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hpslugga

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Posts posted by hpslugga

  1. 49 minutes ago, Fozzz said:

    Israel could put them in concentration camps and people on this thread would cheer them for it.  

    If you go by the words of David Cameron, i.e. a conservative former PM of the UK (not exactly known for their solidarity with the Palestinians), Gaza is an "open air prison." 

    But yes, the more general sentiment of what you said is correct. I once saw a debate between Norman Finkelstein and Benny Morris. In the middle of Finkelstein's demolition of Morris, Morris had the fucking nerve to interrupt him when he was listing "chickens" as one of the items that cannot get through the illegal blockade by saying "THEY'RE HAMAS CHICKENS!!!"

    This is the world we live in, folks: where dickheads like Benny Morris can argue that fucking chickens are a security threat to Israel because they're associated with Hamas, and only a handful of people burst into hysterical laughter upon hearing such a farce.

  2. 2 hours ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

    They were atheists, they may have set themselves up as gods/dictators for life but they weren't practicing a religion no matter how much you or anyone else wants to try and spin it.

    When you turn yourself into a god, you therefore obviously believe in a god (I cannot believe that I'm having to explain this to a presumed adult in 2018) and that completely nullifies claims to atheism. The fact that you continue to fail to understand this in no way mitigates its reality. You just want so badly for your first 3 words to be true, and you cannot for the life of you understand why it isn't.

    And again, you seem to think that the rejection of the Abrahamic religions is what constitutes an atheist. You are wrong. Atheism isn't just the lack of a religion. It's the lack of belief in a supernatural, anthropomorphic supreme being. Deism, for example, isn't exactly a "religion" in your sense either, but it sure as hell isn't atheism.

  3. 8 minutes ago, Orca of Peace said:

    74 before today and they've executed 41 so far today and that will climb to double certainly. 

    Or as their leadership refers to it, "mowing the lawn."

  4. 6 minutes ago, Chrispy said:

    You need to read Mein Kampf, Hitler believed he was acting according to God’s will. 

    He also once said “Besides that, I believe one thing: there is a Lord God! And this Lord God creates the peoples.” That's exactly and precisely 100% the polar opposite of atheism.

     

  5. 42 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

    Mao and Stalin say how you doing.......

    The genocidal despots of the 20th centuries, by and large, constructed societies that suggested that they themselves were gods, just like the Korean leadership still does to this very day.

    Atheism isn't merely a rejection of Abrahamic religions. Atheism is a doubt/skepticism/lack of belief in any supernatural, anthropomorphic immortals, especially ones who involve themselves in human affairs.

    Regarding, Stalin, to quote Hitchens:

    "for Joseph Stalin, who had trained to be a priest in a seminary in Georgia, the whole thing was ultimately a question of power. “How many divisions,” he famously and stupidly inquired, “has the pope?” (The true answer to his boorish sarcasm was, “More than you think.”) Stalin then pedantically repeated the papal routine of making science conform to dogma, by insisting that the shaman and charlatan Trofim Lysenko had disclosed the key to genetics and promised extra harvests of specially inspired vegetables. (Millions of innocents died of gnawing internal pain as a consequence of this “revelation.”) This Caesar unto whom all things were dutifully rendered took care, as his regime became a more nationalist and statist one, to maintain at least a puppet church that could attach its traditional appeal to his."

    Or to quote Gentile

    "The sacralization of the party opened the way to the sacralization of Stalin when he became the supreme leader.  After 1929, the political religion of Russia mainly concentrated on the deification of Stalin, who until his death in 1953 dominated the party and Soviet system like a tyrannical and merciless deity. "

    As to Mao, he was born and raised in a Buddhist family as a Buddhist, and Buddhism was in fact perhaps the only religion that was more or less protected during his so-called Cultural Revolution. Yeah they persecuted people of other beliefs, but they all but literally turned Buddhism into the state religion. Hardly an act of atheism, especially given a line he uttered in the waning years of his life. When asked of his health, he said "I have had a cough for some days. It is time to go to heaven. It seems that I am summoned to meet the good god." Again, hardly the confession of an atheist.

    I won't even go into North Korea because their religious fanaticism should be self-evident. So I stand by what I said...that line about "atheists are the biggest killers" is self-serving horseshit that's concocted by religious people in order to deflect any criticism against religion on similar grounds. If religion really is, as it's defined, "the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods," then I'd suggest that people like you should man up and own this bullshit instead of copying-and-pasting fairy tales from The Land of Make Believe and Pretend.

    • Like 2
  6. Quote

    Atheists are the biggest killers in history.

    The fuck they are. Among all the bullshit that regularly gets spewed here and in the elsewheres of American political discourse, this is a lie that surpasses quite an impressive many.

  7. 41 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

    i would argue that he independent/moderate contingent would be more right leaning than left, without doing any analysis on who voted for which. my thinking is that former republicans who are appalled at the current direction of the party are shying away from both that partisan label, and even the misappropriated "conservative" label, as it's been hijacked by the rush limbaugh crazies.

    While I have no doubt that those people do indeed exist, I think they have a counterpart: the liberal/socialist that's beyond terrified to embrace such a label, due primarily to the very successful propaganda campaign over the last 30-odd years by the right that's aimed to demonize and marginalize such people. It's kinda like in the 30's and 40's when non-religious people called themselves "agnostic"...because they were beyond terrified of using the "atheist" word after being told ridiculous lies by religious people, such as "atheists believe in nothing" or "atheists don't want to be accountable for their sins" or "atheists worship the devil" or "atheists can't know morality" or whatever insipid verbal effluvia they had to endure from a very early age over and over and over again in vast areas of the country. It's no different than what you said, basically. It's no secret that people tend to shy away from admitting shit about themselves out of social pressures. Why else does anyone among us think that Rock Hudson married Phyllis Gates?

  8. Not all that different from how he handled Cena. Vince basically caught lightning in a bottle 3-4 times (depends on if you count the Ultimate Warrior) with a clear cut franchise player.

    Hogan in 1984, Undertaker in 1990, and Austin emerged in 1997.

    Well that's a 6-7 year gap between each one, so he just figured he was "due" again around 2003-2004, hence the Cena era...then that fucking asshole John Laurinaitis basically destroyed what was left of the WWE developmental program after replacing Jim Ross as the VP of Talent Relations (that position is basically the executive of the developmental program) and running amok of it.

    Then cut to 2012, Laurinaitis is demoted and they create NXT in the same month and anyone could just see that Vince was all gaga about Reigns. He spent about 2 months in NXT, then they launched that Shield stable with Rollins and Ambrose, which ultimately allowed him a platform to launch a singles career in just 2 years at the age of 29 (which is insanely young for a main eventer in the traditional sense).

    TL;DR: Vince has been in a perpetual state of panic re: his "top guy" since they severed ties with OVW and he's just been trying to force the issue for the last 4 years. 

  9. 17 minutes ago, Caracara said:

    If the deal was terrible and allowed the nuke program to go forward right up to the last step, then full compliance isn't worth much.

    What evidence do you have that the deal was terrible?

  10. 15 minutes ago, FondrenRoad said:

    As if holding embassy employees hostage is a bigger violation of "international norms" than the use of chemical weapons.  As far as violations of "international norms" go in the modern era, the Iran hostage crisis is way down the list.  Russia's use of a nerve agent to target people on UK soil only happened a few weeks ago.

    Well I was just referring to Iran in general. We orchestrated a coup d’etat that overthrew a legitimately, democratically elected government, replaced it with an autocracy, and that coup alone claimed about 300 lives. That’s a crime that’s supposed to be punishable by death if convicted at The Hague...but that’s ok because they took 52 hostages!!!

  11. 6 minutes ago, Iconoclast Texan said:

    Umm, overrunning the US embassy in Tehran and taking hostages was probably the worst violation of international norms in modern history. The US had every right to seek military action in what was an act worthy of going to war over.

    "It's ok when we do something majorly hideous to them, but not ok when they do something far less hideous to us."

    Seriously, the amount of hyperbole you just used in those two sentences is shocking.

  12. 9 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

    yeah, this is the overarching point. iran was tipping toward revolution or reform. the green revolution ultimately did not succeed, but led to a larger movement and large scale protests throughout the nation. now trump just gave the hardliners exactly what hey needed to say "see, this is what happens when you trust the west. they FUCK YOU AT THE DRIVE-THRU."

    and thus, they solidify their power and control, find more reasons to seek conflict with the west in general. 

    i know that trump fans love his "negotiating style" but it's all tactical. what did we just fucking accomplish?

    iconoclast thinking this will result in free elections free of the mullahs is the darkest of comedies. the only way that happens now is with a river of blood and ash through the streets of tehran.

    All of this plus the quote to which you were responding. Goddamnit this is embarrassing.

  13. 20 hours ago, JBJ said:

    They don't understand your use of socialism because it was never stated.

    Granted, though just for the record I've stated in on shaggy/HF, so I assumed it had been seen. My bad.

    Anyways, my perception of it is faithful to the historic record. The first use of the concept in human literary canon was no later than 1649 when it appeared in a pamphlet. 

    The pamphlet, entitled The New Law of Righteousness, was written during the time of the English Civil Wars by a Christian anarchist named Gerrard Winstanley. I might take a moment to pause here and explain that I don't agree with everything in the pamphlet. I'm an atheist, so I have no use for when Winstanley quoted chapter 2 verses 44 and 45 of the Book of Acts to explain the foundation of his position. Nonetheless, he spells out exactly what "socialism" is: "there shall be no buying or selling, no fairs nor markets, but the whole earth shall be a common treasury for every man...there shall be none Lord over others, but every one shall be a Lord of himself."

    The latter quote instantaneously refutes anyone's conception of socialism as "the government owns everything," whether they favor that or oppose it.

    "There shall be none Lord over others" isn't an ambiguous quotation. It literally denounces any societal order that calls for a person or even a group to assume authority, power, control, domination, etc over the rest of his/her countrymen. That's not even debatable, and I'd think that a reasonable person such as yourself would agree. The second time it came up was about a century and a half later when a French philosopher named Sylvain Maréchal, who had virtually identical views to Winstanley's, articulated his perspective(s). He longed for an existence where everyone experienced "communal enjoyment of the fruits of the earth" and for an ending to "the revolting distinction of rich and poor, of great and small, of masters and valets, of governors and governed." Again, the last 3 words are not at all ambiguous. He wrote that in the 1796.

    I mention the years in reference to the fact that I said 90% of Americans would answer "what is socialism" incorrectly. As Americans, we're taught (even in universities) that the whole concept was conceived by Karl Marx and/or Friedrich Engels. Those guys weren't even born when Winstanley or Marechal were writing about it, so attributing the origins of socialism to them is like saying Al Pacino was the original Scarface.

    As to its workability in today's world, and/or on a large scale, that's irrelevant. The point is to, as hayden actually did before me, discard any illusions people have about a place like Venezuela being (at any time over the last 25 or so years) a "socialist government."

     

  14. 9 minutes ago, closetojumping said:

    I fucking hate myself for entering the cloak room and participating on ANYTHING, but I can't help it here. The premise that you have a working understanding of the concept of socialism because you inherently understand the meaning of community better than anyone else reading is, in fact, not a fact. You type as though it is, but it isn't.

    Plenty of us went to college, took the courses, read the works, and have continued to carry on in their thinking well forward into their lives. Because some folks are overlaying real world experiences and observations to the definition, you think you're typing with better clarity. You're not. What you're doing is attempting to set the terms of the discussion as you deem appropriate and then calling everyone else who doesn't want to have the philosophical dialogue with you on your position effectively a mouthbreather. 

    You're a didactic pedant with a penchant toward behaving as an automaton, so I'm pretty indifferent to your response. I did, however, feel like there's a silly construct you're derailing the thread into and wanted to call it out.

    I attach as much value to every word of this as I do to the dust on this floor.

    • Haha 1
  15. 23 minutes ago, JBJ said:

    I mistook y'all to mean that a socialist government (by my definition) was only really socialist if it wasn't corrupt.

    Oh no. I say that they aren't socialist because they're central power systems to begin with. Scandinavia is basically what some of those leaders were promising in rhetoric (i.e. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, etc), and they weren't socialist for the exact same reason Scandinavia isn't: if you get a central power system involved, the S-word cannot apply by its very definition. It's kind of like if I threw ice cubes at you and you ran around to everyone accusing me of throwing boiling water at you.

  16. 1 hour ago, deadshank said:

    Yep, that will work.  

    Do you CNT-FAI, bro?

    Look, the reason that even small-scale examples fail is because they get crushed from the outside because, whether it's stalinism, fascism, the American system, etc, they all have an interest in ensuring that those movements never survive. They refer to it as "the threat of a good example." Franco was a case study. He crushed his own country with an outside army. Why did he need an outside army? Because his actual countrymen hated his filthy, stinking fucking guts and everything that bastard stood for.

    What we also know, in contrast, is that societies that are based on the assumption that private vices yield public benefit will be destroyed from the inside in due time. They always have.

    Quote

    animal farm.

    You're using a book title from an author who was one of the foremost proponents of such a societal order. It's no surprise that you entirely missed the message and/or interpretation of that novel.

  17. 11 minutes ago, JBJ said:

    It's not your definition, which is why I defined it at the start of my post.  It's a purely economic term to me.

    I can tell that you define it differently by your posts, so just tell us how you define it.  It's impossible to discuss the merits of something without know what is being discussed.  If my definition isn't worth discussion, proffer your own.

    It's not up to me to define it. I didn't coin the term. That was done almost 400 years ago.

    The definition hayden posted is correct, and what's not understood very well by people like incredulty, yourself, and the other 90 or so percent of you who haven't the foggiest idea of what it means is that there's a huge difference between the word that's in the definition that hayden posted (community) and the word you used (the government). The government isn't the community. The government, as we know the concept today, is a very concentrated mechanism of power that tends to the interests of a very select few. That's the exact opposite of socialism, which is an anarchicistic and participatory concept that states, as he said, the means of production, distribution, etc lies in the hands of the community (as in the entire community and not some illegitimate power structure). 

  18. 3 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

    for instance, to build on my point, do yall consider north korea a democratic republic because they call themselves such?

    I like how people shirk that question very easily when they say things like "Nazi Germany was socialist because their flag was red."

  19. Scandinavian countries aren't socialist either. Do their central governments incorporate socialistic elements for the benefit of the general public? Yes, much in the same way that Guatemala incorporates capitalism for its population as well. But you're going a bridge too far in labeling them as "socialist governments."

    What hayden just said is absolutely correct. It's one thing for a corrupt despot to call himself a socialist, but being a socialist isn't about waving flags, repeating words over and over, embracing labels, etc. And it's not about one person either. So let's pretend Bernie won the 2016 election. I doubt very seriously that we'd be living in a socialist society just because the leader happened to like that word. Socialism is a 100% participatory society that, like HH implied (as I understood him, I could be wrong), when exposed to centralized power, crumbles by its very definition. 

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