Oops. Turns out Bush was right about Iranian nukes. Now what are we going to do?
The irony would be rich, were the subject any less serious. After years of the the left and international critics accusing the Bush administration of fearmongering and sabre-rattling about Iran's nuclear weapons program, it turns out that Bush was dead on — Iran will have a working nuclear weapon within the year.…
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426 - Dave Nalle
The Waterford factory in Ireland has been occupied by 100s of workers. The receiver wants to close it. They're occupying it only to keep it open so a Capitalist can buy it. I don't understand why they don't just take it over themselves? There are 700 workers.
At first I didn't see it either, Cindy. Surely those 100 workers who are occupying it could form a corporation representing the collective interests of all of the workers, and even if they could only sign on half the workers, they ought to be able to get a pretty substantial loan to take over the company.
Then with a little research I figured out the problem. The company is almost a billion dollars in debt. There's no way the workers can borrow enough to resolve that. Their best bet would be to let the company fail and shut down and then wait until it's good and dead and then buy the factory and the trademarks at bankruptcy prices and reopen the factory without having to resolve the debt.
The problem is that workers tend not to think in these terms, so they are turning to government to help them out instead.
Dave
427 - Les Slater
"The problem is that workers tend not to think in these terms..."
It's good that they don't.
428 - Dave Nalle
Americans are infected by the thinking that private property rights for Americans abroad is essentially a human right for everyone.
You seem to live in a bizarre vacuum which denies the existence of natural law. The right to own property exists for everyone whether they or you are aware of or chooses to acknowledge it. That's why it's a fundamental right.
If 1,000 campesinos are forced off their land, and it's taken over by a US company that pays a single client dictator for security and access, I can see how you think the US company and the Somoza or whatever just fulfilled a basic human right.
I didn't say anything like that. The campesinos have property rights and if their property is taken from them involuntarily then those rights are being abused.
That leaves 1,000 pissed off campesinos. They lost their property. They lost the most fundamental of human rights.
Absolutely. When have I ever supported taking property rights away from them?
Now that you have been destroyed in this argument, would you like to start another?
I wouldn't know. In this one you were just arguing with your own straw man, not me.
Dave
429 - Cindy DiGeso
Ahhhh! Thank you Dave!!!
That makes perfect sense.
Also, yes, I noticed they are waiting for government help.
I have to learn about this, someone should be helping them. As soon as you said that, I wondered why I hadn't thought of it. I have enough business experience to know that. But, I didn't think of it.
I need labor experience or information too.
430 - Cindy DiGeso
Why Les?
If they let it go and then reopened it as a collective wouldn't it be better?
(confused now)
431 - Cindy DiGeso
hrmmm...the receiver would take all the assets, even the building and sell them. couldn't the workers buy everything?
432 - Cindy DiGeso
(volunteers Les to help them) they have included their contact information and e-mail to receive messages of support, i imagine that means ideas too.
433 - Brunelleschi
go back to the top and read everything again.
Americans blinded by the meme have been making this happen in more places that I can count. I gave examples.
You can't have it both ways.
You can't blindly defend a meme that makes imperialism sound like freedom and at the same time claim to respect, for example, the rights of those 1,000 displaced campesinos. You can't be Dave and Che at the same time.
I am trying to help you understand how our entire system, youself included, can be so blind, and what this means to others, and why it makes us enemies.
If you would stop being so defensive, you might actually learn
something!
Do you even know what the countless revolutions south of us were about, and what they wanted, and what we made sure they did not get? Land. Their land.
You can not defend the system that takes land, and at the same time say they should have their land.
434 - Cindy DiGeso
Waterford Factory Occupation
435 - Cindy DiGeso
BTW Bruni, more effectively...there were 100,000 campesinos that protested. That figure of 100k will only be a fraction. (just a thought)
436 - Les Slater
"If they let it go and then reopened it as a collective wouldn't it be better?"
I guess you haven't read Engels 'Socialism: Utopian and Scientific' yet.
437 - Cindy DiGeso
I had to leave for work. It's on my screen at home.
okay! good. so i'll have some answers tonight.
438 - Dave Nalle
Les, I've read Engels. I don't see how it applies. He misses the fundamental message of Robert Owens experiment which applies here - that collectivism can exist within a capitalist structure and perform competitively.
Dave
439 - Dave Nalle
You can't have it both ways.
I haven't tried to. The two ways we're dealing with here are my way and your interpretation of my way. I only support one of them, guess which.
You can't blindly defend a meme that makes imperialism sound like freedom and at the same time claim to respect, for example, the rights of those 1,000 displaced campesinos. You can't be Dave and Che at the same time.
I'll stick with being Dave. I don't want to take land away from anyone and give it to anyone else. I don't want to dispossess the colonial elite OR the campesinos.
I am trying to help you understand how our entire system, youself included, can be so blind, and what this means to others, and why it makes us enemies.
Yes, but since you clearly have no idea what I believe, your entire argument apparently exists in your head.
If you would stop being so defensive, you might actually learn
something!
If you would stop telling other people what they think and listen to them instead you might seem like less of a doctrinaire buffoon.
Do you even know what the countless revolutions south of us were about, and what they wanted, and what we made sure they did not get? Land. Their land.
Why is it their land? You seem to have confused the right to own property with the right to be given property.
You can not defend the system that takes land, and at the same time say they should have their land.
You seem to be confusing the right to keep what you own with the nonexistent right to be given land just because you exist. This is the exact confusion which John Adams was worried about when editing the Declaration of Independence, which is what prompted the change from "Life, Liberty and Property" to "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."
Dave
440 - Baronius
Dave, you're missing the point! It's memes!
441 - Dave Nalle
Fine, it has to be said...
memes, schmemes.
Dave
442 - Brunelleschi
Dave-
Let's try one more time.
Say a country exists, and people own land and farm it.
They grow rice and beans, and eat the rice and beans.
Someone outside that country, and one person inside it make a deal to use that same land for coffee and bananas for export.
Fast forward, and somehow all those people are gone, scattered to cities or whatever. No one tells the same story, but the end result is a lot of dead people, accusations, and whatever.
All you know for sure is those people did not want to leave and they did not get paid.
The land is now fenced and guarded, used for export crops.
The foreign company claims to have a long term contract, with one powerful citizen, but no one else.
Who got screwed?
Would you defend the company's "human right to the land if all they had was a contract?"
443 - Dr Dreadful
All a meme basically is is an inherited value system or way of thinking, passed on between generations and becoming dominant in a population in much the same way that genes are.
There's nothing inherently negative or positive about them. They just are.
I can't help but think that Baronius and Dave are only having a problem with the notion because this particular meme makes their political philosophy look bad.
444 - Dave Nalle
Second only to property rights are contract rights.
And in the scenario you present the screwage is between the "powerful citizen" and the peasants. If he's a representative of government or a feudal-style landowner who was their overlord, then they're screwed, but the company isn't at fault.
Their grievance is with the "powerful citizen" in question and if he did not have the right to take their land then it ought to be given back to them. Seems obvious.
Dave
445 - Cindy DiGeso
You seem to live in a bizarre vacuum which denies the existence of natural law. The right to own property exists for everyone whether they or you are aware of or chooses to acknowledge it. That's why it's a fundamental right.
Dave,
This idea of private property includes personal effects. Not land Dave. Not the world itself. If it did then no one coming after could be entitled to anything. natural law could never dictate that people could own land.
446 - Cindy DiGeso
I hope my two martinis wear off in time to be able to read Engels tonight :-/
447 - Brunelleschi
Dave-
Good so far.
Suppose then, it is discovered that in fact, the company bribed the powerful citizen, who used force to clear the land. No brainer, right?
This makes the news when the displaced people steal some arms from the powerful one, and seek to move back in.
Violence occurs. Leaders of the former owners are found dead. The outside company gets nervous.
The outside company's own government steps in, and goes on record saying the company's claim to the land is legit, and if necessary, it will use force itself to defend the land and keep the
people off.
Whose land is it?
Is the outside government justified in using force on behalf of the company?
448 - Cindy DiGeso
Dave,
I would like to supply an exception. It does not include owning land. It is territory. That is the maximum natural law would allow as far as land goes.
territory is defined as what is in use.
449 - Cindy DiGeso
jeopardy music playing...
450 - Cindy DiGeso
Their grievance is with the "powerful citizen" in question and if he did not have the right to take their land then it ought to be given back to them. Seems obvious.
Dave, are you sure that that is the law? I mean, the law isn't always that obvious or even fair. And it has been about 28 years since I took a real estate class which gave property law, but I remember something in the white man's law that went if an unsuspecting buyer acquired stolen property, blah, blah, blah...
...something about the rightful original owner was out of luck.
It was an example that had to do with a stolen horse. But, I can't remember.
451 - Cindy DiGeso
Dave,
Here it is. It relates to real property and is called bona fide purchaser for value without notice.
BFP for Value.
452 - Baronius
Nah, Dread, I'm just bored. Bruno's argument begs the question. By saying that Dave's meme is wrong, he says essentially that Dave's evidence is right, but he's reading it wrongly. Bruno's position is therefore unfalsifiable. That's not all of Bruno's argument, but the fact that 400+ comments haven't even moved the conversation in a discernable direction makes me suspicious that there's any more to it than that.
453 - Brunelleschi
Bar
Care to translate that into English? You are not making sense!
A meme, the meme I described a zillion words ago, is a way to see a set of ideas evolve, understand it, and predict thinking/behavior reliably. I explained it that way. Your description sounds nothing like that. The advantage of using this concept is it explains how a large number of people can have the same opinion, but very few of them know why or realize it.
Right or wrong is not so important. Memes can be truths, myths, or a mix, but they are not static like dogma or faith. They evolve by natural selection. A population drops some parts and picks up others. They are also not developed on purpose. They happen without people realizing it.
I am very much interested in opinion and where it comes from, how it changes, and why.
I do see this going in circles, but I have been consistent. I sense that the truths I am bringing out are just opening eyes, or making some people uncomfortable.
454 - Baronius
Bruno, trust me, I get the concept. A meme is a philosophical construct, a mechanism by which we make sense of the world. You are questioning the apparatus by which Dave assimilates information, specifically his understanding of private property, liberty, and the nation-state.
But by arguing that his meme is incorrect, you're not arguing the individual points of contention. You're effectively poisoning the well: you're arguing that his framework is so obsolete as to make him incapable of understanding you. I see how you could take that position; it may be true. But it makes argumentation pointless.
Not necessarily though - you could lay out an argument that exposes the errors in Dave's thinking. In that way, you could refute his meme. I just haven't noticed you doing that.
And as for my harping on your use of that particular word, it's a matter of personal style. For me it dredges up memories of the 1980's and a hundred pointless discussions about paradigm shifts.
455 - Brunelleschi
I don't see it that way.
I didn't even see the word meme until Nov to be honest.
But I did get inspired by The Selfish Gene back in the day, just as I was trying to figure out how could everyone be so blind as to not see that the all the foreign policy actors I listed way back when all thought alike, acted alike, and lied the same (The we do it for freedom thing). What motivates them? How can that be? What drives it?
The one single thing that was always present was this drive for property rights for us, no matter what. That negates all the other excuses for what we do. It explains the competition with the USSR, the covert actions, every low intensity conflict we were in, even the policies of the IMF/World bank (look into it - they use money as a lever to force privatization like its a religion).
Dave just happens to anchor his ideas on freedom in line with the same meme I saw 20 years ago. Thats all. He's just a great example of it.
I'm not going after "Dave's meme." I don't know what that means. Dave just fits the pattern like everyone else and can't see it.
456 - Dave Nalle
This idea of private property includes personal effects. Not land Dave. Not the world itself. If it did then no one coming after could be entitled to anything. natural law could never dictate that people could own land.
I don't buy it, Cindy. Land ownership is a cornerstone of liberty. It is the most real of real property.
Here it is. It relates to real property and is called bona fide purchaser for value without notice.
Interesting, Cindy. For that to come into play you'd have to prove ignorance on the part of the ultimate purchaser, of course.
But it seems to me that in this scenario there are actually TWO causes of action. The ultimate recipient of the land may have a legitimate title to it, but if he does then the prior owner has a claim for the value of that land against the person who sold it without his authorization. There are essentially two wronged parties, but there is one clear villain.
Dave
457 - Dave Nalle
The one single thing that was always present was this drive for property rights for us, no matter what.
Who is "us"? The US government? It gained no land or property. Some multinational corporation? How is that us? The people of the US? How do we benefit? Some shadowy cabal of the wealthy elite? Who, how, why?
Holes you can drive a truck through in this reasoning.
That negates all the other excuses for what we do. It explains the competition with the USSR, the covert actions, every low intensity conflict we were in, even the policies of the IMF/World bank (look into it - they use money as a lever to force privatization like its a religion).
But again, what does the US or anyone else GAIN from this? I always look for motive first, and territorial gain as the primary motive for the gold war on the part of the US is totally implausible.
Dave just happens to anchor his ideas on freedom in line with the same meme I saw 20 years ago. Thats all. He's just a great example of it.
Add about 200 years and you might be right.
Dave
458 - Brunelleschi
Dave, again-
We are talking about how a group behaves and thinks, not its bank account or land holdings. That is why I used this meme. Its about ideas, not wealth.
"us" is the foreign policy actors that I listed several times already, the ones that all think and act the same.
The meme does not even require that "we" benefit. That is not the point and it never was! That is why I used the example of the bees. A bee kills itself defending the hive. Dawkins explained this. I wanted to know why nearly everyone, "the "us,'" thinks the same and says the same things, and can be so damn wrong. Dawkins was the inspiration, the meme is the explanation. Memes can exist even if the way a group thinks and acts is against logic or its own best interest in the long run (example, making it enemies and making the world unstable).
There is NO shadowy cabal with the powers to control every mind for profit, and I never said there was, so the rest of your question is the wrong question.
Since you decided to stop playing in the simple example of the many land owners, and the outside company and its local "strongman," I will just tell you where I was going to take it-
(First, I will point out that you proved me right already when you said the displaced land owners got screwed).
-Picking up where we left off, the situation deteriorates. The outside company appeals to its own government for enforcement of its claims to the land.
-Its embassy staff and the ambassador support the company's claims.
-This makes the news, and the major news outlets support the company's claims. Reporting is biased and ignores the facts of how the conflict started. The displaced landowners are placed in a bad light.
-Public opinion follows policy. The displaced landowners are considered dangerous and violent. The only place you can find people accurately debating the situation as it really is, is where you find thinkers-universities.
-The critics at the universities are ignored and dismissed, but are just an interesting sideshow and don't change much, if anything.
-The outside government applies all the pressure it can. It uses embargo and every lever of power it has, up to and including direct military intervention, but usually uses local clients first.
-All this intervention is expensive. This is not about profit, its about behavior.
-News and opinion outside this conflict understand it more clearly and accurately. The accounts you pick up from them sound nothing like what you get from the big company's home nation. This does little or nothing to change the situation.
-If the pressure-economic, diplomatic, and military succeed, all the actors I listed feel good about what was done. They claim the moral high ground in terms familiar to them, and they all, deep down, believe it.
-Finally, and this is very important, if a similar situation comes up again, the results will be the same. The thinking and behavior are re-enforced, and it all starts again. It can change a little here and there, and the changes spread to all the listed actors. There is no central control for this. It happens on its own, without the actors realizing it.
We can now summarize:
We already agree the landowners got screwed. Now we have a lot of people who were not even part of this celebrating the outcome. They are convinced they did the right thing, and describe this in terms of their beliefs.
Individuals in the outside government did not profit. The reporters did not profit. The embassy staff did not profit. The public did not profit. The military did not profit.
But they all speak and think the same. Their view backs up the behavior, and explain it in the same way, all of them. They are all wrong. None of them see it. If you show any of them the facts, they just don't understand how you can be so wrong-even though you are right.
There is our meme. It is not an individual's meme. Memes explain how a group thinks and acts, not an individual.
Wow, memes are powerful things!
All this is just an example of course, but you know who I am talking about in the real world-the US and it's thinking and behavior.
How can we explain this? We can't. It really does make no sense at all. All we can do it see it as it is and ask what comes next, if we want to predict how the group will behave.
It is not logical for a large group to celebrate stealing, spending a lot of money, and committing violent acts for a false reason, and then claiming that this was moral.
No one ever said memes like this are calculated, logical, or even beneficial. They can even be dangerous and costly.
As I said a zillion words ago, I wanted to understand the gap between America's actions and excuses and the reality. I wanted to know what these actions had in common, so I don't have to sit for hours watching the news every time shit hits the fan somewhere listening to fake news, selfish arguments and propaganda. I had already had enough of it during Reagan.
I submit that America is behaving and thinking based on it's concept of private property, and it claims this about freedom and security. This comes from Locke, who inspired the founding fathers. It works pretty good at home, but it does not work internationally when other people's property is taken and their rights are dismissed.
All the conflicts we argue about can be reduced to a version of the example of the displaced landowners.
It's the private property meme.
459 - Mark Ed(en)
Les and Cindy,
While I would like to see more takes on the Argentine mode, I understand the practical nature of the Irish workers' call for nationalization if the capitalist approach fails as appears to be the case. For example, if the State take possession of the machines and buildings, that gives the workers a 'legal' legitimacy -- a problem that the Argentine experiments continue struggling with.
As an artisan who chose long ago to minimize my participation in the modern capitalist system, I don't pretend to be in any position to advise the proletariat on its campaign to take State power.
My interest is in insuring the prompt withering away of whatever State 'wins' the struggle this time.
note on Engels: where he says 'The time is now', 'now' is pretty damned relativized I guess.
460 - Cindy D
Mark?
They are calling for nationalization? I don't understand the articles. I see the union leader saying to the ministers, "don't be afraid of nationalization." But, all I see is them waiting for Clarion Capital? (Financial?)--something like that, to buy them. They're hoping to keep as many workers employed as possible.
Did I miss something?
(I'm reading Engels today. Still on the intro in English...hate when he quotes Marx (cannot figure out why I don't get Marx).
461 - Cindy D
Waterford Factory Latest News
Unite regional industrial organiser Walter Cullen told The Irish Times that the union was still confident that the Clarion Capital group would be successful in its bid for the plant, in the process securing more than 300 jobs at the plant, including some 200 in manufacturing.
462 - Baronius
"(cannot figure out why I don't get Marx)"
Because he was a derivative, second-rate philosopher and an unrankably bad economist?
463 - Memelleschi
Then why do people mention his name and his ideas on this site every day? If he was lousy, he would have been forgotten.