Iconoclast Media

“Iconoclast”- a person who supports ‘iconoclasm’, a term that has come to be applied figuratively to any person who breaks or disdains established dogmata or conventions. (Wikipedia).

This magazine is designed to do such that - to smash contemporary mythologies of London Ontario, Canada and the world. Some of these myths could be the following:

o   Canada is a “Peacekeeping” nation, and is a “Force for Good”on the international stage
o    Big Business is good for everybody globally and locally
o    “Ambassador London” is a grassroots campaign
o    We need to attract new Big Businesses to London Ontario
o    The Canadian government embraces diversity
o    Sprawl is inevitable
o    London Media accurately reflects the interests of average Londoners and relevant issues

Myths are often taught in subtle ways, usually, in the form of various medias. Language can be used to fog over the reality of situations and topics one can speak about. The objective, clinical language is commonly negated. The reason this magazine uses the name Iconoclast is because it is trying to dispel myths by naming things what they really are - and what is really happening.

Life here in London Ontario, compared to the majority of places to live in the world, is pretty posh. Although many of us live well below the poverty line, and some of us deal with racial discrimination and other oppressive experiences, we do have access to a lot of things such as social services, clean water, parks, schools and libraries. So why, you might ask, does Iconoclast preach and bitch so much? I have 2 answers:

-Londoners have the ability to improve our own living conditions. Many of us have access to education, the internet, food and water. There are at least a few dozen bad apples spoiling the barrel at city hall, but it wouldn’t take more than a dozen progressive people who actually care to make London a healthier and a better place to live. We have the power to kick out Walmart, build affordable housing and to reclaim our city from corporations.
-Londoners have the ability to help those who do not have power to improve their living conditions. We do not wake up everyday to gunfire. Most of us have enough food to survive. Many of us have WAY TOO MUCH.

So here are a few suggestions. The time is now. We are headed for an economic crisis, so this is the time to get political and start caring.

1. Clean up the RIVER. The river is so low this year it appears as a thin band of brown slime spread across a rocky pathway. Imagine actually being able to swim, and for animals and fish to be healthy. Yes! You could go the river and get in. Life would be immediately better.

2. More affordable HOUSING. Get people in homes. Act like it is their right. Subsidize housing and allow for people to have a better quality of life, get the homeless off the street, and let people have spending money for food, clothing, vacation etc with out having to feel like they are in ‘survival mode’. Also, stop Farhi, Transglobe etc from having their oligopoly.

3. Make TRANSIT better. Allow for bikes and groceries to be put on the buses. Also, make them run longer, more frequently and on sustainable fuel. Or better yet bring back rail cars.

4. Create more BIKE lanes. Yes, there are other ways to travel without polluting, causing noise pollution and making everyday life threatening. Create a bike-sharing and repair program. Also, change existing streets such as Albert St, to pedestrian only.

5. Remove all of the ridiculous BYLAWS in this city that restrict people from enjoying the city such as those about lawn upkeep, hanging laundry outside, j-walking, 24-hour noise violation, restricted use of public parks, fire pits etc.

6. Stop using WALMART and make suburban development sustainable and reasonable.

7. Remove war MONUMENTS in Victoria Park (put them in a museum), yellow ribbons on public vehicles and parks dedicated to soldiers. Newsflash to City Hall: pro-war allegiance does not reflect your city’s beliefs.

8. Subsidize forms of micro-sustainable ENERGY such as solar, wind and thermal for homes and businesses, in place of giving large corporations tax breaks.

9. Have garbage-free festivals, ban bottled WATER, install more public water fountains, and actually recycle what is in the blue bins.

10. Cut the POLICE budget.

11. Make the downtown LIBRARY open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

12. Protect bogs, woodlands, forests and water from Tom Gosnell and other REAL ESTATE developers (especially the ones who run the city).

13. Alternative MEDIA is needed to reflect and promote the views of progressive and younger citizens.

This article is based on interviews with Walmart employees in London Ontario.

Does it make sense to you that people earning minimum wage, living well below the poverty line, are doing fundraising for charities which are organized by the corporation to which they are employed? Yes that’s right, Walmart has its workers doing fundraising for charities in its name: brilliant and cheap “good works”.
A friend who worked at Walmart as a cashier for many years told me that she was expected to participate in various fundraisers, including “staff donations”, and if she did not she was treated as if she was not a valued employee. It is bad enough that employees are subjected to singing the Walmart song every morning, and if they are lucky enough to be there at close, the managers broadcast the total sales for the day throughout the store. Employees are expected to cheer and help the store break sales records daily. Ironically, what a Walmart in London can earn in a day, typically well over 150,000$, a cashier will never take home in a dozen years working for minimum wage.
Recently over 800 Walmart employees with friends and family participated in a walk to raise funds for the Children’s Foundation. But who ultimately benefits from the efforts of the low-wage workers? Walmart can donate funds enough to support hundreds of organizations and charities without exploiting its obliging workers (actually Walmart can’t really do anything without exploiting anyone). These events are nothing but publicity stunts to make Walmart look responsible and caring, two things which it is not.
If Walmart really cared, perhaps it would choose to “fundraise” to pay its employees a living wage, and clothe, house and feed the workers in China who make the plastic crap they sell. More fundraising ideas: environmental cleanup from the extraction and processing of petrochemicals, dyes, and metals used to make the products they sell, cancer clinics to treat people who work and eat at their McDonalds’ and revitalization programs for the tens of thousands of small town main streets across North America that are now ghost towns because of Walmart.

Talk show host Dr. Phil McGraw is known for his psychological practice on the famous Dr. Phil television show.  The straight laced, happily married, respected Texan helping the everyday person through struggles in his or her personal life.  In my opinion Dr. Phil is nothing but a contradiction.  Truth is Dr. Phil is the ideal authoritarian figure: a Caucasian Christian male, and an aggressive rich American who is both inexperienced and verbally abusive.  Mr. McGraw is a large, loud man who uses his beliefs (according to popular American moral law and typical Christian beliefs) to intimidate and belittle his emotionally sensitive patients in order to create a dramatic spectacle to gain viewers.  Mr. McGraw publicizes an individual’s personal life by broadcasting 2-3 minute tape of the individual’s sensitive and private issues.  He then responds to that content in a manner in which reflects his personal beliefs.  For example In a 2-part public series on an intervention for two female twin sisters addicted to heroin, he called them “coke-whores.”   A trained professional such as Dr. Phil should have the compassion and human dignity to treat two emotionally sensitive and substance addicted woman with respect, rather than degrade them and allude to them in a negative sexual context.  Mr. McGraw claims that he has never consumed alcohol or partaken in marijuana leaving him ignorant of typical modest substances, yet he preaches on substance issues to which he cannot relate to at all.  He also claims that he has not had a fight with his wife Robin for their 22 years of marriage which is hard to believe considering they have raised 2 children and gone through life changes in order to accommodate Mr. McGraws fame.  Is Dr. Phil a pure, righteous man speaking from a Godly perspective or a rich American bully living in and creating a distorted reality?

Anyone with even a passing knowledge of what the Chattering Classes are chattering about these days is aware of falling wages.  Indeed, wages have been falling in the States since 1973.  This trend accelerated around 2001 and then again eight or nine months ago and now seems to be constantly intensifying.  This is a very important issue to which we will return.

But let’s break for a moment from the concerns of the “wringing the hands”
and “viewing with alarm” section of the wimp Left.  Actual contact with working people brings to light other concerns.  What folks are talking about more than falling wages is increasing exploitation and oppression.  Regardless of who you might be talking with the story will be a version of how harsh management is, how long the hours are, and the additional tasks being added to the work load.  On top of this is the problem of the Temp agencies and so-called part-time work of occasionally up to 60 hours per week.  Working conditions are deteriorating as rapidly as wages.  Also benefits are disappearing and precariousness and marginality are on the increase.  However, because class-consciousness is so low in the States, the system will not be brought down by an increase in the grumbling level.

So let us then return to the issue of falling wages.  The effects of falling wages were masked in the late ’90’s and early 2000’s by the apparently appreciating value of housing.  Take the example of a housing unit valued at $300,000 carrying a $200,000 mortgage. If worse came to worse $100,000 could be realised.  However in some mysterious way that isn’t very clear that same housing unit appreciated to $500,000.  The owner, feeling the pinch of falling wages and wishing to maintain a level standard of living could re-finance upping the mortgage to $250,000 and pocket the windfall.  Likewise in another mysterious value shift the property reverted to is original value of $300,000.  Now the owner was reduced to $50,000 in equity.  More dire scenarios are available.

Now we find this strata of workers, who have been lead to believe that they are “middle class” are increasingly distressed, beset as they are with increasing precariousness and measurably falling wages.  Now car and student loans, and credit cards are also coming under pressure.  A very sharp contraction in “consumer” spending is now underway, which is another way of saying that massive and widespread lay-offs are now sweeping the States.  Yes, derivatives valued at several times these car and student loans and credit card debts are out there and are non-performing.

As some 19th British general remarked about wars in Afghanistan: they don’t start until they’re over.  Likewise the current economic crisis.  It hasn’t started yet. The system might be breaking as I write these words.

It looks like the system will snap sometime between mid-August and the end of February.  The “global” capitalist system, led by those United States is about to plunge into the mother of all depressions.  Massive unemployment.  Dramatically collapsing living standards.  This will be mush worse than the “thirties” for several reasons.  At that time many folks could retreat to the farm from whence they came.  Today we are incapable of fixing many of the things we have.  When they break they have to be thrown out.  We can’t make many of the things we use.  When they break we will have to do without.

Further, in the Untied Snakes, the federal government is broke, the state governments are broke, the agencies are broke, the county governments are broke and the municipal governments are broke.  Only the federal government can print money.  Obviously all jurisdictions are faced with falling revenues and rising expenses.  Many have rules against deficit budgets and raising taxes.  Some have one restriction and some the other.

In New York State the fiscal year (FY) 2008 began on April 1st.  The budget was fiction.  Most likely some insiders knew that.  (Stupidity is a front for the ruling class.)  Reality could not be admitted and so this travesty of a budget was passed lest they spook the horses.  By January 2009 the financial situation in New York will be desperate.  In California FY09 begins on July 1st.  Once again there are most likely insiders who understand that the budget they will bring down will not relate to reality in any meaningful way.  This time next year there will be hell to pay in California.  Cities will burn in the summer of ’09.  Most of the major U.S. corporations, including the Auto Makers, most states, counties, municipalities and the federal government start their FY’s on October 1st.  There is absolutely no way that any of their “budgets” will be enacted with a view to reflecting reality.  Once again, by this time next year there will be many a bare pantry in those circles.  Roads won’t be fixed.  Schools, libraries, etc will close; welfare agencies will be broke, their staffs laid off.

Next year at this time millions more will be unemployed.  These folks, when they lose their jobs will be deeply in debt.

The main stream media, university professors and others who are in the Ministry of Truth will continue to lie to the masses.  One wonders how they will square the circle.

By: Old North