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RE: Failure of the world-wide capitalist system ... kinda. - 12/28/2006 11:53:19 AM   
FirmhandKY


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Real0ne

Ok i took another look at those first two vids.

Frankly i find those vids very hard to watch.  

Especially since the greater majority of what he talks about is regarding de-classified cia and other government documents that expose black ops operations that are now a matter of public record and can be found on the official cia and other gov websites.  That said they are very hard to refute and it felt much like a slap in my face so to speak as i have always had difficulty digesting much less accepting conspiracy or black ops theories.

i watched it with a more critical eye this time since i expect i will have to respond to my reasoning and unless i missed something i have not been able to find anything i could really label as "dishonest" or frankly misguided in it.  Thats all part of what makes it so hard for me to watch.  In my last post i put up a link for the downloader, and i hope you get your puter to run so you and everyone else who are into politics can put a critical and analytical eye to it as well.



is regarding de-classified cia and other government documents that expose black ops operations that are now a matter of public record and can be found on the official cia and other gov websites.
***
In general, I have a few problems with this.

First, just because an operation was dicussed on a proposal, doesn't mean that the operation was ever implemented.  I have some experience with both propaganda and with secret planning documents. 

I tend to have a little different understanding of what goes on behind the scenes when such "planning documents" are being made, and I was also educated in some really neat (read effective) propaganda operations of our opponents.

Another problem I have with this is that often, a molehill is taken as a mountain.  In other words, one simple fact (the proposal of a possible operation that might have one or two "doubtful" parts) is taken as confirmation that 50 other bad things actually happened and were performed.

When someone doubts that all 50 things happened, then they are referenced the original document, which vaguely mentioned the possibility of one of them.  Not much proof to me.

A third thing that I occasionally see is a total misunderstanding of what was originally proposed.  In other words, the terminology, or the actual proposal might have been worded in such a way that leads someone not in that environment to believe that a, b, and c were being proposed, when in reality, d, e, and f were being proposed.  Or that the language itself is technical in nature, using words, phrases or concepts that have a slight, or large difference in meaning from what is commonly accepted.

But, people often believe what they want to believe, and they are difficult to dissuade that they are wrong, especially when they already have the desire to believe the worst. 

While I'm not saying that the people in governments can't or don't lie, mislead or do stupid things and attempt to cover them up, I also know that there is a willingness to believe the absolute worst of governments (the US government in particular) by a section of the population, and that one should be critical of both sides, and not make the instant conclusion that the government is always lying. 

FirmKY

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RE: Failure of the world-wide capitalist system ... kinda. - 12/28/2006 1:25:40 PM   
FirmhandKY


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Status: offline 		Was just replaying part of the first video, and was thinking about the comments about the overthrow of the Iranian government in the 1950's, and another "problem" to add to my above list is the one of "simplicity" (or lack thereof).

What I mean by this, is that often times, things are more complex, less straight line, and are seen and understood differently based on the time, and events afterwords.

For example, I often find few believers in such conspiracies or events that have much in the way of undertanding (or sympathy) of the zeitgeist of the time and place that some such events occurred.

Concern about world-wide Soviet domination isn't something that concerns us overly - now - and we look back and think "how could they have ever gotten so worked up over it?"

Because conspiracy believers often don't have an apreciation of the immediacy, the angst and the concerns of the time, they discount them as valid motivations.

Also, another aspect of "simplicity" is that is often, believers see things as pretty straight forward: A happened, E happened, and later, C said blank, therefore A lead to E for the following reasons.

And B, C, and D are all forgotten, or simply dismissed.

Another way to look at it, is that decision-making, and events - history, if you will - is complex, and rarely a straightforward sequence of events, tied together by strong chains of well thought-out and totally embraced decisions and beliefs.

It is really more of a muddy, confusing, "best guess" mish-mash of people making educated guess, emotional decisions and inconsistent choices that all kind of blend together to get a result that we call "the facts of history".   It's easy to look back, and assume from our later (higher) position that we have a better understanding of everyone's motives and their actions.

Sometimes this may be true. 

A lot of times I suggest it isn't, and that we are caught up seeing the past through our own prism of "educated guesses, emotional decisions and inconsistent choices".

Works both ways, I know.

FirmKY


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RE: Failure of the world-wide capitalist system ... kinda. - 12/28/2006 3:18:53 PM   
thompsonx


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Status: offline 		FirmhandKY:
Are you saying it is right and proper for the US government to actively engage in the overthrow of a soverign nations government baised on the perceived zeitgeist of the period?
thompson

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RE: Failure of the world-wide capitalist system ... kinda. - 12/28/2006 5:09:43 PM   
Real0ne


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quote:

ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY
Because conspiracy believers often don't have an apreciation of the immediacy, the angst and the concerns of the time, they discount them as valid motivations.


Yeh, i was in the military and have both training on some of the finer points of propaganda as well as some first hand experience myself.

unfortunately however in determining propaganda, especially  when dealing with current events "on the fly" as some the topics covered in the film, we do not have the luxury of 20/20 hindsight and courtroom convictions to help determine the path and perfectly place the finger of blame, (or not), you simply wont find it and extensive discounting is often just denial. 

Finding even circumstantial evidence in the early stages much less any form of proof means someone seriously screwed up. 

Its reverse engineering, a matter of adding up the ends and working backwards to find the means.  It is exactly the confusion you speak of that a person must find their way through and that requires a good working understanding of all possible contingencies, motivations and factions involved, and most importantly a personal approach that is willing to accept whatever outcome seems most plausibly suited to the circumstances based on gathered evidence.

Wading through well thought out propaganda and coming up with reasonably correct answers can be best thought of as playing chess in the dark against an opponent wearing night vision, or at least near dark, and people either are good at it or not but then as often is the case, especially in some of the current events going down today, its as simple as: if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck then darn it, its a buick!

Not to forget that everyone laughed at the conspiracy theorists concerning jfk until many years later after the fact.

So....be safe and dont go within a 100 yards of any building larry silverstein owns or any on going investigation of how the feds lost 2.3 billion bucks...


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RE: Failure of the world-wide capitalist system ... kinda. - 12/28/2006 5:21:54 PM   
Stephann


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Status: offline 		Ok, coming into this 27 pages down, I'll admit I'm JohnnyComeLately.  Would anyone care to hash out a summery?  I'd be most grateful - I'd hate to rehash the obvious and conceded points.

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RE: Failure of the world-wide capitalist system ... kinda. - 12/28/2006 5:32:01 PM   
losttreasure


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Stephann

Ok, coming into this 27 pages down, I'll admit I'm JohnnyComeLately.  Would anyone care to hash out a summery?  I'd be most grateful - I'd hate to rehash the obvious and conceded points.


*laughs*  You're in luck... I don't believe any points have been conceded.

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RE: Failure of the world-wide capitalist system ... kinda. - 12/28/2006 5:36:50 PM   
NeedToUseYou


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Stephann

Ok, coming into this 27 pages down, I'll admit I'm JohnnyComeLately.  Would anyone care to hash out a summery?  I'd be most grateful - I'd hate to rehash the obvious and conceded points.


Just select a side...

Side1: Capitalism's evil
Side2: Capitalism is the lesser of evils.

And don't worry about conceding a point, as this thread seems to be a marathon event as opposed to a effort to find common ground.




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RE: Failure of the world-wide capitalist system ... kinda. - 12/28/2006 5:41:19 PM   
thompsonx


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Stephann

Ok, coming into this 27 pages down, I'll admit I'm JohnnyComeLately.  Would anyone care to hash out a summery?  I'd be most grateful - I'd hate to rehash the obvious and conceded points.

Stephann:
In another thread you gave me a 25 page document with 40 references  to track down over a fairly simple point.  For a self declared nerd reading a few pages of text on a thread that is somewhat more complicated my suggestion is that you should not be so lazy...read what we have posted and determine for yourself what is going on here.  A thread that is twenty some pages long cannot be summed up and put on a bumper sticker.
thompson

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RE: Failure of the world-wide capitalist system ... kinda. - 12/28/2006 5:45:54 PM   
Dtesmoac


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Status: offline 		I think Needtouseyou did a good summary ................with the addition of is American or European versions of capitalism:

most Evil / the greater Evil of 2 lesser evils.............LOL

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RE: Failure of the world-wide capitalist system ... kinda. - 12/28/2006 5:54:26 PM   
Sinergy


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quote:

ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY

Concern about world-wide Soviet domination isn't something that concerns us overly - now - and we look back and think "how could they have ever gotten so worked up over it?"



I used to work on building the upgrade to WHOPER, the computer in Cheyenne Mountain that watched and worried about the Soviet Union firing all of their missiles at us.

It was a 7 billion dollar aerospaz contract that was predicated on the Soviet Union being the Evil Empire Trying To Conquer The World.

3 years into the contract, the Soviet Union went toes up and we no longer had a threat of a mass raid of atomic weapons being fired at us.

The contract bigwigs did not even pause in their determination to build the thing to think "gee, maybe another 4 years and 4 billion dollars is a waste of money now that we no longer have an enemy with thousands of nuclear missiles they are planning on firing at us." 

I was living in an existential nightmare for 4 years. 

Not sure I am wrong, but I probably am.

Sinergy

_____________________________

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RE: Failure of the world-wide capitalist system ... kinda. - 12/28/2006 5:58:32 PM   
FirmhandKY


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Stephann

Ok, coming into this 27 pages down, I'll admit I'm JohnnyComeLately.  Would anyone care to hash out a summery?  I'd be most grateful - I'd hate to rehash the obvious and conceded points.


OP (me): 

The world economy has improved tremendously, and is projected to improve much more in the next few years.  This is primarily due to the capitalistic system.  Measures of poverty and the average income of families world-wide is improving massively, on historical scales.

Anti-capitalists: 

Capitalism is evil, it takes away everyone's time, it's immoral, and most important of all, it's not sustainable due to the overuse of all of the earth's resources.

Capitalism is the direct cause of global warming, and we absolutely must pass heavy, confiscatory taxes to ensure the evil war-mongering, oil gluttonist capitalist are punished and brought into line with reality. 

We already know all the facts about global warming, and there is no need to conduct any more research, or define all the parameters of about it.

People could live much more simply... they did in the Middle Ages and were much happier

Capitalist:

Name a better economic system, that has done more for the people of the world.

Capitalism isn't evil, or good. It's morally neutral.  People have morality, not economic systems.

The Middle Ages were a brutal time to live.

The use of force and coercive powers to alter peoples' behavior is what is morally suspect.  Use positive market forces to alter consumption patterns. 

It seems that global warming is a very nice and handy club to use over the heads of the US and capitalism, and it seems like it is often being used to further other political agenda's.

Anti-capitalist:  Is not!

Capitalist:  Is too!

Anti-capitalist: Is not!

Capitalist: Is too!

Pause ...

Anti-capitalist: 

The US isn't a democracy and freedom doesn't exist!  And all the world's terrorist attacks are the products of governments in power, in an attempt to keep power.

Take that!

Capitalist:   .... uhhh

***

Now, before anyone gets all pissed off, that's kinda tongue in cheek.  There have been some very interesting discussions about several related topics, and some of them are still going on.

Unusually, many on both sides of the issue have actually carried on a pretty relatively nice conversation for a change, with only a few notable exceptions.

I'm not sure it's really possible to summarize this thread.  You might have to do the hard work and just read through ti.

FirmKY

edited: Gave a better phrasing to the "the middle ages were a better time" point. 


< Message edited by FirmhandKY -- 12/28/2006 6:46:31 PM >

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RE: Failure of the world-wide capitalist system ... kinda. - 12/28/2006 6:04:02 PM   
thompsonx


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Status: offline 		FirmhandKY:
ROFLMAO
thompson

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RE: Failure of the world-wide capitalist system ... kinda. - 12/28/2006 6:29:10 PM   
FirmhandKY


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Sinergy

quote:

ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY

Concern about world-wide Soviet domination isn't something that concerns us overly - now - and we look back and think "how could they have ever gotten so worked up over it?"



I used to work on building the upgrade to WHOPER, the computer in Cheyenne Mountain that watched and worried about the Soviet Union firing all of their missiles at us.

It was a 7 billion dollar aerospaz contract that was predicated on the Soviet Union being the Evil Empire Trying To Conquer The World.

3 years into the contract, the Soviet Union went toes up and we no longer had a threat of a mass raid of atomic weapons being fired at us.

The contract bigwigs did not even pause in their determination to build the thing to think "gee, maybe another 4 years and 4 billion dollars is a waste of money now that we no longer have an enemy with thousands of nuclear missiles they are planning on firing at us." 

I was living in an existential nightmare for 4 years. 

Not sure I am wrong, but I probably am.

Sinergy


Interesting job Sinergy.

It sounds like something that would likely happen.  While there is little excuse for government waste,  I'm not sure that the decision to go forward was quite that simple (although it could have been).

Perhaps it was a contract that couldn't be terminated, or there might have been other uses for the system, too.

Also, do you have an official name to the project?  The closest I could find to "WHOPR" was the fictional WOPR (War Operation Plan Response) computer system in the movie WarGames.

FirmKY

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RE: Failure of the world-wide capitalist system ... kinda. - 12/28/2006 6:30:59 PM   
Stephann


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Status: offline 		Actually, I didn't really intend for anyone to read the report - I just like to cite my sources when I make a point.  I feel better asking for a recap than I would in refuting a point made on page four, only to learn the answer is on page nineteen, between the 'Happy Christmas' and the 'Best of luck!' posts.

I'll lump myself in with the 'Capitalism is the best we have so far' crowd.  However, I see a form of Marxism emerging in two or three hundred years (if we make it that far) for the same reason it survives in China: because the necessity to manage such a large, global, diverse population so that we don't all starve, outweighs any perceived 'right' to personal fulfillment.

Yes, the US government does things we don't want to admit.  The US is a major superpower today because of it's relatively protected incubation, necessity for invention, and the opportunity for everyone to do what they enjoy most.  It cannot exist forever, because the very science of human thought is being analyzed to decide the combinations of smells, tastes, and colors elicit a response from a customer to purchase more, and more expensive products.  Our children are raised in these environments, and taught they have free choice - so long as they choose the prettiest, shiniest options.

How's that for starters?

Stephan


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RE: Failure of the world-wide capitalist system ... kinda. - 12/28/2006 6:58:31 PM   
losttreasure


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Stephann

...I feel better asking for a recap than I would in refuting a point made on page four, only to learn the answer is on page nineteen, between the 'Happy Christmas' and the 'Best of luck!' posts.


You DID read the thread!    

I'm sure Julia will be delighted to hear that her post between "Happy Christmas" and "Best of luck!" is the answer. 

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RE: Failure of the world-wide capitalist system ... kinda. - 12/28/2006 7:25:36 PM   
Real0ne


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Sinergy

quote:

ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY

Concern about world-wide Soviet domination isn't something that concerns us overly - now - and we look back and think "how could they have ever gotten so worked up over it?"



I used to work on building the upgrade to WHOPER, the computer in Cheyenne Mountain that watched and worried about the Soviet Union firing all of their missiles at us.

It was a 7 billion dollar aerospaz contract that was predicated on the Soviet Union being the Evil Empire Trying To Conquer The World.

3 years into the contract, the Soviet Union went toes up and we no longer had a threat of a mass raid of atomic weapons being fired at us.

The contract bigwigs did not even pause in their determination to build the thing to think "gee, maybe another 4 years and 4 billion dollars is a waste of money now that we no longer have an enemy with thousands of nuclear missiles they are planning on firing at us." 

I was living in an existential nightmare for 4 years. 

Not sure I am wrong, but I probably am.

Sinergy


well imo nations with nukes pointed at us are a very real cause for concern.  The soviets were expanding and of course we couldnt have to much of that. 


_____________________________

"We the Borg" of the us imperialists....resistance is futile

Democracy; The 'People' voted on 'which' amendment?

Yesterdays tinfoil is today's reality!

"No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session

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RE: Failure of the world-wide capitalist system ... kinda. - 12/28/2006 7:28:11 PM   
thompsonx


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Stephann

Actually, I didn't really intend for anyone to read the report - I just like to cite my sources when I make a point. 
Not only did you not expect me to read your source you but you admit that you had not read it in total because you chose not to expend the intelectual effort to do so.
Your source did not support your opinion.
I feel better asking for a recap than I would in refuting a point made on page four, only to learn the answer is on page nineteen, between the 'Happy Christmas' and the 'Best of luck!' posts.

I'll lump myself in with the 'Capitalism is the best we have so far' crowd. 
It would appear from the above comment that you have not read all 27 dull and dreary pages of this thread either.  If you did you seem to have missed the thrust or direction of this thread.
 
 
However, I see a form of Marxism emerging in two or three hundred years (if we make it that far) for the same reason it survives in China: because the necessity to manage such a large, global, diverse population so that we don't all starve, outweighs any perceived 'right' to personal fulfillment.

Yes, the US government does things we don't want to admit.  The US is a major superpower today because of it's relatively protected incubation, necessity for invention, and the opportunity for everyone to do what they enjoy most.
If I remember my history we started our first war less than fifteen years after we elected our first president. 
 
  It cannot exist forever, because the very science of human thought is being analyzed to decide the combinations of smells, tastes, and colors elicit a response from a customer to purchase more, and more expensive products.  Our children are raised in these environments, and taught they have free choice - so long as they choose the prettiest, shiniest options.

How's that for starters?
roflmao

Stephan


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RE: Failure of the world-wide capitalist system ... kinda. - 12/28/2006 7:41:41 PM   
Stephann


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Status: offline 		tompson: Do you always pick and choose what you want to quibble at?  Go read my answer.

Firmhand - thanks a bunch.

Folks, it's not really a question of laziness; in truth, I wanted to make sure it hadn't turned into some bizzare forum game, and there was still something of interest running.  Thanks for the patience.




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RE: Failure of the world-wide capitalist system ... kinda. - 12/28/2006 10:03:52 PM   
Sinergy


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quote:

ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY

Also, do you have an official name to the project?  The closest I could find to "WHOPR" was the fictional WOPR (War Operation Plan Response) computer system in the movie WarGames.

FirmKY


I do have an official name for the project.  Thank you for asking.

Enjoy your evening.

Sinergy

_____________________________

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David St. Hubbins "This Is Spinal Tap"

"Every so often you let a word or phrase out and you want to catch it and bring it back. You cant do that, it is gone, gone forever." J. Danforth Quayle


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RE: Failure of the world-wide capitalist system ... kinda. - 12/28/2006 10:07:53 PM   
Sinergy


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Real0ne

well imo nations with nukes pointed at us are a very real cause for concern.  The soviets were expanding and of course we couldnt have to much of that. 



No argument here.

For the first 3.5 years of the contract there was a real cause for concern.

Unless, of course, one considered the whole concept of mutually assurred destruction, Detente, etc., where people sat down in a room and realized that the only way to win nuclear war was not to play.

Then the Soviet Union went bankrupt (largely because they spent all their money on their military) and we no longer had a mass raid threat.

So the last 3.5 years were simply, in my opinion, a blithering idiots determination to throw good money after bad.

But, being a good employee, I sat at my terminal and did performance analyses.

Just me, etc.

Sinergy

_____________________________

"There is a fine line between clever and stupid"
David St. Hubbins "This Is Spinal Tap"

"Every so often you let a word or phrase out and you want to catch it and bring it back. You cant do that, it is gone, gone forever." J. Danforth Quayle


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