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I apologize for all the missing comments, people. Apparently I had "moderate comments" checked and didn't realize it. Your comments should all come through now. So if I haven't responded to your comments, that was why (I wasn't ignoring anyone!). I'll try to do so as I go back through the posts, but you might not see them.

Or, Vegetarianism versus Eating Cadavers

For certain reasons, I believe that, in my case, eating animals is worse than refusing to eat them. However, I think that it is impossible to state by any rational standard that vegetarians are morally superior to people who eat animals.

After I had been feeling highly hypocritical for a long time, I decided to become a vegetarian a while ago. This was a few months after my fist visit to a zoo in a long time. I had realized that when I look into the eyes of a monkey, a zebra, a tiger, etc. and when I see them interact with others, I feel a deep sympathy towards them. I admire their existences and see that they have feelings just like humans do. Furthermore, I realized that looking at these wonderful creatures does not make me hungry. The sight of the beautiful fur which covers the animal’s flesh does not make my mouth water.

I then realized that this feeling of sympathy and admiration is also present when I look at all the various fishes in an aquarium, at the cows in the fields, at the birds flying through the air etc. As a result, I found it very hard to enjoy cooked parts of these animals without feeling wrong in a certain sense.

Of course, I am a complete hypocrite in a great lot of other regards. However, I found out that I could reduce my overall feeling of hypocrisy by stopping to eat animals, which is hardly a burden anymore nowadays. There are so many delicious substitutes for meat that there have been very few occasions when I felt like I am lacking something.

So, must we consider, for example, the ancient hunter-gatherers hypocrites too? Maybe we do. We cannot know whether they also felt sympathetic towards their prey. However, their situation was clearly different. They not only had fewer alternatives to meat but animals were also either their enemies or competitors. They had fewer opportunities to examine the animals in a safe environment and thus they had fewer opportunities to develop feelings towards them. On the other hand, the improved technical opportunities of our time not only make fences and zoos possible but are also responsible for the emotional detachment of the animals which are slaughtered from the meat which ends up in our stomachs. This and the fact that animals are renamed once they are dead and ready to be grilled are probably the reasons why so many people do not realize their own hypocrisy when they eat animals.

But still, I do not claim that everyone who eats animals is a hypocrite. I know people who become hungry when they see a live cow. And I cannot even say that they should not.

To evaluate this point, let us compare two situations. First, let us imagine a country of vegetarians. No animals are killed for food in this country. But on the other hand, many animals are not even born and given the chance to live a relatively happy life because, today, most animals that are eaten are raised by humans. Compare this country to one where everyone eats meat and thus many animals are raised and once they achieve a certain age they are killed.

Is there any rational standard by which we can judge if a relatively happy life which is forcibly ended is worse than no life at all? There is no such standard because you cannot compare something to nothing. But of course, this serves as no excuse or even justification for killing animals. Nevertheless, eating animals only becomes morally bad—which is not the same as being hypocritical— once we demand that all animals should be as free as we ourselves are. But this is a very different and much more complex discussion, which I will not explore right now.

To conclude, everyone who eats animals despite a strong feeling of sympathy towards them is a hypocrite. However, it is impossible to say that everyone who eats animals is morally inferior (or superior) to a vegetarian.

Tags: Vegetarianism

Sorry about the dearth of updates this month, but it seems like it's not just me. May is crazy month, I guess. (as the first month after Tax Slavery Month, I guess maybe that might have something to do with it) Also, sorry about the slew of unfinished multi-parters. I'll try and get all those threads woven together soon. -------------------------------- One of my favorite methods, or

One thing also that must be understood is that just as there is a black market at the bottom, there is one at the top... The difference in effective wealth between a DuPont or Rockefeller and a successful trial lawyer is greater than the difference between that trial lawyer and a homeless bum. Far greater. The power curve looks like a capital J. I feel safe in saying that no one reading this is

"The State" by Ernest Crosby

They talked much of the State�the State.
I had never seen the State, and I asked them to picture it to me, as my gross mind could not follow their subtle language when they spake of it.
Then they told me to think of it as of a beautiful goddess, enthroned and sceptred, benignly caring for her children.
But for some reason I was not satisfied.
And once upon a time, as I was lying awake at night and thinking, I had as it were a vision,
And I seemed to see a barren ridge of sand beneath a lurid sky;
And lo, against the sky stood out in bold relief a black scaffold and gallows-tree, and from the end of its gaunt arm hung, limp and motionless, a shadowy, empty noose.
And a Voice whispered in my ear, �Behold the State incarnate!�

Oh, crap. Bush is giving a big speech on immigration tonight, and Drudge reports that he’s sending the National Guard to the border. I predict future generations will see this as a step on the road to a total police state on an order of magnitude similar to the effect of 9/11. We’re all about to become a lot more suspicious to law enforcement.

Because that’s the only way this will work: keeping people from crossing the borders of this country will never work. We can’t even keep inanimate objects like drugs out. Only now that there’s a big military crackdown, the price for getting into the country is rising even more - and the human smugglers will have an even bigger profit motivation to bring people across the border in even worse conditions. All this will ensure is that the people who end up getting across will be even more destitute and desperate, thereby exacerbating the problems illegal immigrants have already been causing our society.

Scarier yet, however, is the precedent this will set for a monitoring of society on a scale we’ve never dreamed. Suddenly, finding auslaender will be a priority - and that means all of us will be under further scrutiny, even if we’re upstanding citizens.

• Expect more random traffic stops as law enforcement tries to cast a wide net.
• Expect cops giving everybody a careful eye, even when you’re doing nothing wrong - but especially if you’re doing something out of the ordinary. Suddenly, individuality and standing out from the crowd becomes a real hassle.
• Expect random demands to present your papers to officers. And I predict there will be even more hassles if immigration arrests and resulting asset forfeitures are linked directly to funding these operations and the participating agencies and local police departments.
• Expect more crime as the marginalized immigrants become even more desperate and convinced the law has no value whatsoever, while the prioritization of catching illegals crowds out resources for legitimate crime fighting.
• Expect industries heavily depending on illegal immigrant labor to either get shut down completely or form agreements on the down low with government officials, forming de facto cartels and loweing competition.
• Expect thousands of mistaken identity cases. I predict the enforcement initiative will expressly deny rights to non-citizens and any citizens under suspicion of being illegal.
• Expect new appeals for national pride.
• Expect detention camps for the crowds of “untouchables” who will overwhelm an already crowded prison system.
• Expect the prison industrial complex to experience a wash of new fear money as the government tries to keep up with the arrests.
• Finally, expect these activities to be integrated into the “War on Terror” and eventually used against citizens as we become acclimated to living in a police state.

This is all to say nothing of the unforeseeable consequences these policies will have.

The goal of anti-immigration policy, it seems, is to make this an undesirable country to which to immigrate, to say nothing of the experience of us natives. By giving law enforcement and the military new roles in the monitoring and management of the population, government will get a new, dynamic leg in the door leading to authoritarianism. Forget about non-Americans who want to live here for just one second, and think - is this the America we Americans want to live in?

Tags: immigration, police state, bush, military, national guard

I expected Bush to nominate a military guy for the CIA post left open by Goss, but this is scary:

If Hayden were confirmed, military officers would run all the major spy agencies, from the ultra-secret National Security Agency to the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Fascism, here we come! I don’t care how supposedly non-conformist this Hayden guy is: everybody should be hitting the panic button on this one. It’s one thing to have an organization whose number one purpose is the propogation of elite control and management of economic, political, and social dimensions of our existence. It’s a whole different issue when that mission - which has been merging with outright military governance for some time - simply becomes another branch of our war effort.

It’s a trend that has been going on for some time, with Army intelligence officials rising in the succession order and the bureaucratic integration of the military with law enforcement and intelligence, starting with the Drug War and reaching its latest apex in this War on Terror. The pretense of citizen oversight has been abandonded in favor of a rapid regimentation of all government functions. And what bureaucracy is more orderly and solid than the military? Why not just turn government into the military, avoid even the appearance of independent thought and oversight, and scare the hell out of any potential whistleblowers or leakers?

As long as we keep showing up every four years and picking what flavor of elite we prefer, we can just butt out from the real action. Outrage after outrage: this must be what it felt like to live in Weimar Germany during the latter days. The reaction isn’t so much anger: it’s a population completely stunned, caught off guard, and unable to process events. I’m trying to determine the maximum amount of time a population can be punched in the face before they wake up from the shock and realize the attack for what it is. Problem is, to date, I can’t even muster the credulity to believe what’s been going on before my very eyes…

Tags: cia, military, bush, intelligence, current events

This installment of Understanding the Neoconservative Gestalt is really kind of a joke, since I really just want to highlight a very interesting discussion at Right Thinking Girl, and this hilarious statement by one of the conservative participants:

Borders ARE real. Borders ARE truth, Jeremy. Try walking into Iran or North Korea.

You see? INS and border security policy are matters of absolute truth. Fundamentalist and authoritarian regimes aren’t arbitrarily violent - they’re prosecuting the received word. Conservatives are motivated by a desire to realize in politics objective absolutes like borders between nations, laws, etc. There’s no room for debate, because if you don’t accept A is A then we can’t have a discussion.

NOTE: To be fair, I’m not sure this particular dude qualifies as a dyed in the wool neoconservative - maybe neoliberal.

Tags: immigration, ontology, humor

What did the original socialists envision to be the owner and controller of the economy? Did they think it ought to be the state? Did they favor nationalization? Or did they want something else entirely? Let’s have a look, going right back to the late 18^th Century, through the 19th and into the 20th, and see what important socialists and socialist organizations thought.

*Thomas Spence – farm land and industry owned by join stock companies, all farmers and workers as voting shareholders.

* St. Simon – a system of voluntary corporations

* Ricardian Socialists – worker coops

* Owen – industrial coops and cooperative intentional communities

* Fourier – the Phlanistery – an intentional community

* Cabet - industry owned by the municipality (“commune” in French, hence commune-ism)

* Flora Tristan – worker coops

* Proudhon – worker coops financed by Peoples Bank – a kind of credit union that issued money.

* Greene – mutualist banking system allowing farmers and workers to own means of production.

* Lasalle – worker coops financed by the state – for which he was excoriated by Marx as a “state socialist”

* Marx – a “national system of cooperative production”

* Tucker - mutualist banking system allowing farmers and workers to own means of production.

* Dietzgen – cooperative production

* Knights of Labor – worker coops

* Parsons – workers ownership and control of production

* Vanderveldt – socialist society as a ‘giant cooperative”

* Socialist Labor Party – industry owned and run democratically thru the Socialist Industrial Unions

* Socialist Party USA – until late 1920’s emphasized workers control of production.

* CGT France, 1919 Program - mixed economy with large industry owned by stakeholder coops.

* IWW – democratically run through the industrial unions.

* Socialist Party of Canada, Socialist Party of Great Britain, 1904-05 program – common ownership, democratically run – both parties, to this very day, bitterly opposed to nationalization.

* SDP – Erfurt Program 1892 – Minimum program includes a mixed economy of state, cooperative and municipal industries. While often considered a state socialist document, in reality it does not give predominance to state ownership.

Well? Where’s the statism? All these socialisms have one thing in common, a desire to create an economy where everyone has a share and a say.

Why The Confusion

The state did play a role in the Marxist parties of the Second International. But its role was not to nationalize industry and create a vast bureaucratic state socialist economy. Put simply, the workers parties were to be elected to the national government, and backed by the trade unions, cooperative movement and other popular organizations, would expropriate the big capitalist enterprises. Three things would then happen: 1. The expropriated enterprises handed over to the workers organizations, coops and municipalities. 2, The army and police disbanded and replaced by worker and municipal militias. 3. Political power decentralized to the cantonal and

municipal level and direct democracy and federalism introduced. These three aspects are the famous “withering away of the state” that Marx and Engels talked about.

The first problem with this scenario was that the workers parties never got a majority in parliament. So they began to water-down their program and adopt a lot of the statist reformism of the liberal reformers. Due to the Iron Law of Oligarchy the parties themselves became sclerotic and conservative. Then WW1 intervened, splitting the workers parties into hostile factions. Finally, under the baleful influence of the Fabians, the Bolsheviks and the “success” of state capitalism in the belligerent nations, the definition of socialism began to change from one of democratic and worker ownership and control to nationalization and statism. The new post-war social democracy began to pretend that state ownership/control was economic democracy since the state was democratic. This, as we see from the list above, was not anything like the economic democracy envisaged by the previous generations of socialists and labor militants.