the united states was violently anti-socialist centuries before the russian revolution and remains violently anti-socialist today. cuba may not be a perfect utopia, but it has ideas about common ownership that the united states cannot and will not tolerate. this thinking of a "cold war mentality" does not understand the historical war of american landowners against common ownership, which is a struggle that exists independently of the struggle for hegemony over europe.
if the americans are in a "cold war mentality" with cuba, they were in that same mentality when they crushed land revolts in the eighteenth century and when they crushed the occupy protests a few years ago. even it's use during the cold war, and especially in latin america, was generally little more than a flimsy excuse to exert property rights by extreme force. this has nothing to do with democracy, with castro, with dissidents or with russia. it has to do with ideas that the american elite has never and will never coexist peacefully with because, if exported, they would pose a threat to their own power.
Kevin
The US as a whole was not "violently anti-socialist centuries before the russian revolution." In fact, there was quite a lot of sympathy for the labor movement especially among immigrants but also in society at large. In many places around the country, socialists were elected to local and state governments throughout the late nineteenth and most of the twentieth century, even during the Cold War. The idea that socialism is somehow inherently un-American and has no native history here or is some sort of alien ideology is incorrect. I do agree with you that the elites in the US are definitely violently anti-socialist and that the US used anti-Communism during the Cold War as a flimsy excuse to intervene in the affairs of Latin American countries.
deathtokoalas
i apologize if i wasn't clear.
an early source of violently anti-socialist writing from a prominent member of the united states elite is in the writings of james madison.
this is probably the most insightful paragraph in all of the literature written in the period. madison is explaining why he prefers a system of devolved power (states' rights) rather than a centralized federal government.
"The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source. A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State."
that is, the entire system was designed to limit the cancer of socialism to a small area where it can be isolated and attacked. it's modular thinking. divide and conquer. and it's pretty smart, if you're a powerful landowner trying to prevent an actual revolution.
Kevin
The thing is, socialism, in particular the Marxist variety, did not exist until after the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe, long after Madison's time. While French socialism has its roots in the French Revolution, it isn't really an actual force until after the 1830s. I'm just trying to suggest that your timeline is a bit off, that's all.
deathtokoalas
it would be difficult to speak of industrial age economic systems before the industrial revolution. marxism doesn't make any more sense in a pre-industrial society than it does in a post-industrial one. but, ideas of collective ownership can be traced very far back into history. there were crusades launched against socialists in france. you just have to understand that the economic systems were different, so they had different forms - as future (current, really) forms of socialism in a post-industrial reality will not have much in common with marxism. madison lived in an essentially feudal society, which meant that the socialism of his period had to do with social ownership of land (farming co-operatives, essentially) rather than social ownership of production. when there were revolutions in this period (and there were.), that's what it had to do with.
it's actually quite relevant, as cuba is not a productive force and does not threaten to export worker ownership of factories. the threat that cuba poses is in the way that it organizes farming and land use in general, and the place that it poses a threat is in the rest of latin america, which is largely still under the boot of american plantations. even venezuela still exports well over half of the food it produces, and the united states is it's largest customer.
Thursday, June 5, 2014
yeah. i've decided i'm not going to find the remaining furniture i
need in here, so i'm going to wait until the beginning of august and
take a shopping cart of wood home with me. i'll need to varnish it. and
i'll probably get a drill, too.
i'm hoping i can find a
coffee table before then, but i'm looking for something that's roughly
14x40 and they're just not out there. people want these gross square
coffee tables. or glass ones. yuck. if not, it should cost me something
like $6 to build one and polyurethane over it.
there's
this kind of enclave that i wanted to put shelving into but my initial
plan isn't the best one. there's a window in the corner. i was just
going to put shelving in square over the window, which would eliminate
the need for curtains and make it harder to break in here. i mean,
there's bars, but that's merely a disincentive. i've learned over the
spring that access to this window is important, due to the air upstairs.
so, i'm going to frame around it, instead, and get some curtains after
all. that's three walls of framing that has to go around the window. i'm
thinking i could probably do it for around $50, which is considerably
cheaper than trying to cram a dozen oddly shaped bookcases in - and
better because there's no wasted space. i suppose it's sort of a gift to
the unit, in the end, because i couldn't really take it with me. but i
plan on staying for a while...
similarly for the corner
shelving. i posted some pictures. the easiest thing to do will probably
be to get some studs and just screw the shelves in, but it's going to
depend on scrap wood from the other projects.
i want to
build a simple three story desk to put near my bed to put a speaker
unit up top, the laptop in the middle and various documents underneath.
i've been hoping i can find something, but the space is only thirteen
inches across.
the last thing is a cd shelf. the big
problem has been "how do i get that much wood here". if i do it at once,
i'll take the home depot cart back for the hour walk....
i'll just have to measure it all up in a few weeks.
which
means i'm under budget for the first time since february and may be
able to go catch a show, if an interesting one is happening this side of
the river. actually, i'm still hoping i can catch swans in a few weeks.
depends on customs. it'll be a few days one way or another. should put
the cash aside for that....
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
yeah. it's kinda funny. hobbes is actually providing a summary of a number of arguments *against* capitalism. it's one of the better cases against the laissez-faire model that i've yet to come across.
it's not really an argument in favour of totalitarianism, and it doesn't seem to have anything remotely to do with socialism at all (despite some common apparent misperceptions). it's just a really clear and systemic rejection of the whole "free market" ancap perspective; the thesis of the text is most simply stated as "without strict regulation, markets are impossible".
i want to get this across clearly, so i'm going to be careful about writing this section up.
i'm actually going to be putting forth the idea that hobbes was a kind of proto-marxist, with his leviathan being the dictatorship of the proletariat.
what he's describing is something sort of like the borg, not an individualist liberal society, where the sovereign is the literal reflection of the people's will. that's not the type of authoritarianism he's usually associated with.
right-wing collectivism is generally understood today as synonymous with fascism, but i would also put marx and his followers on the collectivist right.
like i say - it's funny. this is currently being very badly taught.
i don't see anything about rights or individualism in here at all. nor do i see much about how princes ought to rule. i see the projection of a platonic and collectivist utopia, kept in line by a cross between thor and odin.
hobbes seems more at the end of a line of thought than at the beginning of one.
4c1dr3fl3x
It's important to note that Ukraine is now only tangling with a largely irregular (but entrenched) force, and the little green men are not to be seen. Even when THEY were rolling around, it was with very outdated armored vehicles (BMP-2's and BTR-80's, same stuff the Ukrainians field), and none of their current fighting vehicles (BMD-4M's, T-80U's & T-90's, BTR-90's) they have. Given the current political dialogue, this means 2 things: 1. Due to their zealous assaults, ethnically Russian groups are actually being met with the violence they said they feared in the first place, that Putin used as an excuse to back his Crimean velvet glove invasion. Ironic, in a way. And a self fulfilling prophecy. 2. Ukraine still has to be cautious about how they deal with this insurgency. Putin may be pulling back support now that he at least has Crimea and is facing the looming reality of REAL political resistance, but if Ukrainian forces go batshit crazy or have one headliner scandal of counter-insurgency misconduct, they will give him an excuse to start a full-on invasion with his forces unmasked under a pretense of stopping a "fascist genocide", and he will take it. Oh, hey they do love to be hypocritical about what constitutes a Fascist.
PerfectDeath4
Yup, Putin doesn't have as strong of a reason for intervening in Eastern Ukraine. The irony is, if these separatists were in Russia, they'd be poisoned, rounded up, or just shot. That is how Russia deals with 'terrorists'. Heck, that is how Russia deals with politics and protests.
AndyHurd
Good points. Every time I watch ethnic Russians from the east rallying for independence I ask myself why anyone would want to bring such violence upon themselves. Self-fulfilling prophecy indeed.
XANX
+1 for commentary and for the Winrai icon
Светлая
SAVE DONBASS PEOPLE FROM KIEV NAZIS ARMY!
Mitkls
the same thing pretty much everywhere around the world actually. However Ukrainian government and forces just don't have enough power at the moment to do so.
PerfectDeath4
The whole, "Nazi" thing was inspired by a neo nazi group in Ukraine that gained a lot more influence in the government after helping to overthrow the old government during the Maidan riots. Thus, RT started blowing things out of proportion claiming the whole government was nazi controlled fascists.
The scary thing is there are nazis on both sides and they are doing a lot of the killing of innocent people because they can with all the chaos.
deathtokoalas
it wouldn't make sense to have russian troops face aerial bombardment when russia cannot retaliate or otherwise protect them - and they can't, an invasion is not on the table (turn cnn off, it's garbage). i wouldn't mistake a shift in military tactics for a greater shift in strategy.
putin doesn't want control of ukraine. unlike the eu, russia is still a welfare state. what that means is that the eu can take control and sell off the resources with little concern for the average ukrainian, but if russia rolls in they're going to have to pump billions in to fix the decaying social system. from the russian perspective, ukraine (and especially the east of ukraine) is an expensive parasite to be avoided. it's the reason the invasion didn't happen years ago. russia doesn't want them.
what russia does want is to control the puppet strings in kiev. nothing that happened in maidan has eliminated russian dominance in the region. it was a short term (and rather foolhardy) strategy to punish a sitting government, not a structural revolution that sent the russians packing for good. when russia finally does take control of kiev again, and it is a matter of time and not a matter of if, it will likely not be permanent, either.
the russians aren't really being coy about what they want in the east, so it's not really necessary to read between lines. what they want is to decentralize the government into a collection of semi-autonomous zones that they can influence without being responsible to upkeep. that way, russia can have it's cake (control the security situation on the ground) and eat it too (avoid being responsible for running and paying for the civilian government).
the russian speakers are really being mislead. they think they're going to get on russian welfare, but all they're really going to get is russian soldiers. if that becomes clear on the ground the allegiances may shift, or a third front may open up.
for now, the russians need to be thinking about delocalizing the conflict and shifting the instability further west. they can neither fight off the planes with their troops on the ground nor invade with a real army. so, other tactics include bullying and creating diversions.
the green men will be back when it's safe for them, but they're not going to bring a real army with them. or, at least, not so long as it would be viewed, internationally, as an invasion. long term strategy is of course to host russian bases within the autonomous zone.
but the prize is still kiev, not donetsk.
Kadaver85
I'm sorry, you lost me at "russian welfare"... What welfare? Krokodil and glue for everyone?
deathtokoalas
it's really astounding how ignorant westerners are.
yes - russia is a far more attractive place to live than ukraine, if you depend on the state to survive. and, ukraine is on the path to getting a lot worse, while russia is constantly recovering.
but, again, that's not happening. the russians don't want to pay.
vacomments
Regarding the second point, I don't think thats the case. We have been induced to, and the Ukrainian government appears to have been induced to forget that that country is still Ukraine and only Ukraine, a sovereign state. Thus, inside their borders, they should choose to combat any domestic threat, in any manner, without fearing or contemplating the possibility of a military invasion by any of the countries bordering it. In case irregularities occur during the combat of domestic threats, such occurrence should be given to the international community, the United Nations, so that it can be analysed, discussed and attempted to be resolved. From a strategic point of view, Putin's annexation of Crimea was a brilliant, almost immaculate move. And thats the problem. (I dont agree with what was done, but I admire the way it was done) Because the Crimea operation worked so brilliantly, that eluded Putin into thinking that it would work as well and as good for the rest of Ukraine. Maybe it is a cliché to say it, but thats exactly the same reasoning error which eluded Hitler in Czechoslovakia. When the soft, old strategy doesn't work any longer, since you are already committed, you will be tempted or forced to adopt a more aggressive model.
deathtokoalas
law only exists if it can be enforced. these ideas about ukrainian territorial integrity are just that - ideas - and only exist in the world we live in by proxy of various state powers that use force to assert them. that is to say that if ukraine cannot control the area, then it is no longer their area, and they can wave all the laws around in the world that they like but they can't reverse it unless they have the power to do so.
i don't know much about poroshenko, but his early actions have made it clear to me that he understands this. the russians certainly understand it. and, the americans are the architects of a global order that does not care about constraints on the behaviour of states.
what the law states is really truly irrelevant. liberals need to get their heads around the reality that this world order has failed and come up with ideas about a new one, not continue trying to enforce the fantasy.
Kadaver85
Yes, because being suppressed by the government is really a good place to live. I'm from a country with one the worlds best welfare system, and when you say that Russia is a welfare state that just cracks me up. How about getting your info from somewhere other than Russian media and history pages/books? You have people living in poverty in every corner of your "great" country. Just take Sotji as an example, they got forced to live in huts with no sanitary facilities because they wanted to build huge hotels where they used to live. You call that a WELFARE STATE!? God damn you're brainwashed. Just look at any damn OECD index or any other index that shows any info about how people are doing in other countries. You're not any good.
deathtokoalas
well, i wouldn't want to live in either of these places, but the blunt reality is that the reason people on the ground are siding with russia is that they potentially offer a better economic alternative. but, i'll state for a third time that this is a false perception, because the russians aren't ponying up.
lavish, corrupt petro-state or imf austerity reforms? it's not a complex choice.
...but, for the fourth time, it's not a real one.
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
it would have been sooooooo satisfying for an eight year-old kid to run on stage and punch tim hudak in the gut. what a faker.
andrea clarified a few things, but i gotta be honest that i just like the liberals' ideas a little better this time around.
Monday, June 2, 2014
i've been hoping to see something like this from russia for a while, to make it clear that they understand what's going on. american citizens are completely powerless to stop it, so they need to be focusing entirely on defending themselves.
i just want to point out, though, that first strike capabilities don't necessarily need to be nuclear. some of the conventional weapons out there now are more than capable of getting the job done.
i live in canada, where there's more or less a monopoly on lines in any given area. when i was in ottawa, it was rogers for cable and bell for dsl. i'm now in windsor, across the river from detroit, where cogeco owns all the cable lines.
it's kind of wasteful and stupid to suggest running competing lines side by side. but, our regulators have agreed that a monopoly is anti-competitive, so they've forced the line owners to rent the lines out to smaller companies. there are a few quirks to going with a smaller company, but one of the things they offer is cheaper access rates at lower speeds. ultimately, it just exposes how much of a rip-off the major carriers are: how else could a smaller company turn a profit by buying bandwidth from them, then undercutting them on it?
the process of moving down here and switching had me think a lot about it. is an internet line a public good? the analogy that keeps coming through my mind is public roads. we even have the language of an "information superhighway". there are some fringe opinions that disagree, but we mostly all agree that roads should be owned by the public and maintained collectively through taxation. one of the reasons we mostly all believe this is that it provides equal access for everybody. the idea that large companies could take over our roads and start charging us whatever they want for whatever access they advertise is inconceivably backwards to most of us.
it's one thing to stand up against this and argue that things are fine as they are, but the machinery of private property laws is staggered against us. should we not change our perception of what the internet is, it's inevitable that these sorts of changes will take place. what that means is that it's necessary to articulate an alternate vision of how internet lines are owned in order to maintain net neutrality.
i got into a lot of trouble in junior high school when i sieg hieled my english teacher for being excessively authoritarian. it was maybe a little over the top, but i'd consider it an acceptable means of ironic protest, and was certainly not intending to express any kind of racist feeling but rather to express my displeasure at being at the whim of an authoritarian overlord. these kinds of laws are hamfisted and don't work....
surreal.
i'm not going to bother trying to get the historical context in place, or explain why this is meaningless propaganda, but don't forget to boycott ford, ibm, exxon, volkswagon, siemens and bayer while you're at it.
i'm a fan of norm, but i'm not dumb enough to pay for cable, so i guess he's screwed.
he probably means he wants more knight rider fans.
what they can do is distract legitimate anger at failed economic policies away from the elites that they benefit and towards immigrants instead.
this is the chart i was looking for.
and i actually don't have an argument. it's the highest it's ever been.
i
mean, i'm not trying to take away "living wage" arguments, the numbers
still justify a boost, but the blunt truth is that tying it to inflation
at it's peak point is really surprisingly progressive policy.
have to say i never thought i'd see it. it'd be nice to get a bit of a boost first, but it's a structural fix to a never-ending problem. hope it sticks after the election.
i ride without one. i find they restrict my vision, and the fact is i'm petite enough that they hurt my neck.
i take other precautions, which include riding on the sidewalk and telling pedestrians to fuck off if they don't like it.
the bottom line is that if i end up thrown across three lanes of traffic and break my neck and rupture my liver, the fact that i didn't get a concussion isn't particularly relevant.
i often deny it, but in truth i'm a grown up. i've been around long enough to see how things operate, and i've read a little plato which has helped me understand it a bit. corruption is something you have to live with if you want a liberal, representative government.
so, we can talk of minimizing it, then. fine. but, it's very hard for me to look at anybody on the right and conclude that i'm going to get a government dedicated to fighting corruption, when all i've ever seen from the right is endemic corruption.
...and it kind of doesn't even matter what they say, because i understand that it's built into their ideological understanding of government. they exist to facilitate people that invest in their party. the point is to sell as much off as they can, to ensure private sector profits. roads and hydro were an easy target last time. up next are hospitals and who knows what else...
yet, it's really at their core of their political support, this idea that they'll cut down on corruption, in opposition to all evidence that that's all they do. it's not even orwellian, it's just straight-up, in your face lying. generations of people keep falling for it, too. i don't know how far this goes back. burke, even, maybe? it might be the most successful lie in history.
see, if i were naive, i might think the ndp would cut down on it, but i'm not. at best, we might see union corruption instead of business corruption, but they have a lot of fences to mend before they can even get there. and, it's not clear they even want to.
so, i'd rather focus on issues. they're all corrupt. it's a function of the system. when we catch them, we should be strict, but we shouldn't pretend that it's a political issue that can be dealt with through policy or renewal.
Sunday, June 1, 2014
the more i learn about anonymous, the less i like it. "we don't forgive"? what are you, a jihadist group? it just seems like another kind of right-wing populism.
you know, it seems to me that it's been clear that all phone communications (all. everything. yes, your conversation with your mom the other day. everything.) have been sucked in by the five eyes since the echelon agreement was exposed upwards of fifteen years ago, and that the archives (apparently held in australia) go back to the second world war.
all of it. every second. every word.
Molly Mason
Mr Piketty's solution has been tried (and has failed) before. Tinkering about with the Capitalist system is simply a short term, stick a plaster on a gaping wound response - It's time to CHANGE this system to a system which caters for the majority in every respect - the environment - equality and security
CryptedSky
His solution is basically a reboot of John M. Keynes New deal which has worked spectacularly well in the past. When keynesian solutions to keep the economy in check were replaced Friedmanian neoliberal ideology is when the economy started to fail.
deathtokoalas
keynes requires a mostly closed economy with high tariffs and is consequently not compatible with the modern world and it's irreversible open trade reality. we need new ideas to reflect the existing realities, not old ones that no longer make sense.
the left will continue to fail until it understands this.
CryptedSky
screw you koalas are awesome
deathtokoalas
koalas need to be destroyed due to their subversive cuteness.
the idea of a shop owner reinvesting in the business next door has been replaced by walmart reinvesting on the other side of the world. i suppose an actual world government could do something like keynes suggested, but implementing these sorts of policies in the united states is just going to drain the wealth out of the country.
SoundHysteria
Today another UA military helicopter was shot down with a general on board. All crew and passengers died. Considering how few working aircraft the Ukrainian military has and how many it lost so far. Give it another month and the skies will be deserted.
deathtokoalas
i think i'd be more concerned about what the russians decide to try out to try and get around their air superiority. they've been talking tough about this. i don't have any ideas, though - i understand the political aspect, but military matters are something i have no understanding of. that being said, you can bet they're not going to just sit there for the next ten years shooting down planes amidst heavy casualties. they're going to look at the situation, say "this is impossible" and do something else.
i don't know why they don't just go occupy the winning team's stadium.
the problems of growing...
you know, i wasn't sure what was going to follow after that. it turns out it was the economy. that's probably for the best.
the government is not going to change anything. the entrenched policy for well over a hundred years has been slow assimilation. there have been minor changes - trudeau tried to make the process more transparent, mulroney tried to speed it up with blood quantum rules, harper has been pushing for the enforcement of property rights - but there has been no wavering from the purpose of the policy, and no reason to think there will be unless or until the social, political and economic systems in canada change at a systemic level.
in other words, canada is a colonial state and will continue to act like one until it is not one.
so, the bad guy puts a special face mask on and your grandmother gets zapped. it's a symptom of a bigger problem...
it also depends on the industry. a lot of these same arguments apply to corporate taxation, and are really tied to how mobile the business is.
a call centre can get up and move fairly easily. a mcdonald's isn't going anywhere if it's successful, but the burger king across the street might in fact shut down. a mine or a forest is tied to the geography and couldn't move regardless of consequences. & etc
also, you'd expect low unemployment to have a causal effect on increasing wages.
this sucks.
wow.
well, in the end, they get selected out and the world keeps spinning. hey, look, a spider...
Saturday, May 31, 2014
i get the point that you're attacking an unfair caricature, but i spent a while working out of a call centre in ottawa, canada that took a lot of in calls from the southern states and i heard a lot of people with really exaggerated accents - so exaggerated that i could legitimately barely understand them. it wasn't because of a bad connection or static or whatever, it was because we were simply speaking different languages. words i'd never heard before, verb usages that didn't make any sense to me - the whole thing.
ironically, the idea at the time was that canadians were ideal call center employees for the american market because we were cheaper (due to our dollar being around $0.60 usd at the time, which has since changed drastically) and we spoke english that americans could understand - unlike asians or latin americans.
but, i have to be honest - i would personally have a much easier time with an asian accent than i would with a deep south one because, while asian accents might be broken, they're not a structurally different language. the feeling was sometimes mutual - not just "aboot. hahaha.", but "i don't understand what you said because your grammar is foreign to me".
it really surprised the hell out of me, actually. i think i learned that we're not that far from "deep south american" being a different language than "english".
you, on the other hand, just speak a bit slower than i do.
fascists are usually pretty good at lining up behind big money interests when it comes to it. the immigration rhetoric is cause for serious concern (although it's unfortunately true that the function of immigration is to decrease wages, the scorn should be placed at the capitalists that game the system for profit and not the workers trying to survive), but it ultimately serves the interests of the elite because it distracts from the root causes and keeps the violence at street level.
i know what the rhetoric on the euro is, but i think it's just that. the central bankers would be overjoyed to see her (and the far right, overall) win an election.
t's really the oldest trick in the book in europe.
the economy goes down, blame the jews/gypsies/muslims/turks. that way, the angry masses attack them instead of the church/king/parliament/bank. from their perspective, that often solves two problems at once.
but europe also has a low population growth rate, which creates a systemic problem for capitalists that always seek conditions where the number of possible workers far exceeds the number of actually employed ones. there's a lot of very good reasons why that growth rate has stayed low and why europeans should seek to keep it low. however, the people of europe cannot have it both ways without abolishing capitalism - either they need to increase their growth rate, or they need to accept immigration, or they need to seize the means of production for themselves.
---
IamMANnumber1
Germany has brought Europe to its knees 3 times in the last century.
deathtokoalas
"germany" has been in the process of conquering europe, in various levels of severity, for over two thousand years.
chocomalk
Wow do you people ever learn history? Most of Europe's historical woes are attributed elsewhere.
deathtokoalas
dude, it's just like when the visigoths invaded spain, it's just on a different level of abstraction.
chocomalk
Dude it's like saying Europe is not Norway, Sweden, England, France, the Netherlands, Austria etc...all descendants of Germanic tribes. It's like saying Western Germany is Eastern France or vice versa. You are looking at an orgy and finding a few parts you don't like without recognizing the attaching parts. Meanwhile the Romans, the Turks, , The Brits, The Russians, THE GREAT GAME, the(insert name)....
deathtokoalas
i'm not sure you can even make sense of that, so i'm not going to try to.
let's try again.
"germany" has been in the process of conquering europe, in various levels of severity, for over two thousand years.
now, think it through and understand the truth in it.
chocomalk
"Europe" is a relatively new concept, not one to be assigned 2000 years of existence. "Germany" was "Germania". the majority of what we call Europe today, the rest was Rome. So what is your point? That most of the original Germanic tribes that went on to become present day Europe because of a migration somehow tried to conquer itself? Technically the Visigoths would be attacking Rome not Europe. And technically Rome was the biggest aggressor. "Germania" was fairly consistent for about 1500 years regardless of it's name. The rest was Rome, or what was left of it after they fell and "other". The East is another matter. Anyway, you are still missing how everyone was trying to conquer everything..."everything" meaning what used to be Rome/Germania.
deathtokoalas
your understanding of history is a little bit confused, but it doesn't really matter because very little of what you're saying is in any way relevant (and the junkers that built the modern german state were actually not germans but prussians).
however,
1) europe is a geographic area and has existed as it does since roughly the end of the last ice age.
2) eastern europe was in fact largely built by east germans. as i feel you may be confused by a reference to the former soviet state, i need to separate between the east germans (who lived in modern day poland and ukraine and included groups like goths and lombards), the north germans (of scandinavia) and the west germans (of what we now call germany, france and england)
3) germans are not indigenous to the area we now call germany. rather, they moved south near the beginning of the historical period and conquered and displaced indigenous celts.
4) the continuum of tribes in europe were migratory and did not really respect national boundaries. at any given point, you would find not just germans in the area now known as germany but also celts, slavs, iranians and people from much further east, including huns and turkish-speaking people.
5) you'll note i put "germany" in quotes, which was to note that it did not exist as a nation-state 2500 years ago. however, the idea of a german nation united by language, religion and culture is not a new idea. our word for german comes from a greek association of odin with hermes. the germans were those who worshipped hermes. today, we think more in terms of linguistic groupings, of which i mentioned in (1).
6) my point is that "germany" has been in the process of conquering europe, in various levels of severity, for over two thousand years.
chocomalk
Prussian = Germanic, not sure where you are going with that lol.
1. Your vision of this "Europe" as a geological location does not take into account the artificial borders that exclude Russia/Asia etc. We are discussing pre civilized Europe during a time known as the great migration. A time when Europe did not exist as a set location and people came from all over. Sure, same rocks, but it's a whole lot bigger if you add all the stuff it is attached too without those convenient borders.
2. Germanic tribes, is there a point? And at what point are they not "Germanic" even though they hail from the same stock? You mention Goths as if they are not Germanic.
3. Yes they moved south as the Celts moved west, neither were "indigenous. And you quoted a 2000 year timeline, the Celts, what we know of them, predate that and were mainly affected by Rome. They were pushed, Germanic tribes were pushed, Slavic tribes were pushed... they all did pushing as well.
4. This is subject to a very long timeline, but it is pretty safe to say that regardless of who was ruling who, the lines have remained consistent for at least 1000 years give or take and were pretty much formed prior to that.
5. Funny we are communicating in German? No in English...why is that? Because there are other players in this you are not addressing. So the next language most likely for us to speak in would be German?...no it would be French. Although influenced by German, we consider many European languages to be "Latin" based. How could that be? You say this as if it is uniquely German.
6. Your point ignores everyone else, this makes you a bigot. In the same boat as Germany would be every tribe/culture you mention and some you have not. So is there a point? Besides being a bigot and pointing out one guilty party among many? deathtokoalas
i don't feel you're following me, and i'm a little bored with your continued responses. i'm not seeking to build any sort of comparison or produce any kind of normative statements, i'm simply pointing out that "germany" has been in the process of conquering europe, in various levels of severity, for over two thousand years. and the prussians, now extinct, were balts.
chocomalk
No, I follow you, you are a bigot. And "Prussian" ≠ "Old Prussian".
deathtokoalas
now that i've blocked that idiot, i want to reiterate my point: that "germany" has been in the process of conquering europe, in various levels of severity, for over two thousand years.
i'm not sure what's going on outside. when i was out there, it
sounded like a race track around the corner. air show? several lawn
mowers? don't know. but, sitting inside, the waveforms of the different
motors are expanding and overlapping with each other and harmonizing,
and it sounds like an ambient noise festival.
maybe i just wish i was at an ambient noise festival.
it's nice out.
hurry up, customs.
the russians are talking tough about retaliation for escalation in the east; yet, poroshenko reacted to the airport seizure in strongman fashion. whatever the law says, it's a show of force, and there's little doubt that it was directed at russia. poroshenko is of course a new entity at this level, and i don't claim to understand him well, but i can't believe he would be foolish enough to mean the show of force to be a challenge. rather, it's a message that he will defend himself if provoked.
that doesn't negate the russian threats, and they ought to be taken seriously. they have repeatedly warned that the kind of escalation poroshenko put down will be responded to harshly, for the precise reason that they do not want a full war. for all poroshenko's intent to send a message of territorial integrity and whatnot, the russians have made it clear that they are going to control the area for the foreseeable future. they've also made it clear that they want it done peacefully.
so, they're not going to invade. that would be foolish, and everybody outside of the western press can see that. maybe they can, too, and it's just dramatic television.
they're not going to cut off gas supplies, either. that's a punitive attack on the ukrainian people, not on the ukrainian government. putin understands the difference.
he's not stalin.
rather, he's a pussy cat, as i keep saying. he wants to bully his way forward, but he doesn't want to actually hurt anybody.
however. and this is a big however.
i think it exceedingly unlikely that the russians are just going to sit there for the next ten years shooting down helicopters amidst heavy casualties. as the clear aim is to minimize casualties, they are going to respond somehow. and, the pattern is through a show of force, and the use of the *threat* of that force (rather than it's actualization) to seize control of what it wants.
so, how does putin find a way to bully ukraine into grounding it's planes under the threat of severe consequence? i can think of a few things. they are drastic. i would prefer not to give anybody any ideas.
but note the threat of serious consequence, and that it should be taken seriously.
i don't trust internet polls. the sampling simply isn't random. worse, there's an age bias that directly contradicts known voting patterns (older people are far more likely to vote).
i'm not expecting significantly different results than the last election - liberals and conservatives around 35 (+/-) and the ndp in the low 20s. it's going to be about turnout.
i'm not voting. i don't know the riding well enough. but it's probably clear that i'm supporting the liberals over the ndp.
most politicians are a little loopy, but i'm strongly convinced that horwath is a clinical psychopath.
hey, i'm in dwight duncan's old seat.
it's a liberal-ndp race, here, which just stresses the need to understand local issues, which i don't. well, in most circumstances, that's how i'd look at it, anyways.
see, i'm not happy about an ndp candidate attacking the green energy act. yes, electricity has gone up, and people are upset, but it's a boneheaded analysis to blame it on the decision to shut down coal plants, rather than these off the wall market-based electricity policies. i expect the ndp to present an articulate solution that argues for public ownership of utilities (and explicitly against running utilities for private profit), not some hamfisted, cursory nonsense. for the armchair accountants in the audience, how about an argument that improving air quality offsets health costs? if there's no longer any idea of sharing social burdens in the ndp's outlook, if it's just self interest and lowering costs, what's their purpose in the existing political spectrum?
....and i like the idea of high speed rail heading out to toronto. it would make it feasible to spend the day there to catch a festival show.
i don't really care about what they say about jobs, because i understand that the existing political reality is that the government cannot create jobs. it's a neat trick they've pulled off to put the responsibility in the hands of the private sector (we're knee deep in the neo-liberal era, folks), thereby eliminating any control they have over the issue, then run election platforms on it, as though they didn't relinquish control. just once i'd like to see a current politician take the podium and state:
"the era where government policy could create jobs ended in the 90s. we campaigned on it. you voted us in to cut the links. we did it. now, you're on your own. sorry. "
beyond that, the structural realities of mass job creation not just here but in a thousand mile radius are just not feasible. the idea that we can create all these jobs for all these people isn't realistic, so we need to adjust how we think; voters need to get it through their heads that the choice is between having some people on welfare and some people working full time and having everybody working part time and also living on welfare. which is actually what socialism is *really* all about. so, it's socialism or welfare and we have to deal with it. a thousand sun readers just had their brain explode. i'm ok with that being a choice, too, so long as the income differential is meaningful. well, it's a choice, right? better than being sent to the walmart under threat of starvation. the choice is simple: do you want more money than you have time or do you want more time than you have money? and, knowing full well that demanding employment is going to hurt somebody else that needs the money more than me, i'll happily choose time over money.
so, it's mostly meh. the ndp will support the rail plan. and the liberals are simply better on the environment right now.
it's a shame. the province needs to reclaim it's resources. it's going to happen sooner or later. the ndp is really missing the boat on articulating a vision of social democracy at precisely the time that it's needed, and at precisely the time it may actually be embraced.
because people really *are* pissed about rising costs, they're just being misled about the causes, and the ndp are not helping them understand them.
also, it's a shame the liberals couldn't find a mccoy.
yeah. it's the point. she can't beat the liberals straight up. she knows it. her sole purpose is power, so it makes sense for her to help the conservatives win in the short run, in the hopes that it sets up a direct ndp-conservative battle.
russia's more of a market economy than most of europe is, steve. also, vlad would probably dig your new monument. i think he's put a few like it up, himself.
in truth, harper's latest dumb comments are incredibly insensitive to the millions of russians who look to putin to keep the communists out of power. 'cause that's vlad's real competition, after all - not these kleptocratic fascist "liberal" billionaires that the west wants to let back into yeltsin's liquor cabinet.
steve and vlad are actually very similar, kindred spirits of a sort. if steve ever decides to pull his head out of his ass and gain some kind of grasp on reality, he'd see his ideological brethren across the arctic ocean.
but, he'd rather hit the bunker and play with his plasticine soldiers, and send them off to fight his imagined boogeyman. do it for the gipper, steve-o.
i actually think it's fully plausible that steve has been left in the dark and fed propaganda and doesn't really have the slightest idea of what is going on on the ground in ukraine.
nice walk yesterday, although it knocked me out. i guess i needed a
good night's worth of sleep. it's been a long time since i can remember a
good 9 hours in one stretch.
those cheap shoes aren't
working out. i suppose i shouldn't be surprised, although i also think
i'm abusing them. they probably would have lasted the summer if i didn't
take them on these periodic six or eight hour walks. as it is, they're
already softening up on the bottom. i did pick up a pair of skate shoes a
few months ago, but wanted to save them until the spring rains stopped.
the whole purpose of the cheap shoes was really to wear in spring and
fall. so, i guess it's time to switch over. the cheapies were two for
one, so i guess i have another pair for the fall. looking at them now,
it's pretty obvious they weren't really made for walking.
i
got this rare craving for a burger last night. it's something that hits
every few months. raw meat is not allowed in the house, so it's not
something that's in my regular diet. the few times a year i want a
burger, i go buy one. i remembered seeing a local burger place, so i
took a walk around the corner....
"motor burger". well,
i'm in detroit. sounds like a good place for what i imagine a local
detroit burger should be: greasy and messy, with a side of transmission
fluid, but that's kind of what i wanted.
it turns out
it was actually a sort of bourgeois gourmet burger palace, which makes
these weird upper class burgers out of goat cheese and gluten-free buns,
then charges upwards of $15 for them. i was tired, and jonesing hard,
so i forked out the $22 for a bacon cheeseburger and a non-hydrogenated,
baked, organically grown poutine.
deathtokoalas
again: i love that vice is doing this, because it provides some hard evidence to back up the reports coming out of the region and this just isn't coming from elsewhere in the western media. yet, i feel this video requires some context. the basic explanation is that what you're seeing here is turkish-backed militias fighting with saudi-backed militias for control over a post-assad syria. but, let me explain further.
whatever the causes of the initial uprising, the situation was taken advantage of by outside forces looking to advance their geostrategic interests, as also occurred in libya and, at a higher level, in egypt. this led to an influx of saudi-backed fighters looking to expand saudi influence in the region. something that's very interesting is that, before all of this happened, assad was actually on the path to relinquish power to a civilian government. i believe that the overriding interest of the saudi monarchy is to prevent this transfer of power, and install a saudi-style theocratic government instead.
unlike his father, the assad that is in power now did not seize control through a military coup. he inherited power in a way that is more or less monarchistic. but, something that the western media has completely ignored is the reality that he hasn't ever seemed to actually be interested in ruling. if a prince is interested in ruling, does he move to britain to study optometry? how does that help him in learning how to rule a nation? rather, it's been clear for years that the younger assad is more or less an empty figurehead in a state that is run by a junta of military generals, and that he basically wants to step down and focus on his life outside of government. western media rarely reflects anything approximating truth, but it's treatment of assad the individual (rather than the regime that uses him as a figurehead) is a really extreme example of outlandish messaging.
if you've been following syrian politics behind the mess, what you actually see is a state this is trying to democratize by modifying it's constitution to allow for strengthened democratic institutions. one could suggest they're following the "turkish model" in a slow democratization that could take many years. but, ignoring hillary clinton's scoffing reaction, that seemed to be the path the syrian state was heading down.
now, if you think it through, elections in syria might not be what the west really wants. for example, it could allow hezbollah into power, or it could lead to a strongly anti-zionist government. certainly, it would lead to instability. the west always prefers a strong dictatorship that it understands over the uncertainty of popular opinion. so, it initially backed the saudis in their attempt to take control of the region before a democracy could be established.
however, over time it became clear that such a theocratic state would not have popular support in syria, which has been a secular (if not particularly free) society for many decades now. when given the opportunity to support assad or support the saudi rebels, the syrian people chose to support assad. so, the entire thing backfired.
realizing this, a coalition of american allies that includes turkey and qatar have broken with the saudis. there has been a wide realization that the tactics the saudis want to use will not be successful in taking stable control of syria, but will merely lead to decades of war. in order for western interests to take control of syria with popular backing, they need to present themselves as a more moderate force.
so, this is what you're seeing, here: it's all about putting a softer image on the rebels, to make them seem more moderate, in order to generate support for them. but, the interests driving the conflict have not at all diverged.
there's potential for a wider conflict developing amongst nato-aligned nations, which threatens to severely damage american influence over the region. the americans have long been following a british-inherited policy of divide and conquer, where they simultaneously build up each of the major players in the region (turkey, egypt, israel, saudis, iran) and play them off against each other. this asserts their own hegemony while eliminating any local hegemony. should one country threaten to become too powerful (as the saudis have threatened to recently), you can expect the americans to throw their weight behind their competitor (which would be iran). but, the most important strategic ally always has been and remains turkey.
so, the key thing to understand is that the saudis are not only advancing western interests, they also have their own interests, which also includes toppling the shia ("heretic") government in iraq. isis is operating over a wide swath of territory. the boundary between iraq and syria does not truly exist at the moment. and, this is both the cause and the effect of obama's attempt to soften his approach towards the heretics in tehran, too.
it's not widely understood in the west that there remains a great deal of animosity between turks and arabs over control of the levant, where arabs are still bitter over a millenium of turkish imperialism and the turks remain leery about allowing saudi-backed fundamentalists to set up bases too close to their borders.
so, while the general conflict between nato and russia is driving the big picture, and the saudi-iran conflict is driving the civil war, what is driving the actual fighting on the ground is a turkish-arab conflict over the post-assad space.
and i just want to add that the purpose of this message control is to facilitate an upcoming nato bombing campaign, which is now possible due to the russians being distracted in ukraine.
Bman Chu
You make some pretty outrageous, sweeping claims about the west without providing a shred of evidence in support. The west is not one single entity united in conspiracy against the middle east and russia. The west has many different faces and desires as well as many free and informed voices.
deathtokoalas
kinda, but not really. if i was unclear, i was really referring to the nato alliance, which is (excluding minor squabbles) under the unitary command of the united states.
SilverRadiant
oh boy that was the longest explaination I've evr seen :O
deathtokoalas
are books really that far out of the public consciousness at this point?
that wouldn't meet the length requirements of most undergraduate essays, and some high school essays.
===
Doğan Kutbay
So ISIS is Russian backed up?
The Global Excursion
Chechen
Höri
No. The Assad gov is Russian backed. ISIS are a band off opportunistic islamist brigands trying to take advantage and accumulate wealth amid the chaos.
The Russian speakers are the remnants of the Chechen rebels, that fought and lost against Russia and now looking for a new home.
Adam Nohcho
Iranian
deathtokoalas
as is stated in the video, isis is saudi-backed. the russian speaking aspect of this is curious, but if it's true they would likely be chechens.
in the larger scheme of things, isis and russia are not on the same side of the conflict.
Che DESIGNER
Lost against russians? You are talking bullshit here. This is not a game it is a war, no one wins when people die. Don't talk about the things that you know nothing about.
James seeker
No Russia supports Assad
deathtokoalas
that's a half-truth. the russians are supporting the existing government, but support a peaceful transition of power and have been putting pressure on assad to put the process of that transition in motion (and, in truth, he has been). what the russians really support is a russian geo-strategic presence in syria. they're not tied to any specific incarnation of that.
TheGiantKiller8
The 'existing' government is a minoritarian mafia regime that was installed by the French COlonial powers today allied with Russia ie BASHAR. These skum bags were going to be overthrown inevitably like all the British/French./Russian puppets in the region from sadam, Mubarak, ghadhafi and so on.
No matter how much people hate the rebels they are the popular movement in region
deathtokoalas
the baath party wasn't put in place by the french, the whole "arab socialism" thing was mostly an indigenous movement, but received a lot of support from the soviets. syria spent most of the cold war aligned with the soviets, no different than eastern europe really, which is what this is really all about - cleaning up the post-soviet satellite states (libya and syria) and aligning them with nato. the russians, of course, have other ideas.
there's no evidence that the rebels, whether the "moderate" ones under the former fsa or the saudi-backed loonies, represent anybody except their handlers. syria had some problems with freedom of expression, but people were hardly starving on the streets. despite the propaganda, revolutions are rarely about political rights and usually about basic economics. the circumstances for a mass uprising in syria simply weren't in place. there wasn't one. at best, it was a fringe movement of the usual leftists, and at worst it was essentially a foreign invasion.
Amine
Actually there is a point of view that says that they are a creation of the Iranian secret service to create disorder in the region deathtokoalas
that's hilarious.
because iran wants to create disorder.
the propaganda is thick though, people will believe that.
the evidence isn't debatable. that isis is a saudi front carrying out american geostrategic aims is a factual statement.
ugh. this new "facebook for iphone" shit is just horrific. it was bad
enough losing 50% of the page to ads, now we just lost another 25% to a
sneaky ploy by facebook to get pages to prominently display likes as
ads along the sides.
i think this is sort of facebook
admitting that people don't actually click on likes, meaning the medium
really isn't useful to advertisers, meaning their entire reason to exist
is up in the air. the increasingly aggressive nature of facebook
advertising is a function of the inefficacy of advertising on social
media. but, facebook seems to be run by legitimate Corporate Idiots, and
it's consequently likely to get worse. i do predict that the ads are
going to be what turns facebook into a ghost site in the end. if it's
not already halfway there.
i like the rss capabilities.
i repeat that it was the rss, not the people, that dragged me in - and
late at that, not until 2010. and, so long as "content generators"
(which in my case mostly means show promoters in the detroit/windsor
area) continue to use facebook, i'll continue to use it as well. the
corollary of that is that so long as people go looking for these sorts
of sites, i feel i should maintain it.
but, cutting me
down to 25% of the screen for my actual content is too much. to me, that
makes the site unusable. i'm going to be converting this page (and the
rest of my facebook pages, too) into an rss dump over the next few
weeks, by emulating the timeline page at my appspot site.
there's
another benefit to getting off these scripted sites, which is that they
badly waste hardware resources. i shouldn't need 500 mb of ram to fully
load this page back to 1981. it can be easily reproduced with an html
table and an iframe in a way that could be loaded easily on a 386.
i'm
going to leave the rss dump because people are going to keep checking
the site for these sorts of things for the near future, but also because
facebook could still turn things around. but, for right now, the future
of facebook seems to be a dead zone of advertising scripts, where
corporate servers communicate to each other across a barren landscape.
don't
look for a replacement, either. the era of a centralized internet was
thankfully short lived. the initial nature of the internet as
decentralized and targeted to specific interests seems to be reasserting
itself. that's something to be excited about.
for me,
as a musician, that means the replacement ought to be something like
spotify. it's not clear yet which network is going to win out. but note
that there's a paywall there, which means i'm not interested. soundcloud
is awful. so, i'd like to see bandcamp increase it's networking aspect.
however it stabilizes, that's where the future is. and, likewise,
expect a gamer network and a fashion network and a ...
the
model to look towards is something like youtube, which will probably
not be supplanted as the video networking site (unless it fucks up like
facebook has). in the end, i think google did get it right, but not the
way it meant to.
so, i'm not signing off, but i'm
mutating outwards; i'm realizing this host is dead, discarding the
exoskeleton and growing into a new one.
this is the next 2001 period piece i'll be working on, hopefully starting early next week. my memory is blurry; yet, i have a vivid recollection of playing parts of it for my guitar teacher on a sunny day, where there was still snow on the ground.
it's funny how we remember seemingly irrelevant details, but i guess the atmosphere of the performance is important because the performance is. that would date it to roughly march, 2001.
i switched the piece from classical guitar to piano halfway through writing it, and vaguely remember thinking that an impossible interval had something to do with it. yet, that doesn't change the fact that it's guitar music. the counterpoint is very guitar.
i'll have to analyse the score and determine whether it's actually playable or not, or if i can get it close enough. but this one is an open palette right now in the sense that it needs to be filled out, so the early instrumentation choices are really just a suggestion.
one possible idea is that i may split it into a guitar piece to start and a piano piece to finish. i'm thinking of adding sequenced drums and a more defined, squelchy bass part.
for now, this is what the track sounded like as i was writing it. i've been careful to use the same scorewriter and same soundcard as i was using at the time of writing.
written in early 2001. rendered may 29, 2014.
Thursday, May 29, 2014
great headline, jones. yeesh.
and, i've been convinced you're a russian plant since climategate, along with the rest of the neo-birchites, including paul. there's really a lot of irony in the whole discussion, as alex jones is the guy that'll be orchestrating the marches for the kremlin should some state capitol get stormed maidan-like. and, his audience is every bit as white nationalist, too.
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
the russian leadership is very pragmatic and no doubt willing to work with poroshenko, but i'm not convinced it still controls the army.
deathokoalas
o'reilly is legitimately standing at the end of a long line of human thought, but it doesn't necessarily have to do with religion. the crux of what o'reilly is saying is that people won't behave properly unless they have a fear of consequence. because o'reilly also wants small government, he pushes it off to a higher power to enforce the threat of consequence. but, there's a lot of problems with the whole approach.
to begin with, just because bill wants the bad guys to believe they're going to have to deal with god doesn't mean they're going to. because religion is so counter-intuitive, in order for it to really work as a disincentive it needs to be enforced from the top - by government, maybe, as was done by various christian churches in the past and is still enforced in islamic theocracies, or maybe by media, as is done more viably in the united states. so, it's just a hobbesian argument, in the end - and nothing to do with religion, itself.
but, what's worse is that a really moral person doesn't require the consequence. if you're only behaving because of the threat of consequence, you're not truly moral. his ends really don't follow from his strategy.
dawkins seems to generally realize that he's often debating with social engineers, rather than legitimately religious people. whatever sort of self-constraints he imposes on himself tend to neutralize his arguments. i wish he'd engage his opponents on the level they truly exist on, rather than the level they pretend they exist on.
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
i lost a few days due to a nasty neck ache that required a lot of
sleeping. i'm still not really clear on what happened, but i've narrowed
it down to either:
a) i picked up a virus from not
using soap to wash my hands while making eggs. we all do this, because
we're all lazy. i need to be more careful.
b) multiple
sclerosis. this isn't random. i've been hearing about being high risk
since i was a toddler, and i do get weird facial tics and random muscle
spasms rather regularly. where the pain is (where my spine meets my
brain) could very well be a lesion. but, if true, existing medical
science couldn't actually do anything about it except waste a lot of my
time. so, whatever. it's mostly gone away. good enough for now....
i'm feeling alert enough at this point to get back to it tonight. i think i'm still on course to finish the track by the first.
you know, something else that happened right before my back went up
in flames was that i switched from folgers to maxwell house. and i drink
around a pot of extremely strong coffee a day, so it's not outside the
realm of possibility. pot two is coming up, we'll have to see how that
works out...
but, what i wanted to post was this:
<phil hartman>
MAXWELL HOUSE! COFFEE SO STRONG, IT WILL MAKE YOUR NECK HURT SO BADLY, THAT YOU'LL BE COMPLETELY CONVINCED YOU HAVE M.S.
</phil hartman>
also, why isn't there a "bill clinton killed phil hartman" conspiracy theory?
Monday, May 26, 2014
what i'd say about the video is that it's really, unbearably cheesy - and perhaps a little bit trivializing.
...and that producing controversial videos is a time-tested way to distract from the fact that your music is regurgitated, unoriginal garbage.
that being said, i'll give them a C for effort. i'd prefer to see this message articulated than it's opposite one.
mmhhmm.
coincidentally, as space-based weapons drive a new cold war and arms race, a number of "asteroids" that are "as powerful as nuclear bombs" have "appeared out of nowhere".
further, the presented solution is to spend more money on space-based weapons systems.
we have absolutely no idea what our governments are doing.
yeah. i'll be ok. hopefully it goes away soon, though.
it hasn't really improved, but i've gotten used to it. also, i'm
developing a sore throat, which leads me to conclude that i've picked up
a virus. this is pretty intense for the flu, though....
...and the truth is the only vector i can conceive of over the last week would be those eggs. so, bird flu? maybe....
i'll see what i feel like when the sun comes up.
my neck needs rest, but my brain is wide awake. so, read.
i'm
finding myself in far greater agreement with hobbes than i ever thought
i would be, and am actually seeing him produce a lot of the same sorts
of arguments i'm always throwing at ancaps. hobbes would agree that a
society based around markets and contracts would require a state to
enforce those markets and contracts, rendering the vision of classical
liberalism (today pushed by anarcho-capitalists) a sort of contradiction
in terms - precisely agreeing with myself and other anarchists, who
don't think anarchy and capitalism are compatible with each other.
of
course, hobbes would not conclude that markets and contracts (and
property and currency) should be abolished, as i would. instead, he'd
argue in favour of a totalitarian state that forces actors to carry out
their promises.
but i'm a little surprised how much
i'm actually identifying with somebody that's always been presented to
me as the exact opposite of everything i've ever believed in or stood
for.
Sunday, May 25, 2014
lol.
does friedman know what "inelastic demand" means?
ouch.
neck is very stiff. has me paranoid about
paralysis. but i'm hoping i just leaned on it the wrong way. will give
it a few hours to heal before i freak out.
i took a
break from mixing this morning to make some eggs, which gave me some
heartburn and forced me to lie down. i woke up a few hours later barely
able to move, with difficulty swallowing & etc.
see,
it's been suggested to me more than once that i'm high risk for
developing MS. i've had these periodic facial tics for as long as i can
remember, but it's on the other side of the neck. i'm a little worried
that something "broke" on the other side.
for now, i'm going to try to breathe slowly and just basically not move for a few hours.
so, i've become convinced that i will eventually snap my own sternum
in the process of stretching, the blood splinters will travel to my
heart and i'll die on the floor in a pool of my own blood. things are
constantly snapping in there. it's just a matter of time.
but i can't just not stretch. no, really. try it some time. nobody can accomplish this task.
so, i've resigned myself to my own frailty, and patiently await the outcome.
hey, i always said i wouldn't make it to 25.
i was shocked when i made it to 30.
i suppose my track record on this prediction is not good, but i consider it exceedingly unlikely that i'll get to 40.
in
some imaginary state of nature that never actually existed, i would
have been eaten by lions before i turned ten. no, really, i would have.
so, i'm already way ahead, thanks to the technology.
better to quit when i'm ahead. wait.
Saturday, May 24, 2014
there are a lot of positives to treating corporations like people. rather than fight against the idea, the focus should be on using it to the general public's advantage.
you may have seen something about the civil war, but it's nonsense. the idea is british in origin and older than that. stated simply, a corporation cannot appear as a defendant in a lawsuit unless it is legally treated as though it is a person. abolishing legal personhood would also make it impossible to sue corporations. you'd have to sue individual people that work at a corporation instead - and good luck demonstrating liability. that's the whole point in the first place - to make it easier to establish liability...
here's another example of the way the idea could be used to the general public's advantage: if corporations are people, should they not be taxed as though they are people? if you follow the logic through, it's really blatantly unconstitutional (in canada, at least) to give corporations specialized tax cuts. at the earnings levels they have, they should be putting 90%+ of their profits into public spending. so, why doesn't somebody force them to...?
----
BrotherWoody1
Do you think the Holocaust survivors or even the Weisenthal Institute could look into both Ford + IBM for their active support of the Third Reich & their active participation in the Holocaust itself. It's entirely natural to Ford & IBM to move from one Nazified state to another Nazified state. I hope that the Court also makes them accountable for their actions before 1945 as well as after.
deathtokoalas
it's known that ibm & ford were both actively involved in the third reich. however, the biggest criminal enterprise in the holocaust was the standard oil, through it's agreements with ig farben. ig farben was the company that made the gas. it was interlocked with the rockefeller concerns, at the time.
you have to understand that the united states did not enter world war two until 1941, and was not particularly hostile to german plans to attack the soviet union. if you look at the situation carefully, it becomes clear that the american concern was damage control to reverse hitler's botched invasion (which they seemed to support until it failed) and save western europe from stalinism.
ig farben was dismantled after the war. it's major successor company was bayer. smaller successors include hoechst, agfa-ansco and basf.
to an extent, he's right - it's about class. but, what nader is missing is that his idea of "left" is pretty right-wing. what he's describing is a process of moderate right-wingers in the two parties coming together and (representing a dominant popular consensus) working against the existing political consensus, which is to the extreme right. and, these are absolutely exciting developments if you're a reformist liberal (that is, a centrist on any non-american political spectrum) that wants to focus on incrementally fixing little aspects of the system, rather than tearing it all down.
it follows that what he's describing is a resurgence of the center. and, i'll take it. but, that's not the same thing as left & right coming together.
if you actually take the time to hang out at some street protests in north america, you might be shocked to find out that the people that call themselves leftists are mostly actually center-right liberals that react violently to most left-wing ideas. the spectrum has just shifted so violently that mills is considered far left nowadays.
there really isn't a left to speak of to begin with.
google > raytheon.
i mean, if it's one or the other i'd rather the former.
i think this video is confusing correlation with causality in several places, and in the end trying to pull a valid point out of a giant mess of meaningless correlations. religious societies are generally less free, because you get killed when you disobey the book in the most trivial way. i don't doubt the correlation, but is the lower level of crime a result of a higher level of morality, a more stringent level of enforcement or even a lack of proper statistics brought on by a conspiracy of silence stemming from the fact that virtually everybody could be taken behind the mosque and shot in the forehead?
& etc.
to answer the question, which is what baited me into watching it: not all religious people are stupid, but most stupid people are religious.
this is the guitar run through of the first movement of the proverbs symphony, as it was initially written (and demoed in early 2007). note that this version is less than seven minutes and is written to be performed live, whereas the completed movement is over seventeen minutes and would be impossible to reproduce without an orchestra of guitarists.
when finally completed, the trivial group sequence will consist of a 2-cd arranged in four thematically linked "symphonies", of which two are currently complete and one is partly complete. this is a live play through of the second half of the third piece and the entirety of the fourth.
this was written over 2004 and yet has not been recorded in any significant form. i went through a long period from '04 to '07 where i was convinced this piece (and some others i was writing at the time) required a drummer and refused to record until i could find one. i couldn't find one, which put me into a fit of depression and led to writers block & etc. eventually, i just bought an electronic kit with the goal of playing it myself.
however, i then skipped over it because i was bored with the relationship it was a relic of and decided it was time to move on. i'll be recording this (finally) over the upcoming months. for now, here's an unfinished demo of it.
i just watched a little report on the national about how the robocall scandal never happened, and it was just blown out of proportion by the media. this was filmed after the government came out with a report indicating that they couldn't find evidence of the claims.
well, that's government investigating government, and i have reason to believe it's being covered up. how much of an effect it actually had is a more complicated question that i can't begin to try and answer.
however, i was working for one of the robocall firms on election day. it was a small office out of a tall building on elgin street in ottawa. i initially started working there doing opinion surveys as a student, but i found myself going back there between jobs because they were happy to have me back. i happen to have been rather good at getting people to answer the surveys (i guess it's a combination of being interesting enough to not hang up on and being a good troll), which is an obscure and sought after talent.
anyways, the nature of the firm changed over the five or so years i was in and out of it. they were initially doing overflow for ekos or doing a lot of government of canada surveys. over time, they started doing more and more surveys for conservative political candidates. for the last several months leading up to the election, they were pretty much campaigning for the conservative party.
some of the polls were pretty straight forward - which candidate in your riding do you support, followed by some demographics about age and income. some of them were a little less straight forward, and i had caught on that something was not right by the end of it.
for example, they were polling in helena guergis' riding, but they weren't refreshing the numbers. so, you'd have people calling the same numbers over and over again, supposedly on behalf of helena guergis. that's a good way to piss people off so that they don't want to vote for helena guergis, which is what the cpc wanted at the time.
i was taken off the phone on election day to do data entry, but i do distinctly recall the *owner* of the firm periodically repeating - and it was of the utmost importance to him - to NOT tell people there was a change in the riding, because the information was false. i didn't put it together at the time, but it seems like he was actually NOT wanting to commit voter fraud, no doubt to try and protect his business' reputation.
holinshed closed it's doors almost immediately after the election and has not resurfaced since.
the people on the phone were not robots, although they may have sounded like robots from time to time.
ontarians are generally pretty no-bullshit when it comes to elections. we're also generally pretty down to earth when it comes to politics. we had a red tory government in place for something like 30 years, and the truth is that the province has never really moved away from those values. sure, it's a good idea to be reasonable with spending, but not at a cost to social services, which are more important in the end.
so, that works against both the turkeys running against her. horwath is just too transparent, and it's nice to see people turn on her for the power grab. and, the kind of conservatism that hudak represents is just not popular here, outside of the rural heartland. the 905ers want some moderate tax cuts, not an unregulated market-based society (or, worse, having the system sold off to the party's wealthy buddies).
so, this was obvious. and, there's not going to be a change of power here unless:
a) the conservatives go back to their red tory roots, and actually try and outspend the liberals. which will revolt that rural base, as it does everywhere.
or
b) the ndp cut out the transparent power politics, which means a drastic change in leadership. the reality is that the ontario ndp can't even rely on union support, so they end up competing with conservatives for low information voters.
but, it also helps that hudak is a cartoon character. a million jobs, tim? by government policy? is that a four year plan or a five year plan?
it bothers me that i tend to align with the right on speech issues, and not because i feel a conservative twinge within me but because of the motives i end up forced to align with, due to the left being so authoritarian. i don't want to be supporting people that want the right to publish hate literature, but i can't be supporting this type of authoritarian statism that wants to police people's thoughts, either.
the reason to oppose these laws is that they don't work. rather, they provide fresh fuel for stale hate propaganda. if you shut down the nazi newspaper, don't be surprised when they use it as evidence to prove that the jews control the media - and when people are dumb enough to believe it.
further, when you attach consequences to opinions, what you do is just drive them underground. people learn what they can say in public and can't, but they don't actually change what they think. this fuels the resentment. it leads to groups of people yelling "i can't say what i want because of THEM". one would have to expect a long term policy of this sort to eventually lead to a violent backlash, as it isn't eliminating the hate but bottling it up for eventual explosive release.
there are various approaches to dealing with racism, but they generally have to do with working it out through integration and dialogue, not threatening people to shut up or else.
that doesn't mean i think hate speech should be without consequence, but i think it should be treated as a tort and come with some very heavy burden on the person launching the suit. it's ultimately a type of defamation when you work it out; if i say something disparaging about all people of a certain characteristic, the crux of the problem is ultimately that it simply isn't true. yet, the law doesn't challenge just any false statement, it challenges false statements that are shown to cause harm. if somebody's racist tirade has a demonstrable consequence, the person that wrote it should be held responsible for it and forced to make the situation whole.
otherwise, they're just a moron running their mouth off and should be treated as such - which generally means just ignoring them.
