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A Little Respect, Please

By Paul Street at May 02, 2005

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I am a little offended by neo-Stalinist North Korea's description of my nation's president as a "hooligan" and "a philistine." See http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/04/30/northkorea.ap/. Our big bad boy King George merely (following Webster's) a "ruffian" and a" hoodlum" who is "guided by material rather than intellectual or artistic values?" With all due respect for Fortunate Son Dubya's Animal House days at Yale (see J.H. Hatfield, Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President [Brooklyn, NY: Soft Skull, 2002], pp. 31-37), Pyongyang knows damn well that Bush is a world-class terrorist and war criminal. And, in fact, that kooky missile-testing North Korean regime partially corrected itself by adding that that "Bush is, indeed, a world dictator whose hands are stained with the blood shed by innocent civilians." Indeed. Shall we start with the estimated 100,000 Iraqi civilians who died because of Bush's illegal and immoral invason of their country by October 2004, according to the British medical journal The Lancet? Sticking with CNN, see http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/29/iraq.deaths/ A little respect, please. Along those lines, please review a lovely item pasted in below from today's New York Times. It reports that Bush et. al are in all likelihood sending some of their favorite terror suspects to be tortured (under the policy called "rendition") in the nightmare state of Uzbekistan, a post-Soviet republic of horror run by the vicious dictator and US "war on terror" ally Islam Karimov. If I am not mistaken, Karimov has been accused of boiling his political opponents alive. What a hooligan. His fellow philistine George W. Bush has rendered him $500 million so far "for border control and other security measures." Karimov got welcomed to the White House for a quick anti-terrorist strategy meeting after 9/11. That's some serious ruffian activity. Those hoodlums are throwing around some serious cash...almost as much as our Saudi Arabian partner in "democracy," human rights violation, and planetary climate experimentation ("see Abdullah, now pay attention...it's called 'the Greenhouse Effect'") Crown Prince Abdullah. Revolutionary "freedom" exporter Dubya's good friend Abdullah (a recent visitor to Crawford, Texas) happens to rule over the most reactionary and doctrinaire nation on earth, a topic I touch upon in a recent ZNet article (see http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=11&ItemID=7763). Someone call the cops...these hooligans are getting out of control. It's getting hard to even enjoy a good Sung Hae Rim movie in peace. Here's the Times piece (please note General Richard B. Myers' concluding line about "any single issue") May 1, 2005 U.S. Recruits a Rough Ally to Be a Jailer By DON VAN NATTA Jr. Seven months before Sept. 11, 2001, the State Department issued a human rights report on Uzbekistan. It was a litany of horrors. The police repeatedly tortured prisoners, State Department officials wrote, noting that the most common techniques were "beating, often with blunt weapons, and asphyxiation with a gas mask." Separately, international human rights groups had reported that torture in Uzbek jails included boiling of body parts, using electroshock on genitals and plucking off fingernails and toenails with pliers. Two prisoners were boiled to death, the groups reported. The February 2001 State Department report stated bluntly, "Uzbekistan is an authoritarian state with limited civil rights." Immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, however, the Bush administration turned to Uzbekistan as a partner in fighting global terrorism. The nation, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia, granted the United States the use of a military base for fighting the Taliban across the border in Afghanistan. President Bush welcomed President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan to the White House, and the United States has given Uzbekistan more than $500 million for border control and other security measures. Now there is growing evidence that the United States has sent terror suspects to Uzbekistan for detention and interrogation, even as Uzbekistan's treatment of its own prisoners continues to earn it admonishments from around the world, including from the State Department. The so-called rendition program, under which the Central Intelligence Agency transfers terrorism suspects to foreign countries to be held and interrogated, has linked the United States to other countries with poor human rights records. But the turnabout in relations with Uzbekistan is particularly sharp. Before Sept. 11, 2001, there was little high-level contact between Washington and Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, beyond the United States' criticism. Uzbekistan's role as a surrogate jailer for the United States was confirmed by a half-dozen current and former intelligence officials working in Europe, the Middle East and the United States. The C.I.A. declined to comment on the prisoner transfer program, but an intelligence official estimated that the number of terrorism suspects sent by the United States to Tashkent was in the dozens. There is other evidence of the United States' reliance on Uzbekistan in the program. On Sept. 21, 2003, two American-registered airplanes - a Gulfstream jet and a Boeing 737 - landed at the international airport in Tashkent, according to flight logs obtained by The New York Times. Although the precise purpose of those flights is not known, over a span of about three years, from late 2001 until early this year, the C.I.A. used those two planes to ferry terror suspects in American custody to countries around the world for questioning, according to interviews with former and current intelligence officials and flight logs showing the movements of the planes. On the day the planes landed in Tashkent, the Gulfstream had taken off from Baghdad, while the 737 had departed from the Czech Republic, the logs show. The logs show at least seven flights were made to Uzbekistan by those planes from early 2002 to late 2003, but the records are incomplete. Details of the C.I.A.'s prisoner transfer program have emerged in recent months from a handful of former detainees who have been released, primarily from prisons in Egypt and Afghanistan, and in some cases have alleged they were beaten and tortured while being held. The program was created in the mid-1980's as a way for the C.I.A. to transfer crime suspects arrested abroad to their home countries. After Sept. 11, the C.I.A. used it to send prisoners suspected of being senior leaders of Al Qaeda to a half-dozen countries for detention. American intelligence officials estimate that the United States has transferred 100 to 150 suspects to Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Uzbekistan. A senior C.I.A. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he would not discuss whether the United States had sent prisoners to Uzbekistan or anywhere else. But he said: "The United States does not engage in or condone torture. It does not send people anywhere to be tortured. And it does not knowingly receive information derived from torture." Ilkhom Zakirov, a spokesman for the Uzbekistan Foreign Ministry in Tashkent, also declined to comment on whether Uzbekistan accepted terror suspects from the United States. He declined to address the accusations from human rights groups. But human rights activists say that because Uzbekistan's record is well known, it raises questions about why the C.I.A. would send suspects there. "If you talk to anyone there, Uzbeks know that torture is used - it's common even in run-of-the-mill criminal cases," said Allison Gill, a researcher for Human Rights Watch who is working inside Uzbekistan. "Anyone in the United States or Europe who does not know the extent of the torture problem in Uzbekistan is being willfully ignorant." Craig Murray, a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, said he learned during his posting to Tashkent that the C.I.A. used Uzbekistan as a place to hold foreign terrorism suspects. During 2003 and early 2004, Mr. Murray said in an interview, "C.I.A. flights flew to Tashkent often, usually twice a week." In July 2004, Mr. Murray wrote a confidential memo to the British Foreign Office accusing the C.I.A. of violating the United Nations' Prohibition Against Torture. He urged his colleagues to stop using intelligence gleaned in Uzbekistan from terrorism suspects because it had been elicited through torture and other coercive means. Mr. Murray said he knew about the practice through his own investigation and interviews with scores of people who claimed to have been brutally treated inside Uzbekistan's jails. "We should cease all cooperation with the Uzbek security services - they are beyond the pale," Mr. Murray wrote in the memo, which was obtained by The Times. Mr. Murray, who has previously spoken publicly about prisoner transfers to Uzbekistan, said his superiors in London were furious with his questions, and he was told that the intelligence gleaned in Uzbekistan could still be used by British officials, even if it was elicited by torture, as long as the mistreatment was not at the hands of British interrogators. "I was astonished," Mr. Murray said in an interview. "It was as if the goal posts had moved. Their perspective had changed since Sept. 11." A Foreign Office spokesman declined to address Mr. Murray's allegations. Last year, Mr. Murray resigned from the Foreign Office, which had investigated accusations that he mismanaged the embassy in Tashkent. An inquiry into those allegations was closed without any disciplinary action being taken against him. The relationship between Washington and Tashkent was formalized at a March 2002 Oval Office meeting between President Bush and President Karimov. Muhammad Salih, the leader of Uzbekistan's pro-democracy Erk Democratic Party, who is living in exile in Germany, said the relationship had strengthened Mr. Karimov's hand. "It's been a great opportunity for Karimov," Mr. Salih said. "But President Bush has to also think about human rights and democracy. If he wants to have a collaboration on antiterror matters, he should not close his eyes on other things that Uzbekistan is doing, like torture." At a news conference last month, President Bush was asked what Uzbekistan could do in interrogating a suspect that the United States could not. "We seek assurances that nobody will be tortured when we render a person back to their home country," Mr. Bush said. The State Department and human rights groups have continued to report on human rights abuses against Uzbeks in prison. The State Department's latest human rights report on Uzbekistan, issued in February, said: "Torture was common in prisons, pretrial facilities, and local police and security service precincts." In addition, the State Department report noted that in 2003 the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture "concluded that torture or similar ill-treatment was systematic." Amnesty International and other groups have documented specific cases. In the summer of 2002, Amnesty International reported, Fatima Mukhadirova, a 62-year-old Tashkent shopkeeper, was sentenced to six years of hard labor after denouncing the government for the death of her son, Muzafar Avozov, in a Tashkent prison. An independent examination of photographs of the body, conducted by the University of Glasgow, showed that Mr. Avozov died after being immersed in boiling water, human rights groups reported. The examination said his head had been beaten and his fingernails removed. Human rights activists pressed for Ms. Mukhadirova's release. She was freed shortly before a planned visit by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld in February 2004. Human rights activists say that the United States has a difficult balancing act to maintain in its dealings with Uzbekistan. "The relationship between the U.S. and Uzbekistan is problematic," Ms. Gill of Human Rights Watch said. "It can be useful that the U.S. is powerful enough to push for certain concessions. That being said, the U.S. should not be saying that Karimov is a partner, is an ally, is a friend. The U.S. should send the message that Uzbekistan won't be considered to be a good ally of the United States unless it respects human rights at home." The delicate diplomatic balance played out in the early spring of 2004, after a series of suicide bombings in Tashkent killed 47 people, many of them Uzbek police officers. The government cracked down against people on religious grounds, setting off international condemnation. Three months later, despite the urgings of the Uzbek foreign minister, Sodik Safoyev, the State Department said it would cut $18 million in military and economic aid to Uzbekistan because of its failure to improve its human rights record. But the next month, on Aug. 12, 2004, Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chief of Staffs, visited Tashkent. He met with President Karimov and other officials, and he announced that the Pentagon would provide an additional $21 million to help Uzbekistan in its campaign to remove its stockpile of biological weapons. General Myers said the United States had "benefited greatly from our partnership and strategic relationship with Uzbekistan." While he noted that there were genuine concerns about Uzbekistan's human rights record, General Myers said: "In my view, we shouldn't let any single issue drive a relationship with any single country. It doesn't seem to be good policy to me."

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Street, Paul at May 10, 2005 03:09 AM
I admire fellow lefties who relentlessly counter and generally devastate the "human nature" and "realistic" "life sucks" (yes, a total cop out) "crowd" (of 1 or 2 here) at every turn. That "crowd's" arguments remind me that modern American capitalism and its related predatory, zero-sum and dispossessive policies and practices survive less because of genuine mass consent (positive "hegemony" in the sense meant by Antonio Gramsci) than through the silencing of opposition and the significantly coercive elimenation of resistance and any sense of alternative....the creation of a world where people want they they get instead of getting what they want. "Yes, it sucks, but this is the best we can do and the only alternative is totalitarian butchery..." how's that for a social-systemic rallying cry? And of course capitalism conducts its own impressive social, political, and ecological slaughterhouse. Graeme says that capitalism's apologists describe the market in terms similar to the way that fundamentalist Christians describe God. Quite right, and for an interesting mass cultural spin on that, see how "the Maze" (clumsy metaphor for the reified/deified/mystified Market)is treated in that little best-selling "self-help" volume meant to justify capitalist power and delegitimize any notions of social entitlement and collective solidarity...the wonderful little masterpiece of Orwellian corporate-neoliberal anthropomorphism WHO MOVED MY CHEESE? (1998) I'm writing a piece on that popular authoritarian management tract, recommended to me by a "progressive" social worker.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Gammon101, Bwong at May 09, 2005 06:41 AM
"Freedom" presumably means the range of options one can choose from(unless realpc has a different definition). In a class society ones' options vary depending on where you're on the food chain.As you descend you're left with few or no options, hence little or no freedom. In gauging how "free" a society is as a whole one should not just look at the choices availiable to those who can afford it. It is not accidental that "freedom advocates" often do just that, because, implicit in the market ideology is the assumption that only purchasing power counts. If you have more purchasing power you have more votes in the "free market" and therefore more important. For the same reason those who are lacking in purchasing power does not count. "Freedom" is a commodity in our society. We should keep that in mind while trying to decode people such as realpc

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Gammon101, Bwong at May 09, 2005 05:36 AM
"In my opinion, it's better to go without modern high-tech health care with all its expensive bells and whistles than hand over ever more money and power to the central state." You have it exactly upside down. For profit health care providers have a vested interest in promoting high tech, expensive solutions. Low cost alternatives which may work equally well or better are ignored because they don't bring in as much revenue. In addition to being inaccessible, the U.S health system is also the most expensive in the world. It is costly and ineffiicient. Even business, which is hardly interested in the leftist ideal of equality, is increasingly fed up with the huge cost of health related expenditures. A well run, adequatedly funded universal health system actually can bring the costs down enormously. Universal health care is not such a revolutionary idea in 2005, the U.S is the ONLY industrialized nation that doesn't have it. Are you saying somehow only Americans know about "freedom"?

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Yurallnuts, Realpc at May 09, 2005 01:42 AM
"Majorities think Karl Marx is in the Constitution ..." What??? Anyway, you listed the supposedly "liberal" ideas that people generally agree with. You omitted all the controversial stuff like racial quotas for college admission, unlimited abortion rights, contempt for traditional religious values, criminals' rights over victims' safety, etc.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Yurallnuts, Realpc at May 08, 2005 23:05 PM
Americans value freedom over state-imposed solidarity. Americans know that individuals are unique, each with their own talents, preferences and ideas. Therefore, the utopian vision of some will never be approved by all. In my opinion, it's better to go without modern high-tech health care with all its expensive bells and whistles than hand over ever more money and power to the central state. But I would guess most American parents want maximun health coverage for their kids and are willing to pay higher taxes for it, within limits. Everything is a trade-off.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Yurallnuts, Realpc at May 08, 2005 17:55 PM
In parecon, job applicants will be like politicians -- the only way to get hired is majority vote. In other words, a popularity contest. Word will spread through the universal big brother computer system about individuals who are rebelious and hard to control, who therefore should not be hired. "Americans are overwhelmingly liberal and even leftist on most of the main issues of our time." Well that is only if you define "liberal" or "leftist" as "good, kind, fair." Many of us define it differently. Most Americans, if forced to choose between freedom and universal health coverage, would take freedom. There is nothing "liberal" about being against the war in Iraq. Yes social security is a socialist idea but it has been accepted by most conservatives, and Americans want to keep it. The Bush administration will not succeed in demolishing social security.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Bok, Yakov at May 08, 2005 06:50 AM
If U.S. troops have do anything wrong, a significant fact is that the U.S. troops will be punished. For example, the recent court marshalls/trials that have taken place over torture. A few bad apples doesn't ruin the bushel. Unfortunately, the "progressives" are haters and choose to condemn everyone and everything. Another thing I don't under stand about "progressives" is that if they are for the collective, why can't they understand that essentially nobody in America supports them? They have no political party and no political support. The collective, that is, the American people have spoken. Why then don't you abide by the collectives wishes and go with the majority of Americans? Is it because you are an example of why "the collective" doesn't work?

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Tripadic, Edspecial at May 08, 2005 01:39 AM
Oh and BTW "Pansies" didn't become a euphamism for weakness because they're girls (silly Mr. Street!) but because they lack fortitude. Like say fer instance, that you posted a comment on a "Blog" that the author didn't like, and then after insulting you, the author pompously announces that your comment will be deleted, but then doesn't follow through.....see no fortitude. I wonder though, I mean since Pansies aren't girls, who's doing the gay baiting after all? Lastly, it all seems to boil down to masculinity with you, why is it that?

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Bok, Yakov at May 08, 2005 01:02 AM
Graeme said: Garbage collectors collect garbage not because it's "easy" but because they never had the opportunity to become neurosurgeons! You have completely dicounted aptitude. But then again, aptitude tests are racist, right? Stop calling everything that you don't like fascist. You misuse the word thus diminishing its impact. Dollars to doughnuts, you can't even define fascism. I don' know why you are so anti-market. The market is simply the collective. You like collective is good.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Yurallnuts, Realpc at May 07, 2005 20:33 PM
There are many things in life that, from a human perspective, are bad. Some can be fixed or improved, others cannot, and it takes wisdom to know the difference. I see many defects in our system, some that probably don't have to be that way. But the fact that power corrupts, or that people have egos, or that technological progress has unwanted sife-effects -- things like that are realities. We can try to work around them -- the US founders did their best to prevent concentration of power. But that was two centuries ago and they could not see the future.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Yurallnuts, Realpc at May 07, 2005 04:54 AM
"There will always be bosses. Ownership means everything because the whole world is a rat race. I have to get mine before you get yours." That is parody of conservative philosophy. Acceptance of the realities of nature and the limitations of human intelligence is not the same as cynicism. Not acknowledging human limitations can lead to nightmare scenarios such as fascism and communism. I am not a conservative, since I value progress as well as tradition. Blind faith in either progress or tradition, rejection of one or the other, leads nowhere. Some degree of selishness and egoism is found in everyone and always will be, as is altruism and compassion. Conservatives are compassionate as well as selfish, and leftists can be as arrogant and egomaniacal as anyone. Just being a leftist and opposing the status quo can make people feel special and superior -- and what is selfless about the need to feel special? Get a group of well-meaning, cooperative and educated individuals together and before long egos and interests will clash. Parecons will not work, although maybe some of the ideas could be applied in conventional businesses.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Jautter, Mind at May 07, 2005 04:23 AM
This old Bok He played one He played Realpc on his dong With a Yakov padawak give Realpc the bone This old blog goes on and on.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Rekouche, Koceilah at May 07, 2005 02:03 AM
Graeme--right on. I decided to bow out of this for a bit since the discussion was going in circles. Some folks are just stuck in thinking certain ways. There will always be bosses. Ownership means everything because the whole world is a rat race. I have to get mine before you get yours. Presumption that this is human nature. There Is No Alternative. This is life. This is how it works. There Is No Alternative. I tried being nice, I got slapped for it, nature showed me how she works. No more. There Is No Alternative. Repeat. I'm not a bad guy, I just play the game. Not my fault if other folks get dealt a bad hand--I'm not racist or mean, that could've been me..but this is how works, and damned if I'm not getting whats mine. There Is No Alternative.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Yurallnuts, Realpc at May 06, 2005 19:56 PM
"Certain Amazonian plants are also extremely rare but we assign no value to them so we exterminate them" Worth is determined by scarcity but the object must first have some kind of social or biological value. A rare disease has negative value because no one wants a disease. Oxygen has a high value, but it's plentiful enough to be free. Water is more valuable than champagne, but costs less because it's easier to obtain. The market is of course made up of human beings. It is a democratic system and we vote with our dollars. It is much easier than the parecon idea. Yes people interfere with the market in all kinds of ways. But the market makes sense because the calculations and predictions are made for us. Horrrendously complex computer programs could not do nearly as good a job.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Yurallnuts, Realpc at May 06, 2005 15:12 PM
Well bwong, life sucks. Maybe you would prefer parecon since it tries to make things fair for everybody. Everyone gets together and decides how much everything is worth, how much each job should pay, what everybody needs, etc. Now that's hard work! Now the sad fact is it's easier to learn to collect garbage than do brain surgery, so garbage collectors are easier to find. Diamonds cost more than sand because sand is easier to find. That's how the market makes decisions -- they may not always seem fair, but at least the decisions are made somewhat rationally. As opposed to command economies where human beings have to figure it all out. Or parecon where, even worse, the whole community participates in the agonizing decision-making process.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Gammon101, Bwong at May 06, 2005 06:30 AM
Some jobs may be "easy" in the sense of being technically trivial, but they are not so easy because of other factors such as long hours, mind numbing repetitions and little job satisfaction. It takes a lot of stamina to do these on a daily basis. People who perform such functions should actually be paid more just because of what they have to put up with. A brain surgeon probably wouldn't want to drive a garbage truck even if you pay him a million dollars because he derives satisfaction from his job which he can never get from being a garbage collector. The guy who drives a garbage truck performs an essential survice which is boring, smelly and has zero job satisfaction. He should be paid well just for the endurance. More fundamentally, the economy exists to serve people, not the other way around. It is pretty f%ck up that people should have to justify their existence and worth based on their economical functions if you think about it.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Yurallnuts, Realpc at May 06, 2005 01:46 AM
union jobs aren't "easy" It depends. The examples I know of suggest that many union jobs are easy and over-paid.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Yurallnuts, Realpc at May 05, 2005 19:35 PM
Wages are determined by various factors and are not always fair, but the free market does a better job of deciding wages than some know-it-all committee. If it's hard to find workers with a particular skill, then those who have the skill will be paid more. Unions try to make things fair by disregarding this rule, but they create other kinds of unfairness. Yes you can get an easy union job without skills or education, but only if you have the right connections. And how do union workers really feel about themselves, knowing their reward is not proportional to their contribution?

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Rekouche, Koceilah at May 05, 2005 18:03 PM
Yakov everyone has abilities and knowledge that others don't have. Your whole deal is about manipulating the social structure so certain abilities reward you more than others. Do those who give the greatest benefits to society rewarded the highest? Its all about individual money making, "gain wealth forgetting all but self" thing. Well, thats fine if you want things to self destruct, but the world isn't going to last very long by enslaving and exploiting the majority of the population for cheap labor while a minority benefits. Read the bible dude.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Bok, Yakov at May 05, 2005 17:50 PM
UAW members in Detroit's auto industry get paid $30 per hour. They do not need a high school education. They can show up to work drunk without fear of job loss. Their jobs take less than 4 hours of training. In Chicago, garbage men make $24 per hour and don't need a highschool education. These are merely two examples of jobs that can be done BY ANYONE for far cheaper resulting in a lower cost of consumer goods and lower taxes. Both arguably have led to artificial infalation in many areas of economic activity. ANYONE can do either of those jobs. Also, begining teachers, like any entry level job, don't get paid squat. But after ten years in the system teachers often make over $60K per year with better beneifts and more days off than any other job around. Whoever said he didn't want to start a "free-state" movement because he wants his system imposed on everyone, that my friend, is tyranny of the left. Your comment is just further proof that you'd rather sit around and complain then get involved and make a difference.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Rekouche, Koceilah at May 05, 2005 16:23 PM
"I get paid more than the people with easier jobs not only because I have more knowledge, but because I have more responsibility and stress." Teachers get paid squat. They pretty much raise our children (kids spend more time in school than with their real parents). Responsibility is not rewarded with money. Neither is stress. I can think of several jobs where stress is very high (risking ones life) yet you get paid very little. I could list examples for hours. What you're saying is just not true, although its very familiar: its the standard bullcrap lines capitalism echos to make us feel good. Also, automation isn't taking away mind numbing jobs. Some of the simplest things cannot be automated in a production line, and take human beings.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Yurallnuts, Realpc at May 05, 2005 14:38 PM
The mind-numbing jobs are gradually being automated, so the problem of numb minds may eventually go away. It took years to learn my job and there is still a lot to learn. I get paid more because they can't just drag someone off the street and teach it to them in a week. It's true that once you learn a skill it becomes rewarding and the motivation of higher pay might not be needed. But learning the skill in the first place can require a tremendous amount of motivation. Another reason pay is unequal is that some have more responsibility than others. My boss gets paid more because he has a lot more to worry about. I get paid more than the people with easier jobs not only because I have more knowledge, but because I have more responsibility and stress. I believe in equal opportunity but keeping everyone equal is impossible. Things might be more fair if we all started out financially equal at birth. If inheritance of wealth could be eliminated that might even things out somewhat.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Rekouche, Koceilah at May 05, 2005 05:41 AM
"Two thoughts: while labor may be physically strenous or time consuming, it is not necessarily "harder" because anyone can do it. That is precisely why low end jobs get paid less. It is ridiculous to say the worker bees should be paid more than those with intellectual capital." Alright putting aside your vulgar "worker bee" comment lets look at your beautiful captalist term "intellectual capital". A construction worker who lifts steel all day has "heavy-lift labor capital" because maybe he can physically move 100's of pounds all day and others can't. Ones who weren't fortunate enough to be born into privledge and granted higher education and have to do mind-numbing work all day are why all your little consumer-goodies are packed fresh, your sweater knitted without defects, and why your car doesn't drop bolts over the road. What you're saying is, its fortunate we have an unequal society that provides us enough "worker bees" who we can nickle and dime to build us roads, etc while we enjoy the high life with our "intellectual capital" By the way, don't underestimate the complexities of TRS-80 go to statements. One can build a replicate piano with 500 of those little instructions. " If you think you get paid too much, give part of your earnings to those below you, don't wait to be forced by a collective agreement." Its no more forced than I am forced to abide by the law that says dont run people over with my car. What are you talking about?

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Bok, Yakov at May 05, 2005 05:23 AM
Two thoughts: while labor may be physically strenous or time consuming, it is not necessarily "harder" because anyone can do it. That is precisely why low end jobs get paid less. It is ridiculous to say the worker bees should be paid more than those with intellectual capital. Put the non-programmer infront of a computer and we're stuck with the ol' TRS-80 10 "run goto 20 programs." If you think you get paid too much, give part of your earnings to those below you, don't wait to be forced by a collective agreement. Lead by example. Two: Former Supreme Court Justice Jackson wrote "In my view the freedom of the individual to engage in a business economically is a parallel to his fredom of speech and his freedom of action generally." Thus, the problem with the "economic collective" model is it is against freedom. That is exactly how "communist" states become totalitarian and why the socialist model fails in anything more than a sustenance level society.

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By Rekouche, Koceilah at May 05, 2005 04:57 AM
Parecon doesn't say everyone has to have equal skills and creativity. Part of it is about folks getting paid according to their effort. For me, it takes more effort to clean my house than to write a complex software program. However in our society the latter task would pay far more for equal time spent. In a work place all tasks should be shared, and if not the hardest/most tedious/most onerous work should be paid above the managers/programmers sitting on their asses consuming carbonated beverages and web surfing half the time.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Street, Paul at May 05, 2005 04:37 AM
Speaking of special education, my name reversal on EdSpecial was an accident of unintended dyslexic brilliance. Mr. Ed (whose public health expertise certainly outshines the "special skills" [realpc] of the professionals at The Lancet) can tell us the appropriate number of Iraqis that (a) have been killed and (b) should be killed by America's noble armed forces. There's a more conservative number at www.iraqbodycount.org. Is it any less criminal? Ed has resurfaced his word "pansy," which betrays his futile hope to portray himself as the rugged masculine corrector of the insufficiently butch left...which wilts in the face of its patriotic duty to join in the manly beating of craven Arabs. I'd like to recommend an interesting book: Henry A. Giroux's The Terror of Neoliberalism: Authoritarianism and the Eclipse of Democracy (Paradigm Publishers, 2004). The opening chapter defines the relevant historical meaning of the term "protofascism" in American life (YB remains stuck in the worst kind of intellectual ruts) and consistent with the various rightist visitors we get here (now we have Ed), it's worth nothing that hyper-[I would add pseudo-] masculinist identity and related gender- and gay-baiting (practised savagely against Iraqi victims BTW)are key parts of the identity and its rhetoric. The new American fascism is highly gendered. realpc continues on in his noble struggle against the egalitarian ideal...someone has to carry that heavy cross.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Yurallnuts, Realpc at May 05, 2005 03:59 AM
From a parecon article: "... avoid a workplace characterized by unequal knowledge and divisions of labour, in which a single individual is considered indispensible, or might argue for special privileges on the basis of some monopoly on information or skills." This quote is one illustration of why parecon will not work, except possibly on a small scale. Imagine a software company where individuals do not have special skills, where all workers have equal knowledge and are inter-changeable. Work that is fulfilling and creative depends on special skills and talents. And while not everyone has a need to shine or stand out, there are many who do. Parecon could never succeed in enterprises that require high levels of skill and knowledge. You cannot do brain surgery in the morning, software engineering in the afternoon and architecture in the evening. High-level careers demand specialization, which leads to inequality.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Bok, Yakov at May 05, 2005 03:57 AM
Mr. Street, you posted and then deleted yesterday commentary on knowing history. Today, brother #1 Chomsky wrote about propaganda. Finally, today you wrote "protofascist hard-right." It seems that not only have you forgotten history, but are also using the propaganda that Chomsky decried. First and foremost, form Spain, to German, to Crotia, to modern Serbia, fascism is nationalist SOCIALISM. You are doing everyone, and I mean this sincerely in the spirit of discourse, a diservice by misusing such words designed to inflame.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Tripadic, Edspecial at May 05, 2005 02:13 AM
Ok but which part of what I said are you disputing? Oh and I merely offered up a description ("pansie") I didn't apply it to anyone, but if the shoe fits I think the wearer should probably whine about it. Oh and more, I never implied that anyone of your readership supported Clintons. Poor choice of words "liberal" you're right, it really didn't sit well with me either, but I forgot to go back and investigate further. I probably would have changed it to somthing simultaniously more offensive and more accurate. Mr. Street, you slay me! The way you reversed my names to make it read "SpecialEd"! How Clever! But seriously I have to agree with you, name calling has no place in civil discourse amongst dissenting adults.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Street, Paul at May 05, 2005 01:50 AM
ok so bwong and I are in agreement on the full Dickensian restoration in China though we appear to have some differences on how far the market should be tolerated in the good society. realpc's confusion is endless IMO and I'm not going to try to disentangle it. As for Mr. "SpecialEd," who will go bye-bye tomorrow (since this is not a platform for right-wingers to call for "beating prisoners" and to bait leftists by calling them bad names), it is telling that he thinks people writing here are "liberals". A hallmark part of the proftofascist hard-right mentalite is to merge the left with liberalism and even with Clintoniansm. I'll leave his excrement up for a bit since it might be useful in showing others some of what leftists are up against over here.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Tripadic, Edspecial at May 05, 2005 00:24 AM
As to the 100,000 Iraqi civilians, that number was based on second hand accounts (aka hearasy) and fails to account for Iraqi civilians that would have perished in any event under S.H. do a Google news search on Iraqi mass graves c'mon I dare ya. Also the same report found that; "household interview data do not show evidence of widespread wrongdoing on the part of individual soldiers on the ground"

And actually the 100,000 figure DID include recorded deaths in Falluja, just not unsubstantiated ones; "Neighbours interviewed described widespread death in most of the abandoned houses but could not give adequate details for inclusion in the survey". Not to mention that the "team" that conducted the "survey" (because thats what it was) was an Iraqi one, and while I am not ready to condem the characters of the individuals doing the leg work, I think it is important to note that they were residents of the country occupied by the evildoers known as "coalition forces".

Last but not least, Yes! Beat the damn prisnors, if they don't cooperate, torture 'em as much as you can without raising the ire of the selfhating pansies on that occupy the seat to my left. After they give up everything....it's time for "re-education" Yippee! Lets fix the fault that makes 'em yearn for homicidal tyrants! I love America!

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Tripadic, Edspecial at May 04, 2005 23:59 PM
This is my first visit here, I'm sort've disappointed I expected liberals would have better command of the english language. With regard to NK's nukes, I think it's safe to assume that NK made much more progress developing warheads and delivery vehicles during the 6 1/2 years that Kim Jong Il shared head of state status with Bill Clinton than it did in the two years that passed before Bush pulled their covers and labled them part of the "axis of evil".

But of course, in true Clintonian fashion, the Mrs. attemts to lay the responsibility at the feet of GW. When in fact it was first revealed that NK was on its way to developing a delivery system sophisticated enough to strike the US in 1999, for those of you who were still in diapers at that time let me clarify; NK developed these capabilities on Clintons watch, long before they were a member of the "Axis of evil" club, which of course begs the question; If they weren't a member in 1999, why were they developing nukes??

Cont. next post heh heh.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By K, Mr at May 04, 2005 23:57 PM
rationalizing through broad generalizations about the status of the urban or rural 'middle-class' only defines the existence of a 'class' in the 1st place. Socio-economic variables come in many dimensions and to catagorize through generalizations only minimalizes the obvious. Elite propaganda has succeeded in characterizing capitalism as the end to the means. By normalizing these broad catagorical definitions through generalizations such as 'getting a job in a management position' only shows the lack of accurate information concerning the condition of the 'middle class' without being constrained by entrenched generalizations. The wheels of capitalism spin harmoniously as some spin out of control and other break this is the 'free market' and hope to hell you have enough time to deconstruct the mechanisms which envelope our very existence otherwise fall prey to the generalizations of discourse which neo-con propagandists offers to the dialectic. Go Chavez!

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Gammon101, Bwong at May 04, 2005 21:12 PM
If I understand correctly parecon is very different from co-ops. Co-op is a "business model" still emdeds in an ambient economy(which can be "capitalist" or not) while parecon is a model for an all encompassing economical system. It is not to say that a co op type of model cannot become the norm of business organization in the future. But it is still very different from parecon. If I can make a rough analogy. To work in a co op does not require you to live in a commune. Parecon seems to want to turn society into one big commune. I can be wrong but this is the impression I get from reading Albert superficially.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Gammon101, Bwong at May 04, 2005 20:50 PM
Opps, I meant "China's model actually closely resembles banana republics in China's model actually closely resembles banana republic Latin America. Only difference is the Chinese state is much more powerful(hence nobody's puppet)and it has the nuke." Also,leaving aside whether "growth" is good in some absolite sense, China's fasts growth is exaggerated IMO. Since it has many underdevloped areas it has a lot of room to grow into. But it will definitely slow down when things become more satuated. Economists who project China's economical powess by year X based on crude projections are just ridiculous. It's like obseving how fast a 15 year old grow and project he will turn into a huge giant by the time he turns 40. No one with any comon sense(i.e non economists) would take that seriously.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Kafka, Chucky at May 04, 2005 20:40 PM
On Parecon: I guess Zanon ceramics and Burkman(sp?) textiles do offer some good examples of what a co-op can do. It has transformed a corporate welfare losing millions every year into a company making profit, and the workers can have a voice in the decision making. Why not give it a chance and see what more it can do? I think people should not summarily brush aside Parecon by some (meaninglessly) abstract theoretical arguments, without examining any empirical evidences.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Gammon101, Bwong at May 04, 2005 20:29 PM
"bwong almost seems (though I'm not quite sure) to be advocating market socialism (ms), of which China has become the recent poster-child for many left neoliberals (Stiglitz) and also many serious leftists (including now even some Cuban economists)." Pardon my ignorance, I am not exactly sure what it means by ms, but if China is the poster child, that is definitely NOT what I am advocating. In fact there is nothing "socialist" about China except in name. It is even more cut throat capitalist then the U.S in many ways. I think(not 100% sure) in the U.S there is at least some kind of medicare(no doubt substandard) for seniors and the very poor. Social welfare, while constantly being cut back, still exists. In China you don't even have any minimal saftey net. Workers who have their hands cut off because of unsafe practise in the workplace are simply let go with $50. You won't find such travasty even in the U.S. Not only is China capitalist, but the worse kind of capitalism is at work there,the kind you find in the gloomy tales of Dickens. China's model actually closely resembles banana republic Latin America. Only difference is the Chinese state(hence nobody's puppet)and it has the nuke.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Kafka, Chucky at May 04, 2005 19:55 PM
On China: in what way is now China following a “market socialism” model? I just think the word “socialism” here is completely inappropriate, since it is ludicrous to say the “socialism” you see in China helps in any way “avoid creating class inequality” as in Oskar Lange's words, nor do the overwhelming majority of the working class have any power to organize themselves and negotiate. As a Chinese with access to Chinese media, I dare to say in today's China class antagonism and inequality is a lot more acute than the pre-1949 era. And for the 800 million peasants in the rural area (where one can find nothing but complete devastation as a result of wealth transfer into the urban area,) life is now a real living hell. I think this false perception of China being a “successful model” again, is the very same bias towards a so-called capitalist model, in which a lot of the welfare of the populace gives way to some abstract statistics, not to mention in the case of China a lot of these figures are faked. Well, I always wonder what kind of news people in say US and Canada can get about China.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Bok, Yakov at May 04, 2005 19:09 PM
After reading PARECON, the bottom line is socialism does not, cannot, and will not work. You cannot have a leaderless world where every decision is made by the collective. Anyone who has ever worked knows that 1. endless meetings suck, 2. endless meetings result in no work getting done. It takes a leader, something egalitarians oppose, to make the decisions not hammered out in the meetings. Otherwise the collective micromanages - something Paracon claims not to do. If you don't want to work hard and are jealous that other people have more or better than you, just say so. Your time would be much better spent getting involved in your local representative democracy - school board, zoning board, etc. Do that and see how you like going to meetings. Also, why don't you start a "free-state" movement for lefties like theh libertarians have done. To use a capitalist phrase, put your money where your mouth is.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Street, Paul at May 04, 2005 17:45 PM
bwong almost seems (though I'm not quite sure) to be advocating market socialism (ms), of which China has become the recent poster-child for many left neoliberals (Stiglitz) and also many serious leftists (including now even some Cuban economists). I am in the middle of Martin Hart-Landsburg and Paul Burkett, China and Socialism: Market Reform and Class Struggle (published as Monthly Review's entire issue for July-August, 2004), which argues that MS is an inherently unstable formation that has in fact brought about full capitalist restoration in China, replete with terrible socioeconomic and ecological consequences. The main precondition for China's current "market success," these authors say, is "an increasingly insecure labor force whose efforts at self organization are constantly suppressed by one of the world's most authoritarian states." The Chinese state is inflicting massive negative Polanyization on Chinese labor power and delivering it up to massive influx of export-oriented foreign direct investment. Even at its best (without the restoration these authors claim), Albert notes (in his PARECON volume) that market socialism replicates "class division and class rule. There is still the alienation, misallocation, and immoral bases of remuneration intrinsic to markets, and there is still a division of labor that relegates most actprs to greater tedium than warranted, reserving for a relative few greater power and reward."

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Yurallnuts, Realpc at May 04, 2005 14:16 PM
The idea that the US economy succeeds by preying on poor nations has not been supported by evidence. The left must believe it because, according to Marx, capitalism cannot be good for everyone. If the US has a healthy middle class, others must be suffering for it. Whether globalization is helpful or harmful in the long run is debated and no one really knows. US policies have certainly caused harm, but may also have been beneficial, depending on various factors. The question is whether the US feeds its upper and middle classes by bleeding other nations dry. That is the story told by contemporary Marxists, because there is no other way they can explain capitalism's apparent success. I am skeptical because it is not based on objective analysis. but rather on a need to see things a certain way.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Gammon101, Bwong at May 04, 2005 06:40 AM
The relatively benign form of capitalism,--at least domestically,-- in the developed countries took hundreds of years of fine tuning. These countries are also a minority among norminally capitalist states and they employed massive state interventions in economical developments. These countries developed in an enviroment devoid of predatory states. In fact, they were and still are the predators. In contrast, the so called socialists countries exist for a relative short time. in a world where the rules are made by hostile capitalist powers. They have to devot a lot of their scarce resource just for survival, like fending off foreign attacks.Not surprsingly these economies are not "efficient". It is remarkable that Vietnam still exists as a functioning society after the savage attack of the U.S which literally sent it back to stone age.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Street, Paul at May 04, 2005 06:16 AM
Following up on Graeme's comment (bwong's arrived as was I writing this), yes, per capita income is about $500 a year in Vietnam,according to the AP on Sunday. The recently high growth rate in Vietnam (7.7 % per year) is partly an indication of the low base point from which growth began and - more to the point -- doesn't tell you how wealth is being distributed. The country, like China (the only Asian state with a higher growth measure), is probably getting more unequal (GDP tells you nothing about distribution of wealth and income). It is moving to capitalism in part because that is an externally imposed pre-condition for them to engage in global economic intercourse (and get developmental assistance), because previous attempts at independent development outside capitalism were crushed and no doubt flawed by real problems with state command economics, and because the national political elite has chosen that new direction perhaps in part having to do with its own coordinator class and even proprietary and capital accmumulationist reasons...not because they had a referendum of the masses receiving $500 a year...who are invisible in recent Western accounts focusing on the fancy French boutiques and coffee shops on the shining thoroughfares of Ho Chi Mihh City. If I wish to address anything in bwong's message, it will have to be after a cooperatively designed 20-minute timeout.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Gammon101, Bwong at May 04, 2005 06:07 AM
Can you really "design" an economy? You can cook up different variants of local alternative models and see how they evolve.Some may survive with appropiate adaptations and fine tuning and some won't. If you're successful over time you may win more people over and precipitate some changes in a larger scale and affect the ambient economical enviroment, the coevolving enviroment will in turn steer the next phase of evolution of your model. I don't believe you can put in place a rigid master plan and say this has to be the way it is. That is not how social institutions work. I think Albert is too utopian. If I understand him correctly parecon requires an unrealistic amount of micromanagement and coercions (See Monbiot's debate with Albert on Znet) I don't have a problem with "the market" as long as market priciples do not ursurp other social priorities. There is a really important difference between a society with a market, and the capitalist utopian where the society itself becomes an appendage of the market. The latter is by no means the necessary outome of the mere existence of markets, as Karl Polanyi argued compellingly.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Street, Paul at May 04, 2005 04:04 AM
Sorry to be off topic but just to anticipate questions...yes, (in case anyone saw it) I took down a piece I did on Why Study History. I did this because it turned out someone wanted to publish it and I had thought they rejected it. Its rude to publish it on my blog in advance of its appearance. I'll link it here when it comes out (in a week or two). I agree with FC and bwong's comments and it strikes me that the phrase command economy can be semantically turned back against "modern" "capitalism." No there isn't one central state office that coordinates the political economy (the literal definition of command economics ala USSR) but there's an intertwined overlapping revolving door alliance of private-corporate and state-capitalist power concentrations that basically commands wealth and capital accumulation for the few and insecurity and various forms of market discipline combined with state repression and no small related quantity of misery and poverty for the many.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Gammon101, Bwong at May 04, 2005 01:42 AM
"No. Read some history. Why are Vietnam and China becoming capitalist? Command economies cannot be made to work in the long run." Actually, China and Russia were very sucessful economically in terms of meeting what the planers wanted to achieve. The transformation of these countries in a relatively short time from backward, third world like countries into global powers was breathtaking. There were shortage in consummer goods for sure, but consumption was not the state's priority. You may dispute their priorities but that is a different issue. All the miracle economies of Japan and the Asian tigers through out the post war years (with the exception of Hong Kong)were basically planned economies. The Japanese had state coordinated "5 year plans" in different sectors(automobile, computers)They prove exactly why American promoted "free trade" and "free market" don't work. The Asian country that follow the "free market" gospel most closely is the Philipines. It was and still is a basket case.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Yurallnuts, Realpc at May 04, 2005 00:28 AM
"the planned economies of the "Communist" bloc were successful" No. Read some history. Why are Vietnam and China becoming capitalist? Command economies cannot be made to work in the long run.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Street, Paul at May 03, 2005 19:52 PM
Ms. Gill's comment is revealing. HRW is a complex organization that does some really neat work --- including some excllent exposes of human rights abuses within US criminal justice system and more recently within the US meatpacking industry --- but is torn between its mandate of exposing all human rights crimes and its reluctance to fully engage the human rights abuses of the wealthiest nations and most especially the US. It takes some moral shortcuts to keep its funding base and respectable status within US in it seems to me. That's ubiquitious in the nonprofit world (believe me I know ALL about it). YB is settting up a false and obsolete Cold War dichotomy when he leaps from my critique of market (and I would say capitalist command) economics to say that I support centralist state-command (ie Soviet-style) economics. With the 1500 character limit already starting to loom, I think both YB's and then realpc's comments (the latter about the efficiency or lack thereof of markets) are addressed quite well in Mike Albert's PARECON: Life After Capitalism (Verso, 2003), which lays out ideas towards an economy that is not commanded by markets, corporations, or the state. Guess what the Cold War is at least half over and there is still (as before and during the CW) a libertarian left. Saying more at this point entails a full article/posting...maybe something I'll tackle when I get time.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Bok, Yakov at May 03, 2005 18:19 PM
The U.S. is a colonial power in Uzbekistan? Does the government have plantations and mineral mines and lumber companies in central Asia that we don't know about? Seriously, where do leftists get their definitions from? I know that a politically correct tact is to expand definitions, but this is ridiculous! That's not to say that the relationship with Uzbekistan is on the moral highground -but colonial? Get real.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Yurallnuts, Realpc at May 03, 2005 14:10 PM
"markets aren't even particularly efficient mechanisms for allocating resources." Can you explain this? I have never heard of an efficient or successful planned economy. "[I] attach great positive significance to solidarity, empathy, democracy, community, equality, and ecological sustainability." Paul, do you really believe non-leftists are against these things? I mean, except "equality" (which can only be achieved by force and can never be maintained) these are values shared by everyone except criminals. Yes, non-leftists also value independence and individualism, which are in conflict with community and solidarity. Contrasting values must be balanced.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Bok, Yakov at May 03, 2005 05:10 AM
Mr. Street, thank you for clearing up your economic position. One must now presume that for our modern world you believe in command economies. That being the case, who decides WHAT gets produced? The collective? How will the collective work in your Chicago of 2.8m people? If we have an economy of "from each, to each," again, who decides the level of "from" and "to?" The collective? Taken to their logical extensions, from and to can mean to the points right before death. You allude to human nature under the guise of behavior. Are you seeking to change what comes naturally? Isn't that the tyranny you decry?

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By K, Mr at May 03, 2005 04:09 AM
Hey watch out you might get arrested by these neo-cons. They have no honor it seems and their law of the land seems to include all the tricks in the shop of horrors. The yankees learn well from 2nd rate dictatorships and through sly media representation it can dream up anything it wants for its brain damaged population. Through macro-disinformation and re-socialization, the Bush clan has succeeded in distorting truth and making lies believable. When's jesus returning? the Brain Damaged American public needs a new representative. Hey Capitalism is dictatorial no? No wonder the yankee creed is over in central asia. Adapting and assimilating techniques for social control. Hey in this new world order only the best teachers will do and yes i suppose torture is a democratic process (we have to wait another 4 years till this guy has to leave!). God save the planet cause nobody else is. That's an eco-terrorist. Anything that is not capitalist friendly is evil. Anything that is not marketable is not worth anything. Watch out unemployed!! how about this if your unemployed in the united states you can be drafted!! haaaaa a neo-con pipe dream.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Street, Paul at May 03, 2005 01:26 AM
Someone wrote and pressed me on "free market." As I told "r4d20" in comments a couple weeks ago, I'm not for free market becaue I'm left and therefore attach great positive significance to solidarity, empathy, democracy, community, equality, and ecological sustainability. All of those values are violated by even the freest of markets. Markets by their very nature concentrate economic and hence political power. They exacerbate human inequalities and privilege economic over social and environmental values. They select and reward the worst, most- cut-throat human behaviors and values and drown everything -- all past values and commitments as well as the material world --- in what Marx called "the icy waters of egotistical calculation," leaving no real connection between people but "the cash nexus." Left values have no functionality under the rule of markets and so are left to wither and die under soulless logic of the market.All that logic cares about is cash outcomes for the people most able and/or most willing (and part of being the most able is the willingness to make being a wealth-accumulator, that is a big bastard/Economic Man your raison d'etre) to score economic gains. Even a truly free market would replicate the current intensely political capitalism and the rule of The Corporation. And markets aren't even particularly efficient mechanisms for allocating resources. See Mike Albert, Life After Capitalism, chapter 3, "Judging Economies."

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Street, Paul at May 02, 2005 21:23 PM
Of course the North Korean regime is really bad; anyone who thinks I think otherwise is not reading carefully or has taken literalism over the edge. The repeated accusation of inconsistency on free markets is becoming amusing so I owe YB for an unintended (by him) laugh on that one. "We" (the US) can of course be a relatively free nation internally and still make terrible alliances with hideous terrorist regimes such as the ones in Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia. "We" are not interested in actually helping the North Koreans develop out of their current nightmare (look up the books of Bruce Cumings and John Feffer on the US and Korea).czimmerman you're so serious; time to unleash your inner hooligan. Yes, maybe just a straight piece on Uzbekistan would have been best, but I was feeling like an Internet hoodlum I'm afraid. I admit to being entertained by North Korean rhetoric ...where else can you hear people still using phrases like "running dog lackeys" and/or "jackbooted imperialists"?

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Chaszimmerman, Czimmerman at May 02, 2005 20:35 PM
I think its harder to take you seriously when you bring North Korea's comments up. Nothing these people say should be taken seriously, and they should be subject to criticism and activism by anybody who is serious about human rights. Why couldn't the article just be about the Ukraine alliance, without mentioning North Korea?

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Bok, Yakov at May 02, 2005 16:26 PM
North Korea is starving its people. North Korea is putting its own people in concentration camps. North Korea does not give its people freedom of movement. North Korea reportedly can put a nuclear warhead on missles. North Korea reportedly test fired said missle this past weekend into the Sea of Japan. North Korea supports terrorism. And yet, America is the bad guy? In all seriousness, considering you don't believe in free markets (or do you? You go back and forth in your posts), you believe in an egalitarian society that must be forced, how is North Korea any different than the society that you advocate? Any expression of individulism could threaten the balance between "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Please explain.

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Re: A Little Respect, Please

By Rekouche, Koceilah at May 02, 2005 16:23 PM
I looked up the definition of philistine when I read that in the news too. Apparently the word used to be used by students in medieval times to describe non-stundents (or unlearned, ignorant, stupid people, etc). So it fits. Interesting how NK and Bush go back and forth with these juvenile insults. Its been going on for a while. I remember a couple years ago Bush calling Kim Jong Il a "pigmy" (in reference to his short stature). I think its also interesting this latest fuss about long range nuclear-capable missiles. The fact that NK had nukes and missiles with ranges reaching US territory has been known about for years. However its being treated like a revelation.

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