female: i don't like this.
male: actually, you do like this.
female: no...really....i...
male: actually...!
every debate on the topic basically reduces to this. and it's basically pointless to bother further when it gets there.
but, i'll tell you what - maybe he has a point. maybe women gotta pop a few caps in some homies' asses to get 'em to shut the fuck up.
(deleted response)
deathtokoalas
you hit a specific point, and now i need to rant.
patriarchy exists in degrees, rather than in absolutes. most of the world doesn't sell their daughters off for business alliances anymore, but the general idea hasn't been abolished so much as it's evolved. i'm not really certain people are cognizant of this.
it's a liberal thing. daddy as family dictator is out the window; we're about self-ownership, now. but we never changed the game. we never even really changed the rules of the game. the fundamental relationship of women being sold to men is still dominant (it's changing, but it is), it's just that women are now expected to sell themselves.
what it does is open up a free market, where men are buyers and women are sellers. i believe it was engels that pointed out that all sexual activity in a market society is necessarily and unavoidably prostitution.
and, when you put it into that context i agree - gender egalitarianism is not entirely possible until women start buying in equal proportions. that's what gender equality means in a market society.
the conditions for that to occur are economic freedom and social acceptance. it's getting there. but that's the key part - evening out the market.
maybe, one day, we can abolish the market altogether. that's a different discussion.
listen, i know it sounds extreme for a 29 year-old to make this choice, but i can't help but think that those that are criticizing her decision have mostly not been around people suffering from brain cancer. i recently watched my father die from brain cancer, and i want to make a few things clear about the choices she has in front of her - because they may not be clear to people.
when you have a tumour in your breast or your leg there may be serious consequences in removing it that may affect your lifestyle. a mastectomy is a hard choice. but, it doesn't affect who you are as an individual - cognitively speaking.
the chemo and the radiation therapy are treatment options, but they don't actually remove the tumour. the only way to remove the tumour is surgically. what this means is that you're removing a part of your brain, and depending on where the tumour is, it could leave you in a very altered state. it puts treatment of brain cancer in a different category than treatments of other cancers.
my father's first operation did not seriously affect his individuality. the second seemed to affect his ability to reason, and the third legitimately left him mentally challenged. there was no other solution - it was the operation or certain death. in the end it didn't save him, but if it did he would have been left a fraction of his former self. he made the decision to fight until the end, but nobody would have begrudged him had he decided differently - except for maybe himself.
it's a very traumatic, difficult experience for everybody involved. i realize she's decided to live a little longer, and i hope she enjoys that time with her family. but i'd really plead with people not to think they can understand this choice or that they can second guess it in any meaningful way. if you're lucky, you'll never have to make a choice this hard in your life...
ghomeshi has acknowledged there was violence, the question is whether it was consensual.
the problem i have with decoutere as a witness is that she's a cop. if you accept this sort of framing hypothesis as at the least likely given the lengths the conservatives have gone to to take over the cbc, the fact that she's a cop eliminates any sort of objectivity that should otherwise be there.
there are multiple other accusers, and to my knowledge none of them are cops. but this situation of a cop standing up to take down a liberal cbc host on sexual assault charges is very fishy to me....
i mean, i don't claim to know with any certainty what's going on here or who's being honest and who isn't.
but the perception i'm getting is that there's much more to this situation than is apparent on the surface.
it would be useful if jian could clarify what he means by "consensual" because the stories that have come out take the same form - he tries it, they're in shock, it doesn't continue. see, that's not consent. but, dudes often have weird ideas about consent. that would eliminate the contradiction immediately - he would misunderstand consent and be liable for the consequences.
but, the stories also have other constants that are sort of weird. now, i know they're the kinds of things that are often held up as examples of rape culture. i don't remember because i was in shock. i didn't file charges because i was embarrassed. it's often legitimate. but these are also the kinds of things that our legal system has difficulty with.
the reality is that there's a political context here, and these ambiguities need to be clarified before any kind of conclusion can be reached.
all i'm pointing out is that the situation is fishy.
yeah. flying cars. that's exactly what the world needs to get off oil.
we're doomed.
i'm going to reject being called a liberal (i'd prefer variants of anarchist, communist or socialist), but i happened to see the clip and while i think sam harris badly mischaracterized his opponents, and maher kept quiet on that when he shouldn't have, i don't recall anything racist coming out of anybody.
i do recall that ben affleck had a lot of difficulty in following the discussion, though.
that's right - craycray fundamentalist muslims, with their communist insistence that women go to work. we here in america will stand up against this islamo-communism and prevent our women from reaching their potential! 'MERICA!
if you're tired of arguing with zionists...this is the truth of it.
and while it's beyond surreal and absurd, and exasperatingly sad, it just exposes the absurdity of racism.
i'll explain, because i know most people don't really have the historical background.
about 1500 years ago (not quite, but almost), the area of israel passed from primarily roman (although sometimes persian) control to arab muslim control. there are some destruction events in jewish history before that, but the stories that they led to a "scattering" of the jews have very little archaeological support. we know there was substantial jewish migration to a few areas (ukraine, spain, iran, a few others) but there's never been any evidence to support the idea that the jews literally got up and left the area, or were expelled in any kind of significant numbers.
what recent genetic testing has upheld is really the logical answer - that there never was a substantial migration in or out of israel during the "arabization" of the region, which was roughly 700-1000. what actually happened was merely that the jewish population of the region converted to islam - as the spaniards or the indians or the iranians did.
what that means is that the palestinian people, who have been persecuted so horribly as "invaders on jewish land", are in actual fact the literal - and only true - descendants of the actual hebrew people. they are, in fact, the "real jews".
the amount of arab admixture into this jewish population has been as minimal as it is anywhere else in the islamicized areas. we speak of modern iranians as iranians, not arabs. likewise, we should speak of modern palestinians as jews.
get your head around this. the incredible upheavals, the global conflicts, the incredible suffering....it's all based on a misperception.
Paul Dettmann
You people are fucking morons. His words were intentionally taken out of context in this clip so you braindead losers could use it as another right wing talking point.
Here's what he actually said at 17:10 in the full video: "We need better child care, day care, and and early childhood education policies.You know, in many states sending your child to day care costs more than sending them to a public university. True. And, too often, parents have no choice but to put their kids in cheaper daycare that maybe doesn't have the kinds of programming that makes a big difference in a child's development. And sometimes there may just not be any slots, or the best programs may be too far away. And sometimes, someone, usually mom, leaves the workplace to stay home with the kids, which then leaves her earning a lower wage for the rest of her life as a result. And that's not a choice we want Americans to make."
deathtokoalas
you're half right. the words are badly taken out of context, but this clip was a gift to the propaganda machine. he's gotta be more careful...
Divine Insurrection
Why is it all you people have is insults? Can you not see what these bastards are trying to do? Are you BLIND? Or do you actually dig the idea of living in a Communist/Islamic nation?
deathtokoalas
absolutely. look at the communism they have in saudi arabia, where women are forced to go to work against their will.
the american free market system is all about making sure people don't have to go to work if they don't want to.
chaostic84
you are obviously a left side faggot, jump off a cliff and help America. Stupid queer.
deathtokoalas
if that was directed at me, you're correct in your accusations - but wouldn't it be easier if you carried out a public stoning?
Katherine
If you read the whole transcript (available on whitehouse.gov), he's talking about parents who are FORCED to stay at home because they CAN'T AFFORD childcare. He's not upset that people CHOOSE to stay at home.
Duncan
The puppet masters want everyone in the to broke to have at least one parent stay home with the children camp. The agenda is a hybrid reservation/company town for the world
deathtokoalas
i think that's a paranoid exaggeration.
the reality is that there's a contradiction in liberal economic theory. on the one hand, we have this idea of self-ownership - and there's good arguments for this. one of the things that defines self-ownership in a liberal market society is the ability to generate your own income. there's a lot of freedom attached to this - relatively speaking, anyways. some women may give in to the existential dread and prefer to be taken care of, but the proper conclusion from market theory really ought to be that there should be a choice here between dependence and independence. and, yes, that's what obama meant to say, even if he gave his opponents a gift in the way he said it.
but, the flip side of this is that productive forces are constantly seeking to reduce the workforce, and have been succeeding pretty spectacularly over the last generation or so. this is set to increase. just a purely mathematical argument would demand that we'd need 55% (or whatever the percentage of women is) economic growth since 1960 in order to create enough jobs to accommodate for it. that's a hefty growth curve...
...and we're living through deindustrialization and mechanization. we've been pretty flat since roughly 1970, and likely set to decrease.
so, there's a contradiction, there.
one of the ways to resolve the contradiction is to try and convince women they don't want to work after all. this isn't likely to be successful on a large scale within a market system. there's just too much economic freedom attached to the idea of generating your income, and too much shit involved in tying your existence to somebody else's pay check. some women are lucky enough to find themselves in positive situations with this, but most women are smart enough to realize the possible consequences of getting stuck in that sort of situation. so, it's not going to happen.
but they keep pushing it because there isn't a way out besides making serious changes to the way we order the economy. mechanization isn't going to reverse itself. so, you're looking at things like job sharing. and when you play this out to it's conclusion, you're inevitably left with high levels of progressive taxation to administer it.
there's no other end point. and i don't think the democrats really get that either, i think they're mostly lost in delusions about unending growth curves.
you can't just double the labour market in a stagnant or even shrinking economy and expect it to keep going. but, self-ownership is fundamental to individual freedom in the market order. contradiction....
dswynne
First, family planning arrangements is none of the government's business. Secondly, the reason why women have to make a choice to begin with is due to excessive taxation of the poor and middle-class. Thirdly, there is a school of thought amongst feminists that hate the idea of stay-at-home moms because it a) lowers the earning power of women across the board, and, b) takes prominent "talent" out of corporate America, thus less feminine representation. Finally, by empowering the daycare system, you have a perfect storm to unionize daycare workers. Thus, what Pres. Obama said is disingenuous, even if this clip was "taken out of context", based upon the goals of this man (i.e. increasing the scope of government).
deathtokoalas
it's not a question of whether it's the state's business or not, so long as the state exists it will interfere, it's a question of what the state needs to do to protect it's own interests. there's a disagreement on this point, but the democrats and republicans are really equally delusional about it. the republicans argue that the state needs to foster a family-oriented type model in order to protect the wealth of the upper classes from being taxed to pay for the collapse of that system, whereas the democrats argue that the more workers you have the higher the tax base is. i'm several degrees to the left of the democrats, but i realize that the republicans actually make more sense on this point. they're at least acknowledging the basic arithmetic that comes from transferring wealth out of the nuclear family. the democrats are just projecting growth rates out of thin air and into lalaland.
the basic arithmetic is intuitive. consider two people: mary and mark. mary and mark are neither related nor are they lovers - they don't even know each other. if it were the past, mary would be expected to be taken care of by her husband. but, now mary wants to go to work and, because she's a better candidate than mark, takes mark's job away from him. now, mary had a husband to take care of her when she wasn't working. who takes care of mark when he's not working? the answer is that the government has to do this.
so, the basic arithmetic is a shift in responsibility from the family patriarch to the state.
now, here's the thing: maybe you can let mark starve to death. who cares, right? but, you can't let ten million marks starve to death. rather, ten million marks are going to raise an army and tear the state down. so, the state has no choice but to provide them with something or other. just enough to stop them from revolting.
we know what republicans want: to minimize the tax burden for the upper class. so, this is a problem for them. this is the reason they promote the policies they promote.
now, the democrats take this other crazy position that argues that mary and mark don't need to be competing for jobs. the market will adjust. it will create new jobs, so both mary and mark can be working. as a million maries enter the work force, a million new jobs are created. it's magic. then, there's a million new workers to tax.
there's a lot of smoke and mirrors around this, but these are the basic economic positions that drive the way the parties approach this.
i'm not going to respond to your other points, as they're too dumb to bother with and i think you know it.
what's missing in the spectrum is a realistic analysis of how to deal with the contradictory movements of increasing female economic freedom and degrowth caused be deindustrialization and mechanization. i think we can have both of these things, but only if we re-evaluate our calvinist concepts of labour.
dswynne
I think you are misconstruing my argument. I am very much in support of women making the choice on whether or not they want to stay at home. I am saying that Obama is not being sincere in his speech. He doesn't care about whether or not women chose to stay home; he cares more about increasing government spending, while expanding the role of government (vis-a-vis daycare). I also refuted Obama's argument that women who stay home to raise kids make less money. I countered this by stating that tax policies (i.e. disposable income) is the reason why stay-at-home mothers is the reason why families generate less income. The rest of my arguments were stemmed from what I know of the Democratic agenda, especially where the state of feminism is. That part could be debated, but the rest of what I wrote is not.
And I would ask you to not respond to any of my posts that are not directed towards you, especially since you've decided to take them out of context, as a way of making a snarky retort.
deathtokoalas
both wings of the capitalist party seek to reduce spending as much as possible. historically, the democrats have been considerably more fiscally conservative. obama himself has a record of radical fiscal conservatism. further, as a statist institution, both wings of the capitalist party seek to increase the role of the state in society. it's a preposterous premise.
i think it's the third time now that i've stated that the democratic wing of the capitalist party seeks to maximize labour participation because they (incorrectly) believe that this is the way to get the highest tax return. they honestly think they'll make money off of this. conversely, the republican wing of the capitalist party seeks to minimize labour participation because they believe this is the best way to minimize the need for progressive taxation (which they understand as necessary to prevent revolution).
i don't believe that you don't understand that women seek employment to reduce dependency on men, and there's consequently little reason to discuss the topic further. it neither has anything to do with taxation, nor does it have to do with combined income, it has to do with the innate desire that individuals have to exist independently from coercive relationships. what obama was stating was that you damage your career when you have to take ten-twenty years off to raise your kids and it's not fair to make women choose between a career in law and the well-being of their own kids. it was not a statement that had anything to do with the combined income of families, it was a statement that had to do with the individual freedom of women.
if you don't like my responses, you can go ahead and remove yourself from the thread.
ugh. so, i've been over this before....
the reason the drag community focuses on these absurd displays of sexuality is because they're expressing a dominant form of masculinity through a female costume. it's little more than a gay male fetish.
the archetype is madonna, but it's really diversified over the last few decades. if you're focusing your concept of "femininity" on madonna's ultra-masculine dominatrix shtick through however many levels of abstraction, you're not expressing a condition of gender dysphoria, you're merely playing out your male dominance through a kinky costume.
how many drag queens do you see do alice in wonderland or snow white? you don't. because it's not about gender.
so, if you're interpreting the transgender condition through this filter and then you look at me and say "she's not like that....", then of course you're going to get confused - because you're misinterpreting a dominant gay male fetish for a gender condition that encapsulates the exact opposite of that.
i have about as much in common with the average gay male as i do with the average christian fundamentalist. but i'm pretty sure i'd rather hang out with the latter, because i'm confident he isn't going to take his pants off in front of me. well, actually, on second thought, i shouldn't be so sure about that....
the point i'm getting at is that the idea of compressing mtf spaces into gay male spaces is just negating the concept of transsexuality. it's an oppressive implication - it denies that i don't identify as male, don't share experiences with men, etc. and i very well may snap on the next doctor that suggests it.
i want to hang out with a bunch of gay men about as much as any other woman wants to go to any other sausage party. i'm going to sit in the corner by myself, have no idea what they're talking about (probably video games) and hope somebody i can relate to comes in to save me from them. i know this because i've been through it. i'm old. i've lived a life.
like. fuck. if it was that easy, would i have made it so difficult? ugh.
i'm going to send a duplicate over facebook, as i hope to get a referral out by monday if i need to do it that way. however, i suspect it may be easier to simply book an appointment.
the purpose of contacting you is to get my hormone prescription renewed. i've already been through all of the mtf transgender diagnosis - and a very long time ago at that. i've been on hormones absolutely steadily since 2010.
i was previously dealing with a doctor in ottawa. about a year ago, i moved to windsor. last month, i had my prescription renewal denied due to the doctor no longer practicing. i've had *general* difficulties with the doctors in windsor - they won't take my odsp seriously, and they won't write me hormone prescriptions. i'm really at a loss of understanding.
i couldn't even contemplate how i'd react if i were to stop taking them. i've been on them five years! my entire life exists in a female identity. i simply don't understand why the doctor in windsor is refusing to prescribe, but it's forcing me to look outside the city.
i was able to get an emergency prescription to the end of december from the hospital ER room. that's an extreme step, but i had nowhere else to go to get the extension. what that means is i'm hoping to see somebody before the new year.
i'll have to take the bus down, which shouldn't be a problem so long as i have enough time to plan. again: my records are with the doctor in ottawa. would you be willing to see me?
the main heat is about to finally kick in - meaning it's about to hit 21 in here. meaning it's been above 21 in here without the heat on all fall so far. it's 21.3, so it'll fall within the next few hours. it's a little earlier than last year, but the temperature hasn't been very high. considering this is a basement, and it's been cold for weeks, that's actually sort of remarkable. had we not got these intense drops.....
the small heater in the bathroom has been on since the first week of october.
libby.
libby. libby....
so, if you argue that we should not restrict the flow of people from africa because it would damage the economy, does that mean you think we should not restrict the flow of capital across borders because it would damage growth? well, you're citing the who. are you going to cite the world bank and the imf, too?
it's the same neo-liberal argument, applied to a different context. if the aim is the well-being of the local population, it's equally wrong across both contexts.
now, did the government actually do anything? no. are they playing politics in their reaction? sure. is the american right being laughably hypocritical in capitalizing on public fears? sure. so, is it a meaningless political response directed at harper's base? absolutely.
but it's a really bad argument, libby. it's a scary argument. and, it aligns snugly into the existing perspective on the left that we've lost the ndp, to the extent that we ever had it in the first place.
if you're serious about this, you realize the who is pushing market fundamentalism in it's position. this ought not be an issue where travelers from africa are given the opportunity to make the choice to be dishonest. the quarantine should be total. it's the kind of situation that the clauses in the constitution were inserted for - with an extreme public health crisis, the public safety dominates over individual rights. and if that means that sick people choose to stay in africa instead of come to canada - well, yeah, that's the point. sorry, africa, but you're contagious right now.
when a so-called socialist party can criticize a ruling conservative party for abandoning the principles of neo-liberalism without anybody batting an eye about it, you know you're living in a one party state.
i have to admit that i kind of don't get it. gaming is such a dude thing. i don't see it as comparable to women picking up guitars or going to work or any of these sorts of things. it's more like women showing up outside the boys club and demanding to be let in.
i don't really claim to have a grasp of what's going on. i don't know who any of these people are or any of the forums or anything beyond the broad idea of misogyny in gaming. i just don't understand why women want into this world that doesn't offer them anything except wasted hours and doesn't seem to want them in it.
maybe it's a guy thing. i'm certainly revolted by the androcentric nature of the gaming industry, so i don't play the games. why can't there be guy things? why can't you just let the boys play their stupid games and leave it at that....?
i understand a lot of youngish women were raised with the idea that gaming is gender neutral. but, maybe that perception - wherever it came from - is wrong and, maybe, instead of trying to force yourself into something that doesn't want you in it, you should just get the message and voluntarily walk away from it...
there's no end goal of social advancement or hierarchical positioning inherent within taking part in the gaming industry. there's no victory for equality, here. i don't see any feminist gains to be made from fighting for the "right" to engage in mind-numbing stupidity as equals...
conversely, i think this kind of ultra-authoritarianism and interference in the sovereign lives of others is likely to harm general perceptions of feminism. there's really nothing worthwhile and nothing positive that can come out of fighting this battle.
it's fairly well understood at this point that a desire to be a police officer implies a certain level of mental illness. the idea of a "good cop" is a contradiction in terms - these are people that want to walk around with guns and tell people what to do, and there can never be anything "good" about that kind of a tendency.
i've seen the argument made that politicians should not be allowed to announce their own candidacies, for similar reasons. the argument is that nobody that chooses to run could be anything better than corrupt, so the only way to get a clean system is for the masses to nominate people - and possibly against their will.
i think a similar mindset needs to be adopted with teachers. i've spent a good deal of my life preparing to become one, but in the end decided it would be a horrible job. i'd be the kind of teacher that would make no effort to reach out to struggling students and would happily fail 75% of the class if it didn't hold up to my expectations. then, they'd pull this circular argument on me that i'm not meeting expectations. so, i wouldn't last very long. the core of my disinterest would be a complete inability to discipline the children of strangers. that's a totally foreign - and somewhat frightening - concept to me.
what kind of mental illness does it require to want to stand in the front of a room and enforce this neurotic, hierarchical structure down on kids? so, how can we speak of "good teachers", in the context of the mentality that the profession requires?
I was listening to "I
am the Walrus" while working on a Master's Thesis (strange basis), and
in the sidebar was the song in the subject line. I was floored. I
cannot describe exactly what it is, but the entire song has been nothing
short of amazing. (Admittedly, it has served as a good "backdrop" for
working on my Thesis about cyberwarfare.) What inspired this absolutely
incredibly frenetic work?
jessica
that
version of the recording was written in late '01 as a stadium rock track
for an unrealized rock project, but not constructed in it's existing
form until about a month ago. there's consequently a set of influences
relative to 2001 (it's half industrial, half no-wave/grunge) and a set
of influences relative to 2014 (i've been listening to a lot of melodic
hardcore recently), as well as a lot of stuff i've come in and out of in
between. i've dubbed my work "blender rock", which means that it tries
to take in as diverse a set of influences as is possible.
i
should also point out that this is a reworking of what i call my fourth
symphony. there are roughly ten versions of this track, and i will be
compiling them shortly, but for now all i have is this, which is the
version with the symphony title: https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/trepanation-nation
ganzonomy
It's
some of the wildest, most interesting, stuff I have heard in a long,
long, while. I'll take a look at those links when I resume my work on
my MA Thesis, but from what I heard, I am thoroughly impressed.
I've
been listening to a lot of late 1960s / early 1970s Miles Davis (The
"Electric Era"), and I see parallels in it, especially the extent of
keyboard and guitar work and the emphasis of such instruments. (If you
have a chance, I highly recommend finding a copy of Dark Magus - Live at
Carnegie Hall, for me, it seems to be his "peak" from that era). I've
very often just sat down with a good pair of headphones and tried to
pick apart each individual instrument and where it's going (or trying to
go) compared to the others. (I like doing that with a lot of works, be
it King Crimson, Frank Zappa, Miles, anything that has a lot of
instrumentation that's intertwined, or just something that can be ridden
like a "magic carpet").
Again, great work :-)
jessica
davis
is an interesting parallel. i've certainly spent a lot of time
listening to davis, but the times i've sat down with any kind of
emulation purposes are pretty rare. i'd say i get my mclaughlin pull
more out of the mahavishnu stuff. the prog is key for me: i was sort of
reared on crimson, genesis, zappa and floyd and it formed the basis of
my musical understanding before kurt cobain smashed a guitar over my
head and made me take notice of punk rock, which i suppose was a fairly
normal experience for people my age at that time. that prog rock
childhood was very formative, though, and eventually defined my
interests in post-rock in the late 90s and early 00s.
i'm glad you're enjoying it...
ganzonomy
Davis'
work from 1972 to 1975 (post-McLaughlin, his primary guitarist by that
point had become Pete Cosey), is less smooth and more a mixture of
Hendrix-meets-Parliament. I got reared on what would be considered
"classic rock", but one of the things I enjoyed doing was finding out
where "the limits" were. I became a Disc Jockey at WHRW Binghamton from
2004 through 2008 (I was a student at Binghamton University, hated
it... wound up going through the City University of New York (CUNY)
Queens College from 2010 onwards to complete my Bachelor's... but I
digress, back to Disc Jockeying. I found that era of my life to be the
most musically expanding. I would play anything ranging from Django, to
Antheil (Ballet Mecanique being a personal favorite), to Zappa (the
show was named Frankly... Zappa for a time), to spike jones, etc., The
premise was "if it's been recorded, it's playable, and if it hasn't,
I'll figure out how to turn the random things in the station into
musical instruments".
Alas, the master's thesis is on
cyberwarfare - which due to the lack of political science stuff (but a
TON of computer science stuff) is kicking my brains in. Thanks for
making the research process easier. PS: I read some of your works from
when you were in college for law, they're actually quite good. If you
find the spark to finish, go for it.
jessica
i
started off in theoretical physics and, after bouncing around quite a
bit, finished a math degree in 2006. i went back in '08 to do a computer
science degree for purely economic reasons and got to a half credit
from finishing it before realizing that it really wasn't what i wanted
to be doing with my life, so i mentally switched into law and finished
up to the end of second year in it. i ended up concluding that i was
arguing with the basic premises of the english common law and that there
wasn't any future in continuing on with it outside of existing in some
kind of purely theoretical space that is populated solely by anarchists.
i couldn't possibly apply my perspectives in any kind of a real world
context. i have loose plans on going back to school, but i think i'd
probably want to focus on a master's degree in mathematics.
for
the time being, i'm focusing on "completing my discography", which ran
from roughly 1996-2011 and has dozens of half complete ideas. the track
in question (as mentioned, from 2001 but finished last month) is a part
of that process of finishing incomplete ideas. i've worked my way up to
2002, meaning i still have about ten years of musical ideas to finish
before i start thinking about restarting an academic career.
ganzonomy
The
basic arguments of law are some of the most absurd things i've seen,
i'm not a lawyer (my area, were I to enter it after the MA, would be
international law), but there are some arguments where i'm just like
"REALLY.... what was being smoked when this was argued?!" (and that's
even taking into account historical contexts in supreme court cases). I
started out in Mechanical Engineering myself (discovered I couldn't do
calculus) before going into psychology and finally political science.
Insofar as anarchists, are we talking anti-government sorts, or are we
talking about the IR idea of anarchy that is chaos?
The
idea of having a vault of unfinished music, is something that has
fascinated me. I'm a photography fan, and to see works that I've done
years after they were made, I find interesting; particularly in seeing
the things now that I could have improved, conditions that I could have
changed (lenses, film type, etc.,), and I find I have very few that I'm
like "Yes, this was PERFECT!". Admittedly though this travels to my
writing, where I'm always - after the fact - going into analyzing every
little grammatical mistake that was missed.
Side Question? What exactly did "death to koalas" come from?
jessica
one
of the (many) assumptions i found myself having difficulty agreeing
with was the idea that situations should be analyzed by an objective
criteria. i'd ultimately take the perspective that this isn't even
possible - which is essentially the critical legal studies view that law
is functionally defined by actors using the rules to justify enforcing
their opinion, rather than the other way around. where i'd break with
the cls people is that i actually think this is preferable to an
objective set of rules, so long as the class relations can be abolished
or minimized in terms of decision making (and replacing incarceration
with civil/tort law in all but the most extreme of situations would ease
a lot of those concerns) and the decision making is take out of the
hands of elitist judges and put more into the hands of the community.
even
something as seemingly black and white as "thou shalt not murder" is
not really acceptable to me. i can come up with endless justifications
for murder that go beyond the immediate need for self-defense. so, i
don't think that a system that produces these static, immutable rules
and demands they never be broken is the right approach - i think a
system that looks at the situation on a case by case basis and
determines whether the behaviour is or is not beneficial to the
community on that basis - completely independently of past decisions -
is preferable. adopting this approach would throw the concept of stare
decisis out the window and completely abolish the authority of the
existing common law in favour of the authority of the actual, existing
community.
the general position in opposition is going
to be that a system of clearly delineated laws makes it clear what the
boundaries are in terms of what behaviour is allowed and what behaviour
is not. but i'd identify this "liberal" mindset as the basis of most of
the problems we have in front of us, from financial speculation to
environmental degradation. if we want to talking about improving our
social conditions, we have to shift society so that people are thinking
about actively making moral choices rather than behaving as badly as
they can with the singular restriction of merely avoiding the law. if
your only argument in favour of a behaviour is "it's not illegal", maybe
you shouldn't be doing it.
but, in taking this
position, i'm rejecting the very foundations of english society. it may
be an interesting exercise in anarchist rhetoric, but it's not something
i can explore in a courtroom or in a classroom. and, i ultimately don't
feel i need those pieces of paper to write on the topic if i decide to
in the future.
ganzonomy
The first two
paragraphs are mind-blowing to me (not in a bad way, but in a way that I
had never considered viewing things and will have to research further,
since traditional law is built on absolutes and to a great extent
ignores ethics for "if it's legal I can do it, if it's not deemed
illegal, i can still do it!". Not to get too political-sciencey, but
you are touching on the issue that existed between President Theodore
Roosevelt and President William Howard Taft during the early 20th
century. Whereas Roosevelt's mentality was primarily "if it's not
stricken as explicitly illegal, I can get away with it", Taft's
mentality was "it is only doable if the law explicitly states it is
doable". (However both were notable for their "trust-busts" during the
early 20th century as well as their presences in Latin America during
that time period as well. As far as law goes - admittedly I'm not a law
student in the US (right now, I'm finishing my Master's in CUNY
Brooklyn, I may go for International Law after), I will agree that law
is a construct that is built from the norms of the society of which it
exists in, but the issue I have is that while not having "objective
rules" may be preferable in either a small state / municipality,
"objective rules" need to exist in some capacity for the purposes of
providing a structure - however decrepit it may be - for judicial
purposes.
I do agree with a case-by-case basis for
things, because of mitigating circumstances. I find the allowance of
organizations such as the MPAA and RIAA to act egregiously simply
because someone's grandmother plays happy birthday from an MP3 download,
to be asinine. (Actually, the fact happy birthday is copyrighted, and
that the copyright law in the USA allows for it to be continually
renewed, is mind-blowing. The recent movie, the butler, underwent an
MPAA issue because Warner Bros. has a movie called the butler from about
1914, that is not publicly available (so it is not hostile-defended in a
public market), but WB won the right to have that movie's name changed
for "disambiguation purposes". Although I'm a liberal thinker in terms
of economics (ie: I do believe some measure of patent law is necessary
to protect original innovation, but the extent that such things are
protected, and even what can be protected... is insane (video yoga, for
instance recently was patented in the USA; DiMarzio has a registered
trademark on its double-creme pickups for electric guitars, etc.,).
Conversely, I do think there is a cost-of-service that comes with the
rarity of the position and the ensuing difficulty (ie: an
anesthesiologist should make more than a burger-flipper due to the level
of skill that is required, but at the same time I have more respect for
the working individual, regardless of whether he / she is a lawyer or a
burger-flipper, than the welfare case, simply because of the effort
being made). As someone who's put himself through undergraduate, and
now graduate, school, I do appreciate the value of working - even though
much of my work was physical, rather than intellectual, labor.
I
think, if you could take what you are thinking, grind out law school
for the LL.B or JD (depending on if you go in the USA or Canada or
elsewhere), and then go for an LL.M or S.J.D., your views and the
research you have for them, will be very fruitful. The first two
paragraphs you wrote though - perhaps because i'm not a law student -
were difficult to understand. So if I need some clarification, I
apologize. The last two paragraphs though, I 100% agree.
jessica
i
just want to clarify that i wouldn't align with either taft or
roosevelt on this point. my position would be "as a sovereign
individual, *i* decide if it's right or wrong". now, i'd give the
community a sort of right to review the decision, but i wouldn't force
any kind of a constitutional order on the community in their process of
doing so.
so how do people know if something is legal?
they answer is they don't and can't know by merely looking it up in a
reference text - they have to work out those details and decide for
themselves if the behaviour ought to be condemned (technically,
behaviour cannot be restricted in a free society, so it's not a question
of what is allowed or not allowed it's a question of what is censured
or not censured) or not. there may be disagreements, but i wouldn't
argue that this is a bad thing. i think the level of uncertainty is
already inherent in the existing system and dismantling the facade of an
objective system is merely being honest about it.
there
are some obvious things: it's obvious that somebody that kills his
neighbour for walking on his lawn should be censured. there are less
obvious things: i would argue that somebody that kills his neighbour for
raping his daughter is justified in his reaction.
ganzonomy
I'm
going to ponder your argument a bit. I do like sharp conversation (A
LOT!) and I thank you for that. (I'm pondering it because you have
given me an incredible amount of info and i have to digest it mentally.)
I
did see on your feed "He used to cut the grass". That album (Joe's
Garage), has my favorite guitar solo (Watermelon in Easter Hay). That
guitar solo was the first Zappa song I figured out by ear. I have the
first part, and the last part, but I need to figure out the middle
part. (But that solo... puts chills down my spine.)
deathtokoalas
that dog is thinking about what an easy lunch that is. it's licking it's lips. but it reflects on the general situation, computes the likely consequences of eating the baby and eventually concludes it's a better idea not to.
RedStinger103
Because dogs can contemplate, infer and conclude with their brains.
deathtokoalas
yup. they're not the best at innovating solutions to problems, but what i've described is well within the capability of the average dog. dog intelligence is more connected to individuality than breed, but, statistically, labs are also one of the smarter breeds.
RedStinger103
Yes, but you're way overestimating their intelligence.
deathtokoalas
i'm not. just about any dog understands the idea of action--->reaction. it knows if it shits on the rug it'll get in trouble. it knows if it bites it's cohabitors it's going to get in trouble.
i'd even go so far as to argue that dogs have the ability to form a defined mens rea and should consequently be held culpable for criminal behaviour. well, some behaviour, anyways. you could consider turkey theft, for example. the turkey stealing dog is entirely aware of the nature of the crime, forms an intent before the crime is carried out and may even take steps to hide the evidence. that's mens rea, if you ask me. other types of crimes? it may be less clear that a real intent is possible to establish.
so, i'm not overestimating anything. and i think i'm reading the dog's body language fairly accurately.
Jamie
You talk sooooo much shit.
Sound City Network
You clearly never had a smart dog before. I
had a White German Shepherd and she would hide things INTENTIONALLY.
Dogs are smarter than you think.
Gamingalkaline
I don't think that's talking shit, it's talking logically.
jsteel89
My dog has tried several times to take a mouth full or food from the garage and take it where he can hide and eat it.
catfoodtitans
Don't really think dogs have reasoning skills like that. Where would it have learned that would be wrong? Unless you're saying that dogs have morals.
deathtokoalas
well, i don't think humans really have "morals", either, but that's not what i said - i said it was able to foresee the consequences.
Shaul Rosenzweig
You are talking shit. If you knew anything about dog body language, this dog is gentle and submissive towards the child. He goes down below its level to lick it wagging its tail and then kisses the baby gently looking up towards it. Dogs are social animals, and body language is part of their instinct.
deathtokoalas
well, sure it is, after it decided not to eat it.
the tail wagging thing is more of a nervous reaction, and doesn't really indicate anything about how it's interpreting the baby. but, you'll notice there's a nice sniff before the lick. when dogs sniff like that, it's generally food related. now, chances are the dog is well fed. nor is it likely to really think the baby has a lead on where to find a dog treat. it's kind of a slip up that indicates it's thinking about food. and, sure it's thinking about food - it was just licking it's lips at the sight of the baby coming towards it.
but, it made the right choice, in the end. that face lick is indeed a friendly greeting. but what i'm getting across is that it had to think about it...
now, does that mean you shouldn't leave your baby with your dog? well, if your dog is well fed and well treated it's predictably going to make the same choice that this dog did. see, it might not be safe to leave your baby with your in-laws, either, if they're really hungry and don't have any other choice. it's not hard to find news reports about dogs eating babies, but you're almost always going to be dealing with hunger and abuse. so, is it safe? as safe as it is with any predator.
personally, i'd be a bit more cautious than what you're seeing in this video.
Blake
You understand that humans and dogs don't have a predator/prey relationship right? It's not ingrained in the mind of a dog to eat a child because their ancestry, evolutionary history, instincts don't provide them with that sort of impulse. If the parents have ANY dominance over the dog the dog will see itself as second in command, and the baby as kin that needs to be protected. Humans have socialized dogs for centuries that notion of a domesticated one even trying to naw on a baby is laughable. PLEASE do some research before you try to ruin everyone's fun.
The mind of a full grown dog is equivalent to that of a 2 year old. You're over thinking this.
deathtokoalas
canids are what you call "opportunistic feeders". they will eat whatever they can, including members of their own species. i would suggest you do some research, yourself.
and, while dogs demonstrate large amounts of variability based on both individual and breed, the estimated mental age of the smarter breeds (like labs) is more like 3-5.
SpicyHam
ahh the facts, ahhhh
Blake Prescott
I honestly don't think you've ever seen a dog in your entire life. A canid is the family a dog belongs to. A canine is the dog itself.
deathtokoalas
wolves and dogs are actually technically in the same species, and the ability for wolves and coyotes (and coyotes and dogs) to interbreed is relatively large, depending on the range of the species. hence the new species of "coywolves" that have appeared in algonquin park as a hybridization of wolves and coyotes, which perhaps should have never been considered as different species in the first place.
there are a few obscure canids scattered around the world that have diverged a bit further. but, broadly speaking, canids are really largely all the same thing, and the visible differences that we see between them are merely skin-deep phenotypes and local variation.
careful statements...
i don't need to be careful: it's a proxy war between turkey and saudi arabia, both of which are interested in reconstructing their respective empires in the region (the turks due to increasing economic isolation, the saudis due to a kind of ethnic and religious nationalism). it's a conflict that's playing out all over the region: egypt, libya, syria, iraq. america wants to maintain a precarious balance where nobody gets the upper hand in this multi-sided conflict. if isis takes control of the region, it puts the saudis on the path to becoming too much of a local hegemon, so steps are being taken to cut them down a notch.
the rational sociological arguments might actually convince somebody.
hippie jesus freak bullshit is a feel good viral song sung to the choir.
well, we've got to come to a choice with this - either we accept this is ok (and perhaps the boundaries could be blurred a little...), or we need to stop putting introverted women that came into themselves in their 20s in these kinds of situations.
24/15 is pushing it. you'll see 24/17 at any random trip to the mall. it's really not a strange thing. it's never been a strange thing.
one thing you could do is increase the educational requirements to get a teaching job. maybe teachers should have masters degrees.
but i don't see how you can expect anything different when you put 23 or 24 year old teachers in a senior high school classroom. that's like putting dogs in a room and locking the door.
the entire discourse is delusional.
the question is: what do the israelis plan on doing with the palestinians once they've finally taken all of their land? there's not going to be two states - there's going to be one state and one displaced people. so, what's the plan, guys? i fear the answer to this question is too ghastly to truly contemplate...
72Yonatan
Deport them back to their countries of origin in the Middle East is probably the best answer to that question. I know that this just fills you with such dread, of all those fake non-people who are really just Arabs, being sent back to Egypt, to Syria, to Jordan, to Iraq, and to Lebanon. What a horror that must be to you, when they have to leave their good jobs and beautiful mansions here in Israel - the thought of that must make you cringe. Meanwhile they are laughing at people like you behind your back, while taking in the foreign donations; laughing all the way to the bank. Most Arab taxis here are Mercedes.
deathtokoalas
well, if you ignore the obvious truths that palestine is where these people have recent roots and you'd need to go back thousands of years before records existed to figure out where some of them came from (while we're at it, maybe we should deport the jews to iran and give the region to the lebanese, who are the actual indigenous people of the region), that most of them are actually descended from converted jews and that it's very difficult to genetically distinguish between a jew and an arab in the first place....
...the reality is that the countries around them don't want them. israel has tried that repeatedly. it's not an answer. so, you need to think up something else.
skiscore
how about sending jews back to their countries. poland, russia, czech rep. afterall palestinians were there first.
deathtokoalas
palestinians and jews are the same thing, they just have (very) slightly different religious views and speak (very) slightly different languages.
the question "who was there first?" is not formed properly. the bulk of the palestinian population is composed of hebrews that converted to islam. if you wish to argue that the jews were there first (and in some sense, this is true), then the logical conclusion is that the space belongs to the palestinians - because they are the true descendants of the jews that were there first. these other diasphora jews that left and came back don't have any argument in their favour that isn't in their religious texts, which are immediately invalidated by their source.
so we don't have an "arab or jew?" question, here. we have a "converted jew or diaspora jew?" question. this is what we've learned from studying the population - that the palestinians are, in fact, hebrews. and the takeaway from it is that it exposes the real level of racist and nationalist absurdity underlying the policies of the state of israel - they're attacking their own people in the name of their own supremacism.
that's not my point. the israelis need to send more clear messaging on what they plan to do with the palestinians, because the clear deduction right now is that they basically plan on "eliminating" them and are just waiting for the right moment to do it.
skiscore
its way past clear messaging. when they message its lies anyways. what they need is messaging via actions. this will never happen. the "charter" or "purpose" of jews will not allow for it nor tolerate it. either the usa does it, or other arabs will. the mistake was made when usa and britain gave someone elses land to people hurt by a german!! thats the root cause.
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
the idea that large amounts of palestinians came from egypt or iraq doesn't even make historical sense, as these were areas that were colonized by arabs at the same time as israel was.
the genetics are clear on the point - the palestinians are not arabs, not any more than the iranians or the lebanese are. they are hebrews that were converted to islam in the middle ages.
they're jews.
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
well, yeah. we live in 2014, which allows us to use fancy science to tell us where people came from.
and that fancy science tells us that the palestinians are predominantly hebrew in ethnic background.
there's been some arab admixture, but it's no larger than arab admixture in iran or afghanistan.
they're jews.
i scrolled through dozens of threads here and it didn't cross anybody's mind to start a third party.
people talk about things being better in canada. some things are, for sure. it's a very simple reason - we have three major parties. now, the third party has never been elected, but the mere act of having three parties puts pressure on our "democrats". they're constantly forced to listen to a voice that is further to their left and adopt those policies. in fact, our "socialist" party (which isn't really a socialist party) is actually the opposition right now and our "democrats" are in third place. the reason that happened is that they thought they could get away with cutting services.
there have been periods in the past where america had a strong left movement. the reforms that roosevelt put through would not have been possible without a strong union movement, and the gains made in the 60s would not have been possible were it not for the groundwork that that union movement laid. there were big errors made in merging the left with the democrats. that has to be undone.
the situation is different: they shipped all the jobs off. so, there aren't any unions anymore.
but the only way out of this is to build a people's party that puts pressure on obama from the left. right now, the democrats take you for granted. you need to prove they can't do that if they want to win - make them lose and then make them listen. you have to tie electoral success to your demands being met.
deathtokoalas
the bible is pretty gruesome, but it's an iron age text - no less gruesome than the illiad, and really just as well written. it's really an elaborate justification for the jewish state, nothing more or less. "why do we have kings? why don't we kill them?". here, read this, kid...
....and the part about cutting the concubine up into 12 pieces (each representing a tribe of israel) is meant to describe the period of violence and anarchy that occurred before there was a centralized state, tying into the text's central purpose as a justification for that state. it's a hobbesian fairy tale. in fact, the village responsible for the crime was then burnt down by the israelites - which is a problematic reaction and everything but indicates it was taken seriously. in fact, the burning of the village is also presented critically.
so, it's one thing to point out there's a lot of gore in there. it's another to understand why it's in there.
ghenulo
It's impossible to understand why people live their life by this barbaric ancient fairy tale.
deathtokoalas
well, it's a little confusing why people still hold to it, sure. but it's really not hard to understand why the stories were written as they were written. there are entire departments at universities for this, and they present compelling arguments.
i'll admit the idea of the jewish scriptures as a justification for the jewish state is partially an original idea - the idea is danced around frequently, but i'm being far more explicit than anything i've read. it's also blatantly obvious if you sit down and actually read the damned thing.
ghenulo
If people took it as ancient literature, these satires wouldn't be necessary. But alas, we live in a crazy world in which horrible things are done in the name of these writings. Perhaps you heard about the man in Iran who got beheaded for doubting the story of Jonah. You don't see satires of the Iliad because everyone knows that it's historical fiction.
deathtokoalas
well, not everybody interprets it as fiction, but the people that don't tend not to seek power.
what i'm getting across is that disarming it means rationalizing it.
Damian Freeman (TheExceeder)
I really do think things like the Bible should probably be put in the Adults-only section. Knowing half the content of it makes me feel disturbed when I see those fluffy "Children's Bibles".
Also, am I the only one who finds it rather off that they never sell the individual books separately? They always force you to buy the damned compilation. I'm pretty sure if the books were all separated and presented individually we'd be able to find, on average, which ones that Christians actually endorse.
that's some of that wonderful private sector self-regulation at work, right there. it may be two billion dollars up in smoke - but don't worry, it's a better managed system. through cutting various corners, it will save the taxpayers money in the long run.
Sviaveldi
In my opinion the worst part about this thing is the one idiot who thinks he has the right to punch another person just because he doesn't like what he has to say. That's 'afk-SJW's' right there. Scum of the earth.
deathtokoalas
fuck that. what we saw there was a proactive response to keep racism out of the community. it was great to see somebody take the situation that seriously. warmed my heart. you know what they say about nazis - only good one's a dead one. you gotta fight the fasc wherever it appears...
Sviaveldi
I hope you're spared a situation where people would throw punches at you for your beliefs.
Frankly that you defend violence and even death of other people, however you might personally justify it is disgraceful to yourself.
deathtokoalas
as has been pointed out repeatedly, it's not a speech issue, and the fact that you're not acknowledging that indicates that you're not grasping the situation properly. you can repeat the same false statements as many times as you like, but it doesn't provide them with a greater level of truth.
beyond that, the kind of bullshit liberal rhetoric you're espousing has only ever led to the further production of greater and greater violence. you can't just sit around and appease community fascists, you have to stand up and get in their way. if you don't knock them out, it just emboldens them. when you're dealing with violence, you have to respond with violence.
nor am i interested in getting fucking cops involved. as was demonstrated here, the community can take care of itself - it doesn't need the government to send armed thugs in to sort it out.
this was dealt with properly in the way that it must be dealt with in a truly free society and the people that took these steps should be applauded for their reaction.
Sviaveldi
I'll conclude my interaction with you by stating I think you're insane, and I hope you get better soon.
deathtokoalas
right. well, i hope the light in your ivory tower is not as dim as your arguments have been. i take it you're reading up on neville chamberlain. maybe it's better that you stay sheltered, for your own benefit.
if you're unable to argue with me, so be it.
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Orangeman5100
Ummm? Would somebody please enlighten me on the reforms these people demanded that didn't happen?
Future U-kraine
that didn't happen? and what happen they should go home?
Orangeman5100
What?
Thomas
The country at the start had a highly dysfunctional govt so a revolt happened and right sector came to power, Russia invades Crimea so then more territories divide to pro-Russian separatists like Donetsk. Interim Government of Ukraine is referred to be fascist, in the meantime allows justification of separatist territories.
Angela3083
Wrong the USA decided who
went into power in Ukraine regardless. Russia never invaded Crimea the
Crimean's choose to be part of Russia without 1 person being killed. It
all about gas pipes & Nato wanting a base in Ukraine. The Eastern
Ukraine know the score and are defending their corner.
Blake Smith
that's wrong the Russians
said they were the ones that went into crimea after the fact, and a
Ukrainian solider was killed during a confrontation with the russians
jakatom
Does it matter what they want?...if it did, they wouldn't protest for a whole year. It matters what the USA and their EU lackeys want.
Blake
im pretty sure this video is about the protestors
nightlightabcd
Apparently, you want what the pro-Russian "lackeys" want!
James Murrey
The current "government" was about to pass laws banning the use of Russian language. Since 90% of Eastern Ukraine speak Russian (you know.... the native language of the land), they are now trying to split from Ukraine to not be killed by the neo-nazi(s) in power. Do you own research, even this vice dispatch hasn't been 100% truthful. Avoid Reddit, it's purely 'murrican shills spreading false propaganda (like Russian invaded Krim [Russia never sent a single military unit there; instead they hired a PMC to go in and secure the region]).
Culturebreach
Explain to people how neo-nazis are the majority in the Ukrainian protests? There is a presence of neo-nazis in Russia whilst the 3rd largest party in Russia is considered a fascist party.
BlackCousins4life
These aren't the same people who demanded reform. The people who protested against Yanukovych wanted the country to move away from Russia and closer to the European Union, for economic reasons, lessening of corruption and whatnot. When Yanukovych fled the country, they basically got their wish. The newly elected president is committed to Ukraine becoming part of the EU. These protesters have now either gone home or are fighting against separatists and Russian green men is eastern Ukraine. The people now on Maidan are not the same people, so it's hard to see them having any demands. I think they're just homeless and have settled nicely there, so they don't want to leave.
ConcordDown
you got it all figured out, you should join FOX news and make a story :) lot's of people would buy it!
Mat
has the free trade agreement gone into place yet? outside of that, they got the EU association agreement, new president, and new parliament is set. the major euromaidan demands have been met.
there's still the implementation of those reforms, though.
The88Cheat
Change takes time and all these protesters are doing is taking up valuable resources that could be used to better the country. I doubt the new government wants to waste time fighting its own people (especially when they look completely idiotic and uneducated).
Haloreach2323
No one in America said Russia invaded Ukraine. They would be stupid to say so because we all know Ukraine would be at war with Russia. Russia didn't invade, they did something worse, took the land "for the people" like bitches.
Mat
they didn't vote, there was no actual vote you maroon. Who cares if 60% are Russian by ethnicity? That's some Anschluss thinking right there.
Haloreach2323
Doesn't matter. They still did it without the consent of Ukraine. Why not buy Crimea? Who knows? Putler probably forced the people to vote his way.
Jordan
Putin congratulated the Russian soldiers on a job well done in Crimea after it was annexed.
Was ABOUT to pass a law BANNING Russian? Are you high? First of all they tried to repeal a law that allowed Russian to be an official language. Not having Russian as official language is NOT the same as being forbidden to use Russian, you dipshit. Secondly, There are laws proposed in Russia that would ban women wearing high heels. Does it mean that anything that gets thrown up into the air becomes law? NO so you don't act on it UNLESS it becomes law. And enough with the nazi bullshit. The svoboda and right sector (parties who I assume you call nazi) ran against Poroshenko, and never got more than 1% of the Ukrainian vote. I'm willing to bet there are more xenophobic racist neo nazi skinheads in Russia than all of Europe combined. Fucking idiot.
Mat
Statistically, there are far more skinheads / neo-nazis in Russia per capita than in Ukraine by a wide margin
Look at Russia's parliament, Zhirinovsky is a racist bigot and he has the 4th largest party. The third largest, A Just Russia, supports the Russian Orthodox Army terrorist group. The second? The damn Communists!
Jordan
I find it infuriating that they have the nerve to open their mouth and call Ukrainians "neo-nazis" when they have nationalist marches in Moscow numbering THOUSANDS, with people making nazi salutes, chanting "AGAINST BLACKS" along with occasional skinhead gangs running around with bats, murdering people they don't like. Absolutely grotesque.
Jarcnus
US and EU involvement in the destabilization of the country, promotion of violence, arms and riots along with putting in puppet leadership is pretty much a fact. Whatever the FUCK Russia is doing, good or bad is reactionary. The US and west European establishment and their bankster friends wants global trade dominance. FOLLOW THE FUCK GOD DAMNED MONEY FOR ONCE. IMF nonsense abroad, austerity for the poor, international trade deal attempts and bs TPP, TTIP, TAFTA along with other nonsense. It's all to fuck over the masses in a globally run pyramid scheme. Most the wealth in the world created is fake, just so the rich can spend lavishly while the poor suffer and foot the bill.
U.S. Senators Make A Spectacle Of Themselves In Ukraine
Mat
You're so misinformed it's kind of sad.
Jarcnus
Your one sentence telling me "you're wrong" really defeated my argument, oh my.
What I learnt today
When the new president turned out to be "A strong leader for harsh times" or however the press (and people on the street) put it, i.e. the classic "fascist lie" we see in every hollywood movie.... The writing on the wall became pretty stark.
Jordan
I really wish a Russian would support his grotesque label of "fascist" even once with an actual argument. How is anyone in power in Ukraine a "fascist"? Im really curious.
Mat
It's interesting seeing as everyone calls Obama a Communist
deathtokoalas
see, it's hilarious to read these comments going back and forth. you've got multiple false narratives competing with each other, all of them promoting interests by various powerful parties. none of them have anything to do with the protests.
i had my first "aha" moment back in the late 90s, when i was still a teenager. the tv told me people were protesting against apec because of concerns over human rights abuses in china. but, that wasn't the protester's narrative - it was the narrative the state wanted, and so they replaced it. the protesters were actually concerned with the trade agreement, itself. i was a skeptical kid, i understood things were generally spun, but i never thought i'd be blatantly lied to.
the thing about the eu is not the protester's narrative, it's the state department's narrative. the reason it's the state department's narrative is that it reflects the state department's interest. so, what the tv does is show you the images of the people protesting and then tell you they're protesting for what the state department wants.
the maidan protests were/are about corruption. it was something roughly similar to the occupy movement in north america, except it got badly co-opted by a ukrainian equivalent of the tea party. the shuffle of power that happened didn't address a single one of their concerns. i guarantee you the new guy already has a slush fund and is just carrying on where the last guy left off, and the guy before him left off, and the guy before him left off....
What I learnt today
All true, except the girl before him was imprisoned for not being corruptible enough.
deathtokoalas
she was prime minister, not president, and it's not that she wasn't corruptible enough - more that she was so corrupt nobody in the sitting government could trust her.
What I learnt today
Trusting corrupt people is easy. They are predictable, just buy her. Now trusting an honest person, that is a mistake.
deathtokoalas
not really. when they're really corrupt, they're always for sale. so, you can never trust your purchase. yulia bounced around to the highest bidder, and in the end she crossed one person too many. that's why she ended up in jail.
Technology Fool
Those guys look hammered! Leave us alone more vodka
Willy
Ukraine will never be part of EU .I live in EU and nobody wants them to be part of EU.We got enough of our own problems without confronting Russian interests.Germany is the main power of EU and they have good economical relationships with Russia and depends on Russian gas. So despite the political talk Germans and rest of the EU know they cant mess with Russia.
Mat
Can't mess with Russia? Russia is nothing. It doesn't even have an economy.
What I learnt today
Russia has never needed an economy, they have resources. Not caring about all this stuff got them through WWII and will get them through again. They just don't care about anything outside Russia.
Mat
Everybody needs an economy. Oil prices drop and they're screwed. Iran or the US start exporting gas and they're sunk.
That's why you can't just be some resource sultanate.
What I learnt today
That's fine. However not how Russia thinks about it. They have a bumper crop and soon will have the pipeline to EU done. If they can beat US in Syria then the oil will flow. Until then, they laugh.
Mat
what pipeline to the EU? South Stream? That's cancelled.
What I learnt today
The overarching strategic to beat US to EU markets via Syria (or whereever US doesn't block them) is cancelled? heh righto... Guess that's why there is CIA in Syria and Russians in Ukraine. Everything you are seeing here is directly related to those markets, US fear of price differential between Syria/EU and Kuwait/US, and Russian desire to capture the EU market. This hasn't gone away, you are watching it play out.
deathtokoalas
well, it's more directly about controlling shipping lanes through strategic military placement, but controlling shipping lanes has a lot to do with opening up (or shutting down) markets.
you need to take a bit of a step back from the idea of the americans controlling markets, though, as it's a bit of an outdated thing. the united states doesn't create anything any more, except weapons. they don't have a product to sell. i see a lot of this - people trying to understand current events through the lenses of the nineteenth century...
there's some remnants of this, and russia is certainly still under state capitalism, but to take the position that america is defending markets leads to the question of what they're selling, and the answer is nothing at all.
but, the strategic military posturing has more than a little to do with it, nonetheless. they're certainly trying to control the trade routes, as a hegemon would have to do. that definitely means frustrating russian trade...
...but it's not really about competition, it's about dominance. the nineteenth century mercentalist states may have seemed like empires, but they weren't really - they were trading conglomerates that used any means necessary to get ahead.
the united states is legitimately an empire. it has tributary states, which it "protects". and those states are closer to the traditional 19th century state capitalist idea.
which goes back to the weapons, which are the product.
there's this sort of old argument floating around between trying to understand things in terms of empires dominating the world or in terms of commercial interest competing with each other. the americans have found a sort of synthesis in this, as they dominate the world by selling weapons systems.
there has to be conflict for that to happen. the commercial transactions in weapons systems consequently drive the lust for imperial domination. it's conflict for the sake of conflict, because that's the only way that america gets paid.
put a little more succinctly...
the british "empire" created conflict to open up markets.
the american empire creates markets by ensuring endless conflict.
What I learnt today
Just to add something "step back from the idea of the americans controlling markets".... It's not about selling stuff to markets. It's about making sure the EU can't/doesn't get oil 3¢ cheaper than the US.
deathtokoalas
there's certainly been some tension over the last few decades over some financial issues. you know who i think was behind 9/11? germany. yeah, the old german boogeyman, trying to start wwIII right? well, i think it was about the euro, primarily. it was a ploy to sink the dollar. every few months, you hear some news report talking about the "strained relationship", and it's quickly patched up in the media to counteract the optics. both sides are deeply interested in making things seem rosy, and the germans certainly remain in a vastly inferior position both economically and militarily - that is, they remain a client state. but i think the truth is that the germans and americans continue to see each other as their primary competitors in the world and relations are really downright hostile under the surface. if i was an american military strategist, i would not look at germany (or the eu in general, outside of the uk) as a reliable ally. when you've bullied somebody into doing what you want for 70 years, don't be surprised when they take the first opportunity they can to knock you out.
controlling the oil supply is a part of being a hegemonic power, but i can't see what you're suggesting as being an important aspect of american policy. what the americans seek is less to explicitly dominate everything around them and more to control the rules. so, they let british contractors into iraq, and refused french contractors - because they rejected the war. that's the reason france has fallen in line, since. the price of commodities is variable, and speculators make a lot of money from that. so, do the americans care about that kind of price fluctuation? no. why would they, so long as they get to write the rules of who sells what to who?
what does concern them is a russia that wants to ignore those rules, demand the rules be written collaboratively or even write their own rules. russia is a bigger country than iraq, but putin is being punished for the same reason that saddam was - he's not doing what he's told.
when genghis khan would approach a new city, he would send messengers to the city's government, offering them a choice. they could willingly submit, and be spared. or they could resist and be annihilated. a lot of cities were annihilated. a lot of cities were spared...
Willy
hmmm i wouldn't go that far to say Germany was behind it. I think that would be pretty hardcore conspiracy but hey, what do i know .At least you can think out of the box which is only good i suppose .But there sure are various reports that Germany secretly considering and negotiating with BRICS to join .Who knows maybe we will see comeback of German mark one day lol. USA sterility to provide Germany with their gold (which they don't have since USA do not own any gold resources) and empty promises to deliver their gold in near future only assure Germany to look for alternatives to ensure their economical stability.
deathtokoalas
brics is not an alliance, it's just something cnn made up. and gold is as worthless as paper. what's valuable is guns.
Orangeman5100
And oil.
deathtokoalas
commodities, in general, sure. but it's going to fluctuate with demand. if the trends towards computerization and renewable energy both continue, it won't be long before copper (also a finite resource) is more valuable than diamonds.
this is why it's so important to understand the dominance in terms of hegemony, power and control rather than any specific, narrow aim - although, that being said, the primary purpose of anglo-american foreign policy has not wavered from containing and controlling the russians at any point since 1989, or 1789, for that matter.
Orangeman5100
Sadly yes, but it'd be a lot harder for their neighbors if we didn't control them... For example, Ukraine would probably be entirely part of Russia...
deathtokoalas
well, you've got to keep in mind that a lot of the people in ukraine want to be a part of russia...
poland is a better test case, but is poland really better off in the eu? i'm not sure there's much of an argument for it, other than enforced western bias. i'm not saying they'd be better off in russia, i'm just not sure it really makes much of a difference to the average pole, in terms of living conditions.
fucking spain would be a part of russia right now, if it weren't for american intervention in wwII. but would they be worse off?
What I learnt today
OT but everytime I hear that I think of "Fast Show - Johnny Depp": "I remember during the war you yanks were in like a shot! I don't mean the actual fighting, you were a couple of years too late for that Sir." ;-)
deathtokoalas
yeah. the history books will eventually catch up, but they're kind of missing the point right now. there's all kinds of diplomatic cables from american ambassadors to the region in the 30s explaining that american policy was to covertly fund hitler with the hopes that he'd eliminate stalin. that is, it's the same old russian containment policy that traces back to the napoleonic period. when they did intervene, it wasn't to stop fascism or save the jews or help the british or anything of the sort, it was take over as much of europe as they could before the russians got there.
if the normandy invasion had not happened, stalin would have waltzed right through germany and france and parked itself outside franco's doorstep. how does the soviet socialist republic of france sound.....
Orangeman5100
Honestly, not very good...
the thing about the ukip and the national front is that the ukip is a lot more moderate than it's base is.
it's one thing to point out "the ukip is not the bnp" - and be absolutely correct. it's another thing to point out that there's a large overlap in the voting base. these kinds of arrangements never work out for "moderates", if that's what you want to call the libertarian wing of the ukip. the base always wins in the end. what you're stuck with, then, is this unstable coalition of nationalists and libertarians that's set to fracture the moment farage aligns himself against national front policies that are popular with his own base. it produces the inevitability of mutinies in caucus. farage can yell and scream all he wants, but his party is on a set trajectory and it's an alarming one.
the best case scenario is that the whole thing falls apart before the next election, but i think relying on that really underestimates the strength of the far right in britain. talk of tories picking up the positions is really long overdue. if winston churchill were alive today, he'd be more likely to be aligned with one of these fringe parties. there's a strong aspect of british culture intertwined within them.
so, yes, it's prudent to be careful with what labels you put on farage's head - but it's equally important to be aware of the views of the voters he's representing, which are considerably more extreme than his are.
this is the key point right now.
and, yeah, it's a threat for massive instability. but the realpolitik people don't seem to clue in: it has no end point but collapse.
In August, The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Egypt carried out a series of secret airstrikes within Libya with the purpose of slowing down the advance of Islamist militias in Tripoli, specifically...
this article seems to get a few points backwards, though, especially in syria. my understanding is isis is primarily saudi-backed and the fsa was a turkish front group. the part about egypt is correct, though.
photo from voice of america. yeah. well, it's getting the right idea across, anyways.
egypt is often touted as "the most important arab country". what that means is it has the most people, and the largest standing army. but the historical empires in the region this side of the roman empire have been centered in mecca and istanbul. turkey has been trying for a while to reassert a level of hegemony over the last few years, partly because it's been rejected from europe. i've been over this before...
the world is uniting in trade blocs. russia is going through the same spasms, and god forbid a turko-russian union (which would be a historic shift of a nature unseen since the entente cordiale). russia and turkey have been fighting for centuries. turkey is in nato _because_ of the threat of russia. that would dismantle the world as we know it.
but, what does turkey do? it can't get into europe. the arabs don't like them any more than the european do, as there's still that level of animosity. well, 1000 years of colonialism doesn't disappear in a century. there's cultural logic in a central asia union of turkey, iran and the former ssrs, but this is infeasible in a geo-strategic standpoint, as iran remains isolated and those ssrs aren't getting out of a sino-russian entente any time soon.
turkey faces extreme isolation. this is providing it with a set of incentives to try and resurrect the ottoman empire.
so, when you look at turkish influence in syria and egypt and libya and palestine, there's a historical context that unites with a current economic one.
the saudis don't like that, for obvious reasons. they were promised control over the region during world war one, and probably would have got it if it wasn't for zionism.
so, there's a serious conflict building here between a turkey that is desperate for economic integration and an arab league that wants them the fuck out of their sphere.
the back and forth in egypt was a back and forth between turkish and saudi front groups - and the saudis won. the infighting in syria between rebel groups was a proxy war between turkey and the saudis - and the saudis won.
so, now the yankees need to step in and fix it before it explodes...
yes, the qataris are a wild card, but that's a struggle for hegemony in the arab league. the qatari-turkey alliance is one of convenience. should the qataris overtake the saudis as the controlling interest in the gulf, one would expect them to take on the same interests as the saudis.
it's fundamentally a turkish-arab conflict.
and, as i've stated, that possible russo-turko-iranian alliance is a real game changer.
"we" might "lose" turkey. it's been a real possibility now for several years.
high school records are apparently shredded, but junior high school records apparently aren't? i think one of them is wrong. they always told me the file was permanent. hrmmn. i've got stuff being forwarded, will see how that plays out before i start calling to find out...
this is going to go in your PERMANENT RECORD.
well, listen, i'm not really one for the surveillance state and shit, but when you're dealing with information that suggests a pathological condition, i think it really should be permanent. if it's shredded, that doesn't help me - and if it was worse than it is (mild vandal-type pranks, mostly), it wouldn't be in the interests of society, either.
i mean, i was always very careful and very cognizant of the well being of people around me. there were circumstances where i stood in between things happening in order to prevent harm, but nothing where i ever put anybody's safety at risk. the overriding driving force was mostly that i found the vandalism comical. what the behaviour demonstrates is more a conscious desire to flaunt rules - and some political activism, actually.
i enjoyed defacing student council propaganda, for example.
unfortunately, the really nasty pranks were mostly never uncovered. the master prank was probably the time i blew up the school mascot (with military grade dynamite) and placed it back where it was, and nobody ever caught me for that. they installed cameras in the school afterwards, but they never busted me for the best of them.
i think probably the worst situation i got caught for was the time i took the screws out of the exercise equipment in the gym, so that when buddy six-pack football dude got on the exercise bike it fell apart underneath him. that's the kind of thing that characterizes the file, if i can find it. was it funny? that's up to interpretation. the dude that sat on the bike thought it was funny. it's certainly anti-social.
the reality is that it got to the point that the school stopped providing evidence. it didn't feel the need to require it. when a prank happened, it was understood i was responsible. nobody else would have done these things. i suppose i could have been badly framed, but never was.
so, it's less that i "got caught" and more that i was obviously responsible...
....kind of a "j strikes again" type of thing...
it's a huge file, if it's out there, probably with all kinds of things i've completely forgotten about.
and, in my defence, i often caught the principal suppressing laughter. most of it legitimately WAS comical.
it's actually the same school dan aykroyd went to, and that was brought up to me more than once.