Excerpt From The Economist: Almost Made Me Throw Up On The Go Train.
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» spotless_mind replied on Fri May 9, 2008 @ 4:26pm |
 Coolness: 37500 | at least the economist doesn't use doublespeak like "fair and balanced" fox news in the "culture war" .... the economist is openly pushing a particular ideology. They don't even have the journalists' names on their articles, because all the words have to pass through the official censors.
plz don't refer to a small north-eastern section of the D.R.C as "Africa"... there is a difference between a civil-war in a part of a country and a huge diverse continent. i'd still hit the capital Kinshasa for a Soukouss dance party. ;) ...and i have talked to Tibetan nuns who have been raped with electric cattleprods by chinese soldiers, monks and nuns that have been forced to have sex at gunpoint and children who have had their parents shot in front of them, so let's not forget that when we buy chinese goods (pretty much everything) we are outsourcing slavery and supporting tyranny. and discussing things like this on a rave forum or anywhere is important. to have dialogue and community. let's not marginalize ourselves... systems are made of people (like soylent green!) it's nice to have fun and joke around too of course, but you get your crunchy with your smoothy. ;) |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» cvxn replied on Fri May 9, 2008 @ 4:45pm |
 Coolness: 178635 | ***Aerial: sigh... you can't prejudiced the victims of violent crimes like that. Death is not a solution to those that suffers. Humans are resilient. Compassionate murder because they are victims of a crime is as bad as the original violent crime.***
i don't know, we should ask the victims first. i think i say such things because, well, i've suffered lots too. but this is infinitely worse. so i thought.. me already have trouble living with my problems, so I truly wonder how people who have suffered worse things like rape and such, can live and be happy. human might be resilient, but there's a limit, no? i know that some of the victims become fighters, you know, informing the world and trying to end such things. that, I think, is good. but I wouldn't want anyone to suffer that much :( |
| I'm feeling mating season right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» databoy replied on Fri May 9, 2008 @ 4:54pm |
 Coolness: 106105 | You dont have to kill anyone out of compation, peoples can do it themselfs, if need be. |
| I'm feeling 80 hz right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Horus replied on Fri May 9, 2008 @ 11:00pm |
 Coolness: 40740 | Crunchy with smooothy, I like that. |
| I'm feeling p a r t y ! ! ! ! right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Gamos replied on Fri May 9, 2008 @ 11:42pm |
 Coolness: 93485 | Originally Posted By MOOHK
FYI, "truest form" is NOT = to "how 'the economist' uses the term". You would be right if this was a general argument. But its not. Globalization is an economic term, not a social or political or philosophical one, so by default the economic definition is the proper one. Its not my fault that pop culture has taken the word out of context. I'm sure if you dig deep enough you'll find that the word globalization was kicked around in economic academic circles long before hippies and political junkies got a hold of it and began to use the word as some kind of umbrella word (much like the big bad government). And sadly, as a result, people have confused the umbrella term with the economic one. And while they are connected, they are definately not even close to the same thing. Originally Posted By MOOHK
just because things are invisible to you doesn't mean they don't exist. Like miracles Originally Posted By MOOHK
claiming that any non-keynesian perspectives about what economy is, could and should be, come from terms used 'out of context' and/or 'misunderstanding' is a pretty cheap rhetorical technique, don't you think? Not really. I tried to understand your first argument. But it made no sense to me, partially because of the numerous updates, but also because clearly we aren't defining terms the same way. Perhaps I should have been more clear...how exactly do you define globalization? And what exactly do you think is wrong with it? Originally Posted By MOOHK
"Economic Globalization can be defined as the process of increasing economic integration between two countries, leading to the emergence of a global marketplace or a single world market. In other words, the convergence of prices and factors. It's an economic term. Originally Posted By MOOHK
visibility is convenient to a position of privilege, and being blind to the margins/peripheries is a strategy in seeking command of what seems to be true, objective, normal, valid, just or simply topical -- and this is how dominance functions... you lost me. Visibility of what? What margins? What strategy? What dominance? Actually, by this point, im lost Originally Posted By MOOHK
economics is not a unified discipline committed to the neoliberal agenda. claiming that any non-keynesian perspectives about what economy is,and at best, it oversimplifies economic theory and leaves out the ways in which markets can degrade human well-being, undermine societies, and threaten the planet. I have no idea how to respond to this. Theres a ridiculously large amount of economic theory regarding ways in which markets can degrade human well-being, undermine societies, and threaten the planet. One needs to look no farther than regulatory economics, informational economics, behavioral economics, environmental economics, industrial organizational economics, monetary economics, public economics, developmental economics, etc Obviously you won't learn any of this in an intro class because all intro-economic classes assume the simplest of cases: that markets are perfect. And when markets are perfect, the consequence is that the outcomes are optimal. |
| I'm feeling :) right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» basdini replied on Sat May 10, 2008 @ 5:24am |
 Coolness: 145190 | Originally Posted By MOOHK SORRY I WASN'T CLEAR. HYSTERIA DOESN'T REALLY MAKE FOR A SUCCINCT CRITIQUE ON CAPITALIST HEGEMONY, DOES IT. SOMETIMES, ITS JUST LIKE, IF YOU'RE NOT LAUGHING, YOU'RE CRYING, AND THE LINE BLURS BETWEEN MAKING A JOKE AND MAKING COMMENTARY.. AS WELL IT SHOULD, I THINK, HOWEVER I DON'T NEED TO BE UNINTELLIGIBLE. I'M SORRY DEARS, ITS JUST A BIT PAINFUL WHAT GOES FOR 'COMMON SENSE' .. EG., THE OVERWHELMINGLY PROPENSITY FOR PEOPLE TO ASSUME WESTERN-CENTRIC WORLDWIEWS AS GIVEN ...
i'm gonna say something and i know i'm gonna piss a lot of people off when i say it, but i just have to say it... THE WEST IS THE BEST i feel like i have some authority in saying this, i have lived outside of the west for multiple extended periods of time. we (the west) are the most free and most tolerant people on earth, this isn't a matter of opinion, it's a fact. I think that a lot of people who are critical of the west and western perspectives lose sight of the fact that almost every other place on earth is so incredibly racist, intolerant, incredibly un free. The fact that we can can be so critical of our own countries with near impunity shows this quite clearly, in what other countries can you be critical of your government and it's policies? Nowhere, is the answer. In place like China or Russia or the former central asian soviet republics (the 'Stans') you would be jailed or killed or your familly would be harrased. In most of the rest of the world corruption is endemic and there's no real rule of law to speak of, there is no independent press and repressive cultural codes keep people in line. Even places that are sort of considered 'free' outside of the west aren't really free, places like Taiwan and South Korea. As a broad measure of how free people are i like to look at how free the women of a country are, (i personally believe that we can't consider any country free where women aren't trully free, an attack on the rights of any woman is an attack on everyones rights) In what region of the world are women more free than in the west? The west is light years ahead of the rest of the world in this regard. To the socialists on this board, i have to say to you if you really believe in socialism go visit one the remaining communist countries like China or Cuba, if really believe that this is the system to have after that, all i can do is just shake my head at that. Intellectuals in the west really need to get past this peculiar 'western guilt' that they seem to have... It's not to say that we shouldn't be critical of our own countries or stop trying to make them better, but i think at the same time we need to admit that the west really is a beacon of light in a quickly darkening world. anyway i don't care if people don't agree, i just had to get that off my chest. |
| I'm feeling surly right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» cvxn replied on Sat May 10, 2008 @ 11:30am |
| Coolness: 178635 | Basdini, i agree with you on the equality between women and men.
It should happen in every country, so that both sexes can be happy and free. But it's not the case in every "western" country, look in the USA for example, they wanna make abortion illegal (maybe it's already illegal in some states, I don't know), there's lots of pressure by fundamentalist groups, etc... not cool. But "west" isn't perfect. too much consommation, spoiling of resources, etc... |
| I'm feeling mating season right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» nothingnopenope replied on Sat May 10, 2008 @ 1:50pm |
 Coolness: 201215 | Basdini: Your recent posts make it harder and harder for me to start an argument with you....
because all the words have to pass through the official censors
In a newspaper or magazine, the 'official censors' are called editors. Every magazine or newspaper has them, and every news source has an agenda. It's not possible to NOT have an agenda when there are people in charge or what to report or not. If you have advertisers (all newspapers do), you can almost guarantee that there will be no impartiality. |
| I'm feeling gangsta right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Holly_Golightly replied on Sat May 10, 2008 @ 2:25pm |
 Coolness: 158725 | / yeah i think we should consider ourselves lucky when the country we have passport/visa for is canada or some small european country. we have it sooooo easy if you take a look at africa incorporated.
aerial: yeah quebec is so much more progressive than usa. for about everything. / impartiality is a some kind of illusion. |
| I'm feeling hitched right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» spotless_mind replied on Sat May 10, 2008 @ 4:43pm |
| Coolness: 37500 | i know and agree that there is no "unbiased" news source. however, i was just stating that the economist is open in its agenda, namely in their last anniversary issue they state clearly that the magazine was founded to push a particular ideology.
Editors can range in what they do, some just cut text to make stuff fit, and hopefully make sure there are no spelling mistakes. While in the case of the economist, they completely rework it and make sure that it supports their particular anarcho-capitalist stance. the namelessness of the articles bothers me because it doesn't allow for a variety of opinions which the authors are accountable for. instead every article is the dogma of the faceless organization. :/ "Globalization" is a tricky issue, and yes, a vague term. The real problem are what goes on with the WTO , IMF and world bank. The problem in the globalizing economy is that "western" countries do not truly want to play on a level playing ground... they want the "rules" heavily tilted in their favour. "developing" countries are supposed to not "develop" but continue to work at their "comparative advantage" which of course means not allowing them access to education and health-care (see SAPs = Structural Adjustment Policies for how this is done) using them as physical labour and rape their resources... while we are good at the capital owning money makes money white collar stuff. ;) -> haven't you heard that if China and India become as "developed" as us then we will all run out of oil and energy and it will be a great apocalypse!!! ;P ...and of course gender/class equality is very important... and so is maintaining a 'sustainable' lifestyle (i think our lifestyle in the west is not). but every country has its pros and cons. if you want to believe that the 'west is the best' then go right ahead [basdini] but i have lived outside the west for probably longer than you [so i guess that makes ME the 'authority' :/ lol.. no really... fuck authority.] and personally... most of the time i prefer 3rd world anarchy. ;) quality of life can be measured in so many ways... and while scandinavian countries tend to do well in UN quality of life reports, they also have some of the highest suicide rates and rates of depression. it's fucking cold and dark and boring up there. that should be a big minus for Q.O.L in my humble opinion!!!!!!! :P :P :P |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» moohk replied on Sat May 17, 2008 @ 5:11am |
 Coolness: 69050 | I guess I’ll just say what I was initially feeling when I first read this post. I know I had strong feelings about it, and I know that this issue is hardly simple- I guess part of me didn’t want to come down on people about what is, at heart (because I do trust the good intentions behion it), compassion. So, I’ll preface my thoughts with – I know you mean well… it’s just not that easy, and I think it is just as legit for me to say – even if you meant well, I think its harmful, and I hope you can hear what I have to say.
Hey- if you are okay with global capitalism and how it looks now, not to mention what it is built upon on, and what it is fucking growing into day by day –well then, sorry, saying you’re sad about what’s going on in ‘africa’ doesn’t have any corn that you can actually eat. what’s going on in ‘africa’ is so tied to what is going on right here and how YOU are living right now. neoliberalism, free trade, and mainstream economic THEORY are what enabled, and and are what continue to support and maintain this situation. If you’re not okay with violence and oppression, and you’re not okay with what is going on with the so-called 3rd world, then, let’s be okay with asking ourselves some deeper questions. If I have room to be honest here, I’ll tell you that my first feeling on reading the first post in this thread was- oh great, some more insidious racism. Demonizing the DR of C, in a way that is guised as ‘humanitarian’ – I could already predict (and was fearful of ) the racist commentary to follow. Like, how free people feel about commenting on a part of the world they really know nothing about, especially without making connections about how we really relate to that part of the world. Yeah, I think that not only is it pretty fucking suspect when mainstream media chooses to ignore certain GENOCIDES, then all of a sudden draw attention to it. Yeah, it makes me ask why, all of a sudden?. Do I condone this kind of viciousness? Give me a break! Of course not! It makes me fucking ill. But rather than respond to spoon-fed media in a way that is so obviously how they want the response to be shaped to such moralistic, 2-dimensional moral propaganda- I need to think deeper than agreeing with stereotypes that only propagate the exact (Eurocentric/ imperialistic) perpective and that focus attention on the actual victims of such heinousness, while at the same time, not only conceal the ones who are really responsible (which include us), but leave us, ultimately, to feel good about feeling bad about the situation at hand… Update » moohk wrote on Sat May 17, 2008 @ 5:19am my beef with ‘the economist’. the recent article about the DRC that we are discussing is but one example in particular that exemplifies the hypocrisy of liberal-democratic humanitarian undertakings that insidiously feed on the suffering of others, assigning guilt to victims whilst managing to remove their white selves, their corporate money and power from any responsibility in that suffering.Eurocentrism is so embedded in everyday life, it often goes unnoticed. The residual traces of centuries of European domination inform the general culture, the everyday language, and the media, engendering a fictitious sense of the innate superiority of European-derived cultures and peoples. It is pure Western white supremacist propaganda serving to underscore the accepted narratives of ‘Central Africa’ and assist in the consolidation of power over the region, but this is not the story we are told by ‘the economist’. In terms of media coverage of
Economic terms do not exist in a vacuum outside of socio-political forces. Economics has an ideological function. Implicit in the mainstream economic model espoused by ’the economist’ is a colonial agenda. Eurocentric discourse embeds, takes for granted, and normalized (and normalizes, therefore regulating- read: MAINTAINS) the hierarchical power relations genrated by colonialism and imperialism, without necessarily even thematizing those issues directly; as is this the case in espousing mainstream a privilege is a right, an advantage, favor specially granted to one; especially a right held by a certain individual, group or class, and withheld from certain others or all others. true power is never having to wonder how the world is perceived by someone different than you, having the luxury of manipulating that someone’s experience in whatever way you deem appropriate, and sitting pretty amid a status that is far better than those who don’t have your same privilege. too many people believe that sexism, racism, homophobia, and antisemitism are only problems when some event prompts discussion of them on the nightly news. they don't see that people's daily lives are constantly affected by intolerances and prejudices that are still very real in our society.Too often we become blind to the experiences of others, and that can have horrible consequences. Within capitalism, economics plays an important ideological role. Economics has been used to construct a theory from which exploitation and oppression are excluded, by definition. So you appreciate the higher standard of life you live in? constitutional human rights mean next to nothing as long as we are living in a world which thrives on the violent exploitation of the masses by a ruling minority, a system in which the majority of the population - the workers and poor - are divided from each other by means of sexism, racism, nationalism and religion. as long as we live under the threat of starvation and imprisonment, oppression and exploitation, our human rights will never be safe. It is impossible for the workers and poor, for women and oppressed minorities to live in dignity under capitalism. As long as there is a price on our labour, as long as we are under threat of attack because of our identifies, and as long as we live under threat of unemployment, hunger and disease, our rights to live with dignity and free from violence will never be realised. mainstream economics takes the class structure of capitalism as a natural, eternal, fact and builds up from those assumptions. At the forefront of such claims is , and what plays its usual role of ideological cheerleader for the ruling class the Economist magazine... Update » moohk wrote on Sat May 17, 2008 @ 5:25am The accepted wisdom of the age is that the road to prosperity and international acceptance is "economic liberalisation" or some of euphemism for opening economies to foreign investment. What this really means is that authoritarian regimes that allow their subjects to be exploited by international capital rather than state bureaucracies will find apologists among those who profit from such transactions or get paid by them. That this involves violation of the freedom of working class people and the labour "market" does not seem to bother them for, they stress, in long term material benefits this will create outweigh such restrictions on the eternal and sacred laws of economics. That "freedom" is used to justify this just shows how debased that concept has become under capitalism and within capitalist ideology. The key role the mainstream media plays in manufacturing public consent for elite decision makers has a history that seriously messed with progressive aspirations for the development a truly democratic global polity. The neoliberal market ideology which dominates our political economy is based on the same kind of twisted anti-human logic and value system which has legitimised colonialism over the centuries. he Anti-Colonial Revolutions fought the key battles of the twentieth century in terms of human slavery and liberation. Colonialism was the defining way in which capitalism came to most of the world, and anti-colonialism was the necessary negation of this. The anti-colonial struggle was the most important struggle of the twentieth century in terms of numbers mobilized, the stakes being fought for, and the reverberations into the future.
In terms of using gender inequity as a social barometer; not only is it problematic to universalize the female experience so as to define ‘oppression’ from a completely Eurocentric POV, but you totally miss the implications of first-world privilege. if oppression is something that puts others at a disadvantage, what about the corollary aspect, privilege, which puts us at an advantage? Yes, we live very well in the occident. In the western world, the privilege of being born a free citizen is an unearned entitlement, and I hardly dispute this as an ideal. But since globally, only a few have this privilege, it is also an unearned advantage, conferred through dominance. Conflicts in the DRC are scarred by innumerable documented incidents of rape. The inherent violence and terror of rape finds its most barbaric realization during war, especially under conditions of modern total war. The analysis of global or local oppression- and exploitation- mechanisms was always blurred by economics, making the existence of patriarchy and racism "invisible". It divided struggles into primary and secondary contradictions and covered the world in a white, Eurocentric mold. the world one takes for granted as "everyday life" is in fact riddled with privilege of which we are unaware. the personal is political in its most profound sense... Update » moohk wrote on Sat May 17, 2008 @ 5:27am My inner acivist just came in his pants.
maybe my 'inner activist' and your 'inner activist' should get together and .. go bowling (or something). hehe Update » moohk wrote on Sat May 17, 2008 @ 5:35am forgive me my typos, grammatical errors, incomplete sentences, and many updates. maybe i could say it is hysteria- i think i'm just frustrated, i hope that i'm still coherent- i tried. |
| I'm feeling proletarian scum right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» ufot replied on Sat May 17, 2008 @ 2:42pm |
 Coolness: 93090 | In a similar vain to the current topic being debated:
... At the end of WWII, unbeknownst to most at the time, the Russian troops and legion were the first to be let into the falling German home land, leading the final attack. Though speculation at the time was that they were let in to plunder German resources as a payback for economic damages inflicted throughout the war(not to mention the high loss of civilians), the true reason the allies let the Russians in first was to lead the rape train. After all the atrocities reported to have been committed on Russian soil, it was deemed a deserved payback, so that when the war was almost done, they were let in first to lead the rapes... Women, girls even children, trying to ultimately breed the greatest insult straight into the German empire, the ultimate imprint of a true loss, the fruits of war, children of mixed decent, no longer pure in German heritage or genetics ... UFot-thoughts are a crime, we are criminals |
| I'm feeling lies wif da hax!! right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» basdini replied on Sun May 18, 2008 @ 11:29am |
| Coolness: 145190 | adrian, your answer to everything is to have centralized soviet style state, why won't you just admit what everybody already knows, that the left is obviously intellectually bankrupt, i'm not gonna pretend that capitalism is perfect, far from it, but it does seem to protect and promote individual liberty which is the most important thing in my mind.
"The accepted wisdom of the age is that the road to prosperity and international acceptance is "economic liberalisation" or some of euphemism for opening economies to foreign investment. What this really means is that authoritarian regimes that allow their subjects to be exploited by international capital rather than state bureaucracies" because being oppressed by a state bureaucracy is SO MUCH better as far as the western/euro centric point of view is concerned, what other point of view would you have us take? perhaps the Malawi one or maybe, Suranamese one would be more appropriate? you believe that people "are divided from each other by means of sexism, racism, nationalism and religion." perhaps you re missing the part where nowhere is this more the case than in places outside the 'west'. dude i find it hard to argue with you sometimes (not because I believe your position is the right one, far from it), it's like everytime anyone disagrees with you, your all like "you fucking fascist pig", |
| I'm feeling surly right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» spotless_mind replied on Mon May 19, 2008 @ 9:01pm |
| Coolness: 37500 | we shouldn't really see left vs. right / socialism vs. capitalism as dualistic as a sports match. :/
canada is a hybrid of those things anyways. often the best role of the state (which is unfortunately corrupted by lobbyists) is to PROTECT individual liberty from the companies. (one obvious example is that a company will privately profit short-term from environmental exploitation and ruination, while the people who have to live with the effects are fucked for the long-term) the purest theory of capitalism is itself suspect, when numbers (the consensual hallucination that is money) in the form of the numbers relating to 'profit' is what determines what is valid and should grow and continue in society... INSTEAD of what benefits people (i.e. happiness) means that we have a society where insecurities are exploited in advertisments and narratives imposed as a standard industry. multi-national conglomerates all own the media, which shapes our vision of reality which is how we make our decisions. very openly machiavellian. countries' economies are judged often by growth in GDP:. i.e. an oil spill in Alaska... the cleanup to a crisis is expensive, lots of spending... GDP goes up... another cancer patient diagnosed, lots of money must be spent GDP goes up.. then a good year in the economic charts. whooopeee!! ;) ... and back to the geopolitical scene (zooooom-out) we have the corrupt governments in 3rd world countries taking loans and bribes for the contract to allow GE or gold mining companies to rape their land and people, while privately the corrupt leaders have mansions, yachts and most importantly swiss bank accounts and sympathetic (we bribed you before remember) countries which they run to in sanctuary when they are kicked out of power and the country is left in a cycle of debt that they didn't even benefit from but now have to pay! the long-term effect of our history of colonialism is twofold.. one that NOW we want to play on an even playing field (i.e. free-market) after hundreds of years of completely non-even playing field stealing all their gold, resources and having built up our countries on unpaid free labour (i.e. slavery) ... which now of course we outsource. :/ the second, is that our colonial forebearers have carved up the 3rd world's national boundaries, making countries not based on linguistic and cultural ties, splitting one group of people into two countries and in another forcing rival peoples to live together. these all combine into problems like that in the D.R.C. and more popularly Iraq. countries like Iraq (and China) need a totalitarian dictator to force those different rival groups to live together. unfortunately, the current U.S.A administration views a break up of Iraq as a political failure at home and they forced the new supposedly Iraqi constitution to include a "no talk or debate on splitting the country up" as a main rule. as much as I regret the U.S.A interference (first by propping up the dictator Saddam then tearing him down) in the region, they should really wise up, and not pull out immediately, but stay as a peace-keeping force only while allowing the Kurds, Sunnis, and Shias, to split the country into three.... and then fucking totally leave!!! hehe... obviously we need to learn from the disaster that happened with India/Pakistan partition when the british pulled out after independence. and we need to move our troops out of Affie and into D.R.C and Sudan as peace-keeping forces (NOT war-fighting forces, which they never have been properly trained for anyways) in my humble opinion. ;) |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» moohk replied on Tue May 20, 2008 @ 11:08am |
| Coolness: 69050 | hey basdini! i have a theory about why you find it hard to argue with me. its totally an S/M thing, right? i was thinking about how you have a tendency to irrationally go off on anti-communist rants that you frame in response to complete fabrications of anything i've actually ever said. it's kind of weird - it's like you're acting out some version of a post-cold war era fantasy in which you're the rugged individualist and i'm the pinko spectre of the red scare. i wondered, what's with this 2D insistence on oppositional designations of abstract power positions? and then it came to me- this is like one of those teacher/student roleplay dramas, isn't it? you're the capitalist libertarian, and someone has to play the big, bad commie, threatening to punish and humiliate you with socialist reforms!! kinky. or is it the other way around... does the champion of the free world need to teach the insurgents a lesson because they've been very, very bad... ?
well, whatever floats your boat when it comes to the erotic imagination, i guess. but i never consented to this particular role play. please stop mythologizing me as a statist when you go off on your hysterical free-world rants, because for the record, i reject any vision which reduces the idea of revolution to the authoritarian seizure of power by a centralized party believed to be acting in the name of the masses - i know that this vision has led to bloody dictatorships and has nothing to do with real socialism. also, i really do not share your ayn rand fetish, nor do i think it's sexy to polarize ideas into either 1 of only 2 preconceived categories and collapse issues so they conveniently fit into a simplistic, dualistic scenario of the left-right political axis. and if i really only have one line in your script, couldn't it be "cry me a river, white boy"? (although "you fucking facist pig" is pretty hot, i'll admit) as far as the western/euro centric point of view is concerned, what other point of view would you have us take? perhaps the Malawi one or maybe, Suranamese one would be more appropriate?
i think you missed what i was trying to say. i used the word eurocentric, not european/western POV because i have an issue with eurocentrism qua ethnocentrism, in particular an imperialistic attitude of superiority, subordination and dominion over foreign people - not unrelated to the history and implications of colonialism that rapid_filter keeps bringing up and explaining.. POV are infinitesimal. the inequalities of different social groups create differences in their standpoints. there is no a priori hierarchy of difference, so i'm not suggesting that a western POV should be negated and permanently replaced. contesting dominant knowledges makes sense because identity is defined differentially, which makes fixed boundaries suspicious - so, there is no such thing as a "purely" african, european, or american identity. using the subjective 'how i perceive the world' interchangeably with 'how things are', and disallowing either question asking or competing subjectivities is how hegemony functions. |
| I'm feeling proletarian scum right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» basdini replied on Wed May 21, 2008 @ 11:48pm |
| Coolness: 145190 | look at this, you're a grown woman who believes in leftist fantasy,
let me tell you something, honestly, the revolution, it's not comming and it never will. There are some pretty good reasons why it won't, the most obvious one is that the proletriate does not want to overthrow the bourgousie, they want to become them, no where did this become more apparent to me then when i travelled to developing countries and asked the people in them (the poor people especially) 'do you support socialist ideals, for example socially mandated redistributive justice' the answers from them was clearly and almost unanimously, 'no'. They said that they didn't want to take money and things from other people rather they wanted the chance to make money and accumulate wealth for themselves. So these are supposed to be (according to all the literature) the people who are supporting socialist ideals the most and they're not. What does this leave us with? A bunch of spoiled middle class suburban kids from the west telling people in the developing world what's good for them, Doesn't this story sound familliar to you, didn't it end bad last time. you need to admit what every socialist had to admit after 1991 (either secretly or publicly), socialism doesn't have any answers, if not centralized soviet style state, then what? i challenge you to really answer this question. If your position is right and everything could change the way you wanted it to, then what would the world look like? If you say something like 'a world without power structures and relations of dominance,' i'm just gonna laugh cause i'm not sure that a statement like that can mean anything at all... It's funny, but when i read your posts about this type of thing i can tell you honestly, point for point i used to believe in all the things you believe in, but i don't anymore, i lost the hope, i don't know why but i did. Although i still have a lot of sympathy for socialists, because even though i don't agree with everything they believe in, i do think they generally want to make the world a better place, (hats off to anyone who wants to make the world a better place, i don't want try anymore but if you do that's cool). let's turn to the anti colonialism issue shall we if anti colonialism really was as important as you say it is for the peoples involved why are 4/5 of the places that were former colonies not democracies? With the exception of maybe India, South Africa (sort of) and a few places that have done better than others most of the other colonised nations are horribly repressive regimes, let's do that list, it's a much longer one...let's see there is Haiti, Algeria, Syria, Egypt, Pakistan, Zimbabwe and on and on and on, don't the people in these countries bear some responsibility for not democratizing their countries after colonialism ended? We can be honest and say that they do or can go on pretending that it's the west's fault that they are not democracies. The truth is that they had repressive cultural structures that prevented them from creating trully free political structures. If anti colonialism is as important you say it is, then we have to admit that it's all about national self-determination, in that case you may need to admit that Quebec really should be it's own county... In the end nations, countries and states, are all bullshit anyway, they are just a stupid way to seperate people from one another, fuck that, a world without borders should be what we should be pushing for. A world where people are free to as they please with their labor, their property and their bodies. I ask you, how could this be wrong? "and if i really only have one line in your script, couldn't it be "cry me a river, white boy"? (although "you fucking facist pig" is pretty hot, i'll admit)" you don't think this is a little racist on your part, maybe even a bit hypocritcal? You have no idea what it's like to grow being mixed in quebec, being half quebecois is really strange (sometimes i'll be at a dinner or something with french speaking people all night laughing, joking, and having a good time, then my phone rings and it's my dad or something and i start talking in english and the room goes silent). My grandfather was told on the streets of montreal to 'speak white' if he was talking to his friend in french. So i think that comment of yours was totally inapproriate and un called for, but hey, i won't hold it against you, i'm not like that. let's stick to the issues rather than the people here, unlesssssss, all you got is your rhetoric to back up your position... |
| I'm feeling surly right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» JasonBeastly replied on Thu May 22, 2008 @ 2:44am |
 Coolness: 76700 | Shit man, what started all this? Can't you guys see what's inside the Economist's pages? It's a book full of the word FNORD. I seriously don't know how all this could have erupted over discussion of a page full of sentences ending in FNORD. And every word of every sentence of this protracted arguing has ended in FNORD. Can't we all just get along stick and walk softly with it?
And please define "proletriate" and "bourgousie". Your essays are going to give the T.A. a nervous breakdown with all the typos, run on sentences and poor grammatical structure But I guess this is the interneett and all that is and I may have to drop whatever course this is you guys are discussing this for, be it: "Colonialism for the Colonialized", "Bias in Mass-Media and its effect on Consensus Reality", "The Fallacy of Dualistic Political Thinking", "Argument for the Sake of Argument"... I dunno. Btw Basdini I know Adrienne well and she never picked sides, especially not socialism. Where did you get that from? I read everything she had to say and it analyzed both sides of the coin rather equally, if there is indeed a coin, and if that coin is not in fact three-sided. You say left/right, and we say "UP UP AND AWAY!". Whatever. How much speed fuelled this thread anyways? Update » JasonBeastly wrote on Thu May 22, 2008 @ 2:47am Inevitably this will inspire arguments that I am little more than a passive-aggressive agent provocateur with a penchant for stirring up total chaos. But discord dancing is the nouvelle vague and we are its surfers.
And what is there in the world sexier than a saboteur? Only your mother knows. Update » JasonBeastly wrote on Thu May 22, 2008 @ 2:53am And she probably thinks that the Globe and Mail sure has a great crossword and that the articles are at least very well written. You can always trust a person with a proper education and grammatical sense. Or can you? I am not to be trusted really, I'm almost 30 so maybe I have a few months to go (59 days left) before you have to put me in that weird spinning machine like in Logan's Run or I'll have to run for it and find some bizarre icicle cave under the citadel. Obscure I may be but at least I make no pretentious statements on topics of global economikkks (sic). I only know that we have been lied to since our birth, hence the very foundation of our ideology will have to be usurped and re-evaluated before we can rise above the filth like Uberhuman Zarathustras and beckon forth the new age. Until then, everything to me is a sign of imminent collapse, and I'm not even shocked anymore by atrocities. The end is nigh, and it won't seem like a revolution. It'll seem like the abortion of a very sick fetus. Update » JasonBeastly wrote on Thu May 22, 2008 @ 2:54am BTW I was that guy who changed all my Adidas stuff so it would say Acid. |
| I'm feeling marzipan right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Gamos replied on Fri May 23, 2008 @ 2:14am |
| Coolness: 93485 | Originally Posted By MOOHK
I guess I�ll just say what I was initially feeling when I first read this post. I know I had strong feelings about it, and I know that this issue is hardly simple- I guess part of me didn�t want to come down on people about what is, at heart (because I do trust the good intentions behion it), compassion. So, I�ll preface my thoughts with � I know you mean well� it�s just not that easy, and I think it is just as legit for me to say � even if you meant well, I think its harmful, and I hope you can hear what I have to say. Hey- if you are okay with global capitalism and how it looks now, not to mention what it is built upon on, and what it is fucking growing into day by day �well then, sorry, saying you�re sad about what�s going on in �africa� doesn�t have any corn that you can actually eat. what�s going on in �africa� is so tied to what is going on right here and how YOU are living right now. neoliberalism, free trade, and mainstream economic THEORY are what enabled, and and are what continue to support and maintain this situation. If you�re not okay with violence and oppression, and you�re not okay with what is going on with the so-called 3rd world, then, let�s be okay with asking ourselves some deeper questions. If I have room to be honest here, I�ll tell you that my first feeling on reading the first post in this thread was- oh great, some more insidious racism. Demonizing the DR of C, in a way that is guised as �humanitarian� � I could already predict (and was fearful of ) the racist commentary to follow. Like, how free people feel about commenting on a part of the world they really know nothing about, especially without making connections about how we really relate to that part of the world. Yeah, I think that not only is it pretty fucking suspect when mainstream media chooses to ignore certain GENOCIDES, then all of a sudden draw attention to it. Yeah, it makes me ask why, all of a sudden?. Do I condone this kind of viciousness? Give me a break! Of course not! It makes me fucking ill. But rather than respond to spoon-fed media in a way that is so obviously how they want the response to be shaped to such moralistic, 2-dimensional moral propaganda- I need to think deeper than agreeing with stereotypes that only propagate the exact (Eurocentric/ imperialistic) perpective and that focus attention on the actual victims of such heinousness, while at the same time, not only conceal the ones who are really responsible (which include us), but leave us, ultimately, to feel good about feeling bad about the situation at hand� my brain hurts |
| I'm feeling :) right now.. | |
Excerpt From The Economist: Almost Made Me Throw Up On The Go Train.
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