Domain: workers.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to workers.org.
Comments · 22
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Explaining Russian-Ukrainian conflict to Yanks
UN GA just days ago adopted a resolution finally admitting that Ukraine is a victim of the Russian military aggression.
For better or worse, the part of the United States' electorate, to whom you want to appeal, view the United Nations with skepticism. So, instead of appealing to a questionable authority, try the following argument...
Imagine, Americans, Mexican government declaring Trump's election "a coup", his assemblage of generals — a junta, which placed the Latinophobic Nazi in power, contrary to the wishes of most Americans. Out of concern for the brotherly nation, Mexican government is encouraging volunteers to cross into California, Arizona, and Texas to help the local Spanish-speaking "self-defense" militias protect themselves against the White English-speaking bigots, who've persecuted the Spanish-speaking minority for years. In places stolen from Mexico before, these polite volunteers in military uniforms without any official insignia are already organizing a referendum to leave the US and join Mexico.
Patriotic Americans attempting to resist the invasion are denounced as racists and shot at with military-style efficiency. Although officially Mexico is not a party to this "civil war", its troops are regularly encountered on the battlefields — all of them are then found to have been "on leave" from their units. Artillery bombardment of American forces seems to originate from across the border, but no one can say for sure.
Would you still say, it is a civil war — Americans fighting other Americans?
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Moving beyond a parasite-designed economy
Thanks. I've enjoyed our dialogue.
On your point, while I like the metaphor, we are not talking about real tapeworms. We are talking about human beings with a certain culture and a certain ideology that make them act like tapeworms. And we are talking about others who help them to be parasites through ignorance or not thinking they have options. How many kids join the military due to the "economic draft"?
http://www.workers.org/us/2005/economic-draft-0303/
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/War_Peace/Economic_Draft.htmlAnd sure, many parasites got these wars going precisely so they could get a bit of the action, one dollar in their pocket for ever thousand dollars of tax payer money wasted. A key idea here:
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htmA good sci-fi book on this broader theme of abundance and war is James P. Hogan's 1982 novel "Voyage from Yesteryear".
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/info.php?titleID=29&cmd=summary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_from_YesteryearAs he points out there, the tapeworms as you mention will not get much support if everyone else has abundance. Besides, in a word of abundance, if some "lunatic" wants to build self-replicating space habitats on the Moon, why worry about it? There would be plenty of energy and stuff to go around, and it might provide some amusement.
So, ask yourself, why do people want to be tapeworms? And why do others go along with their plans?
I think key issues are "ignorance" and "want":
"A Christmas Carol: Ignorance and Want"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6MFN8yiVc0But it is precisely abundance from the internet and robotics that may end ignorance and want.
So then, we are left mainly with the issue of mental illness to have people causing wars. Adequate vitamin D from supplements or sunshine can help relieve a lot of that too:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/mentalIllness.shtmlMore resources for families could help relieve some of it too:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912/dobbs-orchid-gene
"Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming spectacularly if given greenhouse care. So holds a provocative new theory of genetics, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causing behaviors that are self-destructive and antisocial, also underlie humankind's phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success. With a bad environment and poor parenting, orchid children can end up depressed, drug-addicted, or in jail--but with the right environment and good parenting, they can grow up to be society's most creative, successful, and happy people."Hitler wanted to be a painter for example:
"Adolf Hitler painting may have hung in Sigmund Freud's surgery"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/7221058/Adolf-Hitler-painting-may-have-hung-in-Sigmund-Freuds-surgery.html
Would he have turned to politics if he had not had to worry about selling his paintings?Will the world always have a problem with bullies and the mentally ill who hoard w
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Re:Don't take freedom for granted
Similar immunities also existed for Afghanistan, and some years back for Bosnia. Check out http://www.workers.org/2007/world/lavender-red-115/: it's an alarmingly common practice.
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Re:Who cares?
To my mind you sacrifice your own rights when you choose to do something like that, and deserve a good beating.
That's all well and good. But do you deserve a beating if you didn't do anything wrong? (I'd post a less inflammatory link, but the mainstream press articles are behind a pay wall - however the article does give the basic facts, and I'll note that one of the officers involved in the incident later resigned over allegations of drug use).
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Re:Sheer HypocrisyI agree. What is with the stateless value inspection? It inspires some quick absolute judgements, but seems less meaningful over time...
Look how many companies do business in China. Their purpose is to make money, and that's it, they're done. Certainly, they could use this foothold to lead by example, show alternatives to repression by how they operate, once in... but most seem content to keep the wider profit margins. Remember Nike? Oh, that's old news, and that Liberal filmmaker guy talked about it, so we don't wanna be called nutjobs by the right; best drop the topic.
Let's complain about filtered search engine results; it takes the pressure off the people beating up women in sweatshops, like Disney.
Insanely, you can find that US companies defy Chinese worker-rights laws and oppose unions illegally... i'm sorry, but if you've pissed off the Chinese government by rights violations, that's a noteworthy achievement in the annals of Bastardness. Ask, how fast can change occur? Will any occur at all if we leave China to closed borders and pretend our hands are squeaky-clean 'cause we refuse to touch it? Yeah, but it'd be ugly, and slow. The real issue may be more along the lines of, "once there, what do they DO?" Will Google keep playing along with the status quo forever? Will they lead by example? Will they be a freeing influence or a repressive influence?
If the first rule is "sign here or you don't get to play at all," then it's called a "compromise." Those without the illusion of self-purity make them now and then, since getting real work done means getting your hands dirty. The question is whether you attempt to wash your hands after, or like staying dirty and profit from it - like American companies have been doing for a couple of decades now.
But we bash Google 'cause they dared to say "Do no evil." We tacitly accept that, by default, everyone else can do as much evil as they want, or what...? Their mantra is 'do no evil,' not 'do not sully thy hands.'
Slow tho it may be, progress is made, even in China. Even by China. You will leave billions of their working poor to rot, isolated and alone, because your sense of moral purity doesn't allow you to deal with their government?
How nice for you. Most people in the world don't have that option.
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Re:Fsking Democrats!!!
Christ, learn how to check facts on what people tell you.
Common sense dictates: Believe nothing of what you hear and only half of what you see.
Here are some facts for you to check. Seriously, research them, I'm certain some of them may be false, but if any of them are true, well, then we are being repressed.
http://www.rense.com/general24/overtrepression.htm
http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/repressbox0624.php
http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?item ID=3493§ionID=43
http://www.publiceye.org/liberty/repression/histor y.html -
CAPITALISM CAN'T SOLVE ITS PROBLEMS
Capitalism is in its death throes, incapable of mobilizing the productive forces that have developed under capitalism. Only the working class allied with the peasantry can resolve this global crisis and liberate humanity from the chains of capitalist exploitation and overproduction.
VICTORY TO THE WORLD WIDE SOCIALIST REVOLUTION! -
Re:An Honest Question
I know for sure that we need rid of Bush more than anything else
John Kerry is going to continue the war in Iraq and the intangible war on terrorism, which has no defined, achievable goal. The United States was attacked on 2001-09-11 because of our actions in the Middle East, and the aid we have given to Israel. Neither candidate has promised or even spoken about the real problems, and consequently neither have offered any real solutions; both candidates have only offered to "kill" (Bush, later Kerry) the "barbarians" (Kerry). Terrorists choose terror because they feel substantially disenfranchised, violated, or prejudiced against; not because their environment is set up to breed "evil" (Bush, Kerry). Our security and freedom weren't assaulted on 2001-09-11; we were counterattacked for having preponderance and using it in affairs that weren't our business.
You live in a town that is not much more than rubble. You finally participate in the election of a leader of your home country democratically. Then, the United States overthrows your government and installs a new leader who rules as a dictator for over two decades while continuing to receive weapons and aid from the United States. What do you do? -
Re:Nothing has changed
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Re:Foreign Repressive Governments
Yes. Help. I'm being oppressed by "The Man". Will nobody fight for my right as an American to view porn and communist propaganda?
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Re:Cost/Benefit
Money, yes. Jail probably not. Death, not yet but just wait until the Workers World Party takes over. Don't forget padlocking your business until the issue is resolved, but I am not sure that applies here.
Perhaps you should review federal regulations and civil penalties. -
Re:Huh?
Wow! That was about as authoritative as using the WWP as a source for union issues, WSWS as a source for Economics, or Pacifica Radio as a source for ANYTHING to do with free choice.
Nice try though.
BTW, your in your sig, you use the same time tested method, well documented by George Orwell and others, that the Communist press has been using for ages to cease arguement. Then again, that is what you used when you invoked the dreaded "sprawl" word.
As Orwell wrote, in the closing passages of chapter XI, in Homage to Catalonia: "It is as though in the middle of a chess tournament one competitor should suddenly begin screaming that the other is guilty of arson or bigamy. The point that is really at issue remains untouched. Libel settles nothing." -
Is this really sanctioned?
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Is this really sanctioned?
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Re:Question...
Little boy, you are lost. You need to be with your playmates over here. They oppose Democoracy for non-whites, just like you.
After your visit there, try Workers World for another dose of Stalinism. -
Re: Don't watch FNC
Yet another WWP Commrade!
Just read the BS of this guy and Zeinfeld, then read the BS on the WWP website and you will all see.
BTW, that SOCIALIST Hitler was elected too, just like your boy in Venezuela. You skum keep trying to portray Hitler as some sort of Conservative is yet another of distractor from him, Castro, Stalin and all of your other heros being cut from the same cloth. -
Re:Don't watch FNC
Thank goodness Joseph Stalin is not alive to run for president of
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All of these WWP staffers would have him elected Dictator in record time. -
Re:Don't watch FNC
Another Workers World Party agitator exposed.
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Re:Parachuting
None of the space shuttles have ever had ejector seats, they were rejected as too expensive, bulky and heavy.
The WWP member (see his other posts, propoganda and check the link too) has it quite wrong again.
They were used on STS-1, STS-2, STS-3, and STS-4 -
Re:Don't watch FNC
Wow! What a flaiming load of bullshit! This crap gets modded up these days under a story about the Shuttle desaster?
Where the hell do you get that "In this case we have essentially a single individual, George W Bush who is the advocate of this war." ?
40 other nations have endorsed it, 11 in Europe (including Ireland expressing hurt feelings for not being asked to sign the "letter of eight").
The vast majority of the American public supports it in every poll.
Where do you get this bombing of schools and hospitals bulllshit from? Unless you condone the Iraqis running military operations from them like they did with their air-raid shelters last time. No military, no target.
This crap comes straight from the Workers World Party and their "Socialist news" site, as well as their radio network You Workers World Party Communists are the most vile people on earth and you refuse to admit what you really are. You wish to enslave the world with systems just like the old Soviet Union, North Korea, Iraq and Cuba (the only places who's governments you support, see the weblink).
You support tyrants like Chamorra in Venezuela and use propoganda, like you have posted all day, to disguise your dream to bring some sort of Utopian misery to the world.
I urge all to go read the websites that I have linked to and see exactly what I mean. -
Re:Wrong way to have independence
I don't think you're offtopic, but I do think you should have revealed your source. It wasn't until I got to the bit about serfs that I realized I was reading a communist tract. I appreciate the need to explode propangandist myths about Tibet and the Dalai Lama, and I think the description of pre-Communist serfdom is believable and probably not far off the mark. But I think the one-sided presentation of China as egalitarian liberator is almost or equally false. It's forgivable in propaganda that identifies itself as such, though, and that's why I think you should have identified your source.
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managers profit, workers screwedWhile the CEO's have gotten rich at these companies, the workers, after having to work 60-hour weeks, are now being laid off now that they're unneeded. It was the managers and investors greed that caused the economic collapse to begin with.
Here is a good link speaking about this: