Exposing The Terrorism Trap

I don't usually post things like this, but since I became active in the two recent political threads here I thought I would post this interview I just read because I think it deals with a lot of the very specific issues that various posters have brought up. There are a few things I don't really agree with, but there are a lot fo great points as well.. so, here it is... think what you will.


Exposing The Terrorism Trap
David Ross Interviews Michael Parenti

I'D LIKE to start out with the title of your new book. What do you mean by the terrorism "trap"?

THE ACTS of terrorism that took place on September 11 must be seen in a wider context. The reason these people attacked us are twofold. First there are the immediate causes. They're driven by an apocalyptic religious ideology. But at the same time the question comes up, "Why did they attack the United States?" Bush says it's because we're so free and prosperous. Well, Denmark is a lot freer and a lot more prosperous than we are, so is Sweden, so are a number of other Western European countries, but they are not being attacked in this same way. So we must try to look at the larger conditional causes of terrorism. The terrorist groups that have arisen in the Middle East and Central Asia have emerged from societies in which all popular coalitions and democratic movements have been destroyed by U.S. interventionism: Turkey, Yemen, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and others. In country after country where democratic forces have tried to mobilize for political and economic democracy, where student leaders, labor union leaders, farm and peasant communal collective leaders, independent journalist, liberal clergy, women's rights advocates, various groups of people who have fought for social change in a democratic direction, these reformist democratic forces have been the object of the worst sort of oppression over the last half century. Democratic interests have been destroyed or left with nothing to hold on to.

Finding their economies, their cultures, and their societies spinning or sinking beyond their grasp, finding themselves with no control over their lives, many of these people, in a mixture of hope and desperation, turn to a kind of totalizing religious solution. One that actually preaches direct action and revenge against the evil empire, in this case, as they see it, America. But it's really not America that's doing this to them, it's the U.S. ruling class. America itself is a entity of 260 million people, of many diverse groups most of whom do not want to see their tax dollars expended and the blood of their sons and daughters spilled in far off places, the names of which they don't even know, and usually cannot even find on the map. They wonder why so much is spent on war and so little on things like local education. Their schools are falling apart. The roof on the school is leaking and the kids don't have sufficient textbooks, and school materials. And that's not just in inner cities. I know schools in California, in suburban areas, where the art teachers go out with their own money and buy art supplies for the students because the budgets have been cut back so much. And they're wondering why we have so much public poverty and so much private wealth, so much civilian poverty and so much military glut and military wealth.

U.S. leaders have built military bases all over the world. It seems U.S. forces have got to be everywhere, all over the world, occupying countries from Bosnia to Macedonia, to Kosovo, to Afghanistan, to Tashkent, more and more places at the taxpayer's expense. Meanwhile the quality of life in the U.S. is being neglected and deteriorating. So it's not really true that Americans are clamoring for empire. Despite the monopoly propaganda of the corporate media and national security state, Americans do at times question the terrible costs and burdens of empire. But during times of crises, real or fabricated, our leaders manage to convince people to rally mindlessly around the flag, telling them, "this is for democracy," "this is for our national security," "we've got to do this to fight terrorism." Well, what's happened? U.S. forces went into Afghanistan, destroying much of that already battered country-all supposedly to catch Osama bin Laden. They never caught him, and now they say, "Oh that's not very important anyway, we don't really have to catch him." The White House is now predicting that al Qaeda is planning some other terrorist strikes of major magnitude, coming soon. So what exactly was accomplished by waging war upon a weak impoverished battered country? People say, "Well what would you do?" I would go out and hunt the terrorist cells, specifically. I wouldn't go out and bomb whole cities and villages. That's like trying to catch a flea with a giant sledgehammer. But that policy has served George Bush and his reactionaries in Washington quite well under the guise of this terrorism battle. While the rest of us, you and I, saw September 11 as a horrible, horrible tragedy, they saw it as a golden opportunity and they've been pushing their reactionary agenda ever since. The first thing George II did to fight terrorism after September 11, was to call for an additional tax cut for the very rich. And the next thing he did was to jack up the military budget even more, another 50 billion until now it's close to 400 billion dollars. None of this enhances our security against terrorism.



WHAT ARE the real motives behind U.S. foreign policy?

I BELIEVE the real motives behind most of U.S foreign policy-these may not be the only concerns or the only interests-but the major basic motives as measured by the kinds of countries U.S. leaders support and the kinds of countries or political movements they try to destroy is to keep the world safe for the Fortune 500. To make sure that the transnational corporations and international global finance capital continues to control the land, labor, resources, and markets of most of the world, and ultimately, all of the world on terms that are extremely favorable to them. The goal is to destroy, to obliterate, to thwart any social movement or national leader who is trying for an alternative way of using the land, the labor, the natural resources, the markets, the capital of his or her country.

The most recent example is Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Why is Chavez being portrayed as an unstable, wild-eyed demagogue? It's a very repetitive, rather obvious and predictable formula. A country tries to get out from under the U.S. global-dominated economic system. They want to develop their own society in their own way and you immediately begin to demonize their leaders. You talk about the leader being a "mercurial strong arm," "a strong man," "erratic," "dangerous," "a repressive autocrat," "another Hitler," "anti- American," and "anti-West." But it doesn't make somebody anti-American if they criticize U.S. policy and want to develop in their own way, a way that would be more beneficial for their people. If I criticize U.S policy and say, "I don't like what our leaders are doing in Iraq and Yugoslavia," "I don't like it bombing civilian populations," that doesn't make me anti- American. If I criticize what Israel is doing in the West Bank, in Jenin, in Hebron and other places, that doesn't make me anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic. That makes me anti- the particular leaders who are making the particular policies in Israel or in the U. S. right now.

I'm opposed to those policies. That's not being bigoted against America, or Israel, or France, or China. If I don't like Chinese policy in the business zones that they've set up and a number of areas, that doesn't mean I'm an anti-Asian, and a racist against the Chinese people. That is just a manipulative kind of labeling. To oppose the policies of a government does not mean you are against the country or the people that the government supposedly represents. Such opposition should be called what it really is: democracy, or democratic dissent, or having a critical perspective about what your leaders are doing. Either we have the right to democratic dissent and criticism of these policies or we all lie down and let the leader, the Führer, do what is best, while we follow uncritically, and obey whatever he commands. That's just what the Germans did with Hitler, and look where it got them.

WHAT ARE the domestic repercussions from the so-called \"war on terror?\"

I ALREADY alluded to some of them. The war on terror has enabled the Bush Administration to ram through the USA PATRIOT Act, which defines terrorism so broadly that one could almost say that the conversation we are having right now is aiding and abetting terrorism, and they could try to make a case against us. I\'m not exaggerating. This \"law\" gives the CIA the right, once again, to operate with domestic surveillance, which they\'ve never really stopped doing, which they\'ve been doing in the U.S. all through these years.

But now they can be less sub-rosa about it. They can be more open and go and do whatever they want. It gives them the powers to suspend habeas corpus, to suspend our civil rights whenever they want. Well let me tell you, if under the guise of fighting terrorism they think they\'re going to take away our right to dissent, and our right to a trial by jury, and our right to freedom of assembly and freedom of speech, they\'ve got another thing coming because millions of people do not agree with that hysterical, stupid, USA, so- called, PATRIOT Act. It has nothing to do with patriotism. It is an act which that gaggle of wimps they call the U.S. Congress stampeded and ran into line to vote for by an overwhelming majority because they had to show themselves as out there fighting terrorism.



WHAT DO you believe are the real structures of economic and political power in the United States?

THE REAL structures of economic and political power rest with the powers of very big moneyed interests that finance right-wing think tanks, pay the big paid lobbyists in Washington, and bankroll most of the big elections. If you want to run for any really important federal office-even for the U.S. House of Representatives-to wage a viable electoral campaign in one congressional district now cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The moneyed power also exists in a whole set of auxiliary institutions. The representatives of corporate America sit on the Boards of Regents, and Boards of Trustees that rule our universities and colleges. Corporate America owns the major media. They control the economy. They control the job market, the technology, interest rates, financial institutions. They have tremendous influence over Congress.

People say, \"Oh, do you have a conspiracy theory, do you think people really gather together in a room and meet each other?\" Certainly they meet all the time. They meet at the Bohemian Grove and the Bohemian Club in San Francisco. They meet at the Knickerbocker Club in New York. They meet at the White House. They meet at the Council on Foreign Relations. They meet at the Trilateral Commission and elsewhere. They\'re constantly meeting and confabulating, and selecting the right people for the right positions, the big policy-making positions in government. They\'re constantly setting up policies, what to do and how to do it and how this best protects the powers-that-be and the money-that-is. They don\'t rule entirely the way they would like to. If they ruled entirely as they\'d like to, they would have wiped out social security twenty years ago. They still have to deal with the popular vote to some degree and these are precious democratic rights.

That\'s about all we\'ve got left, these few rights, and sometimes not even that, as dissent is repressed or blocked out of the media. And the vote is devalued when there\'s nobody worth voting for. Here in California we are faced with one man named Simon who\'s running for Governor whose a total right-wing, big-money conservative. He\'s running against Gray Davis, who calls himself a Democrat, who is another conservative, big-money individual who sold his soul to the energy companies and the like. So, you often don\'t have a vote. I\'m voting for the Green Party candidate, Peter Camejo, just as a protest vote because neither of these other two people are worth anything.



IN YOUR book, you respond to the often-heard statement that everything changed after 9-11. What didn\'t change after September 11?

MANY OF the terrible things we talked about, or if they have changed, they\'ve changed for the worst. The government is still constantly looking for ways to restrict our rights and our freedoms. The government is still giving multibillion-dollar tax write offs to the top one percent of the population at the expense of the rest of us. You know every time they get a tax break that means that portion of the tax burden shifts onto our backs, onto the backs of the ordinary working people in America.

The government is still out there trying to destroy the environment and undermine the Clean Air Act, and the Clean Water Act as imperfect and insufficient as those Acts are- trying to roll them back. They\'re still trying to go after Social Security. They\'re still sending troops, money and military materials all over the world to suppress other people who are trying to build better lives for their own countries, trying to get some land reform, trying to get a new kind of government that would give education to the common people, that refuses to sell all the public resources off to the big corporations for a song. U.S. leaders, in the service of the big corporations, continue to undermine movements and governments that are trying to develop in more democratic ways, responsive to the needs of their people.

So I haven\'t seen all that much really changing since September 11. Now, of course, for the people who are directly impacted by the tragedy, who lost loved ones and such, their lives have changed forever and this is something they\'ll live with for the rest of their lives.

DO YOU believe our corporate-capitalist system is reformable? And if not, what is your vision of an alternative political-economic system that would be more just and egalitarian?

I SEE a system in which the people who do the labor, who work and create the value in society, should be the ones who have the say as to how it will be used. And that means you\'ve got to have elections that are not money driven but are really based on issues with clear alternative perspectives which will allow people to vote. You\'ve got to have voting systems that are not restrictive, not an obstacle course designed to disfranchise the poor and the dissident. You\'ve got to have free open ballot access to a variety of parties. You should have proportional representation, which means that if a political party gets 15 percent of the vote, they will get roughly 15 percent of the representation in the State Assembly or the Congress, or wherever it may be. You should get rid of the Electoral College, which elects the president with 550 votes or so. You should have a direct election of the president by direct popular vote, so that every vote counts equally regardless of its location.

You should also have a whole change in our priorities. The corporations should be heavily taxed. They used to provide about 20-30 percent of the national revenue, and today they provide more like 6-7 percent, if that. Many of the biggest corporations don\'t even pay taxes. They even get a negative tax refund because they haven\'t paid any taxes-they have so many tax write offs, they actually get refunded for taxes they never even paid! What a system.

I would also put under public ownership some of the basic industries in our society: the utilities, the energy companies, and this sort of thing. I would develop alternative, renewable, sustainable, energy systems: tidal energy, thermal energy, wind energy, solar power energy. These things are not pie-in-the-sky things. I hear that by 2030 Germany is going to be moving toward a point where a third or half of their national energy sources are going to come from wind. Denmark is doing the same thing. There are countries all over the world doing the same thing. There are houses in the United States, literally thousands of them, that are heated either partially are totally by solar power. One could go on. There\'s no mystery as to what could be done. The alternatives are there. They\'re not just in blueprints. They\'re actually being put into operation in communities.

I would support family farming and communal farming, which is often the safest farming. It\'s the best, and is often very efficient. It may not have that immediate, high-powered, mass productivity that the big agribusiness farms have, but the commodities that come out are usually safer and cleaner. They\'re not ridden with genetically engineered foods or pesticides, or not as much. The family farm and the communal farm uses the water on its own land so they don\'t poison it and spray it to the same degree as big agribusiness. They care for the land. In the long run they\'re more efficient. They don\'t just do cosmetic farming. They don\'t just discard a third of the crop because it might have some scratches on the skin of the potato or it looks irregular in its shape. They sell those potatoes too.

I would democratize our universities so that they\'re not run by a small group of rich businessmen who stand with ideological control over much of the faculty and administration. I would have the universities run by committees of faculty and administrators and students and staff, all of them having a say in things. It might be a little more difficult, sometimes a little messier, sometimes very wonderful and very rewarding, but it would be at least more democratic, more creative and more equitable so the universities wouldn\'t be serving as instruments of the big corporations as they increasingly are becoming.

That\'s just scratching the surface. I would take the corporate media and remind them that they are using the public domain, the airwaves. These airwaves are the property of the people of the United States. In fact they now want to sell the airwaves themselves, the actual air. They want to sell that and make that the private property of the corporate media. There are plans afoot to do that very thing. They\'re going in the other direction. They want to privatize our water systems, so we have to pay exorbitant prices for our water. There are now communities in India were these poor struggling families are paying 30-40 percent of their income just for water. The globalizing corporate goal is to do the same here. They\'re looking for commodities that people can\'t do without that they can grab hold of. Anything in the public sector that is being produced by the state, by the government, for the people, creating jobs and spending power, creating a tax base, fulfilling human needs-but without making a profit for the moneyed class-is hated by that class.

They want to move in and grab hold of everything, be it education, health, medical care, water supplies, electrical utilities, whatever else. Privatize, privatize, deregulate, and hand it over to the moneybags. They will charge whatever the market will bear. They will do these sorts of things and the rest of us will be their economic slaves, working just to buy the basic necessities of life. That\'s their goal, the third worldization of America-and everywhere else. They just want to get richer and richer and make us work harder and harder for less and less. That\'s what globalization and the \"free market\" are all about

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Ok, I am depressed enough to go to sleep now. Goodnight. :p

Why did you use the xbox sign for this thread? Thanks for the good read .....btw are you canadian , just wondering.

No reason for the icon, the thread is not Xbox related. The "X" just seemed right when I clciked it.. heh. *shrug*

As for me, I was born, raised, and studied in New Jersey - but I am currently in the process of emigrating to Québec. :)

Why do you ask, are you Canadian? ;)

I was just curious , canadians and europeans are usually more left wing than americans.

Everyone hates America and Americans. Everyone wants us to leave everyone alone, and yet everyone wants us to help them when they are in trouble. We give more and more money to other nations (more than anyone else), create jobs in foreign economies (with no demand, there is no need for supply, hence no jobs), and invite with open arms immigrants to take advantage of the opportunity here. And you call us evil.

When the US is finally destroyed (sooner than later), the world will suffer greatly- then you'll realize that we did, in fact bring great things to the world.

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Originally posted by Zerodash

When the US is finally destroyed (sooner than later), the world will suffer greatly- then you'll realize that we did, in fact bring great things to the world.

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Yep.

They're still sending troops, money and military materials all over the world to suppress other people who are trying to build better lives for their own countries, trying to get some land reform, trying to get a new kind of government that would give education to the common people, that refuses to sell all the public resources off to the big corporations for a song
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Well, I guess in case of Afganistan, Tailiban were good, they were trying to reform the Country, right? Insteas of forcing it into even more medevil like state. I dont remember that their own people were really happy with Tabiban regime. Yeah, And I see alot of interest tha Big Corporations see in Afagani trade and work force.

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Originally posted by Zerodash
Everyone hates America and Americans. Everyone wants us to leave everyone alone, and yet everyone wants us to help them when they are in trouble. We give more and more money to other nations (more than anyone else), create jobs in foreign economies (with no demand, there is no need for supply, hence no jobs), and invite with open arms immigrants to take advantage of the opportunity here. And you call us evil.

When the US is finally destroyed (sooner than later), the world will suffer greatly- then you'll realize that we did, in fact bring great things to the world.

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Thank you.

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Originally posted by Zerodash
Everyone hates America and Americans.

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Did you actually read the article? It's written by an American. :confused:

He said: «But it's really not America that's doing this to them, it's the U.S. ruling class.» -and- «But it doesn't make somebody anti-American if they criticize U.S. policy and want to develop in their own way, a way that would be more beneficial for their people. If I criticize U.S policy and say, "I don't like what our leaders are doing in Iraq and Yugoslavia," "I don't like it bombing civilian populations," that doesn't make me anti- American. If I criticize what Israel is doing in the West Bank, in Jenin, in Hebron and other places, that doesn't make me anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic. That makes me anti- the particular leaders who are making the particular policies in Israel or in the U. S. right now.»

Yeeeesh. :confused:

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Everyone wants us to leave everyone alone, and yet everyone wants us to help them when they are in trouble. We give more and more money to other nations (more than anyone else), create jobs in foreign economies (with no demand, there is no need for supply, hence no jobs), and invite with open arms immigrants to take advantage of the opportunity here. And you call us evil.

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Jobs? Yeh, slave labour. Thank goodness for Nike, eh? They've really enriched the lives of Asians.

And who called "you" evil? You clearly didn't read the article, and thus look quite foolish. :(

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When the US is finally destroyed (sooner than later), the world will suffer greatly

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Ok, what will happen that is so bad? Equality?

The only things that need to be "destroyed" are the system and the people who hold all the power. Not innocents.

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then you'll realize that we did, in fact bring great things to the world.

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Yeh, there are definitely a few things - no-one ever denied that though.... I also don't know why you are saying "we", as I doubt that you personally had anything to do with it aside from having been born within the same arbitrary boundries.

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Originally posted by Despair
They\'re still sending troops, money and military materials all over the world to suppress other people who are trying to build better lives for their own countries, trying to get some land reform, trying to get a new kind of government that would give education to the common people, that refuses to sell all the public resources off to the big corporations for a song
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Well, I guess in case of Afganistan, Tailiban were good, they were trying to reform the Country, right? Insteas of forcing it into even more medevil like state. I dont remember that their own people were really happy with Tabiban regime. Yeah, And I see alot of interest tha Big Corporations see in Afagani trade and work force.

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Despair, it\'s not a case of anyone saying that the Taliban is good. I don\'t know why you thought he meant Taliban, but even though I am not the author I can assure you that he was not talking about un-democratic inhuman regimes like that. Besides, the fact of the matter is that the US supported the Taliban in the past, before the WTC attacks and they supported bin Laden as well thus clearly illustrating his intended point.

Thats true. USA did fund Agani militants and trained Bib Laden when, Afganistan fought against USSR. So in that matter, US did created the monster, who in time turned against his creator.

But then again, EVERY goverment have lots of SHADY business going on, and durty secrets to hide. Same can be said about Russia and Chechnya conflict. Its pretty much much the same terrorist situation, with groups of Chechen gurellas attacking various Russian villages, and other terroris acts. Which lead to a simular military conflict, but unlike US/Afganistan one, lots of lives were lost both militant and civilian. Again, There are few points of view there, where the Russian goverment right to attack Chechnya, or should they left them independant, and continuing breeding terrorist and crime groups, or was it a good deed, which in the end didnt really solve anything?

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Originally posted by Despair
But then again, EVERY goverment have lots of SHADY business going on, and durty secrets to hide.

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It's sad but true... but some are a lot better than others. For example, the UK is just about as bad as anyone - including the US. Russia, like you point out, has a lot of dirty laundry. But there are responsible governments and peace-makers in the world too though. Norway has a fine tradition of peace-making. Sweden is egalitarian and neutral. Canada is internationally regarded for it's peacekeeping and humanitarianism. A lot of countries are pretty MOR.. No-one is perfect out there.

I must say that IMO Sweden is pretty close tho'... ;)

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Same can be said about Russia and Chechnya conflict. Its pretty much much the same terrorist situation, with groups of Chechen gurellas attacking various Russian villages, and other terroris acts. Which lead to a simular military conflict, but unlike US/Afganistan one, lots of lives were lost both militant and civilian. Again, There are few points of view there, where the Russian goverment right to attack Chechnya, or should they left them independant, and continuing breeding terrorist and crime groups, or was it a good deed, which in the end didnt really solve anything?

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Yeh, that's a very interesting situation. I am not an expert on that conflict but I have read about Russia really botching things up with how they handled it and contributed to the problem but I am also aware of the nasty deeds of the Chechnyan terrorists. I think that this is basically another one of those situations where there is no "good guys". The common people of that region are the ones who have to suffer because of it. It's really sad. :(

KLA is not a terrorist outfit , despair. Russia is occupying their land.

I'll be reading the whole thing in a second, but this immediately jumped out at me in roughly the third paragraph-

"...of many diverse groups most of whom do not want to see their tax dollars expended and the blood of their sons and daughters spilled in far off places, the names of which they don't even know, and usually cannot even find on the map."

So we don't want to meddle because we're poorly educated? I'll read more in a minute, but it'll take a second to get past that little kink of logic.

James

Yes people, isn't NAFTA wonderful? /mind-numbingly extreme sarcasm

Free trade is one of the nails in our coffin...

Since he mentioned Cali...

Actually, tons of money is funneled to our school system every year. Not to mention the revenue from cigarrette tax that goes to education. Not to mention the proceeds the CA Lottery gives to the school districts. Not to mention every school's own personal fundraisers.

And so on and so on.

You say school are leaky. I already know that, grow up in 'ghetto-fied' Norwalk, CA. But even when we ran a fund raiser to get the roofs fixed, which the district said would be used for that, and even when we raised MORE money than needed, nothing was ever fixed. But the district's superattendant and staff somehow recieved pay raises during a budget cut. Not to mention the budget cut ment they were losing hundreds of thousands of dollars, but still spending millions upon millions.

If anything is wrong with the school system, it's that money goes down the crapper for the wrong reasons, the admin demands more, rallies ignorant support by pulling on heartstrings and claiming that 'we don't have enough,' and even when the budget is increased, they don't do crap with it. And then repeat the cycle.

Not to mention the retarded idea of social promotion (which left my sister illitterate for many years while still being passed along, all the while demanding help and getting none), of teachers who don't give a rat's ass, and students who feel the same. Not to mention the an individual tends not to care much about their child's education when the 'taxpayer' is fitting the bill, as opposed to one's own personal money being spent.

I'd like to see how this guy rationalizes private schools doing better scholastically (sp) with smaller budgets than most public schools. And I know there are some public schools with tiny budgets, but when so much money is funneled annually, I ask:

Where does all of that go?

edit: oh yeah, this all spurred from seeing this guy rant that we spend more on military than on education. Ever think that maybe, just maybe, building a tank is a bit costlier than buying a book? It\'s not how much money, in dollars, is spent - its to what effect the cash is used.

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Originally posted by Gongos
I am all for a prudent preservation fo our rights, but we should be realistic.

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Oh give me break, we wouldn't even have a nation if america's founding fathers thought like that.
I believe it was Ben Franklin who said something to the extent that those who are willing to give up freedom for security deserve neither.

The hell with hiding behind being "realistic". It's a simple matter of quality over/or quantity. Do you want to live a good life or a long life, if you had to choose. Will you do everything you can to enjoy your life or will you do everything you can to extend your life to it's longest possible span? Are you a man or a mouse?

In regards to the original letter I would like to ask that none of you to take it to heart. I believe we have all read in history about a similar rant before. If you can't recall it, put Jewish in front of all words relating to big bad companies. The only real difference in this letter and Hitler's speeches used to obtain power is that were Hitler and the Nazis claimed that they had the answer, this letter claims communism is the answer.

Its your basic two truth, a lie. Then what you need to do about it

1. Life sucks
2. America does some bad things in the world.
3. The big companies in the US are thus to blame for it all and must be destroyed.
4. Embrace communism and all your problems will be solved.

Really, just read his last few paragraphs, all of them ask to put things totally in the hands of the public. We all know how wonderfully things went when Russia took things out of the hands of the rich and the ruling class and put it in the hands of the public. We also know how well it went when the Nazis made Germany's jewish upperclass a target.

Nothing is ever going to be fixed in this nation as long as people get caught in smoke screens like this. No one group is to blame in any of this. You're not going to achieve anything by targeting the poor, the rich, the upper class or the lower class. Liberals have ben targeting the rich and blaming them for this nations problems and Conservatives have ben targeting the poor as the problem, accusing them all of immorality and ignorance. Democrats want you to be able to do anything you want at home but enslave you at work. Republicans want you to be able to do anything you want at work but control what you believe and how you think.

The man did make a good point about how past events are being used to further take away this nations basic rights. Id agree with him on that, but communism is not the answer. If you take power away from one group and give it to another someone else will just rise to the top and control it. There will always be someone in all areas of life looking for power and people to control.

Honestly though, I don't know really what to do about it. Life has really gotten so big, so complicated and so dangerous to those who want change I don't know how you would try to change anything and live long.

The original idea from this nations founders of people having militias and overthrowing the government is a joke in today's world. You would be slaughtered and made into a bunch of crazy wakos so unless you have a island as big as Texas with a army as big if not bigger than the US's just forget about that route, its completely futile.

The only thing that might ever work would be if a people from all walks of life pulled together to make some sort of club or group. And within this group have it founded on logic AND quality of life at the same time. Quality just not for it's members but for all mankind (but it would have to start out focusing mainly on the US, first things first). It would also be nice for a change to have a political group that didn't think making laws would fix the world, that actually thought up new ways of dealing with people with out necessarily controlling one or anther group or groups of people. After the group became big it could pull its resources together to pay to campaign for good people.

Of course I have no idea if this would work. In today's world so many things could go wrong inside and outside. Bad people could rise to the top of it, and/or people who are over emotional and only want to further their own beliefs and goals. A worst case scenario would be it mutating into something like the KKK (yes people, the KKK was originally one town's simple little club of men who had similar beliefs, and not even racist beliefs when it was started). And these are just inside factors. The people who start such a thing could be put out business, fired, black mailed and killed by other groups if they feel they are a threat to them. People don?t like having their lives changed if that change might be not to their liking. We can all think of historical examples of how the ruling classes reacted to rises in new ways of thinking and/or groups.

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Originally posted by Gongos

and here is why it is so hard to have a intelligent discussion, because of black or white thinking like that. Guess what, in having a military and police force, you willingly give up certain rights, in exchange for the protection that said individuals give and the promise that hey will be properly monitered.

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What on earth are you talking about. The people are not suppose to have to give up rights to the police or the military to get justice. Their job is to protect those rights and to protect people from those who would violating those right. No one is suppose to be above the laws and ideals this nation was founded on, though this may be possible with the surge of socialistic minded people now in the government. The fact that this could happen is just another example of socialism decreasing the over all quality of life for the sake of promoting longevity, for the good of the people. "We have to fuck this group of people over for the good of the people" "we have to fuck you over for the good of the people"

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Originally posted by Gongos
honestly, fuck the founding fathers, our country exists not because of a bunch of greedy venture capitalists who had a way with words, it exists because the PEOPLE are strong enough to endure. frankiln, jefferson, etc. were at best aping greek cultural styles, it isint like we are THAT different from our contemporary european and japanese neighbors in terms of individual freedoms for not having a piece of paper to fawn over. The bottom line is that we were vulnerable because of thinking like this, because americans would rather enumerate our rights than realistically understand out responsibilities.

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Endure? We gain strength through enduring? When did the US achieve something great PURELY through endurance? Are you referring to how the colonies people just endured England's insane policies? How they just dealt with it day to day and they magically went away? Are you talking about how the U.S just endured ww1 or ww2, just sat back and dealt with them until the nasty little war went away?

Yes it is true we are not that different, currently, than our contemporary European and Japanese neighbors in terms of individual freedoms. Which is sad, that the worlds first successful democratic nation is not much better off now than the more socialistic governments of the world.
It is even worse that people now live in a world were rights are negotiable, that the quality of life can be decreased for the sake of extending life, perhaps even to a point were that life is no longer worth extending. Exactly how bad does life have to get before people realize that the lives they gave up things to preserve are no longer worth preserving? And what would you do if your own life was a threat to the "common good" ? What if 10, 20 , maybe if 100's of 1000's of lives were a inconvenience to the "common good", exactly how many people have to die before such a thing is wrong? How long would you endure genocide if it was for the good of a larger group?

Sure man, you endure, let everything change to suit the time. I just hope for everyone's sake that living in this nation doesn't some day become a meaningless waste of life, ironically for its own preservation.

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Originally posted by IronPlant
In regards to the original letter I would like to ask that none of you to take it to heart. I believe we have all read in history about a similar rant before. If you can't recall it, put Jewish in front of all words relating to big bad companies. The only real difference in this letter and Hitler's speeches used to obtain power is that were Hitler and the Nazis claimed that they had the answer, this letter claims communism is the answer.

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You don't seem to have an understanding of socialism, nazism, fascism, racism, or communism. So, I would like to ask anyone who is reading this post to roll their eyes.

First of all, the article is from the International Socialist Review. Hitler was a fascist and a racist. Nazi means "national socialist", but the Nazis were not socialists either.

Being a racist means to judge people based on their ethnicity. To be against a specific policies and against greed and oppression has nothing to do with racism. There is nothing whatsoever in that man's interview which was even remotely racist, so to compare him to Hitler and Jewish people just because you don't share the same political opinions as him just makes you look silly.

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Its your basic two truth, a lie. Then what you need to do about it

1. Life sucks
2. America does some bad things in the world.
3. The big companies in the US are thus to blame for it all and must be destroyed.
4. Embrace communism and all your problems will be solved.

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The only lie is your misrepresentation of that this man said. You just pulled this out of your behind.

What the man did was discuss specific problems, explain them, and offer suggestions on how to change them. If you want to disagree, explain the problem with them, don't lie and misrepresent what he said. Offer your own opinion on the specific problems.

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Really, just read his last few paragraphs, all of them ask to put things totally in the hands of the public. We all know how wonderfully things went when Russia took things out of the hands of the rich and the ruling class and put it in the hands of the public. We also know how well it went when the Nazis made Germany's jewish upperclass a target.

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You don't know much about the world then do you? Not every country has to be just like the Soviet Union, which was more "Stalinist" than "Communist" anyway. I didn't see anything in this article that calls for turning the USA into the USSR, and most modern communists don't consider the USSR really "communist" anyway.

If the US could be more like Canada, Sweden, Norway, or even France or Germany (none of which are communist, FYI) I say they should go for it. Place price controls on things people need and make sure all people have access to things like health care and water. If you want only the rich people tohave those things, then that's where we disagree.

Once again, your Nazi/Jewish comment just makes you look foolish. There is nothing racist about equality. Quite the contrary actually.

Also, your opinion is quite ironic considering the type of racist views and race problems that exist all too often in the USA today. Minorities in the US still don't have equal rights, freedoms, or incomes.

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Nothing is ever going to be fixed in this nation as long as people get caught in smoke screens like this.

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How do you propose fixing things then? What would you fix and how?

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No one group is to blame in any of this. You're not going to achieve anything by targeting the poor, the rich, the upper class or the lower class. Liberals have ben targeting the rich and blaming them for this nations problems and Conservatives have ben targeting the poor as the problem, accusing them all of immorality and ignorance. Democrats want you to be able to do anything you want at home but enslave you at work. Republicans want you to be able to do anything you want at work but control what you believe and how you think.

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Republicans and democrats are all the same thing in the US. There is no difference. They are both sects of the same right wing idealogy. There are no real "liberals" in the US government.

As for the poor and the rich, what democratic socialists believe is that everyone should be OK. There should not be super rich and super poor. The top 5% of people should not have 95% of the wealth, like it is in the USA (I kid you not, that's a real statistic, and I think it/s closer to 1%/98%, I am just being safe). I prefer living in a society where more people are closer to the middle. Where it's OK to be on the poor end, and you won't suffer, and where you can make some money and be a success. I don't care if that means the richest person in the world won't come from my country. Who needs that much. It's ok to tax the rich. They can afford it.

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If you take power away from one group and give it to another someone else will just rise to the top and control it. There will always be someone in all areas of life looking for power and people to control.

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Yeh, like those crazy Swedish dictators! Oooo they give me nightmares! What a horrible place that is.

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The original idea from this nations founders of people having militias and overthrowing the government is a joke in today's world. You would be slaughtered and made into a bunch of crazy wakos so unless you have a island as big as Texas with a army as big if not bigger than the US's just forget about that route, its completely futile.

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But who brought up taking over the US by force? A violent revolution? I am sure some people belive in that but I have not seen any such views in this thread. Basically this man has just talked about democratic ways to reform the system. If he can't speak out about reform without fearing for his life, that just underlines the problem.

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It would also be nice for a change to have a political group that didn't think making laws would fix the world, that actually thought up new ways of dealing with people with out necessarily controlling one or anther group or groups of people. After the group became big it could pull its resources together to pay to campaign for good people.

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So, it's going to fix the world.. without laws. So, what is it going to do? Just ask people nicely to be good to each other?

Laws are not a bad thing. We all deserve to live in a "Just Society".

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Of course I have no idea if this would work. In today's world so many things could go wrong inside and outside. Bad people could rise to the top of it, and/or people who are over emotional and only want to further their own beliefs and goals.

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Yeh, that's why you need laws. To prevent evil people from controling the government. The control over the government and it's laws should be in the hands of the PEOPLE. ALL people. Not just a select few. But everyone.

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A worst case scenario would be it mutating into something like the KKK (yes people, the KKK was originally one town's simple little club of men who had similar beliefs, and not even racist beliefs when it was started). And these are just inside factors. The people who start such a thing could be put out business, fired, black mailed and killed by other groups if they feel they are a threat to them. People don?t like having their lives changed if that change might be not to their liking. We can all think of historical examples of how the ruling classes reacted to rises in new ways of thinking and/or groups.

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You talked an awful lot about the Nazis earlier in your post, and now you are proposing schemes where the KKK can take over your country. I just don't get it.

How about we just get rid of ruling classes completely? Everyone should have the same rights and freedoms.

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Originally posted by sggg
You don't seem to have an understanding of socialism, nazism, fascism, racism, or communism. So, I would like to ask anyone who is reading this post to roll their eyes.

First of all, the article is from the International Socialist Review. Hitler was a fascist and a racist. Nazi means "national socialist", but the Nazis were not socialists either.

Being a racist means to judge people based on their ethnicity. To be against a specific policies and against greed and oppression has nothing to do with racism. There is nothing whatsoever in that man's interview which was even remotely racist, so to compare him to Hitler and Jewish people just because you don't share the same political opinions as him just makes you look silly.

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The point of that statement was not a declaration that socialism, communism, and fascism and any other ism is the same. I was just commenting that the over all feel of the letter seemed more like a way of convincing people to choose his ideology on the subject with ?arranged? facts. It is a historical truth Hitler did this. The man blames the upper class and business owners of the world for the worlds problems when there is no way that ALL those types of people are to blame nor could they cause ALL the problems. Maybe it was not his intent but he wording eluded to such.

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Originally posted by sggg
The only lie is your misrepresentation of that this man said. You just pulled this out of your behind.

What the man did was discuss specific problems, explain them, and offer suggestions on how to change them. If you want to disagree, explain the problem with them, don't lie and misrepresent what he said. Offer your own opinion on the specific problems.

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I didn?t lie about what he said, I might over generalized what he said but I did not lie. You can not deni that the over all message is this letter is that big business causes the majority of the worlds problems and he fills that socialist and communist solutions would fix them.

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Originally posted by sggg
You don't know much about the world then do you? Not every country has to be just like the Soviet Union, which was more "Stalinist" than "Communist" anyway. I didn't see anything in this article that calls for turning the USA into the USSR, and most modern communists don't consider the USSR really "communist" anyway.

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It was communist there for a while, a short while, before Stalin took serious advantage of the situation. Which is a perfect example of how people can take advantage to get power.

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Originally posted by sggg
If the US could be more like Canada, Sweden, Norway, or even France or Germany (none of which are communist, FYI) I say they should go for it. Place price controls on things people need and make sure all people have access to things like health care and water. If you want only the rich people tohave those things, then that's where we disagree.

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What does this have to do with the quote of what I said? Yeah, like you said they are not communist nor are they a dictator ship like the two governments I was referring to. I?m not sure but aren?t at least half of those nations democrat in some form and not purely socialist? So why did you stick this were you did? Did everyone in the public vote on this (what I was arguing against) or did their representatives vote for those price controls and health care?

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Originally posted by sggg
Once again, your Nazi/Jewish comment just makes you look foolish. There is nothing racist about equality. Quite the contrary actually.

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When I used the Nazi/Jewish comments I am referring to the jews being used as national scape goat and being blamed for Germanies problems, like the way in this letter he chooses a entire economic group as the blame for the worlds problems. Im simply connecting the use of scapegoats. Not calling this man a racist.

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Originally posted by sggg
Also, your opinion is quite ironic considering the type of racist views and race problems that exist all too often in the USA today. Minorities in the US still don't have equal rights, freedoms, or incomes.

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That comment is not relevant to what I said because I wasn?t talking about racism, I was talking about creating scapegaots.

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Originally posted by sggg
How do you propose fixing things then? What would you fix and how?

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What are you talking about now? What does a comment about you shouldn?t get caught up in political point the finger have to do with fixing problems? Are you trying tell me its ok to just make a bland generalization about everyone in one economic group. Make some laws for all of them just because of one? When was guilty until proven innocent the way of justice? All I said is people should get caught up when politicians make up some overgeneralized group to hate and claim he can do something about them. What?s wrong with that? What?s wrong with people spread hate?

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Originally posted by sggg
Republicans and democrats are all the same thing in the US. There is no difference. They are both sects of the same right wing idealogy. There are no real "liberals" in the US government.

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That?s simple your opinion.

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Originally posted by sggg
As for the poor and the rich, what democratic socialists believe is that everyone should be OK. There should not be super rich and super poor. The top 5% of people should not have 95% of the wealth, like it is in the USA (I kid you not, that's a real statistic, and I think it/s closer to 1%/98%, I am just being safe). I prefer living in a society where more people are closer to the middle. Where it's OK to be on the poor end, and you won't suffer, and where you can make some money and be a success. I don't care if that means the richest person in the world won't come from my country. Who needs that much. It's ok to tax the rich. They can afford it.

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That is your opinion and I have no idea why you think your opinion should be the standard. Stuff like ?I prefer? and ?I don?t care? are your feelings. There is no just way to look at what you are suggesting. How is it fair to take away from a man that which he has earned? To say ?tax the rich because they can afford it? What kind of just country penalizes its best to raze up its mediocre and worse with out their consent? How can you advocate forcefully enslaving the strong, intelligent and gifted to the weak and lazy? Not everyone wealthy are fatcats who are born into it, some of them work hard for it, fight for it, go to school longer than most people for it, and you want to bind these people to those who didn?t care enough to try hard, those who slacked off in school, and those who willingly settled for mediocre?

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Originally posted by sggg
Yeh, like those crazy Swedish dictators! Oooo they give me nightmares! What a horrible place that is.

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Maybe it doesn?t ALLWAYS happened, but it has happened enough and caused the world enough pain already that posablity should not be ignored.

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Originally posted by sggg
But who brought up taking over the US by force? A violent revolution? I am sure some people belive in that but I have not seen any such views in this thread. Basically this man has just talked about democratic ways to reform the system. If he can't speak out about reform without fearing for his life, that just underlines the problem.

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I wasn?t accusing him of such. I had started a new topic when I started to talk about what could be done in this day and age. I added this part because when the original government was formed it was thought that if a government does goes aerie it?s a good idea to over through it. That can be done with force so I was just saying that wasn?t a option with the change in times. In was a statement about the change in times, not a me trying to accuse the writer of wanting to do a military coup.

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Originally posted by sggg
So, it's going to fix the world.. without laws. So, what is it going to do? Just ask people nicely to be good to each other?

Laws are not a bad thing. We all deserve to live in a "Just Society".

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I didn?t say it would fix the world but a group of people with the mind set of trying to promote quality of life for all and doing so logically couldn?t hurt the world much more than the other two groups. I also didn?t say laws were not necessary. But they also doesn?t fix all problems. Simply restricting people and/or threatening them with negativity does stop a person from being bad. There are all sorts of things that can be done to promote a better mankind other than laws. Better education, giving people things (fun things, not labor projects) to do as a community, helping the people to become more aware are a few, and im sure if people worked at it they could come up with many more. Doesn?t it make more sense to try to reform people before they commit a crime instead of only after when they have done it and are behind bars? They have the same brain before and after the bars.

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Originally posted by sggg
Yeh, that's why you need laws. To prevent evil people from controling the government. The control over the government and it's laws should be in the hands of the PEOPLE. ALL people. Not just a select few. But everyone.

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You really think a law is going to fix or stop that? Its already against government policy to be a evil president. That?s what the entire thing of impeaching is about. You can tell people that they are going to get whatever negative thing for do something all you want. But if someone wants to do it, they are going to do it. Our full jails around the nation are proof of that.

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Originally posted by sggg
You talked an awful lot about the Nazis earlier in your post, and now you are proposing schemes where the KKK can take over your country. I just don't get it.

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How tired are you? I never said that. I just said that organizations can mutate over time into things they were not originally meant to be. I used the KKK because they are a real life example of that and well known. They really did have nothing to do originally with racism, when it started it was nothing more than some stupid small men?s club.

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Originally posted by sggg
How about we just get rid of ruling classes completely? Everyone should have the same rights and freedoms.

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Fine, lets do that. Tell me when you figure out how to let everyone on this planet vote on every issue and how keep anyone and everyone from not getting more power and control than someone else. When you figure this out call china so they can finally iron out the creases in Communism, im sure they would like to finally not have to have someone in charge to make sure everyone gets the same stuff.

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Originally posted by IronPlant
The point of that statement was not a declaration that socialism, communism, and fascism and any other ism is the same. I was just commenting that the over all feel of the letter seemed more like a way of convincing people to choose his ideology on the subject with ?arranged? facts. It is a historical truth Hitler did this. The man blames the upper class and business owners of the world for the worlds problems when there is no way that ALL those types of people are to blame nor could they cause ALL the problems. Maybe it was not his intent but he wording eluded to such.

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Ok, I understand what you meant better now. But, I'd counter that by saying that he did not "arrange" the facts, but rather he blamed people for the problems he felt they were responsible for, and backed it up with his reasons. I don't think that he blamed the problems on vague notions of "the upper class" or "business owners". I think he was pretty specific - at least as specific as he could be in a short interview - about saying who was to blame for what or why. I can understand that you don't like or agree with his solutions. Many people don't. I just don't think you're being fair in your criticism of the way he made his case.

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I didn?t lie about what he said, I might over generalized what he said but I did not lie. You can not deni that the over all message is this letter is that big business causes the majority of the worlds problems and he fills that socialist and communist solutions would fix them.

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No, but you made it sound like he made no connection between them. Now, maybe you don't agree with him but to say that he didn't make a connection is not correct.

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It was communist there for a while, a short while, before Stalin took serious advantage of the situation. Which is a perfect example of how people can take advantage to get power.

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The problems you were referring to were not problems that took place in the "short while" (during the Russian Revolution). Also, just because Stalin and other members of the Soviet part abused the name of communism, does not mean it's communism's fault. Just like how when the US abuses the name of deomcracy it's not democracy's fault.

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What does this have to do with the quote of what I said? Yeah, like you said they are not communist nor are they a dictator ship like the two governments I was referring to. I?m not sure but aren?t at least half of those nations democrat in some form and not purely socialist? So why did you stick this were you did? Did everyone in the public vote on this (what I was arguing against) or did their representatives vote for those price controls and health care?

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I added that in there because I was trying to show examples of how things which do work well.

Here you are implying something very strange. You make it sound like demcracy and socialist programmes are incompatible. That does not make sense. Of course every country that I cited there is quite democratic. More democratic than the US is, as a matter of fact, because the citizens have more say in their governments because among other things, they have proportian representation (which is to say a parliament where each party gets a say in governing the country based on the % of vote that they receive). Socialism comes in because they have more equitable distrubutions of labour and wealth, more social programs, state ownership of certain industries (to the benefit not detriment of it's citizens), and so on. There are even many political parties out there called "social democrats". These are not alien concepts.

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When I used the Nazi/Jewish comments I am referring to the jews being used as national scape goat and being blamed for Germanies problems, like the way in this letter he chooses a entire economic group as the blame for the worlds problems. Im simply connecting the use of scapegoats. Not calling this man a racist.

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The difference is, blaming someone for societies ills based on their race is 100% irrational. That has nothing in common with criticising certain specific policies and groups for actions they have taken to unjustly accumlate wealth and power, not to mention and surpress other groups. You have a right to disagree with his conclusions, but to compare them to racism simply does not make any sense at all.

Anyway, you think he is making a scapegoat. I think his criticism is valid and based on solid facts. We disagree, that's fine.. but your analogy is unfair.

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That?s simple your opinion. (re: Democrats and Republicans being of the same sect)

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It's also the opinion of my quite patriotic pro-US Political Science teacher in my US university. Political ideology is not simply a matter of left and right. If you had to make a chart of ideologioes you need to use a different kind of chart. Think of it as a chart where the x-axis goes from freedom-to-order and the y-axis goes from outcomes-to-opportunity. The 2 parties in the US 2-party system (one of only two 2-party systems in the world), do not represent all 4 quadrants. Basically, what is referred to as "liberal" in the US, is viewed as quite conservative in many other parts of the world.

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That is your opinion and I have no idea why you think your opinion should be the standard. Stuff like ?I prefer? and ?I don?t care? are your feelings. There is no just way to look at what you are suggesting. How is it fair to take away from a man that which he has earned? To say ?tax the rich because they can afford it? What kind of just country penalizes its best to raze up its mediocre and worse with out their consent? How can you advocate forcefully enslaving the strong, intelligent and gifted to the weak and lazy? Not everyone wealthy are fatcats who are born into it, some of them work hard for it, fight for it, go to school longer than most people for it, and you want to bind these people to those who didn?t care enough to try hard, those who slacked off in school, and those who willingly settled for mediocre?

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Yes, those are my opinions. Just like your beliefs are your opinions. I don't think there was ever any question about that.

As for your questioning of my opinions, I don't mind if you disagree but I don't think you fairly characterised them. The strong do not have to get "enslaved", but systems should be in place so that the weak do not get taken advantage of by the people with the means to do so. What socialism is about is equality and protection for all people no matter what. It's it the opposite of enslavement. It releases people from ecomomic slavery. Everyone gets a chance to succeed. How much they succeed is up to them!! People don't need to be insanely wealthy. But they can still be well off. There are plenty of millionaires in Scandinavia, you know. The difference is just that there are just a lot less billionaires and, of course, homeless people! All people need to eat and need health care and medicine. No matter what. Society as a whole should work together to give these people a chance. IMO it is better to live in a society where the gap between rich and poor is small, and not large. A reasonable gap can still exist, and people still need to work hard to succeed in life, but if they are destitude, the state can help them and help them get back on their feet, instead of letting them rot on the streets. If raising that bar on poverty to levels to where no-one suffers means that the richest of the rich have to pay more in taxes, that's ok with me. They're still going to be the most wealthy.

That is so much better than having more than 95% of the wealth in the hands of less than 5% of the people. The "American Dream" is that every dumbass thinks he is going to be the next Bill Gates, when most of them end up as little more than wage slaves. That is not freedom. That is an illusion of freedom designed to pacify the stupid. Freedom is achieved when all people are free to eat, learn, and succeed.

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Simply restricting people and/or threatening them with negativity does stop a person from being bad. There are all sorts of things that can be done to promote a better mankind other than laws. Better education, giving people things (fun things, not labor projects) to do as a community, helping the people to become more aware are a few, and im sure if people worked at it they could come up with many more. Doesn?t it make more sense to try to reform people before they commit a crime instead of only after when they have done it and are behind bars? They have the same brain before and after the bars.

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Well, I agree 100% about education! There's something positice. That's one of the most important things that can be done.

But once again, it's also your downfall. All people should have access to education and should be able to receive an equal high quality education. This is not the case in the US. Compare the cost of universities in the US and, well, anywhere else. The realistic opportunity for quality education is not available to all US citizens, like it is for citizens of other countries. Even for what many consider upper-middle class Americans, getting an education can mean huge debts. Forget about them, it's even harder to afford an education when you're poor and need to work, or you're homeless and need to eat...

Also, you speak of stopping people from "being bad". Would you like to compare the crims statistics of a country like Canada or Norway with the US? If you don't think that's a fair example you can compare comparable cities from the Canada and the US. There are a lot less people "being bad" in more just societies, because there is less motivation and reason for them to do such things.

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You can tell people that they are going to get whatever negative thing for do something all you want. But if someone wants to do it, they are going to do it. Our full jails around the nation are proof of that.

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Yet, the jails in the other countries I cited are not quite so full. Thanks, for helping me prove my point.

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Fine, lets do that. Tell me when you figure out how to let everyone on this planet vote on every issue and how keep anyone and everyone from not getting more power and control than someone else. When you figure this out call china so they can finally iron out the creases in Communism, im sure they would like to finally not have to have someone in charge to make sure everyone gets the same stuff.

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It does not have to be planet-wide, that's just silly. Certain things which are right for some cultures are not right for others. But all countries should protect the human rights of their citizens, of course. It's unrealistic to have every citizen vote on every issue that ever comes up in government. Not only do the common people lack the expertise, but it's not practical!! However, you can have far more fair systems of representation than you have in the US, so that the voice of the people is heard and carried out and the people can have more of an impact and say in how their nation operates. Like I mentioned about, having a system of proportional representation makes it possible for all voices and views to have a say in government in accordance to how popular they are. That's just one example of how to put more say in the hands of the people.

Also, another example is that elections should not be financed by huge corporations and special interests so that the common person has very little impact or chance to run for office. Unless they are bankrolled by special interests - like they are in the US - the people have very little say in what happens. Like I keep saying, common US citizens are good people. If they had the facts and had a say, they would change things. But they don't. Much of public policy is not decided by the people, it is dictated to them and decided for them. Of course these same special interests also control the media too, so they people don't even know what is going on or what to object to. Unless you are a part of that establishment, you have no way to make an impact or run for a significant office in the US or change a damn thing. This process should be open to everyone regardless of their political views.

Like I said before, everyone should have the same rights and freedoms. There should not be a ruling class.

I don't understand how you can argue with that. If you want to propose different solutions, I can definitely understand that though...

woot!go sggg!
This is a little OT but didnt the US use more socialist(ie the government reduced the power of the free market for a while) policies to recover from the great depression?

Yeh I think so. That period of US history is far from my strong suit... but if I recall correctly from my US History class a lot of things like welfare and other social programmes were started around that time.

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Originally posted by sggg
The problems you were referring to were not problems that took place in the "short while" (during the Russian Revolution). Also, just because Stalin and other members of the Soviet part abused the name of communism, does not mean it's communism's fault. Just like how when the US abuses the name of deomcracy it's not democracy's fault.

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Yes this is true, but when things do go wrong you can have horrible results for those in and around it. What happened in russia is a good example of how wrong it can go. It's a little bit harder to commit crimes in the name of democracy and make sense than it is to do in the name of communism and socialism. If you do a injustice against a man you can?t say you did it for democracy because you infringed on his freedom. But you can harm others unjustly in the name of socialism and communism and just chock it all up to for the "Common Good". Of course there is one way to get around this I will agree. You can get around all political ideologies by just chocking it up to him being a spy of some other conflicting group or view. "Oh we had to kill him because he was a dirty <put politcal group or nation here> spy." Its not logical to do this in a democratic nation but in most cases you can get away with it because others will fear a similar fate for taking up for him.

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Originally posted by sggg
I added that in there because I was trying to show examples of how things which do work well.

Here you are implying something very strange. You make it sound like demcracy and socialist programmes are incompatible. That does not make sense. Of course every country that I cited there is quite democratic. More democratic than the US is, as a matter of fact, because the citizens have more say in their governments because among other things, they have proportian representation (which is to say a parliament where each party gets a say in governing the country based on the % of vote that they receive). Socialism comes in because they have more equitable distrubutions of labour and wealth, more social programs, state ownership of certain industries (to the benefit not detriment of it's citizens), and so on. There are even many political parties out there called "social democrats". These are not alien concepts.

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I disagree with you that socialism and democracy can coexist. First id like to start with the basic def's of Democracy, Socilism and Communism.

de?moc?ra?cy
1. The principles of social equality and respect for the individual within a community.

com?mu?nism
1. A theoretical economic system characterized by the collective ownership of property and by the organization of labor for the common advantage of all members.

so?cial?ism
1. Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.

Were it is obvious why Democracy and Communism contradict each other, in that one promotes the individual and the other promotes the collective over the individual. It is not so blatantly obvious with Demo and Soci. For this id like to quote Ayn Rand.

"When you consider socialism, do not fool yourself about its nature. Remember that there is no such dichotomy as "human rights" versus "property rights." No human rights can exist without property rights. Since material goods are produced by the mind and effort of individual men, and are needed to sustain their lives, if the producer does not own the result of his effort, he does not own his life. To deny property rights means to turn men into property owned by the state. Whoever claims the "right" to "redistribute" the wealth produced by others is claiming the "right" to treat human beings as chattle."

And in claiming control over the life of individuals for the sake of majority it is no better than Communism, having the "I" serve the "thou" and die for it if it is felt that such is necessary. You either care about the individual or the masses, those two priorities are the main differences of socialism and a democracy.

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Originally posted by sggg
The difference is, blaming someone for societies ills based on their race is 100% irrational. That has nothing in common with criticising certain specific policies and groups for actions they have taken to unjustly accumlate wealth and power, not to mention and surpress other groups. You have a right to disagree with his conclusions, but to compare them to racism simply does not make any sense at all.

Anyway, you think he is making a scapegoat. I think his criticism is valid and based on solid facts. We disagree, that's fine.. but your analogy is unfair.

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Yes basing blame on race is irrational. But my argument was neither that the nazis nor this man was being racist. Yes Nazis were racist but im not using that part of it in my example. There is a lot more to what the nazis did other than pure racism. If anything the racism was used to save the people high up time, why bother selecting people when you can kill the major group that most of the trouble makers belong to? It is true that a good deal of the poor were normal Germans and a great deal of the wealthy and intelligent were Jewish. The common man saw this, and it was easy to use in Nazi propaganda. You add this to the magical smoke screen the nazi's created about a super race and its very easy to make it look like pure racism. There was so much more to it than that though. By doing what they did, they got rid of the wealthy and those who might oppose them financially. By doing so they also got rid of those who were educated and got them out of a place to use what they knew to discredit the Nazies ideals. It also created a ora of fear and horror "don't mess up, you might be next" that helped keep others in line. They scape goateed those in the way and destroyed them once they got enough people to believe it. For you to talk like it was a pure matter of racism discredits who these people were and the lives they lived. They didn't die purely because they were jews. They died because of the power and knowledge they had as a group of people. They died because of what made them special and how that same thing could get in the way of the "changing times".

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Originally posted by sggg
It's also the opinion of my quite patriotic pro-US Political Science teacher in my US university. Political ideology is not simply a matter of left and right. If you had to make a chart of ideologioes you need to use a different kind of chart. Think of it as a chart where the x-axis goes from freedom-to-order and the y-axis goes from outcomes-to-opportunity. The 2 parties in the US 2-party system (one of only two 2-party systems in the world), do not represent all 4 quadrants. Basically, what is referred to as "liberal" in the US, is viewed as quite conservative in many other parts of the world.

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That's great, it wonderful even. But pointless to what I was saying. The letter was aimed at the U.S. and thus my comment was in regards to the republican and democratic parties IN the U.S.

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Originally posted by sggg
Yes, those are my opinions. Just like your beliefs are your opinions. I don't think there was ever any question about that.

As for your questioning of my opinions, I don't mind if you disagree but I don't think you fairly characterised them. The strong do not have to get "enslaved", but systems should be in place so that the weak do not get taken advantage of by the people with the means to do so. What socialism is about is equality and protection for all people no matter what. It's it the opposite of enslavement. It releases people from ecomomic slavery. Everyone gets a chance to succeed. How much they succeed is up to them!! People don't need to be insanely wealthy. But they can still be well off. There are plenty of millionaires in Scandinavia, you know. The difference is just that there are just a lot less billionaires and, of course, homeless people! All people need to eat and need health care and medicine. No matter what. Society as a whole should work together to give these people a chance. IMO it is better to live in a society where the gap between rich and poor is small, and not large. A reasonable gap can still exist, and people still need to work hard to succeed in life, but if they are destitude, the state can help them and help them get back on their feet, instead of letting them rot on the streets. If raising that bar on poverty to levels to where no-one suffers means that the richest of the rich have to pay more in taxes, that's ok with me. They're still going to be the most wealthy.

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How can you tell me socialism is about equality and protection for all people no matter what, then try to tell me its ok to make the rich and poor come closer together? Are you going to do that with magic? Probably not, most likely it will be in some form of law that when broken will result in negative force. How can a person be equal in such a system, a system were people take a backseat to a statistical wishes of the masses. Is the equality you speak of the sort from animal farm? "Everyone's equal, just some are more equal than others" How can you at one moment advocate freedom, equality and protection for all people and then advocate having people serv others forcefully? Also how can everyone be equal when someone must be in control to vote on these things and protect them? The kind of equality you seem to talk about is the sort where everyone is equal because everyone has jack-shit, and their lives mean just about as much as what they have, jack-shit.

Oh, you want to talk about how wonderful socialism is with health care and medicine? Socialism has a big part of why medicine cost so damn much in this nation. Socialism is the policy that has over regulated it, made form upon form, group upon group to make sure that your generic tylonal doesn't kill you. All these forms, groups, triple redundances, insurance and high-priced lawyers and what not are what drive up the prices of medicine and care in this nation not big bad medicine companies trying to rip you off. Back before all of this socialism got started in medicine, when my Grandad was Dr. he charged $2, and this $2 could be paid in anyway you wanted, off the record. Be it a little work, maybe a favor, or a trade of some other sort of food or need. Now my Dad, who is also a Dr., charges 35$ a visit. This is low for a visit, and he knows this and does so, so more people can afford it. He also take's Medacare so the poor are more likely to afford him. If you are not familiar with Medacare, when you agree to use it, its sets the price per each thing done by the Dr. regardless of how much the actually things used in the procedure cost. My dad has made a negative $1200 these past few months because of this. So I know first hand how great it is when socialism chooses YOU to be the one who must loose out for "the common good". Thank you Socialism for trying to negate the life my dad has lead. Thank you for trying to make him a public servant on the same scail as a school janitor. Thank you for wanting to pay him jack when thousands of dollars were spent to achieve his dream. Thank you for ruining my families life style to were there never will be another Doctor in my family, and thank you for jacking up the prices of medicine in this nation and taking human kindness out of it. Oh and don?t give me any shit about prices being jacked up to pay for free things for doctors. It is current law and has ben one for a long time that Medical companies can not spend more than $5 on a gift to a Dr. My dad doesn't get free meals from these people, about all we get is shitty pens, and free medicine. My dad gives away this free medicine they give him instead of writing people a prescription that they are going to have to PAY for.

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Originally posted by sggg
That is so much better than having more than 95% of the wealth in the hands of less than 5% of the people. The \"American Dream\" is that every dumbass thinks he is going to be the next Bill Gates, when most of them end up as little more than wage slaves. That is not freedom. That is an illusion of freedom designed to pacify the stupid. Freedom is achieved when all people are free to eat, learn, and succeed.

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That's not a illusion, it's a dream. And who are you to tell them what dreams they can and can not have? Dreams are one of the few pure things that move society. If it wasn't for people dreaming of doing the impossible we wouldn't have flight, personal computers, or even have a nation known as the United States of America. If a dream of being billgates gets them through the work day so be it, its there dream to have.

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Originally posted by sggg
Well, I agree 100% about education! There\'s something positice. That\'s one of the most important things that can be done.

But once again, it\'s also your downfall. All people should have access to education and should be able to receive an equal high quality education. This is not the case in the US. Compare the cost of universities in the US and, well, anywhere else. The realistic opportunity for quality education is not available to all US citizens, like it is for citizens of other countries. Even for what many consider upper-middle class Americans, getting an education can mean huge debts. Forget about them, it\'s even harder to afford an education when you\'re poor and need to work, or you\'re homeless and need to eat...

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That is simple Bullshit. Financial aid and assistance is based purely on need. It wouldn?t be so hard for upper-middle class people to pay for college if it wasn't so. The poor and needy you claim have no way to get money are the very ones most likely to receive scholarships and finical assistance. Hell the government will pay for a unmarried woman with children to go to college and she would be on that low part of the economy you claim can not get money. Part of the reason it cost more to go to college in the US is the number of collges the US has in comparison to other nations. The US also gives more people the option to go to college while most other nations use odd grading scales and really hard acceptance test to keep people out. It's no wonder it cost more to go to school in the US when you have more people going, more schools, and a larger number of bigger and better schools than in other nations.

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Originally posted by sggg
Also, you speak of stopping people from \"being bad\". Would you like to compare the crims statistics of a country like Canada or Norway with the US? If you don\'t think that\'s a fair example you can compare comparable cities from the Canada and the US. There are a lot less people \"being bad\" in more just societies, because there is less motivation and reason for them to do such things.

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bah I could say the same damn thing, just say temp causes it. Look at the nations of the world then take the annual tempature of how hot it is and then compare that to crime. Weird how the hotter it is the more killing that goes on.

Its really a objective thing. Is it any more a crime to kill people than to take away from people to give to others just so those people don?t steel. All you?re doing is putting in a middle man, called the government who never calls what it does a "crime". Instead of the criminal taking it directly, the government does and gives it to him. The result is the same. You're also over generalizing here, to say that all criminals come from the poor and that they are immoral. And then continuing to say that by using socialism to lift up the poor they are no longer poor and the problem is fixed.

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Originally posted by sggg
Yet, the jails in the other countries I cited are not quite so full. Thanks, for helping me prove my point.

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Yeah and they also have smaller populations and live more controlled lives. Woow go Canada for having a smaller population. Over all you are sending mixed signals on this. How can making more laws to break in fact keep people from breaking them? Wouldn't stasticly more laws be broken just because there are more out there to break. I mean the more things on the floor the more likely I am to step on something.

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Originally posted by sggg
It does not have to be planet-wide, that\'s just silly. Certain things which are right for some cultures are not right for others. But all countries should protect the human rights of their citizens, of course. It\'s unrealistic to have every citizen vote on every issue that ever comes up in government. Not only do the common people lack the expertise, but it\'s not practical!! However, you can have far more fair systems of representation than you have in the US, so that the voice of the people is heard and carried out and the people can have more of an impact and say in how their nation operates. Like I mentioned about, having a system of proportional representation makes it possible for all voices and views to have a say in government in accordance to how popular they are. That\'s just one example of how to put more say in the hands of the people.

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yeah, but doesn\'t that go against what you said about letting the people have complete controle. I mean, you did just say that most people are not intelligent for it didn\'t you? On one hand you want to have elected representatives who vote, aka people in charge, and you also want everyone to be equal and have equal say? How do you plan on doing this? The Borg?

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Originally posted by sggg
Also, another example is that elections should not be financed by huge corporations and special interests so that the common person has very little impact or chance to run for office. Unless they are bankrolled by special interests - like they are in the US - the people have very little say in what happens. Like I keep saying, common US citizens are good people. If they had the facts and had a say, they would change things. But they don\\\'t. Much of public policy is not decided by the people, it is dictated to them and decided for them. Of course these same special interests also control the media too, so they people don\\\'t even know what is going on or what to object to. Unless you are a part of that establishment, you have no way to make an impact or run for a significant office in the US or change a damn thing. This process should be open to everyone regardless of their political views.

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They had planned to add this to the bill going through congress to change the current TV signal formats. A good counter point to it was that even though it guaranteed that all sides would be heard, it didn\'t outlaw people still spending there own money to campaign, and thus they would get what they paid for, plus the time the government and thus the people paid for.

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Originally posted by sggg
Like I said before, everyone should have the same rights and freedoms. There should not be a ruling class.

I don\\\'t understand how you can argue with that. If you want to propose different solutions, I can definitely understand that though...

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Yeah everyone should have the same rights and freedoms. But Socialism can not fulfil that. At some point someone has to have more power than the masses to distribute and over see those freedoms and at some point someone is going to be treated lower than a human for the sake of the \"Comman good\"

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Originally posted by xS
woot!go sggg!
This is a little OT but didnt the US use more socialist(ie the government reduced the power of the free market for a while) policies to recover from the great depression?

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They did three big things.
1. They made laws outlawing the allmost criminal credit sceams that were going on. Before then it was legal to pay a man a dollar every month for forever for something like a car, refregirator or a oven. At the time this sounded great to farmers because thats usally about the max amount of money they saw on a monthly basis and allowed them to use it. But when the crops didn\'t come in and they made no money. They couldn\'t pay the credit scheme, all there stuff was taken back, including the farm equipment. Then they couldn\'t farm, then lost there house and so on and it further spireled down the economy. Thats also why the governement pays people to grow crops then to mow them down at the end of the year. Its done to help controle crop subly and demand.

Secondly the government started huge building projects to increase the amount of anybody can do work in the nation

Thirdly we went to war and gave many many companies in the US building contracts. By doing so they helped money get back into the hands of americans and got the economy to spiral up.

Sadly this is were the US debt also got started. Those building projects and those Contracts were all paid for on credit.

It had less to do with socilism and more do to with one amazing federial credit and spending jugling act.

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Originally posted by phoenix angel wing
Yes people, isn't NAFTA wonderful? /mind-numbingly extreme sarcasm

Free trade is one of the nails in our coffin...

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Please tell me you are well informed on the subject. Nothing is worse than people protesting Globalisation when they don't have a clue about it. Overall, I'd have to agree with you though.



America is full of shit by the way. They preach about free trade all the time, while they hand out massive subsidies to their inefficient farmers. Australia suffers greatly because of this. We have really efficient primary product producers, and we produce goods of the highest quality (especially meat). Because of Americas subsidaries, it is harder to compete against your inferior goods, and as a result we lose a huge amount of profit that is rightfully ours. Unfortunately, We are in no position to stop Americas Hypocritical behaviour (we're simply too small), and with A Texan in power, we have no chance of negotiating a drop in their subsidies.

The EU is no better either.

Australia seems to be the only developed country truly nurturing free trade. By 2010, we will have completely removed all forms of protection.

Not sure about Canada though...

and as a side note, Total income equality simply cannot work. It destroys incentive to work

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Originally posted by sggg
If the US could be more like Canada, Sweden, Norway, or even France or Germany (none of which are communist, FYI) I say they should go for it. Place price controls on things people need and make sure all people have access to things like health care and water. If you want only the rich people tohave those things, then that's where we disagree.

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Socialism isn't the be-all end-all band-aid that most socialist would like to believe. I find it amusing that you bring up Sweden and then health care in the next sentence. Back in high school, I was friends with a Swedish foreign exchange student. At the time I was a sort-of socialist, and so I asked him a bunch of questions about their government. One of the most eye-opening things he mentioned was about their health care system. He said it was terrible, and that the Swedes were trying to get it changed to a private system. It could take over a year to get an appoinment with a doctor, many of the doctors there were idiots, and anyone with money went to the US for anything major.

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Originally posted by xS
This is a little OT but didnt the US use more socialist(ie the government reduced the power of the free market for a while) policies to recover from the great depression?

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Not really. The government implemented many socialist policies during the great depression, but it didn\'t really help. World War II got the US out of the Great Depression. It\'s amazing what a little war can do for your economy.

Oh, go read Ten Things You Can't Say in America. Elder brings up the socialized health care from Canada and how, overall, it's lead to lower quality care, longer lines, and less performance satisfaction. And yes, he has plenty of studies and facts to back it up. It's understandable; if you want to give something to everyone, the quality will decline. That's a big rub with me and socialism. So the question is...give everyone a less-then-stellar quality product/service so that way 'everyone wins' or have a person work hard for what they want, and get the quality for what they pay for?

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Originally posted by arjue


Please tell me you are well informed on the subject. Nothing is worse than people protesting Globalisation when they don't have a clue about it. Overall, I'd have to agree with you though.

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While I'm not in tune with Australia, yes, I'm well informed.