Death of a hero
david_michael
sm...@nizkor.org
> May a thousand more follow where he led.
To whom are you referring, Dr. Michael?
Gord McFee
<1149776509.4...@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,
"david_michael" <david_...@onetel.net.uk> wrote:
> May a thousand more follow where he led.
You're free to join him.
--
Gord McFee
I'll write no line before its time
Visit the Holocaust History Project
http://www.holocaust-history.org
Dr Ewan Jackson
Gord McFee wrote:
> On 8 Jun 2006 07:21:49 -0700, in
> <1149776509.4...@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,
> "david_michael" <david_...@onetel.net.uk> wrote:
>
> > May a thousand more follow where he led.
>
> You're free to join him.
>
Oh dear. David's really lost it this time, hasn't he?
Or maybe the creator of "David" has a dark sense of humour and he's
parodying somebody - can't think who, though.
Ewan
Dr Ewan Jackson
david_michael wrote:
> May a thousand more follow where he led.
What did you think of the London bombings, by the way?
Are you hoping for more of that in your own country?
Ewan
Gord McFee
<1149866126.4...@y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>, "Dr Ewan
Jackson" <ewanj...@catholic.org> wrote:
> Gord McFee wrote:
> > On 8 Jun 2006 07:21:49 -0700, in
> > <1149776509.4...@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,
> > "david_michael" <david_...@onetel.net.uk> wrote:
> >
> > > May a thousand more follow where he led.
> >
> > You're free to join him.
>
> Oh dear. David's really lost it this time, hasn't he?
I think he has now transitioned from "off his rocker" to "certifiably
bonkers"
> Or maybe the creator of "David" has a dark sense of humour and he's
> parodying somebody - can't think who, though.
The Lord knows. What is your theory?
Dr. Anthony J. Lomenzo
Gord McFee wrote:
> On 9 Jun 2006 08:15:26 -0700, in
> <1149866126.4...@y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>, "Dr Ewan
> Jackson" <ewanj...@catholic.org> wrote:
>
>
>>Gord McFee wrote:
>>
>>>On 8 Jun 2006 07:21:49 -0700, in
>>><1149776509.4...@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,
>>>"david_michael" <david_...@onetel.net.uk> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>May a thousand more follow where he led.
>>>
>>>You're free to join him.
>>
>>Oh dear. David's really lost it this time, hasn't he?
>
>
> I think he has now transitioned from "off his rocker" to "certifiably
> bonkers"
>
>
>>Or maybe the creator of "David" has a dark sense of humour and he's
>>parodying somebody - can't think who, though.
>
>
> The Lord knows. What is your theory?
>
Vorsicht, Gord! Whenever you [or anyone else in the world for that
matter] ask or question the 'why' of Psycho® DEM supporting, justifying,
praising, welcoming/salamming [read: "may there be many more days like
it" [sic "on" 9-11-01] or , for his own people and nation in London
during July of 2005, "it's not nice, but fair" [sic] ] and Psycho® DEM's
all around stooging, embracing and whooping for terrorist cells and
organizations and what which they do --TODAY-- , well, can yet 'another'
run of the one, the only, the "1945 N/H gambit" not be in the future for
multiple newsgroups!
Hence, the public 'mourning' by Psycho® DEM for one of his professed
'heroes' [!?] was certainly not unexpected, yes? Imagine if they ever
bag Osama bin Laden himself! Ol' Psycho® DEM may just go the seppuku
route! The kufi, Osama-like cammo field jacket and/or Lenin-like
leather Greek fisherman hat(s) [and philosophy] notwithstanding.
Doc Tony
;-)
"Your side won, Mr. Mock!" --- Psycho® DEM to Steve Mock regarding
World War II. THIS ... from a UK citizen!
david_michael
This from Mr Lomenzo, a man who has openly praised the mass murder of
civilians by American forces.
DEM
david_michael
No. I am hoping that our government will cease its policy of terror
bombing in other people's countries, and that the monsters in our
government who were responsible for that policy will be brought to
book, so that those wonderful young people do not feel compelled to
kill themselves in that way.
DEM
sm...@nizkor.org
Ah, but here's where we respectfully differ, Doc. Indeed, I, too, find
nothing surprising in this latest ejaculation from DEM, juxtaposed
against his enthusiastic praise for, inter alia, 9/11, 7/7, Beslan, bus
and nightclub bombings in Israel, and that's not even bothering to
recall his pro-Nazi, pro-apartheid, "hanging communists from lamposts"
stuff from the good old days. Kidnapping and publically beheading
journalists and foreign workers (after making them "confess" to being
Jews)... that's already par for the course for DEM.
However, in DEM's private universe the seppuku route is for other
people. Sure, he would like to *see* a thousand follow where "he" led,
but DEM has no intention of being anywhere near the thousand if and
when they do.
Hence the question I asked at the outset, which he hasn't answered, and
won't. Sure, we all know who he's talking about. But for all of his
fawning praise of heroic martyrdom, I don't think he even has the
cajones to even say it himself. He may invoke the "2006 UK Terrorism
Act" gambit, but if he were really so scared of that measure of
inconvenience he wouldn't have said anything at all. The truth is that
even naming his allies, and his ideology, in clear terms - which is to
say, actually standing for and beside them - is a bigger personal
committment than DEM has ever been willing to make.
Actually pulling the pin himself?... We're light-years away from that
sort of nonsense.
Steven Mock
sm...@nizkor.org
You called it, Doc.
Then again... what were the odds?
Steven Mock
Dr. Anthony J. Lomenzo
sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> Dr. Anthony J. Lomenzo wrote:
>
>>Gord McFee wrote:
>>
>>>On 9 Jun 2006 08:15:26 -0700, in
>>><1149866126.4...@y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>, "Dr Ewan
>>>Jackson" <ewanj...@catholic.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Gord McFee wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>On 8 Jun 2006 07:21:49 -0700, in
>>>>><1149776509.4...@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,
>>>>>"david_michael" <david_...@onetel.net.uk> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>May a thousand more follow where he led.
>>>>>
>>>>>You're free to join him.
>>>>
>>>>Oh dear. David's really lost it this time, hasn't he?
>>>
>>>I think he has now transitioned from "off his rocker" to "certifiably
>>>bonkers"
>>>
>>>
>>>>Or maybe the creator of "David" has a dark sense of humour and he's
>>>>parodying somebody - can't think who, though.
>>>
>>>The Lord knows. What is your theory?
>>
>>Vorsicht, Gord! Whenever you [or anyone else in the world for that
>>matter] ask or question the 'why' of Psycho® DEM supporting, justifying,
>>praising, welcoming/salamming [read: "may there be many more days like
>>it" [sic "on" 9-11-01] or , for his own people and nation in London
>>during July of 2005, "it's not nice, but fair" [sic] ] and Psycho® DEM's
>>all around stooging, embracing and whooping for terrorist cells and
>>organizations and that which they do --TODAY-- , well, can yet 'another'
Well, of course, this may also explain the "isolated community" [sic]
farce where Psycho® DEM advances this as "THE" cure against what he
terms the "decay, degeneracy, rottenness and multi-cultural morass of
the western nations" [sic], but, as all will notice, Psycho® DEM does
nothing himself and apparently is 'still' waiting for someone, anyone,
to try the thing 'for' him and, I suppose, report back to the Psycho®
how it goes because the Psycho® himself lacks the courage [read: guts]
of his own ... drool. But then, what else is to be expected with
Psycho® DEM when his professed mourning of just one of his terrorist
'heroes' [sic] essentially says it all. A farce. But the Psycho® DEM
public 'unraveling' [in more ways than one!] was quite a show!
Doc Tony
;-)
sm...@nizkor.org
Right on the money, Doc. I actually confronted DEM on this very point,
back in the old days when he was still capable of discussing anything
other than the N/H gambit. It was in reference to a line in his sacred
national-anarchist Writings, where he said that since not all people
are cut out for life in an isolated community, those who are not (read:
himself), could contribute by conducting propaganda in favour of those
who were.
I tried to get him to face the implications of the fact that he was
essentially admitting that life was better - at least for that category
of people to which he evidently belongs - in the immoral, decadent,
depraved and degenerating System he despises than it apparently could
be expected to be outside of it.
His only response, as I recall, was to flame me for misspelling
"privilege" and then dismiss the entire point as a "troll".
Steven Mock
sm...@nizkor.org
Ah, finally found the thread. This is some amusing reading:
Steven Mock
Roger
(an Age yet to come, an Age long past)
someone claiming to be david_michael wrote
in message
<1149776509.4...@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>:
>May a thousand more follow where he led.
Gee, I wonder who cuddles is referring to?
When are we going to get back to your "cure" for world hunger?
david_michael
Another utterly hypocritical contribution from Mr Lomenzo, a man who
has openly praised the mass murder of civilians by American forces.
DEM
Dr. Anthony J. Lomenzo
But Roger, have you forgotten the "silver lining" [sic] matter when all
those Africans "die off from western nations neglect" [sic] yet was it
not Psycho® DEM who saw that "silver lining" scenario as, hey, what
else, but "available land opportunities for isolated communities!" [sic]
Ahhh, what a pity that Psycho® DEM just can't find anyone to try his
"world cure" because, hey, the Psycho® himself apparently just dreams up
these 'cures' albeit for various and sundry unnamed 'others' to try and
not himself. No-No, others. You know, the Psycho® DEM belched "clear way
forward" [sic] yet he himself sits on his ass merely listing what ails
the world but lacking the guts to do anything about it personally. Now,
in fairness, there was the matter of Psycho® DEM handing out leaflets
and ringing doorbells for the BNP [British National Party] but then even
Nick Griffin [Chairman of the BNP] had it with the psychotic when the
BNP itself condemned the 2005 "London" terror attack while the Psycho®
was praising it writing in public, "it's not nice, but fair" while
totally blowing off the BNP, also publicly, in a written spiel that
included the DEM-gem, to wit, "We should be marching shoulder to
shoulder with our Islamic brothers!" [sic]. And so it goes with the
Psycho®.
Notice the latest gambit too how myself, Mock, Sinclair, ET AL,
allegedly "praise" [!?] the events of 1945 while the Psycho® is buried
in the here and now informing Geoffrey Sinclair that "space issues"
[cough-cough] are the reason Sinclair's material keeps disappearing
and/or getting snipped or otherwise the Psycho® has allegedly "dealt
with that issue already [!?] .... sure! Still the farce ... and still
the known and duly demonstrated psychotic even in utter and humiliating
defeat. Expect the N/H gambit resurrection simply as a matter of ....
drool.
Doc Tony
;-)
david_michael
Dr. Anthony J. Lomenzo wrote:
How interesting that Mr Lomenzo does not have the guts to debate any of
these allegations with me.
DEM
sm...@nizkor.org
But you know what's occurred to me, Doc, for all of DEM's one-note
piano solos about how we "openly praise the mass murder of civilians by
American forces", there is something that has, curiously, gone entirely
unmentioned by him over the past few weeks: Haditha.
Now, you'd think that event would play to his "depravity of America and
hypocrisy of its supporters" schtick far better than his fawning praise
of the Thug Who Shall Not Be Named. Yet bupkis. Nary a mention.
To my mind, that stands as a subtle indication that the sociopath knows
full well, and is fully conscious of the fact that the *ad hominem*
characterisations of his opponents that he pushes on this n.g. to get
out of discussions he doesn't like are, indeed, utter and complete
fabrications.
He will not mention Haditha, because he knows full well that when
confronted with the prospect of a *real* massacre of civilians, we will
not "praise" it at all, regardless of the nationality of either the
perpetrators or the victims.
So best to keep mum. He wouldn't want to lose his "hypocrite" card,
after all.
Steven Mock
sm...@nizkor.org
> Another utterly hypocritical contribution from Mr Lomenzo, a man who
> has openly praised the mass murder of civilians by American forces.
>
> DEM
Been practicing on the old one-note piano, have we, Dr. Michael?
Steven Mock
Dr. Anthony J. Lomenzo
This of course brings back RVN and the Mai Lai thing. Widely condemned
and a matter, I'll add, that gave even more fuel to the get out of RVN
[Republic of Viet Nam] morass. Actually, now that you mention Haditha,
I see it as the beginning of the end for the present farce in 'Iraq'
which, as you know, I've vociferously opposed from the very beginning.
The "WMD" bosh notwithstanding or the UN being unceremoniously told by
Mr. Bush to essentially, shall we say, engage in self fornication.
But I have also said that my opposition is a 'testament' to the 'system'
that permits 'any' citizen to take serious issue with the [alleged]
leader and the policies of the government! Try that scenario in a system
known as the NSDAP ... or "Uncle Joe" Stalin and his Bolsheviks. And so
on down the line. What I don't want to see, Steven, and which I 'did'
see and in fact did experience personally during RVN when I myself wore
the uniform, is the equally deja vu individual soldier PER SE taking it
in the neck and getting tarred with the broad brush for the actions of a
small group of others!
Switching gears, Mr. Bush is even now rattling the saber again with talk
of giving 'Iran' "weeks, not months" in re their atomic fuel usage
matter thing but it can only be hoped that no further "divine message"
come Mr. Bush's way and the thing widens even further!
So too, in every war there are atrocities on ALL sides but that is not
an 'excuse' by any means, it is however a fact of life, tragic and wrong
as it is. The larger issue is that I've said many times that I am NOT a
subscriber to any sort of "my country right or wrong" philosophy and I
believe those who 'do' subscribe to same are only part of the 'problem'
... 'not' the solution! I hate war and have seen what it does even to
the survivors of armed conflicts but then a review of our collective
which is to say global human species of any and all 'systems' and
'flavors' mind you will show, ugly albeit true enough, how the planet
and human nature itself and geographical considerations aside for that
matter and along with economic, ideological, political, religious, usw.,
usw., almost seems to insidiously dictate century after century after
century that the species engage in such horrendous actions.
The cure? I mean to the human enigma known as human nature ... I don't
know. I wish to hell I did. One reads back in 1918 of "the war to end
all wars" and all nodding their heads in alleged concurrence [after the
fact, of course] ... yeah, right, and how long did it take for 'that'
whoop and holler to last, what, all of 21 years, yes?! And still it
happens, globally.
Doc Tony
david_michael
Actually, he . . . er, I mean I . . . did mention Haditha in a post on
3 June.
The key point is this.
Mock and Lomenzo can condemn Haditha because responsibility for those
actions can be fobbed off on a few rogue, lower level soldiers.
Moreover, soldiers operating 'under stress', etc. etc. Condemning
Haditha does not involve condemning the American president (which even
Mock and Lomenzo might well do), or the American imperial project
(which even Mock and Lomenzo might do), much less the core political
principles at the heart of American foreign policy (the holy cows that
I suspect Mock will never sacrifice).
However, these people cannot condemn Hiroshima, or even Nagasaki,
without running into major difficulties (hence their rather comic
attempts to avoid serious engagement with me on the issue). The moment
you say that 'these attacks were an atrocity on a par with the worst
excesses of the Nazis/Soviets/Islamists' then the whole idea of a
'hierarchy of ideological saintliness' -- central to their worldview --
goes out the window. Western-style 'democracy' is no longer something
special that preserves (despite the counter-evidence of Yugoslavia,
where Milosevic was actually elected democratically after the collapse
of communism in free elections in December 1990) a higher regard for
human life than the alternative systems (Nazism, communism, Islam) that
it demonizes (and in the case of Mock and Lomenzo medicalizes).
I would imagine that there are certain other key historical Western
atrocities that might present similar difficulties for these people.
Such atrocities might include the bombing of Dresden and the decision
to attack Iraq, as well as the entire 'renditions' episode. It is very
difficult to condemn these as crimes and call for them to be punished
without conceding the key point that people are people are people and
that to arrange politicians into a hierarchy of saintliness with
Western neoliberalis at the top and Adolf Hitler at the bottom, with
Joe Stalin and Osama somewhere in the middle, is a gross
oversimplification.
Even George W Bush can criticize Haditha, and probably will -- loudly.
DEM
Dr. Anthony J. Lomenzo
david_michael wrote:
> sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
>
>>Dr. Anthony J. Lomenzo wrote:
>>
>>>Roger wrote:
>>>
>>>>In one age, called the Second Age by some,
>>>> (an Age yet to come, an Age long past)
>>>> someone claiming to be david_michael wrote
>>>> in message
>>>><1149776509.4...@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>May a thousand more follow where he led.
>>>>
>>>>Gee, I wonder who cuddles is referring to?
>>>>
>>>>When are we going to get back to your "cure" for world hunger?
>>>
>>>But Roger, have you forgotten the "silver lining" [sic] matter when all
>>>those Africans "die off from western nations neglect" [sic] yet was it
>>>not PsychoŽ DEM who saw that "silver lining" scenario as, hey, what
>>>else, but "available land opportunities for isolated communities!" [sic]
>>>
>>>Ahhh, what a pity that PsychoŽ DEM just can't find anyone to try his
>>>"world cure" because, hey, the PsychoŽ himself apparently just dreams up
>>>these 'cures' albeit for various and sundry unnamed 'others' to try and
>>>not himself. No-No, others. You know, the PsychoŽ DEM belched "clear way
>>>forward" [sic] yet he himself sits on his ass merely listing what ails
>>>the world but lacking the guts to do anything about it personally. Now,
>>>in fairness, there was the matter of PsychoŽ DEM handing out leaflets
>>>and ringing doorbells for the BNP [British National Party] but then even
>>>Nick Griffin [Chairman of the BNP] had it with the psychotic when the
>>>BNP itself condemned the 2005 "London" terror attack while the PsychoŽ
>>>was praising it writing in public, "it's not nice, but fair" while
>>>totally blowing off the BNP, also publicly, in a written spiel that
>>>included the DEM-gem, to wit, "We should be marching shoulder to
>>>shoulder with our Islamic brothers!" [sic]. And so it goes with the
>>>PsychoŽ.
>>>
>>>Notice the latest gambit too how myself, Mock, Sinclair, ET AL,
>>>allegedly "praise" [!?] the events of 1945 while the PsychoŽ is buried
>>>in the here and now informing Geoffrey Sinclair that "space issues"
>>>[cough-cough] are the reason Sinclair's material keeps disappearing
>>>and/or getting snipped or otherwise the PsychoŽ has allegedly "dealt
The problem, I mean for YOU is, when faced with an event that had
nothing to do with World War II, and of course I make reference to
9-11-01, YOU welcome it! YOU then wish for "many more days like it"
going on about the Americans in a froth that still continues YET when
your OWN nation and people suffer a terrorist attack and again unrelated
to World War II, you praise that too claiming it was "not nice, but
fair" and so on and so on. Your own nation and people yet you are
psychotic enough to tell Steven Mock, "Your side won, Mr. Mock" [sic]
even in relation to World War II and you a UK citizen!
I mean you're obviously psychotic and you continue, as I've said before,
to support, justify, defend and embrace international terrorism because
you've found a philosophical 'home' in such public stooging and de facto
become a willing tool for those terrorist organizations who count on
psychotics and social losers like yourself to do their bidding without
risk to themselves. The only thing here is that your given ample rope by
various posters in now various newsgroups to hang yourself over and over
again while concurrently demonstrating your known mental aberrations.
But as Steve Mock points out and I'm forced to agree when one sees your
total non action in re the "isolated community" rhetoric and bosh,
you're essentially a coward to boot but the 'system' you so loathe, your
own nation and people inclusive, simply 'monitor' nutters like you until
nutters and stooges like you 'do' something but then perhaps even the
authorities know you're more a coward and a psychotic than you are a
'doer' of anything! I'll check in with you again, as I said before,
every 15th or 20th post or so of your public drools but in the meantime
do keep demonstrating and reinforcing what virtually everyone can see
for themselves. I believe you're a public joke, a tragic dupe in
essence, and in addition to being a known psychotic, a terrorist
organization stooge and hawker and a demonstrated coward as well. You're
a waste of time 'save' to prove these facts and 'you' do that via your
droolings. And terrorist organization stoogings as the header of this
very thread well documents.
Doc Tony
Gord McFee
<448B28F4...@localnet.com>, "Dr. Anthony J. Lomenzo"
<doc...@localnet.com> wrote:
I would think he would give up on that one, given the thrashing he has
received from you, Steve and Mr Sinclair. But David is a demon for
punishment, if nothing else.
> Hence, the public 'mourning' by Psycho® DEM for one of his professed
> 'heroes' [!?] was certainly not unexpected, yes? Imagine if they ever
> bag Osama bin Laden himself! Ol' Psycho® DEM may just go the seppuku
> route! The kufi, Osama-like cammo field jacket and/or Lenin-like
> leather Greek fisherman hat(s) [and philosophy] notwithstanding.
As I said, certifiably bonkers.
Gord McFee
<1149972430....@y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,
sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
Infinitely predictable.
Gord McFee
<1149971212....@g10g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,
"david_michael" <david_...@onetel.net.uk> wrote:
That would include I presume, the "brave warriors", who show their
immense courage by trying up a single man, while they are armed with
machine guns, and then behead him. Very brave, David Michael's
heroes.
david_michael
Dr. Anthony J. Lomenzo wrote:
> david_michael wrote:
> > sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> >
> >>Dr. Anthony J. Lomenzo wrote:
> >>
> >>>Roger wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>In one age, called the Second Age by some,
> >>>> (an Age yet to come, an Age long past)
> >>>> someone claiming to be david_michael wrote
> >>>> in message
> >>>><1149776509.4...@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>>May a thousand more follow where he led.
> >>>>
> >>>>Gee, I wonder who cuddles is referring to?
> >>>>
> >>>>When are we going to get back to your "cure" for world hunger?
> >>>
> >>>But Roger, have you forgotten the "silver lining" [sic] matter when all
> >>>those Africans "die off from western nations neglect" [sic] yet was it
> >>>else, but "available land opportunities for isolated communities!" [sic]
> >>>
> >>>"world cure" because, hey, the Psycho® himself apparently just dreams up
> >>>these 'cures' albeit for various and sundry unnamed 'others' to try and
> >>>forward" [sic] yet he himself sits on his ass merely listing what ails
> >>>the world but lacking the guts to do anything about it personally. Now,
> >>>and ringing doorbells for the BNP [British National Party] but then even
> >>>Nick Griffin [Chairman of the BNP] had it with the psychotic when the
> >>>was praising it writing in public, "it's not nice, but fair" while
> >>>totally blowing off the BNP, also publicly, in a written spiel that
> >>>included the DEM-gem, to wit, "We should be marching shoulder to
> >>>shoulder with our Islamic brothers!" [sic]. And so it goes with the
> >>>
> >>>Notice the latest gambit too how myself, Mock, Sinclair, ET AL,
> >>>in the here and now informing Geoffrey Sinclair that "space issues"
> >>>[cough-cough] are the reason Sinclair's material keeps disappearing
But YOU don't care. Your willingness to support the nuclear bombings of
Japan when you had no idea how to justify them -- you had to sit back
and allow Mock and Sinclair to take over the task of trying to justify
them -- shows your indignation about civilian life to be bogus. So
GIVEN that you obviously don't care about attacks on civilians, why do
you pretend to be indignant about views that I expressed about 9/11?
Your indignation is utterly bogus.
>YOU then wish for "many more days like it"
> going on about the Americans in a froth that still continues YET when
> your OWN nation and people suffer a terrorist attack and again unrelated
> to World War II, you praise that too claiming it was "not nice, but
> fair" and so on and so on. Your own nation and people yet you are
> psychotic enough to tell Steven Mock, "Your side won, Mr. Mock" [sic]
> even in relation to World War II and you a UK citizen!
Are you seriously arguing, Mr Lomenzo, that people should support the
policies of the government of the country of which they are citizens,
however barbaric those policies might be?
If I were a citizen of Nazi Germany, are you seriously arguing that I
should wholly support the Nazis in their war efforts?
I cannot believe that you honestly hold that view. Again, I think that
it is utterly bogus.
> I mean you're obviously psychotic
Says the man who supports the nuclear bombing of entire cities full of
civilians, even when he doesn't have the slightest idea of how to
defend his support for that policy and has to withdraw from the debate
and leave it to others!
May I ask you something, sir? Do you support the old Soviet policy of
incarcerating political dissidents in mental institutions? I ask
because the obvious implication of your much repeated denigration of
the mental health of those who argue against you seems to be that we
should be imprisoned in secure institutions and given psychoactive
drugs. If that's what you support, do you have the guts to come
straight out and say it?
> and you continue, as I've said before,
> to support, justify, defend and embrace international terrorism
An outright lie! I have unreservedly condemned American and British
terrorism in the Middle East and elsewhere. You meanwhile have publicly
advocated the nuclear bombing of entire cities full of civilians --
even when you have no idea why! I put it to you,sir, that YOU are the
terrorist supporter, not I.
> because
> you've found a philosophical 'home' in such public stooging
What is 'public stooging'?
> and de facto
> become a willing tool for those terrorist organizations who count on
> psychotics and social losers like yourself to do their bidding without
> risk to themselves.
No, I have never willingly supported the British, American, Israeli or
similar governments.
> The only thing here is that your given ample rope by
> various posters in now various newsgroups to hang yourself over and over
> again while concurrently demonstrating your known mental aberrations.
Well given that most of your 'hanging' seems to involve running away
from quite straightforward argument, I am more than happy to permit you
to engage in this 'hanging'.
> But as Steve Mock points out and I'm forced to agree when one sees your
> total non action in re the "isolated community" rhetoric and bosh,
> you're essentially a coward to boot but the 'system' you so loathe, your
> own nation and people inclusive, simply 'monitor' nutters like you until
> nutters and stooges like you 'do' something but then perhaps even the
> authorities know you're more a coward and a psychotic than you are a
> 'doer' of anything!
Well, at least I'm prepared to argue my case, Mr Lomenzo.
> I'll check in with you again, as I said before,
> every 15th or 20th post
Translation: you wish to leave it to others to address my arguments
against your position rather than defending it yourself.
Doesn't that rather suggest that you're starting to lose confidence in
your ability to defend your position persuasively or at all?
>or so of your public drools but in the meantime
> do keep demonstrating and reinforcing what virtually everyone can see
> for themselves. I believe you're a public joke, a tragic dupe in
> essence, and in addition to being a known psychotic, a terrorist
> organization stooge and hawker and a demonstrated coward as well. You're
> a waste of time 'save' to prove these facts and 'you' do that via your
> droolings. And terrorist organization stoogings as the header of this
> very thread well documents.
I'm just a poster on Usenet, Mr Lomenzo. Nothing more. An ordinary
person engaging in political debate over the Internet during breaks
from work. I am sorry that my views have upset you -- perhaps you
should seriously ask yourself whether the upset that you feel arises
from the reasons that you have advanced or whether your anger stems
from the fact that I am rather successfully forcing you to question
your position on the goodness of the Allied forces during the closing
days of World War II.
DEM
Dr. Gassen Burnham
Dr. Anthony J. Lomenzo wrote:
> david_michael wrote:
> > sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> >
> >>Dr. Anthony J. Lomenzo wrote:
> >>
> >>>Roger wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>In one age, called the Second Age by some,
> >>>> (an Age yet to come, an Age long past)
> >>>> someone claiming to be david_michael wrote
> >>>> in message
> >>>><1149776509.4...@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>>May a thousand more follow where he led.
> >>>>
> >>>>Gee, I wonder who cuddles is referring to?
> >>>>
> >>>>When are we going to get back to your "cure" for world hunger?
> >>>
> >>>But Roger, have you forgotten the "silver lining" [sic] matter when all
> >>>those Africans "die off from western nations neglect" [sic] yet was it
> >>>else, but "available land opportunities for isolated communities!" [sic]
> >>>
> >>>"world cure" because, hey, the Psycho® himself apparently just dreams up
> >>>these 'cures' albeit for various and sundry unnamed 'others' to try and
> >>>forward" [sic] yet he himself sits on his ass merely listing what ails
> >>>the world but lacking the guts to do anything about it personally. Now,
> >>>and ringing doorbells for the BNP [British National Party] but then even
> >>>Nick Griffin [Chairman of the BNP] had it with the psychotic when the
> >>>was praising it writing in public, "it's not nice, but fair" while
> >>>totally blowing off the BNP, also publicly, in a written spiel that
> >>>included the DEM-gem, to wit, "We should be marching shoulder to
> >>>shoulder with our Islamic brothers!" [sic]. And so it goes with the
> >>>
> >>>Notice the latest gambit too how myself, Mock, Sinclair, ET AL,
> >>>in the here and now informing Geoffrey Sinclair that "space issues"
> >>>[cough-cough] are the reason Sinclair's material keeps disappearing
Take a deep breath Anthony, step back from that VDU, take the dog for a
walk and think about what you just wrote.
You continue to suffer under the false logic that it is okay for the
Jewnited States to terrorise others, but it is bad when the chickens
come home to roost.
The sooner Arab, Jew and American exterminate eachother, the sooner the
rest of us can have some peace.
Ben Cramer
"Gord McFee" <gord....@rogers.com> wrote in message
news:2svm82pgo7ke35pmu...@4ax.com...
> On 10 Jun 2006 13:26:52 -0700, in
> <1149971212....@g10g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,
> "david_michael" <david_...@onetel.net.uk> wrote:
>
>> Dr Ewan Jackson wrote:
>> > david_michael wrote:
>> > > May a thousand more follow where he led.
>> >
>> > What did you think of the London bombings, by the way?
>> >
>> > Are you hoping for more of that in your own country?
>> >
>> > Ewan
>>
>> No. I am hoping that our government will cease its policy of terror
>> bombing in other people's countries, and that the monsters in our
>> government who were responsible for that policy will be brought to
>> book, so that those wonderful young people do not feel compelled to
>> kill themselves in that way.
>
> That would include I presume, the "brave warriors", who show their
> immense courage by trying up a single man, while they are armed with
> machine guns, and then behead him. Very brave, David Michael's
> heroes.
In exactly the same class as the IDF thugs who took out a Palestinian family
picnicing on the beach, don't you think?
sm...@nizkor.org
our positions for us, rather than basing his disagreement on anything
we have actually said or written.
I hardly feel the need, at this stage, to defend my honour against
someone who already has a well-earned reputation for vastly
oversimplifying if not out-in-out fabricating the views he would like
to be arguing against, so as to make them better fit his cheap *tu
quoque* accusation of hypocrisy, but I do think at least a few
clarifications are in order.
david_michael wrote:
Did I say that? No? Where is this coming from, then?
Even if it was the act of a few rogue soldiers, and even if they were
operating under stress, someone put them there, someone subjected them
to just that sort of "stress".
I have actually made this point to you very directly before, in the
course of my analysis of war ethics, which evidently did go well over
your head. War inevitably causes suffering - to civilians and
combattants alike. Therefore, any decision to initiate or escalate war
- however noble the intentions might be - is (except, perhaps, under
the most extreme of circumstances) a crime of aggression.
I have applied this principle quite specifically to the war in Iraq.
Whatever good may have come of it (the fall of Saddam Hussein), the
U.S. nonetheless unleased a hell on that region that could only have
led to considerable civilian casualties and suffering, as well as an
ongoing breakdown of social order. They are therefore morally
responsible for all of said suffering, even - to some degree - that
which they did not inflict directly.
If you have read any of my posts on this matter in the past, you know
that this is my view.
> Moreover, soldiers operating 'under stress', etc. etc. Condemning
> Haditha does not involve condemning the American president (which even
> Mock and Lomenzo might well do), or the American imperial project
> (which even Mock and Lomenzo might do), much less the core political
> principles at the heart of American foreign policy (the holy cows that
> I suspect Mock will never sacrifice).
Well, its hard for me to "sacrifice" them since I have no idea what
"core political values" you are talking about or why it is you think it
goes without saying that they are inherently to blame. This seems to
be your usual vague rhetoric - a variation of *post hoc ergo propter
hoc* - designed to allow you to take the mere fact that bad things
happen in the world as a pretext to blame them on whatever you feel
like blaming them on - democracy, multicultural diversity, "Western"
values, globalisation and trade, and what not - and condemning anyone
who fails to share your ideological assumptions as some sort of
hypocrite.
> However, these people cannot condemn Hiroshima, or even Nagasaki,
> without running into major difficulties (hence their rather comic
> attempts to avoid serious engagement with me on the issue).
Are you for real? How many times, and at what length, have I gone back
and forth with you on this subject - pointing out, in clear terms, just
what the moral distinctions are between an excessive act of war and
terrorism - with your only response being to distort my every argument
into the same straw-man and then run away the minute you ran out of
your own diversion gambits. The only comic evasions I have seen have
been coming from your side.
I can't answer your point because its a "troll"
I won't answer your point because you're just "playing"
I can't answer your point because it would be a violation of the 2006
UK Terrorism Act
You're a hypocrite who believes in massacring civilians for no reason
and I won't have anything more to do with you
If we seem less than enthusastic about going around that same tree
*again*, its only because we've been there, done that, bought the
T-shirt, and are frankly bored. There's really no good reason to keep
engaging the newsgroup joke.
> The moment
> you say that 'these attacks were an atrocity on a par with the worst
> excesses of the Nazis/Soviets/Islamists' then the whole idea of a
> 'hierarchy of ideological saintliness' -- central to their worldview --
> goes out the window.
If you claim that this is central to my worldview, I would appreciate
your providing a quote where such a heirarchy is evident.
> Western-style 'democracy' is no longer something
> special that preserves (despite the counter-evidence of Yugoslavia,
> where Milosevic was actually elected democratically after the collapse
> of communism in free elections in December 1990) a higher regard for
> human life than the alternative systems (Nazism, communism, Islam) that
> it demonizes (and in the case of Mock and Lomenzo medicalizes).
Again, I never said any such thing. I think that *I* have a more
honest and consistent respect for human life than *you*.
I don't think democratic political systems inherently produce greater
respect for human life. They can, at times - particularly during the
early stages of democratisation - bring out the worst in populations
(as the Palestinians only recently demonstrated).
The fact of the matter is, Dr. Michael, that given the nature of
current international states system, states - however they are governed
- will always be compelled to place the lives and interests of their
own citizens above those of others. If you have a better system in
mind for governing international relations, I'd love to hear it, but
frankly I would imagine that such creativity is beyond the capacity of
a "national anarchist".
I do happen to think that democratic systems - which necessitate not
just democratic institutions but also democratic cultures to support
them - designed to allow space for maximum measure of diversity - in
terms of people, culture, political interests, etc. - are more free and
just than those that use the state to enforce conformity to some kind
of organic ideal imposed from on-high. But that view has nothing to do
with what such states and their leaders are capable of in their foreign
relations. Indeed, history has shown that the most liberal and
tolerant of states are often the most vicious against outsiders when
crossed.
Anyway, I hope this clarifies things. Not that I don't expect you to
simply caricature my position into the same absurd straw-man again as
soon as it next suits you, given that lying really is like breathing to
you.
Steven Mock
Gord McFee
<e6g3mb$312t$1...@otis.netspace.net.au>, "Ben Cramer"
<[remove]bencr...@gmail.com> wrote:
Nope.
david_michael
> So wonderful to see that David Michael still claims the right to invent
> our positions for us, rather than basing his disagreement on anything
> we have actually said or written.
OK, the old 'nailing jelly to the wall' troll -- try to attack what
Mock seems to be saying and he then denies saying it. We'll see this
below.
> I hardly feel the need, at this stage, to defend my honour
('Honour' -- of a man who attempts to excuse unnecessary nuclear
attacks on entire cities full of civilians? Right.)
Mr Mock clearly stated: 'He [he means I] will not mention Haditha,
because he knows full well that when confronted with the prospect of a
*real* massacre of civilians, we will not "praise" it at all,
regardless of the nationality of either the perpetrators or the
victims.' My point was that Mr Mock's willingness to condemn Haditha is
no surprise because condemning Haditha does not NECESSITATE condemning
anyone other than the soldiers involved. In short, I see no reason to
be impressed by Mr Mock's willingness to condemn Haditha as, in this
instance, responsibility for the atrocitiy will be placed at the door
of the soldiers involved, not the system behind their involvement. Of
course, if Mr Mock wishes to go on to condemn the American political
system and others like it, then my ears will prick up in interest . . .
but whose betting that's going to happen?
> Even if it was the act of a few rogue soldiers, and even if they were
> operating under stress, someone put them there, someone subjected them
> to just that sort of "stress".
The point is that you can condemn SOME atrocities (such as Haditha)
without condemning the political system that led to them because they
did not result from specific decisions taken by high-level politicians.
Other atrocities (Nagasaki, Dresden) arise DIRECTLY from high-level
political decisions rather than the actions of rogue troops. You cannot
fob them off on the soldiers who dropped the bombs/pulled the trigger.
> I have actually made this point to you very directly before, in the
> course of my analysis of war ethics, which evidently did go well over
> your head. War inevitably causes suffering - to civilians and
> combattants alike. Therefore, any decision to initiate or escalate war
> - however noble the intentions might be - is (except, perhaps, under
> the most extreme of circumstances) a crime of aggression.
Oh look -- Mr Mock has just taken the position that British and
American involvement in World War II was a crime of aggression (after
all, the German invasion of Poland and the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbour might have been examples of 'casus belli' but they were hardly
'the most extreme of circumstances'). Fine! Now is he going to argue
that there should have been war crimes tribunals to hang British and
American wartime leaders? Is he going to argue that Bush and Blair
should be given the same sort of treatment that they lined up for the
Nazi leaders? Or even for Milosevic? Or for Saddam? Should we hold
special remembrance days for their victims? Should they be demonized in
our media night after night? And finally -- the real point -- should
the political systems that led to them be demonized and the supporters
of those systems medicalized and marginalized? No?
But once again, we see Mr Mock slithering around like a jelly who
really doesn't want to be nailed to the wall. Remember this exchange
back in September 2005?
ME: 'A war against a brutal oppressor is not an atrocity, surely?'
MOCK: 'Bingo, Dr. Michael. You get it. Now let's see if you can draw
out the implications of this revelation...'
So sometimes he argues that 'any decision to initiate or escalate war
*however noble the intentions might be'* [my emphasis] - is (except,
perhaps, under the most extreme of circumstances) a crime of
aggression.' At other times he's OK with war against a brutal
oppressor. I think we can probably reach agreement on something
approximating the latter position, but then there's huge scope for
disagreement re. WHICH wars are OK and which not, which of course gives
Mock the scope to support the wars that serve the cause of
American-style neoliberal globalism while acting all moral and
indignant about those that don't.
> I have applied this principle quite specifically to the war in Iraq.
> Whatever good may have come of it (the fall of Saddam Hussein), the
> U.S. nonetheless unleased a hell on that region that could only have
> led to considerable civilian casualties and suffering, as well as an
> ongoing breakdown of social order. They are therefore morally
> responsible for all of said suffering, even - to some degree - that
> which they did not inflict directly.
>
> If you have read any of my posts on this matter in the past, you know
> that this is my view.
So are we now going to see Mr Mock campaigning against Western-style
'democracy' because it led to this state of affairs? Mr Mock appears to
hold that the Nazis and Al-Qaeda were/are 'criminal' and he doesn't
hesitate to condemn them. Here, in Iraq, we have Western 'democratic'
regimes carrying out actions that he now seems to be saying he believes
to be 'criminal'. Are we now going to get a clear and ringing
condemnation of such regimes from Mr Mock?
Or is it the case that he has one set of standards for American crimes
and other for everyone else?
> > Moreover, soldiers operating 'under stress', etc. etc. Condemning
> > Haditha does not involve condemning the American president (which even
> > Mock and Lomenzo might well do), or the American imperial project
> > (which even Mock and Lomenzo might do), much less the core political
> > principles at the heart of American foreign policy (the holy cows that
> > I suspect Mock will never sacrifice).
>
> Well, its hard for me to "sacrifice" them since I have no idea what
> "core political values" you are talking about or why it is you think it
> goes without saying that they are inherently to blame.
Mr Mock has no idea about the 'core political principles at the heart
of American foreign policy'?
This is how George W Bush described them on 29 January 2002:
<begin quote>
America will lead by defending liberty and justice because they are
right and true and unchanging for all people everywhere. No nation owns
these aspirations, and no nation is exempt from them. We have no
intention of imposing our culture -- but America will always stand firm
for the non-negotiable demands of human dignity: the rule of law ...
limits on the power of the state; respect for women; private property;
free speech; equal justice; and religious tolerance.
America will take the side of brave men and women who advocate these
values around the world -- including the Islamic world -- because we
have a greater objective than eliminating threats and containing
resentment. We seek a just and peaceful world beyond the war on terror.
In this moment of opportunity, a common danger is erasing old
rivalries. America is working with Russia, China, and India in ways we
never have before to achieve peace and prosperity. In every region,
free markets and free trade and free societies are proving their power
to lift lives. Together with friends and allies from Europe to Asia,
from Africa to Latin America, we will demonstrate that the forces of
terror cannot stop the momentum of freedom.
The last time I spoke here, I expressed the hope that life would return
to normal. In some ways, it has. In others, it never will. Those of us
who have lived through these challenging times have been changed by
them. We've come to know truths that we will never question: Evil is
real, and it must be opposed.
<end quote>
In short:
1. There are values 'no nation is exempt from'.
2. They include things like 'liberty' and 'justice' because they are
'right' and 'true' and 'unchanging for all people everywhere'.
3. They include 'limits on the power of the state' -- i.e. no nation is
exempt from such (unspecified) limits.
4. The values include 'private property' and 'religious tolerance'.
5. People who disagree are evil, evil must be opposed, and big
countries like America must get out there and oppose them.
> This seems to
> be your usual vague rhetoric - a variation of *post hoc ergo propter
> hoc* -
I do not think that there is anything vague about
'core political principles at the heart of American foreign policy'
given that they have been spelled out so clearly by the people who are
intent on imposing them on the world.
> designed to allow you to take the mere fact that bad things
> happen in the world as a pretext to blame them on whatever you feel
> like blaming them on - democracy, multicultural diversity, "Western"
> values, globalisation and trade, and what not - and condemning anyone
> who fails to share your ideological assumptions as some sort of
> hypocrite.
Well if Mr Mock wants to make a case that we should not blame things
like mass starvation, wars, authoritarian multiculturalism (i.e. you
will be multicultural whether you like it or not), etc. etc. on the
spread of global neoliberalism then I'd be fascinated to hear his
argument.
> > However, these people cannot condemn Hiroshima, or even Nagasaki,
> > without running into major difficulties (hence their rather comic
> > attempts to avoid serious engagement with me on the issue).
>
> Are you for real? How many times, and at what length, have I gone back
> and forth with you on this subject - pointing out, in clear terms, just
> what the moral distinctions are between an excessive act of war and
> terrorism - with your only response being to distort my every argument
> into the same straw-man and then run away the minute you ran out of
> your own diversion gambits. The only comic evasions I have seen have
> been coming from your side.
I don't think he's produced an argument that successfully makes
distinctions between an 'excessive act of war' and 'terrorism' -- not
least because the terms 'act of war' and 'terrorism' are so vague. If I
remember rightly, he ended up conceding that in practice the powerful
will end up deciding what falls into which category.
And who are the powerful? Well bless my little cotton socks -- we mean
America, don't we!
> I can't answer your point because its a "troll"
But he's admitted to trolling, 'playing' and 'toying' in the past.
> I won't answer your point because you're just "playing"
Which he's admitted!
> I can't answer your point because it would be a violation of the 2006 UK Terrorism Act
A very real concern when people ask me to justify 9/11 -- to do so
would be a clear and direct violation of that very Act.
> You're a hypocrite who believes in massacring civilians for no reason
Fair comment in Mr Mock's case! Look -- he KNOWS there were
alternatives to Hiroshima (and certainly Nagasaki). I've spelled them
out to him repeatedly. He's even admitted to having a weak spot for
that argument. Yet time and time again, instead of condemning these
acts outright and joining with me in ridiculing Lomenzo, he's right out
there supporting the murderous little squirt!
> and I won't have anything more to do with you
Where did I type that, as a matter of interest?
> If we seem less than enthusastic about going around that same tree
> *again*, its only because we've been there, done that, bought the
> T-shirt, and are frankly bored. There's really no good reason to keep
> engaging the newsgroup joke.
Sure there is. Time and time again, he and Lomenzo try to construct
themselves as the good guys opposing the evils of the world -- which
they seem to equate with the long-dead ideology of national-socialism
and the newer phenomenon of militant Islam. Every time they get on
their moral high horses I can knock them off very easily by pointing
out how badly they seem to want to find excuses for the taking of
civilian lives when the lives involved belong to citizens of countries
that have opposed America, and when the folks taking those lives are
Americans or their allies.
> > The moment
> > you say that 'these attacks were an atrocity on a par with the worst
> > excesses of the Nazis/Soviets/Islamists' then the whole idea of a
> > 'hierarchy of ideological saintliness' -- central to their worldview --
> > goes out the window.
>
> If you claim that this is central to my worldview, I would appreciate
> your providing a quote where such a heirarchy is evident.
I'm sure he would -- and one could spend hours trying to program
Google's search engine to solve THAT one!
Instead I'll simply ask him straight out. Mr Mock, do you believe
Nazism to be worse than Western neoliberal globalism? Do you believe
militant Islam to be worse than Western neoliberal globalism? If you
cannot answer both with an unequivocal 'no' then you obviously believe
in a hierarchy of ideological saintliness.
> > Western-style 'democracy' is no longer something
> > special that preserves (despite the counter-evidence of Yugoslavia,
> > where Milosevic was actually elected democratically after the collapse
> > of communism in free elections in December 1990) a higher regard for
> > human life than the alternative systems (Nazism, communism, Islam) that
> > it demonizes (and in the case of Mock and Lomenzo medicalizes).
>
> Again, I never said any such thing. I think that *I* have a more
> honest and consistent respect for human life than *you*.
I disagree. I think that the fundamental difference is that I take a
very, very long-term view of things. The existing state of affairs will
lead to generation after generation after generation of poverty,
exploitation, oppression, war, misery.
> I don't think democratic political systems inherently produce greater
> respect for human life.
Now THAT's interesting. Perhaps at last you're beginning to see the
light.
> They can, at times - particularly during the
> early stages of democratisation - bring out the worst in populations
> (as the Palestinians only recently demonstrated).
Perhaps you would feel differently if YOUR child had just been killed
by Israeli missiles.
But what I think you're driving at is that in their early stages the
neoliberal globalists haven't had the opportunity to subvert the entire
process so that it only generates results that conform with Mr Bush's
vision of what's acceptable.
> The fact of the matter is, Dr. Michael, that given the nature of
> current international states system, states - however they are governed
> - will always be compelled to place the lives and interests of their
> own citizens above those of others.
Not so. Nobody compelled Mr Blair to invade Iraq placing the lives and
interests of British citizens in peril -- including my own.
> If you have a better system in
> mind for governing international relations, I'd love to hear it, but
> frankly I would imagine that such creativity is beyond the capacity of
> a "national anarchist".
I suspect that even national-anarchism wouldn't work -- at least not in
the modern world. My hunch is that the communities would simply be
subverted. It's already happened in Orania. You need to overthrow the
international globalist system FIRST and THEN let people establish
their own communities, taking protective measures to ensure no
resurgence of Western values arises. I must admit that I have a lot
more time nowadays for people like Abimael Guzman and Prachanda, whom
I'd cheerfully have shot a few years ago.
> I do happen to think that democratic systems - which necessitate not
> just democratic institutions but also democratic cultures to support
> them
'Democratic cultures'?
You mean they have to be thoroughly controlled by people who conform to
Bush's requirements?
> - designed to allow space for maximum measure of diversity
Like we have in Britain where the only three parties given significant
media coverage -- Labour, Tory and Liberal Democrat -- all stand for
almost exactly the same things?
Or like in America where we have those two vastly different monoliths
-- Democrat and Republican -- slogging it out, with no space whatsoever
for any other grouping to make a significant impact?
- in
> terms of people, culture, political interests, etc. - are more free and
> just than those that use the state to enforce conformity to some kind
> of organic ideal imposed from on-high.
I don't think that they are. You just have DIFFERENT constraints on
your freedom. The primary constraint is and always has been financial.
About a quarter of the world's population have to survive on less than
a dollar a day -- for them, and the millions upon millions more who
have to survive on two or three dollars a day, these 'freedoms' are
largely academic. They can't say or do anything that would jeopardize
their employment opportunities, or that would cost them money. Even
those of us with earning potential exceeding a hundred pounds per day
find very real economic constraints on what we can or cannot do or say
in public!
Same with justice. The greatest injustices I have personally
experienced have been at the hands of non-state actors -- private
employers, police officers and media executives. These can be every bit
as devastating as the dodgy practices of party officials in some Nazi
or communist setup.
The two constraints interact. Unless you are exceptionally wealthy, you
cannot use the courts to combat injustice perpetrated by non-state
actors.
> But that view has nothing to do
> with what such states and their leaders are capable of in their foreign
> relations. Indeed, history has shown that the most liberal and
> tolerant of states are often the most vicious against outsiders when
> crossed.
Wow. Well you're certainly on the right lines with that one.
> Anyway, I hope this clarifies things. Not that I don't expect you to
> simply caricature my position into the same absurd straw-man again as
> soon as it next suits you, given that lying really is like breathing to
> you.
A very serious charge. Are you going to back that up with anything
approximating to a specific example?
DEM
Ben Cramer
And how is it not the same?
Or do you now subscribe to the recently floated rumour that the Palestinians
destroyed these people?
sm...@nizkor.org
> sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> > So wonderful to see that David Michael still claims the right to invent
> > our positions for us, rather than basing his disagreement on anything
> > we have actually said or written.
>
> OK, the old 'nailing jelly to the wall' troll -- try to attack what
> Mock seems to be saying and he then denies saying it. We'll see this
> below.
Of course I will deny saying what I never said, Dr. Michael.
> > I hardly feel the need, at this stage, to defend my honour
>
> ('Honour' -- of a man who attempts to excuse unnecessary nuclear
> attacks on entire cities full of civilians? Right.)
Precisely. I have never done any such thing, as anyone who has read my
statements on the matter knows full well.
And, given the length of time you've been at this, I figure even those
who have *not* read my statements on the matter but are simply familiar
with just how shameless you are at speciously attributing such
straw-men to your opposition will assume that you are making this stuff
up whole-cloth, and hence I see no need to defend myself against this
smear every time you level it.
According to the moral principles I have articulated, now and in the
past, it most certainly does necessitate condemning those other than
the soldiers immediately involved, as I just explained.
> In short, I see no reason to
> be impressed by Mr Mock's willingness to condemn Haditha as, in this
> instance, responsibility for the atrocitiy will be placed at the door
> of the soldiers involved, not the system behind their involvement.
If you were listening, I have just finished placing a large mesaure of
responsibility at the door of the state that put them there and its
leaders.
I have no idea what you mean by "the system behind their involvement",
and I doubt that you have any intention of elaborating either.
> > I have actually made this point to you very directly before, in the
> > course of my analysis of war ethics, which evidently did go well over
> > your head. War inevitably causes suffering - to civilians and
> > combattants alike. Therefore, any decision to initiate or escalate war
> > - however noble the intentions might be - is (except, perhaps, under
> > the most extreme of circumstances) a crime of aggression.
>
> Oh look -- Mr Mock has just taken the position that British and
> American involvement in World War II was a crime of aggression (after
> all, the German invasion of Poland and the Japanese attack on Pearl
> Harbour might have been examples of 'casus belli' but they were hardly
> 'the most extreme of circumstances'). Fine! Now is he going to argue
> that there should have been war crimes tribunals to hang British and
> American wartime leaders?
I suggest you pick up a primer on basic international relations, Dr.
Michael. The first state to use military force outside of its own
borders is committing aggression, to which other states are entitled to
respond in order to *counter* said aggression. Germany used force to
invade Poland, to which Britain and any other country is thereafter
entitled to use counter-force to intervene. In the case of the U.S.,
Japan attacked its sovereign territory, to which any state is
*compelled* to respond.
In any case, I would consider genocide to be among "the most extreme of
circumstances", in which case, regardless of these "casus belli", any
state was legitimately entitled to use and continue to use force
against Nazi Germany at that point, at least insofar as doing so served
to put an end to such crimes.
> Is he going to argue that Bush and Blair
> should be given the same sort of treatment that they lined up for the
> Nazi leaders?
In the case of Bush, at least, I think it would be a hell of a trial to
see.
> Or even for Milosevic? Or for Saddam? Should we hold
> special remembrance days for their victims? Should they be demonized in
> our media night after night? And finally -- the real point -- should
> the political systems that led to them be demonized and the supporters
> of those systems medicalized and marginalized? No?
What are you babbling about?
> But once again, we see Mr Mock slithering around like a jelly who
> really doesn't want to be nailed to the wall. Remember this exchange
> back in September 2005?
>
> ME: 'A war against a brutal oppressor is not an atrocity, surely?'
>
> MOCK: 'Bingo, Dr. Michael. You get it. Now let's see if you can draw
> out the implications of this revelation...'
>
> So sometimes he argues that 'any decision to initiate or escalate war
> *however noble the intentions might be'* [my emphasis] - is (except,
> perhaps, under the most extreme of circumstances) a crime of
> aggression.' At other times he's OK with war against a brutal
> oppressor.
I fail to see the inconsistency. It is simply a question of you and I
having a different understanding of what an "oppressor" amounts to. I
set objective and testable definitions of this term, applicable to all
contexts; even, it seems, to the side you label as "mine".
You just use it to justify violence of any wanton sort against anyone
you don't happen to agree with.
> > I have applied this principle quite specifically to the war in Iraq.
> > Whatever good may have come of it (the fall of Saddam Hussein), the
> > U.S. nonetheless unleased a hell on that region that could only have
> > led to considerable civilian casualties and suffering, as well as an
> > ongoing breakdown of social order. They are therefore morally
> > responsible for all of said suffering, even - to some degree - that
> > which they did not inflict directly.
> >
> > If you have read any of my posts on this matter in the past, you know
> > that this is my view.
>
> So are we now going to see Mr Mock campaigning against Western-style
> 'democracy' because it led to this state of affairs?
I do not believe that "Western-style democracy" is what leads to this
state of affairs, Dr. Michael, and you have made no argument supporting
such a view
I think I made it clear that I consider it to be merely the nature of
the international states system, regardless of what sort of political
regime is ruling the component states.
I do wish you'd at least *read* what I have written before you build
your straw-men.
I'm no fan of George Bush and his foreign policy, but these basic
values, at least, I have no problem with. I do wish they would be
adhered to more in a spirit of peace and co-operation than aggressive
missionizing, but I have yet to see you make an argument as to how the
basic values *themselves* are responsible for the manner in which they
have been abused, save for the very *post hoc ergo propter hoc* fallacy
I described earlier.
> > designed to allow you to take the mere fact that bad things
> > happen in the world as a pretext to blame them on whatever you feel
> > like blaming them on - democracy, multicultural diversity, "Western"
> > values, globalisation and trade, and what not - and condemning anyone
> > who fails to share your ideological assumptions as some sort of
> > hypocrite.
>
> Well if Mr Mock wants to make a case that we should not blame things
> like mass starvation, wars, authoritarian multiculturalism (i.e. you
> will be multicultural whether you like it or not), etc. etc. on the
> spread of global neoliberalism then I'd be fascinated to hear his
> argument.
Argument for what? That sentence makes no sense at all.
> > > However, these people cannot condemn Hiroshima, or even Nagasaki,
> > > without running into major difficulties (hence their rather comic
> > > attempts to avoid serious engagement with me on the issue).
> >
> > Are you for real? How many times, and at what length, have I gone back
> > and forth with you on this subject - pointing out, in clear terms, just
> > what the moral distinctions are between an excessive act of war and
> > terrorism - with your only response being to distort my every argument
> > into the same straw-man and then run away the minute you ran out of
> > your own diversion gambits. The only comic evasions I have seen have
> > been coming from your side.
>
> I don't think he's produced an argument that successfully makes
> distinctions between an 'excessive act of war' and 'terrorism' -- not
> least because the terms 'act of war' and 'terrorism' are so vague.
Which is precisely why I went great lengths to clarify the meanings of
these terms with testable definitions in the very exchange to which I
am referring which you ran away from.
Like I said, Dr. Michael, I am ready to continue whenever you are.
<various boiler-plate straw-men and evasions snipped>
> > > The moment
> > > you say that 'these attacks were an atrocity on a par with the worst
> > > excesses of the Nazis/Soviets/Islamists' then the whole idea of a
> > > 'hierarchy of ideological saintliness' -- central to their worldview --
> > > goes out the window.
> >
> > If you claim that this is central to my worldview, I would appreciate
> > your providing a quote where such a heirarchy is evident.
>
> I'm sure he would -- and one could spend hours trying to program
> Google's search engine to solve THAT one!
>
> Instead I'll simply ask him straight out. Mr Mock, do you believe
> Nazism to be worse than Western neoliberal globalism? Do you believe
> militant Islam to be worse than Western neoliberal globalism? If you
> cannot answer both with an unequivocal 'no' then you obviously believe
> in a hierarchy of ideological saintliness.
I cannot answer with an unequivocal anything, since "neoliberal
globalism" is a term that means nothing to anyone except you.
Do I think the basic principles upon which the political and social
systems of according to which Western democracies are governed are
superior to those of Nazism and militant Islam? Hell yes. For reasons
I have already explained - because democratic systems underpinned by
democratic cultures have a wider space to support individual diversity
and mobility - in terms of people, culture, political interests, etc. -
and are therefore more free and just than those that use the state to
enforce conformity to some kind of organic ideal imposed from on-high.
I will grant, that space is not limtitless. *Every* society sets
limits to ensure that the basic rules of access and inclusion remain
roughly consistent from one day to the next, such that people can live
their lives. Hence there are those - like yourself - who are outside
of the mainstream (and hopefully will remain there). But even you seem
to have admitted in the past that our systems here at present allow for
a wider space for a free and diverse civil society than that of any
other functioning at present, and at least contain the principle that
freedom is measured by how wide that space is maintained.
This is not to say that the leaders governing such states - or indeed
entire societies governed by such systems - are incapable of committing
crimes, and to the extent that they do they should be held accountable
by international law.
Anyway, most of your political ranting is addressed by the above, so I
will snip most of it, as it is hopelessly boring and simpleminded
pseudo-revolutionary kitch for the most part anyway.
> > > Western-style 'democracy' is no longer something
> > > special that preserves (despite the counter-evidence of Yugoslavia,
> > > where Milosevic was actually elected democratically after the collapse
> > > of communism in free elections in December 1990) a higher regard for
> > > human life than the alternative systems (Nazism, communism, Islam) that
> > > it demonizes (and in the case of Mock and Lomenzo medicalizes).
> >
> > Again, I never said any such thing. I think that *I* have a more
> > honest and consistent respect for human life than *you*.
>
> I disagree. I think that the fundamental difference is that I take a
> very, very long-term view of things. The existing state of affairs will
> lead to generation after generation after generation of poverty,
> exploitation, oppression, war, misery.
Whatever, sport. If you say so.
> > If you have a better system in
> > mind for governing international relations, I'd love to hear it, but
> > frankly I would imagine that such creativity is beyond the capacity of
> > a "national anarchist".
>
> I suspect that even national-anarchism wouldn't work -- at least not in
> the modern world. My hunch is that the communities would simply be
> subverted. It's already happened in Orania. You need to overthrow the
> international globalist system FIRST and THEN let people establish
> their own communities, taking protective measures to ensure no
> resurgence of Western values arises.
Now this is fascinating. What sort of measures would those be? Who
would enforce them? Just what "Western values" do you think must be
scourged in order for the system to function?
Steven Mock
david_michael
sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> david_michael wrote:
> > sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> > > So wonderful to see that David Michael still claims the right to invent
> > > our positions for us, rather than basing his disagreement on anything
> > > we have actually said or written.
> >
> > OK, the old 'nailing jelly to the wall' troll -- try to attack what
> > Mock seems to be saying and he then denies saying it. We'll see this
> > below.
>
> Of course I will deny saying what I never said, Dr. Michael.
The problem is that it's very difficult to pin you down on what you ARE
saying. One moment you appear to almost, in a much qualified sort of
way, come out to condemn the nuclear bombings in Japan -- the next
moment you're supporting Lomenzo who's all in favour of them and
apparently attempting to excuse them.
> > > I hardly feel the need, at this stage, to defend my honour
> >
> > ('Honour' -- of a man who attempts to excuse unnecessary nuclear
> > attacks on entire cities full of civilians? Right.)
>
> Precisely. I have never done any such thing, as anyone who has read my
> statements on the matter knows full well.
You've been backing Lomenzo up to the hilt -- and he, unlike you,
doesn't pussyfoot about when it comes to supporting those nukings.
> And, given the length of time you've been at this, I figure even those
> who have *not* read my statements on the matter but are simply familiar
> with just how shameless you are at speciously attributing such
> straw-men to your opposition will assume that you are making this stuff
> up whole-cloth, and hence I see no need to defend myself against this
> smear every time you level it.
Then are you prepared to condemn without reservation the nuclear
bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and to condemn those responsible
for them as criminals? Yes or no?
OK, so who are you prepared to condemn for Iraq and what do you think
should happen to those individuals and to the system that allowed these
crimes to be committed?
> > In short, I see no reason to
> > be impressed by Mr Mock's willingness to condemn Haditha as, in this
> > instance, responsibility for the atrocitiy will be placed at the door
> > of the soldiers involved, not the system behind their involvement.
>
> If you were listening, I have just finished placing a large mesaure of
> responsibility at the door of the state that put them there and its
> leaders.
>
> I have no idea what you mean by "the system behind their involvement",
> and I doubt that you have any intention of elaborating either.
In the case of Haditha, my suspicion is that the soldiers directly
involved in the action will be tried. They are putting up a robust
defence and they might therefore get off free. The politicians
responsible for putting them there, and the individuals behind those
politicians, will not, I suspect, suffer any 'consequences' (to use Mr
Bush's term), nor, I anticipate, will there be any changes to the
American domestic political system to prevent such crimes in future. Is
that clearer?
> > > I have actually made this point to you very directly before, in the
> > > course of my analysis of war ethics, which evidently did go well over
> > > your head. War inevitably causes suffering - to civilians and
> > > combattants alike. Therefore, any decision to initiate or escalate war
> > > - however noble the intentions might be - is (except, perhaps, under
> > > the most extreme of circumstances) a crime of aggression.
> >
> > Oh look -- Mr Mock has just taken the position that British and
> > American involvement in World War II was a crime of aggression (after
> > all, the German invasion of Poland and the Japanese attack on Pearl
> > Harbour might have been examples of 'casus belli' but they were hardly
> > 'the most extreme of circumstances'). Fine! Now is he going to argue
> > that there should have been war crimes tribunals to hang British and
> > American wartime leaders?
>
> I suggest you pick up a primer on basic international relations, Dr.
> Michael. The first state to use military force outside of its own
> borders is committing aggression, to which other states are entitled to
> respond in order to *counter* said aggression.
So now we've gone from war being bad, to war being bad except in the
most extreme circumstances, to war being OK when someone else commits
aggression outside its borders.
And, as an aside, I note the quaint twentieth-century view of war here
as a conflict between states. As Creveld argued some time ago, this is
rapidly being redundant as conflict is increasingly involving non-state
actors.
> Germany used force to
> invade Poland, to which Britain and any other country is thereafter
> entitled to use counter-force to intervene. In the case of the U.S.,
> Japan attacked its sovereign territory, to which any state is
> *compelled* to respond.
>
> In any case, I would consider genocide to be among "the most extreme of
> circumstances",
So what genocide was taking place in 1939 when Britain entered the war?
> in which case, regardless of these "casus belli", any
> state was legitimately entitled to use and continue to use force
> against Nazi Germany at that point, at least insofar as doing so served
> to put an end to such crimes.
Note that now war is OK not only if the other side aggresses outside
its borders but also to prevent 'genocide' (even, it seems, when
genocide isn't taking place).
> > Is he going to argue that Bush and Blair
> > should be given the same sort of treatment that they lined up for the
> > Nazi leaders?
>
> In the case of Bush, at least, I think it would be a hell of a trial to
> see.
Come on -- give us a straight answer. Is the man a war criminal or not?
> > Or even for Milosevic? Or for Saddam? Should we hold
> > special remembrance days for their victims? Should they be demonized in
> > our media night after night? And finally -- the real point -- should
> > the political systems that led to them be demonized and the supporters
> > of those systems medicalized and marginalized? No?
>
> What are you babbling about?
Simple. Nazism, communism and Islamism are demonized because of the
actions of their leaders. As you now seem to be admitting, supporters
of those systems are marginalized by contemporary systems with this
being given as an excuse.
If indeed you really hold that Blair and Bush are criminals, should not
the political systems that gave rise to them be treated in the same
way?
> > But once again, we see Mr Mock slithering around like a jelly who
> > really doesn't want to be nailed to the wall. Remember this exchange
> > back in September 2005?
> >
> > ME: 'A war against a brutal oppressor is not an atrocity, surely?'
> >
> > MOCK: 'Bingo, Dr. Michael. You get it. Now let's see if you can draw
> > out the implications of this revelation...'
> >
> > So sometimes he argues that 'any decision to initiate or escalate war
> > *however noble the intentions might be'* [my emphasis] - is (except,
> > perhaps, under the most extreme of circumstances) a crime of
> > aggression.' At other times he's OK with war against a brutal
> > oppressor.
>
> I fail to see the inconsistency. It is simply a question of you and I
> having a different understanding of what an "oppressor" amounts to. I
> set objective and testable definitions of this term, applicable to all
> contexts; even, it seems, to the side you label as "mine".
No, my point is this.
Your claim to be anti-war is bogus.
You've given in various posts numerous instances where you'll support
war.
1. 'Extreme circumstances.'
2. If someone aggresses outside his borders. (Presumably that means
that we British are legitimate recipients of warfare -- by gawd, Mock's
coming perilously close to justifying the London bombings!)
3. To prevent genocide.
4. Against a 'brutal oppressor'.
Given the elasticity of each of those conditions -- especially if
you're using genocide to justify the entry of the British into the
Second World War in 1939 -- it seems to me that your use of the 'all
war is wrong' argument doesn't reflect your real beliefs.
> You just use it to justify violence of any wanton sort against anyone
> you don't happen to agree with.
No I don't. I argue very strongly against the use of violence in
Western industrialized countries because, on the whole, I don't think
it would work here. There are a few instances -- 9/11, the London
bombings -- where the risk has paid off beautifully but on the whole
the costs outweigh the benefits.
> > > I have applied this principle quite specifically to the war in Iraq.
> > > Whatever good may have come of it (the fall of Saddam Hussein), the
> > > U.S. nonetheless unleased a hell on that region that could only have
> > > led to considerable civilian casualties and suffering, as well as an
> > > ongoing breakdown of social order. They are therefore morally
> > > responsible for all of said suffering, even - to some degree - that
> > > which they did not inflict directly.
> > >
> > > If you have read any of my posts on this matter in the past, you know
> > > that this is my view.
> >
> > So are we now going to see Mr Mock campaigning against Western-style
> > 'democracy' because it led to this state of affairs?
>
> I do not believe that "Western-style democracy" is what leads to this
> state of affairs, Dr. Michael, and you have made no argument supporting
> such a view
So you feel that the political systems responsible for permitting Blair
and Bush to come to power and perpetrate such crimes are not
'Western-style democracies'?
> I think I made it clear that I consider it to be merely the nature of
> the international states system, regardless of what sort of political
> regime is ruling the component states.
But communist, Nazi and Islamic aggression cannot be swept under the
carpet in this way?
So would Nazi/communist/militant Islamist values be OK if they were not
abused?
> > > designed to allow you to take the mere fact that bad things
> > > happen in the world as a pretext to blame them on whatever you feel
> > > like blaming them on - democracy, multicultural diversity, "Western"
> > > values, globalisation and trade, and what not - and condemning anyone
> > > who fails to share your ideological assumptions as some sort of
> > > hypocrite.
> >
> > Well if Mr Mock wants to make a case that we should not blame things
> > like mass starvation, wars, authoritarian multiculturalism (i.e. you
> > will be multicultural whether you like it or not), etc. etc. on the
> > spread of global neoliberalism then I'd be fascinated to hear his
> > argument.
>
> Argument for what? That sentence makes no sense at all.
You seemed to have a problem with me blaming bad things in the world on
the politicians running the world at the moment and the philosophy that
they practise. I wondered why you have a problem with this.
> > > > However, these people cannot condemn Hiroshima, or even Nagasaki,
> > > > without running into major difficulties (hence their rather comic
> > > > attempts to avoid serious engagement with me on the issue).
> > >
> > > Are you for real? How many times, and at what length, have I gone back
> > > and forth with you on this subject - pointing out, in clear terms, just
> > > what the moral distinctions are between an excessive act of war and
> > > terrorism - with your only response being to distort my every argument
> > > into the same straw-man and then run away the minute you ran out of
> > > your own diversion gambits. The only comic evasions I have seen have
> > > been coming from your side.
> >
> > I don't think he's produced an argument that successfully makes
> > distinctions between an 'excessive act of war' and 'terrorism' -- not
> > least because the terms 'act of war' and 'terrorism' are so vague.
>
> Which is precisely why I went great lengths to clarify the meanings of
> these terms with testable definitions in the very exchange to which I
> am referring which you ran away from.
>
> Like I said, Dr. Michael, I am ready to continue whenever you are.
Can you refer to the posts in question? I looked this afternoon and my
impression was that you left it to the Americans to decide.
I disputed this in my previous post -- you seem to have snipped most of
my argument.
In a nutshell, (a) in fact there is very little space because the
dominant parties in most Western countries all preach almost the same
thing, and (b) a huge proportion of the world's population has such a
low income that it cannot risk speaking out or campaigning in any way
against the dominant philosophy of our age.
> I will grant, that space is not limtitless.
A euphemism. It is available only to neoliberals. It used to be the
case that even quite moderate nationalists were marginalized as
'Nazis'. Now even quite moderate socialists are sidelined in Britain --
in America that's been the case for years.
> *Every* society sets
> limits to ensure that the basic rules of access and inclusion remain
> roughly consistent from one day to the next, such that people can live
> their lives. Hence there are those - like yourself - who are outside
> of the mainstream (and hopefully will remain there). But even you seem
> to have admitted in the past that our systems here at present allow for
> a wider space for a free and diverse civil society than that of any
> other functioning at present,
I certainly do not admit that. Indeed, I was arguing with you only
recently that there isn't much difference between the systems of
Britain and America these days and that of Poland under the United
Workers' Party!
>and at least contain the principle that
> freedom is measured by how wide that space is maintained.
Not necessarily. Look, if you want a neoliberal dictatorship that's
fine by me. Just permit me somewhere to go to get away from the damn
thing.
I could write an essay on that one, Mr Mock, but I no longer have a Web
site on which to post it and my dinner is ready so I'm going to have to
dodge it for now.
DEM
sm...@nizkor.org
> sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> > david_michael wrote:
> > > sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> > > > So wonderful to see that David Michael still claims the right to invent
> > > > our positions for us, rather than basing his disagreement on anything
> > > > we have actually said or written.
> > >
> > > OK, the old 'nailing jelly to the wall' troll -- try to attack what
> > > Mock seems to be saying and he then denies saying it. We'll see this
> > > below.
> >
> > Of course I will deny saying what I never said, Dr. Michael.
>
> The problem is that it's very difficult to pin you down on what you ARE
> saying. One moment you appear to almost, in a much qualified sort of
> way, come out to condemn the nuclear bombings in Japan -- the next
> moment you're supporting Lomenzo who's all in favour of them and
> apparently attempting to excuse them.
Perhaps my actual position, as well as that of Lomenzo, is simply more
complicated than you are evidently capable of comprehending.
As I have explained myself thoroughly enough in the past, I don't feel
it necessary to waste any further time on that note. The simple fact
is that your entire previous post consisted of nothing more than your
arguing against what you unilaterally decided he and I would think
about the Haditha massacre, based on nothing we'd actually said but
solely, it seems, on the position you would like to attribute to us.
Anyway, I read the rest of your response and it was all pretty boring
and repetitive. I'll come back to it tomorrow and decide whether there
is anything worth responding to.
Steven Mock
david_michael
sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> david_michael wrote:
> > sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> > > david_michael wrote:
> > > > sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> > > > > So wonderful to see that David Michael still claims the right to invent
> > > > > our positions for us, rather than basing his disagreement on anything
> > > > > we have actually said or written.
> > > >
> > > > OK, the old 'nailing jelly to the wall' troll -- try to attack what
> > > > Mock seems to be saying and he then denies saying it. We'll see this
> > > > below.
> > >
> > > Of course I will deny saying what I never said, Dr. Michael.
> >
> > The problem is that it's very difficult to pin you down on what you ARE
> > saying. One moment you appear to almost, in a much qualified sort of
> > way, come out to condemn the nuclear bombings in Japan -- the next
> > moment you're supporting Lomenzo who's all in favour of them and
> > apparently attempting to excuse them.
>
> Perhaps my actual position, as well as that of Lomenzo, is simply more
> complicated than you are evidently capable of comprehending.
I suspect you know that this is unlikely to be the case. My background
alone should tell you that I am capable of comprehending a good deal.
> As I have explained myself thoroughly enough in the past, I don't feel
> it necessary to waste any further time on that note.
Interesting as much of my post was demonstrating that your position
appears vague, contradictory and subject to change.
> The simple fact
> is that your entire previous post consisted of nothing more than your
> arguing against what you unilaterally decided he and I would think
> about the Haditha massacre, based on nothing we'd actually said but
> solely, it seems, on the position you would like to attribute to us.
So you didn't read it before responding.
> Anyway, I read the rest of your response and it was all pretty boring
> and repetitive. I'll come back to it tomorrow and decide whether there
> is anything worth responding to.
Don't bother. It's unlikely you have anything new to add.
DEM
Gord McFee
<e6hakm$b7l$1...@otis.netspace.net.au>, "Ben Cramer"
<[remove]bencr...@gmail.com> wrote:
Because David Michael does not cream his pants at the very mention of
the IDF.
sm...@nizkor.org
> sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> > david_michael wrote:
> > > sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> > > > david_michael wrote:
> > > > > sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> > > > > > So wonderful to see that David Michael still claims the right to invent
> > > > > > our positions for us, rather than basing his disagreement on anything
> > > > > > we have actually said or written.
> > > > >
> > > > > OK, the old 'nailing jelly to the wall' troll -- try to attack what
> > > > > Mock seems to be saying and he then denies saying it. We'll see this
> > > > > below.
> > > >
> > > > Of course I will deny saying what I never said, Dr. Michael.
> > >
> > > The problem is that it's very difficult to pin you down on what you ARE
> > > saying. One moment you appear to almost, in a much qualified sort of
> > > way, come out to condemn the nuclear bombings in Japan -- the next
> > > moment you're supporting Lomenzo who's all in favour of them and
> > > apparently attempting to excuse them.
> >
> > Perhaps my actual position, as well as that of Lomenzo, is simply more
> > complicated than you are evidently capable of comprehending.
>
> I suspect you know that this is unlikely to be the case. My background
> alone should tell you that I am capable of comprehending a good deal.
Unlike yourself, Dr. Michael, I don't judge people by their
"background". I judge them by their words and actions.
What aspect of your background would you be talking about? The fact
that someone somewhere gave you a PhD? There are many varieties of
idiot who can accumulate sufficient research in some narrow area of
knowledge to manage that feat, and the most mediocre of them are
generally the ones that assume that this automatically makes them an
authority to reckon with over any and all topics on which they choose
to pontificate. In your political writings, in particular, you show an
abysmal lack of familiarity with even the most basic terms and abstract
concepts, and you spew catch-phrases and cliches as though they should
mean anything to anyone but you. It would be an object of amusement to
even a first-year undergraduate, to be honest.
But you know full well that when I suggest that you don't comprehend
what Lomenzo and I are saying, its not really your intellectual
capacities I am impugning. Rather, I am expressing my honest belief
that you are genuinely lacking something in your psychological makeup
the renders normal people capable of comprehending the basic moral
categories of society. This is what enables you to, for example,
continuously tell the most outrageous lies without a moments shame or
hesitation, as well as to measure the value of anonymous human beings
solely in terms of the extent to which they can be used to gratify your
personal agenda.
But, more to the point, since you have no sense of the basic moral
categories Lomenzo and I are dealing with, we might as well be speaking
another language when we explain our views to you. Thus when we say
something you don't understand (eg. the use of force is permissible in
order to counter aggression) you translate it into something
comprehensible to your idiom (the ongoing conflict in Iraq renders it
legitimate to kill random bystanders on the streets of London).
> > As I have explained myself thoroughly enough in the past, I don't feel
> > it necessary to waste any further time on that note.
>
> Interesting as much of my post was demonstrating that your position
> appears vague, contradictory and subject to change.
No, my position has been consistent throughout. Its your straw-man
misrepresentations of my position that are vague, contradictory and
ever changing.
You don't understand, Dr. Michael. When I suggest that you are
incapable of comprehending my actual position, I am not insulting you -
I am giving you the benefit of the doubt. The alternative is that you
are intentionally lying with your gross oversimplifications,
exaggerations, and extrapolations of my clearly stated views.
> > Anyway, I read the rest of your response and it was all pretty boring
> > and repetitive. I'll come back to it tomorrow and decide whether there
> > is anything worth responding to.
>
> Don't bother. It's unlikely you have anything new to add.
Hey, you keep repeating the same discredited nonsense, we have to keep
providing the same explanations as to why it is nonsense. That's the
way it works. Like I said, I'm a sucker for trolls.
But I think I will answer you previous response. It contained a few
fascinating distortions that are just too juicy to pass up. Might not
be today though. Been busy.
Steven Mock
Dr. Anthony J. Lomenzo
"Your side won, Mr. Mock!" --- Psycho® DEM [in re World War II]
"Wonderful ... Glorious ..... May there be many more days like it!" ---
Psycho® DEM ["on" 9-11-01 as it was still burning! ]
"It's not nice, but fair." --- Psycho® DEM [London, UK, July, 2005
terror attack on his own nation and people!]
"CASE" .... 'decidedly' closed.
Doc Tony
;-)
[A Psycho® 'amalgam' ]: "I would put it to you, sir , [in this case one
"Mr. G."], 'put those corpses aside for a moment' and envision if you
will a society and system free of the present day decay, degeneracy,
rottenness and multi-cultural morass of the western nations ..... ."
--- Psycho® DEM waxing on the 'positive' [!] merits ... of the 1933-45
NSDAP regime.
So, revisionists and/or any Osama/Limonov subscribers, 'ANYONE' for
Psycho® DEM's "clear way forward" [sic] and the one, the only, the
"isolated community" thing? The Psycho® isn't personally interested in
his own drool on 'that' one but, hey, that doesn't mean 'YOU' can't step
up to the plate and take Psycho® DEM's place and then simply 'report'
how it goes, yes? If it indeed 'goes' at all!
Psycho® DEM: [anticipating a response for some 'volunteer(s)'] :
"Salaam, Comrades!" [* As Psycho® DEM then head-bows with palms
extended looking skyward and then immediately followed by the 90 degree
arm-bend thing with clenched fist at the apex and a shouted "HURRAH!
HURRAH! HURRAH!" in rapid succession and hence both Psycho® DEM 'heroes'
[sic] duly salaamed and saluted therein.]
;-)
david_michael
This from Mr Lomenzo, a man who supported the nuclear bombing of two
cities full of civilians despite being shown that the arguments that it
was in some sense 'necessary' simply don't hold water. More 'psycho'
than that it does not get.
DEM
david_michael
Just a torrent of personal abuse from Mock, evidently seeking to close
the discussion by turning it into a slanging match.
You've accused me of lying. Kindly either justify your libel with some
clear examples or retract and apologize.
DEM
sm...@nizkor.org
Actually, I made some rather "telling points" in the above. The fact
that I also don't like you is neither here nor there.
> You've accused me of lying. Kindly either justify your libel with some
> clear examples or retract and apologize.
I am doing so on an ongoing basis with each substanive reply to your
drool.
At the moment, I am dealing the manner in which you so shamelessly
misrepresent my and Lomenzo's statements into straw-men that better
suit your *tu quote* accusation of hypocrisy. Regardless of whether
you do so intentionally, or simply out of an inability to comprehend
what we are really saying, you have, nonetheless, attributed to both of
us specific claims that have no bearing on anything we have ever said
or written, and, given how many times you have been admonished for this
and corrected as to what our real positions are, I call that lying of a
truly shameless and cowardly sort.
Examples have been provided. More with be forthcoming in my next
substantive response. Whenever I feel like getting around to it.
Steven Mock
William Daffer
> May a thousand more follow where he led.
Into a well deserved, violent and painful death.
'Information', a.k.a LITTLE FLUFFY BOT, a.k.a David E. Michael, is a
a Nazi sympathizer, a terrorist sympathizer and an amoral thug.
Here are some of the his own words to prove these assertions:
On Tue, 11 Sep 2001 19:18:49 +0100, in
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3b9e5465%40news-uk.onetel.net.uk
he gloated over the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians,
hundreds of them his own countrymen.
<quote>
Now, however, the chickens are coming home to roost. This
afternoon a truly wonderful thing has happened: the oppressed of
the earth have turned around and have shown that they do not have
to be nature's eternal victims. They have shown that the poor, the
downtrodden, and the powerless can strike back at the very heart
of the dark forces that are oppressing them. This time it was not
Palestinian children who cowered in fear as death came from the
skies -- this time it was the very fat bankers and financiers who
sustain the terroristic regime of Sharon. This time it was those
very military men who mastermind the attacks on the women and
children of Iraq. They thought they were so safe as they planned
death and destruction from their comfortable offices in the
Pentagon, and as they did their dirty deals in the World Trade
Center. Now they have been given a bloody nose that they will
never forget.
Today was a glorious day. May there be many others like it.
Death to American capitalism!
Death to international finance!
</quote>
In
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3b9e28e1%40news-uk.onetel.net.uk
he responded to the remark that this terrorist act was an 'act of
war against the U.S.' with the remark:
'I view it as an act of war against the liberal Establishment.'
How many times have we heard terrorists using *precisely* this sort
of moral casuistry? How many times have terrorists declared that
their actions were 'actions of war?'
Clearly, David Michael agrees with this assessment. He's at war with
the 'liberal Establishment' and he's willing to celebrate the deaths
of thousands when someone actually does what he can only wish to do.
But this is all part and parcel of the overmastery of his morality
by his political agenda. From my reading of DEM's posts going back
to 1998, one thing is abundantly clear: whenever there's a conflict
between his political ideology and his morality, it's the latter
that suffers.
And the recent spate of posting in response to his paean to death of
11 Sept shows us that he is even willing to subvert his morality to
salve a wounded pride.
Regarding David E. Michael's Nazi sentiments, see:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=35F99AAA.126E%40cableinet.co.uk
<quote>
Third, National Socialism was a revolutionary movement that was based
upon a wonderful dream. Forget the stories of corpses for a moment, Mr
G, and imagine a world very different from the world we inhabit today.
Imagine a world free from the wars that have scarred the face of this
tired old planet since the beginning of time; a world with no extreme
poverty, with no disease, with no exploitation of worker by employer, no
jolting financial crises (with the misery that such crises entail) -- a
world united in a common purpose and a common vision. Imagine a world
free from the old conflicts, where worker and employer strive
side-by-side for the common good, where 'Left' and 'Right' are mere
historical anachronisms, where nation works peacefully alongside nation
for the greater glory of all the earth. Imagine, if you will, a world
where, through a process of artificial genetic selection, mankind has
been enhanced to heights undreamed of: when, year by year, mere human
beings grow ever closer to becoming gods. Think of the beauty of those
people, of their art, their music, their literature. Think of their
levels of culture, their humanity, their nobility. Now contrast this
with the world that has been bequeathed to our children as a result of
that needless and miserable world war. Just pick up a newspaper and look
around you -- look at what your 'liberals' and your 'democrats' have
left to them. Look at the dull-eyed teenagers, drugged to their
eyeballs, staggering around bleak housing estates, their stereos blaring
drum-beats! What do they know of the glories of a Bruckner symphony, or
the heart-rending beauty of Nietzsche? What good have 'democracy' and
'liberalism' ever done for them, Mr G? Answer me that! Look at Africa
and Asia -- thousands upon thousands of square miles, characterized by
war, starvation, famine, massacre, corruption, decay, filth. What good
have 'freedom' and 'rights' ever done for the inhabitants of those
miserable regions? Answer me that! What good is 'freedom' to a man who
cannot afford to buy his daily bread? Tell me that, Mr G! Look at the
legacy of communism -- the blood red claw that, even today, enslaves a
quarter of the world's population. Think of the 200 million corpses --
people who died as victims of this evil claw, for no good purpose
whatsoever. Now can you honestly put your hand on your heart and tell
me, in all sincerity, sir, that you truly and without reservation
believe that the world you and your kind have bequeathed to future
generations -- the world that has given us Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and the
pathetic figure of William Jefferson Clinton, who symbolizes all that is
wrong with this earth -- that you honestly believe that this world you
have left for us is better than our alternative? Can you honestly tell
me that the dream of a beautiful new world that I have outlined above --
the dream that inspired countless thousands of young Europeans to flock
to the National Socialist banner -- is not worth fighting for? Can you
honestly tell me that it is not worth dying for?
</quote>
whd
--
On Tue, 11 Sep 2001 19:18:49 +0100, in message
<3b9e...@news-uk.onetel.net.uk>, David E. Michael expressed support
for the craven cowards who hijacked four airliners, flying two into
the Twin Towers, one into the Pentagon and simply crashing the fourth,
with an attendant loss of life estimated in the thousands, with the
words:
"This afternoon a truly wonderful thing has happened . . . Today was
a glorious day. May there be many others like it."
For the complete post of this terrorist sympathizer, see:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3b9e5465%40news-uk.onetel.net.uk
sm...@nizkor.org
> > > be impressed by Mr Mock's willingness to condemn Haditha as, in this
> > > instance, responsibility for the atrocitiy will be placed at the door
> > > of the soldiers involved, not the system behind their involvement.
> >
> > If you were listening, I have just finished placing a large mesaure of
> > responsibility at the door of the state that put them there and its
> > leaders.
> >
> > I have no idea what you mean by "the system behind their involvement",
> > and I doubt that you have any intention of elaborating either.
>
> In the case of Haditha, my suspicion is that the soldiers directly
> involved in the action will be tried. They are putting up a robust
> defence and they might therefore get off free. The politicians
> responsible for putting them there, and the individuals behind those
> politicians, will not, I suspect, suffer any 'consequences' (to use Mr
> Bush's term), nor, I anticipate, will there be any changes to the
> American domestic political system to prevent such crimes in future. Is
> that clearer?
And just what sorts of changes to the domestic political system do you
think would serve to prevent such crimes in the future, Dr. Michael?
You see, my point was that I have no idea just what aspects of "the
system behind their involvement" you hold to be responsible, and how
you draw that connection, such that I can somehow be faulted for
failing to share this interpretation. I would appreciate it if you
would elaborate.
> > > > I have actually made this point to you very directly before, in the
> > > > course of my analysis of war ethics, which evidently did go well over
> > > > your head. War inevitably causes suffering - to civilians and
> > > > combattants alike. Therefore, any decision to initiate or escalate war
> > > > - however noble the intentions might be - is (except, perhaps, under
> > > > the most extreme of circumstances) a crime of aggression.
> > >
> > > Oh look -- Mr Mock has just taken the position that British and
> > > American involvement in World War II was a crime of aggression (after
> > > all, the German invasion of Poland and the Japanese attack on Pearl
> > > Harbour might have been examples of 'casus belli' but they were hardly
> > > 'the most extreme of circumstances'). Fine! Now is he going to argue
> > > that there should have been war crimes tribunals to hang British and
> > > American wartime leaders?
> >
> > I suggest you pick up a primer on basic international relations, Dr.
> > Michael. The first state to use military force outside of its own
> > borders is committing aggression, to which other states are entitled to
> > respond in order to *counter* said aggression.
>
> So now we've gone from war being bad, to war being bad except in the
> most extreme circumstances, to war being OK when someone else commits
> aggression outside its borders.
Only if you start by oversimplifying my position to "war is bad", which
I never said. The rest of this, as I pointed out, is first-year IR
stuff. I shall elaborate further below.
> And, as an aside, I note the quaint twentieth-century view of war here
> as a conflict between states. As Creveld argued some time ago, this is
> rapidly being redundant as conflict is increasingly involving non-state
> actors.
You're the one who brought up the case of World War II.
And I note the way that you seem to think that simply shouting
"Creveld" every time I raise the issue of the role of the state
automatically means you comprehend the complexity of the situation.
Sure, given the increasing interconnectedness of the world at varying
levels of analysis, increased communication and transportation, to say
nothing of the increasing availibility of instruments of lethal
violence, the reality is an increasing salience of non-state actors.
But that does not automatically mean that any asshole with an agenda
and a backpack full of laundry detergent is normatively entitled to the
same status as a state as an arbiter legitimate violence. On the
contrary, it is in such circumstances that norms of accountability must
be more rigourously defended.
> > Germany used force to
> > invade Poland, to which Britain and any other country is thereafter
> > entitled to use counter-force to intervene. In the case of the U.S.,
> > Japan attacked its sovereign territory, to which any state is
> > *compelled* to respond.
> >
> > In any case, I would consider genocide to be among "the most extreme of
> > circumstances",
>
> So what genocide was taking place in 1939 when Britain entered the war?
I was merely pre-empting your next gambit. Forgive me.
Genocide was not a pretext to enter the war in 1939. However, it was a
legitimate pretext to proceed with the war to its conclusion even after
the initial aggression had been successfully countered.
> > in which case, regardless of these "casus belli", any
> > state was legitimately entitled to use and continue to use force
> > against Nazi Germany at that point, at least insofar as doing so served
> > to put an end to such crimes.
>
> Note that now war is OK not only if the other side aggresses outside
> its borders but also to prevent 'genocide'
Those are but two concrete examples to illustrate a wider principle you
evidently cannot understand, though I will make every effort to explain
it to you.
> > > Is he going to argue that Bush and Blair
> > > should be given the same sort of treatment that they lined up for the
> > > Nazi leaders?
> >
> > In the case of Bush, at least, I think it would be a hell of a trial to
> > see.
>
> Come on -- give us a straight answer. Is the man a war criminal or not?
Probably. I really can't say for sure. But I will say that in an
ideal world he would be tried as one, and have every right to defend
himself on that charge.
> > > Or even for Milosevic? Or for Saddam? Should we hold
> > > special remembrance days for their victims? Should they be demonized in
> > > our media night after night? And finally -- the real point -- should
> > > the political systems that led to them be demonized and the supporters
> > > of those systems medicalized and marginalized? No?
> >
> > What are you babbling about?
>
> Simple. Nazism, communism and Islamism are demonized because of the
> actions of their leaders. As you now seem to be admitting, supporters
> of those systems are marginalized by contemporary systems with this
> being given as an excuse.
Um, no, I have never admitted any such thing. Where do you get this
stuff?
I don't think it is simply the actions of their leaders that cause
these ideologies to be demonised. A direct causal line can be drawn
between the ideologies themselves and the crimes committed in their
name.
Its not difficult to argue that the militarism and racism of Nazism led
directly to aggressive warfare and genocide - and that militarism and
racism were integral elements to Nazi ideology, and that the warfare
and genocide that occured could not have occured without these
ideological elements. Take those elements out, and I would really have
no problem with the ideology (I still don't think it would be workable,
mind you, but I would have no problem with it). But then again, take
those elements out and it would no longer be Nazism - it would be
something else.
Can you make an argument as to how the tenets liberal democracy created
the war in Iraq? Note that your answer must establish a direct causal
relationship between the tenets of that political ideology in
particular - not just the fact that it happened to be the ruling
ideology of the aggressor state.
> > > But once again, we see Mr Mock slithering around like a jelly who
> > > really doesn't want to be nailed to the wall. Remember this exchange
> > > back in September 2005?
> > >
> > > ME: 'A war against a brutal oppressor is not an atrocity, surely?'
> > >
> > > MOCK: 'Bingo, Dr. Michael. You get it. Now let's see if you can draw
> > > out the implications of this revelation...'
> > >
> > > So sometimes he argues that 'any decision to initiate or escalate war
> > > *however noble the intentions might be'* [my emphasis] - is (except,
> > > perhaps, under the most extreme of circumstances) a crime of
> > > aggression.' At other times he's OK with war against a brutal
> > > oppressor.
> >
> > I fail to see the inconsistency. It is simply a question of you and I
> > having a different understanding of what an "oppressor" amounts to. I
> > set objective and testable definitions of this term, applicable to all
> > contexts; even, it seems, to the side you label as "mine".
>
> No, my point is this.
>
> Your claim to be anti-war is bogus.
Of course it is. Since I never claimed to be "anti-war" - at least not
in the categorical sense in which you interpret it. I do have
something of a pacifist streak in me, yes, but it is not so absolute
that I cannot recognise exceptions.
To me this is just another reflection of your constitutional inability
to comprehend the slightest measure of moral complexity. To your mind,
if someone asserts a principle, he must believe it it fanatically or he
is a hypocrite. There is no middle ground between these extremes.
That's what enables you to honestly and with a straight face assert
that my opposition to the war in Iraq must be insincere unless I am
willing to take it as a pretext to reject every moral and political
principle ever associated with the leaders responsible for it, even to
the extreme of sanctioning the random murder of bystanders in the
interests of bringing those principles down. Its quite sick, really.
> You've given in various posts numerous instances where you'll support
> war.
>
> 1. 'Extreme circumstances.'
> 2. If someone aggresses outside his borders. (Presumably that means
> that we British are legitimate recipients of warfare -- by gawd, Mock's
> coming perilously close to justifying the London bombings!)
> 3. To prevent genocide.
> 4. Against a 'brutal oppressor'.
>
> Given the elasticity of each of those conditions -- especially if
> you're using genocide to justify the entry of the British into the
> Second World War in 1939 -- it seems to me that your use of the 'all
> war is wrong' argument doesn't reflect your real beliefs.
Of course it doesn't. Because I never said "all war is wrong".
What I said was that war inevitably causes suffering, and therefore to
initiate or escalate war is a crime.
Do you comprehend the difference? No, I didn't think so. It rather
illustrates what I was saying before - if you were able to comprehend
the moral basis upon which these distinctions rest, the distinctions
themselves would not seem arbitrary or vague at all, but entirely
consistent. Allow me to try and walk you through it - see if you can
follow:
1. War inevitably causes suffering to civilians. That has been known
throughout the history of warfare since ancient times.
With me so far?
2. Causing suffering to civilians is a fundamental wrong.
Okay, I imagine I've lost you. This is the part that you really can't
relate to on a personal level, and since you don't really want to have
to admti that its gonna be N/H gambit from this point on. But please
try and restrain yourself and follow to the end of my argument, 'kay?
3. If causing suffering to civilians is wrong, and war causes suffering
to civilians, then one should think *very* carefully before employing
force as an extension of policy.
4. Now, if the reason why proceeding with armed conflict is wrong is
because it causes suffering to civilians, then under what conditions,
pray tell, might the use of force be acceptable?
Answer: when it does not stand to cause or increase the suffering of
civilians.
Holy shit! I think we have a consistent moral principle, here, sparky.
Now lets apply it.
5. Under what possible conditions could the use of force *not* cause or
increase the suffering of civilians.
A. the answer of classical international relations is that there is
only one such instance: when the use of force is being employed solely
to counter aggression; to contain and restrain force that is already
being applied by an aggressor state.
I think a good example of this dynamic would be the first Gulf war.
Iraq invaded Kuwait; the U.S. used only as much force as was needed to
contain this aggressive use of force and reverse its effects, and then
they got the hell out of Dodge. Now, one might argue that they should
have *chosen* not to apply counter-force in that situation, and one
might claim that they had ulterior motives for making the choice they
did. But from the standpoint of the norms of international relations,
they were well within their rights to do so.
B. now, there are many, myself included, who think there is another
instance where force can be used by a state, and again it is entirely
consistent with the overarching moral principle that the fundamental
purpose is to avoid the suffering of civilians: it is what I earlier
refered to as "extreme circumstances", which, if you had asked me to
explain, I would have elaborated as meaning circumstances in which
civilian populations are *already* suffering to a degree where the
intervention of additional force could only ameliorate, and could
hardly exacerbate that suffering. Genocide, I think, is the classic
example of this - where the actions of a state against a given
population make a mockery of any claim that state might have to exert
legitimate soverignty over that population, and where war could not
possibly put that population in a *worse* situation than they are
already in. Another example, I would propose, would be the situation
of a "failed state" that has descended into continuous civil war
already as bad as any international war could be. With no de facto
state authority, no sovereignty is being violated, and again, foreign
intervention capable of restraining warring sides could only ameliorate
the situation for civilians and at least could not make matters worse.
I think an example of this "extreme circumstances" argument would be
the pretext on which NATO attacked Serbia in 1999. Though again, some
would argue (as I do) that the situation on the ground was not, in
fact, so extreme that the attack *did not* in the end make matters
worse, particularly given the counterproductive military methods used.
Still, the motive was honourable, even if the methods were inane -
whether that motive was to prevent ethnic cleansing or (what I think
was the real motive) to place troops on the ground capable of
forstalling civil war.
Do you think I'm making all of this stuff up on the spot? Nope. Like
I said, its 1st-year IR stuff.
> > You just use it to justify violence of any wanton sort against anyone
> > you don't happen to agree with.
>
> No I don't. I argue very strongly against the use of violence in
> Western industrialized countries because, on the whole, I don't think
> it would work here. There are a few instances -- 9/11, the London
> bombings -- where the risk has paid off beautifully but on the whole
> the costs outweigh the benefits.
Right. The problem is not that killing people for your political views
is wrong, just that it isn't very effective. Hence you would not
recommend it, only praise it once when it is done, though only if it is
exceptionally cruel such as to successfully contribute toward
destabilising a society you despise.
The funny part is that you think this clarification works to your
favour.
> > > > I have applied this principle quite specifically to the war in Iraq.
> > > > Whatever good may have come of it (the fall of Saddam Hussein), the
> > > > U.S. nonetheless unleased a hell on that region that could only have
> > > > led to considerable civilian casualties and suffering, as well as an
> > > > ongoing breakdown of social order. They are therefore morally
> > > > responsible for all of said suffering, even - to some degree - that
> > > > which they did not inflict directly.
> > > >
> > > > If you have read any of my posts on this matter in the past, you know
> > > > that this is my view.
> > >
> > > So are we now going to see Mr Mock campaigning against Western-style
> > > 'democracy' because it led to this state of affairs?
> >
> > I do not believe that "Western-style democracy" is what leads to this
> > state of affairs, Dr. Michael, and you have made no argument supporting
> > such a view
>
> So you feel that the political systems responsible for permitting Blair
> and Bush to come to power and perpetrate such crimes are not
> 'Western-style democracies'?
I guess. But that is a pretty tenuous connection. I do not see how
the characteristic of liberal democracy itself is responsible for
creating this state of affairs, and your resort to such a textbook
syllogistic fallacy is not a substitute for your failure to argue such
a connection.
Blair and Bush have engaged in aggressive warfare.
Blair and Bush are democrats.
Democracy is the cause of aggressive war.
Blair and Bush are also mammels, Dr. Michael. Does having warm blood
also cause aggressive war?
I have already explained that in my view, the characteristic of the
states in question that has most contributed to the current state of
affairs is simply that they are powerful states in the international
states system, behaving in the way powerful states ruled according to
pretty much any domestic political system would.
> > I think I made it clear that I consider it to be merely the nature of
> > the international states system, regardless of what sort of political
> > regime is ruling the component states.
>
> But communist, Nazi and Islamic aggression cannot be swept under the
> carpet in this way?
No, because - as I said - an argument can be made as to how the very
ideologies of communism, Nazism, and radical Islam are direct causal
factors in the very particular crimes and excesses committed under
these ideologies. The very argument you refuse to make with regard to
the tenets of liberal democracy.
<snip: GWB quote>
> > > In short:
> > >
> > > 1. There are values 'no nation is exempt from'.
> > > 2. They include things like 'liberty' and 'justice' because they are
> > > 'right' and 'true' and 'unchanging for all people everywhere'.
> > > 3. They include 'limits on the power of the state' -- i.e. no nation is
> > > exempt from such (unspecified) limits.
> > > 4. The values include 'private property' and 'religious tolerance'.
> > > 5. People who disagree are evil, evil must be opposed, and big
> > > countries like America must get out there and oppose them.
> >
> > I'm no fan of George Bush and his foreign policy, but these basic
> > values, at least, I have no problem with. I do wish they would be
> > adhered to more in a spirit of peace and co-operation than aggressive
> > missionizing, but I have yet to see you make an argument as to how the
> > basic values *themselves* are responsible for the manner in which they
> > have been abused, save for the very *post hoc ergo propter hoc* fallacy
> > I described earlier.
>
> So would Nazi/communist/militant Islamist values be OK if they were not
> abused?
No, because, as I said, in these cases, it is the ideologies themselves
- and not their abuse - that are responsible for their excesses.
Take the racism and militarism out of Nazism, no aggression and no
genocide, and I've got no problem. But then it wouldn't be Nazism
anymore, would it?
What would you take out of liberal democracy that would cause it to
cease to be liberal democracy, such as would prevent abuses?
> > > > designed to allow you to take the mere fact that bad things
> > > > happen in the world as a pretext to blame them on whatever you feel
> > > > like blaming them on - democracy, multicultural diversity, "Western"
> > > > values, globalisation and trade, and what not - and condemning anyone
> > > > who fails to share your ideological assumptions as some sort of
> > > > hypocrite.
> > >
> > > Well if Mr Mock wants to make a case that we should not blame things
> > > like mass starvation, wars, authoritarian multiculturalism (i.e. you
> > > will be multicultural whether you like it or not), etc. etc. on the
> > > spread of global neoliberalism then I'd be fascinated to hear his
> > > argument.
> >
> > Argument for what? That sentence makes no sense at all.
>
> You seemed to have a problem with me blaming bad things in the world on
> the politicians running the world at the moment and the philosophy that
> they practise. I wondered why you have a problem with this.
Well, to start with, because it is intellectually lazy and simplistic.
Which, in itself, isn't such a crime - just annoying. But when you use
it as a justification for the use of lethal violence against innocent
bystanders... well that I call pretty darn evil.
> > > > > However, these people cannot condemn Hiroshima, or even Nagasaki,
> > > > > without running into major difficulties (hence their rather comic
> > > > > attempts to avoid serious engagement with me on the issue).
> > > >
> > > > Are you for real? How many times, and at what length, have I gone back
> > > > and forth with you on this subject - pointing out, in clear terms, just
> > > > what the moral distinctions are between an excessive act of war and
> > > > terrorism - with your only response being to distort my every argument
> > > > into the same straw-man and then run away the minute you ran out of
> > > > your own diversion gambits. The only comic evasions I have seen have
> > > > been coming from your side.
> > >
> > > I don't think he's produced an argument that successfully makes
> > > distinctions between an 'excessive act of war' and 'terrorism' -- not
> > > least because the terms 'act of war' and 'terrorism' are so vague.
> >
> > Which is precisely why I went great lengths to clarify the meanings of
> > these terms with testable definitions in the very exchange to which I
> > am referring which you ran away from.
> >
> > Like I said, Dr. Michael, I am ready to continue whenever you are.
>
> Can you refer to the posts in question? I looked this afternoon and my
> impression was that you left it to the Americans to decide.
Nope. Never said that. I said that - in practice - it the powerful
will inevitably get their way. But that does not stand as an excuse
preventing us as supposedly intelligent beings discussing the subject
from applying consistent moral standards to the powerful and the weak
alike.
I've been reposting the URL over and over again for your benefit, Dr.
Michael. Here it is again:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.revisionism/msg/4621604f67efb239?hl=en&
And I've answered this in a previous post: perhaps they only seem that
way to you because your extremeist values are so far from the consensus
of the mainstream of your society.
> > I will grant, that space is not limtitless.
>
> A euphemism. It is available only to neoliberals.
A tautology, since "neoliberals" is nothing more than the label you put
on all varieties of functioning politics in the mainstream of your
society.
> It used to be the
> case that even quite moderate nationalists were marginalized as
> 'Nazis'. Now even quite moderate socialists are sidelined in Britain --
> in America that's been the case for years.
"sidelined" in what sense? That they don't have a guarenteed share in
power? Tough titties. They are nonetheless free to speak, organise,
assemble and propagate their views, and they do so quite publically.
I've seen 'em do it.
Hell, even extremist nutjobs like you who openly applaud indescriminate
violence aimed at destabilising society are free to walk the street and
post their drool on the Internet at length with impunity. What other
society in *history* would have someone like you anywhere but in a
dungeon or on a spit by now? God bless America and God save the Queen.
> > *Every* society sets
> > limits to ensure that the basic rules of access and inclusion remain
> > roughly consistent from one day to the next, such that people can live
> > their lives. Hence there are those - like yourself - who are outside
> > of the mainstream (and hopefully will remain there). But even you seem
> > to have admitted in the past that our systems here at present allow for
> > a wider space for a free and diverse civil society than that of any
> > other functioning at present,
>
> I certainly do not admit that. Indeed, I was arguing with you only
> recently that there isn't much difference between the systems of
> Britain and America these days and that of Poland under the United
> Workers' Party!
And I seem to recall your conceding that the existence of a sphere of
free civil society in which the institutions shaping these political
boundaries form and reform was indeed a significant distinction between
these cases. Though I'll admit, you thereafter ran away from my every
attempt to discuss with you *why* this distinction is important. I
guess you had your sound-bite and didn't have much further use with a
discussion that might not go your way.
> > and at least contain the principle that
> > freedom is measured by how wide that space is maintained.
>
> Not necessarily. Look, if you want a neoliberal dictatorship that's
> fine by me. Just permit me somewhere to go to get away from the damn
> thing.
Am I stopping you? Just don't let the door hit your ass on the way
out.
Steven Mock
david_michael
A quick recap. You accused me of avoiding mentioning Haditha. I
responded by indicating that (a) I had mentioned it, and (b) your
willingness to condemn it is hardly a 'big deal' given that
responsibility for the action would be placed, if on anyone at all, on
the shoulders of the troops who pulled the triggers -- unlike, say, in
the case of Hiroshima where high-level political decisions were
DIRECTLY (important word) involved. You now ask me what sort of
domestic political changes would prevent Haditha? Odd question -- maybe
you've lost the thread. Perhaps a good start might be to close down
America's war machine so that it can't go invading other people's
countries . . .
> > > > > I have actually made this point to you very directly before, in the
> > > > > course of my analysis of war ethics, which evidently did go well over
> > > > > your head. War inevitably causes suffering - to civilians and
> > > > > combattants alike. Therefore, any decision to initiate or escalate war
> > > > > - however noble the intentions might be - is (except, perhaps, under
> > > > > the most extreme of circumstances) a crime of aggression.
> > > >
> > > > Oh look -- Mr Mock has just taken the position that British and
> > > > American involvement in World War II was a crime of aggression (after
> > > > all, the German invasion of Poland and the Japanese attack on Pearl
> > > > Harbour might have been examples of 'casus belli' but they were hardly
> > > > 'the most extreme of circumstances'). Fine! Now is he going to argue
> > > > that there should have been war crimes tribunals to hang British and
> > > > American wartime leaders?
> > >
> > > I suggest you pick up a primer on basic international relations, Dr.
> > > Michael. The first state to use military force outside of its own
> > > borders is committing aggression, to which other states are entitled to
> > > respond in order to *counter* said aggression.
> >
> > So now we've gone from war being bad, to war being bad except in the
> > most extreme circumstances, to war being OK when someone else commits
> > aggression outside its borders.
>
> Only if you start by oversimplifying my position to "war is bad", which
> I never said.
Actually you did, back in one of our earlier discussions on Hiroshima.
> The rest of this, as I pointed out, is first-year IR
> stuff. I shall elaborate further below.
>
> > And, as an aside, I note the quaint twentieth-century view of war here
> > as a conflict between states. As Creveld argued some time ago, this is
> > rapidly being redundant as conflict is increasingly involving non-state
> > actors.
>
> You're the one who brought up the case of World War II.
>
> And I note the way that you seem to think that simply shouting
> "Creveld" every time I raise the issue of the role of the state
> automatically means you comprehend the complexity of the situation.
> Sure, given the increasing interconnectedness of the world at varying
> levels of analysis, increased communication and transportation, to say
> nothing of the increasing availibility of instruments of lethal
> violence, the reality is an increasing salience of non-state actors.
> But that does not automatically mean that any asshole with an agenda
> and a backpack full of laundry detergent is normatively entitled to the
> same status as a state as an arbiter legitimate violence. On the
> contrary, it is in such circumstances that norms of accountability must
> be more rigourously defended.
And who does the defending? Yup -- the Americans, right?
> > > Germany used force to
> > > invade Poland, to which Britain and any other country is thereafter
> > > entitled to use counter-force to intervene. In the case of the U.S.,
> > > Japan attacked its sovereign territory, to which any state is
> > > *compelled* to respond.
> > >
> > > In any case, I would consider genocide to be among "the most extreme of
> > > circumstances",
> >
> > So what genocide was taking place in 1939 when Britain entered the war?
>
> I was merely pre-empting your next gambit. Forgive me.
You're not going to answer the question?
> Genocide was not a pretext to enter the war in 1939. However, it was a
> legitimate pretext to proceed with the war to its conclusion even after
> the initial aggression had been successfully countered.
So you think that ENTERING the war was wrong but CONTINUING it was
right?
By the way, at what point do you think the Allies got the idea that
there was 'genocide'?.
> > > in which case, regardless of these "casus belli", any
> > > state was legitimately entitled to use and continue to use force
> > > against Nazi Germany at that point, at least insofar as doing so served
> > > to put an end to such crimes.
> >
> > Note that now war is OK not only if the other side aggresses outside
> > its borders but also to prevent 'genocide'
>
> Those are but two concrete examples to illustrate a wider principle you
> evidently cannot understand, though I will make every effort to explain
> it to you.
>
> > > > Is he going to argue that Bush and Blair
> > > > should be given the same sort of treatment that they lined up for the
> > > > Nazi leaders?
> > >
> > > In the case of Bush, at least, I think it would be a hell of a trial to
> > > see.
> >
> > Come on -- give us a straight answer. Is the man a war criminal or not?
>
> Probably. I really can't say for sure. But I will say that in an
> ideal world he would be tried as one, and have every right to defend
> himself on that charge.
I am in complete agreement with that point.
> > > > Or even for Milosevic? Or for Saddam? Should we hold
> > > > special remembrance days for their victims? Should they be demonized in
> > > > our media night after night? And finally -- the real point -- should
> > > > the political systems that led to them be demonized and the supporters
> > > > of those systems medicalized and marginalized? No?
> > >
> > > What are you babbling about?
> >
> > Simple. Nazism, communism and Islamism are demonized because of the
> > actions of their leaders. As you now seem to be admitting, supporters
> > of those systems are marginalized by contemporary systems with this
> > being given as an excuse.
>
> Um, no, I have never admitted any such thing. Where do you get this
> stuff?
Well you write it, then deny it. I suppose I could spend an hour on
Google to find the exact quotes but I really don't have the time or
patience.
> I don't think it is simply the actions of their leaders that cause
> these ideologies to be demonised. A direct causal line can be drawn
> between the ideologies themselves and the crimes committed in their
> name.
But this is not the case with neoliberal globalism? (Yup -- I know: you
want a precise definition of neoliberal globalism before you'll engage
with the point, although you don't seem to require such definitions of
Nazism, communism, or your precious 'racism' concept . . .)
> Its not difficult to argue that the militarism and racism of Nazism led
> directly to aggressive warfare and genocide - and that militarism and
> racism were integral elements to Nazi ideology, and that the warfare
> and genocide that occured could not have occured without these
> ideological elements. Take those elements out, and I would really have
> no problem with the ideology (I still don't think it would be workable,
> mind you, but I would have no problem with it). But then again, take
> those elements out and it would no longer be Nazism - it would be
> something else.
>
> Can you make an argument as to how the tenets liberal democracy created
> the war in Iraq? Note that your answer must establish a direct causal
> relationship between the tenets of that political ideology in
> particular - not just the fact that it happened to be the ruling
> ideology of the aggressor state.
Actually, I can make a better argument. Ideologies don't kill people.
People kill people. Back in 1994 I was chatting to a supporter of the
Tory Party over breakfast at a London hotel and he opined that if the
West had reacted differently towards Nazi Germany then not only would
the Jews have had a far happier time of things but the Nazi regime,
after a few decades, would probably have morphed into 'something like
Switzerland'. The tendency of communism to morph into 'something like
Switzerland' has already been well established. Islam has morphed into
'something like Switzerland' in many parts of the world. Whether an
ideology -- and this includes the ideologies of the Western nations,
whatever you care to call them -- becomes murderous or whether it leads
to a result that morphs into 'something like Switzerland' depends on
situational variables. We can even anticipate what these variables are
-- they include things like existence of a regime-threatening other,
the demonization of this other, the opportunity to get away with mass
murder, etc. etc. (all of which, BTW, are present in the modern
American and British context).
You see, ideologies are often just rhetoric. Underneath them you get
realpolitik. And it's the realpolitik that determines whether bestial
behaviour takes place. The mere fact that a nation-state adopts liberal
rhetoric doesn't mean that it can't behave in a bestial manner
(Israel). And conversely, a regime can adopt rhetoric full or
revolutionary fire while morphing rapidly into 'something like
Switzerland' -- perhaps China after Mao's meeting with Nixon is a case
in point.
Translation: you have now changed your position on war and want to put
forward something more subtle. Fine.
> > You've given in various posts numerous instances where you'll support
> > war.
> >
> > 1. 'Extreme circumstances.'
> > 2. If someone aggresses outside his borders. (Presumably that means
> > that we British are legitimate recipients of warfare -- by gawd, Mock's
> > coming perilously close to justifying the London bombings!)
> > 3. To prevent genocide.
> > 4. Against a 'brutal oppressor'.
> >
> > Given the elasticity of each of those conditions -- especially if
> > you're using genocide to justify the entry of the British into the
> > Second World War in 1939 -- it seems to me that your use of the 'all
> > war is wrong' argument doesn't reflect your real beliefs.
>
> Of course it doesn't. Because I never said "all war is wrong".
>
> What I said was that war inevitably causes suffering, and therefore to
> initiate or escalate war is a crime.
>
> Do you comprehend the difference?
I don't even accept your disavowal of what you said in our earlier
discussions. But you're entitled to change your views -- after all,
that's the whole point of talking to you in the first place.
> No, I didn't think so. It rather
> illustrates what I was saying before - if you were able to comprehend
> the moral basis upon which these distinctions rest, the distinctions
> themselves would not seem arbitrary or vague at all, but entirely
> consistent. Allow me to try and walk you through it - see if you can
> follow:
>
> 1. War inevitably causes suffering to civilians. That has been known
> throughout the history of warfare since ancient times.
>
> With me so far?
No. It doesn't inevitably cause suffering to civilians and CERTAINLY
did not do so in ancient times (when warfare was primarily a conflict
between armed forces on the battlefield). In the modern age of surgical
strikes, there is a far too great an acceptance of the 'inevitability'
of civilian casualties. Perhaps the most grotesque application of this
'inevitable casualty' claptrap is when the existence of military
facilities at Hiroshima is used to justify the attacks on that city
(even though the targeting meeting gave other, more honest
considerations).
> 2. Causing suffering to civilians is a fundamental wrong.
>
> Okay, I imagine I've lost you. This is the part that you really can't
> relate to on a personal level, and since you don't really want to have
> to admti that its gonna be N/H gambit from this point on. But please
> try and restrain yourself and follow to the end of my argument, 'kay?
Depends on what the point is in causing the suffering. If causing a
small amount of suffering to 10 civilians will save a huge amount of
suffering to 100 000 civilians then it seems a fair proposition. I
imagine that we'd probably agree that we want to minimize the suffering
but we'd disagree on the timescale over which it should be minimized.
> 3. If causing suffering to civilians is wrong, and war causes suffering
> to civilians, then one should think *very* carefully before employing
> force as an extension of policy.
I'd go along with the conclusion, if not the premisses.
> 4. Now, if the reason why proceeding with armed conflict is wrong is
> because it causes suffering to civilians, then under what conditions,
> pray tell, might the use of force be acceptable?
>
> Answer: when it does not stand to cause or increase the suffering of
> civilians.
>
> Holy shit! I think we have a consistent moral principle, here, sparky.
And one with which I would tend to agree. Again, we're both saying
'look at the consequences'.
> Now lets apply it.
> 5. Under what possible conditions could the use of force *not* cause or
> increase the suffering of civilians.
>
> A. the answer of classical international relations is that there is
> only one such instance: when the use of force is being employed solely
> to counter aggression; to contain and restrain force that is already
> being applied by an aggressor state.
No. The 'aggressor state' might itself be acting in a way that
minimizes suffering. You need to look at who the aggressor state is and
what it's doing.
Moreover, why a 'state'? In the modern world 'states' are morphing into
nothing more than administrative zones. I think you overestimate the
importance of 'states' in the modern world and underestimate the
importance of (a) supra-state forces, and (b) sub-state forces.
> I think a good example of this dynamic would be the first Gulf war.
> Iraq invaded Kuwait; the U.S. used only as much force as was needed to
> contain this aggressive use of force and reverse its effects, and then
> they got the hell out of Dodge. Now, one might argue that they should
> have *chosen* not to apply counter-force in that situation, and one
> might claim that they had ulterior motives for making the choice they
> did. But from the standpoint of the norms of international relations,
> they were well within their rights to do so.
>
> B. now, there are many, myself included, who think there is another
> instance where force can be used by a state, and again it is entirely
> consistent with the overarching moral principle that the fundamental
> purpose is to avoid the suffering of civilians: it is what I earlier
> refered to as "extreme circumstances", which, if you had asked me to
> explain, I would have elaborated as meaning circumstances in which
> civilian populations are *already* suffering to a degree where the
> intervention of additional force could only ameliorate, and could
> hardly exacerbate that suffering.
Again, you need to look at who's suffering and who's rescuing them. As
Iraq has shown, this can be used as a cynical principle for imperialist
aggression and can make the people who are already suffering suffer
even more in the long run.
Moreover, there's the old American trick: use economic and political
pressure to make the civilians in an enemy country suffer, then use
their suffering as an excuse for intervention.
In SOME instances, I'd grant you, it's more clearcut. Indeed, without
wishing to say anything that would put me in prison for the next
several years under the Terrorism Act 2006, much of my agreement with
the Al-Qaeda approach to things would be justified in roughly these
terms.
> Genocide, I think, is the classic
> example of this - where the actions of a state against a given
> population make a mockery of any claim that state might have to exert
> legitimate soverignty over that population,
Well there's genocide going off in Africa at the moment thanks to
Western economic and political policies. Does that mean that the
Africans are justified in attacking America?
> and where war could not
> possibly put that population in a *worse* situation than they are
> already in. Another example, I would propose, would be the situation
> of a "failed state" that has descended into continuous civil war
> already as bad as any international war could be. With no de facto
> state authority, no sovereignty is being violated, and again, foreign
> intervention capable of restraining warring sides could only ameliorate
> the situation for civilians and at least could not make matters worse.
Same comments apply as above. Can be used as a pretext for imperialist
expansionism and can make things much worse. Civil wars DO end
spontaneously -- Northern Ireland being a case in point.
> I think an example of this "extreme circumstances" argument would be
> the pretext on which NATO attacked Serbia in 1999. Though again, some
> would argue (as I do) that the situation on the ground was not, in
> fact, so extreme that the attack *did not* in the end make matters
> worse, particularly given the counterproductive military methods used.
> Still, the motive was honourable, even if the methods were inane -
> whether that motive was to prevent ethnic cleansing or (what I think
> was the real motive) to place troops on the ground capable of
> forstalling civil war.
>
> Do you think I'm making all of this stuff up on the spot? Nope. Like
> I said, its 1st-year IR stuff.
>
> > > You just use it to justify violence of any wanton sort against anyone
> > > you don't happen to agree with.
> >
> > No I don't. I argue very strongly against the use of violence in
> > Western industrialized countries because, on the whole, I don't think
> > it would work here. There are a few instances -- 9/11, the London
> > bombings -- where the risk has paid off beautifully but on the whole
> > the costs outweigh the benefits.
>
> Right. The problem is not that killing people for your political views
> is wrong, just that it isn't very effective.
No, whether it's wrong depends on the results. If it saves a far
greater number of lives in the long run, or tends in that direction,
then it's not wrong.
> Hence you would not
> recommend it, only praise it once when it is done, though only if it is
> exceptionally cruel such as to successfully contribute toward
> destabilising a society you despise.
>
> The funny part is that you think this clarification works to your
> favour.
I think you are wearing rose-tinted glasses, Mr Mock. You think that
the world you're living in is a civilized, humane place. For most
people it is anything but. I cited the statistics in another post --
you just snipped them and called them pseudo-revolutionary claptrap.
It's not an argument that you want to engage.
Behind much of my thinking are two considerations. First, the modern
global political system is utterly bestial. It is founded upon
hypocrisy, exploitation, lies and murder. And as global warming,
big-power rivalry, corruption, new diseases, etc. etc. bite harder and
harder, it's going to get worse and worse. Second, things don't have to
be that way. It is possible to envisage a beautiful world where the
people are joyful and prosperous, where there is no starvation or
exploitation, where the entire world rises up against natural
challenges in a united, orderly way, where there are no more wars, no
more unnecessary conflicts, no more religions and supersitions, no more
authoritarian multiculturalism, no more crime, no more eradicable
diseases, no more of this farcical 'multi-party' democracy (where the
only parties that can win are neoliberal ones). The aim is to move from
the first state to the second. What takes us in that direction is good;
what impedes is bad.
This is what I mean when I regard the fundamental difference between us
as one of timescale. You look at 9/11 and reason something along the
lines of 'civilians killed, non-state actor (apparently) responsible,
therefore unnecessary suffering, therefore BAD'. I look at 9/11 and
reason 'chain of events started that will destabilize current world
order, therefore GOOD.'
> > > > > I have applied this principle quite specifically to the war in Iraq.
> > > > > Whatever good may have come of it (the fall of Saddam Hussein), the
> > > > > U.S. nonetheless unleased a hell on that region that could only have
> > > > > led to considerable civilian casualties and suffering, as well as an
> > > > > ongoing breakdown of social order. They are therefore morally
> > > > > responsible for all of said suffering, even - to some degree - that
> > > > > which they did not inflict directly.
> > > > >
> > > > > If you have read any of my posts on this matter in the past, you know
> > > > > that this is my view.
> > > >
> > > > So are we now going to see Mr Mock campaigning against Western-style
> > > > 'democracy' because it led to this state of affairs?
> > >
> > > I do not believe that "Western-style democracy" is what leads to this
> > > state of affairs, Dr. Michael, and you have made no argument supporting
> > > such a view
> >
> > So you feel that the political systems responsible for permitting Blair
> > and Bush to come to power and perpetrate such crimes are not
> > 'Western-style democracies'?
>
> I guess. But that is a pretty tenuous connection. I do not see how
> the characteristic of liberal democracy itself is responsible for
> creating this state of affairs, and your resort to such a textbook
> syllogistic fallacy is not a substitute for your failure to argue such
> a connection.
I'm making the point that I made above about it being people rather
than ideologies that cause suffering. Just like Nazism and communism,
neo-liberal Western 'democracy' also has the potential to cause massive
murder and mayhem. It's claim to be superior on this front is utterly
bogus.
> Blair and Bush have engaged in aggressive warfare.
> Blair and Bush are democrats.
> Democracy is the cause of aggressive war.
>
> Blair and Bush are also mammels, Dr. Michael. Does having warm blood
> also cause aggressive war?
But you have no problem with:
Nazis have engaged in aggressive acts
Nazis are 'racists'
'Racism' is the cause of aggressive acts
(Indeed, we see that one played out in the popular media every day!)
In fact, my argument is more:
For Western-style democracy to be superior to rival systems it has to
produce better results.
It doesn't produce better results.
Therefore Western-style democracy is not superior to rival systems
> I have already explained that in my view, the characteristic of the
> states in question that has most contributed to the current state of
> affairs is simply that they are powerful states in the international
> states system, behaving in the way powerful states ruled according to
> pretty much any domestic political system would.
>
> > > I think I made it clear that I consider it to be merely the nature of
> > > the international states system, regardless of what sort of political
> > > regime is ruling the component states.
> >
> > But communist, Nazi and Islamic aggression cannot be swept under the
> > carpet in this way?
>
> No, because - as I said - an argument can be made as to how the very
> ideologies of communism, Nazism, and radical Islam are direct causal
> factors in the very particular crimes and excesses committed under
> these ideologies. The very argument you refuse to make with regard to
> the tenets of liberal democracy.
I have now answered that point. It's people that kill people, not
ideologies. Forget the ideologies for a moment. It's the systems
underneath them that count. You get Islamic and communist regimes that
are indistinguishable from Western ones in most respects. Who knows --
had the international situation been different then the Nazis may
indeed have lost their fire under the influences of international
finance; they certainly seemed to be no enemies of capitalism and were
presumably very vulnerable to being bribed into good behaviour.
> <snip: GWB quote>
>
> > > > In short:
> > > >
> > > > 1. There are values 'no nation is exempt from'.
> > > > 2. They include things like 'liberty' and 'justice' because they are
> > > > 'right' and 'true' and 'unchanging for all people everywhere'.
> > > > 3. They include 'limits on the power of the state' -- i.e. no nation is
> > > > exempt from such (unspecified) limits.
> > > > 4. The values include 'private property' and 'religious tolerance'.
> > > > 5. People who disagree are evil, evil must be opposed, and big
> > > > countries like America must get out there and oppose them.
> > >
> > > I'm no fan of George Bush and his foreign policy, but these basic
> > > values, at least, I have no problem with. I do wish they would be
> > > adhered to more in a spirit of peace and co-operation than aggressive
> > > missionizing, but I have yet to see you make an argument as to how the
> > > basic values *themselves* are responsible for the manner in which they
> > > have been abused, save for the very *post hoc ergo propter hoc* fallacy
> > > I described earlier.
> >
> > So would Nazi/communist/militant Islamist values be OK if they were not
> > abused?
>
> No, because, as I said, in these cases, it is the ideologies themselves
> - and not their abuse - that are responsible for their excesses.
That's where we disagree.
> Take the racism and militarism out of Nazism, no aggression and no
> genocide, and I've got no problem. But then it wouldn't be Nazism
> anymore, would it?
I think you miss the extent to which these ideological labels are
flexible. The Communism of Pol Pot was not the communism of the
Eurocommunists. The Islamism of Osama is not the Islam of Bush's pet
poodles in Iraq. I've heard the label 'Nazi' being applied to people
like Nick Griffin -- if that's the case then it's as flexible as the
'communist' label. One thing I can tell you with absolute certainty is
that you wouldn't get concentration camps under Griffin, whom I've
known vaguely since the early 1980s -- he'd be parading around his
favourite blacks precisely to show how NOT Nazi he is (not a strongly
held principle in sight anywhere there)! Same with 'democracy' -- the
sort of society in which several parties compete but all advocate
essentially the same values (no choice of system for the people) is
very different from what we had even 25 years ago, when there was real
competition, in Britain at least, between a wishy-washy socialism of
Labour and the hard-nosed neoliberalism of Thatcher (limited choice of
system).
> What would you take out of liberal democracy that would cause it to
> cease to be liberal democracy, such as would prevent abuses?
I can't answer because you're talking about a vague label. What does
'liberal democracy' mean? Zhirinovsky?
Look behind the labels. Look at the systems. Forget all this
left-right, democracy-dictatorship, racist-not racist claptrap. It's
all rhetoric to deceive the people. Look at the power politics behind
it.
I'm afraid I've run out of time and, given that I've got to post this
on Google, probably space too.
<snip>
DEM
sm...@nizkor.org
Translation: I can't really answer your request. I have no idea what I
even mean by "the system behind their involvement", what it consists
of, or how exactly it causes whatever I find bad about the world.
So instead, I'm just going to describe how I *wish* the preceding
discussion had gone, and pretend that's what actually happened.
<snip straw-man>
> > > And, as an aside, I note the quaint twentieth-century view of war here
> > > as a conflict between states. As Creveld argued some time ago, this is
> > > rapidly being redundant as conflict is increasingly involving non-state
> > > actors.
> >
> > You're the one who brought up the case of World War II.
> >
> > And I note the way that you seem to think that simply shouting
> > "Creveld" every time I raise the issue of the role of the state
> > automatically means you comprehend the complexity of the situation.
> > Sure, given the increasing interconnectedness of the world at varying
> > levels of analysis, increased communication and transportation, to say
> > nothing of the increasing availibility of instruments of lethal
> > violence, the reality is an increasing salience of non-state actors.
> > But that does not automatically mean that any asshole with an agenda
> > and a backpack full of laundry detergent is normatively entitled to the
> > same status as a state as an arbiter legitimate violence. On the
> > contrary, it is in such circumstances that norms of accountability must
> > be more rigourously defended.
>
> And who does the defending? Yup -- the Americans, right?
All people of conscience, regardless of nationality.
> > > > Germany used force to
> > > > invade Poland, to which Britain and any other country is thereafter
> > > > entitled to use counter-force to intervene. In the case of the U.S.,
> > > > Japan attacked its sovereign territory, to which any state is
> > > > *compelled* to respond.
> > > >
> > > > In any case, I would consider genocide to be among "the most extreme of
> > > > circumstances",
> > >
> > > So what genocide was taking place in 1939 when Britain entered the war?
> >
> > I was merely pre-empting your next gambit. Forgive me.
>
> You're not going to answer the question?
I do in the very next sentence.
> > Genocide was not a pretext to enter the war in 1939. However, it was a
> > legitimate pretext to proceed with the war to its conclusion even after
> > the initial aggression had been successfully countered.
>
> So you think that ENTERING the war was wrong but CONTINUING it was
> right?
No. Try and follow the argument. As I already stated, the legitimate
basis for entering the war in 1939 was to counter the aggressive use of
force already initiated by Germany. I was pre-empting the argument
that, if this was the case, the Allies should then have negotiated a
cease-fire leaving the Nazi state intact once said force had been
successfully repelled.
> > > Simple. Nazism, communism and Islamism are demonized because of the
> > > actions of their leaders. As you now seem to be admitting, supporters
> > > of those systems are marginalized by contemporary systems with this
> > > being given as an excuse.
> >
> > Um, no, I have never admitted any such thing. Where do you get this
> > stuff?
>
> Well you write it, then deny it.
No, you attibute things to me I never said, so that you can accuse of
flip-flopping when I deny them, thereby diverting the discussion away
from what I *have* said.
So, for the record, I do not think that "the actions of their leaders"
are the root problem with Nazism, communism or militant/radical Islam.
Clear enough?
> > I don't think it is simply the actions of their leaders that cause
> > these ideologies to be demonised. A direct causal line can be drawn
> > between the ideologies themselves and the crimes committed in their
> > name.
>
> But this is not the case with neoliberal globalism?
Not that I can see. You're welcome to make an argument to that effect,
though. Its an argument I'd frankly like to see.
> (Yup -- I know: you
> want a precise definition of neoliberal globalism before you'll engage
> with the point, although you don't seem to require such definitions of
> Nazism, communism, or your precious 'racism' concept . . .)
Sure I do. And didn't I just finish saying *specifically* in the case
of Nazism exactly what elements integral to the ideology I feel are
directly responsible for the excesses committed under that ideology.
Is it my fault that you can't make the same manner of argument in the
case of your nebulous "neoliberal globalism"?
Anyway, there's more in your last post I would like to address, but
I've had a very busy day. Will have to wait for later, I'm afraid.
Steven Mock
sm...@nizkor.org
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.revisionism/msg/00d362393a5bf8de?hl=en&>
david_michael wrote:
> sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> > david_michael wrote:
> > > sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> > > > david_michael wrote:
>
> > > > > Is he going to argue that Bush and Blair
> > > > > should be given the same sort of treatment that they lined up for the
> > > > > Nazi leaders?
> > > >
> > > > In the case of Bush, at least, I think it would be a hell of a trial to
> > > > see.
> > >
> > > Come on -- give us a straight answer. Is the man a war criminal or not?
> >
> > Probably. I really can't say for sure. But I will say that in an
> > ideal world he would be tried as one, and have every right to defend
> > himself on that charge.
>
> I am in complete agreement with that point.
Good. Then you concur with me that the solution to these sorts of
problems is the strengthing of instruments enabling the uniform
enforcement of international law. Or, at least, that this is a far
better and more humane solution than, say, randomnly attacking innocent
American civilians in the interests of destabilising the American
political system.
Am I creating a bit of "cognative dissonance" for you, Dr. Michael?
> > Its not difficult to argue that the militarism and racism of Nazism led
> > directly to aggressive warfare and genocide - and that militarism and
> > racism were integral elements to Nazi ideology, and that the warfare
> > and genocide that occured could not have occured without these
> > ideological elements. Take those elements out, and I would really have
> > no problem with the ideology (I still don't think it would be workable,
> > mind you, but I would have no problem with it). But then again, take
> > those elements out and it would no longer be Nazism - it would be
> > something else.
> >
> > Can you make an argument as to how the tenets liberal democracy created
> > the war in Iraq? Note that your answer must establish a direct causal
> > relationship between the tenets of that political ideology in
> > particular - not just the fact that it happened to be the ruling
> > ideology of the aggressor state.
>
> Actually, I can make a better argument. Ideologies don't kill people.
> People kill people.
<snip: speculation about how the Nazi state could have become "just
like Switzerland">
<...>
> You see, ideologies are often just rhetoric. Underneath them you get
> realpolitik. And it's the realpolitik that determines whether bestial
> behaviour takes place. The mere fact that a nation-state adopts liberal
> rhetoric doesn't mean that it can't behave in a bestial manner
> (Israel). And conversely, a regime can adopt rhetoric full or
> revolutionary fire while morphing rapidly into 'something like
> Switzerland' -- perhaps China after Mao's meeting with Nixon is a case
> in point.
I hate to cause you even more "cognative dissonance", Dr. Michael, but
isn't that exactly the argument I just finished making when I said,
"the characteristic of the states in question (Western democracies)
that has most contributed to the current state of affairs is simply
that they are powerful states in the international states system,
behaving in the way powerful states ruled according to pretty much any
domestic political system would."
What's more, doesn't your apparent agreement with that position make a
complete joke out of your "consequentialist" justification for attacks
against civilians in liberal democracies on the grounds that they serve
toward bringing down the hateful ideology of "neoliberal globalism"
which will save more lives in the long run?
If it is not ideologies that kill people but "realpolitik", realpolitik
will remain with or without "neoliberal globalism". And the deaths you
applaud in the name of destabilising "neoliberal globalism" are in
vain.
But the bottom line is, you're wrong. Or, more to the point, this
"ideologies don't kill people" gambit - utterly incompatible with your
earlier rantings - is yet another product of your inability to cope
with complexity. The truth is that *sometimes* ideologies can kill
people - or, at least, the people who kill people do so because of an
ideology, and would not do so in absense of that ideology. Whereas at
other times, actions leading to suffering are the product of
realpolitik irrespective of ideology.
I think the reason why you are flip-flopping so madly between these
extremes is because you are incapable of making a specific argument in
either case. You cannot dispute my argument showing how, for example,
Nazi genocide and aggression was a direct product of the ideology's
racism, except by resort to a vast generalisation: ideologies don't
kill, its always just realpolitik. Nor can you support an argument as
to how the tenets of "Western-style democracy" itself are directly
responsible for starvation and genocide in Africa or the war in Iraq,
except by resort of a syllogistic fallacy: these things happen,
"neoliberal globalism" (again, whatever that is) is the dominant
ideology in the world, therefore "neoliberal globalism" is to blame.
I have not changed my position, Dr. Michael. My position has remained
entirely consistent. You simply don't understand it.
> > > You've given in various posts numerous instances where you'll support
> > > war.
> > >
> > > 1. 'Extreme circumstances.'
> > > 2. If someone aggresses outside his borders. (Presumably that means
> > > that we British are legitimate recipients of warfare -- by gawd, Mock's
> > > coming perilously close to justifying the London bombings!)
> > > 3. To prevent genocide.
> > > 4. Against a 'brutal oppressor'.
> > >
> > > Given the elasticity of each of those conditions -- especially if
> > > you're using genocide to justify the entry of the British into the
> > > Second World War in 1939 -- it seems to me that your use of the 'all
> > > war is wrong' argument doesn't reflect your real beliefs.
> >
> > Of course it doesn't. Because I never said "all war is wrong".
> >
> > What I said was that war inevitably causes suffering, and therefore to
> > initiate or escalate war is a crime.
> >
> > Do you comprehend the difference?
>
> I don't even accept your disavowal of what you said in our earlier
> discussions.
Why don't you cite what it is you think I said in our "earlier
discussions" and we can see if really is all that different to what I
am saying now?
> > No, I didn't think so. It rather
> > illustrates what I was saying before - if you were able to comprehend
> > the moral basis upon which these distinctions rest, the distinctions
> > themselves would not seem arbitrary or vague at all, but entirely
> > consistent. Allow me to try and walk you through it - see if you can
> > follow:
> >
> > 1. War inevitably causes suffering to civilians. That has been known
> > throughout the history of warfare since ancient times.
> >
> > With me so far?
>
> No. It doesn't inevitably cause suffering to civilians and CERTAINLY
> did not do so in ancient times (when warfare was primarily a conflict
> between armed forces on the battlefield).
Sure it did. Even in ancient times, if nothing else, warfare involved
considerable levels of mobilisation, leading to deprivations at home
and large armies that maintained themselves for months at a time
feeding of the populations they conquered. And there were some very
vicious, ideological wars in medieval and early modern times as well.
Its always been a nasty business, one way or another - this has been
recognised since Thucydides, and I provided quotes circa. the 16th
century that recognised this clearly.
My point is that if that is the case, then it is not an aggressor
state. And though there may be grey areas over which people of
differing views on the history can debate, the debate must ultimately
revolve around an objective measure of that suffering.
> Moreover, why a 'state'? In the modern world 'states' are morphing into
> nothing more than administrative zones. I think you overestimate the
> importance of 'states' in the modern world and underestimate the
> importance of (a) supra-state forces, and (b) sub-state forces.
And I think you are trying to distract from the point, which is as
applicable to any entity with access to instruments of lethal violence
as it is to a state.
> > I think a good example of this dynamic would be the first Gulf war.
> > Iraq invaded Kuwait; the U.S. used only as much force as was needed to
> > contain this aggressive use of force and reverse its effects, and then
> > they got the hell out of Dodge. Now, one might argue that they should
> > have *chosen* not to apply counter-force in that situation, and one
> > might claim that they had ulterior motives for making the choice they
> > did. But from the standpoint of the norms of international relations,
> > they were well within their rights to do so.
> >
> > B. now, there are many, myself included, who think there is another
> > instance where force can be used by a state, and again it is entirely
> > consistent with the overarching moral principle that the fundamental
> > purpose is to avoid the suffering of civilians: it is what I earlier
> > refered to as "extreme circumstances", which, if you had asked me to
> > explain, I would have elaborated as meaning circumstances in which
> > civilian populations are *already* suffering to a degree where the
> > intervention of additional force could only ameliorate, and could
> > hardly exacerbate that suffering.
>
> Again, you need to look at who's suffering and who's rescuing them. As
> Iraq has shown, this can be used as a cynical principle for imperialist
> aggression and can make the people who are already suffering suffer
> even more in the long run.
Indeed. But if these principles are grounded in objective facts rather
than ideological constructions, one can test their application against
those facts. I think it is pretty clear that however much the Iraqi
population, or at least elements thereof, may have been suffering under
Saddam Hussein, the destabilisation of social order that resulted
directly from the violence introduced to the territory by the U.S. and
Britain made matters considerably worse, and could only have been
expected to. Hence these principles remain applicable, however much
they can be cynically manipulated in rhetoric.
> In SOME instances, I'd grant you, it's more clearcut. Indeed, without
> wishing to say anything that would put me in prison for the next
> several years under the Terrorism Act 2006, much of my agreement with
> the Al-Qaeda approach to things would be justified in roughly these
> terms.
Except that's precisely your problem, Dr. Michael - Al-Qaeda's actions
*cannot* be justified in these terms. We can argue about whether
Hiroshima and Nagasaki met these terms or not - an historical case can
be made either way. But there is no such argument to be made in the
case of 9/11, unless you immerse yourself deeply in the ideological
assumptions and delusions of the perpetrators. Their attacks on
innocent people induced suffering in the immediate term, escalated
warfare and aggression in the long term, and prevented or restrained
nothing. And that was entirely their purpose.
> > Genocide, I think, is the classic
> > example of this - where the actions of a state against a given
> > population make a mockery of any claim that state might have to exert
> > legitimate soverignty over that population,
>
> Well there's genocide going off in Africa at the moment thanks to
> Western economic and political policies. Does that mean that the
> Africans are justified in attacking America?
[an aside to Doc Tony: and you really have to ask why I find DEM to be
such a fascinating specimin? He really thinks this argument logically
follows. Only someone who was completely lacking the ability to relate
to the most basic moral principles stemming from the capacity for human
empathy would be so inept at comprehending just how those principles
apply. To him, it all just a logical game and he's playing "gotcha";
these aren't real people, and their actual suffering doesn't really
matter]
Okay, back to Dr. Michael...
No, your argument fails for 2 reasons.
1. The connection you draw between these vague "Western economic and
political policies" and the genocide is tenuous at best, dependant on
your personal ideological assumptions which stem from your inability to
comprehend the complex causes behind events like genocide. For you,
its enough to simply conclude that since "the West" (whatever that
means to you) seems to be in charge of things for the moment, and
genocide in Africa occurs, therefore "the West" must be at fault and
liable for retaliation. In other words, you haven't shown that the
West is directly responsible for the genocide - only that they have
failed to prevent it.
2. Even if you *had* shown that "the West" was directly responsible for
the genocide in Africa, the principles I have articulated dictate that
the introduction of violence is only justifiable if it serves to
prevent - or at least will not exacerbate - violence and suffering.
Violence against innocent people in Western countries would do no such
thing. Rather, it would introduce suffering where none had existed
before, and accomplish nothing further to relieving suffering in the
place where that suffering was, in fact, going on.
In which case, my principles, applied correctly, would not justify
violence against innocent people who happen to live in "the West". The
sole purpose of such violence would be retaliation for the failure of
"the West" to do more than they could have, which serves no
constructive purpose. The answer, then, according to my principles,
would to put an end to that "Western" failure, through active political
and military intervention where the genocide is taking place in order
to forcibly restrain the violence already being employed against
innocent people and thereby actively allieviate their suffering.
> > > > You just use it to justify violence of any wanton sort against anyone
> > > > you don't happen to agree with.
> > >
> > > No I don't. I argue very strongly against the use of violence in
> > > Western industrialized countries because, on the whole, I don't think
> > > it would work here. There are a few instances -- 9/11, the London
> > > bombings -- where the risk has paid off beautifully but on the whole
> > > the costs outweigh the benefits.
> >
> > Right. The problem is not that killing people for your political views
> > is wrong, just that it isn't very effective.
>
> No, whether it's wrong depends on the results. If it saves a far
> greater number of lives in the long run, or tends in that direction,
> then it's not wrong.
Right. Which brings us right back to the question you ran screaming
from a few weeks ago. If this is the standard by which you measure
right and wrong (and, as I said, it is a standard I can relate to) how,
then, do you draw the conclusion that in the case of 9/11 and 7/7 "the
costs outweigh the benefits"?
Where are the lives that were saved by these particular applications of
violence? Point to them. Provide an answer that could be understood
even by someone who does not share your political opinions and
ideological assumptions.
Well, if there is anything in the paragraph above *other than*
"pseudo-revolutionary claptrap" it is very carefully hidden. The
current system is bad because it is bad. It is "founded upon
hypocrisy, exploitation, lies and murder" (ooo, that's nailing it
down). One can "envisage" a perfect utopia where all is wonderful, but
you have no idea how to get there or how it is that the current system
impedes us.
Its a discourse big on rhetoric, massive sweeping generalisations and
meaningless catch-phrases, and completely devoid of anything resembling
argumentative content. Now, as I said before, that in itself isn't
such a crime. Its no more annoying than the tripe I find in the
pamphlets handed to me by the International Marxists and such groups,
if even a bit vaguer. But at the end, this vacuous formula is asserted
in your discourse as justification for lethal violence against innocent
people, for the sole purpose of destablising a society you despise,
sans any real conception of what's actually the problem with it or how
something better might serve to take its place once this wanton
violence successfully drives it away.
Kill and destroy, and magically somehow this mayhem will produce a
perfect world. And you consider this a logical, objective argument
justifying murder in consequentialist terms. Utterly depraved.
You are asserting this point repeatedly, but you have yet to make any
argument demonstrating such a causal connection.
> > Blair and Bush have engaged in aggressive warfare.
> > Blair and Bush are democrats.
> > Democracy is the cause of aggressive war.
> >
> > Blair and Bush are also mammels, Dr. Michael. Does having warm blood
> > also cause aggressive war?
>
> But you have no problem with:
>
> Nazis have engaged in aggressive acts
> Nazis are 'racists'
> 'Racism' is the cause of aggressive acts
Of course I do, since this is not an argument I have ever made.
The Nazis did engage in aggressive acts, and I did, earlier, say that
the use of force was legitimate for the purpose of countering their
aggression. But the mere fact of "aggressive acts" is not what
discredits Nazism or racism as an ideology. I think it is hard to
dispute that some of their "aggressive acts" and other applications of
violence were the direct result of their racist ideology; would not
have happened without that racist ideology. Can you make a serious
case, grounded in honest history, that Jews (and other groups) would
not have been denied equal rights, attacked, ghettoised, and ultimately
murdered en masse were it not for the way the racism of Nazi ideology
had categorised and defined them? To what extent would the Nazis have
insisted on conquering and subjugating every territory where groups
deemed racially German lived, without the ideology that identified
people according to such categories, deeming Germans racially superior
and thus considering it an inherent injustice that they should anywhere
be ruled by inferior peoples?
Further to your earlier trite supposition... one would have needed to
take the racism out of Nazism before a Nazi state could possibly have
become "something like Switerland". That's clear enough. Would that
have happened? Maybe. How long would it have taken? And how many
more bodies would have accumulated in the meantime?
> (Indeed, we see that one played out in the popular media every day!)
>
> In fact, my argument is more:
>
> For Western-style democracy to be superior to rival systems it has to
> produce better results.
> It doesn't produce better results.
> Therefore Western-style democracy is not superior to rival systems
But this is where your inability to recognise any complexity, any
middle ground fully comes into play. You seem to think that because
"Western-style democracy" hasn't produced utopia on earth, it hasn't
produced better results. The problem is:
1) your assumptions are oversimplified. Contrary to your belief the
whole of the world is *not* run according to the tenets of
"Western-style democracy", and most of the structural violence that
exists seems to take place in part of the world that are not, which
would appear to empirically support the view that Western-style
democracy, consistently applied *does* in fact produce better results.
2) Having failed to cite any specific crime that can be traced directly
to any specific tenet of "Western-style democracy" (as I, just above,
trace certain aspects of Nazi violence directly to the racism of Nazi
ideology), you haven't shown that this system *causes* problems that
could in any way be solved by an alternative system.
> > > > I'm no fan of George Bush and his foreign policy, but these basic
> > > > values, at least, I have no problem with. I do wish they would be
> > > > adhered to more in a spirit of peace and co-operation than aggressive
> > > > missionizing, but I have yet to see you make an argument as to how the
> > > > basic values *themselves* are responsible for the manner in which they
> > > > have been abused, save for the very *post hoc ergo propter hoc* fallacy
> > > > I described earlier.
> > >
> > > So would Nazi/communist/militant Islamist values be OK if they were not
> > > abused?
> >
> > No, because, as I said, in these cases, it is the ideologies themselves
> > - and not their abuse - that are responsible for their excesses.
>
> That's where we disagree.
Disagree all you like. I don't see how such disagreement can be
sustained with an honest look at the history, but who needs the sort of
"cognative dissonance" history provides?
> > Take the racism and militarism out of Nazism, no aggression and no
> > genocide, and I've got no problem. But then it wouldn't be Nazism
> > anymore, would it?
>
> I think you miss the extent to which these ideological labels are
> flexible. The Communism of Pol Pot was not the communism of the
> Eurocommunists. The Islamism of Osama is not the Islam of Bush's pet
> poodles in Iraq. I've heard the label 'Nazi' being applied to people
> like Nick Griffin -- if that's the case then it's as flexible as the
> 'communist' label. One thing I can tell you with absolute certainty is
> that you wouldn't get concentration camps under Griffin, whom I've
> known vaguely since the early 1980s -- he'd be parading around his
> favourite blacks precisely to show how NOT Nazi he is (not a strongly
> held principle in sight anywhere there)! Same with 'democracy' -- the
> sort of society in which several parties compete but all advocate
> essentially the same values (no choice of system for the people)
Sure people have a choice, Dr. Michael. Your problem simply seems to
be that you don't like the way they have chosen.
> is
> very different from what we had even 25 years ago, when there was real
> competition, in Britain at least, between a wishy-washy socialism of
> Labour and the hard-nosed neoliberalism of Thatcher (limited choice of
> system).
Times change, politics evolve. And they will continue to do so
according to changing social circumstances and global realities. 25
years from now there will be different choices, and maybe they will be
closer together or further apart (or will look that way to you, at
least, since it is all a matter of perspective).
> > What would you take out of liberal democracy that would cause it to
> > cease to be liberal democracy, such as would prevent abuses?
>
> I can't answer because you're talking about a vague label. What does
> 'liberal democracy' mean? Zhirinovsky?
Hey, genius. I'm only using *your* terminology. Swimming in *your*
sewer. You are the one who attributes these abuses to "Western-style
democracy" and "neoliberal globalism", and consequently applauds
violence aimed at destroying these constructs. If you are admitting
that these labels - so integral to your argument - actually have no
meaning in the way that you use them, you are making my point for me.
You are admitting that you can't answer my question in any meaningful
way. You can't zero in on what aspects integral to liberal democracy
(or neoliberal globalism, or whatever) are the cause of the abuses you
blame on liberal democracy.
In short, you can't support your own argument with anything more than
your own hot air.
Steven Mock
david_michael
sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> <continued from
> http://groups.google.com/group/alt.revisionism/msg/00d362393a5bf8de?hl=en&>
>
> david_michael wrote:
> > sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> > > david_michael wrote:
> > > > sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> > > > > david_michael wrote:
> >
> > > > > > Is he going to argue that Bush and Blair
> > > > > > should be given the same sort of treatment that they lined up for the
> > > > > > Nazi leaders?
> > > > >
> > > > > In the case of Bush, at least, I think it would be a hell of a trial to
> > > > > see.
> > > >
> > > > Come on -- give us a straight answer. Is the man a war criminal or not?
> > >
> > > Probably. I really can't say for sure. But I will say that in an
> > > ideal world he would be tried as one, and have every right to defend
> > > himself on that charge.
> >
> > I am in complete agreement with that point.
>
> Good. Then you concur with me that the solution to these sorts of
> problems is the strengthing of instruments enabling the uniform
> enforcement of international law.
No. Once law becomes internationalized it becomes subject to the
horse-trading of international relations. You talk about 'in an ideal
world' -- in such a world Bush would be tried by a jury of his kinsmen,
found guilty of mass murder and shot. As would his accomplices. Why
'internationalize' it?
> Or, at least, that this is a far
> better and more humane solution than, say, randomnly attacking innocent
> American civilians in the interests of destabilising the American
> political system.
I don't think that randomly attacking innocent American civilians is
something I have advocated, is it?
> Am I creating a bit of "cognative dissonance" for you, Dr. Michael?
'Cognitive', not 'cognative'.
No -- you'd need to make me aware of holding two incompatible positions
to accomplish that. I'm not quite sure how agreeing with you that in an
ideal world Bush should be tried for his crimes constitutes two
incompatible positions. At most I have to reject the notion that you, S
Mock, are a fervent Bush supporter.
<snip old stuff>
> > You see, ideologies are often just rhetoric. Underneath them you get
> > realpolitik. And it's the realpolitik that determines whether bestial
> > behaviour takes place. The mere fact that a nation-state adopts liberal
> > rhetoric doesn't mean that it can't behave in a bestial manner
> > (Israel). And conversely, a regime can adopt rhetoric full or
> > revolutionary fire while morphing rapidly into 'something like
> > Switzerland' -- perhaps China after Mao's meeting with Nixon is a case
> > in point.
>
> I hate to cause you even more "cognative dissonance", Dr. Michael, but
> isn't that exactly the argument I just finished making when I said,
> "the characteristic of the states in question (Western democracies)
> that has most contributed to the current state of affairs is simply
> that they are powerful states in the international states system,
> behaving in the way powerful states ruled according to pretty much any
> domestic political system would."
If you read what I actually wrote you'd see that I was arguing that you
need to look behind the ideology espoused by people because people who
use the same ideological labels behave in vastly different ways. The
fact that people use the sort of ideological language that you like
doesn't mean that they can't be beasts, and the fact that they use
revolutionary language that you don't like doesn't mean that they can't
end up selling out to those in favour of the status quo.
> What's more, doesn't your apparent agreement with that position make a
> complete joke out of your "consequentialist" justification for attacks
> against civilians in liberal democracies on the grounds that they serve
> toward bringing down the hateful ideology of "neoliberal globalism"
> which will save more lives in the long run?
>
> If it is not ideologies that kill people but "realpolitik", realpolitik
> will remain with or without "neoliberal globalism". And the deaths you
> applaud in the name of destabilising "neoliberal globalism" are in
> vain.
No, realpolitik will remain with or without neoliberal globalism but it
can be cleaned of neoliberal globalist influence just as realpolitik in
Germany today has been cleaned of Nazi influence, or realpolitik in
Russia was cleaned of communist influence. Neoliberal globalism infests
most ideologies today. Look at the 'communists' in China, the 'Muslims'
running much of the Middle East on America's behalf, the governing AND
principal opposition parties in most Western countries -- hell, look at
Nick Griffin's BNP these days. I am not much interested in getting the
leaders of China or Saudi Arabia to preach a different message -- I am
more interested in getting them to practise a different realpolitik, to
work against America's global interests rather than serving those
interests slavishly.
> But the bottom line is, you're wrong. Or, more to the point, this
> "ideologies don't kill people" gambit - utterly incompatible with your
> earlier rantings - is yet another product of your inability to cope
> with complexity. The truth is that *sometimes* ideologies can kill
> people - or, at least, the people who kill people do so because of an
> ideology, and would not do so in absense of that ideology. Whereas at
> other times, actions leading to suffering are the product of
> realpolitik irrespective of ideology.
What I was arguing was that the idea of a hierarchy of ideological
saintliness -- with Nazism at the bottom, neoliberal globalism at the
top and communism and Islam somewhere in between, was an
oversimplification. You can get bestiality under supposedly saintly
ideologies and you can envisage much demonized ideologies morphing into
something quite benign. This in no way conflicts with the notion that
SOMETIMES you can get ideological killings. In other words my point was
not that you never get people driven to kill by ideology, which seems
to be how you interpreted my argument, but rather that the correlation
between particular espoused ideologies and the propensity to kill is
probably much less than perfect.
> I think the reason why you are flip-flopping so madly between these
> extremes is because you are incapable of making a specific argument in
> either case.
Not really -- you're just pretending that I'm saying something other
than I am.
> You cannot dispute my argument showing how, for example,
> Nazi genocide and aggression was a direct product of the ideology's
> racism,
Could you point me to the post in which you 'showed' this? I thought
you 'claimed' it. I think a very strong case could be made that had the
outside world responded more constructively to Hitler then he could
well have been 'bought' -- the whole thing, as I argued in the material
that you snipped -- could well have morphed into 'something like
Switzerland'.
>except by resort to a vast generalisation: ideologies don't
> kill, its always just realpolitik. Nor can you support an argument as
> to how the tenets of "Western-style democracy" itself are directly
> responsible for starvation and genocide in Africa or the war in Iraq,
> except by resort of a syllogistic fallacy: these things happen,
> "neoliberal globalism" (again, whatever that is) is the dominant
> ideology in the world, therefore "neoliberal globalism" is to blame.
Excuse me, but when a child dies of starvation somewhere in the world
every 5 seconds and yet Mr Bush chooses to spend tens of billions of
dollars on defending 'Western values' by invading dissident states then
it seems to me that a causal link does indeed exist between those
values and the deaths caused by the political decision to defend them
rather than spending the money on preventing the deaths.
Possibly but you've moved from:
'In short, Dr. Michael: war is hell. It inevitably causes suffering to
civilians. Who, then, is guilty for that suffering? Answer: the party
who started the war.' (18 October 2001)
and
'War is hell, Dr. Michael.' (19 October 2001)
and
'<sigh> Let's try this again. All ordinary, sane people recognise that
war itself causes suffering. Hence that war itself is a crime in that
it is the overall cause of said suffering, and that guilt for war - and
for all of the suffering caused by all of the individual actions
further to that war - is shared by both combattants, but falls
primarily to whoever's actions instigated the war.' (29 August 2005)
to stating that it's OK to start a war in extreme circumstances, or if
someone aggresses outside his borders, or to prevent genocide, or
against a brutal oppressor, which is your position in the current
thread.
It looks like a clear shift to me.
> > > > You've given in various posts numerous instances where you'll support
> > > > war.
> > > >
> > > > 1. 'Extreme circumstances.'
> > > > 2. If someone aggresses outside his borders. (Presumably that means
> > > > that we British are legitimate recipients of warfare -- by gawd, Mock's
> > > > coming perilously close to justifying the London bombings!)
> > > > 3. To prevent genocide.
> > > > 4. Against a 'brutal oppressor'.
> > > >
> > > > Given the elasticity of each of those conditions -- especially if
> > > > you're using genocide to justify the entry of the British into the
> > > > Second World War in 1939 -- it seems to me that your use of the 'all
> > > > war is wrong' argument doesn't reflect your real beliefs.
> > >
> > > Of course it doesn't. Because I never said "all war is wrong".
> > >
> > > What I said was that war inevitably causes suffering, and therefore to
> > > initiate or escalate war is a crime.
> > >
> > > Do you comprehend the difference?
> >
> > I don't even accept your disavowal of what you said in our earlier
> > discussions.
>
> Why don't you cite what it is you think I said in our "earlier
> discussions" and we can see if really is all that different to what I
> am saying now?
'<sigh> Let's try this again. All ordinary, sane people recognise that
war itself causes suffering. Hence that war itself is a crime in that
it is the overall cause of said suffering, and that guilt for war - and
for all of the suffering caused by all of the individual actions
further to that war - is shared by both combattants, but falls
primarily to whoever's actions instigated the war.' (29 August 2005)
The words 'war itself is a crime' and 'guilt for war - and for all of
the suffering caused by all of the individual actions further to that
war - is shared by both combattants' seem to be a very different
position from that which you currently take -- viz. that it's OK to
fight a war in extreme circumstances, if someone aggresses outside his
borders, to prevent genocide and against a brutal oppressor.
Perhaps you should sleep on that one and decide which position you're
happiest with -- your pacifist position of August 2005 or your more
Blairite position of today.
> > > No, I didn't think so. It rather
> > > illustrates what I was saying before - if you were able to comprehend
> > > the moral basis upon which these distinctions rest, the distinctions
> > > themselves would not seem arbitrary or vague at all, but entirely
> > > consistent. Allow me to try and walk you through it - see if you can
> > > follow:
> > >
> > > 1. War inevitably causes suffering to civilians. That has been known
> > > throughout the history of warfare since ancient times.
> > >
> > > With me so far?
> >
> > No. It doesn't inevitably cause suffering to civilians and CERTAINLY
> > did not do so in ancient times (when warfare was primarily a conflict
> > between armed forces on the battlefield).
>
> Sure it did. Even in ancient times, if nothing else, warfare involved
> considerable levels of mobilisation, leading to deprivations at home
> and large armies that maintained themselves for months at a time
> feeding of the populations they conquered. And there were some very
> vicious, ideological wars in medieval and early modern times as well.
> Its always been a nasty business, one way or another - this has been
> recognised since Thucydides, and I provided quotes circa. the 16th
> century that recognised this clearly.
So those people who fought did not do so willingly? You see, if they
did fight willingly then there must have been some reward inducing them
to fight, right? A reward exceeding the perceived 'privations at home'
moreover, right?
Ah, right. So if a rich country attacks a very poor country, absorbs it
into its territory and spends a fortune on improving the lot of the
civilians who formerly resided in the poor country (now absorbed into
the rich one), the rich country is not an aggressor in virtue of the
fact that the suffering of the people in the poor country reduces as a
result of its attack?
You've just made an excellent case for Greece to attack Albania, for
South Africa to attack Zimbabwe, and for pretty much anyone in Latin
America to go and finish off Haiti . . .
My point, of course, is that aggression takes many forms -- some
benign, some malevolent, some difficult to call, and a simple principle
like war is justified only when force is being employed to counter
aggression raises a lot of problems.
All of which is academic because in the real world 'might is right' --
and America has the might.
>And though there may be grey areas over which people of
> differing views on the history can debate, the debate must ultimately
> revolve around an objective measure of that suffering.
But in practice it will revolve around considerations of realpolitik --
in other words, whether America likes it.
> > Moreover, why a 'state'? In the modern world 'states' are morphing into
> > nothing more than administrative zones. I think you overestimate the
> > importance of 'states' in the modern world and underestimate the
> > importance of (a) supra-state forces, and (b) sub-state forces.
>
> And I think you are trying to distract from the point, which is as
> applicable to any entity with access to instruments of lethal violence
> as it is to a state.
An important point.
> > > I think a good example of this dynamic would be the first Gulf war.
> > > Iraq invaded Kuwait; the U.S. used only as much force as was needed to
> > > contain this aggressive use of force and reverse its effects, and then
> > > they got the hell out of Dodge. Now, one might argue that they should
> > > have *chosen* not to apply counter-force in that situation, and one
> > > might claim that they had ulterior motives for making the choice they
> > > did. But from the standpoint of the norms of international relations,
> > > they were well within their rights to do so.
> > >
> > > B. now, there are many, myself included, who think there is another
> > > instance where force can be used by a state, and again it is entirely
> > > consistent with the overarching moral principle that the fundamental
> > > purpose is to avoid the suffering of civilians: it is what I earlier
> > > refered to as "extreme circumstances", which, if you had asked me to
> > > explain, I would have elaborated as meaning circumstances in which
> > > civilian populations are *already* suffering to a degree where the
> > > intervention of additional force could only ameliorate, and could
> > > hardly exacerbate that suffering.
> >
> > Again, you need to look at who's suffering and who's rescuing them. As
> > Iraq has shown, this can be used as a cynical principle for imperialist
> > aggression and can make the people who are already suffering suffer
> > even more in the long run.
>
> Indeed. But if these principles are grounded in objective facts rather
> than ideological constructions, one can test their application against
> those facts.
What does 'grounded in objective facts' mean? To the taste of the
Americans?
> I think it is pretty clear that however much the Iraqi
> population, or at least elements thereof, may have been suffering under
> Saddam Hussein, the destabilisation of social order that resulted
> directly from the violence introduced to the territory by the U.S. and
> Britain made matters considerably worse, and could only have been
> expected to. Hence these principles remain applicable, however much
> they can be cynically manipulated in rhetoric.
>
> > In SOME instances, I'd grant you, it's more clearcut. Indeed, without
> > wishing to say anything that would put me in prison for the next
> > several years under the Terrorism Act 2006, much of my agreement with
> > the Al-Qaeda approach to things would be justified in roughly these
> > terms.
>
> Except that's precisely your problem, Dr. Michael - Al-Qaeda's actions
> *cannot* be justified in these terms.
Well, while the Terrorism Act 2006 prevents ME from arguing to the
contrary, it is possible that someone who took the contrary position
might argue that:
1. If the world that we live in today is bestial then it needs to be
overthrown and replaced with something better.
2. The world that we live in today is bestial.
3. Therefore it needs to be overthrown and replaced with something
better.
Once we accept this conclusion, forces such as Al-Qaeda that attack the
current world order seem much more benign.
>> We can argue about whether
> Hiroshima and Nagasaki met these terms or not - an historical case can
> be made either way.
No it can't. No historical case can be made that the atomic bombings
minimized or reduced the suffering of civilians. Alternatives existed
that did not require so much suffering.
> But there is no such argument to be made in the
> case of 9/11, unless you immerse yourself deeply in the ideological
> assumptions and delusions of the perpetrators.
See above. I just indicated how such an argument might indeed be made.
> Their attacks on
> innocent people induced suffering in the immediate term, escalated
> warfare and aggression in the long term, and prevented or restrained
> nothing. And that was entirely their purpose.
Your assessment of the long-term impact of the attacks is faulty. There
is now a powerful militant Islamic challenge to American hegemony
throughout the world and America has lost much money and influence.
Moreover, I suspect that the best has yet to be seen.
If you are in a hole and unable to feed yourself and I choose to leave
you to starve to death, spending my money on a nice Stealth bomber
instead of food for you, I put it to you that I would be directly
responsible for your death.
If I were responsible for you being in the hole in the first place,
then that would make me doubly responsible for your death.
> 2. Even if you *had* shown that "the West" was directly responsible for
> the genocide in Africa, the principles I have articulated dictate that
> the introduction of violence is only justifiable if it serves to
> prevent - or at least will not exacerbate - violence and suffering.
> Violence against innocent people in Western countries would do no such
> thing. Rather, it would introduce suffering where none had existed
> before, and accomplish nothing further to relieving suffering in the
> place where that suffering was, in fact, going on.
>
> In which case, my principles, applied correctly, would not justify
> violence against innocent people who happen to live in "the West". The
> sole purpose of such violence would be retaliation for the failure of
> "the West" to do more than they could have, which serves no
> constructive purpose. The answer, then, according to my principles,
> would to put an end to that "Western" failure, through active political
> and military intervention where the genocide is taking place in order
> to forcibly restrain the violence already being employed against
> innocent people and thereby actively allieviate their suffering.
Which, of course, will not happen under the American global regime.
Democrats and Republicans alike have allowed the problem to fester.
America cannot elect a regime that will alleviate the situation because
its internal political system would not allow such a system to come to
power. What CAN happen, however, is that the people can tell the West
to go to hell and then take their destiny into their own hands.
Let me give you a concrete example: Nepal. One of the poorest countries
in the world. The people there are suffering greatly. For years their
Western-backed monarchy did nothing. They had few political rights,
they were exploited and abused, they starved. Finally, these remarkable
people turned around and gave a stern 'no more' to their government.
They rose up in a glorious people's war and forced the monarchy and its
American backers to climb down and to begin granting them political
power. Now it can go one of two ways. Either Prachanda can do a deal
with the West and the suffering can continue, perhaps with communist
slogans replacing monarchist rhetoric -- as has happened in dozens of
so-called communist countries throughout the world. Alternatively, he
can continue to work for the interests of the people, maintain the
people's war, execute the king and the parliamentarians so that they
can do no further harm, and transform Nepal into a paradise on Earth.
> > > > > You just use it to justify violence of any wanton sort against anyone
> > > > > you don't happen to agree with.
> > > >
> > > > No I don't. I argue very strongly against the use of violence in
> > > > Western industrialized countries because, on the whole, I don't think
> > > > it would work here. There are a few instances -- 9/11, the London
> > > > bombings -- where the risk has paid off beautifully but on the whole
> > > > the costs outweigh the benefits.
> > >
> > > Right. The problem is not that killing people for your political views
> > > is wrong, just that it isn't very effective.
> >
> > No, whether it's wrong depends on the results. If it saves a far
> > greater number of lives in the long run, or tends in that direction,
> > then it's not wrong.
>
> Right. Which brings us right back to the question you ran screaming
> from a few weeks ago. If this is the standard by which you measure
> right and wrong (and, as I said, it is a standard I can relate to) how,
> then, do you draw the conclusion that in the case of 9/11 and 7/7 "the
> costs outweigh the benefits"?
> Where are the lives that were saved by these particular applications of
> violence? Point to them. Provide an answer that could be understood
> even by someone who does not share your political opinions and
> ideological assumptions.
Well, while the Terrorism Act 2006 prevents ME from arguing to the
contrary, it is possible that someone who took the contrary position
might argue that:
1. If the world that we live in today is bestial then it needs to be
overthrown and replaced with something better.
2. The world that we live in today is bestial.
3. Therefore it needs to be overthrown and replaced with something
better.
Once we accept this conclusion, forces such as Al-Qaeda that attack the
current world order seem much more benign.
Yes -- I agree. This is Usenet. If you want a 250,000-word treatise,
please provide the funding and I'll set to work forthwith.
> Now, as I said before, that in itself isn't
> such a crime. Its no more annoying than the tripe I find in the
> pamphlets handed to me by the International Marxists and such groups,
> if even a bit vaguer. But at the end, this vacuous formula is asserted
> in your discourse as justification for lethal violence against innocent
> people, for the sole purpose of destablising a society you despise,
> sans any real conception of what's actually the problem with it or how
> something better might serve to take its place once this wanton
> violence successfully drives it away.
>
> Kill and destroy, and magically somehow this mayhem will produce a
> perfect world. And you consider this a logical, objective argument
> justifying murder in consequentialist terms. Utterly depraved.
Heh, the problem with that argument is that it cuts both ways. Your
alternative is equally vague.
Your approach: OK, lets do nothing. Let the existing system of Western
domination continue. Let a child die every 5 seconds of starvation
while our leaders spend the money on Stealth bombers at $2.5 billion a
time, or on wars at hundreds of billions a go. Let more people continue
to die of starvation-related causes every three years than died in the
whole of the Second World War (according to mainstream historians with
their 50 million). Let a fifth of the world's population continue to
live on less than a dollar a day while fat American businessmen relax
on their sunbeds and their wives enjoy the delights of plastic surgery.
Let all kinds of filth, degeneracy and foulness spread through the
streets of our cities. Let's happily put aside our freedom of speech
and other precious freedoms, for which our ancestors fought and died,
in the interest of the 'war on terror'. Let the ancient nations of the
world turn into multicultural hellholes, mere administrative zones of
the New World Order. Let's just keep voting Democrat or Republican (or
Labour or Tory, or their equivalents in the rest of the Western world)
in the hope that one day it all will come right. And as the years turn
into decades, let the whole wretched farce continue -- generation after
generation of war, starvation, exploitation, degeneracy, oppression,
all in the name of Western-style 'democracy' and 'freedom', in one
great, glorious libertarian bloodfest, going on and on without end.
Because 'technical fixes' MIGHT solve the problems one day. Perhaps. If
the politicians get their act together. Maybe. Somehow. Right?
<snip minor quibbles to save space>
> The Nazis did engage in aggressive acts, and I did, earlier, say that
> the use of force was legitimate for the purpose of countering their
> aggression. But the mere fact of "aggressive acts" is not what
> discredits Nazism or racism as an ideology.
Interesting. BTW who gets to decide what 'discredits' and by what
criteria?
> I think it is hard to
> dispute that some of their "aggressive acts" and other applications of
> violence were the direct result of their racist ideology; would not
> have happened without that racist ideology.
You can have a 'racist' ideology without aggressive acts. The old
Afrikaner principle (NOT followed by the Nats) of 'give each people its
own land' would be the way to do this. Good fences make good
neighbours. That kind of thing.
Conversely you can have aggressive acts without 'racist ideology'. The
convergence of the two is entirely contingent.
> Can you make a serious
> case, grounded in honest history, that Jews (and other groups) would
> not have been denied equal rights, attacked, ghettoised, and ultimately
> murdered en masse were it not for the way the racism of Nazi ideology
> had categorised and defined them?
Well Hitler did offer to send them to the West 'in luxury ships'.
Sounds a fair offer to me!
> To what extent would the Nazis have
> insisted on conquering and subjugating every territory where groups
> deemed racially German lived, without the ideology that identified
> people according to such categories, deeming Germans racially superior
> and thus considering it an inherent injustice that they should anywhere
> be ruled by inferior peoples?
I think it would have depended entirely on the reaction of the outside
world. He could have been made offers that he couldn't refuse.
> Further to your earlier trite supposition... one would have needed to
> take the racism out of Nazism before a Nazi state could possibly have
> become "something like Switerland". That's clear enough. Would that
> have happened? Maybe. How long would it have taken? And how many
> more bodies would have accumulated in the meantime?
But this is rubbish. A sort of de facto 'racism' was the norm in most
countries until about the early 1970s when it suddenly became a greater
crime than mass murder. While there was some terrible treatment of
black people and Jews during this period, it was by no means universal.
It is a popular myth, fostered by the media, that any alternative to
authoritarian multiculturalism must inevitably lead to piles of bodies.
What about the piles of bodies accumulating as a result of ANTI-racist
policies -- Zimbabwe and other parts of Africa being a case in point?
> > (Indeed, we see that one played out in the popular media every day!)
> >
> > In fact, my argument is more:
> >
> > For Western-style democracy to be superior to rival systems it has to
> > produce better results.
> > It doesn't produce better results.
> > Therefore Western-style democracy is not superior to rival systems
>
> But this is where your inability to recognise any complexity, any
> middle ground fully comes into play. You seem to think that because
> "Western-style democracy" hasn't produced utopia on earth, it hasn't
> produced better results. The problem is:
>
> 1) your assumptions are oversimplified. Contrary to your belief the
> whole of the world is *not* run according to the tenets of
> "Western-style democracy", and most of the structural violence that
> exists seems to take place in part of the world that are not, which
> would appear to empirically support the view that Western-style
> democracy, consistently applied *does* in fact produce better results.
No, this is a globalised world. The parts of the world to which you
refer are not independent. They are America's backyard.
> 2) Having failed to cite any specific crime that can be traced directly
> to any specific tenet of "Western-style democracy" (as I, just above,
> trace certain aspects of Nazi violence directly to the racism of Nazi
> ideology), you haven't shown that this system *causes* problems that
> could in any way be solved by an alternative system.
I'm too tired to even start to unravel that one.
> > > > > I'm no fan of George Bush and his foreign policy, but these basic
> > > > > values, at least, I have no problem with. I do wish they would be
> > > > > adhered to more in a spirit of peace and co-operation than aggressive
> > > > > missionizing, but I have yet to see you make an argument as to how the
> > > > > basic values *themselves* are responsible for the manner in which they
> > > > > have been abused, save for the very *post hoc ergo propter hoc* fallacy
> > > > > I described earlier.
> > > >
> > > > So would Nazi/communist/militant Islamist values be OK if they were not
> > > > abused?
> > >
> > > No, because, as I said, in these cases, it is the ideologies themselves
> > > - and not their abuse - that are responsible for their excesses.
> >
> > That's where we disagree.
>
> Disagree all you like. I don't see how such disagreement can be
> sustained with an honest look at the history, but who needs the sort of
> "cognative dissonance" history provides?
Well this has been argued above.
> > > Take the racism and militarism out of Nazism, no aggression and no
> > > genocide, and I've got no problem. But then it wouldn't be Nazism
> > > anymore, would it?
> >
> > I think you miss the extent to which these ideological labels are
> > flexible. The Communism of Pol Pot was not the communism of the
> > Eurocommunists. The Islamism of Osama is not the Islam of Bush's pet
> > poodles in Iraq. I've heard the label 'Nazi' being applied to people
> > like Nick Griffin -- if that's the case then it's as flexible as the
> > 'communist' label. One thing I can tell you with absolute certainty is
> > that you wouldn't get concentration camps under Griffin, whom I've
> > known vaguely since the early 1980s -- he'd be parading around his
> > favourite blacks precisely to show how NOT Nazi he is (not a strongly
> > held principle in sight anywhere there)! Same with 'democracy' -- the
> > sort of society in which several parties compete but all advocate
> > essentially the same values (no choice of system for the people)
>
> Sure people have a choice, Dr. Michael. Your problem simply seems to
> be that you don't like the way they have chosen.
Let's give a couple of examples to refute this.
America has a policy of destabilizing Venezuela. Mr Bush is very keen
on it. Did the American people have a choice? No, because it was
started under Clinton.
All three of Britain's 'main' political parties are committed to
Britain as a multi-cultural society.
All three of Britain's 'main' political parties are committed to
Britain as a mixed economy.
All three of Britain's 'main' political parties are pro-American.
None of Britain's 'main' political parties give a clear commitment to
pulling out of the EU.
Given that none of the minor political parties have the funding, access
to the mass media, or freedom from security service intervention
necessary for them to put their case to British people (most of whom
have never heard of many of the minor parties) what choice do the
people have on entire swathes of policy?
> > is
> > very different from what we had even 25 years ago, when there was real
> > competition, in Britain at least, between a wishy-washy socialism of
> > Labour and the hard-nosed neoliberalism of Thatcher (limited choice of
> > system).
>
> Times change, politics evolve. And they will continue to do so
> according to changing social circumstances and global realities. 25
> years from now there will be different choices, and maybe they will be
> closer together or further apart (or will look that way to you, at
> least, since it is all a matter of perspective).
I believe so. As I said before, I am an optimist. But a long-term one.
> > > What would you take out of liberal democracy that would cause it to
> > > cease to be liberal democracy, such as would prevent abuses?
> >
> > I can't answer because you're talking about a vague label. What does
> > 'liberal democracy' mean? Zhirinovsky?
>
> Hey, genius. I'm only using *your* terminology. Swimming in *your*
> sewer. You are the one who attributes these abuses to "Western-style
> democracy" and "neoliberal globalism", and consequently applauds
> violence aimed at destroying these constructs. If you are admitting
> that these labels - so integral to your argument - actually have no
> meaning in the way that you use them, you are making my point for me.
>
> You are admitting that you can't answer my question in any meaningful
> way. You can't zero in on what aspects integral to liberal democracy
> (or neoliberal globalism, or whatever) are the cause of the abuses you
> blame on liberal democracy.
>
> In short, you can't support your own argument with anything more than
> your own hot air.
>
Whatever.
DEM
sm...@nizkor.org
You see, here's your problem Dr. Michael. Justice is only justice to
you if it goes your way. To me, the rule of law is more important - it
is only justice if it is based on clearly defined laws tested against
the facts of the case and judged my an impartial third party, whether
or not I ultimately agree with the outcome.
No system of justice - international or domestic - is incorruptible,
but the difference between us is that I recognise that we live in a
messy, imperfect world and the failure of our principles to bring us to
a perfect utopia is justification for throwing those principles away
altogether. But I'd rather live according to a rule of law than in a
world where differences are solved by a "well placed bullet", as you
once put it, especially if you're the one deciding where to place it.
> Why 'internationalize' it?
For two reasons. 1) Societies are notoriously reluctant to adequately
punish their own members for crimes against outsiders, a problem that
is compounded when we're dealing with a head of state; and 2) the head
of state, by definition, has access to the society's instruments of
violence and can therefore use them to avoid justice. Most countries
have laws stating that a sitting head of state cannot be taken to court
during his term of office, and such laws are perfectly sensible
precautions to prevent civil war.
Again, Dr. Michael, you don't seem to follow the purpose of my
principles, which are not vengeance but the prevention of aggression
and human suffering. Unlike you, I do not get a hard-on at the thought
of George Bush being "found guilty of mass murder and shot", and even
if I did that would not be adequate reason to advocate such a thing. I
advocate the strengthening of the instruments for the enforcement of
international law so that, in the future, leaders of powerful states
such as George Bush who are contemplating the use of force will know
that they might someday have to justify their decision against a
clearly defined and testable definition of aggression, and will think
twice. Your kind of street justice does not accomplish this purpose.
> > > You see, ideologies are often just rhetoric. Underneath them you get
> > > realpolitik. And it's the realpolitik that determines whether bestial
> > > behaviour takes place. The mere fact that a nation-state adopts liberal
> > > rhetoric doesn't mean that it can't behave in a bestial manner
> > > (Israel). And conversely, a regime can adopt rhetoric full or
> > > revolutionary fire while morphing rapidly into 'something like
> > > Switzerland' -- perhaps China after Mao's meeting with Nixon is a case
> > > in point.
> >
> > I hate to cause you even more "cognative dissonance", Dr. Michael, but
> > isn't that exactly the argument I just finished making when I said,
> > "the characteristic of the states in question (Western democracies)
> > that has most contributed to the current state of affairs is simply
> > that they are powerful states in the international states system,
> > behaving in the way powerful states ruled according to pretty much any
> > domestic political system would."
>
> If you read what I actually wrote you'd see that I was arguing that you
> need to look behind the ideology espoused by people because people who
> use the same ideological labels behave in vastly different ways. The
> fact that people use the sort of ideological language that you like
> doesn't mean that they can't be beasts, and the fact that they use
> revolutionary language that you don't like doesn't mean that they can't
> end up selling out to those in favour of the status quo.
And I think my response clearly shows that it is neither the labels nor
the rhetoric I am concerned about. There are certain root beliefs,
integral to certain ideologies, that I feel are the direct cause of
violence - whether aggressive or structural - for reasons I have
briefly explained. I simply don't see how a case could be made to that
effect for the basic tenets of liberal democracy.
> > But the bottom line is, you're wrong. Or, more to the point, this
> > "ideologies don't kill people" gambit - utterly incompatible with your
> > earlier rantings - is yet another product of your inability to cope
> > with complexity. The truth is that *sometimes* ideologies can kill
> > people - or, at least, the people who kill people do so because of an
> > ideology, and would not do so in absense of that ideology. Whereas at
> > other times, actions leading to suffering are the product of
> > realpolitik irrespective of ideology.
>
> What I was arguing was that the idea of a hierarchy of ideological
> saintliness -- with Nazism at the bottom, neoliberal globalism at the
> top and communism and Islam somewhere in between, was an
> oversimplification.
Sure it is.
> You can get bestiality under supposedly saintly
> ideologies and you can envisage much demonized ideologies morphing into
> something quite benign. This in no way conflicts with the notion that
> SOMETIMES you can get ideological killings. In other words my point was
> not that you never get people driven to kill by ideology, which seems
> to be how you interpreted my argument, but rather that the correlation
> between particular espoused ideologies and the propensity to kill is
> probably much less than perfect.
Okay, I will accept this "much less than perfect" argument. Indeed,
you can have people doing bestial things in the name of self-interest
under the rubric of any ideology - that was, indeed, my point. And,
conversely, you can have violent ideologies forced to temper their
violence under the pressure of political and economic realities. But
if you indeed acknowledge that ideology *can* kill you are
acknowledging that some ideologies are indeed better than others. The
fact of bestial behaviour in the name of realpolitik remains a constant
regardless, but the case could still be made that the world is better
of so long as ideologies that add *more* unneccessary violence to the
world remain marginalised.
> > except by resort to a vast generalisation: ideologies don't
> > kill, its always just realpolitik. Nor can you support an argument as
> > to how the tenets of "Western-style democracy" itself are directly
> > responsible for starvation and genocide in Africa or the war in Iraq,
> > except by resort of a syllogistic fallacy: these things happen,
> > "neoliberal globalism" (again, whatever that is) is the dominant
> > ideology in the world, therefore "neoliberal globalism" is to blame.
>
> Excuse me, but when a child dies of starvation somewhere in the world
> every 5 seconds and yet Mr Bush chooses to spend tens of billions of
> dollars on defending 'Western values' by invading dissident states then
> it seems to me that a causal link does indeed exist between those
> values and the deaths caused by the political decision to defend them
> rather than spending the money on preventing the deaths.
Ah, now you are fudging ideology and realpolitik again. The "political
decision to defend" those values is nothing more than the same decision
every society makes to put its own interests above those of outsiders.
In other words, realpolitik, unaffected by anything specific to the
tenets of liberal democracy.
I too would like to see more money spent on incorporating marginal
parts of the world more fully into the global economy, and less spent
on manning the barricades of our own borders. But that sounds to me
like true "neoliberal globalism", whereas spending more money on
defense than on development aid would be quite the antithesis of
"neoliberal globalism". So it would seem that you are saying that the
world would be better off if there was *more* authentic committment to
"neoliberal globalism", not less.
Then again, the U.S. already spends more on development assistence than
any other nation in the world - more than the next four nations
combined. So if you are going to fault the U.S. and its entire system
of government for failing to solve *all* of the problems in the world
*immediately* and bring us to a perfect utopia, you are going to have
to show us that there is a way they could have done so that they are
clearly neglecting due to the specific principles by which they are
governed. Otherwise, you're just using the starvation of children as a
bloody shirt to wave at your enemies, which is pretty despicable if you
use this as justification for violence against Americans.
Anyway, gotta run again. Will save the rest for later.
Steven Mock
sm...@nizkor.org
> sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> > <continued from
> > http://groups.google.com/group/alt.revisionism/msg/00d362393a5bf8de?hl=en&>
> >
> > david_michael wrote:
> > > sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> > > > david_michael wrote:
<continued from:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.revisionism/msg/713d444263243036?hl=en&>
<snip: old stuff>
> The words 'war itself is a crime' and 'guilt for war - and for all of
> the suffering caused by all of the individual actions further to that
> war - is shared by both combattants' seem to be a very different
> position from that which you currently take -- viz. that it's OK to
> fight a war in extreme circumstances, if someone aggresses outside his
> borders, to prevent genocide and against a brutal oppressor.
>
> Perhaps you should sleep on that one and decide which position you're
> happiest with -- your pacifist position of August 2005 or your more
> Blairite position of today.
I have to admit I am rather at a loss. I've read over these quotes
from my earlier statements several times, and I completely fail to see
how you can interpret them as anything other than a different way of
wording exactly the same sentiments I am expressing now.
Again, I think the misunderstanding stems from my inability to really
get into the head of someone who is, on the one hand, intelligent
enough to read my words, but at the same time incapable of relating on
even the most rudimentary level to the underlying moral positions they
express. If you did, you would spend less time trying to play "gotcha"
starting from the most dogmatic possible literal reading of my
discourse, and more time trying to seriously understand how one applies
these rules in the spirit of the principles on which they are based.
Let me try again.
War is hell. The reason why people say that war is hell is because its
exercise invariably causes suffering to civilians, and normal people
consider such suffering to be a bad thing which is to be avoided. War,
then, is a bad thing, and the people who bring it upon other people are
guilty for so doing. Who, then, is guilty for the suffering caused by
war? Primarily, the party that starts the war. The party that starts
a war is known as the aggressor, and aggression is the word used to
describe the crime. To a lesser degree, responsibility is shared by
anyone who participates in the war in any such way as to escalate the
amount of suffering it causes to civilians.
However, since the principle underlying these notions is that causing
the suffering of innocent people is bad, it logically follows that a
party is less guilty of this crime of aggression to the extent that the
application of force does not add to, or better ameliorates the
violence being inflicted on civilians - for example, if force is used
only to constrain aggression already being committed, or if the
situation of civilians is already so dire that the intervention of
additional force could not possibly make it worse. In neither case,
however, is the party in question "starting" the war or introducing the
violence that is causing suffering to civilians.
> > > > No, I didn't think so. It rather
> > > > illustrates what I was saying before - if you were able to comprehend
> > > > the moral basis upon which these distinctions rest, the distinctions
> > > > themselves would not seem arbitrary or vague at all, but entirely
> > > > consistent. Allow me to try and walk you through it - see if you can
> > > > follow:
> > > >
> > > > 1. War inevitably causes suffering to civilians. That has been known
> > > > throughout the history of warfare since ancient times.
> > > >
> > > > With me so far?
> > >
> > > No. It doesn't inevitably cause suffering to civilians and CERTAINLY
> > > did not do so in ancient times (when warfare was primarily a conflict
> > > between armed forces on the battlefield).
> >
> > Sure it did. Even in ancient times, if nothing else, warfare involved
> > considerable levels of mobilisation, leading to deprivations at home
> > and large armies that maintained themselves for months at a time
> > feeding of the populations they conquered. And there were some very
> > vicious, ideological wars in medieval and early modern times as well.
> > Its always been a nasty business, one way or another - this has been
> > recognised since Thucydides, and I provided quotes circa. the 16th
> > century that recognised this clearly.
>
> So those people who fought did not do so willingly?
To greater or lesser degrees, sure. But I was thinking more of the
people they plundered further to the necessity of maintaining these
armies in the field.
No, this would be aggression, and it would be unacceptable for the same
reason why I find the U.S. attack on Iraq unacceptable. Similarly, a
large proportion of the Iraqi population was suffering under Saddam
Hussein, and attacking Iraq and bringing down the regime had the
potential to accomplish things that - in isolation - would have
benefited the country and alleviated suffering, such as the fall of the
oppressive regime and greater access for the population to their own
country's vast resources. However, as the war in Iraq has proven (and
not for the first time in history) the use of violence in a place has
repercussions - the violence inflicted further to these goals causes
suffering to innocent people, the violence of those who resist causes
even more, and, in the final analysis, the breakdown of society into
cycles of reciprocal violence causes more still, ultimately cancelling
out any benefit that the achievement of the goal in question might have
offered to the suffering population and making matters worse for them.
This is why I'm saying that whether you are George W. Bush or David E.
Michael, one should think *very* carefully before initiating,
advocating or even applauding the introduction of violence as a
solution to a problem.
> My point, of course, is that aggression takes many forms -- some
> benign, some malevolent, some difficult to call, and a simple principle
> like war is justified only when force is being employed to counter
> aggression raises a lot of problems.
There are grey areas. I am merely trying to explain the moral basis on
which the facts of each case are assessed.
Why do you always introduce this same straw-man when you have nothing
else to say?
On the contrary, it is clear that my reference to "objective facts" was
regarding its potential to challenge the abuse of these principles, in
this case by the Americans, for the purposes of aggression. If George
Bush says that the war was about alleviating the suffering of the Iraqi
people, one need look at how much they are suffering and whether war is
and is seriously expected to be an instrument capable of alleviating
that manner of suffering without causing more.
> > I think it is pretty clear that however much the Iraqi
> > population, or at least elements thereof, may have been suffering under
> > Saddam Hussein, the destabilisation of social order that resulted
> > directly from the violence introduced to the territory by the U.S. and
> > Britain made matters considerably worse, and could only have been
> > expected to. Hence these principles remain applicable, however much
> > they can be cynically manipulated in rhetoric.
> >
> > > In SOME instances, I'd grant you, it's more clearcut. Indeed, without
> > > wishing to say anything that would put me in prison for the next
> > > several years under the Terrorism Act 2006, much of my agreement with
> > > the Al-Qaeda approach to things would be justified in roughly these
> > > terms.
> >
> > Except that's precisely your problem, Dr. Michael - Al-Qaeda's actions
> > *cannot* be justified in these terms.
>
> Well, while the Terrorism Act 2006 prevents ME from arguing to the
> contrary, it is possible that someone who took the contrary position
> might argue that:
>
> 1. If the world that we live in today is bestial then it needs to be
> overthrown and replaced with something better.
> 2. The world that we live in today is bestial.
> 3. Therefore it needs to be overthrown and replaced with something
> better.
>
> Once we accept this conclusion, forces such as Al-Qaeda that attack the
> current world order seem much more benign.
But "once we accept this conclusion" involves so many conditional terms
and ideological assumptions as to make this argument thoroughly absurd.
The world today is "bestial" (how? why? who is to blame?); it needs to
be "overthrown" (to what extent? by any means?); and replaced with
"something better?" (what? how?).
You seriously expect to convince *anyone* that this vague formulation
is worth a single life?
> >> We can argue about whether
> > Hiroshima and Nagasaki met these terms or not - an historical case can
> > be made either way.
>
> No it can't. No historical case can be made that the atomic bombings
> minimized or reduced the suffering of civilians. Alternatives existed
> that did not require so much suffering.
A case most certainly can be made: the bombings brought an end to the
war which, had it continued, would had resulted in even more suffering
than the bombings themselves caused. A more straightforward and
objective measure could hardly be imagined. One need not start from
any particular set of ideological assumptions to make sense of this
formula.
You have floated the possibility that alternatives existed that might
have involved less suffering. You've hardly proved this conclusively,
though I would say that regardless, the mere possibility of such
alternatives calls the morality of this event into serious question.
But my point is that no such question even exists to debate in the case
of 9/11, unless you immerse yourself deeply in the ideological
assumptions and delusions of the perpetrators. There is no objective
measure, no one you can point to whose lives were saved and suffering
alleviated by 9/11, relative to the suffering created both by the
attacks themselves and by the cycles of further violence they
triggered.
> > Their attacks on
> > innocent people induced suffering in the immediate term, escalated
> > warfare and aggression in the long term, and prevented or restrained
> > nothing. And that was entirely their purpose.
>
> Your assessment of the long-term impact of the attacks is faulty. There
> is now a powerful militant Islamic challenge to American hegemony
> throughout the world and America has lost much money and influence.
> Moreover, I suspect that the best has yet to be seen.
It sounds like my assessment of the long-term impact of the attacks is
exactly the same as yours. They increased the level of warfare,
extremism and violence in the world, and contributed to deprivation and
a breakdown of social order. The difference between us is that you
think this is a good thing and pine for even more human suffering
insofar as it has the potential to gratify your personal political
fantasies.
That's really just a lot more of your waving the bloody shirt, which I
deal with above.
As I said, the connection you draw between these vague "Western
economic and political policies" and the genocide remains tenuous at
best, dependant on your personal ideological assumptions which stem
from your inability to comprehend the complex causes behind events like
genocide.
There are a lot of forces you *can* blame. You choose, for you own
ideological reasons, to blame "Western economic and political
policies". As justification for further violence it is weak at best,
cynically manipulative at worst.
Right. Nepalese History for Dummies. I don't have much to say to this
other than that you must contact Prachanda at once with this
information. You see, there is an off chance that at the moment he is
under the mistaken impression that governing a state rife with social
and economic problems is a *difficult* business. He will be ever so
pleased to learn just how simple it really is, with only two
possibilities in front of him: 1) allow suffering to continue, or 2)
kill people until, through so doing, his state magically transforms
into a paradise on Earth.
Don't deny him the wisdom of your perspective, Dr. Michael. Or else
(by your own logic) you will be personally guilty for all of the
suffering that results from your failure to intervene, convicted of
mass murder and shot.
> > > > > > You just use it to justify violence of any wanton sort against anyone
But the only way you could possibly get any person of conscience to
accept this conclusion is to support it.
Which brings me right back to the question that this vague formulation
utterly fails to answer: Where are the lives that were saved by these
particular applications of violence? Point to them. And this time,
provide an answer that could be understood even by someone who does not
share your political opinions and ideological assumptions.
> > > > Hence you would not
Not my problem, Dr. Michael. You're the one who's applauding the use
of lethal violence against innocent people further to your political
ends. If you really expect anyone to think you're anything but a
psychopath for so doing, then I put it to you that the burden rests
entirely on you to make a specific argument as to how the violence you
applaud will serve to alleviate even more suffering that it could be
expected to cause. If you really want people of conscience to be able
to adhere to your view, I would suggest that you take this
responsibility a lot more seriously than you seem to be doing thus far.
> > Now, as I said before, that in itself isn't
> > such a crime. Its no more annoying than the tripe I find in the
> > pamphlets handed to me by the International Marxists and such groups,
> > if even a bit vaguer. But at the end, this vacuous formula is asserted
> > in your discourse as justification for lethal violence against innocent
> > people, for the sole purpose of destablising a society you despise,
> > sans any real conception of what's actually the problem with it or how
> > something better might serve to take its place once this wanton
> > violence successfully drives it away.
> >
> > Kill and destroy, and magically somehow this mayhem will produce a
> > perfect world. And you consider this a logical, objective argument
> > justifying murder in consequentialist terms. Utterly depraved.
>
> Heh, the problem with that argument is that it cuts both ways. Your
> alternative is equally vague.
>
> Your approach: OK, lets do nothing.
That is highly presumptuous of you, Dr. Michael. My approach is not
"lets do nothing". This seems to be another example of your inability
to recognise any middle ground: anyone who cannot bring himself to
approve of an orgy of wanton violence further to a given end is, by
default, content that we just "do nothing" and hope for the best.
The difference between us is that the methods I advocate or support do
not involve the introduction of lethal violence. Yours do. Given the
level of suffering that we have seen such methods lead to - throughout
history, but especially in modern times - I would put it to you that
you are under a *much* heavier burden to specifically justify the
efficacy of your tactics than I am before anyone with a conscience
could consent to them.
Anyway, that's about all my attention span can manage for now. The
rest looks to me like repetition and "minor quibbles", though I may go
back to some of your "multicultural hellholes" rhetoric later, for
interests sake.
Steven Mock
david_michael
<snip long debate on whether Mr Mock changed position on war or not>
> War is hell. The reason why people say that war is hell is because its
> exercise invariably causes suffering to civilians, and normal people
> consider such suffering to be a bad thing which is to be avoided. War,
> then, is a bad thing, and the people who bring it upon other people are
> guilty for so doing. Who, then, is guilty for the suffering caused by
> war? Primarily, the party that starts the war.
Right -- we'll fast forward the debate on whether this was your
original position as it's evidently your current one, which is what
matters.
I note the addition of the word 'primarily' now. :-)
> The party that starts
> a war is known as the aggressor, and aggression is the word used to
> describe the crime.
However, aggressors can also be people who do not start a war. For
example, there is no formal state of war existing between Israel and
Palestine but Palestine is certainly on the receiving end of aggression
and Israel is an aggressor.
Moreover, the other party to a war can also be an aggressor. Vide:
country A starts a war, country B responds but starts slaughtering the
civilians of country A on a massive scale. Country A started the
conflict but country B launched a disproportionate response, which
would also appear to make it an aggressor -- at least from the point of
view of the civilians. This is particularly the case if Country A has
been attempting to surrender at the time of the disproportionate
response.
> To a lesser degree, responsibility is shared by
> anyone who participates in the war in any such way as to escalate the
> amount of suffering it causes to civilians.
Ah, so that's what I've just said in other words.
> However, since the principle underlying these notions is that causing
> the suffering of innocent people is bad, it logically follows that a
> party is less guilty of this crime of aggression to the extent that the
> application of force does not add to, or better ameliorates the
> violence being inflicted on civilians - for example, if force is used
> only to constrain aggression already being committed, or if the
> situation of civilians is already so dire that the intervention of
> additional force could not possibly make it worse. In neither case,
> however, is the party in question "starting" the war or introducing the
> violence that is causing suffering to civilians.
With you so far (I think).
Note three immediate problems: the quantification of suffering, the
timescale over which the suffering is to be quantified, and the
prediction of whether any given course of action will increase or
reduce suffering. (Arguably much of Mr Bush's misfortune in Iraq stems
from his failure to get that third calculation right.) I raise these
problems because I suspect that they explain much about why we can
start with a similar premise -- that aggression is to be judged by its
consequences in terms of human suffering -- but reach radically
different conclusions regarding events such as 9/11 and Hiroshima.
> > > > > No, I didn't think so. It rather
> > > > > illustrates what I was saying before - if you were able to comprehend
> > > > > the moral basis upon which these distinctions rest, the distinctions
> > > > > themselves would not seem arbitrary or vague at all, but entirely
> > > > > consistent. Allow me to try and walk you through it - see if you can
> > > > > follow:
> > > > >
> > > > > 1. War inevitably causes suffering to civilians. That has been known
> > > > > throughout the history of warfare since ancient times.
> > > > >
> > > > > With me so far?
> > > >
> > > > No. It doesn't inevitably cause suffering to civilians and CERTAINLY
> > > > did not do so in ancient times (when warfare was primarily a conflict
> > > > between armed forces on the battlefield).
> > >
> > > Sure it did. Even in ancient times, if nothing else, warfare involved
> > > considerable levels of mobilisation, leading to deprivations at home
> > > and large armies that maintained themselves for months at a time
> > > feeding of the populations they conquered. And there were some very
> > > vicious, ideological wars in medieval and early modern times as well.
> > > Its always been a nasty business, one way or another - this has been
> > > recognised since Thucydides, and I provided quotes circa. the 16th
> > > century that recognised this clearly.
> >
> > So those people who fought did not do so willingly?
>
> To greater or lesser degrees, sure. But I was thinking more of the
> people they plundered further to the necessity of maintaining these
> armies in the field.
Well if the troops were paid for fighting then they had money to give
to their families, spend in the mediaeval equivalent of the local
supermarket and inject into the economy. If there were no wars, then
they wouldn't get paid, the money would remain in the mediaeval
equivalent of the bank accounts of the kings and noblemen and there
would be greater poverty among the people. I mean one of the advantages
of war, surely, is that it provides employment, not so?
So acting in a way that minimizes suffering is not ALWAYS a
justification for the use of force? When is it a justifiction and when
not?
> Similarly, a
> large proportion of the Iraqi population was suffering under Saddam
> Hussein, and attacking Iraq and bringing down the regime had the
> potential to accomplish things that - in isolation - would have
> benefited the country and alleviated suffering, such as the fall of the
> oppressive regime and greater access for the population to their own
> country's vast resources. However, as the war in Iraq has proven (and
> not for the first time in history) the use of violence in a place has
> repercussions - the violence inflicted further to these goals causes
> suffering to innocent people, the violence of those who resist causes
> even more, and, in the final analysis, the breakdown of society into
> cycles of reciprocal violence causes more still, ultimately cancelling
> out any benefit that the achievement of the goal in question might have
> offered to the suffering population and making matters worse for them.
> This is why I'm saying that whether you are George W. Bush or David E.
> Michael, one should think *very* carefully before initiating,
> advocating or even applauding the introduction of violence as a
> solution to a problem.
Fair enough.
> > My point, of course, is that aggression takes many forms -- some
> > benign, some malevolent, some difficult to call, and a simple principle
> > like war is justified only when force is being employed to counter
> > aggression raises a lot of problems.
>
> There are grey areas. I am merely trying to explain the moral basis on
> which the facts of each case are assessed.
OK
How can a question be a straw man?
> On the contrary, it is clear that my reference to "objective facts" was
> regarding its potential to challenge the abuse of these principles, in
> this case by the Americans, for the purposes of aggression. If George
> Bush says that the war was about alleviating the suffering of the Iraqi
> people, one need look at how much they are suffering and whether war is
> and is seriously expected to be an instrument capable of alleviating
> that manner of suffering without causing more.
Which, as I've said above, is not easy because there are problems in
quantifying suffering and in predicting what will increase it and what
will reduce it.
As I said before, this is Usenet and there are space and time
limitations. If you want a 250,000 word treatise you'll have to pay for
it!
> > >> We can argue about whether
> > > Hiroshima and Nagasaki met these terms or not - an historical case can
> > > be made either way.
> >
> > No it can't. No historical case can be made that the atomic bombings
> > minimized or reduced the suffering of civilians. Alternatives existed
> > that did not require so much suffering.
>
> A case most certainly can be made:
But not a good one.
> the bombings brought an end to the
> war
Yes, but the Japanese had already indicated that they wanted to
surrender. You didn't need to start slaughtering hundreds of thousands
of civilians to make them get on with it. There were other avenues that
could have been tried -- AND could have been tried sooner.
Look at the targeting meeting minutes. This was the deliberate
slaughter -- the mass murder -- of hundreds of thousands of civilians.
> which, had it continued, would had resulted in even more suffering
> than the bombings themselves caused. A more straightforward and
> objective measure could hardly be imagined. One need not start from
> any particular set of ideological assumptions to make sense of this
> formula.
>
> You have floated the possibility that alternatives existed that might
> have involved less suffering.
Not 'might have existed'. Did exist. I have explained them numerous
times. You have produced no knock-down arguments as to why they did not
exist. So why are you continuing to pretend that these bombings were
anything other than an atrocity?
> You've hardly proved this conclusively,
Proved what conclusively? That the Americans could have included in
their ultimatum to the Japanese -- as Stimson suggested -- a line
guaranteeing the position of the emperor? What sort of 'conclusive
proof' would you want of that and why?
> though I would say that regardless, the mere possibility of such
> alternatives calls the morality of this event into serious question.
PRECISELY!
> But my point is that no such question even exists to debate in the case
> of 9/11, unless you immerse yourself deeply in the ideological
> assumptions and delusions of the perpetrators. There is no objective
> measure, no one you can point to whose lives were saved and suffering
> alleviated by 9/11, relative to the suffering created both by the
> attacks themselves and by the cycles of further violence they
> triggered.
Answered already. Someone justifying it -- which I am not permitted to
do under British law -- might argue (and I make no comment about
whether I agree with them) that in the long run lives will be saved by
bringing to an end the murderous New World Order of the Americans and
their allies. Thus what causes a chain of events leading to the
weakening of that regime would be regarded as good and what influences
against it would be regarded as bad.
> > > Their attacks on
> > > innocent people induced suffering in the immediate term, escalated
> > > warfare and aggression in the long term, and prevented or restrained
> > > nothing. And that was entirely their purpose.
> >
> > Your assessment of the long-term impact of the attacks is faulty. There
> > is now a powerful militant Islamic challenge to American hegemony
> > throughout the world and America has lost much money and influence.
> > Moreover, I suspect that the best has yet to be seen.
>
> It sounds like my assessment of the long-term impact of the attacks is
> exactly the same as yours.
Well maybe after a few bottles of vodka it might . . .
> They increased the level of warfare,
> extremism and violence in the world, and contributed to deprivation and
> a breakdown of social order. The difference between us is that you
> think this is a good thing and pine for even more human suffering
> insofar as it has the potential to gratify your personal political
> fantasies.
Well now you're just typing drivel.
Means?
> As I said, the connection you draw between these vague "Western
> economic and political policies" and the genocide remains tenuous at
> best, dependant on your personal ideological assumptions which stem
> from your inability to comprehend the complex causes behind events like
> genocide.
>
> There are a lot of forces you *can* blame. You choose, for you own
> ideological reasons, to blame "Western economic and political
> policies". As justification for further violence it is weak at best,
> cynically manipulative at worst.
Depends on the specific 'violence' you have in mind.
Sorry but I have no idea how familiar you are with the situation there.
> I don't have much to say to this
> other than that you must contact Prachanda at once with this
> information. You see, there is an off chance that at the moment he is
> under the mistaken impression that governing a state rife with social
> and economic problems is a *difficult* business.
That is indeed the problem. At the moment the aptly named Moriarty is
doubless itching to sidle up to Prachanda and say: 'Look old chap,
we're awfully sorry that we called you a terrorist; how about doing
what Colonel Qaddafi and Mr Musharraf did and kissing some American
ass, in exchange for which we will transform you from an evil terrorist
into a wise statesman and throw lots of money at you. We'll build nice
American bases in your country and tell you how to run your economy.'
If he falls for it -- and he might well -- then little will change in
Nepal: just swap the name 'Prachanda' where you had 'Gyanendra' before
and insert socialist slogans where you had royalist ones before. If, on
the other hand, he puts Moriarty on the first plane to the other side
of the border then there might indeed be hope.
> He will be ever so
> pleased to learn just how simple it really is, with only two
> possibilities in front of him: 1) allow suffering to continue, or 2)
> kill people until, through so doing, his state magically transforms
> into a paradise on Earth.
>
> Don't deny him the wisdom of your perspective, Dr. Michael. Or else
> (by your own logic) you will be personally guilty for all of the
> suffering that results from your failure to intervene, convicted of
> mass murder and shot.
We're getting a recurring theme here. That my solution is somehow
'vaguer' than the alternatives. I dispute this. It might seem so given
that we are communicating via Usenet but I see no reason why my
approach should be construed as any vaguer or more simplistic than the
alternatives. Your option 2) above is clearly a parody of my position,
which is that Prachanda should largely close the borders except to bona
fide tourists (whose actions should be severely restricted), bring
those responsible for Nepal's suffering to justice, and create a
political and economic system that enables the people to live
independently of those who would exploit them, perhaps along similar
lines to the system that almost worked in Albania after the break with
China.
Not a single life has yet been saved by 9/11. A supporter of the action
would need to argue that the benefits will be seen when the Americans
get a whupping in Iraq and around the world, when their influence
wanes, which will then enable the peoples of the world to take their
destiny into their own hands, to build their own independent homelands
free of imperialism and exploitation, and to stand on their own feet
without having the fruits of their labour expropriated by the Americans
and similar powers.
Well it is if you want anything other than a vague summary of my
position!
> You're the one who's applauding the use
> of lethal violence against innocent people further to your political
> ends.
Absolutely not. I have told you, in all sincerity, that I think that
any violence needs to be weighed in terms of its consequences -- a
position with which you seem to agree. Where we differ seems to be in
the timescales on which we're working.
Moreover, as I have argued elsewhere, I do not believe that violence is
the principal way in which change can be brought about. If you read
Limonov's *Another Russia* -- like much of his work, a disconcerting
mixture of eccentricity and genius -- you'll see that he envisages a
sort of pincer effect with different peoples struggling in different
ways against the American global empire. Some struggles will be violent
-- Nepal has been a case in point and the Islamic struggle is
notoriously so. Others -- probably in Russia, for instance -- will be
more political in nature. Yet others may be economic -- for example the
coalition that is forming between Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and other
countries critical of the American way, creating a distinct economic
power bloc. I'm a great fan of Mr Guzman and 'la guerra popular' but I
don't see why it need to be restricted to violent tactics. As I've said
many, many times before (and Chairman Mao agrees with me!) -- such
tactics are not necessarily appropriate for Western industrialized
countries. Indeed, if someone were to suggest to me that I engage in
such tactics here I would instantly suspect that he's either a nut or a
cop (which is why you are right and Lomenzo is wrong about me pulling
the pin, as it were).
> If you really expect anyone to think you're anything but a
> psychopath for so doing, then I put it to you that the burden rests
> entirely on you to make a specific argument as to how the violence you
> applaud will serve to alleviate even more suffering that it could be
> expected to cause. If you really want people of conscience to be able
> to adhere to your view, I would suggest that you take this
> responsibility a lot more seriously than you seem to be doing thus far.
So what do you specifically want me to do? Post 250,000 words
justifying 9/11?
> > > Now, as I said before, that in itself isn't
> > > such a crime. Its no more annoying than the tripe I find in the
> > > pamphlets handed to me by the International Marxists and such groups,
> > > if even a bit vaguer. But at the end, this vacuous formula is asserted
> > > in your discourse as justification for lethal violence against innocent
> > > people, for the sole purpose of destablising a society you despise,
> > > sans any real conception of what's actually the problem with it or how
> > > something better might serve to take its place once this wanton
> > > violence successfully drives it away.
> > >
> > > Kill and destroy, and magically somehow this mayhem will produce a
> > > perfect world. And you consider this a logical, objective argument
> > > justifying murder in consequentialist terms. Utterly depraved.
> >
> > Heh, the problem with that argument is that it cuts both ways. Your
> > alternative is equally vague.
> >
> > Your approach: OK, lets do nothing.
>
> That is highly presumptuous of you, Dr. Michael. My approach is not
> "lets do nothing". This seems to be another example of your inability
> to recognise any middle ground: anyone who cannot bring himself to
> approve of an orgy of wanton violence further to a given end is, by
> default, content that we just "do nothing" and hope for the best.
>
> The difference between us is that the methods I advocate or support do
> not involve the introduction of lethal violence. Yours do.
You haven't told us what those methods are. I suspect that they involve
permitting the CONTINUATION of lethal violence and lethal economic
strangulation.
> Given the
> level of suffering that we have seen such methods lead to - throughout
> history, but especially in modern times - I would put it to you that
> you are under a *much* heavier burden to specifically justify the
> efficacy of your tactics than I am before anyone with a conscience
> could consent to them.
Oh give us a break, man. The suffering in modern times has resulted
principally from three sources:
1. The political aspirations of those seeking to export half-baked
global political schemes, be they the Nazis under Hitler, the Americans
and other Western powers, the Japanese or the Soviets post-1945.
2. The economic aspirations of those seeking to exploit the peoples of
the world, principally the Americans.
3. Corrupt political systems that slaughter and exploit their own
people unnecessarily.
> Anyway, that's about all my attention span can manage for now. The
> rest looks to me like repetition and "minor quibbles", though I may go
> back to some of your "multicultural hellholes" rhetoric later, for
> interests sake.
>
> Steven Mock
DEM
sm...@nizkor.org
time, and still don't, so my remarks will be necessarily brief. In any
event, I don't have a whole lot to say in reaction to your latest
response. Its seems you've pretty much run out of steam and are not
even disputing most of my points with anything beyond the most minor of
quibbles. I would just like to briefly take this opportunity to spell
out what I think the implications of this are (after which I will be
going on vacation, so any reply you choose to offer will have to sit
unanswered - at least by me - for several weeks).
You say that you can't make a specific argument explaining how attacks
like 9/11 might be justified according to consequentalist terms unless
one gives you funding to write a 250,000 word treatise. Fair enough.
But that being so, you can hardly blame anyone for thinking you a
psychopath for so enthusiastically cheering the death and suffering of
innocent people when such attacks occur. Evidently, you have a 250,000
essay in your head that somehow rationalises this by objectively
demonstrating that greater suffering was avoided in the long term as a
consequence of the suffering inflicted now, but unable to explain this
bizarre vision, all we see is someone celebrating the loss of human
life because he thinks it serves his rather vague and largely depraved
political purposes.
In light of this, I would appreciate it if you would desist in calling
me or anyone else a hypocrite when we express disgust at your
behaviour. I have done my best to articulate the principles according
to which I judge acts of violence in the political sphere, and the
moral basis on which they rest. You no longer seem to find any fault
in these principles, nor do you seem able to point to a case where I
apply them unevenly. In which case, the problem is in my principles,
nor in my hypocritical application of them, but rather in your failure
to support an explanation as to just how 9/11 and comparable atrocities
can be justified according to these principles in consequentialist
terms.
Finally, I would like to draw attention to the false dichotomy upon
which you seem to base your approval of violence and your accusation of
hypocrisy for our failure to do same: that given the amount of
suffering in the world, anyone who does not reject the root principles
underlying the hegemonic order - which you label "neoliberal globalism"
or "Western democracy" - responsible for causing that suffering, even
to the point of using (or at least approving of) violence in order to
bring about its dismantling, by default prefers to "do nothing", or at
least next to nothing, in order to alleviate said suffering.
But there is a point I made that you do not seem to want to touch.
When asked just what it is about the global order that you think causes
this suffering you cite things like spending money on Stealth bombers
rather than development aid to countries with starving populations, or
propping up tin-pot dictators running oppressive regimes. But here's
the problem, Dr. Michael. While these things might happen, and I agree
that they shouldn't, you have not made an argument showing that they
are an outgrowth of the values and beliefs which you choose to label
"neoliberal globalism" (in the way that one could, for example, make
the case that denying rights, segregating and ultimately committing
genocide against racially defined outgroups is a direct outgrowth of an
officially adopted racist ideology, even if it is not the *inevitable*
outcome of such an ideology).
I suppose that's why I keep chasing you for some kind of definition of
this nebulous term (and why you're so slippery about providing one).
To my mind, spending money on defence rather than on aiding marginal
countries so that their populations can enjoy the full benefits of the
global economy is the very *antithesis* of "neoliberal globalism", and
propping up nonrepresentative regimes in order to keep them docile the
antithesis of democracy. These are actions such as might be taken by
any state in the interests of realpolitik. Indeed, these are actions
taken by states following the dictates of national self-interest in the
context of an anarchic international system (dare I call it, then,
"national anarchism"?)
You suggest that often ideologies are just rhetoric and labels, but
then make the completely opposite claim that unless one is willing to
reject and seek to destroy the root values underneath the rhetoric and
labels of the ideologies in relative power it follows that one does not
care about starving children in Africa. Horseshit. My solution to
such problems in the world is not to "do nothing", but rather to work
toward a more authentic and less hypocritical application of those
values, and I don't see what's so wrong with that given your inability
to explain just what is wrong with the values themselves. And as my
solution involves reducing the level of coercive violence in the world
- rather than increasing it with only a vague end in sight - I hold
that it is infinitely more moral, and, let's face it, sane than yours.
Unless you can convince me otherwise. Your move.
Steven Mock
david_michael
sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> Sorry to take so long to get to this, Dr. Michael. Haven't had much
> time, and still don't, so my remarks will be necessarily brief. In any
> event, I don't have a whole lot to say in reaction to your latest
> response. Its seems you've pretty much run out of steam and are not
> even disputing most of my points with anything beyond the most minor of
> quibbles. I would just like to briefly take this opportunity to spell
> out what I think the implications of this are (after which I will be
> going on vacation, so any reply you choose to offer will have to sit
> unanswered - at least by me - for several weeks).
My word -- the race relations industry must pay well in Canada! Some of
us haven't had a vacation since 1999! Just think about all those
starving Africans as you relax, Mr M.
> You say that you can't make a specific argument explaining how attacks
> like 9/11 might be justified according to consequentalist terms unless
> one gives you funding to write a 250,000 word treatise.
Uh? An outright lie. I've outlined very clearly how I thought someone
might go about justifying 9/11. You accused me of being vague. I
responded that this is Usenet -- if you want a 250,000 word treatise
then this is not the place. In brief, someone might argue that 9/11 set
in place a chain of events that has destabilized a very murderous world
order, holding out the prospect of its eventual collapse. As I DID say
before.
> Fair enough.
> But that being so, you can hardly blame anyone for thinking you a
> psychopath for so enthusiastically cheering the death and suffering of
> innocent people when such attacks occur.
You're the one who's been attempting to belittle Hiroshima and Nagasaki
-- not me!
> Evidently, you have a 250,000
> essay in your head that somehow rationalises this by objectively
> demonstrating that greater suffering was avoided in the long term as a
> consequence of the suffering inflicted now, but unable to explain this
> bizarre vision, all we see is someone celebrating the loss of human
> life because he thinks it serves his rather vague and largely depraved
> political purposes.
See above.
> In light of this, I would appreciate it if you would desist in calling
> me or anyone else a hypocrite when we express disgust at your
> behaviour.
Sure you're a hypocrite. On the one hand you cry foul over 9/11. On the
other hand you do not condemn outright as such a blatant act of mass
murder perpetrated against hundreds of thousands of civilians
apparently for no reason other than to show off some new technology to
the Russians! You've seen the alternatives to those killings. You've
even acknowledged that they could have been pursued instead. But no!
You persist in supporting Lomenzo and in failing to give a clear and
unqualified condemnation of these flagrant acts of mass murder. That
makes you a hypocrite. Hey, but we've been around that tree before too.
> I have done my best to articulate the principles according
> to which I judge acts of violence in the political sphere, and the
> moral basis on which they rest. You no longer seem to find any fault
> in these principles, nor do you seem able to point to a case where I
> apply them unevenly.
I think we both agreed as far as that actions are judged by their
consequences. After that it becomes hard to pin you down on the
details.
> In which case, the problem is in my principles,
> nor in my hypocritical application of them, but rather in your failure
> to support an explanation as to just how 9/11 and comparable atrocities
> can be justified according to these principles in consequentialist
> terms.
I thought I'd already indicated how someone might go about justifying
9/11 in consequentialist terms. Maybe you were so anxious to go on
vacation that you missed that bit too.
> Finally, I would like to draw attention to the false dichotomy upon
> which you seem to base your approval of violence and your accusation of
> hypocrisy for our failure to do same: that given the amount of
> suffering in the world, anyone who does not reject the root principles
> underlying the hegemonic order - which you label "neoliberal globalism"
> or "Western democracy" - responsible for causing that suffering, even
> to the point of using (or at least approving of) violence in order to
> bring about its dismantling, by default prefers to "do nothing", or at
> least next to nothing, in order to alleviate said suffering.
>
> But there is a point I made that you do not seem to want to touch.
> When asked just what it is about the global order that you think causes
> this suffering you cite things like spending money on Stealth bombers
> rather than development aid to countries with starving populations, or
> propping up tin-pot dictators running oppressive regimes. But here's
> the problem, Dr. Michael. While these things might happen, and I agree
> that they shouldn't, you have not made an argument showing that they
> are an outgrowth of the values and beliefs which you choose to label
> "neoliberal globalism" (in the way that one could, for example, make
> the case that denying rights, segregating and ultimately committing
> genocide against racially defined outgroups is a direct outgrowth of an
> officially adopted racist ideology, even if it is not the *inevitable*
> outcome of such an ideology).
Again, it's not the ideology but the system behind the ideology. If you
have the pursuit of capital accumulation as the central principle
behind the organization of world affairs, together with the promotion
of the free movement of labour and capital, then it seems to me that
you're going to get a world characterized by an uneven distribution of
resources. You'll have piles of wasted resources in some places and a
chronic shortage of resources in others. This state of affairs might
reasonably be expected to continue until you replace capital
accumulation with other principles.
> I suppose that's why I keep chasing you for some kind of definition of
> this nebulous term (and why you're so slippery about providing one).
I am being deliberately slippery about defining such terms because --
as anyone familiar with the debates about defining terms such as
equality, liberty, communism, capitalism, democracy, etc. will tell you
-- the definition of such terms is never an easy matter. In fact even
defining concrete terms like 'chair' is not always an easy matter.
Roughly speaking, neoliberal globalism is support for the free movement
of labour and capital throughout the world and the destruction of
forces that stand in the way of such movement. My problems with it are
that (a) the world order that it promotes appears to be inherently
nasty, with massive accumulation of power and resources in the hands of
a few, who cannot be trusted to use in benevolently, and (b) much of
what it destroys could be seen as valuable.
> To my mind, spending money on defence rather than on aiding marginal
> countries so that their populations can enjoy the full benefits of the
> global economy is the very *antithesis* of "neoliberal globalism", and
> propping up nonrepresentative regimes in order to keep them docile the
> antithesis of democracy.
Spending on 'defence' (i.e. defence and WAR) will support neoliberal
globalism if it tends to support a world order that is characterised by
the free movement of labour and capital throughout the world. Thus such
spending by America and Britain these days is typically supportive of
the neoliberal programme.
If such spending is to counter the spread of this ideology -- for
example in North Korea -- then it is hardly supportive of neoliberal
globalism.
Same principle applies with spending to support small states. Spending
by America to support small states is usually tied up with the spread
of the neoliberal project.
> These are actions such as might be taken by
> any state in the interests of realpolitik. Indeed, these are actions
> taken by states following the dictates of national self-interest in the
> context of an anarchic international system (dare I call it, then,
> "national anarchism"?)
> You suggest that often ideologies are just rhetoric and labels,
Yes. I can support regimes that have very different ideologies, for
example.
> but
> then make the completely opposite claim that unless one is willing to
> reject and seek to destroy the root values underneath the rhetoric and
> labels of the ideologies in relative power it follows that one does not
> care about starving children in Africa.
My claim is that the hegemonistic neoliberal regime running the world
at the moment has not solved these problems -- that we need to move
towards a different system of global organization. It is quite possible
to 'care about starving children in Africa' and support the current
regime because you believe that one day the current regime will get it
right. Indeed, that seems to be your position.
> Horseshit. My solution to
> such problems in the world is not to "do nothing", but rather to work
> toward a more authentic and less hypocritical application of those
> values, and I don't see what's so wrong with that given your inability
> to explain just what is wrong with the values themselves.
Given that we have yet to learn from you what 'those values' are and
how their more 'authentic' application (whatever that means) will
improve matters, I fear that you'll have to excuse my inability to do
this.
> And as my
> solution involves reducing the level of coercive violence in the world
> - rather than increasing it with only a vague end in sight - I hold
> that it is infinitely more moral, and, let's face it, sane than yours.
Well you accused me of vagueness -- I put it to you that 'solutions'
don't come much vaguer than what you've just written!
As I said before, I think that the existing system can be changed by a
pincer approach. Different struggles use different tactics in different
parts of the world. In some places -- the Middle East and Nepal being
cases in point -- then you're going to get violence whether you approve
or not. Much of it can be traced back to the actions of the neoliberal
globalists. In Europe, violence is less likely to be a productive
strategy.
> Unless you can convince me otherwise. Your move.
We can identify systemic problems promoted by neoliberal globalism.
Specifically, gross inefficiencies in the distribution of the
resources. As long as the system of free movement of capital and labour
in pursuit of capital accumulation persists, we might expect the
inefficiencies in distribution to continue. By contrast, in a world
characterized by restricted movement of capital and labour, we might
expect those communities that distribute their resources effectively to
flourish whereas those that do not will perish and eventually be
replaced by more effective systems. This latter process could be made a
good deal less painful if a concerted effort is made to replace the
neoliberal system with EFFECTIVE communities in the first place.
> Steven Mock
DEM
sm...@nizkor.org
> sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> > Sorry to take so long to get to this, Dr. Michael. Haven't had much
> > time, and still don't, so my remarks will be necessarily brief. In any
> > event, I don't have a whole lot to say in reaction to your latest
> > response. Its seems you've pretty much run out of steam and are not
> > even disputing most of my points with anything beyond the most minor of
> > quibbles. I would just like to briefly take this opportunity to spell
> > out what I think the implications of this are (after which I will be
> > going on vacation, so any reply you choose to offer will have to sit
> > unanswered - at least by me - for several weeks).
>
> My word -- the race relations industry must pay well in Canada! Some of
> us haven't had a vacation since 1999! Just think about all those
> starving Africans as you relax, Mr M.
Really? Remind us exactly what you've done for the starving Africans
in your life, Dr. Michael (aside from playing cheerleader to regimes
keeping them in slavery, to begin with).
For that matter, when is the last time you actually worked for living?
Unless you can be certain that you have done more practical good for
plight of suffering people in your life than I have (real people, that
is - not just those who might hypothetically stand to benefit in the
fantasic future when the violence you applaud magically produces a
"paradise on earth"), I suggest you keep your big yap shut.
Most of the rest of your response was the same sort of impotent *ad
hominem* and straw-man diversions that have been exposed as such
repeatedly. Won't spoil my good mood, I'm afraid. Anything there that
registers more than a 0 on the troll-metre will have to wait until I
get back.
Steven Mock
david_michael
sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> david_michael wrote:
> > sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> > > Sorry to take so long to get to this, Dr. Michael. Haven't had much
> > > time, and still don't, so my remarks will be necessarily brief. In any
> > > event, I don't have a whole lot to say in reaction to your latest
> > > response. Its seems you've pretty much run out of steam and are not
> > > even disputing most of my points with anything beyond the most minor of
> > > quibbles. I would just like to briefly take this opportunity to spell
> > > out what I think the implications of this are (after which I will be
> > > going on vacation, so any reply you choose to offer will have to sit
> > > unanswered - at least by me - for several weeks).
> >
> > My word -- the race relations industry must pay well in Canada! Some of
> > us haven't had a vacation since 1999! Just think about all those
> > starving Africans as you relax, Mr M.
>
> Really? Remind us exactly what you've done for the starving Africans
> in your life, Dr. Michael (aside from playing cheerleader to regimes
> keeping them in slavery, to begin with).
I have steadfastly worked all my life to end the neoliberal globalist
regime, which is what prevents them from taking their destiny into
their own hands in their own countries.
> For that matter, when is the last time you actually worked for living?
Fifteen minutes ago, actually. (You are addressing someone who did
close on a 15-hour day on Sunday, I should add.)
> Unless you can be certain that you have done more practical good for
> plight of suffering people in your life than I have (real people, that
> is - not just those who might hypothetically stand to benefit in the
> fantasic future when the violence you applaud magically produces a
> "paradise on earth"), I suggest you keep your big yap shut.
Hey, sounds as if I touched a sore point there. Feeling guilty or
something, Mr Mock?
Maybe there's a bit of cognitive dissonance going off there. On the one
hand you are the great 'humanitarian', the great 'anti-racist', the
great 'friend of the black man' bleating about how concerned you are
about world poverty. On the other, you pirouette off daintly to your
'vacation' in your luxury hotel, doubtless sporting expensive airline
tickets or driving a luxury car!
> Most of the rest of your response was the same sort of impotent *ad
> hominem* and straw-man diversions that have been exposed as such
> repeatedly. Won't spoil my good mood, I'm afraid. Anything there that
> registers more than a 0 on the troll-metre will have to wait until I
> get back.
Happy holidays, Mr M. Eat well.
DEM
sm...@nizkor.org
> sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> > david_michael wrote:
> > > sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> > > > Sorry to take so long to get to this, Dr. Michael. Haven't had much
> > > > time, and still don't, so my remarks will be necessarily brief. In any
> > > > event, I don't have a whole lot to say in reaction to your latest
> > > > response. Its seems you've pretty much run out of steam and are not
> > > > even disputing most of my points with anything beyond the most minor of
> > > > quibbles. I would just like to briefly take this opportunity to spell
> > > > out what I think the implications of this are (after which I will be
> > > > going on vacation, so any reply you choose to offer will have to sit
> > > > unanswered - at least by me - for several weeks).
> > >
> > > My word -- the race relations industry must pay well in Canada! Some of
> > > us haven't had a vacation since 1999! Just think about all those
> > > starving Africans as you relax, Mr M.
> >
> > Really? Remind us exactly what you've done for the starving Africans
> > in your life, Dr. Michael (aside from playing cheerleader to regimes
> > keeping them in slavery, to begin with).
>
> I have steadfastly worked all my life to end the neoliberal globalist
> regime, which is what prevents them from taking their destiny into
> their own hands in their own countries.
Right. 'Nuff said. I'm sure there's a starving family in a war torn
dictatorship somewhere who is appreciative of the sustenance your empty
rhetoric and political fantasies provides them.
Meanwhile, your stuff about my "luxury hotel" "expensive airline" and
"luxury car" was actually rather amusing under the circumstances. In
fact, it is more of a working holiday I'm off too... Anyway, later...
Steven Mock
Roger
(an Age yet to come, an Age long past)
someone claiming to be david_michael wrote
in message
<1150823175....@r2g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>:
>sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
>> > My word -- the race relations industry must pay well in Canada! Some of
>> > us haven't had a vacation since 1999! Just think about all those
>> > starving Africans as you relax, Mr M.
>> Really? Remind us exactly what you've done for the starving Africans
>> in your life, Dr. Michael (aside from playing cheerleader to regimes
>> keeping them in slavery, to begin with).
>I have steadfastly worked all my life to end the neoliberal globalist
>regime, which is what prevents them from taking their destiny into
>their own hands in their own countries.
And just how does it do, such that your deludoanarchy would eliminate
that barrier?
>> For that matter, when is the last time you actually worked for living?
>Fifteen minutes ago, actually. (You are addressing someone who did
>close on a 15-hour day on Sunday, I should add.)
>> Unless you can be certain that you have done more practical good for
>> plight of suffering people in your life than I have (real people, that
>> is - not just those who might hypothetically stand to benefit in the
>> fantasic future when the violence you applaud magically produces a
>> "paradise on earth"), I suggest you keep your big yap shut.
>Hey, sounds as if I touched a sore point there. Feeling guilty or
>something, Mr Mock?
>
>Maybe there's a bit of cognitive dissonance going off there. On the one
>hand you are the great 'humanitarian', the great 'anti-racist', the
>great 'friend of the black man' bleating about how concerned you are
>about world poverty. On the other, you pirouette off daintly to your
>'vacation' in your luxury hotel, doubtless sporting expensive airline
>tickets or driving a luxury car!
And what have *you* contributed, in concrete terms?
last time I asked, you ran away -- will you show us your bright yellow
underbelly again?
david_michael
Oh look, it's 'Roger' trying to troll!
DEM
Roger
(an Age yet to come, an Age long past)
someone claiming to be david_michael wrote
in message
>Roger wrote:
>> >> > My word -- the race relations industry must pay well in Canada! Some of
>> >> > us haven't had a vacation since 1999! Just think about all those
>> >> > starving Africans as you relax, Mr M.
>> >> Really? Remind us exactly what you've done for the starving Africans
>> >> in your life, Dr. Michael (aside from playing cheerleader to regimes
>> >> keeping them in slavery, to begin with).
>> >I have steadfastly worked all my life to end the neoliberal globalist
>> >regime, which is what prevents them from taking their destiny into
>> >their own hands in their own countries.
>> And just how does it do, such that your deludoanarchy would eliminate
>> that barrier?
cuddles cannot say.
>> >> For that matter, when is the last time you actually worked for living?
>> >Fifteen minutes ago, actually. (You are addressing someone who did
>> >close on a 15-hour day on Sunday, I should add.)
>> >> Unless you can be certain that you have done more practical good for
>> >> plight of suffering people in your life than I have (real people, that
>> >> is - not just those who might hypothetically stand to benefit in the
>> >> fantasic future when the violence you applaud magically produces a
>> >> "paradise on earth"), I suggest you keep your big yap shut.
>> >Hey, sounds as if I touched a sore point there. Feeling guilty or
>> >something, Mr Mock?
>> >
>> >Maybe there's a bit of cognitive dissonance going off there. On the one
>> >hand you are the great 'humanitarian', the great 'anti-racist', the
>> >great 'friend of the black man' bleating about how concerned you are
>> >about world poverty. On the other, you pirouette off daintly to your
>> >'vacation' in your luxury hotel, doubtless sporting expensive airline
>> >tickets or driving a luxury car!
>> And what have *you* contributed, in concrete terms?
>>
>> last time I asked, you ran away -- will you show us your bright yellow
>> underbelly again?
>Oh look, it's 'Roger' trying to troll!
Oh, look -- it's mr michael, running away.
And just how does the "neoliberal globalist regime," prevent starving
Africans from taking their destiny into their own hands in their own
countries, such that your deludoanarchy would eliminate that barrier?
It's a question I've been asking you for quite a while, without even
the slightest attempt on your part to give a substantive answer.
david_michael
The problem with trolling, 'Roger', is that you can do it too often. If
you engage someone in conversation repeatedly and each time it
degenerates into silliness after a couple of posts, then people give up
and think 'why bother?' You are, of course, free to interpret that as
people running from you -- in fact, of course, people just find the
entire process boring and pointless.
DEM
Roger
(an Age yet to come, an Age long past)
someone claiming to be david_michael wrote
in message
>Roger wrote:
>> >> >> > My word -- the race relations industry must pay well in Canada! Some of
>> >> >> > us haven't had a vacation since 1999! Just think about all those
>> >> >> > starving Africans as you relax, Mr M.
>> >> >> Really? Remind us exactly what you've done for the starving Africans
>> >> >> in your life, Dr. Michael (aside from playing cheerleader to regimes
>> >> >> keeping them in slavery, to begin with).
>> >> >I have steadfastly worked all my life to end the neoliberal globalist
>> >> >regime, which is what prevents them from taking their destiny into
>> >> >their own hands in their own countries.
>> >> And just how does it do, such that your deludoanarchy would eliminate
>> >> that barrier?
>> cuddles cannot say.
cuddles *still* cannot say.
Of course, it's only "silliness" when mr. michael gets called on zie
hypocrisy, never when zie engages in it to begin with...
>You are, of course, free to interpret that as
>people running from you -- in fact, of course, people just find the
>entire process boring and pointless.
How does the "neoliberal globalist regime," prevent starving Africans
david_michael
Probably because it is gibberish.
DEM
Roger
(an Age yet to come, an Age long past)
someone claiming to be david_michael wrote
in message
>Roger wrote:
>> >> >> >> > My word -- the race relations industry must pay well in Canada! Some of
>> >> >> >> > us haven't had a vacation since 1999! Just think about all those
>> >> >> >> > starving Africans as you relax, Mr M.
>> >> >> >> Really? Remind us exactly what you've done for the starving Africans
>> >> >> >> in your life, Dr. Michael (aside from playing cheerleader to regimes
>> >> >> >> keeping them in slavery, to begin with).
>> >> >> >I have steadfastly worked all my life to end the neoliberal globalist
>> >> >> >regime, which is what prevents them from taking their destiny into
>> >> >> >their own hands in their own countries.
>> >> >> And just how does it do, such that your deludoanarchy would eliminate
>> >> >> that barrier?
>> >> cuddles cannot say.
>> cuddles *still* cannot say.
<sfx: the echoes of eight cowardly little legs...>
So, your claim that the "neoliberal globalist regime" prevents
starving Africans from taking their destiny into their own hands in
their own countries is gibberish?
Why did you make that claim in the first place, then?
david_michael
Ho ho! What a sense of humour! Hahahahahahaah! LOL! ROTFL! ROTFLMAO!
Hahahahahhahhahahahahhaha! Oh what a wit!
Really funny, that one. Laurel and Hardy have met their match in you, I
can see.
DEM
Roger
(an Age yet to come, an Age long past)
someone claiming to be david_michael wrote
in message
david_michael
DEM
Roger
(an Age yet to come, an Age long past)
someone claiming to be david_michael wrote
in message
david_michael
DEM
Roger
(an Age yet to come, an Age long past)
someone claiming to be david_michael wrote
in message
>Roger wrote:
>> >> >> >> >> cuddles cannot say.
>> >> >> >> cuddles *still* cannot say.
Keep running, cuddles -- we need someone to point at and laugh.
Your ability to characterize my question as "probably gibberish" does
not change in the least the fact that it is a grammatically correct,
perfectly reasonable question you seem determined to run from, but
that your ego won't allow you to just ignore.
You have claimed that the "neoliberal globalist regime," prevents
starving Africans from taking their destiny into their own hands in
their own countries.
Specifically how does it do so?
Then you can explain how your deludoanarchy would significantly alter
those circumstances.
sm...@nizkor.org
clearest and most straightforward question imaginable, aimed at
determining whether DEM can put any intellectual substance behind his
rhetoric. And here's DEM, so incapable of even conceiving that such a
thing might even matter, he can do nothing but dismiss Roger's simple
request that he elaborate on his claim as "gibberish". Classic.
Steven Mock
Roger
(an Age yet to come, an Age long past)
in message
<1153675159....@75g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>:
>Roger wrote:
>> Your ability to characterize my question as "probably gibberish" does
>> not change in the least the fact that it is a grammatically correct,
>> perfectly reasonable question you seem determined to run from, but
>> that your ego won't allow you to just ignore.
>>
>> You have claimed that the "neoliberal globalist regime," prevents
>> starving Africans from taking their destiny into their own hands in
>> their own countries.
>>
>> Specifically how does it do so?
>>
>> Then you can explain how your deludoanarchy would significantly alter
>> those circumstances.
>Now this is an amusing exchange indeed. Here is Roger, asking DEM the
>clearest and most straightforward question imaginable, aimed at
>determining whether DEM can put any intellectual substance behind his
>rhetoric. And here's DEM, so incapable of even conceiving that such a
>thing might even matter, he can do nothing but dismiss Roger's simple
>request that he elaborate on his claim as "gibberish". Classic.
... and zie is running still...
david_michael
OK, Mr Mock -- I have noted that you have returned from your month-long
holiday. I hope you enjoyed it and are refreshed. Now let's see. That's
28 days on holiday. One child dies of starvation every 5 seconds.
That's 12 every minute, or 720 every hour, or 17280 every day. So while
you've been relaxing and stuffing yourself with food, 483 840 children
have starved to death.
Meanwhile, at the moment of posting, the amount spent on America's
invasion of Iraq war is about $298,299,800,000.
You want me to give you short-term ways of assisting world poverty?
Well, I'd stop the war in its tracks for a start.
In the long-run the problem of mass poverty of this kind is caused by a
failure to distribute resources optimally. Global capitalism tends to
lead to excessive accumulations of resources in some places and serious
shortages in others. One thus needs to replace the system of global
capitalism with a system that ensures that these failures in resource
distribution will be rectified.
DEM
david_michael
OK, Mr Mock -- I have noted that you have returned from your month-long
sm...@nizkor.org
> OK, Mr Mock -- I have noted that you have returned from your month-long
> holiday.
Nah, wasn't that long. I just couldn't be assed to come back until
now.
> I hope you enjoyed it and are refreshed. Now let's see. That's
> 28 days on holiday. One child dies of starvation every 5 seconds.
> That's 12 every minute, or 720 every hour, or 17280 every day. So while
> you've been relaxing and stuffing yourself with food, 483 840 children
> have starved to death.
And what have you been doing about it in the meantime?
> Meanwhile, at the moment of posting, the amount spent on America's
> invasion of Iraq war is about $298,299,800,000.
Atrocious, isn't it?
> In the long-run the problem of mass poverty of this kind is caused by a
> failure to distribute resources optimally. Global capitalism tends to
> lead to excessive accumulations of resources in some places and serious
> shortages in others. One thus needs to replace the system of global
> capitalism with a system that ensures that these failures in resource
> distribution will be rectified.
And you've come up with such a system that does so more effectively?
Fantastic news! Let us in on the secret.
Steven Mock
david_michael
sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> david_michael wrote:
>
> > OK, Mr Mock -- I have noted that you have returned from your month-long
> > holiday.
>
> Nah, wasn't that long. I just couldn't be assed to come back until
> now.
Sounds idyllic.
> > I hope you enjoyed it and are refreshed. Now let's see. That's
> > 28 days on holiday. One child dies of starvation every 5 seconds.
> > That's 12 every minute, or 720 every hour, or 17280 every day. So while
> > you've been relaxing and stuffing yourself with food, 483 840 children
> > have starved to death.
>
> And what have you been doing about it in the meantime?
Working 18-hour days so that I can send a hefty cheque to the
Palestinians, among other things.
> > Meanwhile, at the moment of posting, the amount spent on America's
> > invasion of Iraq war is about $298,299,800,000.
>
> Atrocious, isn't it?
So what have you been doing about it?
> > In the long-run the problem of mass poverty of this kind is caused by a
> > failure to distribute resources optimally. Global capitalism tends to
> > lead to excessive accumulations of resources in some places and serious
> > shortages in others. One thus needs to replace the system of global
> > capitalism with a system that ensures that these failures in resource
> > distribution will be rectified.
>
> And you've come up with such a system that does so more effectively?
> Fantastic news! Let us in on the secret.
I think that there are several 'systems' that have the potential to do
so a helluva lot more effectively. The point is that none of them will
work in a unipolar world where the only 'system' that's allowed
anywhere is free-market chaos.
> Steven Mock
DEM
sm...@nizkor.org
> sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> > david_michael wrote:
> >
> > > OK, Mr Mock -- I have noted that you have returned from your month-long
> > > holiday.
> >
> > Nah, wasn't that long. I just couldn't be assed to come back until
> > now.
>
> Sounds idyllic.
I meant come back to Usenet.
> > > I hope you enjoyed it and are refreshed. Now let's see. That's
> > > 28 days on holiday. One child dies of starvation every 5 seconds.
> > > That's 12 every minute, or 720 every hour, or 17280 every day. So while
> > > you've been relaxing and stuffing yourself with food, 483 840 children
> > > have starved to death.
> >
> > And what have you been doing about it in the meantime?
>
> Working 18-hour days so that I can send a hefty cheque to the
> Palestinians, among other things.
Really? And how much does updating your blog with new anarchist
rantings pay per hour?
> > > In the long-run the problem of mass poverty of this kind is caused by a
> > > failure to distribute resources optimally. Global capitalism tends to
> > > lead to excessive accumulations of resources in some places and serious
> > > shortages in others. One thus needs to replace the system of global
> > > capitalism with a system that ensures that these failures in resource
> > > distribution will be rectified.
> >
> > And you've come up with such a system that does so more effectively?
> > Fantastic news! Let us in on the secret.
>
> I think that there are several 'systems' that have the potential to do
> so a helluva lot more effectively. The point is that none of them will
> work in a unipolar world where the only 'system' that's allowed
> anywhere is free-market chaos.
So you're not going to tell us, then...
Steven Mock
Roger
(an Age yet to come, an Age long past)
someone claiming to be david_michael wrote
in message
>sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
>> > OK, Mr Mock -- I have noted that you have returned from your month-long
>> > holiday.
>> Nah, wasn't that long. I just couldn't be assed to come back until
>> now.
>Sounds idyllic.
>> > I hope you enjoyed it and are refreshed. Now let's see. That's
>> > 28 days on holiday. One child dies of starvation every 5 seconds.
>> > That's 12 every minute, or 720 every hour, or 17280 every day. So while
>> > you've been relaxing and stuffing yourself with food, 483 840 children
>> > have starved to death.
>> And what have you been doing about it in the meantime?
>Working 18-hour days so that I can send a hefty cheque to the
>Palestinians, among other things.
... which, being used for things other than food, addresses the issue
... how?
>> > Meanwhile, at the moment of posting, the amount spent on America's
>> > invasion of Iraq war is about $298,299,800,000.
>> Atrocious, isn't it?
>So what have you been doing about it?
>> > In the long-run the problem of mass poverty of this kind is caused by a
>> > failure to distribute resources optimally. Global capitalism tends to
>> > lead to excessive accumulations of resources in some places and serious
>> > shortages in others. One thus needs to replace the system of global
>> > capitalism with a system that ensures that these failures in resource
>> > distribution will be rectified.
>> And you've come up with such a system that does so more effectively?
>> Fantastic news! Let us in on the secret.
>I think that there are several 'systems' that have the potential to do
>so a helluva lot more effectively.
And yet, having been invited to detail these, you choose instead to
continue to whine.
david_michael
sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> david_michael wrote:
> > sm...@nizkor.org wrote:
> > > david_michael wrote:
> > >
> > > > OK, Mr Mock -- I have noted that you have returned from your month-long
> > > > holiday.
> > >
> > > Nah, wasn't that long. I just couldn't be assed to come back until
> > > now.
> >
> > Sounds idyllic.
>
> I meant come back to Usenet.
Must have been one helluva hangover.
> > > > I hope you enjoyed it and are refreshed. Now let's see. That's
> > > > 28 days on holiday. One child dies of starvation every 5 seconds.
> > > > That's 12 every minute, or 720 every hour, or 17280 every day. So while
> > > > you've been relaxing and stuffing yourself with food, 483 840 children
> > > > have starved to death.
> > >
> > > And what have you been doing about it in the meantime?
> >
> > Working 18-hour days so that I can send a hefty cheque to the
> > Palestinians, among other things.
>
> Really? And how much does updating your blog with new anarchist
> rantings pay per hour?
I don't have a 'blog'.
> > > > In the long-run the problem of mass poverty of this kind is caused by a
> > > > failure to distribute resources optimally. Global capitalism tends to
> > > > lead to excessive accumulations of resources in some places and serious
> > > > shortages in others. One thus needs to replace the system of global
> > > > capitalism with a system that ensures that these failures in resource
> > > > distribution will be rectified.
> > >
> > > And you've come up with such a system that does so more effectively?
> > > Fantastic news! Let us in on the secret.
> >
> > I think that there are several 'systems' that have the potential to do
> > so a helluva lot more effectively. The point is that none of them will
> > work in a unipolar world where the only 'system' that's allowed
> > anywhere is free-market chaos.
>
> So you're not going to tell us, then...
I'm not sure what you want me to say. You seem to want me to produce
some sort of global system to be imposed from above on the entire world
(which presupposes an 'above' to do the imposing -- I am not a great
fan of global 'aboves'). I don't think there is any reason to believe
that ONE system MUST be implemented EVERYWHERE in order to solve the
problem. There are several possibilities. Moreover, you could have
different 'systems' in different places, to suit local circumstances,
together with channels for changing systems if they don't work
effectively. However, a prerequisite -- if we're talking LONG-TERM
solutions (rather than sticky plaster stuff) is to move away from the
current world order, where the winner-takes-most economy clearly causes
inefficient resource distribution. If we're talking sticky-plaster
stuff then we need to attack centres of resource misallocation in
whatever way we can -- so, to go back to the Iraq war example,
campaigning against that monumental waste of resources would be a
reasonable start in that it would add to pressure on politicians to get
out of Iraq and reallocate some of that money to places where it could
be of more use.
So, a twofold strategy. In the short-term campaign for more efficient
resource allocation where misallocation is obviously occurring and can
be changed. In the long-term, support all those who seek to weaken
America's New World Order.
> Steven Mock
DEM
sm...@nizkor.org
Okay. Aside from the fact that this concluded with one of your stock,
non-sequiter platitudes, there's nothing in here I would seriously
disagree with. Though I think your assessment of the current global
economic system - in terms of how much it actually differs from your
proposed ideal - is simplistic and muddled.
Steven Mock