Citizen Trout
Renegade Eyes' comment about a "Labour Party" combined with all the liberal/progressive hand wringing going on nationally got me thinking about what the outlines of a radical political party might actually look like. I personally think, after these years of working within a labour union, that "worker" as such is too narrow a subject position to do mass organizing around. Besides, soon there will be no work! It occurs to me that what many people desire is Citizenship in the expanded sense of autonomous self-determination in both the political AND economic spheres. For that increasingly small body of true Conservatives, Liberals and Libertarians, there is actually some territory for discussion and to the degree they feel liberty is secured by property they will peel off, which is fine. Something like the Citizens Commonwealth Party? I just want to debate Ron Paul and Sarah Palin basically.
The whole Haiti thing, not to politicize tragedy,is just another layer to everything we have been discussing. I am reading Randall Robinson An Unbroken Agony and watching the news and watching the Telethon fundraiser last night thinking yea, race is something we need to confront but they haven't shown any crumpled mansions, any crumpled sweat shops, any crumpled foreign embassies. Instead of charity they need to say we are sending the very beginning of the reparations we owe and that France especially will be paying for a long time to come. The real question, of course, is how many other Port au Princes are out there in the "Undeveloped nations"? How many people living working going to school hospital, praying in death traps waiting for a flood, earthquake, fire? How many Telethons will it take to bring justice? I am going to a fundraiser tonight with wife and friends and I hope I don't hear about "charity" because each of us has benefited from Haiti's exploitation and owes big time but some more than others. "Give what you can afford"? What does that mean? WWJD?
Finally, I go back to the "hand wringing" over Obamas new "populism" ,his one year anniversary, the State of the Union and his poor disillusioned supporters vs his patient,loyal backers. Bernanke and the Wanker Bankers. Geithner vs Volker. Max Baucus vs Karl Marx and the Supremes. Foreclosures up, profits up, Taliban knocking on your door, baby can it get any worse?
Fuck yes.
posted by troutsky @ 7:27 AM
30 comments
30 Comments:
Back Up
The United States owes Haiti zero reparations. The Haitian people were not enslaved by Americans. America has given Haiti special immigration rights and plenty of aid. I am for continued aid to people in need but any reparations is a French issue.
I hope commies leave the Democratic party. This would reduce you to around 2% of the population and give you the irrelevancy you deserve. It would also end the fan dance of people like Gomer Kerry, Harkin and Rangel
who have spent their careers as congressional apologists for communist clowns.
The face of the party can be terrorist Billy Boy Ayers. Ayers is more Little Lord Fauntleroy than revolutionary. He purchased his freedom and job for which he was unqualified for via daddy's hard work.
I am busy combining the brilliance
of Kultur into the Mazzola Manifesto. Who needs ice pick catching long dead war criminals? Buy the Mazzola Manifesto today and return to the stone ages. You can live violent short lives full of hard work thanks to the vison of Kultur.
Unfortunately given Communist stupidity with the Menchu fiasco I doubt that my Mazzola Manifesto will be correctly viewed as satire.
That's the deal, trout. Occupy the country, use it as some kind of foil against those nasty revolutionary elements in the area and then when it all goes south well, when the erosion and the earthquake and everything else devastates the country you can always drop them a couple of Jacksons and wipe out any responsibility.
It has benefits. You never really have to pay for material adventures and when you contribute to the perpetual poverty you can always just drop a few bucks make yourself feel good.
Charity is insidious that way, you need to keep the object of your charity needy. Basic Paolo Friere, one of Beaks favorites I'm sure. The revolution is a kindness to both oppressed and oppressor, what you think Beak?
Duck
That is not the way I view charity.
The Haitian people need a hand right now. After this is over they are going to need a solid economy.
The time has come for the country to look inwards. Blaming outsiders never produced much. The cycle of accepting corruption must end and the country needs to look to its future. Ultimately Haitians will decide their own future.
What we need to do is keep the Che Bob and Renegade Bladder types at home. Sometimes a nation has to decide it wants to move ahead. Aid the sick and needy, help develop business, but Haitians need to do the rest.
Tavarisch (товарищ) Troutsky
I don't think they desire citizenship (sounds like a public lecure on proper behavior), so much as they desire release from the servitude of the State. In this regard, a communist State is no better than a capitalist Democracy. Under either scenario, the 'populace' loses. They are victims of political maneuvering and control. The people still must depend upon some 'system' for the basic necessities of life under either scenario. They must work for pay or work for party handouts. They have no autonomy with respect to self-preservation or self-determination. They are wards of the impersonal state machinery or the cold economic engines of capital.
Freedom exists in neither system, comrade!
Hey Beakbut!
I am waiting for a copy of the Jew's manifesto
I was listening tonight to rightist talk radio. They said money sent from the US government to Haiti is unaccounted for. As if nobody knows, where the money goes. I think the US doesn't care.
Rush Limbaugh an important Republican voice, tells people not to donate to Haiti. He is in BeaKKKerkin's party.
Contrary to what Beak believes, actually sincerely, that the US could and would develop a capitalist class inside Haiti. Capitalism doesn't work that way. A capitalist class in a country like Haiti, is too late in history to develop. Haiti can't solve any problem within the narrow confines of its borders. That is why its solution is not Haitian socialism either. What is needed is a socialist federation of the whole Caribbean, as part of a socialist federation of the Americas.
The main voice of the Republican Party Rush Limbaugh, says people shouldn't donate to Haiti.
Troutsky: In Minneapolis the Greens and Republicans (Ron Paul types) work together with Ventura types. I'm not talking about a third party. I'm talking about a first party, based on union leadership. All of the "movement" type parties, can only split. They lack a program and a class basis. The Minneapolis formation is pro small capitalists.
If you look at the Militant Tendency in the Labour Party in the UK, the group that brought down Thatcher, the reason they declined was too much activism and thinking they could leave and form a new party. The Militant Tendency started as a tiny group, that later had 200 full time organizers. Growth like that brings new problems. Qualitative change can cause quantitative change, and reverse.
Kultur
Jews do not posses Manifestos. This is what impostors who have converted to a Marxist death cult posses. Our gift is our culture, history and traditions. Those who
posses such things do not need manifestos. I am also thoroughly American in spirit and posses the Constitution.
I am working on the Mazzola Manifesto with you as our great philosopher. You are far more worthy than Trotsky or Marx. Nothing you could write or I could satirize could produce more death and destruction than Marx.
We should seriously combine your theories with a touch of comedy and strike it rich. Mazzola Marxism
will replace all other forms of Marx. Nobody will ever grasp that I wrote it as satire. You could get
the Noble Prize. They awarded it to Menchu for fraud, so why not satire.
Renegade Testicle
There is not one word that I have ever written that is sympathetic to
the KKK. The KKK doesn't like Jews
for racial reasons and because we get blamed for the evils of your kind. In fact a simple look at my posts on Bad Eagle will show support for a nation with no second class citizens.
Limbaugh is an entertainer and not
the leader of my party. The leader
of my nation is pseudo academic Marxist chameleon Barak Obama. The
same guy that hung out with Communist Terrorists who used their father's money to get a job they were unqualified for. He also
went to a racist Church that preached a version of Marx and Malcolm X mixed called Black Liberation theology. In fact there
was plenty of support on Ren's site
for the teachings of the racist Rev.
Limbaugh never said not to support
or aid Haitians. What he did convey
is the lack of results previous aid
and unprecedented immigration rights have produced in Haiti. Similar comments were produced in the Bolshevik NYT on their Op Ed pages.
As usual the moronic Ren lapses into Fundamentalist Death Cult Dementia. The example of how to have a stable economy is quite clear in the examples of Costa Rica
and Chile.
Keep corruption low, get Marxiists
away from power and respect private
property. The fact that his religious views have produced death
and destruction in every application does not deter the fundamentalist Marxist. Sorry, but
the folks at the 700 Club are less
doctrinaire than Commies.
I am waiting for Che Bob to order the followers to wear underwear on their heads. No doubt commies will
follow the insane wishes of a clearly demented leader.
Viva Stupidity, Smash Individuality, Lemmings of the world unite and march right off the cliff of reality.
Funny, I do not see bigotry on my site unless some commie is visiting and talking about Joooos.
A person who owns a blog whose comments read like Der Shturmer with the exceptions of FJ, Pagan and Bardo should not lecture anyone about bigotry.
The whole Haiti thing...
The United States owes Haiti zero reparations...
I find this topic makes me queasy. Of course, legally the USA owes Haiti nothing, but you could make a damn good moral case for why it owes a lot - a quick perusal of the history books makes that clear.
I doubt Beak was being ironic, but the words reparations and Haiti cannot help but be that when put together. After all, one of the main causes of its impoverishment is that it was saddled with huge reparations after the slaves won their independence from France. The USA and other countries agreed that it's only right for the freed slaves to reimburse their former masters. I don't recall the 13 colonies doing that for the UK.
I do, however, get uneasy over all the 'charitable' giving going on. Not that it's bad - people are dying and need help - we can give it. I just don't like the feeling of the "la cause du jour," oh yes, Haiti, "shake one's head and ask, "What can be done for that country..?"" as Flaubert might have written...
But, that's life...
As for Obama, I'm beginning to fear that he's less canny that I'd hoped he was. He and the Dems should be channelling this "populist" fear and anger to do something long-lasting, instead of becoming its target. But, alas, the Dems and Republicans all feed pretty much from the same trough...
"I personally think, after these years of working within a labour union, that "worker" as such is too narrow a subject position to do mass organizing around. Besides, soon there will be no work!"
I agree that to limit organizing to the sphere of wage labor is shooting ourselves in the foot. Murray Bookchin's "Ghost of Anarcho-Syndicalism" makes some very valid points in this regard. If you haven't read before it you can find it here:
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_Archives/bookchin/ghost2.html
However limiting it may be to merely organize "workers" though, I think it would also be self-handicapping to give up on that effort altogether. I think as labor relations become increasingly transient with over 3/4 of the workforce in the unstable service sector, radical unions like the IWW could fill a very important role. A good many of the jobs in service industries are the sort of "unskilled labor" that was the OBU's bread and butter. From my understanding a great deal of the early Wobbly organizing also centered on traveling laborers who worked in various short-term or seasonal agricultural and forestry jobs- the temp workers of their day. I think looking over yesterday's playbook might not be a bad idea in this regard.
I agree, though, that the true left shouldn't limit our organization; my personal vision of Anarcho-syndicalism sees community, neighborhood and even consumer unions as equally valid as any workplace organization.
kultur said:
"a communist State is no better than a capitalist Democracy. Under either scenario, the 'populace' loses.. Freedom exists in neither system, comrade!"
I couldn't agree more.
"It occurs to me that what many people desire is Citizenship in the expanded sense of autonomous self-determination in both the political AND economic spheres."
Citizenship ≠ autonomy of any kind! This is just now occurring to you? So much for a life studying politics. Anarchy is autonomy, so is symbiosis — so are indigenous people before civilization liberates them from it.
Troutsky: By a labor party, led by the union movement, I'm not talking economism. Around the world, often Second Int'l parties, are the first place the working class looks to in time of political movement.
This is from a reply to an article in the NY Review of Books by John Halle of NYU, replying to CFR guy Mark Danner.
Thus, what is predictably missing in Danner’s discussion is anything other than the vaguest allusion to the recent history of Haiti. And it is this history which is largely responsible for the almost inconceivable scale of the devastation caused by what would otherwise be a major, but by no means unprecedented disaster.
The relevant cause, as is described in the works of Robert Fatton, is demographic: for the past three decades the city of Port au Prince has grown from approximately 300,000 to over 2.5 million inhabitants. Lacking the infrastructure required to support this population and the financial wherewithal to develop it, most residents of the capital lived in slums lacking the most basic sanitation facilities, with only sporadic access to safe drinking water and frequently subjected to protracted encounters with what NGO’s somewhat euphemistically refer to as “food insecurity”. Moreover, it hardly needs to be mentioned, building codes were non existent.
It was eminently predictable from these initial conditions that a 7.0 Richter Scale seismic event would materialize as it did with countless thousands buried under rubble, those able to extract themselves doing so in a weakened condition sometimes literally dying of thirst or through opportunistic infections.
If we want to understand as opposed to merely wring our hands about this epic tragedy, we need to inquire into why these conditions obtained. What accounted for the massive influx into Port au Prince from the rural, agricultural areas? Danner indirectly alludes to the crucial in his proposal to “America (to) throw open its markets to Haitian agricultural produce and manufactured goods, broadening and making permanent the provisions of a promising trade bill negotiated in 2008.”
Danner has this exactly backward. As Fatton and others have noted, it is not the failure of the U.S. to open its markets, but rather the converse which is directly implicated in the catastrophe- which is to say two decades of extortionate neo-liberal trade pacts which required Haiti to open its markets to U.S. goods. Chief among these are heavily subsidized U.S. agricultural products, most notably rice. These were dumped on Haiti with similar results to that in much of the third world: Farmers unable to compete with cheap imports were driven off their land, selling out to multinational agribusiness and developers, initiating an exodus to the cities offering the prospect of employment in manufacturing sector albeit at near starvation wages.
The IMF conditions for loans, caused a closure of Haiti's own agriculture, causing influx to the city.
Governments are complaining to the UN, that airplanes with aid are being turned back by the US army. The question has to be asked, why doesn't Haiti have even an army?
Beak: Rush is important in the Republican Party. How many times did the GOP head Mike Steele, offer apologies for daring to say something counter to Limbaugh. Who leads the Republicans?
What carries Chile's economy? Not even Pinochet reversed Allende nationalizing the copper industry. That was all that kept Chile afloat. Ten percent of Chile's population fled. You might find interesting that Cuba's Human Developmwnt Index exceeds Costa Rica's. In addition literacy is higher in Cuba.
Renegade Spleen
Limbaugh is an entertainer who is frequently misquoted by commies. A reading of the transcripts shows he never said don't aid the Haitian people. The comments about the political spin people and race are a sad but true reflection of the way this administration works. We have even had Dems do marketing polls of where the President should go on vacation. Previously,
lefties claimed he was in favor of slavery. This was made up and part of the Bolshevik media's spin.
Did we hear a peep about Hugo's state run media blaming secret US weapons? How many of us heard about
missiles from the crack addict ending up with Lebanese terrorists. The Bolshevik media protects its own, including Obama.
Your comments show your typical communist dementia. Cubans are free to read exactly what the government tells them to read. They live in a police state with armies of Finks and political prisoners who are mostly Black.
Produce and Fresh meat is rare to nonexistent. Oddly some Cubans are claiming to be Jews because kosher meat is available in part through Jewish charities. Any sane comparison of the economies of Costa Rica and Chile to Cuba shows
Cuba way behind in every meaningful measure.
There is hope for your kind. I am working hard at writing the Mazzola Manifesto. Of course Kultur is way more intelligent and
rational than Marx, Mao, Trotsky and Anarchist loons. The combination of my humor and Kultur's writings will be the next great fraud er fad in higher ed.
Instead of clinging to failed philosophers and war criminal leaders you can be a Krolickist. Ditch your Marx, grab a loin cloth
unless you are aesthetically challenged and head to the jungle
to live with the indigenous people. You can live short violent
lives with back breaking work. Of course adoption of this alternative lifestyle is much more
socially acceptable than communism.
If you join the Kult of Kultur he will even throw in his famous cook book. 3000 ways to serve insects, tree bark and local forest creatures. Remember, indigenous people do not eat their neighbors.
This is only done in societies where commies purposely starve the populace.
Join the Mazzola Marxism cult today. Life is not like Mazzola comercials, but it should be.
Beak - sometimes you are genuinely funny (in a sick sort of way!).
"Cubans are free to read exactly what the government tells them to read. They live in a police state with armies of Finks and political prisoners who are mostly Black."
Beak, perhaps you are not familiar with my writings concerning the coming police state in America, brought to you by Obama.
For your benefit Beak, I attach the following clips. First from May 2009
---------------
As we recently read in The Hill's Blog Briefing Room:
"Obama said that good journalism is 'critical to the health of our democracy,' but expressed concern toward growing trends in reporting -- especially on political blogs, from which a groundswell of support for his campaign emerged during the presidential election... 'I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding,' he said."
I guess it won't be long now before OBAMA does what the Iranian Theocracy did last summer in the wake of fallout from their fake elections... OUTLAW the blogosphere and silence those who don't comply!!! No folks, it is not a zero-sum game anymore... it is now a negative sum game! Let the games begin!!!
--------------
Or what I just wrote this month
--------------
I believe it was George Orwell who first raised the specter of the "thought police" in his novel, 1984. In Orwell's horrifying proleptic vision, it was the job of this agency to uncover and punish thought-crimes using a host of covert psychological and surveillance techniques to find and eliminate members of society whose very thoughts were challenging to the controlling hegemony.
Well, Obama is about to make Orwell's vision a reality for the homeland in 2010. His pick to head the department of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Dr. Cass Sunstein, Harvard Law Professor, proposed such an agency in a recent (2008) article published in the Journal of Political Philosophy.
Professor Sunstein wrote in "Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures," that such theories pose "real risks to the government's antiterrorism policies," stemming as they do from a "crippled epistemology." What he means by this is that conspiracy theorists have limited or poor information. His cure is to infiltrate these ill-advised groups with independent undercover agents (reporting to and paid by the administration) to correct the knowledge base of these disparate, renegade groups. As the article states:
"Government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action."[20]
In this manner, he hopes to undermine the credibility and internal coherence of these heterodox groups. Sunstein has already been criticized as a potentate for implementing censorship, online and elsewhere.
Stand aside China, America is in lock step, or is that goose-step, with your sentiments about Google and censorship. The insipient fascism of our state belies the fascist tendencies of all states. Nietzsche was correct; there is no truth and no freedom where there is political society.
--------------
In short Beak, we are fast creating our own police state with Obama taking his lead from none other than W.
Beak misquotes Kultur. He wrote:
...In this regard, a communist State is no better than a capitalist Democracy.
That first clause is important - Kultur is making a more narrow point about the equivalence of the two state systems.
That being said, I think it's still an absurd statement. What do you suppose is the proportion of the population under either system that agrees with this? A tiny minority, mostly radical intellectuals. Since this is not a scientific question of fact, but a philosophical question, I have to say that this puts Kultur's equation into serious doubt.
If I were dealing with equations, I would speak to a mathematician, Lichanos. Math and equations are what got us all into this mess. The measuring of a man's value; the determination of his worth in a capitalist system, or his output potential in a socialist regime.
People were not made to be measured and monitored. All governmental suystems serve this purpose.
And I do not care about what your scienctists (social or natural) believe. I have played all the games that a man can play. I have been worked number and calculations well enough to convince eskimos they needed to buy ice. So I know how the games are played... and I don't play anymore.
One thing all of the socialists and other ideolgues, be they capitalists, Xians, etc... what they all forget is that we are strangers to one another; and all your talking makes sense to you; and all of mine to me. Negotiated settlements are only agreements on the meaning of words... and those can be renegotiated at any time... just ask the scientific historians!!
Many different avenues opened up here!
Lichanos: One of the technical (legal?) aspects of reparations I was unaware of from Robinsons book: As late as 1915,..some 80 % of the Haitian governments resources were being paid out in debt service to French and American banks on loans that had been made to enable Haiti to pay reparations to France.
In 1922, seven years into a nineteen year American military occupation..the United States imposed a 16 million dollar loan on the haitian government to pay off it's "debt" to France."
I actually think reparations should be applied much broader...I share your unease with charity and now wonder if Obama is going to turn deficit hawk and start "reforming" social security.
Copeland: I agree it isn't either / or, workers or consumers, unemployed, minorities etc.. I'm just re-examining the nature of work and identity.
As for "a communist State being no better than a capitalist Democracy", I wonder what happens if we replace the pejorative "state" with administration?
What will we call the work a Council does? How about a Parecon or Parpolity?
Is it the level of coercion, authoritarian hierarchy, or power that a body has? For me to be governed fairly, I will willingly give up some of my autonomy, of my own free will. Anybody else? Perhaps it is the word "communist" that raises such alarms because none of us would agree on a definition. Some equate it with totalitarian.
This is why I disagree with your formula Yodood. I believe a citizen enters into a fair contract and negotiates for a settlement/ accomodation. The antagonism can never be eliminated but can be administered through equitable process.Not under capitalism however. The labour contract can never be fair.
Kultur, I don't know Sunsteins actual position (he is generally pretty libertarian) as to covert vs overt propagandizing. If it was overt, I would welcome it. Compared to the way CNN or NPR operates it would be refreshing!
As for "negotiated settlements are only agreements on the meaning of words", this is my notion of the social realm and would be very welcome. With the loss of tribal unity it is the next historical reality, or the best we could hope for.
"For me to be governed fairly, I will willingly give up some of my autonomy, of my own free will."
"I believe a citizen enters into a fair contract and negotiates for a settlement/ accomodation. The antagonism can never be eliminated but can be administered through equitable process."
Troutsky
You sound like Rousseau here. The problem is the 'social contract.' The idea that men willingly give up their original autonomy to an impersonal entity... call it the state, the party, the polity, administration... whatever we call it ...this is the problem.
The only accomodation that is natural and primal is the voluntary acceptance of 'advice' from a council of elders whom I respect.
That is not feasible; I understand. So, I choose to sit here on the back bench and throw spit-balls!
You sound like Rousseau here. The problem is the 'social contract.' The idea that men willingly give up their original autonomy to an impersonal entity... call it the state, the party, the polity, administration... whatever we call it ...this is the problem.
--------------------------
But Kultur, even when we realize how much is at stake? Surely we can evolve toward a solution?
As for "a communist State being no better than a capitalist Democracy", I wonder what happens if we replace the pejorative "state" with administration?
What will we call the work a Council does? How about a Parecon or Parpolity?
Is it the level of coercion, authoritarian hierarchy, or power that a body has? For me to be governed fairly, I will willingly give up some of my autonomy, of my own free will. Anybody else?"
I would say it hinges on how much autonomy is afforded the "council" etc. in enforcing its decrees, and whether delegates to such bodies are merely relaying the consensus decisions of their constituents or allowed to act as free agents. I'd say if such a body is invested with a singular authority to enforce its decisions, and/or if the delegates to such a body are anything more than a medium between such councils and different masses of constituents, we've got a state on our hands.
I'm also wary of a social contract theory that's based in an abstract but has the very real consequence of alienating people from their neighbors by suggesting they should place their trust in a third party ("council", "state", etc.). Once we start down this road, we've started constructing new self-justifying bureaucracies and have a whole new Frankenstein on our hands.
Troutsky writes:
...pay off it's "debt" to France.
Pretty damn incredible, no? All this international screwing of Haiti is under the radar and long forgotten now.
Kultur says:
The only accomodation that is natural and primal is the voluntary acceptance of 'advice' from a council of elders whom I respect.
That is not feasible; I understand. So, I choose to sit here on the back bench and throw spit-balls!
Ah, true candor here. Nobody begrudges you your cranky anarchist disposition or your desire to live true to it. As a prescription for the other 6 billion of us, it's rather weak, as you recognize. So where does that put us?
Your conclusion would seem to be that humans are irretrievably "lost" unless we return to that "primal" state, with a concomitant reduction in population, and that's not going to happen. So why do you expect, or dream, that anyone will want to listen to you?
If I were dealing with equations, I would speak to a mathematician, Lichanos.
Here you have completely miscontrued my meaning. My point was that precisely because it is a philosophical question of value, there is no scientific-numerical way to resolve the question. I used the phrase "Kultur's equation" ironically, but since your "formulation" is such a minority view, that is evidence - not conclusive - that something is amiss with it. (Were this a scientific/mathematical question, I would not even consider the proportion of people's views on the issue - if everyone says 9 is prime number, they are all wrong, period.)
Kultur lays into me further with a sally into terrain of Private Language:
...what they all forget is that we are strangers to one another; and all your talking makes sense to you; and all of mine to me. Negotiated settlements are only agreements on the meaning of words...
Shall we wonder about the Other Minds problem as well? Are there any? How do I know that I am writing to anyone now? Perhaps you are all machines pretending to be bloggers? Does it matter?
When we talk, are we really talking about anything similar? Strange that Kultur would adopt a skeptical position on language that is a direct result of Enlightenment rationalism. It wasn't until Descartes that such questions were anything but absurd in the realm of philosophical chat. Do your really thing your primitive, primal buddies "negotiated" agreement on the meanings of words? I don't think that's how language developed.
The gist of Kulturs comment - your chatter makes sense to you; my chatter makes sense to me - is that we cannot communicate hardly at all. I think this is rubbish. It's just an easy way to explain why nobody follows our own advice.
Kultur
Obama is going down the drain. He has no chance of implementing anything. He either moves to the center or goes out the door.
Americans will never tolerate government restricting our First Amendment rights. Any attempt to restrict political speech on the web would galvanize a reaction that would be four or five times the size of Tea Parties. Nor would those rallies likely be tame. The First Amendment is an American birthright.
Such a move would be political suicide for the left.
I would like you to sit for an interview on my site. I have interviewed the Duck several times.
I would like you to explain your
odd views in a proper forum.
It is a tough task, but you can handle it.
Lichanos
I am not in the solutions business, at least not in the public (political, social, economic)realm. In other words, I do not believe things are slavagable globally. I only pretend to offer critique and or analysis (not necessarily rigorous; but thoughtful and hopefully thought-provoking).
If you want solutions go see IBM or GE, or Computer Sciences Corporation -- they are 'solutions' guys!
Mine is a pessimistic view of civilized life. And while I have personally benefitted enormously from the tools, toys and programs of civilization; I still feel that I (that we) have been cheated by its flowering. I know this from almost 20 years of studying, teaching, researching and publishing. I know it from being one of the most highly paid executives on the planet for several years. I know it from 4 open-heart surgeries I have had since I was a small boy, until just last year.
I understand all the benefits of life in America -- land of the novel, home of the throw-away. I also live part-time in central Siberia with my wife, and I have seen the harsher outcomes of the Soviet agenda. I believe I was as much controlled by the American experience, as the citizens of USSR were controlled by the Soviet agenda. It is just that the many distractions of the American way, let me think that I was my own man, and not somebody else's puppet. But, that was a miscontrual of reality. Wherever there is a State, there is powere seeking control of the individual.
From Neitzsche:
"State is the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it tells lies…in all tongues of good and evil; …state, where the slow suicide of all is called ‘life.’" [Kaufmann, 160-1]
Politicians have one concern (no matter what they tell the public); and that is protection and expansion of power. Obama is no different than W. And the USA is no different than Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, China, Iran or North Korea.
Again, Neitzsche:
"Only where the state ends, there begins the human being who is not superfluous; there begins the song of necessity, the unique and inimitable tune. Where the state ends – look there, my brothers!" [Kaufmann, 163]
Lichanos - I was not discussing the issue of private language. I was considering the problem of intersubjectivity and how agreement is reached between strangers. It is an accomodation based on an agreement in the use of terms. At least that is how it has happened for the past 6,00 years of recorded history.
BEAK - yes, I will do your interview. let me know the details. Is is live? like a chat online; if so I am 11 hours ahead of NYC, so we must coordinate.
Papua New Guinea last year; natives trying to return to their traditional ways
http://www.anthropology.emory.edu/FACULTY/ANTBK/gebusiResearch/gebusi%20flash%20slideshow.swf
Kultur
I will prepare 25 questions on my blog and you can answer them as you see fit. My focus is going to be on
your philosophy.
When I am in interviewer mode and host I am more civil because no host would get people to respond to questions by being rude. I want to distinguish the difference between you and the cult of Trotsky.
Kultur
I have done a pre interview introduction on my site. For the purposes of the interview the term tribal people will include African
and Asian people who live in preindustrial ways.
I also remind those that when I am here I am dealing with mostly political criminals like Renegade Eye and Anarchists whom I consider low brow comedy acts. What commies like Troutsky fail to grasp is I consider you to be on a par with Nazis. I do not accept any moral critique from Marxists given their history to have any validity.
Just so we are clear; it looks like it will be on Beak Speaks ((no self-aggrandizement there?) And how will the questions appear. Or will it be self-evident, like a series of blog entries. And when?
I've done it over on Beak Speaks, Kultur.
It's actually entertaining.
I can't wait Ducky!
I will prepare the questions tonight.
I am focusing on the philosophy and your writings about Tribal man.
You can just respond in the comments section.
I have never had anyone complain as the questions are fine tuned to each interviewee. They are designed to elicit information in an entertaining format.
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