The War Against The Metropolis

The transition from Culture to Civilization was acocmplished for the Classical world in the fourth, for the Western in the nineteenth century. From these periods onward the great intellectual decisions take place, no longer all over the world where not a hamlet is too small to be unimportant, but in three or four world-cities that have absorbed into themselves the whole content of History, while the old wide landscape of the Culture, become merely provincial, served only to feed the cities with what remains of its higher mankind. World-city and province--the two basic ideas of every civilization--bring up a wholly new form-problem of History, the very problem that we are living through today with hardly the remotest conception of its immensity. In place of a world, there is a city, a point, in which the whole life of broad regions is collecting while the rest dries up. In place of a type-true people, born of and grown on the soil, there is new sort of nomad, cohering unstably in fluid masses, the parasitical city dweller, traditionless, utterly matter-of-fact, religionless, clever, unfruitful, deeply contemptuous of the countryman and especially that highest form of countryman, the country gentleman. This is a very great stride towards the inorganic, towards the end--what does it signify?

The world-city means cosmopolitanism in place of "home" . . . To the world-city belongs not a folk but a mob. Its uncomprehending hostility to all the traditions representative of the culture (nobility, church, privileges, dynasties, convention in art and limits of knowledge in science), the keen and cold intelligence that confounds the wisdom of the peasant, the new- fashioned naturalism that in relation to all matters of sex and society goes back far to quite primitive instincts and conditions, the reappearance of the panem et circenses in the form of wage-disputes and sports stadia--all these things betoken the definite closing down of the Culture and the opening of a quite new phase of human existence--anti-provincial, late, futureless, but quite inevitable.

Sections from Spengler, The Decline of the West: Introduction: Civilization

As I discussed previously the current decline of the West is its war on the urban culture that capitalism creates. Al Qaeda attacked New York the ultmate world city. Wars are conducted against ancient cities like Baghdad, or modern capitalist metropols like Beirut.

Capitalism and its competing capitals in this current age of Imperialism move into empty space, that is they move the pesants and farmers out of the space into the cities. Supercities are being created around the world filled with the displaced, who are transformed into workers and the unemployed; the migrants/multitude.

Spenglers thesis is that while decline is inevitable in Civilization (and by this he meant Western Capitalist Civilization) in its death-throes it returns once again to its patriarchical warrior tradition of the fuerher prinziple, the stronger leader.This is clearly evident in capitalisms failure in Russia, and the return of the Tzar in Comrade Putin.

The idealist of the early democracy regarded popular education as enlightenment pure and simple---but it is precisely this that smooths the path for the coming Caesars of the world. The last century [the 19th] was the winter of the West, the victory of materialism and scepticism, of socialism, parliamentarianism, and money. But in this century blood and instinct will regain their rights against the power of money and intellect. The era of individualism, liberalism and democracy, of humanitarianism and freedom, is nearing its end. The masses will accept with resignation the victory of the Caesars, the strong men, and will obey them. Life will descend to a level of general uniformity, a new kind of primitivism, and the world will be better for it...Modern History Sourcebook: Oswald Spengler: The Decline of The West

This is the very ideology of the American Neo-Cons who follow in Spenglers pessimistic politics with the logic of the need for rule by a Strong Man as espoused by Struass and the Struassarian school.

A logic currently holding sway over our PM as well and the would be Leader of the Liberals, Michael Ignatieff.

Ironically instead of seeing the expansion of the metropolis as the highest form of capitalist civilization, Spengler fears it. Like Burke, he sees it as the begining of the decline. Like Burke he affects the logic of the country gentleman seeing the city as the den of iniquity. He sees the city as decadent.His is the anti-capitlaism of the aristocracy.

In reality it is a mere similcarum of the real decadence that is occuring as the logic of capitalism bares its creative destructive visage for the world to see. It is the decadence of captialism which again places before us the ultimate question; Socialism or barbarism.

“The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind.

“The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.

“The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the world market, given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of reactionaries, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.

“The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.

“The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.

“The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class interest, one frontier, and one customs tariff.” [Communist Manifesto]

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Marx, Spengler, Burke, Metropole, Metropolis, capitalism, DeclineoftheWest, decadence, SocialismorBarbarism, imperialism, globalization,

Noble Savage

While it is popular for leftists and anarchists to embrace the Noble Savage ideology of Rosseau, the reality is that Indigenous peoples were no more or less noble than anyone else.

The Six Nations decimated the Huron peoples in a mass genocide.

And the West Coast Salish and other civilized aborginal cultures functioned through slavery.

A reading of Oswald Spenglers
Decline of The West is much needed by some folks on the left.

With his investigation of slavery on the Northwest Coast of North America, Leland Donald makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the aboriginal cultures of this area. He shows that Northwest Coast servitude, relatively neglected by researchers in the past, fits an appropriate cross-cultural definition of slavery. Arguing that slaves and slavery were central to these hunting-fishing-gathering societies, he points out how important slaves were to the Northwest Coast economies for their labor and for their value as major items of exchange. Slavery also played a major role in more famous and frequently analyzed Northwest Coast cultural forms such as the potlatch and the spectacular art style and ritual systems of elite groups. Aboriginal Slavery on the Northwest Coast of North America

Northwest Coast societies, at the beginning of the Modern period, were stratified. The coast's élite wielded power over a class of slaves whose labour produced at least some of the wealth upon which high status depended. While it is possible to trace the development of an élite on the northern Northwest Coast back 3000 calendar years, if not more, documenting the presence of slavery has proven far more intractable. Understanding the evolution of slavery is dependent on our understanding of the archaeology of élite formation, labour, warfare and gender. Three key lines of evidence for slavery are burial practices, evidence of warfare and raiding and evidence about changing labour demands. Slavery plausibly developed during either of two periods: c 1500–500 BC or c. AD 500–1000. The data at present do not allow us to eliminate either. Each has interesting implications for our understanding of the evolution of stratification.Slaves, chiefs and labour on the northern Northwest Coast


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Canada, Salish, slavery, NorthWestCostalIndiians, Vancouver, B.C., USA, Seattle, Portland, Huron, Iroquois, NobleSavage, Rousseau, Spengler

Albertas New Marriage Law

Introduced as a private members bill by Ted Moron the Legislature in Alberta today voted unanimously to protect choice in marriage for Albertans.

The bill, 208.1 will allow Albertans to not have heterosexuality and heterosexual marriage taught in schools, and will allow marriage commissioners and churches, synagoges, temples etc. to opt out of marrying heterosexual couples.

This is a great victory for choice fellow Tory Leadership candidate Lyle O'Berg said; "I'm in favour of his bill, because no one should have the ability to make anyone do anything against their will,"



Also See:

Ted Morton

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
SSM, same-sex-marriage, gay, lesbian, bi, marriage, Alberta, Morton, ban, bill, politics, legislature

Total War

Enough already.

Afghanistan is about WAR
not PEACEKEEPING.

Its about defending a corupt City-State; Kabul which is surrounded by enemies.

It's about maintaining a country with a porous border with Pakistan.

It's about being a cop between warring clans/gangs.

Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe called on the Harper government Monday to address the effectiveness of the Canadian mission in Afghanistan in light of reports regarding the resurgence of the heroin trade in the battle-scarred country.Duceppe says Afghanistan mission falls short


The unfinished war in Afghanistan has taken a turn with the expansion of the supposedly defeated Taliban into neighboring Pakistan. The latest expression of concern over the new threat came last weekend from Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende as 1,400 Dutch troops moved into Afghanistan to help counter the Taliban-led insurgency. He told a press briefing that part of the challenge was "people coming from Pakistan." He urged that the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan jointly address the problem. Taliban at the Border

Now, as the administration of US President George W Bush hands off "peacekeeping" to NATO forces, Afghanistan is the scene of the largest military operation in the history of that organization. Personal e-mail brings word from an American surgeon in Kabul that her emergency medical team can't handle half the wounded civilians brought in from embattled provinces to the south and east. American, British and Canadian troops find themselves at war with Taliban fighters - which is to say "Afghans" - while stunned North Atlantic Treaty Organization commanders, who hadn't bargained for significant combat, are already asking what went wrong. Why it's not working in Afghanistan

There is a full-scale war going on in Afghanistan, shattering British government claims that its troops would act as “peacekeepers”.

Every day the agony of the Afghan people intensifies and more British soldiers are killed or wounded.

Twenty one British soldiers have died in Afghanistan since 2001. But, by Tuesday of this week, eight of those deaths had come in August alone.

The scale of suffering inflicted on the Afghan people is far greater still. More than 1,600 people have died in the past four months.

Far from being an amiable “security mission”, Nato’s offensive in Afghanistan has now embroiled British troops in some of their fiercest fighting for half a century.

British freighters packed with weaponry and ammunition arrive in the country five times each week. Last week alone over 80 tonnes of munitions arrived.

But the more troops go in, the more the violence escalates.

The nightmare of occupation in Afghanistan

With Canadian forces unable to tell friend from foe in Afghanistan there is only one solution.

Total War.

Round up all men and boys in the villages regardless of age, ship the women and girls to the safety of Kandahar and Kabul. Burn all opium crops, destroy all the villages, shoot all males as the enemy.

Victory is ours.

"I ask you: Do you want total war? If necessary, do you want a war more total and radical than anything that we can even imagine today?"

Any one who is opposed to this final solution is a bloody whimp liberal or a cautious conservative armchair warrior. After all it worked in VietNam until the liberals in the Pentagon whimped out for an airwar. The only way to introduce capitalism and democracy in Afghanistan is Total War!

The claim that capitalism is a total war, and this is its essence, is more or less accurate. Capital, in classical Marxism must always expand insofar to new markets and to create new commodities. Capital presupposes an empty space that is open for which it can grow and spread. Yet, the space for which it can grow is never empty. People, environment, societies, culture, etc generally impede its growth. Sartre and Vietnam


With thanks to J. Swift for the inspiration





See: Afghanistan



Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
, Harper, Afghanistan, Kandahar, corruption, Karzai, Kabul, criminal, Taliban
Canada, Afghanistan, Walsh, soldiers, NATO, friendly-fire, war, Harper, Canadian-Forces, army

NDP Green with envy

James Laxer says that the NDP is strategically challenged, and that challenge has gotten more serious as the Green Party showed it was a real national party this weekend, and elected as its Leader policy savvy media darling Elizabeth May who will give Jack a run for his moustache.

You see the NDP weakness is its relationship to the Liberals, fighting over 'progressive' votes, according to Laxer.

According to Nick Nantos of SES polling, in 2004 the Greens took votes from the NDP, in 2006 from the Conservatives. If they can don the mantel of the party of change, then they will be where the New party was when it was created.

They pose an electoral challenge as the new kid on the block able to mobilize discontent that got the Conservatives votes as agents of change. That change has been to hard a right shift for Canadians. Laxer suggests the NDP attack the Conservatives, leaving the way open for a Liberal minority government.

The Greens if they listened to Nick, would know that their best bet is to be a party of parliamentary reform, change the system wholesale, which will appeal to the old Reformers in the Conservatives and the old new lefties in the NDP. But that will only work if they don't mimic the platform of the NDP.

With Elzabeth May taking a page from Jack, and stating she will be sitting in the Public Gallery and available for media scums chances are good that between now and the next election, the Green Party profile will increase. It worked for Jack and the PM at the time had not locked out the media from access.

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Layton, NDP, Green, Party, Canda, Poltiics, ElizabethMay, Laxer

Softwood Republican Slush Fund

Just how deeply King Stephen's nose is up the arse of King George can be found in the missing $1 billion dollars that remains in the U.S. if the Softwood lumber deal goes through. Half of it goes to the White House as a slush fund for the upcoming election. Even the Liberals, for all their sins, never funded the Democrats with stolen Canadian money.

It should be of great interest and concern to all Democrats and to all Americans that Canada has apparently become the primary financier of Republican election campaigns in the upcoming November elections

Also See

American Exceptionalism

Softwood

Free Trade



Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Harper, Emerson, softwood, US, NAFTA, free-trade, lumber, duties, taxes, Canada, B.C., Ontario, Quebec, mills,
Repbulicans, Repulican, Party, Bush, White, House

The Vampire Party

Funny comment by SES pollster Nick Nantos at the Green Party convention this weekend. He stated that the Liberal party should never be underestimated since it has successfully arisen after being declared dead; "just like a vampire".

Hey thats a great way to appeal to the 'youth', the Liberals party like Goths.


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Liberals, Goth, Vampire, Canada, politics, Polls, Nantos, SES

Only Christians Are REAL Women

The misappropriately titled REAL Women of Canada is a self avowed group of Christian women, fundamentalist Christians to be exact. White Whing Conservative Christian women to be more exact.

Along with attacks on unions, gays, pro-choice advocates, and anyone whose values are not theirs, read pluralistic secular progressive and classical liberal, they were created to attack feminism and feminist gains for women.

Of course they are only several centuries late since the feminist movement began with the classical liberal work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstoncraft written in 1792!

Mary was married to anarchist Willam Godwin, mother of the author of Frankenstein; Mary Wollstonecroft Shelly. And she was an intellectual partner of liberal author J.S. Mills.

REAL Women have always viewed themselves as good old girls, the ladies auxilary of the right wing neo-cons. For women who say that a womans place is in the home, they sure do alot of public bitching about the State replacing the Church as the source of social services.

They have launched a campaign to end funding for the Status of Women. As usaual, its an annual event for this small vocal minority. It's an old war, as Marriane Faithful would say, between those who advocate for womens rights, and those who advocate for christian rites.

Joined in this oppurtunistic campaign to get the Harpocrites to end funding for Status of Women is the right whing blogosphere, with the usual comments from both men and women in that small minded community saying that Feminists don't speak for them.

And the usual smear campaigns about radical feminist groups funded by Status of Women, radicals like LEAF which represents women lawyers. Or those radicals in the Aboriginal movement, the women adovactes who are fighting for their rights against the family compacts of Department of Indian Affairs approved Chiefs who dominate the Aboriginal Political community. Opps the right wing usually likes these women.

Ah well consistency is the hobgoblin of the little minds on the right. Caus one of the arguements REALwomen and their ilk use is that THEY don't get funded by Status of Women. So no womens groups should. They are NOT arguing that taxpayers should NOT pay for womens organizations to lobby the government, just that they don't get funded by the State. And that's not fair. Yep consistency is the hobgoblin.....

You would think that since the Churches are tax free and lobby on behalf of REAL Womens political agenda this would suffice as ripping off taxpayers. But REAL Women wants to rip you off twice. And then if that isn't enough wishes to end lobbying that would counter their taxpayer funded lobbying efforts.

P.S. the Housewife on the magazine cover is probably an Irish maid. The bourgoise housewife MANAGED the home, like her husband the boss at work managed his workplace.

Also See:

Who Speaks For Canadian Women

Catholic Hajib

New Age Libertarian Manifesto

Grandmother of Second Wave Feminism Dies

The Real Crime In Canada

The Sanctity of Marriage Debate

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
SOW, StatusofWomen, Canada, REALwomen, Christians, Feminists, feminism, Poltics, Harper, PM, Conservatives, neo-cons, lobby

Soul of a City

Today marks the anniversary of Katrina's destruction of the Blues City; New Orleans.

In tribute to that great city I am listening to Eric Burdon's Soul of A Man,released in January of this year, it is an aural tribute to the blues of New Orleans where it was recorded. Eric and his band The Animals made blues the soul of their music, ushuring in the British Invasion, more so than better known bands like the Beatles and Stones. The latter who started out in the blues and moved on to Rock n Roll.

What Burdon did for San Franisco in the the sixties with his songs San Fransican Nights he has done for New Orleans with this album of New Orleans Blues/Jazz, that Big Easy Big Band sound.

Eric goes down and dirty on this album, with Kingsize Jones. And does a stunning version of blues classic; Red Cross Store that reminds one of his younger self when he made House of the Rising Sun a top 40 hit.

His song Feeling Blue takes on the prison industrial complex as a new form of slavery, and relates racism to class struggle. Not unlike his work with the Funk Band, War.

There can be no greater tribute to the Soul of A City than this album.

Also See

Music


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Katrina, Eric, Burdon, Animals, RocknRoll, Sixties, NewOrleans, Hurricane, Blues

Fascism

When civilians are targets of terror attacks these are the actions of fascist groups. Regardless of the cause they espouse. They wish to encourage the State to crack down on democratic dissent and opposition movements. The more repression the greater the public resistance is the misquided ideology behind these attacks. And scratch a fascist group and you will find the State's secret police encouraging them.

The Kurdistan Freedom Falcons claimed responsibility on its web site for Monday's attack. "We have promised to turn ... Turkey into hell. Our principle is more actions, bigger blows," the group said. "The fear of death will reign everywhere in Turkey.

The group had earlier said it carried out a bus bombing that injured 10 Britons and 11 Turks in the Mediterranean resort town of Marmaris on Sunday.

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Kurd, Kurds, Kurdistan, Turkey, Bombing, terrorism, secretpolice, dissent,

Homunuclus

Church teaching holds that in-vitro fertilization is morally wrong because it replaces the conjugal union between husband and wife and often results in the destruction of embryos. Artificial insemination for married couples is allowable if it "facilitates" the sex act but does not replace it. The church condemns all forms of experimentation on human embryos.Vatican Critical of Stem Cell Creation

The current pope was once Cardinal Ratzinger the Vatican's chief Inquisitor, yes I know we weren't expecting the Spanish Inquistion.

When the issue of cloning and artificial life was presented for JP2, Ratzinger issued the churches statement on bio-ethics which has not changed since the Rennisance when the Church banned sorcery and the creation of artificial life known as the Homunculus And indeed Ratzinger in his paper, refers to cloning as creating a homonucleus. 21st Century science meets the middle ages.

Does the law permit the ìenhancementî or other manipulation of one's genetic outfit? In this context, the following issues were discussed at the seminar: reproduction techniques in general (the "homunculus issue," see Goethe's Faust 11), special issues of "reprogenetics," cloning (inherently wrong, or open to an evaluation between healing effects and human dignity by way of a rule-and- exception relationship?), disease prevention (MV, cancers), unfairly advantaging certain children in view of a "level playing field" of genetic outfits, right of parents to genetically manipulate their offspring, and liability of parents who do not manipulate.The New Genetics and the Law

The crowning example of alchemical hybris came with the claim of pseudo-Paracelsus in the sixteenth century that he could make a homunculus - an artificial man. Like the gold of the alchemists, which was said to exceed the 24 carats of the best natural gold, the homunculus was supposed to be better than a natural man. Being made in a flask from human semen,
he was free of the catamenial substance that, according to the current theories of generation, supplied the material basis to an ordinary fetus. According to pseudo-Paracelsus, the homunculus was a semi-spiritual being that had an immediate apprehension of all the arts and a preternatural intelligence. In modern terms, the homunculus could be called the perfect test-tube baby, engineered to have the highest possible intelligence quota and aptitude. I have written an article focusing on this topic ("The Homunculus and his Forebears," 1999; see Vita), and have a book focusing on alchemy and the art-nature debate under contract (Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Refashioning of Nature, forthcoming with University of Chicago Press). Newton's Alchemy, recreated

What can we make of his account of the creation of a homunculus, a
miniature human being, in his laboratory? Cloning and genetic engineering are clearly impossible with 16th-century technology. Paracelsus

The invention of hand lenses and the microscope facilitated studies of the chick embryo by Marcello Malpighi (1628-1694), but also gave rise to one of the most profound errors in describing human development, that of the homunculus. This was a miniature human believed to have been seen within the head of a human spermatozoon and which presumed to enlarge when deposited in the female. This was the basis of the preformation theory and was believed by many well into the 18th century.lifeissues.net | When Does Human Life Begin? The Final Answer

Drawing of Human Spermatozoa
1694
The drawing was conceived by Niklaas Hartsoeker not by what
he had seen, but what he presumed would be visible if sperm
could be adequately viewed.

Consider the profound difficulty embryonic development presents to an observer. A complex organism, such as a chick, frog, insect or human, arises in an orderly and magical way from an apparently structureless egg. When embryology was in its infancy in the 17th and 18th centuries, the thought was that no animal could arise from such nothingness. Thus was born the theory of the homunculus: the idea that an infinite set of tiny individuals were contained, one within another, in each egg—or in each sperm (there was vigorous disagreement as to which). Development was seen as the visible unfolding of a preexisting individual. Unhappily for this wonderful notion, in the late 18th century Caspar Friedrich Wolff showed by microscopy that embryos contained cells but no homunculus—there was no preformed entity.
American Scientist Online - In the Twinkle of a Fly

U.S. Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) recently told his fellow Republicans he would advance a two-year moratorium rather than a permanent ban. Ironically, Brownback relayed his intentions while President Bush reaffirmed his opposition to human embryo cloning in a speech delivered by satellite to the Southern Baptist Convention in St. Louis. Bush told them, "We believe that a life is a creation, not a commodity, and that our children are gifts to be loved and protected, not products to be designed and manufactured by human cloning." How did we get so quickly from a few cells in a dish to children? It reminds me of artists' representations during the Middle Ages of the homunculus: an invisibly tiny, fully formed human carried around by the male and then deposited in the female during intercourse. The tiny homunculus would eventually grow into a fetus before it was born. Those were the days before the discoveries of the microscope, sperm and egg. So then maybe Bush and Bevilacqua imagine that people still reproduce with homunculi. Otherwise, describing what we know with absolute certainty are nothing more than single or several cells in a microscopic cluster, resembling the cells inside your cheek, as "children" simply doesn't make any sense! If these men didn't wield so much power, we'd laugh at their ignorance. Stem Cells and Cloning: What Bush Doesn't Know Might Kill You ...

Faust and Homunculus
19th century engraving of Goethe's Faust and Homunculus



Also See

Pluto Gone Dog Gone It

For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing

Magick

Creationism

Catholic


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
stemcell, cloning, homonuclus, Catholic, bioethics, Bush, Paracelsus, Alchemy, science, ,

Champagne Confession

Confessing to a crime you did not commit is good for a free plane flight home, first class, with champagne. To heck with your reputation....Defense: Charges Dropped Against Karr

Also See:

Karr

Mexican Murder Cover Up?

The Real Crime In Canada

Crime Comics

Gothic


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Janke, AngryIntheGreatWhiteNorth, JonBenet, Ramsey, Karr, murder, childexploitation, Thailand, Boulder, Colorado, childmurder, serialkillers, pedophiles,

Summerhill

There is a good background article in the Scotsman this weekend on Scotlands own libertarian educator; A.S. Neil and his Summerhill school.

So when a young idealist from Scotland, Alexander Neill, opened a school where attending classes was optional and all the rules were decided in weekly meetings with pupils and teachers having an equal say, it was written off as a short-lived libertarian experiment of the fairly eccentric 1920s. Predictably the Establishment and right-wing press had a field day, deriding Neill as a "corrupting influence" on children and labelling his establishment the "Do As You Please School".

Alexander Sutherland Neill.

Neill's philosophy was simple. He believed that the happiness of the child was paramount and that self-respect and respect for others would result. "There is more true education in making a snowball than in listening to an hour's lecture on grammar," he once said.

Summerhill, the school he established between the world wars, far from being a passing fancy, is still being run to this day in rural Suffolk, with a greater pupil roll than ever, a testament to its progressive founder.

Arguably, outside a few interested circles - education, libertarianism and various branches of psychology - the Summerhill project is little known.

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Scotland, Summerhill, A.S.Neil, libertarian, education, libertarian-education, childcentrededucation, children, school, schooling

Pluto Gone Dog Gone It

Which of these would you say is a dog: a German Shepherd or a Chihuahua? This is the kind of question put before delegates of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) General Assembly who powwowed in Prague over Pluto's planet-hood. No wonder hardly 300 of the 2,700 astronomers at the meet even bothered to vote for, or against, stripping the ninth rock from the Sun of its planetary status and making it a 'planet dwarf' instead.Plot against Pluto Hindustan Times

Cute Pluto as a dog....wait he is.
Of course in India Astrology is a science.


"Indian astrology did not include Pluto as a planet and the latest announcement by leading global astronomers after a marathon week-long meeting at Prague yesterday only endorsed the Indian mathematical astrology of Aryabhatta and Varahamihira in the sixth century," eminent mathematical Astrologer Mangal Prasad told today. Aryabhatta, Varahamihira's mathematical science vindicated

And European and North American astrologers have stated they will still keep
Pluto in their charts.

Now of course the naming of planets is older than current industrial science,
it originated in what was once called natural science or as we know it magick.
In particular the naming of things is the source of our power over them, as
Fraser defines it; sympathetic magic.

Astrology and Alchemy are the mothers of the later sciences.
Though dismissed by current empirical materialist industrialized scientism.

But wait didn't this group of astronomers vote on a definition of a planet.
Giving things names. And taking them away.

Hmm what does Fraser say about that in his work on natural magick
the Golden Bough....

UNABLE to discriminate clearly between words and things, the savage commonly fancies that the link between a name and the person or thing denominated by it is not a mere arbitrary and ideal association, but a real and substantial bond which unites the two in such a way that magic may be wrought on a man just as easily through his name as through his hair, his nails, or any other material part of his person. In fact, primitive man regards his name as a vital portion of himself and takes care of it accordingly. Chapter XXII.Tabooed Words

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Golden, Bough, Fraser, magic, magick, sympatheticmagic, Pluto, IAU, name, planets, namingplanets, space, solarsystem

Historical Amnesia

Best quote on the American position on a Nuclear Iran.....Yet the reasoning of U.S. officials now struggling to deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions is clouded by a kind of historical amnesia,

See

Iran

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Iran, nukes, USA, nuclear, amnesia, history, UN

Kim Jong il Bush

Only the strong can defend justice in the world today where the jungle law prevails. Neither the UN nor anyone else can protect us. The past history and the present reality show that only a country with its powerful force can defend the national dignity and its sovereignty and independence. It is a day-dream to calculate that our principle will alter due to the change of the world. We have already clarified that we will have no option but to take stronger physical actions should someone take issue with our army's training of missile launches for self-defence and put pressure on it.

Sounds like something George W or John Bolton would say about the UN and the need for America to have the right to pre-emptive self defense in a Post 9/11 world.....but read on.........

The Foreign Ministry of the DPRK is authorized to clarify as follows in view of the grave situation prevailing on the [Korean] peninsula:

First, our Republic vehemently denounces and roundly refutes the UNSC "resolution", a product of the U.S. hostile policy towards the DPRK, and will not be bound to it in the least. Second, our Republic will bolster its war deterrent for self-defence in every way by all means and methods now that the situation has reached the worst phase due to the extremely hostile act of the U.S.


Oh that Kim he is such a clever fellow using American policy and American arguments. And the Americans will denounce North Korea as in violation of international law, kettle, pot, black.

This strategy is based on a conception of preemptive self-defense.10 Preemptive selfdefense,
however, is clearly unlawful under international law.The Myth of Preemptive Self-Defense


Along with this American Defense Policy Kim has made a recent foray into religion, funding a Russian Orthodox Church (from funds given by Russia, gee just like that Katrina disaster relief) and now inviting the American Evangelist of the Hour; Rick Warren to speak at an open air evangelical rally next spring.

Records from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom show that North Korea has one Catholic and two Protestant churches in addition to the new Russian Orthodox church.

Kim is appealing to the Bush Republican base with his policies.
And it is working. Evangelicals break with Bush on North Korea


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Kim, Jong, Il, North, Korea, Bush, preemptive, war, defense, UN, Warren, evangelist, Russian, Orthodox

McGuinty Corporate Welfare

Talk about biting the hand that feeds you, guess it was a good thing Daltons pal Buzz missed this photo op.....

He left the family Honda at home, but Premier Dalton McGuinty was greeted by more jeers than cheers yesterday in the middle of an Oshawa General Motors assembly plant.This after being named "personality of the year" last week by Foreign Direct Investment magazine, a U.K. business publication, for his astute business acumen and passion for research and innovation.Some workers who joined in the catcalls said they were still angry with the premier for calling a 4,000-strong GM job cut "a little bit of contraction" in the auto industry last November. On hand yesterday to mark GM's plans to relaunch the Camaro, to be built in the plant for the 2009 model year, McGuinty was accused of taking advantage of a photo opportunity.Poor reception for McGuinty at GM

While amongst the right wing business types this corporate welfare is being denounced, quite humourously by Andrew Coyne, as another big tax hand out. Which it is and of course Coyne is right it's to produce the ultimate sixties gas guzzler; the Camaro.

So how come Dalton didn't tie his corporate welfare to production of hybrid and alternative energy automobiles, a green car? Oh because thats the NDP platform.....

Green backs for Green production...what a radical concept, it's called industrial ecology. A better environment plan than going nuke and banning coal...which is the other brilliant environmental policy of the McGuinty team in Canada's industrial heartland.


Also See:

GM

Social Ecology


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
MGuinty, GM, Buzz, Hargrove, Camaro, Oshawa, Ontario, CorporateWelfare, Canada, cars, automobilie, production, taxes, taxcredit, investment, environment, hybrid

Katrina Mission Accomplished

A year after Katrina,just like Iraq, it is Mission Accomplished for the Bush team and their disaster/war profiteer pals....while they blame the victims for fraud.....
A review of congressional testimony and other documents by Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch found a total of at least $136.7 million in corporate fraud in Katrina-related contracts. In addition, government investigators have highlighted contracts cumulatively valued at $428.7 million that they found troubling because of lack of agency oversight or misappropriation.Profiting from Disaster: Greed Has Stallled Gulf Coast Recovery ...


Taxpayers around the nation who urged the federal government to pay for relief and reconstruction after Hurricane Katrina probably didn’t expect their money to be spent on $279 meals and $2,500 tarps. But according to a newly released report, corporations hired by the federal government have not only inflated costs but committed labor abuses and delayed the reconstruction process, making millions while local companies and workers have been left behind. Katrina Recovery Funds Wasted by Contractors, Govt.

Ever wonder what happened to all the foreign donations given to the United States in the aftermath of Katrina? It's not good news. It turns out that, like so much of the federal response to the crisis, the largest influx of foreign assistance to the US in memory was met with foot-dragging and clumsy bureaucracy. None of the donated funds has actually made its way to evacuees. What happened to the foreign cash for Katrina victims?

More Than Half of Congress' Katrina Money Unspent

Katrina Victims See Scant Evidence of Bush Funds in New Orleans


See Internationl Relief scams and scandals plaque the US just as they did the victims of the Tusanami in Indonesia and the earthquake in Pakistan. The difference is that under state capitalist regimes in Asia it is government inefficiency in the U.S. it is just the opposite.

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Katrina, NewOrleans, FEMA, Bush, fraud, rebuilding, Hurricane, GulfCoast, USA, disaster, releif,

Post Katrina Monster Executed

This hundreds of years old behemoth, compare the size of the guy and the gator, arose from his/her slumbers awakened by the hurricane last year only to arise and surface to be killed for their efforts.

Some days it is better to not have gotten out of bed.

And while this photo and story about the gator in Texas circualte this is also claimed to be a photo from Flordia from a year ago.


Both versions of this story can't be true, obviously — the big gator couldn't have been shot in Texas and Florida — but the emailed image of game warden Joe Goff striding beside the hulking alligator he shot and killed in April 2005 is authentic.Giant Gator Bagged in Texas (or Florida) - Netlore Archive

Of course the reality is all about photoshop and perspective. Sort of like what the Tories have done on their webpage.


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Alligator, Texas, Flordia, Picture, Katrina, Tories, Conservatives, photoshop, photoshopping, Arkansas, email, urbanlore, urbanlegend

Ignatieff NEP Lite

Liberal Leadership candidate Michael Ignatieff (The Man Who Would Be PET) has announced his Green Plan. Ignatieff proposes carbon tax at pump

In Alberta it reminds everyone, government and NDP opposition of the failed Trudeau NEP....not the NDP NEP which created PetroCanada and which rescued the declining petro industry in Calgary and Fort McMurray. But the Liberals tax and grab NEP....of course for Alberta Liberals, Ignatieff's plan reminds them of the NEP so they have been deafingly silent about it.


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Trudeau, Liberals, NEP, Alberta, Green, Ignatieff, environment, Canada, politics, Liberal, Leadership, Race

Obama Misses The Real Crisis In Kenya

While lecturing Kenyans on AIDs the reality of poverty and famine in his familial homeland was overlooked by Democratic Senator Obama.

On his arrival earlier in Kisumu, he took an AIDS test at a local hospital with his wife Michelle, setting an example for the tens of thousands of Africans who fear the stigma of being tested for the disease ravaging sub-Saharan Africa

AIDs would be less of a problem if this was not happening;
Nightmare of Seeking Medical Care in N Kenya
or this;
The number of Kenyans in need of food aid has nearly doubled to almost four million,

Issues not addressed by the American Senator, showing that despite have his roots in Kenya, his focus is all American view that the only crisis in Africa is AIDS. Not the alarming poverty and cycle of famine that has succoured a mass of deadly tropical diseases, of which AIDS is only one.



U.S. Senator Barack Obama (C) gestures as holds his step grandmother Sarah Hussein Onyango Obama (R) as he returned to his ancestral rural village Kogelo August 26, 2006. REUTERS/Radu Sigheti
Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Obama, US, Senator, Kenya, AIDS, HIV, Famine, Poverty, TropicalDiseases