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No, capitalism requires that you chase capital without mercy. Socialism implies that you generate what people need.

Read this article from 1988; specifically "It is this obsession with capital accumulation that distinguishes capitalism from the simple system for satisfying human needs it is portrayed as in mainstream economic theory. And a system driven by capital accumulation is one that never stands still, one that is forever changing, adopting new and discarding old methods of production and distribution, opening up new territories, subjecting to its purposes societies too weak to protect themselves. Caught up in this process of restless innovation and expansion, the system rides roughshod over even its own beneficiaries if they get in its way or fall by the roadside. As far as the natural environment is concerned, capitalism perceives it not as something to be cherished and enjoyed but as a means to the paramount ends of profit-making and still more capital accumulation."

Still mostly ignored.
Link

Puerto Rico is poor because it is part of the US and a part of the world that has been sacked by colonialism for centuries now. Citation: https://monthlyreview.org/2015...

Everybody seems to have their own theory about why Puerto Rico is "poor" but where are the "rich" Caribbean islands? Puerto Rico is poor because they're an island in the Caribbean with a population over 250,000. Too many people and not enough resources. Just like every other island in the Caribbean. Why does anybody think it's more complicated than that?

Puerto Rico is poor because it is part of the US and a part of the world that has been sacked by colonialism for centuries now.
Citation: https://monthlyreview.org/2015...

but they have had to broaden the use of the term "propagandized moron" to include people so dedicated to their intellectual bubbles that they have to imagine what their opponents say and believe because they have never actually listened.

The only "climate change deniers" are the idiots in the AGW community who think the climate has been ideal and static in the past and who want to manipulate entire populations and economies to try to establish or re-establish an imagined stable and static climate. People on the right have correctly always believed that the climate always changes, and are thus not afraid of the changes and see it as silly to try to use climate changes to advance particular economic and political policy goals.

HERE is what you have been unwilling to hear, or have been too dense to understand:

People on the right are NOT conflating socialism (an economic system) with "global warming"/'climate change". They are simply paying attention to the political left when the left and people at the IPCC admit that they are using AGW to push for global socialism. As in:

"One must say clearly that we redistribute the world’s wealth by climate policy" and "One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore" - both by Ottmar Edenhofer (co-chair of IPCC Working Group III)

People on the right are perfectly aware of the economic system of socialism and all of the evil and the many millions of people worldwide who have been slaughtered by its proponents in the past century, and are therefore VERY wary of the seeminly endless linkages between socialists and global warming nutters and all the endless papers and web sites that champion using global warming fears to advance the fight for global socialism.

As for "non-controversial scientific facts" - people on the right are very aware of that propaganda method too. The National Socialists once said it was a non-controversial and scientific fact that Jews were sub-human ("unter-menschen", if you prefer) and that they should be eliminated. The old soviets (of the Union os Soviet Socialist Republics) used to claim all sorts of scientific proofs for all their dastardly deeds. It was also once a "non-controversial scientific fact" that there was no such thing as plate tectonics. Science lives on the edge of controversy. The true advances in science have often been the people who disagreed with the concensus (which is NOT the same thing as claiming that every rebel is correct).

Those right wingers you apparently never listen to also like to ask about things like data analysis, data gathering and archive methodology, cost-benefit analysis and so-on. They like to ask why we should for example spend trillions of dollars and make the lives of millions of people worse if we could mitigate the effects for perhaps billions and NOT make all those lives worse. They like to question people who, no matter the data or the direction of temperature change, have the same proposed solutions (global socialism) while not being willing to give up their own damned private jets and yachts.

Unions work well for Germany, maybe if we had Socialism at all levels like they do we also would be awesome?

Gee, you are a regular Einstein...literally!

  Why Socialism?
by Albert Einstein

Thank you, very much. Although I am literally a Mexican-American who is not of Israeli descent and so it would be quite hard for me to be literally Einstein. I do agree though that Socialism fights the destructive nature of capitalism which we see _literally_ occurring in the United States of America. High imprisonment rates, obscene income and wealth inequality, destruction of the environment, wholesale removal of our rights, etc.

Unions work well for Germany, maybe if we had Socialism at all levels like they do we also would be awesome?

Gee, you are a regular Einstein...literally!

Why Socialism? by Albert Einstein

Socialist: noun. A person who believes that a businessman with lots of money and power will inevitably become evil, while a politician with lots of money and power is incorruptible.

Not sure if you are trying to be serious or funny but Albert Einstein disagrees with you:

The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured? [1]

Nope, to a socialist a "politician with lots of money and power" is a corrupt symbol of free market capitalism, as seeking money and power are the primary goals of self-interested capitalists. Einstein again:

This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.

I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals... The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society. [2]

If you are trying to be serious then you really don't know shit from shinola. Funny you definitely are not.

[1] [2] Why Socialism?

Castro has been blogging. Website probably not located in Cuba, but it seems legit?

You seem to have drunk the Kool-Aide if you believe that the west (aka, EU, US) have had no involvement in the ongoing (over a decade) political instability in Ukraine. Here are just a few oldies but goodies

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/G...
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
http://monthlyreview.org/2006/...

And of course there is the very long history of CIA and MI6 meddling in the internal affairs of, well, just about every country in the world.

See America’s Education Deficit and the War on Youth

By me in response ro "Virgle", including a bit on the two worlds at Google: http://www.pdfernhout.net/a-ra...
----
"But given what Gatto and Ellul say, that action may be a long time coming because the wealthy get so much emotional reward out of believing the propaganda of elites deserving abundance amidst scarcity for the many and spreading that propaganda further (even via Virgle).
"The Mythology of Wealth"
http://www.democraticundergrou...
"The cheap-labor conservative "minimalist government" social Darwinian world view is just plain bullshit. It builds a new class structure, which just like the ancient class structures, is based on a set of mythological concepts. In fact, those mythological concepts like "property rights", "contract rights", "corporations", "stocks", "bonds", and even "money" itself are socially created to regulate distribution and access to resources. The "market place" is a human creation. The details of how it operates are determined by the particulars of the institutions on which it is built. It is "instituted among men", and if its workings become destructive of the lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness of people subject to it, it may be "altered or abolished"."
For example, Google contractors get no Segways and massages?
http://www.google-watch.org/go...
Or second class badges?
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/...
"I used to work at Google as a Contractor. Let me tell you, it wasn't the greatest place for a contractor. First, you have red badges, so anyone with a Google badge looks down on you. Already you feel left out, and you don't feel like enjoying all the benefits Googler's have. ... I don't miss working there. The people arn't really all that friendly, people have arrogance and MBA, PHD attitudes."
And ultimately, aren't even the people in sweatshops in, say, China who build component used in Google servers in some sense Google contractors? Definitely no Segways or massages for them. :-(
http://www.monthlyreview.org/m...
"Well over 150 million migrant workers from rural areas have crowded into the cities over the past decade in search of economic survival. They may regularly not get paid for months at a time. Public healthcare across the economy is declining to the point where many millions of working families cannot afford to seek medical care or risk huge debt if they do. Migrant workers are at especial risk. Large numbers of workers in the toy industry have now lost their jobs directly as a result of the Mattel recall, and its fallout continues. They are the direct victims of their local bosses' abuses and the lack of safety control. But of course they and their stories and suffering, literally inscribed in the toys they make, remain invisible."
So what is Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California but a little temporary space habitat bubble of happiness for regular employees, but floating on a sea of relative misery for everyone else planetwide who supports it? Can't we as a society or Google/Virgle as an aspiration do better that that? And even within that bubble are emerging issues. How long can a company expect to run on twenty-somethings without kids?"
----

We've been watching "Manor House" and "Downton Abbey" and it is perhaps interesting to think about the upstairs/downstairs distinction in relation to Google employees vs. contractors and other supporters (including suppliers and users).

Personally, I feel Google (including its top management) i

I got my PhD in physics (and am higher in the hierarchy of command than my computers, rather than the other way around). I'm still going to complain about mistreatment of my fellow human beings, being abused by a system that systematically denies a decent living to all despite abundance of resources to do so. Sorry, it's not just the Liberal Studies Feminist PhDs who can see what a pile of shit Capitalism is for humankind. Here, you can even read Albert Einstein's own explicit support for socialism over capitalism if you insist on only listening to the opinions of people with "worthwhile" academic credentials.

He put an end to not one, but two wars and refused to go to full out war in Libya and Syria. That seems a radical difference with the previous holder of the oval office to me, and very much exercizing that option.

No, he put an end to one war, Iraq was already settled by the SOFA rules already in place by Bush when Obama took office. He changed a few wordings like the name of the remaining forces but it's materially the same.

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2009/stewart130309p.html

Funny that you mention marijuana, because he has done exactly that: CNN: President Barack Obama says that federal law enforcement agencies have "bigger fish to fry" than prosecuting marijuana users in Colorado and Washington, which voted in November to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. (late 2012)

I know this is from what you would probably consider to be the conservative source but it seems your reality is not conjoined with the real world.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/05/06/1961751/feds-ramp-up-crackdowns-on-medical-marijuana-dispensaries/

Just wanted to make a couple minor corrections to your post. One war instead of two and despite what has been said by officials, it seems they are targeting medical marijuana after all.

What amazes me by the administration is that they seem to be able to completely separate themselves from their own actions when it comes to public appearance. It's as if someone else is running the government and Obama and friends are just puppets along for the ride or something without a care in the world about what their administration is actually doing unless it somehow benefits them.

Was it the Union or Congress?

I thought it was Congress that mandated that they prepay it all for the life of an employee when hired.

The "crisis" is entirely manufactured by Congress. Yes, Congress. They (and by "they," I mean mostly Republicans who seem to want to drive the post office into bankruptcy) required that the Post Office prepay pensions to the extent that no other business is required to do.

Lest you doubt this statement: The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 required the USPS to prepay pensions for all employees for 75 years in advance within 10 years.

That's right, 75 years. The USPS is required to prepay pensions for the next 75 years. Let that sink in.

Is there any other business you can think of that is required to stash away the pension funds now for its employees not yet born?

DO NOT LET THIS FALL INTO THE HANDS OF RELIGIONSISTS who constantly use out of context quotes by Einstein to "prove" he variously a... fundie, believed

Just remind them of this
http://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism

marketing by the diamond cartels.

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/sharife230710.html

Yeah, how could anybody be worse than Hitler? http://monthlyreview.org/2010/09/01/genocide-denial-with-a-vengeance-old-and-new-imperial-norms

There are many issues involved, making the whole claim totally, well, wrong.

The first problem is that science can't fix **goals**. Einstein explained it well in http://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism but it's a much more general point admitted by most serious rationalists : science (or more exactly rationality, from which science is a subset) is the most powerful tool to understand the world, and to change it to match your goals. But science can't fix goals. It can enable you to maximize your utility function, but it can't fix your utility function. And people will disagree on goals. That's the main reason for which elections and democracy are the best (or at least, "less worse") system, for it allows people to fix the goals together. Imperfectly, but since there is no objective set of goals, no ultimate utility function, only asking to everyone what they want can solve disputes between goals.

The second problem is that science requires the ability to perform repeatable measurements. Large-scale social sciences (like macroeconomics) are therefore not really sciences. You can't perform repeatable experiments and measurements in macroeconomics, with changing one factor and letting the others stay the same. While you can measure the speed of light, or the amount of energy liberated by fusion between two given isotopes of hydrogen, you can't measure how much a tax cut or welfare policy will affect the economy as a whole. You can't make an experiment for that and have 5 other labs around the planet to repeat it in the same conditions. Same when you test a drug on humans, you'll test it on hundred or thousands of cases, comparing it with a placebo. You can't have the same level of confidence in large-scale social science (such as macroeconomics) than you can in physics or biology. You can use rationalism over the evidence we have favoring one or the other systems, but that will still be much more disputed than a claim of "science", and you'll find economists defending and opposing every proposed policy, in a way you'll never see in physics.

The third problem is that science is definitely not conservative. Associating science with conservatism is completely misunderstanding what science is about. Science is completely revolutionizing itself. Relativity and QM are the most known revolutions, but science is directly bound to the idea of **progress**, science is a process of always getting closer to the truth - making your map of reality always closer to what reality really is. Science is definitely not something static, with final answers that will never be changed. That's one of the most fundamental differences between science and religion. Conservatism is resistance to changes. Science is embracing change, realizing you were wrong and fixing it.

That said, yes, we would gain to use more rationalist (or scientific, if you prefer) approach to many topics in politics. And more trust from politicians towards scientists.

And that, I'm pretty sure, would not favor "conservative" policies. It would favor gay rights and abortion. It would oppose death penalty or gun ownership. And it would oppose the current economical orthodoxy, which just, well, fails, from Argentina to Greece to USA. Just for USA, it was much faring better off in the 60s and 70s when it add very high income taxes on the richest, and regulations like Glass-Steagall act, than nowadays after the Reagan/Bush cuts and Clinton liberalism. That part is very well open to debate, but the 3 first reasons for which those claims are just, well, *false*, are much less debatable.

At the birth of the internet many grand claims were made but few of them have panned out. every day things grow dimmer for the great liberation by technology.

Instead it appears that capitalism kills technology in order to create the scarcity it needs in order to function. Capitalism can do this because it has been able to buy a ton of political clout.

You must be a lot of fun at parties if you're that verbose about one word. Mistakes happen, someone used the the wrong word, but most knew what was intended, including yourself. Your mistake was writing a treatise about it.

For the record I agree that the more one makes the less likely they really earned it.

I like Einstein's view on economics, I suspect Republicans would not agree with him.

http://www.monthlyreview.org/598einstein.php

Hitler did not become a Chancellor by a proper constitutional process; he and his party never had support even close to the numbers needed. He got himself in power by back-room dealing, subverting the democratic process, not using it.

What he did then is to use the Reichstag fire to get emergency powers (again, distancing himself from the democratic principles of the constitution); to use the state apparatus to win a larger vote; and to use his private army to force the (new) parliament to let him dispense with what was left of the democratic institutions after the Enablement act.

Calling this a "democratic" process is okay if you accept that countries like Nicaragua, Cuba or Chile in the 70s were "democratic".

So, the idea that Hitler was "democratically" elected is not even close to the truth.

Also, I see some above question the role of the nazis in the engineering of the fire, but if one follows the proceedings of the trials, especially the mountain of evidence of the fire, it is quite obvious.

An informative article on the subject of the fire is available here. Unfortunately, my other sources are mostly on paper, and out of reach at the moment.

perhaps, but i do like machine tools figures, so i googled machine tool manufacturing decline and here is the first url i looked at.

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2009/labotz240709.html

I did not look but i seem to recall picken's texas adventure involved chines turbines, because the usa did not manufacture them big enough

and i did look at at a wikipedia article, maybe wind turbine, that said the manufacturers of the biggest wind turbines are in germany.

you seem to have some sense, but look at some patterns and see if you are whistling past the graveyard. patterns can change and all that i do agree, but there is some effort and wisdom involved. at the moment, even sanity would be a nice change.

Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution provides both that Congress may "regulate Commerce... among the several States" and that it may "make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers."

The first provision is known as the Commerce Clause, and has most recently been interpreted (in United_States v. Lopez) to mean that Congress may make any laws regarding:
1. the channels of interstate commerce,
2. the instrumentalities of interstate commerce, or persons or things in interstate commerce, and
3. activities that substantially affect or substantially relate to interstate commerce

Therefore all that Congress needs to do it prove that uninsured people have a substantial affect on interstate commerce, an impact that they have a right to prevent. That shouldn't be hard to prove; numerous studies have measured a significant negative impact of the uninsured on insurance premiums, business and the economy as a whole. Further, being insured is linked to increased mortality (http://www.monthlyreview.org/0903navarro.htm), which certainly impacts interstate commerce.

Yes, that's why my ancestors came here.

Please note my use of the present tense, and yours of the past tense. It used to be that America was the best country to relocate to. It's not that anymore.

[Multiculturalism is what] the rest of the world will never be able to match us on.

What I find difficult to match is your parochialism. At my workplace we have had Indians (lots of them), a half-Pole, a Chinese guy, we came once close to hiring an Iranian, we should soon get a Korean, we collaborate with a Kosovan from neighbouring division, and by the way I am an immigrant myself. This is East Germany, the part with least immigrants. In the West there are entire communities of Turks, Italians, and Vietnamese. Today I was at an event where I could count at least the following nationalities: Italian, Polish, Serbian, Montenegrin, Chinese, Indian, plus other people I did not know but who did not look ethnic Germans. And then there are people who could be ethnic Germans but who are not, like me.

Other thing: one of the five major German parties is headed by Cem Özdemir, a Muslim who did not even have citizenship 20 years ago.

Point being: America is still branded as The multicultural nation, but it is just one of many, and not necessarily the best to live in for immigrants anymore.

And yet, amazingly enough, Einstein decided to come here. He even wrote a letter to FDR encouraging him to undertake the development of a weapon of mass destruction.

Whose potential he did not know, that he later opposed, to which he did not contribute, and then there was that pesky issue of being at war with Nazi Germany that could have developed that weapon first, which changed perspectives a bit. But hey, don't let the fact that Einstein was a pacifist and a socialist get in the way of your selective quoting.

but when the chips are down you have no problems begging us to come and save your sorry ass.

When Churchill asked you to enter WW2, you stayed back because you did not want to enter. It took Japan to roundhouse-kick your ass at Pearl Harbor and Hitler's declaration of war on the US to get you into the war. Also, the US did not really do that much: the Soviets did most of the work against Germany, you only fought against 14- and 40-year-old that Hitler had placed on the Atlantic Wall. So learn some humility and stop posing as the world's saviour.

America wasn't an interventionist power until the rest of the free world got clobbered twice in the span of twenty years by aggressive non-free countries.

Seriously, you need to lay off the neo-con Kool-aid and read up some history. The US stole half of Mexico, conquered the kingdom of Hawai'i, invaded the Philippines, Cuba, made Latin America into series of satellites, and I have not yet started with the whole colonisation-of-the-West thing yet.

I seem also to read in that twice word of yours that WW1 was a war with an "evil" side. WW1 was a usual old-style war among European powers, and who won mattered very little for the state of civil rights in Europe. The US waited to see who was going to win before jumping on the winner's bandwagon.

Ireland is part of the British Isles but I don't hear anybody demanding that the British call themselves "UK'ians".

Curious indeed, "British Isles" actually is a controversial term rooted in colonialism, because Ireland is not British. "British" refers, er, to "[Great] Britain". In fact I recall distinctly a UK newspaper's article criticizing

"It is quite a logical outcome of our increasing reliance on scientific principles to explain and analyse our world. I find it ironic that many /. members would hate this approach of analysing workers, yet its roots lie in our reliance on science to breakdown, label, categorise, and figure out how we and our world works. In the same way psychology, neuroscience, and other mind-related fields were bastardised to figure out how to manipulate the human mind to makes us consume, the computer sciences will be used in a similar fashion to make us behave a certain way: if you don't want to get fired, you need to make sure what you do conforms to their model.

Sadly, figuring out the "optimal" and "perfect" workers will, like my .sig says, make us realise just what it was that made us human, instead of just robots."

It's not science that makes us do these things, it's the economic culture and institutions which we've inherited. The whole idea of economic efficiency is in fact a farce, einstein realized the negative effects of our economy on human beings, so much so he wrote an essay entitled "Why socialism?" in 1949

http://www.monthlyreview.org/598einstein.php

"In addition, the experience which has accumulated since the beginning of the so-called civilized period of human history hasâ"as is well knownâ"been largely influenced and limited by causes which are by no means exclusively economic in nature. For example, most of the major states of history owed their existence to conquest. The conquering peoples established themselves, legally and economically, as the privileged class of the conquered country. They seized for themselves a monopoly of the land ownership and appointed a priesthood from among their own ranks. The priests, in control of education, made the class division of society into a permanent institution and created a system of values by which the people were thenceforth, to a large extent unconsciously, guided in their social behavior. "

Huh? That's a 1986-style Greenpeace mantra. Nuclear power is not polluting unless someone very, very seriously screws up.

It most certainly is polluting. I suggest you check into the pollution caused by uranium mining. And a lot of the mining is done on Native lands, who are left to clean it up or live with it. Some Navajo have to live with physical ailments caused by the mining on their land.

It's like saying that airplanes kill civilians and destroy buildings.

You're right, it's people who kill other people and destroy buildings, and in the case of uranium it's those who demand uranium which results in the mining of it.

Tell you what, if you support nuclear power how about supporting a free market in it? Let's see how fast companies will want to build nuclear power plants when they have to buy insurance on their own, The Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act shields plants from liability. So let's see if LLoyds of London would insure them, as in a free market there would be no shield. No less than the libertarian free market CATO Institute says of nuclear power "the costs of nuclear power are shared by the public but the profits are enjoyed privately." It goes on about how an investment banking and financial services firm concluded that if 3 subsidies came to an end the nuclear power industry would ground to a halt, one of them being Price Anderson.

Now I hope you're not going to say how CATO is a Greenpeace like environmental organization.

"But, on this not a chance. He does not have the resume in my opinion."

I'd have to disagree, the abstract perfect 'market' or 'capitalism' is this ideal that can never be reached. The fact of the matter is many bright people http://www.monthlyreview.org/598einst.htm have noted that centralization happens as a result of geoemetry of matter/energy efficiency, in other words, monopolies are the natural state of capitalism in the real world, not fairy fairy land of the idealogues. Then you have investors like George soros are saying the same thing, and he most certainly DOES have the qualifications for commenting on capitalism.

http://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Global-Capitalism-Society-Endangered/dp/1891620274/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1201196777&sr=8-2

Quote from: http://www.monthlyreview.org/1299dela.htm when Bill Clinton came to New Zealand for APEC.

The desire to make this a profitable and publicity-rich event was not fulfilled, even in the beginning. The technology of U.S. secret service agents, who arrived to monitor the event and protect the President, was somewhat fallible. A week before the President arrived, Saji Phillips, a chicken farmer from South Auckland, found his fax machine loaded with messages from the U.S. APEC Support Office. They informed him about security arrangements, such as the installation of White House communications equipment at Auckland airport and the code name and security number of a military officer. Phillips rang the Support Office and told them about the error, but still received messages for many days, finally going to the press to try to get some relief from faxes that weren't about chickens.

Great! Now this would be a PERFECT time to introduce the american people to the concept of 'empathy'.

Perhaps, what you are feeling now is similar to what these people have been feeling.

Sure, you say you are not destroying anything. yet. Lets just subject you to the same ridicule for awhile, and push aside your feelings as 'overblown' and 'irrational'. How long until YOU lash out? Its just a joke, they are only words. The people who write the joke(cartoon) dont really care what other people think. After all, its funny, right?

Not that it has much to do with Einstein's value as a scientist, but it shows he was multifaceted, to say the least.

The Japanese have no problem at all with people who deny monstrous war crimes.

An interesting analysis of how the Western media covers war crimes:

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/zamparini151105.ht ml

As long as there is wealth and safety one can remain fairly ignorant of a lot of things.

We left Japan after rebuilding. We left Korea. We left Vietnam. We left Kuwait. We left Somalia and Kosovo. We're going to leave Afghanistan and Iraq, too, when the job is done.

I guess left is a relative concept.
http://www.brookings.edu/views/op-ed/ohanlon/20030 313.htm

Many current U.S. bases were acquired in subsequent wars--the Second World War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and the war in Afghanistan. U.S. military bases in Okinawa, formally part of Japan, are a legacy of the U.S. occupation of Japan during the Second World War. http://www.monthlyreview.org/0302editr.htm

Compare the red spots on the map to the countries listed in the quote.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/intervention/20 03/0710imperialmap.htm

If you look at history from the mid to late 19th century on, one thing in common is all countries which industrialized were demonized and attacked by the industrial world - from the late 19th century to the mid 20th century that would be Germany and Japan. Japan is really the last country to become an industrial nation, although South Korea is on the way. Industrial nations always try to smother industrializing nations on the edge of joining them in the cradle. Every nation since the beginning of the 20th century to push itself towards industrialization has had a socialist revolution, namely, Russia and China. Both were backwards, feudal countries - not how Marx envisioned things turning out certainly. They seem not to have been able to sweep capitalism out of their houses, but they did get rid of all the existent feudal structures. As the article says, India still has a lot of the colonial, feudal structures in place. China always resisted colonialism on some level, and was not under it too long, while India, like Ireland, was under colonialism for many centuries. And Ireland only got going with a large injection of money from the EU.

India will not be a China unless it has some radical changes, and not the kind Wall Street, the World Bank, WTO and IMF proscribe.

Take a look at this Map

See all those color places on the map that hold US miltary bases? Now look at all the places around them that can reach by spitting.

Not to mention that a program like this is not just for the US, but for things likr protecting NATO allies.

If you start thinking globally it makes a lot more sense.

Why Socialism? - An essay by Albert Einstein

The Political Economy of Intellectual Property - Michael Perelman

Why Socialism? - An essay by Albert Einstein

The Political Economy of Intellectual Property - Michael Perelman

... they can just babble, just as Einstein did about [...] pacifism

How did he babble? Remember that Einstein grew up between the world wars. An American WWI veteran said: "The Germans didn't win that war but neither did we. Only the war won that war." It was a house of cards that fell over, countries declared war because of their treaties and rarely because their own direct interests were at stake. And even the interests that were at stake, were more those of the elite than of the people. In the end, the war was not even succesful to put down Germany. The treaty of Versailles paved the way for WWII (with unbearable reparations). It's not surprising that many people became pacifists after WWI. Furthermore, in Germany at that time, militarists were the Nazi's and the believers in Great Germany. There is a big difference in being a pacifist opposing war against the Nazi's or being a pacifist opposing their war drive. Furthermore, when Einstein moved to the US, he did come to believe that the Nazi's had to be stopped and he became a strong supporter of the development of the atomic bomb. After WWII, he did become a pacifist again, because he didn't want war with the USSR. His goal of mutual disarmament became reality when Reagan sign INF and START I. IMHO, the improvement of the US-USSR relationship which resulted from these treaties was an important aspect in ending the cold war (without a big boom).

So how was Einstein wrong?

... they can just babble, just as Einstein did about socialism [...]

I just read his essay Why Socialism? and it struck me how well-written it is. His criticism of 'pure' capitalism is valid and while he calls for a planned economy, he correctly identifies two major problems that would have to be solved first (he forgets the problem of how demand should guide production, but two out of three ain't bad). Those are exactly the problems that the USSR and China were not able to solve in their planned economies.

All in all, a very well written essay worthy of reading. While we now know that no one has succeeded in creating a succesful economy, that wasn't at all clear in 1949, when the Soviet economy was still booming and this must have been one of the more reasonable voices among the communists and the communist-haters. And because the essay is so reasoned, it's still worthy of reading after over 50 years, which is often a sign of quality.

... it would be considerably more productive if people limited their interactions with journalists to the subjects they have actually been educated in.

Unfortunately, many of the 'experts' are extremely biased and worse, they can't even offer good arguments to support their position. Then I'd rather listen to an intelligent person who knows the scientific method and the limits of what he can claim. Those people can often talk very interestingly about subjects and even if they are wrong, there is still plenty to learn from their arguments.

The first thing he addresses in it is what someone here already responded, why does it matter what an expert (or genius) on physics thinks about political matters? His first answer is that since physics is a physical science, e.g. a "real" science, while economics is a social science, pretty much anyone can have an opinion on a social science and have it be of possible equal validity since there's no scietific method of finding a "correct" answer. He also says that the violent, predatory nature of the existing system intrudes on a scientific study of political economy (for example, property "rights" are enforced by...force). His second answer is that this is a social-ethical question more than a scientific question. So in other words, he dismisses the notion that there are experts in economic or social matters whom one can objectively say know more than the average person. It would be like a theologian telling an atheist he understands the nature of the universe better than the average person.

As far as socialism, it never really made much of an inroads in the USA. If it's dealt with it all, it's said that it's "big government"...which sounds more like good old American New Deal Democrat liberalism. It's kind of like Plato's cave, the only reference to the body of socialism would be the shadow of liberalism. Einstein came from Europe where socialism was quite a big thing (as was communism) in the 20th century (in the east and the west - the largest political party in France was communist until 1956, Italy practically elected a communist government in 1976 losing by 5% of the vote, Germany's parliament was majority socialist and communist prior to Hitler, Spain had an anarchist/communist war against fascism in 1936 and was under a military dictatorship for decades afterward, and so on and so forth - socialism, anarchism and communism dominated Europe in the 20th century alongside fascism and Christian democrats). Einstein was steeped in these politics in Europe and had a much more intimate understanding of them then most Americans would. I've found most Americans think they know a lot about 20th century European history and the political philosophies of socialism, communism, anarchism, fascism and so forth, but they really don't. For example, you always hear how the USSR "forced" Hungarians to be communist. You'd never have known Hungary had had a bolshevik revolution in 1919, which lasted until Romania invaded. Of course, Russia had some influence on eastern Europe, but the US could be said in many respects to have "forced" France and Italy to be capitalist - especially Italy - the post-war elections were a total fraud, and as late as 1976 there were secret plans drafted by the USA to have NATO invade Italy if they voted communists into power in the 1976 election, which nearly happened. I don't know which is more disturbing - that Americans know so little about all of this, or that they know so little about all of this but think they do know all of this.

Jack London, Helen Keller, and Albert Einstein are good examples of people whose political opinions were successfully submerged in the popular consciousness by elevating the non-threatening aspects of their life and work.

And that's pretty sad. Helen Keller in particular: the part of her life where she first managed to overcome some part of her disabilities is remembered, but the campaigning work she did afterwards is forgotten. It's just about the most patronizing thing I can think of.

With respect to Einstein, I think that he earned the right to have his views heard (though not automatically agreed with of course!) In that spirit, here's Einstein on socialism.

Ok, maybe that statement doesn't surprise some of you, but it did surprise me, when I hit on this eloquent article that was printed in the first issue of Monthly Review. I was not aware of this publication, or of Einsteins political views until I stumbled on this (I don't remember how I did now...).

Anyway, this was something never mentioned at least in my primary and secondary education.

You can also add to that list George Orwell, which although it may sound counterintuitive, was a staunch Socialist to his death, fighting fascists in Spain, even though during his middle and later life his observation of Soviet Russia made him very cynical about the prospects and practicability of socialism (at least as far as I understood).

Anyway, that opened my mind a bit (mostly because the notion of Einstein we are lead to believe is one of a absent-minded nonchalant apolitical genius...if I could know so little about the core of such a major figure what else wasn't I taught?).

Ok, maybe that statement doesn't surprise some of you, but it did surprise me, when I hit on this eloquent article that was printed in the first issue of Monthly Review. I was not aware of this publication, or of Einsteins political views until I stumbled on this (I don't remember how I did now...).

Anyway, this was something never mentioned at least in my primary and secondary education.

You can also add to that list George Orwell, which although it may sound counterintuitive, was a staunch Socialist to his death, fighting fascists in Spain, even though during his middle and later life his observation of Soviet Russia made him very cynical about the prospects and practicability of socialism (at least as far as I understood).

Anyway, that opened my mind a bit (mostly because the notion of Einstein we are lead to believe is one of a absent-minded nonchalant apolitical genius...if I could know so little about the core of such a major figure what else wasn't I taught?).

As many famous philosophers and scientists have been repeating for at least a century: unbridled capitalism is a bad socioeconomic system because it is unstable. In capitalism, wages have nothing to do with the value of the products produced, wages are determined by the law of supply and demand on the labor market. This creates social unrest because the profits end up in the hands of the few who provide capital but don't actually produce anything; and it also creates an insentive for those few to create and uphold a limited (controlable) amount of unemployment to keep labor costs down.

I like the "survival of the fittest" aspect of capitalism, but I would rather have the citizens survive than a business.

The survival of the fittest aspect is what destroys the social structure and puts an enormous strain on the environment and resources. Every society is built upon a social structure in which people must cooperate to achieve more than an individual on its own possibly can; that's why societies have laws forcing their members to cooperate. Capitalism introduces another set of rules which make it nescessary to compete on one level with the very same people you cooperate with on more fundamental level (by paying taxes and abiding the law).

In the long term, this makes for people who are very aware of their dependence on the cooperating group but don't see this dependence as positive thing or a nescessary fact of life but as something that threatens their economical existence and limits their freedom, resulting in socially challenged people who are indifferent or even hostile towards the cooperating group they belong to, destroying the very roots of society. (Einstein wrote an interesting essay about this more than 50 years ago.)

PS: I'm not rying to start a flamewar or a thread of political deliberations, it's just that capitalism has both good and bad aspects. In the past these bad aspects have lead to class struggles and revolutions; while the more moderate forms of capitalism of today (all tainted with socialism) still lead to environmental problems and societies of indifferent individuals.

If you really think only idiots have socialist sympathies, perhaps you should read Albert Einstein's "Why Socialism?" (Warning, Einstein might reveal some shocking truths about capitalism to you, like "It is important to understand that even in theory the payment of the worker is not determined by the value of his product.")

On topic: as stated in the article, lots of European states have taxes like these yet they are not plan economies, most of them currently haven't even got a left wing government.

Capitalism leads to imperialism due to it's inner dynamic which is it's tendency toward stagnation.
Capitalism as a World Economy

I know you've been pumped full of american bullshit for most of you life, so I'll forgive you ignorance.

Last time I checked there havn't been any modern communist societies (they all got wiped out during collonisation), you need a benine dictator to have a dictatorial communist society and all recient dictators have been militant.

anyhow maybe this man should stick to phyisics

Ultimately the line between "terrorist" and "freedom fighter" is a political one. Our freedom to travel should not depend on a politician's decision about whether they agree with our aims or not. Every "anti-terrorist" measure restricts people based on their politics, not just based on whether they use violence. Violence was already illegal.

Communists! All of them! These are the same kinda people who argue that the Earth is a globe, who pray to that demon Darwin, and who kill our unborn babies! Burn them!

Read a capsule summary of his views here, if you want to know where the man himself stood.