...what is moral or immoral about military occupation?
I really don't think you're trolling, and even though this is such a wildly ideological question that I'm not sure any answer will satisfy you, I'll try.
First, imagine that a coalition of nations has 200 military bases scattered across the USA: NYC has 5 alone, and even Alamagordo NM has one. Like most military bases where the occupying force has some impunity, the off-duty soldiers are a little rowdy. 1) How would the locals perceive this, as a moral issue? Does anyone have a moral right to occupy the USA? 2) Would anyone protest, or perhaps organize violent resistance? Would there be any moral arguments for doing so?
Second, consider the issue of sovereignty. This notion is founded in morals, in the loose sense of the term. Sovereignty good, foreign occupation bad, so long as you believe people have a right to determine their own collective path. So-called democracy, even the kleptocratic republicanism used in the States, purports to hold this up as a moral issue.
Whoa whoa whoa, slow down here... Are you saying that if all countries ceased military research, development and maintenance we would magically end all warfare?
No, I don't think the GP is saying that. I think they're saying that dwarfing the rest of the combined world's military budget is aggressive, and implying that the USA manufactures enemies.
Last time I checked it wasn't morally correct...
Given that the USA has over 600 military bases on foreign soil, any moral arguments in favour of current US global geopolitics are invalid.
yet the list of non-benevolent countries (besides the U.S.) fails to shrink.
how can we possibly believe that terrorism is capable of any more than the few isolated incidents that have befallen the world in the last dozen years?
You know, I was a pretty ordinary nerdy teenager, but I hung out with some less savoury characters. We wreaked some pretty fine havoc from a vandalism point of view. Their ideas, of course!;-)
All the while, I was thinking, "what if we decided to do this somewhere serious?" There were traffic light boxes to mess up, power stations, train controllers, high-rises, and of course the airport...
Not that I would have ever taken initiative, but I was an avid reader of novels featuring violence. Being engaged in some minor mayhem showed me that given some precautions and minor planning, a half-smart bunch of hooligans can raise some real hell.
So: where are they? Sure, there are inept and insane suicide bombers peppering Tel-Aviv bus riders with horror. But where is the real mayhem? A single incredibly complex and (if you ask commercial airline pilots and structural engineers) nigh-impossible feat, never properly explained, just isn't convincing that the network is out there. Most crimes go unsolved, and therefore serious vandalism should be relatively easy. What, you scoff--have you no feral imagination?
Yes, there ARE terrorists out there, but they're nearly all engaged in struggles with occupiers, mostly on their home turf. Sure, there are some terrorists and nasty 'liberation movement' types floating around north america... but if they were serious, they'd be pulling stuff off regularly.
granted, the US can be bought, too, but usually the less people there are involved in controlling/managing something, the better off everything is.
Yeah, that way there are fewer people to buy off! [/cynic]
Some libertarians would say that concentrating power in the hands of a few is anathema to the spirit of liberty. Either none or all, some would say. Moderates like me say that publically owned expert organizations with accountability structures and public oversight are a workable compromise, so long as the bureaucrats don't take over.
You would essentially have to keep adding to the atmosphere
By the time we get around to actually committing to something like terraforming Mars, it will be pretty trivial to slap some ion drives on them thar big chunks of ice spinning around Saturn, and drop them down the well into a shallow entry so that they vapourize. Lots of potential atmosphere out there in space, it just needs to be moved to Mars, and given time, it wouldn't be too expensive. Great sky show on those nights for the martian colonists, too.
I'm not sure that gravity is as much of a problem as you think, given a deep enough atmosphere.
The music companies get about 68 cent, Apple 28,-. the artists 5,-
Margins, he said. After bandwidth, administration, credit card charges, server rooms, and development, I'm sure Apple doesn't have too much of that 28 cents left. However, even a 2 penny margin can add up if the numbers are right, and it's used strategically - *wink*.
Why not have a system where once I own a song, I own it in perpetuity, and can download it again whenever I want?
Hey, I agree with you, and the whole point of digital distribution is that this is entirely reasonable. But the market has momentum, including momentum in ideas, which means that music sellers just don't have to do this yet.
CUSTOMER: Man, my little brother used my favourite Vanilla Ice CD for target practice! Can I have another one? I already paid for it, before, like.
SALES GUY: (*WTF?!!*) Uh, sorry, uh, have a nice day, I mean, let me get the manager...
All the manoevering you're seeing and hearing from competitors, FUD and disinfo and legitimate complaints, is because the people in the middle of this new-take-on-an-old-market have the long view.
The next retail high-season, pshaw. Think twelve years from now. Apple competitors in the media-hub-style emerging markets have puckered anuses. Meanwhile it's full steam ahead towards full vertical integration at Apple.
It's an old saw by now, but since Sony isn't there already (and they could've been, nearly), Jobs is willing to play that role. This will probably be a good thing for operating systems, as an aside.
the BBC only seems to care about one specific political football rather than about China itself.
This may be a legitimate concern of an outsider who claims to have high standards for the quality of a source. Imagine the frustration: a billion people living under some stiff rules about what can be said, and lots of imagined or real conspiracy to delude outsiders. Yet you have to bang your head against that, since your job is to report on the place.
Then, of course, the BBC (and democratic pro-capitalist journalists in general) have to labour under the semi-conscious illusion that they have few forms of censorship or ideology to struggle against in their own working lives. The modern propaganda machine in all its subtleties and gross ubiquity gives us 'democratically free' folks ideologies that we wield like halitosis: it's always someone else's problem. We have to claim impartiality; sales, jobs, pride are based on it, and our general success in the world proves it, in a meta-darwinian kind of way.
Anyway, this issue points out a blind spot in the BBC's view of things: that's always a good place to look for ideology problems.
This is interesting, but, as usual, an art in the hands of a highly skilled practitioner gets lost in the search for reproducibility. Dr Milton Erikson kind of set things off for modern hypnotherapy, but he was extraordinarily perceptive, and generally only took on cases that would work for his methods, so had a resounding success rate.
What was amazing about Erikson was that he noticed that life is rife with trance states, most of them shallow, temporary, and skilfully deployed for survival purposes. Think about this the next time you get home from a tense commute without really remembering exactly how you operated the car.
He found somewhat more suggestible cases, and took advantage of what he saw as our natural facility with trances, and of our heavy reliance on metaphor to get through the day. (Of course, I oversimplify.) Plus he was a damn good psychiatrist. Basically, a prodigy. He would find ways of putting people into trances of various depths, for various lengths of time, using freaky techniques like the rhythm of his voice tuned to the listener's body responses, and barely noticeable emphasis on certain words, not unlike fictional characters in the Dune series. Not easy to reproduce.
His ideas later led to NLP, or Neuro-Linguistic Programming... YMMV.
I think I'm going to buy the DVD set just to see this. Creepy as all hell.
The links in the GP have excerpts downloadable, if you just want to get an idea (warning: high wacko quotient on those sites, and dubious copyright). It really is creepy, once you see it... especially given Chris Carter's (x-files writer/producer) ongoing theme of using conspiracy theorists to spread disinformation. Not a huge x-files & spinoff fan myself, but it is just too weird... The reasoning given in the pilot is that this event [spoiler alert!] is a pearl harbor-style trigger coordinated by a faction of the US gub'mint dedicated to boosting military production and global influence, mirroring both PNAC and real world conspiracy theorists.
It's not ever going to happen again in any of our lifetimes.
Well, not all hijackers are sending planes into buildings. Have you heard of any others? One, I think, previously. In fact, there are enough (an understatement) highly suspicious unanswered questions about those hijackings that the conspiracy theorists have topped the JFK body of ravings.
I'm in doubt myself about the official story, and there are only two degrees of separation between myself and one of the deceased flight stewards (a fellow parishoner of my brother-in-law). Also, not all hijackers board planes in the USA, and security varies hugely in the world's airports--something hijackers know.
Which brings me to your point "the terrorists know the things we're missing." Well yes, and I often wonder about where all the terrorists are. Most murders go unsolved, for instance, as do most robberies, etc. etc. A skilled criminal network (think Hell's Angels) gets caught rarely, and they're doing some pretty sophisticated law breaking, over long periods. I look around me, and see how easy it would be to really muck things up, scare people (hey, I'm a righteous square, two kids and a station wagon--really--but I dabbled in some vandalism while a young teenager, and did a stint caring for street youth, so I know about havoc). There are so many vulnerable points in an open society! And that's the way we want it. I can only surmise that they either aren't very numerous, or aren't really there, or are really stupid.
Condi Rice will be on TV going, "Who could have guessed they would use..." whatever it was.
Yeah, who could guess? Only those who saw the near-exact scenario played out on TheLoneGunmen only six months before the actual event. So, um what, maybe five million people could guess? Or did they forget to wear their tinfoil hats, and got that episode erased?
Hey, good use of categories there. Environmentalists are "bat-shit insane," because there are a few nuts in the apple barrel, eh? I happen to know from good sources that mass murderers are all non-environmentalists, which makes non-environmentalists such as yourself into mass-murder suspects.
Or perhaps you should broaden your exposure to the arguments.
We have cable broadband in places like Vernon,BC, Prince George,BC or even Fort St. John, BC
Well, no cable here, and though I can see Vancouver from where I sit, it isn't quite close enough to get a wireless connection. The future hasn't been distributed here yet, though William Gibson's house is just... over... there, on the left.
Note that I explicitly disagreed with the economist I cited.
Noted. I was referring to your conclusions.
Often these are not "irrationalities" at all, simply people with different values.
A misunderstanding in nomenclature. I was referring to the everyday transactions that we undertake, in a capitalist way, that purport to be one thing (offering a kind of freedom, or gratification, or mutual benefit etc.) but actually also work in converse ways (offering addiction, or poor health, or adding to a common disaster, etc.) that are consciously ignored. This is the kind of systemic irrationality that allows us to happily participate in tragedy.
None of the alternative systems you mention scale well. Most of them have been tried and abandoned for just that reason.
An unsubstantiated claim, though you may be correct. Capitalism doesn't scale well either, in its current mode. I didn't say the many other economic practices I see everyday were our salvation, just suppressed evidence of a naked emperor.
The *relative* wealth of the rich and the poor in a society is a pretty small factor in the absolute wealth of the common man in that society.
Hm, I don't think you're with me here. Quality of life doesn't come from a wallet, nor is the accumulation of surplus capital an adequate measure of societal success. Again, I think that industrialization is the reason for these benefits, and that industrialization is not necessarily dependent upon capitalism (monopoly or market).
if someone does come up wih a better economic system, all of mankind's history shows that it will eventually dominate despite any entrenched resistance.
'Better' for the psychopaths, that is, so long as we let them determine these things. You seem to be overconfident in your grasp of history...
I agree with most of your post, but don't share your faith in economists (the worst of the pseudo-sciences!), Nobel or no. How, after all, did this habit of completely ignoring dangerous externalities become canon? Economists aided and abetted. I also think that your post conflates some of the problems of economies with the inherent problems of a nation-state (due to the very real fact of them being intertwined inextricably).
See, my problem is that I observe all kinds of daily 'irrationalities' in what is supposed to be a rational system, like a simple purchase. One of the main problems in this respect, is dissociation between product and production; another is the conflation of desire and need. I won't go into details, suffice to say I'm bewildered by the massive daily economic contradictions and obvious cynicism in late industrial capitalism.
Another problem of mine is that I also see alternative systems functioning in little ways all around me, frustratingly unacknowledged. Barter, potlaching, altruism, pre-feudal technopeasantry, influence and reputation (whuffie?), communitarianism, guild-craft, you name it, many nascent and hold-over forms of transaction are out there in pockets of daily life.
The bigger problem isn't just profit-hoarding, or corruption, or control over the means of production, or the shell game of surplus labour, or the inherent way in which capital pours inward... it is a question of imagination, and ideology, and what kinds of proposals are allowed to be considered and what is to be poo-poo'd. Put another way: the media don't tell us what to think: they tell us what to think about. Likewise, economists decide what's valid, while ignoring some astonishingly bad contradictions, and so ensure the status quo.
Look, just because the DSM III changed 'psychopath' to 'antisocial personality disorder' doesn't mean that the rest of us will. We still use the word, and the diagnosis isn't significantly different. It's a movie for a general audience, not psychiatrists.
The diagnostic steps were rather obviously laid out as a half-assed metaphor... half true, and half metaphor. If a corporation is an individual (half metaphor, half true), then they can be a psychopath, too. Another thing about The Corp that people don't realize is that it was produced in three segments, for TV, and released as one, for theatre, so the repetition isn't incompetence, it's necessary... but seen all at once, it is a bit tedious.
Do you know of any institutiom engaged in war in the last century that didn't allow for a number of civilian casualties as strategic? G.War in particular has less infrastructure to work with, and so relies on deception and sacrifice. Not that I agree with any of that outright, but it's a fact of engagement these days.
Note that these guerilla tactics are not used for invasion, but defence and internal conflict. Do the invaders/conquerors worry about those peasants? Less so.
Not to defend any bloody behaviour too strongly, but it's easy to critique the cubans without realizing just how much of a threat (and hardship) they were/are under -- 45 years of hot/cold war with a neighbouring superpower and all its intelligence forces and fascistic cuban ex-pats. Learn about that, then guage what your noble behaviour would be.
No, Capatilism works (as wellas it does) because it assumes people aren't nice.
Hey, you know what? it's a false assumption. MOST people are convivial MOST of the time, and as long as things run smoothly enough, no-one notices. The 'action-chains' of daily life remain unbroken, and we can go on happily. One major jerk (read socio-psycho-techno-path) can muck things up for thousands, just by abandoning a car at a busy intersection or making a prank call.
We have, in this attitude, the ideology of 'nature red in tooth and claw' penetrating the capitalist fundamentalism that is holy writ in business school. History is one long string of relatively short violent convulsions, held together by long sessions of peaceful daily life that get forgotten. Likewise, the capitalist heros are successful on the backs of the fallen, and we take it for granted because they become representatives of The Capitalist Way.
Likewise, capitalism only appears to 'work' if you drink the ideological kool-aid (tm). It requires indemnity from externalities like pollution or health effects, an unemployed labour pool, a means of preparing consumers for a life of industrial scrabbling and obeying, horatio alger myths and the patina of open participation, and indeterminate expansion. Since the vast majority of the world's wealth is concentrated into a small few, how does that 'work' better than feudalism, given our current sense of human rights? Do you have a democratic workplace, or do you hang up your democracy hat when you go in to work?
Or do you mean it works because North Americans live heavily subsidized lives (see: externalities, trade agreements, colonialism, economic-hit-men, covert action, resource extraction) and 50% can afford a gas guzzler?
I have no issue with the fact that industrialization leads to wages and urban improvements throughout the world. This is not a process that requires capitalism, just capital. The monopoly totalitarian capitalism exercised by the Soviets under the guise of socialism (that would be 'communism' to the propagandists) is an example of its worst failings, but it still raised the peasantry out of dire poverty, through industrialism. The market oligopoly practiced here is more dynamic, but the 'underclass' is deeply tragic, and primarily a given condition of the economic system.
If there is a better sysytem, it will also assume that greedy psychopaths are in charge, or it will fail the same was that Communism always does.
Hm. An example of 'in the box' thinking as a result of years of propaganda. What's so impossible about designing a system where the scum doesn't rise to the top?
Some people still hunt and fish for their food, not just for a pretty head on the wall.
Oh yeah. Just not many. There are lots who go out every year, have a blast, come home (to town) with a freezer full of moose and grouse, and that's hunting etc. for your food... But not really. It's just a nice supplement, there's a grocery store down the block, eh. That's most of the hunting for food in Canada.
The ones who really live in the bush, or subsist just outside of town's reach, there aren't many. Great people, though. Mostly the original locals.
why not choose to eat free-range, locally-raised, certified organic animal products? For example, I buy my milk from the local co-op, which acquires it from a local free-range organic farm: the cows are milked because they have given birth to calves which will be raised for breeding stock (males) or replacement producers (female). When their cows are unable to safely produce offspring, they are sold for the beef.
I once organised a forum led by an activist vegan nutritionist and a free-range organic rancher. I was hoping for some controversy and heated discussion (ah, the perversions of media), but what I got was an underlying agreement: for many vegans, it is the structure of the food system they object to, especially its depravities. The vegan actually supported the rancher in his venture, and suggested that given his carefully 'humane' techniques as the dominant method of production, only the spiritually-motivated vegans would remain.
Vegans have developed an ideology (like any other movement) that blinds some of its purveyors. I have a friend who's devoted to it, she rescues livestock and keeps them on her property as 'farm pets' so they can live out their life as fertility producers (pigshit is good plant food). Still, it's a bit much, what are we going to do, free the cows? They can't be naturalized, just extincted by attrition according to that logic.
I myself grew up on my grandparents' subsistence farm, and saw how old-fashioned animal husbandry is not too far from hunting-gathering in its relationship (respect) for the livestock. They had names and a 'good' domesticated life... except for the veal (hey, we're italian). I was once vegetarian due to the dissociation between slaughter and table, but now tell people that "I eat meat, but prefer to know its name first." My advice? strive for less than 10% meat in your diet, buy local from smaller family farms, make sure you know about the steps in the food chain that lead to your table... including the death of the animal.
You must be easily grossed out.
Others maybe, but I'm not, I like milking goats/sheep/cows and killing my own food. However, do you actually know what the pus/blood/urine/hormone/pollutant/antibiotic levels are in industrial milk? No, if you want to drink in comfort, don't ask.
Habituation happens when a stimulus is so consistent that it interferes with sensitivity to our environment, so we filter that, for instance, flat-line sound out, it becomes part of the baseline condition, a new version of silence in a way.
Our audio environments are so suffused with fans and other hums that our bodies are adapted to these sounds. Without them the soundscape feels empty and eerie. Think of it as an extension of chronic industrial disease, however. Case studies in the Sahel discovered that 70 year-olds showed no significant hearing loss, due to typically healthy blood and an extremely quiet environment.
Some of that deep discomfort people feel when they're camping away from honking traffic is also due to ideology that's sunk down into the bones over a few industrial generations. Silence, not just quiet but really quiet, is deathlike, an absence of life, an absence of civilization. It's dangerous.
Interesting how I can always hear these "silent" computers. It really is relative.
This plaything of the rich, burning hydrogen, vents merrily into the room. The problem with wood, of course (being someone who relies on it all winter, eh), is that too much heat goes directly out the chimney, and the smoke is dangerous. And, if you've ever had to buck and split a truckload of logs just to stay warm, you'd appreciate more efficiency and economy (beyond saving on fitness club fees).
That can be mitigated by design, using a thermal mass and baffle, such as in a masonry heater. Too bad they aren't part of everyday fireplace design (architects take note).
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I really don't think you're trolling, and even though this is such a wildly ideological question that I'm not sure any answer will satisfy you, I'll try.
First, imagine that a coalition of nations has 200 military bases scattered across the USA: NYC has 5 alone, and even Alamagordo NM has one. Like most military bases where the occupying force has some impunity, the off-duty soldiers are a little rowdy. 1) How would the locals perceive this, as a moral issue? Does anyone have a moral right to occupy the USA? 2) Would anyone protest, or perhaps organize violent resistance? Would there be any moral arguments for doing so?
Second, consider the issue of sovereignty. This notion is founded in morals, in the loose sense of the term. Sovereignty good, foreign occupation bad, so long as you believe people have a right to determine their own collective path. So-called democracy, even the kleptocratic republicanism used in the States, purports to hold this up as a moral issue.
Hope that helps.
No, I don't think the GP is saying that. I think they're saying that dwarfing the rest of the combined world's military budget is aggressive, and implying that the USA manufactures enemies.
Last time I checked it wasn't morally correct...
Given that the USA has over 600 military bases on foreign soil, any moral arguments in favour of current US global geopolitics are invalid.
yet the list of non-benevolent countries (besides the U.S.) fails to shrink.
Interesting. Care to back that up?
You know, I was a pretty ordinary nerdy teenager, but I hung out with some less savoury characters. We wreaked some pretty fine havoc from a vandalism point of view. Their ideas, of course! ;-)
All the while, I was thinking, "what if we decided to do this somewhere serious?" There were traffic light boxes to mess up, power stations, train controllers, high-rises, and of course the airport...
Not that I would have ever taken initiative, but I was an avid reader of novels featuring violence. Being engaged in some minor mayhem showed me that given some precautions and minor planning, a half-smart bunch of hooligans can raise some real hell.
So: where are they? Sure, there are inept and insane suicide bombers peppering Tel-Aviv bus riders with horror. But where is the real mayhem? A single incredibly complex and (if you ask commercial airline pilots and structural engineers) nigh-impossible feat, never properly explained, just isn't convincing that the network is out there. Most crimes go unsolved, and therefore serious vandalism should be relatively easy. What, you scoff--have you no feral imagination?
Yes, there ARE terrorists out there, but they're nearly all engaged in struggles with occupiers, mostly on their home turf. Sure, there are some terrorists and nasty 'liberation movement' types floating around north america... but if they were serious, they'd be pulling stuff off regularly.
Yeah, that way there are fewer people to buy off! [/cynic]
Some libertarians would say that concentrating power in the hands of a few is anathema to the spirit of liberty. Either none or all, some would say. Moderates like me say that publically owned expert organizations with accountability structures and public oversight are a workable compromise, so long as the bureaucrats don't take over.
By the time we get around to actually committing to something like terraforming Mars, it will be pretty trivial to slap some ion drives on them thar big chunks of ice spinning around Saturn, and drop them down the well into a shallow entry so that they vapourize. Lots of potential atmosphere out there in space, it just needs to be moved to Mars, and given time, it wouldn't be too expensive. Great sky show on those nights for the martian colonists, too.
I'm not sure that gravity is as much of a problem as you think, given a deep enough atmosphere.
Margins, he said. After bandwidth, administration, credit card charges, server rooms, and development, I'm sure Apple doesn't have too much of that 28 cents left. However, even a 2 penny margin can add up if the numbers are right, and it's used strategically - *wink*.
Hey, I agree with you, and the whole point of digital distribution is that this is entirely reasonable. But the market has momentum, including momentum in ideas, which means that music sellers just don't have to do this yet.
CUSTOMER: Man, my little brother used my favourite Vanilla Ice CD for target practice! Can I have another one? I already paid for it, before, like.
SALES GUY: (*WTF?!!*) Uh, sorry, uh, have a nice day, I mean, let me get the manager...
The next retail high-season, pshaw. Think twelve years from now. Apple competitors in the media-hub-style emerging markets have puckered anuses. Meanwhile it's full steam ahead towards full vertical integration at Apple.
It's an old saw by now, but since Sony isn't there already (and they could've been, nearly), Jobs is willing to play that role. This will probably be a good thing for operating systems, as an aside.
This may be a legitimate concern of an outsider who claims to have high standards for the quality of a source. Imagine the frustration: a billion people living under some stiff rules about what can be said, and lots of imagined or real conspiracy to delude outsiders. Yet you have to bang your head against that, since your job is to report on the place.
Then, of course, the BBC (and democratic pro-capitalist journalists in general) have to labour under the semi-conscious illusion that they have few forms of censorship or ideology to struggle against in their own working lives. The modern propaganda machine in all its subtleties and gross ubiquity gives us 'democratically free' folks ideologies that we wield like halitosis: it's always someone else's problem. We have to claim impartiality; sales, jobs, pride are based on it, and our general success in the world proves it, in a meta-darwinian kind of way.
Anyway, this issue points out a blind spot in the BBC's view of things: that's always a good place to look for ideology problems.
What was amazing about Erikson was that he noticed that life is rife with trance states, most of them shallow, temporary, and skilfully deployed for survival purposes. Think about this the next time you get home from a tense commute without really remembering exactly how you operated the car.
He found somewhat more suggestible cases, and took advantage of what he saw as our natural facility with trances, and of our heavy reliance on metaphor to get through the day. (Of course, I oversimplify.) Plus he was a damn good psychiatrist. Basically, a prodigy. He would find ways of putting people into trances of various depths, for various lengths of time, using freaky techniques like the rhythm of his voice tuned to the listener's body responses, and barely noticeable emphasis on certain words, not unlike fictional characters in the Dune series. Not easy to reproduce.
His ideas later led to NLP, or Neuro-Linguistic Programming... YMMV.
The links in the GP have excerpts downloadable, if you just want to get an idea (warning: high wacko quotient on those sites, and dubious copyright). It really is creepy, once you see it... especially given Chris Carter's (x-files writer/producer) ongoing theme of using conspiracy theorists to spread disinformation. Not a huge x-files & spinoff fan myself, but it is just too weird... The reasoning given in the pilot is that this event [spoiler alert!] is a pearl harbor-style trigger coordinated by a faction of the US gub'mint dedicated to boosting military production and global influence, mirroring both PNAC and real world conspiracy theorists.
It's not ever going to happen again in any of our lifetimes.
Well, not all hijackers are sending planes into buildings. Have you heard of any others? One, I think, previously. In fact, there are enough (an understatement) highly suspicious unanswered questions about those hijackings that the conspiracy theorists have topped the JFK body of ravings.
I'm in doubt myself about the official story, and there are only two degrees of separation between myself and one of the deceased flight stewards (a fellow parishoner of my brother-in-law). Also, not all hijackers board planes in the USA, and security varies hugely in the world's airports--something hijackers know.
Which brings me to your point "the terrorists know the things we're missing." Well yes, and I often wonder about where all the terrorists are. Most murders go unsolved, for instance, as do most robberies, etc. etc. A skilled criminal network (think Hell's Angels) gets caught rarely, and they're doing some pretty sophisticated law breaking, over long periods. I look around me, and see how easy it would be to really muck things up, scare people (hey, I'm a righteous square, two kids and a station wagon--really--but I dabbled in some vandalism while a young teenager, and did a stint caring for street youth, so I know about havoc). There are so many vulnerable points in an open society! And that's the way we want it. I can only surmise that they either aren't very numerous, or aren't really there, or are really stupid.
Condi Rice will be on TV going, "Who could have guessed they would use..." whatever it was.
Yeah, who could guess? Only those who saw the near-exact scenario played out on The Lone Gunmen only six months before the actual event. So, um what, maybe five million people could guess? Or did they forget to wear their tinfoil hats, and got that episode erased?
Hey, good use of categories there. Environmentalists are "bat-shit insane," because there are a few nuts in the apple barrel, eh? I happen to know from good sources that mass murderers are all non-environmentalists, which makes non-environmentalists such as yourself into mass-murder suspects.
Or perhaps you should broaden your exposure to the arguments.
We have cable broadband in places like Vernon,BC, Prince George,BC or even Fort St. John, BC
Well, no cable here, and though I can see Vancouver from where I sit, it isn't quite close enough to get a wireless connection. The future hasn't been distributed here yet, though William Gibson's house is just... over... there, on the left.
Noted. I was referring to your conclusions.
Often these are not "irrationalities" at all, simply people with different values.
A misunderstanding in nomenclature. I was referring to the everyday transactions that we undertake, in a capitalist way, that purport to be one thing (offering a kind of freedom, or gratification, or mutual benefit etc.) but actually also work in converse ways (offering addiction, or poor health, or adding to a common disaster, etc.) that are consciously ignored. This is the kind of systemic irrationality that allows us to happily participate in tragedy.
None of the alternative systems you mention scale well. Most of them have been tried and abandoned for just that reason.
An unsubstantiated claim, though you may be correct. Capitalism doesn't scale well either, in its current mode. I didn't say the many other economic practices I see everyday were our salvation, just suppressed evidence of a naked emperor.
The *relative* wealth of the rich and the poor in a society is a pretty small factor in the absolute wealth of the common man in that society.
Very likely incorrect. Disparity is a significant determinant of health.
richer in terms of purchasing power
Hm, I don't think you're with me here. Quality of life doesn't come from a wallet, nor is the accumulation of surplus capital an adequate measure of societal success. Again, I think that industrialization is the reason for these benefits, and that industrialization is not necessarily dependent upon capitalism (monopoly or market).
if someone does come up wih a better economic system, all of mankind's history shows that it will eventually dominate despite any entrenched resistance.
'Better' for the psychopaths, that is, so long as we let them determine these things. You seem to be overconfident in your grasp of history...
See, my problem is that I observe all kinds of daily 'irrationalities' in what is supposed to be a rational system, like a simple purchase. One of the main problems in this respect, is dissociation between product and production; another is the conflation of desire and need. I won't go into details, suffice to say I'm bewildered by the massive daily economic contradictions and obvious cynicism in late industrial capitalism.
Another problem of mine is that I also see alternative systems functioning in little ways all around me, frustratingly unacknowledged. Barter, potlaching, altruism, pre-feudal technopeasantry, influence and reputation (whuffie?), communitarianism, guild-craft, you name it, many nascent and hold-over forms of transaction are out there in pockets of daily life.
The bigger problem isn't just profit-hoarding, or corruption, or control over the means of production, or the shell game of surplus labour, or the inherent way in which capital pours inward... it is a question of imagination, and ideology, and what kinds of proposals are allowed to be considered and what is to be poo-poo'd. Put another way: the media don't tell us what to think: they tell us what to think about. Likewise, economists decide what's valid, while ignoring some astonishingly bad contradictions, and so ensure the status quo.
Look, just because the DSM III changed 'psychopath' to 'antisocial personality disorder' doesn't mean that the rest of us will. We still use the word, and the diagnosis isn't significantly different. It's a movie for a general audience, not psychiatrists.
The diagnostic steps were rather obviously laid out as a half-assed metaphor... half true, and half metaphor. If a corporation is an individual (half metaphor, half true), then they can be a psychopath, too. Another thing about The Corp that people don't realize is that it was produced in three segments, for TV, and released as one, for theatre, so the repetition isn't incompetence, it's necessary... but seen all at once, it is a bit tedious.
Do you know of any institutiom engaged in war in the last century that didn't allow for a number of civilian casualties as strategic? G.War in particular has less infrastructure to work with, and so relies on deception and sacrifice. Not that I agree with any of that outright, but it's a fact of engagement these days.
Note that these guerilla tactics are not used for invasion, but defence and internal conflict. Do the invaders/conquerors worry about those peasants? Less so.
Not to defend any bloody behaviour too strongly, but it's easy to critique the cubans without realizing just how much of a threat (and hardship) they were/are under -- 45 years of hot/cold war with a neighbouring superpower and all its intelligence forces and fascistic cuban ex-pats. Learn about that, then guage what your noble behaviour would be.
Hey, you know what? it's a false assumption. MOST people are convivial MOST of the time, and as long as things run smoothly enough, no-one notices. The 'action-chains' of daily life remain unbroken, and we can go on happily. One major jerk (read socio-psycho-techno-path) can muck things up for thousands, just by abandoning a car at a busy intersection or making a prank call.
We have, in this attitude, the ideology of 'nature red in tooth and claw' penetrating the capitalist fundamentalism that is holy writ in business school. History is one long string of relatively short violent convulsions, held together by long sessions of peaceful daily life that get forgotten. Likewise, the capitalist heros are successful on the backs of the fallen, and we take it for granted because they become representatives of The Capitalist Way.
Likewise, capitalism only appears to 'work' if you drink the ideological kool-aid (tm). It requires indemnity from externalities like pollution or health effects, an unemployed labour pool, a means of preparing consumers for a life of industrial scrabbling and obeying, horatio alger myths and the patina of open participation, and indeterminate expansion. Since the vast majority of the world's wealth is concentrated into a small few, how does that 'work' better than feudalism, given our current sense of human rights? Do you have a democratic workplace, or do you hang up your democracy hat when you go in to work?
Or do you mean it works because North Americans live heavily subsidized lives (see: externalities, trade agreements, colonialism, economic-hit-men, covert action, resource extraction) and 50% can afford a gas guzzler?
I have no issue with the fact that industrialization leads to wages and urban improvements throughout the world. This is not a process that requires capitalism, just capital. The monopoly totalitarian capitalism exercised by the Soviets under the guise of socialism (that would be 'communism' to the propagandists) is an example of its worst failings, but it still raised the peasantry out of dire poverty, through industrialism. The market oligopoly practiced here is more dynamic, but the 'underclass' is deeply tragic, and primarily a given condition of the economic system.
If there is a better sysytem, it will also assume that greedy psychopaths are in charge, or it will fail the same was that Communism always does.
Hm. An example of 'in the box' thinking as a result of years of propaganda. What's so impossible about designing a system where the scum doesn't rise to the top?
Oh yeah. Just not many. There are lots who go out every year, have a blast, come home (to town) with a freezer full of moose and grouse, and that's hunting etc. for your food... But not really. It's just a nice supplement, there's a grocery store down the block, eh. That's most of the hunting for food in Canada.
The ones who really live in the bush, or subsist just outside of town's reach, there aren't many. Great people, though. Mostly the original locals.
I once organised a forum led by an activist vegan nutritionist and a free-range organic rancher. I was hoping for some controversy and heated discussion (ah, the perversions of media), but what I got was an underlying agreement: for many vegans, it is the structure of the food system they object to, especially its depravities. The vegan actually supported the rancher in his venture, and suggested that given his carefully 'humane' techniques as the dominant method of production, only the spiritually-motivated vegans would remain.
Vegans have developed an ideology (like any other movement) that blinds some of its purveyors. I have a friend who's devoted to it, she rescues livestock and keeps them on her property as 'farm pets' so they can live out their life as fertility producers (pigshit is good plant food). Still, it's a bit much, what are we going to do, free the cows? They can't be naturalized, just extincted by attrition according to that logic.
I myself grew up on my grandparents' subsistence farm, and saw how old-fashioned animal husbandry is not too far from hunting-gathering in its relationship (respect) for the livestock. They had names and a 'good' domesticated life... except for the veal (hey, we're italian). I was once vegetarian due to the dissociation between slaughter and table, but now tell people that "I eat meat, but prefer to know its name first." My advice? strive for less than 10% meat in your diet, buy local from smaller family farms, make sure you know about the steps in the food chain that lead to your table... including the death of the animal.
You must be easily grossed out.
Others maybe, but I'm not, I like milking goats/sheep/cows and killing my own food. However, do you actually know what the pus/blood/urine/hormone/pollutant/antibiotic levels are in industrial milk? No, if you want to drink in comfort, don't ask.
Our audio environments are so suffused with fans and other hums that our bodies are adapted to these sounds. Without them the soundscape feels empty and eerie. Think of it as an extension of chronic industrial disease, however. Case studies in the Sahel discovered that 70 year-olds showed no significant hearing loss, due to typically healthy blood and an extremely quiet environment.
Some of that deep discomfort people feel when they're camping away from honking traffic is also due to ideology that's sunk down into the bones over a few industrial generations. Silence, not just quiet but really quiet, is deathlike, an absence of life, an absence of civilization. It's dangerous.
Interesting how I can always hear these "silent" computers. It really is relative.
This plaything of the rich, burning hydrogen, vents merrily into the room. The problem with wood, of course (being someone who relies on it all winter, eh), is that too much heat goes directly out the chimney, and the smoke is dangerous. And, if you've ever had to buck and split a truckload of logs just to stay warm, you'd appreciate more efficiency and economy (beyond saving on fitness club fees).
That can be mitigated by design, using a thermal mass and baffle, such as in a masonry heater. Too bad they aren't part of everyday fireplace design (architects take note).