In a world without Whites, all mankind will have dark hair and dark eyes. The blond, beloved by men for 10,000 years, will go the way of the dinosaur. All that will remain will be the bottle blonds known today from such lands as Israel and Argentina. "Does she or doesn't she?" we may inquire of the lass above. Only her hairdresser knows for sure.Friday, October 31, 2008
A World Without Blondes
When the White race goes extinct, White nationalists tell us, blonds will go with us. Blonds like this one below will be known only from photos in museums. It will be a sad day for mankind.
In a world without Whites, all mankind will have dark hair and dark eyes. The blond, beloved by men for 10,000 years, will go the way of the dinosaur. All that will remain will be the bottle blonds known today from such lands as Israel and Argentina. "Does she or doesn't she?" we may inquire of the lass above. Only her hairdresser knows for sure.
In a world without Whites, all mankind will have dark hair and dark eyes. The blond, beloved by men for 10,000 years, will go the way of the dinosaur. All that will remain will be the bottle blonds known today from such lands as Israel and Argentina. "Does she or doesn't she?" we may inquire of the lass above. Only her hairdresser knows for sure.Thursday, October 30, 2008
Many New NPA Attacks in the Philippines
The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.
Updated November 3:
The NPA* has staged a wide variety of attacks all over the Philippines in the past few weeks. In addition, the AFP has gone on the offensive in Mindanao in Negros Oriental.
October 29, 8 AM: In Pantukan town, Compostela Valley Province, Mindanao, NPA guerrillas on a motorcycle shot dead a policeman as he was waiting for a bus . Later, 1 of the NPA team was shot dead and 2 more were wounded in a firefight.
Pantukan municipality in Compostela Valley Province in Southern Mindanao. The NPA have been very active here for some time now.
October 29, 10:20 AM: In Santa Teresita village, Bayugan City, Agusan del Sur Province, Mindanao, 20 NPA guerrillas raided the Jose C. Aquino rubber company here, seizing firearms and a laptop computer.
Bayugan municipality of Agusan Del Sur Province on Mindanao.
October 29: In San Jose village, Prosperidad town, Agusan del Sur Province, Mindanao, Guerrillas set up a checkpoint and stopped a civilian bus on the road, confiscating the weapons of a government soldier on the bus. My, what humanitarian rebels! They didn't even kill the guy.
Prosperidad municipality in Agusan Del Sur Province of Mindanao.
October 29: In Negros Oriental, the NPA warned biofuel corporations in SE Negros such as the Tamlang Valley Agricultural Development Corp that they would carry out punitive operations against them because they worsen the food crisis in the Philippines and cause military harassment of villagers.
Negros Occidental. This island has been practically ruined. 96% of the tropical forest here has been cut down and the rest is under continuous threat. There are many rare and endangered species on this island, some of them critically endangered. In addition to habitat loss, some critically endangered animals here face hunting pressure. An AFP offensive against the NPA is currently underway in this area, where the NPA have been building up forces for some time now.
October 26, 6:15 PM: A large NPA force dressed as Drug Enforcement agents attacked the Quezon Provincial Jail in Lucena City, Quezon Province, Luzon and freed 7 NPA prisoners. 2 policemen and 2 civilians were wounded in a shootout afterward.
The city of Lucena in Quezon Province, Luzon, near Manila. Despite the proximity to the capital of the Philippines, the NPA has a heavy presence in Quezon.
October 25, 10 AM: NPA guerrillas attacked militiamen in Barangay Luna Sur, Makilala town, Cotabato Province, Mindanao, killing 1 and wounding 4 more. They also seized 16 weapons.
Makilala municipality in Cotabato Province on Mindanao. There has been some heavy fighting in this area recently.
October 23, 5 AM: NPA guerrillas attacked government militiamen in Paradise Embac, Paquibato district, Davao City, Mindanao, killing 1 militiaman and wounding 2 more. 1 NPA guerrilla was killed in the attack.
Davao City in Davao Del Sur Province in Mindanao. This is one of the larger cities in the Philippines.
October 25, AM: The NPA attacked an AFP Special Forces outpost in Canidkid village, Montevista town, Compostela Valley Province, Mindanao, killing 1 soldier.
Montevista Province in Compostela Valley Province in Mindanao. There has been some very heavy fighting in this area lately.
October 25, 11 AM: NPA guerrillas attacked government soldiers in Barangay Olaycon, Monkayo town, Compostela Valley Province, Mindanao, while they were carrying the body of one of 8 soldiers who were killed in guerrilla attacks in the area the previous day to another town. The attack wounded 1 soldier.
Monkayo municipality in Compostela Valley Province. NPA guerrillas recently killed 8 AFP forces here.
October 24: NPA guerrillas ambushed a military truck with a roadside bomb and then strafed it with gunfire in Monkayo town, Compostela Valley Province, Mindanao, killing 7 soldiers and wounding 2 more.
October 23, 3 PM: There was a shootout between militiamen and the NPA in Barangay Hilawan, San Andres town, Catanduanes, but there were no casualties on either side.
Catanduanes is an island that is also a province. It's off the southeast coast of Luzon. This is a map of San Andres municipality in Catanduanes Province. I didn't even realize that the NPA were active here.
October 19: NPA guerrillas attacked a hacienda, Hacienda Santa Ana, in Cadiz City, Negros Occidental Province, causing 1 million pesos in damage. In the past eight months, guerrillas here have caused 30 million pesos in property damage.
Cadiz City municipality in Negros Occidental Province.
NPA guerrillas overpowered and disarmed a policeman in Balintawak village, Escalante City, Negros Occidental Province recently. A lot of times these guys just refuse to fight and hand over their weapons.
Escalante City municipality in Negros Occidental Province.
Guerrillas attacked the Globe Telecom cell phone tower in Cauayan municipality, Negros Occidental Province recently.
Cauayan municipality in Negros Occidental Province.
*This blog supports the NPA to the hilt. Our view is that system in the Philippines is such total crap that it needs to be wiped off the face of the Earth.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Updated November 3:
The NPA* has staged a wide variety of attacks all over the Philippines in the past few weeks. In addition, the AFP has gone on the offensive in Mindanao in Negros Oriental.
October 29, 8 AM: In Pantukan town, Compostela Valley Province, Mindanao, NPA guerrillas on a motorcycle shot dead a policeman as he was waiting for a bus . Later, 1 of the NPA team was shot dead and 2 more were wounded in a firefight.
Pantukan municipality in Compostela Valley Province in Southern Mindanao. The NPA have been very active here for some time now.October 29, 10:20 AM: In Santa Teresita village, Bayugan City, Agusan del Sur Province, Mindanao, 20 NPA guerrillas raided the Jose C. Aquino rubber company here, seizing firearms and a laptop computer.
Bayugan municipality of Agusan Del Sur Province on Mindanao.October 29: In San Jose village, Prosperidad town, Agusan del Sur Province, Mindanao, Guerrillas set up a checkpoint and stopped a civilian bus on the road, confiscating the weapons of a government soldier on the bus. My, what humanitarian rebels! They didn't even kill the guy.
Prosperidad municipality in Agusan Del Sur Province of Mindanao.October 29: In Negros Oriental, the NPA warned biofuel corporations in SE Negros such as the Tamlang Valley Agricultural Development Corp that they would carry out punitive operations against them because they worsen the food crisis in the Philippines and cause military harassment of villagers.
Negros Occidental. This island has been practically ruined. 96% of the tropical forest here has been cut down and the rest is under continuous threat. There are many rare and endangered species on this island, some of them critically endangered. In addition to habitat loss, some critically endangered animals here face hunting pressure. An AFP offensive against the NPA is currently underway in this area, where the NPA have been building up forces for some time now.October 26, 6:15 PM: A large NPA force dressed as Drug Enforcement agents attacked the Quezon Provincial Jail in Lucena City, Quezon Province, Luzon and freed 7 NPA prisoners. 2 policemen and 2 civilians were wounded in a shootout afterward.
The city of Lucena in Quezon Province, Luzon, near Manila. Despite the proximity to the capital of the Philippines, the NPA has a heavy presence in Quezon.October 25, 10 AM: NPA guerrillas attacked militiamen in Barangay Luna Sur, Makilala town, Cotabato Province, Mindanao, killing 1 and wounding 4 more. They also seized 16 weapons.
Makilala municipality in Cotabato Province on Mindanao. There has been some heavy fighting in this area recently.October 23, 5 AM: NPA guerrillas attacked government militiamen in Paradise Embac, Paquibato district, Davao City, Mindanao, killing 1 militiaman and wounding 2 more. 1 NPA guerrilla was killed in the attack.
Davao City in Davao Del Sur Province in Mindanao. This is one of the larger cities in the Philippines.October 25, AM: The NPA attacked an AFP Special Forces outpost in Canidkid village, Montevista town, Compostela Valley Province, Mindanao, killing 1 soldier.
Montevista Province in Compostela Valley Province in Mindanao. There has been some very heavy fighting in this area lately.October 25, 11 AM: NPA guerrillas attacked government soldiers in Barangay Olaycon, Monkayo town, Compostela Valley Province, Mindanao, while they were carrying the body of one of 8 soldiers who were killed in guerrilla attacks in the area the previous day to another town. The attack wounded 1 soldier.
Monkayo municipality in Compostela Valley Province. NPA guerrillas recently killed 8 AFP forces here.October 24: NPA guerrillas ambushed a military truck with a roadside bomb and then strafed it with gunfire in Monkayo town, Compostela Valley Province, Mindanao, killing 7 soldiers and wounding 2 more.
October 23, 3 PM: There was a shootout between militiamen and the NPA in Barangay Hilawan, San Andres town, Catanduanes, but there were no casualties on either side.
Catanduanes is an island that is also a province. It's off the southeast coast of Luzon. This is a map of San Andres municipality in Catanduanes Province. I didn't even realize that the NPA were active here.October 19: NPA guerrillas attacked a hacienda, Hacienda Santa Ana, in Cadiz City, Negros Occidental Province, causing 1 million pesos in damage. In the past eight months, guerrillas here have caused 30 million pesos in property damage.
Cadiz City municipality in Negros Occidental Province.NPA guerrillas overpowered and disarmed a policeman in Balintawak village, Escalante City, Negros Occidental Province recently. A lot of times these guys just refuse to fight and hand over their weapons.
Escalante City municipality in Negros Occidental Province.Guerrillas attacked the Globe Telecom cell phone tower in Cauayan municipality, Negros Occidental Province recently.
Cauayan municipality in Negros Occidental Province.*This blog supports the NPA to the hilt. Our view is that system in the Philippines is such total crap that it needs to be wiped off the face of the Earth.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Public Service Killings and NHI Cases
The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.
Public service killings - a recent case in Fresno. I think the killer is a hero. The gangbanger pushed his way into the guy's house, sat down, demanded a drink and a cigarette, and I guess refused to leave. A fight ensued and Brian Waldron, a fine, upstanding citizen, defended himself against the Bulldog gang member animal, hitting him with a stick and killing him.
Then he buried the body, which not a very smart thing to do. Furthermore, you foul God's Earth by placing such dead nastiness in it. Chopping up the body is pretty horrid too.
Cops call some cases like this (good guy kills bad guy) "public service killings". I agree. This guy just got caught is all. Looks like he's going down on homicide charges, but I vote to acquit.
Cases where one gangbanger or criminal scumbag kills another are referred to by cops as "NHI" cases. NHI means "no humans involved".
Haha.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Public service killings - a recent case in Fresno. I think the killer is a hero. The gangbanger pushed his way into the guy's house, sat down, demanded a drink and a cigarette, and I guess refused to leave. A fight ensued and Brian Waldron, a fine, upstanding citizen, defended himself against the Bulldog gang member animal, hitting him with a stick and killing him.
Then he buried the body, which not a very smart thing to do. Furthermore, you foul God's Earth by placing such dead nastiness in it. Chopping up the body is pretty horrid too.
Cops call some cases like this (good guy kills bad guy) "public service killings". I agree. This guy just got caught is all. Looks like he's going down on homicide charges, but I vote to acquit.
Cases where one gangbanger or criminal scumbag kills another are referred to by cops as "NHI" cases. NHI means "no humans involved".
Haha.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Pas de Pitié pour les Russes: Les Tchétchènes Sont des Coupeurs de Ttête!
If you are under 18, you may NOT watch this video! If you are a parent and are concerned about your kids viewing this post, please either supervise and/or restrict your children's Internet use or invest in a blocking program.
I really advise my regular readers to not even watch this video. It's probably one of the worst things you've ever seen; it's way worse than the Russian neo-Nazi one.
I am looking for translators into Swedish, Danish, German, Finnish, Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Estonian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, Romanian, Greek, Turkish, Japanese, Mongolian and Bahasa Indonesia. Email me if you are interested.
This post has been translated into other languages. Italian version (traduzione in italiano). Portuguese translation here (em Português). Spanish translation here (en Español). Korean version (한국). Dutch translation here (in het Nederlands).
This is the French translation of the No Mercy For Russians! post. The translator is Natalie from France.
Si vous pensiez que la vidéo néonazie de l’exécution de deux "noirs" était le summum de l’atrocité, vous faites erreur.
Le pire ne s’arrêtera jamais.
Nous nous sommes demandés si une telle barbarie était une « réponse » aux exécutions filmées, précédemment diffusées sur le net par les rebelles Tchétchènes.
Les égorgements, les décapitations, les écartèlements, les atroces mutilations, ne sont malheureusement pas une nouveauté. Allez donc lire la Bible.
Voulons-nous en parler des pauvres Russes (hommes, femmes, enfants) cruellement brûlés vifs par les lance-flammes Allemands ou des Vietnamiens rôtis par le napalm Américain ? Et tous les hommes et femmes condamnés au bûcher par l’inquisition en Europe ou durant la chasse aux sorcières en Nouvelle-Angleterre ? Et les braves gars du KKK qui rôtissaient vifs les nègres et les italiens ? Et les bons italiens qui "gazaient" allègrement les petits noirs Africains ?
et tant d’autres exemples :
Dans l’ère moderne il y a les moyens techniques pour filmer et diffuser, en temps réel par Internet, toutes les cochonneries que le genre humain produit. Si cela est bien ou mal, ce n’est pas à nous d’en juger.
Durant la longue guerre Russo-Tchétchène il y a eu un précédent retentissant : une vidéo nommée chechclear (traduction probable : anéantissement du Tchétchène), où un mercenaire à la solde des Russes est exécuté par décapitation. C’est un film qui remonte à 1996, à la fin de la 1ère guerre Russo-Tchétchène.
Au dire de l’intelligentsia pro Tchétchène, en ce temps-là les rebelles détestaient les mercenaires, mais ils avaient encore pitié des soldats Russes appelés (conscrits).
Nous voici donc à notre vidéo, le film remonte à 1999.
ATTENTION :
Avant de continuer, je dois vous avertir que les images sont vraiment bouleversantes. J’en déconseille la vision même à un public adulte ! Je ne plaisante pas, croyez-moi. Un conseil ? Ne lisez même pas le compte rendu, je l’ai fait par devoir, pour dénoncer les horreurs de la guerre et de la cruauté humaine.
Il n’y a pas d’apologie de la violence. Pas de morbidité ou perversion non plus. Je vous en prie, croyez-moi, j’ai pleuré et je me suis senti mal. Je n’ai plus revu ce film et je n’ai aucune intention de le revoir. Plus jamais.
L’événement
Au cours d’une incursion à la frontière entre la Tchétchénie et le Daguestan, un groupe composé de 200 rebelles Tchétchènes, mené par Salautdin Temirbulatov (voir photo) a capturé et exécuté six soldats appelés/conscrits Russes.
Ceux-ci faisaient partie d’une petite garnison de 13 soldats qui veillaient sur un petit village. Comment les 7 soldats Russes restants ont pu échapper à l’attaque des forces Tchétchènes largement supérieures, cela reste un mystère.
L’horreur
Cinq soldats Russes ont été égorgés et décapités, un sixième a été abattu à coups de fusil, lors d’une vaine tentative de fuite.
Voici mon compte rendu, convulsé, bouleversé, seconde par seconde :
00.00.00 - 00.00.06 Six secondes pour couper une gorge, on ne voit pas très bien, il y a un piquet qui couvre la tête du premier soldat, il semble déjà mort.
00.00.07- 00.00.13 Un soldat égorgé est en train d’agoniser, il n’arrive pas à respirer, il a du sang dans la gorge.
00.00.14- 00.00.20 Un boucher arrive et commence à lui couper la tête.
00.00.21 Le soldat, avec la tête à moitié coupée, trouve encore la force de se lever sur les coudes.
00.00.22 Deux soldats Russes à terre, un a les mains derrière la nuque. Un boucher coupe la tête de l’autre soldat et il travaille dur...il se lève comme pour montrer son sale boulot...
00.00.54-00.00.57 Le choc ! Ce soldat bouge la tête mais...comment ? La moelle épinière, la colonne vertébrale sont encore attachées ?!! La tête n’est pas tranchée, il n’est pas encore mort.
00.00.58-00.01.02 Image arrêtée d’un soldat sur le dos, avec la tête à moitié coupée.
00.01.02-00.01.09 Les Tchétchènes s’acharnent sur un soldat en vie, ils le frappent avec la crosse d’un fusil, sur fond de rires.
00.01.10-00.01.44 Le couteau du bourreau transperce près de la nuque, le soldat; en plusieurs endroits, il commence à l’égorger; la victime, à genoux, se relève, réagit, essaye de fuir...mais en vain, le soldat se met en position de prière, à genoux, le bourreau l’égorge, le découpe latéralement. Le soldat s’effondre à terre. La caméra cadre le soldat mort, un visage d’enfant innocent, la gorge tranchée.
00.01.45-00.01.56 La caméra prend une séquence des victimes à la suite, une par une.
00.01.55-00.02.08 A présent c’est le tour du soldat allongé (à côté du précédent) : ils le prennent par les cheveux et ils commencent à lui couper la gorge...gros plan sur le visage du soldat, il a une expression stoïque, il y a des cris de douleur suffoqués, mais il serre les dents. Avec dignité.
00.02.09-00.02.28 Le bourreau le lâche, le soldat est encore en vie, sa gorge est déchirée, lentement son visage ne montre plus de douleur, il se détend, il tente de respirer. Il regarde la caméra comme s’il voulait montrer que l’on peut mourir avec dignité. Il possède l’orgueil, l’orgueil du vrai peuple russe (là je pleure, excusez-moi...je suis en train de pleurer, j’ai l’estomac retourné)
00.02.29-0.02.51 Est-ce que le bourreau veut le décapiter complètement ? Le soldat serre les dents, le moment est venu...non...on ne lui coupe pas la tête, le boucher le laisse. Le soldat pivote de côté et tombe face contre terre. Il est mort courageusement, c’est sur.
00.02.52-00.03.02 Mais non ! Tu n’es pas mort. Tu tournes la tête de l’autre côté...pourquoi n’es-tu pas mort ? Pourquoi dois-tu encore souffrir ? Crois-moi, j’espérais que tu étais mort ! Que vont-ils te faire à présent ? Ils sont autours de toi, sans s’approcher. L’un d’eux (avec des baskets) te remue pour contrôler si tu es encore en vie...
00.03.03-00.03.13 Oui, tu es mort, tu dois être mort !!! Ils nous montrent ton visage en premier plan, ton corps, les mains liées dans le dos, ils reviennent sur ton visage recouvert de sang.
0.03.14-00.03.22 Il y a un soldat Russe, face contre terre, il bouge la tête, essaye de se relever (aïe, mon estomac tente de résister, je transpire...mais quand est-ce que cette horreur se termine-t-elle ?) il halète, s’étend sur le côté, mort...non ! Non ! C’est encore toi, soldat ! J’ai reconnu les marques de ta chemise kaki...nooon !
00.03.23-00.03.34 Entracte : dans le pré, deux Tchétchènes attrapent un soldat mort par les jambes et le traînent...où?
00.03.35-00.03.45 La dernière scène est pour toi, mon gars. Oui, ils t’attrapent par les jambes et te traînent ailleurs, tu laisses une traînée de sang...L’image devient noire...
=========
Un mois après le crime, ce groupe Tchétchène a été décimé par les forces spéciales Russes. Tous les Tchétchènes vus dans le film ont été tués.
Leur chef Temirbulatov a été capturé en Tchétchénie en 2000, et ensuite condamné à perpétuité pour le massacre. Vous pouvez reconnaître une 2m 13''by la fin de la vidéo. Temirbulatov est décédé récemment.
Il était incarcéré dans une prison de haute sécurité dans le sud de la Russie (qui « loge » aussi le très connu serial killer Russe Andreï Chikatilo). Il a été tué par les autres prisonniers, probablement des Slaves orthodoxes.
Il semble que la vidéo originale soit divisée en cinq parties. Celle que nous vous montrons est probablement la quatrième section. On ne voit pas les têtes coupées. Nous ne connaissons pas la date de diffusion sur Internet, le grand public Russe a commencé à s’intéresser à la vidéo seulement en 2007, ce qui a suscité un énorme tollé en Russie.
Le débat est alimenté encore aujourd’hui par un très populaire forum Russe. Il y a différent titres pour cette vidéo : Dagestan, Dagestan Massacre, Execution of 6 Russian Conscripts in Dagestan, Rebels Brutally Execute Soldiers in Eastern Europe, Chechnian Beasts, je vous laisse le soin de la traduction.
La propagande médiatique Russe contre les Tchétchènes a mis en évidence précisément les origines des soldats appelés (conscrits), des citoyens ordinaires, des gens du peuple, mais ainsi faisant elle a alimenté la haine envers les Tchétchènes.
Les intellectuels pro Tchétchènes ont soutenu que justement ce sont les soldats Russes appelés qui étaient responsables des atrocités commises durant tant d’années par l’armée Russe au détriment des civils et des miliciens Tchétchènes.
Les Tchétchènes eux-mêmes se sont défendus en indiquant que c’était l’action d’un groupe isolé, commandé par un assassin maniaque (comme dans Apocalypse now ).
C’est possible, peut-être ou certainement, mais nous ne pouvons rien faire d’autre que constater une escalade de brutale folie des deux côtés.
Pour ceux qui font l’apologie de l’indépendance Tchétchène il s’agit d’une conséquence logique : quand les membres de ta famille sont morts, tu n’as plus rien à perdre et tu ne recherches que la Vengeance. Ajoutons-y la croissante propagande musulmane fanatique, et de tels actes de barbarie, absolument horribles et injustifiés, peuvent être compris.
Durant tant d’années de guerre avec la Russie, les Tchétchènes ont commis diverses actions terroristes : explosions d’avions avec à leur bord d’innocents passagers, en 2004 l’attaque de l’école de Beslan qui s’est soldée par un tragique bilan de 331 morts, dont 186 enfants.
Et comment oublier le commando suicide du théâtre Dubrovka de Moscou qui a bouleversé l’opinion publique mondiale ? Toutes ces femmes habillées en veuves, ceinturées d’explosif, mortes, asphyxiées par le gaz des forces spéciales Russes, et une fin tragique pour tant d’otages Russes ?
Je vous recommande vivement la lecture de l’article de Tony Ward, The Case For Chechnya, du New Left Review ici disponible en format pdf.
C’est un examen attentif et complet de la situation Tchétchène avec lequel nous concordons pleinement.
Malgré la montée en puissance des actions terroristes et des atrocités (des deux cotés à vrai dire) la lutte pour l’indépendance Tchétchène vis à vis de la Russie, est une cause juste que nous devrions soutenir.
Qu’il est amer de constater que les Russes n’ont rien fait de mieux que d’éliminer la majorité des chefs modérés Tchétchènes. Comment est-il possible qu’avant d’être tué, un leader modéré comme Aslan Maskhadov ait définitivement pris une position extrémiste pour soutenir un conflit contre les Russes ?
La question Tchétchène dure désormais depuis des siècles, elle est imputable à l’expansionnisme Russe. Commencée en 1805, la conquête définitive de la Tchétchénie s’est concrétisée seulement vers 1863. Les Tchétchènes conduit par le légendaire Commandant Shamil, ont résisté contre les Tsars durant presque 60 ans !
Les Russes n’avaient aucun droit de soumettre la Tchétchénie et les Tchétchènes n’ont jamais accepté la domination Russe (même si au début elle était plus légère, formelle plutôt que brutale). Les épisodes de rébellion contre les Russes sont très nombreux, et n’ont pas cessé même lorsque les patrons étaient les communistes et non plus les Tsars.
Le fait significatif est que lorsque les nazis ont envahi le territoire soviétique, à la fois les Tchétchènes et la majeure partie des républiques Caucasiennes (même si une partie de la population s’était rangée du côté de l’Urss) se sont immédiatement liés à l’envahisseur allemand, se fiant naïvement des promesses d’Hitler à propos d’une future indépendance.
Les Tchétchènes n’étaient pas pronazis mais ils ont cru les cyniques promesses de Hitler; promesses qui sûrement ne seraient jamais tenues : il suffit de penser à la fin réservée aux Ukrainiens (voir Generaplan Ost) qui se sont rangés du coté du Führer...L’extermination !
En 1944 il y eut la violente réaction de Staline à la trahison des républiques islamiques du Caucase. Des communautés entières furent déportées en Sibérie. Le moyen de transport était le train et malheureusement beaucoup de Tchétchènes (hommes, femmes, enfants) moururent de privations durant le voyage.
Avec les Tchétchènes il y a eu d’autres déportés, beaucoup de Ingouches et Tartares. Combien de trains de la mort voyageaient en Europe en ce temps-là !
Après 10 ans de déportation les Tchétchènes survivants des camps de travail Sibériens (où ils se distingués par leur fierté et leur esprit rebelle) purent revenir sur leurs terres, mais ils trouvèrent leurs propriétés occupées par leurs voisins de confession chrétienne.
La tragédie de l’école de Beslan, en Ossétie du Nord, peut se situer dans ce contexte. Les chrétiens d’Ossétie du nord s’étaient appropriés les biens des Ingouches. Les Tchétchènes et les Ingouches n’oublient pas...Ces peuples ont une mémoire historique très développée (et bien, d’autres aussi...Vu ce qu’il s’est passé entre Serbes et Croates après la dissolution de la Yougoslavie).
Malgré la situation générale en Tchétchénie, qui peut se définir maîtrisée, avec un gouvernement pro moscovite et une présence réduite de troupes Russes (8000 soldats au lieu de 60000 en 2005), il y a au moins encore 2000 rebelles Tchétchènes dans les montagnes. La plupart de la population est encore indépendantiste, c’est sur.
Le front des combats et des attentats s’est étendu dangereusement à toute la zone du Caucase Du Nord (comme le Daguestan, l’Ingouchie, l’Ossétie Du Nord, la Kabardino-Balkarie, et la Karatchaïévo-Tcherkessie) et même dans le sud de la Russie frontalier avec le Caucase.
Le problème Tchétchène n’est pas résolu, malheureusement.
CONSIDERATION FINALES
La diffusion sur Internet des vidéos Tchétchènes a alimenté un profond sentiment de haine et de nationalisme à tous les niveaux sans distinction de classe.
Depuis la fin de la 2ème guerre Tchétchène, le mouvement pacifiste Russe a pratiquement disparu, victime de son impopularité et des persécutions politiques.
Cette guerre et ces vidéos horribles ont bénéficié au mouvement néonazi, avec la naissance de nombreux groupes dans toute la Russie.
Sans aucun doute, l’exécution du Daghestanais et musulman Shamil Odamanov (voir vidéos néonazis) et l’exécution des 6 soldats Russes sont des épisodes reliés. De toute façon les nazis n’ont évidemment pas de leçon à recevoir concernant la cruauté ou le sadisme. Ils ont simplement voulu "singer" les musulmans Tchétchènes, leur rendant la monnaie de leur pièce...
Dernière chose : l’armée régulière Russe a commis toutes sortes d’atrocités en Tchétchénie. Un exemple? Tuer des enfants de 12 ans, apparentés (ou pas) avec les rebelles Tchétchènes, en les immergeant dans de l’eau glacée. Et combien de Tchétchènes inoffensifs ont été capturés, internés dans les goulags et torturés jusqu’à la mort ?
Les Russes ont éliminé au moins 20% de la population totale de la Tchétchénie !!!! Et nous nous étonnons que les jeunes Tchétchènes se révoltent et s’unissent aux rebelles?
Monday, October 27, 2008
The Zwi Migdal - Jewish Pimps of Argentina
Interesting stuff. Ynet has some great articles about the Jews.
Every society with prostitution has its pimps, of course.
In the US, pimping seems to be dominated by Blacks. I haven't heard of many White pimps, but I guess they exist. Part of the sickness and baseness of US Black ghetto culture is the glorification of the pimp and the streetwalker. We haven't many Blacks around here, but the few pimps and streetwalkers around here are almost always Black.
I understand that Albanians dominate the prostitution trade in the UK.
The anti-Semitic image of Jew as pimp and peddler of filth and depravity (Peddle some my way!) lacks a sound basis. However, in Argentina, Brazil, Poland and the Ukraine, Jews dominated the prostitution trade.
In one case, in Poland around 1910, there was a Jewish pogrom against the pimps! Pogroms in Poland around this time were often organized around the theme of "Jews are prostituting our women," and the local Jews had had enough. I think that 100 pimps were killed in this pogrom. I'm not sure if they killed prostitutes too.
It's an anti-Semitic lie that due to Jewish dual morality, Jews will only prostitute Gentile girls. The evil Jews are turning out our pure White women! In the case of the Zwi Migdal, it looks like they were only prostituting Jewish girls. I understand that the pimps of Israel (where there is a thriving sex trade) often traffic in Jewish in addition to Gentile women).
The Zwi Migdal were not supported by the Jewish community at large, to its credit. It lasted from 1870-1930.
Even by the turn of the century, Argentina had a very large Jewish population and it still has about 400,000 Jews.
Click the link for more.
Every society with prostitution has its pimps, of course.
In the US, pimping seems to be dominated by Blacks. I haven't heard of many White pimps, but I guess they exist. Part of the sickness and baseness of US Black ghetto culture is the glorification of the pimp and the streetwalker. We haven't many Blacks around here, but the few pimps and streetwalkers around here are almost always Black.
I understand that Albanians dominate the prostitution trade in the UK.
The anti-Semitic image of Jew as pimp and peddler of filth and depravity (Peddle some my way!) lacks a sound basis. However, in Argentina, Brazil, Poland and the Ukraine, Jews dominated the prostitution trade.
In one case, in Poland around 1910, there was a Jewish pogrom against the pimps! Pogroms in Poland around this time were often organized around the theme of "Jews are prostituting our women," and the local Jews had had enough. I think that 100 pimps were killed in this pogrom. I'm not sure if they killed prostitutes too.
It's an anti-Semitic lie that due to Jewish dual morality, Jews will only prostitute Gentile girls. The evil Jews are turning out our pure White women! In the case of the Zwi Migdal, it looks like they were only prostituting Jewish girls. I understand that the pimps of Israel (where there is a thriving sex trade) often traffic in Jewish in addition to Gentile women).
The Zwi Migdal were not supported by the Jewish community at large, to its credit. It lasted from 1870-1930.
Even by the turn of the century, Argentina had a very large Jewish population and it still has about 400,000 Jews.
Click the link for more.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Question For the Anti-Semites
The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.
Why is it when White folks get into the Anti-Semitism Thingie, it seems like sooner or later (if they did not feel this way already) they get into the White Nationalism Thingie or the We Hate Niggers* and Beaners* Thingie? Please clue us in. Inquiring minds want to know.
I'm well aware that there are White folks who are White nationalists but are not anti-Semites. Just that with White folks, there's not too many the other way around. No wonder Jews are suspicious of this WN shit. Tends to come with some pretty nasty strings attached. They ain't stupid.
Even Leftist anti-Semites, after a while, get into the Holocaust Revisionism Thingie, and most of them get into the Nationalism Thingie and the really weird and creepy Let's Get Rid of Left and Right Thingie. That's assuming they are not already making alliance with neo-Nazis and chanting Save Zundel!
Man, anti-Semitism does some weird shit to your head. It's like it's almost worse for your brain than meth.
*Used sardonically
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Why is it when White folks get into the Anti-Semitism Thingie, it seems like sooner or later (if they did not feel this way already) they get into the White Nationalism Thingie or the We Hate Niggers* and Beaners* Thingie? Please clue us in. Inquiring minds want to know.
I'm well aware that there are White folks who are White nationalists but are not anti-Semites. Just that with White folks, there's not too many the other way around. No wonder Jews are suspicious of this WN shit. Tends to come with some pretty nasty strings attached. They ain't stupid.
Even Leftist anti-Semites, after a while, get into the Holocaust Revisionism Thingie, and most of them get into the Nationalism Thingie and the really weird and creepy Let's Get Rid of Left and Right Thingie. That's assuming they are not already making alliance with neo-Nazis and chanting Save Zundel!
Man, anti-Semitism does some weird shit to your head. It's like it's almost worse for your brain than meth.
*Used sardonically
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
What Do White Nationalists Want?
The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.
Updated December 7::
We clearly established here a while back that White nationalism is for the most part simply White racism or White supremacism with a nice-sounding new name to keep from scaring people off. In a fancy, innocuous-sounding package, in other words.
I think maybe less than 5% of White nationalists are actually not racists. I'm not sure what's up with them. A greater percentage are fond of Asians. Some have even married Asian women. It's hard to call folks like that White supremacists, since they usually think that NE Asians are equal to or superior to European Whites.
On more moderate sites like American Renaissance, the view that NE Asians are equal to or superior to European Whites is commonly held, such that we must note that many White nationalists are in fact not White supremacists. This is an important distinction. The Left always calls these folks White Supremacists, and in many cases, that's not fair.
I'm fascinated with White nationalism for some perverse reason, and to be honest, that's why I write about it all the time.
Reading this blog is unfortunately just a glimpse into my perverse, unhealthy and chaotic mind. I wish I was more mature than that, but I'm not. Whatever is in my mind during given periods ends up on the blog. I admit I'm obsessed with race. Hence, the blog is race-obsessed. I'm not able to separate my private mental life from this blog yet, and I may never be.
Let's look at the White nationalist program to see if this movement is racist or not.
Even on Amren, in the comments, you see a very large number of White nationalists saying that, ideally, we ought to throw all non-Whites out of the US. I don't know how many feel that way. I never heard any of them say that they morally oppose such a project. I wonder how many WN's don't think this is a good idea. Clearly such a desire is racist.
On a lesser but yet important level, the vast majority of WN's seem to take the opinion that only European Whites are real Americans. All others, no longer how long they have lived here, will never be Americans. I argue that this notion is racist in and of itself. Those opposed are invited to the comments to disagree.
A very large number of White nationalists, even on Amren, hanker for a race war, in particular a war between Whites and Blacks.
They also like to project about this a lot, claiming that Blacks want a race war with Whites. Sure, Nation of Islam Black Nationalists might, but it's not a common view. I've been around thousands of Blacks (I taught in Black schools for years) and I've never heard one Black person say this.
White nationalists hanker for this because they think they can win this war. Most Blacks don't think this is a good idea, I assume because it's obvious that they would lose. If anything is racism, hankering for race war sure as Hell is.
One thing that is clear is that almost all WN's seem to want White separatism in some form or another. I'm aware that some WN's say that they are not White separatists. Their numbers are very small. Even those who say they are not White separatists still support "the right of communities to implement separatism at a local level." Hmmm.
It seems to me that in general, White separatism would have to be driven by feelings of racism. I wouldn't say all the time, but surely most of the time. As a political project, White separatism must be seen as racist to the core, regardless of the motivations of individuals.
The final WN view is that all anti-discrimination laws should be repealed. Some say we should only do this a piece at a time, but they all seem to support it. I would be very interested to meet a White nationalist who does not support getting rid of all anti-discrimination laws.
This project is so obviously racist on its face that I have even said that non-racist folks pushing this, such as libertarians and anarchists, are de facto racists in that they are pushing a racist agenda, no matter what pretty and loving thoughts may be dancing in their empathy-drenched minds.
This has aroused a firestorm of fury on libertarian and rightwing anarchist sites, but it's always a pleasure to have the right kind of enemies.
Just to be fair, let's point out what's not racist about WN. Discussions of race realism are not necessarily racist, depending on how they are handled. Complaining about or criticizing other races is not necessarily racist either. Maybe they're just telling it like it is? Opposition to anti-White hate propaganda, so prevalent in our society, is not necessarily racist.
Feeling pride in being White is not necessarily racist either.
My opinion is that all races and ethnic groups should take pride in themselves. It's sad that more ethnic nationalists don't feel this way. In fact, if you meet people from around the world, most people do take pride in their race or ethnicity! It's healthy! Love yourself, love your tribe, love your nation, love your race.
Ideally, if WN's respected the right of other groups to take pride in themselves, WN's could look at proud Blacks and Hispanics and at least respect them for standing up for their people; instead, WN's almost always see such folks as deadly enemies.
Let's look at the White nationalist project in summary:
I would argue that from an anti-racist point of view, WN is invalidated right there.
We don't need act silly and beat people up for talking about IQ or crime rates, feeling filial pride, or defending their people against idiots of other races. Given my argument above, why on Earth would any non-racist to anti-racist White person, however proud, sign on to WN? Forget it.
In an incredible book about Peru's Shining Path, The Shining Path: A History of the Millenarian War in Peru, Peruvian journalist and uber-intellectual Gustavo Gorriti wisely noted that Sendero's revolution was a "race against time."
Sendero saw Peruvian society as it was, not as it is. Sendero saw Peru as semi-colonial and semi-feudal, but it was moving away from both by the time they started their war. Their war was actually a war against time, progress and modernity itself.
Peruvian society is horrible, and armed Left revolution is more than justified, but Sendero's analysis applied better to 1960 than 1980. In the ensuing 28 years, Peru only moved further from semi-colonialism and semi-feudalism.
US White nationalism is, like Sendero, in a race against time. In the past 45 years, support among US Whites for the five core projects/philosophies listed above has apparently declined each year in the US. The decline seems to be continuing. Yet White nationalists are racing harder than ever to implement their projects, the prospects for which seem to grow dimmer by the day. How many ways can you spell "doomed"?
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Updated December 7::
We clearly established here a while back that White nationalism is for the most part simply White racism or White supremacism with a nice-sounding new name to keep from scaring people off. In a fancy, innocuous-sounding package, in other words.
I think maybe less than 5% of White nationalists are actually not racists. I'm not sure what's up with them. A greater percentage are fond of Asians. Some have even married Asian women. It's hard to call folks like that White supremacists, since they usually think that NE Asians are equal to or superior to European Whites.
On more moderate sites like American Renaissance, the view that NE Asians are equal to or superior to European Whites is commonly held, such that we must note that many White nationalists are in fact not White supremacists. This is an important distinction. The Left always calls these folks White Supremacists, and in many cases, that's not fair.
I'm fascinated with White nationalism for some perverse reason, and to be honest, that's why I write about it all the time.
Reading this blog is unfortunately just a glimpse into my perverse, unhealthy and chaotic mind. I wish I was more mature than that, but I'm not. Whatever is in my mind during given periods ends up on the blog. I admit I'm obsessed with race. Hence, the blog is race-obsessed. I'm not able to separate my private mental life from this blog yet, and I may never be.
Let's look at the White nationalist program to see if this movement is racist or not.
Even on Amren, in the comments, you see a very large number of White nationalists saying that, ideally, we ought to throw all non-Whites out of the US. I don't know how many feel that way. I never heard any of them say that they morally oppose such a project. I wonder how many WN's don't think this is a good idea. Clearly such a desire is racist.
On a lesser but yet important level, the vast majority of WN's seem to take the opinion that only European Whites are real Americans. All others, no longer how long they have lived here, will never be Americans. I argue that this notion is racist in and of itself. Those opposed are invited to the comments to disagree.
A very large number of White nationalists, even on Amren, hanker for a race war, in particular a war between Whites and Blacks.
They also like to project about this a lot, claiming that Blacks want a race war with Whites. Sure, Nation of Islam Black Nationalists might, but it's not a common view. I've been around thousands of Blacks (I taught in Black schools for years) and I've never heard one Black person say this.
White nationalists hanker for this because they think they can win this war. Most Blacks don't think this is a good idea, I assume because it's obvious that they would lose. If anything is racism, hankering for race war sure as Hell is.
One thing that is clear is that almost all WN's seem to want White separatism in some form or another. I'm aware that some WN's say that they are not White separatists. Their numbers are very small. Even those who say they are not White separatists still support "the right of communities to implement separatism at a local level." Hmmm.
It seems to me that in general, White separatism would have to be driven by feelings of racism. I wouldn't say all the time, but surely most of the time. As a political project, White separatism must be seen as racist to the core, regardless of the motivations of individuals.
The final WN view is that all anti-discrimination laws should be repealed. Some say we should only do this a piece at a time, but they all seem to support it. I would be very interested to meet a White nationalist who does not support getting rid of all anti-discrimination laws.
This project is so obviously racist on its face that I have even said that non-racist folks pushing this, such as libertarians and anarchists, are de facto racists in that they are pushing a racist agenda, no matter what pretty and loving thoughts may be dancing in their empathy-drenched minds.
This has aroused a firestorm of fury on libertarian and rightwing anarchist sites, but it's always a pleasure to have the right kind of enemies.
Just to be fair, let's point out what's not racist about WN. Discussions of race realism are not necessarily racist, depending on how they are handled. Complaining about or criticizing other races is not necessarily racist either. Maybe they're just telling it like it is? Opposition to anti-White hate propaganda, so prevalent in our society, is not necessarily racist.
Feeling pride in being White is not necessarily racist either.
My opinion is that all races and ethnic groups should take pride in themselves. It's sad that more ethnic nationalists don't feel this way. In fact, if you meet people from around the world, most people do take pride in their race or ethnicity! It's healthy! Love yourself, love your tribe, love your nation, love your race.
Ideally, if WN's respected the right of other groups to take pride in themselves, WN's could look at proud Blacks and Hispanics and at least respect them for standing up for their people; instead, WN's almost always see such folks as deadly enemies.
Let's look at the White nationalist project in summary:
Project/philosophy Racist?
Strike anti-discrimination laws YES
Remove non-Whites from US YES
Only Whites can be real Americans YES
Advocate race war vs. non-Whites YES
White separatism project at core* YES
*At project level, not individual level.
I would argue that from an anti-racist point of view, WN is invalidated right there.
We don't need act silly and beat people up for talking about IQ or crime rates, feeling filial pride, or defending their people against idiots of other races. Given my argument above, why on Earth would any non-racist to anti-racist White person, however proud, sign on to WN? Forget it.
In an incredible book about Peru's Shining Path, The Shining Path: A History of the Millenarian War in Peru, Peruvian journalist and uber-intellectual Gustavo Gorriti wisely noted that Sendero's revolution was a "race against time."
Sendero saw Peruvian society as it was, not as it is. Sendero saw Peru as semi-colonial and semi-feudal, but it was moving away from both by the time they started their war. Their war was actually a war against time, progress and modernity itself.
Peruvian society is horrible, and armed Left revolution is more than justified, but Sendero's analysis applied better to 1960 than 1980. In the ensuing 28 years, Peru only moved further from semi-colonialism and semi-feudalism.
US White nationalism is, like Sendero, in a race against time. In the past 45 years, support among US Whites for the five core projects/philosophies listed above has apparently declined each year in the US. The decline seems to be continuing. Yet White nationalists are racing harder than ever to implement their projects, the prospects for which seem to grow dimmer by the day. How many ways can you spell "doomed"?
References
- Gorriti Ellenbogen, Gustavo. Translated, with an introduction, by Robin Kirk. 1999. The Shining Path: A History of the Millenarian War in Peru. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Republicans Cultivate Anti-Intellectualism
The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.
Updated December 18:
In the comments section, Uncle Milton disagrees with me when I say that the Republican Party has been cultivating anti-intellectualism for a long time now. He goes on to list a number of bright Republican politicians, but concedes Gerald Ford was a dunce.
They truth is this. The Republicans have been cultivating anti-intellectualism and just being shit-ignorant in general for a long time now.
In part this has roots in pro-business culture. For a long time in the US, the business and money crowd was aggressively anti-education and anti-intellectual.
I've worked around rich people a lot so I know it still exists. For many years as I was growing up, I could not count the businessmen who delighted in telling me that they either hadn't spent a day in college or didn't have a degree. The idea was that you didn't need a degree to make money, and college just got in the way of making a buck.
One great thing about MBA-addiction is that we seem to have done away with that silliness once and for all. Now, for an entry-level position at many corporations and other institutions, a BA or BS from an accredited university is required. Increasingly, a degree is indeed required in order to make decent money.
I've also spent a lot of my life around some real intellectuals, including the poetry crowd, the artist and art crowd, the writer crowd and the Hollywood crowd. A lot collected books and art, listened to opera, went to art movies, the theater, seminars and dance performances, and could bend your ear about all sorts of highbrow stuff. As a general rule, while these folks were not poor, they were not rich by any stretch.
The truth is that the Republican Party cultivates nothing less than hatred for educated people, intellectualism, knowledge, culture and brains. They hate college professors, they hate intellectuals, they hate Hollywood.
Of course many Republican politicians, thinkers, authors and voters are very smart. Sure they have advanced degrees, law degrees and medical degrees. Sure they write books and whatnot.
But the message and tone of the party is deep contempt and hatred for education, college degrees, advanced degrees, intellectuals, eggheads, all of that.
Ronald Reagan was a fucking dumbass and a hardcore anti-intellectual. He was not smart enough to be either governor or President. I don't care what his IQ was.
A friend of my father's met him once at a party in Los Angeles when Reagan was head of the Screen Actors Guild, and said he was really friendly but not that smart. A friend of my grandmother's dated him in Iowa and said the exact same thing about him. That's what everyone said about him. She dumped him because he was too dumb for her.
It was under Reagan that anti-intellectualism was cultivated to an extreme degree. With every stupid, idiotic, dumb-fuck thing this moron said, the Republicans just cheered more and more. It was like the more stupid shit he said, the more delirious they were. They weren't ashamed at all. They were rolling in the mud.
They were finally sticking it to the ivory tower eggheads, the weenie desegregationist judges, Agnew's "nattering nabobs of negativism" (a clever dig at academia) and Wallace's "pointy-headed liberals who can't even park their bicycles straight" (same thing). It was like a revenge party of stupid, and it carried on for most of a decade.
Gerald Ford is a very intelligent man with a very high IQ.
Richard Nixon was a very smart guy.
George Bush Sr. is not only extremely smart, but he is also a real intellectual.
George W. Bush is intelligent. I read a 5-6 page interview with him in a major news magazine once and I came away thinking, "All this time I thought this guy was dumb, but he's actually a bright fellow." But he is not a deep thinker, nor is he intellectual at all, and furthermore, he is unbelievably shit-ignorant.
He continues the aggressive cultivation of ignorance started with Reagan.
Sarah Palin, an intelligent woman who is also appallingly ignorant for the job she is running for, continues in Reagan's footsteps.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Updated December 18:
In the comments section, Uncle Milton disagrees with me when I say that the Republican Party has been cultivating anti-intellectualism for a long time now. He goes on to list a number of bright Republican politicians, but concedes Gerald Ford was a dunce.
They truth is this. The Republicans have been cultivating anti-intellectualism and just being shit-ignorant in general for a long time now.
In part this has roots in pro-business culture. For a long time in the US, the business and money crowd was aggressively anti-education and anti-intellectual.
I've worked around rich people a lot so I know it still exists. For many years as I was growing up, I could not count the businessmen who delighted in telling me that they either hadn't spent a day in college or didn't have a degree. The idea was that you didn't need a degree to make money, and college just got in the way of making a buck.
One great thing about MBA-addiction is that we seem to have done away with that silliness once and for all. Now, for an entry-level position at many corporations and other institutions, a BA or BS from an accredited university is required. Increasingly, a degree is indeed required in order to make decent money.
I've also spent a lot of my life around some real intellectuals, including the poetry crowd, the artist and art crowd, the writer crowd and the Hollywood crowd. A lot collected books and art, listened to opera, went to art movies, the theater, seminars and dance performances, and could bend your ear about all sorts of highbrow stuff. As a general rule, while these folks were not poor, they were not rich by any stretch.
The truth is that the Republican Party cultivates nothing less than hatred for educated people, intellectualism, knowledge, culture and brains. They hate college professors, they hate intellectuals, they hate Hollywood.
Of course many Republican politicians, thinkers, authors and voters are very smart. Sure they have advanced degrees, law degrees and medical degrees. Sure they write books and whatnot.
But the message and tone of the party is deep contempt and hatred for education, college degrees, advanced degrees, intellectuals, eggheads, all of that.
Ronald Reagan was a fucking dumbass and a hardcore anti-intellectual. He was not smart enough to be either governor or President. I don't care what his IQ was.
A friend of my father's met him once at a party in Los Angeles when Reagan was head of the Screen Actors Guild, and said he was really friendly but not that smart. A friend of my grandmother's dated him in Iowa and said the exact same thing about him. That's what everyone said about him. She dumped him because he was too dumb for her.
It was under Reagan that anti-intellectualism was cultivated to an extreme degree. With every stupid, idiotic, dumb-fuck thing this moron said, the Republicans just cheered more and more. It was like the more stupid shit he said, the more delirious they were. They weren't ashamed at all. They were rolling in the mud.
They were finally sticking it to the ivory tower eggheads, the weenie desegregationist judges, Agnew's "nattering nabobs of negativism" (a clever dig at academia) and Wallace's "pointy-headed liberals who can't even park their bicycles straight" (same thing). It was like a revenge party of stupid, and it carried on for most of a decade.
Gerald Ford is a very intelligent man with a very high IQ.
Richard Nixon was a very smart guy.
George Bush Sr. is not only extremely smart, but he is also a real intellectual.
George W. Bush is intelligent. I read a 5-6 page interview with him in a major news magazine once and I came away thinking, "All this time I thought this guy was dumb, but he's actually a bright fellow." But he is not a deep thinker, nor is he intellectual at all, and furthermore, he is unbelievably shit-ignorant.
He continues the aggressive cultivation of ignorance started with Reagan.
Sarah Palin, an intelligent woman who is also appallingly ignorant for the job she is running for, continues in Reagan's footsteps.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Latest Scary Marijuana-Brain Damage Study
The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.
Updated October 24:
I already talked about this study in a previous post, but it's time to look into it again, as it is continuing to get a lot of publicity.
Study Strengthens Marijuana Brain Damage Case is the title of the accompanying headline.
Marijuana users who had smoked more than 5 joints a day (average of 11 joints a day) for more than 10 years (average use of 20 years) were tested.
They found that there was shrinkage in the amygdala and the hippocampus related to how much cannabis the person used.
The shrinkage was not large in either structure. The damage is described as "equivalent to mild traumatic brain injury or premature aging." The article:
This study was done by Nadia Solowij out of Australia. For whatever reason, every single study done by Solowij and colleagues seems to find pretty serious brain damage.
This study is pretty scary, but so far there have been four other studies of heavy cannabis users that did not find damage to the hippocampus or the amygdala.
However, four other studies found no hippocampal damage from cannabis. An MRI study from 2005 of very heavy cannabis users who had used cannabis on average of 20,100 times found no damage to the hippocampus at all. A study of cannabis-using young adults from 2006 found no damage to the hippocampus, or to any other structure. And a third study also found no hippocampal damage.
The study of users from 2006 also found no damage to the amygdala. This study actually found that the hippocampus-amygdala was 5% larger in the cannabis users than in the non-users, but the difference was not thought to be significant.
So there you have it. There are some pretty scary new findings coming out about cannabis and damage to the limbic system, but things are still far from proven. The single study so hyped by the media nowadays has already been contradicted by four negative studies. You would think that the media might have noted that. You would think wrong.
The road forward? More studies, I guess. You could always try smoking less than five joints a day too, just to be on the safe side.
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Updated October 24:
I already talked about this study in a previous post, but it's time to look into it again, as it is continuing to get a lot of publicity.
Study Strengthens Marijuana Brain Damage Case is the title of the accompanying headline.
Marijuana users who had smoked more than 5 joints a day (average of 11 joints a day) for more than 10 years (average use of 20 years) were tested.
They found that there was shrinkage in the amygdala and the hippocampus related to how much cannabis the person used.
The shrinkage was not large in either structure. The damage is described as "equivalent to mild traumatic brain injury or premature aging." The article:
Doctors have known for years there is nothing "soft" about the drug cannabis. Professor Jon Currie is the director of addiction medicine at St Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne.It's also equivalent to drinking over 2 drinks per day. It's equivalent to severe stress. It's equivalent to having PTSD. It's equivalent to all sorts of stuff.
"This is a very exciting study because it proves for the first time what we have been really worried out. That brain problems are real and that people who smoke cannabis over a long term do get problems." he said.
This study was done by Nadia Solowij out of Australia. For whatever reason, every single study done by Solowij and colleagues seems to find pretty serious brain damage.
This study is pretty scary, but so far there have been four other studies of heavy cannabis users that did not find damage to the hippocampus or the amygdala.
However, four other studies found no hippocampal damage from cannabis. An MRI study from 2005 of very heavy cannabis users who had used cannabis on average of 20,100 times found no damage to the hippocampus at all. A study of cannabis-using young adults from 2006 found no damage to the hippocampus, or to any other structure. And a third study also found no hippocampal damage.
The study of users from 2006 also found no damage to the amygdala. This study actually found that the hippocampus-amygdala was 5% larger in the cannabis users than in the non-users, but the difference was not thought to be significant.
So there you have it. There are some pretty scary new findings coming out about cannabis and damage to the limbic system, but things are still far from proven. The single study so hyped by the media nowadays has already been contradicted by four negative studies. You would think that the media might have noted that. You would think wrong.
The road forward? More studies, I guess. You could always try smoking less than five joints a day too, just to be on the safe side.
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A Defense of White Working Class Republicans
The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.
Updated December 7:
Here.
Doesn't make much sense.
First of all, it starts out with a defense that the White working class is making an intelligent decision to vote on abortion, gay rights and the 2nd Amendment as opposed to economics. Not much to say to that.
Next he argues that Democrats don't really have the economic interests of the White working class at heart; in fact, Republicans do. This is the hoary Republican line, disproven endlessly, especially in these difficult times.
Finally he gets down to some red meat. Turns out that Republicans are better for the White working class because they support lax to nonexistent zoning regulations, which makes homes cheaper! This incredible argument is from none other than Steve Sailer, who apparently works for the Republican Party now. Sailer wants to have a truce with me, but I am thinking of unilaterally violating the cease-fire.
According to Sailer, the Republicans support something called "cheap family formation". A study of economic statistics over the past 30 years should disprove that.
Yeah, I've met so many working class Whites who vote Republican to eviscerate zoning laws so they can get a cheap house ! Lax zoning laws of course being a prime cause of crappy neighborhoods in the first place of course.
Next up. It's smart for the White working class to vote Republican an anti-immigration basis. Though both parties are horrible on this issue, the current Republican Party is one of the most horrible parties for immigration-restrictionists in recent memory. The Republican Party is for all intents and purposes an Open Borders political party.
Last, it's smart for the White working class to vote Republican because Democrats try to desegregate White schools. First of all, few actual desegregation efforts occur outside the South anymore. Second of all, they are ordered by judges, not federal, state or local officials. Third, I am not aware of the Republicans doing anything to stop desegregation of schools.
From the banner:
Who is this blogger? He's big enough to get written up in the New York Times? How sorry.
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Updated December 7:
Here.
Doesn't make much sense.
First of all, it starts out with a defense that the White working class is making an intelligent decision to vote on abortion, gay rights and the 2nd Amendment as opposed to economics. Not much to say to that.
Next he argues that Democrats don't really have the economic interests of the White working class at heart; in fact, Republicans do. This is the hoary Republican line, disproven endlessly, especially in these difficult times.
Finally he gets down to some red meat. Turns out that Republicans are better for the White working class because they support lax to nonexistent zoning regulations, which makes homes cheaper! This incredible argument is from none other than Steve Sailer, who apparently works for the Republican Party now. Sailer wants to have a truce with me, but I am thinking of unilaterally violating the cease-fire.
According to Sailer, the Republicans support something called "cheap family formation". A study of economic statistics over the past 30 years should disprove that.
Yeah, I've met so many working class Whites who vote Republican to eviscerate zoning laws so they can get a cheap house ! Lax zoning laws of course being a prime cause of crappy neighborhoods in the first place of course.
Next up. It's smart for the White working class to vote Republican an anti-immigration basis. Though both parties are horrible on this issue, the current Republican Party is one of the most horrible parties for immigration-restrictionists in recent memory. The Republican Party is for all intents and purposes an Open Borders political party.
Last, it's smart for the White working class to vote Republican because Democrats try to desegregate White schools. First of all, few actual desegregation efforts occur outside the South anymore. Second of all, they are ordered by judges, not federal, state or local officials. Third, I am not aware of the Republicans doing anything to stop desegregation of schools.
From the banner:
Half SigmaUm, don't think so.
The new politics of common sense. Neither Republican, Democratic, nor Libertarian.
Who is this blogger? He's big enough to get written up in the New York Times? How sorry.
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Hispanics and Alzheimers
The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.
Updated October 24:
Interesting article shows that, tragically enough, Hispanics seem to be developing Alzheimer's at an earlier age than Whites.
Suggested factors were stress and low educational attainment. The low educational achievement is quite clear, since US Hispanic culture, while not made up of morons, places nearly zero value whatsoever on education.
I don't buy the stress thing though. I live in a mostly-Hispanic city, and these people do not worry about much of anything at all. They are some of the least neurotic people I have ever met. The whole philosophy is, "So what, take it easy, be apathetic, don’t worry about it, don’t think about it, take it one day at a time."
Hispanics seem to live very much in the present moment. Most of the time, they seem to be thinking about their immediate environment and reacting to it. I’m not sure that they think that much beyond the present moment and what’s directly in front of them.
There are advantages to that, but it doesn’t create a forward looking society.
I don’t buy that Hispanics experience massive levels of stress. They seem to be pretty stress-free, happy go lucky, people from what I can tell.
The stress that does exist is in the form of acting out. Couples fight it out like wildcats and stress and distress over this. People go to jail a lot, and there are lots of health problems. Unplanned pregnancies are typical, and I am starting to wonder if any Hispanics ever have a planned pregnancy.
Once you get to know them, the happy go lucky Hispanic will sometimes complain of depression. Ask him what should happen in his life to relieve his depression, and he is likely to say nothing. There is no hope. Misery will always be his secret company. Other Hispanics, like young gangbangers, sometimes say that they don't care if they live or die. Sounds like a depressed person of some type to me.
Hispanic females can be very quiet, such that they seem nearly schizoid, except that the emotional life is full, but the introversion is such that it cannot be easily glimpsed. It's a very shy woman of few words and deep emotions. Obviously a personality type that could be prone to depression. The extent of depression in Hispanic females is not well-known. The culture is people-rich and there is probably a lot of somaticizing.
There may be masked male depression, probably appearing most of the time as depression or drug abuse. Hispanic culture is a culture of action, not delay, introspection and denial of present action.
The true extent of psychopathology in such a culture is not easy to discern, but the absence of observable neurosis and worry is clear. It's not White culture at all; it's something altogether different.
Whenever I look for parallels to Hispanic culture, I keep getting reminded of the psychological type of the American Indians. To understand the Hispanic, first observe the Amerindian of the West and Latin America. There's other stuff going on - machismo from Spain - but that's a good place to start.
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Updated October 24:
Interesting article shows that, tragically enough, Hispanics seem to be developing Alzheimer's at an earlier age than Whites.
Suggested factors were stress and low educational attainment. The low educational achievement is quite clear, since US Hispanic culture, while not made up of morons, places nearly zero value whatsoever on education.
I don't buy the stress thing though. I live in a mostly-Hispanic city, and these people do not worry about much of anything at all. They are some of the least neurotic people I have ever met. The whole philosophy is, "So what, take it easy, be apathetic, don’t worry about it, don’t think about it, take it one day at a time."
Hispanics seem to live very much in the present moment. Most of the time, they seem to be thinking about their immediate environment and reacting to it. I’m not sure that they think that much beyond the present moment and what’s directly in front of them.
There are advantages to that, but it doesn’t create a forward looking society.
I don’t buy that Hispanics experience massive levels of stress. They seem to be pretty stress-free, happy go lucky, people from what I can tell.
The stress that does exist is in the form of acting out. Couples fight it out like wildcats and stress and distress over this. People go to jail a lot, and there are lots of health problems. Unplanned pregnancies are typical, and I am starting to wonder if any Hispanics ever have a planned pregnancy.
Once you get to know them, the happy go lucky Hispanic will sometimes complain of depression. Ask him what should happen in his life to relieve his depression, and he is likely to say nothing. There is no hope. Misery will always be his secret company. Other Hispanics, like young gangbangers, sometimes say that they don't care if they live or die. Sounds like a depressed person of some type to me.
Hispanic females can be very quiet, such that they seem nearly schizoid, except that the emotional life is full, but the introversion is such that it cannot be easily glimpsed. It's a very shy woman of few words and deep emotions. Obviously a personality type that could be prone to depression. The extent of depression in Hispanic females is not well-known. The culture is people-rich and there is probably a lot of somaticizing.
There may be masked male depression, probably appearing most of the time as depression or drug abuse. Hispanic culture is a culture of action, not delay, introspection and denial of present action.
The true extent of psychopathology in such a culture is not easy to discern, but the absence of observable neurosis and worry is clear. It's not White culture at all; it's something altogether different.
Whenever I look for parallels to Hispanic culture, I keep getting reminded of the psychological type of the American Indians. To understand the Hispanic, first observe the Amerindian of the West and Latin America. There's other stuff going on - machismo from Spain - but that's a good place to start.
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Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Conservative Math: Liberals = Nigger Lovers = Queers
The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.
Updated October 24:
In the comments section, huy, a Leftish Brit, is stunned by the weirdness and stupidity of American conservatism, and really White American society as a whole:
Interesting stuff. I have noticed that the Democrats = liberals = socialists = Communists = fags thing is worst of all with the White racists, I mean White nationalists, excuse me!
This seems to be a standard line of their discourse. Not only are we queer because we are liberal - Democrat - socialist - Communists, but there is something uniquely faggoty, unmanly and queerish about a White man being a nigger-lover. After all, that is the White racists one and only beef against the Left. We support their racial enemies (anyone not White) and we supposedly oppose White folks.
The image they have constructed is of an ubermasculine White man as super-racist. If you're White and you're not a racist, you're not much of a White man, therefore not much of a man. It's a most interesting construction, and I wish more people wrote about it.
It's a bit beyond me why the pinnacle of masculinity is to be a racist shit, and why the commanding heights of faggotry are reached by loving humanity before one's tribe, but I'm trying to get my mind around it.
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Updated October 24:
In the comments section, huy, a Leftish Brit, is stunned by the weirdness and stupidity of American conservatism, and really White American society as a whole:
I'm still amazed by the American right wing.
According to them:
Liberal = sexually liberal = faggot.
Liberal = left wing = socialist = Commie.
Thus Commie = faggot.
Rich Texan Oil tycoons who wear cowboy hats and drive SUV's and only date blond women and drink jack Daniels, or violent redneck skinheads on crystal meth or Harley Davidson gun loving biker gang members are the only real men in America.
The more individualist and selfish you are, the more manly you are.
In Europe, its the homosexual men that are most individualist with their fancy clothes etc.
Interesting stuff. I have noticed that the Democrats = liberals = socialists = Communists = fags thing is worst of all with the White racists, I mean White nationalists, excuse me!
This seems to be a standard line of their discourse. Not only are we queer because we are liberal - Democrat - socialist - Communists, but there is something uniquely faggoty, unmanly and queerish about a White man being a nigger-lover. After all, that is the White racists one and only beef against the Left. We support their racial enemies (anyone not White) and we supposedly oppose White folks.
The image they have constructed is of an ubermasculine White man as super-racist. If you're White and you're not a racist, you're not much of a White man, therefore not much of a man. It's a most interesting construction, and I wish more people wrote about it.
It's a bit beyond me why the pinnacle of masculinity is to be a racist shit, and why the commanding heights of faggotry are reached by loving humanity before one's tribe, but I'm trying to get my mind around it.
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Great Video About Socialism
The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.
Updated October 24:
This is a video of a lecture by Richard D Wolff, Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, on the latest economic chaos and recession in sweeping the world.
Wolff is a Marxist, and the lecture is from a Marxist POV. However, it is interesting in many ways.
One thing that is clear to most sensible folks with an understanding of economics is that Marx's analysis of capitalism is one of the greatest ever done by anyone. For a long time, it was taught in all economics departments. With the advent of crazy Friedmanite neoliberalism in the past 30 years or so, Marx may not be being taught so much, but that's a mistake.
It's sometimes said that Marx is great for analyzing either what capitalism does well or poorly, but not the opposite. Not true. Marx is great for analyzing capitalism both when it is doing well and when it is doing poorly.
In my opinion, where Marx has problems is in proposing alternatives to capitalism, and history has born this out to some extent. Capitalism, with all of its chaos and problems and horrors and deaths, may just be the only way forward for the time being. Like death, disease and taxes, it may be a necessary evil.
Wolff describes how US workers saw 150 straight years of growth and improvement in their living standards, from 1820 to 1970. This is correct. He doesn't lay out how this happened, but there are many explanations for this. He also says that this scenario was rare to unheard of in the rest of the capitalist world.
After 1970, things changed. Productivity kept going up, but wages went flat or even went down. A US worker in the late 1970's made more per hour than a worker working today. As productivity rose and wages went flat, capitalists began raking in incredible profits.
This is what has happened to the US economy over the past 35 years, as neoliberalism took hold and 80% of the population saw its wages stagnate or go down. The top 20% of the population, and especially the top 1%, saw its income explode. But the vast majority of workers of every race got screwed.
As workers got more and more screwed and the capitalists, the owners, those who lived off the labor of others, saw their incomes skyrocket, confused workers began advancing all sorts of explanations about why this was happening. Anti-Semites, as usual, blamed the Jews. White nationalists and White Supremacists blamed Blacks and Browns. Lots of middle class and working class Whites blamed Big Government.
The truth was that the culprits were the business owners who were reeling in superprofits while workers got the shaft.
As this process continued, capitalists found more ways to keep the cost of labor down. They began importing massive amounts of legal and especially illegal immigrants as labor to drive labor costs down even further. They began moving many enterprises offshore and later, began offshoring work via the Internet.
Confused workers scrambled to keep up their standard of living. Others in the family, often the wife, began taking a job, bringing in a second income. Then one or more persons in the household began to work second and third jobs. Americans worked more and more hours, setting new records for workers in the West.
The despicable US media extolled this fact, and praised US workers for working themselves nearly to death, taking pains to point out how tough and hard and slaving-away Americans are compared to pampered, wussy, "soft" Europeans kicking back under socialism.
It's true - part of the US war against European social democracy has been to declare that Europeans are soft, wimpy, sissified and woosy. How did they get this way? Socialism turned hard self-reliant European men into soft, pampered girlymen. Americans were hard, tough and macho. They didn't need no nanny state to help them out. They could do it on their own. The American worker as Marlboro Man.
Wolff points out that that extra workers did not necessarily fix matters, as when the wife started working, it turned out that she needed many things, for instance a vehicle to get to work in.
Working more than one job didn't seem to work very well, nor did having others in the household go out and work, but it did the trick for a while.
After some time, Americans would have to turn to some new tricks to try to keep up their standard of living. They turned to loans. At first they ran up their credit cards. Americans were setting records for going into debt on credit cards and were among the Western world's poorest when it came to saving money.
This isn't really very good personal economics, but the vile media cheered it on nonetheless. Silly, wimpy Europeans and Japanese saved their money for a rainy day, presumably because they were too neurotic to enjoy life. Americans went for the gusto! They spent ever nickel they earned and then went in debt up to their waders! Cheers, cheers, cheers!
After the credit cards were maxed out, there was an explosion in US housing prices. Call it a housing bubble. This came at a propitious moment, for it enabled Americans to use as collateral the biggest asset they owned, their homes. Americans borrowed on their homes, refinancing them, taking out second mortgages and using the money like a credit card to continue to pursue the standard of living to which they had become used.
The capitalists continued to reel in the dough from the leveling of wages, now via outsourcing and use of immigrant labor, and now the capitalists found a new tool - debt.
They loaned money to their own workers! It was like the old days when you lived in a company town, bought at the company store and ate at the company diner, all deducted from your check. Not only will we pay you a crap wage, we will snag every dollar you spend on food, rent and shopping too.
These same capitalists were now swimming in ultraprofits with the money they were making off loaning money to workers and home mortgages (just another type of loan). They had so much money they did not know what to do with it. They threw it into the stock market, and the market for high-end goods of all sorts went through the roof.
Conspicuous consumption came back with a vengeance, and the scummy media once again sang and danced the praises of the most idiotic and obscene ways the rich chose to blow their unneeded and often unearned cash.
A whole new financial industry, a parasitic industry on the economic body of the nation, sprung up, an industry that created no products and no real wealth. It was nothing but a gigantic casino on Wall Street.
All sorts of funky instruments that no one understood were dreamed up - derivatives, CDO's, mortgage securities and all sorts of other stuff that probably shouldn't even be legal. Almost no one understood these things and no one seemed to understand what they were worth.
The inevitable bubble came and the party crashed, as it always does when capitalist bubbles go bust.
The root causes were the destruction of the regulations put in in the 1930's, during the Depression, in order to prevent another Depression. As soon as these regulations were put in, the capitalists began plotting and working to get rid of them.
Over the next 80 years, the capitalists created a Gramscian cultural hegemony that attacked socialism, government and regulation and exalted free market capitalism. Socialism, government and regulation were described as possibly good ideas, but doomed to failure. The only way to avoid the inevitable failures of socialism, government and regulation was to completely deregulate the economy. Anything less was the road to ruin.
With their money, the capitalist interests bought up all the media and most of the politicians. They used this to get rid of the Depression-era regulations and create the manipulate US culture to where your average worker thought that was a great idea, if he understood it at all.
There are various proposals for how to deal with this economic mess. As discussed in a previous post, conservatives, reeling and increasingly discredited, have tried to blame the catastrophe on too much regulation, not too little. Even the slimy media that normally goes along with this crap is finding this too much to buy.
White racists are promoting the racist notion that liberals (via affirmative action and anti-discrimination laws), niggers* and beaners* are the ones that destroyed the US economy. The Republican Party has to some extent bought into this, as has the business press, their amen corner in the mass media, and their academic hacks, but the argument is too slimy and racist for most decent people, plus there isn't an ounce of truth to it.
Steve Sailer, an excellent writer who is widely read, is the latest to promote this racist travesty, much to his shame. Sailer is looking more and more like a Republican Party hack than a really deep-thinking, independent and empirical author.
Furthermore, Sailer has been skating on the edges of racism for some time now without really going over. More often, he seemed to be giving the racists lots of nice talking points. Now he's finally pushing an explicitly racist discourse, and it's not even true. Too bad.
Rate of subprime mortgage defaults by race:
End of discussion!
Whites 19%
Blacks 19%
Hispanics 19%
Liberals, Leftists and social democrats have proposed re-regulation, but the problem here is that we are probably going to re-do the 1930's experience all over again. We will put in a bunch of great regulations and as soon as we put them in, the capitalists and their mass media machines will start plotting to get rid of them.
Then the capitalists and their media machines will launch a jihad, for as many decades as it takes, to reverse all these regulations and get back to total deregulation again. In time, workers will forget why they put the regulations in in the first place, and they will go along with it.
The capitalists will buy most of the politicians all over again, and the politicians will vote to deregulate again. The capitalists will work to recreate their Gramscian cultural hegemony, and the average worker will once again think deregulation is the smart thing to do. The economy will blow up again and we will be right back to 1929 and 2008.
Wolff suggests that there is a third alternative. He describes a paper done by a colleague that describes Silicon Valley workers who hated their jobs. They had to dress up, sit in a cubicle and take orders and crap all day from a bunch of assholes. Can they pay anyone enough to put up with that? With the destruction of the Silicon Valley workforce, these workers were laid off.
A number of them got together and formed IT worker-run cooperatives, a non-capitalist form of ownership along the lines of anarcho-syndicalism. The study found that these workers said that they had never been happier. They were manufacturing software, selling it to buyers and dividing up the profits among themselves. The workers themselves were the new owners.
Wolff said that as a condition of the bailouts to the financial industry, we should mandate that they staff their board of directors with workers, not management, as a first step towards workers democracy.
Wolff also said that he had been giving speeches like this for 25 years now and he has had more interest in the past five weeks than in the previous 25 years.
That's ending on a hopeful note for now. Enjoy the video.
*Used sardonically
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Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Africa Addio
Updated October 24:
A great movie. I just got through watching it. Africa Addio or Farewell Africa is an Italian documentary film shot in 1964 and released in 1966. The film, by famous Italian documentary film directors Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco E. Prosperi, is about the decolonization of Africa. There's some great music by the Italian composer Riz Ortolani.
The directors had earlier become famous with the release of Mondo Cane, a famous shock documentary.
It was released in the US in a censored version called Africa Blood and Guts, with all the fine music cut out. Jacopetti and Prosperi disassociated themselves from this American perversion of their film.
The film has English subtitles so you can follow right along.
Tragically, the film was condemned by the PC Orthodox anti-racist idiots who rule our Western world. It has subsequently been banned in Italy and the UK as "racist." Much criticism nowadays has centered on the movie being racist, misleading, exploitative, or staged. In particular, film critic Roger Ebert has singled the film out as racist.
Jacopetti was tried in Italy on charges of murder on the grounds that one of the executions in the movie was staged for the film. He was acquitted.
All of this is quite unfortunate. 1964-1966 was not exactly the height of racial liberalism in the West.
A friend in Italy tells me that Jacopetti and Prosperi were both liberal and progressive men, and neither one was racist or fascist in any way. He described them both as "open-minded". He also said that in Italy it is understood that the directors blamed colonialism for creating the conditions that led to much of the violence depicted in the film.
The film simply tells the truth about decolonization in Africa. It was brutal, horrid, stupid and genocidal. In quite a few ways, colonialism did seem better. Immediately after decolonization, there were horrible tribal wars. In the course of these tribal wars, there was horrible massacres of men, women and children of opposing tribes.
Arabs, up to 30,000 of them, were singled out and massacred in Zanzibar. In some cases, Whites were killed, even as they were trying to flee the country. In at least one case, the Simba Rebellion in Congo, the Simbas committed mass cannibalism on the opposing forces. Hutus slaughtered 18,000 Tutsis.
There are scenes all through the movie of scores or hundreds of bodies lying all over beaches, towns and jungles, or piled in mass graves. We watch the killers as they do their dirty work.
It's not a pretty movie.
At the same time as humans were being slaughtered, so were animals. Under colonialism, great game reserves had been set up, and men had scarcely been allowed to enter at all. If they did, they were to keep their voices down to not disturb the animals.
With decolonization, all Hell broke loose. At one point, the animal slaughter was so bad that the Africans called the British Army back in to set up the game reserves again. This was quickly amended, and every Friday was kill the animals day. We watch helpless as hunters, White and Black, massacre animals - hippos, elephants, gazelle, cape buffalo, crocodiles, by the thousands.
Apparently at some point later on, some sane people came to power and the animal slaughter drastically tapered off. Because if the animal slaughter depicted in this movie would have been allowed to continue, there would not be one large wild mammal left in the continent.
The animal slaughter has continued, but the grim scenario predicted in the movie has not come to fruition. Large game reserves have been set up, and large mammals still in general have decent populations, except for a few like rhinos.
44 years after decolonization, it's amazing that there are any large mammals left in Africa at all. I think we should give Africans some credit. It's been 44 years, and they haven't killed all the big animals yet.
The horrible tribal wars seem to have tapered off, though there are still some horrible wars in Sudan and the Congo. For most of Africa, there is peace or relative peace; the horrible, insane and stupid massacres of the decolonization period have not continued or rematerialized. This is good.
In 1964, it seemed that Africa was going to continue in racist and tribal genocide and mammal slaughter until most of the people and all of the big animals were gone. This has not occurred. Africa has proved better than our worst fears, and it's been nearly a half century.
Let's give them some credit.
In part, I think that the horrible leaders and parties of the decolonization period have been followed by much better leaders and political parties in most nations.
The film also discusses South Africa, and predicts that it will not last. They were right.
The film is being distributed now on the Net at least in part by White Supremacist assholes, but that figures, and it doesn't make it a bad movie, except if you're an anti-racist loon.
The truth just hurts sometimes. During the decolonization period, a lot of Africans were acting really bad. That's history. Now a lot of Africans are acting a lot better. That's progress.
A great movie. I just got through watching it. Africa Addio or Farewell Africa is an Italian documentary film shot in 1964 and released in 1966. The film, by famous Italian documentary film directors Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco E. Prosperi, is about the decolonization of Africa. There's some great music by the Italian composer Riz Ortolani.
The directors had earlier become famous with the release of Mondo Cane, a famous shock documentary.
It was released in the US in a censored version called Africa Blood and Guts, with all the fine music cut out. Jacopetti and Prosperi disassociated themselves from this American perversion of their film.
The film has English subtitles so you can follow right along.
Tragically, the film was condemned by the PC Orthodox anti-racist idiots who rule our Western world. It has subsequently been banned in Italy and the UK as "racist." Much criticism nowadays has centered on the movie being racist, misleading, exploitative, or staged. In particular, film critic Roger Ebert has singled the film out as racist.
Jacopetti was tried in Italy on charges of murder on the grounds that one of the executions in the movie was staged for the film. He was acquitted.
All of this is quite unfortunate. 1964-1966 was not exactly the height of racial liberalism in the West.
A friend in Italy tells me that Jacopetti and Prosperi were both liberal and progressive men, and neither one was racist or fascist in any way. He described them both as "open-minded". He also said that in Italy it is understood that the directors blamed colonialism for creating the conditions that led to much of the violence depicted in the film.
The film simply tells the truth about decolonization in Africa. It was brutal, horrid, stupid and genocidal. In quite a few ways, colonialism did seem better. Immediately after decolonization, there were horrible tribal wars. In the course of these tribal wars, there was horrible massacres of men, women and children of opposing tribes.
Arabs, up to 30,000 of them, were singled out and massacred in Zanzibar. In some cases, Whites were killed, even as they were trying to flee the country. In at least one case, the Simba Rebellion in Congo, the Simbas committed mass cannibalism on the opposing forces. Hutus slaughtered 18,000 Tutsis.
There are scenes all through the movie of scores or hundreds of bodies lying all over beaches, towns and jungles, or piled in mass graves. We watch the killers as they do their dirty work.
It's not a pretty movie.
At the same time as humans were being slaughtered, so were animals. Under colonialism, great game reserves had been set up, and men had scarcely been allowed to enter at all. If they did, they were to keep their voices down to not disturb the animals.
With decolonization, all Hell broke loose. At one point, the animal slaughter was so bad that the Africans called the British Army back in to set up the game reserves again. This was quickly amended, and every Friday was kill the animals day. We watch helpless as hunters, White and Black, massacre animals - hippos, elephants, gazelle, cape buffalo, crocodiles, by the thousands.
Apparently at some point later on, some sane people came to power and the animal slaughter drastically tapered off. Because if the animal slaughter depicted in this movie would have been allowed to continue, there would not be one large wild mammal left in the continent.
The animal slaughter has continued, but the grim scenario predicted in the movie has not come to fruition. Large game reserves have been set up, and large mammals still in general have decent populations, except for a few like rhinos.
44 years after decolonization, it's amazing that there are any large mammals left in Africa at all. I think we should give Africans some credit. It's been 44 years, and they haven't killed all the big animals yet.
The horrible tribal wars seem to have tapered off, though there are still some horrible wars in Sudan and the Congo. For most of Africa, there is peace or relative peace; the horrible, insane and stupid massacres of the decolonization period have not continued or rematerialized. This is good.
In 1964, it seemed that Africa was going to continue in racist and tribal genocide and mammal slaughter until most of the people and all of the big animals were gone. This has not occurred. Africa has proved better than our worst fears, and it's been nearly a half century.
Let's give them some credit.
In part, I think that the horrible leaders and parties of the decolonization period have been followed by much better leaders and political parties in most nations.
The film also discusses South Africa, and predicts that it will not last. They were right.
The film is being distributed now on the Net at least in part by White Supremacist assholes, but that figures, and it doesn't make it a bad movie, except if you're an anti-racist loon.
The truth just hurts sometimes. During the decolonization period, a lot of Africans were acting really bad. That's history. Now a lot of Africans are acting a lot better. That's progress.
First Thing We Do, Let's Kill All the Teenagers
The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.
Updated October 30:
Bernhard Goetz, one of my all-time heroes. Why? Because he shot five teenage thugs who were menacing him on the New York subway. How old were they? 18 and 19, a prime age for culling the human race.
What sex were they? They were males, but the more teenage females I meet these days, the more I wonder why we allow so many of them to suck our precious air either. What color were they? They were Black, but honestly, I really don't think White or Hispanic teenagers are any better.
What happened to poor Bernhard? He got 6 months in jail for attempting to improve humanity five punks at a time. What an outrage. He should have gotten a national holiday named after him instead.
I'm sorry he didn't kill all of them, and I'm happy the one teenage piece of shit is still paralyzed. It's not that I hate Black punk kids all that much; I just hate punk kids altogether. I'd love to see scores or hundreds of White and Hispanics kids getting the same or similar treatment every year in this country.
I'm not racist; I'm ageist. Truth is, the White ones are the worst ones of them all. It's the same as it was when I taught school when the White kids were the worst race of students - White kids have no respect and act like they own the town and the world.
I hate most kids from 16 to 20 or so (a few are ok, and younger ones are just fine) - White kids, Hispanic kids, Black kids, you name it, I hate em all. I wish we could just kill all of em at age 16, put them in deep freeze until age 21 or so, and then maybe bring them back to life when they've got some fucking sense.
Or take them at age 16, throw them all onto islands with enough food, water, iPods, birth control pills, guns, bullets and dope to last em four years, and let em fight out. Hopefully, the worst ones would get killed off, but we would save on trials, imprisonments, burials, and bullshit payouts for cop shootings of worthless punks.
I think that's why I don't want to teach school ever again - I hate teenagers way too much, especially White teenagers. I'm not sure I would want to teach community college either - I hate lots of 18-20 year olds too, especially the White ones.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Updated October 30:
Bernhard Goetz, one of my all-time heroes. Why? Because he shot five teenage thugs who were menacing him on the New York subway. How old were they? 18 and 19, a prime age for culling the human race.
What sex were they? They were males, but the more teenage females I meet these days, the more I wonder why we allow so many of them to suck our precious air either. What color were they? They were Black, but honestly, I really don't think White or Hispanic teenagers are any better.
What happened to poor Bernhard? He got 6 months in jail for attempting to improve humanity five punks at a time. What an outrage. He should have gotten a national holiday named after him instead.
I'm sorry he didn't kill all of them, and I'm happy the one teenage piece of shit is still paralyzed. It's not that I hate Black punk kids all that much; I just hate punk kids altogether. I'd love to see scores or hundreds of White and Hispanics kids getting the same or similar treatment every year in this country.
I'm not racist; I'm ageist. Truth is, the White ones are the worst ones of them all. It's the same as it was when I taught school when the White kids were the worst race of students - White kids have no respect and act like they own the town and the world.
I hate most kids from 16 to 20 or so (a few are ok, and younger ones are just fine) - White kids, Hispanic kids, Black kids, you name it, I hate em all. I wish we could just kill all of em at age 16, put them in deep freeze until age 21 or so, and then maybe bring them back to life when they've got some fucking sense.
Or take them at age 16, throw them all onto islands with enough food, water, iPods, birth control pills, guns, bullets and dope to last em four years, and let em fight out. Hopefully, the worst ones would get killed off, but we would save on trials, imprisonments, burials, and bullshit payouts for cop shootings of worthless punks.
I think that's why I don't want to teach school ever again - I hate teenagers way too much, especially White teenagers. I'm not sure I would want to teach community college either - I hate lots of 18-20 year olds too, especially the White ones.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
A Primer on Mark to Market
The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.
Updated October 24:
Some conservatives, of course, are blaming the current economic chaos on too much regulation instead of the obvious cause of it that any moron can figure out, lack of regulation. This is especially popular on White Nationalist websites, where the line is that all regulation of business is evil for White people.
I would like to point that although the conservatives are reeling from this latest economic meltdown and their philosophy is in tatters (rejected by the media elite who used to support them to the hilt more than anyone else), some conservatives are starting to fight back.
The market meltdown was not caused by the lack of regulation that everyone knows caused it; instead, it was caused by the conservative bogeyman of too much regulation. But this is not going over very well. Outside of the Fanatics' Bullpen and the Republican Party, no one is buying. Even the US rightwing media is not so stupid as to buy into this one.
The "mark to market rule"* controversy is an interesting one.
But nevertheless, mark to market is being put forward as one of the stupider regulations that supposedly either helped bring this mess on or is making it worse. So says Paul Craig Roberts (unapologetic Reaganite incredibly featured on Counterpunch) here, here and here, and Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek columnist and apologist for neoliberal globalism and US imperialism disguised as reasonable and thoughtful analyst.
Mark to market was put in to keep these corporate rats from lying about their assets and their bottom lines. Amid the catastrophes caused by the rampant accounting fraud and crime accompanying Enron and the other messes, the mark to market rule was instituted. What it means is simple: corporations have to list assets and debts as they really are, not as they think they are in their fairy tale fantasies.
What corporations were doing was this: Suppose I have assets that are worth $10X. That looks pretty bad for my bottom line, so I "re-evaluate them" with the help of some friendly local accountant firm criminals, and now automagically they are actually worth $100X. Why?
Because my accountant criminal buddies and I decided that my assets are actually undervalued, and are worth much more than the market says they are worth. So I get to fool investors, inflate my bottom line and pretend that my insolvent company is actually rolling in it.
Seems like an obvious abuse, no? Seems like a reasonable regulation, no?
Turns out after all that mark to market is sheer government evil. Evil big government is forcing angelic corporations to tell the truth about their net worth instead of lying as they always do, even in their sleep, and this harming the glorified US economy.
Nowadays, banksters and other financial criminals are holding all sorts of assets that are said to be worth, say, $100X. In truth, no one even knows what they are worth, and there is no way to figure it out. Their true value is so low that the banksters act like these assets are toxic waste.
Mark to market means they have to mark them at $30X or $2X or whatever the market says this crap is worth. But what they really want to do is lie and pretend that it's worth $100X.
Why? Because if the corporations tell the truth about how much their assets are really worth, instead of how much they lie and inflate their worth at, investors will pound their two-bit penny stocks into the ground where they deserve to be pounded.
But that's bad for the economy. We can't afford to have the stocks of insolvent companies pounded into the dirt on the basis of honest accounting of assets and debits. Instead, it is necessary to lie, paint a turd to look like a Michelangelo, and keep the sucker/investors marching in the door and laying out the cash. To tell the truth will wreck the economy. To save the economy, we must legalize lying once again.
Does any of this make sense in any rational world? Of course not.
These are the rarefied debates that occupy our ruling elites in these trying times.
*I am not an economist, and I may not have correctly characterized the mark to market rule or the arguments for or against it. If you think I have this wrong, head to the comments or email and let me know.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Updated October 24:
Some conservatives, of course, are blaming the current economic chaos on too much regulation instead of the obvious cause of it that any moron can figure out, lack of regulation. This is especially popular on White Nationalist websites, where the line is that all regulation of business is evil for White people.
I would like to point that although the conservatives are reeling from this latest economic meltdown and their philosophy is in tatters (rejected by the media elite who used to support them to the hilt more than anyone else), some conservatives are starting to fight back.
The market meltdown was not caused by the lack of regulation that everyone knows caused it; instead, it was caused by the conservative bogeyman of too much regulation. But this is not going over very well. Outside of the Fanatics' Bullpen and the Republican Party, no one is buying. Even the US rightwing media is not so stupid as to buy into this one.
The "mark to market rule"* controversy is an interesting one.
But nevertheless, mark to market is being put forward as one of the stupider regulations that supposedly either helped bring this mess on or is making it worse. So says Paul Craig Roberts (unapologetic Reaganite incredibly featured on Counterpunch) here, here and here, and Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek columnist and apologist for neoliberal globalism and US imperialism disguised as reasonable and thoughtful analyst.
Mark to market was put in to keep these corporate rats from lying about their assets and their bottom lines. Amid the catastrophes caused by the rampant accounting fraud and crime accompanying Enron and the other messes, the mark to market rule was instituted. What it means is simple: corporations have to list assets and debts as they really are, not as they think they are in their fairy tale fantasies.
What corporations were doing was this: Suppose I have assets that are worth $10X. That looks pretty bad for my bottom line, so I "re-evaluate them" with the help of some friendly local accountant firm criminals, and now automagically they are actually worth $100X. Why?
Because my accountant criminal buddies and I decided that my assets are actually undervalued, and are worth much more than the market says they are worth. So I get to fool investors, inflate my bottom line and pretend that my insolvent company is actually rolling in it.
Seems like an obvious abuse, no? Seems like a reasonable regulation, no?
Turns out after all that mark to market is sheer government evil. Evil big government is forcing angelic corporations to tell the truth about their net worth instead of lying as they always do, even in their sleep, and this harming the glorified US economy.
Nowadays, banksters and other financial criminals are holding all sorts of assets that are said to be worth, say, $100X. In truth, no one even knows what they are worth, and there is no way to figure it out. Their true value is so low that the banksters act like these assets are toxic waste.
Mark to market means they have to mark them at $30X or $2X or whatever the market says this crap is worth. But what they really want to do is lie and pretend that it's worth $100X.
Why? Because if the corporations tell the truth about how much their assets are really worth, instead of how much they lie and inflate their worth at, investors will pound their two-bit penny stocks into the ground where they deserve to be pounded.
But that's bad for the economy. We can't afford to have the stocks of insolvent companies pounded into the dirt on the basis of honest accounting of assets and debits. Instead, it is necessary to lie, paint a turd to look like a Michelangelo, and keep the sucker/investors marching in the door and laying out the cash. To tell the truth will wreck the economy. To save the economy, we must legalize lying once again.
Does any of this make sense in any rational world? Of course not.
These are the rarefied debates that occupy our ruling elites in these trying times.
*I am not an economist, and I may not have correctly characterized the mark to market rule or the arguments for or against it. If you think I have this wrong, head to the comments or email and let me know.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
The Decline of Modern Capitalism's Traditional Advantages
The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.
Updated October 24:
Modern capitalism seems to be losing a lot of the advantages that it had over Soviet style Communism, and the Net and computers seem to be at the root of this decay.
It's as if the capitalists don't care anymore. They don't care if their product works or not, they don't care if they rip you off or not, they won't give you a refund, they sometimes won't even give you the product after you buy it, they have eliminated customer service, and, most insane of all, sometimes they even make it almost impossible to even buy their product.
They said the Net and computers were going to make our lives better, but I don't see how they have. If it has anything to do with the Net, it seems like it sucks. What has the Net done for workers? Nothing. It's allowed people in India, the Philippines and Eastern Europe to compete with Americans by outsourcing work. Great!
Some examples:
There's plenty of work out there writing junk copy for websites that only exist to somehow make money (not sure how). You're just writing filler. A lot of it is in porn. I got approached by someone the other day about writing this junk copy, but the pay was $10/hour, so I said forget it. That's junk for writing prose on the Net. I told him to walk.
Turned out I was competing with writers of "English" from Eastern Europe, India and the Philippines. They were mostly working for $5/hour or even less. So even writers now are getting screwed down in a race for the bottom. Who's next?
There's a lot more ways the Net has helped create World O' Crap. Look at how many ways a brick and mortar store is better than e-commerce. The main problem with e-commerce is that it sucks.
E-commerce merchants have a right to bitch about it, but they have created this Shitworld of e-commerce. In their mad insistence that the Net not be regulated, the world of e-commerce is full of more sleazeballs and slimers than you could count for the rest of your life.
It's so easy to rip people off over the Net. I have purchased several things off the Net, including website memberships, that were total ripoffs. Quite a few software programs sold over the Net are absolute crap.
There are more problems. In a good number of cases, you try to buy something off the Net and the e-commerce site fucks it up. It will only let you order 3 packages, not 10. After you order, it gives you a database failure page implying the transaction failed, then sends you a mail congratulating you on the sale.
I bought a spyware killer program that it turned out I did not even need from a ripoff website. They quickly took my $30, but then they tried to bill it to my address as my name - for instance, "Thank you for your purchase, Mr. 35889 West Jones Street." There was no way to go back and change my name from my street address to Robert Lindsay. No way would that happen in a brick and mortar.
Then I could not even download the program. I kept trying over and over for two days, and they kept sending me links that didn't work.
Can you imagine that happening in a brick and mortar? First they take your money, then they tell you to come back in an hour to pick up the product. You come back in an hour and it's not there. They give you a new address to pick it up at. You go there and it's not there. This goes on for two days, you running all over town to pick up your product, but it's never there.
One great thing about brick and mortars is I can always get a refund. And I can always speak to a human being. Try getting a refund off the Net via e-commerce. Almost impossible. The worst thing about e-commerce is that they have managed to get rid of human beings altogether.
A lot of times, online stores do let you order by phone, but when you dial the number, no one is ever there. When you can't deal with humans via phone, it's hard to get anything done. They do often end up emailing you back and forth, but that doesn't work very well.
I bought a software program from a large company that refused to install on my system. I'm so discouraged by this Shit E-Commerce World that I haven't even bothered to call the company up to complain. I just wasted the $30. At a brick and mortar, if something doesn't work or its a rip-off, you just take it back. I've never had a problem yet.
Customer service is just one more thing that has been destroyed by the Internet and computers.
A lot of website memberships are just ripoffs. Quite a few software programs just don't work. One more thing wrecked by computers and the Net - product quality.
Capitalists at least used to be able to say that customer service was pretty good under their system. Customer service was often bad under Soviet style Communism. You went into a restaurant in Russia, and the help was rude. If you complained, you got a shrugging shoulder. There was no way to fire anyone.
Now capitalism, along with all its other disadvantages, increasingly has customer service as shitty or nonexistent as it was under Communism.
One more thing you could always say about capitalism was that product quality was often good. If not, if you had the money, you could buy something worthwhile. There was cheap crap, but for a bit more money, you could get something decent.
Under Soviet style Communism, it is true that there were often crappy products. Now it seems that capitalism is even losing this advantage. Product quality is declining under capitalism to where we cannot anymore say that capitalism at least produces good products.
Another advantage of capitalism is that the products are always available. No lines, no shortages, plenty of stuff on the shelves. Shortages and lines have long been the bane of Soviet-style Communism. But under capitalism now, at least on the Internet, there are quite a few e-commerce sites whose stores are so broken it is almost impossible to buy their product. I never thought that I would see that under capitalism.
As we can see, in addition to all of the negatives that capitalism has in relation to socialism (read any socialist critique of capitalism to learn what those are), modern capitalism is even starting to lose some systemic advantages that it has often had recently.
And computers and the Net are at the core of a lot of this system decay in the quality of the modern capitalist system.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Updated October 24:
Modern capitalism seems to be losing a lot of the advantages that it had over Soviet style Communism, and the Net and computers seem to be at the root of this decay.
It's as if the capitalists don't care anymore. They don't care if their product works or not, they don't care if they rip you off or not, they won't give you a refund, they sometimes won't even give you the product after you buy it, they have eliminated customer service, and, most insane of all, sometimes they even make it almost impossible to even buy their product.
They said the Net and computers were going to make our lives better, but I don't see how they have. If it has anything to do with the Net, it seems like it sucks. What has the Net done for workers? Nothing. It's allowed people in India, the Philippines and Eastern Europe to compete with Americans by outsourcing work. Great!
Some examples:
There's plenty of work out there writing junk copy for websites that only exist to somehow make money (not sure how). You're just writing filler. A lot of it is in porn. I got approached by someone the other day about writing this junk copy, but the pay was $10/hour, so I said forget it. That's junk for writing prose on the Net. I told him to walk.
Turned out I was competing with writers of "English" from Eastern Europe, India and the Philippines. They were mostly working for $5/hour or even less. So even writers now are getting screwed down in a race for the bottom. Who's next?
There's a lot more ways the Net has helped create World O' Crap. Look at how many ways a brick and mortar store is better than e-commerce. The main problem with e-commerce is that it sucks.
E-commerce merchants have a right to bitch about it, but they have created this Shitworld of e-commerce. In their mad insistence that the Net not be regulated, the world of e-commerce is full of more sleazeballs and slimers than you could count for the rest of your life.
It's so easy to rip people off over the Net. I have purchased several things off the Net, including website memberships, that were total ripoffs. Quite a few software programs sold over the Net are absolute crap.
There are more problems. In a good number of cases, you try to buy something off the Net and the e-commerce site fucks it up. It will only let you order 3 packages, not 10. After you order, it gives you a database failure page implying the transaction failed, then sends you a mail congratulating you on the sale.
I bought a spyware killer program that it turned out I did not even need from a ripoff website. They quickly took my $30, but then they tried to bill it to my address as my name - for instance, "Thank you for your purchase, Mr. 35889 West Jones Street." There was no way to go back and change my name from my street address to Robert Lindsay. No way would that happen in a brick and mortar.
Then I could not even download the program. I kept trying over and over for two days, and they kept sending me links that didn't work.
Can you imagine that happening in a brick and mortar? First they take your money, then they tell you to come back in an hour to pick up the product. You come back in an hour and it's not there. They give you a new address to pick it up at. You go there and it's not there. This goes on for two days, you running all over town to pick up your product, but it's never there.
One great thing about brick and mortars is I can always get a refund. And I can always speak to a human being. Try getting a refund off the Net via e-commerce. Almost impossible. The worst thing about e-commerce is that they have managed to get rid of human beings altogether.
A lot of times, online stores do let you order by phone, but when you dial the number, no one is ever there. When you can't deal with humans via phone, it's hard to get anything done. They do often end up emailing you back and forth, but that doesn't work very well.
I bought a software program from a large company that refused to install on my system. I'm so discouraged by this Shit E-Commerce World that I haven't even bothered to call the company up to complain. I just wasted the $30. At a brick and mortar, if something doesn't work or its a rip-off, you just take it back. I've never had a problem yet.
Customer service is just one more thing that has been destroyed by the Internet and computers.
A lot of website memberships are just ripoffs. Quite a few software programs just don't work. One more thing wrecked by computers and the Net - product quality.
Capitalists at least used to be able to say that customer service was pretty good under their system. Customer service was often bad under Soviet style Communism. You went into a restaurant in Russia, and the help was rude. If you complained, you got a shrugging shoulder. There was no way to fire anyone.
Now capitalism, along with all its other disadvantages, increasingly has customer service as shitty or nonexistent as it was under Communism.
One more thing you could always say about capitalism was that product quality was often good. If not, if you had the money, you could buy something worthwhile. There was cheap crap, but for a bit more money, you could get something decent.
Under Soviet style Communism, it is true that there were often crappy products. Now it seems that capitalism is even losing this advantage. Product quality is declining under capitalism to where we cannot anymore say that capitalism at least produces good products.
Another advantage of capitalism is that the products are always available. No lines, no shortages, plenty of stuff on the shelves. Shortages and lines have long been the bane of Soviet-style Communism. But under capitalism now, at least on the Internet, there are quite a few e-commerce sites whose stores are so broken it is almost impossible to buy their product. I never thought that I would see that under capitalism.
As we can see, in addition to all of the negatives that capitalism has in relation to socialism (read any socialist critique of capitalism to learn what those are), modern capitalism is even starting to lose some systemic advantages that it has often had recently.
And computers and the Net are at the core of a lot of this system decay in the quality of the modern capitalist system.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.