Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Killer Instinct

This is too stupid for words. Bruno the Bruin who wandered through out Germany, the first wild bear in the country since the 19th century, is hunted and killed. Dumb Bavarians. If they wanted to go Bear hunting they should have come to Alberta.

"That is the stupidest of all solutions," Hubert Weinzierl, president of the German Environmental Protection Association, told reporters. "In other countries, humans and bears coexist in relative harmony. Only in Germany would he be liquidated."

But of course this most wanted of criminals really irritated the Bavarian State officials, so he had to die.
Bruno Taunts his Pursuers: Wanted Bear Visits Bavarian Police Station

Of course now that he is dead the Bavarian State says it will welcome bears in the future. Nein danke.

German officials said they weren't opposed to bears in principle, only misbehaving ones. "If a normal bear finds its way into Bavaria, it is cordially welcome," Bernhard said.

Normal Bears? What the hell is a normal bear? Winnie the Pooh?

And poor Bruno will end up...
, stuffed and offered to Munich's "Mensch und Natur" ("Humans and the Natural Environment") museum where he will go on display alongside the last bear to be shot in Bavaria, 170 years ago.

Natural Justice would demand that when his killer dies he too is stuffed and mounted alongside Bruno, as the idiot who killed the bear.

See: Bears

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Shop Keepers Liberty


Blogging Tory Stephen Taylor interviews Dannielle Smith, the scion of the new right whose column in the Calgary Herald, like her counterpart at the Edmonton Journal; Lorne Gunter, was created when the evil Lord of darkness and all things anti-union, anti-left, heck anti-Canadian, Conrad the Black-hearted purchased the Southam Chain. He viewed the Southam Papers as too left wing so he introduced some balance. Like Gunter and Smith.

When the chain became part of Canwest/Global media group under the Aspers, the right wing ideology spread to their TV news, with Smith hosting their Sunday Politics Talk Show.

Today she has a new job, with the likes of Link Byfield and the Southern Alberta Ranchers lobby, the so called Alberta Property Rights Intitiative. Like Byfield's other front group;
Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy, which all grew out of the deliberate fiscal bankruptcy of the Alberta Report, this one is another attempt to change the Canadian Constitution.

The CCFD
wants a referndum on Same Sex Marriage, the APRI wants Private Property rights enshrined in the constitution. Neither is going to happen.

Taylor claims;
"Danielle Smith has returned to advocacy work for the cause of liberty with the Alberta Property Rights Initiative."

Liberty my ass. This is the liberty of the small shop keeper, who would exploit his workers, the rancher who would expolit his temporary farm workers, and that clique of farmers in the South who want to abolish the Wheat Board. They are in fact opposed to liberty. The liberty of workers to form unions and producers to form cooperatives.

This is the liberty of those who own property and their power over those who do not. As Proudhon said such liberty is based on theft.

And this front group is a lobby for big oil companies like Encana who continue to expolit and pollute Alberta's ground water with their toxic waste from their coal bed Methane experiments. Encana whose past president was Harpers good pal; Gwyn Morgan.

The APRI oppose the communities demand that the Alberta Government regulate groundwater use, claiming that it should be up to the indiviudal property owner and the oil/gas companies. Yeah forget the impact on your neighbours, just make your own private deal. So much for liberty for all.

Ironically they have spent more time lobbying in Ottawa than doing anything in Alberta, which is why Taylor has heard of them and most Albertans have not.

This clique of right winger back slappers always have work avialable to them despite the failure of the original publication they all began as writers for, the Alberta Report. That's because they are the brain trust of the right in Alberta. Not much brains and no one I would trust.







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Hands In Your Pocket


You've seen that ad on TV; the bankers with their hands in someones pocket.

Well in this case the bankers new pal is the Harpocrite government. And they plan to keep their hands in our pockets with his help.

Mr. Harper the bankers friend.


There is a growing optimism in some quarters of Bay Street, however cautious, that Stephen Harper is well-positioned to win a majority government if there is an election early next year. Some influential bank executives believe Mr. Harper is ideologically sympathetic to the industry's merger ambitions, despite the populist bent of his caucus, and that with a majority hold on Parliament he would be willing to deal with the merger file early in his tenure. OECD calls for action on bank mergers


And how do you spell Monopoly? B A N K.


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Monday, June 26, 2006

Poor Jim Dinning


With friends and endorsers like this who needs enemies.


See: Werner Patels

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Political Imbalance

"This isn't a meeting about how much more money the government of Canada is going to transfer to the provinces," Flaherty declared before he sat down for a working dinner in this picturesque tourist town. "It's not just about money."Provinces squabble with Ottawa, each other before fiscal imbalance meeting

"In practice, the Conservative approach would mean paring back Ottawa's role to concentrate mainly on defence, security and foreign affairs while leaving social programs and health care to provincial governments. The implications for Canadians are far-reaching, says University of Ottawa historian Michael Behiels. "Underlying Harper's moves here is a fundamental restructuring of the way the federation has operated for the last 50 years."Ottawa's fiscal finger of fate


The Fiscal Imbalance is just a clever cover for the Conservatives to launch their restructuring of Canada. So lets call a spade a shovel, for the Harpocrites its not a fiscal anything its a political imbalance. They oppose a centralized federalist state. Period. And using the fiscal imbalance is their excuse to bring forward their agenda of devolving power and responsibility to the provinces.

Now some folks might think that is a good idea. But they would be deluded.

As we have seen in practice for the past decade, when the State devolves power and responsibility to lesser forms of government it has always meant they are not doing any such thing. They are simply downloading the costs of maintaining the public sector down the line. Every right wing provincial government in Canada has done this, Klein, Harris, Campbell, Charest, etc.

The core of right-wing liberal 'reinventing government' schemes is decentralization. But before you say that is classic anarchism (that other varient of liberalism), understand this when the Capitalist State speaks of decentralization, it means no such thing. It simply means a way of getting taxpayers to foot the bill through another means of governance and tax collecting.

Whether the scheme is to download service delivery to provinces or municipalities or school and hospitals matters not. Nor does how that service delivery is done, privatization or inhouse unionized workers, it does not reduce the need for the public services, simply moves around who pays. In this case that still comes to you and me, however the differnce is that in the case of privatization the State can claim an arms length relationship with the inevitable cost over-runs.

To allow the provinces to fully fund healthcare, education, etc. will simply shift
the burden to a more localized tax base, while NOT reducing federal taxes one iota.

It will however allow the Conservatives to shift those taxes where they always do, law and order and more military spending.

A clear contradiction for those on the right who claim that they are both Conservative and libertarian.

The Haprocrite Conservatives are neither, nor are they Godwinians , so called minarchists, despite their claims to believe in smaller government.

They are statists whose State is not reduced in size, but militarized, a police state by any other name. This has been the agenda of the right since Reagan and Thatcher. Actually there is nothing new about this right wing agenda, and it ain't the New Right of Murray Rothbard either,it is the same as it has always been historically.






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Church Lady, Not


I found this very funny. Of course I have a twisted sense of humour. Or perhaps my humours are just twisted. Who says lesbians aren't funny. No wait I didn't mean it like that.

A tip o the blog to Vast Left Wing Conspiracy and Omissco



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Anarchist Bios


Here is a listing of anarchist bios I have posted over the past year or so.



Paul Goodman


Kenneth Patchen


Mack Reynolds Lagrange 5

Red Baiting Chomsky



Proudhon



Paul Avirch Anarchist Historian RIP



Black Herstory Month: Lucy Parsons



Chinese Anarchist Author Ba Jin RIP



Ibn Khaldun 14th Century Arab Libertarian


The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress



Anarchist Mayor of Milan



My Favorite Muslim



A NEW AMERICAN REVOLUTION



New Age Libertarian Manifesto



Tags








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Paul Goodman


Before Theodore Rozak defined the counter culture as the social movement of the Sixties and identified it with the libertarian philosophy of self regulation, self development, there was Paul Goodman.

It really was his book Growing Up Absurd that inspired many of us to look at creating a counter culture.

He was seen as one of the fathers of the New Left, giving it a libertarian flavour that the Old Left had rejected.

He was also an accomplished beat poet, thus coming in contact with the likes of Kenneth Patchen and Allen Ginzberg.

An article in Gestalt Review from 1999 has an excellent biography and appreciation of Goodman, his anarchism , and his importance as founder of Gestalt Therapy. The first anti-psychiatry movement in North America.

Here is an exerpt for those unfamilar with Goodman and his work. I have previously published his SOME REMARKS ON WAR SPIRIT





The Contributions of Paul Goodman to the Clinical, Social and Political Implications of Boundary Disturbances
Jack Aylward, Ed.D.

As we approach the millennium, we continue to grapple with
increasingly toxic threats such as environmental pollution, political
tyranny, and corporate domination of the human spirit. Currently, we
are witnessing the development of a health-care delivery system that not
only threatens our professional identities, but ultimately could create a
repressive definition of mental health that replicates the one against
which Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman originally rebelled. Gestalt therapy
theory places importance on creativity, novelty, spontaneity, and
risk in a society that is moving ever closer to repetition, obedience, and
the illusion of security. To meet the challenges, we need not say or do
anything new but simply restate (perhaps more loudly) what is already
present in our literature. To do so, it is imperative that we once again
apply our theoretical model to sociopolitical issues and realities that
contribute to the individual boundary disturbances we deal with in our
psychotherapeutic practices. In this spirit we will sequentially review: (1)
the theoretical and clinical definitions of contact boundary phenomena,
(2) the social nature of self-functioning, and (3) the political implications
in the writings of Paul Goodman.

Given a psychological model that views the individual as innately
healthy and capable, with pathology as a secondary disruption of an
otherwise natural homeostatic equilibrium, Goodman's anarchistic
philosophy is especially resonant with Gestalt therapy theory. This
connection between philosophy and therapy is not unlike Erich Frornrn's
belief in Marxist socialism. For him this philosophy "meant a society
which provides the material basis for the full development of the
individual, for the unfolding of all his human powers, for his full
independence" (Fromm, 1956, p. xiv). In both Fromm and Goodman we
see the belief that society should provide the support for an individual
who is and can be much, rather than one who has much. Optimally,
Goodman envisioned a dynamic unity of human need and social
support, implying as McLeod (1993) does that "the natural hierarchy of
needs arising to seek their fulfillment in the contact that is our very self
means Gestalt is a profoundly social therapy, envisioning and declaring
the naturalness of social and environmental harmony" (p. 28).

In subsequent essays and articles, Goodman focused on political realities
and how such phenomena affected contact boundary functioning.
Far from a utopian view Goodman's view of formal governmental
bureaucracy was that less was more with respect to social and political
structure and its impact on the quality of individual life. Susan Sontag
(1988) described Goodman's social outlook as "a form of conservative
humanistic thinking-doggedly sensitive to everything repressive and
mean while remaining loyal to the limits that protect human growth and
pleasure" (p. xvii). In this sense, Goodman saw that contact boundary
disturbances emanating from repressive and overly developed social
organizations have the potential to sap the spontaneity from human
functioning. Goodman (1994) stated that "society with a big S can do
very little for people except to be tolerable, so they can go on about the
more important business of life" (p. 53). Given that human selfhood was
primarily a social process supported by communication within a community,
political structures were realities needing to be reckoned with.

Mead's conceptualization of self-functioning parallels Goodman's
thinking in this area:

the "I" requires that we protect the rights and freedoms of individuals
as extolled by liberalism, while the "ME" imposes those moral
duties, commitments, and obligations advocated by cornrnunitarianism
[Odin, 1996, p. 371.

Much of Goodman's thinking was influenced by his association with
communitarian philosophers such as Randolph Bourne, Van Wyk
Brooks, and Lewis Murnford. Along with these dissenters within the
progressive intelligentsia of the time who were disappointed in contemporary
liberalism, Goodman was wary of the alienation resulting from
the bureaucracies of advanced industrialism. He, along with Dwight
Macdonald, Dorothy Dey, and C. Wright Mills, supported Brooks's ideal
of "the crafted or interactive self, which found its autonomy by participating
in a public world of culture and experience" (Blake, 1990, p. 141).

Consistent with the process functioning of self-formation in Gestalt therapy
theory, Brooks saw the "crafted self" as a kind of conversation with
the social and natural environments. Social and political realities
provided an ongoing ground for the alienation/identification processes
of contact functioning. In Confusion and Disorder" (197%) Goodman
outlined the potential impact that social structure can have on human
distress.

But if advanced peoples have indeed been colonized by their own
advances, they are confused and have lost their ability to pick and
choose what they can assimilate. We certainly manifest a remarkable
rigidity in our social institutions, an inability to make inventive
pragmatic adjustment. And perhaps worse, the sociology and politics
that we do think up have the same technological, centralizing,
and urban style that is causing our derangement [p. 2351.

The importance Goodman placed on organismic self-regulation and
social functioning also reflected the political thinking of such anarchists
as Mikhail Bakunin and Prince Peter Kropotkin. To Goodman, anarchy
epitomized the absence of authority, not the absence of order. In his
introduction to Kropotkin's Memoirs of a Revolutionist Goodman (1968)
points out the potential for disruptive contact functioning that can result
from an overly organized and impersonal political structure:
The real enemies have proved to be the State (whose health is war),
over-centralized organization, the authoritarian personality of
people. The call is for grass-roots social structures, spontaneity and
mutual aid, direct action and doing it yourself, education for selfreliance
and agitation for freedom [p. xxi].

Goodman was sensitive to the dehumanization of the industrial
revolution, to the accompanying division of labor and, to anything that
smacked of tyranny over someone else's body. Like other anarchist
thinkers, Goodman was fanatic in his defense of the untrammeled person
whom he felt to be best nurtured by an innovative way of life and a
nonrepressive political doctrine.

In Anarchism and Revolution (1977) he wrote:
In anarchist theory, the word revolution means the process by which
the grip of authority is loosed, so that the functions of life can
regulate themselves without top-down direction or external
hindrance. The idea is that except for emergencies and a few special
cases, free functioning will find its own right structures and coordination
[p. 2151.



As a bisexual and free love advocate in the closeted fifties his conservative individualism, as Alyward calls it, is reflective of the need to defend individual liberty in light of a society that was intolerant of homosexuality/bisexuality. Hence his critique of Society with a Large 'S" as being as repressive as the State with a big "S".

Like
Wilhelm Reich who influenced him, he can be considered a father of the sexual revolution. And he offers a good counterbalance to Reichs cultural heterosexism.

Through a Columbia professor he was invited to teach at the University of Chicago while he earned his Ph.D in Literature, but he was fired from his job (as he was fired from every teaching job in his life) because he insisted on his right to fall in love with his students. He was never in the closet about his bisexuality and saw no reason to hide it even in the face of the trouble it caused him in that less permissive time.Paul Goodman's Biography

Along with education, Goodman expounded on themes of alienation, community, and sexuality. He opposed censorship of pornography, believed monogamy was oppressive, and advocated sexual freedom for children and adolescents. Goodman also challenged the boundaries between public and private, consistently linking his political and psychological theories with his personal experiences. In "The Politics of Being Queer," an essay written near the end of his life, he addressed both societal homophobia and his own bisexuality. PAST Out: Who was Paul Goodman?

Like the anarchist educators, starting with Francisco Ferrer, and Summerhill founder A.S. Neil, Goodman opposed formalist, institutional education. He saw it for what it was programing the individual for the needs of the State.

"In all societies, both primitive and highly civilized, until quite recently most education of most children has occurred incidentally. Adults do their work and other social tasks; children are not excluded, are paid attention to, and learn to be included. The children are not "taught." In many adult institutions, incidental education is taken for granted as part of the function …" (Essay: "The Present Moment in Education," April 10, 1969.)


For listing of his writings available on the web see Paul Goodman

Further Bios:

The Radical Individualism of Paul Goodman by Richard Wall

Nature Heals: The Psychological Essays of Paul Goodman ...

Anarchist Encyclopedia: Paul Goodman (1911-1972)

Paul Goodman (writer) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Workshop to decipher Paul Goodman





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anarchism

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Capitalists Fail To Invest In Canada


No tax breaks for corporations until they actually invest all of their capital in productivity; that is workers and technology. Currently they are being funded by tax breaks by provinces like Ontario, Federal tax breaks, unionized pension funds, CPP pension funds, and shucks workers concession bargaining. Instead of investing in productivity, they are hiding their capital away in Income Trusts, which are tax avoidance schemes. All their moaning, groaning and whining is just that.

Canada as a country is failing to equip its workers as well as counterparts elsewhere in the world, and Ontario is a major reason for that failure.The average worker in the OECD will benefit from some $11,200 in new plant and equipment in 2006, and the average worker in the United States will get $13,000.The average Canadian worker, by contrast, will get $9,800 of new plant and equipment, and the average Ontario worker only $8,400. This means that for every dollar of new investment enjoyed by the typical U.S. worker in 2006, his or her Ontario counterpart will get only 65 cents, even less than the Canadian average at 75 cents.Ontario's dilapidated toolbox


Also See:

You Are Worth More Than You Earn



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Right To Work No Thanks

Housefrau and editor of the Financial Post Diane Francis proposes Right To Work laws as a solution to the current labour shortage in Canada. No surprise there, this is typical of the right wing, and you can expect more lobbying from the right for RTW with the Harpocrite government. Already Monte Solberg is expanding the use of temporary worker status for the big Tar Sands companies to break union contracts. But in her article she quotes a union worker from the UK.

What follows is a thoughtful letter from union member John Gilmurray:

The real problem with labour policy in Canada is the union "local" system. On a recent visit to England and Ireland I was surprised that there are no locals, just one trade union congress for each country.

Everybody is hired directly by a construction company based on their resume. There are no grandfather clauses, no middle-aged white guys hanging around a union hall dishing out jobs to friends. Supply and demand are the rule. Thousands in Dublin have vacated jobs as teachers and bank clerks to become carpenters and electricians. No wonder they have one of the the best economies in the world.


What they have in Europe is Industrial Unions, and one should be careful of what one asks for. While Frau Francis may think this is a good idea, she would do well to remember that those of us in the Revolutionary Workers Movement also agree that industrial organizing is better than the outdated craft/trade unionism of the construction and building trades.

One Big Union, is the call to smash the old craft union monopolies in the work place that divide workers and create one big union for all workers. Including those who work in the offices, etc. that are often overlooked by the craft unions. Including temporary and immigrant workers. It was the temporary and immigrant workers exploited by the bosses at the turn of last century that built the most radical union in North America; the Industrial Workers of the World, IWW, the wobblies.

What needs to be done in Alberta is One Big Union of all workers, an end to craft/trade and competing union organizations. Since the orginal Canadian OBU began here in Alberta it makes sense that it should rise again from the ashes during this labour crisis.

Then we could build the General Strike to overthrow capitalism and its state. I don't think that is quite what Frau Francis had in mind though.



Also See:

The Return of Right To Work


Canada's Right Wing Union


This is Class War



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