BCITORGB wrote:
TnT says:
================
the women were grocery shopping at a
Safeway!
==================

Now I have to think you're giving ME a bad time. Women shopping in a
Safeway is a pretty superficial way of measuring liberty, freedom and
democracy.

Back to the history books. Why were American revolutionaries so
****ed
off at King George and the Brits? Weren't they shopping in
fashionable
shops in New York, Boston, etc that were every it as nice as all but
the best London could offer? Why ever were they upset?

Does the notion of a monarchy in 2005 not strike you as archaic? I
suspect it struck many "Americans" as archaic way babk in the 1770's.

frtzw906

I did not mean to imply that a Safeway in Saudia Arabia, marks the
measure of liberty, freedom, and Democracy, but it is a mark that the
invasion has started. It is when the people get enough of these
markers, that they understand that the notion of a monarchy in 2005 is
archaic, obsolete, and are willing to throw off the yoke, all by
themselves. Saves US from feeling like we have to militarily engage
every tin-star dictator or monarch. TnT

BCITORGB wrote:

i was reluctant to bring up the "immigration" issue because, too often
in europe, right-wing rather equates to foreigner hate as opposed to
conservative economics.

this relates, i fear to my earlier post about fundamentalist nutbars of
all stripes. in the cases of denmark and in the netherlands, very
progrssive and tolerant people have been driven into the arms of the
right-wing hate mongers because islamic fundamentalists have abused the
ever-so tolerant welcomes (i'd welcome wilko's perspective on this).

The way I see it, very few Dutch people are actually moving over to the
political right because of the murder of Theo van Gogh. What has been
happening shortly after the murder was that some right wing groups, and
a couple of numb-brained individuals from both muslim and christian
sides tried to ride on the train of dissent by setting fire to a couple
of schools, mosques and churches. That lasted for a couple of days after
the murder, and it stopped completely after those first couple of days,
in part because the Dutch media stopped the media hysteria.

What has become very clear after the murder, which IMHO is more
disturbing than the so called anti-islamic violence rising, is that the
openness of our society has changed. People like Theo van Gogh, who used
very openly hostile remarks towards muslims, like calling them
"goat-****ers" among other things, were slowly considered a normal
phenomenae. As a result, a lot of denegrating things were said about
muslims, and public sentiment towards being permitted to insult
minorities changed.

It's almost as if a magnifying glass has been placed over the muslim
minorities, filtering out what seems worth targeting and ignoring what
is positive.

A good developemnt of all of this has been that no longer the fake veil
of integration is covering all kinds of minority problems, but that they
are now openly discussed.

The negative side is that the government has tried the U.S. scare tactic
and it is now trying to limit the population's freedom with the excuse
of fighting terrorism.

Considering how much support the current government is losing in polls,
I think that their military support of the Iraq occupation and their
willingness to kiss U.S. butt despite the obvious lies and deception
just to stay trade partners with the U.S. will make them lose the next
election.

as i see it, denmark and holland are current manifestations of every
small="L" liberal's dilemma -- we can tolerate just about anything
expect intolerance.

Denmark is actually rather intolerant, with a considerable list of
minority unfriendly and minority intolerant laws and regulations. Think
about regulations not allowing more than a certain amount of minorities
in a certain area, people from minorities without a job being prohibited
to live in certain areas and so on...

Austrian right wing politician Joerg Haider actually tried to shape his
province Kaernten after the Danish model.

as i see the dutch situation (the recent killings of right-wing
politician and playwright) the dutch, with their multi-pillar approach
to society were fairly tolerant of islamic refugees/immigrants...
however, it was when the islamics decided that the system was too
tolerant for their religious belief and started agitating for change
that the dutch populace turned...

That's another side to the story. Because muslims are tolerated and left
to do what they as long as they bother no-one, we expect them to respect
others and not try to force their beliefs onto others as well. Alas, a
few of them fail to understand that. Mind you, that also goes for the
rather irritating U.S. Jehova's witnesses that go from door to door
trying to bring most people something they don't want or need either.

i liken it to someone coming into the usa and trying to change the
constitution (outside of the normal amendment process). this tolerance
was a cornerstone of what defined the netherlands: it was not
negotiable.

Yup, you've got a point there.

my view (and i stand to be corrected) was that the upsurge of the
right-wing can be attributed to pig-headed fundamentalism (in this case
islamic).

There is very little upsurge of the right wing, although I'm positive
that they will gain a couple of seats. A single politician in the
currently right-most party (which are called the "Liberals" here :-) )
has found them not to be anti-minorities enough, and he started his own
faction. Just after the murder he was estimated in the polls at
seventeen seats. That's now down to just a few, several of which are now
more because of him going in against the ruling Liberals than because of
how much he appeals to anti-minorities groups within our society.

Seeing how we have roughly a dozen parties in parliament, and maybe
double that waiting to enter the elections every time, the coalition
that is in the government better be really aware of the sentiments of
the population and not do too many things that are opposing the popular
political opinion (like the invasion of Iraq) or they will lose the next
election to a newcomer to the political arena (which is what happened
here right after the murder of Pim Fortuyn by a crazy environmentalist).

again, i'm of the impression that the danish situation is a parallel.

I think that the difference is a bit more nuanced, but I didn't follow
Danish developments in detail recently. From what I understand the
sitting government gained seats in the recent election, for the most
part because they actually did quite a bit to deal with immigrant
problems in Danmark.

--
Wilko van den Bergh wilko(a t)dse(d o t)nl
Eindhoven The Netherlands Europe
---Look at the possibilities, don't worry about the limitations.---
http://wilko.webzone.ru/

"BCITORGB" wrote in message
oups.com...
rick says:
=========
Fortunately W isn't directly in charge of the education of a
million kids, mr Kennedy is.
==========

Unfortunately, "W" is in charge of the most powerful nation.

rick, you display an interesting bit of (il)logic. By your
reckoning,
then, a minister of education should be more intelligent than
the
leader of the world's leading economy and military.
=============================
No, didn't say that at all. That's your bit of illogical
projection. But, an education minister should be able to at
least count up to 10 without any problems. Fortunately, W is
running the US instead of a minor backwoods education system.



If you're representative of American voters, I'm beginning to
see why
Americans voted as they did.
=====================
Really? Your lack of logic says you have nothing to say about
it. maybe US voters believe more in their country and themselves
than those like you that depend only on what the government will
give you.

Just in case you're also too stupid for sarcasm, my daughter is
in an Ontario school.

frtzw906



Canoe North
http://home.earthlink.net/~etterr/

A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

Tovarich Weiser says:
===========
I'm merely supporting price controls and subsidies
============

Which implies central planning insofar as a central government decides
on the allocation of scarce resources, not Adam Smith's "invisible
hand".

True, but limited government planning regarding the allocation of scarce
resources and subsidies to strategic industries is a far cry from socialism.


As to how this is different from welfare to the poor, you have not made
clear.

What's unclear about "Government support of industry is government support
of industry, which produces things that add to the nation's prosperity in
return for the economic protection and support. Welfare is a drain on the
system consisting of money given to people who produce nothing in return."

This is corporate welfare

Buzz-word. "Welfare" is a grant of money to poor individuals with no
expectation of repayment. Subsidies to "corporations" involved in
agriculture are grants of money made with the express purpose of keeping the
agricultural capacity of the US strong, with an expectation that these
businesses will continue to farm and provide agricultural products to the
economy and the GNP. It's sheik to call subsidies "corporate welfare," but
it's also factually incorrect.

which, in the specific case of
agri-business, may well be driving TnT's sugar beet in-laws and other
ma and pa farms out of existence.

What's driving small farmers out of business is the aging farmer population
and the fact that most young people have no interest in being farmers, which
is, and has for a long time, been a hardscrabble, below-poverty-line
existence that's only attractive to some because of the lifestyle, which
requires great sacrifices in terms of comfort and wealth. Fact is that more
than 60% of small farmers must take off-farm jobs to survive at all.

As for large "corporate" farming, it's simply the wave of the future.
Economies of scale dictate that agricultural crop production be done on a
massive scale, which requires a large investment in both land and equipment,
not to mention huge costs of production. Only a corporation that has
significant capital can really afford to farm these days.

Fifty years ago, a corn harvesting machine might cost $2000. Today, a wheat
combine, a corn harvester or even a tractor may cost $100,000 to $250,000 or
more. It's economic suicide for a farmer with a few hundred, or even a few
thousand acres to try to buy new equipment. Only someone with tens to
hundreds of thousands of acres, who can move equipment around efficiently to
cultivate enormous fields and benefit from the economies of scale can afford
to buy modern farm equipment.

That means large corporations. The "family farm" is, by and large, on the
way out, and people interested in farming will end up working for large
corporate farms by necessity.

That's the sad, hard truth.

But that doesn't mean that agriculture, including large corporate
agriculture, does not deserve subsidies and price protections against
low-cost foreign crops to prevent the decline of agriculture overall.


Further, we have yet to establish that orange groves in the desert
serve some sort of national interest. Seems like a bad idea if the the
price of the oranges doesn't reflect the true cost of growing them.
Wouldn't we be better off eating apples?

People like oranges, and I'd certainly rather they come from the US than
from a foreign nation. Whether oranges are worthy of price supports and
protections is, of course, a matter of government policy, and government
policy reflects the will of the people, however remotely. I'm more
interested in supporting production of food staples like wheat, corn, beef
and other "non-luxury" crops. But, if a farmer wants to raise oranges, it's
better to subsidize him and keep his land in production than it is to end up
with him selling out to a developer. Once the land is converted from
agricultural use, it's gone forever.


Ultimately, somebody has to pay the price of the water.

Yes, so what? Everybody has to pay for water, one way or another.

Most likely it
is Henry Homemaker when he pays higher residential water rates.

Why is Henry Homemaker any more entitled to low-cost water than the
agriculturalist? Henry Homemaker has to eat, and the vast majority of the
water he consumes comes directly from the food he eats...water put there by
the farmer.

This
would be tolerable if our agri-business firms operated as non-profits.
As they don't, Henery Homemaker is subsidizing those who hold shares in
agri-business. That sounds like WELFARE to me.

We all subsidize agriculture because we pay taxes that pay subsidies. So
what? It's not welfare because those subsidies are not simply given away,
they are invested in American agriculture, which, as I said, is a strategic
resource that once destroyed, cannot come back.


Welfare to the poor further serves the purpose of reducing the nation's
income disparity.

No, it merely disempowers and enslaves those who take it. They become
dependent on the dole, and they adjust their lifestyles to live on the dole,
and never seek to better themselves or become productive members of society.
Thus, they become permanent, useless drains on the economy. Our system
rewards hard work and innovation, not selfish laziness.

Check your history books for the consequences of
income disparity, Tovarich. You'll then understand why this is of
strategic importance to your government.

I grant you that CEO salaries are out of control in the US, as they are
everywhere, but such salaries comprise a minute fraction of the GDP and
"income disparity" is not resolved or reduced by simply giving people money
from someone else's pocket. It's reduced by putting people to work so they
become producers instead of leeches. That's why welfare-to-work reform in
the US has been so successful.

The real problem is that many welfare leeches simply do not WANT to work,
they prefer to take the dole and spend their lives sitting on the stoop or
dealing drugs to each other.

Contrast this with the hordes of illegal aliens flooding into this country
to work extremely hard at jobs that "Americans won't do." Americans won't do
those jobs because they are a) being paid to be idle, b) they are lazy bums
who don't want to sweat and c) the jobs they could be doing are filled with
illegal aliens. Remove the illegals and there would be plenty of jobs for
Americans...albeit low-paying stoop-labor jobs that aren't much fun at all.
Still, as the illegals know, stoop-labor beats starvation...something that
is almost entirely unknown in this country. (Note: being hungry is not the
same thing as starvation...Please try to find the last time someone in this
country died from starvation because no food was available.)

If we put people in the position of either working or starving, chances are
they will work, if they can. Hunger is a great motivator. Just look at the
Depression. Welfare was started during the Depression not because of "income
disparities," but because, due to the crop failures and drought, combined
with the stock market crash, there simply was no work available because
there was no money to pay workers. That resulted in the CCC and the great
public works projects of the 30s. We could do the same thing today, and
improve our infrastructure (such as the 70% of highway bridges that are
deteriorating and are unsafe) by requiring welfaristas to put in some sweat
equity for their paycheck. There's plenty of things for them to do, and you
can build a road with 20,000 men with shovels as well as you can with
bulldozers, albeit not as efficiently. Still, I'd rather pay a bit more and
be less efficient in order to see the indigent at work than use modern
"labor saving" devices and have to pay for welfaristas to sit around idle.
Idle hands are the devil's playthings...an aphorism that is indisputably
true.

My other theory for welfare reform involves appropriating all the
professional sports arenas in the nation under eminent domain and turning
them into Welfare Training Centers. I believe that if I have to report to
work eight hours a day to receive a paycheck, so should welfaristas. So, in
order to get a check , you are required to report to the stadium at 8 am
each day.

Once you've been logged in, you find a seat and you sit in it, and do
NOTHING, and I mean nothing, including talking with your friends or moving
about, for the next eight hours. If you violate the rules, and are caught
(by one of the legions of TV cameras and security monitors) you are ejected
from the stadium and you don't get paid for that day. Too many violations
and you're out for some extended period, like a month. Repeat offenders can
be dumped permanently.

Your alternative to sitting quietly in your seat (with potty breaks and
lunch...at your expense) all day is to attend educational seminars and
classes to learn a trade, or to go to the recruiting center, where employers
go to find day laborers and permanent employees.

At the end of the day, if you haven't found work, you get a paycheck.

The next morning, the same thing. You go and sit there in stultifying
boredom, educate yourself or go to work.

At least that way, the taxpayers know that some good, or at least no
mischief, is coming from their enforced income redistribution to the
indigent.

The other upside of this idea is that professional sports athletes will also
be unemployed, and their exorbitant salaries can be used to build new
businesses to employ the poor, and taxpayer-funded stadiums will finally be
used for something beneficial to the country.
--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

Tovarich Weiser says:
==============
In socialism, there is no reward for hard work, and the fruits of your
labor are taken from you by the government and are distributed to
others without your input or approval, and without compensation for
your work. All persons in a socialist regime are required (in theory)
to give their all with no expectation of reward for the benefit
of the proletariat.
==============

What in hell are you talking about?!

Socialism, of course.

This is not to say that a socialist government cannot decide to provide a
dole, or wage, or "redistribution" or whatever, it's that the essential
feature of socialism is that it is not *required* to do so. A Socialist
government may take everything from you without regard for your desires or
needs and give it to someone else "more deserving" than you, and you have
no recourse because nothing "belongs" to you in the first place. Everything
is owned by "the people," including the land you may be working, and it can
be taken and given to someone else at the whim and caprice of the leaders of
the society.

In short, in socialist systems, there is no concept of "private property,"
and thus you have no claim on what you possess.
--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

Weiser says:
==========
If you twits would quit letting terrorists in, we might not have to.
===========

I know it is painful to be reminded of this but: the 9-11 guys trained
in the USA... it seems you twits let them in.

Indeed. But Canada is *still* letting terrorists in, carte blanche.

--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

BCITORGB wrote:

weiser says:
=========
"If you have two operating feet, get up and walk
out of the ghetto.
=========

did i say something about a ghetto here?

and, frankly, i don't give a **** about what the people in kansas want
to teach their kids. but from where i sit, their actions and similar
"ban the books" from literature classes actions in the US bible belt
look awfully similar to what the taliban was up to.

Look awfully similar? I think they are basically the same thing.

The Taliban weren't exactly the most creative of folks, they got a lot
of their ideas from those who came up with a religion before them, the
christians and jews.

It's amazing how well they copied the ideas of some person forcing other
to do as they wish all because that one person claims to be more in
touch with something bigger than us all than the other person. Religion
is basically a power game, with just enough spirituality to keep the
simple people from seeing the truth. The truth is that by using religion
to make people conform to an idea, you can make those people do things
they would never do for money or by threat of direct force.

Freedom would be allowing people to believe in what they want, without
being worried that some religious leader immediately convicts what they
want or believe as herecy. Funny how the church still advocates
abstinence (sp?) as a way to prevent AIDS or how it prevents the use of
birth control in countries where the population explosion is causing
gigantic problems.

Also interesting how in most developed countries there is a direct
correlation between the level of education of the population and the
amount of people still believing in some kind of higher being.
In most of Europe the amount of people still going to some kind of
church dwindles by the day, although a lot of people discover other, not
related to some church or constricting religion, forms of spirituality.

great! have your
regious freedom (if that's what you think it is)! i think it's a
purposeful dumbing down of your children.

That reminds me, funny how the catholic church in essence kept the
population dumb for centuries by picking the brightest people as their
priests, and letting everyone else procreate, effectively eliminating
many of the smartest people from every generation from adding to the
gene pool.

--
Wilko van den Bergh wilko(a t)dse(d o t)nl
Eindhoven The Netherlands Europe
---Look at the possibilities, don't worry about the limitations.---
http://wilko.webzone.ru/

A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

weiser:
=======
Well, first, it's an extremely recent thing.
========

not so recent: the first time i crossed borders in europe without being
stopped was 1972

Only between select countries who had travel agreements. Not EU-wide. That
didn't happen till recently. You didn't get in to East Germany that way in
1972 did you?

--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

weiser says:
==========
you just fail to understand socialism
=========

you confuse socialism with communism

Two sides of the same coin. Socialism inevitably turns into communism.
--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

weiser:
========
In a capitalistic health care system such as the US, you can obtain the
best
health care in the world, if you can afford it..
==========

who was it that said something to the effect: "all men are created
equal...." except, of course, when it comes to healthcare

You misconstrue. The Constitution guarantees that you are CREATED equal, not
that you are guaranteed equal outcome, equal opportunity or equal access to
anything, including health care. This is the most common error made in
interpreting the Constitution.

All you have a right to in the US is life, liberty and the PURSUIT of
happiness, not the acquisition of it by government mandate or fiat.

If you fail in your pursuit, then you may die alone, penniless and an abject
failure in life. That too is your right, and the government has no
obligation to provide for you or ensure that you do not fail. Nor should it,
because, as Linda Seebach said the other day in her column , "The only way
for everyone to be equal is to flatten everyone."

--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser