, a veterans organization of officers of the Continental Army. Gale charged that all the talk about the weakness of the Articles of Confederation was merely a smokescreen for the treasonous ambition of the Cincinnati. According to Gale, this society planned to establish a military dictatorship or monarchy and assume the mantle of hereditary nobility for themselves. Gale was obviously an Antifederalist, one who not only attacked the movement for a new Constitution as unnecessary and dangerous, but who felt it was the result of a deliberate conspiracy against American freedom.

I had found my topic. Apparently, a conspiracy theory existed in the 1780s, the
very period when the political culture and system of the United States was taking
shape, and it accused the leaders of the Continental Army of anti-republican subversion.

Small wonder then that such discourses of radical suspicion surfaced periodically
over the course of American history. If some American revolutionaries felt that even George Washington and Henry Knox could be traitors, we should not be surprised that so many Americans question the report of the Warren commission or distrust the federal government and the United Nations. The Deepest Piece of Cunning is a journey to the origins of conspiracy theories in the United States. It should shed some light on the political controversies of the 1780s as well as the persistence of conspiracy theories in American political culture.

Abstract

In May 1783, the officers of the Continental Army of the United States of America
organized themselves into the Society of the Cincinnati. Soon after, the veterans
organization became the focus of an elaborate conspiracy theory which falsely accused the officers of trying to establish a hereditary nobility and subvert the young republic.

Over the course of the mid-1780s, prominent revolutionary politicans such as John Adams and Elbridge Gerry joined in the outcry. The conspiracy theory became a major political controversy, and even impeded efforts to reform the Articles of Confederation.

However, despite their frantic tone and lack of a factual basis, the accusations were not merely a fringe phenomenon created by political crackpots. Instead, the conspiracy theory was deeply embedded in American political culture. When the political and economic problems of the 1780s threatened to disrupt the republican experiment, many revolutionaries looked for a threat that might explain the crisis. They found that threat in the Cincinnati, whose military background, federal organization, and aristocratic trappings made them suspect.

See:

1666 The Creation Of The World

Once More On the Fourth

Conspiracy Theory or Ruling Class Studies

Bilderberg

Conspiracy Theory

Conspiracy

Ruling Class

Freemasons



Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
American Revolution, Federalists, Anti-Federalists, Federalist Papers, Secret Societies, NWO, New World Order, Society of the Cincinnati, Conspiracy, Conspiracy theory, Bohemian Grove, Conspiracy Theories, Ruling Class, Anglo-American Conspiracy,
USA, America, Christians, Deism, Deists, Jefferson, Adams, Know-nothings, Constitution,

National Minimum Wage

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has issued a report calling for a National Minimum Wage of $10 an hour indexed to inflation.

Something the NDP has been calling for in Parliament as well as for Ontario.

Ironically last week on Don Newman's Politics show on CBC Newsworld Ontario Finance Minister Sorbara told Don that the reason the Liberal government was unwilling to raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour immediately was because he had a report telling him it would mean the loss of 90,000 to 100,000 jobs. Now what report was that?

Back in January Sorbara claimed a $10 an hour minimum wage would lead to a loss of 66,000 jobs. So which is it? Why none of the above of course, it's all speculation.

The reality is that workers in Canada have not had a real increase in our wages since the 1980's. Yet our productivity has increased. Which is why there have been increasing job losses in manufacturing replaced with low paying jobs in the service industry.

MINDELLE JACOBS, writes in the Edmonton Sun today;

Wondering why your money doesn't go as far as it used to? There's a good reason: The median wage has only inched up a mere 1% over the past couple of decades.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) offered up that startling figure, along with an assortment of other disheartening financial tidbits yesterday, in a study calling for a $10 minimum wage.

Unemployment may be about the lowest in 30 years but that masks the hand-to-mouth reality faced by a substantial minority of Canadians.

Take that 1% increase in the median wage over the past two decades. We keep hearing about stagnant wages. Well, the median wage (in 2001 dollars) barely moved between 1981 and 2004 -- from $15.16 to $15.33.

Lots of Canadians are working but huge numbers of them are living from pay cheque to pay cheque. Sure, only 4% of Canadians earn minimum wage and most of them are teens. But there's a whole other block of workers who are making between the current minimum wage and the CCPA's proposed $10 minimum.

As has been pointed out in previous studies, 19% of workers earn less than $10 an hour. While we weren't looking, Canada became a country where almost one in five workers is barely getting by. The lucky have permanent full-time jobs, pensions, sick leave and a host of extended medical benefits. Many others can only dream of such a lifestyle. So how do you like globalization so far?

See;

Minimum Wage

Living Wage

Productivity


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Ontario, NDP, Liberals, MPP, salaries, jobs, minimum wage, MPP salary increase, Sorbara, $10, living wage,
Layton, Canada, politics,

Criminal Capitalism: OLGC

Report reveals fraud in Ont. lottery corporation

So what is the punishment a CEO gets for a culture of criminal fraud?

Ten years, twenty?

Nope.

CEO hit the $720Gs severance jackpot



See

CEO

Corporate Crime

White Collar Crime

Criminal Capitalism

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
criminology, corporate-crime, white-collar-crime, sociology, fraud, scandal, criminal-capitalism, OLGC, Ontario, theft, crime,
lotteries Canada,

Pain In The Butt

Anna Nicole Smith died because of a pain in the butt.

Seriously that is what the Medical Examiner reported yesterday. And her autopsy revealed, that after complaining of a sore butt after yet another injection of growth hormone, she came down with a fever while flying from the Bahamas to Florida.

So there was Dr. Perper on Monday, standing on two concrete cinderblocks behind a podium in the parking lot, the microphones in front of him covered with logos of Access Hollywood, Entertainment Tonight, CNN and Fox News.

His words were broadcast live around the globe as he ticked off the laundry list of prescription drugs found in Smith's system, including methadone, Valium, Clonopin, Ativan and chloral hydrate, a sleeping medicine that played a role in the suicide of her idol, Marilyn Monroe.

He spoke of Smith's "injections into the buttocks and thighs" of human growth hormone, vitamin B12 and immunoglobulins.

"When many drugs act together, they may often have unpredictable and dangerous effects," Perper said.

The reason was that the latest injection had burst an abscess in her butt leading to bacteriological infection of her blood.

Vickie Lynn Marshall February 9, 2007 10:36 a.m. 07-0223

Dissection of the buttocks reveals diffuse subcutaneous scarring and fat necrosis of the adipose tissue bilaterally with three subcutaneous cystic structures containing light yellow, clear, thick liquid within the left buttock.

The right buttock contains similar cysts with similar content, with
at least one cyst wall being calcified.

The left and right buttocks have foci of recent, hemorrhagic tracts within the subcutaneous adipose tissue and the superficial and deep muscular layers extending from the skin surface.

There is a deep-seated 3 x 2.5 x 2 centimeter abscess within the musculature of the left buttock with a creamy, yellow-green pus on sectioning. A recent, hemorrhagic, needle tract extends into the abscess wall from the skin surface.

This was followed by opportunistic flu symptoms, leading to her psychiatrist to dosing her with antibiotics and and her own self medication with various prescription cocktails.

The latter leading to her death by accidental overdose.

But like the media coverage of her death, it was all about a pain in the butt.


ind blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Anna Nicole Smith, autopsy,

Abortion Not A Sin

It's Easter.

For just one week, priests in Malta and Gozo will be able to grant forgiveness to sins related to abortion, heresy, apostasy, and schisms.

So Abortion is not a sin but a violation of church doctrine. Glad they cleared that up.

Heresy, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is a "theological or religious opinion or doctrine maintained in opposition, or held to be contrary, to the Roman Catholic or Orthodox doctrine of the Christian Church, or, by extension, to that of any church, creed, or religious system, considered as orthodox. By extension, heresy is an opinion or doctrine in philosophy, politics, science, art, etc., at variance with those generally accepted as authoritative."

One who commits apostasy is an apostate, or one who apostatises literature, the term typically referred to . In older Westernbaptized Christians who left their faith.

A schismatic is a person who creates or incites schism in an organization or who is a member of a splinter group.

You see in Malta abortion is morally and legally not sanctioned. Yet women will still get abortions regardless of male priests and male law makers. Because making abortion illegal is not only stupid it endangers womens health.

Blindness no excuse for abortion - Health Division

A woman who risks suffering blindness by going through with her pregnancy will not be allowed to carry out an abortion in Malta. This puts Malta in the same league as Poland – a country which was this week found guilty of violating the human rights of a 35-year-old mother, refused an abortion despite warnings that having the baby could make her go blind.

“Abortion in Malta is illegal and is not allowed under any circumstance,” Dr Ray Busuttil, Director General of the Health Division, told MaltaToday when asked whether abortion is allowed in cases where a Maltese mother risks blindness if she proceeds with her pregnancy.
On Tuesday, Polish resident Alicja Tysiac, an unemployed single mother of thee, was awarded EURO 25,000 (LM10,500) in damages by the European Court of Justice.

When Alicja Tysiac became pregnant in February 2000, three eye specialists told her having another baby could put her eyesight at serious risk. But neither the specialists nor her GP would authorise an abortion.

After giving birth later that year, Ms Tysiac suffered a retinal haemorrhage and feared she may go blind. She now wears glasses with thick powerful lenses, but still cannot see objects more than a metre and a half away. As a disabled single mother, she struggles to raise her three children on her meagre state pension.

The Strasbourg court ruled that the mother’s human rights had been violated when she was denied an abortion on therapeutic grounds. But the court ruling will not affect Poland’s strict abortion laws, which some right-wing politicians want to make even stricter.

According to Dr Michael Axiaq, the Nationalist MP and Opus Dei member who chairs the National Ethics Board Committee, in such cases one has to choose between “a lesser of two evils” namely the life of the baby and the disability of the mother. “In such cases, our choice should be that of protecting life.”

But priests don't care for the woman only for the product of her womb. She is still the sinful vessel, the child on the other hand is pure. Even if the woman is raped. The child is holy, the mother a harlot, the rapist; probably a priest.

Thank goodness such religious stupidity is against the law in the EU.

See

Abortion

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
abortion, DNA, RNA, sterlitiy, infertility, sex, relgion, Onan, sin, murder, embryo, embryonic, fetus, fetal, Christianity, Catholic, anti-choice, men, mens-sexuality, health, anti-abortion

Gore Kulture

No not Al Gore.

Gore as in Grand Guignol as in a specific sub genre of horror movies; slasher films, blood and guts movies like Saw, Hostile, etc.

The Peculiar Charms of the Grand Guignol

by Gideon Lester

"At one performance, six people passed out when an actress, whose eyeball was just gouged out, re-entered the stage, revealing a gooey, blood-encrusted hole in her skull. Backstage, the actors themselves calculated their success according to the evening's faintings. During one play that ended with a realistic blood transfusion, a record was set: fifteen playgoers had lost consciousness. Between sketches, the cobble-stoned alley outside the theatre was frequented by hyperventilating couples and vomiting individuals."

-- Mel Gordon, The Grand Guignol:
theatre of fear and terror.

We can go back to Shakespeare to find the first real case of Grand Guignol in theatre;

Titus Andronicus is a play with "14 killings, 9 of them on stage, 6 severed members, 1 rape (or 2 or 3, depending on how you count), 1 live burial, 1 case of insanity and 1 of cannibalism--an average of 5.2 atrocities per act, or one for every 97 lines."

We seem to have moved from a rash of horror films to gore films in four short years. The gore phenomena is specific to the current mass culture we are experiencing.

We have seen an increase in horror films, just as we did during the depression and again during the Viet Nam war, horror films reflect the need for social catharsis during times of cultural stress.

The Gore film on the other hand was an underground phenomena, much like Grand Guignol. It first appeared not in film but in the fifties as crime and horror comics.

It existed since the early sixties, as a b-film phenomena in particular the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis, but became popular in the eighties with the works of Stuart Gordon and Sam Raimi. It expanded in the nineties with the work of Clive Barker, in particular the Hellraiser series, now coming to the small screen as a computer game.

But these were horror movies, there was gore, but there was also humour, atmosphere, the gore was incidental, there to frighten you as much as the thing that jumps out of the dark.

But today the movies are Gore for gore's sake. In that they hearken back to Herschell Gordon Lewis work and Romero's Night of the Living Dead. But unlike them they are major studio releases, a popular film phenomena on the big screen and the producers of the goriest of the gore films; Saw I, II and III are Canadian.

It is reflective of the current social crisis of sociopathology that is in the headlines. Man kills and BBQs girlfriend

Take for instance the Picton murder case and its Edmonton counter part the serial killing of prostitutes, or this recent Edmonton case that was in the news for weeks;

Michael Briscoe, acquitted in the rape and murder of Nina Courtepatte, is haunted by his failure to intervene and try to save her when she was brutally attacked 2 years ago

Edmonton, with its record-high murder rate, is quickly losing its reputation as a safe city.

But it's not just the creeping crime wave that's spooking people. It's the grim reality that we are now known for one of the most odious killings in the country.

Malls are supposed to be places where young people hang out, shop and flirt - not where a strikingly pretty 13-year-old girl is chosen at random to be raped and slaughtered for kicks.

I fear we are raising a society of sociopaths - kids who are so adrift, amoral and inured to violence that they have become completely indifferent to evil. They are drawn to it, it seems, out of twisted curiosity and sheer boredom.

How else to explain how a group of young people could lure Nina Courtepatte from West Edmonton Mall on the pretext of inviting her to a party, only to rape her and beat her to death on a golf course?

Brutality, savagery, gore, and cannibalism all underlie Grand Guignol and the Gore film today, as it does the headlines in your daily paper.

AN ALCOHOLIC who strangled his friend and then told police he did it so he could be sent to prison to exact revenge on a cannibal killer who murdered his girlfriend, was yesterday jailed for life. Alan Taylor said he never got over the murder of Julie Paterson, who was beheaded and partially eaten by psychopath David Harker in 1998.

New Delhi, Mar 22: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday gave a clean chit to Mohinder Singh Pandher, co-accused in the gruesome Nithari serial killings in the outskirts of Delhi. CBI blamed his servant for the macabre killings and also confirmed cannibalism in him. It said Pandher's servant Surinder Koli was a psychopath and blamed him for the killings

A religious cult leader who raped, murdered and ate at least three women in Papua New Guinea has been captured by a group of villagers.

Steven Tari, 35, who called himself the "black Jesus" was beaten by locals from the village of Matepi before being handed over to police.

The failed bible student had gathered around six thousand followers as he travelled through mountain villages promising disciples gifts from heaven if they joined his congregation.

But communities discovered he was indulging in cannibalism, sacrificing young women, drinking their blood and eating their flesh.

The Gore phenomena begins with Slaughter of the Lambs, and its overwhelming popularity. It is about the brutality of a serial killer who skins his victims, and the anti-hero is a cannibal; Dr. Hannibal Lecter. It coincides disturbingly with pig farmer Robert Pictons brutal murder and dismemberment of women in Vancouver, and its implication of cannibalism.

The disturbing fact is that our fascination with the Picton case is the same as our fascination with Dr. Lecter. Cannibalism being the final taboo leading to the mass media phenomena of Hannibal the Cannibal.

I'm not alone in my fascination with cannibalism — why else would there be five Hannibal Lecter movies? Soylent Green is made of people; the living dead will eat your brains at any time of dawn, day, or night; and the biggest blockbuster of 2006, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, featured droves of flesh-hungry islanders.

In fact cannibalism is American as Apple Pie. Even before the infamous Donner party case, the founders of America engaged in cannibalism and capitalism.

Jamestown aims for historic reign over Plymouth

JAMESTOWN, Va. -- The first permanent English settlement in North America has more personality than many other historic attractions.
Capt. John Smith, the pint-sized adventurer, left a breathless narrative of his exploits.
Commerce took root here, and so did tobacco and slavery.
Then there was the cannibalism.
Still, as the country prepares to commemorate Jamestown's 400th anniversary in May, many see this swampy outpost on the James River only as a coming attraction to the Pilgrims' arrival at Plymouth Rock about 13 years later.
New Englanders, for example, point to the Thanksgiving feast, the Pilgrims' pure pursuit of religious freedom and the Mayflower.
Jamestown, on the other hand, "is the creation story from hell," Karen Ordahl Kupperman writes in her new book, "The Jamestown Project." Conflict, disease, horrific killings and starvation are all part of the back story of Jamestown, founded in 1607 as a business venture.
But if not for Jamestown, scholars say, there may not have been a Plymouth, and we all might be speaking Spanish. The Spanish, intent on spreading Roman Catholicism, were turned away twice from the nearby Chesapeake Bay during the early years of the Protestant Jamestown settlement.
"There's no question that Jamestown throws down the gauntlet to the Spanish," said James Horn, who wrote "A Land as God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America."
Now, during an 18-month commemoration, Jamestown finally could outshine Plymouth and fully embrace what historian and writer Nathaniel Philbrick calls its proper claim as "the rightful birthing ground of America."
"Not only was the [Jamestown] settlement found more than a decade before, but the colony that developed from those beginnings was, in many ways, more quintessentially American since it was all about making money," said Mr. Philbrick, the author of "Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War."

Another gore phenomena in media is the popularity of the Zombie. Zombie parties are occurring across North America. In Edmonton there is a Zombie club of folks who dress up in gory zombie costumes and wander the streets groaning and moaning.

At the University of Alabama they are offering a course on Zombies.

Do you hope that when you die, your corpse will return to life and shamble around, wreaking havoc? Have you ever wanted to taste human flesh? Or do you just want to be able to live your life without that crippling fear of someone eating your brains?

Those who said yes to any of those questions will find a kindred spirit in Sean Hoade, a UA instructor currently teaching creative writing, literature and English. In May, during the interim, he will be teaching EN 311-001, titled, Zombies! The Living Dead in Literature, Film and Culture.

Hoade said zombies are the perfect choice because they are the ultimate metaphor for human life.

"Anything that you look at," Hoade said, "the way we know people by sight but don't really know our neighbors ... race relations and class warfare - all of that is reflected in zombies. And that's why they've become so incredibly popular. [There are] zombie movies, zombie books, zombie graphic novels, so I think that it's only right for the English department to offer a class looking at all things zombie."

Hoade said the class will also discuss what zombies being reanimated corpses indicates about people's fears.

"Death is so sanitized now that [even] being around a dead body that isn't reanimated is incredibly spooky. So we're going to look at how the fear of the zombie is actually a fear not just of death, because we're all afraid of death, but a fear, actually, of the dead also."

The class won't strictly focus on the intellectual aspects of zombies. Students will also be able to participate in a variety of zombie-related activities.

"We're going to engage in mock cannibalism," Hoade said. "We're going to [have] human-flavored tofu. It's based on what people who had to resort to cannibalism, like the Donner party and that plane crash and things like that, what they said human flesh tastes like.

"I ordered putrescine, which is the chemical that dead things give off," he said. Putrescine, which is a chemical compound used by the body for cellular division, is responsible for the smell of rotting flesh.

"We're probably going to do a zombie walk, which is we're all going to get made up as zombies and walk around campus and terrorize it. I'll have to see if that's allowed. We're also going to eat Jell-O brains. [The purpose of the activities are] just to try to get into the zombie mindset ... We might go over to the graveyard and lie down on the graves."

Zombie mindset? Zombies have no brains, no minds, thats why they eat brains, they lack intelligence. Just like the folks at PETA.

The folks in charge of PETA love all of God's creatures—with a few notable exceptions. Asked by BlackBook whether the animal-rights group opposes human cannibalism, Dan Mathews, the group's outrage-provoking vice president, quips, "No, as long as the person being eaten is Anna Wintour." It's far from the first time PETA has gone after the Vogue editor in chief, whom it accuses of doing more than anyone else to keep the wearing of animal pelts in style.

The aristocracy has a history of fascination with death and haute coutoure, they go together like art and suicide.

WHEN Victoria Beckham heard that the flamboyant fashion guru, design muse and socialite Isabella Blow had attempted to kill herself in 2005 by throwing herself off a bridge in London, she remarked, "What genius!"

After school, Blow lived in a squat in London and took cleaning jobs. Then she went off to New York, where Brian Ferry, an old friend - introduced her to Vogue editor Anna Wintour. Blow hung out with artists Jean-Michel Basquiat, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, who wanted to know her when he saw she was wearing one pink and one purple shoe.

But for all the name-dropping, there have been two main role models in Blow's life. The first is the Duchess of Windsor, of whom a stylised portrait hangs in her hallway. "Wallis was ugly, like me, but she made the best of herself. I wish I'd lured a king." The other is Blow's aforementioned flesh-eating grandmother, Vera Delves Broughton, a photographer, explorer and big-game fisher. Until recently she held the record for catching the biggest fish in European waters (a tuna, which took 16 hours to reel in).

As for the cannibalism, Blow explains, "She was once in Papua New Guinea. She had some dinner and said, 'God, that was delicious. What was it?' It turned out to be a poor local tribesman who had been grilled up. In her Who's Who hobbies, my grandmother listed 'Once a cannibal'. Ha, ha! I'm so like her. Very wild!"

Christianity itself is based upon the disturbing concepts of cannibalism of its God and the idea of the Living Dead; the resurrection.

Or was Pope Benedict biding his time? Last week he published an Apostolic Exhortation on the Eucharist, Sacramentum Caritatis — The Sacrament of Love. In part it is a summary of the conclusions of the Synod of Catholic Bishops held in Rome in October 2005 — the start of the liturgical Year of the Eucharist promulgated by his predecessor, Pope John Paul II — and as such carries the authority of the whole Church. But it is also a theological tour de force showing the clarity and cogency that are particular to the writings of Joseph Ratzinger.

Sacramentum Caritatis opens with a lucid exposition of the Catholic belief on the Eucharist. The priest’s words of consecration during the Mass turn bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ — a transformation Pope Benedict describes as ‘a sort of “nuclear fission” which penetrates to the heart of all being, a change meant to set off a process which transforms reality, a process leading ultimately to the transfiguration of the entire world’.

This belief, with its connotations of cannibalism and human sacrifice, has always been hard to take. Even in Christ’s lifetime, many of his disciples, according to Saint John, regarded the idea as ‘intolerable ...and stopped going with him’. It was a defining bone of contention between Catholics at the time of the Reformation. Luther downgraded the change from transubstantiation (the bread and wine become the flesh and blood of Christ) to consubstantiation (bread and wine remain bread and wine but co-exist with the flesh and blood of Christ), and Calvin disbelieved it altogether.

The recent rash of zombie and gore films reflect a culture inundated with death. Senseless death, be it wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and through out the middle east, vast unimaginable death from starvation, mass rape and murder in Dafur, or disasters such as Tsunamis , hurricanes and earthquakes that slaughter thousands and decimate cities.

Our fears of death and the unknown are now amplified by our fear of pain. Gore movies are about pain. Blood and guts, yes but the Saw phenomena is about pain, torture and self inflicted pain.

It is Abu Gharib and Gitmo brought to the large screen. We know not what torture Arar Mehar went through, or those held in CIA black prisons. But when we watch Saw we get a gleaming, an inkling of what it feels like to be held incommunicado and tortured. For no good reason. What does the torturer want? Like those held in sensory deprivation in Gitmo, we do not know.

The horror film since its origins in the silent era was fear of the other, the monster. Today with the advent of the Gore film, the monster is us. We suffer the emotional plague of isolation and alienation in a capitalist culture out of our control and dashing headlong into oblivion.

See

Gothic Capitalism Redux

Jack the Ripper

Emotional Plague

Rape

Serial Murder

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
horror,, gore,, horror films,, Zombie,,crime, women, Canada, Supreme Court of Canada, crime

LaRouche Takes Over Vive le Canada

There has been a disturbing trend over at Vive le Canada lately, it seems to have lost it's moderators for there can be no other explanation for the right wing conspiracy theorists that are now spamming it with their nut bar posts.

Here is the latest one from followers of the former Trotskyist turned conspiracy noodle head; Lyndon LaRouche. This appeared also on Progressive Bloggers because Vive le Canada is a member of the PB aggregator.

GOD DAMN THE PUSHERMAN, part two

This article appears in the December 14, 2001 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. Dope, Inc. Is $600 Billion and Growing by Jeffrey Steinberg In the Summer of 1996, EIR conducted an exhaustive study of the worldwide illegal drug trade,

EIR is one of LaRouche's major publications. LaRoucheites came up with the slogan Nuke the Whales, since they are proponents of nuclear power and have used their private intelligence to attack the anti-nuke movement.

They are racists, LaRouche spent years attacking black culture, believing in a banking conspiracy they are Anti-Semites, they are homophobic AIDs deniers, they believe in the Anglo-American conspiracy theories, etc. etc. in other words they are a violent proto-fascist movement

evidence shows 'suicide' student was beaten to death
Duggan, from Golders Green, north-west London, had become involved with the Wiesbaden followers of Lyndon LaRouche, an American millionaire with virulent anti-Semitic views. Unaware of the group's leanings, the former Christ's Hospital pupil told followers that he was Jewish. At 4.20am on 27 March, 2003, Duggan rang his mother. His voice was hushed: 'Mum, I am in deep trouble.'

Worldwide LaRouche Youth Movement

Of course it doesn't help when anti-globalization publications like Michel Chossudovsky's Global Research.ca publish LaRouche sourced materials giving them undeserved legitimacy.


The LaRouche organization was also described by Norman Bailey, a former senior staffer of the National Security Council, as "one of the best private intelligence services in the world."

Global Research refuses to publish neo-fascist white racists who oppose globalization but will publish LaRouche via his followers. It shows that Chossudovsky's conspiracy theory laden analysis of globalization is far closer to LaRouche than he cares to admit.

In that same vein the proto-nationalism of Vive le Canada with its opposition to Deep Integration allows it to fall into the same ideological trap as the anti-globalizationists, accepting conspiracy theories from the left and the right as long as they appear reasonable.

Folks get your act together and start monitoring those posts!

DISCREDITED former MP Ken Aldred was last night dumped as a Liberal candidate in the federal election over his links to far-right groups and his attacks on a prominent Jewish lawyer. Mr Aldred appeared before a specially convened meeting of the Liberal Party's administrative committee in Melbourne after he issued a legal threat to the party demanding the right to attend.

He tried to justify his past conduct in a statement that he read at the meeting, but the committee members - including Peter Costello and state Liberal leader Ted Baillieu - voted unanimously to dump him as the preselected candidate in the seat of Holt.

Liberal Party state director Julian Sheezel confirmed the result last night saying: "The administrative committee considered that he was an unsuitable candidate to receive endorsement."

John Howard had earlier written to members saying he did not think Mr Aldred - who has been linked to the far-Right US-based LaRouche organisation and its Australian arm, the Citizens Electoral Council - was a suitable person to stand for the Liberal Party.

Prominent Jewish lawyer Mark Leibler, who has led calls for the party to dump Mr Aldred, yesterday described Mr Aldred's preselection last weekend as an "embarrassment".

Mr Leibler, who was falsely accused by Mr Aldred in 1995 of being involved in a money-laundering scam run by Israeli spy agency Mossad, said yesterday: "It's not half the embarrassment it is to me as it is to the Liberal Party.

"This guy is a racist, an anti-Semite, he's presented fraudulent documents to the parliament. He is not the sort of person who would be supported by the Prime Minister or the Treasurer or any Liberal of standing."

The LaRouche Movement: American 'fascism' or something else?

The LaRouche movement is a clever organization: clever because it operates several independent divisions that are hard to connect with each other. The Schiller Institute, the Fusion Energy Forum, the Executive Intelligence Review, the Campaign to Explore Human Rights Violations in the U.S. (whose main interests seem to be the rights of Larouchians), Bread for the World, the Human Life Committee, the New Federalist , and 21st Century Science & Technology magazine are all part of the LaRouche organization. Currently, LaRouche is also connected to the ' Productive Triangle Program" (the 'Paris-Berlin-Vienna' axis) promoted by the International Progress Organization (IPO) in Central Europe, intended to promote economic development. Lyndon H. LaRouche has run (as a Democrat, no less) for president several times; in 1992 he is running from a jail cell, with the Rev. James Bevel (a SCLC founder and associate of Rev. King) as his vice presidential running mate. One might note, incidentally, that several LaRouchians do hold various offices around the country, and many LaRouchian groups have sprung up in Europe.

LaRouche is one of those political trippers that has managed to take the bend all the way around from the Far Left to the Far Right, without breaking his neck. In the 60s and 70s, he was "Lyn Marcus," head of the International Caucus of Labor Committees, an ultra-doctrinaire Marxist group with some strange disciplinary practices. Even back in the late 70s he was warning of impending financial crisis and cultural ruin. Today, Lyn(don) is a big promoter of the Strategic Defense Initiative, an implacable foe of world communism, a big supporter of a united Germany, and a borderline anti-Semite, who has attacked a whole bunch of Jews - particularly Roy Cohn, Henry Kissinger, and the heads of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith - by saying they are really "Zionists," i.e. a particularly wicked bunch of Jews... anyone remember the Protocols of the Elders of Zion? (One might note that LaRouche has, on several occasions, attacked the Nazi-hunting branch of the Department of Justice (the OSI) as "witch hunters persecuting upright German citizens," some of those upright citizens being V2 rocket engineers smuggled into this country through Project Paperclip.) It is clear that his trip into the Far Right has left him with some discredited Far Left ideas.

LaRouche's main thesis is that the 'Anglo-American cabal,' which involves George Bush, the English monarchy, and some other ingredients, has decided to undertake a programme of genocidal IMF/World Bank-financed de-industrialization to deplete the population of the Third World. The cabal's plan includes "narcotrafficking"; environmental policies to prevent those countries from developing economically; 'Malthusian' population policies which incorporate birth control, abortion, and allowing disease and hunger free rein; profiteering through 'neo-colonial' resource control; the "lab-created" AIDs virus; and promotion of 'antifamily' ideals such as feminism, homosexuality, Satanism, and "the sex-drugs-rock and roll counterculture." This conspiracy theory, needless to say, is a grab bag of far right and far left nut worries. LaRouche believes that only massive industrial projects - nuclear power, huge irrigation canals dug with atomic bombs (!) in the Middle East, and similar high-tech developments - can free the Third World from the sinister grasp of the oligarchs' cabal.

See:

Conspiracy Theory or Ruling Class Studies

Bilderberg

Conspiracy Theory

Conspiracy

Ruling Class



Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Trilateral Commission, CFR, Bilderberg, LaRouche, Secret Societies, NWO, New World Order, Globalization, Conspiracy, Conspiracy theory, Bohemian Grove, Conspiracy Theories, Ruling Class, Anglo-American Conspiracy, Michel Chossudovsky, EIR, fascist

Elizabeth May and Red Tories

Nice to see confirmation of my post about Elizabeth May choosing to run against MacKay.

“As a former Progressive Conservative, I am delighted that Elizabeth will be running in Central Nova, against the person who destroyed the party of Confederation.”

And as I said; Red Tories can be progressives too.


See:

Green Party

Elizabeth May

Peter MacKay


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Canada, Nova Scotia, Elizabet hMay, Peter MacKay, Green Party, politics, election, Conservatives
SocialCredit, producerism, distributism, Antigonish, Dr.Coady, cooperatives, economics,
Harper, Canada, Progressive Conservatives, Joe Clark, Red Tories, PM, politics