Pettigrew Defeat a Warning

The following article in The Rabble shows what ought to have been done to the warmonger Michael Ignatiev. A similar campaign could still derail his leadership quest.

“On Monday, Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew was unseated by electors in the Montreal riding of Papineau. Pettigrew's defeat comes on the heels of a two-month campaign by Haiti Action Montreal and Le Comité Haïtien Pour Les Élections Fédérales 2006, urging Pettigrew's constituents to hold him accountable for Canada's role in the 2004 overthrow of democracy and subsequent human rights disaster in Haiti. From December until voting day, activists handed out over 12,000 flyers and put up over 2,000 posters in the former minister's riding. The two groups organized a string of demonstrations, confronting Pettigrew whenever he appeared in public. On at least one occasion, Pettigrew cancelled an appearance due to the presence of demonstrators.”
by Haiti Action January 25, 2006

The Federal Election

Well, Anus Lips finally got what he wanted – to be Bush’s Kay-nuk Quisling. Is it a coincidence that Harper becomes PM only two months ahead of a possible Neoconazi attack on Eye-ran? (1) Will Bush’s little sock puppet get us involved in this mess, like he wanted to in Eye-raq? The Canadian mass media, owned by two companies both in the hands of neocons, have been pimping Harper and his Supposed-Tories for months now. They were sooo unhappy, poor things, that we didn’t get involved in the last war, so they are trying to make damned sure we get into the next one.

Only a few weeks ago, the populist Evo Morales got elected by a landslide in Bolivia. THEY get a populist who says he will stand up to the Gringos and democratize the economy. (2) WE get a Quisling who wants to enslave us to the Corporate State. The only good point is that it will be a minority government, so maybe the damage can be minimized. It should be noted that the left advanced considerably – not that the NDP is much of a left – but nonetheless this seems to be part of the global tendency to reject neocon ideology.

Perhaps even worse than Harper’s partial victory, is Michael Ignatiev’s victory as a Liberal candidate. This member of the US War Party is being touted as a possible future Liberal leader. It’s not hard to see what’s going on here. The Neocons are attempting to capture both parties for their war plans and reproduce as closely as possible in Canada the situation in the US - two parties with identical viewpoints except for minor shadings and all other views marginalized. Here is where the anti-war movement can have a political impact and derail these fiendish plans. The Ig should not be able to make a public appearance without being surrounded by demonstrators who denounce him as a Gringo stooge and warmonger. Make him a political liability, rather than a (pseudo) intellectual asset.

(1) Now that the Bush-shites taken over the Canadian state, we may as well talk like them

(2) He is not a state socialist, but espouses a form of libertarian populism “In a 2002 interview, Mr. Morales told The New York Times that the solution to Bolivia's economic troubles was "communal socialism," having peasant communes run mineral and metals mines and agriculture.” (NEW YORK TIMES January 22, 2006 - BOLIVIA'S LEADER SOLIDIFIES REGION'S LEFTWARD TILT By Juan Forero and Larry Roher.)

SDS RIDES AGAIN!

A student IWW member along with other students at both college and high school level have restarted the American radical student organization, Students For A Democratic Society (SDS). According to the Indymedia article:

“New York, NY. Several chapters of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) announced today, Monday, January 16, 2006, their intent to form a
national organization and hold the first SDS national convention since 1969. "It seemed appropriate to make this announcement today, on the observed Martin Luther King day", said SDS regional organizer Thomas Good.
"We have an anti-war movement that is addressing the issue of stopping the bloodletting in Iraq but the civil rights issue remains unaddressed", he added. The national convention is scheduled for Summer 2006 and will be preceded by a series of regional conferences occurring on the Memorial Day weekend.

The newly formed SDS national organization was the idea of a student
anti-war activist who contacted other student and veteran organizers. Good joined the new SDS when Stonington High School (Connecticut) senior Pat Korte contacted him with the idea of linking nascent SDS chapters into a national structure. “ To read more
Click Here.

SDS web site

The Whiteman’s Black Magic

We have no right to be here. Of course, we are here now and can’t be expected to pack up and go back to Europe, Africa and Asia. But that doesn’t make being here legit. Since the Right Of Conquest is not considered valid other means had to be found to legitimize the killing and displacing of millions of Aboriginal Peoples. Cut thru all the legal huffing and puffing and you discover what can only be considered irrational, black magical thinking.

The most grotesque example of this was shortly after Columbus arrived in America. The Pope divided the so-called New World between Spain and Portugal. This colossal arrogance could be taken seriously in an age of superstition. After all, the Pope was supposedly the Big Guy’s rep on earth and thus some of His miraculous powers brushed off on the Bishop of Rome. So the Pope magically disposed of half the Earth’s surface and the untold millions of people who inhabited it.

The Big Guy’s allegedly divine powers also descended on down to monarchs, who were seen as His earthly secular reps. (1) Kings would induct certain individuals, leaders of expeditions, to have the authority to claim “new lands” for the crown. This was, of course, mere magical folderol, but like any black magic it ‘works’ so long as you believe in it.

Thus we come to the following curious situation.

Imperial Government Agent;
“We are building a railway here. You have to get off this land.”

Indian;
“It’s our land, not yours. Go build a railroad on YOUR property!”

Imperial Government Agent;
“No it isn’t. This land belongs to the Great White Mother in London”

Indian;
“We have been here since time began, and never gave our land to anyone.”

Imperial Government Agent:
“It doesn’t matter what you think. According to statutes blah, blah, blah, ad nauseum, you are a British subject and therefore must obey the Laws of the Realm. You either get off this land or you shall be arrested!”

There are other forms of ruling class black magic. Consider the work contract. (sic) Here you have a situation of total inequality - a small minority of wealthy, powerful industrialists on the one hand, and a mass of laborers whose choice is work or starve to death, on the other. Yet, with a mere flick of that ol’ black magic wand - abracadabra, presto, bingo, you have “freedom of contract”! Then there are those magic laws that attempt to stop or regulate age-old behavior. Simply by passing a law the black magicians try to stop people using cannabis, something they have been doing for the last 10,000 years.

It IS black magic they indulge in. Black magic has to do with power, which means power over other people, thus is a form of psychic imperialism. (White magic has to do with attaining a higher state of consciousness, and has nothing to do with dominating other people)

All black magic is based upon threats and intimidation. But the Whiteman’s black magic isn’t only of a psychological or superstitious kind, but one backed up by whips, chains, guns and gallows. A rather practical black magic, you might say!

1. Who exactly this Big Guy is, is an open question. A Being that glorifies greed, theft, torture, war, genocide and vengeance, cannot be the same Being as the one found in the Sermon On The Mount. Must be another Being. “Pleased ta meet cha, hope ya guessed my name!”

Why Food Ought To Be More Expensive

I can hear the yelling now. “Food more expensive! What about the poor?” No doubt, the latter exclamation coming from those kind folks who think Walmart helps the less fortunate. (1) But bear with me. As I explained in “How We Get Robbed” housing and transportation costs are about double what they ought to be. Furthermore, the people who benefit from this extortion are not “the ordinary folks”, but developers, auto manufacturers, politicians and bureaucrats. If housing and transportation cost half what they do now, as they ought to, people could pay double for food and still be many thousands of dollars the richer. The people to benefit from this food cost increase would not be the wealthy, but genuine “ordinary folks” like small farmers and agricultural workers.

Let’s face it, “cheap food” is a fraud. The true costs are kept down in a number of artificial ways. One way was to deliberately destroy the small farm and replace it with vast petroleum, machinery and pesticide-based agribusiness. This was done, in no small measure, by government policy. The environmental cost of all of this is high, and we, the tax payer pay for it. The petroleum and chemical industries, those major components of agribiz, are themselves state-aided in a variety of ways. Agribusiness costs are socialized while the profits are privatized.

Another method has been to truck produce thousands of miles from “cheap” growing areas like Mexico. All this trucking is based upon the availability of artificially cheap petroleum and state-built highways. The general quality of the food has also declined due to agribusiness methods and growing for shipping rather than taste. Cheap pork, chicken and eggs have come at the expense of the animals involved, cruelly kept in cages, rather than free range like 50 years ago.

The humungous agribusiness “farms” require a lot of hired labor, far more than would be necessary if farms were small and worked by families or partners. To keep costs down wages are kept low. Farm workers are imported from the Caribbean and Latin America to do the jobs that Canadians and Americans won’t do because the wages and working conditions are too poor. Yet, at the same time, thousands of North Americans are unemployed. A true cost of food would have to include decent wages, working and living conditions for those who pick and hoe. If this were the case North Americans would take these jobs. (2)

Deliberate government agribusiness policies have driven thousands of people – ex-farmers and farm laborers – into the cities where many become members of a kind of sub-proletariat. Small towns and villages become devastated as a result of population loss. All this comes at a cost, born by the taxpayer, once more – a cost which is not calculated into food prices. Reversing this process, by encouraging a return to small scale, sustainable agriculture would help eliminate these hidden costs.

Within living memory, large cities were fed by market gardens on the outskirts. Urban sprawl, forced upon us by the same criminal elements who encouraged agribusiness, eliminated these and cities became dependent on food trucked from afar. Remaining truck gardens or farms on the outlying areas beyond the suburban blight could not compete and so went under. True cost of food would encourage the return of the truck garden, and indeed, much produce could be grown in suburban back yards. As well, as food rose in price to its true cost, more and more people would chose to grow their own, a practice conducive to both physical and mental health. This would also help mitigate the effects of Peak Oil which is going to sharply raise the price of that “cheap” imported food anyway.

For a good article on corporate agriculture and how it is state-supported see
So Called Green Revolution

1. Pseudo-libertarians and neocrazies regularly attack the critics of Walmart for opposing the poor. Funny coming from the same folks who like smashing unions, off-shoring jobs and corporatizing tax-payer paid for institutions.
2. Tens of millions of people are voluntary agricultural laborers. They do it for pleasure and for the delicious fruit and vegetables it produces. It is called back yard gardening. If agricultural labor was more like back yard gardening, you wouldn’t need to import voluntary slaves to do it.

How We Got Robbed Pt. 2

There are several ways in which the cost of housing and transportation got jacked up. The most important of these is the deliberate creation of suburban sprawl. But before I go into that, what is the reason people want to live in the burbs as compared to the city? I suspect the reason is that they want space - a yard to grow flowers and vegetables, to have barbecue parties and for some, a swimming pool. Can't blame anyone for wanting space, seems a natural enough desire. But must the need for a yard be met only in the present wasteful and therefore costly way?

In a contemporary suburb at least half the lot is unnecessary. Houses are plunked in the middle. If they were near the street as most older houses are, you could have the same size back yard on a lot maybe one-third the length. Ranch style houses make no sense in a climate that is either cold or damp, but look at how many of these sit lengthwise, parallel with the street, making the lots wider than need be. Build one and a half or two stories if you want floor space and your lot can be that much smaller. Suburban streets are now as wide as what highways were back in the 1950's. The larger the lot - the more it costs. The greater the sprawl, the more it costs for municipalities to install utilities and therefore the greater the taxes.

There is also the tendency to overbuild. The big families of the late '50's-early '60's were raised in 1100 sq. foot dwellings. This was jacked to 2000 sq ft in the 1980's. Today you have the imbecility of the mini-mansion. People with one child are rattling around in 4000 sq. ft. barns. Every addition square foot is at least another $150 added to the cost. Smaller, older houses are often bulldozed to make room for these future white elephants.

The insane way these new "communities" are designed also makes for expense. Work and consumption are separated from living space - often by many miles. Shopping centers are surrounded by acres of parking lots, as are the "technoparks".

Rather than integrating apartment buildings and condos into the street along with the duplexes and SFD's, they are set down in the middle of vast windswept lawns, and the inevitable parking lots. Sprawl makes it too expensive for municipalities to run an efficient bus system, so people must rely on cars, which accounts for the high cost of transportation. Much of the wealth spent on transit is wasted. Rather than expensive expressways, rather than unnecessary tunneling for rapid transit, they could run light rail at ground level, but don't.

Consider an alternative - much denser, integrated villages outside of the city connected to the center by light rail. One car per family and dwellings at half the price. If you wanted to put a "house and a yard" into virtually everyone's hands, you could factory built 1000 sq. ft. two story plus basement row houses having a 1000 sq. ft yard. This works out to 22 houses per acre, rather than 5 to 7 in your typical burb.

Everyone knows that if you buy a house for $200,000, you will end up shelling out at least twice that before your mortgage is up. The unnecessarily high cost of mortgages is another feature which jacks up the price of housing. If you artificially inflate housing costs, as mentioned above, then slap on a 4-10% interest rate, it will be difficult for most people to afford housing. There is no reason why loans for a primary residence for the average income person should not be granted at cost - say a maximum of two percent. (1)

1. This figure would break down to one percent to cover handling costs and one percent to help build the fund for future loans. Wealthy people and the purchasers of secondary dwellings would get bank rate. Average income and below would get loans at cost. Those between the average and the wealthy would be assisted on a graduated income scale. To stop speculators no one could sell a dwelling purchased at cost loan for five years without a financial penalty. The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Association, a government institution, already assists mortgages, a more radical or “Proudhonian Peoples Bank” type institution, could put dwellings in everyone’s hands.

For further reading see: "Room For Thought - Rethinking Home And Community Design" by Avi Friedman

Eminent Domain Abuse

Kevin Carson’s Mutualist Blog
has a good article on how big box stores and their municipal political pimps use eminent domain to steal ordinary folks property. Ties in well with “How We Got Robbed”, methinks. See
Big Box Eminent Domain Abuse