: $$$$$$$$$$$$LOL!~! Pope John XXIII, anti-pope, 1400-15. A tad too early for liberation theology, although there Luther was about to break out on the scene.
Erm, French, to put it charitably, you're wrong. The anti-pope circa 1400-1415 was "Pope" John XXII (Twenty-two, in plain English). Pope John XXIII, born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli of Venice, was the pope from 1958 to 1963. I don't believe anyone ever questioned his legitimacy.
: Do you mean John Paul XXIII?
There was no Pope John Paul XXIII, if tehre was, how could we be on John Paul II right now? Papacies don't go in descending order. This is ridiculous.
:I'm afraid he can't be credited w/ liberation theology either, although his direction is such a mish-mash I couldn't really blame anyone for thinking so.
: Another guess?
Read the above, or just consult any reference book. Then read about the preferential option for teh poor" bit.
: ##########Please see above.
No, YOU explain to me how you expect to be taken seriously after arguing that Pope John Paul XXIII preceded Pope John Paul II.
: : : In a Capitalist system, like here in the states, not your goofy example of El Salvador or some other oligarchy, my property is protected by the same laws that protect Bill Gates' property. He, or any one else cannot take what belongs to me. What's mine is mine and what's your's is your's. So where do you come off with this idiocy of the strong preying on the weak?
The same laws protect everyone's property in "hard capitalist" states like El Salvador, too. It's juts that teh poor in Salvador have no property to protect. as is eventually the case in most capitalist states. Laws ought to protect PEOPLE not property.
: ############Giving people notice that their rent will increase, or that they have 30 days to move out of a rented apartment is an example of the strong preying off the weak? That's an example?
Yes. Especially when they evidnetly aren';t able to affor dto live anywhere else, as is attested by the hundreds of thousands of homeless in America, not to mention all those people living in rat-infested tenements.
: Look, the alternative is that anyone who moves into an apartment claims squatters rights. That would be larceny. Grand theft. Is that your idea of a 'compassionate' society?
Well, plenty of countries today recognize squatter's rights. Actually most countries which aren't fascinated by this property obsession recognize them. Rent control and squatters' rights are basic hallmarks of a civilized social ethic.
:I work for something and somebody else takes it. That's your idea of Socialism at work?
Income is not proportional to work right now, and in a capitalist society, it never will be. Grape pickers and carpenters work just as hard as any computer engineer, and a damn sight harder than indolent capatilist parasites like Bill Gates.
: Closing down a factory is immoral? How did that come to be? What happens when a factory does close? It goes somewhere else. To a place, like across the border in Mexico, where the people are gainfully employed.
....for slave wages. Did you know that Puerto Rican men are slowly being poizoned by feminizing hormones from factories that move there to escape American safety standards? Is that your ideal?
: Unless you'd rather they sit outside their corrugated tin homes all day and watch the sun travel across the sky.
No, I'd prefer that they be PROVIDED some REAL JOBS, AND have enough leisure time to watch the sun travel across the sky. Why are you and I entitled to leisure and work conditions taht tehy aren't? Are you and I "better" than Mexicans? I'm sure as hell not.
:They benefit.
No they don't. They would bemnefit from some decently paying public sector jobs. If they "benefit" so much, how come the peopel in northern Mexico, where all those maquiladoras are, are so poor and often attempt to immigarte over here? If you think maquiladoras are so great, why don't you move to Neuvo-Laredo?
: The people who used to work at a factory are then forced to find new employment. And you know what? They do. And many times, with some effort, a better job is found. '
Yeah, right. Burger king anyone? The fastest growing jobs in America are degrading service sector jobs. (You got numbers, Barry?)
: Producing cocoa instead of rice????? What are you talking about?
Like, for example, MALAWI? GHANA?
: Yeah, I would say that the grape picker doesn't work as hard as some guy and his friends who put together a new computer program. Intellectually as hard.
And I should believe you.....why? Isn't that merely your opinion? I have my opinion too, but at least it isn;t arrogant and contemptuous of the labor of teh grape pickers. I'd rather not look with scorn on people that I don't know, thank you very much.
: Which brings us to the socialist's denial of things like human capital, ie; the belief that some people are, in economic terms, worth more than others based on special skills, insights, abilities, etc.
You're right. I'll never believe that some people are worth more than others, except maybe in a moral sense. I belive in innnate human worth. Who you are, not how much you make.
: %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%Does hunger exist? Yup. Has it always existed? Yup. Have governments, including socialist ones, used it as a weapon? Yup. So what's your point?
Yeah, right, Churchill was a socialist when he caused 3 million Bengalis to starve to death. And all this while I thought he was a conservative.
We have enough food to feed everyone right now. Famine exists because the poorest of teh poor can't afford it. By making access to food contingent on how much moeny you can pay- as teh market does with everything, not just food- the market ensures that the poorest will not have access to teh food tehy need, and will die. QED.
: Personally, I don't give very much credence to the 20% of American kids going hungry. I believe that there is probably some hunger, but I also believe that many times the parents themselves are to blame.
REally. And your evidence would be what?
:Additionally, I believe that food giveaways creates an illusion that there is hunger where in fact none may actually exist. If you gave away brand new Mercedes Benz's on Rodeo Drive everybody would be there to pick up their new wheels. From that I imagine that you could say that this sort of demand 'proved' that the people living in that section of Hollywood were deprived of good transportation.
I think when people walk into a clinic with scurvy, it;s pretty evident they have malnutrition. MEdical evidence can tell us more than silly theories about supply curves and such like.
: Do you really believe that there aren't people who don't take advantage of free X's?
Do you really believe that human nature is all about "taking advantage"? DO you really believe in "homo inaequalis"?
: : : : that it relates unturustworhty sources, and that it ludicrously refuses to count teh victims that every cappitalist state has piled up on its record.
: HUH?
40% of Namibia's population, slaughtered by teh Junker-Capitalists in Germany. (This was pre-fascist, in case your'e wondering.) 50,000 civilians slaughtered by the British in SOuth AFrica. 3 million famine deaths in British-ruled Calcutta. 1.2 million deaths in Indonesia. Etcetera.
: : Well, isn't it stupid to igmnore the victims of capitalist regimes? Indonesiua and El Salvador are CERTAINLY capitalist, more than teh US, because teh US has the saving grace of a welfare system and political democracy, both of which attenuate the power of capital.
: $$$$$$$$$$$This is one of those things that we're just gonna have to disagree on. I define a capitalist state as being such as I'm familiar with. That includes not only corporate power, state power, but also the power of the individual.
: The state has it's weapons, the corporation has it's money, and the individual has the Bill of Rights and courts willing to protect those rights.
: If you want to agree to that, fine. If not, if you'd rather keep on pointing to kleptocracies, modern fuedal kings, rule by family connection and other oppressive regimes and simply labeling them as capitalist states, fine. Have a ball.
: When I say capitalist state, I'm talking about something roughly similar to the US.
Fine. France, Belgium, Germany, the United States, and South Korea have been responsible for millions of deliberate slaughters in the twentieth century, and millions mroe deaths from deprivation. (This excludes the 35 million or so killed by Nazi crimes, because I don't want to get into another debate about whether hitler was a rightist or a leftist. Ditto for Fascist Italy.) All five states were hailed, at avrious points, as model capitalist democracies (So was Indonesia, for that matter....add another 1.2 million.) Are you going to deny that France in the early sixties was capitalist?
: : It's called COLONIALISM, remember?
: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$Oh, yeah, right, there's a huge debate going on today about the colonial aspirations of capitalist countries and their designs on places like the dark continent.
: C'mon.
The Stalinist atrocities reached their peak in teh '30s, while British and French colonialism went on till the sixties. I think such atrocities are well within the temporal frame, thank you. If you can refer to Stalinism, I'm certainly going to refer to colonialism.
: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$Gees, don't you ever get out of the muck? You sorta remind me of certain black 'leaders' here in the states who insist on laying all their problems at the doors of slavery.
: Let's talk about today, what country is unwillingly engaged in prostituting itself to any other nation? What nations are being colonized today, and by which nations?
Plenty of nations are hamstrung and handcuffed by teh IMF and other instruments of teh Cpaitalist order. Remember Chile?
: But what you don't see, what no one can see, is to what extent those who are unfortunate have chosen their own paths.
Can you say "arrogant and cruel" as well as "simply false"?
: Deflecting the question is a perfectly acceptable way of avoiding hard issues.
Is that directed at me, or yourself?
:
: $$$$$$$$$$$I love this sort of rhetoric. It reminds my of my youthful days when clowns from SDS were righteously attacking their capitalist targets. If an automobile accident results in a gasoline explosion which further results in a death can be laid at the doors of GM, not to mention Ford, Ziv, et al, are you also willing to lay at the door of Socialism the impediment of human progress.
: I am.
SDS was the vanguard of American idealism, by teh way. Tom Hayden, its foudner, is one of my personal heroes. And the deaths caused by GM weren't mere accidents. GM could have recalled the cars and stopped making new ones. They CHOSE to make the cars more dangerous than they needed to because tehy saw profits as more important than human life. That is the act of a callous murderer.
: : Cuba IS successful in soem regards. How else do you expalin that it has ;lower infant mortality and higher literacy, and longer life expectancy than the US? How do you explain that its nutrition levels
: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$Ahhhhh, your making progress, slow, painful progress. "Some regards" is a fine indication of this.
No, Cuba is sueprior to teh US in a LOT of ways.
: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$That's rich!! I love this BS!! It's like shooting fish in a barrel!!
: No of course not, Marxism is not discredited. Marxism is alive and well. It was last seen exiting the house w/ Elvis.
Last I checked teh CPI (M) was doing fine in Kerala and Bengal. Not to mention the recent Venezuelan firebrand, Lt. Col. Hugo Chavez Frias.
: : YEs, and America doesn't have a far worse oligrachical system? Do you know how concentrated wealth in America is?
:
: $$$$Gee, why don't you, a member of a minority, tell me all about it. Also tell me what your economic future looks like here in the repressive, mean ol' states?
: Look, in a short while your going to be forced to make a decision. After you graduate your going to have choose between taking advantage of the education you've gotten or doing something for the poor.
: If you choose the latter, in twenty years, in 2020, you wake up some fine morning and discover that you've blown your life, is that the fault of the economic system? If your really concerned about the poor, fine, help them out, create soup kitchens, outreach centers, whatever. But for God's sake, don't kvetch later on that the system is 'cruel'.
: I have a feeling that there are a lot of people who have wound up on the skids because of their own stupid choices.
: Perhaps to a real and significant extent. It's a nepotocracy. Ditto most of those other S.American Banana republics.
Your condencsension towards other countries is really astounding. I hoep it makes you feel good, because it makes me feel nauseated.
Nicaragua, by the way, with apologies to Dr. Cruel and his propaganda, treated its Amerindians better than almost any other state in history. They gave the Miskito control over Zelaya province, even though Zelaya was only 25% Miskito.
: Look up the names of the leaders in any of those countries. Sound Spanish? Castillian? European?
: Look up the numbers of indigineous people compared to whites.
: Ask yourself this; "When's the last time I saw a squat person with brown skin and dark eyes and black hair sitting in the Presidential Palace of (country X)?"
Isn't it funny that the two most racist regimes in the western hemisphere, Guatemala and the DR, were both longtime allies of teh US (although thankfully, the US eventually had Trujillo, the murdering right-wing bigot, assassinated.)
Isn't it also funny that the states that did integrate Amerindians into society, like Peru and Mexico, generally did so under leftist regimes.
Isn't it interesting that capitalists, including rubber companeis, were responsible for murdering 84% of Brazilian Amerindians in the first half of the century?
: I'd make an exception to Haiti, although given what they've produced it may be a better idea for the Brits to colonize that nation for 4 or 5 decades.
Haiti has been an inspiration ever since they had their slave revolution in 1805 (?). Don't slander other countries because they aren't mirror images of your own.
:
: Ahhh, time will tell, no?
: For the skeighty-eighth time.
No it won't because Sankara;'s second in command assassinated him in 1987.
: : :
: Well, I guess a wrong answer is better than no answer.
: You may have forgotten, conveiniently so, why we were in Viet-Nam. It had to do w/ the Cold War, when, yes, there were in fact eggs that were broken as the omelet was being prepared.
The cold war was a misbegotten bastard child of American capitalists, caused by Truman's reactionary policies. If FDR had lived there would never been a cold war.
: Don't forget also the bloodbath that took place after we left Viet-Nam.
FEwer refugees, as a % of population, fled the Vietnamese revolution than the (capitalist?) American revolution.
: I suppose in that 3 million figure your including the N. and S. Viet-Namese.
: But more importantly, you forgot about the fine job the U.S. Army and friends did in other places, like Europe, the Philipines, etc, etc.
: Funny how you seem to glibly pass over those very facts which so often put the lie to your world view.
: Anyhow, there's always the Navy. Or the Marines. Or even the Air Force. I'd recommend the Air Force.
: Hey, here's another question for you. Since no military cannot kill, by definition, and since you don't want to join the military because that would be helping to kill in an indirect manner, are you a pacifist?
: Does the Party allow pacifists?
: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$My bet would be from ignorance foisted by the current political system.
How do you knwo American businessmen who vote Republican aren';t doing the same thing?
None.
