Saturday, February 17, 2007

Gnostic Anarchists


Light and Life

The Online Journal of Rev. Thomas Langley

Rise, Prophet!

"Musings, meditations and poems of a mystic anarchist (with some gnostic Christian, Zen Buddhist and Advaita Vedantic thought thrown in for good measure)"


See

Anarchism

Gnostic

liberation theology


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enMasse

Came across the alternative to Babble at Rabble.....still going strong with a blog and discussion forum.









Q:How did enMasse come to be?
A:Well... you'd better take a seat... Where to begin?

EnMasse came into being after Audra Williams, the moderator of the babble discussion forums at rabble.ca was fired by the Management Committee by e-mail during a series of life crises. Audra was an extremely well-liked moderator and was largely responsible for the creation of babble at the time of the Quebec City protests in 2001 and for its success until April of 2006, when she was summarily fired.

After firing Audra, the Management Committee proceded to adopt an extremely hardnosed attitude towards her and towards outraged members of the community, of which there were many. The Management Committee refused to negotiate and some members of the community began actively spamming the discussion forum in an effort to secure Audra's re-instatement. At the same time as the spamming of the discussion forums, a movement for a "strike" against babble developed, largely led by the babbler with the handle Kevin Laddle. The strikers refused to post to babble until Audra was re-instated.

The "Babble Strike" movement grew and on April 10, 2006, a new discussion forum was created on a server paid for by The JF. This forum was initially known as the Babble Strike Forum (BSF). In the first two days over 150 babblers left to join the BSF. At first the BSF was used as a forum to debate the response to the actions of the rabble.ca Management Committee and to debate the possible future of the BSF as an independent progressive discussion forum.

As it became increasingly clear that the rabble.ca Management Committee would never agree to the re-instatement of Audra or any of the accountability and democracy reforms demanded by the babble strikers, a consensus developed to forge ahead with the creation of a new progressive space on the internet. At that time, the site was re-named "Temporary Left Wing Board" while a decision was made regarding the naming of the site.

On April 28th of 2006, only eighteen days after the site's founding, the name "enMasse," often shortened to EM, was chosen by a significant margin in a vote of the membership.

EM has suffered through growing pains and several unfortunate and painful divisions among the membership leading to the departure of a significant number of members. However, as of September 2006 seems to be on a steady footing and is a thriving and vital community.



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New Math


This has to be some form of new math, right.

Terrorism suspect Mohamed Mahjoub will soon be living again in Toronto with his wife and two young sons after spending almost seven years behind bars without charges.


Because if he has been in jail for seven years on terrorism charges, counting backward on my fingers that means;he was arrested in 2000 a year before 9/11 and two years before the Security Act was passed and several years before they built Gitmo North in Kingston.

And if he was not allowed to know the charges against him or see the evidence in denial of habeas corpus, then we already had a paranoid security state in place in Canada before 9/11!!!

My gawd that means we have been living in a police state for seven years and it had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or 9/11.

But thats nothing new;
Canada's First Internment Camps




h/t to
verbena-19

SEE

Why The Tories Want Tory Judges

CIA

Torture

RCMP

CSIS

Arar

Crime


Terrorism



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Friday, February 16, 2007

Who Said This?


But the democratic part of democratic conservatism reflects our insistence on democratic accountability and reform in government.

We believe that Parliament must be reformed so that individual MPs can have a meaningful voice; that an appointed, patronage-ridden Senate is a disgrace; and that citizens must be able to have a direct say over governing their country through such means as initiative and referenda.

This is the Reform part of our heritage, and this conviction that government must be more open, more free, and more democratic is a central part of our political creed.



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Free Book Online: Rosa Luxemburg and South Africa

Newly released online as a PDF



Capitalist accumulation as a whole, as an actual historical process,
has two different aspects. One concerns the commodity market
and the place where surplus value is produced – the factory,
the mine, the agricultural estate… The other aspect of the
accumulation of capital concerns the relations between capitalism
and the non-capitalist modes of production which start making
their appearance on the international stage. Its predominant
methods are colonial policy, an international loan system – a policy
of spheres of interest – and war. Force, fraud, oppression, looting
are openly displayed without any attempt at concealment…
Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital, p. 432.

Capital now devours human beings: it becomes a cannibal. Every
human activity must now become capital and bear interest, so
that investment-seeking capital can live: schools, kindergartens,
universities, health systems, energy utilities, roads, railways, the
post office, telecommunications and other means of communication,
etc. The anarcho-capitalist dreams go even further. Even the police
and legislation are to be transformed into capital investments. One
receives a licence to live and to participate in any of the spheres
of society only if one pays to capital the fees required in the form
of interest. Capital becomes a ‘superworld’ to which sacrificial
victims must be brought.
Ulrich Duchrow and Franz Hinkelammert,
Property for people, not for profit, p.148.

These two citations present in a nutshell the basic traits of capitalist
accumulation from its origins to its current forms – the dominance of the
capitalist forms in the arena of material production, the continuous use
of coercion, violence and theft in order to increase the rate of profit, as
well as the intrinsic tendency of capitalism to subjugate all aspects of
social life to the reign of profit.

The 3rd Rosa Luxemburg Political Education Seminar, jointly
organised by the Centre of Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-
Natal in Durban and the Southern African Regional Office of the Rosa
Luxemburg Foundation in Johannesburg, was held on March 2nd – 4th
2006 in Durban. The Seminar examined these general characteristics of
capitalist accumulation within the global, regional and local context.
That context is shaped, on the one hand, by the growing impact of
a corporate driven globalisation, but also the expansion of South African
capital into neighbouring countries, the emergence of new forms of
‘primitive accumulation’ under the label of Black Economic Empowerment,
and the ongoing commodification and privatisation of public services.
On the other hand, there is a growing movement which not only
resists the commercialisation of all sphere of human life but strives to
build alternatives – to create ‘another world’ which is not only possible
but necessary.

The success of the Seminar is due to many contributors. Very
valuable inputs were made by overseas guests including Elmar Altvater,
Nicola Bullard, Massimo De Angelis, Ulrich Duchrow and Gill Hart.
Other crucial interventions came from scholar-activists from the region
including Jeff Guy, Ntwala Mwilima, Prishani Naidoo and Greg Ruiters.
But this alone would not have been enough to make the seminar the
thrilling event it was. The other factor was vibrant interaction from the
floor. Contributions by activists from townships and social movements
– and the often forgotten inconspicuous work of the staff members of the
organising institutions – created an atmosphere of rigorous debate and
mutual encouragement.

This book contains some of the contributions to the 3rd Rosa
Luxemburg Political Education Seminar. The materials gathered here
will hopefully provide a valuable source of inspiration for activists and
will encourage them to extend their studies on other important writings
which form part of our huge theoretical heritage. However, these texts
can never fully reflect the lively spirit of interaction and solidarity that
prevailed throughout the event. To experience this unique feeling it was
essential to be there.

See:

Marxism

Imperialism

Africa

State Capitalism in the USSR



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Merck Tax Rip Off


Merck still has a $1.76 billion tax dispute with Canadian authorities, and has filed an appeal with the Canada Revenue Agency that is expected to be reviewed this year, spokesman Raymond Kerins said.

The pharmaceutical giant disclosed both tax cases in November in a routine Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Merck said the Canadian dispute "related to certain intercompany pricing matters."

Tax and accounting analyst Robert Willens of Lehman Brothers said in such cases drugmakers generally sell medicines at low cost to subsidiaries in countries with lower tax rates, which can then mark up the prices and keep more profit after taxes.

Merck is not the only Big Pharma company to get caught out engaging in this tax swindle known as transfer pricing. It's based on off shoring ones corporation or personal taxes in a tax haven thus avoiding paying taxes in the country of operation. Something the Irving's have done for years.

We have been participating in OECD for 20 years now on transfer pricing guidelines for instance. That work is critical to having a set of international rules that work for everybody.

We do try and understand the way that businesses operate and certainly there are many needs a company will have for offshore treasury functions. We start to get a bit upset about these when we find that they aren’t really carrying out real treasury functions, that there aren’t, possibly, real people there or very few people there and very few facilities for them to do this work. That is when we get into arguments as to whether or not it is a genuinely commercial function of the group or whether or not it is some sort of tax mitigation or tax planning.




See:

Big Pharma Rip Off

The Mulroney Legacy

AIDS


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Canada Who?


George Bush does it again. After 9/11 he forgot us. Now he does it again when calling for a new surge in Afghanistan. So maybe our being there is not as important as the Harpocrites think it is. And maybe their new relationship with Bush ain't much different than our old relationship with Bush.

President George W. Bush called for an all-out allied effort Thursday to defeat the Taliban
but angered some in Canada by failing to mention its role in the deadly southern part of Afghanistan. Mr. Bush singled out for praise countries that have recently pledged extra forces or equipment as a spring offensive looms – countries like Norway, Britain, Poland, Turkey, Denmark, Greece and Iceland.

See:

Bush



Afghanistan


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Why The Tories Want Tory Judges


Harper admits he wants more law-and-order judges

So that they can stop liberal judges from doing this;

Yesterday in Toronto, a judge ruled it didn't make any sense to keep a sick, 46-year-old man who has not been charged with any crime locked up for almost seven years.

We haven't gained our equilibrium yet. Egyptian refugee claimant Mohamed Mahjoub may be able to rejoice now that Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley has allowed him to be detained under house arrest rather than in a special jail built just outside of Kingston. But there are still two other immigrants there who have been imprisoned for years without charge.

This won't solve all of the defects of the anti-terror laws. The legislation continues to give the government sweeping powers to outlaw any organization it wishes – and then treat anyone who has ever been a supporter of such an organization as a terrorist.

The word "terrorist" is defined so broadly that it can include not just those who commit or plan terrorist acts but those who use symbols associated with terrorism.

See

Statist Anti-Terrorism Act

Paranoia and the Security State

CIA

Torture

RCMP

CSIS

Arar

Crime


Terrorism



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Conservatives Soft On Porn


Since the Conservative Government denied Telus the chance to become an Income Trust they have turned to a new source of profit; cellphone porn.

And what do we hear from the Party in Power that once accused Paul Martin of being soft on kiddie porn?

Nada, nothing, silence.

After all for laissez faire Industry Minister Maxime Bernier it's just another choice in the telecom market place.

As for the Minister in Charge of the CRTC; Bev Oda, well like the Canadian Television Fund it's probably a matter best left up to the CRTC.

Are we shocked at the pervasive liberalism of a supposedly social conservative Law & Order party now governing us?

Not really after all its just a matter of realpolitik, just like their promotion of lung cancer with tax breaks for Big Tobacco.

See:

Telus

CRTC


Bernier

Phone

Income Trusts

Bev Oda


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Radical Capitalists Not So Radical


Louis Rosetto, the "radical capitalist" who founded Wired magazine, is not a 'libertarian" despite what the Wall Street Journal says, he is an Ayn Rand capitalist apologist as is his magazine.

Wired Magazine in the nineties predicted that high tech capitalism was booming and would do so for the next 25 years. And then the dot.com bubble burst.

And yet the article made it onto the market as a book. A self fulfilling prophecy for the pre-Enron generation in Silicon Valley.

For the most part, the book lacks historical perspective--unless you count the authors' use of ''future history.'' For much of the book, they write as if they were looking back from the 21st century, giving their arguments an undeserved aura of certainty. This conceit may confound serious readers, for it produces a bizarre blend of real and imaginary companies in the index. For example, New York Times is followed there by a listing for Nippon Nano, a fictitious Japanese nanotechnology giant supposedly operating in the middle of the next century.

And we should give credence to these dweebs who call themselves 'libertarians" when in reality they are merely apologists for the newest regime of robber baron capitalism.

Like most of the Utopian idealists of the right they believe in what Ayn Rand called; Capitalism The Unknown Ideal. And that is what it is, an unknown ideal because the historical reality of capitalism clashes with their Walt Disney notions of idealized capitalism.

There has never been a free market under capitalism, because capitalism dominates markets, it abhors freedom and demands monopoly. It was in fact capitalism that created the State, the very state these dweebs protest against. If they had their idealized free market, capitalism would again create a State to to regulate competition and allow for the powers that be to gain a monopoly, which is how real life capitalism operates.

Capitalism as a "mode of production," Marx argued, is a historically new and distinct form of human society. True, in both the ancient world and feudalism there were "capitalists." That is, there was trade and money, there were merchants profiting from buying and selling. But these, by themselves, were insufficient to establish capital as the ruling principle and regulator of society.

To understand a mode of production, Marx suggested, we must look to the very core of society, and specifically to the way that surplus is pumped out of the direct producers. In previous forms of class society, exploitation took a definite form. The characteristic dominant social relation was that between lord and peasant, with the peasant family laboring more or less under its own self-direction and compelled, by force, to hand over surplus products and surplus labor to its exploiters.

In capitalism, by contrast, the dominant class relationship is that between capitalist and worker. The worker unlike the peasant is radically "dispossessed." Where the peasant family could sustain itself on the products of its own labor, modern workers cannot, for they lack direct access to the very means to live. They cannot feed themselves from their labor on the land, nor sell the products of their own labor, for they have access to neither land nor the tools and materials required for modern production. Instead, they must hire out the one thing they own - their "labor power," their human creative capacities - to employers in return for money wages, which they can spend purchasing the means to satisfy their needs. The principles of the market, money, exchange, profit, and the like thus penetrate into the very inner fabric of capitalist society in a way that was simply not true for earlier forms of society. The key to the emergence of capitalism was something new: the creation of this radically dispossessed figure, the wage worker.



h/t to
Diogenes Borealis


See:

Monopoly Capitalism in Cyberspace





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