Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Marriage Debate

A year ago when I launched this blog I posted this as one of my first articles:

The Sanctity of Marriage Debate What’s Love got to do with it?

An Anarchist Response to The Sanctity of Marriage Debate

Today I see it is still relevant, since there are idiots out there saying this:

Marriage is not merely a right. It is an institution that predates all states.

Once again the christian fundamentalist right wing will try any arguement to deny the reality that Same Sex Marriage is now legal in Canada. And will probably remain so despite the Harper government promise to revist this.

Originally posted by Burkean Canuck, which should tell you something of his politics, aristocratic apologist that Edmund Burke was. Appropriately he has a union jack on his blog page, still thinks we are a bloody colony of the British Empire. Probably a loyalist, slave owners that they were.

Which is not that far off since the Author, Russ Kuykendall is also a Research Director for t the Work Research Foundation.

WRF is a front group for the anti-union right wing labour 'association' CLAC (Christian Labour Association of Canada). Both the WRF and CLAC were founded by members of the Dutch based Christian Reformed Church of Canada. The CRCC was one of the last of the Reformed churches to break with it's partner in Aparthied the CRC of South Africa.

The article was cross posted to the Shotgun blog, where it has generated much heat and little light, around sixty or more comments. Some libertarians going to battle for the fact that human sexual relationships were not based on marriage but on communal sexual relationships in tribes. This is true, they were also not based on private property which is the sole source for the institution of marriage, property relations, as I argued. Matrilinear inheritance was that the child carried the mothers name, not the fathers in these societies.

To sum up my arguement contrary to the B.S. floated around by right wing fundamentalist christians, MARRIAGE IS A STATE INSTITUTION AND A PROPERTY RELATIONSHIP. It is a modern development of the city states of the Ancient world, post Etruscan, where the woman owned property as did her husband, and is codified into law by Greeks and Romans.


A tip o the blog to Ianism for this.

Also see:

Whose Family Values?

 Marx on Bigamy

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Stick This In Yer Pipe


And smoke it. Anti-smoking activists who claim that their attack on our right to smoke in well ventilated public spaces advocating laws against smoking and forcing us to butt out completely, has no economic or minimal economic impact are LIARS.

Ontario May Lose C$500 Mln From Casino Smoking Ban, Study Says

Jan. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Ontario may lose as much as C$500 million ($438 million) a year by implementing a smoking ban in casinos because it will drive some smokers to U.S. gambling halls, an Ontario government study said.

To make up for this shortfall from their stupid smoking ban the Ontario government has a solution. Ont. tobacco taxes up $1.25 a carton


Also see:Smoking Mad

Smoking At Home Will Be Banned


Where there's Smoke there's Smokers




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If This Is Success

If this is the new definition of success I would hate to see the definition of failure.

Enron's Lay called 'an American success story'




Also see:
Are Income Trusts A Ponzi Scheme
Alberta Fleeced by Enron


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Profiting from Contracting Out

As I have reported here before on this bust; The Neo Liberal Canadian State this is a perfect case of why contracting out and P3's , in this case IT or computer services, by the Federal Government was an abysmal failure. It cost us billions in the Firearms Registry boondoogle. And now this.....

Former bureaucrat faces fraud charges
Toronto Star - 30 Jan 2006
OTTAWA—The Mounties have charged a former Defence Department bureaucrat and two other men in a multimillion-dollar fraud involving computer maintenance contracts.
Charges laid in DND computer billing case Ottawa Citizen
Charges laid in $100-million DND billing scheme CBC News
580 CFRA Radio - Ottawa Business Journal - Ottawa Sun - all 11 related »


Also see Privatization


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Psychological Problems or Gun Problems

Another gun related massacre in the U.S., this time a woman postal worker. So the U.S. media covers it as a case of a psycho killer. The question is not her psychological state, but how come she had access to guns.

But of course the gun nut culture of the U.S. will never ask that question.

Proving once again in the negative, that gun control works. Sure we have the occasional gun incident up here in Canada but not with the regularity that they do in the U.S.

Official: Shooter had 'psychological problems'

Witness: 'We all hightailed it out real quick'

Tuesday, January 31, 2006; Posted: 11:30 p.m. EST (04:30 GMT)

GOLETA, California (AP) -- A former postal worker who had been put on medical leave for psychological problems shot five people to death at a huge mail-processing center and then killed herself in what was believed to be the nation's deadliest workplace shooting ever carried out by a woman.

The attack Monday night was also the biggest bloodbath at a U.S. postal installation since a massacre 20 years ago helped give rise to the term "going postal."

See my other articles on guns

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Mercedes Benz State of the Union


CNN's Lou Dobbs is an excellent example of the contradictions of capitalism.

He wants American Capitalism to be unique. It should not be a national capitalism in competition with other national capitalisms but rather it should be fair and balanced as some other network says.

It should take care of its workers, it should be Fordism.

He critiques Amercian corporations for outsourcing and offshoring Amercian jobs in one breathe, low wages paid to Amercian working families, then he attacks immigration err sorry illegal aliens in the next.

Somehow he believes that there is a mythical level playingf ield out there. That the problem is corporate America isn't being fair, to Americans. That capitalism is about fairness not dog eat dog competition. Boy talk about an idealist. When he isn't being a jingoist.

Last night on CNN before the State of the Union Lou did a special where he spoke out for the besieged American working class, opps I mean Middle Class (whatever that is).....

ANNOUNCER: This is a special edition of LOU DOBBS TONIGHT for Tuesday, January 31, "The State of Our Union: The View Outside the Beltway."

Here now, Lou Dobbs.

LOU DOBBS, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening, everybody.

Three hours from now, President Bush will deliver his fifth State of the Union speech. Tonight on this broadcast we will report on the real state of our union, no spin, no denial, but a nonpartisan, non- ideological view of the reality that makes up this country coast to coast.

We're live all across the nation with our special reports on the issues that matters most to working men and women, middle class Americans, from health care to educational opportunity, to the outright war on our middle class.

DOBBS: And the middle class should be, one would think, the center of the focus of both the Democrats and the Republicans. To this point, they've given themselves up to their corporate masters, and, in fact, neither party, even the Democratic Party with its traditions, is focusing on the needs of what is the foundation of this country, our middle class.

GERGEN: Well, that's right. There's a fellow named Ernie Cortez (ph) who's a big organizer of the Hispanic community in the South, and he told me once a couple years ago, you know, the Republican Party increasingly speaks for people who make more than $200,000 a year and the Democratic Party increasingly speaks for people who make more than $100,000 a year. Who speaks for people who make $40,000 to $50,000?

DOBBS: David Gergen, thank you.
Lou asked his viewers this question:

QUICKVOTE

Do you expect to hear President Bush say anything approaching these words: "The middle class is the foundation of American society" in his State of the Union address?
And the result was 94% of his viewers figured the President wouldn't. Guess we know who the majority of Americans think he speaks for.....those folks who make more than $200,000 a year.

So Lou explain this to me, how come Mercedes-Benz was the offical sponsor for President George Bush's State of the Union Address on CNN last night.

Mercedes-Benz. And its new S-Class


While the Mercedes-Benz is distributed in the U.S. by German owned DaimlerChrysler it is still produced in Germany.

Mercedes S-Class the sponsor of the State of the Union on CNN, costs $86,175, is way out of reach of Middle Class Americans Lou was concerned about.
Guess thats why its called S-Class. Superior.

Hey Lou, will CNN now make your corporate bad guys list for accepting sponsorship from NON American corporations?

And for having a sponsor offering a foreign made car only affordable by George Bush Republicans, not middle class Americans?

Inquirying minds want to know.

There is another irony here.

Lou the jingoist patriot is promoting the The Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund is constructing a world-class state-of-the-art advanced training skills facility at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. The center will serve military personnel who have been catastrophically disabled in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Mercedes Benz ad for its S-Class is Even Cars Need a Hero.

Someone once said capitalism knows no nation. Lou should learn this lesson soon.

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A Libertarian defense of Communism


Libertarian communism is the idea of workers councils, workers self management, the syndicalist ideal of workers control, Soviet power, Soviets without Bolsheviks that is. The Soviet Union Versus Socialism, by Noam Chomsky

Fire your Boss and Do It Yourself, the economics of self liberation.

Brad Spangler does it again from his position as a free market Libertarian he defends what others think is non-libertarian, oh you unbelievers you. Better yet he says that workers councils and workers control of the means of production is the highest expression of free market libertarianism.

This results in a dawning realization that quasi-Bolshevist seizure of state-allied corporations by their own non-managerial workers, such as Carson suggests, is entirely justified on libertarian grounds and that there is nothing in such actions incompatible with respect for genuine property rights and dedication to the free market ideal. Indeed, it would be the highest expression of that ideal.

The Emerging Anarcho-Centrist Agenda for Socialist Revolution with Free Market Characteristics


Or as Herr Dr. Marx put it the workers struggle is the struggle of the working class to eliminate itself as a class to become the human race. To eliminate classes by the radical realization of each individual as having self and social worth. Not just value as part of the creation of capitalism.

From each according to their abilities to each according to their needs, can only result when the producers/consumers are individuals and not wage slaves. Where the social abundance produced by all of us is not privatized for the use of only one class but for all.

That is to become the owners of the socialized means of production. You need to understand socialized to be the corporatized structure of advanced capitalism not state ownership. Thats where most rightwhingnuts get confused.


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State Of The Union Deja Vu

Gee was it just me or did King George II State of Dis Union speech last night seem familiar. Like his comments on the war in Iraq.

Could have sworn I heard that in December when he did his whirlwind speaking tour defending the indefensible, after his polling numbers ended up in the basement. Yep I did. It was word for word.

Most of what he had to say was well same old same old. He gave that huyuck Texas bubba look, pause wait for applause, pause guys waiting for applause, oh boy they are applauding, smirk. Half the house failed to applaud on key points, and only Senator McCain applauded vigorously when el presidente said that he would do something about cleaning up lobbying. Yeah right when hell freezes over.

Ho hum nothing new here lets move on.

Bush: U.S. must kick oil addiction

Bush: U.S. must kick oil addiction

U.S. President George W. Bush uses his fifth State of the Union speech to propose weaning America from its addiction to imported oil and stands firm on staying in Iraq.

DEVELOPING STORY

• Special Report: Scorecard: Rate the speech | Reaction
• Anderson Cooper 360 blog: Taking the offensive
• Democrats: 'There is a better way' | Transcript
• Watch: Domestic spying | Iranian threat | Energy
• Gallery: Photos | Quiz | Slide show | Fact check
• Highlights: Domestic issues | International issues | In full


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Not very diplomatic

Those John Wayne types in the U.S. armed forces in Iraq are at it again. This time they shot up the Canadian Amabasador to Iraq's car. More friendly fire. Lets see we had Canadian troops killed when Americans dropped bombs on them in Afghanistan. We have had an ambassador killed and troops injured since we have taken over for the fleeing err withdrawing U.S. troops in Kandahar. And now this.

Oh yeah remember its just an accident. This is what happens when you give 18 hear olds live ammunition. An accident like when they killed the Italian Spy chief and injured the Italian reporter after shooting up their car.

With allies like these who needs enemies.

Guess this wasn't worth a news flash last night cause the Canadian newsmedia probably didn't want to interrupt err embarass Georgie Bush during his state of dis Union speech.

Apparently now that the orgy of self congratulations in the U.S. is over CNN is now reporting on this.

(CNN) -- U.S. forces in Baghdad accidentally shot at the car of the Canadian ambassador to Iraq, John Holmes, but no one was injured, a State Department official said.

It was not immediately clear whether Holmes was inside the vehicle.

"It's an unfortunate incident," the official said of Tuesday's incident. "We are in close contact with the Canadians about the matter."



Tip o the blog to Right of Center Ice for this

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Ralph Likes Brokeback Mountain

Looks like the Klein government having lost the infamous Vriend case and then having been defeated over the issue of Same Sex Marriage, has now accepted the inveitable. It is praising in official press releases the fact that the gay content film Brokeback Mountain is on the way to the Oscars. Thats because the film was made in Alberta. Gay sex on the silver screen made in Alberta. Come home Bruce and Steve all is forgiven. A tip o the blog to daveberta for this.



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