text:
The evidence from all OECD countries shows that the private sector is far more bureaucratic and much less efficient than the public sector when it comes to providing health care.
Ten Health Care Myths
Gentlemen from Hooker – and many other places – are quite literally pouring these and many other poisons into your coffee and your kids' juice. They just do it in a more indirect, anonymous, and apparently socially acceptable way.
150 Years of Dirty Water
Apologists for censorship invariably profess noble motives. They tell us that of course they are in favour of freedom of speech 'in principle' – then they go on to explain that 'the greater good' requires denying freedom of speech to people whose views they dislike.
– Free speech for me – you shut up
The fundamental fallacy of which people like her are guilty is the belief that because something is bad, or appears to some to be bad, it ought to be banned.
– Opposing Censorship
Believe it or not, some of us would rather not have customs officials and police deciding what we can read or look at. We'd rather decide for ourselves.
– Against Censorship
Karl Marx observed that "No one opposes freedom – at most he opposes the freedom of others." We guarantee our own freedom by supporting the rights and freedoms of others.
– Rights and Liberties
The way to deal with racism is direct action, education, and (intelligently focussed) hard work. People who advocate censorship discourage this kind of activity while encouraging us to devote our energies to pleading with the government and the police to please take even more power to determine which ideas are 'legal' and which 'illegal'.
– Progressives shouldn't be begging the police to take more power
We also have responsibility, to ourselves and to each other, to think and analyze clearly, to exchange, discuss, and debate ideas freely and frankly, and to stand up for what we honestly believe is right. Doing so can make us stronger and help us move forward, while artificially submerging disagreements and controversy would only weaken us in the long run.
– Constructive criticism can be a good thing
What is perverse is the assumption that the cure for our free speech deficit is to have even more limitations on freedom of speech. The corporate media suppress views they don't like? Then let's get the state into the censorship business too! The more censors, the better!
– Free speech for me – you shut up
The assumption underlying the CBC's 'business' panel seems to be that 'business' is about mergers, deals, interest rates, and stocks and bonds, and that the people best equipped to talk about business are people who belong to the world of capital and finance. But business is also about the people who actually work in the offices, factories, and farms, who are so profoundly affected by what happens in the world of capital.
– One-sided discussion of Free Trade
For all that the neo-con agenda is driven by ideology and class interests, isn't there something about its leading proponents, its ideologues, that seems to transcends ideology, economics, even history? Isn't there a essential quality to such people, a basic lack of empathy for their fellow human beings, that draws them to the camp of privilege throughout the centuries, always and forever praising the merits of the powerful?
– Abraham Lincoln saw it
When we throw around indiscriminate terms like 'male violence' and give credence to theories that men are inherently violent, we are slandering men who are not violent and, unthinkingly, we are actually perpetuating the stereotype that to be a man is to be violent. We give an easy out to violent men, who can say 'I can't help it. I'm a man. All men are violent. Men are violent by nature.' This is pernicious nonsense, and we aren't doing men or women any favours by allowing it to be spread about.
– Dances with Guilt: Looking at Men Looking at Violence
Like a routed army, battered by the defeats it has suffered in recent years, much of the left seems to be in wholesale retreat, indiscriminately abandoning not only the useless dogmas of Leninism and social democracy, but the principles and analytical tools it will need to re-group in the future.
– Thinking About Self-Determination
Many good ideas have been shipwrecked because people insisted that they were universally applicable, failing to distinguish between situations to which they applied and ones to which they didn't.
– Green Municipalism
Most anarchist publications avoid any discussion of strategy like the plague. People organizing unions and people organizing against unions receive equally uncritical coverage; pie-throwing and bomb-throwing are seen as equally valid activities, and no attempt is made to discuss the relative strategic merits of the one or the other in a given context.
– Anarchism vs. Marxism
Preston Manning's demagogic suggestion that atheists seek to deny believers freedom of conscience and expression has no basis in reality. On the contrary: no atheist would wish to deny Mr. Manning his right to believe in the Easter Bunny, or Zeus, or Jehovah, or any other supernatural being.
– Preston Manning sees an Inquisition in science's name
We undermine efforts to turn violence into a social taboo when we indiscriminately label every objectionable behaviour, including thoughts and remarks, as "violence."
– Reply to Violent Black
An updated example of chutzpah is provided by ideologues who, day after day, year after year, devote their energies to badmouthing public institutions and demanding they be stripped of resources and denied the ability to act, and who then have the gall to point to the deliberately engineered impotence of these agencies as proof that public institutions don't work.
– Neocon con game: First deprive public institutions of their ability to act, then blame them for not acting
The business of allowing polluters to buy their way out of complying with the law is an innovation with vast untapped potential. For example, law-abiding drivers could sell their unused speeding and dangerous driving credits to drivers who want to be able to hit the road without having to worry about speed limits or the niceties of the Highway Traffic Act.
– Polluted Logic
The absurd claim that the IT industry flourished "because of a free-market environment" could not possibly be more wrong. The high-tech industries, in the U.S. in particular, owe their very existence to massive levels of government subsidies and intervention. The Internet, for example, was created and developed by the United States military in co-operation with government-funded universities. It was turned over to the "free market" only after more than 25 years of publicly-funded work had made it commercially viable. The electronics, semi-conductor, and computer industries, the communications industry, the aviation industry, the biotechnology sector – all the important high-tech sectors in the U.S. – have been developed through huge, and continuing, public subsidies backed by extremely aggressive protectionist legislation.
– The myth of a free market in publishing and high-tech
Even more ridiculous than the software industry's grossly inflated numbers is their claim that the value of pirated software, whatever the true amount is, is money that is "lost" to "the economy". The plain fact is that not one cent of it is "lost". Instead of being spent on software, that money is simply spent on something else. That something else might be a competing product, or it might be rent, or books, or beer. But certainly it is spent on something, and it ends up circulating in the economy in just the same way as money spent on software does. It may be a loss to Bill Gates and his cohorts, but a loss to the economy it isn't.
– The cost of software piracy
The era of the personal computer unleashed a torrent of hype about user-friendliness and productivity gains, and an equally endless flood of expensive 500-plus-page books to help frustrated users figure out how to use the easy-to-use software. The Internet, having become an overnight success some 25 years after its birth, has been similarly hyped, with absurd claims that all the information in the world is now at our fingertips.
– About Online Research
It's so tiresome to see food fanatics spouting their ill-informed nonsense. Sarah Keating claims milk "has no place in a healthy diet". So how does she explain all those millions of milk-drinkers walking around in good health?
– Food fanatics
Those who wind up in prison for a period of time are given plenty of encouragement in their choice of a criminal path by prison conditions which are designed to humiliate and frustrate rather than rehabilitate. Even so, there are those who demand that prisons be even harsher than they presently are. Their conviction is that penitentiaries aren't bleak enough, aren't brutal enough, don't do enough to degrade inmates. They prescribe jails that would be even more efficient in producing hardened and bitter criminals.
– The Capital Punishment Debate
The free market doesn't 'deliver the goods' for most of the world's people. It delivers a lot of goods for a few, a fairly decent standard of living for a larger number, and much, much less for the majority. The free market isn't just the stockbrokers on Bay Street making several hundred thousand year, it's also the cleaners in those same building making $7 an hour.
– Interview – 'Free markets'
The evidence from all OECD countries shows that the private sector is far more bureaucratic and much less efficient than the public sector when it comes to providing health care.
– Ten Health Care Myths
Gentlemen from this chemical company – and many others – are quite literally pouring these and many other poisons into your coffee and your kids' juice. They just do it in a more indirect, anonymous, and apparently socially acceptable way.
– 150 Years of Dirty Water
Getting older means you've had more of an opportunity to become wiser because you've had a chance to do more things, make more mistakes and learn from them, read more things. My observation is that many people don't take a lot of advantage of that opportunity. Young fools often become old fools. But I do think that the social change movement needs to learn more from the experience of elders in the movement. There are people who have learned and experienced a great deal and become wiser, and if we tried to learn from them, we could benefit from their wisdom.
– Interview – Age and wisdom
The hard-won experiences of the past, the disasters that our ancestors learned from at great cost, are disappearing down the memory hole.
– Abandoning the Public Interest
The idea – the reality – of punishment and revenge still dominates every second of prison life, all the propaganda about "rehabilitation" and "correction" notwithstanding. When the bureaucrats' fancy phrases come at us like last week's snow-storms, it's sometimes easy to forget – if we know at all – what prisons are really like, what life in them is like, and what prisons do to the people in them.
– Make the Don a Museum of Horrors
The inefficient socialistic health care system sends him off for treatment within ten minutes – not too shabby, most of us might say – but it takes a lot more than efficiency and high-quality appropriate care to please a right-wing newspaper columnist.
– Right-wing columnist traumatized by having to wait his turn
One of the most striking but infrequently commented-on facts about elections is how few people vote. Depending on the type of election, anywhere from a quarter to two-thirds of eligible voters don't turn out.... Evidently there is a wide-spread alienation from elections and voting. Yet "free elections" are supposed to be a cornerstone of democracy, and in the not-so-distant past people fought and died for the right to vote.
– Politics of Illusion
Private interests cannot be trusted to safeguard the public interest when it conflicts with their self-interest.
– Abandoning the Public Interest
The real advantage of user fees, from the point of view of those who advocate them, is that they deter the poor from seeking medical care. If the poor can be denied medical care, then those who are not poor can avoid helping to pay for their care.
– Ten Health Care Myths
Simplistic theories which relate violence to one factor and one factor only – maleness – actually serve to discourage a serious examination of what it is that leads some men and also some women to become violent. Instead of thinking seriously about causes and solutions, we assume we already have the key: the problem is maleness. This reductionism view (people with penises are prone to violence, people without penises aren't) is as wrong as ideologies which claim that propensity to crime is somehow linked to skin colour.
– Dances with Guilt: Looking at Men Looking at Violence
This is a government which prides itself on "making unpopular decisions," on never compromising, on never changing course. The man in charge... is as determined as the captain of the Titanic, disdainfully brushing off ridiculous warnings of icebergs and giving orders to push on, full steam ahead.
– Contamination: The Poisonous Legacy of Ontario's Environmental Cutbacks
Those who equate drinking and sex with drinking and driving betray their incomprehension of what the issue of consent is all about. No one, whatever their state of sobriety, wishes to hit by a car, whether it is driven by a drunk driver or by a sober one. People who drive when intoxicated inflict a considerable risk of such collisions on others, and that is why we as a society refuse to allow people to drive after they have been drinking. The question of consent never arises, because being run into by a drunk driver is never a consensual act. However, people in varying stages of sobriety do willingly engage in sex. Individuals who are too intoxicated to drive safely are still quite capable of desiring sex, of consenting to sex, and of participating in sexual activity.
– Yes Means No?
Whatever rights one thinks there ought to be, or whatever rights people are said to have, the rights that people actually have are achieved and protected only by struggle. Rights are won. And they can be lost.
– Rights and Liberties
A rogue state, heavily armed with weapons of mass destruction, openly contemptuous of international law and the United Nations, and with a lengthy record of threatening and invading other countries, has plunged the world into crisis. How should the world respond to this threat? What can we do about the United States and its undisguised imperial ambitions?
– The Iraq crisis in context
Bringing about a single secular state in which Jews and Palestinians have equal rights will not be easy, but ultimately it is the only solution to the conflict. A state based on respect for the human rights of all its citizens is a better safeguard against anti-Semitism and racism than one based on ethnic nationalism and inequality.
– The single-state solution
American soldiers, many of whom – like their Egyptian, British, French, and Canadian counterparts – joined the armed forces to escape poverty and unemployment, will also shed their blood in a needless war. The injured and shell-shocked survivors will return to the same neglect and ingratitude that greeted the American Vietnam veterans now living in poverty and pain, and the crippled Iraqi veterans who beg in the markets of Baghdad.
– War in the Gulf
The people of all countries, whether Russian, American, Chinese, Canadian, etc., are much the same mixture of good, bad, and indifferent that we find in our own society and in ourselves. And most people everywhere want much the same things: a decent life, a better life for their children, security, and to live in peace. The Russian people no more want to be annihilated in a war than we do. They are not our enemies.
– The Bomb Won't Go Away on its Own
The people who can't manage to bring their own astronauts back alive assure us that they can keep nuclear weapons safely orbiting above our heads with no chance of anything going wrong.
– The Iraq crisis in context
We see the U.S. and its allies launching themselves into an unnecessary but potentially calamitous war, all the while believing they remain in control of events and that everything will turn out just as they planned. Those who will pay the cost will be those who had nothing to do with starting the war. Ordinary Iraqi working people, who have already suffered for years under an exceptionally brutal dictatorship, will face death and maiming, the loss of loved ones and of homes and possessions.
– War in the Gulf
The concept of a society consisting of "communities" identified by their ethnicity, language, or religion is the very antithesis of real empowerment. It is a model that presupposes that "making a difference" is about nothing more than lobbying for more services for your own ethnic group. When you think about it, that is really a narrow, conservative, and even demeaning vision of what it means to be a citizen.
– Inclusion or Exclusion
As an atheist and a secularist, I am disturbed when I hear people suggesting that in a secular society like Canada, it is desirable for political activity to be centered around churches, mosques, and temples.
– Inclusion or Exclusion
The fact that people can be selfish and untrustworthy is an argument for democracy. That's precisely why no one person or small group of people can be trusted to wield power over the rest of us. Those who hold power are usually corrupted by it because they are as selfish and untrustworthy as anyone else. That is one of the most compelling reasons for decentralizing and democratizing power – for sharing power as widely and equally as possible.
– Interview – Democracy
Democratic groups are better equipped to deal with process problems. This is because democracy allows a group to proceed with what it wants to do in the face of people who are obstructive, obnoxious or insensitive. Democracy makes it possible for a group to say to such people, in essence, that 'we don't think this particular discussion or behaviour is constructive anymore, and we want to move on, whether you agree or not'. It enables the group to proceed in the way the majority of people in it want it to. Consensus, on the other hand, allows people who are insensitive or stubborn to bring the whole group grinding to a halt.
– One Vote for Democracy
Does Quebec maybe have the right NOT to secede? Apparently not. Panitch insists that English Canadian leftists must unequivocally advocate an independent Quebec, even though he must be well aware that a majority of Quebecers don't WANT an independent Quebec.
– Thinking About Self-Determination
The energies of much of the left are devoted to issuing appeals to the capitalist state to fix our problems, or to looking for ways to fix the state as if it had somehow accidentally gone off track. The left has always been attracted to the state the way a moth is attracted to a flame, and the darker it gets, the more it is attracted to statist and nationalist illusions.
– Thinking About Self-Determination
For the foreseeable future, we will have to content ourselves with giving our votes to the social democrats, while giving our energies to more promising causes. What we have to do, in effect, is to start doing the work of a socialist movement, outside of the New Democratic Party, and indeed outside of any party structure.
– Let's Stop Kidding Ourselves About the NDP
A fundamental truth about social democratic parties is that when it comes to the crunch, they always fail to meet the challenge. When the choices are posed most sharply, the social democratic party, whose entire existence is based on refusing to adopt a consistent, pro-working class, socialist position, invariably finds itself incapable of decisive, principled action.
– Let's Stop Kidding Ourselves About the NDP
A good place to start would be to ask whether that familiar slogan of the left, "the right to self-determination", actually means anything, or whether it is another empty slogan whose main utility is that the left can repeat it like a mantra and so save itself the trouble of thinking critically.
– Thinking About Self-Determination
The idea that the right to democracy logically means shared and direct participation and control by all those affected by decisions is dismissed by those in power as impossible and probably "subversive." Thus the right to vote becomes the denial of the right to participate more directly in decision-making.
– Rights and Liberties
If you can understand that your struggle is also somebody else's struggle, or that your different concerns and problems are part of the same struggle, the potential is created for a stronger more effective movement. The working class movement has slogan: 'An injustice to one is an injustice to all.' If that is your approach you understand that solidarity, co-operation, mutual support, whatever you want to call it, is at one and the same time a duty to your fellow human beings and an act of rational self-interest.
– Interview – Solidarity
In the real world it is rarely possible to draw political boundaries that correspond with nationality. Nearly every nation-state and aspiring nation-state contains its own national minorities with conflicting nationalist claims on the same territory. These national groups are usually intermingled and intermarried, sharing the same physical territory, the same cities and towns, the same streets, the same bedrooms.... As a result "self-determination" for the majority frequently amounts to denying minorities their "right to self-determination".
– Thinking About Self-Determination
Leaders who advocate a vision of distinct "communities" that speak different languages, keep apart from each other, and communicate with the structures of the larger society only through interpreters, are doing more harm than good. What they are advocating is not diversity but entrenched division.
– Inclusion or Exclusion
The Left has engaged in the futile pursuit of 'moving the New Democratic Party to the left' since 1933, achieving pretty much the same result as a dog chasing its tail. Anyone who today still harbours hope that Canada's NDP will change in ways the Left would like ought to join New Democrats Anonymous.
– Debating the New Democratic Party
Real change, real empowerment, can only happen when people work together on the basis of common goals regardless of their ethnic or religious background.
– Inclusion or Exclusion
The "right to self-determination" as promulgated by Leo Panitch and much of the left is in fact nothing more than mindless cheerleading for bourgeois nationalism. By contrast, socialists like Karl Marx and Rosa Luxemburg argued that it was necessary to analyze the political, economic, and class content of nationalist movements on their individual merits, and support them only if they were progressive.
– Thinking About Self-Determination
The left will continue wallowing in this morass as long it is encumbered by its uncritical acceptance of the slogan "the right to self-determination". The hidden meaning, the real essence, of this slogan, is the belief that it is neither possible or desirable for two or more ethnic or language groups to live together in one country. I cannot imagine a more pessimistic and less socialist point of view.
– Thinking About Self-Determination
There is no dispute at all about the importance and validity of economic demands, whether in the workplace or in the community. What is under dispute is the 'Wages for Housework' group's insistence that money is the only thing around which it is permissible to organize, their arrogant belief that working class people cannot be interested in anything except money, and their demonstrated determination to actually sabotage working-class struggles that refuse to stick to the narrow goals Wages for Housework has predetermined for them.
– Reply to Wages for Housework
The 'Wages for Housework' people seem to have but one solution to every problem: ask the government to take care of things, whether by providing more subsidies, taking management of the project back from the tenants, or paying them wages for doing housework. And when they couldn't convince residents to support their proposals, they actually turned to the various government bodies to ask them to overrule the decisions tenants had democratically arrived at.
– Bain Co-op meets Wages for Housework
We have to make an issue of the fact that what currently passes for democracy is a best a two-dimensional shadow of what a democratic society ought to be. In contrast to the parliamentary obsession of the social democrats, we should be offering the model of a radically democratic society, in which power is taken away from corporations, governments, bureaucracies, and experts, and dispersed widely.
– Let's Stop Kidding Ourselves About the New Democratic Party
We need to make a real issue of democracy, to challenge our society to take seriously its oft-proclaimed commitment to democratic ideals. We have to make an issue of the fact that what currently passes for democracy is at best a two-dimensional shadow of what a democratic society ought to be.
– What Do We Do Now?
What has actually happened in countless 'consensus' groups is that the group has been prevented from doing what most people in it wanted to do – in other words, prevented from functioning – because one or a few people have blocked consensus or dragged discussions on past the willingness of most members to continue participating in the group. The social change movement is littered with the corpses of groups which fell apart for precisely such reasons.
– One Vote for Democracy
What is really destructive of the integrity of the group is a situation where one person or a handful of people are able to block the desires of the overwhelming majority. When such a situation arises – and it does frequently in consensus-model groups – it makes a mockery of Alexandra's assertion that "consensus... allows each person equal and complete power in the group". On the contrary, in a situation where 100 people want to do something, and one person doesn't and refuses consensus, consensus ultimately hands over all the power to one person, and totally disempowers everyone else.
– One Vote for Democracy
Who does a worker have more in common with: an exploitative employer who belongs to the same ethnic group or religion, or other workers who come from totally different backgrounds but who face the same exploitation in the workplace?
– Inclusion or Exclusion
When have people with power ever yielded to anything except the opposing power of mass movements mobilized to challenge them in a direct and forceful way?
– Inclusion or Exclusion
At these times, as in France in 1968 or Portugal in 1974, the perception of who was powerless and who powerful changed suddenly. As the perceptions changed, so did the realities of power. It is not that revolt is always lurking just beneath a tranquil surface, but that those who are managed are as ambivalent and contradictory as the society to which they belong. What they – what we – believe and do is a patchwork of contradictions swayed by fluctuating expectations, stretched and pulled by a host of differing messages and emotions, inner needs, learned responses and decisions.
– Against All Odds
Circumstances changed in part because people's consciousness changed. People who one day were sitting at home, politically passive, were suddenly in the streets in their thousands and then hundreds of thousands. And part of the reason for this is that something happened in their consciousness where they suddenly felt it was possible. A mental burden was lifted from them and they felt able to go out into the streets and they started to believe change was possible. And because so many other people felt the same way it suddenly became possible. And in the course of a few months all those regimes just toppled.
– Interview – The overthrow of the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe
Central to Luxemburg's importance for me is her revolutionary perspective. She supports pressure for reforms within capitalism, but is utterly clear that reforms cannot bring about fundamental change, that socialism can only come about through revolution, and that the activity of socialists and socialist organizations must always be oriented to the ultimate goal of revolution, no matter what the exigencies of the present situation.
– On Rosa Luxemburg
Almost as bad are those anarchists who lambaste Marx for his "advocacy" of "democratic centralism" and the "vanguard party." Is it really necessary to point out that these concepts were developed long after Marx's death, that Marx never belonged to an organization practising either; that he consistently opposed the tiny conspiratorial sects of his day; that he made it a condition of his joining the Communist League that they scrap their closed, undemocratic organizational forms ... and that one of Marx's chief themes in his criticism of Bakunin was the latter's eternal fascination with conspiratorial, manipulative, sectarian politics?
– Bakunin vs. Marx
If we think back a few years, before Gorbachev, then we remember an Eastern Europe which appeared to be, from the inside as well as the outside, an immovable monolith. The system of social control, while in some ways crude by Western standards, was total and relentless, and few saw any hope of ever achieving change. Only a tiny minority opposed the regimes, and they suffered for it. Yet almost overnight, those who but a historical moment earlier had no hope or thought of resistance or rebellion suddenly came together in their tens and then hundreds of thousands, and the powerlessness, passivity, and resignation of the people turned almost instantly into their opposites. The truly remarkable victories they have achieved should inspire us in our own efforts in working for change in the West and remind us that fundamental change is possible even against formidable odds.
– Looking for Democracy
Marx was relentlessly critical, always seeking new knowledge and deeper understanding, never feeling that his own understanding of any subject was adequate – hence his well-known difficulties in finishing any work because he was never finished investigating the subject matter in its infinite ramifications. It was Marx who scoffed "I am not a Marxist" and who said that "Since it is not for us to create a plan for the future that will hold for all time, all the more surely what we contemporaries have to do is the uncompromising critical evaluation of all that exists, uncompromising in the sense that our criticism fears neither its own results nor the conflict with the powers that be."
– On Rosa Luxemburg
Most of us are not living the lives we would choose to live, but the existing order insists there are no alternatives to itself, and most of us are sufficiently convinced or pre-occupied or discouraged to keep society from coming unglued. Many, many people wish there were alternatives, or think there ought to be, but are resigned to the conclusion that it is utopian to entertain any hopes for real change.... Yet despite the pervasive feeling that 'nothing can be done', people do join together to act in common when they feel threatened or wronged, or when they have a goal in sight which they desire passionately enough. Sometimes they organize quietly and gradually. At other times a mass movement explodes into being, seemingly out of nothing, despite the risks and the odds.
– Introduction to The Connexions Annual
Rarely is there any serious political debate within the anarchist movement, while polemics against the bugbear of "Marxism" (as essential to anarchism as Satan is to the Church) are generally crippled by a principled refusal to find out anything about what is being attacked.
– Anarchism vs. Marxism
Rosa Luxemburg was the leading exponent of a Marxism in the spirit of Marx. One indication of this, paradoxical at first glance, is that she was one of the very few leading Marxists who did not treat Marx's writings as holy writ.
– On Rosa Luxemburg
We need only look at activities of the thousands of people working in grassroots groups across this country, and around the world, to see that people do join with others to block what they see as harmful and to fight for what they consider to be desirable and just. When they do, that which seemed impossible to achieve starts to become possible.
– What Do We Do Now?
Running through all of Bakunin's thought and subsequent anarchist thought and practice is a dark thread, an infatuation with violence, with destruction for the sake of destruction, action for the sake of action, distrust of logic, intellect, and knowledge, and a love for conspiratorial, tightly controlled organizations.
– Bakunin vs. Marx
The shadow which haunts the power structure is the danger that those who are controlled will come to realize that they are powerless only so long as they think they are. Once people stop believing they are powerless, then the whole edifice which they support is in danger of collapse.
– Against All Odds
Socialism is first and foremost about freedom and therefore about overcoming the domination, repression, and alienation that block the free flow of human creativity.
– What is Libertarian Socialism?
This is a remarkable piece of anarchist doublethink. Marx's major work on the state is said to be "in full contradiction" with "all" his writings on the state!
– Bakunin vs. Marx
We have to encourage people's impulses to come together with others to fight against what is harmful and to fight for what is desirable and just. When they do, that which seemed impossible to achieve becomes possible, because enough people believe it is possible and are working to make it so.
– Let's Stop Kidding Ourselves About the NDP
We don't know if we'll win: history is made by human beings, and where human beings are concerned, nothing is inevitable. But because people do make history, we know that it is possible to build a new world, and we strive to realize that possibility.
– What is Libertarian Socialism?


text:
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The information contained in this news release, other than historical information, consists of forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in such statements. For a discussion of certain factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements, please refer to the Company's most recent filings with the SEC and the TSX Venture Exchange. The TSX Venture Exchange has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

subset: commoncrawl


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Material Content: FACE: 100% Acrylic BACK: 100% Polyester
Manufacturer Care Instructions: Hand wash cold, line dry.
Length/Pile 3"
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TMM was founded on the belief that God has called each Christian to serve as a missionary. The scriptures are very clear that He places no boundaries on our task, thus our focus on local and international mission efforts. Acts 1:8b – "and you shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all … more.
TMM's founder, Brett has participated in numerous mission trips with his church, One Heart Church, to Romania, Argentina and Ukraine. These mission efforts concentrate heavily on ministering to … more.
"I was in prison and you came to Me" Matthew 25:36 "Remember the prisoners, as though in prison with them" Hebrews 13:3a Tetelestai Missions Ministry believes that the Bible is very clear … more.
Please consider supporting Tetelestai Missions Ministry financially. You can Donate Now or write a checks mail it to: Tetelestai Missions Ministry, P.O. Box 1134, Acworth, GA 30101
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This durable Carbon Damper Stay will provide your M-06 machine with greater overall rigidity. The piece has 3 damper attachment holes to offer a greater range of setting possibilities.
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Real Time Financials Project
Project Description
The Real-Time Financials project is designed to augment the University's enterprise accounting and reporting systems (i.e., M-Pathways and the U-M Data Warehouse) in order to:
- Provide richer and timelier data
- Reduce the need to maintain data in supplemental systems
- Leverage the enterprise systems for various reporting and business intelligence needs
Completed enhancements include:
- Implemented system-generated estimates for salary, benefits, and financial aid
- Streamlined journal processing and initiated daily posting of procurement transactions to the General Ledger
- Improved Unit Defined Commitments processing for departments to record planned or potential financial encumbrances in the central system.
- Implemented eReconciliation, an online option for reviewing and reconciling financial transactions for a department or project/grant.
The MAIS Web site provides detailed information about the above and on-going Real-Time Financials initiatives.
Leveraging the Enterprise Systems
University units can leverage the Real-Time Financials enhancements to foster data-driven decision making. Examples include:
- M-Reports: Sponsored Project/Grant reports use real-time estimate and Unit Defined Commitment data to display payroll, financial aid, purchasing, and other unit commitments. Inclusion of this data enables researchers and project administrators to see a projected balance for their project/grants. This data assists them in maintaining the fiscal health of the project by being able to plan and adjust for future project expenditures.
- UM-Maintained BusinessObjects reports. Various financial, payroll, and financial aid reports containing estimate and Unit Defined Commitment data are available. These reports allow units to proactively monitor, analyze and forecast costs, thereby increasing their ability to make business decisions based on real-time data.
- Statement of Activity reconciliation: Streamlined journal processing, increased frequency of General Ledger posting, and eReconciliation offers units the opportunity to reconcile transactions more often throughout the month. Proactive reconciliation can simplify the effort involved in monthly reconciliation and assist with error identification and correction processing. This ensures that financial data available to department managers for decision making is timely and accurate.
Project Sponsors
The Real-Time Financials project is a charge by the Associate Vice Presidents for Finance, MAIS, and Research to be a collaborative effort between MAIS, Financial Operations, and University units to improve financial reporting.
Project Contact
If you have questions or would like more information, please contact Project Director, Thom Madden (firstname.lastname@example.com).


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Ferdinand inks new United deal
Rio Ferdinand has signed a new contract to stay at Manchester United for a 12th season.
The 34-year-old defender, whose previous terms were due to expire at the end of June, has put pen to paper on a one-year deal.
Ferdinand, a £30 million signing from Leeds United in 2002, has made 432 appearances for Manchester United, winning the Premier League six times and the Champions League in 2008.
He enjoyed an excellent 2012-13 season, making 32 appearances and being voted a member of the PFA team of the season.
Keeping Ferdinand amounts to the first piece of business new manager David Moyes has done since his appointment to replace the retiring Sir Alex Ferguson.
Sooooo happy to sign a 1yr extension for this great club, living the dream. Roll on next season #mufc— Rio Ferdinand (@rioferdy5) May 23, 2013
Earlier this month, Ferdinand ended speculation about a recall to the England squad by announcing his international retirement. The former England captain won 81 caps.
Moyes said told the club's official website: "It is clear for everyone to see that Rio has had one of his best seasons with the club and I think even from the outside you can see what a big character Rio is around the dressing room so I am delighted he has signed a new contract and I am looking forward to working with him."
Ferdinand said: "I am delighted to have signed a new contract. Who wouldn't want to play in this fantastic team in front of 75,000 fans each week, it has been an incredible journey and I am glad it will continue. I can now fully concentrate on my club career, which has worked well for me over the past few years
"This is a great team to be part of and we are now moving into a new era with the club which is very exciting. I have met with David I am really looking forward to working with him and winning many more trophies with this great club."
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Malayalees celebrate Onam on a grand scale
Sat, Aug 29, 2015, 01:32 PM
Malayalees in Hyderabad celebrated Onam festival on a grand scale in Hyderabad. They wore their traditional clothes and performed cultural dances and songs. At Apollo Hospitals, in Jubilee Hills, Malayalees dressed in their traditional clothes participated in a cultural programme and had a grand feast, by cooking Malayalee dishes. They were very happy to celebrate their festival in a joyous manner, they said.


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Why Dwarves and Goblins Rule
"Forget the hobbit. It's up to us to save Middle-earth." Okay, nobody actually says that in The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II, the highly anticipated sequel to the 2004 real-time strategy game from publisher Electronic Arts and developer EA Los Angeles, but they might as well have. You're not here to recreate the adventures of Frodo and the rest of the Fellowship, but rather to take part in the War in the North. Some people might not even be familiar with this area of Middle-earth, though some of the greatest battles between the Free Peoples and the forces of Sauron took place here.
Let's cut to the chase: the first game was already impressive, even if it was a simplified RTS and faltered somewhat in the combat department. BFME II is much, much better. Whether you're fighting for the survival of the Free Peoples in the Good campaign or crushing everyone in your path in the Evil campaign, this game does a remarkable job of making you feel like you're truly in the middle of epic battles. The sights, the sounds, the strategy: everything comes together and makes you say, "This is Middle-earth."
The Lord of the Rings
The Battle for Middle-earth Ii
(Electronic Arts)
US: Jul 2007
This sequel introduces three new races—new in the sense that you couldn't play them in the first game—namely the Elves, Dwarves, and Goblins. I've always found it amusing how the Dwarves have gotten the (pardon the pun) short end of the stick, since the Elves are always basking in the limelight. Similarly, when we talk about the army of Sauron, the first thing that comes to mind are the Orcs, whether the regular variety from Mordor or the new and improved Uruk-hai that Saruman bred in Isengard. The Goblins never get any respect. Which is why it's great to see BFME II do justice to these two races, who are very much the antithesis of each other: Dwarves are the epitome of order, Goblins are chaos personified. While you still get to play the Elves and the Men of the West (this sequel combines the unit types from Rohan and Gondor, giving you a much more balanced roster) in the eight scenarios that make up the Good campaign, and the Orcs and other evil races in the Evil campaign's eight battles, it's the Dwarves and Goblins who really shine in BFME II.
One of the most welcome changes from the first game is that this sequel ditches the Living World map that dragged the forces of Rohan, Gondor, and Isengard to and fro in the South. Instead, the main single-player campaign, as already mentioned, goes for the more traditional RTS structure of a series of battles. This makes for more effective storytelling and intense action. You don't get the lull or pointless side battles that occasionally bogged down the first game. Here, every battle is an epic one, meant to advance the plot and propel you to a final assault on Dol Goldur or the sack of Rivendell. Don't worry, though, if you're a fan of the Living World map, it's still around in the Risk-like War of the Ring, another game mode BFME II offers.
When you're playing the Good campaign, the game does a great job of truly making you feel like you're surrounded by the forces of Sauron and are in danger of being overrun. Since you're always outnumbered, more often than not you'll have to fortify your base and survive wave after wave of enemies before finally being able to take the offensive. Conversely, if you're leading the Goblins, your strategy really is to build and breed, pillage, then breed some more, because while you can quickly churn out units, individually they're very weak. Which is why you have to rely on vastly superior numbers.
This, of course, is exactly how the war between good and evil played out in the novels and the movies adapted from them, which is why the unmatched craftsmanship of the Dwarves—which you put to good use when constructing buildings and fortifications—and the clockwork-like efficiency of their phalanxes are a great counterpoint to the sheer numbers and rushing attack style of the Goblins.
The Dwarves, however, are painfully slow, while the Goblins are easy to kill, so you adjust your strategy accordingly and complement them with their allies. The Elves move swiftly and are very deadly with their arrows—think of them as the English longbowmen in this war, though frankly, I can't believe just how powerful they made these volleys of arrows. I still insist that you shouldn't be able to easily slay a Dragon Lord or the fell beasts of the Nazgul with arrows, but well, there you go. Meanwhile, if you're evil, your allies the Orcs can construct Mordor buildings that have access to technology and magic that your Goblin structures lack. For instance, it's the forces of Mordor which can churn out siege weapons like battering rams and catapults. Of course, the Goblins might very well ask why you would need a catapult when you can breed a mountain giant and have them throw boulders at your enemies or their buildings.
As I've said, the battles here are truly epic, and I still can't get over how intense it was in the Good campaign to survive wave after wave of attacks as the Free Peoples made their last stand in the city of Dale and the Dwarven stronghold of Erebor. That was truly a glorious battle. Still, I have to admit that it was also wickedly fun to play the Evil campaign. I'm telling you, nothing was more satisfying than finishing off Gandalf, Aragorn, and the remaining members of the Fellowship. Not even Galadriel could save those fools, hah!
With the great single-player campaign, plus the War of the Ring, skirmish battles, and multiplayer, Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II is simply one of the best PC games I've played so far this year. If you can, get the Collector's Edition. It contains an extra DVD with behind-the-scenes footage, the game soundtrack, and other goodies. Of course, you really only need to know one thing: in the Collector's Edition, you get to control the new dragon unit. That alone is worth the price of admission.
Now, if only someone could tell me why the Dwarves sound like Fat Bastard.
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