Ayn Rand on Native Land Theft

They didn't have any rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using . . . . What was it that they were fighting for, when they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their 'right' to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, but just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or a few caves above it. Any white person who brings the element of civilization has the right to take over this continent.

So much for Rand's “libertarianism”, not to mention respect for property rights. Property rights are for “white” folks it seems.

Thanks to Red Jenny http://redjenny.blogspot.com/2007/09/why-i-am-not-objectivist-2311.html

CAPITALISM DIDN'T INVENT ANYTHING

This was written back in July 2005, but the issue came up recently in a posting in Renegade Eye Blog, so I am running it again...

Apologists for capitalism like to lay claim for all the good things developed during the last 200 years. Wouldn't have happened without capitalist entrepreneurs, they say. And this is the reason that these entrepreneurs must be rewarded with colossal salaries and patent monopolies.

Trouble is, with this happy scenario, is inventors don't invent to become fabulously wealthy. There are legions of garage and basement-based inventors, and none of them are rich. Some like Edison and Ford do become rich, but in the beginning they weren't and yet they still invented. Inventing is their art, and like artists they will do so whether they are financially rewarded or not.

While financially successful inventors become capitalists as a matter of course, few inventors are themselves capitalists to begin with. The most common source of invention in the 19th and early 20th Century was the skilled worker. Edison and the Wright Brothers are the prime examples. Morse, Fulton, and Ericsson were artists. Watt an instrument maker. Edison a railway telegrapher. Kelvin, DeForest, (radio) Farnsworth, (TV) Bell, Faraday, Davie were scientists. Eastman (camera) an office clerk. Ford, and Howe (sewing machine) were machinists. Cyrus McCormack was a farmer.

Note that all great inventions are connected with a person's name. Inventions are made by individuals (Or two brothers as with the Wright Brothers and les freres Lumiere) and not by corporations. Corporate capitalism invents nothing. It might buy out someone's idea, or adapt an existing concept, but produces nothing new. Corporations develop ideas, but in a bureaucratic fashion. This explains the poor quality and impracticality of so much contemporary design. (1)The old inventors were practical people trying to find the simplest and most workable solution to a problem. The bureaucrats are merely looking for a marketing angle or a way of cheapening the cost, to which they will cheerfully sacrifice design.

Capitalism, and this is well known, suppresses inventions if they harm profits. Way back in the 1830's steam powered buses were running across England. The coaching industry and railways crushed the steam coaches by getting Parliament to enact the infamous "red flag law".(2.) Nicola Tesla found a way to transmit electricity without wires, his backer, J.P. Morgan, pulled the plug on him and a campaign of slander against Tesla was launched in the newspapers. A tacit agreement among the Big Three auto manufacturers in the US put the revolutionary Tucker car out of business.

Apologists for the corporate system claim that capital's promotion through advertising and large scale production brings new improved goods to the masses and as a result brings the price down. But people know a good thing when they see it and don't need to be propagandized into buying something. No mass advertising was necessary to switch from flint and steel to matches, or candles to coal oil lamps and then to electricity. Advertising is mostly a way of getting people to buy what they don't need or to get a larger share of the market for a product that is in no way different from that of the so-called competition. (Think of Coke vs. Pepsi)

While it is true that an economy of scale is needed to produce complex goods like aircraft, automobiles and large ships, it really doesn't apply to most items and services. Does the world really need and benefit from multinational corporations frying hamburgers, brewing beer, baking bread, manufacturing cheese, bottling soft drinks, or providing janitorial services? I think not. The quality of these goods and services is usually much better when delivered by small or local firms. If you want good beer you buy from a microbrewery not Molsons or Coors. Good bread is only found at local bakeries, mass production bread is only fit for pigs. MacDo burgers are crap and Kraft cheese has no taste.

1. Things have gotten insanely and unnecessarily complex. Why should you need a manual to operate your car radio-CD player? Why did they abolish the on-off switch for cell phones and pagers? Why are "help menus" so unhelpful?
2. The law by which any "horseless carriage" had to be preceded by a man bearing a red flag. This law, which wasn't killed until 1896, effectively gave France and Germany a big head start in the auto industry.

To All Survivors of "Indian Residential Schools"

Public Announcement

To all survivors of "Indian Residential Schools" and "Indian Hospitals", and their families and descendents:

An Invitation to make History

The time has come for the full truth of the crimes of the residential schools to be shared before the world, so that those responsible can be brought to justice, and the spirits of the departed can be laid to a final rest.

Commencing on September 5, 2007, a travelling human rights Tribunal will visit many indigenous nations across Canada to hold public and private sessions where you can share your story and other evidence regarding what actually went on in the residential schools and hospitals - and how these crimes against our people are continuing today.

Convened under the land law jurisdictions of the Anishinabe, Cree and Metis Nations, this Tribunal has a simple mandate: to gather the proof that genocide of indigenous people occured and is occuring across Canada.

One of the primary aims of the Tribunal is to identify the fate and buried location of the more than 50,000 children who died in residential schools and hospitals, and arrange the repatriation of their remains to their traditional territories for a proper burial.

The Tribunal will open in Port Alberni, British Columbia, on September 5, 2007, and will travel eastward over the following three months. It will include international human rights observers from indigenous nations around the world, local tribal elders, and members of the media.

Before the end of this year, we plan to present our findings to the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York City.

We, the founding elders of the International Human Rights Tribunal into Genocide in Canada (IHRTGC), personally invite you to to welcome us onto your territory and to fully participate in our work and sessions. We need to hear your stories and gather the evidence that will make justice a reality.

We ask you to circulate this notice to your friends and families, and to encourage your own elders to welcome us and participate in our work. Please contact us at the numbers below if you can help us.

We look forward to working with you to end the suffering and bring a true and lasting healing to all our peoples. The truth shall set us all free.

With warmest regards and in the spirit of our Creator,

Louis Daniels - Whispers Wind, Elder, Anishinabe Nation

Jeremiah Jourdain, Elder, Metis-Cree Nation

Co-convenors,

The International Human Rights Tribunal into Genocide in Canada (IHRTGC)

c/o 260 Kennedy St.

Nanaimo, B.C. Canada V9R 2H8

ph: 250-753-3345

(after September 4, leave a message at 1-888-265-1007 or email us at these addresses: genocidetribunal@yahoo.ca

hiddenfromhistory@yahoo.ca)

Our website is: http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org

Issued under the authority of our Hereditary Land Law Jurisdiction from unceded Coast Salish Territory, Turtle Island, 23 August, 2007

Prosperity Partnership Summit Denounced In Nanaimo

At 7;30 this morning at least 30 of us were strung in several lines along the Pearson Bridge in Nanaimo. There may have been more as some workers stopped to participate for half an hour or so before heading to their jobs. We bore signs denouncing the Prosperity Partnership (sic) Summit, that latest act of corporate state graft and empire building. A great many people driving to work waved or beeped their horns in support. I saw only one negative response. Most people took the leaflets. Participants involved included the Green Party, the Canadian Action Party, the NDP, Council of Canadians and the Popular Participation Movement (a radical youth movement) Since this demo was organized word of mouth and Nanaimo is relatively a small town, I think it was a success.

Michael Nerenberg - Songwriter

Morin Heights is a picturesque little Laurentian town about 45 minutes from Montreal. But it is well known for something else besides cuteness. Morin Heights, and the surrounding area, is home to some of Quebec's best musicians and songwriters. For folk, you have the McGarrigles and the late Wade Hemsworth, jazz the incomparible bass player, Normand Lachapelle, the sax man, Reez Soudre, and in rock, the legendary Robert Charlebois. There is one really outstanding songwriter/composer, who other than among his fellow musicians, has remained virtually unknown. Michael Nerenberg is part Dave Van Ronk, part Tom Waits, part Tom Lehrer and part Jelly Roll Morton, but at the same time, all and uniquely himself. His songs are hilariously funny or poigniant, joyous or sad, but always socially aware and intelligent. I am so pleased to discover that Michael now has a web site and that it is possible to download some of his songs. He has also started an organization called Committed Music and I quote from the site, This site is meant unabashedly to serve as a forum for message music, a warring site against ignorance as much as a spot for fine sounds.

For Michael Nerenberg's songs and Committed Music see

http://www.committedmusic.com/Michael%20Nerenberg/index.htm

Right Wing Pedos Once More!

More evidence that the authoritarian mentality and pedophilia are connected. See

http://www.armchairsubversive.org/

Manifesto of solidarity with Venezuelan Anarchists and Social Movements

One disturbing aspect of the article below are the disputes within Venezuelas small anarchist movement. There are, as I pointed out on a number of occasions in this blog, anarchist groups which give a certain amount of critical support to the Bolivarian Revolution. El Libertario is highly critical of the Chavistas. This article denounces El Libertario's anarchist opponents as “ fictitious groups paid for by the state” and considers them an aspect of Chavista repression against themselves. The critically pro-Bolivarian anarchists in turn call them “liberals” , “anti-working class tools of the right” etc. To me this all smacks of sectarianism and hence any articles coming out of the Venezuelan anarchist milieu have to be taken with a grain of salt. (1)

The newspaper Tierra y Libertad, mouthpiece of the Iberian Anarchist Federation, published in edition 227 of June 2007 this manifesto of the International of Anarchist Federations (IAF-IFA; www.iaf-ifa.org) in support of those who in Venezuela today confront the bureaucratic capitalist project of the Chavez government as well as their social democrat and right wing opponents.

In the first three months of 2007, 23 popular demonstrations were repressed by the Venezuelan government and 99 activists were detained. This fact speaks of the growing unease as well as the criminalization of social struggle in this Latin-American country, in a reality masked by the propaganda and mystification of a regime that paints itself as the vanguard of ‘21st Century socialism’ with the support of different groupings and persons associated with the authoritarian left throughout the world.

However, those who are concerned with the real situation of the oppressed and exploited in Venezuela know the inconsistencies and contradictions of the populist government led by the militarist Hugo Chavez. Far from structurally advancing the reduction of inequalities and the increase of possibilities of social development, the government in power in Caracas continues to maintain one of the most unjust systems of distribution of wealth in the continent, further deepening the role assigned to the country by economic globalization as a secure and trustworthy provider of energy to the global market, with trans-national oil corporations as pampered partners and principal beneficiaries of the actions of the Venezuelan state. After eight and a half years of a government relying on high oil prices with the highest financial income in national history, the social results of Chavez’s politics are mediocre, the most notable being the apparition of a new parasitic bourgeoisie of the client state, the ‘bolivarian bourgeoisie’.

According to recent government reports and statistics, over 5 million workers, 46.5% of the labour force remain in the informal sector of the economy, 43% of workers receive a salary under the legal minimum wage, a little less than 200 dollars per month, 2.5 million people lack suitable housing, 18% of the population suffer malnutrition, the network of public hospitals displays needs and limitations of every type, 90% of the indigenous population live in poverty, more than 400 people die violently each year in prison and there is an average of 15 people assassinated every month by repressive organs of the state.

The Venezuelan government has maintained over the last five years an inter-class dispute with certain traditional sectors of the local bourgeoisie which, in the midst of a strong political-electoral polarization, has allowed the division, immobilization, and recuperation of the country’s social movements. Any critic of the corrupt, inefficient and wasteful official bureaucracy would immediately qualify it as being ‘at the service of imperialism’, and with the excuse of confronting possible ‘coup’s and ‘reactionary provocations’, they have announced diverse laws that penalize with greater vigour street actions and strikes in the basic state industries. These are part of legal mechanisms that since 2006 have been used against popular mobilizations which, trying to recuperate their own demands, demonstrate every week for the right to personal security, decent housing, work and decent working conditions. The response of the government has been with tear gas grenades, gunshots and arrests.

Faced with the deceitful polarization experienced in this country, and specifically as a response to the presidential mandate to dissolve previously existing parties and groupings in order to integrate them in to the single party of Chavism, with the acronym PSUV, diverse Venezuelan organisations are trying to create autonomous spaces for the social movements. Amongst these are the efforts of the anarchists who from separate initiatives, such as the publication El Libertario (www.nodo50.org/ellibertario) are building an alternative that is as removed from the social democrat and right wing opposition as it is from the capitalism of the Bolivarian state. This effort by the anarchists to construct alternatives and routes that are consistently autonomous implies risks: El Libertario, for example, must face a systematic campaign of recriminations and disrepute from fictitious groups paid for by the state, thus there is a growing harassment of anti-authoritarian activism.

This manifesto wishes to remind our libertarian brothers and sisters inside Venezuela, as well as the various grass roots autonomous organisations that they have our appreciation, support and solidarity. Our anarchist organisations and initiatives will denounce, in every way they can, the incoherence and demagoguery hidden behind the alias of the ‘bolivarian revolution’, activating the necessary support mechanisms in response to every government attack against the concrete aspirations of social justice and liberty of the Venezuelan people.

1. Just how vicious sectarianism can be within the anarchist movement can be shown by the splits within the Spanish CNT back in the 1980's. The old guard attacked the group which later became the CGT as “traitors,” “anti-anarchist” and the two groups physically attacked each other. In the 1990's, the minority split-off from the French anarcho-syndicalist CNT slandered the majority as “fascists”. The International Workers Association (AIT) to which the Spanish CNT belongs, forbids its members from attending conferences sponsored by non-AIT anarcho-syndicalist unions. The AIT is notorious for its sectarianism. It is believed that El Libertario has some connection to the AIT. I should point out that only a minority of anarchists engage in this sort of thing and that most try to work together.