Thursday, September 10, 2009

Venezuela: Economic Crisis and Imperialist Attacks Pose New Challenges For The Revolution

Written by Patrick Larsen
Thursday, 10 September 2009

The coup in Honduras and the stepping up of a US military presence in Colombia are serious warnings to the masses of Latin America. On top of this the present world economic crisis is having an impact on the Venezuelan economy. All this is posing very sharply the need for a turn to a genuine revolutionary programme on the part of the Bolivarian movement.

In the last couple of months events in Venezuela and other Latin American countries have enormously sharpened the contradictions between revolution and counter-revolution. First there was the coup in Honduras at the end of June, which acted as a warning for the masses in El Salvador, Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela. Then there was the announcement of the plans to upgrade the US military presence in Colombia, which has provoked a severe diplomatic crisis between Venezuela and Colombia and a state of alert among the Bolivarian masses. Most importantly, however, the world economic recession has had profound effects on the situation in Venezuela, where workers are now facing ferocious attacks from the bosses.

The US Military Bases in Colombia

After the shock which the coup in Honduras represented for the masses, the signing in July of an agreement between the USA and the Colombian government allowing the former to use military bases in Colombia, has provoked a new social earthquake across Latin America. According to military experts, the most important of the seven bases that the US military is now allowed to use is Palanquero, which will allow them to retain full control over the Pacific coastline. The American government has invested 46 million US dollars in Palanquero alone.

The reaction of Chávez was swift. All diplomatic relations have been broken with Colombia and so has all commercial exchange between the two countries. Ecuador and Bolivia have also firmly opposed the Colombian-US agreement. Indeed Colombian president Álvaro Uribe found himself completely isolated at the recent UNASUR encounter in Bariloche, Argentina, where one left-wing president after another ‑ at least in words ‑ rejected the agreement.

The aim of the military bases is clearly not to “counter drug-trafficking”, but rather to keep any revolutionary movement in Colombia and other Latin American countries in check. Over ten years Colombia has increased its military budget from 2.5% of GDP to 5%. In fact, Colombia is now the country that spends most on its military budget as a percentage of GDP, only exceeded by Israel and Burundi. This new agreement with Colombia was reached after the contract for the US military base in Manta, Ecuador, expired and was not renewed by president Correa.

Despite Obama’s smiles and the apparent new line of dialogue with the Latin American presidents, no one should have any illusions. The US remains an imperialist power and needs to strengthen and reassert its presence in the region, which it considers as part of its spheres of influence. As a representative of US imperialism, Obama is obliged to defend US interests in Latin America. The sharpening of the class struggle and the spreading of revolutionary movements across the whole of Latin America is putting the US imperialists in a position whereby they must find a way of curbing the process. That is what this new treaty with Colombia represents.

Venezuelan Economy in Crisis

While Venezuela enjoyed significant rates of growth in the period 2004-2007, the latest figures clearly demonstrate that the country's economy has now definitely been hit by the effects of the world crisis. In the second quarter of 2009, GDP fell by 2.4%. The figure for the first quarter was a minimal growth of 0.5%.


In the second quarter of 2009, Venezuelan GDP fell by 2.4%.

Part of the reason for this is the lack of private investment in industry and manufacturing. According to the Central Bank of Venezuela, private economic activity dropped by 4% in the second quarter of this year. A recent study revealed that the Venezuelan bourgeoisie has closed 4,000 large or medium-sized enterprises during the last ten years.

One should also add to this the huge fall in state income from oil production. In the second quarter of 2008 the state earned US$28.597 million from oil production compared to only US$13.576 million in the same period of 2009. This represents a drop of 51.9%. This is particularly bad in a country where income from oil exports accounts for 30% of GDP and for 50% of the state budget. World market prices of other raw materials that Venezuela exports, such as aluminium and iron, have also fallen.

Together with other Latin American countries, Venezuela has also been hit by the effects of the overall fall in FDI (Foreign Direct Investment). Already in 2008, in the period January to October, FDI fell by 18% compared to the same period in 2007. All these factors have contributed to worsening the situation the Venezuelan economy finds itself in.

Representatives of the reformist wing within the Venezuelan government, such as Alí Rodríguez, Minister of Finance, hope that oil prices will recover quickly and thus provide some new oxygen for the Venezuelan economy. However, although in the past couple of months we have witnessed a small recovery in the economy, it is not at all guaranteed that this will continue in the next few months. Actually OPEC is predicting a fall in total demand for oil in 2009 compared to 2008.

Whatever the immediate prospects are, any possible slight recovery of oil income cannot make up for the serious problems that the Venezuelan economy is facing; such as the strike of capital, sabotage, speculation and hoarding, on the part of the bourgeoisie. To the normal effects of the economic cycle, in Venezuela we need to add three other factors which are affecting the economy. One is the fact that there is a revolution unfolding and the ruling class does not feel confident to invest. The second is the conscious campaign of economic sabotage on the part of the oligarchy. And finally, the fact that all the attempts on the part of the reformists to regulate the market economy only serve to create further economic dislocation.

The crisis has already had direct consequences on the situation being faced by the Venezuelan working class. Recently General Motors, which supplies Venezuela with 40% of all its vehicles, closed all its production plants for three months and with the effect that thousands of workers were temporarily laid off. In Barcelona, we witnessed the illegal, and politically motivated, bosses’ lockout at Mitsubishi which put more than 1.400 jobs in danger. The lockout, whose aim was clearly the smashing of the revolutionary trade union the workers had organised, was defeated by the decisive and militant action of the workers. Similar events could unfold in factories across Venezuela and thus bring about new explosions in the class struggle. Already the unemployment figures show a rise from 7.8% in June to 8.5% in July.

PSUV and the Setting up of Workers' Patrols

In the Socialist Party, PSUV, significant events have taken place over the last few months. Chávez has given the go ahead for the setting up of “patrols”, a new type of party branch that will allow a greater participation of the rank and file. Around two million people have registered to be active in the patrols. Even more significantly, Chávez has advocated the creation of “workers' patrols”, i.e. PSUV party branches to be set up inside the factories. Workers in many factories have taken up this call. In factories such as Mitsubishi, Vivex, Inveval and SIDOR, PSUV branches have been set up with significant numbers of workers participating.

The national congress of the party was scheduled for this coming October, but will most likely be postponed by the leadership to November or December. Whatever the date will be, the party congress – which is supposed to coincide with a congress of the PSUV Youth – will be the scene of new and probably quite harsh clashes between the right and the left, between revolution and reformism. With the setting up of numerous party branches in the factories, it is possible that the working class will exercise a much more decisive influence within the party and this can be very dangerous from the point of view of the bureaucracy. The scene is set for new critical debates with the PSUV.

Perspectives

After various attempts at open counter-revolution, the right-wing (or at least the most decisive sectors) seems to have adopted different tactics. What they are now aiming at is more akin to the tactics adopted by the counter-revolution in Nicaragua in the 1980s. Their aim is to slowly but surely undermine the social conquests of the revolution, intensify economic sabotage and thus undermine the revolutionary morale of the masses.

In the recent demonstrations against the LOE (New Education Law) there were indications that there has been some growth in the Opposition's forces. Although the Bolivarian masses achieved bigger turnouts in their pro-LOE demonstrations, we cannot underestimate the fact that the Opposition this time was able to mobilize significant numbers.

In December 2005 they made a big mistake by boycotting the elections to the National Assembly. Thus they were left without a single MP. Only with the betrayal of PODEMOS (a social-democratic party that used to support Chavez but jumped ship to join the Opposition in 2007) were they able to obtain a small parliamentary representation. But this time they will certainly not make the same mistake. Through their slow but painstaking work they will probably be able to present a serious threat in the upcoming February elections to the National Assembly.

Their goal is clear: to win a significant number of MPs and use them in their ongoing campaign of pointing the finger at the deficiencies of the government, bureaucratic mismanagement, food scarcity, etc. In this manner they wish to build up of a mood of opposition against the government among the middle classes and one of apathy within the working class and among the poor. That is the kind of social environment they require to get rid of Chávez and strangle the revolution, be it by parliamentary or extra-parliamentary means.

The masses of workers and poor, who have defended the Venezuelan revolution time and again over the last 10 years, will not let the counter-revolution get on with these plans without a fight. But after 10 years of revolution and now with a worsening economic situation, many of Chávez's supporters are getting tired of the slow pace of the revolution, of the talk about socialism, but with no decisive action to back it up and with the lack of any real radical change.

The masses, beginning with the most advanced layers, are beginning to understand that the revolution cannot be carried to a successful end without destroying the source of the oligarchy's power, i.e. private ownership of the means of production. This idea is already being discussed by activists in the trade union movement, the PSUV and the PSUV-Youth. This is an important development. Life teaches, as the saying goes, and the experience of the Bolivarian revolution over the past decade is full of lessons. If the advanced layers within the movement were to adopt a genuine Marxist programme they would be able to win over the masses to such a programme. Only by such means will the success of the Socialist Revolution be assured in Venezuela. There is no middle way!

RENEGADE EYE

96 comments:

Craig Bardo said...

Poor analysis to think Obama is positioning the US to deter Chavez.

Frank Partisan said...

CB: Obama's rhetoric differs from Bush's. People including some Bolivarians, think Obama is different.

Obama has already had a coup in Latin America, and he's keeping troops in Colombia.

You didn't even try to back up your words.

Ducky's here said...

If he's not trying to deter Chavez then I wonder what the additional troops are for.

Anonymous said...

Wow... whoda thunk moving a few drug interdiction recconaissance airplanes a few hundred miles from Ecuador (as the lease on the US airbase expires) into Columbia could be portrayed as a "huge provocative American troop buildup."

Oh, that's right, perhaps a demogogue... someone like Hugo Chavez, could spin it that way.

Sometimes I'm lead to believe that the Left will believe ANYTHING a populist dictator tells them... despite all the evidence and facts to the contrary.

Anonymous said...

Part of the reason for this is the lack of private investment in industry and manufacturing. According to the Central Bank of Venezuela, private economic activity dropped by 4% in the second quarter of this year. A recent study revealed that the Venezuelan bourgeoisie has closed 4,000 large or medium-sized enterprises during the last ten years.

How dare the forces of international capitalism decline to further invest in Venezuela so that the means of production they create can't be readily expropriated by the state for the benefit of the workers (ala PDVSA, EDC and CANTV. How dare they!

Imagine if the victims of muggers were to stay home instead of walking unarmed into blind dark alleys! The mugger's children wouldn't be able to afford to eat!

Talk about blaming the victim...

Slave Revolt said...

Let's be real here. The US has a venerable tradition of genocide and criminality.

Let there be no mistake: Obama simply representse the liberal wing of the criminal ruling class.

Obama's hand in eliminating the participation of Lavalas in the senatorial elections in Haiti is indicative of the man's commitment to 'democracy'.

Capitalism is a complete failure in Latin America and in the world in general. The quickening ecological crisis of all the evidence that the non-zombie world community needs to reflect upon.

Still, the path is long, and liberal sell-outs abound.

Let there be no mistake: if the US wants war in Latin America, they willhave it, and the imperialists will be defeated.

The Bolivarian and socialist movement is a HUGE threat to capitalism, the imperialist project, and the global ruling elites.

The problem for the ruling class is that the logic of capitalism is ecocidal and fundamentally against the well being of the vast sea of humanity. It is already imploding because of its own inherent greed and entrenched ignorance.

If it comes to it, those of us that support human liberation are more willing to fight for our healthy and noble ideals than are the fat McDonald-eating genocidal murders that stupidly put themselves in the service of the empire.

Venezuela and the Americas are not Iraq, you stupid m-f'ers.

Bring it on gusanos. You will wish you were back at Semen-Carcas (Nieman Marcus). LOL

On a positive note, Obama will not ratchet up tensions in the region--because he will be seen as a total sell-out to cracker-imperialism. But he still has to play along with the delusions of the far rightwing that directs "US intelligence" (how oxymoronic, I know).

Nice analysis as usual Ren. The cracker-imperialists continue to be a massive failure, and thank god the US economic collapse will keep a check on the excesses that we have seen in the past.

On the Venezuelan economy: yes, let private capitalism put the squeeze on the Venezuelan economy. The world is better off without the type of parasitism that is the central dogma of ecocidal capitalism.

The quicker Venezuelans are weaned from the vapid consumerist passive mindset the better.

Grow food or die mf'ers.

(Dog knows that the US population could use a Cuba-style diet. Seeing flabby, pasty white people all red and sweaty in the vegetable garden is a sign of hope.) LOL

Today is the day to commemorate the Abraham Lincoln Brigades--and Ward Churchill. Hasta La Victoria Siempre mf'ers!

Frank Partisan said...

I'll be online tonight to reply.

Anonymous said...

Grow food or die mf'ers.

I guess the Venezuelans and Cubans should take your advice Slave boy... instead of importing Russian tanks. But then with the HUGE military buildup by the Americans in Columbia... my guess is that Hugo has no choice but to buy more tanks. The very thought of tranferring 220 Americans from the Manta airbase in Ecuador to Columbia (bringing the US-Columbian force total to fourteen hundred Americans (military AND civilians) is a terrifying thought. Especially if they're in a position to identify and inderdict drug flights between the Jefe Cocalero, Evo Morales, and the Jefe Petrolero, Hugo Chavez.

It could disrupt the entire ALBA economy.

Frank Partisan said...

Ducky: The War on Drugs wears thin.

FJ: Chavez is not a dictator. Dictators don't have referendums all the time. The present government in Honduras, won't even allow a poll question on the ballot. Venezuela has the right to recall.

Nationalized companies have been compensated. I can see where it can be confusing, still I wouldn't call corporations victims. What is needed is a national democratic planned economy. Lenin wanted some capitalism to remain, but it was planned and everyone knew where they stood.

Colombia is the country with the biggest illegal drug trade in the region. That is beside the point about those bases.

Cuba and Venezuela have the right to trade and buy arms. Cuba has more to worry about with its markets flooded with cheap goods.

There is no such thing as an ALBA economy. The governments are diverse.

Slave Revolt: Good to hear from you.

Latin America is in the vanguard of social revolution.

I think Obama withdrew support for the Honduras junta, at the last minute. Still they went ahead.

I'm no fan of Ward Churchill. He was CIA in Nicaragua, along with Russell Means. Both were kicked out of American Indian Movement.

I wouldn't complain about Cuban cooking. As a socialist I don't advocate taking away pleasures, but expanding. We'll be getting fat with the 20 hour workweek at 40 hrs pay. Socialism means expanding abundance.

Many of the ecological problems can easily be fixed, with a planned economy.

SecondComingOfBast said...

Ren-

"Lenin wanted some capitalism to remain, but it was planned and everyone knew where they stood."

He wanted some capitalism to return after he saw what a big mess the alternative was turning out to be.

"Nationalized companies have been compensated. I can see where it can be confusing, still I wouldn't call corporations victims."

You still don't get the point. No business is going to want to invest capital in a country if there is better than average chance their holdings will be expropriated by an arbitrary decision by the government.

Remember, I was undecided, and firmly in the middle regarding Chavez for a long time. I was willing to give him a fair hearing. I was always wary of a lot of things I heard about him, but I thought he might at the same time have a positive influence on the region, might encourage the countries to develop and become more self-sufficient and democratic, etc.

Then the expropriations started, and I started putting two and two together concerning a lot of the other stuff. I have no use for him.

"I'm no fan of Ward Churchill. He was CIA in Nicaragua"

WHAT?

"As a socialist I don't advocate taking away pleasures, but expanding. We'll be getting fat with the 20 hour workweek at 40 hrs pay. Socialism means expanding abundance."

Please explain who is going to pay for this. And how.

"Many of the ecological problems can easily be fixed, with a planned economy."

As a socialist-and more importantly, as a self-described Trotskyist-please explain how a planned economy is going to work without an entrenched bureaucracy.

Frank Partisan said...

Pagan: Lenin wanted Siberia to be developed by capitalists. Lenin and Trotsky knew that after the defeat of German socialism in 1919, socialism was in trouble in Russia, and will be deformed.

Ward Churchill was a Contra in Nicaragua.

To start with Venezuela is a capitalist country, with a small part of it nationalized.

Companies that do politically unpopular things as hoarding food in warehouses, involvement with coups, sabotage face nationalization. Haliburton has a contract with Chavez.

In China and Russia, it wasn't socialism that failed. The economies became too big to be run by bureaucrats. The bureaucracy became a handicap. Just as Trotsky figured, eventually the bureaucrats will want to have unheritance right. It's an easy transition from party bureaucrat to capitalist.

If China and Russia had democratic planning, there would still be socialism. China shows what a nationalized economy can do, when it has access to the world's markets.

Technology for profit increases work. In the 60s-70s, people believed technology will free people from work. New technology has to be used at 100% capacity to be paid for, then even outs when others get it.

The US is a rich country. It's what Marx wrote about. He wasn't writing about poor countries like Haiti.

Anonymous said...

Nationalized companies have been compensated.

If I only gave you a nickle for every dollar you gave me, you would hardly consider yourself as having been "fully compensated". And THAT is what Chavez did... unless you were someone like EXXON-Mobile, and then he simply kicked them out after their having invested billions.

Anonymous said...

Chavez has NO cause to complain about a "lack of foreign investment." None.

And as for "referendums" in Venezuela, only ONE was ever permitted (under the OLD Constitution)... and Hugo counted the votes FRAUDULENTLY, then made bringing up the point again Unconstitutional.

And yes, Hugo's a dictator. He had his parliament give him dictatorial powers and even the parliamentary decrees acknowledged the powers as such.

Anonymous said...

btw - The FARC will be pleased to know that their Uncle Hugo will be bringing them home presents and souveniers from his recent trip to Russia. It's not like there isn't any precedent...

SecondComingOfBast said...

It goes beyond just not getting fully compensated though. Investors that might have purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars in common stock in some of these companies have seen a potential source of profits fly out the window. What do they do? They sell their stock, get out while the gettings good, and put their money in some other company that might net them the hoped for long term bang for their buck.

Thus, the company stock falls, which means a loss of investment capital, which translates into decrease in production, expansion, and, unfortunately, jobs.

Sure, a giant company like Exxon Mobile can weather that storm. They can shrug it off without really breaking much of a sweat. Smaller companies that don't have their resources and aren't so adaptable don't make out so good.

roman said...

The fact that foreign direct investment has declined and the resulting closure of thousands of large and medium sized companies should not come as such a big surprise. Who doesn't know that once a government starts to "nationalize" businesses (even if they pay compensation) it has a chilling effect on future investment. What investor in his/her right mind would invest good money in any Venezuelan enterprise after seeing Hugo's antics on the world stage and his vision of emulating the Cuban model? What did the Chavez government expect?
After the recent world-wide decline in the economy, the Venezuelan worker classes are losing their jobs at a record pace. This coupled with the obvious tactic of the unhinged Chavez government's having to resort to fear mongering by seeing enemies everywhere should lessen any support once enjoyed. Their only saving grace, the price and demand for oil, is gone and their control is unraveling like a house of cards.
The Venezuelan people have nothing to fear from the USA and should instead look at their own current leadership with a very wary eye.
History will again go round circle, the grand utopian socialist experiment is in decline and will ultimately fail, the Chavez government will colapse, and unfortunately the masses will suffer greatly for years to come.

Frank Partisan said...

FJ: Chavez isn't complaining of lack of investment, the writer was.

FARC has nothing to do with Chavez. They burned him. Land reform is not a socialist program. The land to the tillar stuff, is how capitalists are made. Those kind of demands should be supported, because of being antifeudal.

Much of what Chavez can change by decree, he put to referendum.

Pagan: Only Stalinism are shoe shine people nationalized.

Venezuela has only a small percentage of the economy nationalized.

In a colonial country, the capitalist class is weak. It's threatened both by its own working class, and stronger capitalist countries. It's too weak to meet even literacy programs. In Honduras they were even threatened by a referendum to have a referendum. That's why the capitalist democratic stage and the socialist stage need to be combined.

Frank Partisan said...

Roman: Chavez has serious issues to deal with. I don't see him falling.

The economic problems are not unique, in a world recession.

You are woefully naive, to think the base in Colombia, is about fighting drugs. After Honduras, the feeling throughout Latin America, is that the US will be behind coups.

If Chavez would fall, it would be not because socialism failed. It would be because, he didn't lead the country in that direction. The big power in industry and government is in the oligarchy. Police and soldiers in Venezuela, are not reliable.

Any business that closes, leaves a building to be occupied.

Chavez's main threat is people in his government.

SecondComingOfBast said...

Chavez's main threat is Chavez. His worse enemy was never George W. Bush (and it damned sure is not Obama)and its not the "capitalist class". Chavez is his own worse enemy.

There's a big difference between nationalizing "shoe shine people" and Spanish cement companies.

Gert said...

Ren:

"You are woefully naive, to think the base in Colombia, is about fighting drugs. After Honduras, the feeling throughout Latin America, is that the US will be behind coups."

Considering how many US interventions there have been in Latin America and how often the US has supported dictatorial Far Right regimes there in the past, Latin American vigilance against more of the same is entirely predictable and rational.

It's hardly a surprise that the US supports Micheletti.

It's all very reminiscent of Iran of course: there too the West has meddled and meddled and many prescribe... more meddling!

These people isn't learning...

I'm not a great supporter of Socialism but considering just what kind of abject poverty Latin American 'Capitalism' has bestowed on masses of people, I can't fault them for looking for an alternative...

Anonymous said...

In Honduras they were even threatened by a referendum to have a referendum.

No, in Honduras they were threatened by an illegal referendum to be conducted by illegitimate agencies with stolen ballots sponsored and supplied by Hugo Chavez with the referendum results already tabulated and decided on the computers supplied before the vote was even conducted.

It's hardly a surprise that the US supports Micheletti.

That's news to me. Why did we cut off all American aid to Honduras, again?

Anonymous said...

Chavez's main threat is people in his government.

Yes, Chavez regime will collapse from corruption just like every other Latin American regime since earning independence from Spain and Portugal in the nineteenth century despite all American efforts to assist them and keep them from being exploited by European Marxists and other facists.

It's time to bring back the Monroe Doctrine.

SecondComingOfBast said...

The fatal flaw in capitalist international relations is that capitalists by their natures go where the profit is. You deal with who you have to deal with. In South and Central America, you were not dealing with a capitalist class. You were dealing with a different kind of animal all together. You were dealing with a system that was far more akin to feudalism than it was to actual, bona fide capitalism.

Ren of course disagrees with me on this. He seems to insist that there are various stages of capitalism, and different stages of socialism, yet for some odd reason there can be one, and only one, form of feudalism.

Well, when you have less than one percent of a population controlling the wealth of a country or a region and passing that wealth down through the generations and where there is practically no chance of growth and development, nor improvement of social standing outside of a limited number of peoples and families, one of whom everyone else in the country works for with very little if any chance of advancement, that is a kind of feudalism.

The fact that there is no royalty or titled aristocracy to speak of is irrelevant. There is also the matter of the church, which in a feudal society will always have a larger share of power and disproportionate influence than you will see in other systems. This have historically been true of Central and South America, and Mexico.

The question becomes, which system offers the greatest long term chance of evolution from this feudal system-capitalism or socialism? Seeing as how there has never been a strongly developed capitalist system in this region, it's hard for me to understand how capitalists can be considered the enemy.

True, western capitalists have benefited from their relationships with the ruling families and cliques in the region.

They also sold grain to the Soviets.

Anonymous said...

You are woefully naive, to think the base in Colombia, is about fighting drugs. After Honduras, the feeling throughout Latin America, is that the US will be behind coups.

The feeling throughout South America is that Hugo Chavez and his "Bolivarian Houses" are the new source on the continent of populist revolution.

Frank Partisan said...

Gert: The Honduras coup, shook up all of Latin America.

FJ: The Monroe Doctrine was never gone.

If what you say about Zalaya was true, than it would have simply gone to the courts.

The oligarchy was afraid that if any concession like a referendum is made, they'll have confidence to go farther with demands.

Yes, Chavez regime will collapse from corruption just like every other Latin American regime since earning independence from Spain and Portugal in the nineteenth century despite all American efforts to assist them and keep them from being exploited by European Marxists and other facists.

I don't what that's about.

Pagan: For the most part in Latin America, even peasants work in factory like conditions.

Feudalism is about power in land owning. Currency has erratic meaning.

Latin America is primarily capitalist. goods are exchanged on the world market, with currency. The world is primarily capitalist.

People work in factories, not guilds. They work for employers, not gentry.

tony said...

The US's Foreign Policy seems to track the smell of Oil quite closely.
Given the Wars in Afganistan + Iraq have now nearly been lost............Perhaps,under Obama, US interests will refocus more on South America?

SecondComingOfBast said...

I never said it was exactly the same. Take Mexico. What percentage of the people own the majority of the wealth, and that's especially including the land, but also everything else. It's far more disproportionate there than it is here. There, less than one percent of the people own practically everything. Elections make precious little difference. Sizzle without the steak.

If a US company opens up a factory down there, that's what they have to deal with. I don't know, but I would almost be willing to bet they rent the land from one of these families. I don't know what you call a "gentry" but I think you would find quite a few who qualify for the title.

You won't see any of the daughters of the wealthy property owners running around and dating and especially marrying outside their class either.

What influence does the Catholic Church have on the overall Mexican population, or in South or Central America, compared to the influence it or any other church has on the population here.

The Church is probably one of the biggest overall causes of friction in the area, just like it was with the aristocracy in the feudal days. And just like they try to be here but with far more relatively modest success.

To make it big in Mexico if you aren't a member of one of these ruling families, you have to basically do one of three things-be an entertainer of some sort, claw your way up in some criminal enterprise, or leave for the US.

Anonymous said...

The effects of 21st Centurt Socialism are now being felt throughout South America... thanks to Hugo Chavez.

SecondComingOfBast said...

And that's another thing. It's always the poor, underdeveloped nations where socialism takes root and grows. Countries such as Russia, China, countries in South or Central America, Africa, etc. It's always countries that, while sure they might technically be termed "capitalist" to an extent, have far more in common with a feudalism style than they do with bona fide true capitalism.

You never saw it in highly developed, advanced countries, and you probably never will. True, Europe has some socialist policies and programs, but its just not the same. You don't see the jackboot, thuggish behavior there, for all their other faults, that presented itself in the poorer countries that became socialist or communist.

SOME people want to slam me for saying all this, but here's the thing. Capitalism is not the main enemy, and they know it. Capitalism, at best-and at worse-is an enabler. That is bad enough, but to paraphrase socialist rhetoric-

"True capitalism has never been tried there yet."

Frank Partisan said...

I'll reply late tonight.

Gert said...

FJ:

From your last link:

There are signs of growing cocaine abuse within South America, a region once known mainly for its export to North America and Europe. Argentina is near the top of this worrisome development, with an estimated 2.6 per cent of its 12-to-65 age group having used cocaine at least once in 2006, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said in June.

In the Western hemisphere, only the United States has a higher estimated usage rate, of 2.8 per cent.


And Chavez is to blame for this, how???

Gert said...

Pagan:

'True capitalism' is a mixed economy with checks and balanced and regulation. laissez faire capitalism leads to a jungle.

SecondComingOfBast said...

Gert-

I agree with that as long as regulations aren't so byzantine that they become counter-productive.

Anonymous said...

And Chavez is to blame for this, how???

Does this help answer your question?

"Coca leaves and paste aren't cocaine... cocaine is the result of capitalism. These are sacred coca leaves. Evo sends me coca paste... I recommend it to you..."

So please, have some Paco, Gert. Hugo "recommends" it.

And he'll be damned if the US DEA will interfere with shipments, either south of Columbia OR south of their "threatening" bases in Honduras.

Anonymous said...

...and how do Latin American's of the "Bolivarian stripe" fund their revolutions? Ask the FARC's largest distributor, Hugo Chavez.

Gert said...

FJ:

The video is a spoof. But it's nonetheless true: coca leaves and refined cocaine aren't remotely the same thing.

And I'm in favour of decriminalising nearly all drugs anyway. Prohibition doesn't work. The 'War on Drugs' is a very expensive and very violent failure.

Go on, spew some ridiculous clichés at me (and about me)...

Anonymous said...

I'm glad you have no qualms about the illegal drug trade, but the video is NO spoof. That's Hugo admitting his daily use of coca paste. He openly and lovingly refers to Evo Morales as his "Jefe Cocalero" (Coca Boss).

In 1987, 25 tons of cocaine were transhipped through Venezuela vs in 2007, 220 tons shipped through Venezuela. Currently 36% of the cocaine intercepted in Europe transited through Venezuela.

But then to a Hugo lover like yourself, I'm sure that cocaine is simply another "acceptable" (if illegal) product supporting the ALBA alternative socialist economy. Maybe the UK should drop the EU and join it?

SecondComingOfBast said...

Marijuana should be legalized and regulated. The DEA should keep on doing exactly what they are doing now when it comes to marijuana-acting as a regulatory agency. Just legalize the damn weed and make it official.

All other hard drugs need to be considered on a case by case basis, not for public consumption, but for heavily restricted pharmaceutical use only. That includes heroin. With one fell swoop we can keep the Afghan poppy farmers productive and profitable and eliminate that source of funding for the Taliban.

I don't see much use for cocaine. The Incas used to chew it constantly when they were out working the fields. It kept them working, productive, and docile. It's probably the most dangerous drug out there, powder or rock, with the exception of meth which isn't a natural drug anyway and needs to be heavily prosecuted.

We just have too much other shit going on to worry about shit like that anyway. It's billions of dollars a year down a rat hole all for political purposes and an excuse to fund what amounts to just another regulatory agency disguised as a law enforcement tool. It's fucking crazy.

Frank Partisan said...

FJ: If anything you say about Chavez was remotely true, the US/Colombia would have an excuse to invade like Panama. The opposition can't win politically, so they make up accusations.

FARC isn't relevant. Rural movements can only play an auxillary role. Land reform? Big deal. This is not 1790. Chavez has read Permanent Revolution.

I'm not a Chavista or Bolivarian. My group is in Lula's party, the British Labor Party, the PPP in Pakistan etc. Its not about following Chavez, its about him following us.

Pagan: I generally agree with you about drugs.

China had aspects of feudalism, before the revolution. If Mao was a real revolutionary, he'd united China with Russia as one country. He only overthrew capitalism, because capitalists fled. He was happy being in the Kuomintang.

Gert: I think if Chavez was involved with drugs, the US would invade. They would have an excuse.

Anonymous said...

If anything you say about Chavez was remotely true, the US/Colombia would have an excuse to invade like Panama. The opposition can't win politically, so they make up accusations.

Nothing I'm saying is made up. Chavez freely admits to using coca leaves and paste, and Evo Morales freely admits to representing Bolivia Coca growers and being Chavez's personal drug supplier. What do you think Hugo talks about for hours on end every night in his "little talks to the nation" from Miraflores? The man is a self-obsessed blowhard egomaniac. He doesn't hold anything back.

Just because you can't speak the language and don't listen to his speeches doesn't mean everyone else is ignorant of his aspirations and intentions.

Anonymous said...

Go see Oliver Stone's new movie. Watch him and Evo chew coca and plot revolution. You must be really gullible to think no one knows about this.

Anonymous said...

Hugo Chavez is the world's leading advocate for putting the Coca BACK into the Cola.

He'd make the mercantilist Queen of England look like a third rate drug dealer during the Opium Wars.

Gert said...

The current Western stance on drugs, including hard drugs, is one of hypocrisy and inefficiency. Prohibition on drugs works about as well as the American prohibition on alcohol did.

We spend around the world billions (if not trillions) on ineffective law enforcement, prison bills caused by draconian laws and sentencing guidelines and medical bills for those who got caught up in the 'drugs wars'. And we end up with inner cities riddled with crime caused by those who can't afford the artificially inflated 'street prices' of their 'fixes'.

Slowly legalise all drugs, appoint either private companies (licensed by the state) or state run companies for the production and sale of these drugs in recreational quantities. Tax high.

Pump the money saved on the expenses listed above, as well as a good dollop of the tax revenue generated, into information campaigns, rehabs for those who want to quit and pre-emptive measures to keep drug use fairly low.

We're entitled to drink and smoke ourselves to death as long as we don't harm anyone else. Alcohol and tobacco companies are allowed to make huge profits from these self-harmers. Why not apply the same standard (or lack thereof) to other drugs? There's no rational reason that's ever been explained to me...

The Sentinel said...

“Why not apply the same standard (or lack thereof) to other drugs? There's no rational reason that's ever been explained to me...”


One day, when you dare to venture away from the nest of safe little old Briddlington, climb down from your Ivory Tower and actually encounter the real world most of us live in, you might just see the devastating and often irreparable effects of crack, meth and heroin on real people, their lives, their families lives and the lives of many, many others who are impacted by the addictions dynamic.

Gert said...

Sent:

"you might just see the devastating and often irreparable effects of crack, meth and heroin on real people, their lives, their families lives and the lives of many, many others who are impacted by the addictions dynamic."

Most of the devastating effects of drug use are the direct result of the criminalisation of these drugs. The artificially high 'street price' is the overwhelming driver behind acquisitive crime and the marginalisation of those who are addicted to it. The use of heavily cut and thus far more dangerous products, as well as the 'recycling' of needles (and ensuing problems) are the result of criminalisation.

Take the use of 'designer drugs' (Xtacy and cocaine in particular): the drugs of choice for the more affluent, those who can afford to buy good quality drugs without having to resort to criminal activity to fund their habit stay well outside the cycle of misery you refer to and outside the court system (and if you're Kate Moss, your habit will be rewarded with extra publicity!)

Heroin for instance, doesn't make one violent, quite opposite, it's the ultimate sedative. But the artificially high price of often heavily cut products does tend to lead the less affluent drug user into a life of crime.

Gert said...

Your problem is that you see the effects but refuse to see the root causes.

Anonymous said...

"All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects."

"..there is always soma, delicious soma, half a gramme for a half-holiday, a gramme for a week-end, two grammes for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon..."

"So the best people were quite determined not to see Linda. And Linda, for her part, had no desire to see them. The return to civilization was for her the return to soma, was the possibility of lying in bed and taking holiday after holiday, without ever having to come back to a headache or a fit of vomiting, without ever being made to feel as you always felt after peyotl, as though you'd done something so shamefully anti-social that you could never hold up your head again. Soma played none of these unpleasant tricks. The holiday it gave was perfect and, if the morning after was disagreeable, it was so, not intrinsically, but only by comparison with the joys of the holiday. The remedy was to make the holiday continuous. Greedily she clamoured for ever larger, ever more frequent doses. Dr. Shaw at first demurred; then let her have what she wanted. She took as much as twenty grammes a day.
"Which will finish her off in a month or two," the doctor confided to Bernard. "One day the respiratory centre will be paralyzed. No more breathing. Finished. And a good thing too. If we could rejuvenate, of course it would be different. But we can't."

""The Savage," wrote Bernard, "refuses to take soma, and seems much distressed because of the woman Linda, his m---, remains permanently on holiday. It is worthy of note that, in spite of his m---'s senility and the extreme repulsiveness of her appearance, the Savage frequently goes to see her and appears to be much attached to her - an interesting example of the way in which early conditioning can be made to modify and even run counter to natural impulses (in this case, the impulse to recoil from an unpleasant object)."

"What's in those" (remembering The Merchant of Venice) "those caskets?" the Savage enquired when Bernard had rejoined him.
"The day's soma ration," Bernard answered rather indistinctly; for he was masticating a piece of Benito Hoover's chewing-gum. "They get it after their work's over. Four half-gramme tablets. Six on Saturdays."

''Hug me till you drug me, honey;
Kiss me till I'm in a coma;
Hug me, honey, snuggly bunny;
Love's as good as soma."

""No shoving there now!" shouted the Deputy Sub-Bursar in a fury. He slammed down he lid of his cash-box. "I shall stop the distribution unless I have good behaviour."

The Deltas muttered, jostled one another a little, and then were still. The threat had been effective. Deprivation of soma-appalling thought!

"That's better," said the young man, and reopened his cash-box. "

""Don't you want to be free and men? Don't you even understand what manhood and freedom are?" Rage was making him fluent; the words came easily, in a rush. "Don't you?" he repeated, but got no answer to his question. "Very well then," he went on grimly. "I'll teach you; I'll make you be free whether you want to or not." And pushing open a window that looked on to the inner court of the Hospital, he began to throw the little pill-boxes of soma tablets in handfuls out into the area."
For a moment the khaki mob was silent, petrified, at the spectacle of this wanton sacrilege, with amazement and horror."

"It was after midnight when the last of the helicopters took its flight. Stupefied by soma, and exhausted by a long-drawn frenzy of sensuality, the Savage lay sleeping in the heather. The sun was already high when he awoke. He lay for a moment, blinking in owlish incomprehension at the light; then suddenly remembered-everything.

"Oh, my God, my God!" He covered his eyes with his hand."


BNW - Huxley

SecondComingOfBast said...

Gert, the problem with taxing high is that the only money that could be made would, for the most part, have to go to the government agencies charged with regulating the drugs in question. There wouldn't be a lot left over, and most of what would would probably be limited to education and rehab. Which I'm fine with that.

(I just bring this up because I have a strong suspicion that a lot of people have the idea the government could rake in tens or maybe even hundreds of billions of dollars a year on the drug trade, and in the minds of many, enough to actually fund the entirety of the government, which is blatantly ridiculous).

It would however be a definite boon to the economy in a number or ways. It would add to employment both at the retail sales level and on the production and distribution end.

It would end the spiraling prices of drugs and therefore greatly reduce the need for criminal activity on the part of users.

It would empty out prison space of those who really have no business being there, and that is not only those who commit non-violent drug offenses. Since there would be a drastic reduction in drug related violence, it would drastically reduce those numbers as well.

It would free up police resources to concentrate on other crimes, thus serving to even further reduce the rate of violent and other crimes.

It would free up the tens of billions of dollars a year annually for other matters, while producing enough money to at least pay for it's regulation.

On the down side, there might at first be an initial spike in drug use, with the resulting social problems that might entail.

Otherwise, the biggest problem with legalized drugs boils down simply to a matter of restraining legislators from continually hiking up the taxes until once again the prices are inordinately high, as they have done with the cigarette industry.

Once that problem was addressed, I would be all for it, and I come from the perspective of someone who is not a drug user (though I did briefly smoke marijuana on a regular basis, for roughly a four year period, and experimented a handful of times with acid).

Anonymous said...

Civilization is a curse, isn't it Gert? If you were offered an opportunity to escape, would you take it?

Of course you would.

Thank G_d that the libertarians aren't in charge. There would be no memory of civilization. Just an eternally recurring apocalypto.

Gert said...

Pagan:

You seem to get it.

There wouldn't be a lot left over"

How much is 'left over' to alcohol and tobacco producing companies? Not that much but that doesn't stop absolutely massive production though, does it?

"On the down side, there might at first be an initial spike in drug use, with the resulting social problems that might entail."

Legalising would almost certainly lead to increased consumption, that's not really the question. The question is: 'which is the lesser of two evils?' The current situation is a disaster on a grand scale. Do we want to continue trotting down this road forever?

FJ:

"Civilization is a curse, isn't it Gert? If you were offered an opportunity to escape, would you take it?"

No. Drugs are part of 'civilisation' (however you want to define that). I don't want to escape it, I want to change it. LIKE YOU. But not in the same way as you.

'Civilisation' isn't an absolute: much of what we do doesn't strike me as 'civilised'.

I don't come from a libertarian perspective, but from a pragmatic one: if something manifestly doesn't work, consider changing it.

Brave New World is a sophisticated parody. Have a good laugh but don't take it seriously. I much prefer the rival Orwell.

The Sentinel said...

“Your problem is that you see the effects but refuse to see the root causes.”


The root cause of the addiction of crack, meth and heroin is the use of crack, meth and heroin.

The root cause of the physical and physiological damage caused by crack, meth and heroin is the use of crack, meth and heroin.

The root cause of the crime caused by crack, meth and heroin is the use of crack, meth and heroin.

Simple.

These three hard drugs are immensely addictive, degenerate and destructive and cause underlying physiological and psychological changes that manifest in extreme anti-social behavior.

To say that the drugs of choice for the “more affluent” are cocaine and ecstasy is rubbish; ecstasy has always been cheap and cocaine is the most used drug in the UK, a study showed that 99% of all UK bank notes had traces of cocaine and the figure was 90% for the US.

Both drugs are damaging with just one effect of ecstasy is the depletion levels of seratone and one effect of cocaine is major paranoia.

The taxation nonsense doesn’t work: In Holland drugs are still sold on the street, unregulated because they are cheaper then the in store products.

Of course these drugs are widely available the world over and the effects of them are devastating whole communities but they are still being controlled to some degree by being kept illegal and certainly the problem is as contained as each government is willing to contain it.

More hard drugs like crack, meth and cocaine on the streets means more damage, degeneration, addiction and misery.

Anonymous said...

I think it's clear from your comments that you have NO idea as to what "civilization" and "culture" are.

"Drugs are a part of civilization..."

Read Freud's "Civilization and It's Discontents" or...

Nietzsche, "GoM"

The man who, because of a lack of external enemies and opposition, was forced into an oppressive narrowness and regularity of custom impatiently tore himself apart, persecuted himself, gnawed away at himself, grew upset, and did himself damage—this animal which scraped itself raw against the bars of its cage, which people want to “tame,” this impoverished creature, consumed with longing for the wild, which had to create out of its own self an adventure, a torture chamber, an uncertain and dangerous wilderness—this fool, this yearning and puzzled prisoner, became the inventor of “bad conscience.” But with him was introduced the greatest and weirdest illness, from which humanity up to the present time has not recovered, the suffering of man from man, from himself, a consequence of the forcible separation from his animal past, a leap and, so to speak, a fall into new situations and living conditions, a declaration of war against the old instincts, on which, up to that point, his power, joy, and ability to inspire fear had been based. Let us at once add that, on the other hand, the fact that there was on earth an animal soul turned against itself, taking sides against itself, meant there was something so new, profound, unheard of, enigmatic, contradictory, and full of the future, that with it the picture of the earth was fundamentally changed. In fact, it required divine spectators to appreciate the dramatic performance which then began and whose conclusion is by no means yet in sight—a spectacle too fine, too wonderful, too paradoxical, to be allowed to play itself out senselessly and unobserved on some ridiculous star or other!

SecondComingOfBast said...

Sentinel-

I think you are seeing the present day effects of the drug culture and assuming that is the way it would be, only perhaps exponentially worse, were they legalized. That is not necessarily the case at all.

Where does it stop? The government here in the US is constantly at war with tobacco companies, and it's obvious to anyone who is remotely objective that their long-range goal is to eliminate tobacco consumption totally, albeit probably within something like a fifty year time span. By so doing, they cause the prices to raise exponentially, to the point where a carton of cigarettes that once cost five dollars now cost thirty, and in some cases, depending on the state involved, maybe as high as fifty-or more.

The culture of government would have to change before I would feel good about legalization of drugs, because I can see where the feds would see this as an opportunity to pick the pockets of the poor and working class yet again.

By the same token, there can be no doubt that the so-called "war on drugs" is a miserable failure in every relevant way. It has not led to decreased drug use or addiction, and has added significantly to the prison population. It has been a massive drain on taxpayers, on social services, contributed to delinquency and welfare enrollments, all because of the criminal nature of the drug culture and the inordinate cost associated with use and addiction, thanks primarily to government meddling.

And for what? Simply as an excuse to fund yet another unnecessary government agency (DEA) which is already more of a regulatory agency than a law enforcement agency to begin with.

I am not a proponent of the legalization of hard drugs such as heroin or cocaine for mass consumption, by any means, such drugs should be tightly controlled and relegated to pharmaceutical use only. Things such as methamphetamine and crack cocaine should never be allowed under any circumstances.

However, for many of these drugs, we are simply stuck in what amounts to a Dark Ages mentality concerning their use. It's time to reassess our priorities, and drugs should not be one of them. Keeping them illegal, unfortunately, is assuring they will remain a priority when they should be a merely incidental aspect of our culture.

Sure there will be problems, like there is with alcohol and tobacco. But the problems have been made far greater, not lessened, by our present day view of drugs as some kind of harbinger of evil and sin.

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. We stigmatize drug users, ratchet up the price of drugs to astronomical levels, and then wonder why they commit crimes when they become addicted in a capitalist culture where there is always somebody willing to take advantage of the profit margin involved. It doesn't make any sense.

Anonymous said...

Pagan,

You do Our Ford proud!

Anonymous said...

The impetus for men to use drugs lies in their desire to escape from their own minds which oppressively force them to hold their animal instincts in check.

One cannot totally eliminate (ala `18th amendment) outlets like drugs, or civilization will destroy itself (ala Pentheus/Thebes from Euripides "Bacchae"). But neither can civilized men permit the Baccanalia to continue year round or it will cease to be civilized.

Anonymous said...

Savage. Man of Culture. Civilized Man.

These are three stages of human mental development.

Or as Hesiod would say. Man under the rule of Ouranos. Man under the Rule of Chronos. Man under the rule of Zeus. Three stages of Greek mental development.

Anonymous said...

Drugs help put Argus to sleep, allowing Zeus to therreafter ravage Io.

The Sentinel said...

Pagan Temple,

I understand what you are saying but it I think it just won't work; weed and the like has been decriminalised in Holland for some time now and the Dutch are pretty mature and liberal bunch but there are still major problmes with it; and as I said, all drugs - including the decriminalised ones because they are cheaper - are sold on the street.

One approach of theirs seems to have some merit, that of needle park - whereby addicts can go and do their thing there but nowhere else, on the sufferance of harsh punishments (in theory anyways.)

But the situation in the UK is different to most being an island that can be effectively policed if the will existed; the endemic hard drug situation of today was virtually unheard of in the UK (thanks in part to the "policing and prescription" policy enacted by the Rolleston Committee report) before mass immigration and the new types of criminal gangs it brought - especially heroin from Islamic countries and organisations.

Sure there was some drugs as always but it wasnt the out of control enter entire-areas-at-your-own-risk problem we face now.

In any case Gert is talking about legalising crack, meth and heroin and peddling some fantasy that is just illegality that makes them dangerous and antisocial.

Insane.

Gert said...

Sent:

"These three hard drugs are immensely addictive, degenerate and destructive and cause underlying physiological and psychological changes that manifest in extreme anti-social behavior."

Most drugs do not cause anti-social behaviour (although alcohol when used to excess can lead to it.

Medicinally speaking even heavy doses of heroin do not cause anti-social behaviour: it's a pain killer, for chrissake.

The anti-social behaviour stems from the need to make money to finance the habit.

"The taxation nonsense doesn’t work: In Holland drugs are still sold on the street, unregulated because they are cheaper then the in store products."

Holland's a bad example: there is no real legalisation at all apart from in certain limited areas.

Gert said...

FJ:

Your whole point is a fallacy from start to finish. Because you start from the wrong premise, namely that the availability of drugs will lead to a society that 'regresses' to savagery where all just escape all the time into drug-induced states. This is patent nonsense: most people use drugs (alcohol and tobacco for instance) quite sensibly. We're not societies of alcohol-induced zombies. We wouldn't be societies of heroin-induced zombies either.

Your take on civilisation is really rich: here the 'Civilised Man' Farmer John, having read the classics (among others the classic quack Freud) feels he can lecture us all on what civilisation is and that he speaks for all of us in that respect.

Funny how the guys who berate the others for being Utopians always turn out to be... Utopians!

The Sentinel said...

"Your whole point is a fallacy from start to finish. Because you start from the wrong premise, namely that the availability of drugs will lead to a society that 'regresses' to savagery"

Whilst your absurd idea that legalising crack, meth and heroin will lead to some sort of a wonderful social renaissance is a perfectly sound premise.


"We're not societies of alcohol-induced zombies."

Funny that, because only a couple of threads back you were bemoaning the perils of alcohol in the UK.


"feels he can lecture us all on what civilisation is and that he speaks for all of us in that respect."

I don't see where he has done that at all; but I have seen and noted where you think you have the right to say how people should think - Michelle Obama being the latest would be victim of the would be thought policeman.

Gert said...

Sent:

"To say that the drugs of choice for the “more affluent” are cocaine and ecstasy is rubbish; ecstasy has always been cheap and cocaine is the most used drug in the UK, a study showed that 99% of all UK bank notes had traces of cocaine and the figure was 90% for the US."

Care to dig up that 'study'? Sounds like fantastical rubbish to me. 99 % of all banknotes???

Xtacy and cocaine are by and large the drugs of choice of the more affluent, yes, that is true.

"Both drugs are damaging with just one effect of ecstasy is the depletion levels of seratone and one effect of cocaine is major paranoia."

The effect that drugs have depends widely on the dosage used and how frequently they are used. Living in a continuous state of alcoholic inebriation can lead to personality changes, yet this is rare and even more rarely permanent. There is thus no simple, unequivocal 'effect of cocaine''.

And:

"Whilst your absurd idea that legalising crack, meth and heroin will lead to some sort of a wonderful social renaissance is a perfectly sound premise."

and:

"Funny that, because only a couple of threads back you were bemoaning the perils of alcohol in the UK."

... show again what a poor and underhand debater you are. But since as you ask so nicely I'll reiterate.

ALL drugs, including alcohol and tobacco represent dangers to the user. Most people manage that danger by taking a calculated risks. Society does it too, by, despite the boundless misery alcohol bestows on so many, the cost to society in so many different way and other drawbacks, allowing the sale of this otherwise 'Class A' drug to millions and by the million.

The War on Drugs however clearly doesn't work, precisely like America's War on Alcohol didn't work (and for the same reasons). I advocate moving from punitive measures to pre-emptive and remedial/medicinal measures, financed by cost-saving on law enforcement and revenue generation from selling licensed drugs. The aim would still be to minimise drug use in society at large as much as is reasonably possible but without the costly, punitive and having been proven futile methods of today.

Legalise drugs and the use will almost certainly increase but by eradicating the debilitating amounts of crime that affect everyone (and not just the user or pusher) the overall amount of suffering and burden on society at large, including the user, would be smaller than what it is today.

What a totally bonkers idea, huh?

SecondComingOfBast said...

FJ-

There would be laws and social ramifications as usual for those who lived the Bacchanalia day in and day out, year in and year out, just as there are now.

There would still be laws against selling drugs to school children-and by the way, those laws would probably be enforced much more effectively than they are today. There would still be laws against underage drug use, just as there is against underage tobacco and alcohol use today.

There would still be laws against driving while intoxicated on drugs, and against any other crime you might care to mention committed while intoxicated on drugs. Nothing would change in that regard.

Neither would the ramifications of showing up to work stoned to the gills. I promise, it still would not go over very well with the boss. Or the spouse.

While there are a few who are functional alcoholics and addicts, most of us are unable to hold down a job or maintain a relationship (marital or otherwise) while habitually under the influence of drugs, or alcohol.

The major changes of legalization and relaxation of our Draconian drug laws would be good. I guess I should point out that the main reason drugs have decimated so many poor communities, particularly poor African American communities, is due to the influence of drug gangs, and other such criminal organizations whom our current drug laws have actually empowered to a profound extent.

But by no means is it merely African American communities which are impacted. You see it all the time in Kentucky. You have dry counties where the sale of alcohol is illegal, which serves no purpose other than to create a niche market for bootleggers. They manage to do quite well, selling half-pint bottles of rotgut whiskey for the price you would pay for a similar quantity of Maker's Mark in a wet county.

County officials get their share of the proceeds while the cops look the other way. They can't be bothered with it, they have dope pushers they have to bust-unless of course they pay them off too. In a good many cases, after all, you are dealing with the same criminal.

So for twenty dollars, in any county of Kentucky, regardless of whether said county is wet or dry, you can get your drunk on for the day. You can do it two or three times a week, or more, depending on your personal finances.

The water bill can wait a month or two. One just shouldn't put it off for too long, though, as after all, it helps to stretch out the baby formula.

The Sentinel said...

“Care to dig up that 'study'? Sounds like fantastical rubbish to me. 99 % of all banknotes???”

You really should know better by now.

I’ll do better then just dig up that study and give you similar results in Spain and the US too.

(And no need for your contemptuous quotation marks either really, the techniques used are how all such studies are done, they obviously cannot test every single bank note)


“More than 99% of the banknotes in circulation in London are tainted with cocaine, according to a study.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/464200.stm


“Traces of cocaine can be found on 94% of euro banknotes circulating in Spain, a study has suggested.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6208877.stm


“…scientists are reporting that cocaine is present in up to 90 percent of paper money in the United States, particularly in large cities such as Baltimore, Boston, and Detroit. The scientists found traces of cocaine in 95 percent of the banknotes analyzed from Washington, D.C., alone.”

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090816211843.htm



“Xtacy and cocaine are by and large the drugs of choice of the more affluent, yes, that is true.”

And so clearly cocaine is not by and large the drugs of choice of the more affluent, yes, that is true.

And ectasy is only £10 a pop.

What is also true is the “fantastical rubbish” that lies at the premise of your legalize all drugs crap.

Clearly you have no idea of what you are talking about at all, now do you?


“... show again what a poor and underhand debater you are.”

Really? How so?

And you’ll notice that I don’t have to resort to lies at all, let alone on a regular basis - why do you?


“Legalise drugs and the use will almost certainly increase but by eradicating the debilitating amounts of crime that affect everyone….”

In the fantasy world you inhabit where cocaine is the rare and rich mans drug maybe, but in the real world where cocaine is absolutely awash everywhere, so much so it shows up on 99% of London banks, 94% in Spain and 90% in the US, well, no.

Face it Son, yet again you haven’t got the first clue of what you are talking about.

Anonymous said...

Your whole point is a fallacy from start to finish. Because you start from the wrong premise, namely that the availability of drugs will lead to a society that 'regresses' to savagery where all just escape all the time into drug-induced states.

Nice strawman. I actually stated that it was the complete abolition of drugs that would lead to the destruction of a civilization... ala Pentheus/ Thebes. Don't you read anything I write?

Of course not. For reading what I actually wrote would merely expose your utter ignorance of the classics (not that you could possibly learn anything from them since you obviously think you already know everything ala BNW is a sophisticated parody???).

Your take on civilisation is really rich: here the 'Civilised Man' Farmer John, having read the classics (among others the classic quack Freud) feels he can lecture us all on what civilisation is and that he speaks for all of us in that respect.

LOL! I'm not a civilized man. I'm an ancient that can move between all three mental states at will. YOU are the degenerate "civilized man" that physically represses and sublimates his violent thoughts and requires drugs to escape the trap of his culturally conditioned mental prison.

Sent to a war zone, you'd be a PTSD case... while I'd be water-boarding Iraqi's and drilling holes in their skulls to help exorcise their devils.

Anonymous said...

Give man a mental escape hatch (drugs) that he can hit whenever he's feeling "stressed" and you destroy the necessary torture chamber that expands human mental faculties and neutralizes all the fruits of his pent-up and repressed mental "creativity" (civilization).

As Nietzsche said in GoM:

We modern men, we are the inheritors of thousands of years of vivisection of the conscience and self-inflicted animal torture. That’s what we have had the longest practice doing, that is perhaps our artistry; in any case, it’s something we have refined, the corruption of our taste. For too long man has looked at his natural inclinations with an “evil eye,” so that finally in him they have become twinned with “bad conscience.” An attempt to reverse this might, in itself, be possible—but who is strong enough for it, that is, to link as siblings bad conscience and the unnatural inclinations, all those aspirations for what lies beyond, those things which go against our senses, against our instincts, against nature, against animals—in short, the earlier ideals, all the ideals which are hostile to life, ideals of those who vilify the world? To whom can we turn to today with such hopes and demands? . . . In this we would have precisely the good people against us, as well, of course, as the comfortable, the complacent, the vain, the enthusiastic, the tired. . . .

Anonymous said...

There would be laws and social ramifications as usual for those who lived the Bacchanalia day in and day out, year in and year out, just as there are now.

Indeed there would. But who would enforce those laws... they certainly would not be "self-enforced" through external "cultural conditioning. And a law unenforced is merely a sad, sad joke...

There would still be laws against selling drugs to school children-and by the way, those laws would probably be enforced much more effectively than they are today. There would still be laws against underage drug use, just as there is against underage tobacco and alcohol use today. When I was in Eighth Grade, our parents medicine cabinets were regularly emptied... prescription drugs being the recreational escape of choice/ opportunity. The box cars outside the brewery in tenth grade were second choice...

While there are a few who are functional alcoholics and addicts, most of us are unable to hold down a job or maintain a relationship (marital or otherwise) while habitually under the influence of drugs, or alcohol. I'm not sure that you understand the potency and addictive nature of modern pharmaceuticals and the huge numbers of individuals who would otherwise not partake who would be enticed to take drug induced "sabbaticals". And it's not the "working man" I'm concerned with. It's the theoretical mathematician/ physicists breaking concentration that concern me.

ps - The crime and welfare rates would simply go through the roof.

Anonymous said...

Libertarians operate under the mistaken impression that what may be advantageous, "freeing" or "good" for them is "good" universally. They fail to realize that by definition, 50% of the population is mentally "below average."

SecondComingOfBast said...

I guess I'm just a big picture kind of guy. I know for a fact there would be adverse consequences, but on balance, I just think it would be better to go the legalization and regulation route, provided we could rein in the legislators who might be tempted to take advantage of the newly legally addicted whose pockets they would then proceed to pick. Did I mention that I am not fully in favor of legalization until there is a profound change in our political culture?

Oh well, thanks for reminding me of the Bacchae anyway. It keeps me from picking up whores in bars.

Gert said...

Sent:

The study also states clearly:

"It is believed most contamination happens during legitimate financial transactions, when contaminated notes touch those in general circulation.

But MSA said that with at least 4% of the notes, the machine gave a massive reading which showed they had been in close contact with the drug."


It's the 4 % here that's the 'big number', not the 99 %. But 99 % sounds so much more spectacular, doesn't it?

The only one here who gets it is Pagan.

Sent starts from a false premise ('drugs make you anti-social" - they don't: that's a side effect of the illegality, abolish tobacco and tomorrow you've got huge tobacco crime on your hands). The bootlegging problem in some US dry counties is just one example.

Farmer's is gibberish. Classics or not. High brow nonsense not applicable to modern society.

Of course we will keep going down the current road for another what, 10, 20 30 years? All that time the arms race that the War on Drugs has become will merely escalate further and further, getting more expensive by the year, while hardly putting a dent in illegal drug consumption. And one day, the electorate will once again understand they've been lied to and that the status quo isn't working. More and more law enforcement officers are beginning to see it and say so. We're relegating entire generations of young people to the dustbin of society by throwing them in jail for a decade or so. It doesn't solve anything and its deterrent capacity is obviously too small to make much of a difference.

FJ:

"Libertarians operate under the mistaken [...]"

As stated above: mine is not a libertarian viewpoint. We just can't keep doing the same thing over and over when clearly that doesn't work. The law enforcement people that seem to arrive at the same conclusion as I do (and Pagan, apparently) aren't libertarians either. You're framing this in the wrong terms.

Gert said...

Pagan:

I can't say there's a syllable in your comment of 17:31 that I disagree with...

The Sentinel said...

"The study also states clearly"

Yip - I just knew you would have to try and rip apart the study rather then just accept facts that show your premise to be entirely false. (Although you have now removed your contemptuous quotation marks from the word study.)

The bottom line is that 99% of the notes had traces of cocaine on them because cocaine is so wide spread. That is how it got onto 99% of the notes in the first place.

That this is the result of this study is obvious to anyone with even an ounce of common sense, honesty and integrity.

And the study in Spain found on the notes that "each one carried an average of 25.18 micrograms of cocaine" with 94% of their notes contaminated with traces of cocaine; and 90% in the US and 85% in Canada.

Face it, you are wrong.

You are wrong on an entrenched part of your argument - that you were so sure about you thought evidence to the contrary was "fantastical rubbish" - that cocaine is a rare and rich mans drug when clearly it, like I said, it is awash. And so is ecstasy, and always has been.



"Sent starts from a false premise"

Quite obviously you do. Clearly.

And you don't know what will happen if all hard drugs were legalised; you couldn't possibly know. You are making it up as you go along.

Whereas I do know what is happening when drugs are still under some sort of control, and the most likely, logical conclusion is that will only get much worse.


"('drugs make you anti-social" - they don't: that's a side effect of the illegality, abolish tobacco and tomorrow you've got huge tobacco crime on your hands)"

Like I have said (many times), you don't live in the real world.

I know there are no crack dens or heroin and meth estates in that all white, safe little seaside town you hide in whilst plotting PC mayhem for the rest of us, but I can assure you that crack, meth and heroin THEMSELVES elicit the most antisocial behaviour. They are extremely powerful psychoactive drugs, which is kind of the whole point to people that take them.

For you to compare tobacco to crack is laughable and indicative of your out-of-reality take.

Have you ever been around crack, meth and heroin in your life? Let alone having lived in amongst it?

But I tell you what, yet again, why don't you put your money where your mouth is and bring home a crack pipe, a skag needle and a some crystals and leave them on your kitchen table for your daughter to have the 'free choice' you advocate for others?

Lets see if she would like to take them, what the results will be and lets see just how impressed her mother will be?



"FJ:You're framing this in the wrong terms."

Yeah FJ you're thinking all wrong. Just listen to Gert and he will tell you how you should be thinking. His way.

Gert said...

Sent:

"The bottom line is that 99% of the notes had traces of cocaine on them because cocaine is so wide spread."

If it's so widespread how come we're not surrounded by paranoiacs behaving anti-socially?

Simple: it's not that widespread at all and sensible users don't suffer much, if any, consequences.

"And you don't know what will happen if all hard drugs were legalised; you couldn't possibly know. You are making it up as you go along."

No, but I can predict. And society can manage the worst outcomes. Today we have a terrible outcome. The no-go areas about which you (rightly) complain wouldn't exist if there weren't high-stakes turf wars between law enforcement and gangs, as well as between gangs. Where illegal and huge amounts of money can be earned, high risk taking gangsters move in. Even an imbecile understands that.

"They are extremely powerful psychoactive drugs, which is kind of the whole point to people that take them."

Ever talked to a heroin or crack cocaine user? I have. Neither induce anything but a sense of deep pain-free well-being. Complete sedition. Oblivion. Nirvana. Debilitating in a sense but not conducive to anti-social behaviour at all.

Cocaine is an upper that can lower inhibitions, increase mental activity and like alcohol can lead to violent behaviour. Much depends on circumstances and dosage though.

"For you to compare tobacco to crack is laughable and indicative of your out-of-reality take."

I don't (another cheap attempt at point scoring by you). What I'm saying is that if you make tobacco illegal, you have all the problems of smuggling, illegal use, costly law enforcement, turf wars, desperate addicts etc etc on your hands, like any prohibition of substances does.

"But I tell you what, yet again, why don't you put your money where your mouth is and bring home a crack pipe, a skag needle and a some crystals and leave them on your kitchen table for your daughter to have the 'free choice' you advocate for others?"

She already has that choice: despite the punitive approach, drugs are widely available. They are to me too: I choose not to use them. I'm pretty sure my daughter will make the same choice. If she doesn't, she's likely to have her life ruined.

"Yeah FJ you're thinking all wrong. Just listen to Gert and he will tell you how you should be thinking. His way."

Feeble and paranoid. Farmer's got his opinion, I've got mine, you've got yours. Simple.

I disagree with BEAJ a lot but I agree with him on one thing: you still belong in his gallery of INTERNET CIRCUS FREAKS

Gert said...

Sentinel:

And since as you keep calling me a liar, I suggest folk here have a look at some of the comments you made in the past on Bacon Eating Atheist's blog.
Choose your own favourites by means of the Google blurbs (some more on page 2 as well).

There's more to come: on your (past?) Holocaust revisionism for instance.

The Sentinel said...

"If it's so widespread how come we're not surrounded by paranoiacs behaving anti-socially?"

It is that widespread; the study has proved it.

You are wrong again; get over it.

But interestingly you now concede that cocaine DOES induce paranoia and antisocial behaviour.



"No, but I can predict."

No you cant; you can pull things out of your arse and call them fact.


"Ever talked to a heroin or crack cocaine user? I have. "

Ever lived in the same flat as an additct? I have, twice.

Spent a large part of your life living around them? I have.

Crack use causes temporary and permanent psychotic episodes resulting in extreme violence; it almost always induces paranoid behaviour and an erosion of mental capacity whilst heroin does this, but more profoundly renders the addicts moral systems completely defunct. They will and do, quite literally, rob their own grandmothers. Whereas cocaine not only erodes mental capacity and can induce psychosis it always ends in extreme paranoia.


"I don't (another cheap attempt at point scoring by you)."

You did. And as I explained to you in detail, it is the actual effects of the drugs themselves that are the issue.


"She already has that choice"

Be a bit hard in the all white, safe virtually crime free seaside town you have picked to hide in whilst plotting your PC mayhem for everyone else.

Why not legalise it in your house and provide them for her to use if she wants? Whats the harm in that?


"I'm pretty sure my daughter will make the same choice. If she doesn't, she's likely to have her life ruined."

So you fully recognise that hard drugs are extremely destructive but you still want full legal access to them for everyone anyway?

The Sentinel said...

And so you want to come back to your favourite argumentum ad honimen again in lieu?

Fine by me.


"And since as you keep calling me a liar"

You are a liar. And a troll.

And a pathological one at that, like every PC fanatic out there.

I have proved it time and time again and I proved in the previous thread that you are a liar that keeps repeating the same lies and a troll who uses every trick in the book to try and shut people up that you disagree with.

But aside from your politically motivated lies, what about your previous claims to have been in active service? When it turns out that you had never seen active service in your life; just a poxy exercise in West Germany that you had been made to do as a Belgian conscript - you didn't even volunteer to serve your country, you had to be forced.

The lies just pour out of you as a matter of course.


"I disagree with BEAJ a lot but I agree with him on one thing: you still belong in his gallery of INTERNET CIRCUS FREAKS"

I'm really not sure what you think you have achieved with that one, linking to a poxy blog run by a narcarcistic deviant idiot on par with yourself. I ripped apart him and his bullshit and you and yours along with the other sheeple that piped in many times. It was easy.

But you really do enjoy the dehumanising smears like "freak" don't you? Its your life blood.

Along with your pedophile mindset that leads you to be fantasising online about the sexual abuse of children and applying the twisted incestuous fantasy to those who dare to disagree with you.

I said it before and I meant it: I genuinely fear for your daughter, being around such a twisted piece of work like you, and I am far from alone on that, as you well know.


"I suggest folk here have a look at some of the comments you made in the past on Bacon Eating Atheist's blog."

So do I - there are some very good examples there of how I use reason and evidence to put forward my case whilst my 'opponents' use the most foul and depraved abuse instead, with you pretty much as the most notable example of filth.

You used to do the same trolling on my blog: Non-stop filth, abuse, attempts to shut me up on my own blog(!) and even telling me "this thread is finished"!!!

And as I have said many times to you: Who do you think you are?

The Sentinel said...

"There's more to come: on your (past?) Holocaust revisionism for instance."

And I have plenty more of the racist, anti-Semitic filth you have pedalled online and the outraged reaction to it by dozens if not hundreds of people who consider you to be "racist filth" "a far right nutter" and a "crank"

But tell me, why is it just now "revisionism"? Before you claimed it was "denial"?

Go ahead, quote away - I would be most happy to back up everything I have ever said on anything - and it would be quite easy because I never say anything without evidence in the first place.

There has been no "revisionism" from me; just pointed facts. As I told you a few weeks ago when you tried to pull this same stunt (a stunt that always backfires)


"You chose to perceive what has been said in that fashion, and it is hardly surprising that you choose to do so, but again in your own words "Does the allegation make it true?"

I am fully aware of the fact the Jews were murdered wholesale by the Nazis, more then most I would say having been based in Germany for years in the army (including Hohne, directly opposite Bergen-Belsen, for around 2 years) and having met some of those who were involved in it. The grandparents of a German girl I was engaged to were both in organisations directly linked with it, one was in the SS the other in the Gestapo. I know better then most first hand the events and opinion of the day.

As with all historical accounts, nothing is 100% true nor infallible and I have challenged elements such as the Nazis converting humans into soap - something even the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Simon Wiesenthal Center now acknowledge was untrue and didn't happen, calling it a mix of "cruel rumours" and a throwback to"French propaganda from the First World War."

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/soap.html

If you want to take from that anything other then what it is, that's your problem.

The Sentinel said...

And you still haven't answered this question yet:

Who in their right mind would add the racial taunt of “Jewish” in front of a sexual taunt about “tits”? What difference would it make about the ethnicity of the owner of these “tits”? Who would use Nazi terminology to refer to the state born out of the holocaust and its people?

You have been picked up on that and more by dozens and thoroughly reviled for it - can you really not see why people think you are a racist, anti-Semitic sexual deviant?


For someone who puts himself so high up on the PC pedestal and considers himself a guru and an infallible PC judge, here is a very small selection of what many people really think of you:


“On the contrary far-right nutters, like Gert, need their posts saved and replayed to remind others what nasty racist filth they truly are.

Gert, like most Jew obsessed cranks, lets his contempt for Jews seep out after a while, sure enough he’ll try to hide it when he can, but such filth comes out eventually and reveals his underlying neurosis.

Just give him a bit of time and Gert will do a David Irving star turn!”


“Gert,

Do me a favour, FUCK off.

I have NO time for Far Righters like you. Clear enough?

Now FUCK off.”

http://modernityblog.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/holocaust-denier-in-geneva/



“And by the way, instead of whimpering that when you called Israelis “herrenvolk” you didn’t mean to imply they were Nazis, why not look inward and consider why you made that particular comparison. From reading your posts in this thread and others, the answer is quite clear, as you have consistently referred to Israelis/Zionists as nazis (zionazis, zionutzies, etc. etc. ad nauseam).”


“So is Gert, another disgusting specimen who is quite openly calling Israel “Nazis”.”

http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/05/07/%E2%80%9Cseven-jewish-children%E2%80%9D-an-incitement-to-hatred/


“Gert: I don’t assume nothing for the sake of argument with you, I don’t argue with Holocaust-baiters. Once you’ve used the phrase Herrenvolk in reference to Jews, you lost any right to civilised argument.”

http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/05/09/penalty-points-on-a-poetic-licence/

Gert said...

Sent:

"So you fully recognise that hard drugs are extremely destructive but you still want full legal access to them for everyone anyway?"

You still don't get it. I haven't recognised that "hard drugs are extremely destructive", quite the opposite. Most of the harm comes from artificially high street prices, forcing users into criminality. THAT's what would happen to my daughter. The current system is broken. Period.

"But aside from your politically motivated lies, what about your previous claims to hae been in active service?"

Complete distortion. I was a conscript, never said otherwise. I was stationed in Germany, as an artillery gunner (Soest 6th Artillery Battalion, 155 mm). I took part in major Nato exercises, including with US troops. Never claimed otherwise.

Are people who haven't seen active service inferior to you? Active service gives you privileges? Superior insights?

"But tell me, why is it just now "revisionism"? Before you claimed it was "denial"?"

Dishonest. You're not a holocaust denier and I never said so. I specifically used the term 'revisionist'. Minimiser may be a better term.

You claimed many had died because of starvation or being worked to death, as if that's not part of the Holocaust.

You claimed we don't know the numbers: but in reality we have very good estimates.

You claimed you'd seen gas chambers with 'Made in France' on them. Why, to what effect? What are you trying to prove?

You utterly ridiculed Deborah Lipstadt: how disgustingly low can one stoop?

It went much beyond that, BTW.

"The grandparents of a German girl I was engaged to were both in organisations directly linked with it, one was in the SS the other in the Gestapo. I know better then most first hand the events and opinion of the day."

Sure, these people really sound like objective sources to me... A real bunch of truth-tellers. A bit like hearing the truth about Apartheid from a former supporter of that regime...

Truth is you dabbled with Nazism (you said so elsewhere), obviously some of it stuck.

"And you still haven't answered this question yet:

Who in their right mind would add the racial taunt of “Jewish” in front of a sexual taunt about “tits”? What difference would it make about the ethnicity of the owner of these “tits”? Who would use Nazi terminology to refer to the state born out of the holocaust and its people?"


I have. Several times. As regards the sexual taunt, have the honesty to dig up the link again and publish the three comments that preceded it: mine was a reaction to IsraeliNurse's. I was taunted and I retorted. As you very well know.

I never used Nazi terminology with respects to Zionists (or Jews). Never ever. Zionutsies, yes, nothing more. I co-wrote a post titled 'Why Israelis aren't Nazis' (look it up on my blog). And Herrenvolk, yes. Well, the colonisers of Palestine behave indeed like that, as all colonisers do.

Harry's Place systematically tars everyone who disagrees with them on I-P as 'Nazis', 'neo-Nazis', 'Far Right' (funny that, most Zionists are firmly on the Right), 'anti-semite' and assorted terms. Rather rich coming from a clique riddled with racists...

With regards to you, here's the extent of my sins:

I consider you Far Right. I can't see how anyone can disagree with that.

You adhere to Racial Theory, and surprise, surprise, find fault with all non-white peoples, especially immigrants. To me that's racist.

You've at least more than just dabbled in Holocaust revisionism and non-political anti-Semitism. Traces of that are all over the Internet. Funny how you've now closed your own blog: it'd be veritable treasure hunt, as some of the comment boxes I've found testify.

The Sentinel said...

"Complete distortion. I was a conscript, never said otherwise."

Start off on a lie. Why not? Its how you intend to go on.

This is what you actually said:

"BTW, I did active service (military, assuming that's what you're referring to)."


"Are people who haven't seen active service inferior to you? Active service gives you privileges? Superior insights?"

People that lie about it are grossly inferior.

But yes, having volunteered for service and having seen much active service I have more right then most to comment on my own country without being labelled as some sort of hate filled nazi by a Belgian like you who was forced to serve his own country.


"Dishonest. You're not a holocaust denier and I never said so. I specifically used the term 'revisionist'. Minimiser may be a better term."

Another lie:

On the same thread you claimed to have seen active service you also had this to say about me:

"You're a racist, an anti-Semite, a Holocaust denier, a homophobe and an obtuse thug to boot..".


"You claimed many had died because of starvation or being worked to death, as if that's not part of the Holocaust."

Many were worked to death and starved; you are saying thats not part of the holocaust, not me.


"You claimed we don't know the numbers: but in reality we have very good estimates."

"We" again is it? Are "we" this time?

Again, I stated facts such as these:

"For many years, a memorial plaque placed at the camp by the Soviet authorities stated that 4 million people had been murdered at Auschwitz. The government of the People's Republic of Poland also supported this figure. In the west, this figure was accepted, but some historians had their doubts.[2] After the collapse of the Communist government in 1989, the plaque was removed and the official death toll given as 1.1 million."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp#Death_toll


"You claimed you'd seen gas chambers with 'Made in France' on them. Why, to what effect? What are you trying to prove?"


If you had actually been to Auschwitz you would know that to be a fact; to what effect? Because its true! What was I trying to prove? I was stating a fact.


"The gas chamber at Auschwitz I was reconstructed after the war as a memorial"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_chamber#Nazi_Germany


"You utterly ridiculed Deborah Lipstadt: how disgustingly low can one stoop?"

I have no idea who she is - but you talk about "how disgustingly low can one stoop" - try your pedophila fantasies that you use on your political opponents for a start.


"It went much beyond that, BTW."

How about some proof then?


"Sure, these people really sound like objective sources to me... A real bunch of truth-tellers. A bit like hearing the truth about Apartheid from a former supporter of that regime..."

They told me what they did and what they saw and they didn't hold back. They were both still unreserved Nazis.

Besides that I lived in Germany for years and met many, many people from that era and have been in a lot of the sites associated with it.


"Truth is you dabbled with Nazism (you said so elsewhere), obviously some of it stuck."

Another (unsubstantiated) lie.

I have never "dabbled with Nazism" nor have I ever said any such thing.


"I have. Several times. As regards the sexual taunt, have the honesty to dig up the link again and publish the three comments that preceded it: mine was a reaction to IsraeliNurse's. I was taunted and I retorted. As you very well know."

You love sexual taunts though don't you?

But you still haven't answered the question:

Who in their right mind would add the racial taunt of “Jewish” in front of a sexual taunt about “tits”? What difference would it make about the ethnicity of the owner of these “tits”?

The Sentinel said...

"I never used Nazi terminology with respects to Zionists (or Jews). Never ever."

Yes you have. You wrote an entire post about it calling them the "new herrenvok" for a start.


"Harry's Place systematically tars everyone who disagrees with them on I-P as 'Nazis', 'neo-Nazis', 'Far Right'..."

Its not just the dozens of people there that have fully exposed you for who you are though, now is it?

As we shall see.


"I consider you Far Right. I can't see how anyone can disagree with that."

As we shall see, you consider everyone who disagrees with you as far right.


"You adhere to Racial Theory, and surprise, surprise, find fault with all non-white peoples, especially immigrants. To me that's racist"

Again, as we shall see everyone who disagrees with you is "racist."


"You've at least more than just dabbled in Holocaust revisionism and non-political anti-Semitism. Traces of that are all over the Internet."

Then post some proof then..


"Funny how you've now closed your own blog: it'd be veritable treasure hunt"

I closed it mainly because I was getting non-stop threats and perverted sexual abuse akin to the ones featured a couple of threads back from the likes of Daniel Hoffmann-Gill and, quite possibly you.

I was collecting the evidence (I hold a CHFI qualification), and considering whether to report it to the police, technically attack (hack) the posters, or... or just leave it.

The Sentinel said...

Anyhow, here are some more 'folks' who have thoroughly seen through you, your ideology, your tactics and your anti-Semitism and exposed it - and you for the troll you are - in such a beautifully succinct way I will defer to them in this small sample:


“many of you may already be familiar with Gert, as he has had many hostile run-ins with others in this blogging community the past year…

Gert's signature characteristic is his unofficial title as "King of the Ad-hominem", as anytime he is challenged by an opposing view he immediately becomes hysterical and starts running off endless streams of personal insults, childish name-calling, and obscenity-laced slurs dripping with anti-Semitism.”

http://madzionist.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html


“Are you suggesting that Jews should be banned from living in Judea because they are Jewish? Are you even remotely aware of how anti-Semitic that is?

Jews have the right to live nearly anywhere in the world, but you say the one place where Jews must be forbidden to live is Judea??”

http://madzionist.blogspot.com/2008/11/olmert-to-release-another-250.html


“Well, Gert, we may be pathetic, but at least we read what we're commenting on before hurling insults, unlike yourself.

I don't think you even understand the issues here. I don't think you have any philosophical point of view on the subject, Gert. You're just another cultist, trained to point at heretics and chant slogans, my friend. You see a trigger, your mouth opens, out comes the pre-programmed denunciation.

Yes, your kind of "liberalism" (an offence to the meaning of the world "liberal" is a cult. Just like scientology, or the moonies, or the various fundamentalisms. You're trained not to think for yourself, to argue always by authority, to cut yourself off from non-believers, only venturing among them to cause dismay or to try to proselytise. And your only weapon, devoid as you are of logical support for your belief system, is to shout the heretic down. Condemn her with a word. "Racist!" you shout, and the heretic is cast out.

And under it all, you're terrified that you may be wrong. You pour over your pamphlets and your websites, bolstering your beliefs like somebody squinting at the quaran before beating his wife. But you don't think about anything. You never question what you beleive (for fear you may come to doubt it). And as we see, you don't even bother to consider the heretics' words before condemning them.

Oooh, we have "racist tendencies". But strangely, ye who would condemn every white person on the planet, even the unborn are completely devoid of racism.

Be daring, Gert. Do something you've never dared to do before. Consider and analyse your own beliefs and dare, just for a second, to consider that you may be wrong.”

http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2007/11/the_word_racist.html

Anonymous said...

High brow nonsense not applicable to modern society.

That's why the Right rules, while the Left just drools!

The Sentinel said...

Gert

“But you didn't answer any of my questions. You used other peoples posts to rant and then call me names. Try to focus…

Hint: It would probably be effective to actually read the posts of the person you are calling names.”



“Gert

So far you've called me: 1)complete and partisan idiot, 2)You're a crackpot, 3)racist imbecile.

What you haven't done is to offer any kind of reasoned debate.

I don't see why this sort of discourse is your only recourse. Surely, a person who holds themself in the regard you seem to hold yourself can do better than to emulate a feces throwing monkey.”

http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2008/11/jews_went_heavi.html



“Gert, your long-winded ad-hominem was most unfortunate. No matter how many times you close your eyes, cover your ears, and scream "religio-fascist!" it won't cover for your conspicuous lack of substantive responses…”


“Gert, you've done what I suggested you not do: resert to insults. I mean, what's this whole thing here for? Insulting people to try and make yourself feel better? People who are sure of themselves are not easily insulted and tend to turn it back on you. That's what happened here. Did you achieve anything?-No.”

http://madzionist.blogspot.com/2006/12/deconstructing-leftist.html

Gert said...

Sentinel:

I've made up my mind last night not only not to read a single syllable of whatever you decide to print here or elsewhere and not to respond to it anymore either. Have the courtesy to do the same with regards to me. Considering what you once called a 'free speech zone' (your blog) is now even closed to the public, have the courtesy to consider mine closed to you also.

Addressing you is like starting a war: one knows when it starts but not when or where it ends. We've been wasting much of Ren's patience here, IMHO. Too much. This is dragging an otherwise fine blog into the mud.

Wherever you go, I imagine the scenario to be the same. Look at how deliberately you completely distorted my opinion on how to deal with the drugs problem: it's not just strawman upon strawman, it's strawman within strawman. You suffer from a bad case of literalism, an inability to read inter alea. This way you interpret what an opponent says exactly as it suits you and can always find fault with it. You're thus constantly attacking windmills in your own mind.

Context is alien to you, hence the endless internet links that are supposed to prove your position.

Undoubtedly you'll want to see all this as a victory for you. Well, feel free... I'm now unsubscribing from this thread and won't be reading any more of your comments. Someone has to put an end to this and I doing it. Now.

All the best with any of your endeavours.

Bye.

The Sentinel said...

Jesus Christ!

Do the games, the bullshit and the hysteria never end with you?

You make up a pack of lies to smear me, to debase me and discredit me; you tarnish me with the most obscene and hysterical labels for the same reason and you try every trick in the book to shout down and shut up everyone who dares dissent from your PC religion / cult and especially you personally - the self-appointed high priest of your cult - and when you realise all of it has become indefensible and fully exposed through sheer weight of evidence you try to assume some sort of controlled moral withdrawal?!!

You are so full of shit it is awe inspiring!!!


"I've made up my mind last night not only not to read a single syllable of whatever you decide to print here or elsewhere and not to respond to it anymore either"

Of course you have.

I blow far too hard on your house of cards and expose your tactics and lies so easily for all to see.

And as we can all see as well, I am far from alone in this.

Many, many people have your number Gert and have succinctly summed up your raison d'être and methodology


"Have the courtesy to do the same with regards to me."

Again with the mind control. You do what you want, that's up to you. I'll do what I want, that's up to me. You see how this works?

If I see you spouting more fantasy and lies then I WILL say so, have no worries about that.


"Considering what you once called a 'free speech zone' (your blog) is now even closed to the public"

That's right it was a free speech zone, open to the public for around 3 years and tolerant in the name of free speech- if, understandably, not entirely ecstatic - of the vast and endless reams of abuse, filth, lies, taunts, insults and labels you saw fit to heap on me on a daily basis - all without substance - and the various playmates you incited to visit all in tandem with assorted other cultist like yourself, all without, as you well know, one deletion or CM policy.

That all ended recently when the abuse, filth, lies, taunts and insults turned to repeated physical threats and death threats against me and my family as well as the most depraved sexual insults imaginable; personally I couldn't give a fuck, I really couldn't, but I have a duty to my family to take threats against them seriously, assess and take measures if found to be real.

And as I have already said, along with Daniel Hoffmann-Gill, I have reason to believe that you may have been behind one or two of the comments left.

The Sentinel said...

"have the courtesy to consider mine closed to you also."

That's around the 20th time you have invoked this, the last time being just a couple of weeks ago.

I think it must be obvious by now, even to an idiot like yourself, that I have no interest at all in visiting your webrag and so this is just more hysterical posturing.


"Addressing you is like starting a war: one knows when it starts but not when or where it ends."

Trying to dominate, control, defame, smear and discredit me is like starting a war; and it ends in your defeat.


"We've been wasting much of Ren's patience here, IMHO. Too much. This is dragging an otherwise fine blog into the mud."

Back to your pathetic old see-through ingratiation attempt tactic - once again, you have brought it here, that's right, you alone through your incessant lies, smears, labels and attempts at mind control.


"Wherever you go, I imagine the scenario to be the same."

That imagination of yours is a large part of your problem: It leads you to make up the most fantastic lies and the most depraved smears.


"Look at how deliberately you completely distorted my opinion on how to deal with the drugs problem: it's not just strawman upon strawman, it's strawman within strawman."

I have done no such thing; people can read back over it and judge for themselves.


"You suffer from a bad case of literalism, an inability to read inter alea. This way you interpret what an opponent says exactly as it suits you and can always find fault with it. You're thus constantly attacking windmills in your own mind"

Pure projection as pretty much every comment about you by the various people above demonstrates: Your consistent theme is to completely ignore your 'opponents' comments altogether and merely attack them personally, most often with your only weapons / standard toolkit of PC heretic labels.


"Context is alien to you, hence the endless internet links that are supposed to prove your position."

I know that any evidence is irksome to your cult - especially of the irrefutable kind, but that's how normal honest people work: They back up their opinions with substance, with evidence. You are totally unable to do this, hence the scorn.

I have told you time and time again, I beat you every time not because I am a genius but just because truth and reality are not on your side.

They simply are not.


"Undoubtedly you'll want to see all this as a victory for you."

Vindication, in that you are unable to back up your consistent vile lies and smears about me, yes.

Vindication, in that you are unable to credibly deny the assorted other lies you routinely tell, yes.


"I'm now unsubscribing from this thread and won't be reading any more of your comments"

The PC cultist refuses to have any heresy placed in front of him lest he must consider the merit of it.

I think the third comment about you in the small sample I posted describes these cult dynamics "just like scientology, or the moonies, or the various fundamentalisms" beautifully and as a perfect summation of your mindset. Very insightful.


"All the best with any of your endeavours."

And the worst of luck with yours.

Everything you and your PC cult do, say and advocate does immense damage to my country and my people, and ultimately all people within its sphere.


"Bye."

If only.

And if only I had a pound every time I heard this hysterical departure swan song from you. In fact, the last time was only a couple of week ago. I be at least £2 richer this week!!!

Ducky's here said...

LOL! I'm not a civilized man. I'm an ancient that can move between all three mental states at will.

---------------------------

Whoa, Farmer, how is that done.
I see a chance to really save on beer money here.

Anonymous said...

Easy. We play Rochambeau and I go first. That should free civilization's current grip on your mind.

Anonymous said...

3 lions on my shirt!

jules rimet's still dreaming!

the sentinel is a cunt!

and he likes to argue!

The Sentinel said...

Oh look, the cowards back!

Anonymous said...

3 lions on my shirt!

jules rimet's still dreaming!

the sentinel is a cunt!

and he likes to argue!

The Sentinel said...

And here he is again: Another fellow troll of Gert's dimension: daniel hoffman-gill - aka "anonymous" and attempted ID spoofer.

And here is just one of the latest reactions to his pathological hate trolling - flying the nasty, vindictive and ignorant PC flag so proudly as usual - on just the latest blog he has decided to hate troll on and fresh from just yesterday; under his own name strangely, after bizarrely being too cowardly to do it in his own name here - or could it because with the rules he insisted on yet cannot even remotely keep within himself?!!



"Owners and monitors of this site.

Please read the comments of Hoffmann -Gill # 36.

This person has been thrown off from blogs because of hate AND perversion.
Sunny..you write that this is all about debate.

Debate is great, it brings understanding.
However, Hoffmmann-Gill breeds hate and his language is vulgar..

Please consider following the rules you set forth as it is good for all to learn from one another.

This man is a perverted, hateful distraction. His words should not be printed.
This is to be a Liberal site, but this person..what ever he is, makes anyone who is a liberal look badly..very badly.

He is a poor pathetic soul who needs help quite badly. Why give him a forum to speak on.
Trust me, you will find him elsewhere as well, and he is disgusting. He has been shut off many times and for good reason.

Please take one moment and look him up…it is then your call.

Colleen"

http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2009/09/21/rupert-murdoch-and-fox-news-imperialism/

Anonymous said...

3 lions on my shirt!

jules rimet's still dreaming!

the sentinel is a cunt!

and he likes to argue!

The Sentinel said...

And here is the demented fuckwit troll Hoffmann-gill actually thinking he is getting away with his trolling here without notice and embracing the other troll Gertrude:


https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=11234003&postID=5889709627025045224

Whilst Gert is at his anti-Semitic hate again and being thoroughly reviled for it, with new gems such as “It’s such a wonderful little country, Israel. Truly a (B)light unto the nations…” others on the blog have read Hoffmann-gills comments in the link above and have his number too:

“Gert, could you get Daniel Hoffmann-Gill to post over here? It would be top class entertainment to have two such insane cunts on show at once. Cheers.


Daniel’s latest performance here:”
“Wow, Gert is back and as mad and anti-Semitic as ever!

I agree with Django, it would be great if he could bring his nutjob buddy Daniel Hoffmann-Gill over too; oh what a fest of crazyness that would be!...

Go on Gert, get Daniel Hoffmann-Gill over here as one of your “band of pirates” so we can all have a real good laugh at your joint insanity!!”


http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/09/26/naivety-over-iran/


What a lovely pair of trolls they make, thoroughly mocked online for the obscene idiots they are!!!

Anonymous said...

3 lions on my shirt!

jules rimet's still dreaming!

the sentinel is a cunt!

and he likes to argue!