I'm reasonably leftist/radical myself, certainly at american standards.
What you're one of those anarchists? No, you vote for a reformist "social democratic" party? No? you don't believe that the USA should rule the world? Oh well, then you're entitled to deliver a pronouncement on how "interesting" Sherman's ideas were. Obviously you know NOTHING about the LA anarchist scene and how effective RTF was at being an organizing center. RTF was mainly a messageboard with occasional article, like indymedia or/. itself.
Yeah Sherman was dumb to do the cracking etc., but the BIG STORY is that the FBI spokesperson says that he is going to be charged because of the information on BOMB-MAKING. This is apparently legal due to the newly introduced USA-PATRIOT Act. This is a big change in the laws of the land.
Speak the truth! Thank god for a sane posting. I was just about to assume that/. was entirely and only composed of the most craven groupthinkers. Thanks for salvaging my day!
Seriously, c'mon.
First, activists are not terrorists, and that kid's no activist. My brother-in-law is an activist {PETA} and his arguments are intelligent, well researched, more than reasonable, and effective. I haven't given up meat yet, but I've cut down on milk. Thus, someone is listening to him and he's effecting change. That is what activists do.
So, you construct a definition of "activist" designed to exclude someone that hasn't convinced his kid brother not to drink milk and that means everyone else is a terrorist? Seriously, c'mon!
Advocating the violent overthrow of the state should not be illegal. To be sure raisethefist did that, but what all the quotes from the FBI spokespersons *say* he is being nabbed for is for publishing info on bomb-making. That is definitely NOT illegal. I've also seen reports that Sherman "anti" was engaged in cracking or site-defacement or something. If so then why haven't they charged him with that? This is nothing more nore less than an attempt to intimidate a VERY active Black Bloc anarchist scene in Los Angeles. I've given more specific information here and you can see some more here and here
First, off I totally support "anti" (now revealed as Sherman), but there *were* bomb-making instructions on the site. It has been cached by an incensed Carnegie-Mellon professor who thinks that there is nothing illegal in this information
I think if you look at it you will see that there is *much* more comprehensive information on making bombs available all over the place. (The Monkeywrencher's Guide) comes to mind.
Raise the fist has had a lot of effectiveness in serving as a focal point for Black Bloc anarchists in SoCal. There was a large presence at the Democratic National Convention where they were attacked by rubber bullet firing police (along with a lot of other folk). This was followed up with a peaceful MayDay demonstration which was *really* beaten up by the LongBeach PD (about 120 kids out of 150 arrested). One of the guys that defended himself Rob "Ruckus" Middaugh is now doing 2-3 because he had a parole violation, he was closely associated with the site which was trying to raise support for his cause.
They also kept a database of pictures of undercover feds from demonstrations and logs of IP addresses of government agencies that were monitoring the site. Basically they were looking for an excuse to take the site down and it seems that Sherman may have given it to them by the alleged cracking that he engaged in (this is something that puzzles me: why focus on the bombs if the cracking is all the evidence that they have?)
These are all young kids doing what they believe in. They are involved in all sorts of DIY community projects and are sincere and active. My heart goes out to them.
So does that mean that if a developer spends time contributing to Mono he is guaranteed that his work will never be incorporated into a closed, proprietary product?
Reading over this I couldn't figure out what they were measuring with the OBLcpu benchmark. They don't talk about what flags they used, I couldn't find information in the article about what the 34 "kernels" were in the graph. Can anyone throw any further light on this?
Also, why are they looking at the geometric mean in the first and second graphs?
Re:Am I the only one who never had any problems?
on
Loki Games Closing?
·
· Score: 1
especially since Loki had some really great developers like Sam Lantinga (SDL developer among many things). Any one hear what the future of the SDL is going to be or what SL's future holds?
Re:Am I the only one who never had any problems?
on
Loki Games Closing?
·
· Score: 1
my friend Mike got his Radeon working with X/DRI (I was there to help) in 5 minutes. Yes, 5 minutes. All he had to do was install XF4.1 and he was playing OpenGL games at amazing speed. And this was back around July.
Which Radeon card? Also, just out of interest, seeing as you've had no problems, what exactly is your card? 3dfx voodoo3, but with how much memory? AGP or PCI? Is the memory SDR or DDR?
I don't know how much of it is specifically RedHat's fault, but I do agree with you that the central problem with linux gaming is 3D support. Just look at the questions on xf86-newbie (and even on Xpert) and you'll see that a lot of them are "how the hell do I get 3D working" and "what cards are supported for 3D". This is a seriously lagging area for the Linux desktop. I know that Precision Insight (now Tungsten?) have tried to sort things out with adding the DRI, but there is still a huge amount of confusion.
Here's a question for those that are disagreeing with me right now: what card are you using, what version of XF86, do you have 3D acceleration working, do you have OpenGL, what games have you tested this combination with?
I'm running XF864.2 on an ATI 8500 and I only have 2D acceleration
On 1. it may or may not be intended to mislead. It's an interesting question. I'll bet that it has to refer to part-time jobs though (then we get into definition of a part-time job!).
On 2. I have absolutely no clue. Another great question. I started to look at Eurostats
which seems to have a hell of a lot of data if only I could find the time to access it. Interestingly it give the euro-zone countries an 8.5% unemployment rate as compared to the overall (15 member state) 7.8% rate.
There is data from the International Labor Organization that breaks down by country unemployment rates (again, calculated in seemingly different ways!) which shows that some heavily unionized countries (Sweden, Luxembourg) have low un-employment etc. Here's their (up to 1999!) US figures for comparison.
Anyway, it's a tricky business, but I can't help suspect that French trade-union members live a better life than US casual/part-time workers!
Given that there is actually a row about how to define unemployment we may be arguing past each other. You might find this article interesting in how it questions both the way that both the UK and other countries (Netherlands) have messed around with calculating how many people are unemployed. It also makes a few points about the US situation.
This is spot on, especially on the nuanced point about the greencard clock starting over. Even w/out that consideration there is another: the H1-B can only be transferred to other employers a limited number of times. So, if you're chasing more interesting work or higher wages then you've got to consider the danger that you're going to run out of options. H1-B puts a foreign employee in an invidious position and it destroys what labor-market there is, driving down wages. It's the good old globalized race to the bottom: a free market for the employers but a restricted market for the employees.
Also, the H1-B holder is _supposed_ to be payed _more_ than an American counterpart but this can be fudged by using job-description in creative ways.
You posit more jobs (I assume as a percentage of population) in the US versus Europe. Care to give some figures? Also what's the value of a shitty temp job that leaves you with minimal health and welfare benefits (see the other story today on/. about Silicon Valley temps)? Unions have been a big success in Europe, ensuring a 35-hour work-week in France, decent health and unemployment benefits and a strong economy. Countries with weaker and less militant unions (Ireland and Britain have had consistently higher unemployment and shakier economies [true Ireland did very well recently but a lot of this has been in the form of subsidies from contintental Europe])
Today, though, workers may be receptive to labor's renewed message, coming as it does after two decades of wage stagnation and heightened inequality.
In the 1980s, for example, the 10-year average earnings of the bottom fifth of male wage-earners plunged by 34%. Now more than half of families say two members must work to make ends meet. And constant downsizing has chewed away at pay and job stability, even among professionals...
If unions do regain power, Corporate America is certain to feel the squeeze. With just a tenth of private-sector employees in unions today, most employers have had a free hand to hold down labor costs. Reunionization would force up pay and benefits, which typically are 20% higher among union members...
Globalization and the growth of services, too, will continue. Employers still have the upper hand in most unionization battles. BUSINESS WEEK, February 17, 1997, p56.
In America and Britain, except at the very bottom of the income distribution, wider wage differentials have been the most important force behind increasing income inequality in recent years...
All countries have been buffeted by the forces of changing technology and stronger global competition. So why should wage differentials in most of continental Europe have changed by much less?
The answer is that deregulation in America and Britain has allowed market forces to do their work, whereas in continental Europe powerful trade unions, centralized wage bargaining and high minimum wages have propped up the wages of the low-paid.
Indeed, pay differentials narrowed through the 1980s in western Germany, where trade-union membership has held steady at around 40% of workers over the past 20 years; in America, membership has fallen from 30% to 12% since 1970. A study by Richard Freeman of Harvard University confirms that, in general, wage inequalities are smallest in highly unionised countries. THE ECONOMIST, November 5, 1994, p19
God, maybe I'm tired but that had me sputtering onto my monitor! Thank you, the funniest thing that I've read in days. Obviously the spirit of John Wyndham passed on into you!
Aside from the fact that the Savage4 is underpowered compared to recent cards, as pointed out by many above, there is a slight problem for those that wish to run XF86 with it.
Although there is support for the chip with the new savage driver under the DRI infrastructure it is poor compared to Matrox, ATI and Nvidia support[1]. Check out the XF86 newbie and Xpert lists and you'll find plenty of moaning about this chip.
The problem is that S3 have been slow (to say the least) to release specs or their own drivers to the community.
The presence of this Savage4 chip is thus a serious deterrent to anyone that is interested in running a *BSD or GNU/Linux
1. Thanks to the XF86 developers for what they have been able to do with this chip however. Although it still only provides 2D and no OpenGL support and various versions of it need to have Option "noaccel" and Option "swcursor" activated (thus slowing it even more) it nevertheless will be acceptable for those looking for basic graphics.
Uhhh well....the "parent" just says something that was known already. Shouldn't a post have more content than that? I wondered whether AnonymousDword had something more substantive to offer. Guess not.
did you try it with him on top, or with you on top? If it was the former then I can see why you mighn't have enjoyed it!
I have to make the disclosure that IHNHSWR (I Have Not Had Sex With Richard), so feel free to over-rule my intuitive guess!
Which model VAIO do you have? What have the issues been? I've just ordered one of the last of the R505TLK. They threw in a free CD-ROM, but I've heard it's a problem getting them to work. Are you going to put up any info on your experiences?
Re:What can be done about terrorism?
on
More On Tragedy
·
· Score: 1
Well, you're certainly ending as you started. Ignorantly and ignoring the answers that have already been supplied to you. I'm not going to bother posting after this because I believe that you need to go and do your own research. You might try reading for starters Chomsky (any of the Barsimian interviews), Zinn's "People's History of the United States", Norman Solomon "Habits of Highly Deceptive Media", any of "Z Magazine" (www.zmag.org), any of The Nation (www.thenation.com). Now down to your specific questions:
Firstly, would you rather have lived in East Germany or West Germany?
Yet again you ask me a "have you stopped beating your wife yet?" question. I would rather live in a Libertarian Communist society. Neither Capitalist/Fascist or Communist/Fascist are models that satisfy me. See, here's where you may be confused: Capitalism is designed to produce misery. It can't do anything else. Communism may produce something good, but it's not guaranteed. The only way to have a good chance of avoiding material poverty and tyranny is to implement a democratic structure on top of a commitment to distribute material goods according to need. Compare this with Capitalism - it's central tenet is that one accumulates material goods according to power, good-luck and accident and that a minority will have most of the pie whilst a majority has least. Capitalism enshrines and ensures that there will be starving people.
why do you keep using the United States as an example?
Because the United States is the controlling superpower of Capitalism and the one that extols the un-alloyed virtues of Capitalism more clearly than any other.
other capitalist countries,have all of them committed horrible atrocities?
Yes, there is a long history of the colonial stage of Capitalism creating immeasurable suffering in the world. Think Britain, France, Holland, Italy, Belgium, Spain, Germany (although here to a lesser extent due to a perception of colonies as being "a millstone around the neck" on Bismarck's part especially. However they did also have colonies), just about any country of which you care to think.
would you say that non-capitalists countries,like say,oh I don't know NAZI Germany, or China, have exactly been the picture of humanity?
Nazi Germany despite being controlled by a party known as the National Socialist Workers Party had an essentially capitalist economy. Large businesses were given assistance, aid and government contracts and profitted from this government. There were extensive links with US and other European companies and investors who were very happy to have their capitalist friends in power. Have you never heard the phrase "fascists are the shock-troops of capital?". This refers to the fact that whenever there is a threat that the workers may take over the country the right-wing fuckers come out and attack them. If you read some of the references that I gave you, you may notice reference to the many congratulations that Hitler received from people like the then Home Secretary of Britain - Winston Churchill - for defeating Communism. You may see the extensive network of Capitalist investment stretching to the US (among others) that helped to build the war machine that was unleashed against the other capitalist powers. So I would argue that Nazi Germany is a capitalist country, was supported and financed by other capitalist and that the outcome (as in Spain (Franco vs. democracy/communism, Italy (Mussolini vs. democracy/communism) etc) is typical of what one gets from Capitalism.
As regards China - it's economy is a State Capitalist one , NOT communist. In a very similar manner to Marxist-Leninist USSR this country was subject to a take-over of popular workers revolution by authoritarian, non-democratic "socialists". They consciously decided that they could not implement communism "just yet" and introduced the "mixed economy" that allowed some limited markets for entrepeneurs and many more State Controlled Businesses. So, not Communist. The only times communism has existed has been in subsitence communities, religious communities (for a long time people took Christ's words seriously and did their best to live up to it) and very briefly in the Workers Soviets in the USSR prior to Bolshevik take-over and in Spain (esp. Catalonia) c.1936 and the Spanish revolution. Note that this last example was explicity subject to attack by the USSR and Britain (Stalin who had a pact with Germany) and the old colonial capitalists sure didn't want a truly communist spain. W.r.t. their human rights records - what do you think I feel about them based upon what I've told you before? About your beliefs I'm not so sure though - your Capitalist friends in this country have extended Most Favored Nation trading status on the Chinese. Pretty sick.
you are only looking at the flaws in Capitalism and not the flaws in other systems
If the flaw of Capitalism is that it produces and has only ever produced and can only ever produce inequality, poverty, misery and despair then I consider that it is a system that has to be dumped. I am very aware of the flaws of what I advocate Libertarian Communism/ Socialist Anarchism. It will be very hard to defend this open, democratic system from the determined attacks of its enemies. It requires a high level of education and awareness in order to work. It requires that its participants are willing to believe that the other participants are potentially fair, rational people who whilst they have their own interests at heart recognize that they have no right to inflict misery on others. It requires a serious dedication on our part to guarding the interests of our fellows as jealously as we are encouraged to guard our own in this society. Its very mode of operation runs counter to all the conditioning, propaganda and lies that we are subjected to in this system. I am not SURE that this will work. I think that it might. I believe from the few examples that I have cited that it has a chance. I am willing to take that chance because the present is so awful that it is immoral not to.
ignoring any successes in Capitalism
It's hard to be happy about cheap computers and cheap meat if it is obtained at the expense of a couple of thousand people being tortured, starved and dying. Perhaps I do ignore some things. But frankly it sounds like some of the discussion one hears about Nazi Germany (the economy boomed) or Fascist Italy (Mussolini made the trains run on time, drained the Pontine marshes).
Anyway, I'm not posting any more. I'm sorry I was rude in this thread. I was mad. But that's not an excuse. Good luck.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm reasonably leftist/radical myself, certainly at american standards.
What you're one of those anarchists? No, you vote for a reformist "social democratic" party? No? you don't believe that the USA should rule the world? Oh well, then you're entitled to deliver a pronouncement on how "interesting" Sherman's ideas were. Obviously you know NOTHING about the LA anarchist scene and how effective RTF was at being an organizing center. RTF was mainly a messageboard with occasional article, like indymedia or /. itself.
Yeah Sherman was dumb to do the cracking etc., but the BIG STORY is that the FBI spokesperson says that he is going to be charged because of the information on BOMB-MAKING. This is apparently legal due to the newly introduced USA-PATRIOT Act. This is a big change in the laws of the land.
Speak the truth! Thank god for a sane posting. I was just about to assume that /. was entirely and only composed of the most craven groupthinkers. Thanks for salvaging my day!
Are you sure about the Eugene Deb's thing? That's fascinating if so, can you give me a reference that I can check it up in? Thanks.
Seriously, c'mon. First, activists are not terrorists, and that kid's no activist. My brother-in-law is an activist {PETA} and his arguments are intelligent, well researched, more than reasonable, and effective. I haven't given up meat yet, but I've cut down on milk. Thus, someone is listening to him and he's effecting change. That is what activists do.
So, you construct a definition of "activist" designed to exclude someone that hasn't convinced his kid brother not to drink milk and that means everyone else is a terrorist? Seriously, c'mon!
Advocating the violent overthrow of the state should not be illegal. To be sure raisethefist did that, but what all the quotes from the FBI spokespersons *say* he is being nabbed for is for publishing info on bomb-making. That is definitely NOT illegal. I've also seen reports that Sherman "anti" was engaged in cracking or site-defacement or something. If so then why haven't they charged him with that? This is nothing more nore less than an attempt to intimidate a VERY active Black Bloc anarchist scene in Los Angeles. I've given more specific information here and you can see some more here and here
First, off I totally support "anti" (now revealed as Sherman), but there *were* bomb-making instructions on the site. It has been cached by an incensed Carnegie-Mellon professor who thinks that there is nothing illegal in this information I think if you look at it you will see that there is *much* more comprehensive information on making bombs available all over the place. (The Monkeywrencher's Guide) comes to mind.
Raise the fist has had a lot of effectiveness in serving as a focal point for Black Bloc anarchists in SoCal. There was a large presence at the Democratic National Convention where they were attacked by rubber bullet firing police (along with a lot of other folk). This was followed up with a peaceful MayDay demonstration which was *really* beaten up by the LongBeach PD (about 120 kids out of 150 arrested). One of the guys that defended himself Rob "Ruckus" Middaugh is now doing 2-3 because he had a parole violation, he was closely associated with the site which was trying to raise support for his cause.
They also kept a database of pictures of undercover feds from demonstrations and logs of IP addresses of government agencies that were monitoring the site. Basically they were looking for an excuse to take the site down and it seems that Sherman may have given it to them by the alleged cracking that he engaged in (this is something that puzzles me: why focus on the bombs if the cracking is all the evidence that they have?)
These are all young kids doing what they believe in. They are involved in all sorts of DIY community projects and are sincere and active. My heart goes out to them.
So does that mean that if a developer spends time contributing to Mono he is guaranteed that his work will never be incorporated into a closed, proprietary product?
Reading over this I couldn't figure out what they were measuring with the OBLcpu benchmark. They don't talk about what flags they used, I couldn't find information in the article about what the 34 "kernels" were in the graph. Can anyone throw any further light on this?
Also, why are they looking at the geometric mean in the first and second graphs?
Thanks dude, very informative.
especially since Loki had some really great developers like Sam Lantinga (SDL developer among many things). Any one hear what the future of the SDL is going to be or what SL's future holds?
my friend Mike got his Radeon working with X/DRI (I was there to help) in 5 minutes. Yes, 5 minutes. All he had to do was install XF4.1 and he was playing OpenGL games at amazing speed. And this was back around July.
Which Radeon card? Also, just out of interest, seeing as you've had no problems, what exactly is your card? 3dfx voodoo3, but with how much memory? AGP or PCI? Is the memory SDR or DDR?
Thanks,-Crush
I don't know how much of it is specifically RedHat's fault, but I do agree with you that the central problem with linux gaming is 3D support. Just look at the questions on xf86-newbie (and even on Xpert) and you'll see that a lot of them are "how the hell do I get 3D working" and "what cards are supported for 3D". This is a seriously lagging area for the Linux desktop. I know that Precision Insight (now Tungsten?) have tried to sort things out with adding the DRI, but there is still a huge amount of confusion.
Here's a question for those that are disagreeing with me right now: what card are you using, what version of XF86, do you have 3D acceleration working, do you have OpenGL, what games have you tested this combination with?
I'm running XF864.2 on an ATI 8500 and I only have 2D acceleration
On 1. it may or may not be intended to mislead. It's an interesting question. I'll bet that it has to refer to part-time jobs though (then we get into definition of a part-time job!).
On 2. I have absolutely no clue. Another great question. I started to look at Eurostats which seems to have a hell of a lot of data if only I could find the time to access it. Interestingly it give the euro-zone countries an 8.5% unemployment rate as compared to the overall (15 member state) 7.8% rate.
There is data from the International Labor Organization that breaks down by country unemployment rates (again, calculated in seemingly different ways!) which shows that some heavily unionized countries (Sweden, Luxembourg) have low un-employment etc. Here's their (up to 1999!) US figures for comparison. Anyway, it's a tricky business, but I can't help suspect that French trade-union members live a better life than US casual/part-time workers!
Given that there is actually a row about how to define unemployment we may be arguing past each other. You might find this article interesting in how it questions both the way that both the UK and other countries (Netherlands) have messed around with calculating how many people are unemployed. It also makes a few points about the US situation.
This is spot on, especially on the nuanced point about the greencard clock starting over. Even w/out that consideration there is another: the H1-B can only be transferred to other employers a limited number of times. So, if you're chasing more interesting work or higher wages then you've got to consider the danger that you're going to run out of options. H1-B puts a foreign employee in an invidious position and it destroys what labor-market there is, driving down wages. It's the good old globalized race to the bottom: a free market for the employers but a restricted market for the employees.
Also, the H1-B holder is _supposed_ to be payed _more_ than an American counterpart but this can be fudged by using job-description in creative ways.
You posit more jobs (I assume as a percentage of population) in the US versus Europe. Care to give some figures? Also what's the value of a shitty temp job that leaves you with minimal health and welfare benefits (see the other story today on /. about Silicon Valley temps)? Unions have been a big success in Europe, ensuring a 35-hour work-week in France, decent health and unemployment benefits and a strong economy. Countries with weaker and less militant unions (Ireland and Britain have had consistently higher unemployment and shakier economies [true Ireland did very well recently but a lot of this has been in the form of subsidies from contintental Europe])
Today, though, workers may be receptive to labor's renewed message, coming as it does after two decades of wage stagnation and heightened inequality.
In the 1980s, for example, the 10-year average earnings of the bottom fifth of male wage-earners plunged by 34%. Now more than half of families say two members must work to make ends meet. And constant downsizing has chewed away at pay and job stability, even among professionals...
If unions do regain power, Corporate America is certain to feel the squeeze. With just a tenth of private-sector employees in unions today, most employers have had a free hand to hold down labor costs. Reunionization would force up pay and benefits, which typically are 20% higher among union members...
Globalization and the growth of services, too, will continue. Employers still have the upper hand in most unionization battles.
BUSINESS WEEK, February 17, 1997, p56.
In America and Britain, except at the very bottom of the income distribution, wider wage differentials have been the most important force behind increasing income inequality in recent years...
All countries have been buffeted by the forces of changing technology and stronger global competition. So why should wage differentials in most of continental Europe have changed by much less?
The answer is that deregulation in America and Britain has allowed market forces to do their work, whereas in continental Europe powerful trade unions, centralized wage bargaining and high minimum wages have propped up the wages of the low-paid.
Indeed, pay differentials narrowed through the 1980s in western Germany, where trade-union membership has held steady at around 40% of workers over the past 20 years; in America, membership has fallen from 30% to 12% since 1970. A study by Richard Freeman of Harvard University confirms that, in general, wage inequalities are smallest in highly unionised countries.
THE ECONOMIST, November 5, 1994, p19
Thanks. Informative answer.
for the terms: OEM
I suspect that OEM is Original Equipment Manufacturer? But does that mean that the part is reconditioned?White box
Retail
Bulk
God, maybe I'm tired but that had me sputtering onto my monitor! Thank you, the funniest thing that I've read in days. Obviously the spirit of John Wyndham passed on into you!
I bow to your superior knowledge and experience. I think there was confusion.....mine! Thanks for the correction.
-crush
Aside from the fact that the Savage4 is underpowered compared to recent cards, as pointed out by many above, there is a slight problem for those that wish to run XF86 with it.
Although there is support for the chip with the new savage driver under the DRI infrastructure it is poor compared to Matrox, ATI and Nvidia support[1]. Check out the XF86 newbie and Xpert lists and you'll find plenty of moaning about this chip.
The problem is that S3 have been slow (to say the least) to release specs or their own drivers to the community.
The presence of this Savage4 chip is thus a serious deterrent to anyone that is interested in running a *BSD or GNU/Linux
1. Thanks to the XF86 developers for what they have been able to do with this chip however. Although it still only provides 2D and no OpenGL support and various versions of it need to have Option "noaccel" and Option "swcursor" activated (thus slowing it even more) it nevertheless will be acceptable for those looking for basic graphics.
Uhhh well....the "parent" just says something that was known already. Shouldn't a post have more content than that? I wondered whether AnonymousDword had something more substantive to offer. Guess not.
Huh? Care to explain to someone that doesn't get your point? Thanks.
did you try it with him on top, or with you on top? If it was the former then I can see why you mighn't have enjoyed it! I have to make the disclosure that IHNHSWR (I Have Not Had Sex With Richard), so feel free to over-rule my intuitive guess!
Which model VAIO do you have? What have the issues been? I've just ordered one of the last of the R505TLK. They threw in a free CD-ROM, but I've heard it's a problem getting them to work. Are you going to put up any info on your experiences?
Now down to your specific questions:
Firstly, would you rather have lived in East Germany or West Germany?
Yet again you ask me a "have you stopped beating your wife yet?" question. I would rather live in a Libertarian Communist society. Neither Capitalist/Fascist or Communist/Fascist are models that satisfy me. See, here's where you may be confused: Capitalism is designed to produce misery. It can't do anything else. Communism may produce something good, but it's not guaranteed. The only way to have a good chance of avoiding material poverty and tyranny is to implement a democratic structure on top of a commitment to distribute material goods according to need.Compare this with Capitalism - it's central tenet is that one accumulates material goods according to power, good-luck and accident and that a minority will have most of the pie whilst a majority has least. Capitalism enshrines and ensures that there will be starving people.
why do you keep using the United States as an example?
Because the United States is the controlling superpower of Capitalism and the one that extols the un-alloyed virtues of Capitalism more clearly than any other.
other capitalist countries,have all of them committed horrible atrocities?
Yes, there is a long history of the colonial stage of Capitalism creating immeasurable suffering in the world. Think Britain, France, Holland, Italy, Belgium, Spain, Germany (although here to a lesser extent due to a perception of colonies as being "a millstone around the neck" on Bismarck's part especially. However they did also have colonies), just about any country of which you care to think.would you say that non-capitalists countries,like say,oh I don't know NAZI Germany, or China, have exactly been the picture of humanity?
Nazi Germany despite being controlled by a party known as the National Socialist Workers Party had an essentially capitalist economy. Large businesses were given assistance, aid and government contracts and profitted from this government. There were extensive links with US and other European companies and investors who were very happy to have their capitalist friends in power. Have you never heard the phrase "fascists are the shock-troops of capital?". This refers to the fact that whenever there is a threat that the workers may take over the country the right-wing fuckers come out and attack them. If you read some of the references that I gave you, you may notice reference to the many congratulations that Hitler received from people like the then Home Secretary of Britain - Winston Churchill - for defeating Communism. You may see the extensive network of Capitalist investment stretching to the US (among others) that helped to build the war machine that was unleashed against the other capitalist powers. So I would argue that Nazi Germany is a capitalist country, was supported and financed by other capitalist and that the outcome (as in Spain (Franco vs. democracy/communism, Italy (Mussolini vs. democracy/communism) etc) is typical of what one gets from Capitalism.
As regards China - it's economy is a State Capitalist one , NOT communist. In a very similar manner to Marxist-Leninist USSR this country was subject to a take-over of popular workers revolution by authoritarian, non-democratic "socialists". They consciously decided that they could not implement communism "just yet" and introduced the "mixed economy" that allowed some limited markets for entrepeneurs and many more State Controlled Businesses.
So, not Communist.
The only times communism has existed has been in subsitence communities, religious communities (for a long time people took Christ's words seriously and did their best to live up to it) and very briefly in the Workers Soviets in the USSR prior to Bolshevik take-over and in Spain (esp. Catalonia) c.1936 and the Spanish revolution. Note that this last example was explicity subject to attack by the USSR and Britain (Stalin who had a pact with Germany) and the old colonial capitalists sure didn't want a truly communist spain.
W.r.t. their human rights records - what do you think I feel about them based upon what I've told you before? About your beliefs I'm not so sure though - your Capitalist friends in this country have extended Most Favored Nation trading status on the Chinese. Pretty sick.
you are only looking at the flaws in Capitalism and not the flaws in other systems
If the flaw of Capitalism is that it produces and has only ever produced and can only ever produce inequality, poverty, misery and despair then I consider that it is a system that has to be dumped.
I am very aware of the flaws of what I advocate Libertarian Communism/ Socialist Anarchism. It will be very hard to defend this open, democratic system from the determined attacks of its enemies. It requires a high level of education and awareness in order to work. It requires that its participants are willing to believe that the other participants are potentially fair, rational people who whilst they have their own interests at heart recognize that they have no right to inflict misery on others. It requires a serious dedication on our part to guarding the interests of our fellows as jealously as we are encouraged to guard our own in this society. Its very mode of operation runs counter to all the conditioning, propaganda and lies that we are subjected to in this system. I am not SURE that this will work. I think that it might. I believe from the few examples that I have cited that it has a chance. I am willing to take that chance because the present is so awful that it is immoral not to.
ignoring any successes in Capitalism
It's hard to be happy about cheap computers and cheap meat if it is obtained at the expense of a couple of thousand people being tortured, starved and dying. Perhaps I do ignore some things. But frankly it sounds like some of the discussion one hears about Nazi Germany (the economy boomed) or Fascist Italy (Mussolini made the trains run on time, drained the Pontine marshes).Anyway, I'm not posting any more. I'm sorry I was rude in this thread. I was mad. But that's not an excuse. Good luck.