I thought it appropriate that on a day where the Pope has passed, that something be offered that shows the depth of this man's thinking, and the humanity he touched by offerring his opinion to many issues.

quote:

---

"Why do the working people in Poland - and everywhere else for that matter - have the right to such a dialogue? It is because the working man is not a mere tool of production, but he is the subject which throughout the process of production takes precedence over the capital. By the fact of his labor, the man becomes the true master of his workshop, of the process of labor, of the fruits of his toil and of their distribution. He is also ready for sacrifices if he feels that he is a real partner and has a say in the just division of what has been produced by common effort".

---

Bold highlight by myself.

We are often reminded of the fall of communism and part of this history was played out in the Gdansk Shipyard. Reading Lech Walesa's Nobel prize speech, is quite enlightening.

To those, who age of reason has not yet experienced the struggled that life sometimes prepares for us, resistance we must be experience to effect change?

These are not sheep who wondered aimlessly but people who recognized the dignity in a capitalistic system or communistic systrem that would control the people.

To me, this struggle was the struggle of the working class to break free of the restrains that held it's people under the brutal regimes stripping people of their rights and freedoms.

Their integrity as a working class people deserved to be recognized. Who would profit from the relationships that labour toiled and such profit gained?

It is quickly realized that such capitalistic system or communistic, would quickly strip the man of his dignity, would think twice, when it is realized that such processes are based on the economy of those same class systems.

How quickly this solidarity might be in it's dynamics that it would move quickly this way and that way, with its monetary provisions to secure good prices from those that would profit from the loss of value, by emptying of the pockets of families who struggle to survive.

The Pope practised good philosophy from what I have heard and read over this day.

[ 02 April 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

Oh, for crying out loud!

The man was the leader of a regressive reactionary cult! He was homophobic, sexist and opposed things like sex ed., contraception and abortion! Whatever "progressive thinking" the man did on social matters was clearly is stark contradictions with the principles of the church he lead.

This Pope shit is really fucking annoying me. I think you're letting the stupid sycophantic news coverage get to your head.

[ 02 April 2005: Message edited by: Surferosad ]

When in the 1980's Pope JPII visited Managua, Nicaragua many in the crowd chanted for him to pray for their family members who'd been killed in the "contra war". Pope JP II's response was to scream into the microphone "SILENCIO!".

quote:

---

Originally posted by Surferosad:
The depth of the man's thinking?!

Oh, for crying out loud!

The man was the leader of a regressive reactionary cult! He was homophobic, sexist and opposed things like sex ed., contraception and abortion! Whatever "progressive thinking" the man did on social matters was clearly is stark contradictions with the principles of the church he lead.

This Pope shit is really fucking annoying me. I think you're letting the stupid sycophantic news coverage get to your head.

[ 02 April 2005: Message edited by: Surferosad ]

---

It is obvious you did not read the quote and the link it was contexted too.

You are one of those young whipper snappers that does not really have a good comprehension of the struggles of the working class at all. If you did you'd understand what the pope is saying?

The philosphical basis of insight into the problems being caught under those same regimes, you have a man who developed perspective about not only the Jewish problem, and it's anti-sematic extermination in world war 2, but of the communistic one, after Russian rolled in and took over this country.

See not only is the mind supposed to be developed here in terms of science, but it also must have some education and sensitivity to the plight of any peoples anywhere.

To sense the importance of what is being expounded in a society that might be in the gripps of almost anything. An idealization, taken over the group in its most deverse forms, as you like to try and do with your skeptical allegiance(nice religion you have there . You would have to be able tstandback and access this. You are obviously not capable of doing this yet.

You class yourself even when you think your not classed

quote:

---

Originally posted by radiorahim:

As for Lech Walesa and Solidarnosc, once in power they introduced Friedmanite "shock therapy" to the economy throwing millions out of work. In effect, throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

---

Sorry, it was about effective change and what could arise in a society. The second part is a after effect, that I did not draw attention too, but this does not hurt what the propspectve changes thta could arise. What determination did this society have at the time?

Communistic value failed and they are in the grips of a new system of change, yet it teetering dangerous if it thinks it can not include the freedom and expressions of souls respectively.

quote:

---

Originally posted by'lance:
quote:
~~~~~~
Rallied Poland to rebel against the communists, almost crediting him to kicking off a (reletively) peaceful regection of Communism.
~~~~~~~

That's not true. When martial law was declared, he counselled patience and quiescence -- at least, implicitly. The then-Archbishop of Poland appeared on television with Gen. Jaruzelski. This was widely understood in Poland to mean that the Church had no particular problem with the new regime.

---

If Poland had been under a right wing military dictatorship like the ones that were oppressing South Americans at the same time (instead of a communist atheistic regime), I'm sure that the pope's support for "polish freedom" would have been a lot less clear (if it ever was clear).

Each time some big kahuna dies, the media goes into binges of historical revisionism... When Reagan died, he was the one being credited with the fall of communism and whatnot...

[ 03 April 2005: Message edited by: Surferosad ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by forum observer:

I thought it appropriate that on a day where the Pope has passed, that something be offered that shows the depth of this man's thinking, and the humanity he touched by offerring his opinion to many issues.

Bold highlight by myself.

We are often reminded of the fall of communism and part of this history was played out in the Gdansk Shipyard. Reading Lech Walesa's Nobel prize speech, is quite enlightening.

To those, who age of reason has not yet experienced the struggled that life sometimes prepares for us, resistance we must be experience to effect change?

These are not sheep who wondered aimlessly but people who recognized the dignity in a capitalistic system or communistic systrem that would control the people.

[snip]
[ 02 April 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

---

I shall read that link to that speach. I wonder if it was truely educating or a promise manufactoring enterprise.

Which communism?
"Communism is the position as the negation of the negation, and is hence the actual phase necessary for the next stage of historical development in the process of human emancipation and rehabilitation. Communism is the necessary form and the dynamic principle of the immediate future, but communism *as such* is not the goal of human development, the form of human society. [34]

The Pope practised good philosophy from what I have heard and read over this day.

I should qualify this some more.

By not being more forthcoming about having previous knowledge about the links set up with Lech Walesa and the information about the Pope.

I made it appear as, that day and you took it as that. The news reports in regards to the history of the Pope and his philospohical tendencies reveal much more of the man then the papacy? Although, the politics would have been based on these leanings, as a growth of the Catholic religion under his papacy as you suggest.

The thread on communism incites these thoughts as well.

Solidarity is a powerful thing when people stand together for effective change. This is something that had to make sense in one's own heart, for without this conviction, it is a empty road to resolution.

My interests are in the struggle of any people out of the predicaments that life seems to corner with regards to individuals, populations. I have learnt that some in this generation are not so eager to resist, fight for their rights, and are quick to judge those they work side by side with?

Such autocratic systems, ask for greater participation in the roles that we can play in democratic systems. Without some resistance, do you think there could ever be negotiated processes that would meet somewhere in the middle instead of, to far, either left or right?

Wihout some kind of resistance, the world could have been easily taken advantage of. To those who were less inclined to follow the rules of the bylaws of these institutions which we opted into, to make sure, we are protected from gross misjustices that could run rampant.

These are some of the components for effective models of change.

If you can't understand this, I don't think you should call yourself a progressive.

To me this has political intonations, yet I am well aware of the balance that the far left brings to the far right. You see?

I am hoping for a much truer manifestaion of principles that would govern a country like Canada without the pressure felt by those instigating corporate idealizations to control vast proportions of the population. Americanization takeover of a good democratic country I like to call home. It presents many diverse aspects of the population under constitutions that gaurantees the rights and freedoms.

Lets look at the country of Tibet for a moment and the Chinese invasion. Do you know many contries where the governemnt is is located outside of its borders. Do you know of the many countries that realize the strength of its leadership and do not question the principles of the budhhistic nature that mind could engage?

Like the Pope, the Dalai Lama, is a trememdous figure of a individual who engages the priciples of mind in our endeavors, to somehow make this a topic of becoming abetter individual. I mention previous that the constitution that he drew up would allow the people to choose its leadership.

[ 04 April 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

quote:

---

In Poland, the former Gdansk Shipyard, point of origin of the Solidarity Trade Union, is closed and now a museum piece. Over 20% of the labor force is officially unemployed (Financial Times, Feb. 21/22, 2004) and has been for the better part of the decade. Another 30% is "employed" in marginal, low paid jobs (prostitution, contraband, drugs, flea markets, street venders and the underground economy). In Bulgaria, Rumania, Latvia, and East Germany similar or worse conditions prevail: The average real per capita growth over the past 15 years is far below the preceding 15 years under communism (especially if we include the benefits of health care, education, subsidized housing and pensions). Moreover economic inequalities have grown geometrically with 1% of the top income bracket controlling 80% of private assets and more than 50% of income while poverty levels exceed 50% or even higher. In the former USSR, especially south-central Asian republics like Armenia, Georgia, and Uzbekistan, living standards have fallen by 80%, almost one fourth of the population has out-migrated or become destitute and industries, public treasuries and energy sources have been pillaged. The scientific, health and educational systems have been all but destroyed. In Armenia, the number of scientific researchers declined from 20,000 in 1990 to 5,000 in 1995, and continues on a downward slide (National Geographic, March 2004). From being a center of Soviet high technology, Armenia today is a country run by criminal gangs in which most people live without central heat and electricity.

---

I wonder if Poles realized exactly whose freedom the Pope, Maggie, Ronnie and well-heeled friends were meaning at the time ?. Wither Polish capitalism ?.

Poland 15 years later

And while Maggie proclaimed solidarity for Poles, she and Milton Friedman waged war on unions back home.

[ 04 April 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]

You leave a vacuum and it will be quickly filled? Long ranges plans are defintiely on corporate minds , so why are they not on those who would want effective change?

We don't have to visit pot luck supper gatherings if we don't want too, but there is still a vital part we can play without moving to far right and abandoning principles of fair wage and equity??

The people were better off under communism and putting up with trade embargos by the Nazis, er ... I mean multinational corporations and banking elite. We've all been had.

Viva la revolucion!

[ 04 April 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]

Ouch! That's a pretty wide sweeping statement. It sounds familiar

But I believe people are inherently good and want to do the right thing. Are not evil

quote:

---

Originally posted by forum observer:

But I believe people are inherently good and want to do the right thing. Are not evil

Something odd about that link and the favorites displayed. Should I be paying attention closer?

---

I believe people are intrinsically good, too. I think it was Canada's David Frum who is credited with coining, "axis of evil" for the benefit of religious fundamentalists. I think that some on the right believe we are all driven by the seven deadly sins. I think it's possibly true of them and their kind. They're a minority of us, thank goodness.

The link was to silenttheft.com I think Bollier quotes Polanyi and Gerard Winstanley's Digger Movement is discussing how feudalists, and now capitalists, went about cordoning off public land and creating oppressive labour laws for their own benefit. Essentially how the common good was replaced by individual property rights and now, the corporate good. Linda McQuaig does a fantastic job of dissecting free market theology herself.

quote:

---

They hang the man and flog the woman

that steal the goose from off the common.

But let the greater villain loose

that steals the common from the goose.

English folk poem, Circa 1764

---

[ 04 April 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]

The annual G7/G8 Summit brings together leaders of the world’s richest nations - France, the United States, Britain, Germany, Japan, Italy and Canada, a process that began in 1975. Russia has also been in attendance ( though not a full member) since 1994 . The meetings consider economic policy issues as well as, political and security matters. Though not an "institution", the G7/8 is an important global policy making process at the highest level. In addition to the annual meeting of heads of state and governments, there are also annual meetings of foreign ministers and other ad hoc ministerial meetings. For many years protests and alternative events have critized the summit for defending the interests of the rich and powerful at the expense of most of the world's people.

I wanted to be a little more specific on what the seven deadly sins were. They are based on this, the WTO.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Rufus Polson:
If people were inherently good we wouldn't be in this mess. People are inherently mixed. And they come in various mixes.
Systems designed to enable good people still need ways to deal with the occasional total asshole. Because if they don't, it will only take one to kill it for everybody.

---

Hi Rufus,

I had a talk with my wife this morning about some of the issues of religious states and the patriarchial leanings they all have. To me the Catholic system is very archaic. Such developements are oppressive to woman, and the rights they feel here in terms of the right to choose, as their self dignity being espuged.

I have to hear it some more here.

Part of the global perspective to me is this relationhip that would seek to find balance amongst the left and right, to encourage higher harmonicial transcendence. Is there such a thing?

Looking at the environment, is it conducive for probable predictions coming from a well adjusted emotional/intellectual secure individual? Who could excell from Canadian improved family(a definition of the society that is taken into the political arena) relations, where such nurture could have found and established new heights within the context of Canada's borders.

In our house, politics is finely tuned right now? Which way could it fall? Such transcendance, might have found it's opportunity right now?

This is to make Candians understand that they can play a pivitol role?

Can we to our neighbors down south show how quickly one could succumbed to the values of protectionism? Which, has hurt foreign relationships.

How do you make such a "entanglement," as shown in the house, build pride for future communitive relations that have been dictated by the United states and it's corporate zeal of ownership?

Trade Sanctions

The Government of Canada announced today that it will retaliate against the United States in light of its failure to comply with the World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling on the Byrd Amendment. Following extensive consultations with domestic stakeholders, Canada will impose a 15 percent surtax on U.S. live swine, cigarettes, oysters and certain specialty fish, starting May 1, 2005.

Today, the Commission of the European Union has proposed imposing retaliatory measures as trade sanctions on certain products from the United States. Canada continues to cooperate closely with all seven WTO Members that have received authorization to retaliate. These countries may also exercise their retaliatory rights over the next few months.

Once the rules are developed within the context of what "you practise comes home to roost in American society," very quickly, society will see where the business interest has always prevailed above the interest of the public.

Strong family relations and stability go a long way to demonstrating that such security built within the confines of it's youth, will hopefully be the stronger visionaries/formulated views of what we want this Canada to become. Not what is dictated by the WTO in it's long jurisdictional thinking to fair balance. We will see how protectionism has hurt it's founding members. Will hurt it's prospective countries.

Three Amigos

Strengthening economic and security ties with the U.S. and Mexico will also strengthen Canadian sovereignty, Prime Minister Paul Martin says.

"If you're competitive, if your standard of living is rising, then in fact what you're doing is strengthening your sovereignty," he told reporters Wednesday in Waco, Tex. after his summit with presidents of the United States and Mexico.

It's not, in bold. Maybe in some people eyes who property rights have certainly increased in that same corporate zeal.

But while we "resist" such changes to our sovereignty, the Three Amigos have been busy.

Makes a lot of sense to me, that such a relation would be built, while the ineffectvesness of Nafta has been shown? Court rulings and all. They want to expand the borders of its definition to security, and all other definitions that would strip the Canadian people of the sovereignty that it has gained from seeking independance?

It would be a magical feat to remain establish and maintain this balance in the house especially from a three way split?

Continued Privatization is the Liberal Agenda and Paul Martin continues to take this stance.

Competitvesness does not say we should take the inherent propery rights of the Canadian soil and sell it off to American interest. So that we can can compete on the open market for what we already maintained.

Why would something so idiotic as has been established in our thinking, to think the WTO is the right way to go?

It's a a psychological cover for acceptance of the rules and definitions of what had been set out by the WTO( is this higher estabished view of constitutional rights then Canadian principles?).

When the trade war is all said and done, are we suppose to feel better? Transcendance of over the seven deadly sins, recognizes a higher standard within our own house in Canada, and any attempts to ursup constitutional reforms, is always a attack on the vitality of it's people?

Well We Know Who Three of the Amigos are?

[ 04 April 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by forum observer:

. . . .

Such autocratic systems, ask for greater participation in the roles that we can play in democratic systems. Without some resistance, do you think there could ever be negotiated processes that would meet somewhere in the middle instead of, to far, either left or right?

. . . .

To me this has political intonations, yet I am well aware of the balance that the far left brings to the far right. You see?

. . . .

[ 04 April 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

---

Ah, political centrism! Last refuge of practical metaphysics!

"The Left balances the Right and the Whole is in Harmony! Let none disturb this Balance! For it is Eternal!"

[ 05 April 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

               0
               I
              /I\
             / I \
            /  I  \
           0   0   0
           1   2   3 

Yours was a generalized a comment and could be consider "fictional" without some concrete information to back it up.

But don't get me wrong, a dot within a circle can be a powerful imagine too

Did you see the "paradox" of soveriegnty versus sovereignty? I wish I was a better writer. I have failed you

[ 05 April 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by forum observer:
Yours was a generalized a comment and could be consider "fictional" without some concrete information to back it up.

---

Oh, that's funny!

The metaphysician demanding I give "concrete information".

quote:

---

The old method of investigation and thought which Hegel calls “metaphysical”, which preferred to investigate things as given, as fixed and stable, a method the relics of which still strongly haunt people’s minds, had a great deal of historical justification in its day. It was necessary first to examine things before it was possible to examine processes. One had first to know what a particular thing was before one could observe the changes it was undergoing. And such was the case with natural science. The old metaphysics, which accepted things as finished objects, arose from a natural science which investigated dead and living things as finished objects. But when this investigation had progressed so far that it became possible to take the decisive step forward, that is, to pass on the systematic investigation of the changes which these things undergo in nature itself, then the last hour of the old metaphysic struck in the realm of philosophy also. And in fact, while natural science up to the end of the last century was predominantly a collecting science, a science of finished things, in our century it is essentially a systematizing science, a science of the processes, of the origin and development of these things and of the interconnection which binds all these natural processes into one great whole. Physiology, which investigates the processes occurring in plant and animal organisms; embryology, which deals with the development of individual organisms from germs to maturity; geology, which investigates the gradual formation of the Earth’s surface — all these are the offspring of our century.

---

From Engels' Ludwig Feuerbach.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/ch04.htm#005

Basically, I'm chiding the metaphysical idea of political centrism, which holds that there is an identifiable "balance" between the Left and the Right, much like that of a balancing scale. If the balance is ever "disturbed", the Left or Right getting more powerful than the other, the whole structure comes crashing down.

Show me this "center" you believe in.

quote:

---

But don't get me wrong, a dot within a circle can be a powerful imagine too

---

If you're thinking of the Taoist symbol for the unity and intermingling of opposites, that might be a fine crude picture for some things, but politics isn't it (aside from stating the obvious that it's full of contradictions, like life).

quote:

---

Did you see the "paradox" of soveriegnty versus sovereignty? I wish I was a better writer. I have failed you

[ 05 April 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

---

Explain it to me. Or tell me which of your previous posts does, then I'll look there for the explanation.

I've got time.

quote:

---

---

quote:

---

Three Amigos

Strengthening economic and security ties with the U.S. and Mexico will also strengthen Canadian sovereignty, Prime Minister Paul Martin says.

"If you're competitive, if your standard of living is rising, then in fact what you're doing is strengthening your sovereignty," he told reporters Wednesday in Waco, Tex. after his summit with presidents of the United States and Mexico.

It's not, in bold. Maybe in some people eyes whose property rights have certainly increased in that same corporate zeal.

But while we "resist" such changes to our sovereignty, the Three Amigos have been busy.

---

So while Martin saids Sovereignty has been strenghtened, I counter with, "while we resist changes too." Is Paul Martin right, or am I?

quote:

---

Basically, I'm chiding the metaphysical idea of political centrism, which holds that there is an identifiable "balance" between the Left and the Right, much like that of a balancing scale. If the balance is ever "disturbed", the Left or Right getting more powerful than the other, the whole structure comes crashing down.

---

I understood you quite well I think, I just drew your attention to the fact that there are three parties that can function within the context and dynamics of the House while the fourth could swing the vote for or against? Crap. I had forgotten about the fourth. But ultimate your right, "Nay or ye"

quote:

---

Show me this "center" you believe in.

---

You got time eh?

I'll give a scientific explanation to see if you can get the jest of it and then I'll bring something else into the picture for you.

it turns out that within string theory ... there is actually an identification, we believe, between the very tiny and the very huge. So it turns out that if you, for instance, take a dimension - imagine its in a circle, imagine its really huge - and then you make it smaller and smaller and smaller, the equations tell us that if you make it smaller than a certain length (its about 10-33 centimeters, the so called 'Planck Length') ... its exactly identical, from the point of view of physical properties, as making the circle larger. So you're trying to squeeze it smaller, but actually in reality your efforts are being turned around by the theory and you're actually making the dimension larger. So in some sense, if you try to squeeze it all the way down to zero size, it would be the same as making it infinitely big. ... (CSPAN Archives Videotape #125054)

Now if you comprehend GR, you gain this sense of momentum when you look at the Mercuries orbits or Hulse and Taylor's nobel prize winning work Quantum harmonic oscillators, become of interesting as does your scale comparison as it reveal some of the dynamcis nature curvature would have applied of mass(material things)

You present the Taoist symbol and such a exchange beteen the dark and the light would indicate that such values would contain the seed of the other? Maybe like Heart and Truth?

That In death, you would judge your own self? As to the progress you made? The pain you caused, You would feel?

Ultimately, this symbolize the state of existance, that had culminated in your life, that you would know the note and chord struck, would define your future?

Because there is a distinction between dark and light, the line becomes indistinquishable when you consider, that the line is defined, either by the light or the dark, which ever you prefer? A Taoist knows how to walk that fine balance without being effected. That's what I heard anyway

If you recognize the aspect of "change," Brian Green gives us to ponder in the quote I wrote of his and the subsequent link associated, imagine then, that you could turn things inside/out? We do all the time.

So you use this schematic drawing of the circle to reveal some of the psychological possibilties(mandalas explored by Jung) that cultures have laid over top of this plan, and revealled to us, the sense of wholeness. This could only be experienced if you knew that you could move to this center, and realize the vastness with which you had engaged?

IMagine then, that from this vastness outward, all life is expressed from this inside out? This is no different for each of us.

If we had consider the effect of symmetry breaking we would have well known the universe became what it is, objectively defined. Or the ideas manifested, in objectively define results.

We would had to accpet that supersymmetrical realizations can exist? We had to look for signs of this.

Symmetry: Dimensions of particle Physics

[ 06 April 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

It's people! Soylent Green is made out of PEOPLE!

[ 06 April 2005: Message edited by: obscurantist ]

In an overpopulated futuristic Earth, a New York police detective finds himself marked for murder by government agents when he gets too close to a bizarre state secret involving the origins of a revolutionary and needed new foodstuff.

quote:

---

Originally posted by forum observer:
In an overpopulated futuristic Earth, a New York police detective finds himself marked for murder by government agents when he gets too close to a bizarre state secret involving the origins of a revolutionary and needed new foodstuff.

---

I was expressing my somewhat pedantic concern about the increasingly common misuse of the apostrophe in the words "its" (possessive) and "it's" (contraction of "it is").

Obscurantist

quote:

---

opposition to the spread of knowledge : a policy of withholding knowledge from the general public

2 a : a style (as in literature or art) characterized by deliberate vagueness or abstruseness b : an act or instance of obscurantism

---

It was yor name that through me off of the content of your post, your vagueness. So I immediately had to response from what little information I had. I lost sight of the greater meaning you might have wanted to imply. Sorry.

In this case, your personae, and the content, were all that I could think of. It was educative

[ 07 April 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
opposition to the spread of knowledge : a policy of withholding knowledge from the general public