Slashdot Mirror
Happy Independence Day, Jose
Now and then, even among the cowed, comfortable and generally unconscious citizens of the Corporate Republic, a hero arises. On this July Fourth, let's award the Slashdot Order of the Penguin to one Jose Bove, whose international crusade began last year in protest against U.S. duties on Roquefort cheese.
Bove, a French farmer and union leader, may seem like an unlikely figurehead for the emerging political struggle of the 21st Century. Even though he isn't an American citizen, he's got a pretty good grip on what used to be considered American values, and is thus an Independence Day icon for the increasingly-resented United States, the Corporate Republic's world headquarters. The United States is now a place where a robust economy, conformity and market research are national religions, and a nation where kids who dissent and act strangely are routinely tossed out of school or thrown in jail.
Bove spent a week in jail last year for his assaults on a McDonald's under construction in his hometown of Milau (he faces up to five years in prison). For obvious reasons, McDonald's has become an international symbol for the globalization, mass-marketing and homogenization that U.S.-bred corporatism is spreading like the measles. Now Bove is drawing an odd agglomeration of supporters worldwide as he stands trial. His day in court is drawing thousands of anti-globalization protesters, environmentalists, trade unionists, students and other campaigners cramming into Milau, a small market town in southern France.
"This is not just about food," Bove told the demonstrators. "It is about the struggle of small people, leading simple lives, to free themselves from the dictatorship of the multi-nationals."
Bove's particular issue is what he calls the industrialization of agriculture. He could just as easily be talking about the industrialization of education, technology, law, medicine or work. He's dubbed his town "Seattle-on-the-Tarn," a reference to the local river and to the protests he joined during the World Trade Organization's Seattle summit last year.
The struggle of small people to free themselves from the multi-nationals has a lot to do both with technology and independence. From market monopolies like Microsoft to giant entertainment conglomerates like AOL-Time/Warner that will seek to dominate information and its distribution to corporatist invaders of privacy, the struggles of small people will increasingly resonate around the world. And this is all before the rise of the gathering bio-tech conglomerates, soon to dominate genetic research and try to use the Human Genome Project to mass market the perfect human, all the while screening their work behind talk of cancer and aging cures.
Corporatism threatens to overwhelm individuals all over the world, from cheese farmers to outspoken employees to bright and idiosyncratic students -- its virtues are promoting conformity, corrupting the political system, suppressing dissent and creativity. Its primary target is individualism, its primary enemy individualists -- which means hackers, programming entrpeneurs, renegade teachers, small businessmen and farmers like Bove, odd-ball filmmakers. Bove has put the struggle as eloquently as anybody could.
So have his supporters, carrying signs through the streets announcing "The World Is Not For Sale." This message stings in the United States on Independence Day. What in this country isn't for sale?
It's strange to be watching this odd drama in another country, when the issue itself is so American. Perhaps Bove will sail over here when AOL/Time-Warner opens its first franchise office in the United States and give us all an example to live by.
Happy Independence Day, Jose.
I would like to retract my statement that Jose Bove is believed to have ordered the fatal Breton attack, and offer my personal thanks to those who corrected me on this point.
I did not set out to malign him. I simply found that Katz' article didn't tell me anything about the person he was applauding. Hence the title and initially biographical tone of my post. I simply wanted facts. After over an hour of reading French/US articles, and getting contradictory impressions, I stumbled into some shocking (seeming) facts, which seemed too noteworthy to ignore.
In the days after the April terrorist attack, Le Monde and several other media reported that "Jose Bove is being questioned by the authorities" -- but there were no corresponding headlines saying "Jose Bove seems to be cleared". Also search engines can lag 1-2 months behind content, so the few exculpatory 'minor articles' in May/June were not fully indexed
I feel paticularly embarrassed because I had a friend who was in a similar situation many years ago. I first saw it on a front page headline "Prominent Senate Intelligence [sic] aide caught with a kilo of heroine!" That was the afternoon edition, just hours after the arrest, but he was already cleared before the papers hit the street (the drugs were from a vengeful ex with whom he was 'planning a future' until he learned she was involved with drugs. They verified this with her supplier and ID'ed the anonymous tip) His arrest got headlines or was cited on the front page of many major national papers, but Follow-ups tended to get a few column-inches on page 36... eventually, if ever. That's how the media work -- and the ranking system of search engines (as well as the indexing delay) will only make this problem worse in the future -- A word to the wise.
After reading the facts presented by the other posters, I reviewed the source material for my post, and found that other statements that I relied upon may have been media sensationalism as well. Yhese had made me very skeptical of his claims of nonviolence, but after examining those incidents in some detail (which is why it's taken me so long to repond) I now have a great deal more respect for Mssr. Bove's methods, even if I do not necessasrily agree with his politics.
I apologize for my error, and especially for emphasizing it in my earlier post. I let my shock get the better of me, and in that I am no better than the media I criticize.
I realize that public retractions seem to be unpopular on Slashdot, but I think it's only right
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
"plain old anti-Americanism"
Is "brainwashing" too strong a term here?
Why are so many foreigners "anti-American"? Answer - they're not - they actually have genuine three-dimensional motives with reasons, but rather than listen, acknowledge or or face up to these things, a lot of people find it far easier to dismiss them and pretend they don't exist. Just like the homeless "have only themselves to blame" - the belief allows one to feel morally sound in ignoring their situation.
Like the sane man committed to an asylum from which he will never escape because his pleas of sanity are met with unthinking "of course dear, now take your pills and settle down", the use of "anti-american" to deprive people of a voice for a legitimate grievance (which usually has little or nothing to do with nationalities) is a disgusting dismissal of intellect and justice.
During the cold war, people worried about "sleepers" - US citizens whom the Commies had brainwashed to turn into enemy agents upon hearing a code phrase (from an anonymous telephone caller for example). Ironically, this is not far from the truth. If someone campaigns to change a particular US policy after bearing the brunt of its shortfalls, all it takes is one presenter on CNN to say the magic code-word "anti-American" and the minds of the nation snap closed without question or reason.
That's an impressively engineered populace, albeit one prone to overlooking certain designated injustices.
Back to the case in point. By the largely capitalist ideals of the USA, the consumer should be free to know what they are buying and free to choose to whether to buy it. A European study linking growth hormone beef with cancer might be controversial, and might not be believed by those in the USA (though critics in turn would partly attribute this to the extensive marketing in the USA), but the consumer has to right choose to eat or choose not to eat growth hormone beef, be it out of health concerns, or ethical concern, or whatever. Yet beef exporters attempted to deny this right. They were curtly informed that they must fully disclose the information about their product if they were to sell it. The USA goverment responded with 100% tarrifs on unrelated French goods. When someone's livelyhood goes down the drain because of retribution/punitive measures (depending where you stand) for something entirely unrelated to that person, someone who has does nothing to deserve such discrimination except happen to be of French nationality, then regardless of where you stand on the issue of beef, I think you have to acknowledge that an innocent has been wronged. Even if you think the beef exporters are the primary victims, this does not lessen the further injustice.
To presume reasoning like "anti-Americanism" is as silly as discussing it in terms of "anti-Frenchism".
Do the world a favour - next time you hear of someone doing something because they are "anti-American", take the time to find out why they are _really_ doing it (and for that matter, what it is they are _actually_ doing and want, not what is claimed of them). Depending on the case, you might find this very difficult - like I said, the code-word "anti-Americanism" switches off a huge proportion of the minds of the nation, and might be the only "information" about the case that is easily acessible from within the USA.
Or you can just keep believing that people are strangly jealous of the USA for some reason, that they spontaniously resent it without reason (perhaps because it's big, wealthy or powerful?), or whatever the twisted reasoning it is that means "He doesn't like us, but we can disregard that because people are just like that and never have a reason worthy of contemplation".
"Anti-Americanism" is almost always a crock.
And it is self perpetuating, for when someone tries to voice their grievance, and an entire nation treats them like an enemy in response (once the "anti-American" card has been played), it is only natural for them to respond the same way, and thus produce someone who genuinely is "anti-american".
Wow. Talk about a lopsided presentation of "facts". I do hope mine will be more objective.
Who is Jose Bove? He's a Roquefort (a kind of cheese) producer and a union leader who emerged as quite a popular figure thanks to his fight against the dangers coming from the industrialization of food production and, more generally, against the economy-driven globalization.
What did he do? He and ten other unionists dismantled a Mac Donald's restaurant that was being built in his hometown of Millau. There was no damage done to anyone during this action.
And more importantly, why did they do it? After France refusing to import steroid containing beef from the USA, the USA answered by increasing taxes on some French products, including Roquefort cheese. Bove, as a Roquefort producer, suffered directly from this tax increase, but discovered that there wasn't anyone, politician or institution, he could appeal to as it all occurred within the frame of the GATT. Because of this, he resorted to vandalism against what is seen (in France) as the symbol of the american presence in: Mc Donald's.
So, the questions raised by Bove's actions are those of the lack of power of governments in front of global institutions as the WTO and the growing influence of transnational corporations on our societies. They have nothing to do with anti-americanism or mindless violence.
As a sidenote, I happen to live near the place where the Mc Donald's bombing you're mentionning took place. The terrorists who led this attack belong to a local movement, called Armee Revolutionnaire Bretonne, which has no ties whatsoever with Bove's union. Please check your information before posting such accusations.
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This was sarcasm, in case you don't understood it. You sing the corpo's advertising like all well-reeducated mooing mass member.
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What's funny is that in your zealotry you fail to notice that the post you reply to was intended as sarcasm as well. He's on your side.
"Moo", indeed.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
... as long as it fits into their recipe? British MacDonalds use British beef (at least until it was widely known that this was a mad idea...), French MacDonalds use French potatoes for their fries etc. However, French cheese is the "wrong" variant (did you ever see a Roquefort Burger?), and so they have to import it from the US (or more likely from the Netherlands, as it is closer, and as they have some rather insipid cheese variants there as well...).
Say no to software patents.
I am sorry that you imagined some sort of slight against the French (or against goat farmers for that matter). I called Jose a "cranky French goat farmer" because that is what he apparently is. This is not a slight against the French. Heck, Americans have more than their share of crackpots as well. If you want to feel slighted because you agree with Jose's attack on McDonald's then go ahead and feel insulted. As far as I am concerned anyone who thinks that Jose is some sort of freedom fighter is clearly an idiot.
Seriously, how cracked do you have to be to vandalize a McDonald's because the U.S. has closed its borders to your cheese. This is especially true if you happen to oppose globalization. It's wrong for Americans to try and sell hamburgers in France, but it is perfectly all right for the French to try and sell their Roquefort cheese here in the U.S. After all, French cheese is anti-globalist, pure, natural, healthy cheese.
Are you starting to see the reason why I have a hard time accepting Jose as something besides a crackpot? He isn't against globalization any more than I am. He wants to be free to sell his cheese for the highest prices possible, even if it means he has to ship his cheese clear to America to obtain those high prices. He doesn't want McDonald's, however, to have the same right to sell their hamburgers in France. Despite the fact that apparently McDonald's is fairly popular in France.
Don Quixote tilted windmills that he thought were giants. That did not make him a hero. Jose is a glory seeking cheese maker seeking to make his inane point through vandalism. He likewise is no hero.
It's not a democracy. It is, at best, a republic. Your own [army's handbook] used to confirm this, with a detailed definition of the terms.
As for "never have the people in this country been more free," I must insist that you read McWilliam's book. The truth is that never have your people been LESS free. You just don't see it, because you've been sucked in by the myth.
Read the book. It'll make you discontented. And then maybe you'll get off your complacent duff and make some changes.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Is something wrong, Jon?
That said, I think it's time I changed my
regards, treefrog
Actually...it's not surprising that the US is friendly to megacorps. In fact, it could be argued the entire US started as a megacorp...
The Virginia Company (of which many of the "patriots" of the American Revolution were stockholders, including Benjamin Franklin) wanted to do surveys of the land west of the Appalachians for land claims and settlement. The British, who had signed treaties with most of the Native American nations along the Appalachians (including the Cherokee, Creek and Delaware nations) to the effect that everything west of the Appalachian Mountains was "Indian Country" (a minor note--much of what was then Virginia (including Kentucke County, which eventually became Kentucky), was west of the mountains and about the only white folks living there at the time were refugees from the failed uprising of Bonnie Prince Charlie--bet you didn't know there were Scottish and Irish settlers in the early 1700's, eh?) said no because in large part they didn't want to piss off the Native American nations OR the French (many of the Nations had alliances with France).
In 1776, the Colonies declared independence. Literally almost one of the first acts the United States did as a nation was to sign a treaty with the Cherokee Nation ceding the biggest part of non-Jackson-Purchase Kentucky to the state of Virginia. Shortly thereafter Dan'l Boone and others came to take the lands and survey them (and ran promptly into the Shawano, who had not signed a treaty giving THEIR chunk of Kentucky over, but that's another story).
The treaty in question also ceded a fair chunk of the state of Tennessee; in fact, eastern Tennessee set itself up as the short-lived "State of Franklin" (not uncoincidentially named after one of the big stockholders in the Virginia Company--kinda like how Hudson Bay got named) for about a year and a half until the Articles of Confederation were superceded by the Constitution. (There are articles on this on the 'net, and on historical markers all through eastern Tennesseee--outside of Bristol there is actually a "historical community" set up as a reenactment of lifestyles around the time the State of Franklin existed.)
For that matter, literally until the Constitution was ratified, darn near all land west of the Appalachians was effectively owned by the Virginia Company. (After this, the US tended to take big chunks of land by buying them from other countries who never owned the land in the first place and setting them up as "territories". :)
Needless to say, at least some of us have been screwed by US-based megacorps since day 1 :P
-Windigo The Feral (NYAR!)
Many of you are proclaimed communists and socialists who continually complain about the so-called shortcomings of capitalism and individual freedom in America.
"America's bad." "Founding Fathers were all slaveowners and nothin's changed." "Capitalism makes everybody poor except for corporations." But then I realized that there's an elegant solution to your problems: China!
I have to admit that I'm somewhat envious. If there existed today a fully capitalist country anywhere in the world I would relocate there without hesitation. But alas, there are none, and here I remain.
But you, the socialists and communists who comprise the bulk of the Slashdot community, your Nirvana exists! I have read your posts and I hear you. I understand your desires and motivations. Utopia is within your reach, and it is: China!
Don't take my word for it. Read it straight from the PRC Constitution itself:
Preamble
After founding the People's Republic, China gradually achieved its transition from a New-Democratic to a socialist society. The socialist transformation of the private ownership of the means of production has been completed, the system of exploitation of man by man abolished and the socialist system established.
socialism, yeah!
Article 1
The People's Republic of China is a socialist state under the people's democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants.
The socialist system is the basic system of the People's Republic of China. Disruption of the socialist state by any organization or individual is prohibited.
wow!
Article 2
All power in the People's Republic of China belongs to the people.
the people, not the corporations!
Article 6
The basis of the socialist economic system of the People's Republic of China is socialist public ownership of the means of production, namely, ownership by the whole people and collective ownership by the working people.
oh my God yeah!
You see, it's there, waiting for you. Think about it. No more posting messages about all the rich people who make you feel bad 'cause they own all that stuff. In China, nobody's rich! (Except for the bureaucrats, but no country's perfect.)
So to you, my Red Readers of Slashdot, I present my July 4th gift: China.
And in return, my only request is: PLEASE LEAVE
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when mcdo will open a "restaurant" on the artic continent? or on the moon?
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When there are enough people in those places who want their product.
And when/if that happens, who are you or I to say to those people that our wishes override theirs?
If you don't like it, don't buy it. If the opening of McDonalds in a certain place isn't wanted by enough people, they'll close up shop. If not, you'll just have to live. The few cannot and should not override the many.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
This is an issue of democracy not tyranny, Bove's community doesn't want McD opening shop in their town. Who do you think the city fathers (or whatever their equivilant are in france) are going to listen to a bunch of broke artistic types and community activists or a large american corporation making promises od tax revenue, jobs, etc. Even if McD's presence is benign, not driving everyone out of business and not destroying the traditional agriculture economy, the community still has the right to protest over who's opening shop.
I've seen the fast food chains drive smaller restaurants out of business and replace originality with corporate uniformity. Corporate restuarants can afford to go with low profits and even huge losses as long as the shareholders and executive officers are willing to pour their huge amounts of capital into these restaurants. Smaller independants can't keep up, they don't have a rich uncle they can always hit up for cash.
Does this touch upon the 'let me eat crap and die painfully' argument, yes. Is this about local nationalistic pride, yes. Is this about laizze fair capitalism, yes. Are these things controversial? You bet, that's why we have a democratic ethic, the people who will be most affected by McD should be the one's rallying and making policy. Not the profit driven corporations and a handful of local beaurucrats.
Bove is an extremist, if he wasn't you'd never hear of him. Him and his pals did dismantle half of a McDonald's because they were pissed. I see this as a healthy display of civil-disobedience, its going to open a lot of eyes on both sides of the pond.
I'd say this is more towards civil-disobedience for the purpose of raising awareness of the larger issue of business and government collusion that goes against the democratic ethic, not some PR press packet trying to stop controversy not encourage it.
A few points.
:)
1) You are free. See Cuba as a reference.
2) The freedoms that U.S. people don't have are the freedoms they gave conrol to under whichever representatives they vote for. It's not irreperable damage though. Note Al Gore's progress in the polls.
3) If you really want to see the Constitution and the Bill of Rights prevail, then quit attacking corporations, power mongers, and religious fanatics already and start voting for representatives who want a weaker central government, one that isn't so corruptible
Quites simply, on point #3, the governemnt shouldn't have anything to do with McDonalds or any other corporation. Who friggin cares if McD's are really really big. They also employ tons of people, virtually created fast food (which has saved my ass numerous times), and make good french fries. Are they evil? No. Hitler was evil. Stalin was Evil. Mr. McDonald just found a good way to make a profit in exchange for feeding tons of people who don't care to spend time in the kitchen. They are not breaking any laws, and will only show intrest in the government if the government suggests something stupid, like shutting them down or crippling their buisness, which seems fine to people like you.
Can anybody explain to me why liberals see the corporations as evil and big government as inherently good?
(Last time I asked that question here, people replied that the governemnt should be socially responsible for it's people, to which I replied that social responsibility shouldn't make up for personal irresponsibility. If anyone could go beyond this, please....)
The freedoms that we don't have are freedoms that the people of the United States gave up by electing the wrong people into office.
If you really want a real democracy, then I say vote for Republicans like I do. They support a small central government, which do not regulate your "evil" corporations as strongly as Democrats do on a federal level. They support local government power and control more than federal control. Not only does this mean a more well-balanced governement than the top-heavy one that's been growing in the last 8 years, but it also means that your vote means more. If you live in a state or county that is more liberal or more conserative than average, then they should live under their own set of rules (and see what results) instead of attempting to impose those ideas on the entire frikkin country.
If you don't want McDonalds, then see what your local government can do against it before forcing the federal government to do something.
Bolverk dun said:
Considering the multinational who owned, spun off, and just recently rebought Nestle, you're honestly shocked at this?
(For those who don't know--Nestle was for some time, and is again now thanks to a reaquisition, a subsidiary of Phillip-Morris. Yup, the big cigarette company. One of those that laughably tried to claim that they didn't dope cigarettes with nicotine, even though literally anyone who works or has worked in a Phillip-Morris tobacco plant can tell you that there are certain tanks you Do Not Touch lest you be rushed straightaway to the hospital because aforementioned tanks sweat nicotine. (Yes, I've had family members who worked at Phillip-Morris, and one that had to sue for worker's comp due to their chopper damn near cleaving her hand into Marlboro additives. Let's just say I've a fair amount of knowledge on the subject.) They aren't exactly the most ethical of companies to begin with--getting people hooked on cigs, on formula, it's all money to them :P)
-Windigo The Feral (NYAR!)
THE IMPORT TAX IS ON BEEF - i.fucking.e. beef from France to the US
THE EXPORT TAX IS ON FRENCH DELICACIES - like Roquefort from the us to France.
anybody remember the banananas? the US wasn't happy that the UK put a tax on their bananas, so they put a prohibative tax on woolen jumpers, whisky etc from the UK.
The US bananas were from corporate owned farms, the ones before were from small farms.
Now: you want a banana, it's a Chiquita Banana.
The UK backed down, I'm glad someone didn't
Titus-G, celebrating the 4th of July, I don't want that guilt.
~ppppppppö
Peter McWilliams died on June 14th. Many believe he would have been able to hang on a little longer if he had had access to medical marijuana, which he used to prevent the nausea his AIDS and cancer medicines caused.
He was awaiting sentencing for growing marijuana, which would have probably ended up at one of the medical marijuana clubs in California (it's illegal to sell it, but the state and the localities are happy to look the other way). The federal judge ordered weekly urine tests to make sure he wasn't using it, and a few days after a fire destroyed the computer that contained the only copy of his next book, he was found dead in his bathtub, having choked on his own vomit.
See www.forahero.com for more info.
Oh, no, I can't get enough people to agree with my political crusade to have any effect.
Should I resort to violence and vandalism, or should I just force people to agree with my political agenda by convincing the government that "something must be done" (preferably, "for the children", "for the environment", or "for the poor").
Or maybe you should just go sit in your corner and pout, because freedom includes the freedom to open a restaurant, and the freedom to buy a right to use someone else's name for advertising, and the freedom to buy from people at a mutually agreeable price, and the freedom to hire people at a mutually agreeable wage, and the right to sell to people at a mutually agreeable price.
Or we could just have the government run everything, and those who were popular could have things their way, and everyone else would just be SOL. If you live in a democracy, the choice is (at least partially) yours.
--Kevin
Then quit. Duh.
Corporations need to answer to employees and customers just as much as anyone else. If not, they loose customers, market share, and stock value, then they go broke.
America needs more moronic pro-communism liberals like I need a hole in the head.
Go back and look at the changes made in American government made during the Reagan administration. A number of useless government programs were cut, phased out, or incorporated into better-managed programs.
;).
My earlier post, btw, was to point out the irony of complaining about the death of personal freedoms and democracy while attacking corporations and promoting regualtion. However, I must point out (just cuz I feel like it), that the federal government needs to fscking give up on enforcing anti-drug laws and simply pull all social responsibilty for individuals who partake in the use of illegal drugs. (BTW, they need to add drug testing to social welfare programs anyway.) If they want to fsck up thier lives, then the government shouldn't gaurantee a damn saftey net. That alone will reduce the number of welfare-mother crackwhores tenfold, and save millions of dollars put to use in trying to crack-down on drug activity and put it to more usefull causes, like teacher salaries
Actually the argument is about the collusion between government AND business. His beef is with both parties, if a established government respected local wishes would there be as many McD's? I doubt it.
The Amercian Revolution certainly wasn't just political, it was also economic. Corporations like Hudson Bay and East Indies had exculsive contracts with the Brit government and did their best, along with the Brits, to bleed the colonies dry. That was "legal" business. It was also crap. He isn't a hero he's just trying to raise awareness through civil-disobedience. I wouldn't praise legal business so much if I was you, once legal business was owning slaves and putting kids to work in factories.
Yeah you're right, Rosa Parks should be ashamed of herself. What your missing is that there are unjust laws and when government doesn't listen to the needs of the community people take illegal methods to change their society. You can pick a decent law and make a strawman argument out of it, but I don't know who you're trying to convince.
BTW, its pretty childish to call people names like Doofus.
The current issue of German news magazine Der Spiegel (27/2000) has an article on Bove on page 166: 'Kaese statt Hamburger'.
McDonald's isn't going door-to-door confiscating guns, nor are they placing people in prison for refusing to pay taxes.
Neither was the poor merchant whose tea was thrown in the harbor.
Ok, let me preface this statement: OUR society is not built upon anarchy.
What I'm trying to say is that there are rules that most of us abide by because it makes social interaction possible. Redefining these rules to suit your own world-view is frowned upon.
Anarchists will say destruction of corporate property is acceptable, because they stole it from the workers in the first place.
If this is the case, then what's to stop me from forming my own philosophy "Paulism", which advocates the elimination of the religious texts? I claim that reproducing the words of God is blasphemy. I claim that no human can claim to understand the infinite wisdom of God and that any attempt to capture this wisdom is folly. Not only folly, but a distortion.
Therefore, Paulism contends that marching into bookstores, motel rooms and private residences to destroy any religious writing is acceptable.
Would I get away with this? If you can, why can't I? Because "the man" is holding me down? No, I don't think you'd even need a any government laws or even any moderately religious individual for people to decide this is wrong.
It's just not done. Respect for the belongings of others is a fundamental tenet in modern society.
Summarily declaring that corporations are not entitled to "own" property is ridiculous. You're right, corporations are legal entities not people. However, there are people who voluntarily contribute their property to the corporation. One of the main reasons they do this is to protect against litigation - not to steal from workers. Are they no longer entitled to their work once it is "owned" by the corporation? Workers, too, are compensated for their work and a large number don't complain.
If you don't like corporations, don't work for one. There are many, many sole proprietorships or partnerships that offer employment. Equating these with corporations is not only wrong, but ignorant. The risk in running your own business is substantial. And I doubt very much if the anarchist protestors that frequent WTO meetings take the time to distinguish between a private business or a corporation.
You claim that I take a whole paragraph out of context and at the same time rationalize violent criminal activity with the writings of a pacifist 19th century French printer-(unwittingly)-turned-revolutionary.
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McDonalds only makes me vomit if I choose to buy it and eat it. MS Frontpage only drives me insane if I choose to buy it and use it. The gov't fucks me whether I ask them to or not.
Actually, a number of companies will mess with you whether you want them to or not. I'm a bit of an environmentalist and have seen records of a good bit of misbehavior by companies. Just check out the records on Superfund sites, particularly in Silicon Valley. There's a lot of things a company will do to screw with customers just to save a buck or two. Love Canal, the Ford Pinto, and the price squeezing behaviors of various monopolies like Standard Oil are all good historical examples of this.
I don't buy products from the paper mill in my hometown as far as I know, but the stench still comes to me whether I ask for it or not. Your argument is void.
And tell me who holds the gov't accountable for it's actions? More gov't. Isn't that convient...
The people affected by them, of course. Also, checks and balances come into play. Ultimately, in our society, the government is under much closer scrutiny than our businesses. Plus, if there are people abusing their position, they usually can't be in power for more than a few years and can be thrown out beforehand by a vote of the people.
Corporations only answer to their shareholders. It's easier to brush aside qualms about the company's questionable actions when it profits you or when you're kept ignorant of it. Government starts out with the goal of serving the people. Companies are just responsible for making money -- that's a lot less lofty height to fall from.
Sure, governments can do more to you and do it more directly, but there is more you can do in response. Try voting. It's an opportunity you don't get to take in the business world. "Voting with your dollars" is a misnomer. It implies your money is just as pure, free, and powerful as your vote at a poll booth. In reality, there'd be less people using Windows right now if that meant anything. I don't recall being forced to vote for someone I didn't like to get to vote for someone I did.
Anyway, why should you care if there is a McD's down the street anyway.
Oh, I don't... but I already said that if you were paying attention. I'm just pointing out that the original poster was foolish to think that not one guy not patroning their establishment made one whit of difference.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Good point, but his original argument was that him just not buying from them was sufficient. I'm not saying there's no point in resisting. He was saying that there was no need for the actions of the farmers because they could've just not eaten there. That's the "Real Protest." While I don't support the form of action they took, just not eating there would've gotten the message across to no one.
Advocacy is what is needed if you want to stop someone who you feel is oppressing you. IMO, though, their choice of a McDonalds was a bit screwy.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Shit, Katz. I usually don't read your stuff, but this one is actually pretty damned good. Keep it up!
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
People bring this up a lot to show how "biggoted" early America was, but this was actually done to help bring about an end to slavery.
When the number of slaves was used in calculations of the population, the South looked extremely populous, which meant more Congressmen in the house of representatives. Since no slave was free to vote against the choices of his plantation owner, it basically meant that the slave-owning vote counted for more.
To put a stop to this, the census was changed so that only 3/5 of the slave population would count towards representation in Washington, which reduced southern influence in federal politics and eventually lead to more abolitionists in Congress and the success of Lincoln's bid for the Presidency.
WFIW, free black men who voted were counted as one vote, not 3/5 of a vote.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Well they always do things a couple of years after the Americans, but always do it better. Look at their revolution, constitution, and their patriotic music. Now they are protesting even better than the average American. They are also innovative. They knew before the American civil war that the Napoleonic method of fighting was outdated. They knew in 1939 that the Maginot line and trench warfare were useless. I'd say that they are pretty dynamic a people.
Romanes eunt domus? People called Romanes, they go the 'ouse? It says Romans go home. No it doesn't. What's Latin fo
Signs that have bigger writing in English than French (in Quebec). Though as someone who is fully bilingual, it doesn't bother me any.
Conversely, America censors nudity like there's no tomorrow. We have a somewhat more European attitude towards it.
------
If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
- Even though he lives in France, cheese farmer Jose Bove, on trial for trashing a McDonald's franchise...
- Even though he lives in France, professional political agitator Jose Bove, on trial for trashing a McDonald's franchise...
Now, tell me which one makes Bové sound like a hero. The man has devoted his life to bending the world to fit his own opinions, and has done a fair amount of damage in doing so.Remember, kids, it's only premarital if you plan on getting married.
Interesting discussion, and many great e-mails, as always. Thanks. I find it odd that on this site of all places, and among people who grew up with a particular conscious of monopolies and corporatists like Bill Gates, that one would really have to explain what this farmer's grievance is. He and the people he represents can't compete with McD's anymore than an individual programmer can compete with MS Word...If you broaden the anology to include Wal-Mart, agricultural combines, McD's and the scores of others (AOL/Time Warner) that are forming around the world, it should be clear: no small individual or entrepeneur can compete. MCD's didn't do anythign to Jose, except it's a symbol in much of the world of a noxious kind of American culture that destroys local culture, small businesses and the opportunity to do business outside the context of a giant corporation.
It's strange to me that on this site, of all places, people have no real political consciousness of how big a threat to individualism corporatism is..and this on a website stuffed to the gills with individuals!
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Actually, the fact that Germany had lost so many planes in the Battle of Britain was only one factor in the indefinite postponement of "Operation Sea Lion," the planned invasion of Britain. The other was that Hitler had turned his attentions to an invasion of Russia, in part because he thought this would weaken Britain's position in the long run.[1] (Also, he was nuts enough to believe he could succeed at invading Russia where others had failed.)
And, while it's true that America did not intervene with direct military force until after the Pearl Harbor attack, America was supplying Britain with weapons and warships over a year earlier, through such expedients as the Lend-Lease program. Also, America was beginning to build up its military forces in the fall of 1940, and President Roosevelt had ordered investigations into the possibility of developing atomic weapons (preliminaries to the Manhattan Project) a year earlier than that.[2] It seems likely that somebody figured that the U.S. would be in the war at some point...
Eric
[1] See Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p. 774, 798.
[2] Gerhard Weinberg, A World At Arms, pp. 157-159.
--
Be who you are...and be it in style!
Neither was the poor merchant whose tea was thrown in the harbor.
The "poor merchant" was the East India Tea Company, which was a monopoly guaranteed by force of arms.
So, you're wrong; people were indeed being placed in prison for refusing to pay tea taxes, and the East India Tea Company lobbied to get their monopoly status emplaced. They were the only company legally allowed to import tea to the colonies, and they deliberately sold at a loss to drive out the domestic tea production.
McDonald's, on the other hand, does not have a monopoly on bad food in France, and nobody is just going there to eat because it's the only food available. McDonald's is not bribing French officials to outlaw Burger King, and they are selling their food at a profit.
French people are eating at McDonald's by choice. That says something about "community wishes".
--
Woefully, this sort of lie works on most people. I doubt if the poster even realized that they were lying, as the numbers are basically accurate as far as they go. The problem is that the standard "rich are getting richer" line only works if you compare the present day with an economically depressed time period. If you were to compare today to the time just before the stock market drop in 1987, you would find that the rich have gotten poorer. If you were to compare today to 1930, you would find that your numbers paint a comparitively rosy picture.
Wealth is a poor benchmark. It really doesn't matter how much money Bill Gates has, for example, as long as joe blow on the street can buy enough eggs and milk to feed his family. Thus, measures of cost of living vs. income per region and per neigborhood are usually the best way to determine just how people are doing. Looked at in this way, the situation has only started to get bad where I am (Boston area) recently, due to housing prices mostly.
Of course, it's always easier to say "McDonalds is ruining our world." In reality, population is our single largest problem, and has been for about a century. Just about every activist issue (from polution to deforestation to energy-production to impersonal global corps.) has its roots in population growth. If you want to work for something that will better the human condition, work for population control. There are basically three ways to do this:
- Teach birth control early and often, and create incentives for single-child homes
- Have more wars / kill people in some other way
You may feel that either one is a bad idea for various reasons, but that really is about the only way you can do it. Of course either method can be coupled with a strong dictatorship (or other totalitarian state) for more sure results, but I don't recommend it.Actually, dude, I've been on Slashdot since before Katz came along. I didn't get moderated up to 2, I post at 2. :-b I usually don't read Katz's articles, 'cause I read a bunch in the past, so I have the Katz filter on to trash his stuff.
This one was a bit better than usual. Perhaps, I got lost in some of my enthusiasm for the topic.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
I hear you on housing prices. As Joe Blow on the street, I can tell you that rent is extremely high, and I feel like I am being exploited every day. Having just moved away from home, I am really feeling the effects of the class gap, which is odd -- because I make significantly more than minimum wage, and I only have to pay 1/2 the rent! I don't know what the economic reason for all of this is, but it's not fun, and it's times like these that I think communism would be a Good Thing. =)
afterall, McD's have prevented was from happening.
Fact: No war has ever occured in which both countries had a McD's.
maybe corporatism is better than nationalism, fundamentalism, fascism, rascism, communism, libertarianism, etc.
afterall, all of the above have had wars occur because of them.
I agree, this is definately not a bad thing. But, in my view, if the French people so overwhelmingly abhored something as distateful as MacDonalds, wouldn't it be a safe assumption, that a MacDonalds 'restaraunt' in France, would be an utter flop. If there is no demand, there is no profit.
You mean like the amazing success of EuroDisney^H^H^H^H^H^H DisneyLand Paris? The emptiest^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hhappiest place on earth? The great sucking void that the Disney Corporation blew into the French countryside, only to have it become a sucking money vaccuum and void, where the designers didn't even have the blasted imagination necessary to change the park around to fit European taste? (I mean, come on: Main Street U.S.A., in France?!?!?!?)
In some places in the world, Micky D's will flourish. In France, I suspect they'll wither.
But why is that a bad thing? If they are dying, then perhaps they really DO need to die? I'm sure many the carpenter in days of old resented the fact that these new fangled machines could produce hundreds of chairs a day, while they could produce a mere one.
Things don't just die. They die for a reason. Places like McDonalds haven't killed the local Diner in the US. They haven't killed the Chinese restraunt on the corner. Heck, they haven't killed the ice cream stand on the other corner.
And as far as everone looking the same, it may have been bad english, but it was a generally racist statement.
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Now, take it further, and imagine that all of the things being advertised are *SELLING LIKE HOTCAKES* in these countries. They are pushing where it makes buisness sense to do so. Carefull what you wish for I say, you *JUST* might get it..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
How hard is it to check your goddamn facts? It took me one minute to retreive this AP article and get the basic story.
There is no mention in it of anyone dying. And if someone had died he sure would have been on trial for worse than vandalism and the AP sure would have mentioned it.
Bove tore the roof off of a McDonalds that was still under construction. It had no 28-year-old-women managers. It didn't have ANY managers yet. It wasn't even open.
Knife 31 has no business telling anyone to check their facts. He's got to be an idiot. And now for your enlightenment:
France Big Mac Vandal Trial Begins
The Associated Press
Saturday, July 1, 2000; 1:36 p.m. EDT
MILLAU, France ÐÐ A public prosecutor on Saturday recommended that a sheep farmer who has waged a high-profile battle against globalization receive a 10-month suspended sentence for vandalizing a McDonald's restaurant in this southern French town.
Jose Bove was on trial with nine other defendants who attacked the Millau fast food restaurant last August during a wave of protests targeting the fast-food chain as a symbol of American trade "hegemony" and economic globalization.
Prosecutor Alain Durand also recommended that Bove spend 18 months on probation. Bove said he would appeal any sentence and vowed to continue his battle internationally.
"The combat will not stop at France's borders," said Bove, spokesman of the radical Farmers' Confederation union, who made headlines in December when he brought his anti-globalization message to the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle.
Prosecutor Alain Durand requested that the nine other defendants receive suspended sentences of no longer than three months, saying they merely carried out Bove's plans.
After the hearing, about 11,000 supporters gathered to greet the 10 defendants as they left the courtroom.
The Millau court began hearing arguments on Friday as about 15,000 demonstrators gathered to support the defendants. Later that night, a concert to mark the trial drew about 45,000 anti-globalization supporters.
The court is expected to deliver its decision Sept. 13.
Bove's battle began last year when the United States slapped sanctions on food products ranging from Roquefort cheese to foie gras in retaliation for the European Union's decision to ban imports of U.S. hormone-treated beef.
The mustachioed sheep farmer has said his main targets are the World Trade Organization, multinationals and governments that push scientifically engineered food. He says the organizations crush the small-time producers who insist on quality and taste.
© Copyright 2000 The Associated Press
'Our corperate masters'. How cute. Tell me, what country do these masters come from? Iran? Oh wait, I know, it MUST be China.
;-P
And creating demand where it does not exist? Where'd that come from? *NO* buisness 'creates' demand. Well, Ok, microsoft does, becouse they can. But how can a company create demand for a hamburger?? Subliminal messages I suppose?
I'll have you know, I work for a US company (As do many other Americans, I've been told. Damned those corperate slavemasters are good). When you talk of the corperate masters, you insult every single US citizen. Lemme get you in on a secret. *WE ARE THE CORPERATE MASTERS* you elequently refer to. Here, we don't refer to them as the 'corperate masters'. We call them Joe and Larry over there in the Marketing department. They're not coopting the sucess of the US people. They're using that success to grow markets. The *SAME WAY THEY DID HERE*. And if you buy it, they will come. And they're buying it..
Be carefull what you wish for, you just might get it. You want those antibiotics? Then hell yes you need the computer components. You gonna rely on someone else making it for the rest of your lives?? And as far as the nuclear waste, that's BS, and you know it. I can say I've NEVER heard of a contract to exchange antibiotics for nuclear waste..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
> before everyone spouts their indoctrinated
> drivel, i would like to remind the posters that
> they would not be posting on slashdot, would not
> be using a browser, would be surfing an
> internet, and would not be using a computer if
> it were not for "multinational corporations",
> the "military industrial complex" or
> "monopolies."
Yes yes yes, and mousolini DID in fact make the trains run on time. Whats your point?
> it is so strange that what "evil" corporations
> are accused of doing,(with what power i can't
> imagine) is the same stuff that governments
> have been doing forever!
With what power? Well its called money. People are wed to it. Can't survive in our society without it. That makes those who have alot of it powerful and capable of influencing people.
Its no better when governments do it really. Though really...does it matter if the media is run by a bunch of guys under name of government or a bunch of guys with allot of money under name of profits? Its the same end result.
Capitalism is broken because humans do NOT act in rational manners. They are much too easy to manipulate. Corperations have learned that quality of product doesn't matter...only quality of marketing and media control. Its better to buy out your competition or market like crazy than it is to actually make something worth buying.
Look at microsoft. They have bought companies with competeing or otherwise semi-cool products like most people buy coffee. I have yet to see a microsoft product that wasn't a steaming pile of shit (and yes, I have used them...supported them even, in past jobs). Yet its instant profit....just add marketing.
We are fast aproaching the point where it is hard to not be a customer of the huge companies. Go to the supermarket? well with very few exceptions you know nothing is locally produced and sold by small companies in there.
How about hardware stores? We used to have 3 in this area...Home Depot came in and all the others (all locally owned buisnesses) were out of buisness within 3 years. Now Home Depot has NO competition...they are the ONLY place in the area.
Starbucks does it with coffee shops. These things are becomming ubiqutous and its disgusting.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Funny, I just watched the Green party convention yesterday and there was Nader speaking out against unethical, power-mongering corporations. He mentioned those that go overseas and displace native foods with their "fat and sugar pumps" *cough* McDonalds *cough*.
After Bradley was thrown off a cliff in favor of Al really-I'm-not-a-piece-of-wood Gore, leaving me with a choice between the lesser of two evils (isn't it always?), I was looking around at other parties. To my surprise, the Green party really encompasses a lot of what Slashdot and the net is about with respect to law and policy. The Green party, it seems to me, is really against rampant unethical corporate greed, and the awful wake it leaves, especially in government corruption, and putting power back in the people's hands (*really*...not just saying "I feel your pain").
Whether he knows it or not (he said he doesn't use computers), Nader's speech and the Green party's philosophy is in *lockstep* with net issues: corporatization, privacy invasion, incrementally stripping freedoms from people. It was very refreshing to find someone who has a record of fighting and winning on these issues was running for president, as opposed to the conventional black hole mind drain of "guns or babies" politics ("Hey, my opponent eats babies for breakfast. Vote for me!").
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Just thought you'd like to know. You can take that silly bumper sticker off your car now (Yes I live in Barrhaven too!).
Undemocratic? Did you ever think that we are in the "Thrall of third way socialist thugs" because the people of Canada vote for them? With an average 75% voter turnout, I'd say we are more democratic than the US.
..and as a matter of fact I DO vote for the NDP!
If you like the US so much, feel free to immagrate. I'm sure they will welcome you with open arms - After marrying an American and having 2 children by him, you should probably only have to wait 30 months to get your green card (as my sister did - she's still waiting for that green card).
Why haven't you moved tio your capitalist paradise yet?
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
Go to the Toronto Star and do a Search...these stories were front page news up here for a few weeks.
As for massive gas taxes, the studies in fact do include them. They also include Health insurance premiums (average about $500 US per month for a family of 4) which we do not have to pay (social, UNIVERSAL, government-run health care - a thing of beauty). We also have very little or no user fees for many local and provincial government services. And I pay the same amount of tax whether I live in Downtown Toronto or in Wiarton, Ontario. Ask somebody form Philly about the 6% city tax just for living in the city. Add that onto a state sales tax and you pretty much have the equivilent of a "VAT" (we call it a GST - goods and services tax of 8% and PST - provincial sales tax of 7 % in Ontario - oh, and not everything, like food and diapers and such, is taxed). I've been to many US cities and grew up on the border with Michigan and I'm familiar with the quality of your infrastructure - roads, sewers, police etc.
My point is the same as my previous post - I may pay a little more tax but I get a hell of a lot of services.
You get what you pay for.
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
carlos
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
William F. Buckley, for one. His picture could be placed next to "conservative" in the dictionary, but he has spoken up in favor of the decriminalization of drugs on many occasions.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I'm glad you cited a source. It's nice for a change to have someone do that.
But, perhaps you need to review *your* history. This country was founded by *businessmen* and, in part, was founded on economic freedoms. Remember the whole "taxation without representation" theme in the Declaration of Independance? Most of the Founding Fathers wanted to see a free-market economy. (At least, from what I've read of Ben Franklin's writtings. Check out "Fart Proudly", truly a masterpiece.) This isn't a political issue at all. It's an *economic* issue. The reason the corporations "run" this country is because we *pay* them to do so! Everytime we buy their goods or services, we encourage them to continue doing business the same way. How else did Microsoft get so big? We happily sent them our money for their product. Those of us that aren't happy with that are starting to use other people's products. (For instance, these days I'm using Corel's Wordperfect Suite on GNU-Linux, instead of Windows and the MS Office Suite.)
The real question is, is it so bad? A lot of people seem to think it's okay, or they wouldn't spend their money the way they do. I happen to agree with you on what's wrong, but not what to do about it. Yes, our government does not serve us anymore, but that's our fault. We need to get out and vote for a change. Get people into office that do care about what *we the people* really want. More importantly, get the people who have not done what we want back *out* of office. Then, we need to follow that up by putting our money where our mouth is, so to speak, and not supporting companies that we don't believe in anymore. And, in that regard, we do all need to educate ourselves more.
However, the Constitution is working just as our Founding Fathers intended it to work. Otherwise some fascist data-filter would have killed both our posts!
Thanks for listening,
RyuMaou
Oh, the trials and tribulations of a network geek! Read about them at: http://www.ryumaou.com/hoffman/netgeek/
yep, it is. this guy is largely full of shit; he isn't "speaking for us", he would just like to replace Mickey Mouse with Asterix (French cartoon character, for those who don't know). unless you're a French patriot, there's nothing to celebrate here -- just some local closed-mindedness that happens to attack a couple of popular targets (globalization, and junk food). I don't like globalization (well, some effects of it) or junk food either, but I'd never support this guy.
This form of direct action is actually quite common in France, it has not been long since French farmers stopped lorries carrying lamb entering France from the UK and burnt the (already slaughtered) contents.
At the moment it is not just french peasant farmers that are suffering. In the UK small upland farmers are going bankrupt at an amazing rate. One of the problems is increased new legislation, which I believe has been heavily lobbied for by the multinationals and large producers, which is forcing smaller abatoirs to close. Small farmers have to then take their produce a long way to get it slaughtered, and they cannot afford this.
There is also a problem with the buying power of the supermarkets and multinationals. You sell at our rates on our terms or you don't sell at all.
It is not all doom and gloom though. Organic produce is more popular than ever, and the rise of farmers markets in many towns is throwing a lifeline to the smaller producers.
I've already read many comments on this topic that seem to basically say "This guy is an anticapitalist nutter. Fuck him". This is a topic that many people in the EU (including myself) care passioately about. I visit the states regularly on business, and I have seen what unconstrained capitalism can do. Jose, I salute you and say "Vive le Roquefort".
And one more thing - beer guy, this is one thread where you will be so on-topic it will hurt!
regards,
treefrog
You claim that your anecdote is more 'true' than any number of statistics. Anecdotes lie because people remember the one anecdote and forget the millions of contrary examples.
Hell! I gave references that debunked 3 stupid anecdotes in the parent to your post. If you look around the right places, you can find people who debunk more anecdotes.
How much are land prices? How big of a house could you buy/build out in the middle of nowhere? If you want to live in the city where everyone else lives, you have to pay the prices, or settle with a smaller living area. You have to compete with everyone else who wants to live there. And many of them are people who are also computer science and have fairly signifigant incomes.
How much is a farm in western Montana with lots of land and a big house? How much is a small house close to Silicon Valley? If having a big house is so important, why not move to Montana?
It's a choice that life gives you. Quit bitching that you don't like either option.
And these NeXT computers would run on finely crafted, hand carved silicon chips??
Oh yeah, American values. A country founded by rich white lawyers and land owners so they wouldn't have to pay their government their taxes. This is what we (Americans) were from the beginning.
How does McDonalds sell billion s (USD) worth of hamburgers in non-US markets? If everyone hates America so much, why does everyone keep buying Big Macs? (or any other "Corporate Republic" product?)
I would gladly pay to send Jon Katz to one of those small precious countries without internet access that are so endangered by the "Corporate Republic", provided he promise to never come back. Go seek your "freedom" elsewhere, wannabe.
(Paid for by the Coalition to Point Out to Jon Katz that he is a Soft American.)
Jon, I like that you are talking about corporatism. In fact, Slashdot is the site that first hooked me up with that meme, and I appreciate it. However, I don't think that a cheese farmer, while a recent news item, is a great example of corporatism working against an individual, or why an individual should fight back.
If you were trying to sell someone on the idea of corporatism with your article, I don't think people would rally behind you. McDonalds encroaching on the rights of a cheese farmer in France? Hardly compelling. The story of the Film Festival ruining the delicate ecosystem of Mr. Hanky is far more grabbing.
I want to see real corporatism, Jon. Show it to me. Show me corporations stomping all over normal people. (For example, health care and corporatism. Coporations and their ability to change the law to work against individuals.)
Give us stuff that makes Scientology tactics look like amateurs.
Do MacDonald's in the States also have golden arches?
Yes, and the local outlet here has pizza as well. But I challenge you to tell the difference between a quarter pounder in Quebec and one made here in Los Angeles.
Hi!
I don't think you understand who the patient is we're talking about. Let me elaborate.
Children who get sick go to the pediatrics wing of your local hospital. Children who get banged up in car accidents go to the pediatric intensive-care ward of your local hospital.
Children who are long-term inpatients at children's hospitals are not "normal" kids with boo-boos. They have cancer. They are waiting for transplants. They are hoping to improve enough to be considered as candidates for open-heart surgery. In short, their parents are on their knees every morning and every night, praying desperately to God that these kids live long enough to be able to worry about eating too much fat in their diet.
My youngest daughter has Down syndrome. 54% of Downs kids need open-heart surgery before they're two. Annie was spared that by a merciful God--but more than a third of her preschool classmates are now dead. A beautiful, clever, sparkling little boy who terrorized the world with his motorized wheelchair at age 5 died of lung problems when he was 8--he literally outgrew his lungs. He loved McNuggets--and the medical staff at Children's Hospital thought that McNuggets were just what kids like him needed. I agree.
Toronto is hardly freezing, even in January.
And when you go for that MRI you'd better hope that the hospital recognizes your insurance, or that you have enough insurance, or that going to the hospital won't raise your premiums or that the MRI is even covered by your insurance...because you know they will take care of business before you get treated. I'd rather wait a little longer and be able to get medical procedures just by showing my little green and white card (OHIP). And get treatment because I need it not because I can afford it.
I once paid $1000(Can - about $600 US) for 5 stitches in Boston. In Toronto I may have had to wait an extra hour but it would have cost $0(Can - about $0 US).
BTW MRI patients in Toronto are being sent to Buffalo on OHIP and are getting treament.
If you don't like Canada, move...no one will miss you.
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
McDonald's cares not if you "like" it.
It *only* cares to make money. It will do anything to add to the coffers.
Every single penny they spend on *good things* such as homes for battered women and such are *only* done to gain market share. (They declined a large donation to a childrens hospital to due to the fact that the hospital would not put up McDonald character pictures in the wards (which could help gain life long patrons.))
If McDonald's is putting in *any* site. It is only because they think they can make money. It is not because locals actually like the food, want the food, or desire the food. People will *choke it down* when pressed for quick meals, cheap meals or some junk food.
McDonald's cares not for anything but their coffers. They would sell their grandmother in a bun except that public outcry would cause a drop in the corporate wealth.
The point is that in 2000 Bill Gates is richer than he was in 1999, but that doesn't affect the quality of life of someone who last year had the spending power to buy 1 car, 15,000 eggs and a pet dog and has roughly the same spending power this year. I guarantee that guy isn't looking at Bill Gates saying "damn, he's worth 20% more this year, and I'm only worth 5% more!" He's looking at his life and saying "why didn't *I* become a trillionare? I could have dropped out of Harvard!" The difference is that if Bill were worth slightly less this year, it still wouldn't matter. The purchasing power of the rich will always be beyond the purchasing power of the non-rich, by definition. What really matters to the overall health of a nation is the QUALITY OF LIFE in the middle-class (because middle-class is what the poor can actually strive to become). That quality of life has been improving over the last few years. Thus statements like "the rich are getting richer" don't hold much meaning.
I did read, and I know exactly what it's about. It's about nationalism and demagoguery.
If someone kills your father, you don't find someone who looks a lot like the murderer and kill him for revenge.
This guy took it out on the wrong people - it's as simple as that.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
I never said it would be easy. It wasn't easy for the founders of Wal-Mart to get where they are now. I'm just saying it's not impossible.
As I mentioned, certain chains eventually fall or are overtaken by smarter and faster competitors. Apple and Microsoft took IBM's place in the industry because IBM wasn't fast enough or smart enough to get in the right market. Eventually someone will replace them as well.
Upstarts have a strange habit of occasionally breaking through and becoming the big guys. Wal-Mart and its ilk weren't around forever you know... At one point they replaced someone else at the helm of their markets.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
What ticks me off about this particular Katz rant is that Jon Katz would equate the founding fathers of the United States with a French farmer who is upset because he can no longer sell his cheese in the U.S.
Give me a break, Washington could have been king, but he turned it down because he was more interested in the liberty of the common man than his own welfare. Napolean, on his deathbed was reported to have said that "they expected another Washington," and somehow a cranky French goat farmer is his moral equivalent in the 21st Century. That's like saying that I am the moral equivalent of Florence Nightingale because I gave blood last week.
Since when did terrorism and vandalism become American values?
Since April 19, 1775.
Don't they teach American history in schools? What was the Boston Tea Party but an act of vanadalism??
In obedience to your Excellency's orders, I marched yesterday morning at 9 o'clock with the 1st brigade and two field pieces in order to cover the retreat of the grenadiers and light infantry in their return from their expedition to Concord.
As all the houses were shut up, and there was not the appearance of a single inhabitant, I could get no intelligence concerning them till I had passed Menotomy when I was informed that the rebels had attacked his Majesty's troops who were retiring, overpowered by numbers, greatly exhausted and fatigued, and having expended almost all their ammunition - and at about 2 o'clock I met them retiring rough the town of Lexington - I immediately ordered the 2 field pieces to fire at the rebels, and drew up the brigade on a height.
The shot from the cannon had the desired effect, and stopped the rebels for a little time, who immediately dispersed, and endeavored to surround us being very numerous. As it began now to grow pretty late and we had 15 miles to retire, and only 36 rounds, I ordered the grenadiers and light infantry to move of first; and covered them with my brigade sending out very strong flanking parties which were absolutely very necessary, as there was not a stone wall, or house, though before in appearance evacuated, from whence the rebels did not fire upon us. As soon as they saw us begin to retire, they pressed very much upon our rear guard, which for that reason, I relieved
every now and then.
In this manner we retired for 15 miles under incessant fire all round us, till we arrived at Charlestown, between 7 and 8 in the evening and having expended almost all our ammunition. We had the misfortune of losing a good many men in the retreat, though nothing like the number which from many circumstances I have reason to believe were killed of the rebels. His Majesty's troops during the whole of the affair behaved with their usual intrepidity and spirit nor were they a little exasperated at the cruelty and barbarity of the rebels, who scalped and cut off the ears of some of the wounded men who fell into their hands.
While I think that Mr. Katz's writings are crap, the fact of the matter is that the US was founded by a violent revolution, one of the few (if not only) British colonies to engage in such.
The problem with holding Mr. Bove up as a hero is that he is not the victim of 'corporatism' that Mr. Katz would have us believe. He is the victim of a government bureacracy acting to restrain free trade - some thing that multinationals hold abhorent, and the very thing that the anti-corporatists propose in order to protect their petty national self-interests.
Face it folks, globalization is the natural evolution of human society on it's way from tribe, village, city-state, nation towards a real world society. Anything or anyone that tries to fight this is simply a socio-luddite, and is in fact opposing the progress of the human spirit towards a world where the tragic consequences (holocausts, ethnic cleansings, nuclear proliferation) of adherance to petty social groups (i.e. nations)
are no longer tenable.
THINK, DAMMIT!
Get your history straight.
---------
With the WTO/OAS/World Bank building 'treaties' like GATT, FTAA, etc etc. You are about to have the same situation on a global scale. Corporate interests and economic treaties will supersede local/national authority because they will 'impede the economic solvency of ABC Inc'.
Things are going to get very bad unless people like Jose are willing to stand up and tell McDs to Fuck Off.
When people realize that the world is being governed in the Board Room instead of the Legislature it will already be too late.
Vote Green, Vote Independent, attend Protests, Burn your Local McDs to the ground. The time for revolution is near.
Yep. I can just see the headlines: "Jose chooses not to eat at McDonalds!"
You make it sound like vandalism and the destruction of private property is all right, if you have a reason.
It's not.
Especially if this was the protest of McDonalds where someone was killed. If it wasn't, its still not the way to go about doing things.
Violent demonstrations draw a lot of attention, but its the wrong kind of attention. People are watching to see what happens next, not because they're drawn to the cause.
You're glorifying vandalism.
If you destroy public or private property in the name of a cause-- its still vandalism and worse-- it keeps the real message from being accepted.
I don't know how many times I've been turned off by this tirade of "American yada yada yada."
America allows protests... but it allows "PEACEFUL" protests. Because of the radical anti world economy VANDALISM in Seattle-- when the organizations in question met in DC the reasonable voices couldn't be heard because idiots were using the conference as a reason to wreak havoc...
(why else would you carry molotov coctails in your backpack? These are not the tools of reason!)
It's grandstanding and it doesn't allow the real message to get through.
Take a page for American history... The Boston Tea party-- A rather destructive protest of the English Tea tax where tea was dumped in the harbor... It didn't stop the tax. You know what did? People switching to coffee.
If you want to see real, and lasting results, take a page from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Peaceful, civil disobedience. It takes more time but fewer people get hurt. He was a real hero.
[This Chapter] in particular deals with the Constitution and Confederation, and what was intended by the men who created it. The [next chapter] deals with the Bill of Rights.
The entire book is worth reading, because it will alter the way you view your rights and freedoms. Things aren't as charming as you've been brainwashed to believe: you are not free, it is not a democracy, and your government is slowly but surely destroying the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Of course, most people won't ever read the book and will go meekly along like sheep to slaughter.
Frankly, I think most of you should be getting a bit more educated, a bit more aware, and a lot more politically active. You need to wrestle control of your country back from the corporations, powermongers and religous fanatics that are destroying it.
--
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
More information about the McLibel case can be found on the activist's group McSpotlight which also contains information on the current French trial of José Bové, and the French Peasant Confederation.
I bid all the anti-globalisation fighters against multi-nationals striving to deprave us of choice and free speech out there the best of luck.
-- "I can't tell the future, I just work there." -- The Doctor
These companies aren't building locations for the giggles of it. There's *DEMAND*, and god forbid, these companies try to actually sell a product to people who are looking to buy.
If these foreign contries are that concerned about it, why, OH WHY, are they BUYING THE PRODUCTS? WHY are these companies making money?? Lemme tell you why..
Becouse this cheese farmer is a minority.
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Trashing.
There are many freedoms we enjoy, but destroying the property of others is not one of them.
Sadly, these neo-revolutionaries like to redefine their definitions of right and wrong, violence and peaceful protest.
Check out the definition of violence according to these groups. Pay close attention to the 2nd point:
These people believe the destruction of property belonging to others (IT DOESN'T MATTER WHO... since only greedy capitalists would own something anyways) is a perfectly acceptable means of furthering their own views.
By definition, anyone who so much as disagrees with them is an "oppressor" and by their first definition, is inextricably linked with "white supremacists", "homophobia", "animal abuse" and a range of other equally distasteful groups.
I harbour no sympathy for Jose or his anarchist compatriots. Society is not built upon anarchy. He deserves whatever he gets.
Jon, next time, please find a "hero" that's worth respecting.
--
Corporate greed fleecing people; serving their shareholder's tireless need for profit at the expense of people.
Poultry in america is already reported to have a 10% increase in fecal contamination now that "irradiation" can be used to sterilize it -- after all, if a corporation can serve you sterile shit with your food, why not eat it, if it means higher profits through increased efficiency! Plus, that chicken can sit on the shelf at the market for weeks now, without expiring. yummy.
And that liberal clinton government. They signed in a law so fruits and vegetables may be labeled "cold pasteurized" instead of "irradiated". After all, who would buy food labeled "irradiated" if the bin next to it says "organic"? What do you want to feed your baby? The baby food manufacturers have already decided to skip on "irradiated" products. Wouldn't Louis Pasteur be proud!!
Here's the real shit about freedom -- it's not maintaining the staus quo -- it's about working every day to end the reign of power structures that desperately want to control you mind and poison your body (salt, sugar and fat are the cheapest (and unhealthiest) ways to satisfy your body's cravings for nutrition) while picking your pocket:
> > Subject: Declaration of Independence
> >
> >
> > Have you ever wondered what happened to the 56 men who signed the
> > Declaration of Independence?
> >
> > Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured
> > before they died.
> > Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned.
> > Two lost their sons serving in the Revolutionary Army; another had two
> > sons captured.
> > Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the
> > Revolutionary War.
> > They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their
> > sacred honor.
> >
> > What kind of men were they?
> >
> > Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists. Eleven were merchants, nine were
> > farmers and large plantation owners; men of means, well educated. But
> > they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the
> > penalty would be death if they were captured.
> > Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his
> > ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and
> > properties to pay his debts, and died in rags.
> > Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British that he was forced to
> > move his family almost constantly. He served in the Congress without
> > pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His possessions were taken from
> > him, and poverty was his reward.
> > Vandals or soldiers looted the properties of Dillery, Hall, Clymer,
> > Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton. At the battle of
> > Yorktown,Thomas Nelson Jr, noted that the British General Cornwallis had
> > taken over the Nelson home for his headquarters. He quietly urged
> > General George Washington to open fire. The home was destroyed, and
> > Nelson died bankrupt.
> > Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed. The enemy jailed
> > his wife, and she died within a few months.
> > John Hart was driven from his wife's bedside as she was dying.Their
> > 13 children fled for their lives. His fields and his gristmill were laid
> > to waste. For more than a year he lived in forests and caves, returning
> > home to find his wife dead and his children vanished. A few weeks later
> > he died from exhaustion and a broken heart.
> > Norris and Livingston suffered similar fates.
> > Such were the stories and sacrifices of the American Revolution.
> > These were not wild-eyed, rabble-rousing ruffians. They were
> > soft-spoken men of means and education. They had security, but they
> > valued liberty more. Standing tall, straight, and unwavering, they
> > pledged: "For the support of this declaration, with firm reliance on the
> > protection of the divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other,
> > our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."
> > They gave you and me a free and independent America. The history
> > books never told you a lot about what happened in the Revolutionary War.
> > We didn't fight just the British. We were British subjects at that time
> > and we fought our own government!
> > Some of us take these liberties so much for granted, but we
> > shouldn't.
> > So, take a few minutes while enjoying your 4th of July holiday and
> > silently thank these patriots. It's not much to ask for the price they
> > paid. Remember: freedom is never free! I hope you will show your
> > support by please sending this to as many people as you can. It's time
> > we get the word out that patriotism is NOT a sin, and the Fourth of July
> > has more to it than beer, picnics, and baseball games.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Actually, swine, some studies late last year showed that the tax rate between the US and Canada for people making under 60k (read - the vast majority of folks in both countries) is almost identical (Canada having a 1-2% greater rate). And we have a large safe tolerant country voted #1 by the UN for 7 years running. Where does the US rank? 15? or 20?
I guess you get what you pay for, eh?
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Yeah, sure, biotech is full of wonderful wholesome potential. So was atomic energy.
Now let's look at what these things are used for in the real world. That is, if you don't mind referring, now and again, to the real world, just for a break for variety's sake from the glowing-monitor Metaverse of free-floating theory. But if you do mind, please skip what follows, as it is sure to distress you.
Atomic energy - remember atomic energy? - was supposed to make electricty too cheap to meter, to irrigate the Sahara, and in general to usher mankind into a new era of prosperity and contentment. But in reality, the very first application of it was to smash and/or incinerate about one hundred and fifty thousand defenseless civilians to bloody pulp. Later in its career, atomic energy was used to politically terrorize half the globe, and as a side-benefit, in a mere half-century it has heaped up upon the face of the earth vast volumes of pervasive high-intensity pollutants, which to this day no one knows how to safely store for decades much less hundreds of millennia, that will require something in excess of twenty times the length of recorded history to subside in toxicity to where they are no longer an acute threat to the continuation of mammalian life.
Biotech is supposed to make it possible to grow crops in the Sahara, and to cure all known diseases, and in general to usher mankind into a new era of prosperity and contentment. So let's take a look at the very first two commercial products of this wonderful transgenic technology which the Monsanto Corporation has brought to the marketplace. The first is something called "Roundup-ready" soybeans. These soybeans have been modified so that factory farmers can hose down their soybean fields with hitherto unusable quantities of another Monsanto product, a toxic herbicide called "Roundup," in order to kill off all the weeds. Without the "Roundup-ready" gene, the quantities of the herbicide "Roundup" that are employed would render the field as sterile as a patch in the middle of the Sea of Tranquillity, but the artificial gene makes the customized soybeans immune to this toxin. If you're planning on eating these crops, I hope you too are immune to that "Roundup" herbicide. Not that you'd know, however, because the chemical companies have lobbied our legislators so vendors of this Frankenfood are not required to inform you that that package you plucked off the store shelf contains a product not of nature but of the lab.
If you think that's sinister, contemplate the second commercial application of biotech. It's called "Terminator" . It has precisely one purpose: to render food crops sterile. See, ever since the days of the Sumerian Empire and even before, humans practicing agriculture have saved a certain amount of year X's harvest as seed for year X+1's planting. But Monsanto sells seed to farmers in eighty-plus countries, and, insanely, Monsanto claims that one hundred percent of the genotype of these seeds they sell ("developed," in the main, by nature and evolution across geological eras of time) is all Monsanto's "intellectual property". Well, just like any other greed-crazed industrial megalith, Monsanto is pathologically protective of its "intellectual property" and the profits which flow therefrom.
Suppose I am a farmer in, say, India, and I buy a load of Monsanto-brand seeds and plant a crop. When I harvest my crop, as farmers have done since prehistoric times, I save a portion of the grain for next year's seed crop. Now I don't need to go back to Monsanto and buy more, right? Which God forbid! Why, that would be like allowing a heroin addict to grow his own poppies. Where's the big profit for the drug lords there? The only difference being, of course, one can kick heroin addiction, but who can kick the eating habit?
So to prevent the catastrophe of a Fortune 500 corportation losing any potential profits, the genetic engineers at Monsanto inject a special gene - the "Terminator" gene - into the seeds I bought, so that they are fertile in the first generation but totally infertile in the second.
That's pretty bad in itself, my farm becoming helplessly addicted to purchasing Monsanto's seeds, but it gets worse. You're an adult, you know about the birds and the bees, right? Even plants have sex, dreamy plant-like sex, and sex means they trade their genes back and forth. So when the pollen from "Terminator" treated food crops drifts over the fence into my neighbor's field, his crops can end up infected with the diabolical "Terminator" gene. Now his next year's crop comes up OK at first but suddenly it all drops dead after about eleven weeks. Gee, won't he be happy! Now imagine this effect taking place en masse all across a continent. It would take the psychotic sensibility of PKD's "Null-O" to dispassionately contemplate the vast and unprecedented human catastrophe that would occur if, say, one year a third of the Asian rice crop were accidentally wiped out by the uncontrollable dissemination of this destructive gene.
OK, those are the very first two applications of biotech out of Monsanto. Have I made my point yet? Sure, biotech is full of promise. But biotech is not being employed by civic-minded scientists with benevolent goals. Today biotech is owned and operated by capitalist corporations, despite the fact that the entire scientific foundation upon which it rests, and half of the innovations, are the direct product of research paid for by the taxpayers in general - just like with the Internet, the taxpayer pays for the basic research, then after it becomes commercially viable corporations patent all the good parts and stuff the profits in their pockets. And as everyone knows, everything that capitalism touches it turns to shit.
In theory, biotech may have potential for good results, but so long as it is employed solely to deepen the wealth gap between the investing class and the rest of us, I am convinced that it will only yield evil results.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Don't they teach American history in schools? What was the Boston Tea Party but an act of vanadalism??
McDonald's isn't going door-to-door confiscating guns, nor are they placing people in prison for refusing to pay taxes.
If you refuse to eat McDonald's food, they don't haul you off at gunpoint.
The Boston Tea Party has *NOTHING WHATSOEVER* in common with this French criminal, and to even imply that it does is to belittle the heroic sacrifices of the men who died securing those rights we hold so dearly.
What's curious is that in the rest of your post, you clearly Get It, but you started with something like this without clarifying it.
--
2) from any
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(click here)
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3) Find the name Jon Katz in the list of AUTHORS (try not to wince in discust while reading his name):
X JonKatz place an X here
4) Scroll down to the bottom of the page and find a button that says savehome and click on it.
Your /. experience will now be as informative and interesting as before but without those dreadfully trollish rantings from the tiresome and clueless yonny cats.
___
You know, the real way to protest McDonalds opening in your neighbourhood is - don't eat there.
Yeah. That's worked so well with Amazon.com over their "One-Click Shopping" patent. Ooo! Ooo! I don't use Microsoft software. How much longer until they're gone?
You know, the odd thing is that I already don't eat McDonalds because I don't like the food. I wonder why the ones near me haven't closed yet?
Reality is funny that way.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Did you hear the call my little calfs? The becon for differentiation? Oh slashdot Juniors, do you yern to be different? Then follow Katz and have safety in numbers. Oh yes, he "sparks discussion" very well, but hey, so did Hitler.
In all seriousness though, I'm no fan of these franchises, but who am I, or any individual to dictate to the rest of the world? Does the mere dislike of McDonalds entitle me to destroy it? I think not. America was founded based on sensible laws aimed to achieve the greatest good. They strove to strike a balance between the individual and society at large. Jose's actions are a direct strike against that. We are a nation of laws and process. You may not always like the outcome, but remember that process is far better than the alternative, anarchy. Furthermore, remember that you are just one individual; for every one of you, there may be many others who feel differently.
This is yet another thoughtless thread by Katz. Katz is not some great thought proking journalist. Quite the contrary, he's a shallow inflamatory scribbler from the left. You would get much the same affect if you brought in someone like Rush Limbaugh (sic?) from the right. But that is not the point. Is it? Sure, you get discussion, but you don't promote intelligent discussion that way. I really don't much care to see 1000 flames. Slashdot's management seems to confuse quantity, the volume of discussion, with quality. The problem is that Slashdot's revenues are currently being driven by quantity, they simply don't care.
The only solution is to simply turn Katz off (yes, I know, I'm obviously reading this one, but I typically dont) and let slashdot know why. Perhaps when the slashdot juniors tire of these worthless threads, we may see something better.
John, this was one of your worst articles.
Who is José Bové, and is he admirable?
He is a Frenchman who was born in Bordeaux in 1953, and grew up at Berkeley, as his parents studied Biochem. Back in France, he refused to do his military service and dropped out of Bordeaux University to immerse himself in various leftist political and ecological movements. In 1975 he and his wife decided to move to the country, take up sheep farming and join a local peasant movement (Confédération paysanne), which he terms 'a trade union', though I do not understand in what sense he means this) against a plan to extend an army base in southern France. He was arrested for "invading" the base during a 1976 protest, and he spent three weeks in prison. (The military project was canceled five years later, more due to the economy than nanything else
In 1998, he blew up up a silo (which belonged to the pharmaceutical firm Novartis) because it contained genetically modified corn. Here's Mssr. Bove's own statement about his actions and motives. It appears to have been written in English, or at least be an authorized translation. I haven't found a French original or variant translations.
In 1999, he became a 'national hero' (according to his supporters -- he's certainly a cult figure) for damaging an unfinished McDonalds with a bulldozer, and later organizing a massive giveaway of Roquefort cheese to protest US import restrictions. He also is known for staging 'illegal' free Roquefort and French bread picnics in front to McDonald's during the WTO protests in Seattle. Distributing the cheese was 'illegal' because it was unpasteurized. Time magazine did a piece on him
But he's not in jail for the bulldozer attack. he spent 20 days in jail for that in 1999. He calls that the greatest favor the judge could have done, due to the publicity it gave him.
On Wednesday, April 19, 2000, an attack on a McDonald's resulted in the death of a '28 year-old waitress'. Jose Bove is believed to have ordered this attack. He has always proclaimmed his movement (Confédération paysanne) to be nonviolent, but admits that violent means have been used, and often refers to the groups actions as 'combat' (same in French as English) I found a French account of the attack that you can babelfish, if necessary
I also found an 12/99 interview where he outlines his current views. He is not an ultra-liberal (in fact he denounced ultraliberalism as 'suicidal'), his personal views are a patchwork of conflicting insistence on individualism and collectivism, (which becomes harder for me to render coherently, the more I read) Politically, he opposes 'internationalization' and insists that 'each nation has a right to choose what it wants to eat' (he supports French Bans on US food, while protesting US bans on French foods)
I leave an analysis of his ideology to others -- anyone but Katz.
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
You are an incredible doofus.
By your definition, if I took issue with your post and destroyed your entire home while you were vacationing at the Cannes, that would constitute a "noble act" since I didn't "directly hurt you."
A violation of property rights is an act of violence and is almost never morally acceptable. Perhaps you'll learn that in Philosophy 102.
Jose figured McDonalds would be a good target to take out his frustrations on America. Since, of course, the locally-owned franchise is the epitomy of evil.
--
Heck yeah! Goat cheese rocks. I somehow cultivated a taste for the stuff when I lived in Chile, and now that I am back in the states you just can't get quality goat cheese.
Seriously, you should try it.
I visit the states regularly on business, and I have seen what unconstrained capitalism can do.
Tariffs are constraints on capitalism. Tariffs are bad (as you and Jose seem to agree). Please don't confuse corporatism with capitalism. Corporatism is the belief that your corporation's agenda is more important than any other objective. Capitalism is the belief that free market economics (elimination of tariffs and other trade barriers, unrestrained competition, free flow of information, etc.) will result in the rapidest financial benefit for all, including labor and management, foreign and domestic.
The worst aspects of America's economy are the result of corporatism (tariffs, patents, auto insurance, health care, Microsoft, etc.). The best aspects are the result of free market capitalism (high standard of living, opportunity to try a startup, ubiquitous Internet access, etc.). I agree that America has problems, but capitalism is not at fault.
Regarding the stricter restrictions on food processing, I wish to avoid salmonella and mad cow disease, and am in favor.
Bob (rbb36)
I find it difficult to understand how someone can justify a violent reponse to the appearance of a McDonald's restaurant. Especially when there are many, effective, non-violent approaches.
M. Bove could have chosen to organize a protest, perhaps blocking the site entrance with a legal protest. These things take a large number of people to organize and thus can be taken as a representative view of local opinion (in lieu of other, established democratic forms).
He could have organized to block food shipments after the fact or to inform patrons as they approached the completed McD's or to undertake any number of other, legal and non-violent approaches. But they wouldn't have been such a good vehicle for rallying forces...
Violence might be justified if there is an imminent threat and it is certainly a good choice of response to prior violence. That hardly seems to be the case here. McDonald's hasn't chosen to wear red coats and to march in with rifles and bayonets to enforce the eating of greasy, over-processed foods laden with hormones. If the majority of M. Bove's countrymen choose to follow the American hegemonization process, then why shouldn't M. Bove respect their choice.
What right allows any individual to force their own point of view of their community?
Stephen
P.S. I wonder how Jon Katz would feel if someone trashed his computers because they felt that his writing was a threat to their interpretation of what topics should be consumed by other readers?
From this perspective, McDonalds is an abomination, serving up homogenized, tasteless garbage just for the sake of a fast meal. Until now, its been something to sneer at from afar, but now that its right in the town, its triggered a major backlash.
I can empathize with this - I grew up in the Baltimore area, well known, at least it used to be, for its distinctive seafood cuisine. Ive been away for >25 years now, and each time I go back to visit, there's less and less places that can make really good crab dishes, and the area looks more and more like every other area - roads covered with burger kings, dennys, wendys, uno pizza's etc. What I find objectionable is the "homogenization" of the local cultures in the US, and I suspect thats what bothers many of the followers of Bove.
--
Maybe so, but in that case I don't think it is worth celebrating. Enforcing your own preferences with violence on other people does not seem like a good thing.
I don't like McDonalds food, so I don't eat there. I don't see how this give me the right to deny others the choice of eating at McDonald.
I also don't like the ridiculously small portions served at most of the higher class restourants here in Denmark, most of which subscribe to the French "Nouvelle Cousine" (the food is fine, there is just too little of it). Does this give me the right to vandalize all the French resteaurants in Denmark?
Maybe traditional Danish cousine should be the only option in Denmark. That would be fried pork, potatoes, and vegetables from which all taste have been boiled out.
And in international news, the McDonalds Air Force launched a counter attack against Cheese Farmers accross all of france today.
The UN is reported to have conveined an emergency meeting as to what to do with these dictators. Rumors of a counterattack have abounded, and it is thought that NATO will become involved possibly in force by tommorow..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Hi Marc!
Ronald McDonald House is not a children's hospital, and the RMHs don't provide services, per se, to seriously ill children. What they do is provide a place for the families of those children to stay nearby, so the family unit can stay intact.
The original RMH is in Philadelphia, near to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. CHOP serves patients from a wide area--I live about 100 miles from CHOP and know several families that are at CHOP routinely. If you have a child with pervasive disabilities, or that requires continuing treatments, commuting back and forth to Philadelphia can become an enormous task. Wealthier parents might stay in a local hotel, but it was all too common for parents to stop coming--leaving the child alone for days or weeks at a time.
Doctors have known for years that children do better in the hospital when Mom or Dad and/or siblings are around. CHOP doctors (including the chief surgeon, C. Everett Koop) also realized that kids weren't eating their prescribed meals--what they really wanted was junk food. They struck an interesting bargain with the McDonald's franchisers in the Philadelphia area.
McDonald's contributed big bucks for the renovation of Children's Hospital, including the construction of a new lobby. McDonald's built a restaurant *in* the lobby, so ambulatory patients could come down to the restaurant with their parents. In addition, children can have McDonald's meals in their rooms, in place of regular hospital food.
On top of that, the local franchisers bought a nearby rowhouse and rehabbed it as a place for parents and families to stay while a child was at CHOP...which they named Ronald McDonald House.
I agree with you wholeheartedly--Ronald McDonald House is a wonderful institution. I just wanted to mention that RMH is always associated with (and typically adjacent to) a children's hospital--RMH is for the patient's parents.
Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists. Eleven were merchants, nine were farmers and large plantation owners; men of means, well educated. But they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty would be death if they were captured.
Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and properties to pay his debts, and died in rags.
Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British that he was forced to move his family almost constantly. He served in the Congress without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His possessions were taken from him, and poverty was his reward.
Vandals or soldiers looted the properties of Dillery, Hall, Clymer, Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton.
At the battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson Jr, noted that the British General Cornwallis had taken over the Nelson home for his headquarters. He quietly urged General George Washington to open fire. The home was destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt.
Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed. The enemy jailed his wife, and she died within a few months.
John Hart was driven from his wife's bedside as she was dying. Their 13 children fled for their lives. His fields and his gristmill were laid to waste. For more than a year he lived in forests and caves, returning home to find his wife dead and his children vanished. A few weeks later he died from exhaustion and a broken heart.
Norris and Livingston suffered similar fates.
Such were the stories and sacrifices of the American Revolution. These were not wild-eyed, rabble-rousing ruffians. They were soft-spoken men of means and education. They had security, but they valued liberty more.
Standing tall, straight, and unwavering, they pledged: "For the support of this declaration, with firm reliance on the protection of the divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."
They gave you and me a free and independent America. The history books never told you a lot about what happened in the Revolutionary War. We didn't fight just the British. We were British subjects at that time and we fought our own government!
Some of us take these liberties so much for granted, but we shouldn't.
So, take a few minutes while enjoying your 4th of July holiday and silently thank these patriots. It's not much to ask for the price they paid. Remember: freedom is never free!
--------
Oscarfish.com: tropical fish with attitude. Way t
It was a pretty big PR shot-in-foot for McDs.
Yea, I remember, it was just like Elian. NBC/CBS/CNN had 24-hour news coverage, choppers, the whole nine yards. Oh wait, those were McDonald's commercials
Is it any wonder why the "look at this idiot for a month" media has taken over?
--
+&x
No, actually no one would ever learn that in a contemporary philosophy class. They'd learn exactly the sort of incredibly inane and shortsighted crap that Jon Katz spews forth. Property rights? Corporate myth, the attempt to subvert individualism with facist control structures. Individual rights? Individuals have the right to have every whim satisfied, and it is the responsibility of anyone producing anything to satisfy those whims, as a duty. You are nothing, the Consumer is All. A more detailed analysis might compare Jon Katz's views of "The Corporate Republic" to a Nazi diatribe.. but at least the Nazis didn't hide behind the rhetoric of individualism.
One man's religion is another man's belly-laugh. - LL
Karma: Excellent, but still won't get you laid.
God in Heaven, are you ever wrong about that. The class war in the U.S.A. is alive and well. It's just that only one side is fighting, the other side, my side, is mostly standing around, numbly, dumbly staring mouth agape at the TV, taking the blows and not fighting back. That's what's wrong with this country, why we've gone down the tubes so bad these last couple of decades. The family at the median point of incomes in the U.S.A. works something like fifteen weeks more per year than in 1975 for the same amount of goods, meanwhile the top one percent of incomes has doubled their share of the national wealth, but you never noticed at all. It's because suckers like you refuse to pay any attention, that our enemies in the ongoing class war have made the devastating inroads that they have.
Why don't you tune in to the economic news in your daily newspaper? The Fed has been raising the prime rate for years now with the naked intent of running the unemployment rate up to what is to them a more comfortable figure. Sooner or later the recession they are so assiduously engineering is going to kick in, and then the shit's really going to hit the fan. Who will you blame then, "welfare queens"?
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
You know, the real way to protest McDonalds opening in your neighbourhood is - don't eat there.
You don't eat there, they close up shop and go home. You eat there, Micky D's makes some money, and opens up another franchise down the street.
Capitalism is funny that way.
Clinton is no liberal, not at least by the modern definition. The original definition was "a laissez-faire guy," someone who wants to hand the entire nation to capitalists on a silver platter. Maybe he qualifies for that.
AFDC, NAFTA, MAI, the "War on Drugs". That the original poster described Clinton as a liberal just proves that he believes what he is told by lying morons such as Limbaugh, to the exclusion of the evidence of his own two eyes.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
With regard to the issue about small farmers and other people being squeezed out of their 'way of life' - perhaps it is important to take a broad look at the way society is changing across the board. Are the children of these people taking on new-age roles and jobs, and living in the future ? If so, then it is inevitable that life in the new world will not include 'small farmers' as anything other than a lifestyle choice, rather than an economically sustainable way to live. The same thing happened to 'blacksmiths' and 'wood turners' as the world ebbed into industrialisation -- such is life, and such is progress!
-- Matthew - matthew.gream@pobox.com, http://matthewgream.net
it has not been long since French farmers stopped lorries carrying lamb entering France from the UK and burnt the (already slaughtered) contents.
French farmers do from time to time stop lorries (cheaper and earlier) vegetables from Spain and drop the load onto the road. The French police does look interestedly and nothing else. Years later, the French government pay something to the Spaniards.
But now the Spaniards have learnt, and Southern Spanish farmers stop lorries from Morocco carrying (cheaper and earlier) vegetables, and drop the load onto the road. These farmers will complain later about the massive immigration of unemployed Moroccan wetbacks. The immigrants come to work under the Spanish farmers, but they want them with papers.
On a related note, Portuguese fishermen dropped Spanish fish that was brought to profit of the obscene prices of fish during the St. John's (06-24) Day.
Meanwhile, the whole agricultural (tobacco included!) and fish production of Europe is subsidized by the EU.
__
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
It's about regionalal support and community. One thing multinationals do is exist outside the bounds of any particular nation. THey leech off a community; a McDonalds, aside from the minimum-wage jobs it provides for flipping burgers, does not add to it's local community as a business. Sure.. they pretend to spend money on other community things, but it's not the same thing.
A restaurant using food grown locally enriches the community and strengthens it. A restaurant using food imported from outside the community when the same goods are available locally will simply erode the locals ability to maintain a living growing food locally (which is *IMPORTANT* to any community.. or at least, it should be.
Remember, their beef (no pun intended) was with being ruled without representation by some braindead aristocratic loser thousands of miles away. The twit Brits believed that just because his father was King so should his son be king. How insane is that? What qualifications does he have? That's not a way to rule a country. You need democratically elected representatives to voice the opinion of the majority of the nation!
Thats exactly what the artical is saying! France has the right to live out of the rule of the corporate america. And take a look at American "democracy" these days. America is one of the oldest democracies thats still around and this is something to be pround of. But its age shows. We americans live under a plutocracy, where third parties can not have a voice. Other newer democracies are not like this! Why is it that we are the richest nation in the world but second only to Mexico in poverty in industrialized nations?
And now organizations like the WTO take American sovernity. Check out this link from a conservative legistlator complaining about the WTO for those reasons.
And it is rather funny to see this these things unfold. Isn't america the land of majority rule and minority right? And the mojority want their McDonalds and their C+M and their cheap clothes and planned obscelence. And then Along come some intellectuals. Who think _they_ know what the people really want, and what is best for the "people." I'm sorry to say, but McDonalds is moving there because people buy it, like it, eat it, and by the vote of their Dollar's (or franc's) elect to have a McDonalds. Now, I do not like this, but hey, i don't like mondays, and cant do much about that anyway. People against things such as ramapnt corparatism are the minority, people who back up their words with action are the minority. The happy fat masses will always rule, because THEY are the majority. We cannot change that, and can only try and teach those willing to learn, and protect the corner of reality (where we have staked out our minority rights) from encrochment.
What? - Einstein
From [Redacted] Tue Jul 4 09:45:43 2000
:)\n"
Date: Tue, 4 Jul 2000 09:44:52 -0700 (MST)
From: [Redacted]
To: jonkatz@slashdot.org
Subject: Article for 07/04/00
This is William Sutton ([Redacted]) who has contacted you in the past about this or that. Most of the time when you post an editorial I agree with it, and I even stand up for you on #slashdot when the anti-Katz sentiment sweeps the channel.
I'm not sure that I can agree with this one though. It would be nice to see some hard facts backing up just WHY Jose is a prototypical champion of American Values. From the sounds of things, he is really a prototypical champion of French Values. Consider:
- A majority of the posts point out that Jose hardly has reasons to be disinterested, and these are financial reasons. Jose (they point out) was responding to a threat to his wallet rather than a threat to his freedom or life (e.g., quartering troops). The "taxation without representation" arguement doesn't wash here either, because it's a US tax, not a French tax. Thus, Jose is subject to American import duties, but is not a US citizen (unlike the colonists here in the 1700's who were mostly English citizens and who claimed that they were not represented).
- American values have never supported wanton destruction against foreign property as a way to achieve something, and with the rare exception of the "Boston Tea Party," against domestic property.
- The French have a long history of lower and middle class violence against anything perceived as a financial threat. This extends to the revolts against the crown during the time of Henry V and the French kings who preceded him. It is an established pattern that when the French citizenry feels itself unjustly taxed or treated that it spreads over the countryside looting and pillaging, opening prisons (remember the Bastille?), and generally creating anarchy. This violence typically starts with the lower class and is manipulated by the middle and upper-middle classes (see Tuchman's _A_Distant_Mirror_ for examples). Jose is in the perfect position as an upper-middle class labor leader to tap into popular sentiment and control things to his ends. (Lower and middle class people don't regularly jet between France and the US, so Jose is a man of some means. And since he is a farmer, he's definitely not in the upper class.)
- The French helped us in the 1700's, not, as some would ascribe, to a desire to promote freedom, but because it made trouble for their bitter enemies, the English. Note how often the French and the Scots (and later the Americans) colluded to bring the English grief? Notice that the English, for the same reason, used the people of Brittainy and Flanders against the French? It wasn't disinterested, and it wasn't for the well-being of the people being used.
American corporatism may or not be evil (you descrbe it as "spreading like measels"), and Jose may or may not be an activist, but one thing is apparent: Jose is definitely *NOT* an American hero, and it may even be questioned whether or not he is a French hero. As far as I can tell Jose is simply a French criminal with little self-control and less sense about appropriate measures for redress and grievance. He would have accomplished more by taking his claims to the French government or by making an emotional appeal on American TV than by his ill-considered actions against McDonalds.
William Sutton
if ($user =~ m/shaldannon/i) {
print "\n-- $user
}
What is your Slash Rating?
Honestly, people, do I have to surround my messages with <sarcasm></sarcasm> tags? I mean, "Ooo! Ooo!" isn't normally part of an evenly measured argument.
Everyone seems to be responding to me with exactly my point. No, you and I protesting McDonalds by not eating there does not shut them down. It only looses them 2 customers. In the mean time, there are millions more. The whole idea that people can control the actions of corporations by single-handedly not purchasing from them is ridiculous. That's why corporations are so dangerous. Without someone bigger bullying them around (i.e. the government), they have almost no accountability for their actions.
...and no, I don't think McDonalds should be closed because I don't like their food. I'm just pointing out that me not buying food from them hasn't hurt them badly. While there's nothing formal in the way of a boycott or protest in my actions, they are no different to McDonalds, Inc. than that of some guy who doesn't visit them because they're upset about some issue.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Perhaps I'm missing something, but isn't the American dream something like anyone can build a multinational out of old shoelaces in America. Aren't corporations like McDonalds, Microsoft, and AOL-Time-Warner the peak of that dream?
How then can a French man lashing out against "an international symbol for the globalization, mass-marketing and homogenization that U.S.-bred corporatism is spreading like the measles." be considered an American patriot? He stands against everything the American dream stands for.
Maybe you have to be an American to really understand?
France banned hormone-injected American beef that was not labelled. Instead of labelling our meat properly, our government childishly responded by adding a 100% tax on Roquefort cheese and other French delicacies.
Yes, he broke the law when he vandalized a McDonalds. However there is one very American thing most of you forgot about: Civil Disobedience - breaking the law as a form of protest. It is indeed a valid, time honored way to get your point across, and as long as you aren't directly hurting anyone and are willing to pay the consenquences, is a noble act.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
i did some camping in Milau, it's a great place, warm weather, very neat, and me too i don't want to see a mcdo there! when mcdo will open a "restaurant" on the artic continent? or on the moon?
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BeDevId 15453 - Download BeOS R5 Lite free!
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
From this perspective, McDonalds is an abomination, serving up homogenized, tasteless garbage just for the sake of a fast meal.
...then serve me a great tasting, delicate, non-garbage fast meal. The key is not the taste. It is the speed. Oh, and some people actually like to go from place to place and find the same food. It is comfortable. By definition people like comfort. While there are better burgers, there are many more that totally suck. McDonalds basically provides a guarantee of consistency and speed. And Happy Meal trinkets.
John S. Rhodes
WebWord.com -- Usability Vortal
How to Download YouTube Videos
I wonder if, because one finds Slashdot to be morally and economically reprehensible, Katz and the editors who allow him to post his fascist drivel would have no problem if that person were to lay a DoS attack on the site.
See Jose, they are nice, hard-working people, not some big bad scary multinational corp, McDonalds is your friend, I'd advise you to have one of their great MBX sandwiches today! We all know that since McDonalds is the most popular restaurant in the world, that they make the best food too.
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
Wow. "Informative" and [fact]???
Last time I checked this terrorist act was attributed to "independantistes bretons" and has nothing to do with Jose Bove. Also his McDonalds destruction was made in a near public way, nothing to do with secretive terrorists.
I do not endorse the destruction of the McDonald (who does?), but casting a "terrorist" adjective on Jose Bove is pure FUD here.
Usually french farmers put tons of tomatoes, fruits or bad smelling stuff in front of public buildings when there're not happy anyway ;-).
The "right" to prevent other people from choosing their own paths, even if they don't coincide with ours.
The "right" to wrap the whole thing in a sanctimonious cloak that excuses everything.
Katz, once again, has chosen a real winner. There's a reason I don't listen to him anymore.
Honorary Member of Jackie Chan's Kung Fu Process Servers
Mr. Katz, if you aren't too busy singing the praises of Jose Bove, you might take a minute to remember Ms. Laurence Turbec, a McDonald's employee in Quevert, France, who was killed by a bomb placed outside the McDonald's restaurant where she worked. Was she an "acceptable loss" in the battle against corporatism and Le Big Mac?
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Ahem.
Jose, can you see
By the dawn's early light....
-JD
Micky D's is considered the first wave of the invading corporate US culture, and it's seen as the first step in homoganizing European culture, all in the name of the lowest common (financial) denominator.
The French are quite passonate about their culture. Frankly I suspect they would rather allow some of their people to starve or live in poverty than lose their culture. This is not a bad thing per se; just a different value system than the one we have in the United States.
See, in the United States, the problem is not "multi-nationals" or the "corporate culture" as Katz keeps pounding out as some sort of repetitve chant. The problem is that in our ingenuity and our drive to make money, we try to cater to the lowest common denominator of the masses without regards to regional or parochial concerns. After 50 years of studying just in time distribution models and studies in retail competition, we've succeeded in creating more goods for more people at a cheaper price point than at any time in history. Now, even the poorest in the United States can afford a color television, mass-produced jewelry, mass-produced art and many other trappings which used to be reserved for the middle class. We've also reached a state of affairs where you cannot tell if you've walked into a shopping mall in Atlanta or in Los Angeles--because they're the same stores and the same layout with the same color scheme.
The French abhor this bland uniformity. To them, this sort of uniformity in the name of catering to the lowest common denominator is a form of walking death.
And so they protest. And they protest the signs of this bland uniformity, a MacDonalds which strives for such conformity that you couldn't tell a quarter pounder made in a MacDonalds in Japan from one made in Kentucky.
I'm sure there are other issues which drove Jose specifically to be pissed at the United States. The world seems full of people who hate the US with a passion for one reason or another, some of it perceived, some of it real. Knowing though that MacDonalds represents everything the French abhor about the United States, at least you can understand why he attacked one.
This is just unbelievable. A few months ago JonKatz was complaining that chat rooms and online discussion forums are too hostile and here he is celebrating a man whose form of protest is to destroy the property of those he disagrees with.
I wonder if Katz will feel the same way when they come to smash his home.
As though we don't have any third choice besides a.) giving up industrialization altogether and moving back into the caves, or b.) turning the entire planet into one big plantation where the massas in the big white houses with the columns out front are fictional "persons" called corporations, and the rest of us get the choice only between being a house n*gger or a field n*gger.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
These hackers are just thiefs trying to steal videos so the movie makes can't make money. Do you know of any pirated movie movie on the internet? Ummm....They just want to break the law.
This CPHack program is to let kids see porn! But are the sites bocked so, they can't can't get to it and it's easily bypassable already? Umm...They are trying to corrupt our children.
These crackpots are telling lies about us!!! What statements are untrue? Ummmm...they are making inflamatory statements causing us losses! What losses are you having? Ummm...the statements are untrue.
Fight Spammers!
They roam wild in many parts of France and can be hunted (la chasse aux fromages) or caught in traps baited with crusty white bread. Intensively farmed cheeses are cheaper but lack the flavour and health-giving properties of the wild cheese.
Socialism is the political expression of the principle of human interdependence. It embodies the idea that as members of the human-race, we are all essentially responsible for one another: we have an obligation of mutual support and share a reciprocal bond which binds us together for our collective protection and maintenance. On a theory level it is a beautiful thing: Altruism and love for the fellow man. In practice it is the difficult to digest political economy. I only state this as an American. Socialism has a greater appeal to the masses in the third world. That does not mean it cannot be applied here. Expressed in a religious sense, it embodies the proposition that in order to fulfill one's obligation to the Creator (Divine Source, God or Nature) one must necessarily fulfill the commandment to serve one's fellow creatures. It also embodies the principle that the physical possessions which are bestowed, albeit temporarily, upon mankind are for the benefit of everyone, not being confined to the exclusive use of a privileged section of society. Thus we are to work together as stewards of this great gift we call Earth. It was R. Buckminster Fuller that once stated: 'land ownership is a relic of the feudal monarchy'. Bucky was right on target with social theory, and had been inspired to create in that arena.
Socialism has been discredited as a workable political philosophy, and is considered by some to be no longer fashionable. This is the prevalent view of most political commentators and is certainly the opinion of those affluent individuals who occupy the driving seats of the various governments which are running the world at the present time. Unfortunately for the capitalist, socialism has a tendency to stick around. The reason for this is the fact that socialism is the expression of a basic principle of humanity: the fundamental and undeniable equality of the mass of mankind. In spite of the disapproval, there are, and always will be, a minority of thinking people who comprehend the essential validity of the idea: "....all men are created equal." This quotation, no doubt, rings a bell somewhere within the faint and subconscious recollection of those who dwell in the, "Land of the Free!". If men are, fundamentally, equal, then they are entitled, as of right, to an equal share of the good things of life. Capitalism will not submit: profits must be made, otherwise we go under. The richest rewards are in armaments: therefore, they will be produced and men will kill themselves much more efficiently that ever before. Politicians in the USA and elsewhere, are the product of a militarist/capitalist system: they have been educated within that philosophy and can see no other solution to the economic problems facing mankind.
In the past, we have allowed self-interested, opportunistic politicians to trick us into thinking that they were interested in the public at large. Now is the time for working-class people, of all nations, to begin to think for ourselves and not merely to leave that to others, whom we have thought were cleverer than we ourselves. Now, more than ever before, is there a need for workers to unite against the enemy within. These are those puppets of International Capitalism who have been so busy undermining and destroying the essential rights and privileges of working-class people everywhere. We are still in the majority: we have the vote: we should, indeed, unite and elect representatives who will honestly and dutifully fulfill the mandate of the people. Those who profess to work for the people under the banner of a "Labor" Party will need to return to the traditional socialist policies of a Working-Class political party. The only alternative is the formation of new parties, dedicated to the establishment of socialist principles.
pronoblem
Throwing somebody else's perfectly good tea in the harbor was vandalism too. Do you think the fireworks are a coincidence? The founding fathers took King George's property. Religion aside, our founding fathers have alot in common with what the media calls "muslim terrorists".
Here in Cleveland the RMH is a wonderful hospital for children (part of the University Hospital Systems). RMH provides amazing care for children who otherwise would have to spend most of their lives in sterile hospital beds next to 90 year old heart patients. They also provide entertainment, recreation, and rehabilitation. Now granted it is not free or anything, but many of the facilities there would not exist without the McDonald's corporation. Sure they are big business and we are supposed to hate them, but at least here, they are doing the Right Thing(tm).
Rev.Marc.
I've lived up and down the US East Coast, and what you're missing in Baltimore is missing all over the place here. I'm in Boston, now, where you can still find some good food, but you have to look.
The worst part is, the McDs costs the same as the local sub shops, but people still eat at McDs! Seems to me someone should mention to the French they're not the only ones suffering...
-jpowers
-jpowers
He also embodies what used to be considered American values.
What, using violence as a means to get what you want without concern for the consequences or ethics? If that's what you mean Jon, then I fully agree that he's a role model for the history and "values" of the US, a nation which started a bloody revolution over taxes.
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Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
To the French, culture is all important. I suspect they would rather starve than allow anything to destroy a distinctively French culture.
They see Micky D's as more than just an abomination of the local cuisine. They see McDonalds as the first wave of an american cultural invasion which caters to the lowest common denominator and rolls like a bulldozer over parochial cultural concerns.
They look to the United States and see that, since about the 1990's, you cannot tell the difference between a shopping mall in Long Beach and a shopping mall in Atlanta. Of course in the United States, we strove for this sort of bland conformity in order to make it cheaper and easier to manufacture goods and services to a larger audience. And nothing better exemplifies this sort of bland conformity than McDonalds, where you couldn't tell the difference between a hamburger made in Japan from one made in Baltimore.
To the French, this sort of comformity is a form of walking death.
The French protest McDonalds because they fear a world where walking into a shopping district in Moscow is no different than walking through the French quarter in New Orlenes, where the Lobster and butter is a standardized bland flavor throughout the world, and where we all wear clothes from the Gap.
And to a certain degree I can't say that I blame them. While I appreciate a corporate culture which is attempting to cater to as many people as possible, it bothers me greatly that there is no place to go to find something different. I can drive for almost two hundred miles (I'm in Los Angeles) before I find anything that isn't the same damn shopping mall/fast food/tourist crap/mass produced electronics/mass produced art stuff. Hell, I bet in 10 more years, downtown Tiajuana looks like downtown San Francisco and downtown Honolulu....
Unfortunately, after reading the "editorial" twice, I still can't figure out what specifically MacDonalds or the US, did to poor Jose. What would posess him to attack a unfinished restaraunt? And if it's just because you don't like taxes, or multi-national conglomerates, thats too bad. Taxes are a fact of life, as are conglomerates. Corporations aren't gaining anything by duties paid on items imported. And more countries than the United States have them.
Jon, I DID read this article, TWICE, and I still can't figure out why I should feel bad for this person. I don't agree with his actions. Now if I knew why he did what he did, I might feel differently. Your writing style assumes that I either know exactly what or who you are talking about, or just agree blindly in your hatred of corporate america (or just america for that matter).
Jarod
I agree with one thing - it seems kind of pointless to take a trip to a country you've never been to and eat of all things McDonalds (whose quality sucks compared to even most chains here in the USA).
However, it is their choice. For someone to vandalize a McDonalds establishment, they are saying that they should be able to judge food quality on the behalf of those tourists. That is wrong.
If their food is so much better, and they can market it, they won't have to deal with it. It's up to the local food providers to reverse the American need for familiar food, not the American's requirement to be forced to apply their hunger needs equally.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Of course, if they engage in predatory behavior, they will lose the right to sell Roquefort in the US. Pretty nifty, huh.
Predatory behaviors, like refusing to ingurgitate cancer inducing artificial hormon-grown beef? Yeah, we should really feel bad about that.
American beef can enter the country ... as long as it's grown (and provably so) without added hormons, just like European beef ... how is that unfair?
A person is just about as big as the things that make them angry.
other than that..
"Corporate Republic" WTF??? "Yahoo Serious"?? These words don't really make sense together...Such a thing doesn't exist.
Republic = "a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law"
A "corporate republic" would be one in which the representatives are elected by corporations and not people (although corporations are often considered people, so that's how you jump over the line). This is very much the type of government that is growing in the world. This is why the media (The fourth estate,the public press)....
hrmmmm, since I got a minute...
....is so important. Now, if you move into the corporate republic example, you see that, yup most mass media supports the "public" (read corporate) interest. Often this is because they are or at least part of, the corporations in question. A bit of a media rant, but that's where a lot of the corporate republic get's it's basis, and where it is most evident.
Most of it does lead to conspiracy theory, and when you talk (conspiracy theory+government/industry)*$$$ you get lots of hits and comments.
He is comparing Capitalism to the Measles in the fourth paragraph!! How many people died from the measles worldwide! Measles is a horrifying desease... This type of emotion-evoking yet utterly meaningless comparison has no place in a technology journal.
"Technology journal"??!?!?! You need to set your threshhold to -1 and read some trolls for a while. If anything,
To top things off with a cherry, he includes hackers and programmers in with his list of "threatened" individualists.
"What in this country isn't for sale?" Certainly Katz's own book would be included in the "for sale" category?
Rights and markets are what's for sale. The reason hackers and programmers are involved is both because of Katz, and because they share the plight of having their territory overrun by corporations and the laws they require to function. Virtual farmers seeing tremendous roadblacks to the viability of independant business being erected at a scary pace. The right to figure out how something works, or god forbid, fix it. Those are the rights that are being "sold" (or bought, if you prefer) That's the link.
Anyway, just a bit of Independance Day rant. Time to barbecue and start forest fires. (note: this is a joke about the fact that where I live, it is both hot, dry, wooded, and the day of the year when fireworks are real popular. And we had a fire about two weeks ago that nearly burned down a few friends' houses. Happy 4th!!!)
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+&x
If you expect people to respect your property rights, you have to respect the property rights of others. If he doesn't like McDonald's, he should educated others as to why they should not patronize their restaurants. He has no right to simply destroy their property.
This might be the all-time worst trollish JonKatz post.
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Or thanks to the wonders of corruption, lobbying and other palm greasings: Shouldn't we rather speak about a mongol horde under the command of a mugger?
Say no to software patents.
cheese geek - it's got a kind of ring to it, don't you think? Better update the Katz Filter...
Can your IM do this?
Maybe people in the US don't hear about things which happen in Europe, but the French are notorious for vandalism. They regularly block lorries coming from the UK, often burning or spoiling the contents of the lorries, usually produce from Britain. The French police usually sit by and do nothing about this blatant disregard for the law.
So, what are we supposed to do here? Applaud someone who seems to believe that wanton destruction of a companies' assets is going to make one bit of a difference to the US government's trade practices?
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A couple questions.
Even though he isn't an American citizen, he's got a pretty good grip on what used to be considered American values, and is thus an Independence Day icon for the increasingly-resented United States, the Corporate Republic's world headquarters.
I'm missing something. Jose Bove fights against a multinational corporation - for which I applaud him - and is thus ascribed "American values"? What are these values (whether or not they still exist)? Why do they have to be "American"? The men in 1776 didn't have a problem with trade, they had a problem with taxes (and the stirrings of abolitionism). I fail to see any valid connection.
Corporatism['s]...primary target is individualism, its primary enemy individualists --which means hackers, programming entrpeneurs, renegade teachers, small businessmen and farmers like Bove, odd-ball filmmakers.
So these now-past American values include individualism? I don't think so. If by individualists you mean non-conformists, then maybe yes. However, most of the people you list there and as Bove's supporters are working from within a collective and cooperative framework, the most familiar example being the OS development community.
Jon, I see where you're going with this, and I think that with more thought it might have been quite a strong point. I think your praise of people like Bove and the comparison you draw between such activists and hackers et al. is an interesting one. But why the hell did you have to drag in the good ole U.S.ofA. and the tired crap about freedom? (Freedom in this version seems to have been invented by those guys in Philly...) It's a glaringly weak point in an otherwise potentially interesting piece -- it introduces thoughtless jingoism. Combine that with the confusion over individualism (which edges dangerously close to the libertoons) and nonconformity/cooperative work, and the piece ends up rather mushy and obscurely irritating, rather than thought-provoking. Save me from rhetoric I could hear in any elementary school around Memorial Day.
A thoughtful comparison between the WTO protesters and hackers into open source would be more than welcome on this screen, however. Maybe I'll try...
--
this is not my beautiful wife. TH
"Perhaps Bove will sail over here when AOL/Time-Warner opens its first franchise office in the United States and give us all an example to live by."
So you're advocating violence as an answer to corporatism. Personally I'd rather follow Gandi's lead. How about symbolically binning all those free AOL CD's outside the franchise? I think you could make quite a large pile.
Sig pending!
As someone else already pointed out, the attack that resulted in a death was not attributed to him.
Also, France doesn't boycott US meat, it boycotts unlabeled hormone-containing meat. The US knows clearly that meat from animals raised hormone-laced food or genetically altered produce don't go down well with consumers, so against the interest of openness they press the rest of the world to accept these foods unlabeled.
In retaliation for the fact that France doesn't exclude the US from compliance with food laws, the US puts a 100% tariff on several typical French food items that threaten the existence of small producers (probably hoping that these producers will lobby the government to allow unsafe food from the US to enter)
If Europe doesn't import a lot of food from third-world countries because it doesn't live up to the host of regulations about food, then why should we import unsafe (because unlabeled, anti-choice) food from the worlds richest nation?
EJB
You've got it backwards. First came some intellectuals in the corporate/government complex, who decided that the majority should want planned obsolesence and the other halmarks of conspicuous consumption, and programed the culture (via the media and the educational system) accordingly. There have been various counter-movements since, led by other groups of intellectuals who have been resistant to the programming.
That's the big flaw in market worship - the idea that what the majority wants must be best, or at least has some relationship to fulfilling people's genuine wants and needs. The majority wants what they're told to want.
Truer words never spoken.
I need only point the /. crowd at M$ FUD for proof. People most frequently take the easiest path. It's easier to use the browser that came with your system than to take the trouble to download something else. There's also a lot of inertia.
It's like the frog in pot of water, as long as you turn the heat up slowly, he happily cooks to death because he didn't notice what was happening to him.
As long as our rights are removed slowly, insidiously, we never notice. And if the corporations can squelch the dissenters (without too much publicity) we never notice.
Whether one is a terrorist or a freedom fighter depends on which side the observer aligns him or herself. Sure, trashing a McDonalds is an act of vandalism, but it raises awareness. Education is the key, but sometimes education requires shocking action to make people aware of the lesson.
Individualism is a Good Thing (tm). I don't agree that crimes like the murders that the Unabomber committed to bring attention to the Creeping Corparatism are appropriate, but confining oneself to property damamge for publicity may be a necessary thing. (Also see the WIPO Seattle protesters.) If Mr. Bove was involved in the death of the girl at the McDonalds resulting from the bombing, then he has crossed the line.
Also, I'm not sure that McDonalds is the right target ultimately, but it was the target that was representative for his environment/community.
Our freedoms are precious. They have been won by many who were willing to take a stand and risk themselves personally. It's sad to see those freedoms leaching away slowly to Corporate interests. Only by raising these issues, loudly and in as much a public way as we can, is there any chance of keeping those freedoms.
Unfortunately, the legal system is not longer a tool of justice and is instead of tool of the moneyed interests, so we can't count on that to protect us. This battle can only be won in the public forum, with education and activism. People are not moved to change unless something incites them. The doublespeak of 1984 has truly come to pass. People accept what they're told and remain fat, dumb and happy. But it's a happiness born of complancency, not of real peace and joy.
You can not attempt to escape a trap unless you know that you're in it.
Russ
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
Nick
-- "It's a sad day for American capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over Central Park" - Jim Moran
I know a place, where there used to be a café, you could also eat some cheap food there, and that was convenient because there were no other place like it around. Then McDo bought it. Q: What do we do?
"Corporate Republic" WTF??? "Yahoo Serious"?? These words don't really make sense together...Such a thing doesn't exist. There is no underground corporate movement plotting to overthrow the goverment. Fear Mongering in action via Katz.
Of course not. Corperations tend to be pragmatic. Why risk the muss and fuss of an overthrow when you can just buy it one official at a time?
He is comparing Capitalism to the Measles in the fourth paragraph!! How many people died from the measles worldwide! Measles is a horrifying desease... This type of emotion-evoking yet utterly meaningless comparison has no place in a technology journal.
Actually, he compared CORPERATISM (not capitalism) to the measles. Corperatism HAS killed many people and will continue to do so.
To top things off with a cherry, he includes hackers and programmers in with his list of "threatened" individualists. Clever how he turns the "evil empire" against the /. reading public, again evoking an emotional response to a non-issue. Large corporations don't give a rats ass about individualists as long as they buy their product.
You made the point! Some (certainly not all) hackers and programmers prefer to reverse engineer and produce a free product rather than buy a pre-fab closed one. That's when they get oppressed. Have you viewed a DVD with a free and open player lately?
Who is the victim?
Here we have a company setting up a fast food restaurant. A man comes in an vandalizes the restaurant. I am having a hard time seeing the French man as the victim. Perhaps I just have the inability to draw the line between outcasts being arrested (which is diffidently bad, but unrelated thing) and McDonalds opening up a new restaurant.
The victim here is McDonalds, the people who were to work at the McDonalds that was being set up, and people who want fast, cheap, and admittedly not gourmet food. McDonalds is not the villain. I like McDonalds. I LIKE the fact that the food is cheap, greasy, and tasteless next to a home cooked meal. I LIKE the ability to choose. I like freely and voluntarily to choose to buy cheap greasy uniform food.
Perhaps I view the world differently from others. I think the thing that makes me an American, is my right to choose. I love how our capitalistic system is based around the idea of voluntary choice. I have NEVER been forced buy McDonalds food, a Ford car, or a Sony Discman. I chosen to buy these things. That is freedom. No one has ever told taken away this freedom to choose. No one ever prevented me from choosing because they thought my choices were wrong.
This man in France is the kind of person who would take away my freedom. He would prevent me from freely choosing to buy McDonalds food. He has decided that my decisions are wrong, and is willing to strip away my freedom to choose with force. That is counter to individualism. The man who will tell you that your choices are wrong, and then proceed to use force and violence to prevent you or anyone else from making those decisions are the kind of people who are willing to throw 'outcasts' in jail. They take the power they have and choose for other people their fate. I find that disgusting. I find the actions of that Frenchman disgusting. He did not convince people of his point of view. He did not attempt to starve the franchise by peacefully changing the opinions of others. He instead attempted to strip the choice away form the people around it, which, is in my opinion, is nothing to celebrate.
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No, health quality and economic wealth are opposite interests. If a paysant destroys property, he`s simply a criminal, and should be punished ? Yes! Arguing that europe should therefore just buy american to prevent thier citizens from protesting against american multinationals ? No! damnit.
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That's the thing, though. McDonalds isn't forcing anyone to eat there. But they obviously are. You said yourself that McDonalds franchises are springing up all over the place - why is that? I'm assuming that someone is eating there. I see two possibilities:
A) American tourists, feeling homesick for American food.
B) French nationals, who don't seem to be all that worried that American food sucks.
Either way, there is obviously a market supporting these franchises.
What it seems to me is that this is a case of a very small minority trying to force either a majority or another minority not to eat somewhere that they want, while trying to make it look like McDonalds kidnaps people on the street and forces them to eat their food.
Contrary to popular belief, Americans don't only eat at McDonalds. I have one down the road, and the only time I eat there (maybe once a month, usually less) is when I don't have time for something better. Why can't France be the same way, or just not eat there at all if they don't like it? McDonalds will either stop multiplying, or even pull out of their French operations and stay where they are wanted. Problem solved.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
This is so called +4 Insightful post is a chain letter that has already been spammed to the current poll and has been debunked on several websites including here..
PS: The post is offtopic as well.
The point is that while Jose may live in a republic, that republic has increasingly little control over Jose's society. The real control is held by corporations, and they are not democratic in any way.
Many corporations are richer than many countries now. General motors is richer than Denmark.
Increasingly, corporations are making decisions 'in partnership with' local government, because local government is poor and disorganised.
It is a true thing that increasingly, our lives are not blighted by fat, greedy mayors taking back handers in the town hall, but by greedy companies that simply walk all over the town hall.
The interesting parallel between the US Revolution and Jose is that both occassions were primarily about money. If the UK had been smart, they'd have cut taxes on the US, opened up the trade, and all would have been well.
And if people weren't so desperate to have tasty burgers with 0 effort required, there wouldn't be giant companies walking all over us so much.
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You have got to be kidding here. Since when did terrorism and vandalism become American values? This non-stop rant against "globalization" makes no sense! It's a last ditch effort by people to stir up trouble in what has become an age of prosperity where living conditions are improving the world over.
I'm sure all the anarchists would be much happier if we went back to subsistence farming and raiding our neighbor using clubs when our own crop failed. That is what these anarchists stand for! No rules, no laws, no personal responsibility, no socital responsibility. Then they can rape and pilage to their own heart's content.
The IMF, World Bank, Sony, and McDonalds are not the enemy here. Ignorance is the enemy. Do you think the big corporations want us poor and down trodden? Hell no! They want us all to be rich and properous so we will buy yet more of their goods and services. Rich people are consuming people are happy people.
Change does happen. Live with it. Many of these protesters are people who can't handle changes to the economic direction in the world. If they spent less time protesting and vandalizing, and instead took some classes and spent time learning, they would find that there are many more opportunities being created than being lost.
It all comes down to one simple statement, "get a life!"
World Beach List, my latest project.
from watching the Yankees lost a heartbreaker to the Baltimore O's. But I'm going through these posts and answering my e-mail, and thanks for both. My job is to provoke exactly this kind of discussion and I feel very good about it and the column.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Well, I'd say from the posts that this concerns a lot of you. And you sure are hazy on your Dylan.
I write about stuff that concerns me, of course, and the people who run
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I don't know where you found those informations, probably in some ultra-liberal activist site. I tend not to answer to sensible political comments like yours, but I really can't let you say such aberrations while having a score of 5 !
;)
But maybe was it intentionally ?
Anyway, the _fact_ is that Jose Bove has always been non-violent, and his actions has always been more symbolic than anything else. The "confederation paysanne" never destroyed the MacDonald's restaurant with a bulldozer, but actually "unmounted" it cleanly, without damaging parts. This action was made after the officials were made aware of it, without any form of violence.
The attack on MacDonald's your are talking about, where unfortunately a 28 years old waitress died, was a completely different terrorist action issued by Britain separatists, and can in no way be compared or assimilated to Jose protests.
He (and his movement) has always been non-violent.
The interesting thing here is that I finally see how much non-sense (since I know this specific subject) can an anti-Katz actvist say
Ben.
My son and I don't usually eat at McDonalds here in California but last summer when we were in Europe they were useful for a number of reasons:
1) McDonalds is the only place you can get a cup of American style coffee. I don't care for the sludge they call Expresso. Gives me cramps.
2) McDonalds is inexpensive compared to the tourist priced resturants in Europe. That and staying at Youth Hostels helped us to stay for 45 days in Europe instead of 30. We went all over, including watching the fireworks in front of the Eifel Tower on July 14th, participating in the Love Parade in Berlin a few days before, watching the fireworks in Florence on St. Somebody's Day, visiting St. Peter's, the canals of Venice, the Matterhorn at Zermatt, the Prado in Madrid, the Alhambra in Granada, even a day in Tangiers across the Straits of Gibraltar from Aljeceris.
3) They are easy to find. There are 47 in the city of Paris alone. Too bad they don't join up with Internet Cafes.
There are some differences. Many sell food with a slight local flavor. They charge you for the catsup. Many do not request you to bus your table; they hire people to do that for you.
4) They are highly successful. The French love them. So does everyone else in Europe, except for the politically motivated left. I'm sure Jose is a political candidate with the Green Party or some such socialist ilk. This is just a publicity stunt by someone who has the ultimate goal of sticking his hand in your wallet.
5) They ALL understand English! Although the food might have a twist to the name to make it fit in the local language. Actually language was only an issue in Germany where a few places required me to use my college German. That was a rare event. Seems like everyone in France speaks English. Oh, I forgot, my son's High School Spanish came in handy in Spain. And my Mandarin Chinese I learned 10 years ago, believe it or not, came in handy at a mom and pop store in Madrid run by some Chinese. Ni hao ma?
6) They are fast (although in the train stations and in Spain you might have to stand in line for 10 minutes). There is really no competition in Europe with that concept.
7) They are courteous. That speaks volumes. The problem people like Jose have is that they are really rude sociopaths wrapping themselves in the flag of some cause.
If people like Jose were really serious they would form a business that competed with McDonalds with more of a local flavor. There are a few attempts like that although we saw that mainly in Spain.
But Jose doesn't doesn't really want success. He can only build himself up by tearing someone else down.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darueber muss man schweigen. Ludwig Wittgenstein
Um, if I recall McDonalds is a franchise. They don't stay anywhere for tax reasons if the franchise goes broke. They go out of business.
(there's a post just a couple up from yours stating that McD's went out of business in his country because nobody wanted to eat there)
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Hey! Moderators! We've got some facts here, get this up over the flamebait and American Values which have nothing to do with anything!
Can your IM do this?
Try running some statistics; the poor in the year 2000 are better off than the middle class in 1971. The average work week has gone DOWN by about 2 hours in the last 30 years.
Since 1900, we've gone from 76% of out income being spent on food, clothing, and shelter to 37%, which is why we have *twice* the income to spend on goodies like cars and computers. If you want a workweek half as long, just give up those toys. More good news like this here.
Here's another tidbit. Did you know that bank's create wealth. Say a ``rich person'' puts a billion dollars in the bank. That money gets loaned out to people who buy goods which funds your salary. You, and a million other people put a thousand in the bank. Guess what? There's now two billion in the bank. So what if they have a billion in the bank? You have your thousand in the bank. Who controls more wealth? Your million friends of the big evil rich person? You both have the same wealth; wealth that you wouldn't have had had then not invested it. What does it matter, unless your envious?
That's what annoys me about all this inequitable distribution of wealth crap. If someone has money, they either do one of two things with it. They spend it, funding other people's salaries, or they invest it, where it gets multiplied 10x; with most of that going to other people's pockets.
The federal reserve is the one thing that's kept this economic expansion going so long. Fundamentally, if you make the competetion for labor sufficiently intense, the cost of labor goes up. Businesses then have to raise prices to compensate for the higher labor costs. This raises the cost of living and makes people demand higher wages. IE: inflation. Inflation is hideous, it can wipe out fixed incomes. (If you're retired and have to live on $500/month, having prices double over 5 years is nasty). It forces interest rates up, as banks have to hedge against being paid back in dollars that are worth less. It also makes long-term planning in any contract. If you agree to sell a million playstations for $300 over the next 3 years, and find out that the dollar is worth 1/2 as much near the end; you've wiped out your profit margin. There are places where inflation has been so severe, that prices have doubled every week; people got paid twice a day to help keep up. Either way, lending rates go up discourage lending, and the economy slows down. One's just nastier than the other.
Now, I will agree that a lot of the crap that corporations do should be stopped. I hate corporations railroading over honest people or freedom just because they're bigger. I hate corporations that lie and manipulate people or are hypocritical (like Ben and Jerrys unsafe, dioxin laced ice cream. ). I dislike the WTO or the MPAA.
But on the other side, I dislike the sabotage, terrorism and, most critically, the lies spread by the anti-corporations side.
Like any other human-made system, capitalism and corporatism isn't perfect. The system needs tuning and fixing once in a while. But, overall, it's the best way to run things that we know about. It's not a fundamentally broken system.
Spreading misinformation or lies around just to scare people into joining you is not the way to win. Spreading the truth is. Ultimately, in a democracy, the government answers to the people. If enough people demand something, it will happen.