What can be more serious than SHARING the Earth!?
The NDP in one shocking word…
Thu, 2008-11-13 17:35
#52
Thu, 2008-11-13 18:11
#53
Iran were saying that too.What can be more serious than SHARING the Earth!?
The problem with sharing with the USSA is that state dept officials and Pentagon capitalists decided in the 1950s that their economy would be based on consumer driven capitalism, and that U.S. corporations should have access to global resources. Crazy George II said a number of months ago that the American way of life will not be open to negotiation.
On the other hand, scientists around the world have said in recent years, and you can check the literature which says, in so many words, that this cold war era promise for middle class capitalism based on consumption was a colossal lie. If we export this level of consumption to the other 85% of humanity, we'll strip world resources bare in nothing flat and choke on the pollution.
Thu, 2008-11-13 18:17
#54
remind
Benoit, because the earth is not being shared as you maintain, and it seems you would have "royalty" dispense that sharing.
Plus there is no way to make viable anything without workers unlike you funnily pretend.
___________________________________________________________
"watching the tide roll away"
Thu, 2008-11-13 19:36
#55
Humans have all inherited the natural wealth of the WHOLE Earth. What is making your nose hurting is the cold weather you find in on only PART of the Earth.
Please explain to me how sharing the whole earth can prevent me from feeling discomfort due to Winnipeg winters. Or if there is a way that sharing the earth can prevent my allergies, please, let me know. I hate being sick on a biannual basis.
Thu, 2008-11-13 19:58
#56
remind
I know it sucks trying to use grass and leaves to clean your nose, when you are allergic to them.
___________________________________________________________
"watching the tide roll away"
Thu, 2008-11-13 23:30
#57
The colonization of the Northern hemisphere of the New World was religious, military and political matters not an economic matter. But in the present time, the Americans have substituted a black person for a member of the Bush dynasty. The people can therefore hope to get slavery and work (quasi-slavery) farther in their past. The only form of good work is dead labour; dead labour is what we can call a cultural capital.
Thu, 2008-11-13 23:44
#58
But no amount of the stacks and stacks of paper money - nor the financial sectors' trillions in "near" money speculative gambling debts - will build new bridges, railways, schools or hospitals. Without workers to do the work, money and exclusive private property laws are as meaningless as they are worthless to global capitalists. It's why the very first order of fascist business class and their hirelings in government is to attack trade unions and the free market right to collective bargaining.
Thu, 2008-11-13 23:57
#59
the regina mom
Without workers to do the work, money and exclusive private property laws are as meaningless as they are worthless to global capitalists. It's why the very first order of fascist business class and their hirelings in government is to attack trade unions and the free market right to collective bargaining.
I need to know more about this Fidel. What should I read? Capital is a long, slow haul for me, but I hope to finish the three volumes in my lifetime!
Fri, 2008-11-14 00:12
#60
Even Marx was already recognizing that it is the collective intellect of engineers (human and social capital) coupled with quasi-automated machineries (physical capital) that are producing our material infrastructures.
Fri, 2008-11-14 00:33
#61
the regina mom
I've read McQuaig, but not the title you suggest. I'll look for it. I read Cameron regularly -- I've been hanging around rabble from the get-go, just not babbling. I don't feel I have the understanding necessary to make the statement you made, the reasoning for the business class to go after trade unions and workers from the get-go. I've seen it twice, here in SK, in my lifetime. Both Devine and Wall-mart hit Labour hard.
Fri, 2008-11-14 00:34
#62
I need to know more about this Fidel. What should I read? Capital is a long, slow haul for me, but I hope to finish the three volumes in my lifetime!
I think the first book that opened my eyes to what's been happening in Canada was, suprisingly enough, one written by Diane Francis. Then the real eye opener for me was Linda McQuaig. For me, McQuaig's books must have been similar to the experience had by the character Neo in the American movie, "The Matrix." Shooting the Hippo: Death By Deficit and Other Canadian Myths was the beginning of one large "red pill" for me personally. Linda makes references to several great leftist theorists like Marx, Polanyi, and Schumpeter. Duncan Cameron here at rabble is one to pay attention to. He drops by now and then and contributes short commentary essays as does CAW economist Jim Stanford, who is also very good at explaining difficult and not-so difficult concepts wrt the economy in layman's terms. And there are contributing writers to rabble who are very good as well. Welcome to "the matrix", Regina mom. cheers
Fri, 2008-11-14 00:38
#63
Jacques Rancière showed the founding gesture of "great countries": the exclusion of a silent majority from the privilege of thought and art, the implicit alliance between philosophy and the repressive order of social hierarchy. In The Philosopher and his Poor (1983), Jacques Rancière makes explicit this objective alliance by studying the exclusivism and elitism of theory in the, supposedly emancipatory, writings of Marx.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v006/6.4deranty.html
Fri, 2008-11-14 00:49
#64
Learn more about the role consumers should be allowed to play in an economy then you will begin to measure what is wrong with monopoly-like unions.
Fri, 2008-11-14 00:56
#65
I don't feel I have the understanding necessary to make the statement you made, the reasoning for the business class to go after trade unions and workers from the get-go. I've seen it twice, here in SK, in my lifetime. Both Devine and Wall-mart hit Labour hard.
Yes, well you may be more informed than I am wrt unions and Canadian trade unionism. I know that in the U.S. they have the very repressive Taft-Hartley law in "right to work" US states. Here in Canada there were 175 repressive pieces of labour legislation enacted since 1982. CUSFTA-NAFTA are very anti-worker and anti-environmental trade deals.
Fascism versus trade unionism goes way back to Henry Ford and even the Nazis in Germany. Trade unionists and socialists were the first to be rounded up and interred at Dauchau prison years before war broke out in Europe.
And ultimately, today I think the biggest problems for trade unionism and workers rights has to be globalisation and deregulation, and supranationalism in general. Neoliberalism was hatched in order to bypass national sovereign decision making and labour laws, and overall, democracy itself.
Market socialists like Polanyi understood that free labour markets were attacked and repressed in order to shift the balance of power from workers in the large majority toward capitalists and industrialists. As we see today, self-regulating markets are not self-regulating toward a state of "equilibrium" Markets fail, and now sovereign decision making is required to solve real problems in financial markets that have taken precedence over and above productive labour economies the world over. Polanyi said about Liberal capitalist utopia"
"While laissez-faire economy was the product of deliberate state action, subsequent restrictions on laissez-faire started in a spontaneous way. Laissez-faire was planned; planning was not" [Polanyi 1957, 141].
Fri, 2008-11-14 00:57
#66
Learn more about the role consumers should be allowed to play in an economy then you will begin to measure what is wrong with monopoly-like unions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_sovereignty
Yeah, screw those unions. I hate weekends! And don't get me started on the 8 hour day, I hate having to go home after only 12 hours, never mind this 8 shit. And I absolutely love unsafe workplaces. They make work a daily adventure. You never know when your factory might burn down with you locked in it!
Fri, 2008-11-14 01:04
#67
When goods and services consumers feel compelled to buy without undue marketing efforts are cheap and reliable, people don’t need to work long hours.
Fri, 2008-11-14 02:48
#68
the regina mom
When goods and services consumers feel compelled to buy without undue marketing efforts are cheap and reliable, people don’t need to work long hours.
We don't need more consumption of cheap goods...
Fri, 2008-11-14 13:38
#69
We don't need more consumption of cheap goods...
... then learn to live with high unemployment.
Fri, 2008-11-14 14:29
#70
We certainly don't need more junk to buy, nor can we afford to waste precious dwindling resouces on such any longer, but services we definitely need. In fact, cleaning up and reorganising this mess of an industrial waste zone we call a civilisation will require a great deal of services, many of which we have not previously conveived of.
However, the private sector, being largely responsible for the crumbling, unsustainable paradigms that need to be overturned, cannot be the provider of these services. They will be largely not for profit. It is the public sector that will have expand enormously to fill this gap. If society can understand this need and act accordingly, not only will we not have to endure high unemployment, but zero unemployment will actually be within our grasp, something that capitalism has always discouraged.
Fri, 2008-11-14 14:52
#71
The communist countries were still more wasteful of their natural resources than the capitalist countries. Working has always been the best pretext for destroying our social and natural environments. Therefore, no clean up will be possible without radically rejecting the notion of work as labour.
Fri, 2008-11-14 15:16
#72
the regina mom
We don't need more consumption of cheap goods...
... then learn to live with high unemployment.
That statement lacks a certain sense of vision. Your kind of negativity, I can live without.
Fri, 2008-11-14 15:20
#73
Are you masochistic to prefer more work to more leisure time!?
Fri, 2008-11-14 15:40
#74
the regina mom
You seem to assume that everyone has the same life. I am a poet and I have adjusted my life so that I can do the work that being a poet entails. I don't do 9 to 5, nor do I do TV or MSM. I write to support my poetry habit and I live with as small a footprint as I can on a 25-foot lot in the inner city in a family of four.
I resent your holier-than-though assumptions, assumptions which demonstrate little but your strict adherence to ideology and a negativity which I -- and I suspect, many others -- reject. Just who do you think you are? And why do you think you can tell me I am masochistic when you haven't a flipping clue who I am or what I do?
For your information, I love the work I do. I love writing. I love raising my children. I love growing a garden, processing the produce, making nutritious and delicious meals. How dare you be so insulting, in a progressive forum no less!
Fri, 2008-11-14 15:48
#75
The work of a poet is her poems once they are finished.
Fri, 2008-11-14 15:51
#76
The Choice
The intellect of man is forced to choose
perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story's finished, what's the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day's vanity, the night's remorse.
William Butler Yeats
Fri, 2008-11-14 16:06
#77
the regina mom
The poet's body of work is her poetry once shared, but alas and alack, a poem is never finished, only abandoned.
The work of a poet is the poem she is living. Her experiences, interactions, ideas, emotions, etc. inform the poem and she writes her life accordingly.
Fri, 2008-11-14 16:13
#78
A poet is an artist, not a worker.
Fri, 2008-11-14 16:17
#79
the regina mom
And the artist does not work?
Fri, 2008-11-14 16:19
#80
She creates.
Fri, 2008-11-14 16:33
#81
The communist countries were still more wasteful of their natural resources than the capitalist countries.
The USSR still didnt produce overall CO2-GHG emissions that is and continued to be the case here in the west leading up to the 1980s-2000s. U.S. EPA says anthropomorphic GHG emissions are directly related to growth in "GDP" Few next to no countries have pursued consumption based economies on a per capita basis like the USSA and Canada. No country comes close to the USSA for dependence on oil and total energy. One visit to a Great American Mall or Walmart, and any big box grocery store tends to give one a "feel" for the level of consumption here in North America. Widgets and food were inexpensive here for several decades, and it's because capitalist corporations were used to plundering about two-thirds of global resources and labour, and with Latin Americans and other thirdworlders working for what were basically slave wages. World Bank points to increasing real GDPs of thirdworld capitalist nations since globalisation and deregulation began 30 years ago, but real developing world incomes are skewed toward the richest of populations while the vast majority still live in grinding poverty and consuming very little by comparison.
Fri, 2008-11-14 17:09
#82
You can't create anything without work Benoit, but then, we've already established that you don't understand what the word means. In fact, you seem to understand the meaning of very few of the words you use, or, at the very least, seem to feel free to redefine them at your leisure without informing the people you're talking to. I thought maybe you were some poorly-designed robot, but now I'm thinking perhaps you're some DaDaesque performance artist. But I admit my curiousity is getting the better of me. Despite the fact that your answer is bound to be more gibberish, and utterly impervious to reason, why don't you go ahead and tell me what your definition of work is. Then we can all tell you why it doesn't make any sense and you can ignore us some more. Won't that be fun?
"The communist countries were still more wasteful of their
natural resources than the capitalist countries. Working has always
been the best pretext for destroying our social and natural
environments. Therefore, no clean up will be possible without radically
rejecting the notion of work as labour."
And just for the record (though once again I'm wasting my time reasoning with you), I don't support the Soviet model, nor was there anything in my post to indicate that I did. There are countless models that could be used to expand the public sector. It doesn't have to be fascist or centrally controlled. Come out of your dualistic thinking and breath the fresh air of diverse possibility. Or not.
Fri, 2008-11-14 18:02
#83
She creates.
So do I. Does that make me a highway artist instead of a highway worker?
Fri, 2008-11-14 18:34
#84
the regina mom
Benoit has obviously never worked nor given birth and thus has no freaking idea of what labour is.
Fri, 2008-11-14 18:53
#85
remind
Hmmm,I guess we are all supposed to sit back and wait for things to magically appear, to get cleaned up, to get fixed etc.
___________________________________________________________
"watching the tide roll away"
Fri, 2008-11-14 21:23
#86
The USSR still didnt produce overall CO2-GHG emissions that is and continued to be the case here in the west leading up to the 1980s-2000s. U.S. EPA says anthropomorphic GHG emissions are directly related to growth in "GDP" Few next to no countries have pursued consumption based economies on a per capita basis like the USSA and Canada. No country comes close to the USSA for dependence on oil and total energy. One visit to a Great American Mall or Walmart, and any big box grocery store tends to give one a "feel" for the level of consumption here in North America. Widgets and food were inexpensive here for several decades, and it's because capitalist corporations were used to plundering about two-thirds of global resources and labour, and with Latin Americans and other thirdworlders working for what were basically slave wages. World Bank points to increasing real GDPs of thirdworld capitalist nations since globalisation and deregulation began 30 years ago, but real developing world incomes are skewed toward the richest of populations while the vast majority still live in grinding poverty and consuming very little by comparison.
Much of what you describe here was engendered by one specific aspect of the Bretton Woods accords: the Harry White’s plan. The world’s nations needed to trust each others again after WWII. Only the USA had a currency able to achieve this goal.
Fri, 2008-11-14 21:34
#87
You can't create anything without work Benoit, but then, we've already established that you don't understand what the word means. In fact, you seem to understand the meaning of very few of the words you use, or, at the very least, seem to feel free to redefine them at your leisure without informing the people you're talking to. I thought maybe you were some poorly-designed robot, but now I'm thinking perhaps you're some DaDaesque performance artist. But I admit my curiousity is getting the better of me. Despite the fact that your answer is bound to be more gibberish, and utterly impervious to reason, why don't you go ahead and tell me what your definition of work is. Then we can all tell you why it doesn't make any sense and you can ignore us some more. Won't that be fun?
"The communist countries were still more wasteful of their natural resources than the capitalist countries. Working has always been the best pretext for destroying our social and natural environments. Therefore, no clean up will be possible without radically rejecting the notion of work as labour."
And just for the record (though once again I'm wasting my time reasoning with you), I don't support the Soviet model, nor was there anything in my post to indicate that I did. There are countless models that could be used to expand the public sector. It doesn't have to be fascist or centrally controlled. Come out of your dualistic thinking and breath the fresh air of diverse possibility. Or not.
One of the greatest classics in political philosophy is The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt. In this book she convincingly argues that no public sector is possible if action is not substituted for work and labor.
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=toc&bookkey=41655
Fri, 2008-11-14 21:53
#88
Much of what you describe here was engendered by one specific aspect of the Bretton Woods accords: the Harry White’s plan. The world’s nations needed to trust each others again after WWII. Only the USA had a currency able to achieve this goal.
It was a century marred by war before and after Bretton Woods. Four empires collapsed after WW I, and later so would the British empire come to an end. But those world regions were divvied largely based on oil-producing potential. The Soviet empire came to a conclusion at the end of cold war. Empires don't last. Sarkozy-US dollar no longer only currency in world
Fri, 2008-11-14 22:04
#89
The World could have avoided I think the present financial mess by adopting then the alternate plan, the one that was proposed in Britton Woods by the British.
Fri, 2008-11-14 22:04
#90
One of the greatest classics in political philosophy is The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt. In this book she convincingly argues that no public sector is possible if action is not substituted for work and labor.
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=toc&bookkey=41655
All right, first, what the hell does substituting "action" for "work and labour" mean. Did that already take place in Canada, because we have a fairly healthy public sector (although it is constantly under attack)
Second, what effects would that have, especially on me as a highway worker. Would you just rename what I do "road action" instead of "road work"?
Fri, 2008-11-14 22:06
#91
Take a vacation to read the book.
Fri, 2008-11-14 22:07
#92
the regina mom
If you ignore him does he go away? I have little time and no patience for fundamentalists of any ilk.
Fri, 2008-11-14 22:18
#93
By the way, Regina was a Princess and as such no work was required of her to found your city.
Fri, 2008-11-14 22:30
#94
the regina mom
BTW, Regina is Latin for queen. My city is known as the Queen City.
Fri, 2008-11-14 22:38
#95
The name was originally suggested by Princess Louise, wife of the Governor General. She chose the name "Regina" to honour her mother, Queen Victoria, who was reigning at the time.
Fri, 2008-11-14 23:00
#96
Take a vacation to read the book.
But vacation is a benefit that was negotiated for by my union, and you don't like unions.
Seriously, could you give a brief explanation as to what the difference between "action" and "work" is and why you think that difference is important? My reading list is long enough as it is.
Fri, 2008-11-14 23:10
#97
While you wait for me to synthesize three thousands years of political experiences, I will dare adding one more book to your reading list:
Fri, 2008-11-14 23:12
#98
Naming is a very different activity than working. Naming is what a poet is doing. As such a poet is akin to rulers or monarchs, like Princess and Queen. Workers are more like slaves than like monarch. Workers must disappear and each human must become monarch if we want to save the natural equilibrium of our common kingdom (the Earth).
Fri, 2008-11-14 23:33
#99
No one's going to jump at the chance to be "instructed" by you, Benoit, or rush to your reading list for the privilege of some inkling of what the hell you're talking about all the time. They may be interesting books and I may read them some day, if I have the time and the inclination, but if you came here to converse, then do it. Quit with the oratory drive-bys that aren't making a lick of sense to anyone.
I ask you again, how do you define work? I get that you think whatever's in these links of yours is indistinguishable from your own opinion (which in itself is strange), but if you can't explain it to me then I would hazard a guess that you don't understand it yourself, which doesn't exactly lend your recommendation a lot of weight, now does it. Answer people's questions, directly and simply, and perhaps someone will take you seriously. As it is, I'm on the verge of tuning you out altogether.
Fri, 2008-11-14 23:33
#100
the regina mom
Ben Hunnicutt. Right to Work. No Time For God and Family. Why have I just gone looking for the CCPA's report on CLAC?
Fri, 2008-11-14 23:40
#101
genstrike wrote:
Also, I should add that not all leftists are supporters of Fidel
Castro, and among those who are, a lot of them are very critical.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finding so called "leftists" who criticise Castro is as easy as finding neo-libs who parise tax cuts. It seems virtually everyone on the so called Canadian left does nothing but find fault with Cuba. Even when Cuba has been hit by 3 major hurrincanes this year, leaders of our "left" are silent about our nation's pathetic aid for fear of a right wing backlash.
Fortunately others who don't mask or apologise for their leftist views have no problem in seeing the incredibly important role the Cuban Revolution has played in empowering movements across Latin America and the "developing" world.
Evo Morales, the
outspoken leftist who claimed victory in
Bolivia's presidential election, praised
President Fidel Castro in an interview with
government television.
"I want to tell you that this year
I dreamt of joining the anti-imperialist
struggle of Fidel and the Cuban people,"
he said in a message to the Cuban people.
Morales praised the resilence of Cuban
in resisting the decades-old US trade embargo
against the island. "I hope the government
of the United States lifts it some day."
"I want to tell the Cuban people,
its government and its leaders: thank you,
for showing how to govern, to Latin America
and the rest of the world, and for defending
its dignity and sovereignty. A special and
revolutionary greeting to all the Cuban
people," Morales said.
http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y05/dec05/20e6.htm
One just has to read any babble thread to see anyone who even dares speak about the Cuban Revolution in such terms will be quickly labeled "Stalin".
I do agree with this thread's general premise, its time the Canadian left stood for something more than just "compassionate capitalism".
ETA: Sorry about the messed up format, am still trying to figure out the revamped site.