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OT: The News Thread

Re: OT - The News Thread

I just thought it was nice hammer fist (although it was with a statue)
 
Re: OT - The News Thread

BeLeafer said:
Nope. Just overt thuggery.
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Well, that's usually required to put down an unwilling population. To hold a fascist ideology, a person doesn't necessarily have to be violent though.

They've gotta be an authoritarian douchebag, but they don't have to be individually violent.
 
Re: OT - The News Thread

Fascism (and authoritarianism) is inherently violent, always has been. At the least, any self proclaimed fascist group use physical violence. Certainly, all the fascist governments of Europe in the 20th century bludgeoned their way to power.

The violence is both domestic and international in character. It's also physically and ideologically/psychologically coercive.

It is little more than a politics of thuggery in all its dimensions.
 
Re: OT - The News Thread

and I'm not arguing that point, my issue was entirely theoretical.

Fascism is no more about violence (in theory) than Communism is.

You're allowing historical data to cloud the theoretical in this case. The theoretical is simple. Fascism is the blending of state power between a nationalist government and the nations corporate business structure into one entity.

If you believe in the marriage of state and corporate power, you're a fascist, and as it pertains to this issue, Berlusconi is a fascist. Even if he isn't a fascist in the common historical vernacular.
 
Re: OT - The News Thread

Any theory of fascism is post facto. There were never any theorists of fascism. The best you'll find is Ernst Junger. Check his theory of the worker-soldier - infused with violence from top to bottom.

Theory must be rooted in historical evidence, from the ground up, or it's just so much fluff. I'm not even sure why anyone would want to theorize political thuggery.
 
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Re: OT - The News Thread

To add ... theorizing it in the absence of the historical evidence will do little to help understanding and more likely hurt it.
 
Re: OT - The News Thread

Addendum II .... heh

If you want to define fascism so broadly as the 'marriage of state and corporate power', you can label every government of the 'western world' in the 20th century and onward, fascist.

I like to just think of it as the maturation of capitalism. Yes, it's a pretty fascist affair.
 
Re: OT - The News Thread

Ha, just discovered that they actually made a stamp out of our pal, Ernst. Part of the denazification program, I guess. ha ha

Ernst_Juenger_stamp.jpg
 
Re: OT - The News Thread

MindzEye said:
and I'm not arguing that point, my issue was entirely theoretical.

Fascism is no more about violence (in theory) than Communism is.

You're allowing historical data to cloud the theoretical in this case. The theoretical is simple. Fascism is the blending of state power between a nationalist government and the nations corporate business structure into one entity.

If you believe in the marriage of state and corporate power, you're a fascist, and as it pertains to this issue, Berlusconi is a fascist. Even if he isn't a fascist in the common historical vernacular.
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This reminds me of a cartoon done some time ago (I wish I could find the cells to post here) that many politics afficionados on here have no doubt seen, but the premise was simple. It had a group of citizens discussing with historical figures the evils of communism and the scores of citizens that had died from its implementation in the twentieth century. Suddenly, an image of Marx appears and he very insistently claims "BUT THE PREMISE STILL REMAINS TRUE!" I think you make a valid point in positing that just because there is a historical record of oppressive governments (or more to the point, violent governments) doesn't indicate that an ideology in itself is inherently violent. Communism for instance, sounds very utopian in theory, but that's of little solace to the student standing in Tianamen Square in 1989 trying to avoid being crushed by an armada of T-72s.
 
Re: OT - The News Thread

JaysCyYoung said:
This reminds me of a cartoon done some time ago (I wish I could find the cells to post here) that many politics afficionados on here have no doubt seen, but the premise was simple. It had a group of citizens discussing with historical figures the evils of communism and the scores of citizens that had died from its implementation in the twentieth century. Suddenly, an image of Marx appears and he very insistently claims "BUT THE PREMISE STILL REMAINS TRUE!" I think you make a valid point in positing that just because there is a historical record of oppressive governments (or more to the point, violent governments) doesn't indicate that an ideology in itself is inherently violent. Communism for instance, sounds very utopian in theory, but that's of little solace to the student standing in Tianamen Square in 1989 trying to avoid being crushed by an armada of T-72s.
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I think the point that needs to be accepted, is that there simply isn't, and never will be, a government that adheres strictly to any single ideology....so when you call a government "fascist" or "communist", you're basically just attaching the closest ideology you possibly can to it.

Those weren't Communist T-72's in Tianamen square, those were PRC T-72's.
 
Re: OT - The News Thread

Example #91823646 that corporations don't give a **** about any of us:

http://www.alternet.org/environment...eated_pink_slime_now_in_most_u.s._ground_beef

According to today's New York Times, The "majority of hamburger" now sold in the U.S. now contains fatty slaughterhouse trimmings "the industry once relegated to pet food and cooking oil," "typically including most of the material from the outer surfaces of the carcass" that contains "larger microbiological populations."

This "nasty pink slime," as one FDA microbiologist called it, is now wrung in a centrifuge to remove the fat, and then treated with AMMONIA to "retard spoilage," and turned into "a mashlike substance frozen into blocks or chips".

Thus saving THREE CENTS a pound off production costs. And making the company, Beef Products Inc., a fortune. $440 million/year in revenue. Ain't that something?
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Bush's U.S.D.A. also allowed these "innovators" to get away with listing the ammonia as "a processing agent" instead of by name. And they also OKd the processing method -- and later exempted the hamburger from routine testing of meat sold to the general public -- strictly based on the company's claims of safety, which were not backed by any independent testing.

Because the ammonia taste was so bad ("It was frozen, but you could still smell ammonia," said Dr. Charles Tant, a Georgia agriculture department official. "I’ve never seen anything like it.") the company started using a less alkaline ammonia treatment, and now we know -- thanks to testing done for the school lunch program -- that the nasty stuff isn't even reliably killing the pathogens.


But government and industry records obtained by The New York Times show that in testing for the school lunch program, E. coli and salmonella pathogens have been found dozens of times in Beef Products meat, challenging claims by the company and the U.S.D.A. about the effectiveness of the treatment. Since 2005, E. coli has been found 3 times and salmonella 48 times, including back-to-back incidents in August in which two 27,000-pound batches were found to be contaminated. The meat was caught before reaching lunch-rooms trays.

In July, school lunch officials temporarily banned their hamburger makers from using meat from a Beef Products facility in Kansas because of salmonella — the third suspension in three years, records show. Yet the facility remained approved by the U.S.D.A. for other customers.
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Re: OT - The News Thread

BeLeafer said:
Addendum II .... heh

If you want to define fascism so broadly as the 'marriage of state and corporate power', you can label every government of the 'western world' in the 20th century and onward, fascist.

I like to just think of it as the maturation of capitalism. Yes, it's a pretty fascist affair.
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utter tripe. you are clearly a product of a modern western university education, where it has become totally fashionable these days to label everything that isn't socialism as "fascism".

bravo. your mummy and daddy's tuition money seems to have been put to good use.
 
Re: OT - The News Thread

it's old news (anything not reported 'today' is in this the internet age).

but worth posting.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/personal/01/04/dating.site.overweight/index.html

Dating site for beautiful people expels 'fatties' after holiday weight gain

By Mallory Simon, CNN
January 4, 2010 6:52 p.m. EST

(CNN) -- A dating site that markets itself as an elite community for beautiful people with a "strict ban on ugly people" has axed about 5,000 members for packing on the pounds during the holiday season.

The international site BeautifulPeople.com threw out members after they posted photos "revealing that they have let themselves go," according to a company statement.

"As a business, we mourn the loss of any member, but the fact remains that our members demand the high standard of beauty be upheld," said Robert Hintze, founder of BeautifulPeople.com. "Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded."

The site describes itself as an "elite online club, where every member works the door" -- that is, users can join only after enough members vote them "beautiful" during the 48 hours after their profile is uploaded.

And apparently, enough beautiful people were angry that some members had enjoyed a bit too many treats during the holiday season.

So BeautifulPeople.com sent those flagged members e-mails, according to the company statement, telling them they could register again for the site when the extra pudge was gone.

"We responded to complaints by moving the newly chubby members back to the rating stage. This is the same as having them re-apply," Greg Hodge, managing director of BeautifulPeople.com, said in a statement.

The company said it "expelled" 1,520 users from the U.S., 832 from the U.K., 533 from Canada, 510 from Poland, 425 from Germany, 402 from Italy, 323 from France, 220 from Denmark, 176 from Turkey and 88 people from Russia. In the e-mail, it gave users suggestions for boot camps and workout facilities to get themselves back in shape.

Some gave the site a shot again, hoping fellow users might not see them as the "fatties" others had.

"Their re-applications were reviewed by existing members, and only a few hundred were voted back in. Over 5,000 were rejected," Hodge added.

Hodge admits, and has admitted from the time his company started, that his site may not be fair, but people want to date someone they are attracted to.

"Is it elitist? Yes, it is, because our members want it to be," Hodge said when the company started out in 2005. "Is it lookist? Yes, it is, because our members want it to be. Is it PC? No, it's not, but it's honest."

And on this site, beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder; only one in five applicants is normally accepted, a company statement said.

Maintaining those standards is what the site is about, Hodge said, and that's why people were expelled.

"Every year we see that some of our members from Western cultures eat and drink to excess over the holidays, and clearly their looks suffer," he said in a statement. "The U.S.A. has been grossly over-indulging since Thanksgiving. It's no wonder that so many members have been expelled from the network. We hope they will be back after shedding the festive pounds."
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can't let the fatties roam the site. a priceless quote, and probably won't be topped in all of 2010.
 
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