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notices and features - Date published:
6:00 am, January 17th, 2010 - 21 comments
Categories: open mike -
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The current rise of populism challenges the way we think about people’s relationship to the economy.We seem to be entering an era of populism, in which leadership in a democracy is based on preferences of the population which do not seem entirely rational nor serving their longer interests. ...
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Yesterday I asked “What, if anything, is wrong with Communism?”, Bill’s answer threw me and I didn’t really know where to begin or what questions to ask to understand his perspective. So I’m asking the same question again plus a couple of others in an effort to understand the left as it exists in NZ.
Is Communism (mostly) a good thing?
What, if anything, is good about Communism?
What, if anything, is wrong with Communism?
So you got an answer you didn’t like and decided to ignore it in the hope that you’d get a less challenging answer today.
How’s that blog coming on? You were just about ready for the big launch a few weeks ago.
It’s going to be a fascinating read if the ignorance you display here is anything to go by.
This could be lolworthy:
http://thestandardsstandards.wordpress.com/
[lprent: Yeah I’d noticed it. That makes the second site, however the one by burt was a bit defunct last time I looked. ]
Classic. Another disgruntled metablog created to “fisk” the Standard. In a way it’s flattering.
Thanks for that PB! My viewership has soared thanks to you!
You’re most welcome.
The blog is still in the same state. I keep getting distracted.
So felix do you think Communism is (mostly) a good thing?
What makes you think that I would care what you think about other people’s opinions of concepts of which you’ve already demonstrated that you have no meaningful understanding?
I’m here to improve my understanding – that’s the point of the questions.
Then go back to yesterday’s post and ask Bill to clarify anything you don’t understand about his answer.
If you’re not prepared to do so then it’s impossible to accept that you’re asking questions to improve your understanding.
And if you’re not telling the truth about that then it’s inevitable that people will assume that you have some other motive.
I’d guess that any answer you are likely to get will give you the same problems Bill’s did.
The thing is, communism has got fuck all to do with the left as it exists in NZ.
Oh, look dear, isn’t it sweet. The teenage son has channelled all those spots, spoof stains, and impotent angst into a website reflecting his rebellious streak by opposing anything the grown ups have to say. Coochy-coo.
What, if anything, is wrong with Communism?
From my observation – the implementation.
For your intellectual entertainment the writings of some egoist communists (no jokes): The Right To Be Greedy: Theses On The Practical Necessity Of Demanding Everything
Obama’s administration gets scarier and scarier. This is a must read: Obama confidant’s spine-chilling proposal.
It’s a shocking insight into the authoritarian mindset of the Obama administration.
As frightening as it is, this sort of thing is already happening. The US has been doing it for years in relation to its PR for Iraq. Also, corporates employ their own sock-puppets to promote products and watch for then counter any negative commentary that gains the slightest traction.
What really scares me are the consequences individuals will face when identified.
I’m getting the sense of the possibility of an infinite conspiracy regression here.
Anyway. Conspiracies are great for governments cause they soak up a lot of energy on useless crap…they are a very efficient means of distraction and mis-direction.
If governments seeded conspiracy chat rooms, blogs and sites, it would be to encourage the conspiracies, not shut them down!
Shaping discourse and framing debate is a wholly different matter.
Google is not your friend any more.
Won’t Get Fooled Again
We’ll be fighting in the streets
With our children at our feet
And the morals that they worship will be gone
And the men who spurred us on
Sit in judgment of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun sings the song
I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
And I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again
Don’t get fooled again
Change it had to come
We knew it all along
We were liberated from the fall that’s all
But the world looks just the same
And history ain’t changed
‘Cause the banners, they all flown in the last war
I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
And I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again
Don’t get fooled again
No, no!
I’ll move myself and my family aside
If we happen to be left half alive
I’ll get all my papers and smile at the sky
For I know that the hypnotized never lie
Do ya?
There’s nothing in the street
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left
Is now the parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight
I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again
Don’t get fooled again
No, no!
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss
sigh.
Starting to see a lot of this bullshit type of reporting setting up the premis for a US troop presence by demonising the victims of the earthquake…they are becoming the enemy now.
From the UK’s Independent.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/haiti-desperate-for-the-world-to-deliver-on-its-promises-1870407.html
“Port-au-Prince yesterday was a city as tense as only a place of two million people with resources for a few thousand could be. It lacks much in the way of water, food, medical care and security the last a powerful reason why aid has to be accompanied by troops during distribution. Such precautions are wise. Yesterday afternoon 1,000 people fought with knives, ice-picks and hammers over goods looted from shops.”
See. I don’t buy the idea that whole neighbourhoods who came together to console one another in loss and communal shock and to help excavate neighbours, both living and dead one day then turn on one another the next. Are we really to believe that mobs of 1000 people armed with hammers, ice-picks and knives are now fighting one another when yesterday they were saving each other?!!
And where did this abundance of ice-picks come from? Lot’s of glaciers and mountaineers in Haiti are there? And wouldn’t hammers be being used to try to break up the concrete that is burying people?
Went on a wee google hunt and it seems that Guy Adams is re-reporting shit that comes from the New York Times. “Looting Flares Where Authority Breaks Down” Going through the photos attached to the NYT article is educational insofar as the explanations, interpretations attached from the various images.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/world/americas/17looting.html
Meanwhile, the Independents ‘Man in LA’ Guy Adam’s twitter stuff is here. http://muckrack.com/guyadams And I have to say that on a first pass, his tweets don’t quite gell with his newspaper reports.
Have to admit I haven’t paid much attention to Rachel Maddow so have been enjoying a cruise through her archives. One show in particular has been full of lolz – read the transcript as it becomes abundantly apparent that Sarah Palin has no idea regarding:
why North and South Korea are separate
what the Fed does
who her son Track will be trying to kill in Iraq, and
who perpetrated the 911 attacks, she thinks it was Saddam Hussein
With such a breadth of knowledge and understanding about current events and historical conflict no wonder Fox News wants her. She’ll fit right in with the regular viewers without a doubt.