First, ideology and religion are two things I don’t argue about in general.

Social thinking of one sort or another can be considered ideological. So, I don’t think “our” argument is about ideology or aligning with a particular set of policies or ideas.

If you stick to the particulars instead of straying off into areas unintended, like arguments about ideas and inspiration. than I think we can have a fruitful (if disagreeable) “discussion”.

I am not uninspired by the words of many writers and thinkers and activists. Let’s just be clear. But, for me, it is not purely the use of language which is compelling, but whether that language leads to one or more first principles that can than lead to action.

Marx does not provide that. He provides a whole roller coaster of ideas patched together into volumes. If you find clarity there, fine. If you find inspiration there, fine.

But I do not find the kind of first principles that can make a real difference in peoples lives. I think, among others, that Henry George was not happy with anything but first principles. He was about clean and clear definition of terms that we can read and agreed/disagreed in the light of day without leaving it to “scholars” to debate, write endless papers, and make a “living” at deciphering (such as the case with Marx).

Viewing land as THE center of human wealth and that it is an integral part of natural order of our existence. Communism is not real, it is by nature utopian.

Max you are embarrassing yourself. This is the reason why your perspectives about ideology are so distorted. IDEAS ARE NOT REAL. IDEAS INSPIRE. Only HUMANS can make “ideas” real. To compare a concrete substance like land to ideology is why you are so CONFUSED and why your confusion and undeveloped ideology will only mislead (at best) or at worst your agenda is to deliberate maintain the discombobulation of the Left.

It’s like reading the bible when you read Marx/Engle and Das Kapital, one can “discover” language to meet today but there is no real connection.

Viewing land as THE center of human wealth and that it is an integral part of natural order of our existence. Communism is not real, it is by nature utopian. The earth, wind, water, minerals are real. It is these and all other natural resources which give rise to a clear reality.

One can see in reading George (vs Marx) the clarity of language, the determination to make sure that terms are not used (as does Marx) interchangeably and ambiguously, leaving the reader to a clear headed what and how (unlike Marx).

Why have the ecological critics missed this crucial element of Marx’s vision? The answer may lie in the ongoing influence of so-called “tragedy of the commons” models, which (mis)identify common property with uncontrolled “open access” to natural resources by independent users. In reality, the dynamics posited by these models have more in common with the anarchy of capitalist competition than with Marx’s vision of communal rights and responsibilities regarding the use of natural conditions. Indeed, the ability of traditional communal property systems to sustainably utilize common pool resources has been the subject of a growing body of research in recent years. This research arguably supports the potential for ecological management through a communalization of natural conditions in post-capitalist society.35

Marx’s emphasis on the future society’s responsibility toward the land follows from his projection of the inherent unity of humanity and nature being realized both consciously and socially under communism. For Marx and Engels, people and nature are not “two separate ‘things’”; hence they speak of humanity having “an historical nature and a natural history.” They observe how extra-human nature has been greatly altered by human production and development, so that “the nature that preceded human history…today no longer exists”; but they also recognize the ongoing importance of “natural instruments of production” in the use of which “individuals are subservient to nature.” Communism, far from rupturing or trying to overcome the necessary unity of people and nature, makes this unity more transparent and places it at the service of a sustainable development of people as natural and social beings. Engels thus envisions the future society as one in which people will “not only feel but also know their oneness with nature.” Marx goes so far as to define communism as “the unity of being of man with nature.”36

US is for ‘demcracy’ -an utopia, really- and free speech but dead iraqis, pals, pashtuns, somalis don’t hear that.
and the living in that part of the world only care about living, eating, working, chatting, etc., and care zilch about ?all isms.
tnxbozhidarbalkasvancouver

can one imagine what benefits wld accrue to china if 50-100mn chinese wld obtain best education available?
and compare that with just one mn or fewer amers receiving the best education available?

and then india, pakistan, et al ape china?! US wld have to provide free higher education or eventually regress toan unknown degree?
tnx

once chinese improve their socialism, over bn of indians wld not stand still for indian caste system or for its enormous iniquities.
pakistanis, kurds, other asians might espouse chinese model.

however, the demonization of china because of some of its human rights abuses is already in full swing by all master classes.

so, 8-millennial struggle btwn ancient/ modern king and people outside looking in is still going on!
It’ll end one day. But i think socialism wld be victorious. tnx

You’re joking, right? In all classical economics capital is on “par” with labor.

What George does (along with all good classical political economists) is to make sure that land (the universe minus human development vis a vis capital and labor) is on “par” with labor and capital.

That is essential for any kind of economic justice. And it has been denied by the neo-classical economists who are interested in creating and sustaining an economics for the elite, to privatize the commons (land, etc.)

George’s economics is based pro-community and by its nature anti-elitist. It aims to eliminate monopolies and to capture community wealth for the community.

You don’t understand George (nor do you seem to understand Herman Daly); and frankly, I don’t think you understand Marx.

A just and sustainable economics is what both George and Daly are after (as is the Canadian Peter Victor).

As far as “societal exploitation”, it is only because you do not see the implications of privatizing the commons that you don’t see how Henry George addresses this critical problem. His synthesis arises not by sitting in a London library and dialecting, but through observation. He goes through a different arduous process of seeing, analyzing and synthesizing. But what moved him to even care was his deep concern for the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, leaving the many into the margins or poverty.

An incredible coalition of peasants and non-peasant have band together the world over to create a “food sovereignty”. This comes from a deep understanding of resource access and anti-neoliberalistic polices of the North. Henry George speaks to this universal need. It is not new, but it is hidden primarily in the US, where the empire has readily colonized great swaths of the population through a hyper-consumer marketing through hi- and low tech communications on a daily, unrelenting basis.

If you don’t understand how the wealthy “create” wealth, then you’ll never understand why the poor are poor.

But DV need to bring on more ideas about alternatives.

What needs to occurs is Left-wing posers need to be exposed. I’m glad that Tennessee recently posted about a “Left-wing” site that is really a Zionist front.

Max Sheilds continue to want to present charlatans like Henry George and Herman Daly who constantly spent their time disparaging Marx and Marxism. Before there can be a consideration of “alternative” one needs to understand HOW the current crisis emanated. Posers like Max Shields and Noam Chomsky and other have spent their energies trying to woo people away from Marxist analysis. Why? Because confusion and obfuscation are at the core of their agenda. If their explanation of the crisis are designed to obfuscate ergo their solution are not designed to provide a real alternatives.

In the case of Max’s promotion of Henry George you have someone who places capital on par with labor. George single solution of a “land tax” FAILS to address societal exploitation and the ability of the working class to fight for real control and POWER over the lives.

RH2 ask about real alternatives and concrete action. The answer has always been there unfortunately the “Left” has been drifting away from those alternatives, action and answers for decades.

Yes, I agree. I think it’s important to critique Obama. Silence has a certain complicity about it and there is a need to combat the MSM propaganda hummmm.

But DV need to bring on more ideas about alternatives. There was a brief, less than adequate, Henry George essay. There are economists such as Peter Victor and Herman Daly who are essential alternatives (who happen to incorporate HG’s undertanding of natural resources as central to understanding an imperial modernist preditory system such as rules the earth through the number one empire: USA. But this is not just a USA problem. If the USA wee simpley to vanish as an empire, it would be replaced, if there is no reakoning by our all-too-self species.

We’ve analyzed the problem to death here. It’s time for a fresh awakening. Enough of the dead-souls syndrome. We got it, Obama is a worthless turd. Now what?

“mulga,yes,
also sprach zarathustra: Bring out one more ’savior’! It always works for despotic people! tnx, danke herr zarathustra!”

bozh and mulga spoke wisely to the masses on DV. Zarathustra ( a kind of Balkan-Austro-Canadian wine) has successfully educated the masses on DV.
What a radical and revolutionary change !

“I disagree on that point … well spoken includes content and insofar as Obama says anything at all it has been virtually content free. Fortunately, in the middle east where he most recently blathered mindlessly (though grammatically well) there seem to be some people who can see right through him.”

And, have you so far actively moved your ass against “grammatically well “ content free speech of Obama? Has your popcorn consuming on DV more conten?

At 7.30 in the morning on 3 June, a seven-month-old baby died in the intensive care unit of the European Gaza Hospital in the Gaza Strip. His name was Zein Ad-Din Mohammed Zu’rob, and he was suffering from a lung infection which was treatable.

Denied basic equipment, the doctors in Gaza could do nothing. For weeks, the child’s parents had sought a permit from the Israelis to allow them to take him to a hospital in Jerusalem, where he would have been saved. Like many desperately sick people who apply for these permits, the parents were told they had never applied. Even if they had arrived at the Erez Crossing with an Israeli document in their hands, the odds are that they would have been turned back for refusing the demands of officials to spy or collaborate in some way. “Is it an irresponsible overstatement,” asked Richard Falk, the United Nations special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories and emeritus professor of international law at Princeton University, who is Jewish, “to associate the treatment of Palestinians with [the] criminalised Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not.”

Falk was describing Israel’s massacre in December and January of hundreds of helpless civilians in Gaza, many of them children. Reporters called this a “war”. Since then, normality has returned to Gaza. Most children are malnourished and sick, and almost all exhibit the symptoms of psychiatric disturbance, such as horrific nightmares, depression and incontinence. There is a long list of items that Israel bans from Gaza. This includes equipment to clean up the toxic detritus of Israel’s US munitions, which is the suspected cause of rising cancer rates. Toys and playground equipment, such as slides and swings, are also banned. I saw the ruins of a fun fair, riddled with bullet holes, which Israeli “settlers” had used as a sniping target.

The day after Baby Zu’rob died in Gaza, President Barack Obama made his “historic” speech in Cairo, “reaching out to the Muslim world”, reported the BBC. “Just as it devastates Palestinian families, the continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” said Obama, “does not serve Israel’s security.” That was all. The killing of 1,300 people in what is now a concentration camp merited 17 words, cast as concern for the “security” of the killers. This was understandable. During the January massacre, Seymour Hersh reported that “the Obama team let it be known that it would not object to the planned resupply of ‘smart bombs’ and other hi-tech ordnance that was already flowing to Israel” for use in Gaza.

Obama’s one criticism of Israel was that “the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements . . . It is time for these settlements to stop.” These fortresses on Palestinian land, manned by religious fanatics from America and elsewhere, have been outlawed by the UN Security Council and the International Court of Justice. Pointedly, Obama made no mention of the settlements that already honeycomb the occupied territories and make an independent Palestinian state impossible, which is their purpose.

Obama demanded that the “cycle of suspicion and discord must end”. Every year, for more than a generation, the UN has called on Israel to end its illegal and violent occupation of post-1967 Palestine and has voted for “the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination”. Every year, those voting against these resolutions have been the governments of Israel and the United States and one or two of America’s Pacific dependencies; last year Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe joined them.

Such is the true “cycle” in the Middle East, which is rarely reported as the relentless rejection of the rule of law by Israel and the United States: a law in whose name the wrath of Washington came down on Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait, a law which, if upheld and honoured, would bring peace and security to both Palestine and Israel.

Instead, Obama spoke in Cairo as if his and previous White House administrations were neutral, almost divine brokers of peace, instead of rapacious backers and suppliers of the invader (along with Britain). This Orwellian illogic remains the standard for what western journalists call the “Israel-Palestine conflict”, which is almost never reported in terms of the law, of right and wrong, of justice and injustice – Darfur, yes, Zimbabwe, yes, but never Palestine. Orwell’s ghost again stirred when Obama denounced “violent extremists in Afghanistan and now Pakistan [who are] determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly can”. America’s invasion and slaughter in these countries went unmentioned. It, too, is divine.

Naturally, unlike George W Bush, Obama did not say that “you’re either with us or against us”. He smiled the smile and uttered “many eloquent mood-music paragraphs and a smattering of quotations from the Holy Quran”, noted the American international lawyer John Whitbeck. Beyond this, Obama offered no change, no plan, only a “tired, morally bankrupt American mantra [which] essentially argues that only the rich, the strong, the oppressors and the enforcers of injustice (notably the Americans and Israelis) have the right to use violence, while the poor, the weak, the oppressed and the victims of oppression must . . . submit to their fate and accept whatever crumbs their betters may magnanimously deign suitable to let fall from their table”. And he offered not the slightest recognition that the world’s most numerous victims of terrorism are people of Muslim faith – a terrorism of western origin that dares not speak its name.

In his “reaching out” in Cairo, as in his “anti-nuclear” speech in Berlin, as in the “hope” he spun at his inauguration, this clever young politician is playing the part for which he was drafted and promoted. This is to present a benign, seductive, even celebrity face to American power, which can then proceed towards its strategic goal of dominance, regardless of the wishes of the rest of humanity and the rights and lives of our children.

http://www.johnpilger.com
Link: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/3891

One of my favorite people still maintains that Obama is so much better than Bush. Thus far the only thing he can point to is that Obama speaks well. I disagree on that point … well spoken includes content and insofar as Obama says anything at all it has been virtually content free. Fortunately, in the middle east where he most recently blathered mindlessly (though grammatically well) there seem to be some people who can see right through him.

Sadly, we have gone about as long as it takes a group to get it’s stuff togatehr and attack the US again. Then we will hear from the people who actually think Obama is not tough enough (I suppose because his rhetoric is allegedly so soft). I can only imagine the sort of USA PATRIOT ACT we come up with then. Of course, on the other hand, maybe by finally having a police state with check points on our highways between places, the complacent, complicit and go along with government crowd will begin to realize, not that ‘it’ can’t happen here, but that ‘it’ has happened here.

Oh well, as part of the sheeple, you and I will bitch about it, but go along as we always have.

Now, THAT is sad.

RG the LG