Calgary's Catholic School Board is pulling "The Golden Compass" from school shelves -- a children's fantasy novel that criticizes strict religious dogma and encourages readers to keep an open mind.
Now that Australia has signed on to the Kyoto Accord it just leaves Steve and George to do their No Kyoto Bali Roadshow; that began at the Australian APEC meeting and ended last week in Africa at the Commonwealth meeting.Blogging from Bali: The Other Canada
It does not seem that the Canadian government is playing a very constructive role at this conference thus far. Here are two examples. First, Canada refuses to commit to binding targets unless all major emitters accept binding targets - a position which goes against the principle underlying the UNFCCC, which is criticized by development economists, which has attracted opposition from China and which may lead to a negotiating impasse. Second, in sessions of the compliance committee, Canada has proposed that the countries who appoint representatives to lead enquiries regarding non-compliance should be responsible for their own travel and accommodation costs. Considering that Canada is likely to be the subject of such an enquiry, this position does not appear to be anything but defensive and self-interested.
December 7, 2007 at 4:31 AM EST
NUSA DUA, INDONESIA and OTTAWA — Canadian Environment Minister John Baird is urging delegates to the Bali climate change meetings to avoid "the same mistakes" made at Kyoto when large emitters like China and India weren't given binding targets to reduce carbon.
Mr. Baird, who left for the conference yesterday, said that the U.S. decision not to ratify Kyoto stemmed from the fact that large developing countries weren't obliged to sign on to targets.
"Many said that one of the big reasons Kyoto wasn't ratified is that there weren't binding targets on China and India," Mr. Baird said. "Ten years later, let's not make the same mistakes we made 10 years ago."
Yesterday, Canadian delegates to the United Nations conference were reported to have called for a "comprehensive review" of the fundamental "architecture" of the Kyoto treaty, provoking new questions about its commitment to the battle against global warming.
The wide-ranging review of Kyoto should assess its structure, its architecture, its "adequacy" in achieving its goals, and its key principles, such as the idea of differentiated responsibilities for different countries, a senior federal official said yesterday.
The official made the comments at a closed-door session at the conference in Bali. No news media were allowed at the session, but his comments were verified by environmental activists who attended.
The comments were made at a session where countries were assessing Kyoto's performance. But while some countries have called for a reconsideration of the accord, the Canadian delegation seemed to be calling for a much more far-reaching review than anything contemplated by other nations, the environmentalists said.
They said a sweeping re-examination of Kyoto could be a serious distraction at a time when the world is trying to hammer out a new climate-change agreement within the next two years to replace Kyoto when it expires in 2012.
Mr. Harper Goes to Bali
..."It's clear that Canada and Japan are talking to each other and using the same language. And Japan seems completely averse to doing anything without the United States."
Another environmentalist, Steven Guilbeault of the Équiterre group, said the Canadian position has been poorly received by most other countries. "It's a poison pill, and it makes a lot of countries very nervous," he said. "Canada is saying it wants to do less. Everyone is disappointed and appalled by it."
Japan and Canada have dominated the "Fossil of the Day awards" – sarcastic prizes given every day by environmentalists to the worst-performing nation at the Bali conference.
Mr. Guilbeault, who has been attending climate-change conferences for the past 12 years, says there is widespread suspicion among other countries that Canada may be trying to derail an agreement at Bali.
"The level of distrust toward Canada is at an all-time high," he said. "In 12 years, I've never seen such distrust.".
Canada accused of undermining climate talksCanadians should be embarrassed by the actions of our PM and his Enviro-Flunky; John Baird, not the actions of those attending the Bali conference to give voice to Canadians real views, and paying for it out of their own pockets since the Conservatives have put the kabosh on anyone but their handpicked cronies going as the official delegation.Canada is taking heat from activists at the Bali climate change conference, who are accusing it of undermining negotiations.
Climate Action Network Canada claims to have a document showing that Canada's negotiators have been instructed to demand that poorer nations accept the same binding, absolute reduction targets as developed nations.
"Canada is trying to rewrite history by putting the burden of emissions reductions on poorer countries," said spokesman Steven Guilbeault on Saturday in Bali, Indonesia.
However, Environment Minister John Baird -- who arrived in Bali on Saturday -- has said this past week that any new climate change agreement must include all the world's major carbon polluters and set binding targets.
CTV's Steve Chao, reporting from Bali, told Newsnet that a top UN official said earlier this week that Canada's government is a skeptic and that it doesn't want to do anything on climate change.
The activists say that the Kyoto Protocol is built on the recognition that industrialized countries are largely responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change and must lead the reduction fight.
While emerging economies like China and India must slow their emissions growth, the activists say that they should not be subject to the same absolute reduction targets as developed countries.
Canada -- which has 0.4 per cent of the world's population yet produces two per cent of greenhouse gas emissions -- the United States and Australia are the world's biggest per capita emitters. Canada and the U.S. emitted about 20 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents per capita in 2004.
In comparison, China emitted 3.8 tonnes and India 1.2 tonnes.
Once again forgetting that they are a MINORITY government representing a minority of Canadians and their politics are those of an even smaller minority.
Mr. Heinbecker said he didn't think it was "proper" that Mr. Dion will be in Bali and could raise a stink about the Harper government's position. "The reality is the government is the government," he said, "and the position they take is the Canadian position until such time as a different Canadian government takes a different position." (Embassy, December 5, 2007)
Harper in Quebec to woo ADQ supportersHe also said his move to recognize the Québécois as a nation within a united Canada has proved critics who said the motion would endanger national unity wrong. “The philosophy of this government is the very antithesis of the centralizing philosophy of the successive Liberal regimes of [Pierre] Trudeau through to his successor, [Stéphane] Dion,” Mr. Harper told the gathering.
Nationalism -- A Political Religion
Rudolph Rocker
That modern nationalism in its extreme fanaticism for the state has no use for liberal ideas is readily understandable. Less clear is the assertion of its leaders that the modern state is thoroughly infected with liberal ideas and has for this reason lost its former political significance. The fact is that the political development of the last hundred and fifty years was not along the lines that liberalism had hoped for. The idea of reducing the functions of the state as much as possible and of limiting its sphere to a minimum has not been realised. The state's field of activity was not laid fallow; on the contrary, it was mightily extended and multiplied, and the so-called "liberal parties," which gradually got deeper and deeper into the current of democracy, have contributed abundantly to this end.
In reality the state has not become liberalised but only democratised Its influence on the personal life of man has not been reduced; on the contrary it has steadily grown. There was a time when one could hold the opinion that the "sovereignty of the nation" was quite different from the sovereignty of the hereditary monarch and that, therefore, the power of the state would be awakened. While democracy was still fighting for recognition, such an opinion might have had a certain justification. But that time is long past; nothing has so confirmed the internal and external security of the state as the religious belief in the sovereignty of the nation, confirmed and sanctioned by the universal franchise. That this is also a religious concept of political nature is undeniable.
Mussolini's liberal clamour stopped immediately as soon as the dictator had the state power in Italy firmly in his hands. Viewing Mussolini's rapid change of opinion about the meaning of the state one involuntarily remembers the expression of the youthful Marx: "No man fights against freedom; at the most he fights against the freedom of others. Every kind of freedom has, therefore, always existed; sometimes as special privilege, at other times as general right."
Excerpt from the 'Day of Infamy' Radio AddressFranklin D. Roosevelt's "Day of Infamy" Speech
To the Congress of the United States:Yesterday, December 7, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
The United States was at peace with that Nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its Government and its Emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in Oahu, the Japanese Ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to the Secretary of State of form reply to a recent American message. While this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or armed attack.
It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Japanese Government had deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.
The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. Very many American lives have been lost. In addition American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.
Yesterday the Japanese Government also launched an attack against Malaya.
Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong.
Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam.
Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands.
Last night the Japanese attacked Midway Island.
Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our Nation.
As Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense.
Always will we remember the character of the onslaught against us.
No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.
I believe I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again.
Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger.
With confidence in our armed forces -- with the unbounded determination of our people -- we will gain the inevitable triumph -- so help us God.
I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December seventh, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
The White House, December 8, 1941
SEE:
"His findings will help the government ... provide language programs and services that serve the unique needs of minority communities," Harper saidOf course in English Canada French is a minority language as English is in Quebec. However the only reason English is a minority language in Quebec it due to its provincial language laws. So what does this all mean? Well the Tories will respect French in Quebec and English in the rest of Canada. Meaning they will try and change the nature of the Official languages act to end Federal Bilingualism. That has always been a bug a boo in the bonnet of their right wing base.
An ugly internal dispute over sex, religion and violence erupted within the Alberta Conservative party Saturday, ending up with a candidate being ousted and Premier Ed Stelmach saying the reasons for the "difficult" decision must remain confidential.
It was like a Mafia hit gone wrong.
What should have been done quickly and bloodlessly months ago ended up being done messily with a baseball bat last weekend.
Officials with the Alberta Progressive Conservatives bludgeoned to death the political career of Craig Chandler in a meeting room of a Red Deer Hotel on Saturday. It took 21/2 hours for the officials to bash away at Chandler's history and credibility before rejecting him as a candidate for Calgary-Egmont.
By the time they were done, there was so much blood on the carpet it's a wonder someone didn't think to put down a plastic sheet beforehand.
Don't any of these guys watch The Sopranos?
What's so puzzling about all this isn't that the Conservatives whacked Chandler but that they took so long to do it. And I don't mean the 21/2 hours of brass knuckles behind closed doors on Saturday.
The Tories could have saved themselves and Chandler a lot of grief if months ago they had taken him aside and warned him off. They could have simply told him that he wasn't welcome because while he might be a "conservative" they didn't think there was much "progressive" about him. Furthermore, if he managed to win the nomination, Premier Ed Stelmach wasn't going to sign his papers.
Chandler says he would have appreciated the warning.
"Someone could have taken me aside and told me," he said in an e-mail exchange on Monday.
It's not as if Chandler was a stranger to the PCs. He has a long and loud history of involvement with right-wing political movements including the federal Reform party and the Alberta Alliance. He is a social conservative, at times belligerently so.
More to the point, he has a long history of making inflammatory comments, often against homosexuality. He got in trouble with the Canadian Human Rights Commission and earlier this year posted an apology on his radio program's website agreeing to "cease and desist" from saying homosexuals are "sick, diseased or mentally ill" or that they are "wicked or dangerous."
An Alberta man who has pressed for five years to get an anti-gay letter branded as hate literature won a victory Friday with a human rights commission ruling that said it broke provincial law and may even have played a role in the beating of a gay teenager.The letter, written by Stephen Boissoin and published in the Red Deer Advocate in 2002, carried the headline "Homosexual agenda wicked" and suggested gays were as immoral as pedophiles, drug dealers and pimps.
Darren Lund, a high school teacher in Red Deer at the time, complained to the Alberta Human Rights Commission after the teenager was beaten in the city two weeks after the letter was published.
In Friday's ruling, commission panel chairwoman Lori Andreachuk said both Boissoin and the Concerned Christian Coalition to which he belonged broke provincial human rights law by likely exposing gays to hatred and contempt.
During the panel's hearing earlier this year, Boissoin testified that Craig Chandler - a former CEO of the coalition who recently won a provincial Progressive Conservative nomination in Calgary - was aware of and supported what he was doing.
Chandler posted a formal apology on the coalition's website about the letter last January after a separate complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
Tory officials are scheduled to review Chandler's nomination on Saturday.
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.
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.
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.
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.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.
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.
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.
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.
The history of the world is none other than
the progress of the consciousness of freedom.
-George Hegel, 1821
