I generally feel that it is of great importance to highlight our individual veiws as women towards feminism, i don’t however see any value in value elitism.
I feel that that is a mimic of patriarichal hierarchy systems, which as feminists we seek to change. I am for marijuana reform and decriminalization. And as an Ecofeminist, i feel that the legal issues surrounding this plant are easily reflected in the laws governing a woman’s body, e.g. birth control and abortion rights.
The domination and degredation of Earth and Women are both interalated through the Christian Patriarchal system. Yet, i beleive that a feminist can most definitely be Christian, even though i am not; I do not wish to exclude any women- so why is it that some "feminist" groups choose to join in the fight to keep us down by seperating and devaluing us as individuals??
I have low aspirations, expect my problems to just go away/back down, i'm generally unhappy and if something is too hard i just don't try....
for the most part this was accurate, i disagree with 3 of the things listed above however.
psychoanalyze Yourself; Don't read ahead, just copy and paste the following into a NEW bulletin BEFORE you read my answers. Then answer the following questions one at a time WITHOUT LOOKING AHEAD with the first thought that comes to mind. Then read what each answer means at the end.
1. You are walking in the woods. You are not alone. Who's with you? beth
2. You are walking in the woods. You see an animal. What kind of animal? fox
3. What interaction takes place between you and the animal? we make eye contact, it breaks away and walks in the same direction as us for a while
.4. You walk deeper in the woods. You enter a clearing, and before you is your dream house. How big is it? small
5. Is your dream house surrounded by a fence? no
6. You enter the house. You walk into the dining room and see the dining table is covered with?dust
7. You exit the house and a cup is on the ground, what kind is it? ceramic mug, really vintage
8. What do you do with the cup? leave it be
9. You walk to the edge of the property where you find yourself standing at a body of water, what is it? ocean
10. How do you cross that body of water? i don't
The ANSWERS
1. The person who you are walking in the woods with is the most important to you.
2. The size of the animal is representative of your perception of the size of your problems in your life.
3. The severity of the interaction you have with the animal is representative of how you deal with your problems.
4. The size of your dream home is representative of the size of your ambition.
5. A lack of a fence is indicative of an open personality. People are welcome at all times. The presence of a fence indicates a closed personality. You'd prefer people not drop by unannounced.
6. If your answer did NOT include food, flowers, or people, then you are generally unhappy.
7. The durability of the material with the cup is representative of the perceived durability of your relationship.
8. What you did with the cup is representative of your attitude.
9. The size of the body of water is representative of the size of your relationships.
10. The way you cross the water is representative to how easy or hard you expect your life to be.
The North American Union: Democracy Dying in Canada
Unfortunately, democratic rights in Canada are quickly becoming an illusion. In a sinister plot being carried out underneath our noses, the Canadian government has been working collectively with Mexico and the United States to create the conditions for a merger into a North American Union (NAU). To date, there has been absolutely no public participation concerning this merger.
The plot will thicken even more on August 20-21 when George Bush and Felipe Calderon, the presidents of the United States and Mexico, meet Stephen Harper at the Fairmont Hotel in Montebello, Quebec. Further planning and analysis of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), an informal agreement signed by the leaders of the three countries in 2005, will command center stage.
If Canadians understood the substance of the SPP they would be appalled since it is a direct threat to the existence of Canada as a sovereign country. Internal SPP documents released under FOI requests have shown that U.S. administrative law is being written in stealth to "integrate" and "harmonize" 100's of regulations in Canada and Mexico.
As Dr. Jerome Corsi has pointed out in "The Late Great U.S.A.", the European Union is being used as a model for the NAU. The European Union was created incrementally over a 40 year period with public disclosure, but the North American Union have been placed on an incredible 5 year timetable with no public disclosure!
Government leaders, the corporate elite and senior bureaucrats have been meeting secretly for the past 2 years to "fast track" the eventual rollout of the NAU by 2010.
The big question is: why hasn't the Canadian government used the parliamentary process and the media to inform its citizens regarding the looming NAU?
You are forced to conclude that the mainstream media is guilty of collusion with government and corporate executives and has failed to report the context of the NAU and the implications for the future of Canada.
Essentially, the SPP lead up to the NAU is the sequel to the Free Trade Agreement and we all remember the Mulroney promises of 1989. We were to have more jobs, more prosperity, more investment and the middle class and the working class would benefit, right? Wrong. Many of the jobs and companies went south, unemployment rose, Canadian companies suffered takeovers, but the political pundits keep talking about the increased wealth in North America.
Yes, it's true that there has been a huge increase in the number of millionaires and billionaires in North America today but what about the rest of us? The multinational corporations have done just fine, and now they are the ones who will be sitting down at conference tables in Montebello with presidents and a prime minister- changing the rules to suit themselves while no media or citizens' groups will be allowed to observe or participate!
If you doubt this scenario will occur on August 20, I remind you that there was a blackout on media coverage at a previous SPP conference, in Banff, Alberta from September 12-14, 2006 after which Stockwell Day, Minister of Public Safety refused to answer any questions regarding the conference in the foyer of the House of Commons. Apparently, that conference in Banff was so secretive that the Canadian public did not have the right to learn about it.
A full discussion of the SPP is beyond the scope of this article but it is important to remember that the next decade will be all about "deregulation." It will mean that the protections of government on which we have come to rely, will vanish into thin air. Future generations, our children and grandchildren, will ask us why we fell asleep at the switch and failed to hold our governments accountable.
The United States will become our model. Privatization and deregulation of: health care and drug safety, road construction and transportation, environmental, energy, forestry and agriculture regulations are just a few of the areas where government will abdicate its constitutional responsibility to us.
Once the corporations and government carry out this fascist coup d'etat, we can predict the results- increased prices, decreased wages and a gaping hole in our social safety net like we never imagined. It will bring an end to the middle class in Canada and bring about a huge increase in the ranks of the working poor. It will lead to a "Walmartization" of the economy.
Maude Barlow, in her recent book, "Too Close for Comfort" presents all of the frightening details of "Canada's future within Fortress North America."
To add insult to injury, the planners of the Montebello conference, according to Connie Fogal of the Canadian Action Party, have affirmed that U.S. troops will be coordinating security arrangements at Montebello, which include a $1 million fence to keep the expected 10,000 protesters 25 kilometers away from the secretive meeting of three so-called democracies.
George Orwell once said: "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face- forever."
The boot of the North American Union is only 3 years from our face right now and we need to put tremendous pressure on our Canadian government to unveil its intentions, reveal its secrets and come clean.
When completed, the highway will run from Mexico City to Toronto, slicing through the heartland like a dagger sunk into a heifer at the loins and pulled clean to the throat. It will be four football fields wide, an expansive gully of concrete, noise and exhaust, swelled with cars, trucks, trains and pipelines carrying water, wires and God knows what else. Through towns large and small it will run, plowing under family farms, subdevelopments, acres of wilderness. Equipped with high-tech electronic customs monitors, freight from China, offloaded into nonunionized Mexican ports, will travel north, crossing the border with nary a speed bump, bound for Kansas City, where the cheap goods manufactured in booming Far East factories will embark on the final leg of their journey into the nation's Wal-Marts.
And this NAFTA Superhighway, as it is called, is just the beginning, the first stage of a long, silent coup aimed at supplanting the sovereign United States with a multinational North American Union. Even as this plot unfolds in slow motion, the mainstream media are silent; politicians are in denial. Yet word is getting out. Like samizdat, info about the highway has circulated in niche media platforms old and new, on right-wing websites like WorldNetDaily, in the pages of low-circulation magazines like the John Birch Society's The New American and increasingly on the letters to the editor page of local newspapers. "Construction of the NAFTA highway from Laredo, Texas to Canada is now underway," read a letter in the February 13 San Gabriel Valley Tribune. "Spain will own most of the toll roads that connect to the superhighway. Mexico will own and operate the Kansas City Smart Port. And NAFTA tribunal, not the U.S. Supreme Court, will have the final word in trade disputes. Will the last person please take down the flag?" There are many more where that came from. "The superhighway has the potential to cripple the West Coast economy, as well as posing an enormous security breach at our border," read a letter from the January 7 San Francisco Chronicle. "So far, there has been no public participation or debate on this important issue. Public participation and debate must begin now." In some senses it has. Prompted by angry phone calls and e-mail from their constituents, local legislators are beginning to take action. In February the Montana state legislature voted 95 to 5 for a resolution opposing "the North American Free Trade Agreement Superhighway System" as well as "any effort to implement a trinational political, government entity among the United States, Canada, and Mexico." Similar resolutions have been introduced in eighteen other states as well as the House of Representatives, where H. Con Res. 40 has attracted, as of this writing, twenty-seven co-sponsors. Republican presidential candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire now routinely face hostile questions about the highway at candidate forums. Citing a spokesperson for the Romney campaign, the Concord Monitor reports that "the road comes up at town meetings second only to immigration policy." Grassroots movement exposes elite conspiracy and forces politicians to respond: It would be a heartening story but for one small detail. There's no such thing as a proposed NAFTA Superhighway. Though opposition to the nonexistent highway is the cause célèbre of many a paranoiac, the myth upon which it rests was not fabricated out of whole cloth. Rather, it has been sewn together from scraps of fact. Take, for instance, North America's SuperCorridor Organization (NASCO), a trinational coalition of businesses and state and local transportation agencies that, in its own words, focuses "on maximizing the efficiency of our existing transportation infrastructure to support international trade." Headquartered in borrowed office space in a Dallas law firm, the organization, which has a full-time staff of three, advocates for increased public expenditure along the main north-south Interstate routes, including new high-tech freight-tracking technology and expedited border crossings. It has had some success, landing federal money to pilot cargo management technologies and winning praise from the Bush Administration. Speaking at a NASCO conference in Texas in 2004, then-Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta congratulated the organization for its efforts. "The people in this room have vision," Mineta said. "Thinking ahead, thinking long term, you began to make aggressive plans to develop...this vital artery in our national transportation system through which so much of the NAFTA traffic flows. It flows across our nation's busiest southern border crossing in Laredo; over North America's busiest commercial crossing, the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit; and through Duluth and Pembina, North Dakota, and all the places in between." A few years ago NASCO put on its home page a map of the United States that more or less traced the flow that Mineta describes: Drawn in bright blue, the trade route begins in Monterrey, Mexico, runs up I-35 and branches out after Kansas City, along I-29 toward Winnipeg and I-94 toward Detroit and Toronto. The colorful, cartoonlike image seemed to show right out in the open just where NASCO and its confederates planned to build the NAFTA Superhighway. It began zipping around the Internet. The organization soon found itself besieged with angry phone calls and letters. "I think the rumor going around was that this map was a blueprint and it was drawn to scale," says NASCO executive director Tiffany Melvin. (Given the size of the route markings, that would have heralded highways fifty miles wide.) Ever since the map went live, NASCO has spent a considerable amount of time attempting to refute charges like those made by right-wing nationalist Jerome Corsi, whose recent book The Late Great USA devotes several pages to excoriating NASCO for being part of the vanguard of the highway and the coming North American Union. Until recently, NASCO's website contained the following FAQs: Is NASCO a part of a secret conspiracy? Absolutely not... We welcome the opportunity to share information about our organization.... Will the NAFTA Superhighway be four football fields wide? There is no new, proposed NAFTA Superhighway.... Is the map on the website an approved plan for the proposed NAFTA Superhighway? There is no proposed NAFTA Superhighway.... The map is not a plan or blueprint of any kind.... They are EXISTING highways. The Trans Texas Corridor is the first section of the proposed, new NAFTA Superhighway.... There is no proposed, new NAFTA Superhighway. But NASCO is just one part of what Corsi and his ilk view as a grand conspiracy. There's also a federal initiative called the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), which they portray as a Trojan horse packed with globalists scheming to form a European Union-style governing body to manage the entire continent. The reactions of those in SPP to this characterization seem to range from bemusement to alarm. "There is no NAFTA Superhighway," Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Market Access and Compliance David Bohigian told me emphatically over the phone. Initiated in 2005, the SPP is a relatively mundane formal bureaucratic dialogue, he says. Working groups, staffed by midlevel officials from all three countries, figure out how to better synchronize customs enforcement, security protocols and regulatory frameworks among the countries. "Simple stuff like, for instance, in the US we sell baby food in several different sizes; in Canada, it's just two different sizes." Another star in the constellation of North American Union conspiracies is the Mexican deep-water port of Lázaro Cárdenas. Located on the Pacific coast of the state of Michoacan, the port is undergoing a bonanza of investment and upgrades. According to a 2005 article in Latin Trade, the port is adding a terminal that could provide enough capacity to process nearly all of the cargo that comes into Mexico, making it "the logical trade route connecting the United States and Asia," in the words of the Mexican officials overseeing its overhaul. Since it's the only Mexican port deep enough to handle Super Panamax container ships from China--the most efficient means of shipping products across the Pacific--it's an attractive alternative to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which are unionized and increasingly congested. (More than 80 percent of Asian imports come in through these two ports.) Of course, if cargo switches from Los Angeles to Lázaro Cárdenas, more and more manufactured goods will have to travel through Mexico to reach their US destination, and there will be a significant uptick in the northbound overland traffic. The Kansas City Southern Railroad company is already betting on that eventuality, spending millions of dollars to purchase the rail routes that run from the port up to Kansas City. At the same time, a business improvement group called Kansas City SmartPort, whose members include the local chamber of commerce, is pushing for Kansas City, which is already a transportation hub, to transform itself fully into a "smart port," a kind of intermodal transportation and cargo center. The group recently advocated a pilot program that would place a Mexican customs official in Kansas City to inspect Mexico-bound freight, relieving bottlenecks at the border. The notion of a Mexican customs official on American soil fired the imaginations of those already disposed to see a North American Union on the horizon, and SmartPort staff have been fending off angry inquiries ever since. In his essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," Richard Hofstadter famously sketched the contours of the American tradition of folk conspiracy--a tradition that has, at different times, seen its enemy in Masons, Jesuits, immigrants, Jews and Eastern bankers. There's certainly a strong continuity between that tradition and the populist/nationalist ire that drives the NAFTA highway myth. Hofstadter's original essay was motivated in part by the activities of the John Birch Society, which today is one of the leading purveyors of the highway myth. But there's something more. The myth of the NAFTA Superhighway persists and grows because it taps into deeply felt anxieties about the dizzying dislocations of twenty-first-century global capitalism: a nativist suspicion of Mexico's designs on US sovereignty, a longing for national identity, the fear of terrorism and porous borders, a growing distrust of the privatizing agenda of a government happy to sell off the people's assets to the highest bidder and a contempt for the postnational agenda of Davos-style neoliberalism. Indeed, the image of the highway, with its Chinese goods whizzing across the border borne by Mexican truckers on a privatized, foreign-operated road, is almost mundane in its plausibility. If there was a NAFTA highway, you could bet that Tom Friedman would be for it--what could be more flattening than miles of concrete paved across the continent?--and Lou Dobbs would be zealously opposed. In fact, Dobbs has devoted a segment of his show to the highway, its nonexistence notwithstanding. "These three countries moving ahead their governments without authorization from the American people, without Congressional approval," he said. "This is as straightforward an attack on national sovereignty as there could be outside of war." Though the story of the highway has been seeded and watered in the fertile soil of the nationalist right wing--promoted by Birchers and Corsi, co-author of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth's book about John Kerry--it also stretches across ideological and partisan lines. Like immigration and the Dubai ports deal, it divides the Republican coalition against itself, pitting the capitalists against the nationalists. And more than a few on the center-left have voiced criticisms as well: Teamsters president James Hoffa wrote in a column last year that "Bush is quietly moving forward with plans...for what's known as a NAFTA superhighway--a combination of existing and new roads that would create a north-south corridor from Mexico to Canada.... It would allow global conglomerates to capitalize by exploiting cheap labor and nonexistent work rules and avoiding potential security enhancements at U.S. ports." Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Boyda, from eastern Kansas, invoked its specter early and often in her improbably successful 2006 campaign against Republican incumbent Jim Ryun. A campaign circular inserted in local newspapers warned that "if built, this 'Super Corridor' would be a quarter-mile wide and longer than the Great Wall of China." Boyda told me that her attacks on the highway "hit a real nerve because enough people had the same concerns." What might at first have been a niche obsession has bled, slowly but surely, toward the mainstream. "The biggest problem of these conspiracy theorists," says Robert Pastor, a professor of international relations at American University and a leading proponent of increased North American integration, "is that they are having an effect on the entire debate." Add up all the above ingredients--NASCO, SPP, Lázaro Cárdenas, the Kansas City SmartPort, the planned pilot program allowing Mexican truckers to drive on US roads--and you still don't have a superhighway four football fields wide connecting the entire continent. Which is why understanding the persistence of the NAFTA highway legend requires spending some time in Texas, where Governor Rick Perry and his longtime consigliere, Texas Department of Transportation commissioner Ric Williamson, are proposing the $185 billion Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC), 4,000 miles of highway, rail and freight corridors, the first of which would run up from the border through the heavily populated eastern part of the state. Plans for the TTC call for it to be up to four football fields wide at points, paving over as much as half a million acres of Texas countryside. The first section will be built and operated by a foreign enterprise, and when completed it would likely be the largest privatized toll road in the country. And unlike the NAFTA highway, the Trans-Texas Corridor is very, very real. In 2003, amid a dramatic drawn-out battle over a legally questionable GOP redistricting plan, the Texas state legislature passed House Bill 3588. At 311 pages, it's unlikely that many of those who voted for the bill had actually read it (and many have come to regret their vote), but it received not a single opposing vote. The bill granted the Texas Transportation Commission wide latitude to pursue a long-term plan to build a series of corridors throughout the state that would carry passenger and commercial traffic and contain extra right-of-way for rail, pipelines and electric wires. What first triggered opposition was that under the plan, the new TTC roads would have tolls, something relatively novel in Texas. The state's Department of Transportation--known as TxDot--pointed out that the state's gasoline tax, which pays for road construction and maintenance, hadn't been raised since 1991, while population and commercial traffic were growing at a dizzying pace. Tolls, the governor and his allies argued, were the only solution. (Many TTC opponents propose raising the gasoline tax and indexing it to inflation.) But opposition quickly spread, from those in metro areas concerned about the cost of their daily commute to ranchers angry that their land might fall under the TTC hatchet. According to Chris Steinbach, chief of staff for rural Brenham's Republican State Representative Lois Kolkhorst, when people in the district heard about the plan they responded by asking, "'Why would you want to do that?' It was a real front porch, rocking chair kind of question." Meanwhile David and Linda Stall, a Republican couple from Fayetteville, Texas, began actively organizing opposition to the proposal. As early as 2004, they started bringing friends out to local TxDot hearings and launched the website Corridor Watch. By the time the 2006 gubernatorial election rolled around, a wild four-way race with incumbent Rick Perry pitted against three challengers, the TTC had become one of the most controversial issues of the campaign. Perry was re-elected with 39 percent of the vote, but with all three of his opponents campaigning passionately against the TTC, it was hardly a popular endorsement of the plan. What was once scattered resistance is now a full-fledged rebellion. The Stalls have pushed through a plank in the state's GOP platform opposing the corridor, which means the governor is now at odds with the official position of his own party. In March thousands of Texans from across the state attended an anti-TTC rally on the Capitol steps, and liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans came together to co-sponsor a moratorium on the plan. It passed the House and Senate, only to be vetoed by Governor Perry. (A considerably weaker version was ultimately signed into law.) Perry's continued support of the TTC in the face of mounting opposition is more than just a political liability; it's begun to resemble Bush's Iraq policy in its obstinate indifference to public opinion. This, along with the fact that the federal government sent a letter to the state warning it not to pass a moratorium on the project, has fueled conspiracy speculations about what the real goal of the TTC is. Kelly Taylor, a John Birch Society member and Austin-based freelance contributor to its magazine, has been working hard to connect the dots between the TTC and the NAFTA Superhighway. "It first surfaced because it was a local toll issue," she told me over coffee. "That, in and of itself, was alarming enough--all the corrupt politics that happened to make it come about. Then we thought, Wait a minute, something's not right here, this is bigger than just a local toll issue." Taylor may represent a certain fringe of the anti-TTC efforts (her name prompted some eye-rolling among other activists), but there's a whole lot of cross-pollination between local concerns about the TTC and the growing North American Union mythology. When I asked David McQuade Leibowitz, a Democratic State Representative from San Antonio, why the governor was so determined to build the TTC, he put his boots up on his desk, leaned back in his chair and said, "I think Texas is the first link in the highway to run from South America to Canada. One nation under God. We see bits and pieces of it. We don't see it all. It makes us cringe and sick to our stomachs." Texas Transportation commissioner Ric Williamson is one of those Texas personalities who seem almost self-consciously to will themselves toward caricature. One Democratic staffer in the Capitol casually referred to him as Darth Vader; Texas Monthly recently called him "the most hated person in Texas." Owner of a natural gas production company before becoming a state legislator in 1985, he has lately been reincarnated as a transit policy wonk, a role he plays as a cross between mid-twentieth-century road builder Robert Moses and J.R. Ewing from Dallas: the planner as good old boy. He does not suffer from a lack of confidence. "We're the greatest state agency you'll ever interview," he told me at one point. With his good friend Governor Perry hemorrhaging political capital, it's fallen to Williamson to advocate for the corridor and draw fire from its opponents. At first the press contact for TxDot told me Williamson wouldn't be available, but after I informed her I'd lined up dozens of interviews with TTC opponents, she called me back a week before my trip to Texas for this article to set up an interview. When I was ushered into Williamson's office, he was in the midst of a discussion with one of the four staffers who flanked him. At my appearance in the doorway, he made no move to acknowledge my presence other than slightly pulling out the chair next to him, where, apparently, I was to sit. Williamson's case is straightforward: The state needs a whole lot of new roads it can't pay for. The sheer population growth in Texas, particularly in the urbanized area in the eastern part of the state that contains San Antonio, Dallas, Houston and Austin, combined with the projected increase in commercial traffic, has precipitated what Williamson says is an impending crisis. The TTC would provide the necessary increase in capacity at the low, low price the state can afford. "Our view is, you can run from the corridor if you want to," he told me, smiling, "but that's eventually what we'll build. Because that's where the fricking people live!" At that he shot up to walk over to a map of the state hanging on one wall, patting my shoulder with paternal authority as he passed. "It's so logical to me it drives me nuts." He's right about the challenges the state faces, but it's a long jump from the diagnosis to the cure. Opponents of the plan point out that, as conceived, the corridor will run parallel to the existing Interstate, possibly far from the same cities where it's supposed to relieve congestion. (TxDot says state law will require the roads to connect to Interstates, which connect to cities.) On top of that, the current plan employs a novel privatized financing mechanism that has many crying foul. Under a comprehensive development agreement (CDA) signed in March 2005, the Spanish concern Cintra (in partnership with Texas-based Zachry Corp.) will pay the state for the right to develop the roads along the corridor, where it will be able to collect tolls and establish facilities within the right-of-way for fifty years. This kind of road-building deal is commonplace in other parts of the world, often in places where government lacks the ready capital necessary to develop large infrastructure projects. It's called a BOT, for build, operate, transfer. Until recently it was unheard of in the United States. The arrangement has been heavily criticized for a number of reasons. The CDA includes a noncompete clause that could conceivably prevent the state from building necessary roads in the future because they would "compete" with a stretch of the privatized TTC. It's also expensive. A recent state auditor's report estimated the cost for just the first section of the corridor at $105 billion. TxDot portrays the deal as a clever way of getting the private sector to pay for public roads, but eventually the total cost of the project, plus a layer of profit for Cintra-Zachry, will be coming out of the pockets of Texas drivers. Finally, the timeline for development of the project, which will be constructed piecemeal, is based on which sections of the corridor Cintra has identified as "self-performing," according to Williamson--in other words, those sections that contain a high enough volume of toll-paying passengers that they will turn a profit. Williamson argues that the state simply has no choice. Or, as he put it to one reporter, "If you aggressively invite the private sector to be your partner, you can't tell them where to build the road." But this seems, to put it mildly, pretty ass-backward. The point of transportation planning is to provide the infrastructure for people to move efficiently, safely and quickly from point A to point B, not to maximize the profits of some conglomerate that managed to win a state contract. You wouldn't want to place, say, fire stations across a city using the same logic that guides the placement of Starbucks. But that's more or less the way the TTC is unfolding. "I always think of the corridor as a payday loan," said Kolkhorst's chief of staff Chris Steinbach. "You're going to get a little money up front, but you're losing the long-term gain you're charged by the people to oversee." As he said this I noticed his computer's screensaver, which featured an image of the Texas Capitol dome with a bright red banner Photoshopped in that read Everything Must Go! In my conversations with people in Texas, it seemed that the privatized nature of the road was what got folks the angriest. Bad enough that drivers would face tolls, that ranchers would have their land cut out from under them, but all for the financial gain of a foreign company? "If you liked the Dubai ports deal, you'll love my TTC land grab," taunts an animated Rick Perry on one anti-TTC website. The cartoon goes on to portray Cintra as conquistadors clad in armor riding in to steal Texans' treasure. "What really drives this is economic," activist Terri Hall told me. "It's about the money. We're talking about obscene levels of profit, someone literally being like the robber barons of old. And this is one thing that government actually does well, build and maintain roads." Hall is an unlikely defender of the public sphere. A conservative Republican and an evangelical Christian who home-schools her six children, she first got interested in road policy when TxDot announced plans to toll the road near her house, which runs into San Antonio. Outraged, she brought it up with her local State Rep, and when that didn't work, she began organizing. She founded the San Antonio Toll Party (like the Boston Tea Party, she notes) by pamphleting at intersections and calling friends. "It's really like the old days, during the American Revolution...just fellow citizens trying together to effect change." Hall soon became part of the broader anti-TTC effort, and though she originally thought she was just fighting a corrupt local government, she's come to view her battle in a much broader context. "There are big-time control issues," she said. "Someone is really jockeying around to control some things here in America. It explains the open borders, it explains our immigration issues, it explains our free-trade issues, what it's doing to the middle class. "It really all started with NAFTA," she continued. "There've been people like Robert Pastor and the Council on Foreign Relations. All these secretive groups." She laughed nervously and apologetically. "It sounds like a conspiracy. But I do know there are people who have tried for a long time to go to this global governance. They see there's a way to make it all happen by going to the heads of state and doing it in a secretive way so they can do it without a nasty little thing called accountability. So they won't have to listen to what We the People want." Hall had arranged to meet me in the San Antonio exurbs, in a home design center that doubled as a cafe. Outside, a thunderstorm lashed the windows with rain. As she spoke, her newborn son propped next to her swaddled and napping, it occurred to me that she was living the twenty-first-century version of the American dream. She and her husband had moved to Texas from California in pursuit of cheap housing, open space and a place to raise their family. Their web-design business was successful; their children healthy. Why, I found myself thinking, was she so upset about a road? Ric Williamson must often ask himself the same thing. Just as the White House was blindsided by the opposition to the Dubai ports deal, just as NASCO was shocked to find that a simple schematic map attracted angry phone calls, just as the Commerce Department was shocked to find a simple bureaucratic dialogue the subject of outrage, so too have Perry and Williamson seemed ambushed by the zealous opposition of people like Hall. But what people like Williamson don't seem to understand is how disempowered people feel in the face of a neoliberal order whose direction they cannot influence. For corporatists within both parties (Williamson, it should be noted, was a Democrat while in the Statehouse), selling port security or road concessions to a multinational is inevitable, logical, obvious. To thousands of average citizens in Texas and elsewhere, it's madness or, worse, treason. Both the actual TTC and the mythical NAFTA Superhighway represent a certain kind of future for America, one in which the crony capitalism of oil-rich Texas expands to fill every last crevice of the public sector's role, eclipsing the relevance of the national government as both the provider of public goods and the unified embodiment of a sovereign people. For Williamson, this is progress; for Hall, it's an outrage and a tragedy. "We have so little control over our own government," she told me, the alienation audible in her voice, thunder punishing the air outside. "We are really the last beacon of freedom in the world--the land of the free and home of the brave--and we're letting it slip away from under our noses."
CANADA’S GOVERNMENT & OIL
Current mood: artistic
Category: News and Politics
The NDP is proud to present the latest exclusive story from distinguished storyteller, Massey Lecturer, Order of Canada member and performer/creator of CBC's Dead Dog Café, Thomas King. Thomas is the NDP candidate in the riding of Guelph, where he lives and teaches at the University of Guelph.
Last week I flew out to Alberta for a vacation, and when I got to the carousel to pick up my bags, whom should I see but Stephen Harper and Stéphane Dion. It's not often you run into the Prime Minister of Canada and the Leader of the Opposition in an airport, so I walked over and said hello. You might think that Mr. Harper and Mr. Dion would be a little aloof, being as they're famous, but they were quite friendly. I told them I was going to Banff to hike the Rockies.
Mr. Harper said that the Rockies were beautiful and all, but that nature tended to be overrated, and that he and Mr. Dion were off to a new, all-inclusive resort near Fort McMurray called Alberta Oil Sands Land. Mr. Dion said that Alberta Oil Sands Land was supposed to be better than Wonderland in Ontario or Disney Land in California and more exciting than the West Edmonton Mall.
I have to admit that the place did sound tempting.
Well, before you knew it, Mr. Harper was insisting that I come with him and Mr. Dion to Alberta Oil Sands Land, and, in no time at all, we were on a Government of Canada jet headed for the resort.
I didn't know what to expect, and I have to say that, when I first got there, I was a little disappointed. Alberta Oil Sands Land looked more like a trailer park that had been built around an oil refinery than a four-star resort, but Mr. Harper said that the oil companies had wanted to make the facility as authentic as possible.
They certainly did a good job. The place even smelled authentic.
A couple of guys in parkas and hard hats came out and took our luggage to our single-wide theme suites. My suite was decorated to look like the inside of an oil barrel. I tell you, I couldn't tell the difference.
And we got gift bags. My bag had a Ralph Klein coffee mug, a Ralph Klein key chain, and a Ralph Klein hard hat that I was supposed to wear at all times. I'm guessing that Mr. Harper and Mr. Dion got pretty much the same thing.
Of course I just had to see all the sights right away. I wanted to start with the Ralph Klein Environmental Pavilion, but, unfortunately, it was closed for repairs. Just as well. I was a little tired from the trip, and all I really wanted to do was lie on the beach and enjoy the sun. So, I grabbed my bathing suit and jogged over to the Ralph Klein Waste Water Park.
And that was certainly the right choice. I've never seen a water park quite like this. The park looked, for all the world, like a series of interconnected toxic-waste holding ponds right on the Athabasca River.
I was so impressed that I even stopped and read the information plaque at the entrance to the Waste Water Park. It said that a single barrel of oil from the oil sands produced three times more greenhouse-gas emissions than a barrel of conventional oil and that the ponds and beach areas were one of largest human-made structures in the world and could be seen from space.
Even more impressive, ninety percent of the water used in processing the oil sands was so toxic that propane cannons had to be used to keep migrating water fowl away.
They even had times posted when you could watch the park staff blast teals and canvasbacks and buffleheads and northern pintails along with common loons and Canada geese out of the sky to keep them from landing on the water.
Well, the beach area next to the ponds was pretty crowded, but it didn't take me long to find Mr. Harper and Mr. Dion. Mr. Harper had bought a pair of high-top rubber boots from the Protective Clothing concession so he could dangle his feet in the water without the risk of sores and lesions. Mr. Dion was building a large sand castle that looked a lot like Parliament, and he took the time to show me how the contaminated oil in the sand helped to hold the whole enterprise together.
Now my feet did get greasy, and I did wonder if this might be a health concern, but Mr. Harper said that you could get detoxifying sprays from the Ralph Klein vending machines and that the oil was actually good for your skin and helped to block the sun.
I should say that I was disappointed with all the "No Swimming" signs and the barbed wire.
Mr. Dion asked me if I had been to the Ralph Klein Pollution Pavilion and watched the smoke stacks in action or caught the show at the Ralph Klein Musical Effluent Discharge Fountain. You must see it, Mr. Dion told me. It's the highlight of the resort.
Personally, I was more interested in the Ralph Klein Earth Mover rides, but the lines were always much too long. In the end, I spent most of my time at the Waste Water Park, watching happy families relaxing and enjoying their tax dollars in action.
But the best part of the entire vacation was watching the sun set each evening on what was left of the Athabasca River. Mr. Harper would strum his guitar and tell us how his heart swelled when he looked out over the landscape and saw the sheer beauty that human ingenuity and corporate genius could create.
Even Mr. Dion got a little teary as we all watched the smoke stacks discharge their billows of pollutants. He said that the soft clouds floating over the high prairies reminded him of the old days when Native people sat around their council fires and told stories about living in harmony with the earth.
I KEEP POSTING A BULLETIN ABOUT A GUY THAT WOMEN SHOULD WATCH OUT FOR ON HERE, CUZ HE'S A PERV AND HE WILL SEND YOU DISGUSTING PICS, AND MYSPACE ISN'T ALLOWING ME TO POST THEM, EVEN THOUGH IT'S FOR YOUR OWN GOOD
FUCKING BULLSHIT SYSTEM
HEY "TOM" : STEP UP-LET'S HEAR A FUCKING REBUTTAL!
HERE'S MY BULLETIN:
THIS ASSHOLE: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=349432971 IS GOING AROUND TRYING TO ADD WOMEN SO HE CAN SEND PICTURES AND VIDS OF HIMSELF SHITTING. tHESE PICS ARE EXTREMELY GRAPHIC AND ONE HAS ALREADY BEEN REPORTED AND REMOVED.
GO TO HIS PROFILE AND BLOCK HIM SO HE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SUBJECT YOU TO ANY OF THIS. IT'S SERIOUSLY VILE.
this list i'm sure will be added to; but in the mean time:
REDUNDANCY
"Well that's my opinion ^_^ Otheres will have there own haha"
thank's captain obvious. I was completely unaware that other people have differing oppinions, and that you can really only vouche for your own. Thank you soooo much for talking EVEN more than you needed to for us to grasp this concept. Oh and it's so cute and funny, let's giggle after our intelligent little quip! Hahaha, logic, it's so cuuuute.
ugh!
sorry, i read too many issues of Vice magazine when i was a teen and now i'm a huge cunt over very small things, VICE- YOU RUINED ME!!!!
so i've been looking for a job for the past week or two, and everytime i go out i have the oportunity to do a few to several good deeds.
The most memorable so far have been helping a little old lady in a grocery store with her bags on her wheelchair (i was just stoked that my appearance didn't cause her to look for someone else), returning glasses i had found to the lost and found center, running into a very drunk woman on the street who totally wanted to be my new best friend, she asked me for a smoke, and i don't smoke, but she seemed like she'd been through the ringer enough times, and i could tell it took alot for her to ask me for a cigarette, so i offered her a joint to take to help her mellow out later. I dunno, i guess they're not all really good deeds, per say, but i feel like everywhere i go lately i'm accumulating more karma.... now if only karma made me some money....
ah well, at least i got some resumes out, helped some peeps and got some excercise.
Anyways, this is just a breal from writing my paper, ciao kiddies!! xoxoxo
"property of _______" "i belong to _______" "i will not send nudes because i have a boyfriend/girlfirend" etc.
1. when it's over you are you going to look at pictures of yourself from then and say "this is when i belonged to _____"? 2. Is that all that's holding you back from sending creepy internet losers nudes?
how about self respect. acknowledging that you're worth something more than a free peep show. how about being your own woman with respect to the person you're with. I don't ask anyone for permission on anything. why should you?
i just find this whole property thing in relationship immature and obnoxious.
*****READ B4 YOU ADD ME***** : (i told myself i wouldn’t do this....)
Current mood: tired
(i understand, you'll most likely skim this, so i highlighted the main stuff)
I always felt like I never have to validate myself to anyone but me. But apparently, the need has arisen:
I don't like adding people with no picture or a blank profile. You reek of two different possibilities;
a) spam b) creeper
with the exception of bands that I don't like, I add just about everyone.
So, you've been accepted/added now what?
a) You ask me for NUDES/PICS or contact information.
-Seriously, if you want nudes, wait until I let you know (via bulletin/blog) that my set is approved and live on the Suicide Girls site, then- feel free to go to the SG site BUY a membership and look at all our beautifully unique and sexy ladies. We're not free. Period.
Also, I'm not stupid. In fact, I'm extremely smart (but I'll get to that later) so I'm not sending you any private information.
***All of point "a" will get you deleted and blocked - don't be silly***
b) You add me, just so you can leave me a cunty comment about how you can't find me on the Suicide Girls page, and nothing more. Have some tact. I'm not a cunt to anyone on here unless they sincerely deserve it, and for me, that really takes alot. You can't find me on the site because my set isn't up yet. If you need me to disclose more information, feel free to contact me via message (have some couth) and I will clearly and politely explain answers to any of your questions. ALTERNATIVELY, you could actually look at my pics, blogs etc. and gather this information on your own accord.
c) don't talk to me, that's fine... post a tonne of pointless, "pay attention to me" bulletins (like more than 3 in a row) AND you don't talk to me ever, not fine.
*You get deleted.
d) I don't like vampires. By this, I mean; energy suckers. If you have low self-esteem, that's really too bad. I have had tonnes of friends that have suffered from it. I am also not friends with them anymore. I only have so much energy that I can give you. I will try to help you feel good about yourself, but if you don't try to help yourself and continue to whine and drain my energy by putting yourself down and expecting me to pick you up- I have NO time for you. You need to know when to help yourself.
e) I am book smart, yes. I have had more life experience than I care to share with most people, and I am street smart. Do I think that means I'm smarter or better than you? No. Not at all. In fact, I don't think I'm better than anyone. I think there are many different types of people and many different types of intelligence, none better or lesser than another. Just different. Sometimes these differences create friction. Friction causes communication problems. This leads to hurt feelings through misunderstandings, or one of us becoming defensive at the feeling of being attacked. This only leads to trouble. I will avoid this by telling you that I just don't think we're getting each other, and I think for the best we should put everything behind us, dust our hands off, and walk away.
So I think this is all.
I really am super nice, empathetic, honest, and thoughtful. I want to respect you, but for that to happen you need to respect me.
AAAND I WANTED TO PUT TOGETHER A LITTLE SOMETHING:
I'm so happy. I am completely in love. This person makes me feel like i'm more than i ever thought possible.
He makes me smile, laugh, perform interpretive dance infront of him, paint him pictures, feel like my bed is cold and empty with out him. He inspires me. He never pressures me into anything i don't want to do, or that isn't a true expression of who i am.
'Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other.'
Karl - age 5
'Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK.' Danny - age 7
'Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and you talk more. My Mommy and Daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss' Emily - age 8
'When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.' Karen - age 7
i am a sap and i cry over anything romantic and sweet. I'm tearing up typing this.
anxious
hot
busy
tired
artistic
high
amorous
