The name of he Fremantle football club isn’t a four letter word vulgarity, but you still can’t use the word because an American garment company owns the word and they won’t let fans (mostly in Western Australia) use that word when rooting and cheering for the Aussie team.

Perhaps a bit of explanation is needed.

When baseball season plays the season opener game, this columnist usually likes to make some snide remarks about the likelihood that an American team will, most likely, win the World Series later in the year.

To make the point in a really sarcastic manner, we decided to root for a foreign team that didn’t even play baseball.  In an Australian guidebook, we found some information about professional sports in the Fremantle area and would note that they didn’t have a snowball’s chance in the Sahara Desert of getting into the playoffs. 

For this columnist the annual shtick became a part of our repertoire and so when we finally indulged in our life long desire to go to Australian and explore it all (which is impossible on a three month visa because it’s so darn big and there’s so very much to see), we soon found ourselves staying at a hostel in Fremantle.  As long as it was only a short stroll, we decided to go visit the stadium (they take their summer vacation in December) and maybe get a souvenir T-shirt or some other tourist type tchotchke. 

When we ambled into the parking area, we talked to some of the team employees and were informed that the name we used was no longer a word that could be said.  Ever on the alert for a story, we asked how that could be.

We were told that an American company (they were too polite to add any negative editorializing comments lest the delicate ears of an American tourist should be offended) owned the word and would only let folks use it when they were referring to the permanent press pants that the company makes and sells.

It seemed odd that this story hadn’t been carried in the blogisphere where hysterical writers were constantly lamenting the disappearances of the citizens’ rights and freedoms.

Wouldn’t that make a good feature story for the Business sections of America’s biggest daily newspapers?  On second thought, maybe the advertising department would discourage any such negativity. 

Wouldn’t the absence of the name of the Fremantle Football Club’s pet name be something that would exasperate Democrats and amuse conservative talk show host? 

Could bloggers use the fact that that word is being held hostage, as positive proof that 1984 has arrived in American society?  Uncle Rushbo would probably goad the liberals in his audience into adding that it was all George W. Bush’s fault that the use of that word is so highly regulated by its owner.  Is that company’s headquarters in Texas?

In Australia, football clubs play soccer.  No wonder the apparel company fears that those guys might misuse and abuse use their word.  You won’t find the forbidden word on the team’s official web page

(In Australia, they call auto body repairmen panel beaters.)

In the final analysis, the worst that can happen is that some Australian sportscaster will blurt out the word **ckers.  No worries mate, just a slip of the tongue.  How much would the fine be? 

Many Australians are comfortable with the contention that America practices cultural imperialism.  Most Americans are ignorant of the concept.

[If only Americans can win it, then why is it called “The World Series”?  We’ve been told that when the annual baseball competition first started it was sponsored by the World Tobacco Company and hence it was referred to as “The World Series.”  Who knew naming rights were a money maker that long ago?  We tried to fact check this urban legend on line but the effort was inconclusive.  Readers are encouraged to do their own fact checking on this and many other items offered in contemporary American culture.]

Harry Bridges has been quoted as saying:  “There will always be a place for us somewhere, somehow, as long as we see to it that working people fight for everything they have, everything they hope to get, for dignity, equality, democracy, to oppose war and to bring to the world a better life.”  Does the blosphere need an official motto?

Now, the disk jockey will play Harry Belefonte’s “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song),” “A Pub with no Beer,” and Otis Redding’s s song “Sitting on the **ck of the Bay” and we’ll slide on out of here and go buy a pair of permanent press trousers.  Have a “watchin’ the tide roll away” type week.

It appears, even the Avatar’s were not able to fend off Cultural and Economic Imperialism on their home planet:

I have no desire to see this tragic film now.

The typical white liberal assumes that non-white people have more “culture” than white people, and may express “envy” as an attempted compliment. Given that white liberals feel that they are denied access to the non-white culture which they “envy”, it is likely that their “envy” is directed at the imagined culture of non-whites, rather than culture (or loss of culture due to white cultural imperialism) as experienced by non-white people.

One example of the white-imagined culture of people of colour is the Oriental Riff, or rather, the Orientalist Riff:

This riff (click on the above image to play the sound file) appears in orientalist American and British pop songs like “Kung Fu Fighting” (1974) and “Turning Japanese” (1980). However, the “proto-cliché” or rhythmic pattern of “da-da-da-da, da da, da da, daaah!” originated in the 1800s, and has since been ubiquitous in pop culture to signify (and other) Asian culture or Asian people. Martin Nilsson has dedicated an entire website to the history of this rhythmic pattern, The Musical Cliché Figure Signifying The Far East: Whence, Wherefore, Whither?, and defines what he calls the “the Far East Proto-Cliché” as the following:

In other words, the “proto-cliché” is a riff with the rhythm of “da-da-da-da, da da, da da, daaah!” with varying tones, where the first four notes have identical tones, and the bracketed first six notes are obligatory. Additionally, “the instrumentation and general context should be meant to suggest the Orient in order for this pattern to actually be the Far East Proto-Cliché”. Nilsson’s website tracks this “proto-cliché” and provides ninety-seven examples of it from 1847 to 2001.

The painful irony of white people envying Asian people for our “culture” is that what white people perceive as cultural unattainability is actually our perceived cultural otherness. The otherness-disguised-as-unattainability evoked by the ubiquitous “proto-cliché” is a white construction of Asian identity, and this white construction of Asian identity is what they envy and already own without realizing it.

The “proto-cliché” and the most offensive instantiation of it—the Orientalist Riff itself—are used to dehumanize Asians. Kai Chang describes the Orientalist Riff as Musical Yellowface and writes:

Having grown up in a music-loving household filled with both Chinese and Western classical music, this little melody has always annoyed me. It’s basically what white folks play every time Orientalism is invoked in a TV show, movie, or pop song. It’s so prevalent that I honestly suspect that many white folks unconsciously hear this ditty when they see me walk into the room.

Funny thing is, it’s neither Chinese nor even representative of Chinese music. It’s a white supremacist construction whose artistic purpose is to caricaturize, mock, and dehumanize Asians.

Racialicious commenter Elton writes (17 Dec 2009):

Just yesterday, I was at Walmart, shopping for Christmas, when a kid walking by gave me a suspicious look and, as he walked away, sang what I call the “Chinese Stereotype Melody.” I have no idea where it came from, but Asian Americans probably know what I’m talking about. It goes something like, “da-da-da-da duh duh, duh duh, da” and has been used in countless shows and movies (often accompanied by fake martial arts, a gong sound, bowing, fake Chinese words, and just all around mockery of Chinese people, and, by extension, all Asians).

[...]

Anyway, even though this melody probably had the original intention of cheap laughs for people who think Orientalizing, exoticizing, and marginalizing people who are perceived to be perpetual foreigners is funny and entertaining and safe because they’ve never had to confront their own racism, it has the effect, over generations, of making millions of people victims of taunting, bullying, concentration camps, anti-immigration laws, colonization, fetishizing, rape, terror, torture, and socioeconomic inequality. We call this racism.

“It’s just a stupid melody,” you might be saying to yourself. “It’s just a stupid gesture.” And you would be right–it is stupid. It’s something that I would have hoped to leave on the playground 20 years ago. But the persistence of mockery of Asians, particularly the extent to which it’s accepted as innocuous, represents a growing trend that racism against Asians is not only acceptable, but doesn’t even exist.

Not only is the Orientalist Riff racist, but the similarly racist and orientalist “proto-cliché” is a long-standing tradition in the music culture of white-majority societies, even older than classic music genres that defined American music. A blogger puts the ditty into historical perspective:

The thing’s been around longer than jazz, longer than rock, and depending on how you measure these things, longer than the blues, which is where jazz and rock came from. It’s older than the Chinese Exclusion Act. It’s been around at least since 1847, in a melody in The Grand Chinese Spectacle of Aladdin or The Wonderful Lamp.

[...]

It really kicks into first gear, though, in the 1880s, which is about when the blues properly started up (which is where pentatonic scales started taking over Western music), and when… let’s call it “social tensions” began building up, as expressed in the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Clearly, the Orientalist Riff and the equally-orientalist “proto-cliché” originated from historical, anti-Asian sentiment in white-majority countries. Yet even today, the “proto-cliché” (or the riff itself) is being perpetuated in television and film, as if the rhythmic pattern is a natural representation of Asian culture instead of the obvious manifestation of white racism that it is. For example, in Karl Lagerfeld’s Paris-Shanghai: A Fantasy (2009), which debuted just this month (December), the “proto-cliché” appears in the second video (part 2) at about 6:06.

To expand on Nilsson’s fascinating research, I will be saving to Delicious instances I find of the “proto-cliché” (which includes the Orientalist Riff itself) and tagging them with the tag protocliche. If you find other contemporary examples of it and you use Delicious, please tag them with “protocliche” as well. If you are not a Delicious user, you can post links to “proto-cliché” examples in the comments of this post.

Posted by Irresponsibility

There is nothing middle class white people like more than an whiff of pagan barbarism. Hindus slaughtering animals as part of a once-every-five-years ritual propitiation of the goddess Gadhimai fits the bill nicely. “Frightened calves galloped around in vain as the men, wearing red bandanas and armbands, pursued them and chopped off their heads,” the Guardian reports. Meanwhile the bloodthirsty hordes “Banned from entering the animal pen… scrambled up the three-metre walls to catch a glimpse of the carnage.”

The Guardian refers to this as “The world’s biggest animal sacrifice.” A curious claim given the UK slaughtered over 3 million animals in October 2009. That’s okay though, because we’re civilised people. If it were to appease the gods it would be weird. Eating the buggers is fine.

Pope Benedict XVI addressed the artists of the world on November 21, 2009 from the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City.

For a link to the address given by Benedict to artists on relation between art and the Church today, please refer to the comments section below for a link to the Chiesa website.

- ‘Goyo de la Rosa’

   Editor, LA ROSA

Yes, you are reading this correctly. I am a cultural imperialist, on the right side of this page you will find links to top stories by CNN. Why you ask? Well because i find those stories as to be important and i personally follow the international news on a daily and sometimes hour to hour basis.

RSS has been widely used over the last few years to be an efficient manner of spreading stories over multiple websites and services. Introducing yet another technical ability to the already developing centralising of news media. Everyone owning a website can now have stories that are published on different sites, appear instantly on their own site. Quite similar how different newspapers copy stories from large news agencies for their local paper, saving costs and helping the efficiency of their organisation.

Wich all seems logical but in this manner it isnt helping the creativity of aspiring writers, even if they made their own rss feeds let alone make money from it, because chances are slim, that one of the big boy’s will pick it up.  Adding yet another factor to flatten the scope of news we all read every day. Is this proof of the emerging global village, or an effect? Answering this question, is like asking  what was there first, the chicken or the egg? The answer remains to be seen.

I personally enjoy it, living in the western hemisphere i quickly adapted to the stories about the rest of the world and i am quite fond of looking at the news from a global perspective. From my perspective it is also proof of your personal development, not focussing on the local “cat in tree” stories but seeing the big picture behind a news storie. In my mind that starts with watching CNN over your local newscoverage.

Many men in this fleet, as well as mercenaries in the armies of Simon Bolivar, San Martin, and the Chilean Bernardo O’Higgins (son of an Irishman), were countrymen of Hartnell’s.

He had seen recruiting offices in London and Liverpool proclaiming the cause of freedom and opportunity for the common man, offering military service in South America at a time when no sort of manly service seemed needed in England.

And he may have had a military opportunity in mind, alternate to a business career, ending his letter to brother George:

‘I would advise you not to neglect your Spanish, as I think it not at all improbable, but as some future period I may have the pleasure of seeing you in this part of the world; and whether or not you will always find it an amusement.’

In the same packet sailing on a company ship October 22, 1819, went a short note entirely in Spanish, giving the same advice to his schoolboy brother, Nathaniel; also letters to his mother, his sisters Mary and Hannah, and Uncle Edward Petty.

All were carefully transcribed in quill pen, and the return address always given as:

‘A Dn Guillo. P. Hartnell

en casa de Dn Juan Begg

del Comercio Ingles

Santiago de Chile’

To new friends he has become Don Guillermo Arnel (as close as the Spanish tongue can approach the British syllables).

While he is still tanned from the hot sun of the Argentine pampas and the icy wind of the Andean passes, wearing clothes of Spanish style and speaking the language with facility, there is little to distinguish the young Englishman from other youths in the Chilean capital — little but an educated and inquiring mind.

That he is endeavouring to live up to all the terms of his contract, he tells Uncle Edward:

‘Permit me to avail myself of the present favourable opportunity of reiterating to you my sincerest thanks, which is all I have to give, and all I am assure you require, for the many favours you have conferred upon me, and which I have hitherto so ill repaid.

[Pages 12 - 14 of Susanna Bryant Dakin's history of Alta California, THE LIVES OF WILLIAM HARTNELL, published by Stanford University Press in 1949].

['Goyo de la Rosa' is also transcribing Susanna Bryant Dakin's important book on the history of Alta California at the LA ROSA website.  For links to that transcription, which is now nearing the end of the book, please refer to the comments section below, or to the CCC BLOGROLL to the right, under 'LA ROSA.']

LA ROSA – CCC TRANSCULTURAL PACIFICAN HISTORY 1819 – 2009

Just prior to Mr. Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper leaving for their Asian tour, the Chinese Communist Party maligned His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet once again.

The official Obama administration response to this rudeness was to say absolutely nada.

In relentless search of business opportunities with the Communists, the two North American leaders say nothing about human rights abuses by the Communist Party of China of Tibetan Buddhists, Chinese Roman Catholics, various other Chinese Christians, and Chinese Falun Gong.

For a link to an article on this issue from the San Francisco Chronicle, please go to the comments section below.

Gregory Paul Michael Hartnell, President

Concerned Citizens’ Coalition

Victoria, Vancouver Island, Pacifica

CCC

Seattle University President Stephen Sundborg, S. J., is named as a defendant in a lawsuit brought against the Oregon Province of the Jesuits (‘Society of Jesus’), according to an article in the Seattle University Spectator, published since 1933.

These allegations were brought by almost 500 plaintiffs, represented by a number of different law firms, accusing almost 80 Jesuits of various criminal acts of sexual abuse against minors.

The SU President is accused of knowing of the details of some of the alleged abuse and of covering it up.

Father Sundborg denies knowledge of the cases and says he is innocent of all charges.

A majority of the suits have been placed by natives of Alaska.

As a Christian, a Catholic and a person who was taught by Jesuits in San Francisco, I find this news appalling.

Please refer to the comments section below for a link to the Seattle University Spectator article on this ongoing problem. 

- Gregory Paul Michael Hartnell, President

Concerned Citizens’ Coalition

‘WE REVERENCE THE HOLY IMAGE, O BLESSED ONE. . . ‘

826

Saint Theodore called “the Studite” after Studios, Constantinople’s leading monastery, which he revived, populated with over 700 monks, and launched on its period of maximum influence in studies, culture, and Church affairs.

As the formost mentor of Byzantine monasticism since St. Basil the Great, Theodore is principally responsible for making it more cenobitic, and in that way more “Basilian”; but he also succeeded in retaining much of the spirituality of the more solitary laura system.

Studios came into its own during the second and final Iconoclast persecution when Abbot Theodore, true to the great prophetic tradition of that monastery, had his monks go in solemn procession through the streets around the monastery carrying the sacred images and chanting a hymn which begins, “We reverence the holy image, O blessed one. . . . . “ 

Theodore, already twice exiled for reproving the injustices of previous emperors, was now banished by Leo V the Armenian, imprisoned, and cruelly abused; but he continued to animate orthodox resistance by his correspondence.

His letters, of which 550 remain, also show him to be the great Byzantine doctor of the papal primacy, a Greek “version” of St. Leo I.

His constantly recurring theme is that Peter continues to govern the universal church through his successors in Rome.

He sees the pope as the divinely appointed head of the patriarchs and the unshakeable rock of faith without whose approval no ecumenical council is possible.

Seventeen years after his death, the Iconocast controversy now over, St. Theodore’s body was brought back to Constantinople in great triumph as champion of the holy images.

LIVES OF THE SAINTS

Father Augustine Kalberer, OSB

November 12: Saint Theodore ‘the Studite’

Pages 412 – 413

LA ROSA TRANSCULTURAL ICONOPHILE PROPAGANDA 826 – 2009

‘ALL FOREIGN SOLDIERS MUST WITHDRAW’

An election held under the guns of a foreign occupation army cannot be called legitimate or democratic.

That’s a basic tenet of international law.

Nevertheless, the US and its NATO allies have been lauding the recent faux presidential elections in Afghanistan as both a sign of growing support for Hamid Karzai’s Western-backed government and the birth of democracy in Afghanistan.

In reality, the carefully stage-managed vote in Afghanistan for candidates chosen by Western powers is unlikely to bring either peace or democracy to this wretched nation that has suffered thirty years of non-stop war.

On the contrary, American generals have intensified warnings that the military situation in Afghanistan is rapidly “deteriorating” and are calling for yet more troops in addition to the recent major manpower increase authorized by President Barack Obama.

Sixty-eight thousand US combat troops, 40,000 NATO soldiers, and 75,000 mercenaries are apparently not enough.

Welcome to Vietnam Mission Creep, Part II.

Taliban and its nationalist allies rejected last week’s vote as a fraud designed to validate continued foreign occupation and open the way for Western oil and gas pipelines.

Taliban, which speaks for many of Afghanistan’s majority Pashtun, said it would only join a national election when US and NATO troops withdraw.

Charges of a rigged election are unfortunately correct.

All parties were banned from the supposedly “free election.”

Only candidates who favored continued US and NATO occupation ran.

The US paid for the elections and advertising, funded the Election Commission, and spread around large amounts of largesse to tribal warlords.

Foreign observers reported extensive fraud and vote rigging.

Compared to this pre-determined vote, Iran’s recent elections look almost Swiss by comparison.

Afgan elections run by the Soviets in 1986 and 1987 were fairer and more open: opposition parties were allowed to run.

After all the pre-election hoopla in Afghanistan, to paraphrase Omar Khayyam, we come out the same door we went in.

Election results won’t be in for two weeks.

But the winner will be whomever Washington decides is to be its man in Kabul.

That will likely be Hamid Karzai or Northern Alliance front-man, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah.

The Obama administration is fed up with Hamid Karzai and mutters about dumping him, but can’t find an acceptable alternative.

Abdullah, with his close links to Iran and Russia, makes Washington nervous.

What the US would really like is a new version of the late Najibullah, the iron-fisted strongman who ran Afghanistan for the Soviets.

The Western powers have marketed the Afghan War to their voters by claiming it is all about democracy, women’s rights, education and nation building.

President Barack Obama claims the US is in Afghanistan to fight Al-Quaida.

But Al-Quaida barely exists.

Its handful of members long ago decamped to Pakistan.

This war is really about oil pipeline routes and Western domination of the energy-rich Caspian Basin.

And of course pressure on Obama from the right that the US cannot afford to lose a second war under his command.

Afghanistan’s Pashtun tribes, who make up 55% per cent of the population, remain excluded from power.

Afghanistan is a three-legged ethnic stool.

Take away the Pashtun leg and stability is impossible.

There will be neither peace nor stability in Afghanistan until the Pashtun majority is enfranchised.

This means dealing directly with Taliban, which is part of the Pashtun people.

The Western powers cannot run Afghanistan by using the minority Tajiks, Uzbeks and smaller number of Shia Hazara.

The solution to this unnecessary war is not more phony elections but a comprehensive peace agreement between ethnic factions that largely restores status quo before the 1979 Soviet invasion.

That means a weak central government in Kabul (Karzai is ideal for this job), and a high degree of autonomy for self-governing Pashtun, Takik, Uzbek and Hazara regions.

Governments should revert to the old ‘loya jirga’ system of tribal sit-downs, where decisions are made by consensus, often after lengthy haggling.

That is the way of the Afghans and of traditional Islamic society.

Afghanistan worked pretty well under this old easy-going system.

In fact, Afghanistan never really had a government in the Western sense.

All foreign soldiers must withdraw.

A diplomatic ‘cordon sanitaire’ should be drawn around Afghanistan’s borders, returning it to its tradional role as a neutral buffer state.

The powers now stirring the Afghan pot, the US, NATO, India, Iran, Russia, the Communist Central Asian states must cease meddling.

The have become part of the Afghan problem.

CCC BLOG reprint excerpted from:

‘Why Canada should get out out of Afghanistan’

Eric Margolis, Paris, New York and Banff

Island Catholic News

October November 2009, page 4

CCC

THREE CANADIAN ESTABLISHMENT

TABOOS:

ABORTION ON DEMAND,

UNJUST AFGHAN WAR AND

DECADENT ENGLISH MONARCHISM

Thank God Almighty they have finally gone, and not a minute too soon!  

While in Victoria, Charles Windsor made an ass of himself, as usual, by blathering about the supposedly advanced provincial policies of the BC Liberals to address ‘climate change.’

What would this strange Englishman know about Gordo Campbell’s transparently phoney policies in this regard that he wasn’t coached to repeat by the duplicitous premier?

If Mr. Windsor is so concerned about greenhouse gas emissions, he would do the proper thing, and stay at home with his expensive  show horses, shovelling their manure onto his organic veggies, and not dumping it on the beleaguered ’subjects’ he imagines us to be.

All this flying around with his second wife Camilla and an entourage of toadying retainers, polluting the atmosphere while doing so, can’t possibly be good for the environment, and so one wonders what on earth the pompous fellow was talking about?

Did he buy himself some carbon indulgences (or rather, ‘credits’) to assuage his guilty conscience, like David Suzuki and other ‘green’ hypocrites do?

As for the Anglican bishop who received him at Christ Church Cathedral, this man is so liberal as to be almost Unitarian in his fuzzy theology, presiding over a dying flock.

He is so anxious to be ‘politically correct’ and ‘bless’ same sex unions that he has locked the doors of a number of congregations of the more traditional Anglicans in his own diocese who have the audacity to disagree with him.

These faithful Christians, whose love of  God’s Holy Scripture is apparently much stronger than that of the bishop, have been deprived of using the very parish churches that they helped build and sustain through tithes all their lives.

The ‘Defender of the Faith’ allowed himself to be blessed by this impostor.

As a Catholic Christian Canadian, I object most vociferously to the patent nonsense that is passed off as the ‘constituional monarchy’ in Canada.

The archaic institution is clearly highly divisive, as the recent statements of Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe remind us, notwithstanding the manufacturing of consent for the decadent status quo by cynical Establishment pundits too lazy to think outside the box.

It is nothing more than a theocratic constitutional fiction of the highest order that Charles Windsor’s mother is the Queen of Canada.

It is a national disgrace that we, as educated democrats and self-respecting Canadians allow this rubbish to persist.

Eighteen years ago, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff wrote an essay calling for the abolition of the monarchical pretense in the Canadian polity.

Federal ‘Conservatives’ gleefully unearthed the long-forgotten essay, to embarras Mr. Ignatieff, and read sections of it out loud, broadcasting it recently during Question Period in the House of Commons.

To his disgrace, they were successful in this regard, as he did nothing to defend his controversial thesis while these people were visiting Canada.

This was a lost opportunity which does a grave disservice to the majority of Canadians who have no use for this family and its pretensions.

Liberal polling numbers under Mr. Ignatieff’s leadership are deservedly worse than they were under his hapless predecessor, Stephane Dion. 

Abortion, the unjust war in Afghanistan and the monarchy are the taboo subjects that the Establishment doesn’t want you to think about in Canada.

Polls have shown that all three subjects are nevertheless highly controversial, and have been for years.  

Some recent polls even now show majorities that disagree with the status quo on these three issues.

But you will rarely read about those polls in the Globe and Mail, the National Post or any of the other newspapers owned by these Death Culture companies, including the lamentable rag that practically monopolizes public discourse in Victoria, the Times Colonist, vested as they are in promulgating lies about the Canadian right-to-life,  peace  and republican movements.

Thus, a false secular peace persists on these issues, and millions of Canadians who oppose these things are left without any political party to represent them.

For links to the polls referred to above, please consult the comments section below.

- Gregory Paul Michael Hartnell

‘ROYAL’ VISIT USED AS PRETEXT TO DEBATE

ALTERNATIVES TO DECADENT ENGLISH MONARCHISM

As I write, they are now not far away at the Lieutenant Governor’s mansion (about a hundred metres away, in fact), that worthy being one Stephen Point, a Catholic Knight of Columbus and a former aboriginal chief who should know better than to play dress-up with this ‘lot.’ 

Refreshingly, the poor sad lady who delivers the freebie Victoria News brought the paper to our front door this afternoon with the startling and topical editorial advocating that Canada should endorse ‘an independent head of state accountable only to Canadians,’ and that could logically only mean that Charles Windsor would never become King of Canada after his mother Elizabeth dies.

The majority of Canadians have no use for a decadent foreign monarchy in this postmodern North American confederation of nation states (Quebec and the ‘rest of Canada’). 

The English royal family does not represent our  best Canadian or Quebecois interests, nor are we subject in any real way to these people.

A MESSAGE FROM THE ROCKLAND OUTSIDER

TO CHARLES AND CAMILLA WINDSOR:

Kindly do us all a favour, and leave as soon as you can.

And if you come back, which you are certainly most welcome to do, kindly pay for it yourselves.

You will appreciate it more and it will be good for your self-esteem.

You can certainly afford it and you don’t need my tax dollars, nor those of any other Canadian, to pretend that we are ’subject’ to you.

Gregory Paul Michael Hartnell, Editor

CCC BLOG and LA ROSA

When in 1787 an alarmed Abigail Adams in London wrote to Jefferson in Paris that the “mobish insurgents” of Shay’s Rebellion in western Massachusetts were destroying the fabric along with the foundation of American society, taking the country to the brink of chaos, Jefferson greeted the news cheerfully.

“I like a little rebellion now and then,” he replied.

 ”It is like a storm in the Atmosphere.”

Jefferson bestowed his warm approval not only on resistance to government oppression but on the revolutionary enterprise in general.

When Jefferson first arrived in Paris and frequented the intellectual salons of the late 1780s, he encountered French wit and the French passion for puns and bons mots.

He was not impressed.

“This nation,” he decided, “is incapable of any serious effort.”

Uninterested in vacuous verbal acrobatics, he wrote to Abigail Adams, not without wit of his own, that all one might do for the French was “pray that heaven send them good kings.”

Two years later, however, life in Paris had changed dramatically and Jefferson remarked that the frivolities of conversation had given way to a more serious awareness of politics.

Now Jefferson found himself praising the men of letters who belonged to the “Patriotic party,” asserting that they constituted the intelligent part of France.

Those who had leisure to think were in a position to initiate change and reform an abusive government.

A believer in the power of reason to shape history, Jefferson admired the new writings, noting that they give “a full scope to reason, and strike out truths as yet unperceived and unacknoleged [sic] on the other side of the channel.”

Still, he admitted that the lack of political experience of men of letters prevented them from fully appreciating the value of the American model.

French intellectuals, versed only in theory and new in the practice of government, were making some unfortunate proposals.

Ideally, theory and experience would complement each other.

SISTER REVOLTIONS:

French Lightning, American Light

Susan Dunn

Page 45

This book is available for borrowing from the Oak Bay branch of the Greater Victoria Public Library.

Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister of Canada, recently sang at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa that he get’s high with a little help from his friends.

This surprised me as I had understood that Mr. Harper fancied himself a valiant prohibitionist warrior in the so-called ‘war on drugs.’

As if that was not bizarre enough, Mr. Harper had the  audacity to suggest on Thanksgiving Day that the Canadian people should be grateful that Canadian soldiers are fighting and dying in Afghanistan.

This supposedly ‘Conservative’ politician has thus perverted the very meaning of the holiday (originally founded by American Christians to glorify the Almighty), politicizing it in a most unseemly manner in order to try to justify an unjust, costly and futile war.

This Canadian writer is grateful to the Creator for life in this fragile body, but certainly not now nor will I ever be grateful to the Canadian Army for their shameful and unnecessary presence in that tragic country.

Rather, I am outraged that by wasting billions and fighting in paranoid reaction to the suspicious 9-11 attacks we have allowed ourselves to be used by an imperial American administration that now enjoys extraordinary control over our sovereignty, foreign policy and military movements.

We have no legitimate business being there whatsoever, and are being betrayed by our own government by our continued presence there.

We supposedly live in a democracy where the majority of the Canadian people have long polled their disgust at our pointless efforts there.

And yet we have no peace party to represent a reasonable alternative to the cynical posture of the present government.

The Liberals, the present main Opposition party in the Canadian parliament, brought us into this mess.

They should now have the honesty and common sense to admit that that was a disastrous error of judgement on their part, especially now that we know that the present government in Afghanistan is almost completely corrupt and stole the  recent election.

Why are we helping to prop up this sickening little satrapy and its corrupt henchman Karzai?

What part of corruption in Afghanistan is in the Canadian interest?

What part of Karzai’s junta represents Canadian democratic values?

Is eight years, 135 dead Canadians, and countless Afghan deaths not enough?

Wake up, Liberals!

Get rid of Iggy, develop a coherent Afghan peace policy in sync with the wisdom of the Canadian people, and get yourselves elected.

Otherwise, you will doom us to never-ending pre-emptive unjust war as Obama puts more pressure on us to up the ante.

And you will allow the Conservatives to dictate to the majority of peaceful Canadians with a sold-out warmongering minority government.

Gregory Paul Michael Hartnell, President

Concerned Citizens’ Coalition

CCC TRANSCULTURAL PEACE PROPAGANDA 2009

Passengers on the company ship (whose name he never mentions) were an assortment of young Britishers — traders, engineers, miners, mechanics — mostly veterans drawn from the unemployed to accompany British money, machinery, and goods across the sea, where all could be used to someone’s advantage.

Most of the young men, like Hartnell, carried contracts precluding any share in the profits.

But hope accompanied each one, after hopeless years at home.

Here in South America the infant republics needed intelligent, educated citizens to aid in the establishment of democratic institutions.

Many of the young men would find the atmosphere so congenial that never would they return to the Old World.

Among these would be William Hartnell.

It was only a year since the combined arimes of Argentina and Chile, commanded by General San Martin, had decisively defeated the Spaniards at Maipu.

Only since then had foreign vessels been welcomed to Buenos Aires, where Hartnell’s sea voyage ended.

Having looked forward so long to final disembarkation, Hartnell must have experienced anticlimax when his ship anchored in the outer ocean roads seven or eight miles from the city.

Passengers, luggage, and cargo all must be piled into small landing boats, then rowed across the shallow waters of La Plata estuary, brushing past reeds and disturbing waterfowl on the way.

On shore carretas (wooden carts) drawn by oxen, pack mules or riding horses were available for transportation acr0ss the pampa that surrounded the city.

Buenos Aires, averaging sixty-five feet above sea level, is not dramatic in location.

But sea-weary Hartnell and his fellow passengers found much to interest them in a city typical of the capitals built by Spain in her Central and South American colonies.

They gazed upon the magnificent cathedral and wandered in the plazas and elaborately laid-out alamedas (public walks).

They joined the inhabitants in listening to music, dancing, and playing pelota.

It was a temptation to Hartnell, welcome wherever he went for his modo corriente*, to linger in Argentina.

But he must press on to Santiago where new duties awaited him, and new pleasures too.

* Modo corriente, an idiomatic expression described by Hartnell’s contemporary traveler in South America, Captain Basil Hall, as meaning “the manner of a man who, without departing from his own natural character, is desirous of pleasing and willing to take all things as he finds them.”

THE LIVES OF WILLIAM HARTNELL

Susanna Bryant Dakin

Stanford University Press 1949

Pages 10 – 11 

CCC – LA ROSA TRANSCULTURAL HARTNELLIANA 1949 – 2009

Global culture is formulated by movement of ideas, images, or products throughout the world. However, there are different views about the way it spreads and influences. This essay will examine the literature which analyses the flow of ideas, images, and products across nations and cultures    and evaluate this literature particularly its different views on cultural imperialism in terms of movement of ideas, especially focusing on the relations between global cultures and economy, and global culture and the role of communication technology because globalization is mainly driven by economic reason and technologies have been developing rapidly than we expect.

These articles (Morris,2002; UN, 2003; Williams, 2006) examine whether the flow
of ideas are one way, from the West to the East, or multidirectional, in other words, whether there is cultural imperialism or not. These articles are based on the theory that is called ‘culture/media imperialism’ which argues “a small group of Western countries not only controlled the international media trade but also used it to transmit their particular culture and economic values, especially individualism and consumerism, to large numbers of developing nations around world” (Chadha and Kavoori, 2000).

Morris(2002: 28), studying through history, challenged this view arguing that there have been hybridization because ideas flow multidirectional ways, not one directional, despite “imbalance of power”. Ideas and cultural images are transferred by physical movement of people such as war, trade, religious reason and immigration, and communication technologies. She argues that there is “little evidence” of homogenization of identity in terms of movement of cultures, conceding some cultural homogenization especially when it comes to technology (Morris, 2002: 29,30). It seems like that a homogenization is only surface structure; Deep structure of local community is resilient and has the ability to assimilate new ideas and images (Morris,2002:33).  While, Williams(2006) examines contemporary situation of globalization and comes to the conclusion, which is the same as Morris, that the trend is toward multidirectional flow because there is a regional growth of Asian market and economy through media products and their exports. For example, in South Korea, they developed by selling cars but capital moved into cultural industry such as movie, drama, and internet games (Williams, 2006: 17). She focuses on the close link between economic growth and cultural power, and also its link with political image, giving the example of the United States which is losing their attractiveness due to the political issues such as the war in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay (Williams, 2006: 4). In this sense, Morris did not take into account current context and economic/political link with cultural influence.

However, Morris mentions little about economic aspect of cultural movement as a driver, while the UN aligned closely to cultural imperialism view. In this view, they argues that western agencies control global media which spread consumerism especially to the youth through commodification of culture, i.e. one directional flow of ideas (UN, 2003: 19,20). The UN also focused on the relation between economy and political power and movement of cultural ideas pointing out that multinational company spreads commoditified culture to widen their market share. For this purpose, they try to unify the global culture, resulting in homogenization (UN, 2003: 26). Both the UN and Williams agree with the view that media is a tool to gain super power, meaning they partially agree with cultural imperialism. For example, France supplied their TV program for free to an African country to keep their cultural and economic dominance in that country (Latouche, cited in UN, 2003: 20). However, Williams(2006: 23,24) concludes that cultural globalization leads to mixing of cultures not homogenization, disagreeing with the UN’s argument.

Another significant point that Morris(2002) did not consider enough is the role of media and technology. She argues that technology only accelerated exchange of ideas which is not related to the homogenization and claims that media is not the only way of communication (Morris, 2002: 33). However, the UN seems to support ‘media centric’ view which means media is the driver of values from the west to others. In terms of financial power, the strength of global media is extremely strong. For example, Proctor and Gamble’s advertising expenditure ($5,755million) is 10 times the entire education budget of Vet Nam ($579million) (UN, 2003: 29,30). They assert that the power of media and communication technology from the west is more influential than traditional culture, leading to homogenization. New technologies such as mobile phone and internet games seduce the youth from the mundane activities such as school (Cote and Allahar, cited in the UN, 2003)

In Conclusion, there has been research on cultural imperialism which is challenged by Morris(2002) arguing, through history, there always has been cultural hybridization. But, she did not mention much about relationship between culture and economy. Given the influence of media and technology, cultural imperialism might be plausible as the UN(2003) claims. Further research considering powerful features of internet such as openness, sharing and engagement is might be valuable.

References

Chadha, K., Kavoori, A., 2000, ‘Media Imperialism revisited: some findings from the Asian case’, Media, Culture & Society, Vol.22

Morris, N., 2002, ‘The myth of unadulterated culture meets the threat of imported media’, Media, Culture & Society, Vol.24

United Nations, 2003, ‘Young People in a Globalizing World’ World Youth Report.

Williams, L., 2006, ‘Soft and sexy: the image of the next superpowers’,
Sydney Morning Herald, 14 Oct.

- This essay is assignment 2 of DEEP2 course in Insearch UTS written by me.

Transgriot has a post on what it’s like to be a transgender student, in addition to another post on Jonathon Escobar, a Georgia student forced to leave school for cross-dressing. Pam’s House Blend also has a post on Escobar. These posts reference a GLSEN study on transgender students, which you can also find linked to here. The study is rather disheartening, but it seems like an accurate assessment to me. This merits a post, but I don’t think I’ll take it up at this point.

Transgriot also has a post on faith as a trans person, which is very much relevant to my experiences.

Bilerico has a post on why pushing for marriage equality in DC doesn’t have to mean – and shouldn’t mean – the repeal of the DC domestic partnership law. This is something I feel often gets lost in the marriage equality debate – domestic partnerships aren’t relegating people to second-class status, since they’re equally available and serve a different social purpose from marriage. And some families would really benefit from domestic partnerships, and that gets lost if they’re framed as “marriage-lite” by marriage equality advocates, who sometimes reinforce the primacy of marriage as social policy a bit too much.

Feministing has a link to a CBC article on Muslim groups that want to ban the burqa and the niqab. My attitude is that generally banning people’s behaviours is ineffective at preventing them from doing it, and that mostly it just allows people to stigmatize the behaviour, even if the people who engage in the behaviour don’t accept the stigma. This is also an issue of whether it is acceptable to enforce “equality” on people without their consent, particularly in a way that could be cultural imperialism. And some people may wear these garments as a political statement, making this also an issue of freedom of expression.

And here’s an attitude I can certainly sympathize with over at Genderfork. I’m sure that I’ll feel this way at first snow.

A ROYAL WASTE OF MONEY

Re: ‘Prince Charles and Camilla to visit Victoria next month,’ Times Colonist, October 3, 2009

The Windsors get their huge income from a number of sources.

Some of it comes directly from the taxpayers.

And some is income from financial and property investments that really belong to the taxpayers.

In all they cost more than $189,000,000 Canadian.

The majority of citizens of the U. K. are not pleased about this waste of money, and we find little value in the Royals.

Like Canada, many residents in the U. K. have lost jobs, and absolutely cringe when the Royals do a walkabout.

Chuckles took 3,000,000 pound from the taxes collected from the people of Britain in 2008, a 23.5% increase on the previous year.

According to the Civil List, the Prince of Wales spent 970,000 pounds for one year’s travel expenses, with a single trip of 30 days, to Australia, New Zealand and Fiji costing $502,600 Canadian.

Security costs were over and above that, paid by the country he visits.

In case you are not feeling sick to your stomach, here are a few more examples of Charlie’s expense claims: 275,000 pounds Caribbean cruise on a chartered yacht, 18,916 pounds Charles; pub crawl in Cumbria; 40,513 pounds 3-day tour by train in England; 24,870 pounds two day visit to Spain; 25,829 pounds – train for Charles to visit the Eden botanical project in Cornwall; 33,000 pounds for a “prince” to travel the 110 miles from Salisbury to Birmingham.

There are more, but I’m making myself ill.

As a taxpayer here and in the U. K., I have every right to be grumpy but we’re amazingly upbeat, even philosophical about the circumstances.

I admit there is a very small amount of solace, knowing that fellow taxpayers here and at home, despise the Royals as much as I.

Charles and Camilla’s spending habits are nothing compared to Mummy and Daddy, who will visit B. C. in 2010.

William Perry

Victoria 

‘TOM IS AN ODDITY EVEN FOR THE GRATEFUL DEAD’

Tom Constanten played with the Grateful Dead and will appear in Victoria with the Jefferson Starship on October 27, 2009 at the Royal Theatre downtown on Broughton and Blanshard Streets.

The following is an excerpt from the rock music history book ‘Living with the Dead’ by Rock Scully as told to David Dalton.

Scully was the Dead’s manager from 1965 to 1985.

If you are interested in the Monterey Pop Festival of 1967, and San Francisco psychedelic music history, including the Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver, Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks, the Grateful Dead, the Animals, Santana, Janis Joplin, Big Brother, and Jimi Hendrix, etc…

Please go to Goyo de la Rosa’s blogsite for other excerpts from ‘LIVING WITH THE DEAD’:

- Goyo de la Rosa, Editor, LA ROSA

http://goyodelarosa.wordpress.com/

Its during the making of Anthem that Tom Constanten gets involved with the band.

He’s a music school friend of Phil’s and in November, Tom starts playing piano on some of the tracks.

In those days you ferreted out freaks in whatever area you could find them.

But Tom is an oddity even for the Grateful Dead.

He has a ridiculous Napoleon Bonaparte haircut – with kiss-curl pulled down and trimmed ever so carefully across, wearing a four-button jacket buttoned all the way up with a new immaculate white collar.

The rest of us are all shaggy, growing beards, wearing ripped T-shirts – clearly the man has no sense of appropriate studio attire.

He has an erudite wit, which doesn’t always chime with the prevailing acidic sense of humor of the Dead family.

He perhaps takes things more seriously than we do, especially his new “religion,” Scientology.

Probably a reformed speed freak like Monsieur con brio Lesh.

Anthem of the Sun evovles into a picture book of images that meanders all the way through a trip and comes out the other side.

In other words, you can’t make head or tail of it, and that’s sort of the point.

And what would a trip be without sound effects?

In the section after Jerry’s song “That’s it for the Other One,” we use UFO landing sounds and other strange noises.

It’s a forerunner of the space jam.

And a lot of this stuff – just plain guitar weirdness – the Dead do live.

We have this box called the Insect Fear Device, that you can plug the guitars or microphones into and play or sing through it and it makes all kinds of unearthly sounds.

The prepared piano is pretty much Tom Constanten.

The term “prepared piano” means doing things to the piano, but it is used in its widest sense here.

Stuffing things in it, partially damping the strings, causing strings to rattle against things.

Tom puts quarters and half dollars and sh– in between the strings or weaves cellophane through the strings and it makes really eerie cracking sounds.

A grand piano is an amazing contraption.

You can use a grand piano to actually launch stuff. 

LIVING WITH THE DEAD

Rock Scully and David Dalton

Pages 126 – 127

CCC – LA ROSA TRANSCULTURAL PACIFICAN HISTORY 1965 – 2009

During the Napoleonic wars, Spain found it impossible to police the whole west coast of South, Central, and North America.

She was hard pressed in Europe, defied in Mexico; and on the South American continent her colonies were fighting for independence under the inspired leadership in the north of Liberator Simon Bolivar, and in the south of Protector Jose de San Martin.

Both were colonials educated in the mother country: Bolivar for the life of an aristocratic landholder, and San Martin as a military man, who served first against the Moors and then, still as an officer in the Spanish army, against Napoleon.

Independent of each other, upon return to their respective countries, Venezuela and Argentina, they took advantage of Napoleon’s invasion of Spain and dethronement of Ferdinand to direct revolutionary campaigns through the length and breadth of South America.

For years before William Hartnell signed his contract with Mr. Brotherston’s agent, foreign ships had been entering South American harbors, some with special licenses and some without.

The rich prospects of such trade, with American products complementary to the European market, attracted avaricious as well as adventurous spirits.

Smuggling was regarded more as a game than as a sin by everyone but the Spaniard.

Mr. Brotherston warned his protege of dangers, formerly commonplace, which the trader still must be prepared to meet.

In his own memory, English goods mostly had been smuggled in through Atlantic ports.

Those that reached the Pacific coast were carried by man and by beast, across the pampas (grassy plains) and, single file, through a final narrow pass in the Andes.

This was laborious, but preferable to the ocean passage around the Horn, past Magellan’s Land of Fire, where the inhospitality of stormy, unchartered seas had been exceeded, at times, by that of Spanish port authorities.

There were instances Brotherston could recall of British and Boston trading vessels being treated as warships.

Several company ships had been subjected to gunfire, or to the imprisonment and torture of crew members who merely applied for aid in distress or wished to purchase ships’ supplies.

It could still happen, said Mr. Brotherston to wide-eyed William Hartnell, whose decision by now seemed irrevocable.

Unsettled conditions existing everywhere after revolution put each new trading concern on an insecure footing for an undetermined time.

THE LIVES OF WILLIAM HARTNELL

Susanna Bryant Dakin

Stanford University Press

Pages 7 – 8

CCC – LA ROSA TRANSCULTURAL PACIFICAN HISTORY 2009

On homecoming visits to Backbarrow, William could nowhere find employment.

The northern industrial centers of Manchester, Leeds, and Liverpool seemed as stagnant as London.

They contrasted strangely in the young man’s mind with the excitement and activity he so recently had seen in German ports.

His experiences taught him that postwar England had been left with a huge idle population, and a capacity for production far in excess of demant.

Much of the continent, which formerly had provided markets for British products, now lay bleeding and bone-poor.

Soldiers, released from danger, now stormed the employment offices, unable to endure with fortitude idleness and poverty.

At home, as on the continent, Hartnell saw universal despondence succeeding the initial elation of victory.

When, like all his contemporaries, he was close to despair, young Hartnell was rescued by a family connection.

Uncle Edward Petty had a school friend who was an important man.

Mr. James Brotherston headed the huge trading firm of his name, with offices in Liverpool, London, and Edinburgh, and agents in out-of-the-way places, like John Begg and Company in Santiago, Chile.

Mr. Petty arranged an interview for his nephew.

William went in unemployed, and emerged as bookkeeper and accountant for the Chile concern, across the world.

Moreover, Mr. Brotherston took a fancy to him.

As they had talked together in the dim light of the London office, Hartnell’s features were dimmed in the fading day, and it seemed to the older man that he was interviewing his own youth.

A quarter-century earlier he had made a similar decision to leave friends and family and familiar things to seek his fortune far away.

He had faced danger and endured hardship, and now was eating the fruits of success.

His large stomach testified to this, as did the heaviness of his face, the rich clothes, and the gold watch chain suspended across his flowered waistcoat.

How quickly he would turn back the clock, could he become again an ardent youth!

CCC BLOG reprint:

THE LIVES OF WILLIAM HARTNELL

Susanna Bryant Dakin

Stanford University Press

Page 5

CCC

1569

Bl. Mark Criado, who became a Trinitarian at fourteen and died a martyr at Almeria, Spain, tortured and slain by the Moors.

LIVES OF THE SAINTS

Father Augustine Kalberer, OSB

Blessed Marco Criado: Sept. 25

Page 345

CCC TRANSCULTURAL PEACE PROPAGANDA 1569 – 2009

Mat Wright of JohnsonStreetBridge.ORG says that British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell will not fund Victoria Mayor Dean Fortin’s Johnson Street Bridge so-called ‘replacement project,’ as it is euphemistically called by foolish Fortinites.

The project, which will be on the agenda of the Victoria City Council later this afternoon at a meeting at Victoria City Hall between 5 and 7 p. m., is going to cost at least $63,000,000 to the City of Victoria taxpayers, if Mr. Wright is correct.

To connect to Mat Wright’s article at the Johnson Street Bridge website, please refer to the ‘Comments’ section below.

- Gregory Paul Michael Hartnell, President

  Concerned Citizens’ Coalition

CCC