Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Lack of Planning Created Skills Shortage in Alberta

Premiers say education and training key to Canada's economic future

Having a plan for economic development is seen as being a "planned economy'" in some folks minds, like the ruling Tired old Tories in Alberta.

Well all economies are planned, including the so called market economies. The plan can be obvious, such as government intervention in the economy ala Keynes or the plan can be, the Adam Smith secret hand of the marketplace, that is the corporate control of supply and demand. Yes market economies are planned economies, they are not 'free' associations of producers, so they have to plan.

Unfortunately when right wing nuts run the government for their business friends they let them do all the planning. Dumb move that. Cause they plan in quarters and bottom lines and fail inevitalibly to take into account the business cycle of boom and bust. Which is why all this talk about a Skilled Labour shortage in Alberta and increasingly across Canada is a great example of the failure of neo-liberalism and conservative governments to plan for the economy.


They knew they had a skills shortage in Alberta in the late 1970's when the Oil Boom was in full swing here. I worked for the Department of Adanced Education and Manpower in 1980. There used to be two seperate departments Advanced Ed for Post Secondary Education and Manpower for labour needs, labour law, etc. The then ruling Tories, under Peter Lougheed, came up with the brilliant scheme to merge these two completely different departments into one in order to solve the Skilled Labour shortage at that time. But since they didn't have a plan or a philosophy as to what the focus of Post Secondary Education was in Alberta (and by the by they still don't) or should be nothing really changed. Universities produced managers, engineers and professionals, Technical Institutes like NAIT and SAIT produced workers, tradesmen, etc. And never the twain would meet.

So what clever solution did the Alberta Government come up with to solve its skilled labour force crisis in both the oil patch and the construction industry? Importing workers, first from other provinces, such as Newfoundland, (which is why Fort McMurray is the biggest Newfie city in Canada) and when that wasn't working they began looking overseas. They also began the process of allowing private for profit insititutions like hair salons, to begin granting certificates and run apprenticeship programs (Esthetics is the biggest pink collar ghetto of young workingclass women in Alberta who enter trades).

We had begun to develop a trades and apprenticeship program in High Schools under the previous Social Credit Government after the Woods Education Commission report. Several schools in Calgary and Edmonton began to offer skills instruction and pre apprenticeship training, such as W.P.Wagner High School in Edmonton.

All of this came to a grinding halt in 1982 when the economic melt down affecting Canada and the rest of the G8 countries became a reality in Alberta, the bottom fell out of the gas and oil market while inflation hit double digits. All thought of skills training went out the window, as the Tories scrambled to save their asses, cause they hadn't planned for the economic boom and bust of capitalism. Duh oh.
Construction work disappeared, and wages fell, workers and management left the province in a rush to find work elsewhere. Skills training was no longer an issue, mere economic survival was.

Well here we are 25 years and one boom gone bust later, and we have the same old Tories in power and we have another skilled labour shortage, and their solution has been the same old same old:

The shortage of skilled workers is acute in booming Alberta, says Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Ed Stelmach.

"You can pick any trade, any profession: we're having difficulty filling those spaces with people,'' Stelmach said.

"It's hitting us on every level, even in small rural communities. I've talked to small agriculture machinery dealers who say they can't sell any more harvesting equipment because they don't have people to put them together in time for harvest.''

The strength of Alberta's oil and gas sector has allowed it to steal workers from other industries and provinces, a short-sighted strategy that's now created a looming crisis. Stelmach says skill shortages are hurting Alberta's economy and he believes the impact will be felt elsewhere.

"We just won't be able to grow at the same rate if you don't have the people to build the plants, to provide the goods and services,'' he said. "We'd like to come forward with a common strategy amongst all the provinces so we can get an agreement with the federal government and get different options.''

Premiers to concentrate on workforce
By Judy Monchuk
Canadian Press

Students demand more cash from Ottawa
Aug 8 2005 CBC News

Quebec university and CEGEP students want the premiers to concentrate on one major issue when they meet this week: getting more money from Ottawa for post-secondary education. The student groups say the federal government cut billions from education and social programs in the 1990s to balance the budget.

Like Health Care, Post Secondary Education is a Provincial Responsibility. Ottawa has handed over transfer payments for years until the deficit hysteria took over in 1995 and then Finance Minister Paul Martin cut federal funds to the provinces. The problem with federal transfer payments is that the provinces put them in general revenues, and there is no strings attached to ensure they are used for what they are supposed to be used for. We are just supposed to trust our Provincial governments to do the right thing with taxpayers money. Ah hem. Right.

In Alberta awash in oil riches, a billion here or there is negligble, the Ralph Reich is opposed to spending on infrastructure or the public sector. But this is nothing new, in the late seventies and early eighties with the first big boom in Tar Sands development, there were fewer students in university and college in Alberta due to many of them working. The lure of big bucks was there and our post secondary institutions were going through a funding crunch even then.

Again there was no plan, no vision for what training was needed for working class kids, what there was of a paln by the Tory government was that while Oil made the province money, what created jobs was a state subsidized construction boom.

Vote buying is an old tradition in Alberta, it's colourful and apocraphile beginings were in booze for votes and having the local drunk vote more than once for the same candidate at different voting stations. By the time of Peter Lougheed Government awash in oil money, this became a full fledged program aimed at the construction industry in the province. The Lougheed government built universities, seniors homes and hospitals all over the province. What they didn't fund was enough staff for these institutions. That was always an after thought.

In universities and colleges if you wanted to staff the new buildings, you increased tuition fees and user fees to pay for it. In 1977-78 differential fees were introduced in Alberta universities for foriegn students. Despite wide spread protests, the fees were passed by Government appointed Boards at the Universities and Colleges.

This set the stage for the imposition of tuition increases that would follow for the next quarter of a century. That's right we have had tuition increases for 25 years now. And all they have done is expose the policy, the only policy the Alberta government has ever had towards post secondary education, of downloading provincial debt to institutions, faculty and students.

In an Interview I did with the then Deputy Minister of Advanced Education in 1980 he said that the reason the province imposed tuition fee increases was because "there were not enough students in university and college" to make up for the funding shortfalls. Funding shortfalls that were a result of the province limiting funds for staff and student support, but being generous with funds for capital projects' ie. buildings.

He said then "It's a chicken and the egg problem", not enough students means that there aren't enough operating funds for universities and colleges, so the government allowed them to increase tuition fees to make up for the lack of bodies. When I asked if the logic of this would result in a tuition decrease if the student population increased, he said no, it would just stay stable, that is at the last rate of increase.

Well that didn't last long, as the oil boom and the economy took a nose dive with the global crash of capitalism in 1984. Remember the Dark Thursday of 1984 when the stock market crashed the worst it had since 1929, of course you do. we all do because it caused massive inflation not seen since the Weimar Republic.

As Kim Moody points out in his book An Injury To All this was the begining of capitals declaration of Class War against the working class and its unions. Wages fell or were rolled back, while inflation was rampant people lost their homes unable to make boom time payments. The Real Estate market caught fire, and flipping became the big thing.

If you had the money for a downpayment you could buy a house and sell it in a week. Farms collapsed, and lenders forclosed on farming families, across North America. It was as bad as the time of the Great Depression, but the social safety nets absent then, were in place now to help ameliorate some of the worst of the bottoming out of the marketplace.

Still it was not enough and food banks were created as a short term solution to the food crisis of the working class now unemployed. They are still with us today. And it was the time when homelessness became visible to the middle class in their communities. No longer just the mentally handicapped or the addicts, the street people were joined by working class families with no homes and no jobs. And they are with us still.

The old fall back of the Lougheed era of state subsidies to the construction industry for building infrastructure was halted, as was attempts to invest in big time heavy industrial projects, like the Swan Hills Hazardous waste plant, an original Don Getty P3.

By the time of the Ralph Reign in Alberta the government still had no plan for post-secondary education, except to use it willy nilly to meet short term employment needs whether that was teachers or nurses, which had projections of shortages due to pending mass retirements in the ninties. Or the development of management and entreprenaurial courses,such as Management Studies at the University of Lethbridge, and including selling off entire departments to industry and corporations, such as the University of Calgary Petrochemical Engineering department.

While the arts, humanities and libraries were cut back in funding, practical employable skills programming in science, engineering, education, medicine, and business/mamagement studies flourished.

In K-12 education the attack was over back to basics, testing, and in the ninties charter schools, vouchers, and the rise of market competition for schools. In Edmonton Public the ultimate reform in education complete decentralization, known as School Based Management, was introduced in the dark days of the early eighties as the government reduced its comittment to funding public education.

This meant the end and destruction of embryonic apprenticeship programs at W. P. Wagner. By the mid-eighties vocational education in Edmonton Public Schools was like its German or Japanese counterparts, based on targeting or tracking students into a career path. Unfortunately in Edmonton, and across Alberta, that targeting was not of the average student the vast majority of whom would not be going to university, but to the underprivileged, the emotionally or phsyically challenged. It was reduced to remedial vocational education.

Showing a complete disregard for working class educational needs, W. P. Wagner in its final days as a vocational school was doomed to comics in the library and an armed cop on patrol.

The failure to link skills education and vocational training begining in High School with streaming into apprenticeships was not restricted to the Department of Education, but also the newly renamed Department of Advanced Education and Learning. Once again the departments were seperated, new empires were created for Cabinet Ministers, but no plan was developed to deal with post secondary education in Alberta. No plan for training the vast majority of students who graduate from High School and will not be going on to university doomed to become little business men; managers at Wal-Mart or hair stylists in someone elses salon.

This government never did have a plan for training or vocational education. In the ninties when faced with its debt and defecit hysteria it began an ambitious program of rebuilding Alberta along Republican lines, including transforming public education and post secondary education into fee for service, school based management, voucher system funding to further reduce the governments funding of education. It also encourage privatization of eduction especially vocational education with the introduction of American private colleges and fly by night computer colleges with certification.

That was its sum total plan after special hearings on the future of post secondary education. The same old government appointed boards of directors of Alberta universities and colleges remained, only with more corporate partners and corporate hacks in charge. Even the corporatization of post secondary education in Alberta was left up to the market, leaving each institution to compete with each other for students (provincial funding) and corporate sponsors (operational and infrastructure funding).

While a specialized school like Old Scona Academic, which is the top academic school in Alberta, could exist all this time and successfully graduate high school students with a BA equivalency in courses that was given credit at Alberta Universities, such did not exist for trades or vocational training.

In Edmonton and Calgary the Trades Unions put more High School graduates through apprenticeship training programs than either the Public or Catholic boards do. Skill training in the urban mileux is not seen as essential, it is however seen as essential in the rural and smaller urban communities in the province.
Still for the Alberta Government its vocational program for High School is seen as an after thought, not a neccisity.

Through out the ninties, the provinces benefited from getting direct EI funding from the Federal Government to implement trades training. In Alberta no such a program was developed, instead those funds went into the provinces general revenues. Once again ripping of both employees and employers who paid into the fund, and the society at large for failing our students and adult learners who might want skill training. Instead the goverment funded private for profit companies that taught you how to write a resume. This was the extent of skills training in Alberta.

In order to integrate a proper skills training program in Alberta for the working class majority it has to begin in High School tracking non university track students into trades. The program has to be credit based and credited as part of the students apprenticeship. In post secondary education both the Trades Colleges and the University need to cross credit courses, for instance, in welding students in Fine Arts at University should take welding at NAIT or SAIT, and welding students at these colleges should be able to take credit courses in abstract metal sculpture. All students in both institutions should be taking economics, politics, science and philosophy courses offered by universities. The motto should be that every plumber can read Shakespere. We don't need comic books in our public school libraries. And we don't need the ideology that says being a blue collar worker is for 'dummies' literally or figuretively.

But that is the attitude, we currently have in 9-12 primary education and post seconday education. Because we have no plan.






Sunday, August 14, 2005

Creationism is NOT Science



Creationism versus Science


Welcome to the Creationism vs Science page! To your right, you will see a 3.5 million year old skull excavated from Kenya in 1999. Scientists have named it Kenyanthropus platyops, and it is being proposed as another possible distant ancestor of mankind. Its features are somewhat different than those of "Lucy", also known as Australopithecus afarensis (discovered in Ethiopia in 1974), with smaller teeth and a flatter face. It is also possible that it is related to the australopithecus family, and that its initial classification as a separate genus may have been premature.

Researchers are hopeful that more such remains may be found as excavations continue. This specimen is being added to the growing list of so-called "missing link" species, and the evidence is clearly pointing to the conclusion that numerous such species would have existed around the same time (2-3.5 million years ago), one of which was successful enough to eventually become homo sapiens.

However, creationists have undoubtedly discounted this in their minds as yet another fraud, just as they dismiss virtually all of the geological, paleontological, and astrophysical research that shows that the Earth is billions of years old. The creationist movement is very powerful in America because it's so well funded. That funding, plus a weak education system and a gullible public, has led to a very successful misinformation campaign for the oxymoronically named "Creation Science" lobby.


Well it's always nice to find a site that tackles the right wing nuts directly. And here is one that I encourage you to read as the debate on evolution being challenged in US schools by Creationism and Intelligent Design and the Bushites continues to percolate. Next we will be teaching Flat Earth Theories as valid science.

Saturday, August 13, 2005

One Hundred Years of the Wobblies

Industrial Workers of the World
Edmonton General Membership Branch

PO Box 75175, Edmonton T6E 6K1
Email: iww-edm@iww.ca Web Page: edmonton.iww.ca

PRESS RELEASE
For immediate release: Friday, August 12, 2005

The Wobblies Celebrate their Centennial
Archival Display in Edmonton


Edmonton - The Edmonton Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) affectionately known as the ‘Wobblies’ are celebrating their Centennial 1905-2005 with a display of IWW archival materials from the Walter Reuther Labour Archives in Detroit. The material includes major historical events in the struggle for free speech, against war, and in the fight for workers rights in North America. Mush of this material has never been seen before.

This Archival display is traveling across North America in celebration of the first North American radical Syndicalist union. Edmonton is the first Canadian city to host this display. It will be shown at the at the 2005 Labour History Day celebrations tomorrow in the Stanley A. Milner Library,

Celebrations will begin shortly after 12 Noon on Saturday, August 13, 2005 in the Edmonton Room of the Stanley A. Milner Library, 100 St. & 102 Ave., Edmonton. The afternoon program will commence at 1:00 PM with official greetings followed by the 100th Anniversary Presentations.

The IWW Archive Display will then be on public display at the Stanley A. Milner Public Library until August 23.
-30-

Friday, August 12, 2005

IWW CALLS CLAC ATTACK!

THREE PICKETS THREE CITIES ONE DAY

The next CLAC ATTACK will take place on Friday, August 26th in Edmonton, Calgary and Fort McMurray at the following times and locations:

Edmonton CLAC Office
15505 Yellowhead Trail, NW
Edmonton
5:00-7:00

Edmonton and General Contact E-mail: edmonton(at)haywood.iww.org

Calgary CLAC Office
232 - 2333 - 18 Ave. NE
Calgary
5:00-7:00

Calgary Contact E-mail Chad: kibilz(at)shaw.ca

Fort McMurray
Bob Lamb Building - 8015 Franklin Ave.
Fort McMurray
7:30-9:30pm

Fort McMurray Contact E-mail Maryann: maryannroberts(at)shaw.ca

Alberta Phone Contact: 1-780-439-8235 (Ask for Bryan).

You can download the CLAC ATTACK Poster for distribution in your community.


Who is CLAC and why are we picketing them? Read our CLAC Attack leaflet to find out who CLAC is. Read our Why Picket CLAC? leaflet to find out why you should be helping to shut down the Christian Labour Association of Canada.


The IWW’s CLAC Attack demos this spring were very successful. For more information, read our article on the events in the first issue our branch newsletter, the Wobbly Dispatch. We’ve also been noticed by the CLAC supporters at Canadian Christianity.com who wrote the article Christian Union Stands Firm in Alberta.

See my articles

The origin of CLAC? Dutch Emigres from Collaborationist Regime Create CLAC

Right to Life = Right To Work

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Cry Wolf!

File this under another ecological 'duh oh'. Notice how these studies are done after the fact, like after the fact that the Alberta government has allowed commercial expansion into wilderness areas.

Banff food web shows sharp differences without wolves

CBC News


When wolves left an area near Banff, Alberta, elk became more common, a meadow replaced willow trees, and songbirds were replaced by sparrows, biologists say.

In the mid-1980s, wolves naturally recolonized the Bow Valley in Banff National Park, except for areas near the town itself.

Gray wolf (CP file photo)

Mark Hebblewhite of the University of Alberta in Edmonton and his colleagues have found the exclusion of the wolves caused major changes in the area's food chain, down through its trophic levels.

The study in the August issue of the journal Ecology is one of the first large-scale studies to show the key role of a top predator on land.

"Those effects trickled in a cascading fashion down the trophic levels from the highest carnivore to the herbivores, elk, down to vegetation," Hebblewhite said.

Since wolves feed on elk, the number of herbivores jumped without the predators. Elk populations were 10 times as high in the low-wolf area compared to where many wolves roamed, the team found.

"Where there's lot of elk, it's like a lawnmower's gone through and mowed everything down," Hebblewhite said. "There's no young aspen."

Beaver populations, which depend on willow to build their dams, also seemed to decline. Songbirds like the American Redstart also vanished from the area without wolves.

Friday, July 29, 2005

Anti-Zionism is NOT Anti-Semitism



I shall continue to be an impossible person as long as those who are now possible remain possible. Michael Bakunin 1814-1876

In response to Warren Kinsella who maintains the myth that criticism of the State of Israel is Anti-Semitism. And to other critics of my articles:

Warren Kinsella moves Right
&
Lies of Our Times


Bakunin’s denunciation of Nationalism and the State led him to denouncing Polish Nationalism in favour of Pan-Slavism. At the same time Bakunin denounced the Zionism of Herzl, who wanted Jews in Russia to leave for a new utopia, rather than to fight against the Tsarist Pogroms and for a social revolution. Anarchism opposes nationalism and the Nationalist State in all its forms.

Theodor (Binyamin Ze’ev) Herzl

(1860-1904)

“In Basle I founded the Jewish state . . . Maybe in five years, certainly in fifty, everyone will realize it.”


The Jewish State
Theodor Herzl

1896

"Anti-Semitic behavior is generated in situations where blinded men robbed of their subjectivity are set loose as subjects. For those involved, their actions are murderous and therefore senseless reflexes, as behaviorists note -- without providing an interpretation. Anti-Semitism is a deeply imprinted schema, a ritual of civilization; the pogroms are the true ritual murders. They demonstrate the impotence of sense, significance, and ultimately of truth -- which might hold them within bounds . . . Action becomes an autonomous end in itself and disguises its own purposelessness." Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment trans. John Cumming (New York, 1972), pgs. 171-2.

JEWISH CRITICISM OF ZIONISM

Edward C. Corrigan

Mr. Corrigan has a law degree from the University of Windsor and a Master's in political science from the University of Western Ontario. He advises the reader: "This article is not intended to be a comprehensive study of Jewish criticism of Zionism but only an introductory survey. The author owes a debt to many people in the Jewish community for assistance and would like to thank David Finkel and especially Harriet Karchmer for her help with the material on Orthodox Jews. The writer, of course, bears all responsibility for the material and any errors or omissions."

The Palestinian uprising or intifada and the Israeli campaign to suppress it have caused considerable anguish for many Jews around the world. A large number of Jews have even begun to reassess their support for Israel and critically analyze the ideology of Zionism which legitimates the Jewish state. One example of this phenomenon is a statement that appeared in The Nation on February 3, 1988. It was endorsed by 18 prominent American Jews.

The advertisement called upon American Jews to "dissociate from Israel." It expressed the concern that "the close identification in the public mind between Israel and Jews -- an equation vigorously fostered by both the Zionist movement and the American Jewish lobby, which has come under its control -- threatens to stigmatize Jews everywhere." The ad called for a two-state solution and for negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

The statement also discussed past discrimination against the Jews and the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust adding:

How tragic that in our own time the very state established by Jews in the aftermath of this evil has become a place where racialism, religious discrimination, militarism and injustice prevail; and that Israel itself has become a pariah state within the world community. Events taking place today are all too reminiscent of the pogroms from which our own forefathers fled two and three generations ago -- but this time those in authority are Jews and the victims are Moslems and Christian Palestinians.

Those endorsing The Nation statement included Professor Yigal Arens, the son of Moshe Arens; Mark Bruzonsky, former Washington Associate, World Jewish Congress, who now serves as chairperson for the organization; Professor Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor MIT; Rabbi Susan Einbinder, Colgate University; Jane Hunter, publisher of Israeli Foreign Affairs; Jeremy Levin, former CNN Beirut Bureau Chief and former hostage in Lebanon; Professor Don Peretz, Department of Political Science, SUNY; and Henry Schwarzschild, of the American Civil Liberties Union. The subsequent organization they formed, the Jewish Committee on the Middle East (JCOME), has, in the short time that it has existed, attracted well over a thousand signatures endorsing their statement. These include academics at 125 U.S. universities.

JCOME has challenged pro-Israeli American Jewish leaders to conduct a joint poll to see what American Jews really think about Israel and the Palestinians. To back up their challenge JCOME cited evidence which suggests that there is a divergence of opinion between American Jews and the pronouncements of their "official" leadership. As one example of a difference in opinion JCOME pointed to a poll which showed that 29 percent of American Jews favor negotiations with the PLO. However, while this new organization is important, Jewish criticism of Israel's policies and Zionism is not new. They both have deep roots within the Jewish community.

It is clear that the ideology of Zionism has had a profound impact on Jews. Today most Western Jews support its objective of establishing and securing a Jewish state in the territory formerly known as Palestine, even though the majority do not follow its precepts and immigrate to Israel. Historically Zionism was the subject of intense debate. Zionism has always meant different things to different people. It could be interpreted in a religious, political, national or racial light depending upon the circumstances. For some, Zionism was a solution for the age-old problem of anti-Semitism, while for others merely an excuse for getting rid of the Jews. As Hannah Arendt explained, "The Zionist Organization had developed a genius for not answering, or answering ambiguously, all questions of political consequence. Everyone was free to interpret Zionism as he pleased . . . ."

Zionist leaders have put off indefinitely the attempt to resolve the resulting conflicts and even contradictions generated by different interpretations of Zionism. This explains why the "Jewish state" has no constitution and why many fundamental questions about the nature of Israel remain undefined. The avoidance of a battle over conflicting definitions of what is a Jewish state is one of the reasons why Israel has a vested interest in maintaining the state of war in the Middle East. This interest has been openly acknowledged by a former president of the World Jewish Congress, Nahum Goldmann:

On the day when peace comes, the leftist movement will undoubtedly be very strong in Israel, and it will be anti-Orthodox. A great cultural battle will then break out which, like Ben Gurion, I want to avoid at this moment: as long as war prevails, that kind of internal struggle would be terribly dangerous. But after the hostilities the first thing to do will be to separate religion and state. Today we confine ourselves to telling the leftists: "Don't make a fuss on this question, you will be obstructing our defence policy, which requires national unity" -- and the leftists, being good patriots, give way. But after the peace they will resume the debate.

Prior to World War II the majority of Jews were non-Zionist, and a large number were openly hostile to Zionism. As Nahum Goldmann wrote, "When Zionism first appeared on the world scene most Jews opposed it and scoffed at it. Herzl was only supported by a small minority." It was not until the full horror of the Holocaust was realized that the great bulk of the Jewish community came to support Zionism.

Jewish history is rich in its diversity of ideas and ethical dissent. Many of the Hebrew prophets were "solitary voices" who criticized their people for betraying the great principles of their faith. The prophet Amos, for example, advanced a new interpretation of the "Chosen People" thesis. He wrote: "From all the families of the earth I have chosen you alone; for that very reason I will punish you for all your iniquities." Amos' concept of "chosen" did "not imply the assurance of victory or prosperity" but rather that of "the burden of more severe punishment for 'normal' unrighteousness."

Amos was even more revolutionary in reinterpreting the meaning of the "Promised Land." To quote Hans Kohn:

Through his mouth the Lord proclaimed that the children of Israel were unto Him no better than the children of the Ethiopians. True, God had brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt; but equally He brought the Philistines (then Israel's hereditary enemies) from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir, guiding each one into its land.

In Amos' view all peoples were entitled to the land they occupied in a spirit of equality and sharing. No one people had special God-given rights.

One of the most critical moments in ancient Jewish history was when Jochanan ben Zakkai, the leading representative of Judaism in his day and the disciple of Hillel, "abandoned the cause of the Jewish state." At the time, the city of Jerusalem was besieged by the Romans and heroically defended by the zealots. Zakkai escaped from the city by a ruse, and with the agreement of the Roman commander, established a Jewish academy at Jabne. Judaism survived while the Jewish state was destroyed.

In the more recent period, Ahad Ha-am (Hebrew for "One of the People" and the pen name for Asher Ginzberg), one of the greatest Jewish thinkers of this century, was also highly critical of Zionism.10 He drew attention to the fundamental and neglected ethical dilemma of Zionism, namely the presence of the Arabs. In his 1891 report, The Truth from Palestine, he pointed out that "there was little untilled soil in Palestine, except for stony hills and sand dunes." Ahad Ha-am also warned the Jewish settlers against arousing the wrath of the large native Arab population:

Yet what do our brethren do in Palestine? Just the very opposite! Serfs they were in the lands of the diaspora and suddenly they find themselves in freedom, and this change has awakened in them an inclination to despotism. They treat the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, deprive them of their rights, offend them without cause, and even boast of these deeds; and nobody among us opposes this despicable and dangerous inclination.

Ahad Ha-am wrote this statement when Zionist settlers formed only a tiny portion of the population of Palestine. He also gave the following warning: "We think. . . that the Arabs are all savages who live like animals and do not understand what is happening around. This is, however, a great error."

Ahad Ha-am worked tirelessly for an intellectual and spiritual revival of the Jewish people. His belief in Zion was of a spiritual and prophetic nature. In 1913 he attacked the Zionist labor movement's racial boycott of Arab labor:

Apart from the political danger, I can't put up with the idea that our brethren are morally capable of behaving in such a way to men of another people; and unwittingly the thought comes to my mind: if it is so now, what will be our relation to the others if in truth we shall achieve "at the end of time" power in Eretz Israel? If this be the "Messiah," I do not wish to see his coming.

Israel Zangwill, one of Herzl's earliest and strongest supporters, eventually turned against the idea of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine. Ironically it was Zangwill who coined the phrase "a land without a people for a people without a land." It was this phrase that became the potent rallying call for Zionist settlement in Palestine.

It was not until 1904 that Zangwill realized that there was a fundamental problem with the Zionist program. In a speech given in New York in that year he explained:

There is. . . a difficulty from which the Zionist dares not avert his eyes, though he rarely likes to face it. Palestine proper has already its inhabitants. The pashalik of Jerusalem is already twice as thickly populated as the United States, having 52 souls to every square mile, and not 25 percent of them Jews; so we must be prepared either to drive out by the sword the tribes in possession as our forefathers did, or to grapple with the problem of a large alien population, mostly Mohammedan.. . . This is an infinitely graver difficulty than the stock anti-Zionist taunt that nobody would go to Palestine if we got it. . . .

Zangwill and many other leading Zionists split from the movement in 1905 when the Zionist Organization turned down the British offer to settle Jews in Uganda. Incidently, this proposal was supported by Herzl. The dissidents set up the Jewish Territorial Organization to pursue alternative settlement proposals. Zangwill was elected leader of the new body. The organization was, however, dissolved in 1925.

Sir Edwin Montagu, the only Jewish member of Lloyd George's cabinet when Great Britain first threw its weight behind Zionism in 1917, was also adamantly opposed to the creation of a Jewish state. He attacked the Balfour Declaration and Zionism because he believed they were anti-Semitic. Montagu based his argument on the fact that both Zionism and anti-Semitism were based on the premise that Jews and non-Jews could not co-exist. He was also afraid that a Jewish state would undermine the security of Jews in other countries. Montagu's opposition to Zionism was supported by the leading representative bodies of Anglo-Jewry, the Board of Deputies and the Anglo-Jewish Association, and in particular, by Claude Montefibre, David Alexander and Lucien Wolf.

NON-RELIGIOUS OPPOSITION TO ZIONISM

Not only Orthodox and Reform Jews were opposed to Zionism. In March 1919 United States Congressman Julius Kahn presented an anti-Zionist petition to President Woodrow Wilson as he was leaving for the Paris Peace Conference. The petition was signed by 31 prominent American Jews. These included Henry Morgenthau, Sr., ex-ambassador to Turkey; Simon W. Rosendale, ex-attorney general of New York; Mayor L. H. Kampner of Galveston, Texas; E. M. Baker, from Cleveland and president of the Stock Exchange; R. H. Macy's Jesse I. Straus; New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs; and Judge M. C. Sloss of San Francisco.

The petition read in part:

. . . we protest against the political segregation of the Jews and the re-establishment in Palestine of a distinctively Jewish State as utterly opposed to the principles of democracy which it is the avowed purpose of the World's Peace Conference to establish.

Whether the Jews be regarded as a "race" or as a "religion," it is contrary to the democratic principles for which the world war was waged to found a nation on either or both of these bases.

Albert Einstein was also anti-Zionist. He made a presentation to the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, which was examining the Palestine issue in January 1946 and argued against the creation of a Jewish state. Einstein also later turned down the presidency of the state of Israel. In 1950 Einstein published the following statement on the question of Zionism.

I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state. Apart from the practical considerations, my awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain -- especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks, against which we have already had to fight without a Jewish state.

Albert Einstein, Sidney Hook, Hannah Arendt and twenty-five other prominent Jews, in a letter to The New York Times (December 4, 1948), condemned Menachem Begin's and Yitzhak Shamir's Likud party as "fascist" and espousing "an admixture of ultra-nationalism, religious mysticism and racial superiority." The same theme is echoed in William Zukerman's 1934 article in The Nation, "The Menace of Jewish Fascism. "58 This is also the premise of Michael Selzer's book, The Aryanization of the Jewish State.

For most Western Jews and many other people, the connection of Zionism to fascism and racism is odious and inappropriate. However, this theme is a recurrent motif in the debate on Zionism within the Jewish community. Even David Ben-Gurion, Israel's founding father and first prime minister, wrote an article in 1933 entitled, "Jabotinsky in the Footsteps of Hitler."60 Vladimir Jabotinsky was the founder of Revisionist Zionism and the mentor of Menachem Begin.

Professor Richard Arens, the late brother of Moshe Arens, the Israeli defense minister and leading figure in the Likud party, has also equated Israeli policies towards the Palestinians with the Nazi persecution of the Jews.61 Hannah Arendt, when writing about the trial of Adolph Eichmann, pointed out the irony of attacking the Nazis' Nuremberg Laws of 1935 when certain laws in Israel regarding the personal status of Jews were identical to the infamous Nazi code. Morris Raphael Cohen, the distinguished philosopher, went so far as to argue that "Zionists fundamentally accept the racial ideology of anti-Semites, but draw different conclusions. Instead of the Teuton, it is the Jew that is the pure or superior race."

Other leading Jewish intellectuals who opposed Zionism include Louis D. Brandeis (see Menuhin, Jewish Critics of Zionism), Martin Buber (coauthor, with J.L. Magnes and E. Simon, of Towards Union in Palestine: Essay on Zionism and Jewish-Arab Cooperation, 1947), Isaac Deutscher ("The Non-Jewish Jew," in The Non-Jewish Jew and Other Essays, 1968), Simon Dubnow (Nationalism and History: Essays on Old and New Judaism, edited by Koppel S. Pinson, 1961), Morris Jastrow (Zionism and the Future of Palestine, the Fallacies and Dangers of Political Zionism, 1919), Emile Marmorstein ("A Bout of Agony," The Guardian, April 1974), Moshe Menuhin (father of Sir Yehudi Menuhin and author of The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time), Claude Montefiore ("Nation or Religious Community?" reprinted in Selzer, Zionism Reconsidered), Jakob I. Petuchowski (Zion Reconsidered, 1966), and Franz Rosenzweig. Hans Kohn, who was one of the world's leading authorities on nationalism, posed the following questions on the issue.

Might not perhaps the "abnormal" existence of the Jews represent a higher form of historical development than territorial nationalism? Has not the diaspora been an essential part of Jewish existence? Did it not secure Jewish survival better than the state could do?

Erich Fromm, the eminent scholar, also was critical of Zionism. He stated that the Arabs in Israel had a much more legitimate claim to citizenship than the Jews. Fromm also wrote:

The claim of the Jews to the Land of Israel cannot be a realistic political claim. If all nations would suddenly claim territories in which their forefathers lived two thousand years ago, this world would be a madhouse.


"One Man, One Vote, One State"

Israel Shamir, a leading Russian Israeli writer, is a champion of the "One Man, One Vote, One State" solution seeking to unite Palestine & Israel in one democratic state. Shamir's work and that of his contributors speaks to the aspirations of both the Israelis and the Palestinians seeking an end to the bloodshed, true democracy and lasting peace.
In the midst of the endless talk of a "Two State solution", Shamir, along with Edward Said, has become a leading champion of the "One Man, One Vote, One State" solution in all of Palestine/Israel. His most recent essays have been circulating widely on the Internet and are now posted on many prominent media sites. With every new article, Shamir is establishing himself as a journalist whose work speaks to the aspirations of both the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Zionism as Jewish National Socialism
Lasse Wilhelmson - 31.08.2004 11:55

The Jewish colonization of Palestine under the Zionist slogan "the land without people to the people without a land" started almost a hundred years ago and reached its first climax with the proclamation of The Jewish State of Israel in 1948. A second climax is now in the offing through the ongoing colonization of the West Bank and Gaza.

Moses Hess converted Karl Marx to Communism, yet advocated National Socialism for Jews; Shlomo Avineri on the Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State- Selections by Peter Myers. Date November 14, 2000; update August 17, 2004.

Kibbutz Reshafim

After growing up in the antisemitic 1930's in Eastern Europe and escaping the Holocaust by hair's breadth, it is no wonder that many Jews, the founders of Kibbutz Reshafim among them, became fervent Zionists. The fact that of the famous saying "A country without people for a people without country" only the second part was correct, didn't escape members of the Hashomer Hatzair Movement, who favoured the creation of a bi-national state in Palestine. It didn't work out that way, and during the War of Independence in 1948 many Palestinian communities were displaced. (A list of abandoned Arab villages in the Beit Shean Valley). A number of kibbutzim and moshavim (another form of cooperative agricultural settlement) were founded and populated by refugees and olim2 from Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.
Socialism in all its forms was immensely popular in the 30's (as were the variants of Fascism). Its aim in those days was not just the economic betterment of the working class, but the creation of a new, more humane society and a new man to go with it. The kibbutzim were to serve as a model for this revolution. They were the proletarian vanguard, and much admired for it.
Even if quite a few of the founding members considered Stalin to be the epitome of human endeavour and mourned his (long overdue) passing on, they never adopted his policies of proletarian dictatureship. Decisions were made by a democratic show of hands, and there was quite a bit of pressure on those black sheep who wouldn't accept majority rule.

Eyal's Radical Corner

Class War in Palestine

The Zionist Scourge

We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai."

—David Ben-Gurion, prime-minister of the provisional government of Israel, speaking before the IMF general staff during the 1948 war

The Birth of Zionism

With the onset of industrial Capitalism in Europe in the 19th century, the ruling classes took advantage of ethnic divisions in the European population to vent the masses' anger at them, incurred by deteriorating living standards and intensified exploitation. One of the immediate and easiest targets were the Jews, who, due to various factors (not the least of which being religion-inspired separatism, often even xenophobia) had failed, in many areas in Europe, to harmonize themselves with the rest of the population, and many of then had found refuge, for the previous several centuries, under the protection of the nobility and the monarchy, as petit-bourgeois tradesmen, artisans, scribes, lawyers, etc. Now their former benefactors were inciting the more violent non-Jews even to harm Jewish people physically in the infamous 'pogroms' (which were, by the way, not only inspired but often actually organized by the national governments).

So, basically, the Jews had two options: the first, to seek unity with the peasants and the workers, forsaking the landed nobility and the the bourgeoisie; the second, to look to the masters for solutions.

Many Jews opted for something which was a mix of these two - immigration to the more advanced Capitalistic countries: the western European countries and the USA.

Of those who did not immigrate, the more progressive Jews (probably the poorer ones, the workers, the peasents, and some of the landless petit-bourgeois) came to adopt a Socialist perspective, understanding that racism and nationalism to be by-products of the Capitalistic class society, and must therefore be resisted by joining forces with the radical forces in combating the exploiters. Many of the influential agitators and organizers struggling for social change in Europe were Jews. And, of course, the 'Algemeiner Yidisher Arbayterbund' cannot go unmentioned here...

The Jews more closely tied to the ruling classes, those who were service-renderers to the rich and powerful and dependent upon their wealth for a living, saw things differently, of course. Theodore Herzl, the 'founding father' of political Zionism, an Austrian playwright, journalist and outspoken admirer of the policies of the Imperialist European governments, decided that what the Jews needed was a nationalistic movement of their own. The idea was not to remove the causes of ethnic strife, but rather find a place where Jews could be the ones holding the economic, military and political power, and therefore the on the attacking side of ethnic confrontations (which, claimed the Zionists, were completely unavoidable, since Jews and non-Jews are 'incompatible').

Zionism was a part of a wider current in European political thought, and it seems to have been inspired by Sorelianism (e.g. purification by violence and nationalist revision of Socialism), de-Man's Planism and other pre-Fascist thinkers. With it, world Imperialism acquired its foremost champion in its unfolding war against the toiling masses of this region.

A Deal

The contradiction between the letter of the Covenant and the policy of the Allies is even more flagrant in the case of the independent nation Palestine than in that of the independent nation of Syria. For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country, though the American [King-Crane] Commission has been going through the form of asking what they are. The four great powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.

—British Lord Arthur Balfur, two years after issuing the 'Balfur Declaration' (supportive a 'National Home' for Jews in Palestine)

So imagine you're a prominent Jewish businessman or intellectual in the 1880's. Given the facts that:

  1. You're all buddy-buddies with the political leadership and the economic elite of Europe, which is at the height of its colonialist period
  2. You want 'save the Jewish people' (the same ones you'd do everything to distance yourself from, and didley-squat for their protection from the almost-officially-mandated violence)

What's more natural than to offer up the Jews as harbingers of European rule to the countries of the 'uncivilized barbarians'?

So the Zionists came to the German Kaiser, and the Russian Tsar, the British and other governments (all of them anti-Semitic to some degree or another, obviously) and proposed the following deal: "we'll get all the Jews out of your sight and render you further economic and military services abroad, providing you find us a country in which to settle them all and to rule."

It took a few years of convincing, but the Imperialists couldn't resist an offer of erecting "a bastion of Europe against Asia" (to quote Herzl), not to mention a chance to drive out Millions of members of an ethnic group highly prone to Socialism and other 'destructive' and 'harmful' notions.

"Ok," says Britain (who ended up being the main supported or political Zionism) "How's about you take Uganda?"

"Hmmm... let us think..." say the Zionists. "Naah, we want Palestine. We need the sound basis of crackpot religious myths to bring together diverse religious groups to form a single national entity. We'll call it 'a land without a people for a people without a land'. It'll work out great! ... The only problem is pushing the Turks around some and we're set!"

Colonization

Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because the geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahalal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kfar Yehoshua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single site built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.

—Moshe Dayan, addressing the Technion, Haifa (reported in Haaretz, April 4th, 1969)

"But what about the Palestinian Arabs?" you would ask. And so did Max Nordau, another famous Zionist leader. This question brought about (not immediately, but soon enough) the great split in political Zionism - the split between the so-called-left (supposedly-Socialist, to some extent) Zionism - and the more overtly Fascist Zionism.

The 'left' surmised that "for now, we'll just concentrate on getting as many Jews as possible to settle in Palestine and we won't talk about what's to happen eventually - we'll tell everyone we're just trying to evade persecution, or to bring progress to an under-developed region, or to carry out a social experiment, or to create a Jewish worker's society or some other fibs" ; the right-wing, who were less ashamed of their racism and felt no need to identify themselves with the masses struggling for freedom and equality, said openly: "Fuck the Arabs. Not with words but with blood and iron shall a nation be molded - their blood, our Iron. We'll take control of the entire land and they'll either accept us as absolute masters, be driven out or die at our hands."

But such distinctions were hardly relevant when it came to practical action. Once the first world war was over and the British assumed control of the country, wave after wave of Jewish immigrants began flooding Palestine. There was hardly a peasant among them and not too many manual laborers... but they did bring on a steady stream of investment capital, and the technical expertise to use it. The pseudo-feudal, agricultural, semi-theocratic Palestinian society did not stand a chance. It gradually began to fray and eventually disintegrate in an alarming rate, as more and more agricultural land was bought by Jews and an increasing number of Palestinians sought employ with the Jews. Even the local elites, the more powerful 'hamula' structures, where overwhelmed and didn't put up much of a fight.

A great backlash against this process took place between 1936 and 1939 in the form of a mass strike followed by an armed rebellion, but it was doomed to fail, both because the Palestinian working class was weak in number and the peasantry disorganized (or rather mis-organized), with its leadership fearing the rebellion and aiding its diffusion, and because the British were bringing in massive troop reinforcements (rumor equates the number of British soldiers in Palestine during the rebellion to their numbers in India, but I haven't confirmed that) and did not hesitate to resort to house demolitions, mass arrests, numerous executions and assassinations.

The Zionist leadership, tightly controlling the Jewish workers, teamed up with the colonial ruler to violently suppress the rebelling natives by force.

Anarchy in Yiddish: Famous Jewish Anarchists from Emma Goldman to Noam Chomsky

Anti-semitism, argued anarchists such as Voline, had evolved as a sort of safety valve that the wealthy and powerful could use to control working class anger – people who were conscious of being cheated and misused could be persuaded to attack the Jews rather than their rulers or their employers. As everyone from the Czars to Hitler discovered, Jews make excellent scapegoats. To really permanently destroy anti-semitism, anarchists argued, we have to attack the root of the problem: the conditions of exploitation and injustice that Jew-hating serves as a distraction from. Thus, Voline wrote that only

the complete destruction of present-day society and its reorganization on a completely different social basis which will lead to the definitive disappearance of the nationalist plague, and with it, of antisemitism. It will disappear when the vast human masses, at the end of their sufferings and misfortunes, and at the price of atrocious experiences, comprehend, finally, that humanity must, on pain of death, organize its life on the sane and natural basis of cooperation, material and moral, fraternal and just, that is to say, on a truly human basis. (“Antisemitisme,” Encyc. Anarchiste)

Jewish anarchists took this a step further by beginning the battle against anti-semitism in the present. Samuel Schwartzbard didn’t stop at his personal revenge for the pogroms; he founded an organization called the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism. In exile from the U.S., Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman investigated and reported back on the condition of the Russian Jews in the early years of the Soviet Union. Leah Feldman rode with Nestor Makhno’s army against the pogromchiks. One way or another, Jewish anarchists fought back – as Jews, as anarchists, as human beings rising against their oppressors.

At the same time, they didn’t always have an easy time getting along with other Jews. Religion was a particular sticking point. Proudhon and Bakunin had defined anarchism as the revolt against all forms of human enslavement, physical and mental – and religion they counted as a form of mental slavery, noting that the Church had always bolstered the State, and that poor people were always told to wait for their reward in heaven rather than seeking justice on earth. Jewish anarchists frequently took up this wholesale attack on religion; in her famous manifesto, Emma Goldman wrote of “religion” as “the dominion of the human mind” (AOE 53):

The primitive man, unable to understand his being . . . felt himself absolutely dependent on blind, hidden forces ever ready to mock and taunt him. Out of that attitude grew the religious concepts of man as a mere speck of dust dependent on superior powers on high, who can only be appeased by complete surrender. All the . . . biblical tales dealing with the relation of man to God, to the State, to society . . . [express] the same motif, man is nothing, the powers are everything. Thus Jehovah would only endure man on condition of complete surrender. Man can have all the glories of the earth, but he must not become conscious of himself . . .

Religion! How it dominates man’s mind, how it humiliates and degrades his soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion. But out of that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical, so cruel, so terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears and blood have ruled the world since gods began. Anarchism rouses man to rebellion against this black monster. Break your mental fetters, says Anarchism to man, for not until you think and judge for yourself will you get rid of the dominion of darkness, the greatest obstacle to all progress. (51, 53)

Now, in light of this kind of pronounced atheism emanating from the anarchist quarters, it’s no wonder rabbis in New York and London saw the Jewish anarchists as a threat to their traditions, their communities – and their own rabbinical authority. In 1888, the “clerical and lay leaders” of London’s Jewish community “set out to destroy” the Yiddish-language anarchist newspaper, the Arbeter Fraint. According to Fishman, “The back page of every issue carried the appeal in heavy type: ‘Workers, do your duty. Spread the Arbeter Fraint!’” The typesetter was bribed, and issue number 26 appeared with the wording of the ad slightly changed: “Workers, do your duty. Destroy the Arbeter Fraint!” The typesetter promptly disappeared, fleeing the wrath of the editors; then, after that, they bribed the printer (155). By 1904, they were hiring “gangs of thugs (schlogers) . . . to break up Anarchist and Social Democrat meetings” (259).

Anarchists didn’t take all this lying down, needless to say – nor did they fail to provoke it. When the Arbeter Fraint started up again, it featured a full-bore attack on orthodox Judaism, including parodies of the Passover seder and the Lamentations (155). In the late 1880s, a group of Jewish anarchists on the Lower East Side organized as a club called “The Pioneers of Freedom,” which “distributed Yiddish parodies of penitential prayers, mocking the traditions of Yom Kippur,” and organized “Yom Kippur Balls held on Kol Nidre night” (Kolel) In 1889, they leafleted to “[invite] Jewish workers to spend Kol Nidre evening at the Clarendon Hall on Thirtieth Street” – causing a “near-riot” when the proprietor, “under political pressure,” tried to call it off. In 1890, in Brooklyn, they threw a “Grand Yom Kippur Ball with theater” on the Day of Atonement (“A Life Apart: The Treyfe Medina”), advertising their celebration as “Arranged with the consent of all new rabbis of Liberty . . . Kol Nidre, music, dancing, buffet; Marseillaise and other hymns.” This spectacle, which more than once provoked actual street fracases between believers and non-believers, was duplicated in London and in Philadelphia (Kolel) – although on at least one occasion, in 1890, the Russian-Jewish anarchists of Philadelphia actually called off their Yom Kippur Ball – which was to feature “pork-eating” – out of respect for the role played by the city’s orthodox rabbi, Sabato Morais, in mediating a crucial strike of cloakmakers that year (“Morais”). In London in the 1890s, Rudolf Rocker was asked to comment on the habit of some Jewish anarchists of demonstrating “provocative behaviour” in front of the Brick Lane synagogue on Shabbat. He answered that “the place for believers was the house of worship, and the place for non-believers was the radical meeting” (Ward). Which, if you think about it, is a peculiarly rabbinical sort of exchange – it’s just the sort of question young men used to ask rabbis to answer: Rabbi, are the comrades right to demonstrate in front of the synagogue on the Sabbath? No wonder Sam Dreen said “Rocker was our rabbi!” (qtd. in Fishman 254).

The Jewish Question from the Left

Persistent Memories of the German Revolution the Jewish Activists of 1919

Stephen Eric Bronner

[New Politics, vol. 5, no. 2 (new series), whole no. 18, Winter 1995]

Netanyahu and the Palestinians

Adam Keller

[New Politics, vol. 6, no. 2 (new series), whole no. 22, Winter 1997]

The Life and Death of Socialist Zionism

Jason Schulman

[New Politics, vol. 9, no. 3 (new series), whole no. 35, Summer 2003]

Intellectuals and Anti-Fascism: For a Critical Historization

Enzo Traverso

[New Politics, vol. 9, no. 4 (new series), whole no. 36, Winter 2004]

The Silence of the Vatican and the Plight of the Jews

H. Brand

[New Politics, vol. 8, no. 2 (new series), whole no. 30, Winter 2001]

Demonizing the Germans:
A New Mythology of Collective Guilt

Horst Brand

[New Politics, vol. 6, no. 3 (new series), whole no. 23, Summer 1997]

The First Neoconservative

Herman Wouk, the Americanization of the Holocaust, and the Rise of Neoconservatism

Joel Brodkin

New Politics, Vol. X, No. 3

No Symmetry:
Notes From Israel & "Palestine"

Mark Dow

[New Politics, vol. 9, no. 1 (new series), whole no. 33, Summer 2002]

The Struggle for Palestine

Barry Finger

[New Politics, vol. 8, no. 2 (new series), whole no. 30, Winter 2001]

Standing Fast Julius Jacobson (1922-2003)

Barry Finger

[New Politics, vol. 9, no. 3 (new series), whole no. 35, Summer 2003]

The Al Aqsa Intifada: Taking Off the Masks

Tikva Honig-Parnass

[New Politics, vol. 8, no. 2 (new series), whole no. 30, Winter 2001]

Thursday, July 28, 2005

Warren Kinsella Moves Right

The right wing in Canada has a new cheerleader, it's none other than the last Chretienite left standing; Warren Kinsella.

In his latest blog attack on the current Liberal Party Regime, he loves to hate; the Martinistas, he gives former Liberal MP Carolyn Parrish a backhaded compliment. While commenting on the sudden change on her home page where comments bashing the Martinistas were removed he takes umberage at her comments on Israel.

Reflections on the Middle East-Carolyn Parrish Independent MP

Warren Kinsella in his blog comments on July 26 says he disagrees with Carolyn. She's ok in his book's for attacking Paul Martin, but and it's a big but,
" but I don't agree that an MP who accuses Israel of "crimes against humanity" should be invited back into the Liberal caucus." says Warren.

And who does Warren link to in his denouncing Parrish, why David Frum, ex- Canadian speech writer for George Bush II, in his column in the far right National Review.

Warren are you saying the 'Anschluss' of Palestine by the Zionists and their campaign of 'Lebensraum' into the West Bank and Gaza Strip is Ok, is defensible? Even though it has been denouced by Amnesty International, the International Court of Justice in the Hauge, the UN and every civilized country around the world. With the exception of the Americans who supply Israel with its weapons, and funds, and have David Frum spin their Axis of Evil rhetoric. Are you saying that you prefer right wing nut Frum over liberal Parrish? Apparently.

What Parrish said in her report linked above is:


"the occupation, with its brutality, destruction, humiliation and human rights violations, must end. The policy of defending Israel through military siege of Palestinian towns must also end. The collective and random punishment of Palestinian civilians must end and access to basic human rights and the necessities of life must be re-established wherever Palestinians reside. “The Wall” must continually be attacked. The world cheered when the Berlin wall was toppled. Why does it sit silently by while this monstrosity consumes land and destroys people’s lives?"

Apparently in Frum and Kinsellas world defending Palestine means being anti-Israel. Tell that to the Israeli left who have been saying the same things for years. Or the Arab Israelis who say it too.

As for Warren who has written a book on the far right in Canada to defend the far right in Israel who currently run the country, well that's a bit much.

And to play Liberal party do gooder, about welcoming Parrish back into the fold, when at least 34 members of the Party are aligned to the right wing in Canada, with their positions on gay marriage, it is amazing to hear this from Liberal Warren. But then he is a minority and an outsider in the party as well being the last Chretienite on deck.

Coincidentaly his denounciation of Carolyn appeared and the next day the right wing NCC also denounced her.

"NCC Urging Liberals to Keep Parrish Out

"(Toronto July 27, 2005) The National Citizens Coalition says it may run a media campaign urging Prime Minister Paul Martin to keep Carolyn Parrish out of the Liberal caucus.

"'Prime Minister Martin kicked Parrish out of his caucus because her behaviour was intolerably crude and crass,' says NCC vice president Gerry Nicholls. 'Her recent attack on General Rick Hillier indicates that she has not changed. Allowing her back into the governing party would be bad for Canada.'

So was Warren giving aid to the enemy by helping kick off the Anti-Parrish campaign?

Well he has been sucking up to Paul Wells at Macleans, maybe he is hoping to get a column.

Wells is a long time pal of Ken Whyte who was National Post Editor and now Editor of Macleans. Whyte began his journalism career at the right wing Alberta Report.

David Frum is also a former associate of Wells both worked at the National Pest. A paper that does not distinquish between hard news and political propaganda.

But what happens when attitude — traditionally the purview of columnists — starts seeping into straight news copy.The National Post has begun moving columnists to the front page to analyze the hard news stories running alongside their columns, as they did for their October 13, 1999 coverage of the Speech from the Throne. Paul Wells’s view of the proceedings snuggled against Ottawa bureau chief Robert Fife’s blow-by-blow account of the details. The danger is bedding opinion with hard news reporting is that it can taint the assumption of objectivity.
Thunderbird Magazine, UBC Journalism Review.

Warren did get published in the National Pest recently and he has been saying nice things about Stephen Harper lately. He gets praise from the right wing bloggers. A Conservative Life blogs:

A respectable Liberal

I've never "mixed it up" with Warran Kinsella. I'm probably too insignificant for him to even notice if I tried. His latest publication in the National Post reveals that he, like the subject of his article, is a man of character. Liberals have done their best to convince Canadians that Stephen Harper is "scary" or even "evil". It is good to know that some Liberals aren't willing to slander someone for the sake of political gain. Some excerpts from Mr. Kinsella's article...Advice for a nice guy

"I am a Liberal, and liberal, but I like Stephen Harper.

The main reason for liking him is personal. When my Dad died, a year ago last week, Mr. Harper called me and my Mom to express condolences. He talked about meeting my Dad once, and he talked at length about his own father, who had passed away not long before."

Warren's blog is full of how nice these guys all are now that is on the outs with the PMO. Mainstream media commentators who of course are all anti-Paul Martin. But once you bed down the enemy of your enemy that leaves you with fleas.

July 20
"The corporate MSM ones tend to be a bit colourless - with the notable exceptions of Wells, Zerb and Gunter, naturally."


Lets see Wells a centre right liberal; pal with a former Alberta Report gunsel. Gunter is a former Alberta Report gunsel, Whyte and Gunter are both journalists schooled in the Byfield school of right wing blather. Zerb is a liberal. Two rights and a liberal.

Maybe all that punk music Warren listens to has finally adled his senses. I would suspect that his days in the Liberals under his arch nemesis Paul Martin are numbered and he is sucking up to the right for a job.

Then he can join the NCC and the likes of Ezra Levant and David Frum in denouncing Parrish. And like Frum he can finally call her an anti-semite, which is the real subtext of his accusation that she is Anti-Israel.

Of course she is nothing of the kind, but Warren equates reactionary Zionist leadership in Israel with the people of Israel, and any criticism of Israel is verboten by the pro-Israel lobby in Canada. Boy he actually is begining to sound like Stockwell Day...scary....Warren...scary. To think some people actually think Warren is a progressive. That's even scarier.


Wednesday, July 27, 2005

It's A Family Thing

I recently wrote here about Link Byfield's outrageous historical revisionism

Well not to be out done by hubby, his wife Joanne Byfield is no stranger to the over the top rhetoric of the right wing. Joanne is active in the anti-choice movement and Real Women. No mere foot soldier, she is in fact a leader in the anti-choice, anti-feminist, anti gay movement on the Right in Canada.

See my article Right To Life = Right To Work

Like the whole clan, Father and Mother in Law, Ted and Virgina Byfield, and brother in law Michael Byfield, whose personal publishing empire was the Alberta Report, they are prone to hysterical rhetoric and over generalizations. Their comments border on what some would call hate speech at worst , and racist, mysoginist and homophobic at best.

In Alberta such speech is 'protected' by the right wing who loudly denounce anyone who challenges them as being opponents of 'Free Speech'. It is promoted in the Sun and Hollinger newspapers, usually disguised as comment columns. Lorne Gunter who used to work at Albewrta Report has a regular column in the Edmonton Journal. Ted and Link have columns in the Edmonton and Calgary Sun. These right wing whiners, still have a forum for their hateful speech.

Here is one of Joannes stupid hateful comments from the now defunct Alberta Report Magazine.

"Public opinion is far less influential in shaping public policy than special interest groups, especially groups favoured and funded by the federal government. These are many and diverse: feminists, homosexuals, criminals, environmentalists, multiculturalists and minority-language groups."
Joanne Byfield, March 2003


Deconstructing Joanne:
By criminals she means that the Elizabeth Fry and John Howard Societies get federal funding, but criminals sounds so much better doesn't it. Multiculturalists does not mean Germans or Ukrainians (Ukraiaians were the major group who pused the Trudeau Liberals to fund multiculturalism back in the early seventies). It means coloured folks of East Indian, East Asian origin.
Minority Language groups means of course those folks who speak French, one of the two founding nations in Canada.

Lump them altogether with each other throw in the term criminal and this sounds well horrorfying, eh. Except once you do lump all these groups together the only 'public' Joanne can be refering to is WASPS, and the occasional Catholic, who are not a majority in Canada anymore, which is what really gets her and the rest of the Byfield clan's goat.

And by the by the Alberta Report was taken to the Alberta Human Rights Commisision over anti-semitic statements made in an article by Michael Link her brother in law. They ruled that the Alberta Report and the article were in violation of the Provincial and Federal Human Rights act. Surpirze, Surprize.

This raises the old debate of nature or nurture. Is right wing idiocy the Byfield clan collectively suffers from genetic or environmental. Hmm? Or perhaps it's just a case of birds of a feather flock together.


The Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission
Commission Panel Decisions 2002

Finding
The Panel finds that beyond the words of the Article, the message contains a very powerful image or caricature that amounts to a negative stereotype of Jewish people, more specifically of Jewish businessmen. Simply put, the Article is a report of a failed business deal. However, the message contained in it goes far beyond the purpose.

This Panel finds that the Article published or caused to be published by the respondents, The Alberta Report, Michael Byfield and Link Byfield is in contravention of Section 2(1)(a) of the Act. The caricature contained in the Article indicates discrimination against Jewish people.

The Panel has carefully balanced the interests of freedom from discrimination and that of the freedom of expression in its consideration of Section 2. The Panel concludes that the Act, and in particular Section 2(1), is directed towards achieving such pressing and sufficiently important objectives that it warrants limiting freedom of expression in this case.

In this case, the limitation on expression required involves not including the last quotation in this report on the failed business deal. The Panel is satisfied that this is such a minimal interference with the freedom of expression that it is justified in these circumstances. The only thing the anonymous quote adds to the Article is the discriminatory message. The removal of the quote in no way detracts from the business purpose.

IN THE MATTER OF THE
HUMAN RIGHTS, CITIZENSHIP AND MULTICULTURALISM ACT
R.S.A. 1980, C. H-11.7 (AS AMENDED)

AND IN THE MATTER of a Complaint before
The Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission
Complaint No. S9805008

BETWEEN:
HARVEY KANE and
THE JEWISH DEFENCE LEAGUE OF CANADA
COMPLAINANT

AND

ALBERTA REPORT, LINK BYFIELD
MICHAEL BYFIELD and TED BYFIELD
RESPONDENT