|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
|
 Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 8:04 am Post subject: |
 |
|
| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| Quote: |
| The price of living in a free society is that every kook and idiot is free to commit a crime. |
Ummmmm, no. The price of living in a free society is that every kook and idiot is free to talk about whatever they want to, but their freedom stops at the moment of action.
Oink. |
Ummmmm, neither. Their freedom stops at the moment they are apprehended, convicted, sentenced, and imprisoned.
Ba-a-a |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
|
| Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2009 1:22 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
Ummmmm, neither. Their freedom stops at the moment they are apprehended, convicted, sentenced, and imprisoned.
|
I disagree. (Surprise!) Their freedom stops at the moment of action, although their power to act continues. Once they are apprehended, etc. even their power stops. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
megandadam
Joined: 28 Dec 2008
Location: toronto, canada
|
| Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2009 4:00 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| Quote: |
Ummmmm, neither. Their freedom stops at the moment they are apprehended, convicted, sentenced, and imprisoned.
|
I disagree. (Surprise!) Their freedom stops at the moment of action, although their power to act continues. Once they are apprehended, etc. even their power stops. |
and i would disagree. the prison isn't what it used to be in most 'democracies'. the inmate continues to have power and the power of action in most cases. i would assume all you'd have to do is take a look at canada to see what i mean. inmates have a hell of a lot of power, and can live comfortably in prison. there is a lot of controversy over just how much freedom an inmate has, and they have a lot of services believe it or not that many other canadians don't have equally easy access to (libraries, schooling, etc.) |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
|
| Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2009 5:41 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
| the inmate continues to have power and the power of action in most cases. |
Ummmm...we were talking about the power of a person to commit a crime, not about a prisoner having the opportunity to check a book out of the prison library. Those are quite different things.
An illustration might help. I have a neighbor across the hall who thinks Timothy McVeigh is a hero and that his only mistake was targeting a gov't building in Oklahoma City rather than the Capitol or White House. I think he has the right to rant and rave about the government all he wants, but when he drags home a bag of fertilizer (we live in an apartment) then I have a right to be suspicious about what he is up to. I contend that he doesn't have a right to experiment with making bombs on his balcony because I prefer to die a natural death, not in one of his accidents.
Further, I contend the gov't has an obligation to protect me from my neighbor's nutty knee-jerk anti-gov't shenanigans. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
|
| Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 6:26 am Post subject: |
|
|
You do not think it merely a coincidence that Celente confirms much of what I have been saying, do you? Anyway, he predicts violent upheavals rather soon as well.
And so does our Spy Chief:
Bad News From America�s Top Spy
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090216_bad_news_from_americas_top_spy/
Posted on Feb 16, 2009
By Chris Hedges
Riots have become common occurrences in many countries as the financial meltdown continues. The U.S. military is preparing to quell civil unrest at home.
We have a remarkable ability to create our own monsters. A few decades of meddling in the Middle East with our Israeli doppelg�nger and we get Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaida, the Iraqi resistance movement and a resurgent Taliban. Now we trash the world economy and destroy the ecosystem and sit back to watch our handiwork. Hints of our brave new world seeped out Thursday when Washington�s new director of national intelligence, retired Adm. Dennis Blair, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee. He warned that the deepening economic crisis posed perhaps our gravest threat to stability and national security. It could trigger, he said, a return to the �violent extremism� of the 1920s and 1930s.
It turns out that Wall Street, rather than Islamic jihad, has produced our most dangerous terrorists. You wouldn�t know this from the Obama administration, which seems hellbent on draining the blood out of the body politic and transfusing it into the corpse of our financial system. But by the time Barack Obama is done all we will be left with is a corpse�a corpse and no blood. And then what? We will see accelerated plant and retail closures, inflation, an epidemic of bankruptcies, new rounds of foreclosures, bread lines, unemployment surpassing the levels of the Great Depression and, as Blair fears, social upheaval.
The United Nations� International Labor Organization estimates that some 50 million workers will lose their jobs worldwide this year. The collapse has already seen 3.6 million lost jobs in the United States. The International Monetary Fund�s prediction for global economic growth in 2009 is 0.5 percent�the worst since World War II. There are 2.3 million properties in the United States that received a default notice or were repossessed last year. And this number is set to rise in 2009, especially as vacant commercial real estate begins to be foreclosed. About 20,000 major global banks collapsed, were sold or were nationalized in 2008. There are an estimated 62,000 U.S. companies expected to shut down this year. Unemployment, when you add people no longer looking for jobs and part-time workers who cannot find full-time employment, is close to 14 percent.
And we have few tools left to dig our way out. The manufacturing sector in the United States has been destroyed by globalization. Consumers, thanks to credit card companies and easy lines of credit, are $14 trillion in debt. The government has pledged trillions toward the crisis, most of it borrowed or printed in the form of new money. It is borrowing trillions more to fund our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And no one states the obvious: We will never be able to pay these loans back. We are supposed to somehow spend our way out of the crisis and maintain our imperial project on credit. Let our kids worry about it. There is no coherent and realistic plan, one built around our severe limitations, to stanch the bleeding or ameliorate the mounting deprivations we will suffer as citizens. Contrast this with the national security state�s strategies to crush potential civil unrest and you get a glimpse of the future. It doesn�t look good.
�The primary near-term security concern of the United States is the global economic crisis and its geopolitical implications,� Blair told the Senate. �The crisis has been ongoing for over a year, and economists are divided over whether and when we could hit bottom. Some even fear that the recession could further deepen and reach the level of the Great Depression. Of course, all of us recall the dramatic political consequences wrought by the economic turmoil of the 1920s and 1930s in Europe, the instability, and high levels of violent extremism.�
The specter of social unrest was raised at the U.S. Army War College in November in a monograph [click on Policypointers� pdf link to see the report] titled �Known Unknowns: Unconventional �Strategic Shocks� in Defense Strategy Development.� The military must be prepared, the document warned, for a �violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States,� which could be provoked by �unforeseen economic collapse,� �purposeful domestic resistance,� �pervasive public health emergencies� or �loss of functioning political and legal order.� The �widespread civil violence,� the document said, �would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.�
�An American government and defense establishment lulled into complacency by a long-secure domestic order would be forced to rapidly divest some or most external security commitments in order to address rapidly expanding human insecurity at home,� it went on.
�Under the most extreme circumstances, this might include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States. Further, DoD [the Department of Defense] would be, by necessity, an essential enabling hub for the continuity of political authority in a multi-state or nationwide civil conflict or disturbance,� the document read.
In plain English, something bureaucrats and the military seem incapable of employing, this translates into the imposition of martial law and a de facto government being run out of the Department of Defense. They are considering it. So should you.
Adm. Blair warned the Senate that �roughly a quarter of the countries in the world have already experienced low-level instability such as government changes because of the current slowdown.� He noted that the �bulk of anti-state demonstrations� internationally have been seen in Europe and the former Soviet Union, but this did not mean they could not spread to the United States. He told the senators that the collapse of the global financial system is �likely to produce a wave of economic crises in emerging market nations over the next year.� He added that �much of Latin America, former Soviet Union states and sub-Saharan Africa lack sufficient cash reserves, access to international aid or credit, or other coping mechanism.�
�When those growth rates go down, my gut tells me that there are going to be problems coming out of that, and we�re looking for that,� he said. He referred to �statistical modeling� showing that �economic crises increase the risk of regime-threatening instability if they persist over a one to two year period.�
Blair articulated the newest narrative of fear. As the economic unraveling accelerates we will be told it is not the bearded Islamic extremists, although those in power will drag them out of the Halloween closet when they need to give us an exotic shock, but instead the domestic riffraff, environmentalists, anarchists, unions and enraged members of our dispossessed working class who threaten us. Crime, as it always does in times of turmoil, will grow. Those who oppose the iron fist of the state security apparatus will be lumped together in slick, corporate news reports with the growing criminal underclass.
The committee�s Republican vice chairman, Sen. Christopher Bond of Missouri, not quite knowing what to make of Blair�s testimony, said he was concerned that Blair was making the �conditions in the country� and the global economic crisis �the primary focus of the intelligence community.�
The economic collapse has exposed the stupidity of our collective faith in a free market and the absurdity of an economy based on the goals of endless growth, consumption, borrowing and expansion. The ideology of unlimited growth failed to take into account the massive depletion of the world�s resources, from fossil fuels to clean water to fish stocks to erosion, as well as overpopulation, global warming and climate change. The huge international flows of unregulated capital have wrecked the global financial system. An overvalued dollar (which will soon deflate), wild tech, stock and housing financial bubbles, unchecked greed, the decimation of our manufacturing sector, the empowerment of an oligarchic class, the corruption of our political elite, the impoverishment of workers, a bloated military and defense budget and unrestrained credit binges have conspired to bring us down. The financial crisis will soon become a currency crisis. This second shock will threaten our financial viability. We let the market rule. Now we are paying for it.
The corporate thieves, those who insisted they be paid tens of millions of dollars because they were the best and the brightest, have been exposed as con artists. Our elected officials, along with the press, have been exposed as corrupt and spineless corporate lackeys. Our business schools and intellectual elite have been exposed as frauds. The age of the West has ended. Look to China. Laissez-faire capitalism has destroyed itself. It is time to dust off your copies of Marx. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
|
| Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 9:57 am Post subject: |
|
|
More evidence:
NYU Students Occupy School Cafeteria
Here in New York, several dozen student activists have barricaded themselves inside a cafeteria at New York University. The group Take Back NYU has submitted several demands, including the establishment of a socially responsible committee, a full disclosure of the school�s annual budget and support for Palestinian students in the Gaza Strip.
Student: �The first two orders of the socially responsible finance committee will be an in-depth investigation of all investments in war and genocide profiteers, as well as companies profiting from the occupation of Palestine.� |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
|
| Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 10:26 am Post subject: |
|
|
| bacasper wrote: |
More evidence:
NYU Students Occupy School Cafeteria
Here in New York, several dozen student activists have barricaded themselves inside a cafeteria at New York University. The group Take Back NYU has submitted several demands, including the establishment of a socially responsible committee, a full disclosure of the school�s annual budget and support for Palestinian students in the Gaza Strip.
Student: �The first two orders of the socially responsible finance committee will be an in-depth investigation of all investments in war and genocide profiteers, as well as companies profiting from the occupation of Palestine.� |
Guy, that stuff is a rite of passage for campus rabble-rousers. You should have seen what my fellow students used to pull at UMASS during the early nineties. A few dozen students taking over a campus cafeteria would've been a typical day, likely getting less coverage than the sports scores in the uni newsletter.
Are you suggesting that this is the start of a revolution?
(edit: Well, obviously you are suggesting that. I'll just go on record and say that these kinds of activities aren't likely to accomplish such 'lofty goals'. If there is a revolution in the U.S., I don't think it's gonna come from uni campuses. It would have to be much more mainstream than that to have any chance of success.) |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
|
| Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 2:33 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
| You do not think it merely a coincidence that Celente confirms much of what I have been saying, do you? |
Chicken Little predictions are a dime a dozen. Throwing a rock at a cop doesn't a revolution make.
There's lots of anger, frustration and resentment out there. Fear, too. And those are volatile breeding grounds for revolution. But revolution needs a philosophy--something to substitute for the current regime. I'm not seeing it yet. All we've got now is the makings of Peasant Revolts where the peasants rise up, kill a few landowners and then the king comes along and impales a few folks, promises a bit a reform and goes back to his castle and continues chasing wenches around the supper table just like before. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Jeff's Cigarettes
Joined: 27 Mar 2007
|
| Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 3:15 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| I predict that the state of Texas will be the first to break away. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
|
| Posted: Sun Feb 22, 2009 3:30 am Post subject: |
|
|
I went over to Coex today and scored a big haul of books. One of them, "Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-1934" by Bryan Burrough. I started reading it at lunch and it reminded me of this thread.
One very possible outcome of the financial crisis is a surge of anti-bank feeling, similar to the one in the 30's. In the 30's it produced a regular cottage industy of bank robbing with Dillenger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Machine Gun Kelley, Bonnie and Clyde, the Barker Gang all working at the same time.
Robbing banks is rather passe, sad to say, and I don't expect that to come back into fashion, but it might be possible for the Mexican government to descend into chaos with some of the violence spreading north. There have been several articles in the last couple of weeks about how bad it is down there. 6,000 killed last year alone. Someone said both Pakistan and Mexico could very easily become failed states.
Anyway, gooooooood book. You should read it and learn some respect for J. Edgar Hoover (and his baby blue tie, socks, handkerchief and secret wire taps). |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
man_of_words
Joined: 18 Oct 2008
Location: Seoul
|
| Posted: Sun Feb 22, 2009 3:43 am Post subject: I know I could google it but... |
|
|
| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
| If they only protest about Gaza and nothing else then they are probably neo - nazis or moonbats or both. |
What is a moonbat? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
|
| Posted: Sun Feb 22, 2009 4:14 am Post subject: Re: I know I could google it but... |
|
|
| man_of_words wrote: |
| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
| If they only protest about Gaza and nothing else then they are probably neo - nazis or moonbats or both. |
What is a moonbat? |
A follower of Ron Paul.  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
|
| Posted: Sun Feb 22, 2009 9:08 am Post subject: Re: I know I could google it but... |
|
|
| man_of_words wrote: |
| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
| If they only protest about Gaza and nothing else then they are probably neo - nazis or moonbats or both. |
What is a moonbat? |
It is one of Joo's favorite words to describe a supposedly whackjob left-winger. I believe the word is derived from the name of George Monbiot, a left-leaning journalist in the UK. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
|
| Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 3:58 am Post subject: Re: I know I could google it but... |
|
|
| man_of_words wrote: |
What is a moonbat? |
Someone who didn't listen to Ron Paul, whose words are being seen as more true and relevant every day now. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
