: It is apparent from the ill informed junk I've been reading in this group that few of you have the intellectual power to grasp lifes simplist truths.
Nonetheless, some of us have an excellent grasp, not merely of the philosophical issues involved, but also of apparently subsidiary and unrelated issues (even if the words 'grammar' and 'syntax' are very minor points!)
: I cannot disagree more with the trivial viewpoints expressed by many of the posters.
No, really? *mock shock*
Would you care to cite the postings you disagree with, or are you actually saying you just disagree with the whole anti-McD's motion. After all, many of the most trivial and ill-informed posters here are the ones speaking out in favour of McD's.
: How anyone can create links between such diverse and variable events and McDonalds and world hunger suggests that the person doing the linking is indeed the bigger problem.
If, (as I think) you are trying to say that McD's cannot be pinpointed as contributors to Third World hunger, you would be advised to reexamine the facts of the matter.
1. The Western capitalist system tends to concentrate wealth in the hands of those who already have it. This enables large food corps. to buy large areas of land, which are then 'off-limits' to local people, who have to farm their remaining areas more intensively to maintain their food levels.
Alas, this tends to result in 'leaching out' - the loss of valuable nitrogen compounds from the soil, meaning the land becomes less fertile. Of course, the 'modern' way to remedy this is to invest in fertilizers, which are a short-term solution at best. Oh and most of the fertilizer companies are Western, too, meaning that;
a)The local peoples are kept off their heritage land by food companies.
b)They have to despoil the remaining land to stay alive, which they do by buying Western fertilizers and 'modified' grain.
c)These Western items cost a lot of money, especially by Third World standards, which means that the Western corporates make even more money from these people.
2. McDonald's are a very large food multinational and have been shown in court to encourage the destruction of 'dry tropical forest' for future cultivation. As such, they are implicated directly in the land denial and destruction mentioned in 1a and 1b above.
Put simply, if Western food corps. like McD's didn't do it, the people could go on farming their ancestral land (as they have been for thousands of years.)
: This kind of person is always part of the problem being that they stand on the side lines and complain, or worse perform unlawful acts of petty to severe terrorism upon those of us who are trying to make changes.
Where can you go if you don't want to play the game? We live in a deeply intolerant society, and acts that do not conform with the State's view of the world are suppressed with violent force.
Personally, I feel that there is a limit to the changes you can make within the 'system'. The system is extremely resistant to change. There comes a point at which you have to say "I'm not playing the game any more".
By the way, "terrorism" is the use of _fear_ (not violence) to affect people's behaviour. While the fear may be a fear of violence, inaction due to fear of imprisonment is giving in to terrorism in much the same way. We live with a terrorist system every day of our life - it's just that we're so conditioned to think the law is infallible that we accept punishment and coercion without question.
: So called "Animal rights" and other groups choose to impose their narrow and biased views on everyone else.
No anarchist has ever imprisoned another person, nor have they dropped atomic bombs, nor have they polluted on a systematic scale. To do that takes a state. As for 'narrow and biased', well, the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant state is, as I said, hardly a model of tolerance...
: This is the worst form of "Big Brotherness" ever performed in the history of mankind.
Can you place the quote you used? It was written by a socialist (who had fought alongside the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War). Not only that, but the book in question concerns the distopian properties of a centralized and authoritarian state. '1984' is about the crushing of individual freedom by the State. Not, as you seem to think, about the actions of grass-roots minorities.
(Incidentally, the current UK Labour government is proving uneasily true to the book - learn to love Big Brother Tony...)
: The evil of this is the method of using "oh this is good" to mask the true nature of the message.
It's called "lying". Everyone does it from time to time. Apart from me, of course...
(Note for the humour-impaired: the above statement is ironic.)
Of course, there's another term for condemning something and doing it yourself. It's called 'hypocrisy'
: To say that anyone can impose and force their wills and thoughts upon someone else is beyond contempt.
Yet you allow the government to do it on a daily basis? *doh*
: These groups would be better served if they could keep to the facts and not their own political ideals.
And can you find anything factually 'wrong' with anything I've said?
Go on, I dare you...
: IT would be refreshing to see these groups who preach against the evils actually do something of worth.
Like standing up in court for what you believe is right? Or risking bankruptcy to spread (useful) information to the general public, despite threats of violence and imprisonment?
: Instead of bombing some animal research center where is the activist's new and better method for fighting AIDS or Cancer or any other disease? When did the activist's introduce that revolutionary water pump and filtration system for the poor of the world?
Eh-yi-yi. Whilst most anarchists have nothing against science and scientists (or I'd be up the creek, having a B.Sc. in Physics) it's important not to be under the illusion that Science will save us. The problem is with our own attitudes and 'revolutionary breakthroughs' merely alleviate the symptoms for a while. If the human race is to survive, we need to treat the disease. In the case of animal experiments, can you cite one test that _cannot_ be done on cultured human tissue or a computer?
: Say how about those activists and their newly introduced methods of feeding the world?
Well, if our political system were more efficient, there would be enough food to feed the world. We are already producing enough food to feed the world, but the capitalist profit motive acts against this by insisting on profit in the transactions. We don't _need_ to produce more food. We do need to make sure the food available is used efficiently.
:Stop wasting good peoples money on political trash and do something!! Get off your soap boxes and work.
How can you tell 'good people's money'? Does it glow, or sing hymns?
To quote Hadrian: 'Money has no smell'
(i.e. under the current system, it's impossible to tell whether your money is good, bad or ugly. Ethical investment is a nice idea, but insofar as it supports the capitalist system, it isn't 'good money' as you can never know where every bit of cash has been.)
(Of course, $25 million spent on the Republicans' inaugural ball in 1988 was fine and dandy. Not 'political trash' in any way, oh no...)
Gideon.
(Who is actually working quite hard, thankyou...)
