this man is a bad prime minister

Harper says he's finished with Ottawa press corps
Last Updated Wed, 24 May 2006 23:11:10 EDT
CBC News

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he'll no longer give news conferences for the national media, after a dispute led a number of journalists to walk away from an event when he refused to take their questions.

Some reporters left Prime Minister Stephen Harper's press conference on aid to Sudan's Darfur region when told they could not ask questions. (Fred Chartrand/Canadian Press)

• INDEPTH: Stephen Harper

Speaking to A-Channel in London, Ont., Harper said "unfortunately the press gallery has taken the view they are going to be the opposition to the government."

"They don't ask questions at my press conferences now. We'll just take the message out on the road. There's lots of media who do want to ask questions and hear what the government is doing."

Since becoming prime minister in January, Harper has had a testy relationship with the national media in Ottawa. His staff has tried to manage news conferences by saying they will decide which reporters get to ask questions.

The press gallery has refused to play by those rules. "We can't accept that the Prime Minister's Office would decide who gets to ask questions," Yves Malo, a TVA reporter and president of the press gallery, told CP on Tuesday. "Does that mean that when there's a crisis they'll only call upon journalists they expect softball questions from?"

On Tuesday about two dozen Ottawa reporters walked out on a Harper event when he refused to take their questions.

That led Harper to say that from now on he will speak only to local media.

The CBC says it will continue to cover the prime minister. "If the prime minister chooses to take questions we will be there to ask them," said Ottawa managing editor George Hoff. "We will have a journalist there to ask questions," he said.

Harper's supporters said Wednesday they believed the conflict is being blown out of proportion.

"I think this will get sorted out over time," Conservative Geoff Norquay said during an interview on Politics on CBC Newsworld.

"I think both sides have an interest in sorting it out and I think they will over time. The reality is that every new government wants to keep a tight lid on its messages and this one in particular because it had the previous example of Mr. Martin who had so many priorities that they all turned to mush in the minds of the Canadian people. And that's why this government is tightly focused on its messages," he said.

tetris ice cream truck

If you love your internet then you need to go to this website and do something to make sure it remains your internet free information is a right, let's all fight for it.

http://www.savetheinternet.com/

man oh man

Tempus Fugfit.

as this first week comes to a close I am really happy with what goes on here though I'll be doing a lot better once I've adjusted to the somatic rythms of the community. I'm able to crawl out of bed in time to do the stuff expected of me but just barely. I've slept through my alarm every day that I've used it. Right now I'm listening to Captain Beefheart because it isn't going to make me sleepy while I write this... I am going to bed early tonight.

I've got a much better idea about what I'd like to do with a Worker house in Vancouver, the sorts of hospitalitry I feel capable of and what kinds of other activities I'd like to try and organise.

Today's been perfect as far as temperature goes. it's overcast and cool and breezy... nice.

There was an interview with one of the founders of the community here, he talked about everything from the start of the comunity all the way through to the Iraq war protests and the ati-war movement. They are going to put the interview on their website and offered to let me sell CD's of it in Van as a way of fund raising for my other trips.

I've said it before but the kindness and genuine sense of community at this place is a constant source of joy and amazement for me.

and though I could keep writing I really don't want to. so for now that's the shizz

Lost Angeles

So here I am in LA. This place is really cool I kind of want to write all about it here and tell you about my first couple of days except I just did that in a letter to some close friends so instead of rewriting I'm going to use the miracle of modern technology and copy and paste the text of the letter straight into my blog!

LA is really neat. It's beautiful in this sort of dilapidated/post-apocalyptic way. I think I can understand a lot better now what inspired the punk scene here back in the 80's and 90's. Hennacy House is wonderful, there are so many really great people living here and I'm not the only volunteer either. There's a cute girl from Hawaii and a dude from the mid west who used to be a journalist. Then there are the folks who live here more or less full time. In the common area there's a UFW (United Farm Workers) flag signed by Cesear Chavez hanging in a frame and all these photographs of MLK, Dorothy Day and Daniel Berrigan. The house itself is HUGE! and full of beautiful artwork and history. Dorothy Day actually visited here soon after it was started because of a UFW strike in 1973 (she was a genuine supporter of Chavez and his work.) You should try and come out here some time I think that you and Sarah would really dig this place a lot. My bedroom is a converted walk in closet, it's nice and comfortable and small, and I like that a lot. Today I worked on the coffee line and we did a vigil in front of the federal building. Life here is good.

Still waiting on some material for the zine the deadline's tomorrow and though I can go to print really soon after that if I wish I would love occasionally to recieve the things some people tell me they'll write for me.

that's all she wrote!

getting ready

so I've got a couple of hours before I split for Lost Angeles. It's exciting that I'm going to do this, I'm interning at the Catholic Worker in LA for a month. This year is all about travelling for me, in January I was in Ecuador, not I'm going to LA then about a month later I'll be on my way back east with stops in Calgary, Ottawa, Toronto, New York, and Baltimore. I'm so grateful for the chance to do all this travelling. I can remember how I felt two years ago when all I wanted to do was go and see the world and get out of Van for a while. It was a bit of an impotent feeling because I had no way of travelling, no money, no people to visit or go with, and since I was in school I couldn't just pick up. I wanted to go someplace farther away than Victoria and for longer than a long weekend, now thank God I have that very opportunity. And in other news I uploaded a new Empire of Crime jam to the website http://www.lulu.com/empire-of-crime

it says that to get the CD it costs 5.50 but if you want to you can get the whole album for free by downloading the "sample"

don't know what else to write here right now. I'll try and update as often as I can over the coming month.

An earlier essay

A Catholic Boy at Presbyterian Vespers
By Chris Rooney

I went to my friend Barrett's church tonight for a Celtic vespers service which he and his wife Sarah hold every thursday. Their church is presently doing something that I don't believe is common practice in many protestant congregations, because of their vespers service they are probably the only Presbyterian church in Vancouver which offers a weekly eucharist. Participating in this intimate and unique celebration of the sacrament was remarkable. The group who meets for vespers each week is very small, including myself and the pastor there were only seven people present. Also the communion was shared in a circle, with each person communicating to the one beside them. Also I was pleasantly surprised at the level of social concience expressed by my Protestant brothers and sisters. Durring the prayers and intercessions, there was a definite sence of social concern and empathy expressed which I have found sadly lacking in the liturgy at my parish. Perhaps this was due to the small size of the prayer service. With most everyone there sharing a belief in the social teachings of our shared faith it must be easier to pray for the poor and for an end to war and millitarism than it is in a large congregation of people with possibly convergent views on such things.

Thinking of it in those terms though fills me with a sadness. In the intercessions a prayer was made for the CPT members held hostage in Iraq, among them a founder of the Toronto Catholic Worker community, Zaccaeus House, yet since their abduction in November not once have they been mentioned in the liturgy or intentions at my church.

At the end of the service and after communion we all stayed arround the wooden altar and talked and ate the rest of the loaf of bread, and there was a wonderfull feeling of community, of something shared. One of the themes of a recent Mass at my church was Christian unity, this is something that I deeply hope and pray for, that one day the table will be open to any and everyone who wishes to sit and eat.

Barrett often comes to mass with me and, when he can get away with it, he will communicate on the sly, sharing the body and blood of our saviour with me and my parish, though the roman eucharist is barred to protestants. And at his church this Vespers service is the only time he can regularly take communion in his denomination.

One day I know we will both be able to approach the same altar without hiding, and on that day we really will be one holy, universal, and apostolic church.

no endings, just new beginnings

"10They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. 11"Men of Galilee," they said, "why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven."
--Acts of the Apostles (NIV)

I was thinking about the above from Acts yesterday as I skated home from Barrett and Sarah's house for the last time. They left for New York state today to settle some final details before they move there later this summer, and I leave in a couple of days for LA and a month long stint at Ammon Hennacy House.

Though I've no doubt that my friendship with them will continue on for a very long time I can't help feeling their move a bit. The two of them have been really important to my spiritual developement and to understanding my faith and what it means to live as a Christian and a radical.

This passage from Acts could really be seen as the start of the mission of the Apostles, one minute they are saying their farewells to Jesus and the next minute there are these two celestial looking people standing before them reminding them that they have have work to do that doesn't involve staring at the sky.

looking back on the year that I've had to get aquainted with Barrett and Sarah I can see how much of our friendship was shared directly with Christ. I can recall how when I first met them I was praying for some kind of greater understanding of my faith, I was praying for some way to place my various beliefs in context to one another and without my really being aware of it the friendship that I shared with the two of them has in so many ways done just that.

Now we've each got work to do.

thoughts on the film "Shake Hands With the Devil"

I just now got through watching the film "Shake Hands With The Devil", a documentary based on the experiences of Romeo Dallaire when he was in command of the UN forces in Rawanda in 1994, and based on the book by the same title which he has written about the genocide.

This is an important film because it talks frankly and without mincing words about what the world refused to do in that country, and the responsabilities the world continues to shirk in places like Darfur.

There is a naked hipocracy about our lamenting the genocide which took place in Europe during World War Two. It is a hipocracy which makes it seem ok to erect monuments in stone, in words, in films, paintings and theatrical productions, to convince ourselves collectively and individually that the kind of wholesale slaughter which happened in the 1940's is behind us. All that we have to do to keep this illusion alive is to turn our backs to the TV, to skip past the news story in the paper or change the radio station.

How can I look at myself in the mirror and think about these things? Why doesn't the whole world feel the shame which should come from knowingly turning an entire country into one big cemetery? What can I do to help ensure that this kind of thing never does happen again. I don't know, but I'm fairly certain it has to be more substantial than writing in a blog or waxing mournfull in a coffee shop or some other thing like that.

Knowing that genocide is happening in the world even as I write this but that I lack the courage even to read about it; that I find it easier to turn my back makes me feel a little ill.

The cries of the dead should dog us to our graves for what we the "civilized world" do and what we ignore.

I pray for a massive sea change to take place within the hearts minds and souls of every single person on the planet.I pray for the courage and the ability to do my part in ensuring that the world sees no more nation sized graveyards. I pray for the politicians, the authority figures, the leaders of humanity to wake up to this, and I pray for the people who are content to be ruled by these men and women, that we all can bring real peace into the world. Not the uneasy peace of diplomacy, not the faulty peace that's kept by men in blue helmets, not the peace which follows a nuclear blast, or the peace in the eye of a hurricane, but the peace that wells up within the hearts of individuals, the sort of peace which comes with the recognition and acceptance of our enemies as our brothers and sisters, people who share in a common humanity with us. The sort of peace which we each bring out into the world from inside of us.

This is the only true peace, it's the peace of love, acceptance and humillity, not the peace of the status quo but rather the peace which supplants or destroys the status quo, because business as usual is destroying the planet and everyone on it.

I make this prayer in Jesus name and in full confidence that he who asks shall recieve. And in the understanding that we reap what we sow.

* * *

Oh Lord please make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love,
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is discord, unity,
Where there is doubt, faith,
Where there is error, truth,
Where there is dispair, hope,
Where there is sadness, joy,
Where there is darkness, light.

Oh Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console,
To be understood, as to understand,
To be loved, as love.

For it is in giving that we recieve,
It is in pardonning that we are pardonned,
it is in dieing that we are born,
to eternal Life.

Amen

new essay

Crass and 20th Century Christianity
By Chris Rooney

I was listening to the Crass album Best Before for the first time in almost two years today. I can remember feeling uncomfortable listening to their song “Reality Asylum” even back then, before I had fully embraced the Christian religion or gone back to church. It is a song that has been both maligned and praised, in it’s time it has been called obscenity, free speech, and any number of other things, it has been banned and censored at various times and even attracted the attention of Scotland Yard to what might have otherwise become an obscure punk rock band. You reading this might never have heard of this band or even know that this song exists, it’s been more than twenty-five years since it was written and certainly almost as long since it was recorded or performed live so I will try and explain why this song has been on my mind today and why I think that it poses an important challenge to Christianity, a challenge which has in many respects remained un answered.

Reality Asylum is six minutes and thirty-seven seconds of polemic against Christianity, against Christ, against the concept of a Trinitarian god, against the resurrection, against God, and against everything that professing Christians believe. It is spliced together with samples of a young girl praying, the sounds of monastic chanting and various other audio clips and instruments. As a track it is a lot closer to audio collage after the fashion of the Beatles “Revolution Number 9” than it is to the traditionally rigid style of most punk rock songs.

I didn’t intend to listen to it when I put the CD into my computer, I actually wanted to skip it but couldn’t recall the song’s title or where it was on the album and so I shouldn’t have been surprised when it turned out not to be the song I had muted in my itunes playlist. Of course once the song had started I decided to listen to it anyway. It was very hard for me to do.

As a self identified Anarchist and Pacifist I have a lot ideologically in common with the band Crass but as a Christian this aspect of their message has always been hard to listen to comfortably.

Above I mention that I think this song poses a challenge to Christianity, a challenge I think that many people, myself included, might find easier to ignore or skip past. For some it might never even be seriously raised or contemplated. It is always easier to be content with the status quo, with business as usual; it is always easier to turn your back than to get spat on, but that is not what we as Christians are here to do. Christ exhorts us to take the hit and offer the other side of our faces for the same beating; we can do nothing less and should never seek to either. And that’s why I forced myself to listen to the whole song.




What is this challenge, you might ask? I would answer with another question:

What have we done to the good news of Christ that it would become a poisoned letter to the very people who should be its most vociferous supporters? What have we done to make the marginalised, the radicals, the poor, the anarchists and the pacifists and the punks curse us and strike out at us?

When Christ came to the people of Israel he didn’t come first to the politicians, the chief priests, and the leaders of the people, he came to the prostitutes, the beggars, the leprous and mentally ill, he came to the starving, the guerrillas, the anti-Romans, and the people who for what ever reason had been turned out of their communities, he came to the tax collectors and the working class, the fishermen and the stigmatized, he came to the despised.

On his first visit to Jerusalem what did he do in the temple? Did he go and speak with Caiaphas the high priest? Did he entertain with Herod and Pilate? No, he fashioned himself a whip and turned over the tables of those doing business on the temple grounds, he chased out the bankers the people selling and buying animals to sacrifice. In other words he disrupted the status quo, he disturbed “business as usual”.

When he spoke of the laws and about how to treat those who abuse and walk all over you he talked not of violent solutions to the problems of living in an occupied land; he preached of a radical forgiveness, he talked about the dignity of the oppressed, he said that they would inherit the earth. The teachings of Christ as contained in the gospels and echoed in the epistles are primarily stories of social justice, of liberation for the prisoners, of dignity and acceptance for the stigmatized, and for aid and comfort to the poor. The gospels and Christ’s apostles are messengers of a peaceful insurrection. This is something that can be taken for granted or ignored so very easily two thousand years later.

Why is it that the same marginalised all over the world are so likely to forget these truths? Why are the churches seen by many to be the seats of power when the teachings they hold are about abandoning worldly power and authority as false and returning the power to God?

When Christ was tempted in the desert the devil offered him the powers of the world if only he would bow before him. Christ rebuked Satan and for it was given true power, the power to save the world from itself.

What has happened to this good news? Why is it that many think first of the metaphysical when they think of the Gospels--that Jesus died for our sins—instead of the radical messages of social justice that underscore the whole New Testament?

I spent the rest of today day riding my bicycle around the city trying to think through all of this. The song I started this paper describing to you had left me with a strong feeling of being ill at ease. I could only ask myself what I had done as a Christian to share this good news, how have I behaved as a disciple of Christ in relation to the people who need this good news the most?

I started by asking myself “why do they hate my religion?” Only it is easy to rattle off a list miles long, replete with two millennia of historical examples of why someone might hate Christians or Christianity, we have a rich history of bad actions attached to the name of our faith. So I tried asking a different question, “What have I done to disprove history? What have I done withy my faith?” This question brought on yet more; “What is good news to the drug addicted, to the prostitute, to the man serving time in a federal prison? What is good news to the man or woman who has to steal groceries in order to feed their starving family?” And just as importantly I asked myself “What have I done about this as a Christian? How have I helped to share my faith in their good news?” The answers I got to these questions were not easy to digest. I give what I can to people when they ask me, but giving money or food to a man on the street is not a solution to the problems that keep him there. I try to protest against unjust laws and against globalisation, I write against capitalism and I try to show support for others who do as well, but when I ask myself “is this enough?” I can’t help but feel that it’s not.

Why do so many public figures praise God with one side of their mouth while they give speeches against the poor with the other? Why do many people donate large sums of money to Christian charities only to write the donations off on their tax returns? Why can a man or woman extol the virtues of faith while depriving other people of the reasons to have faith? Can a four star general order men to kill each other in far away lands and still feel good about going to church on Sunday?

Can a politician run on a “pro-life” election platform and sleep easy at night after posing for a photo-op as he signs his name arrogantly on a bomb or after denying clemency to people on death row? Can that same “Pro-life” politician feel justified in his beliefs and still do nothing about all the ways the system kills people? Can a President? Can a Prime Minister? And what can I do in my life as a Christian to set this right if only in the smallest personal way?

These are all questions we each ought to ask ourselves at some point or another I just hope that it takes less than the raw anger of a polemic against the things that you love in order for you to do it. <

AAAAAAAAAaaaaaahhhhhhh!

I need pictures!

I'm serious if I don't get any artwrk for the coming issue I will be forced to make a zine without any at all...

come to think of it, perhaps I can make that work. If the next issue has no artwork in it perhaps it would inspire people to send stuff in for the next issue?

on a somewhat related note my room mate has just raised a question I sometimes ask myself as well; does anyone actually read this blog?

It's hard to tell since the software is so much different than Live Journal in that there's no friends page or communities or anything like that.

Ahmadinejad takes Bush to task over his profession of faith

Doubtless you're well aware that the President of Iran has sent GWB a letter and in so doing has broken a diplomatic silence that has remained between the Presidents of the US and Iran for almost 30 years.

Thanks to this wonderful internet of ours I have mamaged to find a link to the complete transcript of the letter

http://www.cnn.com/interactive/world/0605/transcript.lemonde.letter/index.html

If you havn't read it yet for yourself I would strongly reccomend it, The president of Iran takes a very interesting stance, one which I havn't seen used much. The substance of the letter focusses in large part on George Bush's professed Christianity and asks many hard questions of his faith.

I would be interested to find out what the official response to this letter has been and if anyone reading this has a link to anything regarding the American reaction to this letter please paste it in the comments section, I would be very grateful.

blogging on the job

I've got some free timne here at the bookstore and so I figured I'd write a bit about what's been going on in my life. Still going to LA in a couple of weeks only I will be coming home earlier due to the fact that they will be starting their summer intern program and won't have any room for me after the end of June. Typing on a PC again after so long with the lappy is kind of difficult.

I've had this feeling like being on the verge of tears for the past few hours. I'm not too sure why, I could probably find a number of reasons for my fragility today and many of them would require more back story than I care to write today.

I've been slacking off on my music lately and that's probably going to kick my ass on Friday when I go back into the studio with Todd.

I've been trying to figure out what I might be able to do for work when I come back from my trips this summer. God willing, the bookstore is not going to drop out of my life because I love working here and pasrticipating in the collective meetings and such but one thing I need to do when I come home is think very seriously about what I will be able to do to get off of my government pension and start supporting myself.

Another area of some concern for me is starting the Worker house here, I try not to worry about where anything is going to come from--actually I've become pretty good most of the time at not giving it any thought. I'm trying to leave it in God's hands because otherwise I would probably panic and not get anything accomplished at all. However no matter how good I am most of the time the thought always manages to sneak back in about who will be willing to help me start it and where things like jobs and money and house will come from.

One of the things I've given thought to as far as work goes is maybe getting involved in CMHA or another group who deal with mental health. I don't have any accreditation in this area but from my own life experiences I'm sure that I at least have a fighting chance at a low level position doing something.

Last night I watched Romero with Barrett and Sarah, it was a really good film, it was shot in El Salvadore and many of the locations, like the church where Archbishop Romero was killed were the actual places where events had happened.

Watching that film made me want to have another go at reading Gutierrez "Theology of Liberation". I am certain that I will get to it sooner or later. of all my books on Theology opr radical politics that and Tolstoy's "The Kingdom of God is Within You" are both titles which I hope to read through soon.

Yesterday before the film I went to a meeting of this peace group here in town and much of the focus was on the up coming World Peace Forum here in Vancouver. I'll have to check the dates again because if it turns out that I'll be home durring the event I will have to make a point of going.

There's also something going on in Castlegar with regards to draft dodgers and other war resisters, if I'm here in time I want to try and get to that.

bleh I'm feeling like a zombie right now and I don't really know if I've got much else to say so I'll just be cutting it short and getting back to looking like I'm doing something book store related.

peace

I really love this quote

"The desire to rule is the mother of all heresies."

--St. John Chrysostom 4th Century CE

I want to write something about this quote however when I tried just now all I managed to do was expose my own sorry lack of knowlege about the things I wanted to write. Perhaps if I don't forget all about it I'll come back to this at a future date and try again to put my thoughts down but for now I'll just leave you with the quote.

w00t mother fucker.... w00t

So my upstairs neighbours are playing what sounds like electronic polka or something, anyway it's just about the worst music I've heard coming from their place yet. In all fairness Mark and I were doing some pretty fucked up stuff earlier and no one complained. It was really good to get together with Mark again to jam, it's been so long since I really let loose with all the gear.

Mark and I are doing this avant-guard electronic stuff under the title The Empire Of Crime. At times it is really creepy and others it's this sublime droning trance stuff and still others it sounds like Negativland. Most of the equipment is tape recorders and radio and pedals, getting together to jam usually means about half an hour of setting things up right and getting the recording device wired to the rest of the gear so we can save it for posterity and then we just sort of see where the noise takes us. This is our secind year of doing this and we've got an album containing the best exerpts from our jams. I'd love to do something with it but don't really have any connections to distribution or printing CD's. I did construct a page where you can download some of our music for free. the URL is http://www.lulu.com/empire-of-crime

It's 4:00am and I am going to have to suffer through the upstairs guys because after the racket we made earlier it would be really lame of me to start raising a fuss (though I almost want to anyway...)

Production on my hopefully forthcoming folk CD is going to resume in about a week. I can't help but feel lame about it though. I've had weeks to practice and yet all I've done is brush it off

I could make the excuse that the previous recording sessions have burnt me out a bit but though it's true it's equally true that I need to just slog through it for now and then take my rest when it's time instead of getting lazy and ignoring my responsibillity. I do wish though that I could get some more gigs maybe the pressure of playing live would make me get my folk on.

Right now I'm really in to two bands that I can't recommend enough.

Robyn Hitchcock's first band "The Soft Boys"

and this group called "Iron and Wine"

I'm tired. why won't they stop playing that awful music?

Something everyone in North America ought to know about

IAEA Finds No Proof of Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program
By Juan Cole
Republished from Information Clearing House

Iran maintains that it is in fact fulfilling its obligations under the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty.

In its April 28 report, the International Atomic Energy Agency mentioned the UNSC mandate to Iran of last February:

• re-establish full and sustained suspension of all enrichment related and reprocessing activities,
including research and development, to be verified by the Agency;

• reconsider the construction of a research reactor moderated by heavy water;

• ratify promptly and implement in full the Additional Protocol;

• pending ratification, continue to act in accordance with the provisions of the Additional
Protocol which Iran signed on 18 December 2003;

• implement transparency measures, as requested by the Director General, including in GOV/2005/67, which extend beyond the formal requirements of the Safeguards Agreement and Additional Protocol, and include such access to individuals, documentation relating to procurement, dual use equipment, certain military-owned workshops and research and development as the Agency may request in support of its ongoing investigations.

Despite not being fully in compliance with these demands, Iran maintains that it is in fact fulfilling its obligations under the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty.

The IAEA found no smoking gun.

Here is its conclusion, which others will not quote for you at such length:

33. All the nuclear material declared by Iran to the Agency is accounted for. Apart from the small quantities previously reported to the Board, the Agency has found no other undeclared nuclear material in Iran. However, gaps remain in the Agency’s knowledge with respect to the scope and content of Iran’s centrifuge programme. Because of this, and other gaps in the Agency’s knowledge, including the role of the military in Iran’s nuclear programme, the Agency is unable to make progress in its efforts to provide assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran.

34. After more than three years of Agency efforts to seek clarity about all aspects of Iran’s nuclear programme, the existing gaps in knowledge continue to be a matter of concern. ’

This ambiguity is being twisted by the Bush administration to make it seem as though Iran has done something illegal. The report can be read to say that there is no evidence that Iran is doing anything illegal.

In fact, under the NPT, countries do have the right to do the sort of experiments Iran is doing. Most of the complaints are not about substance but about something else.

Iran’s president pledged to continue to cooperate with UN isnspectors.

More about Iran later. For now see the next item, where an Iraqi VP says all hell would break loose in Iraq if the US attacked Iran.

Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan. Visit his website www.juancole.com.

escape dreams

I had all these prison escape dreams last night. Seriously that's all I can remember dreaming about, I must have had four or five of them in a row. I's have this one and I'd kind of wake up and then I'd go back to sleep and have another and it just kept on like that. The last two or three were really memorable, one of them was a POW escape dream where I was in a POW camp in Germany durring the second world war and I had two friends on the inside with me and we were all trying to get out. The dream ended with one of my dream war buddies suicide bombing a suply train and there was this sweeping crane shot at the end which showed the German Alps and there was closing credits and all kinds of things. The next dream I was back in a POW camp but I couldn't get out and so I was balled up and huddling in one corner trying to think of how I'd get out and then this woman came up to me with this desk and started asking me to say a few words in rememberance of this girl I'd never known. The vary last one was the strangest for sure. I was watching this guy with a mowhawk going nuts inside some kind of wooden box full of debris and it was leaking large ammounts of water. Eventually I realised that the box was moving along in these tunnels like a strange falling apart subway or something. Then it came to a stop in the tunnels and the box had no real way of getting moving again but still we couldn't get out because to do thatwould somehow mean certain death (I think there was something dangerous in the tunnels). I got up after we were taken in the box to some kind of station and there were all these red monsters or demons which were made out of red cloth and one of them was smoking a cigar. I knew when I woke up from that one that it was time to get out of bed.

strange strange strange

post cinematic blues

(before I start I feel I ought to warn anyone reading this that it'll probably seem very self indulgent and boring but this is a blog and blogs are where you get crap like that off your chest)




Blaah,

my life's become noticably smaller since I stopped going on Live Journal. Most of the people who I really enjoyed interacting with on the computer dropped out of my life as soon as I quite logging on to that site. Sometimes I think about going back to LJ but I'm no longer sure that it's worth it.

To tell you the truth I'm not sure it was ever really worth it.

Mostly I think it's just loneliness.

I try and take comfort in the things in my life which bring me joy: making the zine each month, working at Spartacus Books, riding my bicycle, and the beauy that really infuses all creation but then there are times like tonight where I feel largly cut off and sad. I've got a lot of friends sure but not many truly close friends, and two of them will be moving to the US at the same time as I leave for Los Angeles.

Two days ago I got an e-mail from a singles site that I had an account with about a year ago. I dropped the account because the experience of being there made me really miserable, most of the people were really not my type and the ones who were or who I could hope might be all turned out to be dead ends.

So anyway prompted by a sort of masochistic curiosity and too much free time I re-activated my account to see if anything had changed but it was no different. Also I was met with this strong feeling that being there was futile because even if there were a million women on that website none of them would be the one I spend my time praying for. So I closed the account for good the next day. I'm trying to content myself with what God has already given me to do and to be gratful for all of it. Largly I think I succeed at this but there's always that seemingly innocuous event which can remind me of how lonesome it can be to have so much good and no one to share it with.

Perhaps I should just start spending all my time hanging out at theological schools. At least that way I might have a better chance of finding someone my type.

Of course I realise that there's really not much point in looking, all it's ever done for me in the past is leave me feeling broken and defeated. And besides even if I met the most wonderful woman in the world tomorrow it would matter little because come the 22nd I'm on a train to LA to start my process of religious formation.

I'll be gone almost completely from the 22nd of May until August sometime, visiting Catholic Worker communities and family. So why do I bother with this kind of self indulgent misery? I wish I could ask that rhetorically but right now I really do want to know.

I wish that it could be easier to shut off ones emotions temporarily, I have a lot in my life I need to get sorted out in the meantime, and there's never really a lack of things to do. If I could spend all this time I waste by feeling alone in persuit of more practical business like doing laundry or puting together the next copy of the Radical's online edition I think I'd probably have to be a robot but at least I'd be able to get things done.

anyway I've had enough of this writing about it only makes me feel better in a vague sort of way. I think I need to go out tonight.

this article is reprinted from www.rabble.ca

What you need to know about May Day
In North America, May Day and Labour Day represent the two faces of working-class political tradition, one symbolizing its revolutionary potential, the other its long search for reform and respectability.
>by Leo Panitch May 1, 2006 For more than 100 years, May Day has symbolized the common struggles of workers around the globe. Why is it largely ignored in North America? The answer lies in part in American labour's long repression of its own radical past, out of which international May Day was actually born a century ago. The seeds were sown in the campaign for the eight-hour work day. On May 1, 1886, hundreds of thousands of North American workers mobilized to strike. In Chicago, the demonstration spilled over into support for workers at a major farm-implements factory who'd been locked out for union activities. On May 3, during a pitched battle between picketers and scabs, police shot two workers. At a protest rally in Haymarket Square the next day, a bomb was tossed into the police ranks and police directed their fire indiscriminately at the crowd. Eight anarchist leaders were arrested, tried and sentenced to death (three were later pardoned). These events triggered international protests, and in 1889, the first congress of the new socialist parties associated with the Second International (the successor to the First International organized by Karl Marx in the 1860s) called on workers everywhere to join in an annual one-day strike on May 1 — not so much to demand specific reforms as an annual demonstration of labour solidarity and working-class power. May Day was both a product of, and an element in, the rapid growth of new mass working-class parties of Europe — which soon forced official recognition by employers and governments of this “workers' holiday.” But the American Federation of Labor, chastened by the “red scare” that followed the Haymarket events, went along with those who opposed May Day observances. Instead, in 1894, the AFL embraced President Grover Cleveland's decree that the first Monday of September would be the annual Labor Day. The Canadian government of Sir Robert Thompson enacted identical Labour Day legislation a month later. Ever since, May Day and Labour Day have represented in North America the two faces of working-class political tradition, one symbolizing its revolutionary potential, the other its long search for reform and respectability. With the support of the state and business, the latter has predominated — but the more radical tradition has never been entirely suppressed. This radical May Day tradition is nowhere better captured than in Bryan Palmer's monumental book, Cultures of Darkness: Night Travels in the Histories of Transgression [From Medieval to Modern] (Monthly Review Press, 2000). Palmer, one of Canada's foremost Marxist labour historians, has done more than anyone to recover and analyze the cultures of resistance that working people developed in practicing class struggle from below. He's strongly critical of labour-movement leaders who've appealed to those elements of working-class culture that crave ersatz bourgeois respectability. Set amid chapters on peasants and witches in late feudalism, on pirates and slaves during the rise of mercantile imperialism, on fraternal lodge members and anarchists in the new cities of industrial capitalism, on lesbians, homosexuals and communists under fascism, and on the mafia, youth gangs and race riots, jazz, beats and bohemians in modern U.S. capitalism, are two chapters that brilliantly tell the story of May Day. One locates Haymarket in the context of the Victorian bourgeoisie's fears of what they called the “dangerous classes.” This account confirms the central role of the “anarcho-communist movement in Chicago [which] was blessed with talented leaders, dedicated ranks and the most active left-wing press in the country. The dangerous classes were becoming truly dangerous.” The other chapter, a survey of “Festivals of Revolution,” locates “the celebratory May Day, a festive seizure of working-class initiative that encompassed demands for shorter hours, improvement in conditions, and socialist agitation and organization” against the backdrop of the traditional spring calendar of class confrontation. Over the past century communist revolutions were made in the name of the working class, and social democratic parties were often elected into government. In their different ways, both turned May Day to the purposes of the state. Before the 20th century was out the communist regimes imploded in internal contradictions between authoritarianism and the democratic purpose of socialism, while most social democratic ones, trapped in the internal contradictions between the welfare state and increasingly powerful capital markets, accommodated to neo-liberalism and become openly disdainful of “old labour.” As for the United States, the tragic legacy of the repression of its radical labour past is an increasingly de-unionized working class mobilized by fundamentalist Christian churches. Canada, with its NDP and 30-per-cent unionized labour force, looks good by comparison. Working classes have suffered defeat after defeat in this era of capitalist globalization. But they're also in the process of being transformed: The decimated industrial proletariat of the global North is being replaced by a bigger industrial proletariat in the global South. In both regions, a new working class is still being formed in the new service and communication sectors spawned by global capitalism (where the eight-hour day is often unknown). Union movements and workers' parties from Poland to Korea to South Africa to Brazil have been spawned in the past 20 years. Two more books out of Monthly Review Press — Ursula Huw's The Making of a Cybertariat (2003) and the late Daniel Singer's Whose Millennium? Theirs or Ours? (1999) — don't deal with May Day per se, but capture particularly well this global economic and political transformation. They tell much that is sober yet inspiring about why May 1 still symbolizes the struggle for a future beyond capitalism rather than just an homage to the struggles of the past. Leo Panitch teaches political economy at York University and is co-editor of The Socialist Register.