We're Not in Kansas Anymore

In recent years the warm and fuzzy coating has fallen away from the modern capitalist state. Or more accurately, it is being torn off. On one hand the social programs that were used to keep the lower classes happy are being reduced and removed. Where people were coaxed into docility before, the future does not have docility in the cards. As a result the state will force political compliance.

The shift has already occurred. We have slipped over the boundary into the world of the nightmarish police state. How this was accomplished was quite impressive. At this point most people still have not noticed and those that do, for the most part, welcome the change. They welcome the increased security. They like to take flights without the worry of terrorists blowing them out of the sky. They like to live in cities without the worry of terrorists bombing subways or randomly shooting citizens.

What these people don’t realize is that the enemy is not who they think it is. The enemy is actually the power that claims to be protecting us.

The fact is that if terrorists want to blow up airplanes, poison food sources, or randomly kill people in way imaginable, there is simply no way of stopping them. Those that tell you that we need increased security are not doing so in an attempt to curb terrorism. They are doing so to curb YOU. You see, you are their enemy and they know it but you don’t. They are already taking measures to prepare for a war against you and you don’t even know what is happening. In fact, you don’t even recognize your own enemy and when you do, we will likely have little room to maneuver.

Prior to 9/11 there was Seattle and Quebec. There were protesters organizing against capitalism. This was landmark. There were protest movements in the West before and they were against war, against poverty, for woman’s rights, or for gay rights. But this is the first time that America and the West has had massive and popular protests as part of a building movement against capitalism itself. This was monumental and the significance has apparently been lost on the geniuses that spin opinions in the mainstream media.

The occurrence of 9/11 couldn’t have come at a better time for those that would like to create a world-wide police state. The most disturbing aspect of this is that the keepers of the state, whether they are Republicans, Democrats, liberals or social democrats, Labour or Conservative, are all on the same page. The Labour Party in Britain, a social democratic party, has put in place draconian measures that rival the neo cons in Washington. This transcends the notion of a neo con conspiracy.

The big question, the question we all need to ask ourselves is whether or not these new laws can be used to stifle democratic dissent. The answer is clear and the answer is undeniably 'yes'. The reason that that question and answer are so very important is because the very foundation of free societies has been pulled out from beneath us. For hundreds of years societies have been evolving toward greater freedom and human rights from the Magna-Carta to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, we have been steadily going in a progressive direction. That is until recently where the war hawks have usurped the whole damn thing.

The fact is that if you live in America, Canada, Britain or Australia, you no longer live in a free society. That the difference is hardly noticeable as we go about our day by day lives is part of the problem. That reality is evidence of volume of accomplices that are working in concert, including most mainstream media, most politicians, as well as those that have designed this Orwellian landscape. They have pulled off a master coup as they had us distracted by war and rumors of war.

For the moment let us give them the benefit of doubt.

Assuming that the politicians of today (eg. Bush, Martin, Howard and Blair) are very sincere about fighting terrorism and that these anti-terrorist laws are really intended to give the police and the spooks enough leverage to protect citizens from terrorism. Let us imagine that these draconian laws will deter terrorists and safeguard society from random acts of violence. Let's also assume that these laws are not intended to stifle dissent. The question then arises about future politicians that may use these laws against politically incorrect but peaceful protest. What is to stop some future politicians from using these laws to effectively police and eradicate political dissent? What will prevent them from tossing people such as unionists, boycotters, and protest organizers in the hoosegow forever?

But, as we know, we don't have to wait for some unscrupulous future fascist leader to see how opressive these laws can be. The people that are tortured in concentration camps today will tell us that it has already happened.

The fact that the reaction to this by the media, the legal profession, as well as the pre-9/11 protesters is merely a whisper is perhaps a result of incredulity rather than antipathy. For most people the reality of crossing the boundary into a world of arbitrary authoritarianism has not sunk in. The whole thing is too outlandish, too far out and too surreal to process in most reasonable minds. It just doesn’t compute (What – we have slipped into a police state? Nah – can’t be).

Canada has not done much, relative to other countries, to make it a target of terrorism. But the shredding of the freedoms and rights of Canadians has occured nonetheless. You'd almost think it was some sort of world wide conspiracy.

Canada has passed legislation that gives the state the power to literally throw you in jail and throw away the key and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it. You can't even see a lawyer if you have been targeted.

Bill C-36 allows the state to detain people on the suspicion that they will commit a crime. The individual could be barred from legal council in closed hearings. People involved in protest movements or strikes could be prosecuted this way.

So far, it seems that it immigrants and particularly immigrants from Islamic countries that have been singled out by the New World Order. It may very well be that state oppression is selectively discriminating against this particular ethnic group to bolster public support for political repression. The propaganda suggests that Muslims are prone to terrorism.

The potential iron net is far greater however. The wording of the act permits the state to act against those who may “seriously” interfere with essential services. Threats to economic systems are deemed worthy of prosecution. This could be defined as an act of terrorism. Planning such activities could be reason enough to land you or me in jail. Surveillance may be carried out without the blessing of a judge. This bill throws out the checks and balances that are necessary for a free society.

Read what Canadian lawyer, Rocco Galati has to say regarding this bill:

http://www.apfn.org/apfn/WTC_1984.htm

Other previously free societies have also passed similar laws including the United States, Britain, and Australia.

There are sufficient laws in place to check crimes and terrorism. This new reality we now live with is not meant to curb terrorism. That is merely a ruse. It is aimed at removing our freedom to organize dissent against capitalism. Stopping terrorism could be achieved if the killing and oppression would end.

As Noam Chomsky said, the way to stop terrorism is to stop terrorizing.

In the past the rationale for war has been to preserve freedom. Today, the enemies of freedom are our elected politicians and those they serve. The enemies of freedom have slipped in through the back door. It is your duty to recognize this. Otherwise, all those that sacrificed their lives for freedom in the past have done so in vain.
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"19 terrorists in 6 weeks have been able to command 300 million North Americans to do away with the entirety of their civil liberties that took 700 years to advance from the Magna Carta onward. The terrorists have already won the political and ideological war with one terrorist act. It is mindboggling that we are that weak as a society." -Rocco Galati

Dreams Can Come True

So can lies, hysterical delusions, and fabricated threats.

The claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction turned out to be lies. The war privateers needed a war and they lied in order to have one. They told other lies. They also said that Iraq had ties to the terrorists that plowed airplanes into the twin towers.

Bush was not alone in his lies and war schemes. He had plenty of help within his administration, abroad, and in the mainstream media as well. They presented these war lies, when they did mention them, as if the President and his cronies were misled by sinister speech writers or spies or ‘sources’, such as the present Prime Minister and Oil Minister in Iraq, Ahmed Chalabi.

The Bushies had deliberately taken aim at Iraq long before the invasion. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published a report on the Bush Administration’s dealings with intelligence information on Iraq. They claim that the Bush administration exaggerated and lied about the Iraqi military to portray Iraq as a credible threat to the United States. For stubborn and loyal followers of the hawks, there is the disturbing and infamous Downing Street memo. If there was any doubt that Bush was intent on making war in Iraq no matter what, read the memo. The memo states, in part, “Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

This memo suggests a culture of lies. It’s not only Bush – unfortunately. It’s also the political and media elites working together against the people of the United States, Iraq, Britain and many other countries; but most especially, against the people of Iraq. The spin doctors know about the lies and do they mention it? No. We all know that these people are maintaining lies in their tacit acceptance and their uncritical posturing following clear evidence that the whole war was sold through lies. What’s most baffling is how many people accept all this with hardly a raised eyebrow.

The history of Iraq is unfolding, not as it should from the invaders point of view. But it is unfolding nonetheless. And what we can see emerge from the cocoon of Saddam’s world, a world made considerably more miserable by a decade of crippling sanctions, is a very Islamic society and likely, an Islamic state based in Islamic law. The Americans lopped the head off the monster of Iraq and what did we see? We saw the masses tear down a statue of the Dictator, Saddam. But that scene belied the reality of the head being ripped off an Islamic hydra.

Now, as we watch history unfold in that terrorized country, it looks as if some of the hype may have been prophetic in some ways.

Does Iraq have Al Qaeda connections as the Bush party claimed? They didn’t then when Bush said they did. But they very likely do now.

Is Iraq a base for terrorists? There is nothing to suggest that Iraq had been when the liars were making the claim, but they certainly have plenty of people willing to blow themselves up to attack Americans or anybody connected with them now. On top of that, the antipathy against the West in Islamic societies and the on the job training occurring in Iraq will likely have Westerners watching over their shoulders for many years.

Mark Sherman recently reported in an AP article that “An American accused in court papers of having ties to Osama bin Laden is now working for the Iraqi government’s Foreign Ministry”; this, according to U.S. officials and a former counterterrorism spook. Once the Sunnis get on board with the governance of Iraq, the likelihood of Al Qaeda connections inside the government will be far greater than it is now.

The Iranian Ayatollah, Sistani, was one of many flies in the ointment Bush didn’t count on when he invaded. Muqtada al-Sadr is another and the resilience of the Sunni resistance yet another. And there are many others. It’s hard to imagine a scenario that would better play into the hands of fundamentalist Muslims and generally, anybody that wishes to eject the USA from the region, than the one that has played out over the past several years.

The dream of building a Western democracy in Iraq was either immensely stupid or just another lie. Pick the latter, that’s the truth. There was never any such intent just like there was never any such intent in Haiti, Guatemala, or anywhere else.

The new Iraq that will emerge will present enormous problems in the future. Israel will feel threatened by the emergence of an intensely fundamentalist Islamic state in Iraq; a state that will be very close to Iran. American puppets in the region such as the Saudi government, the Egyptian government, and the King of Jordan will also feel the heat. Threats will abound for many years to come, thanks to Bush’s “war on terror.”

What follows is a list of some of the lies that preceded the war:

Al Qaeda and Iraq: The claim that Al Qaeda is connected to Iraq may have been false before but it isn’t false now. Al Qaeda may soon enjoy connections in both the government and the insurgency, if that has not already happened.

Oil: The claim that this war is not about oil is a lie and will forever remain a lie.

Nuclear Weapons: They made the claim that Iraq was on the road to building nuclear weapons and were convincing enough with their visions of mushroom clouds that many Americans still believe them. Before the invasion, Bush had claimed that the Iraqis were six months away from developing a nuclear weapon.

Threat of Attack: They claimed that Iraq had a fleet of unmanned aircraft that could be used to attack the United States.

Quantity of chemicals: They said that Iraq has 500 tons of chemical weapons.

Chemical weapons: They said that Iraq has 30,000 weapons and planes capable of distributing lethal chemicals.

Nuclear Threat: They said that satellite photos show that Iraq is rebuilding nuclear facilities.

Saddam’s refusal to cooperate: They said that Saddam Hussein wouldn’t allow weapons inspectors into Iraq.

That’s a few of them and the beat goes on.

These things will always remain lies for that time, but it’s hard to predict the future. Some of these claims may close to the truth someday just as the claim that Al Qaeda was in Iraq has come true. As long as the madmen scream for war, the threat of terrorism will remain and it will grow. And if any of those horrific things do happen, or others, we can thank the liars for making their own lies, dreams, and delusions come true.

A Little Box of Bullshit

The notion that the average citizen should take the responsibility and the privilege of being part of the decision making processes – aside from merely marking an ‘X’ every so often, isn’t really taken seriously. People generally satisfy themselves with the notion that elections satisfy the criteria for a functioning democracy. As a result we have a class of bureaucrats theoretically serving politicians who serve their corporate masters. The citizens that vote are not in this equation. The citizenry are merely the audience and real decision making occurs in a place remote from the general population.

Any notion of real democracy; that is, a society where the people have input into the decisions that affect society is a threat to this order. This order is different than medieval society only in degree, not in kind. The depressing notion that we are essentially in the same boat where we are in service to the masters is, unfortunately, true. And psychologically the servants of today in modern capitalist societies are not much different than the serfs or slaves of feudal tyranny. We tend to look to the master class for direction and find safety in their supposed wisdom. We have learned to defer to them and to psychologically depend on them. We don’t recognize the fact that it is us and not them that create all the wealth and make everything work.

A dog eventually falls in love with his chain.

The 64,000 dollar question is; how do they manage to do it? How do they manage to keep the general public in a state of docile servitude?

To study the answer to this question, it is helpful to watch the people with power and how they communicate to the general population. For example, when they want to do something that may be unpopular and could conceivably start a protest or an uprising, ideas are presented. The masters may want to start a war for instance and they will present their case as to why a war in important. They will instill fear into the general population. The war may be carried out for oil, or to grab billions of tax dollars through arms manufacturing or whatever. The real reasons are never mentioned by those with an interest in the war. What is really impressive is the way they can present the case to the serious minded pundits and intellectuals and the way those same pundits, commentators and intellectuals eat it up. That is impressive. And they, the educated and apparently ‘smart’ talking heads present a psychological hit to the general population.

Here we must examine the art of bullshit; the spinning of fine tales by the media establishment.

To sell bullshit and to have it adhere to most people, it must have the blessing of the educated. The uneducated or the less educated will naturally defer to them and accept that they know better. After all, they are educated. So with careful aim, the professional bullshitters must strike their target, the educated.

It is this class of citizens that are crucial to ensure that the rabble stay in line behind the invisible steel fences. It is the first line of defense. The second line of defense is a tangible force. They need these lines of defense to hold the social order. Otherwise, they, the rabble, may take control and who knows what’d happen then. After all, they ain’t educated.

So the educated talking heads will be paraded out in front of cameras and in very sober and serious tones they will discuss the impending disaster that will befall all of civilization if a war is delayed much longer.

They are there to convince us that the corporations and those that run them are our lifeline. They are our salvation and we need our masters as desperately as the educated talking heads need them. We are all on the same side after all and we must face the enemy.

Another poignant example is the problem of socialized health care in Canada. This is a potential bonanza for the private sector but they have been held at bay for a long time as a result of Canadians’ stubborn attachment to health care. It presents quite a problem. They have been working at its destruction for several decades now and they continue, relentlessly, to slowly destroy it. This is a job for the political class and they have been making impressive headway at times but the socialist monster is as resilient as hell. Their biggest victory has been in the mid-90s when the Liberal government managed to cut funding dramatically. At that time they were cutting public expenditure everywhere and health care didn’t escape the cuts. The system has been limping since that time. Those that have crippled it are quick to point out that it is limping and that maybe private insurance schemes would fix that problem.

Back then, the right wing think tanks like the Fraser Institute managed to persuade Canadians that there is a dangerous deficit that needed reigning in. The think tanks, the politicians and perhaps most importantly, the media, made the deficit a salient and pressing issue. Fear of the massive deficit was instilled into the minds of the average citizen to the point that almost everyone was on board. Everyone began to push in unison for the cutting of social programs and all government spending. At the same time, the same hysteria was being manufactured in the United States, Britain, and most Western societies. We needed free trade and we needed to put ourselves in a competitive position for the lean, mean economic machine known as globalization. To remain competitive we had to clamp down on social parasites like seniors, the ill, and the poor, was the cry. The talking heads convinced us.

At the same time almost 40% of tax dollars went into the pockets of investors that were owed money by governments for loaning the money in the first place. These collectors of interest made off like bandits and this interest collection scheme was never questioned. It was all perfectly legitimate and government workers and the poor and the ill were branded parasites. Government spending was the monster that would devour us all.

That was then. Now there is not much said about the crime of running a debt and borrowing from our grandchildren. There is a war in Iraq and it is costing many billions of dollars. But this money is feeding wealthy weapons manufacturers. So, where is the media? Where are the politicians that were screaming about the deficit? They are saying nothing because they are part of the same bullshit shell game. They are playing us all for fools.

They have pulled off some impressive displays of bullshit over the years beyond the two examples cited above (the need for war and the urgent need to cut social programs). In a broader context, they have managed to convince the educated talking heads, and as a result the rest of us, that the system that enslaves actually liberates and the very notion of liberation from THAT system will result in slavery. In other words, the capitalist system is touted as liberation itself and the only means of achieving freedom for mankind (sic). Any notion of wealth distribution will result in gulags and forced labour.

Capitalism is liberating for the wealthy but it is not for those that must work in order to survive and especially for those that are poor. Aside from that, it has an ostensible tendency toward freedom of expression and ideas and freedom of movement.

But as liberating as capitalism appear, its oppressive nature is obvious and ugly. It is the very nature of capitalism to control people and commodities. Both are involved in the process of exchange; the process that makes capitalism work. People need commodities and capitalism needs to provide them. If it does not do this, it perishes.

Capitalism cannot control everything we need. If it could, it would. Suppose gravity could be restricted or taken away from people. Capitalists and the capitalist state would conspire to make it a commodity. It would be illegal to manufacture your own gravity or to own it without permission. You’d have to pay the legal owners of the source of gravity for it. In a similar fashion, you cannot just put up a satellite dish willy-nilly and grab the signals out of the air even though doing so does not diminish the quantity that is available to the owners of the source or anybody else.

Commodities and services like insurance are controlled by the capitalists with the enforcement of the state to ensure that the citizen pay for insurance and for electricity.

This is the nature of capitalism. A capitalist society is touted as a free society but in fact individuals are held into wage slavery in order to survive and citizens are forced to pay capitalists for their vital necessities. This is not a system prone to freedom. They will hold up totalitarian examples and say, ‘see here, that is socialism’. This is to ensure the idea that ‘anything that is not capitalistic is less free than capitalism’ is swallowed by those that pay and the class that must work in order to eat. The selling of this doctrine is vital to their survival.

It is up to you to see bullshit for what it is. It is up to you to see a shell game and a scam performing before your eyes, especially when it affects your life and the future of your children.

When we accept ideological premises as our own, we must chew them up thoroughly before we can properly assimilate them into our psychic system. On the other hand, if we swallow whole chunks without chewing them properly, we will not digest them. They will make us insecure, defensive and aggressive because deep down we know that we really don’t know what we are talking about, just like the educated talking heads. We have swallowed bullshit whole and that is what we put out. And we know that, like them, we are phony lackeys to a remote master who is located the social stratosphere. To develop an identity that is truly ‘me’, it is necessary to question our beliefs rigorously and to have the courage and the desire to toss out what truly is bullshit and to allow the truth to develop our being. That means we must place our energy, each one of us, into the development of critical consciousness. As a result we will become truly ‘me’ and at that point, the bullshit emanating from the bullshitters will be inconsequential.

Freedom and democracy are not only noble ideals. They are very real and necessary aspects to a healthy and happy life where we have some control and where we are able to take our own initiatives. But we have been cut off from the decision making processes that affect each and every one of us and we have accepted slavery and called it freedom. The spinners and the bullshitters have presented us with a very narrow box to fit inside. But through acting and thinking outside that box, we can liberate ourselves.

Sapranos in the White House

If we belong to a street gang or pretty much any gang of criminals, the way to the top, the way to achieve power is through brutal force. Generally, the most dangerous, the most threatening psychopath gets to be boss. Somebody more dangerous may come along and kill him. The new guy is boss. They don’t spend a lot of time taking minutes of meetings and discussing points of order. The craziest guy with the biggest gun calls the shots and everybody else listens.

In a somewhat more complex way, that is also how fascism works. In fact, there are many parallels with fascists and the average everyday band of criminals. Their goals are more or less the same and so are their methods.

Some may say that this is the law of the jungle; that humans are that way naturally. But if they studied anthropology beyond watching the Flintstones, they would know that hunter-gatherer societies were not violent and the individuals were not self serving but were in service to the rest of the community.

In the modern civilized world, we are generally compelled to play by a set of rules that are based in rationality and legal principles that are set according to standards that most agree with. Whether based in civil or common law, nations agree on a set of basic notions of what constitutes a civilized society. From these principles The Bill of Rights was adopted in the USA, The Charter of Rights and Freedoms has been adopted in Canada and each nation has a set of legal principles that citizens must abide by. Internationally we have the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declared by the UN in 1948. In the civilized world, we have laws and no man or woman is above those laws.

Modern authority is based in rational principles and laws. Traditional or charismatic authority may be the basis for habits and customs within subcultures. These arbitrary rulers may hold sway over cults or movements, but they must all adhere to the principles of the wider legal authority of rational legal principles. This is what separates us from the archaic past and protects us from the tyranny of criminals or the menacing whims of violent madmen.

Now imagine living in a world that is run like a biker gang. Those that are most powerful, most violent and those with the biggest guns win. Legal principles mean nothing because the men with that power cannot be arrested and brought to trial. They have their own protection, their own police and their own military. They intend to force everybody else to abide by the law, but they are exempt. Not only that, they can make rules up as they go along. They do what they want and there is nothing anybody can do about it. Now the rulers can stack the deck in their own favour and nobody can stop them. They have at their command a military force that is the most powerful in the world.

This is what is going on in the world today. It’s not that the gangsters have gone wild and their mayhem will be over in a few years. The problem runs much deeper than that.

What is most important in the arrest and detention of suspected terrorists by American forces is not the plight of those men. What is even more important is the precedent that this has set. What is most important about the invasion of Iraq is not the massive slaughter and indiscriminate killing of many thousands of Iraqi people. What is even more important is the normalization and validation of the use of fascistic force. The cowards in the media and the cowards that mimic security legislation are complicit in this massive crime. As horrific as the oppression and killing is, the legacy that these actions project could be far worse. Aside from that, the legal principles that have been our protection from tyranny have been torn to shreds.

Those with financial, political, and military power have placed themselves above the law not only in their own society, but over all societies. Their response to dissent is either no response at all or they will repeat the same predictable lies over and over again. They thumb their noses at the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International or anybody that criticizes their draconian and brutal attack on civil liberties, the law, and on individuals. They will say that this is ‘the war on terror’; that we’ll have to excuse them while they lock people up without charges, torture people and invade other nations; unprovoked. If we accept this, then we’ll have to excuse every brutal dictator in history that had their nation attacked or threatened. The declaration at the Nuremberg Tribunals that initiating war, invading another country, is the ultimate war crime and contains within it all other war crimes, means nothing. The Geneva Conventions also mean nothing and the rule of law means nothing.

The Patriot Act was born in the violence of 9-11 and it was given immortality in the violence on July 7th in London. It effectively strips the citizens of the United States and any other citizen in the world of their fundamental human rights. The state can lock you up by claiming that you are an enemy. You have no right to a lawyer or a judge. You have no rights whatsoever and you may be tortured. You may also be spied on or killed should you arouse suspicion. We’ve recently seen what happened to Jean Charles de Menezes of Brazil for walking around with Arab colored skin.

The normalization of extraordinary state power has occurred with an alarming silence. Alarming too is the immunity of the corporate/state power from rule of law while at the same time stripping away ordinary legal protections for the average citizen. George W. Bush and company are free to terrorize whole societies at their leisure while brown skinned citizens have to worry about being apprehended or shot. The new oppression of the New World Order has racist, cultural, national, and class preferences. It has the same prejudices.

The language used by the overlords of the New World Order is disturbing in its ambiguity. To wage war against vague and subjective enemies is an excuse for tyranny. Passing laws that are worded with language that is open for any interpretation makes society vulnerable to abuse by the state. For example, recent legislation in Britain makes it an offence to “indirectly incite” anyone to commit terrorist acts. Couple the cavalier attitude judges and pretty much the whole legal profession has shown with respect to civil liberties over the past several years with this vague legal language adopted in the USA, Britain, Canada and other Western nations, and you have a recipe for explicit repression.

This indiscriminate language has a very aggressive edge. For Bush and company, the enemy has become quite abstract. Evil forces are 'out there' and they are enemies of freedom and democracy, according to Bush. As long as these elements exist, they pose a threat to the United States and the ‘free’ world. Bush stated in his last State of the Union address that it is the mission of the USA to free oppressed people all over the world. Considering his track record regarding freedom, we know what he is really talking about. This code for, 'we are going to take whatever we want, whenever we want to do it. When Bush mouths the word freedom, he necessarily perverts its meaning.

The standards that need to be met in order for Bush to rationalize military attacks have suddenly become very subjective. He doesn't have to find something hard like weapons of mass destruction any more. That proved too difficult. With the spineless media and henchmen by his side, Bush can justify an attack on just about anyone. The notion of and validation for ‘pre-emptive war’ has already been established. With the media, congress and other world leaders looking for their backbones, George W. Saprono will do what he wants.


We have awakened to a world where the mob has taken control. They have the biggest guns and Bush has the most ruthless gangland characters pulling his strings and yanking his chain. Besides, he is one of them. The World Court can go to hell, and every other court can go to hell. The guys with the most money and the biggest guns call the shots now.

From here it looks as if the maniacs in the White House and the terrorists that brought down the twin towers share the same goal of terrorizing American society. If their aim was to disrupt any sense of peace or civility in the United States, they have succeeded. If they aimed to play on the psychology and sense of security Americans may have had, they succeeded. But they couldn’t have done it without the Bush’s help in whipping up hysteria and fear.

Anti terrorist legislation is not about protecting you from terrorists. It’s about control. It’s about muting dissent in an era when the sweetness of the Keynsian state will give way to the full exposure of the ugly skeleton of the oppressive barbed iron state that has always been there.

But we need to hold our seat in the midst of this. In the midst of this insanity, if you listen you can still hear the voice of reason and calm. All the dogs are not barking up the same tree. Here is a fine example:

US District Judge John C. Coughenour said the successful prosecution of Ahmed Ressam should serve not only as a warning to terrorists but as a statement to the Bush administration about its terrorism-fighting tactics.
"We did not need to use a secret military tribunal, detain the defendant indefinitely as an enemy combatant or deny the defendant the right to counsel," he said. "The message to the world from today's sentencing is that our courts have not abandoned our commitment to the ideals that set our nation apart."
He added that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks have made Americans realize they are vulnerable to terrorism and that some believe "this threat renders our Constitution obsolete ... If that view is allowed to prevail, the terrorists will have won."
(http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/072905N.shtml)

This was a stroke of courageous beauty amidst the backdrop of the ugly rise of what has the disturbing appearance of corporate/ bourgeois state tyranny . And there are many more. Watch for them, nurture them and protect them. They are our friends and allies.

Fuck Mainstream Media

When we pick up a paper or check the news on television we generally expect to be informed. The media has a responsibility and that responsibility is to inform us of what’s going on. If a dam is in danger of breaking two miles above our town, it is the responsibility of the media to let us know that the danger exists and why it exists. To a certain extent, we put our trust in them. But trusting the mainstream media is not a rational or intelligent choice to make. They have lied by saying things that are not true, by not saying things that are true, and very often through spinning bullshit, which is slightly different than lying. Sometimes bullshit is worse than lies. It’s not that they have done so several times, or even often. It’s that they do it all the time. They are programmed like a virus in software to fuck us up.

They never, by the way, use vulgarities like ‘fuck’. This is not an offhanded comment. It is very relevant. In fact, if you read media where the use of such words is acceptable, they have passed an important litmus test. They obviously don’t pander to the fucked up Christian Right and they don’t pander to the corporate elite who are very careful not to offend those that march in orderly fashion. They are in the business of providing audiences.

The mainstream media is not just a simple money pig. It is much more than that. With the marriage of the corporation to the state complete, it is natural for the corporate media to mouth the interests of both. The mainstream media has become a lackey, a tool of those that want to tell you that the Western world is in deep, deep danger. In a similar vein to Hitler’s fire in the Reichstag, the oil/ arms billionaires that run the White House want us to be terrified. They want a green light to make war in the Middle East and they want a green light to funnel billions of tax dollars into their own pockets through the sale of weapons systems. As a result we see very agitated talking heads that spew drivel ad nauseam about the need for security. It also serves their more sinister designs to build an iron shackled state apparatus where we will learn to live with less freedom and more security. We will learn that extremist views cannot be tolerated and they pose a threat to us all. Welcome to the Matrix.

They obviously serve many other functions besides making money and parroting the wishes of the aristocrats and overlords. They also strive to indoctrinate and shape the rabble into a uniform and docile mass of chauvinism.

Every day people are blown to bits in Iraq and often these events are not even mentioned in the news. When they are mentioned they will be treated rather frivolously. Contrast that with the severity and alarm on the airwaves whenever terrorists attack White or priveliged people. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, a disaster in Asia or Africa or Latin America may be mentioned casually while the misfortune of some rich, White Westerner would be a matter of much concern and excitement. Or they may focus on more ordinary folks like a runaway bride, or a missing teen in Aruba. This follows a pattern of implicit racism and it certainly suggests Brown foreigners are disposable and White Westerners are not. That pattern drives an implicit message into the minds of those that are vulnerable to its reception.

There is no doubt that the corporate media is working overtime to indoctrinate the citizenry, especially in the United States. It is in the United States where this process is magnified and as a result, people outside the USA may be affected to a lesser degree. This is not to slight the citizens of America, it is just that it is Americans that live deepest inside the belly of the beast of American hegemony. The CBC in Canada for example, is noticeably different than mainstream American media.

The crux of the problem is that the media is owned and controlled by that special interest group – the one that’s extra special. They have their own interests and those interests happen to be against the interests of the rest of us. And it is those billionaires that set the tone, the content, and the agenda for the rest of the media. A small-town newspaper does not have the resources to hire investigative journalists and they pick up the main stories from the newswire. Those items are fed by that same special interest group. Here, Chomsky explains who sets the content and the agenda for the mainstream:

“The New York Times and CBS, for example. Well, first of all, they are major, very profitable, corporations. Furthermore, most of them are either linked to, or outright owned by, much bigger corporations, like General Electric, Westinghouse, and so on. They are way up at the top of the power structure of the private economy which is a very tyrannical structure. Corporations are basically tyrannies, hierarchic, controled from above. If you don’t like what they are doing you get out. The major media are just part of that system.”

Chomsky also makes the point that the media has a specific motive and that motive is the audience itself. That is why news stories are very short and their patterns are quite simplistic. Short attention grabbing sound bites or pleasing optics are important. Content is but not in the way it should be. The main thrust of the business is not to inform, the business is about grabbing an audience and people are the product. Chomsky continues:

"Take the New York Times. It’s a corporation and sells a product. The product is audiences. They don’t make money when you buy the newspaper. They are happy to put it on the worldwide web for free. They actually lose money when you buy the newspaper. But the audience is the product. The product is privileged people, just like the people who are writing the newspapers, you know, top-level decision-making people in society. You have to sell a product to a market, and the market is, of course, advertisers (that is, other businesses). Whether it is television or newspapers, or whatever, they are selling audiences. Corporations sell audiences to other corporations. In the case of the elite media, it’s big businesses." (Lifted from: http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/articles/z9710-mainstream-media.html)

But there is more to this than selling audiences. You will notice that the media will make certain issues relevant and important. They will spin them out in concert with the party line and with each other, sometimes word for word. For example, the deficit was the big problem when the politicians and the large corporations wanted to cut social programs. Right wing think tanks and agencies like Moody’s of New York suddenly had a lot to say about how societies are governed and how tax money is spent. You will also notice that when tax dollars are spent on weapons systems, the media does not make an issue of the deficit. It is rarely mentioned, if at all. That is because those that control the media are the same people that profit from building weapons systems.

According to Peter Phillips, “The eleven largest or most influential media corporations in the United States are General Electric Company (NBC), Viacom Inc. (cable), The Walt Disney Company (ABC), Time Warner Inc.(CNN), Westinghouse Electric Corporation (CBS), The News Corporation Ltd. (Fox), Gannett Co. Inc., Knight-Ridder Inc., New York Times Co., Washington Post Co., and the Times Mirror Co. These eleven major broadcast and print media corporations now represent a major portion of the news information systems in the United states. For many people their entire source of news and information comes from these eleven corporations."
(Source:http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media/Media%20Censor_ProjCensor.html)

General Electric is in the business of making battlefield computer systems. Their director, former senator Sam Nunn (who also directs Chevron/Texaco) isn’t likely to promote journalists that research his connections or to report any stories that work against the interests of NBC. He is not likely to be happy about his reporters making anti war statements either.

Recently, media and political elites have been shouting concern about the dangers of extremism. This sounds quite ominous. How does one define extremism? What is extreme in one culture is moderate in another. Attending Mosque every day and praying five times a day would be extreme from a Western point of view while viewing explicit sex movies would be extreme from their point of view. And extremes shift in time as well. From the point of view of 1970, all politicians are now extremely right wing. From the point of view of politicians in the 1930’s, today’s politicians and the population in general would seem bizarre. The point is, when the elites take on enemies like extremists, or 'evil doers', when they can make these subjective judgments, we must watch our backs. This very general term, extremism, casts a wide net. Will the mainstream media cast dispersions on leftists, environmentalists, or any spiritual practice that they subjectively deem extreme? Have the elitist media set out to squash dissent of all kinds using the modern day fire at the Reichstag (9-11) to do it? It really looks as if this process has already begun.

Steve Mizrach points out, “Opinion in our society must be carefully shaped and molded within certain careful boundaries: those who transgress those boundaries are libel to wind up "extremists," "ideologues," "fanatics," or "agitators. Now that dissidents in the U.S. can no longer be labelled 'fellow travellers' of the Moscow-run Commie conspiracy, the task has become more urgent. And how is it that consent, that most valuable of social products, is manufactured?”
(Source: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media/Consent_AmerStyle.html)

Mizrach points out that the following tactics are employed by what we may regard, realistically, as the enemy; that is, the mainstream media. They mould opinion particularly on Sunday talk shows by parading the opinions of sycophants that are the mouthpieces that have been schooled within the hallowed halls of the university of corporate indoctrination.

These are bolstered by spin doctors, or, PR devils. “PR managers, known as "spin doctors" when working in government, are able to carefully craft speeches and advertisements which evoke powerful images in the American psyche, frequently using "power words" such as freedom, fairness, liberty, justice, and peacekeeping for policies which dominate, discriminate, imprison, exploit, and terrorize much of the rest of the world.” (Mizrach)

Mizrach also points out the real purpose of public opinion polls is not so much to measure public opinion as it is to shape it. They also employ academics and think tanks to shape and mould public opinion.

Together, these tools are used against us. They are more threatening an enemy to the citizens of Western nations than an army of bin Ladens. They are used not only to shape public opinion. They are used to lie to us and to indoctrinate the impressionable and the young.

But there remains wild cards; people with influence that are not politically correct. In the past several years we have witnessed the firings and muzzlings of very influential people. Bill Mahar was fired for stating the obvious on a show ironically named, “Politically Incorrect”. He isn’t alone. Phil Donahue and Peter Arnett have been fired for political reasons. This works very directly. Advertisers who are the corporate – or more generally, the business elites, have forced them off the air.

More recently the increasingly fascistic and bold business elites, represented by both the Democrats and Republicans, have de-clawed the relatively liberal Corporation for Public Broadcasting (PBS). Bill Moyers was called to the mat for his apparent ‘liberal’ bias. The message that has been sent to those with influence is to stay inside the box of what the corporate rulers deem politically correct for American politics. It is worth noticing the contrast between American media and that of any other country in the world. In Canada for instance, liberal is a political stance that people generally consider either middle of the road or maybe somewhat to the right. In Canada, socialism is leftist but curiously in America, socialism has been purged from politics. It’s as if it doesn’t exist.

We cannot underestimate the importance of Indymedia, bloggers, progressive web sites, and all progressive movements that rely on the internet. The internet is a genie let out of a bottle. This fluid and democratic flow of information is the blessing of this uncontrolled machine that sits before you. The corporations do not own or control this medium and here, we are free. And it is from here we face the enemy. From here we will work together to defeat the next rising wave of tyranny.

Freedom Fried

Freedom has a price. It is a price that we have been willing to pay for hundreds of years in most Western societies. The cost is a certain degree of necessary anxiety as a result of the unpredictable nature of disparate human impulses.

When the citizens and leaders of a society become jittery and fearful enough, they tend to sell their freedom for safety from the unknown and unpredictable. In societies that have cowed to fear, you may be stoned to death for committing adultery, you may be sanctioned for ‘extremist’ views, or you may be put to death for a crime you have not committed. That is a problem with a secure society. It is, after all, a myth. The upside is that all the trains tend to run on time.

To live in a free society we must tolerate known criminals living in our midst. We must tolerate all sorts of political and philosophical opinions that are an affront to our sensibilities. We have to accept the fact that anything can happen. Many unpleasant possibilities are plausible, even the possibility of being killed. But that’s life. Security is a myth and if we take a look around, if we take a look at what happens when societies give in to fear, we can see what happens. Those societies become tyrannical nightmares.

There is a border, a clear and distinct line that we cannot cross. We must prosecute a crime AFTER the individual has acted. And no nation can act against another preemptively.

That means that we cannot prosecute pedophiles that are likely to harm children before they act. Instead, we have to be awake and aware and take steps to protect them ourselves. The state cannot do it. We cannot prosecute those that will likely murder their spouse before they act. We have to act to protect ourselves and our loved ones. The state cannot do it. In free societies we have always endured this precarious situation. But we have done it.

But now all that is changing and what it may mean for us is a future of having to endure the iron shackles of an arbitrary and brutal state apparatus. We have to ask ourselves if we are that cowardly. Are we timid and fearful to the point that we allow the terrorists that slaughtered the people in the twin towers to take away our freedom?

They seem to be winning the war that Bush had boldly declared against terrorism. Not so much in the sense that they are managing to create enough carnage and fear in Iraq to be party to the complete terrorizing of that society as much as the effect they are having on American society. This also spills over into British, Canadian, Australian and many other societies.

Coincidentally, and fortunately for the terrorists of both stripes (the Arab terrorists and the American terrorists) there were two bombings in London just prior to a vote in the US House of Representatives on renewal of the misnamed and potentially fascistic Patriot Act. Following hours of intense debate they voted 257-171 to permanently extend 14 of 16 provisions that had a four year sunset. The remaining two provisions were given a ten year lease on life. This would not have happened without the London bombings. You'd almost think the Mid-Eastren and Western neo cons were working together. One provision is to permit "roving wiretaps" and the other will allow the state to search individuals library and medical records.

If it is the long term plan of the terrorists to destroy individual freedom in the West, they are doing a bang up job. Unfortunately, they are on the same page in this regard as the neo cons that are pushing this cancerous virus against the spirit of freedom through the media, through legislation and through the minds of the timid and fearful fools that buy into this fearful bullshit.

On this political front, we may have to make uncomfortable bedfellows. There are some conservatives that are vehemently passionate about individual liberty, some liberals and socialists as well. On this matter, we should be prepared to drop the guns we tend to hold at one another's heads and work together against the conservatives, liberals and socialists, that don't give a flying fuck about individual liberty and especially the terrorists and neo cons that are working to destroy it.

The Withering Away of the Quasi-Socialist State

‘Socialism proper’ is when the wealth of society is in the hands of the commons or the public as opposed to a particular individual or individuals. Quasi-socialism is piece-meal socialism embedded in capitalist societies. Examples of this are workers unions, social programs, the public ownership of roads and parks, or anything else that gives the working class and the public in general a greater degree of power.

Quasi-socialism has been deeply implanted in Western European and North American countries. Without it a society is always precariously teetering according to the whims of the economy. As a result, the people that live in that society are also precariously teetering between survival and death. Each day people starve to death in a world where there is enough for everybody.

Imagine the world where there is no quasi-socialism. A world where capitalism is completely unfettered and little or no social programs are in place. This is the situation in many countries around the world and it is a situation that capitalism tends toward through time.

In this situation a worker must sell his or her time to a business owner in order to eat, to buy health care and medicine, to feed the children, to buy electricity and so on. Without money the individual has no freedom, none whatsoever. He or she is not even free to access these basic necessities. Money is required to survive and without it, you don't. For the citizen and her children to be free of the stalking grim reaper she must surrender her time and labour to a business owner and produce wealth or provide services to that business owner. There is absolutely no freedom in this situation. It is a situation of wage-slavery. The choice is simple and stark. Either sell your time to a capitalist or die. So, obviously, the citizen sells his or her time to a capitalist.

While that worker is employed by the business owner, he or she is completely subject to the whims and arbitrary decisions of the boss. The owner might decide to have sex with the worker and may demand it. The choices the worker has at that point is to give in to the owners demands or face malnourishment or worse. The boss might discover that the worker is gay or may find out that the worker is of the wrong religion or has friends that are Black and for that reason, the owner fires the worker. The main point is that one individual has discretionary and arbitrary power over another. When that condition exists and it is a matter of survival and the choice is submission or survival, there is not a trace of freedom.

The agreed upon conditions could be ignored by the owner but the worker will be forced to comply and then some. For instance, the owner may decide that the worker should work several extra hours a day for free. I have lived in a country where workers worked six days a week and an additional two hours per day for the bosses for no pay. This was the expectation. Even at that, the bosses would notice who left first. Firings were arbitrary and came without warning and the threat was ominous. The oppression was ubiquitous for workers but the owners seemed to be having a good time.

A firing doesn’t mean the same thing where there is no social safety net. The sense of fear emanating from workers in that situation is palpable, especially when the boss is around.

Consider the contrast; in societies where unions have taken hold and where social programs have been developed, the standard of living is quite comfortable for most. In societies where unbridled capitalism exists, the standard of living is generally poor. This is because the more wealth is distributed among the population, the more demand there is for goods and services. But aside from those macro-economic considerations, there is the consideration of freedom. There is the consideration that one person, or one class of persons, has arbitrary power and control over others. This situation is completely unacceptable and it is a human rights issue.

So the choice is obvious. Unbridled capitalism is a set-up for abuse; a set-up for abject slavery and tyranny. The only acceptable conditions for capitalism are conditions where workers have a decent measure of power and economic freedom. That means that they have choices within and outside the workplace. That means that they are free to organize unions and that if they are unemployed, they are still free to make choices, to eat, to avail themselves of telephones and transportation and medical care. That means that an adequate social safety net is in place.

The problem is that capitalism has significant built in contradictions. And what that means for workers is that capitalism and capitalist states as a whole will become more austere as capitalism matures. The bangles and decorations at its edges are beginning to disappear. Universal health care, welfare, unemployment insurance, and the whole social safety net has started to rot and many people are falling through. They have landed on the sidewalks of the cities and they hold their hands out begging for spare change. They are doing so because they have lost their freedom to eat, to live in a home or to ride a bus. Whole families are homeless and the capitalist world is slipping into a foreboding future.

The big question is whether the withering away of the quasi-socialist state is irrevocable. Has capitalism grown to a point of no return or can we resurrect the ghost of John Maynard Keynes? Can the capitalists afford to throw us a few scraps? We must not forget however that while we in the West enjoyed the blessings of the marriage between J.M. Keynes and Henry Ford, people continued to starve to death in many parts of the world. Now capitalists are moving their shops there, to where the labour is cheap. Their need and desire to throw scraps to workers in the West has diminished.

In the near future we may lose our tax base for social programs. Maybe we will be forced to nationalize some of the profit making industries to pay for schools, hospitals and doctors. We can’t do without them. Or maybe we’ll have to take the whole socialism thing a few steps further than that.

Magical Mysterious 1967

In 1966 our morals, behaviour, and values were similar to those of 1956, or 1946, or even 1826 for that matter. But in 1967 something suddenly shifted. In 1966 there was a mood of innocence and certainty. Young people used colloquial expressions like ‘swell’, ‘neat’, or ‘lady’. They dressed conservatively and wore their hair short. They fought for God and country and they were patriotic.

In 1967 it was as if somebody pulled a switch. Young people suddenly grew their hair long. They suddenly opposed war and they refused to carry guns. And they dropped their guns and they began to drop LSD. The language of youth changed dramatically. Youth spoke pejoratively of “the establishment” which generally meant not only the state and the private sector, but traditional ways of thinking and doing things. Suddenly everybody knew who Timothy Leary, Alan Ginsberg and Aldous Huxley were.

In 1967 the Western world swung into full social upheaval. The anti-war movement exploded in living colour, the civil rights movement became emboldened as did the women’s liberation movement and many other movements of protest and change. The rug was pulled out from beneath Lyndon Johnson and John Calvin and parents everywhere.

The times suddenly had a very anarchistic and rebellious feel to them. It seemed to be an anarchistic rebellion that emerged out of nowhere. People began to set up communes and there was explicit talk of socialism, communism, and revolution not only in America, but throughout Europe as well. In America there was the Weather Underground, the Black Panthers and various other organized groups of revolutionaries. But as anarchistic and socialistic as it might have seemed, in fact it was the full social completion of the capitalist revolution that began so very long ago. The modes of production had changed but the people didn’t – until now. It was the final act of the capitalist revolution and it contained within it the energy and vision of socialism.

As our material conditions change so do we. But not easily if the nature of the last paradigm was a palpable solidity and continuity. The forces of inertia were well developed in the mentality of stoic and 'proper' feudal society. This served to retard the natural flow of psychological change and as a result social change was ostensibly held back. Meanwhile, changes in technology, the processes of production and the relationships within the capitalistic sphere continued to march to the beat of the drum of progress. As a result the values and processes at the workplace developed strain against the traditional values and mores of the average household.

The utopian world of ideas and morality cannot withstand the practical considerations of human needs and the very tangible reality of production and distribution. The caricature may hold for a time but will perish if there is any practical compulsion to expel it. Sometimes it happens slowly and incrementally and sometimes they meet a swift and abrupt end. That is what happened in 1967. As a result, people that formed their world view prior to that stand ideologically opposed to those that came of age at that time or later. It was commonly referred to in the 60’s and 70’s as the generation gap.

The modern capitalist world had become, previous to 1967, reliant on the empiricism of the scientific method. This implicit assumption was contained within the capitalist paradigm and it was subversive to and would be the death blow for religious and beliefs and the power of the church.

Capitalism also usurped the power and privilege of nobility as the power of merchants and industrial capitalists grew. Traditional and arbitrary power gave way to rational laws and principles where it became theoretically possible for individual inhabitants of the lower classes to rise through the social mobility granted by free enterprise. Legal principles now would be legitimated through reasonable observations and logical processes.

Capitalism also granted greater personal freedom to each individual. The binds of the old social order were broken. Not only did social mobility become possible, but the rigidity of morality and the social rules of patriarchy and religious piety had now lost their grounding and legitimacy.

In this climate of freedom from the binds of feudalism, a wealth of ambition and inventions found its way to the market. New ways of producing, hustling wares, and managing industry were developed. Capitalism developed tools to reduce the drudgery of work at the workplace and in the home. An explosion of commodities flooded the capitalist world making life far more enjoyable that previous generations could have even imagined.

But as late as 1966 this psychological transformation had not taken hold within most households. Most of the population lived in the world of Norman Rockwell. World views emanating from the pulpit and from parents and grandparents help preserve the old social order. Change was threatening to those with the comfort of habit and ideological solidity. They barely noticed the great demographic shift taking place as people left the countryside and moved into cities. But even in the cities, the extent of popular rebellion was restricted to good boys like Elvis and Jimmy Dean. The Western world was stuck in the comfort of knowing one’s place. There was good and there was evil. The known was good and the foriegn was evil. There were proper folks and immodest outcasts. The social order was holding.

In the background however there was Alan Ginsberg and the Beats. There was the emerging civil rights movement and there were Marxists, feminists and anarchists lurking about. Women and minorities were demanding equality and although these voices seemed silent in the mainstream, they all made their contribution to the cultural revolution of the sixties.

While it marked the coming of age for full scale capitalist society, it was energized by the radicalism of socialism. The thrust and energy of the 60s was based in the strain that existed between the forces of production and the inertia of wholesome conservativism. The individualist liberating qualities of capitalism were empowered with a growing hunger for for collective liberation, all qualities that are born of the liberations and inequities of capitalism. This incendiary concoction didn't burn, it exploded. The sympathies of socialism were explicitly expressed while the free expression itself was a manifestation of now widely accepted social freedom of capitalist society.

The acrimony that is so apparent and seems so natural between capitalism and socialism is rooted in a similar conservative bent to the old school crackers. But the nature of capitalism is that of a shape shifter. Capitalism is inherently revolutionary and its own revolution against itself is programmed into the software. Socialism is a natural and necessary child of capitalism.

Wealth is based on the difference between the time worked by a worker that is equal to his or her wages, and the extra time the worker produces. That extra time has value and it is surplus value. This is the basis of the wealth of capitalists. Although capitalism carries with it a greater degree of freedom than serfdom, the reality is not freedom in any practical sense, except for the lords of capital; ergo, the germination of revolutionary energy. Workers are free, yes, but at the same time they are not. And as capitalism matures, the strain between those that own and control and those that are owned and controlled increases necessarily.

The worker in feudal times had, in some ways, more independence that the wage worker of modern capitalism. He devoted some of his earned wealth to the lord that he served but maintained his own field and animals. Craftsmen produced wealth directly with their hands and enjoyed a measure of independence. But the modern worker in the modern workplace has become an alienated tool of socialized production and is valued in these terms. He must sell his time to one capitalist or another or face destitution. The modern worker finds himself in a state of social anarchy in the world of work, commodity production, and distribution. Who knows what is going to sell, what will shut down or what the future will bring? Previously, there was binding security.

Capitalism does not contain within it the inertia, security, and solidity that feudal systems had and for that reason, there is always an undercurrent of change and anarchy.

This situation results in societies that are under the constant strain of conflict and upheaval. The shackles of religion and tradition have been broken. The conflict between the new master, the capitalist, and the serf-like wage worker, percolates continuously. The strain between the increasing difficulty gaining profit from a unit of work and the diminishing standard of living for the average wage slave impregnate all societies with the seeds of socialism. And in an ironic twist, it was these seeds of socialism, the resultant dissatisfaction with capitalism that burst forth in 1967 to result in the full expression of capitalist liberation.

Capitalism has socialized the forces of production. And as it matures and grows, the utility of the individual capitalist diminishes. Their role becomes nothing more than that of a gambler at a casino. Managers of corporations must find ways to squeeze profit out of increasing difficult circumstances. It becomes their job to cut wages, to appropriate as much wealth as possible for and to the great casino. What is in the interests of the casino players and managers is directly opposed to the interests of workers and consumers as well as the general public.

The next social upheaval will come and it will be fundamentally different that the one that began in 1967. 1967 marked the beginning of a wholesale acceptance of individual freedom from the shackles of residual feudalism. This residue had to be purged from the psychology of the new generation.

There is no way to predict when it will come or what it will mean to the way we do things and our common values. We can only try to make educated guesses. History has a way of unfolding with twists and turns that seem written by a madman.

In 1960 or even in 1966 it would have been impossible to predict what was about to happen. The next upheaval could come at any time. The changeover from the age of kings and lords to the age of the bourgeoisie happened incrementally and the explosion of rebellion occured late and well into its adolescence.

Socialism will be born of a big bang. It is a birth that will require explicit revolutionary energy. The timing and the details are impossible to predict. But there is no doubting that it will come. It’s in the cards.

Insidious Karma

The elder Bush's bullet, aimed several decades ago at Phillip Agee, missed and it will likely strike Karl Rove right between the eyes. Looks good on him.

As a teen I read Agee's book, "Inside the Company: CIA Diary" in utter fascination. I could never look at the government of the USA the same way again.

Dubya's daddy, George H. Bush was director of the CIA before he became El Presidente and he aimed a bullet toward the agile Agee and missed. He got the Intelligence Identities Protection Act passed into law with the intent of nailing Phillip Agee, or anybody like him, to the cross.

In 2003 the shadowy Robert Novak wrote, "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction."

It looks like Bush's close advisor and friend, Karl Rove, is the one that let that cat out of the bag and Rove may be the one struck by the bullet aimed at Agee so long ago.

Strange isn't it? Bush senior takes a shot at Phillip Agree two decades ago and the bullet seems to be headed for Bush Junior's right hand man, Karl Rove.

Karma is rarely instant but it's gonna get you. It's gonna knock you right on the head.

Don’t Blame Bush

George W. Bush has taken on the appearance of something not natural, something supernatural, since he became president. Prior to his ascension he was just a bumbling fool. Sure he was cavalier with the gallows, but a bumbling fool nonetheless. Now he has become Satan to many horrified innocent bystanders.

But we can’t blame Bush.

During the last presidential campaign John Kerry was sounding more hawkish than Bush and his cabal of demons. And really, do you believe that if Kerry had won the election things would be any different in Iraq? It is likely that even if the Democrats had won the first election that by now Iraq would have been invaded.

This all depends on who is really in control. While it is true that the GOP is top heavy with oil billionaires, it is also true that the billionaires that dictate policy to the Republicans also tell the Democrats what to do. The lines of control are more convoluted than Halliburton and Cheney.

Here we come to the heart of a very important question. The question is; who really controls the American State? That is, who is in the shadows? Who is behind closed doors when the really big decisions are made? Who is it that tells Bush what to do?

Another interesting question is why this question is apparently completely off the radar as far as the mainstream media is concerned.

What seems to be happening recently would likely be happening if the marriage between the American state and the private sector was almost complete. Previously, American politicians held a modicum of political power but were heavily influenced by the business class. It may have shifted, apparently subtly, that the business class has taken full control of political decision making. The effects are not so subtle.

We might turn our attention to the question of who profits directly from war. If we peruse the who’s who in the war party (Boeing, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Halliburton, etc.) we begin to get a picture that is bigger than partisan politics.

According to John Kenneth Galbraith, “In 2003, close to half the total US government discretionary expenditure was used for military purposes. A large part was for weapons procurement or development. Nuclear-powered submarines run to billions of dollars, individual planes to tens of millions each.

Galbraith explains further that weapons profiteers provide politicians with plans and designs for new weaponry that will provide good jobs and salaries for politicians constituencies and the privateers themselves will make a killing. What Galbraith does not explain, at least in this particular article (Corporate Power) is that this type of spending is immensely wasteful. It is really corporate welfare and it is not very useful to the general public.

And so here we have it; the dictatorship of the bourgeoise. They are seeming benevolent monarchs and they provide us with oodles of material goods whether we like them or not. In fact, they spend billions convincing us that our measure as a human being is gauged by the car we drive, our PC, our home and our gadgets. And we swallow it all, hook, line and sinker. They divert our collective attention away from the starving masses that live outside the tent of American hegemony. People that starve directly as a result of capitalsim. People in Haiti for instance. They divert our attention away from the 40 million plus Americans that have no heatlth insurance. They divert our attention away from the carnage and massive slaughter that is going on in Iraq. A slaughter that is aimed at keeping the hegemony healthy and our trinkets flowing. And to hell with the people that have to survive on this planet two hundred years from now – party on Wayne.

American foreign policy is shaped and dictated by the corporations that run the American state and so is a good deal of domestic policy. So called free trade agreements also give these very same corporate managers a handle and a great deal of leverage on domestic policies in other countries as well. It is corporate managers or their representatives behind those closed doors that pull Bush’s strings and they would be attaching the very same strings to John Kerry if he were president. The figurehead really doesn’t matter at this point.

It looks as if we're not in Kansas anymore Dorothy. Concentration camps, torture, pre-emptive war, the spitting on the Geneva Conventions, the cavalier disregard for spirit of the American Constitution and so on have Americans bewildered and non-Americans in awe. Bush has said that 9-11 will change everything. In this case, he was almost telling the truth. The recent exposure of the nature of the American state may have been helped along by 9-11. It was not caused by it however.

We can look forward to the privatization of all that is public in the future. We can look forward to unabashed corporate control of domestic policy not only in the USA, but everywhere. Because if we look into the nature of capitalism, it grows in one direction.

When that all happens, the dictatorship of the bourgeoise will be complete.

The Myth of Freedom

What does the word 'socialism' conjure up? Does it bring to mind gulags, barbed wire, ugly concrete walls, death to dissidents, oppression and rigid control by a jackboot state apparatus? It should bring these things up as well as many more ugly images. If it doesn't, you have not been properly indocterinated. You better be careful, you might not be in the box.

For the moment, let us step outside of our collective indocterination and take a peek at what freedom is and what it could be.

Perhaps the greatest propaganda victory of capitalists over socialists during the so called cold war has been the success of the notion that capitalism equals freedom and socialism inevitably results in totalitarianism. The capitalists had willing accomplices; socialist farces making socialist faces. Country Joe Stalin and the Chairman that crushed Tibet were the people with the power. To be fair, they put together some impressive socialist polices. But a tyrannical dictator cannot be a socialist any more than a Christian can be a capitalist.

If we examine freedom and socialism and capitalism, we can see that there is nothing to suggest that socialism is oppressive and capitalism is liberating. The principles of socialism suggest otherwise as does the fundamentals of capitalism. Capitalism is inherently oppressive and socialism is inherently liberating.

The real freedom within the framework of capitalism is the freedom to oppress others; to own and control the life of another human being. The boss of an employee cannot own the worker or control a worker during his or her off hours but while he or she is at work, he owns and controls that person. And as capitalism matures and the terms of exploitation sharpen, the notion that the worker is free during his off work time becomes less clear. Some bosses demand that the worker is available through a phone call or submit to drug and alcohol screening. Workers rights are eroding and corporate power is expanding.

The worker's choice may be to quit - and then the choices are to work for another owner or face the ultimate state of oppression; poverty. And people in poverty have no choices or, in other words, no freedom.

In capitalist societies, freedom is granted through class, money, and power. Socialism holds the promise of freedom for everybody. The freedom to exploit or to be a tyrant however, vanishes. And if that is not socialism to you, it doesn't matter. It is socialism and anything less isn't. Freedom for all may seem like a dream now but it will be living material reality in the future.

More realistically and more now, the big dream of freedom is to strike it rich. It may be unfair to describe lotteries as ‘idiot tax’ because for most, it’s the only way out. Win big and suddenly we are catapulted into the realms of the gods and the beautiful people. No longer do we worry about the oppression of wage slavery, our kids future, lack of choices, destitution, Kraft Dinner - again - and so on. Because now we have joined the ranks of the idle rich and rich people are free to do what they want when they want to do it. They have so much money that their money magnetizes more money by simply existing. What a dream, what a beautiful life.

On the other hand many poor people are not even free to get food and medicine for their kids. Many poor people are starving and have no home. To not have choices is not to be free. The equation is simple: The more money you have, the more freedom you have.

‘But at least it isn’t the Gulag of Kim Jung Il’, will be the inevitable response from those that see in shades of black and white. ‘At least it isn’t the Berlin Wall’. This is true. But reality is not quite that simple. It may not be Kim Jung Il but it is Haiti and Honduras and it is Canada and America.

The fact remains that millions have suffered under well intentioned socialist revolutions. There is a very real and tragic history behind the association between socialism and totalitarianism. In each and every case, whenever a socialist revolution has occurred, the socialist state has had to defend itself against attacks from outside agitators as well as terrorists from within that were bent on the overthrow of the revolution. When we consider the reaction of the USA to the terrorist attacks on 9-11 and the extent of the paranoia that followed, we can then consider the paranoia of a smaller state that has the USA hell bent on overthrowing it.

It would be crude to suggest that the tyrants of socialism are solely the spawn of the Great Satan however. While it might be argued that Stalin was not a socialist in the proper sense of the word, the fact is that he grew to take power and became the dictator of an intended socialist state. But Stalin and the rest of the infamous dictators of socialist states have grown out of the rigidity and tyranny of feudalism. They held crude and primitive ideas about power, people, and leadership. In other words, they had not been refined into the liberalism that the relative freedom of capitalism can percolate. They believed that people had to be whipped into submission with brutal force.

This is not socialism however. Socialism requires that the working class control society. If any dictator or central committee have control, it is a gross perversion. Socialism is necessarily democratic and if it isn't, then it isn't 'social'.

Modern liberal capitalist democracies tend to contain within them the liberating tendencies of socialism. We see examples of it in the rational basis of our legal principles. That is, authority is based in rationality as opposed to emotion, tradition, or charisma. We see it in the demands for civil rights, in the demands for gender equality, for workers rights, gay rights and so on. These tendencies are the tendencies of socialism but within the framework of capitalism, they are merely liberalism. That is, we see single issue yuppies fighting the good fight while they step over the homeless and treat them as a nuisance. Liberalism hints at socialism, but it ain’t the real deal. It is about liberation for my self or my people – the rest can go to hell.

Freedom cannot exist under capitalism except for those that have wealth and power. The bottom line is that we must sell our labour in order to live and in that process, we give up our freedom. The person that hires us can fire us. He has that power. And that power grants him control of me and you. He can fire us on a whim. As a result we live under the oppression of that person or organization. We feel that pressure in the presence of the bosses. If he (they) gets the notion, he can fire any employee arbitrarily. He might find out you are gay, or that you have a Black boyfriend and then the jig is up. The gay hating racist prick will fire you for incompetence or insubordination – or something. The point here is that one person has an unacceptable degree of power over another.

Without money we have no freedom in capitalist society because we have no choices. We cannot house ourselves or our family, we cannot eat and we cannot go anywhere or own anything. So, we sell ourselves to the boss.

Capitalism also requires control outside the workplace and to maintain that control they rely on the power of the monopoly and the power of the state. One example of the controlling nature of capitalism is the existence of copyright laws. Copyright laws are about control and control for profit. The capitalist state is rife with such laws and restrictions to control goods and information to allow the ‘lawful’ owners to make us pay. It is in the interests of capitalists to take control of all commodities and to reduce their availablility. They make us, the inmates of their madhouse, pay for insurance, electricity, communications, all the vital necessities of life and as a result, they have control of us. The wealth flows from us, to them and the only way to make the flow stream laterally or downward, is through sweat and subservience.

But what about pensions? What about unemployment insurance? What about free health care and social assistance? These are examples of freedom aren’t they? Are these not examples of having choices without being required to sell our souls?

The fact is, these are piece meal examples of socialism that exist in many modern capitalist societies. These are the results of the countless struggles carried out by socialists and agitators of the past. Take a look and you will see that what is humane in society, what is decent and what is good for people is always socialism.

What do we see from the other side? We see oil billionaires lying to wage war in Iraq. We see capitalist states invading country after country to maintian the supply to addicts. We see scores of workers thrown out of work when the capitalists can make more profit by shifting locations. We see the rich and their political minions doing their utmost to cut social programs, privatize health care, and generally make life as miserable as possible for the rest of us. The reason is that what's good for us is not good for them and vice versa. This is one of the fundamental problems with capitalism and that is why they (the capitalist class and their puppets) can be so bizarrely inhumane.

We ask ourselves why they keep wanting more and more. Surely five mansions and enough wealth to last for a thousand generations is enough. We may also ask ourselves why they seem to want to exclude everybody else from their grand party.

Power is intoxicating and they are addicted to it. The ego can also get quite drunk on the status they enjoy. But the real substantial effect of wealth is freedom and the ultra wealthy have not only tasted freedom, they swim in it. They have it exclusively and that leads them to believe that freedom is a zero sum game. But there is no reason to suggest that freedom is a limited commodity. We can all be free.

The Principles of Socialism

Socialism must be based in natural human needs, wants, and human development.

It is natural that parents care for the needs of their children. As children grow, they develop from self centered need gratification to community connection, which is a fundamental human need. Community connection proceeds from the service of the self to the self to the service to others. Service to others may mean at one level, service to the individual’s own children and family or it may extend to working in the community to meet the needs of others.

This developmental process should be the basis of socialist development because it is natural to human beings. Socialist principles should never be based on principles that are alien to the natural inclinations of human beings.

We are born with nothing but needs and if we die of old age, we die with nothing but needs. Through the process of life, we will optimally develop if we proceed through self centered need gratification and expand our perspective to the needs of others. Through self centeredness, children learn to appreciate the wants and needs of human beings. As we grow and if we have children, we learn that their needs are more important than our own. If we don’t have children, we still learn that the needs of other people are more important than our own through other means besides parenting.

Human adult happiness can be achieved through one thing only. It is achieved when we genuinely place the needs, happiness and well being of other people above our own. The human individual that is stuck in selfishness is truly important from a socialist point of view because he is suffering more than more developed human beings. And from the socialist point of view, who suffers most is most important.

One problem with the capitalist stage of social development has been that those same individuals that suffer in the cage of selfishness that deserve our compassion, have taken complete control of our societies. It is as if the children have taken control of the household.

Capitalist societies must be put on notice. Legislation must be pushed through capitalist parliaments that if capitalist control of government does not serve the needs of the people, then socialist control of government will take place. In other words, the adults will take control of the household.

Criteria should be developed with this in mind. That is, criteria that measures human misery. Should human misery fall below a certain level on quantitative and qualitative measures, then socialists will replace capitalistic lawmakers on national and preferably international levels and form a revolutionary new socialist government with the following principles as its foundation.

That society functions on the bases of the needs of the community.

That the needs of the community are assessed with the most needy individual deemed as the highest priority.

The needs of the public are deemed the highest priority.

Production is based on the needs of the community.

Distribution and trade is based on the needs of the community.

Ownership and control of natural resources is in the hands of the community.

Ownership and control of the wealth created by labour rests in the hands of the community.

Ownership and control of the community rests in the hands of all members of the community.

Community leadership is based on service to the needs of the community.

Socialist societies will be fundamentally different in one single fundamental respect at first; that the ownership and control of natural resources rests in the hands of the community.

Socialist societies will evolve through achieving ownership and control of industry placed first in the hands of nation based community control. Control will devolve to the local community as expediently as is practical.

The process of transformation from the private sphere to the public sphere is accomplished through cooperation and agreement wherever possible.

Early socialist societies will maintain the same institutions, businesses, infrastructure, and liberal legal principles as late capitalist societies. The legal principles that are contrary to socialist principles will be abolished.

The institutions created through private ownership be initially maintained and assessed for value to the community.

Where capitalistic incentives are needed for under-developed individuals and communities, the community will hold strict control over production, trade, and the relationship between private bosses and workers.

Where capitalistic incentives are needed for under-developed individuals or communities, the coercive nature and threat posed by those individuals and communities is openly and frankly discussed in public forums.

Practical steps are taken to prevent those same individuals from manipulating wealth and community control for their own benefit.

In all cases where capitalist incentive mechanisms are needed, they will be on a temporary basis.

In all cases where capitalist incentive mechanisms are needed, workers will be organized in democracy based unions outside of the control of the owners.

Control of both natural resources and industry will devolve to the community where industries are located.

That trade between communities is coordinated and based on community needs.

Individuals work is not forced.

Individuals should work in accordance with the needs of the community.

Work direction is based in community needs.

Work initiative is based in crass goal achievement for those in lower stages of psychological development.

Work initiatives are based in self centered needs for youth with the recognition that self centeredness is valuable and necessary for youth to develop.

Control of work is based in the individual’s willingness and ability to take initiative and ownership of the problem of community needs.

Workers that carry out, facilitate and coordinate trade between communities are included and welcomed while they are away from their home community.

Communities will assist other communities where trade or production development is difficult or slow. Trade should focus on the needs of the community but also on the needs of foreign communities.

State control of criminality will evolve toward social and community control.

State control of all institutions will evolve toward community control.

State control will evolve toward community control; community control will evolve toward family control and toward no control. Individual emancipation from state coercion is a fundamental goal of socialism.

Socialist societies will develop toward the abolition of the state.

The socialist state will adhere to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of media, and people will not require payment for information. Information will be free and unfettered.

Repressive state forces will be in formed only in the case where tyranny and oppression must be curtailed. Authority, whether it is the authority of a parent or a teacher or police, will never be abused. If it is abused, the authority will be removed by the state from the individual, the body or organization.

Discrimination against human beings will be eliminated through education and in severe cases of organized hate, through legal sanctions that are aimed against tyranny.

The education of educators and medical professionals will be a priority in all communities. These skills and resources will be shared and developed according to need.

Vital needs shall never require a charge of money. This includes and is not restricted to housing, food, medicine, medical care, or anything else where its absence may result in the death of an individual.

Technological development will be enhanced through the development of community awards and grants and through the development of incentives to individuals and communities.
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The great sweep of history, from the communism of hunter gatherer societies to early tribal societies and all its developments to late tribal societies to early feudal societies and its developments to late feudal societies to early capitalist societies and through those developments we now emerge, seated within the historical context of late capitalism; aware of the sweep of history.

It has become increasingly obvious that capitalism has developed and has become not capitalism but monopolism. The state and private business are married and stand over and above societies. These powers have control of the societies and the individuals in them and together, they form an oppressive and alienating force.

The time is coming where we, the individuals that are members of various societies, must take the initiative to move from late capitalism to early socialism. Early socialism should and will look like late capitalism but at that point, we will have switched tracks. Our trajectory will have changed and we will be on the road to the abolition of the state, the complete abolition of capitalism, and the abolition of barbarism.

Experimenting from Nova Scotia to Nazi Germany

The death of a prostitute, a homeless person, or an average Joe does not seem to have much of an impact. But the death of a middle class student in Aruba seems to be big news. There isn’t much doubt that human beings are valued and de-valued according to social class, perceived morality, and perceived exchange value.

Eugenics is a system of ostracization or sterilization aimed at preventing undesirable human beings from breeding and creating more undesirables. This was the spirit in Nazi Germany with the mass genocide of people they considered to be undesirable. The Nazis also carried out the practice of eugenics with the spirit of the master race in mind.

When we consider the fact that we are moving in that direction through time and that we are increasingly placing value on human beings depending on a very judgmental, classist, and racist pecking order, we should remind ourselves of how dangerous facism can be. We should also be aware of how dangerous liberal do-goodism can be because there is no shortage of these often phoney charity minded and reform minded do gooders. Just as surely as liberal do-gooders can rationalize their aim for a ubiquitous and rightious middle class, the Nazis could rationalize their aims for a master race. Both sentiments are dangerous and have the same sinister designs.

Here are excerpts of an article on eugenics derived from research done by the author, Stephen Ellis. There are also links to take you to articles in a recent issue of Shunpiking Magazine:

~excerpts~

(Lifted from Shunpiking Magazine)

'Modern science has it well in hand':Nova Scotia's 'experiment' in eugenics

By STEPHEN ELLIS*

30 April 2004Canadian Legal HistoryDalhousie University

"Behold ye simple moron,He does not give a damn,I'd hate to be a moron,Ye Gods! Perhaps I am."The Medical Society of Nova Scotia

HALIFAX, NS -- IT WAS sixteen years before those fateful days in May, 1945 when the consequences of the German eugenics movement and the Nazi program of Josef Mengele could no loner be denied.

On the occasion of the founding of the Brookside Training School in Nova Scotia, Dr. Samuel H. Prince, noted social reformer and mental hygiene society president, exemplified the tireless commitment of many of his generation of progressive activists. Progressives of this period agitated for a better world, one where science, humanism and Christian values would play a large part. There were many evils to be overcome in the early part of the twentieth century, tuberculosis, influenza, among others, and more and more, people were putting their faith in science as a way to cure society's ills.

For middle-class progressives, however, no phenomenon matched in gravity the type of danger the existence of "feeble-minded" people represented in Nova Scotia. And on this November day in 1929, the campaign against the blight of "feeblemindedness" had for the most part reached a successful conclusion: a publicly-funded institution had been established to ensure this "most pernicious element" was eliminated from the arteries of the nation.

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Boiled down, eugenics is the notion that the quality of the human race can be improved through selective breeding. It is based on the assumption that individual traits are passed through heredity. Francis Galton first popularised this form of determinism in 1865:

If a twentieth part of the costs and pains were spent in measures for the improvement of the human race that is spent on the improvement of the breed of horses and cattle, what a galaxy of genius might we not create! We might introduce prophets and high priests of civilization into the world as surely as we can propagate idiots by mating cretins. Men and women of the present day are, to those we might hope to bring into existence, what the pariah dogs of the streets of an Eastern town are to our own highly-bred varieties.
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Maude Merrill in a 1922 article in the Dalhousie Review reflected well the tenor of the time:

The Nams, the Kallikaks, the Zeros and the rest of the innumerable tribes of Ishmaelites, unearthed in our insatiable thirst for the truth about heredity, have abundantly proved that certain mental traits are characteristic of generation after generation of the same stock. ... The social significance of inferior mental capacity is strikingly apparent in its intimate relation to all forms of anti-social conduct.

Alexander P. Reid, Dean of the Dalhousie Faculty of Medicine from 1868 to 1875 and Superintendent of the Nova Scotia Hospital for the Insane, was typical in many respects of the middle-class professionals of his time. His faith in eugenics was unwavering:

Eugenics steps forward as the guide that can safely pilot it [society] to the safe harbours of health, wealth and desirable possibilities ... and points out the means by which the undesirable recession in race propagation can be controlled, nay, eliminated. F.C.S. Schiller, humanist philosopher and founder of the English Eugenics Society, laid out the basics of the eugenic doctrine in an essay for the Dalhousie Review:

The license society allows at present to the criminal, the insane and the feeble-minded to multiply at pleasure, and to have their worse than worthless offspring cared for at the public expense, or rather, at the expense of those who feel too heavily taxed to produce children that would yield better returns to the community ... The gist may be stated in a single sentence. Society, as at present organized, wastes its good material and extirpates its better stocks, while it recruits itself from its inferior elements. It does this unconsciously and unintentionally, but at a growing rate.

As faith in nineteenth-century liberalism declined, social Darwinist ideas guaranteeing "survival of the fittest' ensured that eugenics was planted in very fertile soil. The belief in the right to be "well-born" had literally swept the world. In the United States sterilization laws were enacted in as many as thirty-one states and became the inspiration of the later Nazi eugenic campaign in Germany.

Canada, too, took up arms against the foe from within. Alberta's sterilization laws remained on the books until 1972. In its forty-four years, Alberta's Sexual Sterilization Act had authorized four thousand, seven hundred and twenty-eight sterilizations, and was directed disproportionately at women, and people of aboriginal and Eastern European descent.
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Eugenics as social policy: Canada

History has now provided ample evidence that eugenics was far from a passing fancy in Canada. Some of this country's most prominent social reformers were quite naturally believers in the need for eugenic measures to protect the nation against racial degeneration. People like J.S. Woodsworth, Tommy Douglas, Charlene Whitton, Emily Murphy, Nellie McClung and Agnes McPhail, among many others attest to the fact that far from being the preserve of a fringe group, eugenic ideas were mainstream.

The medical profession in particular took an early interest in the need to combat "race suicide" in Canada.

In a piece read before the American Medico-Psychological Association in 1900, Dr. James Russell of the Hamilton Asylum opined that while there were many processes that aimed to "destroy the moral and intellectual fibre of the race," the elevated status of the Anglo-Saxon race would not be undermined. Speaking in less than subtle metaphors, Dr. Russell painted the picture thus:

The immense virility of the Anglo-Saxon race, like that sturdy oak, may resist the encroachments of the canker worm for generations, but unless purge and purified of the disease it will at last crumble and decay.

No individual was more prominent in the campaign against "mental defectives" than public health crusader Dr. Helen MacMurchy. Next to successful campaigns on such vital issues as birth control and infant mortality, MacMurchy saw dealing with the problem of the "feeble-minded" as a national priority. With a rather disconcerting mix of compassion and cold-heartedness, MacMurchy in her 1920 book The Almosts: A Study of the Feeble-Minded viewed the problem in this way:

It is the age of true democracy that will not only give every one justice, but will redeem the wastes products of humanity and give the mental defective all the chance he needs to develop his gifts and all the protection he needs to keep away from him evils and temptations that he never will be grown up enough to resist, and that society cannot afford to let him fall victim to.

Dr. MacMurchy was a fervent advocate of the forcible segregation and sterilization of mental defectives and claimed that society would pay dearly in "expense, crime, immorality, crime and national degeneration" if these "unfortunates" were allowed to reproduce. Mentally defective children become mentally-defective men and women -- mentally defective paupers and criminals ... then the community must be protected from the feeble-minded and the feeble-minded must be protected from many in the community who would lead them into evil ways.
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The mental hygiene movement in Nova Scotia

The politics of eugenics (or mental hygiene, as it become known) had equally erstwhile proponents in the province of Nova Scotia. As early as 1890, Alexander P. Reid in a paper read before the Nova Scotia Institute of Natural Science, viewed the danger the feeble-minded posed in alarmist terms:

These "ulcerous and diseased outgrowths on society" whose affliction is "sixty to eighty per cent" inherited will pass away with sufficient effort.

Speaking of the "tyranny of defective organization," Dr. Reid remarked, "There are many congenital defects, but crime, idiocy and insanity are the most potent for ill in the culture of the race, and will society not interfere to protect its successors when they cannot help themselves?

" In an article written in 1913 entitled "Eugenics", Reid speaks in terms eerily reminiscent of the later Nazi campaign against the Jews:

[M]ust society continue to be oppressed by this increasing mass of expensive and worthless humanity ... Were these ideas carried out the whole lot of irresponsibles, imbeciles and criminals would be eliminated in two generations, and some States are now on the high road for this termination ... if we cannot reach perfection let us get as near as we can.

Loyal to the idea, Reid reiterated that the source of the "problem" must dealt with conclusively: "The disciple of Eugenics is thus given a sound basis upon which to construct practical work and formulate laws which can in time eliminate the undesirable elements of society." Lamenting the fact that the Nova Scotian public remained unfavourable to the recourse of sterilization, Reid settled for segregation: "Let us place all the feeble-minded under such restraint that procreation be prevented."


Probably the most active member of the medical community in Nova Scotia to take on the "problem" of the feeble-minded was Dr. W.H. Hattie, Medical Superintendent from 1898 to 1914 and Provincial Health Officer from 1914 to 1922. In an article called "The Prevention of Insanity", Dr. Hattie's analysis mirrors that of others engaged in this battle: "The average imbecile is not of much use as a citizen. He is usually at least in some degree extra-social if not anti-social. But he is capable of procreating his kind." State intervention, according to Hattie, was also necessary to ensure couples were "properly" paired. With respect to the feeble-minded:

More than mere suasion is necessary to any measure of success, however, and there is good sense in the efforts which some lawmakers are putting forth to prevent promiscuous marrying and to place some restrictions on the marriage of the unfit.

Seven years later in an article of the same title, Hattie developed on his idea of the type of "suasion" necessary. In the event the deemed defective demonstrated any sexual impulse, the state must intervene:

When there is evident defect, particularly if any tendency to eroticism is manifest, the safety of the community, as well as of the unfortunate individual, demands segregation in a suitable institution. This costs more than sterilization or the lethal chamber, but does less violence to sentiment. Some authorities, as Archibald R. Douglas, of the Royal Albert Institution, assert that the imbecile is a much more potent agent in producing racial deterioration than the lunatic. I doubt if we have any more pressing need in Canada today than the proper provision for the feeble-minded members of our country, particularly those who are still sexually competent.

In an article entitled "The Physician's Part in Preventing Mental Disorder", Dr. Hattie repeated the mantra of the mental hygiene movement:

The so-called lesser grades of mental defect are perhaps really those of paramount importance, for these are accountable for a very large share of the criminality and immortality and delinquency and pauperism which cost us so dearly, and it is these lesser defects which are most likely to be passed on from generation to generation. The problem then is many-sided, and bears so intimately upon national efficiency and national progress that we cannot afford to disregard it.

Echoing the apocalyptic tone of his contemporaries across the continent, Hattie warns of a national emergency; only the fittest will survive on the national and international stage:

Canada is faced today with a situation not less perilous that that involved in accepting the challenge of the Hun. We have entered upon a period of competition such as never before dreamed of. Our place among the nations depends upon our ability to meet this competition, and this in turn depends upon the physical, mental and moral qualities of our people.

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I. A movement is born - The Halifax Local Council of Women

In one of the very few references to Nova Scotia, McLaren in his work points out that Canada's first eugenical movement was formed in 1908 in Nova Scotia in the form of the League for the Protection of the Feeble-Minded. True as this may be, organized agitation in support of eugenic measures in Nova Scotia was taken on by the Halifax Council of Women (HCW) at least a full decade earlier. And given the boundless energy and influence of such women as Mrs. J.C. Mackintosh, Mrs. Charles Archibald, and later, Mrs. Agnes Dennis, the dubious honour rightly goes to the HCW.
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II. The Nova Scotia League for the Protection of the Feeble-Minded

The group with the well-meaning name was formed on June 3, 1908, no doubt at the inspired instigation of the HCW. The League for the Protection of the Feeble-Minded, with the Lieutenant-Governor of the province, J.C. Tory, as its honourary president brought together people from many walks of life to carry out this vital social task. Dr. William H. Hattie, Ernest H. Blois, Sir Frederick Fraser, Judge Wallace, Archbishop McCarthy, Agnes Dennis, Eliza Ritchie, Mrs. F.H. Sexton of the I.O.D.E., and Dr. Frank Woodbury. Later, as the Nova Scotia Society for Mental Hygiene, it would involve such personalities as A.H. MacKay, Superintendent of Education, and Dr. Samuel H. Prince, founder of the Maritime School of Social Work, Kings College professor and prominent social reformer.

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III. The Murray and Rhodes governments respond

On two separate occasions, in 1916 and again in 1926, the Nova Scotia Legislature saw fit to organize royal commissions to investigate the nature of the social danger facing Nova Scotians. Interestingly, both inquiries found that the social, moral and economic welfare of the province was "gravely menaced" and that immediate steps had to be taken to "limit the multiplication of this unfortunate class". Moreover, both commissions concluded that sterilization as a method of selective breeding, though effective, offended popular sentiment. Instead, the more "cost effective" method of segregation was preferred; "defective" boys would be required to learn a trade so as to become a productive member of society and "defective" girls would be kept in care until the child-bearing years have passed.

Both inquires drew the same conclusions about the societal impact on the "unwatched" mental defect:

We may reasonably assume that this condition is responsible for a very considerable share of the pauperism, illegitimacy, vice, and crime which exist in our province, and we are aware that the defect is one which is singularly prone to be transmitted from parent to child. It would, therefore, seem reasonable that from the economic, as well as from the moral and sociological points of view, a strong effort should be made to limit the multiplication of this unfortunate class.

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IV. Legislation

In 1927, the Rhodes government moved quickly to implement the recommendations of the Royal Commission, and, by so doing, became one of Canada's few governments to give eugenic doctrine a legislative form. Bills 64, 70 and 84 were all enacted to amend the Children's Protection, Poor Relief and Education Acts, respectively. Also, Bill 174 was enacted to establish the only "training school" east of Orillia, Ontario.

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Conclusion

It is not difficult to imagine the pride that comes with having finally achieved what one has dreamed of for decades. Speaking at an annual meeting of the Nova Scotia Society for Mental Hygiene the day before the cornerstone was laid, Dr. Prince was glowing in his appraisal:

We are turning a new page in our book of golden days. There is a spell upon us and about us, which is more than the spell of autumn. It is like the night before Christmas. It is like the denouement of a beautiful story. For at last all is in readiness for the silver trowel, when a few hours hence there shall be well and truly laid the corner stone of the new Brookside school, which to bring into being this society was born.

As the history of eugenic social policy has demonstrated, one person's beautiful story is always someone else's nightmare. Hundreds of "worse than worthless" children were herded into this institution to save the rest of society from ruin. Not one of their names is known. Compounding the problem is the fact that this disturbing chapter of our history has all but disappeared from the history books, if it was ever there in the first place.

Where there is oppression, there are always victims. The scapegoats in this eugenic crusade were the children. In fact, it is likely that thousands of children passed through the doors of the Brookside Training School, branded with the stigma of mental defect and treated as the "waste products" they were perceived to be. One thing is certain: Nova Scotia must atone for the violence committed against these helpless children.

Disturbing still is the fact that by the time Alberta, British Columbia and Nova Scotia had drawn up legislation to eradicate mental defectives from society, eugenics as a scientific doctrine had largely been discredited. By 1926, one of the main architects of the Nova Scotian eugenics movement, Ernest H. Blois, in a paper read before the Annual Conference of Children's Aid Societies drops the following bombshell:

[W]e were told once that most crimes, sexual immorality, especially among females, and evil in many forms were due largely to feeble-mindedness. This we now know to be untrue, but nevertheless, in dealing with these particular forms of vice and crime, feeble-mindedness is one, and in some cases a very large factor in a very complex problem.

Yet, he still argued for their incarceration. One of the conclusions from the 1926 Royal Commission included the incredible statement, "too little is known regarding the hereditary nature of feeble-mindedness". They, too, argued for confinement. How the eugenic argument survived without its main theoretical support remains a mystery.

A look at the historical facts from across the continent shows that eugenics left no territory untouched. It was perhaps a movement that seemed impeccable in its logic and unstoppable in momentum. After all was said and done, the victims paid the price and the "progressives" went on with their lives as if nothing had happened. [102]

Link to Full Article:

http://www.shunpiking.com/ol0207/0207-SE-eug-NS.htm

Link to Shunpiking Magazine featuring more articles on Eugenics in the May-June 2005 Issue. This Magazine is well worth perusing for interesting and well researched artiles:

http://www.shunpiking.com/