Injuries to All

Wordsalad!  Jackspeak for “Your argument is completely over my head.”

Liz said: “If only someone would compulsorily sterilize Ann Coulter!” Ummm! I don’t think you need to worry about that, Ann Coulter has a bigger Adam’s apple than Rue Paul . . . er, she looks like she’s had gender reassignment surgery . . . ANN COULTER’S A DUDE!

Liz, is Jack what George Galloway refers to as a Trotskyist popinjay?  Or perhaps a Randist popinjay?  LOL.

Probably, Lefty!  I’d say Randist popinjay, deffo!!

The first thing that made me cross about Jack when I came on here, was that he thoroughly dissed Richard/ProudVet, making those so below-the-belt comments about his family…

(Jack from Liberrandtopia does this all the time, actually! To Margaret, as well.)

That was the first thing that attracted me to post… I composed a long post, only to have it fall off the blog, because it was a bit over 4000 characters… The preview doesn’t tell you how many characters you’ve typed, or what the limit is; nor does it save the page, like most other programs - the BIG defect of this blog!  (I bet Richard’s fallen afoul of it before - and there’s only one solution, isn’t there?  To use the COPY utility to record one’s post before one posts it!)

Anyway, Steve and Lefty.  Perhaps you can help me explain to Jack, that in a society that has NO security - I read a brilliant neologism from that on my SF friend’s blog, must see if I can re-find it… “Precarity”, I think it was!!  In a totally PRECARIOUS, ie globalist, neocapitalist, or indeed Randian society… WHO among us (except for the richest 10 - 20%) HAS the luxury, to PLAN??  For the future?

When every moment, one’s job may be snatched away… In the USA, as Michael Moore’s next movie is going to show, I know, anybody who isn’t super-rich and/or covered by some very handsome, non-adjusted or whatever it is called, insurance plan - usually, it is true, those with government jobs… Well, they can lose all they own through medical bills!  That movie with Jack Nicholson, his most recent one, I think, “As Good As It Gets”, was a prime example of that!  To all Canadians, Brits, French, Germans etc - it seems like SCIENCE FICTION, that such could be allowed to OCCUR!  Star Wars VI, Sin City nor Batman Begins could possibly be as OUTLANDISH!

Yet - it lives and breathes!  American upper-crust selfishness impinging on everyone below them, in the world today.

See what happens to YOU, Jack, if you get assaulted by some low-life thugs and need high-price facial reconstruction!  Sure your insurance will cover it?  What would Rand recommend - suing the thieves?  Who are all likely to be poorer than you are?  VERY helpful advice!

Someone on here, I think, or else it was on counterpunch.org, said that Truman was all ready to introduce universal health insurance.  It was only the special interests, the insurance companies, and the top doctors themselves (parasites!) who prevented him.

Roosevelt would have done it, if he lived, I think. The old crip was made of sterner stuff than all of the weak-kneed Dems who followed him.  (’Cept the brothers Kennedy - and of course, they got rid of THEM!)

Roosevelt survived a coup against him, in 1934, I think it was… A little-known part of American history.  Again, it was the elite who were conspiring against him.  Personally, I’d have gassed half of the conspirators and exiled the rest. Nuff of right-wing jerks!

Jack, Jack…

There is a number of things I still haven’t managed to say to you, in my posts!!

The first one is, that it doesn’t really MATTER which country I come from, economy-wise.  ALL the “Western” economy states, the G8, and specifically, all the ENGLISH-speaking states, are in the same boat!!  Read www.wsws.org, that’ll tell you!!

(Why, did you think I was a French girl?  I would have to be some fluent Anglophone Frenchie to blog like this, let me tell you!!  I DO speak French, but I couldn’t blog very well in it.  Well I haven’t tried, yet...)

HOW do you make out that the US national median income isn’t declining, anyway?  Because the huge increases right at the top of the tree bump up the average?  (But that would be the mean!!)

ILLUSTRATIONS of what I mean by the international nature of the totally unsatisfying, unsatisfactory and fvcked-up global ("free world") job market:-

(I found these all before, but my post got chucked off the blog by the stupid software!!)

Still, they’re good examples, so I won’t begrudge the extra work.

3 SUPER, TRUTH-TELLING BOOKS:

1) “Nickeled and Dimed: on (not) getting by in America”, by Barbara Ehrenreich, referred to by me previously.  Published under slightly different titles in different years, such as: “Nickeled and Dimed: Undercover in Low-wage America”, and variations on the above, because it has been published and republished by at least three different publishers.  Quite the bestseller.  Well worth a read.

2) “Hard Work: Life in Low-Pay Britain”, by Polly Toynbee, Bloomsbury, 2003.  Same subject matter as above, same journalistic method, different country.

3) “Dirt Cheap: Life at the Wrong End of the Job Market” by Elizabeth Wynhausen, Macmillan Sydney 2005 - the latest opus in this international “series”!

Read them all and spot the similarities.  (You also might try from the 1980s, “Ganz Unten”, by Germany’s most famous undercover journalist, Gunther Wallraff, translated into English as “Lowest of the Low”.  He poses as a Turkish Gastarbeiter for about a year.  Bravest, most daring thing I’ve ever heard of!!)

The second point is - my, you DID react strongly when I put on that stuff about James Lovelock and his Gaia theories!  I did it for U Scare Me - he seemed interested!  “Amazonian nonsense” - DID you mean “amazon” in the Greek sense - or the fact that I was referring to amazon.com!  They sell books by almost all publishers on EVERY viewpoint, you know - Rand’s on their list!  They are truly good capitalists!

So, you think it “dangerous nonsense” to postulate that the earth is “one organism”, rather than just a bitty collection of individual things… Hmm.  So that’s what Randists don’t like about that sort of ecological thinking! Actually, I wasn’t THINKING of Lovelockianism like that… I mean, as a dangerous commie theory, I was more attracted to it because of my mystic beliefs… But TRULY, “all things are one”, and if I can manage to relate that to Marxism - I can both sell Gaia to Marxists, and left-wing politics to all the New Agers I encounter!  Thanks for giving me the idea, Jack!!

Actually, I’m a Canadian!  (I can usually pass for a Yank on the web when I want to, though! I USUALLY remember to use their spellings!)

No I’m not!  I’m teasing you!!

Work it out!  You’ve been annoying nearly everybody else on here, I shall annoy YOU for a change!

YES, it really is WONDERFUL, the way in which Jack Barnes made me fully realise how DANGEROUS James Lovelock’s “the earth is one organism” ideas might be to conservatives - as well as challenging to capitalist polluters!

“There is no such thing as society” - my ass!  There IS such a thing as ecology!  One environment!  ONE people under Gaia!!

Yay!

Well, no-one else seems to be posting on here right now, they’ve probably gone to bed.  I’m an insomniac, so that’s why I’ve decided to turn it into the Liz blog. (Though this is probably my last post for now, as I have to go off and do something.)

Resentment, Jack!  Steve or Lefty want to post anything about the topic?  It’s a good one!!

Randians, in common I think with Marxists and other rationalists (the Marxists are at least realistic about how people actually behave, in conditions of hardship, etc. though) are a bit… underestimating… on the role of Emotions in human affairs.

(Whereas a Nietzschean now, he would know all about THAT… not that I’m one of above!)

They’re the most powerful things in the world, you know!  They rule!  They run everything!

Especially - the emotions of the outcast and the powerless.  They are KARMA.  They wait to GET YOU, Jack, and all other selfish people!!

The fact that whites are quite often preyed upon by black criminals in the US today - the fact that the ghettos started to spill outwards and make their problems KNOWN outside in the 1960s and onwards - regardless of the “guilt” of the particular white victim - THIS, my friend, is KARMA.  Inevitability.  What SHOULD happen.

(Of course, there’s plenty of white-on-white and black-on-black crime as well.  Not disregarding any realities!)

Let me think of fictional illustrations of the power of resentment: well, one right off the top of my head is Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice”.  That is a VERY powerful illustration!  Race without doubt plays a big issue in this play! It was inspired by an earlier “revenge tragedy”, “The Jew of Malta”.

Actually, I can think of yet another, more modern illustration of this theme - it’s a fantasy one, and it’s not race but class this time which is at stake (which is really why I’m bothering to mention it!), it’s very well known, but you guys will NEVER guess, till I tell!

God these forms are NUTS!  I’ll try another time! Other contributons, anybody??

Man it was late when Liz quit last night.  I hope she didn’t fall asleep and crash her broomstick on the way home.

Lefty,
A corporation is a living breathing entity that moves through life like a living breathing person.  A corporation that is 100 years old is subject to the laws of today, not 100 years ago and subject to changes tomorrow.  You only inject an obscure centuries old real property law into the conversation as a way to impress us with your liberal elitist attitude.  The same attitude that is killing the liberal movement today.  It’s the same attitude I want displayed for people who read this but may be on the fence.

I also want people to read how Progressives have interest in the thought that the government can just shut down a privately owned business because they’ve been around too long.  Companies that have thousands of employees trying to raise families, just so you can have the pleasure of hurting a few people at the top.  There’s a big ole false premise for you.  I don’t want to change your opinions, in fact, I want you to stay on the attack.  Not only is it fun, it’s also informative.

First of all USM, no one on the Left has EVER seriously suggested that the government shut down a profitable business that is responsible for employing people and providing incomes. They leave this to greey capitalist downsizers and monopolizers who want to restructure the economy more in line with their own corporate strategies (workers and their communities be damned!)while the “left” usually tries to fight this by demanding government bailouts!  Secondly, Christine, equality is attainable and we really don’t know who is better than who in a world where increasing numbers of people are marginalized by a rotten system they don’t control. The ghettos and trailer parks of America could contain countless geniouses who may never develope their potential due to cynical people in control and bad social conditions and lack of opportunity.  Doesn’t capitalism make efficient use of its human resources!  It finds it more profitable to incarcerate these folks and have them slave away in privatized prison work facilities for private contractors! As far as the Russian Capitalist experiment goes I’m no expert.  I DO know of a great and copious study called “The Oligarchs” which basically claims that the new Russian Capitalism, which is less regulated than the Western variety, was basically installed by the old elite who were in a position to commandeer and privatize everything the Russian masses worker to develope during the “socialist” period (as a Trotskyist I held The USSR to be a deformed workers’ state) and invited in western capital to exploit cheap labor. I really am quite suprised as many Russian workers I work with tell how society is worse and more unstable than before. As usual, the people make the revolution but a small group commandeers its direction and wrests control away for their own counter-revolutionary purposes!

USM,

Perhaps you are right that I was insulting and arrogant in condemning all the American people.  I DO stand by my assertion that to many are uneducated and easily led.  Most only have the current highly consolidated and monopolized media (which is in effect a form of private STATE MEDIA) such as FOX NEWS which is by any standards a Republican noise machine. USM, most Americans have no idea about “them thar ferners!” nor do they want to know! They are woefully ignorant about the histories of other countries! They conflate issues into one big confusing ball of nonsense as they are intended to do by authority.  To get to the point of “honest disagreement there first has to be knowledge.  None of these people knows anything about the middle east. I know about it. I lived there! I spoke some of the languages and saw how the people lived and thought.  They have NOT been fighting forever and though highly religious have a more peaceful and tolerant history than the west does.  They are particularly violent now because western imperialism with guns, bombs, and cash has torn down their societies and implanted corrupt dictatorships.  Muslim fundamentalism was encouraged not only to fight the Russians in Afghanistan but as a counter-wieght to the left in those areas which US imperialism sees as the real danger.  Also, I would like to finish by adding that the American People have become a disturbing phenomenon not only to many of us at home but to many abroad who see the most powerful country in the world mindlessly leading its masses into a fanatical frenzy of jingoistic and xenophobic nationalism, aggression, and outright hatred!  The Europeans are right to be scared.  They’ve seen this stuff before. And not quite so long ago!

To all the folks out there friend and foe, left and right, I NEVER advocated limiting the life of a business to 50 years! I would never come up with something so stupiid!  Some one else came up with this 50 year limit “idea”!  Even anarcho-sydicalists don’t come up with this drivel!  LIZ, the story of the neo-cons who are heavily Jewish goes back to the immediate post-WWII era. The paleo-cons, more traditional, small town, christian fundamentalist, nationalist types had a different source and culture than the cosmopolitan and highly educated Jewish urban neo-conservatives who were only first generation American.  It really begins with Daniel Bell’s proclaimation of the “end of Ideology” with the onset of the Fifties saying the isms had failed to bring about a livable and ideal society.  Many of these old guard were disappointed radicals who were repulsed by the crimes of Stalin and felt a moral responsibility after the war. They felt betrayed by the Left. As the WHO song goes, “meet the new boss; just the same as the old boss!” This was a thoroughly understandable reaction by those who had always been more thoughtful and knowledgable than their paleocon counterparts and who only wished that they “not be fooled again!” But from here they began to formulate all manner of unreasonable positions and fanatically adhere to unjustifiable positions for opportunistic purposes.  What began as a legitimate questioning of old mistakes developed into an unnecessary full-fledged reactionary ideology worse in some ways than the old rural paleocon variety. PS Christopher Hitchens’ mother is Jewish which, according to Jewish law makes him a Jew.  There really is a pattern!  What can I say? My people go to extremes!

Steve,

***Doesn’t capitalism make efficient use of its human resources!  It finds it more profitable to incarcerate these folks and have them slave away in privatized prison work facilities for private contractors!***

This would make a good PBS special.  Are the people that are placed in these privatized prison work facilities sent there without due process of law and a jury of their peers?  Please tell us more.

USM, don’t be a slacker.  Stop making up arguments to oppose and respond to the one that I put in your court.  Tell be about the RAP and why it should or shouldn’t apply to businesses and/or corporations. 

BTW, corporations are not living or breathing, they are no more than a few papers in a file cabinet at you friendly local Secretary of State’s office.

USM,

Without question there are a good many folks in the joint that should be there and that society needs to keep there!  Some of them are downright nasty to say the least!  As a cabbie I fear these individuals. We need to deal with crime.  Having said this, I would like to point out that criminality is an adaptive response to a hostile environment often generated and sustained by social conditions.  People are and should be held liable for their personal behaviour yet criminality as any criminologist will tell you is not an essential or inherent trait but an adopted one which can even be promoted by authority as model of coping with poverty, lack of opportunity,and social exclusion.  I for one believe the gangsta metaphor in hip-hop culture comes from the very top of the food chain in American society where the values of take what you want and resolve disputes through violence are inculcated.  I think gangs peddling drugs in the hood is less threatening to authority than political activism.  Gangs are US mores brought to their logical conclusion while the money from drugs can support hood subculture and save the government money.  It also keeps the African-American community down. This means the wealth is spread less thin. One has to question an incarceration rate that continues to climb all through the 1990s and beyond even as the rate of crime itself is slowing down!  Prisons are expensive and serve as a form of social control.  With all the wealth around today education and jobs programs could easily resolve the crime issue for good.  But WAIT! They’re just discovering another possibility for surplus urban youth. Look out BAGHDAD here we come!!!!!!!!

Steve,

***most Americans have no idea about “them thar ferners!” nor do they want to know! They are woefully ignorant about the histories of other countries! They conflate issues into one big confusing ball of nonsense as they are intended to do by authority.***

Once again we have the elitist left blaming us stupid Americans.

*** To get to the point of “honest disagreement there first has to be knowledge.  None of these people knows anything about the middle east.***

And Again. 

*** Also, I would like to finish by adding that the American People have become a disturbing phenomenon not only to many of us at home but to many abroad who see the most powerful country in the world mindlessly leading its masses into a fanatical frenzy of jingoistic and xenophobic nationalism, aggression, and outright hatred!***

And a grand finish with the mind numb robot thing.

You have made your point.  Everything that is wrong in the world is because of us stupid Americans, our capitalistic society and Fox News.  By the way.  When you were living in the peaceful Middle East did you ever get tickets to any of the gang rapes or public executions?  I’m sure you caught a good stoning or 2.  If you went to school there was it less crowded in the class rooms without all the women, if you happened to be in one of those countries.

USM,

I do apologize for being to cliched about the “mind-numb robot thing” but contemporary times lead me to hyperbole which I usually avoid!  To be honest USM there are fewer gang rapes and executions in the Middle East than in the state of Texas alone!  I was shocked to discover this but I compared our rape and execution rate with that of Texas and, unfortunately the Saudis are way behind!  If I was a woman I’d feel safer in Riyadh than Houston! Anyhow, I wasn’t in Saudi Arabia so I’m no expert. I was in Israel for three years and worked mostly with Palestinian laborers in the construction industry. I felt their situation was deplorable.  The Israelis really oppress them and I felt ashamed at having a connection to this which I have since renounced!  Like many progressive Jews we refuse to support Israel and make it known yet the press ignores us and focuses on the Right-wing Jewish leadership to give the false impression that we are all of one mind.  I support a democratic secular state as a two state solution is becoming increasingly implausible.  Oslo seems dead for good!  The Palestinians I met seemed highly educated and skilled for people with so little opportunity.  SOme were hostile and some were not!  Many of the ones with Israeli citizenship within the Green Line had decent standards of living but the Arabs from Gaza or Ramallah were dirt poor and had to endure high costs of living in the occupied territories due to the entanglement with the Israeli economy through labor markets and trade in goods and services.  The Arabs there did not express much anti-American feeling (I was there after Gulf War I 1992-95) except to register thier occaissional support for Iraq.  It was more a matter of support for the Iraqi people than Saddam’s dictatorship.  As far as religion is concerned most Palestinians I met were less religious than most small town American Christians and have very enlightened views yet are considered beneath US sympathies while fanatics like the Saudis get all the help.  I don’t mean to trash the US people but they don’t do their homework for the most part. Nor do many of them care!

Steve,

That was very thoughtful and informative dialogue.  I appreciate the effort and feel more informed as a result.  I appreciate it, thanks.

Corporations are people getting together for
a specific business purpose. The only reason,
if there is one, to file with the state is to
protect their interests against fraud. The
licensing is a permissive matter, the presumption
is always that individuals have an absolute right
to form any type of business and no approval
from the nonproductive state sector is required.
It would like if I described lefty’s inheritance
or life insurance or 401K policies as pieces of
paper that don’t mean anything !
Even for a braindead leftist totally ignorant
of all economic law, lefty’s statement about
corporations being nothing but pieces of paper
is a breathtakingly stupid statement of major
super-assholian proportions.
How did you get to be such an unthinking and absolutely brutalized goon, lefty ?
It would take an industrial cleaner to properly
wipe your sorry little butt, little man.
The only reform I would make for corporations
and it would be a major one, is to take away
the bankruptcy protection on the libertarian
grounds that it gets the state in the business
of absolving the debtor and acting against the
creditor, which is not a proper function of government.

Dear Margaret,

I just noticed you’re posting to me and felt that I should respond.
First, there isn’t any one ideological line that
a woman is supposed to follow anymore than blacks
are required to reside on the liberal plantation.
Don’t you think it a bit presumptous of you to claim to speak for all women ?
Second, you use this hackneyed term “mainstream” as if it is supposed to mean anything.
Well, Edison and Einstein and Michaelangelo
and Goethe and Rand are all out of the mainstream,
which is really another term for THE STATUS QUO.
Maybe we could also call it the STATIST QUO.
Third, most libertarians CAN’T STAND BUSH, if you
see the antiwar.com and lew rockwell.com websites
that Jack previously referred you to, you will see
the hardest hitting anti-Bush websites around.
Do you think that simply repeating the Big Lie that libertarians and Republicans are the same
makes it true ?

Steve, as you know the Middle or Near East is probably the only subject on which we somewhat agree so I largely agree with your ripostes to
USM on this but would you really want to be a
woman in Riyadh ? The truth is that we have no
idea of how many gang rapes and executions there
are in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, etc.
We can properly attack Israel without defending
the Arab States.
Just like some of us simultaneously opposed apartheid in SA and also Marxist cannibals like
Mugabe.
Remember you can have more than one enemy.
Some of us oppose the left and the neocons.

Liz,
It did occur to me that you might be Canadian
but my main complaint about you is the lack of
linearity in your postings. You do seem like
a highly intelligent person, like Steve is, but like Margaret, Merlin, Richard Proud Vet and Lefty
most emphatically are not.
You’re bizarre statement that black crime against
whites is justified because some of our ancestors
were slavers or enacted Jim Crow laws is about as
stupid, racist and Nazi a statement as I have
ever read. The first time that you or one of yours
is the victim of some vicious black thug will be
the exact moment that you recant your unconscionable bullshit. I don’t know what suburbs
you are talking but my former wife and I lived in
Oakland for many years and the racism of blacks
in Berkeley-Oakland is as bad any KKK activity
in Alabama and my ex, a red diaper baby, had
spent a month in jail in Mississipi in 1965
for civil rights activity. But now she is no
longer a leftist on race, affirmative action,
busing,rent control, gun control, welfare
and some other related issues. Though she
still loves Ho, Che, Mao, socialized medicine,
etc.
The black crime rate, black on black crime
and the slightly smaller black on white crime
is way out of proportion to their percentage
of the population.
“Karma” is a mystical, Nazi, collective guilt
anti-concept that is not true in reality, which
is made up EXCLUSIVELY OF INDIVIDUALS.

Liz, the WSWS website is a bunch of Aussie Trot
nuts. They defend electroshock, starving Schiavo
to death, coercive psychiatry, black sociopathology and the mass murderer Trotsky
himself. They are absolutely worthless as a
source of reliable information. They predicted
we would have a civil war when Ozone Al lost
in 2000 !
I’ve read the Ehrenreich book and now you need to
read some of the works I’ve mentioned.

Jack,

Actually, being a woman in Saudi Arabia would be a big downer! Being a woman in Texas can be also for other reasons.  There is sexism everywhere. The Muslims do have longer to go than we do in dealing with gender issues!

U Scare Me - depends which time zone I live in, doesn’t it!!

Steve - so you ARE a Trotskyist!  Good!  I agree with your remarks about Russia, Soviet and post-Soviet.

And everything you said about capitalism’s inefficient use of human resources and people languishing away in ghetto, trailer parks and the privatized prison-industrial complex.  (Which parallels many of the worst exploitations of the 18th and the earlier 19th centuries, when people in prisons and workhouses were often worked to death for private interests.  Did you know, there was a famous strike in 19th-century USA, where a bunch of miners, I believe it was, went over to the local penitentiary and set all the prisoners free, because the Warden etc was planning on hiring them out as cheap labour to the local mine owners and driving down the miners’ wages/breaking their strike!

That’s what unions TODAY should do!!

Liberate the Bastilles!)

Oh, gosh, Steve, you’re Jewish too… Well I might have had a Jewish ancestor several generations back, on my maternal grandfather’s side (which doesn’t make me Jewish.) A family name is Rosin - what do you think?  (We come from Europe, obviously.)

So the neocons are mainly (or exclusively?) disappointed Jewish urban European ex-radicals who were disgusted by Stalin… I see… And what about the Thatcherites in Britain?  They DO seem to have been driven by some Jewish input… Sir Keith Joseph, Alfred Sherman, one or two others… (Michael Howard is a Jew!)

Yes, Jews tend to be people of extremes - both Trotsky and Rand, in their different ways, testify to that!

ARE neoconservatism and monetarism/Reaganomics/
Thatcherism to be counted as one and the SAME?

USM --

Why should people who are put in prison by due process of law and a jury of their peers, be placed in privatized prison work facilities, to labor for private interests?

Where is the logical connection between one and the other?

(On top of what all Steve says, which is usually pretty sensible!)

Steve, how do you figure that ?
They have been around much longer than
most of the West ? Wouldn’t that have been
enough time to get their act together ?
I’m not defending Texas for sure.
But I don’t think it’s a good comparison.
Liz, capitalism is what brought those resources
out of the ground and made them usable.
If we had to wait for the Arabs and the Africans
those resources would still be in the ground.
Those resources belong solely to those who
develop them, not the backward tribes who are
merely occupying the land of their betters- the
betters being the white western capitalists.
You lefties have a thing for the primitive, that
Rousseau pathology. But the Turd World is not something to admire or emulate.
Take off that hairshirt and start enjoying the
imperial life.
After the Africans finish offing each other, the
dark continent can become habitable again.
No, I do not wish to free all the criminals
from prison. Prison labor is a nonfactor in
a real capitalist economy as distinguished from
today’s fascist mixed economy, fascism being
a form of socialism.
Trotsky was the mass murderer of Kronstadt and
would likely have been even worse than Stalin
had he won their power struggle.

If the private prison has better conditions than
the state, why not ?
Is there something noble about being a slave to
the state ?

I wanted to respond to some of the rather anal anti-capitalism tirades on the forum.
If we in the finance and investment community went on strike a la Atlas Shrugged, all of you
anti-capitalist posters would be reduced to living
in absolute pigstys (assuming some of you do not
live in same at present). We are the creators,
the inventors, the innovators, the builders, the motivators, the heroes of our modern industrial
capitalistic civilization. Our rights to our palaces and yachts comes before your bloody rights
to your hovels. We are going to remove the general
welfare clause from the Constitution and substitute There Shall Be No Governmental Interference With Business and Trade of Any Sort.
This Amendment will be in effect for perpetuity.
Next reform is to stop the theft of the American
workers’ money by compulsory union theft.
We need to outlaw all political contributions
by labor unions, who are not an objective force in
society but a special interest group.
Then all Democratic Party elected officials shall
serve without pay. Since they are so devoted to
their beloved “peeepulll” they should consider
their tenure in office as a pro bono public service.
All public leftists should receive annual IRS audits. There is nothing more disgusting than
a liberal-socialist-communist tax cheater.
Liberalism leads to socialism which leads to
communism. We need to teach this salient fact in
our public schools before we do the right thing
and abolish them.
We need to remove the crappy hebraic In god we
trust on our money and substitute In GOLD We Trust.
We need to fully computerize voting, and my family
has the new systems to make it work.
A full knowledge of the US Constitution, the Bill
of Rights, the Federalist Papers and The Complete
Works of Ayn Rand & Aristotle should be required
before one can register to vote.
All nonwhite collar felons are hereby barred from
voting in perpetuity.
A blanket pardon for all antitrust, income tax
and regulatory convictions shall be issued.
Food stamp and welfare fraud shall be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
No individual shall be permitted to discharge
any debt owed to a business creditor.
Employee time theft shall be treated as a Class
A felony.
With these urgently necessary reforms we can become a great, prosperous, fully free nation.

The “rich” do NOT provide most of the investment for the creation of jobs. That’s typical Republican Noise Machine bullshit. MOST of the capital comes from the retirement funds of middle-class people. Of course, the rich DO keep their claws in the capital - if there are big gains in the value of the retirement fund management will siphon it off and give it to themselves. If the fund loses money, as the city employee retirement fund here in San Diego has, that’s tough shit for the retired.

Ayn Rand’s stuff may be widely ride second only to the bible, but both her stuff and the bible suck as literature. Rand’s idiotic view of human nature is sillier than her politics.

For the record, I’m not a democrat, nor a socialist, nor a communist. I’m interested in cybernetics - robust self-regulating systems. Thank god no authoritarians have discovered cybernetics. Or Skinner for that matter.

Thanks for your time!

Liz,

The neo-cons tend whether thatcherite or Reaganite tend to favor trickle-down economics as a strategy for restarting growth.  They assert that by putting more money in the hands of the capitalist instead of taxing it away there will be more jobs, growth, and, eventually, even tax base provided by a burst of new investment made from capital restored to the private sector. They also are very keen on fighting inflation through austerity. They believe that increases in inflation reduces investment for fear of devaluation of assets so money runs to real estate and other non-productive shelters and stagnation occurs.  The trouble with these neo-classical theories is that they don’t address reality!  In the excellecnt website you recommended, for example, it is said that not only is there no savings shortage (there is an uninvestable 60% overaccumulation of savings in the US economy in the form of foreign securities purchases which is depressing interest rates) and not only are we the least taxed economy in the advanced capitalist world but, inflation is the lowest as well.  The problem is demand side. There is a chronic tendency toward stagnation due to the fact that as labor productivity and inventories rise, the growth of real wages lags far behind so there is a lack of effective demand to absorb the economy’s net productivity.  US real wage increases are said to have recovered at one-third the rate of their recovery at the end of the past five or so business cycles!  Corporate profits have recovered from the last recession and occupy the highest proportion of the US GDP ever in the post-WWII period while wages and salaries are at their lowest.  Much of this is due to Bush’s policy of letting jobs hemorage out of the economy while increasing unemployment and the reserve army of labor which holds wages down. The economy has grown in GDP terms by quite a bit as has labor productivity while the real incomes of those below the median have lost 15-20% of their real value from 1973.  This is the cause of the chronic tendency toward stagnation for the last three decades.  Importing cheap goods courtesy of Asian T-bond investors to swell the profits of our burgeoning retail sector is not a reasonable social policy and is costing jobs that could be made by that portfolio investment.  Cutting the minimum wage, like the Republicans and the Libertarians want to do, is not only cruel but the equivalent of throwing gas onto a fire in order to extinguish it!

We certainly do provide the funds for investment.
If it wasn’t for us, there would be no middle
class retirement funds.
See Economics And The Public Welfare by Benjamin
M. Anderson, Capitalism The Creator by Carl Snyder
and Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics by Dr.
George Reisman.
We are not responsible for your city government’s
mismanagement of funds nor is any profit GUARANTEED IN THE MARKET.
No cares about you’re ignorant views on Ayn Rand.
“Trickle down” is a leftist anti-concept, the
Reagan years were great for everyone that worked,
like Bush he simply didn’t go far enough in his
tax cuts.

Abolishing the minimum wage would be the greatest
single thing to provide full employment.
The Left hates blacks and other subpar groups
and wishes to keep them down on the socialist
welfare plantation. The more miserable they are,
the more you folks hope to cash in.
You are truly contemptible haters of mankind.

Libertarians have NEVER explained how socialists are racist when it is libertarians who refer to the poor as subpar and inferior.  If there were no taxes the rich would glean all the fruits of others labor through their control of the system and private property and the poor would get nothing but the chance to enrich these parasites even more!  How are unions an interest group but not business? And please tell me why welfare is considered a subsidy but not pathetically low wages (for business that is)that workers have no power to change through either unions or the law?!

Saying wages are low is like saying that prices
are low since a wage is the price paid for labor.
If there were no taxes the workers would be able to save money, move on to the middle class and then challenge those particular rich who are incompetent.
Business creates jobs and raises our whole standard of living while unions are an extortion
racket run for the interests of the labor czars.
Welfare, whether corporate or to the poor, is a
subsidy because it comes involuntarily out of our
pockets. It creates distortions in the market.
The Left TALKS endlessly about the poor and minorities but your policies keep them unemployed
and on the dole. Who cares if you’re better at
dishing out the PC crap if the policies actually
hurt the alleged beneficiaries ?

Mr. Rockefeller,

In your post of June 14, you state:

“We certainly do provide the funds for investment.
If it wasn’t for us, there would be no middle
class retirement funds.”

You make no comment on my statement that most of the capital in the America is provided by retirement funds. You DO claim to be responsible for creating retirement funds. I would think the union organizers of the last century were the people most responsible for the creation of retirement funds.

As I mentioned before I’m not a leftist. I don’t really care for unions - especially the prison guard’s unions and the teacher’s unions.

But back to your post:
“No cares about you’re ignorant views on Ayn Rand.”

I assume you mean “No ONE cares about YOUR ignorant views on Ayn Rand”? Well, thank you for the ad hominem attack.

If you enjoy reading Ms. Rand’s to-my-mind-tedious writing, please help yourself. I’m not really sure if anyone posting on this board cares what you think of Ms. Rand’s writing. But please read away.

“We are not responsible for your city government’s
mismanagement of funds nor is any profit GUARANTEED IN THE MARKET.” I don’t believe I implied anyone other than the Republicans guilty of the mismanagement were responsible. I merely commented on the irony: CEOs (and mayors) siphon money from any retirement fund that does well, but say that there is no “profit GUARANTEED IN THE MARKET” when the funds lose money.

In yet another post you make a claim I’d love to see backed up with something other than the titles of books by white economists: “Abolishing the minimum wage would be the greatest single thing to provide full employment.”

I think teaching people how to work for themselves would be “the greatest single thing to provide full employment.” But maybe you’re right. (Please note the way I use the contraction “you’re” - it’s a contraction of “you are”.)

As I mentioned in my first post and the object of your flame, I’m interested in “cybernetics - robust self-regulating systems.” And that interest arouses a certain curiosity in me. I’m curious HOW a system like the meat-packing system in America evolves in such a way as to INCREASE the number of
injuries on the job. Shouldn’t a free market favor companies capable of boasting of the safety and cleanliness of their meat processing plants? I’m just curious about this, that’s all.

Mr. Rockefeller, do you believe a system in which personal injuries increase over 20 years needs no correction?

“The Left hates blacks and other subpar groups
and wishes to keep them down on the socialist
welfare plantation. The more miserable they are,
the more you folks hope to cash in.” Hmmm… I know a lot of leftists. Most of them imagine socialism like the Netherlands, Sweden, or Israel. Or Canada. Their racism seems to tend toward forgiving blacks and other minorities certain cultural activities I find abhorrent.

“Blacks and other subpar groups” - Mr. Rockefeller, really! Black people dominate in sports and entertainment in U.S. They’re to be found at the tops of most other fields, even if their numbers are statistically under-represented. And scientists currently believe that Africans decended from those who stayed in Africa when the rest of our ancestors made the great exodus 65,000 years ago to populte the rest of the world have more genetic diversity than the descendants of the diaspora.

“You are truly contemptible haters of mankind.” Geez. I don’t know. I spend an awful lot of time with democrats, socialists, new agers, and pagans. I even have a communist friend, the hardest working chiropractor/massage practitioner I’ve ever known. I spend time with these people because they’re well socialized, friendly and funny. Most libertarians I’ve met are humourless nerds. I find most self-identified “conservatives” grumpy and intolerant. As I find your posts.

Libertarians assume a great deal such as the system is fair, natural, and the only possible one.  They also assume there is no power imbalance in their perfunctory and schematic world.  Saying that reforms hurt the poor is like a bully saying that resisting a beating only makes it worse in the very end!

You apparently have trouble reading because
I specifically refuted your assertion on investment creation & gave sources.
Unions only live off of capital created by the
capitalists, which is why I suggested you might
profit from reading Ayn Rand or if you are too
close-minded about her work, I did give other sources.
Characterizing correctly your (happy) ignorant
views on Ayn Rand is not the same as the ad hominem fallacy in logic.
On the minimum wage see Henry Hazlitt’s Economics
in One Lesson on how it causes it unemployment.
I’m not familiar with the specifics of your scandal in San Diego but many jurisdictions are
heading for disaster and the great majority of
them are run by Democrats.
Assuming there has been an increase in meatpacking
injuries and it is the fault of the management,
we do have the tort suit to correct it.
Blacks are not found at the tops of most fields
outside of a few major sports and entertainment
businesses. Your statement here is hogwash.
They are found at the top of the crime and poverty
fields but I don’t believe it is exclusively
genetic, the pernicious leftist ideology that
regards them as victims shares much of the blame.
They have a bad culture by and large with the
obvious exceptions, Bill Cosby, etc. There is
a biological or genetic component too because
not everything is cultural. I have never one
refutation of the Bell Curve.
Your misspelled comments about African diversity
from 65,000 years ago make no sense. Sounds
like Black Muslim nonhistory.
I’ve met a TON of leftists and I’ll stand by
remarks above. By and large they are humorless
oafs. I have a limited tolerance of leftist
nonsense. I admit it.

Steve, just because you call an action a “reform”
does not make it good.
Capitalism has nothing to do with bullying
or physical force but with our minds.
It is the only fair and natural system but it
rests on inequality and that is a good thing.
A natural thing, we are all unequal.
Whoever claimed there had to be a power balance,
whatever that nebulous phrase means ?

Bill,

I think our Mr. Rockafeller was being ironic.  Anyway, the “authoritarians” aka conservative crooks, discovered good ol’ B.F. long ago.

J Craig, Lin Bio, Christine, Jack Barnes, a few others, and now Peter Rockefeller...Sigh.

Look, it really is pretty simple. If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, you can lay odds that it is a duck...er troll.

The troll has taken over the whole thread. There is hardly anything going on that it has not provoked or created. People here are actually arguing about libertarianism as if that has real value! Who’s agenda is that? I give you one guess. Certainly not the progressive folks here. 

So, one would be inclined to ask: Now why would a person take the time, and expend the effort, to come on to a liberal forum like this when he is totally opposed to what the people on it stand for? To learn from the “idiots” here? (Be serious). How about to teach them something? (Would you go on a libertarian forum to teach them about progressive values?) And if it is to teach, why is this troll so mean spirited? So, then why would that person come on this forum all day as he does? Its not hard to see the answer when you look at it that way.

And of course that begs the question, “Why would I want to waste my time trying to do the impossible?” That is, of course, talking to a troll on this forum as if it is a real human being whose heart is in a loving place.

Never mind, Merlin!!

Look at it this way!!  We know that Jack is a mean-spirited so-and-so, his remarks to Richard prove that… And others!

(I seem to be giving him a run for his money, though!)

I think it’s interesting to NOTE the amount and variety of views that DO come onto these sort of Left-Democratic forums… I’ve thus far encountered lots of genuine Liberals, a few would-be Marxists who still seem in thrall to the Democrats (as everyone on the Left IS in in America - it’s the mesmerising size and clout of the party, and indeed of the whole two-party system!)

Atavistic socialists like myself… Well I seem to be the best example of a socialist eccentric!

One or two people who maybe are just folks…

And of course the right-wing extremists like Christine and Jack Barnes.  I find it interesting, though, that they’re evangelizing libertarians, NOT evangelizing religious fundamentalists!

Maybe religious fundies wouldn’t dare come on a blog like this!

I dunno!  Still learning!

Anyway, I don’t know much about libertarianism; OR, most importantly, how libertarians fit in with the Republican party machine, which Jack obviously still supports, because he says FreeRepublic.com is doing good work.

Isn’t a troll someone who DOESN’T really believe in or support his position - someone who says just anything??

Who Lin Biao, by the way?

The name sounds like something out of history.

Now, Merlin, “Peter Rockefeller” IS a real TROLL!  His name is crap, it’s presumptuous, I bet he doesn’t own a bean… you name it!

And he doesn’t quote any books or websites - just says really stupid things like only LEFTISTS should get thorough tax audits!

Well it’s usually the Right-wingnuts who are caught cheating on their taxes - Newt Gingrich, any one??

Yeah, Bill - and Jack!  I DON’T believe Ayn Rand’s stuff sells in numbers, or is read in numbers, only surpassed by the Bible!

(Why should it - is it because it is written at a 12-year-old level?)

What about the Koran?  Or the Annals of Confucius?  Bet they sell plenty, worldwide!

I don’t believe assertions like the above one, without proof.  But I happen to know, that the works of J R R Tolkien, namely the Lord of the Rings trilogy, sells 5 MILLION a year worldwide - the BBC website told me about 3 years ago, and that was when the movies were just starting to come out.

As for Joanne Rowling, I bet SHE’D give that Rand meany a run for her money!!

Yes, Steve, I agree.  Glad you liked www.wsws.org.

You’re precisely correct in your June 14 3.09 post.

All that “socialists are racist” is PURE trash, by the way… They say it of liberals in America, too, of course… it’s just a sinister line spouted to get the poor blacks “away” from their sources of support - so that the rightists can rape them!  That’s the clearest way of putting it!

WHO wrote “The Bell Curve”?  Who sponsored it?  CIA Manhattan Institute, that’s who!

As for “Rockefeller” - I did have my suspicions for a moment that he was a SATIRICAL troll, not really holding his absurd positions… but all that racist trash he just spouted and the stuff about “liberal plantations” proved to me that that he IS, the genuine, GangOfPimps article.

(The pimp metaphor works well - what Peter is saying about genuine Democrats who care about welfare (not all do, of course!) is like a pimp saying to his ‘girls’, or a gangster saying to the people he ‘protects’ - Don’t go off with that social worker, he’s trying to keep you on the social work plantation, when you could make all this money - for me - by whoring for ME!)

Rock on Bill.

Is Peter Jack Barnes’ pal, specially invited on here - or do you think he’s Jack who’s learnt not to use his return key so much?

Oh but Bill - did you EVER read Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”, about the turn-of-the-century Chicago meatpacking industry, BTW?

And it HASN’T evolved to be any better since then - marginally cleaner, perhaps, and I don’t think so many workers get rendered into lard, though many still get killed or injured on the job… RSI plays a big part now too.

Read “Fast Food Nation” by Eric Schlosser, which also addresses the problems in the above article.

Nope, “Peter Rockefeller” IS Jack - he’s slipping back with that return key…

Christine and Jack…

You might like to know that earlier today, I checked out a couple of the websites at least, which you recommended.

I don’t know about the books, yet. ‘Spose I’ll have to get a few, give my money to those Amazon capitalists, sigh… Seeing as I was curious enough to want to know what all you right-wingers thought!  (At least I won’t be stooping so low as to buy Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity!)

lewrockwell.com being the one I spent most time at… Yes, I agree, they ARE anti-Bush; and they seem like a TRULY libertarian website to me, ie they’re not so interested in Ayn Rand, as they are in the legalization of medical marijuana, for a start, and possibly in the legalization of all drugs in the end.  Well so am I!  I never disagreed with THOSE aspects of the Libertarian Party!  But I’m not sure to what degree the Libertarian Party is Randist…

(I have, as I have said, come across at least one libertarian lady before on the Web, who is libertarian, pro-drug and anti-communist, for what SHE perceives to be a very good reason… bad experiences at the hands of the American govt., basically… As a minor, too!  But if the American “war-on-drugs”, cult-creating elite are “socialist”, I’m a Dutchman! Which I’m not!)

Yeah, sure you Libertarians can have your medical marijuana and so on!  WHO would deprive you of it?  NO socialist or Communist I know!

(It’s some of the other ideas of these ultra-free-marketeers we don’t like!)

I did learn a lot from that site though… well not from it precisely, but there were a lot of links.  From one of them I found out quite a lot about the campaign for medical marijuana, and I also learnt about the fate of one Peter McWilliams, which ended up making me very sad.  You see, I thought the name was familiar… and it was, I used to be a fan of his, of sorts, at least a buyer of several of his “New Age” self-help paperbacks, in the earlier Nineties… Apparently he was a poet and a political activist as well, which I did NOT know…

Poor guy!  He was a bit of a guru victim - he lived in those fascinating, late Sixties/earlier Seventies times, which were before my era. Then he became a rationalist materialist - as he was slowly dying of Aids!! (Some people really make it hard on themselves!) He became interested in marijuana as a medicine largely because of its anti-nausea effects, which allowed him to keep medicine down to overcome both Aids and cancer.  Fascinating. http://petermcwilliams.org/mirrors/www.petertrial.com/story.htm

It was worth going to lewrockwell just to read his story, and another long interview on a linked site which I can’t find now…

But the evil Feds busted him; and one of the conditions of bail was that he had to stay off marijuana… and no other medicine worked on his nausea symptoms, so in the end, in June of 2000, he was found choked on his own vomit… What a way to go!  Someone should sue the feds!

But Jack/Peter would probably say that Federal agencies shouldn’t be responsible!

Let’s see how compassionate Jack is, by his reaction to that story.  I think even Rand might have shed a tear.  After all, the guy was an entrepreneur his whole life through, albeit a faggy, poetry-vending, New-Age-guru one.  William F. Buckley called him “a bird of paradise” - what does that say about Buckley, I wonder?

Yeah, that lewrockwell is full of what I find is the strangest mix of people - the right-wing (racist) National Review-founding Bill Buckley; the medical marijuana legalizers; one guy who seems all hot on promoting Intelligent Design as opposed to Darwinism… (typical right-wing plot, Trotskyists will tell you!)

Neo-liberals are such a rag-bag!

Ludwig van Mises or whatever he calls himself - shouldn’t it be Ludwig van Miser??  I’m sorry but Bill’s right - you can chase me with old white male elitist economists, Jewish, Dutch, Austrian or otherwise!!

I learnt, coincidentally, by the way, off a link from a recent Alternet post.. well there was a BRILLIANT, long article about the Religious Right (the really, really right - Dominionists!) and the American Establishment and the connections between the two and everything else.  From Moral Rearmament to Alcoholics Anonymous, it’s amazing how many cult-like movements come out of America. This guy said that the Austrian school of economics was basically a Nazi plot! I can buy that! Well, Hitler was from Austria - why not??  Heidegger and that lot seem to have had something to do with it as well - he was a big Nazi fellow-traveller, and Leo Strauss would have been too, if he weren’t a Jew!

(Sauce for the goose, Jack! You’re always saying that all sorts of far-flung things which have no relation to it are Nazi plots!!)

Here’s the article link: http://insider-magazine.com/ChristianMafia.htm

WELL worth a read!!

(Basically, though, all this “Vereide” Wayne Madsen talks about in the article - well, the rich were all doing it, in 20s/30s Germany and America, and using religion because they were afraid of Communism and unionism - which means, basically, afraid of the working class!  It’s a class thing, as ever!!)

Well, FINALLY, Jack, to answer a lot of what you posted to me earlier in the thread…

Non-linearity? I won’t be too sad! The New York Times a few years ago praised a rising trendy writer to the skies for being “jazzy and non-linear”. Unfortunately, the guy happened to be a fascist comic book writer/artist who I just happen to hate!

But non-linearity is obviously no obstacle to anything…

Except, maybe, to your brain, Jack!!  (You just can’t cope with my associative mind and all its ideas!)

Now, Bill, Margaret and others: I really think Jack Barnes IS a big troll; as I think Margaret said before, his name reminds one of the labor movement, and I’ve finally realized the reference: Jack Barnes is actually the name of the president of the Socialist Workers’ Party in America; and they’re the main rivals to the SEP/World Socialist Web Site!!

They hate each other. So this Jack Barnes, with all his comments about wsws.org - he seems to know a lot about them, for a Libertarian that presumably never SAW the site before I mentioned it - well he could be the same guy, feasibly!

Or else he’s an independent troll using the name on purpose. And Peter Rockefeller as well.  It would fit!  What d’you think, Merlin?

Yes, returning to your pathetic extremist comments, “Jack”, as they relate to wsws.org… (Will they ever defend ME like this some day… Sigh....!)

For example: “Aussie Trot nuts”?  The SEP/WSWS is an INTERNATIONAL organisation; that is their whole point! Their main base is in America, and they have offices in US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Poland, (former) Yugoslavia, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia… which is what makes them such a valuable news site, really!

Electroshock - yes, I think you’ll have to look at their article which briefly mentions it a little more CAREFULLY than that!! It is still a medically approved procedure which is in favor with many doctors and hospitals.  The charge is smaller now, and they do it all under anaesthetic. I saw it on ER or sth. some years ago…

“Coercive psychiatry”??  You mean Freudianism, or what?  (Freudians are pussies if you know how to beat them at their own game, which I happen to! I’m a proud Jungian!!  Adlerian!  And a lots of other thingsian.)

Or do you mean drugs in mental hospitals? Well, we could argue about that all day. Thomas Szasz might not like it, but if the alternative is, as it has proved to be in this new society, throwing out schizophrenic people to fend for themselves on the streets - you know where my vote will go!!

“Starving Schiavo to death”..!!  She was brain dead ANYWAY, Jack! Had been for years! Her brain had turned to MUSH, capiche?? All the brain scans proved it. Not the most squeamish New Ager would recommend keeping her “alive” like that.

And WHY, pray, is this such a big right-wing issue, for both Repugs and Libertarians? BECAUSE, it would seem to me, it is the USUAL right-wing “pro life” plot, aimed at keeping women DOWN… WE bring the life into this world, understand?  It’s OUR decision whether to go through with it!!  I wonder, was Ayn Rand a “pro-lifer”? I have no idea.

It takes me such LONG posts to reply to all your crap, Jack, because you, as a rule, just throw out lists of the stuff!!  And leave the real arguments to other people!

“Black sociopathy” - is WHAT, and how do wsws.org defend it??

“mass murderer Trotsky” - well, another site, www.marxist.com, don’t seem to think so, and the Kremlin archives, recently released, don’t back that one up either.

“They predicted
we would have a civil war when Ozone Al lost
in 2000 ! “

No, they DIDN’T actually… the reference to a civil war Mark II comes when they analyze the awful, polarized, angry atmosphere in the wake of the Clinton impeachment and the relentless persecution of the Clintons for trivia by the far right.  WSWS did criticize the hypocritical handling of the 2000 (S)election by the politicians, the media and everything else, though…

(They claim to have made bigger and better predictions than what YOU say, Jack!  Like the fall of Stalinism!)

Yeah, when did you read the Ehrenreich book?  THAT was quick!!  Or, if you read it before, well it should have told you more about WHY workers won’t just work their guts out for greedy capitalist pigs, shouldn’t it??

Now go and read the other two…

BTW - what is the difference between your flaming Mises and Rothbard and the neocons, anyway?  They ARE neocons!!  Who you say you don’t like!

“After the Africans finish offing each other"… this is just pure RACISM, Jack! Why are so-called “libertarians”, who THEORETICALLY should be immune to such irrational arguments - unless of course they think it’s an expression of their freedom - SO prone to race-based prejudices??

(This is just some kind of Southern Rebel Yell thing, isn’t it?)

And FINALLY, the best bit last!! 

“You’re [sic] bizarre statement that black crime against
whites is justified because some of our ancestors
were slavers or enacted Jim Crow laws is about as
stupid, racist and Nazi a statement as I have
ever read. The first time that you or one of yours
is the victim of some vicious black thug will be
the exact moment that you recant your unconscionable bullshit!”

No it won’t, Jack, because I don’t seek revenge against desperate people anyway, and because I would never turn racist (or anti-Irish, or sth.) because a member of that ethnic group attacked me.

Why, how many “vicious black thugs” do YOU know of, have YOU personally encountered??

Remember, as Mike Moore said, outside of race riots, it’s actually quite rare!  He thinks they put the same black face under a wool hat on every TV news screen in America!  (Maybe they do!)

You obviously AREN’T aware (probably purposely render yourself ignorant) of the DEEP effects slavery and race persecution has had on America.  The Blacks are, because of it, the single most economically disadvantaged group (bar Native Americans, the other great sufferers) BY MILES!!

They want to sue companies for slavery, now.  I’ve seen activists, mainly on other blogs, I think, like Alternet’s.  I hope they do - I’d like to see what happens!  Let them sue the Rockefellers and Richard Mellon Scaife.  That will serve that lot all right.

KARMA, by the way, isn’t anything to do with NAZIS, Jack.  It’s one of those facts of life.  What goes around, comes around.  Enhanced cause and effect.

(If Nazis had seriously believed in it, I think they would have been more tender in how they treated all those Jews...)

“not true in reality, which
is made up EXCLUSIVELY OF INDIVIDUALS.”

Yes - WHY are you so nervously insistent on the above, Jack?!

I mean, what is a body - a body or just a collection of cells??

I would have thought either interpretation valid, depending on the construct.

ANYWAY, Jack!  You haven’t been bothering, so far, to answer ANY of my original questions about your Libertarian utopia!!

Like - WHO in it is going to be responsible for roads?  Airports?  Air traffic control?  For seeing to it that all the computer components match up?  International standards??

Just let’s stick to the ROADS and the AIRWAYS for starters!!

After all, in a TRUE libertarian Utopia, it seems to ME, at any rate, the FIRST thing one would abolish, is POLICE and PRISONS…

(Anyone on here agree with me?  Anyone want to abolish Bastilles, the way I now do?!)

But NO, Jack, YOU want to keep just THOSE… plus “bloodsucking attorneys”, because otherwise you’re going to have a hard time claiming that the capitalist pigs are imprisoning people justly…

Yes, well, all bourgeois need their cops to run to.

Not so “rugged individualist” after all!

AND - NEITHER did you answer my other main question about this dreamworld - ie, in it, WHAT would be to be done, about the people NOT ABLE TO COPE, and unable to earn a sufficient living, in the total absence of social security?

What are you and the ghost of Ayn Rand going to do about THEM, for Pete’s sake?!

ANSWER ME, and be honest!!

a) Kill them b) let them starve - but they’ll steal, Jack!  Like ravens and magpies!  c) put them in workhouses/industrial prisons d) slave ships like the Romans.

CHOOSE!!  Or come up with something better.

Liz said;

“Yeah, sure you Libertarians can have your medical marijuana and so on!  WHO would deprive you of it?  NO socialist or Communist I know!”

And the socialist would have the government pay for it! YEEEEHAAAA!  Or, at least, subsidize the farmer. LOL.

Hi Liz,

In my last post I wrote this:

“J Craig, Lin Bio, Christine, Jack Barnes, a few others, and now Peter Rockefeller...Sigh.
Look, it really is pretty simple. If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, you can lay odds that it is a duck...er troll.
The troll has taken over the whole thread. There is hardly anything going on that it has not provoked or created. People here are actually arguing about libertarianism as if that has real value! Who’s agenda is that? I give you one guess. Certainly not the progressive folks here.”

Those who have been posting here a while know that these names are all created by one individual. He changes his user name when it suits his purpose. And as I noted these are not all of them. He keeps generating new ones. (His creating an old friend “Christine” was a rather humorous touch I think, even though transparently corny. Her job is to back up Jack Barnes and lend credibility to his flagging persona. Peter Rockerfeller? This one’s purpose is to piss off anyone who is foolish enough to think he is a real person!)
I have made it my task to continue to expose this fraud and troll from time to time as I feel this type of behavior is very destructive to this forum and hurtful to those of us here. (See definition of troll below,) As I have continually pushed, ad nauseum, we, the folks of good intent, (of all stripes) should not have any transactions with this fraud/troll.
I said above that this one individual is monopolizing the agenda on this thread! What else is being talked about??? And quite successfully too I might add. Whoever this troll with the multiple user names is, “it” (I prefer to call a troll an “it.”) laughs “itself” to sleep at night at the “idiots from the left” who can’t stop themselves from responding to his goading crap.

Historically, I don’t know who Lin Bio is, if anyone. In a past thread here it was another incarnation “it” used. This time an Asian arguing. Very transparent and badly done. Lin Bio gave Margaret a bad time while the personality existed.

Here is the definition of a troll:

troll

v.,n. 1. [From the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban] To
utter a posting on Usenet designed to attract predictable
responses or flames; or, the post itself. Derives from the phrase
“trolling for newbies” which in turn comes from mainstream
“trolling”, a style of fishing in which one trails bait through a
likely spot hoping for a bite. The well-constructed troll is a post
that induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look
even more clueless than they already do, while subtly conveying to
the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact a deliberate
troll. If you don’t fall for the joke, you get to be in on it. See
also YHBT. 2. An individual who chronically trolls in sense 1;
regularly posts specious arguments, flames or personal attacks to a
newsgroup, discussion list, or in email for no other purpose than to
annoy someone or disrupt a discussion. Trolls are recognizable by
the fact that the have no real interest in learning about the topic
at hand - they simply want to utter flame bait. Like the ugly
creatures they are named after, they exhibit no redeeming
characteristics, and as such, they are recognized as a lower form of
life on the net, as in, “Oh, ignore him, he’s just a troll.”

Jack Barnes, nee J Craig, Lin Bio, Christine, Peter Roc...etc. fits the definition in 2. above.

I enjoy your posts! Thanks!

Our current epoch is utterly defined by the hyper-mobility of productive capital on a global scale. All the nonsensical braying, like so many donkey’s, of the US bourgeousie about unfair Chinese trade practices are ingenuous at best!  US investments of tens of billions have made China the biggest exporter of cheap assembled garments in the world.  Exports are 36% of China’s GDP half of which are destined for the US.  Most of China’s increase in textile industrial capacity over the last five years comes from US TNC investment!  The cancellation of the three decades old multi-fibre agreement, assigning textile quotas to various countries around the world for the vast US market, led to incredible Chinese increases in market share putting other countries out of business.  US TNC investment strategy made the Chinese industrial revolution the fourth greatest in history after the UK, the US, and post WWII Japan.  This has less to do with China than the current epoch of corporate led globalization which is making the biggest TNCs more money than the previous trade agreement arrangements of the earlier days.  Capital is consolidating on a global scale and Bush’s nagging about tariffs, currency revaluations, and Chinese export taxes on their textile exports to the US and EU markets would only cost Chinese jobs and TNC profits.  It is for this reason that little will be done!  Niether Walmart nor the US textile and garment makers want to lose money to Bush’s protectionism which will not eventually save jobs at home.  Workers are still force into a race to the bottom! Capital is hyper-mobile and no one is talking about capital controls!  One of the greatest contradiction in today’s world is the co-existance of emerging global tendencies in governance and the economic interests it serves with the decending vestiges of nationalist fractions of capital and the parts of the old nation-state apparatus which served them.  As the Transnational Capitalist Class grows everywhere and consistenly merges into a powerful global economic interest the remaining fragments of bourgeous nationalism around the world will either die off or merge in some ancilliary manner with the growing TCC!  Global governance from the WTO and other such organizations will increase in their influence on political outcomes!  Nationalism will soon disappear even as a means of posturing! Doubts about this should be allayed by the further growth of Chinese industrial capacity and increasing specialization within the global workshop and the world division of labor at large.  In the end, the political struggle will not be between nationalism and globalism but between corporate global hegemony on the one hand and the counter-hegemony of the dispossessed and impoverished masses the entire world over!

Liz,
I’m getting weary of having to trudge through
your word salady non-stop rants to find the few
items even relevant to our previous exchanges.
Slavery ended 150 years ago, legal segregation
over 40 years ago in the south, long before
that in the rest of the country.
Black crime and black sociopathology have not ended and they commit all manner of crimes far
out of proportion to their 12% of the population,
50% of all homicides for just one example.
Since not all blacks commit crime, your theory
of oppression and poverty causing crime doesn’t
hold water. It is the very bad MoFo culture indulged in by white trash leftists such as
yourself that has encouraged a pandemic of crime
by blacks since the New Deal.
Africa is in a state of utter depravity due to black misrule in every country there, the Marxist cannibal Mugabe merely the latest example.
The Kremlin Archives do not whitewash Trotsky,
you are a liar pure and simple. Read The Black
Book of Communism. Trotsky was the author of
the Red Terror and slaughtered the anarchist
sailors at Kronstadt in 1921.
People not able to cope ARE GOING TO HAVE TO
RELY ON PRIVATE CHARITY, PERIOD.
Your misfortune is not a lien on me.
Black thugs, quite a few when I was unfortunate
to live in Oakland-Berkeley and DC before that.
All property will be private and for profit
or a voluntary NGO, including roads, broadcasting
airwaves, airports, streets, schools, hospitals
and so on down the line.
READ “FOR A NEW LIBERTY” BY MURRAY N.ROTHBARD
FOR THE DETAILS OF INTEGRATING THEORY WITH
PRACTICE.
Don’t you dare to tell me to choose between your
false scenarios. I reject them all.
Terri Schiavo was not braindead, not in a coma,
not in pain, not terminal and not on life supports. She responded to sight and touch.
Her husband simply decided AFTER he got the million bucks to dump her and invented some dubious hearsay testimony as to her alleged intentions.
See liberal Nat Hentoff’s pieces on the Village Voice and Jewish World Review websites in this regard.
See the works of Peter Breggin, MD, a psychiatrist
in Bethesda, Maryland on the barbaric brain destroying effects of electroshock and see
Szasz’s Compassionate Cruelty on the homeless
issue as it relates to so-called “mentally ill.”
You might as well smash a brick against someone’s
head, it would be as kind and scientific as ECT.
Funny, most of the LEFT here couldn’t stand Clinton for his many wars, NAFTA, crime bills
and so-called welfare reform. You must be an
unusually stupid Canadian to defend him.
The government should not pay for pot, it should simply get out of the way and repeal ALL drug
laws, see Our Right To Drugs by Thomas Szasz.
The first Lin Biao was Mao’s chosen successor
but fled from Red Guard and his plane crashed
on the way to USSR in 1970. The Lin Biao here
told me that he is his grandson.
I am pro-abortion and think your mama should have
had one. I think your right not to be killed starts after you get out of the womb.
That was Rand’s view.
Nonlinearity is a sign of disordered and immature
thought.
Read the Ehrenreich book a while back after I
heard her interviewed on Commie Pacifica network.
Prisons are another failed socialist idea but
for now we need them until we can think up a
more creative alternative THAT WILL PERMANENTLY
SEPARATE THESE SCUM FROM SOCIETY.
Over 70% of blacks between 14 and 45 in Baltimore
are in prison, on parole, on probation, awaiting
trial or awaiting sentencing. I’m concerned about
the other 30% on the loose............
Ok, that’s it, feel like I have to take a bath
whenever I finish responding to your idiocy.
Never heard of Jack Barnes, some SWP hack ?
WSWS is a worldwide group headquartered in Australia with maybe 38 members total.
Merlin is the main person using multiple identities on this board including gordon,
margaret, lefty, richard, proud vet and many
others. He is an agent provocateur, so beware !

Wow, this really has become quite the lengthy thread!

Liz, we may be worlds apart spiritually, but you rock politically.  I think that Libertarians are not even worth the newspaper one would wrap them in to chuck them into the bin.  You seem further Left than I (as I am a capitalist, but think socialism insofar as caring for the populace is a good idea), but what a welcome respite from the Thread Masher you are.

Merlin, glad you’re still fighting the good fight.

On another issue, I was just emailed from an Impeach Bush group I belong to and they are organizing protest rallies outside local TV stations for tomorrow to demand that Rep. John Conyers’ delivery of the half million signatures demanding a House investigation into the Downing Street Memos be covered (at last) on network TV.

Look in your area for such rallies and participate.  We’ve got to get rid of these bastards.

Barnes, Taylor and Rockefeller make cogent
arguments. The rest of you, excepting Steve,
belong in padded cells.
If objects like Liz and Margaret represent
the opposition, W ain’t losing any sleep.
Funny how Dems and Commie Trots get along
so well politically.
The voters are not buying the phony centrism
of the Dems, they know they are your basic
Commies.
Losers all...............................

Robbie,

Thanks so much for exempting me from the padded cell. I get claustrophobic.  I hope you’re not thinking of Gitmo for me! At least I’d be guaranteed three squares a day!  MAYBE! No the Democrats are not communists. They are a big capitalist party like the other one! They have actually pulled capitalist chestnuts out of the fire on many occaisson.  They used the military more than the chickenhawk Republicans.  It was Clinton who really defeated Saddam Hussein.  He throttled Iraq several times including once in 1998 destroying the Mukharabat HQ and in all likelihood setting back any plans for restarting Saddam’s weapons program. It was during the 8 years of sanctions that the military was reduced to nothing for want of spare parts and inability to upgrade itself through weapons and technology imports that were easily available under Reagan and Bush I.  One other thing.  As many may not know or have forgotten, Bush I pulled Saddam Hussein back from the brink of disaster in 1991 after the Iraqi troops began their long retreat from Kuwait.  They turned on Saddam and a revolt by the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the South was on the verge of success when the US actually helped Saddam put down the rebellion by allowing him to crush the Shiites with the authorization of the helicopters and the Kurds in the North with troops.  At one point there was revolt in the military so widespread that Saddam really only controlled Baghdad and its environs.  14 out of 18 provinces were in the hands of the rebels. Bush I helped him back to power in order to deny the Iraqi people the chance to change the government themselves and thereby exclude US imperialism from determining the political future of Iraq. US policy bore fruit for big corporations and now they control most of Iraq. The oil and the value of the entire economy is valuable to the neo-con pillagers and carpetbaggers.  Clinton stuck with the policy of duel containment and most likely made it easier for Bush. If elected Gore most likely would have led a multilateral force to divide up the spoils.  Unlike Bush’s atavistic nationalism, the Democrats now see the US military as the chief bodyguard of world capitalism in general. Most of the major US foreign policies have deep roots and are bi-partisan.  Just look at the Cold War!

Thanks, Steve, for the history.
Didn’t Carter first encourage Hussein
to invade Iran during the hostage crisis
in Summer, 1980 ?
Didn’t Clinton’s Secretary of State, Madwoman
Allbright tell Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes that
500,000 starved Iraqi children due to Clinton’s
sanctions were an acceptable price to pay ?
Weren’t Gore-Lieberman even more warmongering
and hawkish than Bush ? And even more controlled
by AIPAC ?
I thought Saddam’s nuclear dreams turned to dust
before Clinton came in ? Please clarify.

Hot off the presses:
Unrequited Love: Middle Class Voters Reject
Democrats at the Ballot Box
The 16 page study is done by a Democratic Think
Tank, Third Way.
Just downloaded from The New American website
(JBS bi-weekly) and they got it from Fox News.
Former Rep. Martin Frost from Dallas gives an
analysis of it, Frost and the more qualified
Tim Roehman of Indiana were defeated by that
dufus, Howard Screaming Dean for DNC Chair.
More Dems in Congress have called for Dean’s
head.
Steve is an intelligent leftist and worthy
adversary but the rest of you psychotics
like Liz, Margaret, Merlin (aka....everybody),
Nothing to be Proud of Vet and Lefty bottom
feeder should check this one out.
Bush is unpopular but the libs even more
and the Billary bitchess has totally backed
the neocon’s war. As has Pelosi, Tauscher
and most of the slimebucket Demos in Congress.
Except Kucinich and the libertarian Ron Paul.
Imperialism-statism-collectivism was a revolt
against traditional American libertarianism
by Insiders like Rockefeller, Carnegie and
others. Liberals love war, murder, torture,
excrement and decadence of every sort.
But no matter how many blacks you got to
vote three and four times for Kerry in Cleveland,
you still couldn’t steal the election.
The Democratic and Liberal bandwagon has turned
out to be a HEARSE.

My, my, our resident troll is really showing his desperation! In this last diatribe he doesn’t even try to hide behind the “Rockefeller” pseudonym.

Looks like we might expect to see the Barnes persona disappear as did J Craig, having lived out its life expectancy. I wonder what new user name will appear in Barnes place? Should this “exchange of personas” take place, who will be the first person here to spot the “new” name for this old and desperate troll? I wait with breath held, in excited anticipation!

You are the troll, Merlin. We have counted
at least 16 different aliases you post under.
There are a good many people here who agree
with Jack and Christine and Peter.

And now “Katie” chimes in! Is “she” new? Then I win the silly game I proposed in my last post. I must say I’m flattered by all this attention I’m getting! And just think, folks, none of you exist! You are all me!

Its funny, in a previous post, I told our troll I had nothing to discuss with “it.” Yet “it” is so desperate for me to talk to “it,” “it” is accusing me of being all of you! So “it” gets me to “discuss” with “it” in a round about way.

You know, this calling “it” “it” is getting difficult, but I guess “it” is what “it” is.

merlin, guy, no one cares what you think
or even if you think. little guy, you are
just a blip on the way to more cerebral
posts.
hope you win this argument with yourself.....

Boy, Merlin, aren’t you glad we don’t know Jack Barnes, Katie, Christine, etc. in real life?!  I think “Jack the Ripper” is probably more true of his persona than any other name.  His frustration and rage is palpable and, sadly, laughable.  He isn’t very clever, really, because you can always tell his writing style. 

By the way, you’d mentioned you’re from my neck of the woods once.  There is a rally tomorrow by the Channel 5 Studios at 5:30 demanding an official investigation into the Downing Street Memos, precluding an impeachment hearing.  Be there!

Omigod, now Margaret is writing to her other
identity, Merlin aka Lefty aka Gordon aka Richard
aka Proud Vet aka bunni.
Like the Democratic Party she is doomed to lose.
So sad.

Now, people, don’t be too hard on Margaret.
She does the very best that she can with the
limited material available. We never expect her
to win any arguments and she never disappoints.
I’m just trying to figure out which posts are
part of her multiple identities and which posts
belong to her ugly offspring and her wizened old man.
Merlin writes ok for a guy in a straightjacket.
His reasoning is nonexistent but at least he gets
the words on paper. Plus some other things.
Good luck at that rally. Average age of most
Democrats and libs is 83 now.
Only blacks still vote unquestioningly Demo.
Every one else (hint: much higher IQ) is now
jumping the ship.
This board has reunited me with Christine for
the first time in 23 years !
Couldn’t be happier.
You all have a great evening.

Steve said:

“. . . Nationalism will soon disappear even as a means of posturing! Doubts about this should be allayed by the further growth of Chinese industrial capacity and increasing specialization within the global workshop and the world division of labor at large.  In the end, the political struggle will not be between nationalism and globalism but between corporate global hegemony on the one hand and the counter-hegemony of the dispossessed and impoverished masses the entire world over. . . !”

Well stated.  Nations come and go.  Corporations exist in perpetuity.  Sadly, the blind loyalty compelled of humans’ primative, vestigial instinct for tribalism will transfer from Nations to corporate employers and providers as Nations become more and more irrelevant.

Margaret said: “I think “Jack the Ripper” is probably more true of his persona than any other name.”

Or, just Jack(ass).

Ooooh Margaret,
Are you that woman I used to date way back in the 70s during the carefree days free love? Gosh, if it really is you, it is just sooo neat to meet up with you again here after all these years. How long has it been? 30? Wow, how time flies when you are having fun! We’ll have to touch base again real soon and talk about old times! Talk about fate and coincidence.