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Evidence from youtube, makes a concise movie about Evolution and Intelligent Design.
From a recent interview of Noam Chomsky by Michael Learner –
ML: […]What path is rational for a movement seeking to build a world of environmental sanity, social justice, and peace, yet facing such a sophisticated, powerful, and well-organized social order?
NC: […]At the moment we can’t realistically talk about challenging global capital, because the movements that might undertake such a task are far too scattered and atomized and focused on particular issues. But we can try to confront directly what global capital is doing right now and, on the basis of that, move on to further achievements.
For example, it’s no big secret that in the past thirty years there has been enormous concentration of wealth in a very tiny part of the population, 1 percent or even one-tenth of 1 percent, and that has conferred extraordinary political power on a very tiny minority, primarily [those who control] financial capital, but also more broadly on the executive and managerial classes. At the same time, for the majority of the population, incomes have pretty much stagnated, working hours have increased, benefits have declined — they were never very good — and people are angry, hostile, and very upset. Many people distrust institutions, all of them; it’s a volatile period, and it’s a period which could move in a very dangerous direction — there are analogues, after all […]
Noting the concentration of wealth and concentration of power must be the first step in realizing the imbalance growing within Canadian society. Chomsky is referring to the US of course, but we in Canada are stripping down the balancing factors that makes Canadian society egalitarian and thus a better, safer place to live. The social redistribution of wealth is an important feature of Canadian society and must be maintained, the Harper government needs to reaffirm this corner stone of our society lest we follow the Americans into their hellish free-market dystopia.
Americans are not fond of their particular slice of hell either…
Liberty in the land of the brave, and the home of the free seems to be missing a clause somewhere because liberty is not really working well for women, especially if looking for access to reproductive health services such as abortion. The Alternet article lists the top 10 states where Abortion is virtually illegal. For me this is a bottom 10 list, and I will highlight the lowlights of this particular list.
“1) Idaho. Even though the constitutional right to abortion has been established for 38 years, a woman in Idaho was arrested and charged for aborting her pregnancy. The woman bought some drugs online to terminate her pregnancy, and was ratted out by an acquaintance who disapproves of a woman’s right to choose.”
2) Iowa – Christine Taylor accidentally fell down some stairs and went for treatment at the hospital. While telling the nurse about her personal problems, a common enough situation at a hospital, Taylor let on that she had briefly considered abortion early in her pregnancy. The nurse called the cops, claiming the accident was an attempt at self-abortion. Taylor suffered three weeks of purgatory before the D.A. dropped the charges, but the fact remains that a woman was arrested and charges were considered on the grounds that she’d thought about exercising her constitutional rights.
3) Utah. As Michelle Goldberg explained in the Daily Beast, no woman’s story is too heart-rending for anti-choice zealots not to try to put her in jail for attempting an abortion. A pregnant 17-year-old who lived without electricity or running water in rural Utah, who may have been exploited by an older man and who certainly had no way to get to a doctor or pay for an abortion, paid a man $150 to beat her in the stomach.
4) Louisiana. Using law enforcement creatively to get around the legal right to abortion is done in ways other than prosecuting women, of course. There’s also the practice of targeting abortion providers and hitting them with unnecessary, harassing regulations that aren’t applied to any other medical facilities.
5) Kansas. It may still be legal to get or provide abortion in Kansas, but it’s become increasingly dangerous to do so. Human rights aren’t really being secured if trying to exercise them means facing threats of violence, as the civil rights activists of the past can tell you. Already one abortion provider in Kanas, Dr. George Tiller, has been assassinated, which dropped the number of providers in the state from four to three.
6) Virginia. Virginia is quickly rivaling some of the more deep South states in the art of using legal harassment to run abortion providers out of business. Not only is the legislature trying to pass regulations that hold abortion clinics to hospital-level standards, but anti-choicers are trying to interfere with the Department of Health’s decisions allowing abortion clinics to operate in the state.
7) Mississippi. The legal battles continue over whether or not it’s legal for the state to issue a ballot initiative on the question of whether a fertilized egg should be legally considered a “person.” If civil liberties groups challenging the ballot initiative lose out, it will probably pass into law, which not only threatens abortion, contraception and IVF access, but could result in legal actions taken against women who merely miscarry or give birth to stillborns.
8) Indiana. Indiana has dropped from 15 providers in 2005 to 12 in 2008. Law enforcement in the state has been looking for creative ways to put women in jail for failing to bear live children. A woman who attempted suicide while pregnant, only to give birth to a baby who didn’t survive, has been charged with murder.
9) Ohio. Luckily, legislation that would ban abortion of any pregnancy where the fetus has a heartbeat is currently stalled in the legislature, but if this bill moves forward, it could be nearly as dangerous as a bill defining a fertilized egg as a person.
10) South Dakota. South Dakota legislators passed the most stringent waiting period law in the country, requiring a woman to wait 72 hours for an abortion and consult with a registered anti-choice pregnancy center before getting her abortion.
As no anti-choice centers have signed up yet, the law functionally bans abortion in South Dakota.
My personal favourite is Mississippi where they are really going wild-crazy-sauce with trying to legislate into existence the definition person being a fertilized egg. It just scary really how far the anti-choicers are willing to go force pregnancy on women. Women are not incubators yet it seems Mississippi legislators are doing their best to turn them into exactly that.
Hopefully, there remains some sensible people down south who can throw out this attack on women.
Just picking up the Spirit Level again, and finding great stuff to share.
As a way of creating a more egalitarian society, employee ownership and control have many advantages. First, it enables a process of social emancipation as people become members of a team. Second, it puts the scale of earning differentials ultimately under democratic control:if the body of employees want big income differentials they could choose to keep them. Third it involves a very substantial redistribution of wealth from external share holders to employees and a simultaneous redistribution of the income from that wealth. In this context, that is a particularly important advantage. Fourth, it improves productivity and so has a competitive advantage. Fifth, it increases the likelihood that people will regain the experience of community. And sixth, it is likely to improve sociability in the wider society.
The real reward however, is not simply to have a few employee-owned companies in a society still dominated by hierarchical ideology and status-seeking, but to have a society of people freer those divisions.
– The Spirit Level:Why Equality is Better for Everyone. p.260-261.
Yes, gentle readers, a more a egalitarian society is better for everyone. What a concept eh? :)
Sometimes the Russian Television network has some good stories. By good stories I mean, news articles that would never seen the light of day within the media disciplined airwaves of the U.S. According the the RT report, US workers are working harder for less and less every year, and funny, business has never been better (2008 being a notable exception).
Unfortunately, our Canadian government is behaving badly (surprise) when it comes to the recent labour disputes regarding Air Canada, and most likely Canada Post. In both cases, they cite the weak economy not being able to afford a strike…what nonsense… being legislated back to work by the conservatives is just a polite way of breaking down the collective bargaining process and stripping workers of their rights.
Welcome to the 21st century. A time where demonic possessions, cursed spirits, and other such notions of the supernatural manifestations have been gratefully laughed into the tabloids where no sane person, and certainly no judiciary body, would give them anything other than scorn and ridicule. Oh wait….it seems some courts haven’t learned much since the Dark Ages. Fuck… Today’s disservice comes from an article from yesterday’s Journal.
Two decades ago, in a Jewish court in Jerusalem, a secular lawyer was sentenced for insulting the court. I’m not sure, but I think the penalty for contempt of court around these parts is a fine, maybe a short jail term. I welcome any clarification on this point, as law is no speciality of mine. Whatever it is, it’s nothing like what the courts hand out in the “holy land”. The offending lawyer was cursed by the courts, that his soul would be reincarnated into the body of an impure dog.
That’s right. They cursed him.
If that was all there was to this story, we could just laugh at the silly religious nutbags who think they can curse/condemn/bless people because of their elite status with whatever deity, but alas no. As it has happened countless times before, the ludicrous notions of believers resulted in events much too horrible to be laughed off. Fast forward two decades and the court is interrupted by a dog who will not leave.
Well, says one of the judges, this must be that lawyer we cursed all those years ago. Seems he still hasn’t learned his lesson. Therefore, the good, just, and sane thing to do is sentence this dog to death. But a quick death is too good for him, thus we order the method of execution to be stoning! Praise be to our invisible sky-daddy!
A court, a judicial body, societal elites who are law experts, cursed one man and sentenced a dog to die by stoning. I am rebounding between incredulity at how ludicrous this is and disgust at how appalling this is. Mistreatment of animals is a grievous evil and being stoned to death is a horrifying fate, undeserved by even histories worst criminals. But it gets worse. The court decided that the stoning was to be carried out by local children. Children! I can only imagine what the psychological ramifications of having to not only witness, but take part in such a brutal and savage atrocity would do to an impressionable youth. I can’t even imagine what it would do to me. In one fell swoop, this court orders a barbaric act of animal cruelty and an unforgivable act of child abuse. Why? Because of their faith in the supernatural, and the arrogance that people can affect said supernatural through curses and blessings.
Fortunately, this double dose of monstrous infamy was ultimately thwarted. Not by reason, of course. The religious are impervious to logic when it comes to their faith. No, the dog somehow managed to escape on its own. I would like to think that someone there, anyone, saw the horror of the intended sentence and made it so the dog could get away. I would like to think that a seed of doubt took just enough root to drive someone into action against the ‘holy court’, even if only to anonymously save a dog. A wild hope, I know, but at present, wild hopes are all I that I can muster for the religiously controlled areas of the world.
An Open Letter to BioWare on The Old Republic MMO
As a single consumer, I have very little impact as to what goes on and into TOR. I am writing this letter to voice concerns over the development of the game and more personally, what would make me happy and want to purchase the game.
My concerns are twofold. Perhaps the most troubling is the lack of a third faction playable Faction in the TOR universe. I would like think that the EA-Overmind would have seen the dynamicism a third faction brings to player versus player (PvP) interactions. The prime example would be Mythic’s Dark Age of Camelot that you swallowed not to long ago. The three way conflict in DAOC virtually guaranteed that some sort of action was going on somewhere in the virtual world. Certainly, it was not perfect and even tri-faction PvP gets tiresome after awhile. However, the novelty of two faction PvP wears off even more quickly as there are simply less options available to work with. TOR seems destined to head down the well worn and unimaginative binary path of good vs. evil, light vs. dark, red vs. blue etc. You speak of story and characterization as a key part of this MMO, yet when it comes to PvP, all the depth of character and backstory goes down the tubes and it is back to binary basics. Read the rest of this entry »
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