National Pest Gets It Wrong

This National Post editorial by Jonathon Kay finally catches up with its comrades on the right, aka the Blogging Tories, labeling NDP Leader Jack Layton as Taliban Jack. The problem is that his argument is totally fallacious, fabricated and not factual.

In the case of Afghanistan, in particular, this defeatism is grimly ironic coming, as it is, from a politician who postures as the champion of gay rights and feminism: But not for the presence of brave NATO troops, the country would fall into the hands of medieval theocrats who behead homosexuals and treat women like burka-clad dogs.

Hey guys I hate to spoil your tirade but the country is already controlled by medieval theocrats, war lords, misogynist homophobic males, which is why it is called the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

And women still are forced to wear burka's, female child brides are for sale, girls schools are burned out, freedom of the press does not exist, oh yes and it is still a crime if you are homosexual.

Liberating Afghan women from the Burqa was a sub-text of the war against the Taliban. Although some Afghan women have discarded the Burqa, after the fall of Taliban, an overwhelming majority continue to wear it as a matter of choice and social norm. So far the Burqa has survived the American bombing and the NGOs onslaught. International activists for women’s rights have been disappointed, and are now silent, by the mass of Afghan women continuing to wear Burqas.

Male with male sex is socially condoned but not as homosexuality, rather it exists because it is an outgrowth of patriarchal oppression of women. Patriarchy is about power over others; domination, S&M is the logical extension of patriarchy. Male sexuality is thus one of a dominant over a submissive regardless of the gender of the latter.

Puritanical Taliban tried hard to erase homosexuality and pedophilia from male-dominated Pashtun culture in Afghanistan; now that Taliban no longer rule, some people in Kandahar are indulging in it once again; problem is so widespread that government has issued directive barring 'beardless boys'--euphemism for under-age sex partners--from police stations, military bases and commanders' compounds; under Taliban, anyone found to be homosexual was buried alive, ancient punishment prescribed by Shariah, compendium of Islamic laws

The source pointed to the fact that behaviour between men, which would arouse curiosity in many western countries such as holding hands, kissing or embracing is not considered as explicit sexual behaviour in Afghanistan. The source was of the opinion, that homosexuality was common in Afghanistan in connection with the sexual debut due to the strong degree of separation which is practiced between the sexes. The source knew of commanders who were known of having relationships with young boys. However this does not lead to a general accept of homosexuality in Afghanistan. The source mentioned that rumours had been circulated, that people from the Panshjiri-dominated security forces had raped young Pashtun men with the aim of demonstrating their power.

In liberated Afghanistan it is still a capital offense to be a Christian.

Something the Post forgot to mention.

And speaking of burka clad dogs.




















h/t to Montreal Simon.


SEE:

Anti Islamism Manifesto

Islam And Class War

The Need for Arab Anarchism

Dr. Marx on Islam

1979 Fascist Counter-Revolution in Iran

WOMEN AND ISLAM


NDP

Afghanistan






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Leduc #1

You would expect that for the millions we spent on having an Alberta Embassy in Washington, they could hire someone to fact check the speeches.

Leduc #1 was discovered in 1947. This bit of historical revisionism would credit the discovery to the PC government rather than the Socreds.

"This set of circumstances has created a unique mutually beneficial relationship that has delivered safe, secure, reliable supplies of oil and gas to the U.S. since Leduc Number One drilled in 1974 by Imperial Oil – the Canadian sub of Exxon."

Murray Smith

Rocky Mountain Natural Gas Strategy Conference and Investment Forum

Topic: "Energy Supply: Quantities and Qualities"

Denver, Colorado - August 1, 2005

This is not the only controversy to entangle Mr. Smith.

I hope he bones up on his oil industry history now that he has moved on to join the Washington circle at the TD Bank.

Investment bank TD Securities Inc. has created a new advisory board that will include Alberta political heavyweights Jim Dinning, Anne McLellan and Murray Smith, as it seeks an extra edge in the ultracompetitive energy sector.

The formation of the board, which will support TD Securities' energy practice, is intended to provide opinions on public policy, give insight on market conditions and open more industry doors, said Frank McKenna, deputy chairman of Toronto-Dominion Bank and leader of the new advisory board.

David MacInnis, president of the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association, said government and politics have always been important in energy, but there has been a reluctance in the past to admit that fully.

Say it ain't so.

And MacInnis lets the cat out of the bag, big oil admits the need for a planned energy economy.

"The reality is that it's not just regulatory issues that are confounding energy development in this country," he said. "There is a significant lack of co-ordinated, coherent thinking on the policy side. So if a group like this can contribute to the quality of the dialogue, that is a good thing."

Planning is usually associated with socialism but in this case it is more like cartelization if not outright corporatism.

And the TD has created an investment bank of political bagmen and woman for big oil.


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Paradise Lost

A series by the BBC shows the difference between poverty and living poor and happy. What's so great about living in Vanuatu?

The Pacific island nation of Vanuatu is the happiest place on earth, according to a new "happy planet index". Beside the palm trees and beaches, why is life so good there?

On a tiny island in a set of islands in the Pacific paradise is real. In the Vanuatu chain of islands the people have their own gardens, vast forests for sustainable housing and hunting, they have an gift exchange economy based on tusks, and they are happy.

For centuries, Pacific islanders have used tusks, mats, shells and even giant rocks as currency for trading and ceremonial purposes.

But the Tari Bunia Bank is now taking that custom to a new level of sophistication - and helping to protect Vanuatu's isolated traditional communities from the harsher imperatives of modern capitalism.

They don't have capitalism on Pentacost island. They have peace, no crime, and a cooperative society. They are considered poor by world economic standards, but remind us that economic poverty is only rated by the standards of capitalist accumulation not joyful subsistence of human existence and daily life.

For years, campaigners have urged the government to pay more attention to Vanuatu's traditional economy. Official statistics show the country is one of the world's poorest and least developed.

But Selwyn Garu, secretary of the National Council of Chiefs, said those figures fail to take account of "80% of the population who live under another system. The government is focusing on the Western capitalist system. But we feel that is not justice."

But on the more remote Pentecost Island, the outside world is still being kept at arms length.

Before heading to the village hall for a lunch of yams cooked in a stone oven, and fresh seaweed, Chief Viraleo closed and bolted the doors to the bank.

So far there have been no robberies. All the branches, he explained with a chuckle, were guarded by spirits and snakes.

Ironically on another island, 'Paradise ' is falling prey to capitalist development.

As foreign developers rush to buy up the coastline around Port Vila, some are not convinced.

"In my heart this is still paradise," said Ricky Taleo, 29, watching builders carve up the shoreline in front of his village for a new resort.

"But the happiness is fading away slowly. And I guess in a couple of years it's going to turn into a dump."

Where they came into contact with capitalism during WWII they have adopted a unique interpretation of their experience.

One of the world's last surviving cargo cults is celebrating its official 50th anniversary on Tanna island in Vanuatu.

The John Frum Movement worships a mysterious spirit that urged them to reject the teachings of the Church and maintain their traditional customs.

The cult was reinforced during WWII, when US forces landed with huge amounts of cargo - weapons, food and medicine.

Villagers believe the spirit of John Frum sent the US military to their South Pacific home to help them.

Devotees say that an apparition of John Frum first appeared before tribal elders in the 1930s.

He urged them to rebel against the aggressive teachings of Christian missionaries and instead said they should put their faith in their own customs.

The John Frum cult first emerged in Vanuatu in the 1930s, when the island was jointly ruled by Britain and France as the New Hebrides.

Rebelling against the influence of Presbyterian missionaries, dozens of villages on Tanna put their faith in the shadowy figure of John Frum, variously described as either a real person or a spirit.

They believed he would drive out their colonial masters and re-establish their traditional ways.

The cult was reinforced during the Second World War, when the US military arrived with huge amounts of cargo, such as tanks, ships, weapons, medicine and food.

Islanders were stunned to see black and white troops working and living together, in contrast with the French and British officials who had treated them as colonial subjects.

The Americans' wealth and racial co-operation seemed to dove-tail perfectly with their own beliefs. So they became convinced that John Frum, their mysterious saviour, was an American.

Since then, the villagers have spent the last six decades dressing up in home-made US army uniforms, drilling with bamboo rifles and parading beneath the Stars and Stripes in the hope of enticing a delivery of cargo once again.

Islanders have celebrated John Frum's generosity for 50 years

SEE:

Commodity Fetish a Definition

The God Eaters

Palm Sunday April Fools Day

Anarchism In Action

Hobbit Controversy

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Bio-Fuel B.S.

Another excellent post on the real story behind bio-fuels.

Biofuels: The Five Myths of the Agro-fuels Transition

The agro-fuel transition closes a 200-year chapter in the relation between agriculture and industry that began with the Industrial Revolution. Then, the invention of the steam engine promised an end to drudgery. However, industry’s take-off lagged until governments privatized common lands, driving the poorest peasants out of agriculture and into urban factories. Peasant agriculture effectively subsidized industry with both cheap food and cheap labor. Over the next 100 years, as industry grew, so did the urban percentage of the world’s population: from 3% to 13%. Cheap oil and petroleum-based fertilizers opened up agriculture itself to industrial capital. Mechanization intensified production, keeping food prices low and industry booming. The next hundred years saw a three-fold global shift to urban living. Today, the world has as many people living in cities as in the countryside. [10] The massive transfer of wealth from agriculture to industry, the industrialization of agriculture, and the rural-urban shift are all part of the “Agrarian Transition,” the lesser-known twin of the Industrial Revolution. The Agrarian/Industrial twins transformed most of the world’s fuel and food systems and established non-renewable petroleum as the foundation of today’s multi-trillion dollar agri-foods complex.

The pillars of the agri-foods industry are the great grain corporations, e.g., ADM, Cargill and Bunge. They are surrounded by an equally formidable phalanx of food processors, distributors, and supermarket chains on one hand, and agro-chemical, seed, and machinery companies on the other. Together, these industries consume four of every five food dollars. For some time, the production side of the agri-foods complex has suffered from agricultural “involution” in which increasing rates of investment (chemical inputs, genetic engineering, and machinery) have not increased the rates of agricultural productivity—the agri-foods complex is paying more and reaping less.

Agro-fuels are the perfect answer to involution because they’re subsidized, grow as oil shrinks, and facilitate the concentration of market power in the hands of the most powerful players in the food and fuel industries. Like the original Agrarian Transition, the present Agro-fuels Transition will “enclose the commons” by industrializing the remaining forests and prairies of the world. It will drive the planet’s remaining smallholders, family farmers, and indigenous peoples to the cities. It will funnel rural resources to urban centers in the form of fuel, and will generate massive amounts of industrial wealth.

See

Real Costs of Bio-Fuels

Conrad Black and ADM

Bio Fuels = Eco Disaster

GMO News Roundup

Lost and Found

Boreno is Burning

Agribusiness

Desertification

BioFuel and The Wheat Board

The Ethanol Scam: ADM and Brian Mulroney

ADM

Wheat Board

Farmers


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Huh?

A comment by an Ontario Green activist Mike Casselman on his blog, which leaves me incredulous.

Yes folks at 1:54AM on CFRA news my interview was aired. Of course the Liberal, NDP, and Green panelist misinterpreted what I had said with the question on the dollar and jobs, but I forgive them.

I had answered a question on factory workers and factories moving to Mexico and they all thought I said Canadian workers should be happy to work for minimum wage.

however what I said was

"If factory workers go on strike, jobs that would've been there in 20 years won't be because they'll be hiring Mexicans to do the work for a fraction of the cost."

Remove foot, place back in mouth.

Nope the panelists didn't get it wrong Mike you did say Canadian workers should be happy with their jobs. Worse you said that if they went on strike they should expect to be replaced by scabs. Which you imply you approve of.

Whether the scabs are Canadian or Mexican is irrelevant, your anti-worker, anti-union screed is fear mongering, nativist, jingoism.

The Greens will have this kind of Green Right Whingnut speak for them, while they give the muddy boot to this guy.

Of course it only proves this point; “Greens, The True Conservatives”

Which I have said they were all along.



h/t to My Blahg




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Harpers Equalization

King Stephen I will be on a whirlwind trip across Canada today to make equalization payment announcements that have nothing to do with equalization, provincial resource rights or the Atlantic Accord.

Instead in Nova Scotia he will re-announce military spending, in Saskatchewan he will re-announce bio fuel spending. And he will be going solo having not bothered to inform the Premiers of the respective provinces of his pending dog and pony show on their turf.

This is strictly a show for the Conservative Federal Government, to pretend they did not screw these two provinces in their last budget.

The fact that there is no new money being announced, just a rehash of previous announcements is straight out of the Ralph Klein playbook.

For years the Alberta government has announced, re-announced, and announced yet again funding announcements.

It is euphemistically called buying votes.


SEE:

Tories Blame Premiers for Equalization Crisis

Chickens, Home, Roost

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The Carbon Market Myth

Once again capitalism tries to make a buck off the environmental crisis it created. In this case it is carbon markets.

In Canada the dispute over a domestic carbon exchange, linked to the stock exchange, is between Quebec which supports Kyoto in order to get the carbon exchange to locate in Montreal, while the Conservatives refuse to play in the carbon market, disadvantaging the TSX.

While the Tories talk about Carbon credits going to Russia, the reality is that the carbon market is housed in the Chicago commodity exchange. It is a non starter when it comes to actually reducing green house gases. Instead of being some futuristic market it is a return to the state monopoly mercantilism of the 17th Century.

The carbon market is unique in that the commodity traded derives its value primarily from its ability to meet the requirements set by an environmental regulator. There is also a market for voluntary offsets to emissions, but this market is small and unlikely to ever represent a significant piece of the total carbon trading pie (the World Bank estimates (PDF document) that the EU ETS, the only regulations-based emissions trading market in the world, accounted for 99% of total market value in 2006).

The problem with this is that governments have a long history of messing things up when they get involved in any industry. For instance, in Europe, the market for phase one emission allowances took a massive hit after it became clear that EU governments had over-allocated emissions to shield their national industries from the full effects of strict emissions caps. Besides effectively neutralizing the economic incentive to innovate and reduce emissions, this seriously shook the market's confidence in the ability of governments to uphold the necessary conditions for an effective and efficient carbon market to develop.

See:

Corporate America Greener Than Harper

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Blackstone Hi-jinx

Having appointed former PM the RH Brian Mulroney to the board, Blackstone the private equity hedge fund went public with an IPO. In the two weeks it has made no money on its posting in the stock market, but had paid off its CEO handsomely. This week it offered to buy out Hilton Hotels, with a bid that led to cries of insider trading. If any fallout occurs then Blackstone can always call on Mulroney to bail them out as he did with ADM.

Since the close on its first full day of trading on June 22nd, Blackstone Group (BX) has not finished a single session in positive territory.

Blackstone, whose founder Stephen Schwarzman pocketed $677 million from his IPO's proceeds.

Shares of Hilton Hotels Corp. rose 6.44% to close at $36.05 Tuesday -- ahead of the announcement of the company's sale to the Blackstone Group for approximately $20 billion in cash. After the close, Blackstone said it would pay $47.50 per share for Hilton, a 32% premium. The pre-news rise -- the shares' strongest surge since 2005 -- has prompted calls of insider trading.

Although much of the attention on Blackstone has centered on CEO and co-founder Stephen Schwarzman, it is Hamilton "Tony" James who runs the firm, his hand on everything from private equity deals to real estate transactions to advisory work.

As Blackstone's No. 2, the pressure is on James to lead the firm through its new chapter as a public company and steer the massive money machine through the rough waters facing private equity firms.

With the private equity industry booming, James earned more than the CEOs of Goldman Sachs (GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and JPMorgan (JPM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) combined last year and his stake in the firm is currently worth $1.55 billion after its June IPO -- a huge amount considering his riches have come neither as a chief executive nor a company founder.

The billions Blackstone's top executives raked in through the $4 billion IPO however, attracted the scrutiny of lawmakers, who proposed legislation to jack up the firm's tax bill.

"I'm worried about the fact that private equity has grown so quickly and so fast that it's made itself a natural target for speculation and resentment," James said at the Reuters Investment Banking Summit in November. "It has made a lot of money."

Also worrying are investor doubts about Blackstone's high valuation and a pullback in the credit markets, factors that have sent shares of the company lower since their debut.

See:

The Ethanol Scam: ADM and Brian Mulroney

Criminal Capitalism Business As Usual

Gambling On Your Future

Criminal Capitalism Redux

Golden Parachutes

Rich Getting Richer

CEO Cream Sour Milk for Workers

Criminal Capitalism The Story of 2006

White Collar Crime Reporter 1

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Overturn This

Our law and order pro military federal government likes to overturn Liberal government laws, how about this one. Betcha they don't.

Ottawa has always admitted mismanaging the veterans funds by failing to invest the money or to credit them with any interest.

However, the government decided to start paying interest in 1990, but passed legislation blocking claims for interest before then.

It was that law the Supreme Court upheld in 2003.

By some estimates, the award would have topped $6 billion with accrued interest had it been allowed to stand.

SEE:

Rememberance or Revisionism

Harper War Monger

An End to Colonial Assimilation?

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Bullying and Infertility

Aggressive bullying can lead to a reduced sex drive according to this article.

Stressed-out African Naked Mole-rats May Provide Clues About Human infertility

As Wilhelm Reich noted over sixty years ago cooperative loving relationships are healthier than aggressive, dominating ones, whether at home or in the workplace.

Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings

can master their sadistic destructiveness.

Wilhelm Reich, on Sigmund Freud's hope

SEE:

Psycho Bosses Depressed Workers

A Little Eros For Valentine's Day

Gore Kulture

Polyamory Is Good For The Genes

Free Love

Marx on Bigamy

Whose Family Values?

The Sexual Revolution Continues

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