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Big Thread: Politics Main

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Fri, 2014-02-28 17:22

bibliophile20 bibliophile20's picture

Big Thread: Politics Main

So, politics. Everyone has them, and nobody can agree on them. :) It has been said that the two truisms of politics are "that no matter what the action, many voices will rise up in protest against it," and "man is a political animal." And everyone loves to hate to talk politics--and yet we all do it. So, here's a safe place to do so. This is the first of the Big Threads, and, for the moment, it is an experiment. Here is where we discuss Politics on this forum. Elsewhere, that subject is discouraged, unless it directly pertains to the topic's subject. If the discussion starts to segue into Politics, we ask that you move that discussion here, rather than threadjack. So, who wants to get the ball rolling?

—

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -Benjamin Franklin

Fri, 2014-02-28 19:00

consumerdestroyer consumerdestroyer's picture

Sisyphus' Eternal Ball-Roll

I'll start: some people like authoritarian politics, some people like democratic politics. Some people like authoritarian economics, some people like democratic economics. What's the deal with that? Related: doesn't it suck to have democratic, liberty-oriented values in a country where all major parties are far to the right of centre and super authoritarian when it comes to the economy (i.e. support of capitalism), and all of the most popular minor parties don't have a chance at success [b]and[/b] all support authoritarian capitalist economics just the same? In the U.S., you even have people arguing for a [b]more[/b] authoritarian economics calling themselves the "Libertarian Party", which is such a mental gymnastics from the original coinage of libertarian (i.e. liberty as [i]opposed[/i] to authority, coined by an anarcho-communist and anti-capitalist) that it must really make anyone with a serious political education's head spin! Like, since when is it "liberty" to demand Kings have more authority over their subjects than before and less need to be responsive to the needs of those they rule? I guess it gives the King more liberty (or the "boss" or "CEO" or "Chairman of the Board" or what have you in the economic authoritarian sphere of unelected Kings), but I thought democracy and liberty was about [i]depriving[/i] tyrants of the liberties they had taken over the rest, of the freedom to deprive others of freedom? But what do I know, I'm just an anarchist living in a post-scarcity world with an "invisible hand" that is pretty visibly enforcing artificial scarcity in markets that don't need to exist because unelected people in the economy feel they can charge for it! Not to mention all the devolved costs of keeping the minority world's way of life as it is by exploiting the majority world (resource extraction in particular has large markets of near-slave and literal-slave labour conditions). I wonder whether the oppressed poor and peasants of France prior to the French Revolution cared much about aristocrats penning treatises on liberty that they could read amongst themselves and discuss at salons though, and that wonder extends to the majority world we refer to as "developing" and "third" today, and what their oppressed poor and workers think of our politics threads on forums for our leisure hobbies. How's that for a Sisyphean ball? Is it being pushed uphill or rolling down? I can't tell.

Fri, 2014-02-28 19:49

Lilith

Soundbite

As someone raised on the incoherent flickerings of American television media, I have to wonder if there's any way you can boil down that rambling spiel of yours to something resembling a point, because otherwise I feel like I just walked into a room and had some pre-corp-bound college grad vomit buzzwords all over me. Said facetiously, of course.

Fri, 2014-02-28 22:42

bibliophile20 bibliophile20's picture

Made perfect sense to me, and

Made perfect sense to me, and CD did a marvelous job of opening several cans of worms. Except the worms look like they're made of some kind of smart explosive. That end of that first paragraph and the entire second are pretty directly a gauntlet being thrown down regarding economic and political "liberty" and a nice shot at the hypocrisy of any economic/political elite, such as the First World economies, discussing topics such as "freedom", while they benefit from a very lopsided system that oppresses and exploits others elsewhere across the globe.

—

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -Benjamin Franklin

Sat, 2014-03-01 00:42

consumerdestroyer consumerdestroyer's picture

@bibliophile I usually get

@bibliophile I usually get responses like yours when I say these words to people in person. Something is lost in the writing of it that makes responses like Lilith's a bit more the norm online. Need to work on my phrasing/use of terms, I guess? Or maybe hyper-link to a definition? I just don't know which words [i]need[/i] the hyperlinks. *shrugs* @Lilith The problem with bullet points is that they don't get across the enormity of the problems. I'll try though, with one dash indicating the main point and two dashes indicating a tl;dr that you don't have to read unless you want a clarifying vomit. -Authoritarianism vs. democracy/libertarianism applies to the economic sphere as well as to the political sphere. --I use libertarianism in the sense it was meant everywhere in the world before the advent of American right-libertarianism, which is to say as opposed to authoritarianism. The guy who coined it was an anti-capitalist anarcho-communist, so American "libertarians" are basically a bad joke today, especially in non-Anglo European political science circles where it is still used in the classic sense and right-libertarianism is still usually qualified as "American libertarianism" in European political science. -Capitalism is not democratic economics. --Anarcho-capitalist/American right-libertarian extensions of the free market are an exacerbation of the authoritarian qualities of capitalism and not some magic reversal into democracy and liberty vis a vis the economy as their ideologues claim. -Marxist-Leninist politics are authoritarian, and before Stalin ever came in to power that authoritarianism stomped all over what had originated as economic democracy in the worker owned and operated soviets. --See the Kronstadt soviet in 1921 for a good pre-Stalin example of why Lenin apologists can't say shit about Stalin screwing up a "good thing", and this all not to mention the years between 1917 and 1921 where Lenin ordered the destruction of presses ranging from Russian anarchist, left-libertarian socialist, anarcho-syndicalist and trade unionist presses straight through to [b]Marxist-Leninist presses[/b] that just wanted to hold Lenin to his pre-1917 writings. G.P. Maximov, a Russian revolutionary who lived through the revolution and fled during these shitty times, wrote a book in the 50s from an anarchist perspective on the failures of the post-Revolutionary years that is quite good at covering a lot of the pre-Stalin abuses called [i]The Guillotine at Work: The Leninist Counter-Revolution[/i]. -We are currently living in a world where post-scarcity is possible, but this is not news. --Some have been saying this since before the OPEC crisis in the 70s (although they were, I think rightly, derided at the time because the tech/status of global supply chains at the time and the lack of ubiquitous, reliable instantaneous communication like the internet made this claim dubious), but even the most conservative estimates have placed the latest point at which this became feasible in the late 90s. So we're coming up on a couple decades into a world where artificial scarcity is engineered by industry leaders in industries where no global or national industry leaders are elected by their workers as democratic governments are elected by their citizens (i.e. not a single industry anywhere in the capitalist world, since CEOs, Boards of Directors and Presidents/VPs of even small businesses are rarely anything but top-down authoritarian by default, although some worker owned co-ops are sizable including in the Mondragon region of Spain...although in Mondragon there is still a techno-managerial class, so it's not perfect). -Artificial scarcity is not a "right" or "freedom" or "liberty" for unelected people to enjoy at the expense, literally, of lives. However, capitalism, as an authoritarian top-down economic system, disagrees with that in the same way unelected political figures have disagreed with that. --This has happened throughout history (and continues to happen today) wherever dictators, tyrants, fascists or other authoritarian political regimes have had the "right" or "freedom" or "liberty" to do things such as (to provide a modern example from a few African dictatorships) hold food and medicine from international aid hostage in the urban centres of the country to drain the rural areas of people trying to live subsistence lives to an area where they can charge them more to live and eat than they make working on projects for the state and the companies in good with the state's most powerful people (whether companies internal to that nation or global ones with bases in the countries we all live in that are more than willing to cut costs under "business-friendly" regimes, i.e. friendly to authoritarian economics like capitalism). There is no difference to the people on the oppressed end of oppression whether this is political authoritarianism doing the oppressing or economic authoritarianism: everyone suffers and dies from these conditions the same whatever the cause. Economic democracy would mean not only people in the majority world having control over their economic lives from the bottom-up, it would mean workers in the minority world being the collective co-owners of the places they work...which, largely, would mean no one would plan out in the first place (much less authorize) exploitation of fellow human beings working the same jobs on a different continent to boost the bottom line. These decisions can take place largely because the structures of economies are top-down and authoritarian by the very nature of corporate structures, from the banks and investment firms willing to put money down on ventures of companies like my country (Canada)'s very own Barrick Gold, whose workers rape women in Guatemala in South America and Eritrea in Africa (there is a UN Human Rights Commission report on the latter freely available online, which took place [b]before[/b] money poured in for what went on in Guatemala, which Barrick Gold is trying to hush up by attempting to [b]pay off the rape victims[/b] so this won't see legal action), and Canada's not even the worst when it comes to resource extraction and their impacts on the countries they operate in, so if the unelected leadership of banks and investment firms (not to mention the unelected leadership of mining corporations) can continue to act without consequences so long as their bottom line profit exceeds legal fees, payouts and bribe/hush money...well, it's the Divine Right of Kings all over again, but the thrones are leather chairs at the head of boardroom tables. -We're a global aristocracy, not unlike the national aristocracy that existed prior to the French Revolution in France. --I think I covered it pretty well in the final paragraph of my first post, but if it still seems like a confusing analogy I can expand on it. Like I said, you can just read after the single-dash and if the points seem counter-intuitive or wrong-headed, hopefully the double-dash material (or my original post) explains it a bit? My degree is Political Science, I breathe this stuff better than I breathe the N/O/Ar/CO2 mixture swirling about my face, but sometimes I use examples that people have a hard time connecting with. I can bring it home if people ask specific clarifying questions, but I am primarily focused on oppressions levelled at people [i]outside[/i] the minority world I live in, so my examples aren't always super relevant to people whose focus is a bit closer to where they live (i.e. the places which are able to exist in the conditions they exist in largely due to the aforementioned oppression I focus on).

Sat, 2014-03-01 06:59

Killebrew

Wow. I know some basic

Wow. I know some basic political science (read Poli-Sci 101), but I felt very much out of my depth reading all of that. Fascinating, but apparently beyond my formal education. I'm not even sure where to begin, on some points I am in complete agreement, on others, however, I don't know that I could disagree more, particularly in regards to the economics. I tend towards supporting capitalism, very much believing that anyone that comes up with a product/service that people want should be able to profit from their work, though I don't believe that a monopoly is beneficial to anyone in the long run only serving to stifle advancement. One look at oil should be enough to show that. How much money has been put into alternative fuel sources in the last 25 years compared to oil? I definitely don't believe that economic power should reside solely in the hands of the companies though, I'm not sure if there is a system that would suit my views, I think some more checks and balances between the powers of the people in regards to businesses and the businesses ability to make a profit would be ideal. On the other hand, I'm not a big fan of the way intellectual property rights have lead to things like the DMCA and other such laws, and would not mind seeing them curtailed significantly. I very much like the creatives commons license that Eclipse Phase is published under, it protects the owner of the IP while promoting the users ability to alter, use and show it off to others. I do very much hope I managed to convey at least the basic ideas there.

—

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Sat, 2014-03-01 10:13

Lilith

Yeesh

There's not many people out there that could make a bullet-point list that still extends to over a page, CD, so I'll give you props on that. And while I appreciate the effort, bibs, you don't have to dumb it down for me. I may only be a college drop-out, but I like to think of myself as more lazy than stupid. I mostly made my initial reply to try and get more of a boilerplate statement out of a block of text that I felt would make the eyes of others like myself glaze over just looking at it, and it seems that attempt was less-than-successful. Anyway, my bullet point response to those would be: -Sure. -Yup. -Sounds about right. -Nah, don't think so. -Most definitely. -Eeeeeh, I guess. Unlike everyone else, I'm no Poli-Sci student, so I only have my own limited knowledge (and the resources of the series of tubes that is the Internet) to draw upon. I suppose I should elaborate on my views further but I just got up and I'm far from a morning person, so I'll let the thread stew and snark here and there where appropriate later.

Sat, 2014-03-01 13:16

consumerdestroyer consumerdestroyer's picture

@Lilith On the, "Nah, don't

@Lilith On the, "Nah, don't think so." that (I believe) corresponds to the fact that we can be post-scarcity today. The LA Review of Books has an article on a book that (I feel) points to the wrong solutions, temporary alleviation of symptoms rather than actual cures for the disease. But it merits a read if your stance is "Nah, don't think so.": http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/post-scarcity-economics @Killebrew: "I tend towards supporting capitalism, very much believing that anyone that comes up with a product/service that people want should be able to profit from their work, though I don't believe that a monopoly is beneficial to anyone in the long run only serving to stifle advancement. One look at oil should be enough to show that. How much money has been put into alternative fuel sources in the last 25 years compared to oil?" In a world where post-scarcity is possible, people's needs (and I think it's crucial that you said "a product/service that people [b]want[/b]" as opposed to [b]need[/b]) should be provided for free. Money shouldn't be involved. They should be basic human rights. Water, food, shelter, medical aid, etc. There should be no cost attached to them. Manufacturing demand for these things to profit off of other people's [i]survival needs[/i] is immoral, unethical and inhuman. While I also happen to think this applies to energy production and consumption, it becomes tricky there for a variety of reasons. Spoiler'd Rant:

Spoiler: Highlight to view

For what it's worth I think profit from work, the wage system, is itself a form of unjustified authority in people's lives. However, many people (including anarcho-capitalist user Smokeskin in an earlier thread on unjustified authority that we had going on here last month) would voluntarily opt-in to a system where a top-down hierarchy was established in their economic lives. I'm not one of them, but I understand that people with a limited perspective on the majority world impacts of sustaining minority world capitalism think that it would work out fine with x, y or z reform in place. The problems with national capitalism in every nation that have mostly fair to good living conditions internally are generally problems shunted out into international/transnational capitalism. So, for example, Made In A Free World and Walk Free are two modern initiatives that aim to call attention to the incredibly horrific (and long-standing) problem with a vast swathe across literally every sector of the economy in the minority world where somewhere along the supply chain (most commonly but not always at the point of resource extraction or primary/secondary raw resource processing) companies from the largest to the smallest benefit from slavery in the majority world (first/developed and third/developing are pretty neoimperialist/neocolonialist and offensive IMHO). Because of things like that, if I had an idea, I'd open source/copyleft it and start up a group where I was one among equals with a horizontal, leaderless structure with everyone from the workers on the factory floor to the janitor having equal say in all decisions as if we were one giant board of directors (some co-ops already run this way, though most of them are book publishers, bookstores, cafes, etc that I've come across anyway), then we'd all have equal say about what we were going to do with this product/service to stand out from the crowd. I'm not big on money economies in the first place, so my goal, to be honest, would be to develop an alternative structure in the rotting corpse of the old. For example, if I had any medical know-how at all (or any of the related know-how to follow in this example), and could find like-minded folks with training in everything from medical/surgical expertise to the manufacture of medical equipment to the chemistry needed for pharma to safe electrical wiring practices and construction practices for hospitals, I'd much rather that the lot of us got together and did everything from the ground up at a personal cost to us and then open a free hospital in a country where everything is for-pay, and figure out ways to zero out operating costs (build our own energy grid separate from energy companies, etc). These are pipe dreams, but again, some projects like Open Source Ecology's GVCS plan to do exactly this in the long-term: open source hardware and blueprints for everything necessary for a modern civilization (from tractors to 3D printers), copyleft'd for the world to use, civilization on a USB stick that you don't have to pay anyone to get access to and that requires only the raw resources to start putting together. At that point it's about getting together an anarchist resource extraction consortium and chucking the raw materials at people trying to get projects like these off the ground (because, ideally, those people are fed, sheltered and clothed no problem). You may say people should have the "right" to profit off of any number of steps in this process, and if people agree to that, sure. I'd rather not live in that world, but that's just me. I say that if all the basics were free to access for all, people would care less about getting money for their work than about making leisure/luxury/speciality goods, wants instead of needs, and they could figure out what that system entails on their own (and again, personally, like Posthuman Studios, if I had such a good/service, I'd make it available for free in addition to whatever voluntary economies other people wanted to contribute to in my name, whether via paypal donations under capitalism or rep boosts in a mutualist/gift economy social network or whatever). I don't need remuneration for making people's lives better, the reward is doing so. Capitalism has trained us out of that, in large part because for much of it's bloated existence, it could argue it's own necessity. Now the titanic capitalist beast is bloated and distended from floating, dead, down the rivers on whose banks live the global poor, and chunks rot off and crush them as it floats by on its way to ever increasing profits, a dead man's bank account swelling to the profit of those who can stand the stench enough to live on the corpse of this beast so they can access the pockets. Everyone else just has to deal with a polluted ecosystem and dying friends and family. The dream, cry the men who live on the stinking rotship, is to one day use the profits from this journey to fix all that lies in its wake. Meanwhile, they invest the money in keeping the raft afloat and increasing their profits more than anything else, which they have ever done, and which they will ever do. Small business owners have Emperor's New Clothes syndrome, only it's with the delusion that the smell that surrounds them is a perfume that all will love because they see a bunch of fucks in suits dancing around in the rot as if it's the best smell on Earth. "Smell me!" they say with a grin, "I had this idea that requires me to be on this beautiful raft, and now I smell of the best things in the world!" and no one dying in Sierra Leone while working resource extraction for the supply chain that supplies the man's small business cares that he thinks his system's smell is the best, that he smells good because he self-started with his own idea or that he can charge people for the idea at what, in his country, is more fair than his competitors because he gets the processed resources cheap...due to their misery.

That waxed poetic at the end, but I had to wrap it up quickly because I'm out the door to GM an Eclipse Phase game! :)

Sun, 2014-03-02 09:32

Killebrew

Since this topic heavily

Since this topic heavily involves politics I'm assuming it goes here, though if I'm incorrect in this I'll gladly form it's own topic. I'm curious if anyone else is paying attention to the events in Ukraine, specifically Crimea currently. If anyone is, what are your thoughts, and what news sources are you using? Being in the US myself all of the news sources inherently have a pro-Western viewpoint since they are all Western. If anyone has an English language Russian source I'd be interested in reading it. I'm trying to withhold my own judgement on the matter until I can assemble as full a picture as I can.

—

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Sun, 2014-03-02 16:16

#10

Lilith

Ukraine

My thoughts? "Oh boy, here we go." And I'll believe in a post-scarcity society when I don't have to worry about going hungry or being thrown out on the street because of the fact that I'm now unemployed.

Mon, 2014-03-03 13:11

#11

Decimator

consumerdestroyer wrote:In a

consumerdestroyer wrote:
In a world where post-scarcity is possible, people's needs (and I think it's crucial that you said "a product/service that people [b]want[/b]" as opposed to [b]need[/b]) should be provided for free. Money shouldn't be involved. They should be basic human rights. Water, food, shelter, medical aid, etc. There should be no cost attached to them. Manufacturing demand for these things to profit off of other people's [i]survival needs[/i] is immoral, unethical and inhuman. While I also happen to think this applies to energy production and consumption, it becomes tricky there for a variety of reasons.

Provided for free by [i]who?[/i] Who is going to provide their labor free of charge?

Mon, 2014-03-03 14:44

#12

bibliophile20 bibliophile20's picture

Decimator wrote:Provided for

Decimator wrote:
Provided for free by [i]who?[/i] Who is going to provide their labor free of charge?

People like me. Or do you think I'm paid to moderate this site? ;-) I love to help people; I'm like a big Jewish mother. I teach, I cook, I educate, I moderate :) . For some of that, I'm paid. For most of it, I do it for the joy of helping other people and for the satisfaction that I'm making the world a better place. My friends are the same way. I have a computer problem, I ask them, and they help me, without asking for payment in return. Or a car problem. Or general life problems. I joke with one of my best friends that I could talk to her for free, or go see a therapist for $200/hour. Or take GMing. I've heard of exactly one person who makes a living GMing--her players love her GMing so much that they cover her bills so that she can do full time worldbuilding. So, by that same logic, why is your GM providing their labor free of charge? I spend 5 hours a week GMing, plus I don't know how much time during the week preparing. That's a fair amount of uncompensated labor. Moving further: Charity workers. People in the Copyleft movement, who make things and donate them free of charge. Volunteer workers in any number of fields. Students and interns. Volunteer firemen. Volunteer EMTs. Teachers at many Makerspaces. Teachers in general (if you take all of the time out of the classroom that teachers spend working into account, such as time taken grading, most teachers make well below minimum wage). Clinic Escorts. Community gardeners. Doctors Without Borders. The Free Software Movement. Each of these provides "their labor free of charge"--and, I'm sure, if many people didn't have to run the rat race in order to make sure that their basic needs were met, they'd volunteer their time and effort as well.

—

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -Benjamin Franklin

Mon, 2014-03-03 14:53

#13

consumerdestroyer consumerdestroyer's picture

Lilith wrote:I'll believe in

Lilith wrote:
I'll believe in a post-scarcity society when I don't have to worry about going hungry or being thrown out on the street because of the fact that I'm now unemployed.

Yeah, my partner and I have just been kicked off of welfare (we've both been unemployed for over half a year, me personally for about one and a half) and we were already having to pick and choose which bill to pay each month on a rotating schedule, calling the other ones and making payment arrangements we know we couldn't make and putting it off until that bill's month rolled around. Can't afford food, so we go to the food bank, which means our nutrition is extremely poor. Our household's collective balls are so close to the bandsaw that I'm fairly sure I can see chunks of my large intestine on the ground. Poverty sucks. That said, poverty and other inequalities are largely artificially enforced to maintain entire industries that would collapse if we went post-scarcity. You can follow the money on why we aren't post-scarcity pretty easily. I'm curious though...did you read the link before reiterating that you don't believe post-scarcity is possible? I don't see it as a mark of disrespect, we all have time constraints (and I know very intimately that unemployed means a lot of frantic action and a lot less free time than people think), but I wonder what point you feel there is in responding with disbelief to something you didn't read.

Mon, 2014-03-03 15:06

#14

consumerdestroyer consumerdestroyer's picture

Decimator wrote:Provided for

Decimator wrote:
Provided for free by [i]who?[/i] Who is going to provide their labor free of charge?

Yeah, it's sort of a matter of ideology/revolution/hope. Authoritarians in the political sphere don't want to relinquish control over the political lives of others, even if there is a horrendous cost to those people. Same goes for authoritarians in the economic sphere. There were benevolent kings, but I sure as fuck wouldn't want to codify kings as the politics that we all have to sign up for, even if some people were royal loyalists. Same goes for capitalism, and I'm not alone on this (as bibliophile has pointed out). Sometimes that's just the nature of the work done, but sometimes it's the political ideologies (or economic ideologies) of the people doing the work. The more that liberty, freedom, egalitarianism, democracy and so on spread and spread and spread as political ideologies, the less people were willing to accept political authoritarianism. The same'll happen with economics, although I have no illusions about that process (take, for example, the large number of politically authoritarian states still in existence around the world today...I don't imagine that top-down, unelected economic authoritarianism will go away any faster than top-down, unelected political authoritarianism "did" i.e. still hasn't). But that doesn't mean I can't hope. It doesn't mean I can't work towards a future without authoritarianism as a constant process with no end goal for any generation, this or thirty generations in the future or thirty thousand generations in the future. Revolution, in the words of Abbie Hoffman, is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit. And, to add a bit of my radical sexual politics to the mix:

José Esteban Muñoz wrote:
We may never touch queerness, but we can feel it as the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality...the future is queerness' domain. Queerness is a structuring and educated mode of desiring that allows us to see the future beyond the quagmire of the present...we must dream and enact new and better pleasures, other ways of being in the world, and ultimately new worlds...queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility for another world.

Mon, 2014-03-03 22:02

#15

Undocking

Killebrew wrote:

Killebrew wrote:
I'm curious if anyone else is paying attention to the events in Ukraine, specifically Crimea currently. If anyone is, what are your thoughts, and what news sources are you using? Being in the US myself all of the news sources inherently have a pro-Western viewpoint since they are all Western. If anyone has an English language Russian source I'd be interested in reading it. I'm trying to withhold my own judgement on the matter until I can assemble as full a picture as I can.

Moscow Times http://www.themoscowtimes.com Aljazeera http://www.aljazeera.com The East and Crimean peninsula have stronger Russian support and the Crimean has a majority population of ethnic Russians, since Russia did partition the territory to Ukraine during the Cold War (1950's). The Central, Western and Northern regions are in support of joining the UN and oppose Russian influence. Russia has invaded Georgia under similar pretences and occupied territory. Putin does not care much about empty gestures of economic isolation, it happened when they invaded Georgia then went back to normal. The G8 is threatening to become the G7 again, but without an escalation on the part of Ukraine's allies, then Putin will just do what he wishes.

Mon, 2014-03-03 22:39

#16

consumerdestroyer consumerdestroyer's picture

Among the first bills that

Among the first bills that the new "not corrupt" government passed was one [b]decriminalizing Nazi propaganda[/b] which is fucking [b]insane[/b] unless you've been following the authentic left in Ukraine this whole time, and their analysis of extremist right-wing and nationalist groups' participation in the protests. The Euromaidan, pro-EU/pro-US (largely, some of the Euromaidan voices are pro-EU but US-cautious) side of things is not just on a sliding scale from neoliberal to neoconservative, they're on a sliding scale from neoliberal to [b]outright fascism[/b], and the bills passed as quickly as possible after they ousted the Russian puppet show that it's kind of a scary fucking situation, and they are lumping a lot of previously recognized minorities in with Russians as ethnic groups that don't deserve recognition as "Ukrainian", which is going to cause a [b]lot[/b] of problems. Putin's a dick too, but both sides are basically fucked in crucial, insane ways, and the EU/US are willing to turn a blind eye to fascists (at best) and (at worst) trying to court and appease extremist elements that are anti-Russian Ukrainian fascist-nationalists, again if you've been following the authentic left on this and not just right-of-centre-but-left-of-Republican American talking heads. I highly recommend Googling the Autonomous Workers Union in Ukraine as a Boolean Truth Serum to counteract the half-truths, white lies and misdirects being lobbed by both sides, because the shit the AWU has been saying has been [b]on fucking point[/b] this entire time, from the day the anti-protest laws were signed to yesterday's amazingly concise and powerful statement. Basically, they recognize that while both sides are fucked, at least the illusion of democratic, popular sovereignty is what the EU/US are trumpeting as their cause célèbre in all of this. Russia isn't even batting an eye with their naked aggression (although the he said/she said game of moral high horse is something Putin is grudgingly beginning to enter with the "They're fuckin' fascists!" hypocrisy, hypocritical but not false, unfortunately), and this is scaring a lot of people. That said, the AWU say it best when they say:

Autonomous Workers Union wrote:
There’s no point in waiting for “rescue” from Nato. Ukrainian nationalist politicians can only organize defense of a part of territory at best. The war can be averted only if proletarians of all countries, first and foremost Ukrainian and Russian, together make a stand against the criminal regime of Putin. Joint action by the Ukrainian and Russian proletariat and all progressive democratic forces which will put an end to Putin’s regime, will also mean an end to the current neoliberal-oriented nationalist regime in Ukraine. While for the leftists and anarchists of the West it’s high time to cut ties with so-called “anti-imperialism” which comes down to the support of Putin’s regime against the US.

Mon, 2014-03-03 22:48

#17

consumerdestroyer consumerdestroyer's picture

On that last statement, it is

On that last statement, it is [b]totally[/b] true, I can't tell you how many Marxists I know online are saying that Putin is basically in the right here and opposing EU/US "imperialism" as if Putin wasn't protecting [b]Russia's own[/b] neo-imperialist interests that have fallen apart under popular dissent/protest. This crisis, on both sides of the "EU/US are right!" and "Russia is right!" debate, is giving me a good criteria to unfollow/unfriend peeps on the internet tho, so I guess there's that. But I'm finding there's way more chaff than wheat, and it's sad shit in a digital age where they could go outside of Pravda and CNN to figure out what's going on.

Mon, 2014-03-03 23:05

#18

consumerdestroyer consumerdestroyer's picture

Just For Full Context

http://www.thetoc.gr/eng/news/article/ukraine-to-ban-greek-as-official-m...

Times of Change wrote:
On 23 February, the coup government in the Ukrainian parliament voted through the following bills: 4201 – Bill to ban Ukrainian Communist Party activity. 4217 – Bill to redress antecedents of the Soviet occupation of Ukraine. 4176 – Bill to repeal law penalizing Nazi propaganda. 4184 – Bill to place V. Avakov as minister of the interior and members of “Right Sector” party on ministry staff (Avakov also belongs to the party which many consider fascist). 4215 – Bill to establish a “Pantheon of national heroes.” 4203 - Bill to curb state spending. 4197 – Bill to place “Svoboda” party member Α.Mahnitskogo as Prosecutor General. 4204 – Bill delineating the duties of the President of the Uraine. 4191 – Bill to place “UDAR” party member V.A. Nalivaychenko as overseer of Ukrainian Security Agencies 4211 – Bill to fire incumbent officers and personnel of security forces and replace them with new personnel (the latter are believed to be members of extreme right wing groups). 4199- Bill to repeal the use of their native language by Minorities , which refers to Russian, Romanian, Hungarian, and Greek.

Also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQoo_iJgIMc Edit: Ah, here we go. This is what I was looking for. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-u-s-has-installed-a-neo-nazi-government...

Wed, 2014-03-05 13:42

#19

consumerdestroyer consumerdestroyer's picture

Extreme right-wing elements

Extreme right-wing elements of the new pro-Euromaidan government in Ukraine hired snipers to attack pro-Euromaidan protesters during the unrest. Out of the two toxic options, Putin is seeming more and more like the Obama to Obama's Romney or McCain, ironically enough. Two shitty neolib/neocon options, one of which supports false flag fascist fucks (Obama's administration) and one of which doesn't (Putin's administration, so far anyway, has been supportive of pro-Russian elements in Crimea and elsewhere in Ukraine which are largely neoconservative/neoliberal democrats). I'd still put my trust in the decent people living throughout Ukraine and Russia, but as far as governments go, at least Russia isn't funding neo-Nazis who hide amongst protesters they fire upon in order to get into power. This whole situation is a horrifying joke that I don't want to hear the punchline to, no matter which way it goes.

Tue, 2014-03-11 09:12

#20

Kremlin K.O.A. Kremlin K.O.A.'s picture

consumerdestroyer wrote:In

consumerdestroyer wrote:
In the U.S., you even have people arguing for a [b]more[/b] authoritarian economics calling themselves the "Libertarian Party", which is such a mental gymnastics from the [b]original coinage of libertarian (i.e. liberty as [i]opposed[/i] to authority, coined by an anarcho-communist and anti-capitalist)[/b] that it must really make anyone with a serious political education's head spin!

Decided to fact check that bit. Turns out not the case. Libertarianism was first coined to be the opposite of determinism. I.E. it was the idea that free will is a thing, rather than we doing the actions pre-programmed during the big bang. Although, at the time, the latter determinism referred to divine providence.

Tue, 2014-03-11 13:18

#21

consumerdestroyer consumerdestroyer's picture

Kremlin K.O.A. wrote

Kremlin K.O.A. wrote:
consumerdestroyer wrote:
In the U.S., you even have people arguing for a [b]more[/b] authoritarian economics calling themselves the "Libertarian Party", which is such a mental gymnastics from the [b]original coinage of libertarian (i.e. liberty as [i]opposed[/i] to authority, coined by an anarcho-communist and anti-capitalist)[/b] that it must really make anyone with a serious political education's head spin!
Decided to fact check that bit. Turns out not the case. Libertarianism was first coined to be the opposite of determinism. I.E. it was the idea that free will is a thing, rather than we doing the actions pre-programmed during the big bang. Although, at the time, the latter determinism referred to divine providence.

Yeah, I meant politically. Here's the paragraph right below the one you're pulling from:

Quote:
The use of the word libertarian to describe a new set of political positions has been traced to the French cognate, libertaire, coined in a scathing letter French libertarian communist Joseph Déjacque wrote to mutualist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1857, castigating him for his sexist political views. Déjacque also used the term for his anarchist publication Le Libertaire: Journal du Mouvement Social, which was printed from 9 June 1858 to 4 February 1861. In the mid-1890s, Sébastien Faure began publishing a new Le Libertaire while France's Third Republic enacted the lois scélérates ("villainous laws"), which banned anarchist publications in France. Libertarianism has frequently been used as a synonym for anarchism since this time.

It wasn't obvious I was talking about the political usage of libertarianism in a thread about politics? I'll make it more clear next time. I feel like my posts are already padded with a lot of explanation, but I guess a sentence more won't make a difference.