Saturday, March 18, 2006

Is Paris Burning


France's global warning

Once again, French students are leading the march - this time against an unpopular employment law - but these protests are also about the country's future on an increasingly globalised planet, writes Alex Duval Smith in Paris

Sunday March 19, 2006
The Observer


It was the same bright spring sunshine and the same familiar elegant landmarks, but the hundreds of thousands of young demonstrators on the streets yesterday were a whole new generation. Almost 40 years since the great student protests of 1968, France's students are again manning barricades, café tables are being thrown at police riot shields, and tear gas hangs over the Left Bank.

France was again showing its revolutionary fibre and, in the republican tradition, it looked last night as though victory was close to being with the people.





Flames erupt from a car and a motorbike in front of a hotel during clashes between youths and police that followed a student protest against the First Employment Contract (CPE), in Paris, March 16, 2006. REUTERS/Charles Platiau


It was only months ago that the sans papier, the immigrant youth outside of Paris began their protests with the burning of cars.

The torching of the French banlieues as both sequel to the No vote of May 2005 and symptom of a wider Western malaise. Rejection of official pieties of integration, and flames of revolt against an automated Europe. Jean Baudrillard: The Pyres of Autumn

Today half a million families along with students and trade unionists demonstrated across France peacefully against the new French Labour Law.

The best coverage was on BBC World News TV which distinguished between the demonstrations during the day, peaceful, with the later night time police instigated rioting. It was like night and day.
Riots erupt after French protests BBC

The 24/7 cable news stations in the U.S. covered it as if only the rioting had occured. Why am I not surprized.
Student-Worker Protests in Paris Turn Violent
FOX News

Also See:

May 68 Redux

Tout va Bien





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Horowitz the Trot

David Horowitz is a classic case of the the Trotskyist who becomes his opposite. The New Left idol who no longer idolisized becomes the 'other', in order to become famous once again. It happened with Shactman and Burnham, in whose shoes Horowitz has stepped. Nothing new here, except of course his whining and historical revisionism.

Such as this recent quote from the dweeb;

"If not for the sacrifices of white soldiers and a white American president who gave his life to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, blacks in America would still be slaves. If not for the dedication of Americans of all ethnicities and colors to a society based on the principle that all men are created equal, blacks in America would not enjoy the highest standard of living of blacks anywhere in the world, and indeed one of the highest standards of living of any people in the world. They would not enjoy the greatest freedoms and the most thoroughly protected individual rights anywhere. Where is the gratitude of black America and its leaders for those gifts?"

And to think Horowitz was the darling of the White Left who identified with the Black Panthers, back when he was editor of Ramparts. And then after his breakdown, and drift into paranoia claiming the Panthers were out to kill him he becomes a born again Conservative.

Of course he convienently forgets his Civil War history. Including the fact his White President, Lincoln, freeing the slaves, which of course he was reluctant to do, was only accomplished when the Federal Government needed more troops for the final big push on the Confederate army.
Guess Horowitz missed the movie Glory.


What twit. But thats what you get from Trots who become Neo-Cons. Emphasis on the con. As in con artists.

In this case Horowitz the red diaper baby came from Stalinism, remained a Stalinist, despite toying with Trotskyism, so its no wonder he became a red baiting neo-con, and a white supremicist.


In addition to political alchemy, Horowitz has another new fixation: race, exemplified by his recent book, Hating Whitey and Other Progessive Causes. Last August, in a piece titled "A Real, Live Bigot," Time columnist Jack White took issue with an essay Horowitz wrote for Salon. In that piece, Horowitz excoriated the NAACP's class-action suit against gun manufacturers and wondered, "Am I alone in seeing this as an absurd act of political desperation by the civil rights establishment? What's next? Will Irish-Americans sue whiskey distillers, or Jews the gas company?" White, who is African-American, retorted that Horowitz's column was so repellent that it "made the anti-black rantings of Dinesh D'Souza seem like models of fair-minded social analysis."


He has become his own enemy, and his rantings are an attempt not to atone for his Left wing past, but to claim he always was a conservative. He has gone from Red to Red Neck.

In his book Hating Whitey, Horowitz dismissed Dr. Cornel West as "an intellectual of modest talents whose skin color has catapulted him into academic stardom with a six-figure income."

Do I detect the tone of green with jealousy in this statement? Of course.

A tip o' the blog to A Class Act.

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Water War

Politcal power grows out of the barrel of the gun. Mao Tse Tung

OROPOYI, Kenya - Akiru Lomukuny's clan already has seen one boy killed, a girl raped and dozens of women beaten just for trying to get a drink of water. Now, she says, things are about to get a lot worse.Generations of east Africans have clashed sporadically over cattle, pasture and, most importantly, water. The drought sweeping the region is making the fight for resources more desperate.

"The route through Uganda is like going between two dogs," Lomukuny said. "During the migration, the fighting is perpetual, all the way through, until we find a place to settle."

She said the biggest concern was the supply of bullets, because unlike in Uganda, the Kenyan government doesn't provide the nomadic tribes with arms and ammunition. She said if the government would only give them more well water, things would be different.

But Lomukuny said her clan has to take its chances and cross the border.

"I don't care if I lose a child, or my husband, it is a desperate state now," she said. "We have to go."

She looked a reporter straight in the eye.

"If you want to help me," the grandmother said with immense dignity. "Give me a gun."


Starving Kenyans are on the brink... "The Kenyan government has declared a national emergency. Dozens of people have already died in northeastern and eastern Kenya, while dead cattle and other animals dot the landscape. The UN estimates that hunger and thirst killed hundreds of people and tens of thousands of livestock in Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia."


A tip o the blog to News Trolls for this.

Also See:
Free Trade; Hong Kong & Somalia

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Gag Order Over Tax Increases?



King Stephen the Harpocrite has taken his cone of silence politics to their ultimate conclusion, he is now silencing his Ministers so that everyone is singing from his songbook.

Harper's new gag order
London Free Press - 4 hours ago
Retreating into a bunker mentality, the new prime minister has proclaimed that his office must approve all information, comments and even letters to the editor from government officials and cabinet ministers,

This is good old fashioned Alberta-Style politics, so reminiscent of another King.

King Ralph.

Alberta ministers must quit early to seek Klein's job CBC News


Could this new Stalinism in the PMO be because the Tories intend to introduce TAX INCREASES in their new budget?

So says the Canadian Taxpayers Federation;

Yet to finance their tax cut package (highlighted by the GST reduction), the Conservatives have said they’ll raise the bottom income tax rate back up to 16 per cent from 15 per cent. They’ll also cancel the $500 increase in the BPE. This increase would kick in for 2006 and not affect the income tax cut granted for 2005. Nonetheless, should Mr. Harper go this route, he will correctly be labelled a tax-hiker, and rightfully incur the wrath of taxpayers.



More Stories On: Harper


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The Other Seal Hunt


Stageleft has published a particular nasty racist little email that was sent to some Northern folks, the Inuit. It attacks them for seal hunting.

The Inuit who also are affected by the anti-seal hunt activists they have produced a
new pro sustainable development video promoting the Seal Hunt in the North as part of a sustainable fishing/hunting economy.

But of course their video is nothing like the corporate campaign the Green NGO's do because of their deep pockets. Pockets filled annually by the fundraising campaign around the seal hunt.

In 1974 IFAW hired the same advertising agency as Coca-Cola to co-ordinate a $100,000 "Stop the Seal Hunt," campaign. Seal pup products are now banned in Europe and the U.S. Marine Mamal protection Act prevents any importation of seal products into Canada's largest trading partner. With annual revenues of $60 million a year and support from U.S., Canadian and European celebrities, the IFAW represents a publicity juggernaut, Simpson said.

The Reality

http://www.firstcoastnews.com/assetpool/images/0631691931_seal.jpg

The Propaganada Image

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Amongst Northern peoples, those in the Circumpolar Arctic, sealing is part of the traditional economy. The Green NGO's like to claim that the Inuit and other aboriginal peoples are simply dupes of the fur industry! The fact that traditional hunter gatherer economies are based on hunting, duh oh, might have something to do with it of course doesn't cross their minds.

This is a morality play about the angst people in the south feel about the North, urban sophisticates living in the metropoles versus the rural rubes and rednecks who live in the Southerners much cherished 'wilderness".

Its people in the south versus Peoples in the North, and by the way the Newfoundland Hunt is in Labrador where it is part of the traditional way of live of the aboriginals who live there as well as the Fisher folk from the Rock.


Its about old economies based on fishing and hunting which are suffering from underdevelopment, but that underdevelopment, is in the eye of the beholder, sustainable fishing and hunting economies can exist. But not for PETA and others who want to end all use of animals so we can become vegans.

Unfortunately the Green moralists believe that the Hunting and Fishing Folk should pay the price for urbanites to wander in a people-less wilderness.

McCartney called the hunt "barbaric" and a "stain" on the country, and urged Ottawa to replace it with subsidies for fishermen and an eco-tourism industry.

It comes from all those cutesy wilderness movies put out by Walt Disney that generations have grown up on. The ones with the anthropomophic animals that talk. Which maybe why Ms.McCartney almost got bit by a baby seal, because she was probably trying to have a conversation with it.

POSED UNPOSED

Image
Tom Hanson, Associated Press
A seal pup tries to nip at Paul McCartney and his wife Heather as she tries to pet it on the ice floes.


Paul McCartney and his wife Heather pose with a seal pup as part of a high-profile publicity stunt - even though seal pups are not part of the seal hunt and it is illegal to target them. (CP / Tom Hanson)

Paul McCartney and his wife Heather pose with a seal pup as part of a high-profile publicity stunt.
(CP Tom Hanson)

He and his wife posed for photographers while petting whitecoat pups, which are illegal to target.


And its nice to see someone put the Seal Hunt in context;

Seal hunt pales next to Iraq slaughter: senator



Also See:

Seal Hunt Articles 2006

Seal Hunt Articles 2005:

Green Opportunism

Green Party Seal Hunt Flippers

SEAL HUNT DEJA VU

Did Viagra impact the Seal Hunt

A Rational Observation on the Seal Hunt



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Friday, March 17, 2006

V for Anarchy


V for Vendetta is out today, not Guy Fawkes Day but not far off, as it is Saint Paddy's day.

And the links between V and the IRA struggle back in 1916, could be made.

As could links to the current State of Terror that we are facing with our new Security States. Those in power who claim that we are under attack and thus must give up our civil liberties for the good of the State.

Now while this V guy is kinda of violent, he is the opposite of our poor Windsor Smith in 1984. Servility or Liberty.


“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.” Thomas Jefferson


Which makes this review from CTV all the more interesting in that it is well balanced.

At the center of the story is the mysterious V, (Hugo Weaving, The Matrix, Lord of the Rings) a Guy Fawkes mask wearing anarchist who saves a woman named Evey from being raped by state police. After their chance encounter, V inspires her to join his crusade to restore civil liberties through acts of terrorism.

"It's less of a message and more of a question which is 'when if ever is violence justified'? And you can say that there are certain situations when it is justified," Natalie Portman, who plays Evey, told eTalk.

Vendetta explores the idea that one person's terrorist may be another person's freedom fighter.

The debate over the politics of the deed versus mass mobilizations will be taken up again as they did over the Black Bloc.Already some anarchists are planning to leaflet the movie to use it as a chance to clarify that Anarchy really is. Good on them. It will help counter the Anarchist as Terrorist mythology.

THE TERROR LAST TIME
New Yorker, United States - 5 Mar 2006
... When the war was over, his politics shifted. ... Merely by virtue of what the Haymarket eight had said and written about anarchism and dynamite, they were ...

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May 68 Redux

The streets of Paris have ignited in days of rage as students strike against the new employment laws. Reminding us once again of the Paris Maydays of 68. Complete with cops attacking protesters. It's a Flashback; Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

About 250,000 students took to the streets of major cities. Some wore black garbage bags to symbolise their charge that the Government treats young people as disposable workers.The student rallies have worried the Government because of their rapid spread, the threat of participation by trade unions and the historical power of students in France. A student protest that began at the Sorbonne in 1968 led to the resignation of the President, Charles de Gaulle.



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France's newly passed labour law

Due to come into effect next month, it will make it easier to hire and fire young people at a time when the youth unemployment rate averages 23 per cent.

The protesters' anger focuses on provisions that will allow companies to fire employees under 26 at any time during their first two years of work, without cause.

"They're offering us nothing but slavery," said Maud Pottier, 17, a student at Jules Verne High School in Sartrouville, north of Paris.

"You'll get a job knowing that you've got to do every single thing they ask you to do because otherwise you may get sacked. I'd rather spend more time looking for a job and get a real one."

Business leaders complain that existing French labour laws make it virtually impossible to dismiss incompetent employees without giving them prohibitively costly severance package

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Philosophy Update



I have updated links in my blog article; A Philosophical Dilemma

I have included a link to Tony Negri's work on Spinoza;
The Savage Anomaly
THE POWER OF SPINOZA'S METAPHYSICS AND POLITICS

This is an online edition of the full length book.

As well I have included a link to Eric Hollands article Spinoza and Marxism. Enjoy.



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Thursday, March 16, 2006

Dimiti Shostakovich 1906-2006












It is the hundredth birthday of the Russian avante-garde/modernist composer Dimitri Shostakovich.

His work was always heroic, some say bombastic. It was played by the orchestra in Stalingrad as the Germans advanced, and Shostakovich himself composed during the seige of Lenningrad.

The Leningrad Blockade Museum

September 16, 1941

"An hour ago I finished the score for the two movements of a large symphonic composition.

If I succeed in bringing it off, that is if I manage to finish the third and the fourth movements, I'll be able to call the work the Seventh Symphony.

Why am I telling you this?

I am telling you this to show that life in our city is normal.

We are all at our battle stations.

Soviet musicians, my dear numberless comrades in arms, my friends!

Remember, our art is in peril. So let us defend our music, let us work honestly and selflessly!"

Dmitry Shostakovich, speaking in a Leningrad Radio broadcast


His work was critical of the Stalinist regime while a paen to the revolutionary struggles of 1905 and 1917. The hero in his music was not an individual but the people and their struggles. His music ironically spoke to the soul of the listener. His is the voice of the dialectic, the struggle of humanity is also the struggle of the individual. He remains a major Socialist voice in modern music.

He was trashed in the West during the Cold War as a Stalinist hack. Without regard for the rigours of trying to remain within that regime while existing with personal and musical integrity.

As in death, he was fated to be at the heart of controversy during his life. However, if, during the Thirties and Fifties, Shostakovich was subjected to so-called 'right-wing' criticism from official circles professing the most reactionary conservatism, today he often becomes the target of attacks from the 'left', either from those post-war avant-garde adepts who see him as a traditionalist, or from 'truth lovers' bitten by the bug of unmasking, who smirk at his imagined conformity. Today it is very easy to be more Catholic than the Pope. It is more difficult to find what can be called the historical ear -- something that anyone who has pretensions to the title of music historian or music theorist should actually possess. Naturally, it is naive to expect younger generations to be informed of the social experience of the previous generations, for they will never be able to bridge this gap. They hear and see the recent past differently from those who experienced it, and that is not in the least surprising. Nevertheless, those who study the art of the past ought at least to try to correlate it with what used to be social practice during that time. The lack, among the young, of personal knowledge of these matters can be compensated by the study of historical facts and, naturally, as far as possible, by their correct interpretation. Otherwise, distortions -- or, at the least, superficial judgements -- will become etched in stone. To restore the historical truth and take a fresh look at Shostakovich's work are endeavors that are equally imperative today.

Shostakovich was an artist with a complex and tragicfate. Persecuted for almost his entire life and almost sharing the fate of Meyerhold, Mandel'shtam, and [the writer Varlam] Shalamov, he courageously endured hounding and persecution for the sake of what was most important in his life: his art. Occasionally, however, during the most complex conditions of political repression, he had to manoeuver. Without this manoeuvering, there would have been no Shostakovich art at all. Many of those who had started with him perished, while many others were brought to their knees. He survived and persevered, endured everything and, in the end, fulfilled his calling. And we can only bow before his fortitude and steadfastness.

What is important is not only how he is perceived and listened to today, but also who he was for his contemporaries. For those who listened attentively to his strong voice, filled with anxiety and, at times, breaking with despair, Shostakovich became a crucial symbol of intellectual integrity. For many years his music remained a safety valve which, for a few short hours, allowed listeners to expand their chests and breathe freely. At the time, his music was that truly indispensable lungful of freedom and dissidence, not only in its content, but also -- which is no less important -- in its musical form. However, first and foremost, we were grateful to Shostakovich for the fact that during those precious minutes of communion with his music, we were free to remain ourselves -- or, perhaps, to revert to ourselves. The sound of Shostakovich's music was not only always a celebration of high art, but also an interlude of truth. Those who knew how to listen to his music would take it away with them from the concert hall. His music became an emblem of spiritual experience and of hope for the future. It can be said, without exaggerating, that Shostakovich was the authentic conscience of his time. I would suggest that it is our task to carry over that understanding of his work into the present and to instill it into the coming generations of musicians and listeners.

The Dissident
Mark Aranovsky's introductory article in the Shostakovich issue
of Muzykal'naya Akademiya, Winter 1997



COMPOSITIONS by DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH Internet Edition compiled by Onno van Rijen


Listen to: Written With The Heart's Blood

The five parts of Quartet No. 8 depict significant moments -- both positive and negative -- in the composer's life. The piece is dominated by the repeated use of Shostakovich's musical "signature" of D, E flat, C, and B. This recurring motif both binds the piece together and gives it an oppressive, almost inescapable quality. In the second movement (Allegro Molto, featured here as arranged by Barshai for the New Century Chamber Orchestra), the relentless repetition conjures images of prison or endless pursuit: the strings race around each other with a manic urgency, swelling and spreading until they form a seemingly inescapable web. The piece's breathless, unsettling quality influenced both the work of Bernard Hermann, who composed the music for Psycho, and the band Faith No More, who sampled it in "Malpractice," on their 1992 album Angel Dust.





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A little taste

"Wow you are right Hamid that opium is great, thanks for the taste."

"Yep Stephen it gives you something to smile about."

"Better than Timmies."




Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, 2002-2003








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