Open mike 17/01/2010

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, January 17th, 2010 - 21 comments
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21 comments on “Open mike 17/01/2010 ”

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  1. Ministry of Justice 1
    17 January 2010 at 10:11 am

    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?

    • felix 1.1
      17 January 2010 at 10:56 am

      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.

      • Pascal's bookie 1.1.1
        17 January 2010 at 11:01 am

        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. ]

      • Ministry of Justice 1.1.2
        17 January 2010 at 11:03 am

        The blog is still in the same state. I keep getting distracted.

        So felix do you think Communism is (mostly) a good thing?

        • felix 1.1.2.1
          17 January 2010 at 11:47 am

          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?

          • Ministry of Justice 1.1.2.1.1
            17 January 2010 at 12:14 pm

            I’m here to improve my understanding – that’s the point of the questions.

            • felix 1.1.2.1.1.1
              17 January 2010 at 12:23 pm

              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.

    • Pascal's bookie 1.2
      17 January 2010 at 10:59 am

      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.

    • BLiP 1.3
      17 January 2010 at 4:00 pm

      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.

    • Descendant Of Smith 1.4
      17 January 2010 at 5:23 pm

      What, if anything, is wrong with Communism?

      From my observation – the implementation.

  2. Quoth the Raven 2
    17 January 2010 at 12:14 pm

    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

    1
    Greed in its fullest sense is the only possible basis of communist society.
    2
    The present forms of greed lose out, in the end, because they turn out to be not greedy enough.

  3. Quoth the Raven 3
    17 January 2010 at 12:45 pm

    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.

    • BLiP 3.1
      17 January 2010 at 4:10 pm

      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.

    • Bill 3.2
      17 January 2010 at 6:34 pm

      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.

    • Mach1 3.3
      17 January 2010 at 9:20 pm

      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

  4. Bill 4
    17 January 2010 at 7:45 pm

    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.

  5. BLiP 5
    17 January 2010 at 8:02 pm

    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.