Gay Old Communists

I found this terrific graphic at one of my anarchist pal's blogs; Kehlkopfmikrofon . It visually reveals the sinister link between the Gay Agenda and the Communist Agenda to undermine faith, family and the American way. Say it ain't so.

Russians in love.

"Thank you comrade for rescuing me from Nazism."





















And don't forget them commies were once America's friends during WWII.



















Which of course was an embarrassment at the end of the war so they created a witch hunt to purge commies from America.

After all as we all know in Uncle Joe's Russia then and still today, just like in Bonapartist Iran, there are no gays just happy peasants and the Glorious Soldiers of the Red Army.

Just like there were no Gay men or women in America until they were discovered after WWII.

Before Joseph McCarthy began his witch hunt began against commies in the U.S. State department he began with a witch hunt on homosexuals.

And of course homosexuals did not exist in America before they were publicly outed post WWII by McCarthy's HUAC. Because his witch hunt began before Kinsey published his studies on American Sexuality.

In fact thanks to HUAC's witch hunts the commies were some of the folks who then were active in creating the first Male Homosexual Society to fight for their rights; The Mattachine Society.

Like dear departed Harry Hay. Who was not only a communist but a Wobbly and a Pagan.

You can't hardly separate homosexuals from subversives ... A man of low morality is a menace to the government, whatever he is, and they are all tied up together. —Senator Wherry in New York Post, 1950 It may come as a surprise that the gay movement not only began in the 1950s, but that its founders were former communists and radicals. Harry Hay, who wrote the first call for a gay movement in 1948, had been a party member for 20 years, active in labor organizing and cultural work. The fact that these organizers had already spent most of their lives outside the mainstream no doubt prepared them for the risks involved in forming a gay organization. The modern gay movement in America began in Los Angeles, a city that symbolized the mobile, affluent lifestyle of Americans after the War. The Mattachine Foundation (to be distinguished from the post-1953 Mattachine Society) was formed in the winter of 1950 by a group of seven gay men gathered together by Hay. The name refers to the medieval Mattachines, troupes of men who traveled from village to village, taking up the cause of social justice in their ballads and dramas. By sharing and analyzing their personal experience as gay men, the Mattachine founders radically redefined the meaning of being gay and devised a comprehensive program for cultural and political liberation.

In 1951, Mattachine began sponsoring discussion groups. Years before women's “consciousness-raising groups,” Mattachine provided lesbians and gay men a similar opportunity to share openly, for the first time, their feelings and experiences.

So in effect the so called 'Gay Agenda' would never had come about if it weren't for Americas Uncle Joe, and his rabid anti-commie aide, Roy Cohn who was gay. Proving again that homophobia is created by self hate and denial. The Right Wing created the modern gay movement thanks to their need to repress freedom. Ironic eh?

Cohn confers with Senator McCarthy at the Army-McCarthy Hearings

In 1952 Joseph McCarthy appointed Roy Cohn as the chief counsel to the Government Committee on Operations of the Senate. Cohn had been recommended by Edgar Hoover, who had been impressed by his involvement in the prosecution of the Rosenburgs. Soon after Cohn was appointed, he recruited his best friend, David Schine, to become his chief consultant.

For some time opponents of McCarthy had been accumulating evidence concerning his homosexual relationships. Rumours began to circulate that Cohn and David Schine were having a sexual relationship. Although well-known by political journalists, it did not become public until Hank Greenspun published an article in the Las Vagas Sun in 25th October, 1952.

And of course these folks who fought for Gay Rights in those dark days coincidentally came from the Left Coast, home to the Beats and the rising Youth Culture that would create a new American 'Counter Culture' in the Sixties. Influenced as they were by Kinsey and the rediscovery of earlier American Radicalism that the post war social amnesia of the Witch Hunts had failed to suppress.

The Daughters of Bilitis /bɪ’li:tis/ (DOB), considered to be the first lesbian rights organization in the United States, was formed in San Francisco, California in 1955. The group was conceived as a social alternative to lesbian bars, which were considered illegal and thus subject to raids and police harassment. It lasted for fourteen years and became a tool of education for lesbians, gay men, researchers, and mental health professionals.

As the DOB gained members, their focus shifted to providing support to women who were afraid to come out, by educating them about their rights and their history. Historian Lillian Faderman declared, "Its very establishment in the midst of witch-hunts and police harassment was an act of courage, since members always had to fear that they were under attack, not because of what they did, but merely because of who they were."

Daughters of Bilitis (D.O.B.) was founded in San Francisco, California in 1955. The name of the group comes from the book Song of Bilitis by French author Pierre Louy, which contains love poems between women. In 1955, the group only had eight members. In the years to come, the group grew considerably. D.O.B. provided a place for lesbians to meet outside the bars, documented their lives, and promoted civil rights. One of their most significant achievements was a national newsletter for lesbians, titled The Ladder. They soon started other U.S. chapters, and even one in Australia. D.O.B. held their first national convention in San Francisco in 1960.

For a time, Daughters of Bilitis and The Mattachine Society joined together in "Common Cause". Some women even wrote for Mattachine's ONE Magazine. As the women's movement began to grow in the U.S., it became apparent that the men of Mattachine showed little desire to champion women's issues. At the same time, the women's movement was not particularly welcoming. The National Organization for Women (N.O.W.) was afraid that lesbian involvement would only bring further hostility from the media and a male dominated world. They called lesbians "the lavender menace" and sought to eject them from the movement.

Revisionist history continues today in America in Tom Brokaw's new book on the Sixties that overlooks the importance of the Mattachine Society and the Lesbian; Daughters of Bilitis Society and the rise of the Gay Rights Movement. .

BOOM! Voices of the Sixties: Personal Reflections on the '60s and Today shares Brokaw's perspectives and personal accounts of 1960s issues including Vietnam and the civil rights movement.

One glaring Boomer-era omission, however, was the gay rights movement. Brokaw, on a recent CNN appearance, says that the gay rights movement "came later," and he didn't intend to slight the movement by not including it.

While the impact of the movement was marked notably in the late 1960s by the Stonewall riots, its momentum and progress were due in no small part to the work of Dr. Frank Kameny, who has written a letter to Brokaw and representatives of Random House Publishing Group.

"I write with no little indignation at the total absence of any slightest allusion to the gay movement for civil equality in your book 'Boom! Voices of the Sixties'. Your book simply deletes the momentous events of that decade which led to the vastly altered and improved status of gays in our culture today."

Ralph, a man approaching his eighties and one of my regulars at the Café, had a good chuckle when I told him about my research for this story. He said "I can answer that easily. The way we met in the old days was the three B’s: Balconies, Bushes and Baths; those are all gone now." Ralph stumbled into the gay scene in the ’50s by accident; he loved watching movies, especially John Wayne westerns. He was surprised by the number of people that would congregate in the dark balconies of the theaters. Then, when someone sat right next to him in an empty row he caught on. After that, Ralph became an avid moviegoer since that was the easiest way for him to meet other men.

Camille, in his 80s, spoke about the baths in New York City. He has a fondness for that era in the mid-’60s because "it provided a sanctuary where we could truly be ourselves. It was more than a place for sex, it was our entire social outlet. We could talk openly there but we couldn’t associate with one another in the real world. It was also a pure time, before AIDS entered the gay scene and changed everything."

Some men, especially those who grew up in rural areas, also spoke about "the bushes." Tom, a colleague in the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus, described growing up queer in Ohio in the early sixties as "not fun and very lonely." He heard rumors about the city park and that became the only means he could connect with other gay men. He said it was very dangerous and he was assaulted there once.

Clearly not all men met through sexual encounters back then. Some, like Jim, 74, sought out a socio-political gathering of gay men known as the Mattachine Society. He felt that finding the courage to attend that meeting was the only way to meet other men like himself.

The next generation of men I spoke with, the men who came out in the ’70s and ’80s, had new means available: personal ads and the bars. Although gay bars have been in existence for ages, people felt safer to venture out and frequent them, given the end of police raids thanks to Stonewall and the emerging gay rights movement.

Even today America hides the truth about the history of the Gay Rights movement because it is not just the history of the counter culture but reveals that mass movements are the direct result of the Right Wing Political Agenda to suppress freedom. This is the dialectic in action. As Michael Focualt points out in his History of Sexuality; suppress human rights around sexuality and you create movements for human rights for sexual freedom.

Foucault argues that we generally read the history of sexuality since the 18th century in terms of what Foucault calls the "repressive hypothesis." The repressive hypothesis supposes that since the rise of the bourgeoisie, any expenditure of energy on purely pleasurable activities has been frowned upon. As a result, sex has been treated as a private, practical affair that only properly takes place between a husband and a wife. Sex outside these confines is not simply prohibited, but repressed. That is, there is not simply an effort to prevent extra-marital sex, but also an effort to make it unspeakable and unthinkable. Discourse on sexuality is confined to marriage.

That repression is something the right wing in Canada, America, Israel, Russia and Iran share in common to this day. And the fight for freedom is always counter to that agenda. Which is why the fight for gay rights is the fight for human rights.

The history of the world is none other than
the progress of the consciousness of freedom.
-George Hegel, 1821

SEE

War On Satan the Sodomite

Out Of The Hogwarts Broom Closet

Ezra Says Gay Bashers Are Muslims

Outing BP

Procreation To Save The White Race

Marx on Bigamy

Polygamy is NOT Polyamoury

The Sanctity of Marriage Debate

Whose Family Values?

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
witch hunt, Joseph McCarthy, Harry Hay, Mattachine Society, HUAC, gay rights, the sixties, Russia, Daughters of Bilitis, homosexual agenda, communist agenda, gay, homosexuality, Tom Brokaw

B-Day

I got a reminder notice today from the nice folks at Blog.ca.

Happy Birthday plawiuk,

today is your birthday and we wish you a day filled with your favourite things, with sunshine and laughter and lots of good cheer.

How about writing something about your birthday in your blog? Your friends and the blog.ca community will certainly be glad to hear about how you have experienced this special day.

Just log in http://www.blog.ca/login.php to write a post on your blog to your friends or to the whole blog.ca community .

We wish you all the best and are looking forward to seeing you again soon.

Your blog.ca-team

As if I would forget. And since they asked me to post about my birthday well shucks who could resist. Here is my post..... from last year; Today In History.

Modest ain't I.


And here are two versions of Beatles doing Happy Birthday. I like the second one best. Both are rockin'. The original Happy Birthday song was called Good Morning To You.


Happy Birthday - The Beatles






Birthday by the Beatles
From The White Album

,


Unfortunately these guys forgot about me;

December 1 Birthdays in History - December 1 Deaths - December 1 Events

And I didn't make the news like these folks.

Today in 1982 Michael Jackson released his autobiographical video;
" I am not like other guys' Narrated by the great Vincent Price. It created the culture of mass music videos.

And of course Birthdays are a pagan celebration.

Birthday

It is thought the large-scale celebration of birthdays in Europe began with the cult of Mithras, which originated in Persia but was spread by soldiers throughout the Roman Empire. Such celebrations were uncommon previously so practices from other contexts such as the Saturnalia were adapted for birthdays. Because many Roman soldiers took to Mithraism, it had a wide distribution and influence throughout the empire until it was supplanted by Christianity. The Jewish perspective on birthday celebrations is disputed by various rabbis.

Celebration of birthdays is not universal. Some people prefer name day celebrations, and Jehovah's Witnesses do not celebrate either, considering their origins to be pagan festivals along with Christmas and Easter

And I have that statue of Mithras at home...coincidence? I think not.

Also 'coincidentally' Mithras shares the same birthday as Jesus, as does Krishna and Horus. Since it is the Sun's Birthday.

They are after all Sun Gods.



And don't forget today is World AIDS Day. I noticed a lot of Harpocrites were not wearing their red ribbons this week neither in the house or while doing interviews on Mike Duffy.

Hmmm.....I guess for them it is still a Gay Disease,

despite evidence to the contrary.

Harper also can focus more attention on AIDS in Canada, where more than 62,000 people are living with HIV/AIDS. New infections are often among young people, especially girls 15 to 19 years old.

But at least one Cabinet Minister was wearing his Red Ribbon...why am I not surprised?




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Eugene Plawiuk, December 1, December 1, 1954,12/01/54,born today, today in history, Sagittarius, horse in Chinese Astrology

American Proletarian Republicanism

American Exceptionalism is based upon proletarian republicanism.

In England and the Commonwealth the rule of the Master over his 'servants' was postulated under the Master Servant Act which determined the condition of the working class as one of indentured servitude. This Act remained the basis of labour law in Canada even after it was reformed. However its concept of a fiduciary responsibility of the worker to the boss remains as the basis of all labour relations law to this day in the British Commonwealth.

Because America was founded upon the concept of the free land movement, which Edwin Gibbon Wakefield so bitterly complained about, this concept was actively resisted and the liberal ideal of a free contract for labour was embraced.

It was for this reason French and Irish Canadians in the 19th Century often traveled freely to the United States to work, and then came back home to farm. Which lead to bitter complaints from Nativist Americans about 'illegal immigrants' and 'Papists'.

It was quite common during the building of the Great Lakes Canals, the grunt work being done by Irish 'Navvies'. And it was this free movement of workers between Canada and the U.S. that led to Rebellion of 1837 in Canada where the rebels embraced the liberal ideals of American Proletarian Republicanism; free labour and free trade.

Citizenship and Justice in the Lives and Thoughts of Nineteenth-Century American Workers

DAVID MONTGOMERY
THE TANNER LECTURES ON HUMAN VALUES
Delivered at
Brasenose College, Oxford University
April 29, May 3, and May 6, 1991

Master-and-servant legislation in Britain and the United States
shared the same roots in the fourteenth-century Statute of Laborers
and the Elizabethan Statute of Artificers. The law imposed criminal
sanctions against workers who left their employment without
the master’s permission. Those sanctions applied to wage earners
as well as to slaves, indentured servants, and apprentice.23 In
1823 the British Parliament renewed the law’s provision that abandoning
work could lead to criminal prosecution before a justice of
the peace and a sentence of up to three months at hard labor after
which the workers’ still owed their masters all contracted labor
time. The new British law did, however, eliminate the magistrates’
powers of supervision of conditions of employment, which
had been part of the Elizabethan law but had lapsed into disuse.
Daphne Simon has calculated that during the 1860s an average
of ten thousand men and women in England and Wales were
prosecuted each year for leaving their jobs, most of them agricultural
laborers, household workers, miners, and workers in potteries
and cutlery trades.

During the same decade that Britain’s Parliament renewed the
law of criminal sanctions, American courts discarded it. A book
by Robert J. Steinfeld sheds important light on this development.
Steinfeld argues that the decisive legal judgments hinged on the
claims of owners of indentured servants, and they were couched
in language that sharply contrasted the legal position of wage
earners to that of slaves. Although all northern states by 1820
either had prohibited chattel slavery or had decreed the eventual
manumission of all children subsequently born to slaves, migrants
from Europe who had contracted themselves into temporary bondage
for specified periods of time continued to arrive and be sold
in the ports of Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore. Pennsylvania,
the most common destination of such servants, had enacted
regulations of the trade by 1818, to require schooling for servants’
children and to inhibit the separation of families and the sale of
servants outside of the state.

Virtually all the new arrivals were sold to rural employers —
for labor in the fields, within households, or on construction
projects. In the northern cities the rapid disappearance of journeymen
residing within the households of employing artisans, the
substitution of day-to-day money wages for board and services provided
by the master’s wife (“found”), and the large influx of
immigrant journeymen after 1790 had undermined the eighteenth century
reliance of Philadelphia’s artisans on indentured whites
and of New York’s artisans on black slaves. In New York City,
where the owning of slaves had been remarkably equally distributed
throughout the white population before the Revolution, most
slaves of 1800 were found in households of the wealthy, and
bondspeople still employed by artisans had declined to only 18 percent
of the total. White artisans, laborers, and household workers
alike vociferously objected to being called “servants” and to physical
punishments, which they considered badges of servitude.26
Both chattel slavery in its New York and New Jersey agricultural
strongholds and indentured servitude on Pennsylvania
farms were plagued with runaways and with (often successful)
efforts of bondspeople to negotiate better terms with their owners.
Shane White’s study of the decline of slavery in New York has
produced evidence of many black slaves negotiating their way to
freedom through long-term indentures, especially after the enactment
of the gradual manumission law of 1799. Simultaneously,
popular antipathy toward bondage for white people created difficulties
for owners who sought to enforce the terms of indentures.

The troubled persistence of indentured servitude is revealed
by the experiences of Ludwig Gall — ironically a German follower
of Charles Fourier — who came to Pennsylvania in 1819 in
search of a site for a phalanstery. Gall brought eleven servants
with him. When they arrived in Philadelphia, Gall recorded:
They had scarcely come ashore when they were greeted as
countrymen by people who told them that contracts signed in
Europe were not binding here; . . . that they were free as birds
here; that they didn’t have to pay for their passage, and nobody
would think ill of them if they used the money instead
to toast the health of their European masters. . . , The last
scoundrel said: “Follow me, dear countrymen; don’t let yourselves
be wheedled away into the wilderness.”

Gall resorted to the threat of debtors’ prison to make his “companions”
repay their passage. He brought one defiant servant
before a justice of the peace and had him incarcerated, only to
discover that he (Gall) had to pay the prisoner’s maintenance,
and a late payment the second week set the man free. Although
that servant seems to have enjoyed his stay with a “boisterous
group” of three hundred debtors, who “formed their own little
republic” in the Walnut Street prison, the other ten were persuaded
by the threat of jail to indenture themselves to Gall for
three to four years, in return for Gall’s promise to pay them ten
dollars a year.

Gall’s troubles did not end there. His anxiety to rush the
servants out of the city before they learned the ways of American
life was well founded: five men whom he had boarded apart from
his family deserted him the day he left Philadelphia. The remaining
servants made Gall cut short his westward journey in Harrisburg.
Five days after his departure from Philadelphia, he wrote:
“Two of my servants deserted me between Montjoie and here
[Harrisburg]; and my choice was to continue the journey with
hired help, whom I should have to pay $2 a day, or stay here
perforce.” He rented “a pretty country house” with thirty-six tillable
acres, “precisely as much as the [one man and two women]
who remained true to me can care for with two horses.”

Alas, the remaining man did not “remain true” for long. He
soon demanded a seat at the family table and a good Sunday suit,
and on Gall’s refusal, he absconded. A neighborhood farmer
captured the man and had him jailed by the justice of the peace.
From prison the man spent six weeks negotiating the terms of his,
own release, while Gall paid his maintenance. His prison had
cards, whiskey, and in fact, growled Gall, “Methodists with a
misplaced love of humanity supplied him and his fellows with
an abundance of food and drink. . . . Indeed, everything was in
vain. In the end I had to let the fellow go.”

Just to rub it in, the “French-speaking Swiss immigrant,”
whom Gall hired in the servant’s place, threatened to drag Gall
before a justice of the peace for asking him to feed the horses on
Sunday (in violation of state Sabbath laws). Gall settled out of
court: paying the hired man half the anticipated fine.

The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company reproduced Gall’s
experience on a larger scale, when it brought some five hundred
laborers from Ireland in 1829, only to have them depart for Baltimore
or to nearby railroad construction, where higher wages were
available. Prosecution of the runaways proved prohibitively costly
to the company, and juries refused to convict the workers. Even a
federal judge who was willing to enforce Maryland’s 1715 statute
against runaway servants acknowledged that bound wage labor
was “opposed to the principles of our free institutions and . . .
repugnant to our feelings.” Both the canal laborers and those
working nearby on the new railroad struck several times during
the next six years over wages and over control of hiring, inducing
President Jackson to dispatch federal troops in 1834 to maintain
order. But no worker faced imprisonment for breach of contract,
such as they would have risked in England.

The repugnance felt by the federal judge had been written
into law by the Supreme Court of Indiana in an 1821 ruling on
The case of Mary Clark, a woman of color. The case was brought
by a free black woman in a free state, whose master made the
familiar claim that she had bound herself voluntarily in 1816 “to
serve him as an indented servant and house-maid for 20 years.”
When her suit for habeas corpus was denied by a lower court,
Clark appealed to the state supreme court, which set her free with
the resounding declaration that no one but apprentices, soldiers,
and sailors could be subjected to criminal prosecution for deserting
a job in violation of a contract. Because a contract for service
“must be performed under the eye of the master” and might “require
a number of years,” enforcement of such performance by
law “would produce a state of servitude as degrading and demoralizing
in its consequences, as a state of absolute slavery.”

Although legal commentaries soon began to quote The case of
Mary Clark, it did not appear frequently as a cited precedent until
after the Civil War. By that time the adoption by former Confederate
states of Black Codes — labor codes applying specifically
to African Americans, whose central feature was the imposition
of criminal prosecution for those who failed to sign one-year labor
contracts, or who left a job after they had signed such a contract —
had evoked a vigorous reaction, first from black southerners and
then from the federal Congress. “I hope soon to be called a citizen
of the U.S. and have the rights of a citizen,” a black soldier
from South Carolina had written in 1866. “I am opposed myself
to working under a contract. I am as much at liberty to hire a
White man to work as he to hire me, I expect to stay in the South
after I am mustered out of service, but not to hire myself to a
planter.”

The soldier’s conception of liberty was enshrined in the 1866
Civil Rights Act, and subsequently in the Fourteenth Amendment
to the Constitution, both of which nullified contractual requirements
of the Black Codes, and put in their place national principles
of “freedom of contract” to regulate both economic and
family life. The promise sought by the black soldier of equal
application of the principle of employment at will had become the
law of the land. Its practical significance for the daily lives of
southern rural workers provides an especially dramatic illustration
of the impact of democracy on the law of wage labor and will
receive close attention in my final lecture.

SEE:

Native America and the Evolution of Democracy

"Are Anarchists Thugs?"

Jamestown; The Birth of Capitalism

Jamestown; the beginning of Globalization

The Era Of The Common Man

1666 The Creation Of The World

The Many Headed Hydra

Plutocrats Rule

American Fairy Tale

Slavery in Canada

A NEW AMERICAN REVOLUTION

The Origin of American Conspiracy Theories

History of Slavery

The Truth Shall Set Ye Free

Cooperative Commonwealth=Free Market

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Edward Gibbon Wakefield, Marx, agrarian, farmers, populism, populist, producer, producerism, distributionism, Hilare Belocq, Quebec, Conservatives, colonization Canada, US, Grange, left-libertarian, libertarian-left, agorist, free-market, Von-Mises, Hyaek, Austrian-School, migrant workers, Canada, Britain, immigrants, temporary workers, nannies, farm workers, Chinese, labour, labor, employment, slavery, migration, immigration, USA, Europe, free-labour, labor, mutitude, Negri, Hardt, Empire, illegal, aliens, sans, papier,
capitalism,, history,, slavery,, primitive, accumulation, of, capital,, Atlantic, History,, Britain,, workers,, proletariat,, socialism,, labour, history,, labor, history,, pirates,, piracy,, colonialism,, American, colonies,,

Schipperke

I have two of these wonderful dogs called Schipperke's, Trooper and Tami. Both are Show Dogs. They are sometimes called 'the little captain' as the name is often mistranslated into Skipper Key, as in boat skipper. The legend has it they are Flemish or Belgian Barge Dogs.

The reality is somewhat different. They look like small version of the Belgium Sheep Dog though they are not directly related, and they too are a sheep dog.


The Schipperke (pronounced: skipper-key) has been known for centuries in the Flemish Province of Belgium where he was bred as a watchdog and hunter of vermin.

He is a bright, active and inquisitive dog that makes an excellent family companion. He is very good with children and suspicious of strangers, making him a good watchdog. Smart, loyal and loving, the Schip needs attention and companionship. He is active and loves to learn, and will excel in such activities as obedience, agility, flyball, tracking and herding.

Peasants in the Flemish Low Countries were not allowed large dogs, like horses and swords these were the symbols of the ruling classes and their Knights. So the peasants bred a small dog called the Schipperke to act as a shepherd, and the name means shepherd in Flemish. The peasants were Flemish Weavers and they brought their dogs with them when they traded with England and Europe.

THE WEE DOG FROM WALES
 By Sharon Pflaumer
 As with most breeds, there are a number of theories concerning
 the origins of the Pembroke Welsh Corgi in addition to the
 fanciful tale (about the fairies leaving two children wee dogs
 as a gift). This sturdy, all-around worker may have come
 from Schipperke-like dogs introduced to the British Isles
 by Flemish weavers in 1107. These weavers settled in Wales,
 where their canine companions evolved into cattle dogs.
 Another theory maintains the Pembroke is descended from
 the Swedish Vallhund, which may have been introduced to
 Wales by the Vikings.

Sumptuary Laws of Edward III's Reign

In 1337 when war was again declared with France, the English Parliament enacted
 a law intended to restrain  extravagance in dress and to promote the consumption 
 of English manufacturers. The 1337 act dealt with furs, limiting the wearing therof 
 to persons of gentle birth (or persons with annula incomes of 100 pounds or more). 

 The Black Death reached England in 1348 and the end of the following year had spread
to the north of the  country. It was estimated at least 20% of the population died.
This led to the  imposition in 1351 of the Statute of Labourers which fixed wages to
pre Black Death  levels and prevented mobility of labour in an attempt to restore stability
at a timewhen demand for workers was much greater than the supply (Pearsall, 1996).

People were often paid in apparel and foodstuffs. In 1355 an act was passed concerning the 
  dress of prostitutes. This related to restrictions of wear with the purpose of 
  distinguishing prostitutes from  respectable women. The parliament of 1363 passed an 
  act regulating both apparel and consumption of foodstuffs. This act amended the 1337 
  act and reduced the threshold for permissible wearing of furs to any non-peasant 
  with annual income of 40 shillings or greater. The legislation had two objectives 
  i.e.. protectionism i.e. only members of the royal family could wear cloth of 
  non-English manufacture and partly as an anti-inflationary  measure. Prior to this,
   Flemish weavers were taking English cash out of the country,  restriction to the 
   royals, was an economic means of keeping English money in the country. 

The Schipperke look more like foxes when they are mature, and like little bears when they are young pups. They are bright, intelligent, and obstinate hence the designation Little Captain, they push their way around. They are the perfect anarchist dog and the perfect dog for an anarchist.

They were later adopted by the Flemish Tailors Guild sometime in the late 15th Century or early 16th Century, because of their beautiful ruffs. The Tailors would make decorated collars and show them off on the ruffs of their Schipperke's in local competitions, walking them through the streets, and thus the origin of the dog show begins with the Flemish Tailors and their Schipperke's.

uring the 15th Century, Brussels became the tapestry capital. The extravagant use of gold thread in these works, inspired the name Tapis D'Or (cloth of gold). The most prominent weaver, Pieter Van Aelst, was responsible for creating "The Acts of the Apostles" which was commissioned for the Sistine Chapel. And in the 1500's Queen Elizabeth made the weaving industry the basis of England's trade. William Sheldon designed a series of county maps which were a charming mixture of geographical representation and decorative design. Mary, Queen of Scots, employed 2 Master Embroiderers for the Crown: Pierre Oudray and Charles Howart. The first embroidery book published in England was "A Schole House for the Needle" by Richard Schorleyker in 1624. It illustrated most of the usual motifs of the time, and also some lace and cut work. Embroiderers were also influenced by the designs from a manuscript by Thomas Trevellyan. These may be seen in many variations of Elizabethan Age embroidery.

They were later adapted for use on the Flemish canal barges, as a rat dog, to hunt and kill the scourge of barges and the working class ghetto. Thus the confusion about them being barge or boat dogs and the terms Skipper Keys, or little captains.

My Year of the War Including an Account of Experiences with the Troops
in France and the Record of a Visit to the Grand Fleet Which is Here
Given for the First Time in its Complete Form

When I think of Belgium's part in the war I always think of the little
Belgian dog, the schipperke who lives on the canal boats. He is a
home-staying dog, loyal, affectionate, domestic, who never goes out
on the tow-path to pick quarrels with other dogs; but let anything on
two or four feet try to go on board when his master is away and he will
fight with every ounce of strength in him. 

They are a rare dog breed that has become popular over the last few years. Since we adopted Trooper and Tami, I see more of them around the neighbourhood now. But folks still stop us and ask us what kind of dog they are. Most folks have heard of them as the rare Belgium Barge dog.

Both our dogs are from Diana Kinnear's Majekin line of Schipperke's and we are their adopted guardians. They both still do dog shows and Trooper is a Champion breed stud. This photo is of his winning pose in Camrose, the year we adopted him.

We found them by looking on the net. We had used the net to find rescue animals, in particular cats, we have a long standing tradition of adopting older cats. Since we lived in an apartment for many years. When we moved into our house I began to suggest we get a dog. A small dog, this funny dog with a funny name, we had seen at the dog show, which was just a bit bigger than our cats.

So we were looking for the dog with the funny name Schipperke and looked it up on the Internet. We came across Trooper through Diana who had moved from Calgary to Edmonton and needed to adopt him out to a home since she had another male in her menagerie and Trooper being the Alpha Male he needed a home of his own.

And eventually so did his granddaughter Tami, who really is a a spoiled little princess. She is my partners little girl. She lived with other Julie and the other 'girls' at Diana's house but really needed to be in her own home. And yes it is her home, she bosses Trooper around.

So what started out as a us looking at getting one dog, ended up with us adopting two of these wily intelligent guard dogs. And let me tell you they are better than any alarm system when it comes to protecting 'their home and property'.

Julie at 10 weeks(Mazeru Heavensent to Majekin) bred by Anna Verleg

( Ch Majekin Poetry In Motion x Ch Roetmop Qiwi)

Tami at 4 months(Majekin Talk About Me)

(Ch. Ebonorth Autumn Stormy Boy x Ch Majekin Ombrelle de Orval)

SCHIPPERKE CLUB OF CANADA SPECIALTY WINNER:
AM/CAN CH MAJEKIN NEMESIS DE SANGBLEU (TROOPER)
















Now what prompted me to write about them, which I had been intending on doing for some time actually, was this recent story in the news. If you are a regular reader of this blog, and of course who isn't, you know my position on crimes against animals.

Well this story was in the press recently. It's a terrible case of animal abuse and cruelty and it happened to a Schipperke puppy and it is horrible because the puppy was in the care of this person, totally dependent on them for it's survival. And of course as I have pointed out before if a person can do this to an animal they can do the same to children or even adults.

Three months for puppy drowning

Karen Kleiss, edmontonjournal.com

Published: Friday, November 16

EDMONTON - A man who drowned his friend's four-month-old puppy in a bathtub while she listened on the phone was sentenced today to three months in jail.

Jeffrey Vince, 46, is banned from owning pets for two years after his release, Crown prosecutor Prima Michell said after court.

Vince pleaded guilty in June to causing pain and suffering to an animal in connection with the Sept. 6, 2006 incident.

Michell said the incident began when Vince and a female friend got into an argument because the woman had been discussing Vince's mental health with a neighbour.

Vince pointed at the four-month-old puppy, a Schipperke lap dog named Shadoe, and the tiny dog nipped at his fingers. Angry, he grabbed the animal, shoved it into a carrier and drove home to his apartment, Michell said.

A short time later, he called his friend and asked her if she wanted to hear her dog dying. He placed the dog in the carrier in the tub, and ran the water until it died. He then attempted suicide by overdosing on pills, Michell said.

"This is not a case of somebody who might have some weird notions of discipline, and it is not a case of someone who is too poor to feed their pet," Michell said. "This is a deliberate act by someone who is mad at the owner."

Michell said psychological reports entered into evidence during the trial show Vince has a history of mental illness, but that the illness did not prevent him from forming the intention to kill the animal.

In court today, Michell said told the judge he feels bad for killing the dog.

And well he should. But he also needs medical help for his mental condition, which no amount of jail time will address. And it shows the failure of our social system that does not consider mental health as a public health issue. Instead it allows people to suffer alone, as the Klein government did when it closed Alberta Hospital and left the mentally ill to wander the streets homeless. And thus contributes directly to their alienation and subsequent mental illness which they deny they have.

On the other hand here is a story about how important that bond is between us and our animal companions, and no they are NOT pets. It is a bond that is as deep as humankind, since we domesticated wild animals to join us in our communities. And it too is a sad story, because it deals with the death of family member.

Another Sad Day

Posted Tuesday, October 30, 2007, at 3:37 PM

I'm just popping in for a quick minute today. My wonderful, sweet Schipperke, Bear, passed away suddenly and quite unexpectedly yesterday morning. He didn't feel well on Sunday. We just thought his arthritis was bothering him. By 3:00 a.m. yesterday morning, we knew something was seriously wrong. We flew out the door for Dr. K's office, where he was waiting for us. We were all with him, when he crossed the bridge. Dr. K feels that it probably was a blood clot brought on either by an auto immune response or a disease called DIC. He assured us, that there was nothing that we could have done.

Bear was such a bright light in my house. I know that it will be dim for a while, and never quite as bright before. Bear was a friend to everyone who met him, whether it was another pet or person. He became the official greeter of my neighborhood. We made rounds to visit all of the neighbors. He hadn't been getting out quite as much, because of his arthritis, but he still liked to visit.

Casey and I are still in quite a bit of shock. I may not be around for a couple of days, and I hope that you all understand. I'm still processing. This was an exceptionally hard blow, so soon after losing Slate the first of September. Please send good thoughts and prayers this way.

Goodbye Bear. You were a loyal, uplifting friend. You will be terribly missed.

But I will end on a more positive note with this final post I came across while Googling Schipperke's in the news. I have two cats and two dogs, and they all get along well. I will tell you my cat tales in another post. This final post ends with a message about the importance of adopting animals, especially rescued animals, those that have been abandoned by their owners. Often through no fault of their own, because in Alberta with the lack of affordable housing landlords are refusing to accept 'pets' or overcharging for the privilege of living with your companion animal.

Juanita's Juanderings
Claws and Paws
By Juanita Harris

I have two cats, Ebony and Ivory, who are about five years old, and who have become fat, lazy, and quite comfortable in their surroundings. In other words, quite spoiled. Until recently they have been able to lounge anywhere they darn well choose to lounge, be it on the furniture, my bed, or the dining room table. Now there is a battle for �top dog� in the house, and the cats seem to be losing the war. So much so that I haven�t seen much of them in the last two weeks. I think they have taken permanent lodging underneath my bed.

Their calm, cool, complacency has been greatly upset by my bringing home another four-legged fur ball � namely Roxie, a three-year-old Schipperke. Now to picture this. Here�s Roxie, all of seven pounds, and both of the cats are at least 12 to 14 pounds each. You see, Roxie doesn�t much like cats, and my cats don�t much care for dogs as it turns out. I am hoping that things will eventually settle down to a dull roar instead of the growl, bark, chase, and hide routine that now takes place every time the cats appear.
But, have no fear. I have not abandoned the cats. I go into the bedroom every day, shut the door, and spend quality time with them. I don�t want them to feel unloved. In fact, I moved their food into the master bathroom so they would not have to traverse the dog�s line of sight in order to be able to eat. But, they still must do that to get to their litter boxes.

At this time of year, with Christmas rapidly approaching, if you are considering a pet for your family, please consider adopting from the Humane Society as I did. There are plenty of beautiful, loving dogs and cats, puppies and kittens that deserve good, loving homes. But, if you do adopt a pet, please make sure your family is properly educated in the proper care and training of that animal before you bring it home. And, if you decide to get a pet from a private party, please make certain that your pet is properly vaccinated and spayed or neutered at the proper age. It is better for the animal and it avoids the unnecessary euthanizing of unwanted puppies and kittens.

'Til next time, be safe and have a very Happy Thanksgiving.

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The Ugly Canadian

While Harper trumpeted Canada's generosity towards Tanzania, money promised by the previous Liberal Government and still not up to the actual commitment of 20% of the GDP, the real face of Canada was shown by the Mining companies that Harper had in tow with him. The same gang he had in tow with him when he visited Latin America earlier this year. For Harper 'aid' means investment opportunities.

DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA — The goal was to leave the image of a benevolent Canada investing in the health of poor Africans, but in the end it was another Canada, that of its globe-hopping mining companies, that stole the day.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper spent eight hours yesterday in this commercial centre on the Indian Ocean, visiting a school, lunching with Tanzania's President and announcing a $105-million contribution to a new health-care initiative in Africa and Asia.

Yet it was a 45-minute meeting with officials from a dozen Canadian investors, led by mining giant Barrick Gold Corp., that dominated Mr. Harper's news conference with President Jakaya Kikwete.

Thanks in large part to Barrick's three gold mines, Canada has emerged as Tanzania's largest foreign investor, prompting a resource boom that helped Tanzania record a 6.2-per-cent growth rate last year.

Yet the mining success has prompted allegations that royalties are too low and that Tanzania's people, still among the world's poorest, are not sharing adequately in the bonanza.

Adding to this is a nasty labour dispute at Barrick's Bulyanhulu gold mine, where 1,000 of the 1,900 workers have been on what the company calls an illegal strike for the past month.

A court hearing scheduled for yesterday, at which the union hoped to obtain an injunction to stop Barrick from hiring replacement workers, was postponed to today for reasons that were unclear.

Mr. Harper would not comment on the strike other than to say that he expects Canadian companies to "act responsibly within the laws of the land" when they are abroad. He praised Tanzania for creating a stable political and business environment that encourages Canadian companies to invest.

Mr. Kikwete was also diplomatic when the subject turned to Canada's investment in the mining industry and in particular the work of a committee created to advise the Tanzanian government on whether to change the royalty regime.

"We are not blaming the mining companies," the President said, noting that the companies are living within Tanzanian law.

He added that the goal of the review is to achieve a "win-win situation" for the companies and the government.

"We'd like to see more and more Canadian investment," Mr. Kikwete said.

It was the second time in recent months that Mr. Harper had met Barrick officials during an international trip. In July, he stopped off at Barrick's offices in Santiago, Chile, where the company is developing the massive Pascua Lama mining project in the Andes, despite protests from environmentalists.

Joan Kuyek, the national co-ordinator of MiningWatch, a group that critiques what it sees as irresponsible mining practices around the world, says Barrick's Tanzanian operation displaced thousands of small-scale miners and gives little back to Tanzania.

"If Mr. Harper met only with people chosen to have him meet with and didn't meet with the small-scale miners, didn't meet with the people who have to deal with the social and economic and environmental price that these mines are racking up in Tanzania, and didn't meet with their representatives, well I think that's pretty shocking," Ms. Kuyek said.

See:

Cold Gold

Afghanistan or Africa

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