Readers of the March 5 New York Times were greeted by the grotesque headline, “His Hands Reattached, a Worker is Overjoyed.” The piece included a photo of the recovering machinist, 49-year-old Arsenio Matias, a Dominican immigrant and father of six. While operating a vacuum press that produces plastic components for window displays, both his hands had been caught up and neatly… return to article
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Reader Comments (397)Wordsalad! Jackspeak for “Your argument is completely over my head.”
Posted by lefty on Jun 14, 2005 at 2:55 AM 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!
Posted by Lefty on Jun 14, 2005 at 2:58 AM Liz, is Jack what George Galloway refers to as a Trotskyist popinjay? Or perhaps a Randist popinjay? LOL.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 14, 2005 at 3:06 AM 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!
Posted by Liz on Jun 14, 2005 at 3:54 AM 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!
Posted by Liz on Jun 14, 2005 at 4:27 AM 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!
Posted by Liz on Jun 14, 2005 at 5:22 AM God these forms are NUTS! I’ll try another time! Other contributons, anybody??
Posted by Liz on Jun 14, 2005 at 5:27 AM 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.
Posted by U Scare Me on Jun 14, 2005 at 10:21 AM 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!
Posted by steve on Jun 14, 2005 at 11:09 AM 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!
Posted by steve on Jun 14, 2005 at 11:25 AM 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!
Posted by steve on Jun 14, 2005 at 11:42 AM 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.
Posted by U Scare Me on Jun 14, 2005 at 11:56 AM 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.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 14, 2005 at 12:15 PM 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!!!!!!!!
Posted by steve on Jun 14, 2005 at 12:16 PM 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.
Posted by U Scare Me on Jun 14, 2005 at 12:43 PM 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!
Posted by steve on Jun 14, 2005 at 1:14 PM Steve,
That was very thoughtful and informative dialogue. I appreciate the effort and feel more informed as a result. I appreciate it, thanks.
Posted by U Scare Me on Jun 14, 2005 at 1:37 PM 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.
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 14, 2005 at 2:38 PM 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 ?
Posted by Christine M. Taylor on Jun 14, 2005 at 2:52 PM 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.
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 14, 2005 at 2:59 PM 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.
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 14, 2005 at 3:13 PM 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.
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 14, 2005 at 3:32 PM 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!
Posted by steve on Jun 14, 2005 at 4:39 PM 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!)
Posted by Liz on Jun 14, 2005 at 5:01 PM 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?
Posted by Liz on Jun 14, 2005 at 5:12 PM 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!)
Posted by Liz on Jun 14, 2005 at 5:15 PM 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.
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 14, 2005 at 5:15 PM If the private prison has better conditions than
the state, why not ?
Is there something noble about being a slave to
the state ?
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 14, 2005 at 5:18 PM 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.
Posted by Peter Rockefeller on Jun 14, 2005 at 7:34 PM 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!
Posted by Bill on Jun 14, 2005 at 7:37 PM 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!
Posted by steve on Jun 14, 2005 at 7:42 PM 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.
Posted by Peter Rockefeller on Jun 14, 2005 at 7:49 PM 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.
Posted by Peter Rockefeller on Jun 14, 2005 at 7:53 PM 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?!
Posted by steve on Jun 14, 2005 at 8:09 PM 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 ?
Posted by Peter Rockefeller on Jun 14, 2005 at 8:24 PM 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.
Posted by Bill on Jun 14, 2005 at 9:14 PM 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!
Posted by steve on Jun 14, 2005 at 9:54 PM 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.
Posted by Peter Rockefeller on Jun 14, 2005 at 9:55 PM 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 ?
Posted by Peter Rockefeller on Jun 14, 2005 at 9:59 PM Bill,
I think our Mr. Rockafeller was being ironic. Anyway, the “authoritarians” aka conservative crooks, discovered good ol’ B.F. long ago.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 14, 2005 at 10:22 PM 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.
Posted by Merlin on Jun 15, 2005 at 1:43 AM 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??
Posted by Liz on Jun 15, 2005 at 4:20 AM Who Lin Biao, by the way?
The name sounds like something out of history.
Posted by Liz on Jun 15, 2005 at 4:21 AM 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??
Posted by Liz on Jun 15, 2005 at 4:25 AM 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!!
Posted by Liz on Jun 15, 2005 at 4:32 AM 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!)
Posted by Liz on Jun 15, 2005 at 4:44 AM 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?
Posted by Liz on Jun 15, 2005 at 4:46 AM 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.
Posted by Liz on Jun 15, 2005 at 4:50 AM Nope, “Peter Rockefeller” IS Jack - he’s slipping back with that return key…
Posted by Liz on Jun 15, 2005 at 4:52 AM 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!
Posted by Liz on Jun 15, 2005 at 5:40 AM 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!!)
Posted by Liz on Jun 15, 2005 at 5:41 AM 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??
Posted by Liz on Jun 15, 2005 at 6:21 AM “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!
Posted by Liz on Jun 15, 2005 at 6:21 AM “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.
Posted by Liz on Jun 15, 2005 at 6:46 AM 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.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 15, 2005 at 7:48 AM 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!
Posted by Merlin on Jun 15, 2005 at 8:06 AM 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!
Posted by steve on Jun 15, 2005 at 1:51 PM 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 !
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 15, 2005 at 3:01 PM 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.
Posted by Margaret on Jun 15, 2005 at 3:49 PM 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…............................
Posted by Robbie on Jun 15, 2005 at 4:16 PM 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!
Posted by steve on Jun 15, 2005 at 5:30 PM 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.
Posted by Robbie on Jun 15, 2005 at 6:31 PM 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.
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 15, 2005 at 7:08 PM 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!
Posted by Merlin on Jun 15, 2005 at 8:56 PM 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.
Posted by Katie on Jun 15, 2005 at 9:21 PM 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.
Posted by Merlin on Jun 15, 2005 at 9:57 PM 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…..
Posted by stanley on Jun 15, 2005 at 10:12 PM 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!
Posted by Margaret on Jun 15, 2005 at 10:14 PM 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.
Posted by Redeye on Jun 15, 2005 at 10:41 PM 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.
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 15, 2005 at 10:51 PM 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.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 15, 2005 at 11:23 PM Margaret said: “I think “Jack the Ripper” is probably more true of his persona than any other name.”
Or, just Jack(ass).
Posted by Lefty on Jun 15, 2005 at 11:25 PM 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.
Posted by Merlin on Jun 16, 2005 at 12:00 AM Robbie,
You’re correct on all of thee above. Probably on the issue of WMD being destroyed in thefirst war. You might even have added that Carter and ZB drew the Russians into Afghanistan in order to destroy them, expand US capitalism globally, and get the Caspian Sea energy resourses for the US and to control a part of the world’s new, rival supply of energy. But then this is nearer to the point that Imperialism is bi-partisan. Imperialism isn’t a policy, it’s a stage of late capitalism’s development!
Posted by steve on Jun 16, 2005 at 12:37 AM Lefty,
There is no primordial, tribal instinct in man. THe nation is NOT the tribe, or family writ large as socio-biologists claim! The nation-state is very new in history. About the late 18th century nationalism appeared as a political mode of orientation and then only in western europe. This is because early capitalism used the nation as an organizational form of the nascent system. There were human orientations and identities that prevailed much before and will be so afterwards.
Posted by steve on Jun 16, 2005 at 12:44 AM Mm, yes, Lefty.
The conservative crooks, aka authoritarians, their having discovered B.F. (Skinner??) as you remarked to Bill…
Yes, I think they must have, because Skinner the rat-behaviorist had his authoritarian streak, didn’t he? At least, his theories could be applied that way. They’re very much: “do this to the rat/human and it will do that, no prob” - I’m sure that some of the heartless government psychiatrists like that sort of notion!
Yes, Lefty, you are probably right… that if we socialists got into power, we would not only ALLOW the marijuana, we would provide it FREE! For medical cases at least. Nationalized marijuana. (Sorry to any timorous Dems who are still scared of offending the “religious” members of society!)
But - HOW about using legalized drugs (we wouldn’t have to sell them, although the CIA already do) to fund what are currently very UNDERFUNDED social programs, in what you might call our projected (left-run!) transitional society, that at first would have big problems putting taxes up, because that always gets a lot of middle-class backs up…
But - HOW about - WSWS never mention anything like this - Legalizing many types of drugs and just levying a duty on them, like with alcohol and tobacco, and using that to pay for our much-desired social programs?
Have you ever read the books of a British left-liberal comedian-turned-novelist, one Ben Elton? Namely “High Society”? (Yes, it’s THAT sense of the word high!) That’s a very good novel, along with “Popcorn”, one of the VERY FEW novels that dares to criticise Hollywood and certain types of - less social - movies.
It describes what transpires when a fictional British politician tries just that, with the drugs issue.
After all, we’ll need SOMETHING to fund our transitional society, on the way to socialism, after we throw all the right-wing bums out, all over the Western world, won’t we??
Posted by Liz on Jun 16, 2005 at 1:25 AM Steve, the one thing which you didn’t do, I think, is explain
a) if neocons and Thatcherites are one and the same thing (in effect)
b) if neocons and Randists/libertarians are also thus, or if there is a large faction of them who are!
Posted by Liz on Jun 16, 2005 at 1:27 AM Hey, Jack! If you don’t like my BIG posts, try this one on for size!
1) YOUR mother is the one who should have had an abortion!! (Actually, I don’t know how people get away with saying things like that on boards. It certainly wouldn’t be allowed on a moderated one.
I personally find it inexcusable, except possibly at the end of a long series of mutual exchanges of hotheaded posts and insults! THIS board tends to be rather intellectual, and doesn’t have room for that kind of playfighting.
But Jack obviously doesn’t do it in hot blood; he resorts to many such personal below-the-belt remarks in cold; therefore he is to be regarded as a person without etiquette.)
Though I’m sure he’d like to think of himself as a Southern gentleman!
2) I think that Republicans and Libertarians, plus neocons, plus Dominionists, and all that lot in America are all REALLY the same thing, although they so often pretend to disagree with one another.
Discuss.
The Right wing are ALWAYS ganging up, on everyone they perceive to be contrary to their interests!
Whereas, LEFTISTS NEVER tend to be so… two-faced. We TOO often disagree with one another… you don’t get me, or Steve, saying that we agree with everything Democrats do or the Democratic leadership does.
There isn’t, so far as I am aware, a Dem website equivalent to FreeRepublic.com, and if there WERE, we lefts wouldn’t necessarily say it was doing “a good job”. As Steve points out, we would point out that more often than not, the Democratic leadership gang up with Republican and moneyed interests (because all US politics gains its funding from the same sources) and are employed as “firemen” by the Right.
So - Lefties = honest, too honest!!
Libertarians = two-faced Republican fellow-travellers.
Am I right, or am I right??
Posted by Liz on Jun 16, 2005 at 1:46 AM 1) Jack - Your drooling and snarling has become tiresome. Your pseudonyms are, apparantly to others, as transparent as window glass. Enjoy your life of hate. I grew up in So Cal, during the 60’s, when desegregation did not take place until almost 1964. why do you think blacks rioted in the 60’s? For the fun of it?
I live in Harrisburg, PA. I see conservative stupidity every day in the state legislature. We have one of the most radical right-wing-nuts on the continent - Rick (Sanctemonious) Santorum. A hypocrite from the work go. This pervert brought his dead baby home to meet his living children, so they could pray over the corpse. Isn’t that abuse of a corpse?2) Steve. How about putting in a few paragraph breaks? It’ll make your input easier to read, instead of being 200 words crammed into one block. Then instead of skipping most of your entries, I’ll actually read them.
3) Everybody else - The point is that the nation is in the hands of Fascist Theocrats, not republicans. Bush and his minions, being te narrow-minded sorts they are, hate America and all Americans. They have no qualms about destroying the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. That was one of the reasons for the illegal midnight strongarming of the PATRIOT Act. With that obscene law, three Amerndments to the Constitution were set into abeyance. Those were: First Amendment (free speech and free press (there is no “liberal media,” it is all owned by right-wing-nut REPUBLICANS. The Fourth (search and seizure), The Fifth (right to refuse to testify against onself).
Now, it appears to me that Jack loves the Patriot Act and thinks it should be strengthened. Boo!
Jack seems to think that a few of my ideas are Communistic. Not really, just more Socialistic than his (his ideas are closer to Fascism than not). I spent 39 months in the USAF in Germany during the Vietnam war and saw and participated in anti-war rallies, both in the German public forum and on military bases in Germany (contrary to regulations, mostly). I learned that taking ideas from one group and using them for better purposes was good. To emasculate the corporations is not Communistic, but American and would restore much of America’s beginning base. In the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton explains the reasons for the choices they made to establish our nation. If you haven’t read them, more’s the pity. It might disabuse you of some of Ayn Rand’s worst theories.
Steve - Theory is fine and good in the classroom, but in the real world, it rapidly becomes apparant that the theory does not work. Business has a tendancy to reduce theory to silliness. Keep in mind, economists are often guessing when they make pronouncements about the economy. Also keep in mind that the Gross National Product has a number of false assumptions built into it.
1) Layoffs are boosts to the GNP. So, by the GNP theory, GM firing 25,000 people boosts the economy. Utter nonsense.
2) Any adverse event (building slump, mass layoffs, war, economic slump, 9/11 attacks) counts as a plus to the GNP.
As a result of these GNP assumptions, we are not getting an accurate picture of what is the true state of the economy. The truth is that America is one disaster away from a massive depression. The housing market is vastly over-valued, the earnings of the middle class are going DOWN in terms of purchasing power and millions have been without work for years.
Posted by Richard A Knighton on Jun 16, 2005 at 2:10 AM Seems I tend to run long.
Part 2
That brings up my next peeve. Getting a job in America has become an excersize in futility. In order to get a good job, one has to tell the prospective employer one’s most intimate details of one’s private life. One has to allow the invasion of one’s privacy - via drug tests. Drug tests that are effectivly being used to deny people jobs. Eat a Kaiser roll for lunch and test in the afternoon, you spike a positive for opiates (poppy seeds)- lose the job. These tests have become so common that to get a job that does not involve the possible harming of others (such as a clerk’s job, or a garbage collector) without taking a drug test is impossible. A person should not have to be drug tested unless there is good and valid reason for testing. Catagories include: Police, Fire, Doctors, Nurses, other medical staff, Pilots, EMTs, etc. Clerks, librarians, store clerks, etc. should be exempt, since nothing they do at work is life threatening. Drug testing should be reserved for situations that involve serious issues - train crashes, car wrecks, etc. The current casual use of these tests has rendered them mostly useless for what they were designed for.
I noted that Jack objected to limiting corporations to a maximum lifespan of 50 years. Just proves what I suspected, Jack is a corporate flack and suck-up. He wants the current set-up to continue forever. Too bad, I suspect that the era of corporate dominance of the ecomomy is doomed. Look at Ford, GM, etc. Both are losing money faster then they can earn it due to poor corporate decisions to stick with gas-guzzeling SUV’s rather than taking advice given to them 6 years ago to start producing hybrid cars. Toyota told Ford and GM that Toyota was converting their entire line of autos to hybrids and would complete the switch by (I think) 2008. GM is boasting that they have 9 cars that get better than 30 MPG. So what? Every European and Asian car does that, excepting specialty vehicles such as Rolls Royce, Lamborghini, Ferrari, some Porsches and a few BMW’s. And even these cars are capable of getting much better mileage with minimal modification.
However, American cars have to be re-designed from the ground up to get better mileage. Only one, at present has a hybrid engine design and it gets moderate mileage. It’s engine and drivetrain comes from Toyota. It’s an SUV (Stupid Useless Vehicle). Neither Ford Nor GM has sold a single SUV outside of the US. The stupid things are physically too big for European roads. Europeans also are not so stupid as to want to buy something that gets an average of 8 miles per gallon (15 Hwy). Folks, I had a motorcycle in Germany (a 1952 BMW) that not only got better mileage, but could take me places that no car could
go, then or now.
America has to change to be able to regain her place in the world. We have to drop our colonialist ideas (stop conquering other nations on false premises) and concentrate on fixing the nation properly. Again, forst step - get rid of the Repugnicans. Allow them to join any other party, then outlaw the Republican Party. The GOP (Greedy Old Pigs) need to be put out of business.
Next, impeach Bush and his cronies. If impeachment is impossible, wait. Sooner or later, the Democrats or teh Greens will be in the ascendancy. Then revenge will out and the criminals will be punished. Most will probably be tried on treason charges. The convicted should be sentenced to life without possibility of parole. Keep them in there forever. Fine them sufficient that it renders them destitute. Give Barbara Bush a job at Wal-Mart, with Jenna and Barbara, jr. Or send Barbara jr and Jenna to Iraq (after all, we’re going to be there for years to come, according to the generals in Iraq, who said that we can not win by force of arms). Time to get the bad guys.
Posted by Richard A Knighton on Jun 16, 2005 at 2:11 AM Those that are interested, see my blog at:
http://wizardswords.blogspot.com
I go off on a lot of political morons there, don’t update as often as I should I suppose, but it is MY blog.
Oh, Jack… You should visit my blog. But don’t be surprised if what I have to say is contrary to what you believe. After all, I am a Progressive Liberal, and damned proud of it! Don’t be surprised if I edit your post. It is MY blog.
One of Jack’s problems is that he assumes rather than actually doing the research necessary to find the facts.
Here’s a few facts for you all.68% of ALL federal revenue goes to the Military.
Over 1700 Americans and 130 Non-Americans have died in Bush’s war.
Nearly 300 Billion has been pissed into that rat hole called Iraq. Results - more bombings and killings.
Nearly 30,000 non-fatal American casulties to date. All have come home at night, so Bush can keep you from seeing them. The dead return at night too, usually on the same plane that brings back the wounded.
Bush has yet to go to a single funeral for an American soldier. Clinton went to every funeral necessitated by our being in Bosnia.
Now, the latest:
The Downing Street Memo. This is the proof that Bush and Blair trumped up the Iraq war on lies and fear. These minutes of a meeting of the British Cabinet are conclusive that the “intellegence was being fixed around the policy” and that the policy was war. There was never any real attempt to resolve the issues around Iraq by diplomacy. Bush decided to go to war in 1998, while he was Governer of Texas. Once he was installed into the White House, he spared no effort to get his war. Bush claimed that Saddam wanted to kill GHW Bush (GW’s father). This is a bullshit story. There was no plot to kill Bush 1.
News sources I visit regularly (so should YOU)
1) truthout.org
2) Buzzflash
3) International Hearld Tribune (read this paper for over three years in Germany - good source for European happenings)
4) Common Dreams
5) Black Box Voting (want to know what REALLY happened in Florida in 2000, Georgia in 2002, and Ohio in 2004?)
6) MoveOn.orgFolks, turn off your TVs (or in the words of a progressive, SHOOT YOUR TV!). You will not get the news on TV. You will get propaganda, half-truths and lies. Stop reading your local newspaper, it is a shill for the Bushites. Your local news is possibly safe, but you have to verify every story. The funnies (Doonsbury is the best) are your best bet (and the crossword puzzle).
90% of the media is owned by 6 companies. That includes radio, newspapers, cable, broadcast TV, telephone, cell service. Your cell and land-line telephone service are the same people that want to prevent you getting low-cost high-speed internet. What do you pay for DSL? $50, $60, more? Europeans and Japanese pay about $10/month for both phone service and DSL. Think Verizon or SBC is a bargain now?
I suggest everybody do the following: Turn off the TV for a week. Go on-line, seek out the sites I mentioned. Then after the week is over, use the TV sparingly. You FOX watchers, go soak your heads. Then go shoot your TV
By-the-way - Howard Dean was right. The Republican Party is comprised of rich, white, right-wing, males. The percentage of people of color in the Repugnican Party is about 2%. If one inlcudes all the states as well, it rises to 2.5%. The Repugnicans hate minorities and anyone that is poor.
i hope that Jack chokes on the above three posts.
‘Til next time, children!
The Wizard
Posted by Richard A Knighton on Jun 16, 2005 at 2:46 AM “There is no primordial, tribal instinct in man. THe nation is NOT the tribe, or family writ large as socio-biologists claim! The nation-state is very new in history. About the late 18th century nationalism appeared as a political mode of orientation and then only in western europe. This is because early capitalism used the nation as an organizational form of the nascent system. There were human orientations and identities that prevailed much before and will be so afterwards.” Posted by steve on June 15, 2005 at 7:44 PM
Steve, I agree with everything you said, except for your conclusion, which is not supported by your premise. Or, perhaps you misunderstood my premise.
The vestigial instinct for tribalism is genetic, evolving over the millenia as a survival mechanism. Those who were protected by the group had a better chance of survival. It preceeded Nationalism by . . . 200,000 years. The Nation-state is a modern manifestation of tribalism. This vestigial anachronism will continue long after corporations have replaced Nations.
Did you see that movie “Rollerball?” It is a study (intended or not) in tribalism and the takover of the world by corporations.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 16, 2005 at 4:06 AM By the way, Jack, you twerp, you must be a “liar” concerning Terri Schiavo… because LOOK what I found on Reuters and Yahoo News and CSM and a bunch of other sites…
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0614/p01s03-usec.html?s=u
Yeah, right, Schiavo was a living, conscious person!It’s amazing how that myth seems to have infected ALL the Right, including a couple of more conservative-leaning New Age sites…
Still, as I have just remarked above, all rights boringly tend to sing off the same hymn-sheet, on the most disparate of subjects, whereas lefts have GENUINE differences.
Not that I have anything against people who are trying to cope with loved ones on life support. But - as with the ECT I SUPPOSE… in the end, they just have to take the medical advice of the doctors actually DEALING with the case, ie not some paid off by the Republican party to make propaganda to serve its own interests. And in this case, the prognosis was not good.
Why are you so INTERESTED in Schiavo, Jack, other than your Republican mates egging you on?
I thought you were a heartless, “there-is-no-such-thing-as-society”, “The individual is all”, Randian libertarian? Who wants everybody’s mother (of those who outargue you) to have had abortions? (So I suppose that makes YOU, too, a closet cyberpunk fan, as you’re gonna need a time machine for that one!!)
So WHAT is the deal, regarding Schiavo?
(If you can think of anything other than: “Well that’s what I read on Freepers.com and naturally I HAD to copy it!”)
WHY do you care?
Because she was white and her family are relatively wealthy??
BET you wouldn’t have said the same about a black patient (and neither would most of the right-wing nothing-better-to-worry-abouts), not EVEN a middle-class one!
Don’t worry, the guy you SAY you don’t like, but keep supporting all the same, Bush - the brothers Bush for that matter - think the same.
Ie, if the patient is white and her family has money, keep her hanging on as long as possible, without hope of positive outcome.
(That “eye movement” stuff was bogus, by the way; it might have been very traumatic for the family, as it seems to mimick movements of someone who looks perhaps dazed; but that is a common symptom in the case and the doctors say it truly is random… As a “paranormalist”, I find NOTHING to disagree with them, here (though for MY part, I would have called in a genuine medium and asked HER opinion… As to the whereabouts of Ms. Schiavo’s spirit! “Long flown”, I bet she’d tell me…))
Yeah, and Schiavo COULDN’T have been “focusing” or “following” ANYTHING, because as all the articles will tell you, the medical verdict arrived at posthumously, by the autopsy was that she was BLIND. Her brain’s visual centers had been destroyed.
But if it’s a POOR, BLACK person, with limited or non-existent medical insurance - THEN they don’t deserve to be kept on life support, DO they??
For ANY signifiant length of time! Not even if they are a BABY and might survive. That’s what Bush and his Bushies think.
http://www.bushsamerica.com/index.php?m=200503
(Case half-way down above blog)
Here’s another rather interesting example from Britain in 1999, where it was the doctors - but backed up by government policy - who decided that a 12-year-old hydrocephalic boy should die, after he was taken to hospital for something non-life-threatening. The WSWS said they did it just to save the NHS money - eg, like they won’t give heart surgery to Down’s Syndrome children, usually… But there WASN’T any right-wing/religious fuss in this case, and apparently the family were prosecuted for taking their child out of “care”... Bet it didn’t get far in court, if tried by jury… But I don’t know because there’s no follow-up here.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/apr1999/brit-a30.shtml
Anyway, it just shows you that the Right VERY selectively pick their “cases”, their cause celebres… (So, on occasion, do the Left!)
Posted by Liz on Jun 16, 2005 at 7:49 AM Nice to see you back, Richard!!
More power to your elbow. I would never insult your family.
Posted by Liz on Jun 16, 2005 at 7:53 AM Just had to comment about Liz bringing up Peter McWilliams in a post (sorry if off subject)...his book is a must-have for anybody advocating true freedom: “Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Society” published by Prelude Press, 1993.
How about that recent Supreme Court decision to stomp on State’s rights concerning medical marijuana? We still live in the Dark Ages.
Incarceration of non-violent people is Barbaric. Cruel and unusual punishment, unlawful searches and seizures, that is the norm in this land of the “unfree”.
“No loss by flood and lightning, no destruction of cities and temples by hostile forces of nature, has deprived man of so many noble lives and impulses as those which his intolerance has destroyed.”—-Helen Keller
“It rankles me when somebody tries to force somebody to do something.”—-John Wayne
Posted by pick of the litter on Jun 16, 2005 at 1:28 PM Obviously, she could see in 2001. If her
EX had spent the million dollars he was awarded
for her on trying to save her instead of trying
to kill her, she might not have deteriorated,
no doubt the two weeks of slow starvation took
their toll on her organs.
THE BIG DEAL WAS THAT THIS WAS A COURT ORDERED
MURDER BY SLOW STARVATION.
I wouldn’t believe ANYTHING that came out of
that swamp county Nazi government, least of all
the coroner’s report. This was a very bad precedent and that was the intention.
Some intelligent people on the left, if that is not an oxymoron, like Nat Hentoff, Jesse Jackson,
Naomi Joffe, etc., opposed this barbarism as much
as some (not all) of the Right.
Excuse me, you stupid twattie, but I’m not a Republican or a Bush supporter. If you’d take
your little pea brain out of neutral and your
mouth out of overdrive, you might learn something.
Richard, your stats are as false as your nonarguments and it’s amazing the amount of space
that you take up to say so little.
Your apologias for the black criminal class are
as unconvincing as they are idiotic.
Nobody cares about your psychotic hangup on corporations, they are the greatest wealth
producing instrument ever created by man and
the abolition of government enforced bankruptcy
is the only reform needed to make them completely
responsible.
Inequality is inherent in the nature of objective
reality and that’s a great thing.
If someone was trying to kill a black like they
did Terri Schiavo I’d oppose it too.
Liz, being the asshole you are, you typically
employ red herrings as a substitute for reasoned
argument. Do you really think I’m under any
obligation to answer your Have you stopped your wife style questions ?
Richard, you need to read other sources and visit
other sites than those that simply confirm your
tired old prejudices, none of the sites you listed
is known for accuracy or integrity nor would I
give the sweat off my balls for all of them put together.
Unlike you, Dicky, I’ve only posted under one name. You have posted under at least five aliases
and as Ayn Rand said, a string of zeroes adds up
to ZERO. I’ve forgotten more Hamilton than you
ever read and I recognize him for the statist-monarchist he was. Not my favorite founding
father and I’ll take Rand any day over him and
a trillion of his statist kind.
Fascism is a form of socialism where the state
regulates and controls rather than outright
ownership (in most cases).The New Deal was inspired by fascism as was the Fair Deal, New
Frontier, Great Society (actually a ripoff of
a 1914 Fabian Society tract).
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 16, 2005 at 1:39 PM ECT is not a medical procedure, it is a form
of torture and no one has to take any doctor’s
advice if you have doubts about it. The court
in this case only listened to one set of doctors.
Hardly justice.
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 16, 2005 at 2:16 PM “Richard” or whomever or whatever you
are, please radically condense you’re
word salads. Not that it will make the
ideas any more rational but at least
people will be able to read and comprehend
you’re crackpotisms.
Right now they read like a mental patient
on an acid trip. The sheer unintelligble
ranting turns off everyone.
Liz, the same to you. Try to clean up
your act.
Leave out the personal insults and reduce
your output by 90% and people might take
the time to read it and reply.
Jack Barnes, you are a Saint for trying
to deal with the deranged Communist trash
on this board.
I marvel at your patience although it now
appears to be wearing thin.
Frankly, I’d ignore them at this point.
Let them play handball with their own
excreta.
They have lost for good. The future will
be a ferocious battle between the
libertarian-Objectivists and the statist
neocons within the GOP.
The left and the Dems are out of the
picture.
Posted by Marcy Fleming on Jun 16, 2005 at 2:59 PM Marcy, hear ! hear !
“Richard A. Knighton” also posts as
Gordon, Merlin, Lefty, nonservile peasant,
douchebag, Proud Vet and oher monikers.
He only wishes his dick was as long as
his rap sheet.
“Liz” is also “Margaret.”
Bashing a liberal a day keeps
socialist fascism away.
I’m encouraging all Right thinking people
to come to this board.
It drives the libtards crazy !
Posted by Big Sonia on Jun 16, 2005 at 3:07 PM Hey, Liz, I guess I’m you now. Not too bad, as we agree on most everything except religion. I’ll take your company anytime over that of the insane Mr. Barnes, et al.
I’ve always heard that the sounds made during an individual’s death throes are nearly unbearable to hear, and now I have heard it for myself. I’m glad this is online because I wouldn’t want to have to hear his banshee screaming as the GOP tanks! All his dreams of Libertarians actually rising above the station of dogcatcher are ruined. Janice Rogers Brown will be neutered by her judicial peers, you watch.
He’s kind of like watching the Wicked Witch of the West get water thrown on her by Dorothy (in this case, Liz, Margaret, Richard, Merlin, Lefty, & Steve). “I’m melting, I’m melting! What a world, what a world! AAAGGGGHHH!!!!”
Posted by Margaret on Jun 16, 2005 at 4:02 PM No, it’s the public bowel movements of the
living that are the most dreadful to observe.
Margaret aka Liz, your party is dying.
Posted by Teresa on Jun 16, 2005 at 4:20 PM Jack,
Do you have a baby name book in front of you so you can keep a fresh supply of psuedonyms flowing? Everyone is wise to you, fool.
Posted by Margaret on Jun 16, 2005 at 4:25 PM Anti-white, anti-male, anti-heterosexual, anti-
business, anti-capitalism, anti-American, anti-
individual rights and hysterical panic-mongering
are not attractive traits.
You keep losing more ground every election,
2000, 2002, 2004….......
Bush was the weakest possible incumbent and
he still clobbered you !
Anti-Bush is not enought to win when people
oppose what you really stand for.
No DEMOCRATIC candidate would even run on the
extreme leftist crackpot ideas posted by the
six people who mention, assuming that you are
not five of them. Steve is actually intelligent
so I’m sure you’re not him.
Here in Arkansas we have gone from a Dem to
a Rep state in the last decade. And this is happening all over the country.
Most liberals had abortions (yeah !) and are
dying out, look at the disparate Red vs. Blue
birthrates.
Posted by Teresa on Jun 16, 2005 at 4:28 PM Lefty,
I saw Rollerball long ago. The nation-state is about 200 years old and will decline. There have always been ways to rule people as groups formed out of proximate populations which share various social and ascribed charactoristics. The point is that all such things are socially and politically constructed by powerful authority and once emplaced justified by some contrived story of its alleged naturalness and historic immutiblity! Tribes may have adapted to adversity thousands of years ago and survived simply because of the ability to pool efforts for protection and for hunting and shelter. This is hardly the politically charged and significant development that the sovereign nation-state became as a highly complex and developed organization form of society.
Posted by steve on Jun 16, 2005 at 7:54 PM Liz,
Neo-cons, Reagan, Thatcher on the one hand. Libertarians/Randists on the other hand.
Posted by steve on Jun 16, 2005 at 7:57 PM I think this forum is in need of oversight!
This troll who has now, today, added 3 new names to its goading! Marcy Fleming, Big Sonia and Teresa. “Its” vitriol knows no bounds and is all by itself turning this forum into something akin to Terri Schaivo’s brain! Recognize it folks, this forum is brain dead.
Listen folks, (now I’m lecturing you all! I apologize for doing so. This is my last word on it as you all know what this troll is doing.) You are part of the problem if you keep talking to “it.”
1nonservilepeasant, please recognize that there is NO point in trying to reason with a troll. “It” is not reasonable or nice and no amount of your good natured wishing will change that. So far, you’ve stayed above the fray, but unless you stop now you will be dragged under the bridge in the slime where trolls live. “It” has finally attacked you directly. Keep dealing with the rest of us, we appreciate your thoughts.
Margaret, please don’t “feed the troll” anything. ANYTHING! Look where all this Bunni talk has gotten you. Nothing but vicious hurts. Not to mention the slurs against Bunni. Talk to others, NOT the troll. Keep up the great work, Margaret!
Richard, as knowledgeable as you are, you convince no one who is a troll, and no one who is on the fence is ever converted by negativity toward a troll even as obvious as this one is. All the thought and emphasis, placed by that possible convert, goes into the emotional drama created by the negativity. It becomes the = of a pro wrestling match. Its a “Who’s better ‘n who” situation with all the goodness lost in the slime under the bridge. BTW, love your posts and thanks for the URL to your blog!
Liz, you have a lot of good stuff to say, but simply saying it to “one up” the troll is a losing game. You simply play his game, by his rules, while you think you are winning. Margaret said it well about the wicked Witch of the West. Lets move on by addressing issues amongst those of us who want to learn and share without all the “I’m better ‘n you,” in fighting.
A lot of us, including me a bit ago, has been and is aiding and abetting this troll’s purpose which is to destroy this forums values and upset as many people as “it” can. No administrator can oversee trolls as they can change their name faster than a speeding bullet.
Oversight is up to US! Either we do it or we get fucked by the troll! Its just that simple!
This is my last word on all this troll business. I hope you all take the value of this site seriously enough to see that Barnes and “its” ilk stay under the bridge.
DON’T TALK TO TROLLS!!!
Again, my apologies for the lecture.
Posted by Merlin on Jun 16, 2005 at 8:13 PM Yes, Merlin, don’t lecture, or you’ll become as boring, or more so, than the troll!
Seriously!!
I was going to post something earlier to you on the topic that sadly got wiped off the form before I could press submit because I had to go into another program. Pity. It was going to express my view on the “troll” issue pithily. I might give it another try. Wait till I see what else is above.
Identity swapping and changing IS a big problem… I don’t mind a bit of it for a joke (for example I thought the FUNNNIEST, ever, post on this forum was the one on page 1 or 2 when ProudVet/Richard I believe it is, poses as “Jack’s Daddy” and writes a scene of Jack being lulled into a straitjacket and transported to the booby hatch, complete with sound effects! THAT was good! Again, Richard!! More, bis, encore!)
I think that YOU, Merlin, are becoming a bit boring, sadly, and that you were the sort of person who could never stand being teased at school, and didn’t have very good coping strategies if you did! “Ignore him” IS a tactic - but it doesn’t always work. (It may be more effective on boards, though, because the bully can’t pinch you.)
I always thought, that if a person was being an asshole, the thing to do, was 1) to be an asshole right back, but in a more creative way, and 2) to seriously exhibit or feign interest in ALL the trash that they talked: for example, IF they were a boy trying to get attention with, for example, trash talk about all the karate moves they could do - ASK them in detail, about every one, catch them out in all their silliness about “black belts” they have supposedly been awarded… and, anyway, just give them so much attention that they no longer LIKE it any more… because it shows them up.
That’s MY advanced technique.
You’re wrong that there is nothing on this forum that hasn’t been initiated by the troll: you obviously haven’t seen some of mine and Steve’s posts. U Scare Me too, is a contributor.
(I always get interested in the number of non-liberals that DO come on these boards - I went on a conservative one once, but only for about five minutes! It was that one all in blue, can’t remember what it is.)
Anyway, maybe some of us REALLY DO want to see what “Libertarians” in the US of A think!! Like we might want to see what Christian fundamentalists believe. (Even if, as I said, a certain percentage is posing and (white) trash talk - well, they open they mouth so big - they must believe in SOME of it!)
And SOME of these posts - ie Bill’s, ie bits of some of mine, actually DO refer to the subject at the top - the workplace and injuries therein, and other problems of capitalism!
Post some more, if YOU know anything on this subject, Merlin, let’s just see… Or if you know WHERE ELSE our troll might have turned up on this site - tell us that!! Go on a troll hunt - that provides MUCH more entertainment!
(He thinks you’re an agent provocateur, by the way, which shows that he obviously doesn’t know the basic, proper definition of that word, which is a person seeded into an activist group, not merely to cause trouble (that would be a real-world troll!) but to provoke that group into doing something ILLEGAL which they can be arrested for. Nobody on this forum is doing anything illegal because of either “Jack Barnes” or yourself. End of definition!)
My only complaint is that this forum is WAY too serious and nobody on it seems to have a sense of humor. (Except Richard Knighton.) I tried a little earlier and got something going with U Scare Me… and wanted to put something else of “lighter” tone up… But if it’s full of boring Merlins (and egotistic trolls) I might as well not bother.
Sorry!
Posted by Liz on Jun 16, 2005 at 9:13 PM Steve said:
“Tribes may have adapted to adversity thousands of years ago and survived simply because of the ability to pool efforts for protection and for hunting and shelter. This is hardly the politically charged and significant development that the sovereign nation-state became as a highly complex and developed organization form of society.”
Steve, I vehemently disagree. We’ve gone around this issue several times and either I don’t get your point or you don’t get mine.
As I tried to explain before, tribalism is a genetic trait that has evolved over thousands of years as a survival mechanism. Those who didn’t have it, didn’t make it. So we are all smitten with it and it controls virtually every aspect of human behavior. The effects of this trait cannot be completely avoided, and to the extent it can, only through recognition of its exisence, and recognition of the manifestations of it by an individual in his/her behavior.
The existence of nation-states, and virtually every other way that humans have contrived to define themselves, is a manifestation of the vestigial instinct for tribalism. The eventual death of the nation-state is irrelevant. It must and will be replaced by another contrivance subconsciously designed to satisfy the primative survival instinct. JMHO.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 16, 2005 at 9:44 PM Merlin,
He doesn’t hurt me with his writings. I just am simply amazed that any one human being could be so completely lame. Bunni laughed that he called her a whore, since she does practice abstinence.
Liz, do what you want, I won’t try to tell you what to do. I do, however, agree with Merlin. It is pointless. The spiritual vibe I pick up off that guy is like a movie of some creepy loner feeding his anger online until he goes out and does something really physically horrid to someone. He doesn’t scare me intellectually, as I find his arguments much like Rand’s or Chomsky’s. Full of wordiness and little applicable value. In a fantasy world, in a word. But his seems like a vile, angry and bitter one. I really do pity him.
Liz, in case you didn’t pick it up earlier, I am an evangelical Christian, but not in the Fundamentalist mode. Nonetheless, I do admire your expertise and wit. You remind me a lot of people I met both times I was in the UK. Love it there!
Posted by Margaret on Jun 16, 2005 at 11:58 PM Liz - I ws busy a few days.
Jack - I don’t see any reason to give you satisfaction on anything. Your flames have been vile, repugnant and repulsive. Well done. You now qualify as a right-wingnut.
Re: Terri Schiavo. Her Electro-encephlograph was flatline 15 years ago. Anyone that understands that knows that she died 15 years ago. Flatline means that there is no higher brain functions - no cognitive activity, no person. Recovery from this is impossible, no matter what anyone wants. Mr Schiavo did more than was required to try to bring his wife back, but there was nothing to bring back. If Mr Schiavo had truly wanted to kill her, he could have easily waited 5-10 minutes longer before calling 911 and getting her to a hospital. To suggest otherwise is scurilous.
As for your attacks on me. Piffle and tosh. You have no idea who I am, nor does it truly matter. You are of no importance and are less than noticible.
I stated that CORPORATIONS should be limited to 50 years. Doesn’t anyone pay attention in class? Take notes if you need to. These are simple concepts. Private businesses will, naturally be exmpt, since they don’t need a charter, like a corporation does. And that is where the ‘paper’ enters the discussion. Corporations are essentially, entities of paper.
Ayn Rand. What a waste of paper. But so was L Ron Hubbard - founder of Scientology, The Modern Lie. Hack writers being accepted as quality.
Posted by Richard A Knighton on Jun 17, 2005 at 12:01 AM Lefty,
Tribalism does not seem to be GENETICALLY insinuated into the human DNA structure and was something adapted by early man to cope with adversity and promote survival. It did not lead into nor does it serve as an antecedant for modern forms of political identity and organization which are wholly modern and related to the needs of the power structure. Of course, modern social forms are LEGITIMATED by linking them to historic patterns said erroniously to be natural or an essential part of human “instinct”. This is wrong! The nation-state came into being with the French Revolution which revolutionized the concept of citizenship to its modern democratic and universal form. A state is a state of all its citizens and there is thus equality before the laws of that state. Competing notions of citizenship are historically limited and qualified and not extended to all those in the realm such as in ancient Greece and Rome. The Ottoman Turks has a concept of Dhimmi which accorded non-Muslims of the old empire different kinds of rights, perogatives, duties, and obligations. The nation-state came into its true form of existance after WWI most notibly the modern Turkish State in 1923 contrasting sharply with the old imperial form of the state. This is not related to early tribal man. Recall Claude Levy Strauss and the separation of nature and culture.
Posted by steve on Jun 17, 2005 at 12:03 AM Another thing or two -
Big Sonia - You are so far off the mark on me it is silly. Your pseudo suggests obvious things and not so obvious.
Please, try not to use so many perjorative terms. It is unbecoming.I was not the author of the “Jack in the Booby-Hatch” fable. I was, however amused by it.
That’s all, good night.
Posted by Richard A Knighton on Jun 17, 2005 at 12:08 AM Darn it, Steve - Your post is intreguing (prob misspelt). I believe that the natural gregariousness of the human race lead, initially to hunting bands, farming communities, villages, towns, cities, etc. It is encoded in our DNA to be gregarious. What we do with that trait is entirely up to the individual. Our desire to protect our fellows (family, town, city, state, nation) can be seen as an extension of gregarity reversed - fear of the stranger. The desire to repulse. This is where war stems from (and all hates and fears, naturally).
Your turn.
Goodnight.
Posted by Richard A Knighton on Jun 17, 2005 at 12:16 AM Ah, I was going to ask you, Margaret! Evangelical Christian yet not fundamentalist - I see! I did think that there were evangelicals who were NOT fundamentalist, as evangelist simply means proselytizing, does it not??
(I used to be a Christian! I can’t get on with the overall male domination, though! It just won’t do! Life is female! The male has its place, but really! They can’t BEAR anything. The Earth is not male. Yet you’d think that they were responsible for everything good, the way they carry on.)
Yes, the UK is a nice place, isn’t it. In a way! The British sense of humor is, I believe, a special one.
But the US (and North America as a whole) does, I think, definitely stand out in terms of - being what I would call a powerhouse culture. USA especially. Well, your Democratic party is just so big… It may have a lame leadership, but look at the amount of websites, blogs and boards people associated with it, deeply part of it, put up there!
(Marxists like to say it’s dead, but I’m not so sure! Every time I think “yes”, it’s dead… Then I hear someone like Eric Schlosser or ANYONE on liberal radio speak, or I read their books/sites - and then I think - I am not so sure! Liberalism looks ALIVE to me!! Hence I tend to trawl every left-liberal site and blog I can find! I know there’s PILES of energy and action there! Look - it even attracts the right!)
No wonder there is loyalty to this party, even if people like John Kerry fail (Well they don’t try!) to represent the lower-income brackets.
I’m not exactly a liberal - but I WILL work with them!
Anyway, anyone who does not already know this: In These Times is a wonderful publication/site. Check out the whole of the site. Also go to their net radio station, www.fireontheprarie.com. Download all the interviews - WELL worth it!!
It is NOT just all Air America, you know, Jack the troll! Apparently there is something called “low power” or whatever it is, FM radio now, and all sorts of stations are springing up on the US dial (and they usually have their websites, with downloads for people out of the area - if they have any sense)... And the Dems are getting well into that!!
Posted by Liz on Jun 17, 2005 at 2:13 AM Ah - so it was Richard who it was that said that CORPORATIONS (only) should be limited to a 50-year lifespan… I was wondering who had sparked off that “thread”.
NOW - WILL “JACK’S DADDY”, the REAL, incognito author of the hilarious fable “Jack in the Booby Hatch”, (radioplay complete with sound effects), equal of “Jack and the Beanstalk”, PLEASE step forward?? (And unmask yourself?)
Or if you care to remain the masked avenger, you could always write us another one.
Posted by Liz on Jun 17, 2005 at 2:25 AM Steve and Lefty,
Hmm. I’m not really sure WHAT to believe in this nation/tribalism debate… I’m not sure if ALL concepts of nationhood started with the French revolution… It’s a “trendy” modern academic, lefty thing to believe, I do know! It’s also trendy on the more conservative flank of academic historians to believe the opposite.
Hmm. Well I think (popular) feelings of nationality ARE largely based on language and culture. (This has to have to do with tribalism. I mean, ask the average American football fan or British soccer fan what they care about the nation state at the time of the French revolution! But they have their soccer riots and happily chant: “Eng-er-lund”... etc… And the English soccer fans plaster their faces with the English flag, cross of St. George, etc, in greasepaint - VERY tribal!! Isn’t it, Steve?)
I haven’t read all the books by the arguers on the subject. But I do recall a snippet about Geoffrey Chaucer, who was one of the first “chroniclers”, or lexicographers, or whatever of the English language. He went around noting which words turned up in certain dialects wherever he went in England. One story was to do about the forms of the word “eggs” in Middle English. One was “eggis” and the other one was more of a Latin form, “oeve” or - something! (The language was still under development!) He asked a woman in southern England for the latter and she indignantly responded that she hoped he wanted “eggis” as she wasn’t French!!
Just a snippet…. (From a program I saw about Chaucer/Canterbury Tales.)
Posted by Liz on Jun 17, 2005 at 4:49 AM Hey, I LOVE IN THESE TIMES! where else can you get such personal debate as this dichotomy between a decent person such as “proud vet” and “jack barnes”.
Proud Vet’s honest character shines through…but “jack barnes” is somewhat the paradigm of today’s USA. Sadly. Libertarianism is the rampant philosophy most popular now, a “philosophy” of greed and antihumanism. Vicious, uncaring and unscruplelessness is the trademarks of the JACKS of today. He’s probably some salesman working for a Pharmaceutical company. Low risk, low effort but lots of ability to spew bullshit.
Okay, Ayn Rand’s book are still selling like hotcakes…but read her bio. ... point one… her beloved father was a “pharmacist” who made money selling snakeoil and suspicious bromades to ailing desparate middleclass Oligarchs affiliated with the Czarist Monarchy… and when the Bolsheviks and others sweept him and other fakes away with the corrupt ruling class of Russia….Ayn Rand came here to America to spew her vicious, antisocial crap. Thus Republicans now are stealing our social security funds and giving them to war profitteers making their killing on the “War on Terror”...
The War on Terror…is the War on US! And Jack Barnes and his ilk are the true terrorists. Note he’d as soon starve and kill proud vet’s daughter as to look at her. That’s a true devotee of Ayn Rand. I work with one libertarian and he’s one real loser, no education, no health benefits and can barely show up on time and yet he’s waiting for his dad to give him the family farm. Most libertarians are besotted with family inheritance even if it’s modest… and likely can’t earn a living on their own. eh, Jack’s are really the losers. They often aren’t married even or with a significant other. They can’t commit and are just wage slaves sucking it up for their masters.
Posted by datadave on Jun 17, 2005 at 5:21 AM nice comments, liz.
that’s enough for tonight. If “jack” comes back…well it’ll be another ‘historical’ tirade about some long dead philosophical point. But “libertarianism” is worthy of dispute nonetheless. The CATO institute for example is very powerfull in controlling the public’s media at the moment. That’s a Libertarian Think Tank…getting a tax free ride to push one concept of political control, corporate control of everybody.
Posted by datadave on Jun 17, 2005 at 5:35 AM Glad you liked them, Datadave. (Do you write under any other aliases? Had to ask!)
I am trying to find out whatever I can about Libertarians (all I’ve managed before is to visit the Libertarian US party website, which did not have much on it, except one or two little points of interest.)
I thought there might be MORE libertarians like the sadly late Peter McWilliams or like that other pro-hemp person I know of, I might as well come out and say who it is - it’s Ginger Warbis aka Antigen, of Anonymity Anonymous, http://fornits.com/anonanon
(I have very good reasons for knowing all these sites, and I do know a bunch; all from my Web research which really started in earnest in 2000. I’m not that interested in drugs because I don’t take them… though there was a point when one of my family members now deceased was in constant nagging pain and I was thinking… No longer a problem, sadly, for me!
Are you concerned about the GENUINE, government-sanctioned abuse of children (rather than the trumped-up anti-black-pop-star sort??)
Go and visit www.thestraights.com. You’ll experience a REAL eye-opener!!)
I thought there might be more of these sorta anarchist libertarians. (Who I might be able to get along with!)
However, I seem to be finding that it’s mostly just neocons and Repug fascists under another alias… They (like Jack) might say they hate Bush, but really it’s because Bush isn’t RIGHT-wingnut enough for them!
They want, maybe, I dunno… Hitler!!
“Proud Vet’s honest character shines through…but “jack barnes” is somewhat the paradigm of today’s USA”
You said it there, datadave! It’s nice to see the contrast.
You can see Jack is not to be admired, because whenever people say things that he really doesn’t like, not about him personally, but about something like Marxism, for example, Schiavo or whatever… (notwithstanding that this is a liberal site!)...
He just responds with the vilest of personal attacks - on people’s families and so on…
So I’m glad I’ve decided not to give out my personal information!
(In occult circles it’s called closing off the chakras to prevent psychic attack - and funnily enough, I think it’s something I have instinctively known how to do, forever, ever since schooldays… Emotional armor-plate!)
But you see, my darlings, magic really is true - because in magic, you need something PERSONAL - from an individual - to make a harmful spell against them?
In spells, it’s usually something physical, (hair being a favorite!) but in wider terms, anything might do… Anything that allows them to place you entirely, in space and time. Or to establish a link.
(Remember that, Margaret! It’s good advice! Take it from the occultist!)
Know all this and ye need fear no troll!!
Posted by Liz on Jun 17, 2005 at 7:18 AM Hey, Jack!! (AKA shapeshifting shit-eating greenskinned sub-Shrek ogre troll!!)
From an interview with “The Director’s Chair”:
Q - What’s a worker’s best defense against downsizing?
Michael Moore - “I’ll give you one that I learned from those Pay Day [candy bar] people: Don’t do too good of a job. Because you’ll make your company too profitable and it becomes an attractive takeover target and it’ll get bought out and they’ll consolidate and throw a number of people out of work. Just keep the company solvent, but don’t make it too profitable.”
And guess WHAT - I got that off a libertarian site, which exhorted the reader to “read Ayn Rand”!
But he was pro Bush and the Iraq war!
Oh yes, and he remarked to the above except the great profundity of: “No wonder the companies go to Asia, where they WORK for their pay…”
Yeah, and a fat lot of good it does them, in these sweatshop zones in Indonesia!!
WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE… (And that includes YOU, embattled middle class!!)
THAT will be your only solution!
Posted by Liz on Jun 17, 2005 at 7:48 AM THIS is what I got off another blog, on The Daily Kos:
by srolle
Thu Mar 3rd, 2005 at 21:54:50 PDTGreenspan is a famed figure in the objectivist movement. That’s gross in case you didn’t know.
To describe him as a partisan hack would be far too kind. In reality, he is an objectivist hack. Objectivism is so far out on the fringes of libertarianism that it scares most rational, empathetic people. (Empathy is a four-letter word in objectivism.)
Posted by Liz on Jun 17, 2005 at 8:24 AM Oh, and Jack, BTW: Because of this wonderful site (yes, it IS wonderful, datadave is quite right - though I have found other sites that are wonderful in other ways!) and its associated radio station, I have NOW found that there IS at least ONE Congress Representative in America who is a Socialist; he always stands as an Independent, but his entire state of Vermont knows him as a democratic socialist; which is his avowed position, just like me he’s upfront about it, (which people HAVE told me you CANNOT do in the US in either mainstream politics or media, eg TV - I always wanted to be able to prove them wrong!) and this has never been much of a media issue for him until recently, where he has been called to give some interviews on Fox News and it came out that he was a Socialist, so finally he is being red-baited! A bit. But he doesn’t care!
His name is Bernie Sanders and he’s running for Senate in 2006. www.fireontheprairie.com
Posted by Liz on Jun 17, 2005 at 11:46 AM Yes, pick of the litter.
I don’t know how the Federal government CAN stomp on states’ rights in this case - because I thought the medical marijuana provision was already accepted in law… Gotta go back and do some more research.
Still, it just shows you, right-wingers are all for “state’s rights” when it suits THEM, and all against when they DON’T. (Ie, rubbing out Jim Crow laws!)
The Federal government have developed into a fascist organization though, I often think. They have too much power now.
Posted by Liz on Jun 17, 2005 at 12:48 PM Richard,
You are simply a liar, Schiavo died when she
was maliciously starved to death by court order.
She was not blind in 2001 when the famous photo
of her was taken and there was one doctor specialist who had done MRIs & scans on her
and had come to the opposite conclusion from
the politically inspired suspect Coroners Report,
like anything that comes out of that Nazi swamp
county government is believable.
The effects of two weeks without food & water would shrink anyone’s brain, except maybe yours.
No room for shrinkage.
Obviously, Schiavo killed his wife, he received
a huge award to keep her alive and instead spent
it trying to kill her, starting with forbidding
hospice employees to clean her teeth in 1995,
the relation of proper dental to overall general
health is so obvious that no further comment is
necessary. He could have simply divorced her
and let her parents take care of her. They were
willing, he wasn’t, he stayed with her for the money. No pathologist would say she died 15 years ago or anytime before she was cruelly starved to death. See Nat Hentoff’s columns on the Jewish
World Review and Village Voice websites on this
legal atrocity.
Ayn Rand’s “biography” as written by Barbara Branden and Nathaniel Branden is wrong in almost
every respect and a full rebuttal has been
written by James S. Valliant, A District Attorney
in San Diego County, titled “The Passion Of Ayn
Rand’s Critics: The Case Against The Brandens”
the second half of the long book contains Rand’s
personal diaries which give the lie in detail
to both Brandens and they are the sole source
for the ridiculous statments made by Merlin in
the guise of datadave.
Greenspan was never an Objectivist, always a social climbing social metaphysician as Rand
noted years ago. Again, Margaret/Liz got their
nonfacts from the Brandens.
I should quote Schopenhauer here to the effect
that poseurs muddy their waters to make them
appear deep. 90% could be cut from Liz aka Margaret or lefty aka Merlin or Richard aka
too many people to list, postings because it
is duplicative. If you eliminated the ad hominems
from these people plus the namecalling & vulgarity
then almost 100% could be cut from their posts.
Cognitively, a long line of zeroes is still a
zero, as Rand noted.
Ok, enough of the lightweights.
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 17, 2005 at 2:45 PM I’ve been away for a bit.My server crashed.
Anyway.I’ve been able to read Jack’s rants and watch his ersatz Machiavellian game.Pathetic.You’d think the troll academy would better train its graduates.Jack,I’m not an authority on the English(it’s capitalized,in case you haven’t readthat far in your Fowler’s handbook),I merely teach it.Authorities and authoritarianism are the domain of right-wing simpletons.Furthermore,it doesn’t impress me that you’ve read the Great Books-shortcut books for people too lazy to read,yet wish to create the illusion they’re an intellectual.
I’m quite aware of the etymological antecedents of “manu” and “fact"pre-dating the Industrial Revolution.What perplexed me was your inability to understand the basic concept of labor and it’s relationship to management.You’re right,physical labor(notice the deliberate obfuscation of terms here,kids)is not a source of wealth.Production,though,is.You seem unable to grasp that,despite simple terms are still espousing an argument that comes to “Which came first,the chicken or the egg”,so it is pointless to even attempt to argue any further on that.You’ve accepted the dogmatic philosophy of the right that power is truth.Fortunately,right-wing thinking is a mental illness that can be treated.
Regarding Ayn Rand being an outstanding writer,she is.However,most people would use “egregious”.Sales numbers do not equal good literature.You obviously missed that somewhere in your extensive readings.Extensive,yes,but extending how far?
Ayn Rand is outstanding in her field.
Yes,and so is a lady farmer at harvest.
Oh,and you are still accusng me of posting under different aliases.“That pracice is not limited to one side of the spectrum as you well know”.Yes,from reading your posts.One last thing.you keep capitalizing Wwoods and have called me Mr.Woods.FYI"wwoods” is an abbreviation,similar to WWJD.In this case,What Will Obnoxious Overbearing Demagogues Say?What say you,Jack?
Posted by wwoods on Jun 17, 2005 at 2:48 PM It is obvious that “Richard” and several
others here are agent provocateurs because
one of the main things they do is cause
demoralization, confusion and strife.
They do not have to commit illegal acts
or even urge others to do so. That is only
in more extreme circumstances.
It is obvious that Barnes and Steve are the
only genuine articles, they have presented
detailed, lucid arguments and have given
multiple sources.
The rest of you sound like hysterical hags
having a bad PMS period or wallowing in the
end of your menopause.
Now if only Margaret’s Mother had followed
Bunni’s example as regards abstinence.
My only question to “Merlin” and the other
trolls is, Is Bush paying you directly or
is it the Company ?
If Rush Limbaugh wanted to do a satire
on the braindead left, he could not invent
better examples than you “people.”
Posted by Pete Wilson on Jun 17, 2005 at 2:55 PM I hate to say this but it’s not only your
server that has crashed.
There is no such thing as “mental illness”,
it is an anti-concept. See Thomas S. Szasz,
MD, thirty or so major books in this regard.
Oh, I know all about the Soviet/Chinese
psychiatric techniques for “cures” that you
endorse, Stan Woods.
They are more properly classified as crimes.
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 17, 2005 at 3:00 PM Nazism was and is a leftist movement as
regards government control of the economy
and society, it is a variant of socialism.
See The Ominous Parallels by Leonard Peikoff,
for starters. Hitler was not a fag, that’s
just psychobabble bullcrap.
That he opposed the Weimar cultural garbage
is only something that he had in common with
90% of all Germans. Their degeneracy paved the
way for National Socialism.
Steve, in a free society the government doesn’t
have the power to grant lands to anyone.
That government welfare to business exists
does not make it right or necessary.
Liz/Margaret, blacks are THEIR OWN GREATEST
ENEMY. See John McWhorter’s books in this black.
He’s a prominent black scholar and lives in Oakland.
I already referred you to Murray Rothbard’s For
A New Liberty which details how everything
including police, law courts and defense
would be privately run, he goes beyond Rand.
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 17, 2005 at 3:13 PM Having been following this thread from
the beginning and I notice that all of
you lefties, except Steve, are totally
unable to deal with Jack’s or Christine’s
or Peter’s or Marcy’s arguments.
You spend your time attacking him as a troll
when it is obvious that you are using multiple
identities.
How come ?
Posted by Noree Freese on Jun 17, 2005 at 3:17 PM Is it just me,or has anybody noticed that the topics of this post have greatly diverged?i thought the focus of this post was to discuss how Republicans have managed to wreck the working environment by catering to management instead of labor.How’d we get so far of track?Oh,that’s right,pesky trolls like Jack come on and throw out demented half-truths to derail intelligent discourse.I see he’s still trying to win at any price.Either that’s his job,or this is how he figures he can"make a difference"or"score a point for his team”.Yeah,for a team that will discard him when the balance sheet says to.
Posted by wwoods on Jun 17, 2005 at 3:36 PM Jack,
Stan Woods?Who the **** is that?Take your medicine.Please.Also,quit trying to tell me what books to read.You and I both know that anything you recommend is going to be nothing more than right-wing propaganda which APPEARS to know what it’s talking about,just like you.Pete,if you’re not also Jack,
Agent provocateur?Spare us the melodrama.You make us sound like characters out of a Joseph Conrad novel.Now I see that Jack’s back as Noree Freese.Oh,brother.Jack,I’m telling you:Louis Friend…use it!
Posted by wwoods on Jun 17, 2005 at 3:49 PM Can you translate you’re raving into english,
Stan Woods ?
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 17, 2005 at 4:03 PM “wwoods” is gordon aka lefty aka proud
vet aka richard knighton aka stan woods
and works for cointelpro.
ignore him.
Posted by Rotten Robbie on Jun 17, 2005 at 4:05 PM It appears that Jack(ass), a/k/a Teresa, Noree, Pete, Fat Sonia, are having a COOL-AID party all by himself. Jack(ass) is in the final throws of COOL-AID induced toxic-anoxic encephalopathy, leading to his current schizoid state and ultimately death.
In the mean time it’s very entertaining to watch Jack(ass) frothing at the mouth while his eyes roll back in their sockets and his head spins in circles.
S’mor COOL-AID, Jack(ass)?
Posted by Lefty on Jun 17, 2005 at 4:12 PM Is it hard posting in that straightjacket,
Lefty ?
Posted by Bill Winston on Jun 17, 2005 at 4:40 PM Once again I am accused of having multiple personalities. To hell with you Repugnican slugs. You only understand the personal attack. You are not worthy if my further notice.
Everyone else that wants a rational discussion, say so.Later.
Posted by Richard A Knighton on Jun 17, 2005 at 11:04 PM Liz,
There is one interesting Marxist thesis on the issue of the origins of modern nationalism and national identities by Benedict Anderson who wrote “The Imagined Community” whereby he argues that modern identities, as you suggested, are language related. With the relative shift in political power in the early 16th century between the Catholic Church and secular European Monarchies there also came a Latin/Vernacular conflict whereby the vernacular began to emerge the more prominant. This was facilitated by what Anderson notes as “the spread of print-capitalism” facilitated by the invention of the Gutenburg Press and the proliferation of writing for common people at first of the Bible and then secular works of poetry, fiction, philosophy and other works in vernacular languages. Because Printing, which took off incredibly at this time, became a locus of accumulation and, thus, promoted vernacular or ethno-linguistic particularism vs Latin Universalism, it can be said to constitute a shift in national consciousness based on a productive relation (what Anderson calls “print capitalism” which was highly profitable)which in turn constituted the promotion of “the imagined community” that is a contrived sense of national identity based on language and a written culture. The book is very dense and tough to read like most abstract theoretical work but highly rewarding if you can get through it!
Posted by steve on Jun 18, 2005 at 12:55 PM Richard,
This is another disturbing debate. Are we “hard-wired” for combat as it is often asked. The answer for progressives of all factions is of course NO! Early adaptive imperitives in protecting the hunting grounds and hence the food supply from other groups or other such arguments meant to link early tribal adaptive behaviours to modern aggression are ridiculous! First of all early tribes were nomadic and circulated about hardly ever conflicting with other tribes. Anthropological evidence suggests that where conflict occured it was quickly resolved in the interest of survival (the cavemen WERE MORE intellegent it seems) and not allowed to become a sustained pattern of war behaviour. This would have been non-adaptive as there were to many other adversities in nature for man to be conflicting with man. Obviously, man had to conquer nature before setting about with man. The more we secure our dominance over everything in the world the more aggressive we get with each other. I only mean to say that there is no logical or anthropological link from modern war to early natural history of cavemen. Modern War is linked to modern systmes of domination like global capitalism and the nation-state system of alliances which increasingly lapse into crisis generating ever more violence. The 19th Century was far more violent than the 18th Century and the 20th Century, having killed over 100 million people in wars alone, was the most violent so far with the 21st promising ever more violence. The problem is the increasing integration of the world and the concentration of wealth and power in the process rather than its earlier pattern of diffusion. The political system thus becomes MORE not LESS unstable with this trend as struggles between hegemony and counter-hegemony on different levels increase the tendency toward violent conflict and war. As we enter the 21st Century look for the fragmentation of the world system along many lines and the conflicts it generates to generate more heated violence between states and states and non-state actors like liberation groups and various types of insurgencies.
Posted by steve on Jun 18, 2005 at 1:15 PM I really hate to ridicule people’s views but Libertarianism is ahistorical nonsense and has failed to gain many adherents due to its simplistic association of historic phenomena like fascism and the mixed economy in utterly stupid fashion. First of all Laisse Fairre capitalism is IMPOSSIBLE. True, its never been attempted because no capitalist would ever accept it not least of all because it would make society unviable. The role of the state is to stablize the system for capital as it has always done. During the 1930s, for example, codified in law practices that private economic actors had already been engaged in for a long time in the interest of stability such as collective bargaining. This practice existed in Ford’s plants as early as the 1920s and in other plants by the depression in the 1930s. This is why the Wagner Act of 1935 passed so quickly, easily, and uninanimously! It only codified an existing pattern of behiour giving it legal room to expand and provide a stable and peaceful basis of capital accumulation by stablizing and legally ensconsing a Capital/Labor Accord or Truce. The state is thus an instrument for the management of class struggle and the smooth reproduction of the system. The neo-liberal destruction of the old social accord from the 1930s is similarly facilitated by the state in order to restructure capital globally and restore the falling rate of profit. Without the state managing the system for capital and redistributing wealth, protecting capital with various laws and providing core infrastructure all hell would break lose and capitalism would become unviable. It would be a violent, unstable system and war and barbarism would be even more prevalent without the state. If the state were unnecessary the capitalists would dispense with it. How else can capital spread risk, costs, and logistical difficulties in establishing itself and externalize the costs and losses of the system without the state. Capitalism needed the state to come into existence because it is not a free and natural system but a system of domination that is essentially undemocratic and requires increasing repression by the state. Early industrial capitalism didn’t emerge from the peaceful, boyant trade of the medieval cities which were perfectly compatible with fuedalism but from agrarian enclosures which created a rural working class for spinning industries in the UK that violently tore up the old order to create the putting out systme and link it to the wool trade with flanders(see Ralph Davies “The Rise of the Atlantic Economies”). Capitalism emerged through imperitives created by the dependency it fostered on the part of formerly independant people, NOT through incentives created by the free growth of urban trade! This is captialism’s history and the way it has spread its productive relations throughout the entire world ever since the 16th Century!
Posted by steve on Jun 18, 2005 at 1:45 PM Libertarians are always conflating Fascism with socialism because government intervention in the economy seems, for them, to be a common denominator. Yet socialism is brought about by working class demands/revolutionary activity while fascism is the political consequence of a deep, unresolvable crisis of late monopoly capitalism the likes of which we saw in the 1930s in which capitalists themselves actively promote dictatorship through their direct intervention in the political process in ways they have never before done. In Germany, in the 1930s, there was a profound crisis of a top heavy, highly concentrated monopoly capitalist system based primarily on intermediate goods industries such as steel, pig iron, metallurgy, industrial dyes, machine tools, and coal. These industries needed foreign markets to achieve profitable scale economies and depressed wages to achieve export competitiveness (which was partly achieved by the Stinnes/Legien Accords for wage/price stability. There was a depression of demand in the German economy for consumer goods which the feedstock industries had as their main customers. The issue was resolved through the Nazi program, actively supported by the entire capitalist class in Germany, of remilitarization, foreign aggression, and conquest. This brought about the first real military-industrial complex since Japan’s and access to foreign supplies of cheap raw materials. It also brought into play captive foreign markets in occupied countries who the Nazis compelled to maintain a certain proportion of German funny-money called “Askemarks” redeemable only by the Reichsbank for trade in goods and services with Germany. This was the brainchild of the Walter Funk who succeeded Hjalmar Schacht as Finance Minister in the early Nazi period. Foreign markets and cheap raw materials along with the biggest military behemoth the world had ever seen restored profitability yet the other crucial element the Nazis provided was the decisive crushing of the German working classes whose unions were banned and replaced by the Deutsche Arbeiters Front (German Workers Front) a Nazi collaberationist front with no independence from either capital or the Nazi Party. By 1938, when Germany was about ready to embark on military conquest, wages and salaries had dropped to the lowest porportion of the German GNP ever while the profits of the great cartels had reached their highest proportions. Additionally, the rate of industrial accidents had reached an all time high due to massive industrial speed-ups amidst already dangerous working conditions. Fascism, with its enforced decline of the living standards of the masses and its deadly promotion of war, is a form of class struggle waged by capital in crisis periods. Socialism by contrast is an entirely different kind of system. The other main difference is that socialism, far from consisting of either a policy of even a social system, can also be considered a stage of historic development.
Posted by steve on Jun 18, 2005 at 2:50 PM Steve:
We are NOT hard-wired for combat, how-ever we ARE hard-wired to defend ouselves when threatened. How we respond to the threat, clearly dictates the actions of primatives. More socially advanced types have different responses than stone-age types. Additionally, imposed new social interactions can influence these reactions as well.
Our natural responses to threats can be used against us to produce a stronger reation to a threat. We call this “military training” and it is intended to overcome the normal tendency to find killing repugnant. This revulsion to killing is at the root of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. It’s why people go crazy during war.
We teach humans, dogs and chickens how to fight to the death. Two are considered by very small groups to be sports. The other is Governmental mass murder.
Posted by Richard A Knighton on Jun 18, 2005 at 11:12 PM Jack(ass) Barnes said:
“Is it hard posting in that straightjacket,
Lefty ? Posted by Bill Winston on June 17, 2005 at 11:40 AMHey Jack(ass), I put you in a straight jacket about a week ago. What’s the matter you “sub-100 (IQ) monkey boy,” running out of material. I’d think that Tom Delay’s office (who’s paying you to troll here), would keep you stocked full of lies and subterfuge to spread around liberal websites.
In the mean time, Hillary Clinton, the next President, needs to start working on compiling candidates for agency heads (like the EPA, FDA, SEC, OSHA, etc), to replace the corporate pimps that the crook - Bush - appointed to these posts (in exchange for kickbacks of course).
Another interesting question, will President Clinton have to fire the entire CIA and replace them? You remember that Bush demanded oaths of loyalty to him in order for CIA personel to keep their jobs, or they were replaced. You see, when President Clinton takes office, she will need an unbiased CIA to investigate the crimes of the Bush family so that they can be dispatched accordingly. Sounds like fun great doesn’t it.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 19, 2005 at 3:08 AM Richard,
Clearly, you and most people are confused on this issue. The survival instinct is natural to man and all other beings. Having said this it is critical to note that the trappings of modern civilization have nothing to do with this. In fact the modern military and the decision making institutions that surround it have as little to do with primitive instincts as can be. These are heavily bureaucratized institutions that make violence more likely precisely because heavy layers of rules and institutional bodies separate man from his actions in alienating parterns of ever deeper disengagement from the cognitive self and from ones moral sense. This is the essence of MODERNITY. This is what all those “pop” sociologists were trying to express with regard to the concievability Nazi war crimes, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the blowing up of Vietnamese VIllages by US Helicopter gunships, and other bombing raids that wreak havok and destruction on human civilization. Modern warfare enables the intensity of mindless war and killing by ALIENATION, the precise opposite of primordial instinct whereby we are overly and uncontrollably in contact with our cognitive sense. Modernity, and most especially modern warfare, succeeds by DISENGAGING the individual from his/her cognitive sense through mass actions, bureaucratized decision-making and execution of decisions, mass indoctrination, and, finally, the dehumanization of the opponent through sophisticated mass media inculcation. These are structural features of modernity mediated by complex state authority which enables counter-intuitive behaviours on the part of individuals who become mindless cogs in the machine of warfare in the political interest of others in modern bureaucratized society.
Posted by steve on Jun 19, 2005 at 10:45 AM Richard,
It isn’t psychobabble! It is the very core of what this debate is all about. Why don’t you read an old classic-Hannah Arendt’s, Eichmann in Jerusalem. Then you might understand what I am trying to say.
Posted by steve on Jun 19, 2005 at 11:26 AM Aliases of “Jack Barnes” on this forum, Injuries to All, in order of
first appearance here:-As well as “Jack Barnes”, which he claims is his REAL NAME,not that of some
labor activist, employed as a joke, and is certainly his most consistent persona,
he employs these multiple others:-
1) Rotten Robbie2) lefty’s mama
3) Christine M Taylor
4) Robber Baron
5) Susie
6) Peter Rockefeller (seems to be his most right-wing persona! Not to say there’s much difference!)
7) Robbie
8) Katie
9) stanley
10) Redeye
11) Marcy Fleming (who conveniently nominates Jack for sainthood!)
12) Big Sonia
13) Teresa
14) Pete Wilson
15) and finally, last to date - Noree Freese!!
(THAT one recalls the name of the wife
of a rather well-known comic book villain to ME, Jack! See, I know Yank imperialist
pop culture rather well!!)Most sly references don’t slip by me, because I always know when I have heard sth.
before, even just once or twice, even if I can’t place it immediately… Even
“Lin Biao” (one of his aliases on another forum, ‘twould appear) rang a bell!
16) Oh, and, late addition, a new one: Bill Winston.
HOW CAN WE TELL? BECAUSE JACK KEEPS USING THAT LOUSY ENTER/RETURN KEY, LONG BEFORE THE END OF THE LINE!!He’d like to be a poet but he don’t know it.
Have I missed any? What do you think, Margaret?? (I’ve tried to include them all!)
I think it’s important that you and I take a critical stand, as Jack seems to wish to conflate the both of us, in particular! Despite that we are of different ages (you have a grown-up daughter), political affiliations, religions, countries, etc… you know, all the details! Jack doesn’t sweat the small stuff, it would appear.
He also likes to pretend that Richard Knighton and Merlin and a hundred other people are
the same, and/or “agents provocateurs”.Yawn.
The only original person on this board, he would like to believe, is himself.
(And his ten thousand other aliases/split personas.)
(I don’t know about Lin Biao, Louis Friend etc and their activities as I haven’t yet found the forums on ITT with those on. If they employ the same formatting and vicious writing style,
(non-jokey) personal attacks,etc, I think it’s safe to assume it’s “Jack” up to his old tricks.)
I’d like to speculate as to who the “real Jack” is, and as to what his medical diagnosis
(for that it what it must amount to!) really adds up to.(You notice how he denies that psychiatry, etc, is a real science - very MUCH in denial, is
our Jack, I would think!!)I don’t think Lefty was at all wrong when he (for it WAS he, as he now proudly admits!)
put Jack into that figurative straitjacket…“In joculo veritas” one might very well say!!!
(The original Latin saying is “in vino veritas”, and I’m no Latinist, though I’d like to be,
but I didn’t have the advantage of going to the type of school where they taught it. So I might
have got the grammar in the above adaptation wrong, but it’s the wit that counts!)
Posted by Liz on Jun 19, 2005 at 6:41 PM To “Jack Barnes”, aka Michael Hardesty, which I believe is your real name:-
Ayn Rand was a WACKJOB. I haven’t read any of her books yet, but the more I read about her on the net, the more I realize that.
Anyway, there are TONS of authors who wrote more than one novel who have OUTSOLD her, in numbers terms!! Charles Dickens has probably outsold her. Joanne Rowling certainly has. That Christian wackjob Tim LaHey has, BY MILES… His “Left Behind” series, of what, 7-8 cheap thrillers, has sold 80 MILLION COPIES… (Jesus! Is all I can say to that! Wept.)
Hey, Margaret?
Rand has only sold a bit above 20 million.
ANY world-bestselling author can equal that by the end of his career. Jeffrey Archer has probably done that by now.
Fascist wackjobs… It just proves to me, that a psyche once threatened, can marshall ALL its defences, ALL sorts of strange weapons, constructed in the depths of the id (a Freudian term and I’m a Jungian but let’s run with it!) to defend itself… ALL kinds of dark sorcery and Error….
(I shall make a note to tell the Fourth Internationalists, the Trotskyists I am in contact with, the ones with an INTERNATIONAL presence… If they’re going to do any expropriating this time when the revolution comes, as it surely shall within the next 20-50 years if modern capitalism continues the way it’s doing, can they please just limit it to conglomerates - who don’t belong to anybody, just a vague collection of shareholders, as if the directors REALLY cared about those (!), and the OBVIOUS big crime families, like the Bushes etc.
Not people who own drugstores and chemists shops and various medium-sized businesses. Otherwise they’re going to breed another generation of dreadful “thinkers” like Ayn (Pain) Rand.)
That’s going to be high on my requests list!)
(Actually it probably will be possible to take over whatever we want, economically speaking, after regime change, by stringently prosecuting big fish for economic crimes which are ILLEGAL UNDER THIS SYSTEM, NOW!!)
Hmm, Richard Knighton? What do YOU think, if you’re on here? I don’t see you disagreeing somehow…
Anyway, “Jack”, read this following site for a refutation of Rand’s self-contradictory ideas.
http://home.sprynet.com/~owl1/rand5.htm
Posted by Big Chief Crazy Horse on Jun 20, 2005 at 1:26 AM The more I research Rand, the more weird things I keep hearing about her… See, when I was in institutes of learning in whichever country I come from, nobody ever talked about her… Nor in school. She was NEVER a geeky teen interest in my neck of the woods. I therefore find her to be a US obsession. Unsurprisingly. Funnily enough, though I think I was always peripherally aware of her, because of watching a documentary when I was a minor, sth. about Hollywood. I seem to have somehow got the idea that her novels were sort of like a futuristic Wild West, though - whereas it seems she’s much worse!!
Well, apparently one of her novels “Atlas Shrugged”, glorifies rape, within a hero/heroine relationship. She’s obsessed with “macho”, phallic metaphors - never with the female side of life. (A sort of Jazz Age Camille Paglia, then!)
Only she wasn’t homosexual, or if she was, she hid it well. She was against homosexuals, apparently - usual macho reason, thought they were effete and a “disease”.
And then there’s all this junk about which Michael Hardesty (the real Jack) informs us on another ITT blog, that Rand was against the civil rights movement… Hmm. Yes, we’re in VERY good company!!
(HOW else did she expect blacks to emancipate themselves, other than outright bloody war - by BUYING the votes from the whites in the South?)
Oh yeah, and apparently she got her start by the good graces of Cecil B. DeMille… another GREAT friend to humanity! I am sure.
Hm. Wonder if it would work for me. Maybe if I go to Hollywood, stand outside studios and wiggle my hips and pout my lips when Steven Spielberg (after all, he’s not so bad politically) drives by…
Assuming he’s not gay, of course.
Anyway, like Ann Coulter - another media whore. Albeit operating in an environment where it was new; ie Rand was a pioneer in this respect.
(Someone had to be!)
Posted by Big Chief Crazy Horse on Jun 20, 2005 at 1:26 AM Where is everyone? All the regular gang? Have you gone to the new article(s)? I didn’t notice anything that interesting going on there earlier… Must go and have another look!
(See what Jack’s incarnated himself as this time!)
A slug? A gremlin?
Posted by Liz on Jun 20, 2005 at 1:30 AM Oh, BTW: The above-but-one posting marked “Big Chief Crazy Horse” is actually ME… sorry folks! (If you thought it was a transvestite Native American: had to disabuse you of any possible misunderstanding there…)
Yeah; it’s a joke identity I used for about one post in another of these forums. I thought it was turned off when you went to visit another blog; obviously not! One learns something every day?
Still - as I said - WHERE is everybody? Right now? There doens’t seem to be much activity by any of the regular people, by ANYONE, on the new blogs…
Have you all been driven off by Jack??
Posted by Liz on Jun 20, 2005 at 6:48 AM By the way, Jack.
John McWhorter (I read the “Prison in the Cards” article and the comments) is just full of shit and yet another of these “house n*gg*rs” who are paid handsomely by Bush and co, by neoliberals, by any right-wing shit-assed thinktank you can think of.
He actually WORKS for the Manhattan institute… so what is THAT saying? About him?
Like Jews who worked for Hitler.
Posted by Liz on Jun 20, 2005 at 7:00 AM Oh - forgot to ask you! DO Libertarians - your sort - actually believe in VOTES??
Or would they be unnecessary, in your Liberrandtopia? The Jack version of heaven on earth, to compete with my “Rousseau primitivist” version!! (Not that I think EITHER one is now possible!)
I ask about your opinion on Votes - because WITHOUT civil rights and the gains made by that movement - HOW are black people supposed to be assured their democratic rights?
Which shows you; you people have NO idea of objective reality - ie, of real situations in real life.
Mm. I think Jack REALLY believes in votes just for white people, and 2 for men for each 1 for a woman.
That’s MY suspicion.
Posted by Liz on Jun 20, 2005 at 7:04 AM Privatized police = the Robocop movies, BTW, Jack.
(Or more realistically, something more like the capitalist corruption and semi-legal viciousness they now have in most South American states - WHERE YOUR NEOLIBERAL ECONOMIST FRIENDS ORDERED THE KILLING OF ALL THE SOCIALISTS!!)
God, they’ll do it to US… won’t they, Steve?
So why don’t we do it to THEM, first??
Posted by Liz on Jun 20, 2005 at 7:13 AM Pat Buchanan! F*ck me! Or rather, Pat Buchanan can go and fvuck himself.
I’m really GLAD now I visited some of those older, closed forums, like the one after the article “Prison in the Cards”, Jack… Or rather Michael Hardesty. (Finally, a real-sounding, non-copied-from-somewhere name!)
Because at least it gave me a chance to find out your REAL name, what is likeliest to be… though it might not be the one you were born to; you probably changed it to an alias after bombing a black church or something…. (Hah! What do you say, Margaret?)
Anyway, that seems to be the one you’ve been hawking around many other internet sites. Michael…. “Windex” seems to think so.
And I’ve found that one of your GREATEST reading recommendations is - who else? Pat Buchanan! (OK, so you’re also - tangentially - into Noam Chomsky, but only when he says something to suit YOU - ie, stuff against Jews in Israel!)
Pat Buchanan, A RACIST, CONSERVATIVE, ANTI-BLACK, ANTI-SEMITE.
What MORE is there to say?
I’m REALLY surprised that YOU and your “Chinese pal” “Lin” DON’T LIKE Frank Miller and his toilet movie “Sin City”, Michael, I think you’d REALLY like it…
Don’t you agree on this one, Margaret? Don’t you think it’s JUST made for Jack/Lin/Michael?
Anti-religious, latently racist, “libertarian” and lax in its attitudes to prostitutes etc (ie, that every woman should be one or act like one, and that Nazi regalia is fine, too…) Frank Miller considers himself a “romantic” too, you see, and I can ONLY understand that as meaning in the Ayn Rand sense (whatever THAT is - I can hardly WAIT to read her drivel, just for the privilege of debunking it!)...
For it certainly isn’t in the OLD, 19th-century or previous sense, as MY literary “master”, the great Mr C. S. Lewis (he called himself “Jack”, too, but it wasn’t YOUR sort of Jack, JACK!) did teach me, through his works.
YOU knew I was a Lewis fan, didn’t you, Margaret? Odd for a person who has now rejected most of Christianity - but I always did believe in consulting a classicist/medievalist… and such he was, the best, the best!
C. S. LEWIS HAD MORE BRAINS IN HIS LITTLE TOE THAN AYN RAND HAD IN HER WHOLE STUPID TRENDY 30s-COIFFURED HEAD.
(Not all women are worth the time of day!)
And I think that’s how HE would have dismissed her - though to my knowledge he NEVER mentioned her, I don’t think he was familiar with much American philosophy. But HAD he read her, he would definitely dismiss her as a “modernist trendy”, like so many of the people he had met, and whose philosophy he had dismissed, at cocktail parties he would have gone to in Oxford in the 20s and 30s. (He came to Christianity relatively late, though, mind!)
He danced to the beat of a more ancient drum. As he explains in his rather illuminating allegory, “The Pilgrims’ Regress”, the introduction to which if only I could find it among my collection, gives the BEST (fivefold) definition of PROPER Romanticism I have ever heard.
OH, and although a (trad) conservative, he HATED racists, racist apologists and all their ilk!!
Posted by Liz on Jun 20, 2005 at 7:47 AM -
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