Yes. In my opinion, conservatism is always bad. Conservatism is always and everywhere at all times elite rule and only elite rule. Some support elite rule. I don’t. I support popular rule. I say elite rule is bad. Since elite rule is always bad, conservatism is always bad. Real simple. In addition, conservatism is almost always dishonest. As an elite philosophy, you can either be honest about your goals and say you are working to better the elite and harm everyone else – say, the top 2
But this continuous lying results in a destruction of Politics. There’s not much of a democracy left when almost the entire media is lying their fool heads off day and night. The population is bewildered at best or brainwashed at worst. This is the sort of “democracy” we have here in America. It’s hardly a democracy at all! Erranter asks if we should not be bashing conservatives.
Doesn’t a conservative just mean someone who is fine with the way things are going, the status quo? There are places where the status quo is democracy and none of those above things. I don’t think it’s fair to attach “bad” to the very definition of conservative and “good” to progressive. That’s changing the definitions which people use to communicate and permanently attaching a moral judgment. It’s also unequivocal that conservatives are bad, because a part of this new definition is that they are bad.
Someone who is fine with the way things are going, the status quo – No, that is not what conservatism means. Conservatism is elite rule. It always has been, it is now, and it always will be. Some things never change. Elites hate democracy. The Republican Party hates democracy. Notice how they are always trying to repress voter turnout. Heavy turnout is always bad for the elite Republicans. Given half a chance, sane electorates generally vote for popular rule (the Left) and against elite rule (the Right). Why would any electorate voluntarily vote against popular rule and for elite rule? They would have to be out of their minds (like the US electorate). It’s hard to vote in elite rule. People don’t like it too much. So conservatives usually need to rule by dictatorship in one form or another. Once Latin America got rid of the dictatorships, the first thing the people did was vote in the Left. There are only a few places on Earth where US style hard rightwing conservatives are actually voted into power, and those elections are problematic because the popular, anti-elite candidates of the Left are typically murdered. The US Guatemala El Salvador (though the Left is starting to win now) Colombia Chile Turkey The Philippines That’s about it. The conservatives in El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Turkey and the Philippines all rule by terror. They all run death squads and slaughter the Left. In the Philippines, conservatives run as populists who will fight and get rid of poverty, so that’s not really US conservatism. In Colombia, Guatemala and El Salvador, conservatives usually run on a platform of “kill the Communists (the Left).” Everywhere else on Earth, people generally vote in some sort of a liberal to socialist type government. All of Africa has generally been run by popular Leftwing parties, with a few exceptions in Zaire and Kenya. They haven’t done a very good job of popular rule, but US style conservatism simply does not exist there. In North Africa, most of the governments are socialist. Morocco was always the outlier, as it was ruled by a rightwing king, but he’s a dictator. All of the Arab World is generally run by some type of socialist party or other. US style conservatism never takes power there. All of the former Soviet Republics are now run by some type of socialist government or other. All of Europe is being run by some type of socialist government or other, with the possible exception of Great Britain. The UK was always the outlier. US style conservatism ruled under Thatcher, but she was probably the most hated ruler in the 20th Century UK, and she couldn’t get much done. Russia is run by a socialist regime under Putin. The Iranian religious government has always been socialist in nature. It’s hard to characterize the Karzai regime, but it is not US conservatism. The Pakistani government is very hard to characterize, but it is not US style conservatism. The recently assassinated leader, Benazir Bhutto, was a socialist. The President, her widower, is also a socialist. Since Independence, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka have generally been run by socialist regimes of one type or another. Myanmar is run by a regime that calls itself socialist. Singapore has a social democracy. SE Asia has been run by socialists since 1975. Thailand typically had rightwing military government. Recently, a progressive, Thaksin, was elected. He was extremely popular, but the conservative elite threw him out in a coup like they often do. At any rate, US style conservatism does not exist in Thailand. China is run by a socialist party. Mongolia is run by socialists. Japan has been a social democracy since 1945. True, South Korea was always a rightwing regime, but recently they elected a leftwinger. Taiwan was always ruled by a rightwing dictatorship, but I am not sure who is in power since independence. They have had a social democracy for a while now. Indonesia was always run by a rightwing dictatorship, but they recently went to democracy. The present leader has begun a number of socialist programs.
In the comments, Matt astutely notes about Republicans’ willful promotion of stupidity:
Rob, You may remember how conservatives at one time were writing all those books about how l “liberal” education policies were making American children stoopid (Closing of the American Mind, Don’t Know Much About…, Cultural Literacy). Whether their idea of the causation was correct or not, they were right; Americans are stoopid. But you’ll notice they’ve mostly shut up about it. They must have figured out that the poorly educated and the willfully ignorant were their base.
Good point Matt. Of course that’s their base. Sure, a lot of people who vote Democrat aren’t very smart, but that’s just the way they are, and nothing can be done about it. Anyway, the Democratic Party in general is not hostile to science and does not promote complete and utter stupidity, except when they parrot GOP ideas and concepts. What’s funny is that I’m sure the guys running the GOP are very smart people. No doubt they are often very intellectual guys. But they willfully peddle Stupid Juice by tankload to the masses, and they know full well what they are doing. It’s disgusting, but there’s a method to their madness. If they could get people to vote rightwing by peddling intelligence, I’m sure they would do that instead. What’s disturbing is that conservatives have always promoted ignorance and stupidity everywhere they’ve been in power and at all times. The priests of the Middle Ages would not let the Bible be translated, because they didn’t want their flocks to learn to read. The Taliban burn down girls’ schools. The Nazis burned books. When Fujimori seized power in Peru, he shut down most of the nation’s universities as hotbeds of subversion. The army raided the universities, ransakcked them, tore them to pieces, raided libraries and destroyed all the books, on and on. The universities were later reopened, and students shuffled back to campus, appalled at their trashed schools. Funding for the universities was gutted, and the books in the libraries were never replaced. Curiously, Peruvian polls consistently show that a majority of Peruvians support Fujimori, so I guess Peruvians are even more retarded than Americans. At least we don’t send in the army to tear down UCLA and burn all the books in the library while the population cheers. Not yet anyway. I guess that’s in the future. A similar thing happened in El Salvador under rightwing rule. The universities were shuttered as hotbeds of subversion. Under Pinochet in Chile, funding for the public schools was gutted, and your average Chilean public school now is literally falling apart. The wealthy send their kids to public schools, so they don’t care. Not quite pro-stupidity, more like “we don’t want the masses educated.” The same happened in Argentina, where funding for the public schools was incredibly transferred to private schools, leaving the public schools tottering and and decrepit. This is essentially what the Right in the US wants to do with their vouchers scheme. The ruling elites have always feared that an educated population would figure out the rich people’s scam and cut off some of the loot or transfer some to themselves, so conservatives everywhere and at all times have attacked the education of the masses. The motto of conservatives is that the dumber the people are, the easier they will be for us to manipulate. I am ashamed to admit that the worst Communists who ever lived, the Khmer Rogue, deliberately targeted any urban person with an education. They often signaled out those who worse glasses for execution. One wonders how much the national IQ went down during Khmer Rogue rule. Mao executed intellectual dissidents during the 100 Flowers Campaign. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao shuttered universities and sent students to the work the fields with the peasants. The argument was that intellectual students were a privileged elite. Stalin’s purges in the 1930’s disproportionately targeted the intellectual leadership of various ethnicities who he distrusted. Otherwise, Communists have been some of the most pro-educational governments in the history of man, but we do have some shameful backsliding. Any time your government is mass imprisoning and/or executing the intellectuals of society, it seems to me that the state is engaging in some pretty retarded behavior. Here’s a plan! Let’s put all the smart people in prison! Better yet, let’s kill all the smart people! Duh. No better way to run your society into the ground.
This is why voters are getting angrier and angrier. But they are venting all of their rage in a rightwing direction. That’s not going to help the matter. Republicans never help grow jobs. They could care less about jobs. Who cares about jobs?
Jobs means labor. Labor is the enemy of capital. Capital and labor battle it out to divide up the spoils of profits. The objective of capital is to give as little of the profits to labor as possible. That means hiring the fewest workers that they can possibly get away with, paying them the lowest wages they can get away with, giving them the worst possible benefits that they an get away with.
So the fewer workers the better, all other things being equal. Capital is always trying to eliminate jobs via mechanization, overwork, forced overtime, etc. Any way that capital can figure out to eliminate a job, they will do it. Why then should we expect capital to give two flying fucks about about how many people are working? Who cares!
As long as profits are going great, capital doesn’t care if the unemployment rate is
When the unemployment rate goes up, the stock market tends to rise. When unemployment starts dropping below a certain point, the stock market starts dropping and you see all sorts of weird articles in the business press talking about how unemployment has gotten too low. They start demanding that the Fed raise interest rates to drive up unemployment. A few weeks later, Alan Greenspan does just that. The corporate media, from “left” to “right,” raises a gigantic cheer.
The recessions are getting worse because Project Middle Class Death is working quite well.
This project formerly had Alan Greenspan at its helm. Greenspan was in charge of a ruling class project initiated in the 1970’s that was intended to reduce the wages and wealth of the US middle class by 1/3. This project had the total support of both political parties, “left” Democrats and “right” Republicans, along with the entire “left to right” spectrum of the corporate media. When it comes to class politics in the US, true liberals are rare to nonexistent.
Even the Democratic Party is sworn to neoclassical economics that only benefits the top 2
Wages have been flat since 1980 or possibly as far back as 1973. The gap between the rich and upper middle class has skyrocketed. Bottom line is that business is bad, and we are in a recession due to lack of consumer demand. Neoliberal voodoo doodoo economic hokus pokus won’t get us out of this mess.
Giving businesses and the rich more tax breaks won’t create more customers in the stores. As if businesses are not hiring more workers due to their tax burden! This is why Obama’s latest neoliberal stimulus proposal is so flawed. The centerpiece is yet more supply side tax cuts and tax breaks for US business. I can assure you that that won’t create a single job.
US businesses are sitting on a mountain of cash. They don’t even know what to do with it. Profits are going like gangbusters. If I run a business and have no customers, I have a problem. If at that same business, you give me a tax break, I now have more money. But so what? I still have no customers. Why should I hire even one more worker as long as we don’t have any more business? I run a business, not a government make-work project.
All of the supply-side neoliberal gimmickry on Earth will not stimulate demand and create more customers. As the customer base declines, the risk of deflation unfolds.
Since Republicans have nothing to offer the economy but neoclassical and neoliberal supply side tax cuts and tax breaks for the rich and business along with huge cuts in government spending, this cannot possibly help the economy. Not in any possible world can it help the economy. Not in the best of all possible Milton Friedman Fantasy Worlds can it help any possible economy.
This is where Keynesianism steps in. The only actor that can stimulate demand in such a case is government. The credit markets are dried up, and the banks have not been loaning much to business for 30 years now. There’s no money in it. The money is in doubling down at the Casino in the Sky at the latest Derivatives Magic Show table. If the banks aren’t putting money into the private sector, and business doesn’t want to borrow anyway (no customers, remember?), once again, Keynesianism tells us, it’s time for Government Man to come to the rescue.
Neoliberalism a la Milton Friedman has never been proven to work anywhere. In fact, everywhere it has been tried, it has failed. Its theories about monopolies have been proven to be incorrect.
In Latin America, it failed for last 20-30 years, such that most Latin Americans want to chuck it. Even establishment hacks at Time Magazine admit it failed in Latin America. It was tried in nearly pure form in Chile at the start of the Pinochet regime, and it so badly ruined the economy that Pinochet threw all of his Chicago boys out and went back to socialism of a sort.
In Russia, it allowed a bunch of international Jews to strip the country, its assets and its wealth blind, creating a huge number of millionaires and killing millions of Russians by reducing life expectancy. A good analysis of neoliberalism shows that it reliably ruins a country’s education and results in large declines in many health figures such as infant mortality and life expectancy. In other words, neoliberalism kills.
But neoliberalism isn’t designed to fix economies, save lives or send folks to school. The neoliberal project is one of income transfer. It involves a massive income transfer from the bottom 8
Neoliberalism also regularly blows up economies. That’s a feature, not a bug. It’s supposed to do that. It’s called boom and bust.
As you can see, the overwhelming majority of US voters are White. It is US White voters and only US White voters who have sent America down the conservative and reactionary sewer pipe in the last 30 years. An operation that is yet ongoing, and that seems to be gaining quite a bit of steam. In the 2006 election, it was even worse. 7
The voter pool is also overwhelmingly White. So the argument that Blacks and Hispanics don’t turn out to vote is washed up. Even if they all turned out to vote, it wouldn’t matter much. It would only shift the electorate maybe -
As long as America is overwhelmingly White, it will be a terrifyingly reactionary and backwards place, the laughingstock of the Western World. There is nothing inherently reactionary about White people. In Europe, they are reliably socialist. Someone show me a reactionary and non-socialist country in Europe please? In New Zealand and Australia, Whites are quite socialist, whatever their limitations in recent days with the horror specter of Mr. Howard.
In Latin America, it is true, Whites are reactionary, extremely so. Even in Uruguay and Argentina, they are reactionary. But these countries also have a revolutionary White Left that in the past has given the White elites the bullets and bombs they so richly deserve.
Argentina today, though a reactionary and Third World mess like the rest of the continent, at least has a Leftist President. A real Leftist, not an Obama rightwinger. The Argentine elite is alarmed about the Communist takeover of Argentina, Commies being coded as “fascists,” and are openly calling for the return of the fascist dictatorship. Fascist Argentines bashing Left opponents as fascists while calling for the return of Argentine fascism. Typical fascist obfuscation and mind-warping.
They claim that Kirchner had Commie “brownshirts” in the streets who have taken over entire zones. The Commie Kirchner is supposedly trying to “censor the media” by breaking up the reactionary media monopolies that own nearly the entire media of the land. But why should the Right own 9
Media should be delineated democratically according to predilection. If 3
Uruguay elected a former Left wing guerrilla, but I’m not sure how much will change, as he is dedicated to following the neoliberal suicide model. Is Uruguay a more socialist state than the USA? An interesting question.
Costa Rica is a pretty socialist place, which is interesting since anti-Communist fools and liars always uphold Costa Rica on their social figures, comparing it to Cuba on the grounds that Cuba is not so hot. What these congenital liars don’t realize (Or maybe they do!) is that all of Costa Rica’s great figures are attributable to Costa Rican social democracy.
Those are the countries in which Whites are a majority.
In the rest of Latin America, Whites are a minority, and they are frighteningly conservative to reactionary. They have generally stayed in power through repression, fraud, imprisoning, assaulting, kidnapping, torturing and murdering the opposition. White elites have done this in most countries in the region: Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Mexico.
The implication is that Whites will only support any kind of socialism where they are a good, solid majority. They are only 6
The entire rightwing movement in the US for the last 30 years has been coming from Whites. Has it been coming from Hispanics? Of course not. Has it been coming from Blacks? Please. Has it been coming from Jews? Pull the other one. Has it been coming from Asians? Forget it.
So when you read that “the voters” are furious with Obama and support all sorts of reactionary monstrosities in opposition to him, it’s US Whites, and only US Whites, who are leading this Tea Party opposition wave to Obama. And much of it is undoubtedly racist, no matter how much they scream that it’s not.
US Whites, as a
The other day, my mother (smartest women on Earth) told me that in the lifetime of my brother and I, we will live to see the US become a more progressive country. If all goes according to plan, I will take off around 2035 or so. The reason for this, she said, is the decline of Whites.
White nationalists have told me that a declining White America will lead to a more progressive place. Their reasoning for this is curious, and doesn’t make much sense. One guy told me that as Whites decline further and further, they will get more and more radical. As they dip below 4
Will Hispanics, Blacks, Jews and Asians continue to be reliably progressive into the future? It’s an interesting question. Majority-Indian, mulatto and mestizo places like Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Panama are quite backwards and rightwing. A White minority in all places continues to rule to the detriment of everyone else. Usually they enforce their rule at gunpoint and often with deadly force. But they get the votes of mestizos, Indians and mulattos to do this.
In the Caribbean, Black and mulatto elites have treated their own people horribly. This is particularly the case in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Most of the Black Caribbean is not very socialist, with the exception of Cuba. But Dominica is an equitable country, and Trinidad and Tobago has a decent amount of socialism. Socialism was arrested in Jamaica with the US assault on Manley, a White socialist.
The record in Black Africa is not good in terms of socialism. North African Arab states are much more socialist than Black Africa. True, there is not much to divide in the first place, but still. Even Black African countries that have fallen into some money are still horribly rightwing. Gabon, a wealthy African country, has nightmarish levels of poverty, malnutrition, maternal mortality, child and infant mortality. Apparently, as has always been the case in Africa, a tiny Black elite has grabbed control over the economy for themselves and possibly their tribe and is locking out everyone else.
Given that mestizos, mulattos and Blacks have a poor record of setting up socialist systems in their own lands, one wonders just how socialist they will be here in the US as they grow in numbers. So far, they have been realiably socialist, but what will the future bring.
The model in mulatto, mestizo and Black countries is typically astounding gaps between the rich and the poor, horrifying levels of poverty, and often an enraged, militant and sometimes armed but cash-starved Left minority battling the elite for power. In these countries, poverty is a big deal, the opposite of the US. So there, all parties, from Right to Left, run on reducing poverty and fighting for the poor, with a few overtly fascist exceptions in Guatemala, El Salvador, (Honduras?) and Colombia and a strange overtly rightwing government in Chile, increasingly a US model state in Latin America.
The Right has the entire media spectrum. In Honduras, a 9
The ignorant mestizo, mulatto and Black electorate tends to vote for parties that often have progressive sounding names. In many cases, these parties are said to be overtly socialist parties. This is especially the case in the Caribbean, where almost every party has a socialist-sounding name. So down there, the Right calls themselves socialists, progressives and populists fighting for the poor while they implement reaction.
A similar dynamic is seen in Africa, where most parties have socialist-sounding names.
In other words, the US model of reactionary parties having open reactionary images, programs and politics is nonexistent in most of Latin America and Africa. No one would vote for it. In fact, it’s anathema in most of the world! It’s nearly nonexistent also in Arabia, South Asia, Europe, SE Asia and NE Asia. Turkey does have an overtly rightwing government.
Other than Turkey, show me one overtly reactionary party along the lines of the US Republican Party in power in any of these places.
One wonders if the model of the US reactionaries will change in the future with White decline. Will we see the rise of a backwards mestizo, mulatto or Black elite looking for votes possibly on an ethnic basis. Will we see the rise of fake populism and fake socialism, where the Right will operate rightwing parties with socialist and progressive sounding names campaigning on poverty reduction and helping the have-nots, to get the non-White vote? Will the Republican Party model of an openly and brazenly reactionary party become nonviable as non-Whites refuse to support it, according the model in the rest of the world?
Iceland is bankrupt. Moral to the story: the more a nation swallowed the neoliberal poison, the more fucked the are. The more sensible and socialist they were, the safer they are.
As I said before, if anything comes out of this world economic collapse we are presently experiencing, it is that neoliberalism should be buried for once and forever with a stake through its heart. That’s not going to happen, but it should.
Since 1980, the entire world has been a swoon with something called neoliberalism. Started by Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago, it quickly become championed by both US political parties, almost the entire US corporate media – newspapers, magazines, TV and radio – and almost every single economics department at every US university. An entire generation of economists was graduated with a sole idea in his head.
Neoliberalism was tried for decades in Latin America. Or, actually, it was forced down their throats at gunpoint. It failed in Latin America as it failed everywhere. Death rates went up, life expectancy went down, infant mortality went up, access to medical care went down, wages went down, unemployment went up, schooling figures declined.
There was economic growth, but almost everywhere on Earth, it went only to the top 2
For over a decade now, I have been reading increasingly shrill and paranoid screeching in The Nation, Counterpunch and other sane places that the march to neoliberalism could lead to economic catastrophes, recessions, depressions, market crashes.
The folks saying this are called Leftists. In the modern Zeitgeist, Leftists are insane people, losers promoting a failed ideology, persons to be mocked who lack a single coherent idea.
Who tells the truth? Why, the entire politico-media world blaring FREE MARKET in my head day and night. I, the cynic, wondered dubiously if this Chicken Little stuff would come true.
Sadly, the Leftists, intellectual losers on the wrong side of history, were right all along. They predicted this whole damn mess. As I said, neoliberalism is predictable. The entire media-political intellectual class, the entirety of US thinking, wisdom and expertise, was wrong, wrong, wrong, a million times wrong.
Shitheads.
Now the shitstorm is slamming into their faces, and yours and mine, with hurricane gale force.
Iceland, otherwise sensible Nordics, become the worst neoliberal crackheads in Europe. No one deregulated their financial sector like the Icelandics. They were Milton’s test-tube baby. They’re now his Frankenstein.
The same way Friedmanites blew up Chile and raped Russia, leaving her beaten and bloodied, they have left a scorched Earth in frozen Iceland. The most free market in Europe has been wrecked worst of all.
Other states in Europe, accustomed to heavy state intervention in economic affairs, are probably going to ride this out a lot easier. Their financial sectors were already pretty well-regulated, and they are nationalizing like mad.
Interestingly, in Africa, the financial sector is still heavily under state control and there has been almost no financial deregulation. Africa, along with Cuba and some other places, is expected to be able to ride out this crisis quite well.
I never thought in my lifetime I would see socialism vindicated like this. Here in America, we nationalized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the world’s largest insurance company. Now we are on our way to nationalizing the banks.
Would ever thought that George Bush was a secret Marxist-Leninist?
The killer? Same guy we all thought killed Natalie, rich Dutch punk Joran van der Sloot. He’s 21 now, and he was 16 when he killed Natalie. Incredibly, he killed the Peruvian woman on the exact 5 year anniversary of the death of Natalie. Celebrating an anniversary? Taunting Interpol? Who knows.
A private investigator with deep knowledge of the case said he knew that van der Sloot would kill again, and he did. He’s now an international serial killer. Looking at footage of van der Sloot, he’s a tough call. He’s clearly a narcissist. Is he also a sociopath? I’m not sure. He’s one cocky, swaggering bastard, a real lady-killer in more ways than one, and he obviously thinks he can do anything he wants to. He’s now on the lam in Chile, two days after the murder. He will be caught and tried for murder for the third time. But this time he will be found guilty.
This is an interesting map, though on first thought it seems unnecessary.
First of all, it makes quite clear how Brazil stands out as the Portuguese speaking state in Latin America. One could argue that this makes them odd man out, but if we look in terms of population, Latin America has a population of 570 million. 192 million of those are Brazilians. So 3
All the Spanish-speaking countries can communicate well with each other, and there is a “neutral Spanish” that any educated person can use when conversing with any other educated person from Hispanophone Latin America. As long as you are doing this, you will both be understood.
Getting down to regional dialects, things do get complicated. I understand that Chilean soap operas, spoken in the rich dialect of the Chilean street, are dubbed in the rest of South America because other South Americans can’t understand Chilean street Spanish. But they are probably well understood in Argentina. There does seem to be a “Southern Cone Street Spanish” that is harder to pick up as the latitudes move northward.
Bolivian Spanish sounds strange, but it’s probably intelligible in South America. It heavily inflected with Indian languages.
There is a general Caribbean Spanish that can be hard to understand.
The language of the Colombian Caribbean coast can be hard for even other Colombians to understand.
Dominican Spanish is notorious for being hard to understand. First of all, it seems to be based on Canarian Spanish of the Canary Islands, which is a very strange form of Spanish. Into this base went a ton of African words, much more than in the rest of Latin America. Further, it is spoken very fast. Dominican Spanish is pretty baffling to other Spanish speakers, at least for a while. Nevertheless, there is a more neutral form of Dominican Spanish that is widely intelligible to other Hispanophones.
On the streets of Mexico City, a very hardcore slang has emerged, sort of a Mexico City Street Spanish, that is pretty hard to figure out outside of Mexico.
Latin America is interesting in that the rest of the world seems to be learning “English as the universal language,” while Latin America is lagging behind.
I know quite a few educated Latin Americans who barely speak a lick of English. Latin Americans live not so much in the society of the Western Hemisphere, but more particularly in the society of Latin America. And Latin America is extremely Hispanophone. Everywhere you go, most everyone speaks Spanish. Spanish is a very highly developed modern language with words for everything. Why bother to learn English? What for? To talk to gringos?
However, at advanced university levels, such as Master’s Degree and particularly doctorate level, increasingly there are requirements to learn English.
One would think that Mexicans at least would be required to take some English in school, right? Forget it. First of all, Mexican schools are crap, and they are broke. The elite and upper middle class steal all the money in the country, and the Libertarian/Republican dream minimal state/free market economy hosts horribly defunded and decrepit schools. It’s not uncommon to meet 20 year old Mexicans who dropped out in the 2nd grade.
English is typically not offered in Mexican public schools. It’s only offered in private schools, which is of course where the moneyed class above sends their kids, which is why they won’t pay for public schools (They don’t use ’em), which is why the public schools are crap. I’m sure many more non-Hispanic Americans in the US are taking Spanish than Latin Americans are studying English.
Hispanophones also often do not bother to learn Portuguese. Some of the educated ones claim they can understand it without studying it, but I doubt it.
A lot of Brazilians say they can understand Spanish pretty well (I think they study Spanish more than Hispanophone Latins study Portuguese), but when you start talking to them in Spanish (which I do on a regular basis) it doesn’t seem to work very well. Want to talk to a Brazilian? Learn Portuguese!
As we can see on the map, both French Guyana and Haiti speak French.
I was talking about Haiti with my liberal Democrat Mom once. The general conversation was along the lines that Haiti was all screwed up. She said, “Well, they’re all Black, they’re dirt poor, and worst of all, they’re in the Western Hemisphere, but they all speak French!” Indeed. What do these funny Frencophones think they’re doing in our Anglophone, Hispanophone and Lusophone Hemisphere anyway?
Further, the language of Haiti is not really intelligible to French speakers. It makes about as much sense as hardcore Jamaican English does to us. However, the Haitian elite often speaks good French. They also say they understand Spanish, but I’ve tried to talk to them in Spanish, and it didn’t go anywhere. Often they don’t understand much English either. Want to talk a member of the Haitian upper class? Learn French!
So the Haitians are rather isolated in this Hemisphere, but I’m not sure if your average dirt poor Haitian cares. I suppose they could always talk to the Quebecois, but no one understands Quebecois either.
French Guyana is also a French speaking country. It’s still a colony, and it has a very nice standard of living. Nowadays, colonies don’t even want to go free anymore, as it means a standard of living crash.
As you can see, British Honduras speaks English. There are some other English speaking islands in the Caribbean and some French speaking islands too, but none are marked on the map.
Dutch has pretty much died out in the Western Hemisphere, but it used to be spoken widely in Suriname and the Dutch Caribbean.
The main language of Guyana is probably some English creole, but it’s not shown on the map.
Indian languages are still very widely spoken in Peru (Quechua), Bolivia (Aymara) and Paraguay (Guarani).
That article is a lie. The law that passed made the stations fill out a bunch of paperwork so they could be monitored better. Just routine bureaucratic stuff. Those opposition stations deliberately refused to fill out that paperwork, knowing full well that they would get shut down. They basically shut themselves down on purpose in order to make Chavez look like a dictator. I believe that most of those stations have been reinstated after they filled out their paperwork.
The “yanking the advertisements off the air” is not true. The law limits the stations to one ad break per 30 minutes. I’m not sure what the purpose of that is, but it applies to all stations, pro-government, anti- and neutral.
The part about “forcing them to carry Chavez speeches” isn’t really true. They do want all of the media to have to carry important government announcements. During the coup, for instance, the government was constantly sending out announcements regarding this or that, mostly in opposition to the coup. The Opposition media completely blocked out all government statements and showed soaps and sports nonstop instead. No one could figure out what was going on because the Opposition had all the media.
So, yeah, they have to carry some government statements, but not that many. If you think about it, every time Obama gives a speech, all the US stations are all over it, right? Including Fox? But down there, they just lock out all government statements like they don’t exist. That doesn’t seem fair or right.
The law that the MSM is complaining about so much is a pretty reasonable media responsibility law, similar to that in many countries. I believe it is almost identical to the law in Canada, for instance.
The draft law the piece referred to is troubling, but Chavez himself opposed it. It was the Chavista legislature that proposed that. The Attorney General’s statement was also disturbing, but the law never got passed anyway. You know, some dictatorship, the Chavistas can’t even pass their own laws!
I don’t agree with a lot of the government’s hard line on the media, and at times, I wish they would just blow the Opposition media off. I know they’re assholes, but so what? Let the dogs bark.
Globovision is still on the air 7 months after that article was written, but I think they are moving to cable.
On the regular airwaves, 2
The article is not correct that Venezuela is the worst in the Hemisphere. In Colombia, they just murder the Opposition media, so it frankly barely even exists. In Peru, there is a law called “apology for terrorism.” It’s used pretty broadly.
In Colombia, Peru, Chile, Panama, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, there is no opposition media that I’m aware of. The elite has almost the entire media spectrum. I’m not sure of the situation in Mexico, Ecuador, Paraguay, Bolivia and Uruguay, but the elite seems to have most to all of the media in those places too. There is a Left media in Argentina, but it’s one daily paper. There is probably some Left media in Brazil, mostly newspapers. In Argentina and Brazil, the elite control TV. There is opposition media in Nicaragua from the Sandinistas.
So really, Venezuela is probably one of the few places in the Hemisphere, along with Nicaragua, Bolivia and Ecuador, where there is a ferocious and vibrant Opposition media at all. Keep in mind that the elite control the media in Latin America. They almost always control the state too, so in essence there’s never any opposition media in Latin America, except when a leftwing, anti-elite government comes in. Then the entire media spectrum of the nation lines up against the state. So the strange truth is that Venezuela has one of the loudest, most belligerent, most vibrant and most powerful opposition medias in the region.
Some dictatorship.
What Chavez is trying to do is to get away from the elite media model towards community radio and TV. He has been giving out licenses by the handful for community radio and TV stations. It’s true that most of these smaller stations support him, since most communities support him, but community stations in anti-Chavez regions have anti-Chavez community media. Even the Chavez-supporting community media is often extremely critical of the regime, when they feel that they are screwing up. Someone needs to keep the government on its toes.
What he’s doing is democratizing the media space, moving away from the typical model in capitalism where an elite, say the top
The “mounting economic problems” in Venezuela are due to the worldwide recession or depression that the US elite set off with their financial machinations and fraud. Venezuela is experiencing the same thing that everyone else is, it’s not Chavez’ fault. During Chavez’ term, the economy has grown like gangbusters.
The commenter also refers to this article to claim that “Hugo Chavez is a dictator.” This was the defeat of the proposed Constitution rewrite. There were good and bad aspects of it. The bit about censoring the media in a national emergency was an attempt to make sure the situation that occurred during the coup would not recur. I supported his bid to run for life. If Venezuelans want to keep re-electing him over and over, let them. That sounds like democracy to me.
I think the bit about seizing private property was for economic sabotage. A lot of the capitalist food producers are engaging in economic sabotage to try to bring down the regime, and it’s hard to figure out how to deal with them!
The inflation is occurring, or was occurring in 2007 at the time the article was written, due to an overheated economy that is growing too fast. You know, the same guy who is ruining the economy is also presiding over an economy that is growing so wildly it is getting inflationary? The “student opposition” is like the “student opposition to FARC” in Colombia. Rightwing students from moneyed classes are rallying at their expensive private universities. Yeah, some “student movement.” Just like the 60’s, huh?
The main thing is that Chavez’ constitutional reform was defeated. How is that a dictator puts his laws up for vote and the people vote them down? What kind of dictatorship is that? A lot of Chavistas voted against that law, and I don’t blame them.
I admit that Chavez bothers me at times with his polarizing rhetoric and bombastic blathering. The guy’s a demagogue, let’s face it. But so is Castro, so was Daniel Ortega, so was Juan Peron. Latin Americans love their caudillos and their demagogues.
tulio notes, remarking on the “Chilean economic miracle” under Pinochet.
I have a Venezuelan…he fled Venezuela and now lives in Chile, a more free market country, and btw the most prosperous in Latin America. And Pinochet had a lot to do with Chile’s prosperity, even though he was a bastard. If it weren’t for him, it would be another 3rd world Latin American country. He turned that country’s economy around.
First of all, Chile is not the most prosperous in Latin America. Mexico is quite a bit wealthier than Chile. Mexico seem like a First World country to you? 2
Second, it’s debatable whether Chile is more free market than Venezuela. Chile has long had a deep social democracy in place, and Venezuela has never had crap. Much of Chavez so-called evil socialism is just him trying to put the basics of a social democratic system and a civilizational infrastructure in place where there never was one – he’s spending money on education, medical care, roads, literacy, land reform, food subsidies, housing, electrification, plumbing, sewage, water, etc.
At least in Venezuela, you have a President who is committed to the entire low income and working class portion of the population. There’s no need for him to care about, work for or help the well-off, since they’re already sitting pretty as it is.
In Chile, the low-income and working class population pretty much get a gigantic Fuck You. The state only works for the 1/3 or so upper middle class, and everyone else can buzz off. I imagine this is still the case under Bachelet, but I’m not sure.
Pinochet had nothing whatsoever to do with Chile’s “prosperity.” Truth is he ruined that country. His radical libertarianism from the Chicago School quickly caused one of the worst depressions in history. In order to climb out of it, he had to repudiate neoliberal orthodoxy and involve the state, government spending and labor in his economic project (Keynesianism).
Even that more statist project did not do well. All of that economic growth under that Pinochet clown was just the climback from the damned Depression that he caused at the start! Big deal! By the end of his term, in 1989, Chile’s GDP finally matched of Allende, the socialist whom he replaced. IOW, 16 years of total economic flatlining and failure.
To illustrate, let me give some hypothetical figures, since I don’t know the real figures. Say per capita income was $8,000/year when Allende left office. Pinochet so nuked the economy that in a few years, PCI was something like $2,000/year. From 1978-1989, there was huge economic growth, true, but they were just climbing out the rut. By 1989, his last year in office, PCI finally made it up back to $8,000 year again. Talk about spinning your wheels.
The upper classes did much better though under Pinochet, maybe the top 1/3. Everyone else got royally screwed. Average wages declined by 3
Chile is doing ok now with a much more state-interventionist economic scheme under a Socialist President, Bachelet. Much of Chile’s relatively good human development figures are due to its deep socialist and social democratic, especially health care and education: Chile has been a pretty socialist state for a long time now. Chile has a decent national health care system, and that’s the reason for its commendable health figures. Malnutrition figures are also very low; Chile does a good job of feeding its people.
Education is another matter. About 1/2 of the public schools are literally falling apart. I mean literally, as in collapsing. There’s no agenda to fix them, because the pricks who run the country all send their kids to private schools (this is how it works all over Latin America).
It’s no surprise tulio has been brainwashed about Pinochet. The US media has told nothing but lies about the guy.
The gap between the rich and the poor in Chile is absolutely insane, and the racism and class hatred is rife and toxic. The light-skinned well to do live in gated compounds or with high walls around their sumptuous homes, often with barbed wire and guard dogs. They live that way because of the out of control crime rate, especially theft, by the darker-skinned lower classes. The crime rate is a symptom of the insane inequality and class hatred in that place. Chile is just another typical Latin American shithole, a little fancier than the rest of them.
I’ve known some Chileans; their contempt for poor and working class people was palpable, and they were openly and outrageously racist against Chilean Indians. And these people were supposedly “leftwingers.”
Update: In the comments section, the brilliant James Schipper adds some good hard figures to the argument. The rich-poor gap he talks about can be represented as a Gini coefficient.
The main thing about the Chile was that the upper classes, maybe the top 1/3 or so, totally cleaned up under Pinochet. Pinochet merely dramatically shifted income from the bottom 2/3 of the population to the to top 1/3, so obviously he’s wildly popular among the well to do in Latin America. As a socialist, I’m not supposed to support Reverse Robin Hood policies. Any socialist doing that may as well hang it up and just become a Republican. Or join the Democratic Leadership Committee (DLC), same thing.
It’s fascinating that neoliberals and libertarians continue to rave about this fake “miracle”. Either they’re lying, or they’re idiots.
Some people never learn.
Schipper:
Excellent post! In the early 1980s, the unemployment rate in Chile reached 2
Pinochet also privatized pensions, but guess what, the military kept their government pension plan.
According to the CIA World Factbook, the richest 1
It seems that any government that pursues neoliberal economic policies will be praised by MSM in the West while any government that does the opposite will be excoriated.
This is a very interesting article written by Nepal’s Ambassador to the US. What he’s doing here is throwing out a trial balloon of a rightwing military coup in Nepal to overthrow the civilian government, followed by the inevitable death squad terror that always follows in such cases. Note that towards the end he mentions Pinochet, Suharto and Chung Park Hee. All ran far rightwing anti-Communist military dictatorships, all three came to power via military coups at a time of a threat or reality of a Communist or Leftist takeover of the article.
This is what capitalism always does, and in a way, the Leninists have a point, which is that the capitalists never allow any substantial challenge to their power to come about legally. If it does or even threatens to, there’s usually a military overthrow of the state followed by years of death squad terror aimed at decimating the Left for decades to come. It happened in Haiti, Chile, El Salvador, Uruguay, Guatemala, Argentina, Peru and Indonesia. They tried it in Venezuela recently.
You can forget about the parts towards the end where he talks about how a fascist coup followed by a death squad regime is the only way to eradicate poverty and bring about prosperity and opportunities. Those are the last things this guy wants, and these rightwing coups never bring about any of that. Fact is, they’re designed to prevent just those sorts of things.
The coup would need the support of both the US and India. I’m sure it would be forthcoming from both places.
What happened in Nepal is that there was a negotiated settlement to the Civil War there. As part of the settlement, there were elections which the Maoists won with 4
It would be as if the Head of the US Joint Chiefs refused to obey the Commander in Chief, then refused to step down when the President fired him. It was for all intents and purposes a military coup. It seems that India was involved up to their mitts in this. Then the Maoist President simply resigned, as the rule of civilian control of the state was being violated.
As you can see below, the Ambassador chides the whole notion of “civilian rule.” Apparently he thinks it’s a bad idea. Since then, I’m not sure what’s been going on on the ground in Nepal, except the Maoists have been involved in a lot of protests up and down the country, and yes, they have recently declared a few new states.
All in all, this is a pretty ominous proposal the Ambassador is tossing out there.
The original appeared here. La Republica is apparently the voice of the rightwing and business community in Nepal, best as I can tell.
Getting Out Of The Quagmire
by Sukhdev Shah
(Shah is Nepal’s ambassador to the U.S. He worked for the International Monetary Fund for two decades and is a U.S. citizen.)
As things have evolved over the past three years, Nepal has become a fertile ground for a military takeover of the government, independently or under the shadow of a constitutional authority.
Such a possibility has been talked about in a limited circle but been forced open by a delegation of some Nepali Congress (NC) leaders who recently urged President Ram Baran Yadav to consider imposing President’s Rule to help restore peace and enable the Constituent Assembly (CA) to complete writing the constitution before the expiry of deadline in five months. This is not an incredible or inappropriate suggestion, considering the marathon obstructions staged by Maoists to prevent the CA to open for business and carry out its mandate.
Even after losing the control of government in May this year over the enigmatic issue of civilian supremacy, Maoists have not softened their stance on the president’s action that re-instated the ex-army chief after his firing by the then Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal. In order to further press on this issue, Maoists have announced formation of autonomous states in several parts of the country in defiance of the wishes of government, which also seems to challenge the constitution- making authority of CA.
By doing so – unilaterally deciding to divide up the country into ethnic enclaves – Maoists have started the process of a slow dissolution of the State which they eventually would turn into an all-powerful proletarian dictatorship, making the country a one-party State. This particular perception of Maoists’ ultimate objective and long-term planning is not based on fancy or conjecture but comes straight out of their public declarations that claim the virtues of `fusion’ of ideologies and role of peoples’ war – jana yudhha – as means to capturing the State power.
The Maoist strategy of declaring autonomous states is probably the shrewdest means adopted until now to undercut the legitimacy of Maoist-version of a bourgeoisie State and assert people’s power under its own leadership. And this strategy would be highly appealing for the grassroots, who have had no great admiration for all-powerful Kathmandu-based governments doing the dictates of generations of family dynasties and self-serving corrupt politicians.
With the promises of self-rule allowed to ethnic majorities under the autonomous state system, ordinary people can see the benefits of localization of government authority, with a chance of liberating themselves from the tyrannies of centrist authoritarian rule.
Facing the challenge
Needless to say, government is at a loss on how to face up to the Maoist new challenge. The easiest course of action will be to ignore it – let them disrupt house-sitting, demonstrate on the street, put-up road blocks, spread anarchy, and declare more autonomous states, which can be viewed as no more than a symbolic defiance. However, by ignoring such threats to its authority, the government in power is unlikely to generate confidence and win sympathies, or hope that current impasse is going to end quietly and uneventfully.
If Maoists continue with its present strategy of making the central government look irrelevant, indifferent, and detached from the basic functions of the State, there will be no need for them to make a forceful entry into the capital to capture power. This will come to them naturally and effortlessly – from the growing irrelevance of government at the center, aided by gradual shift of state functions to regional, autonomous states.
There should be nothing wrong with the slow dissolution and eventual disappearance of the traditional State and its replacement by a grassroots entity that is built-up from grounds up. Indeed, by forcing the dissolution of the State, Maoists would be making a bloodless coup, which would be entirely legitimate in an environment of deepening conflict, lack of direction, heightened uncertainty, and loss of control over critical government functions.
There is not much that the Maoist-less current coalition government can do to stop or even slowdown the country moving in this direction except if it chooses to force-stop the process by making a last-ditch effort and take one extreme measure, similar to the one advocated by NC leaders noted above – presidential rule backed by the army.
Given the limited options the current government has in outsmarting the Maoists, it may be attracted to do just that and the army would, most likely, choose to go along. The army’s willingness to comply with such an option can be argued in two ways, the first being that it never got to use its full force to suppress Maoist rebels during their decade-old insurgency.
Reportedly, the army was held back by palace orders, which had to come to think of Maoist challenge more as a counter to political parties than a threat to itself. Second, by making civilian supremacy a battle-cry, Maoists, once in power, will seek a quick dissolution of the army, which they view as the last hurdle on the road to complete victory.
Maoists have been in sort of an undeclared war with the army for sometime now but it is becoming increasingly certain that the army will not just sit back and surrender. Rather, it may be getting ready for a showdown and final war with the Maoists – an opportunity it was looking for during king’s regime but was repeatedly denied. Army’s willingness to face up to the Maoists will be strengthened if its actions are given the legitimacy of enforcing presidential rule, which is allowed under the constitution.
A discouraging outlook
There are many ways in which the current conflict can get resolved and the much-lauded peace effort moved towards its logical conclusion – which is to get an agreement on the constitution, hold broad-based election, and usher in an era of constitutional rule that upholds people’s sovereignty. However, the outlook for consensus building and restoration of normal conditions appear increasingly dim, even non-existent.
The main reason for pessimism is that communism generally, and Maoism in particular, is now a ground reality in the country, reflecting not as much the smartness of ideology Maoists have brought to bear upon the population but the utter incompetence, lack of vision, and unabashed dishonesty of the regimes that have governed Nepal for decades and centuries.
In particular, all of them have failed to create glue that binds people together, encourage them to pursue a common goal, and motivate them to work for a better future, for themselves and their children.
The Maoists have taken advantage of this vacuum by creating grassroots organizations to bring the people together, partly by the force of their ideology but mostly by aligning people against the hereditary and traditional interests.
Of course, the record of nine-month rule by Maoists has caused much disappointment and helped cool down enthusiasm for its long-term sustainability but they continue to remain in public consciousness as the last hope for people who consider themselves dispossessed and have not much to lose from serious anarchy and breakdown of the law and order. At least one half of the country’s population would fit this category who seem united backing up Maoists’ intention of winning over and destroying the bourgeoisie democracy.
Presidential rule or army takeover can eliminate some Maoists and subdue their backers but it will be incapable of winning the ideological war. At the same time, if the ideologically- hardened comrades in hundreds of thousands face up to the army onslaught and engage them in running battles, the situation can easily get out of hand and millions will flee to take shelter across the border in India.
It is difficult to predict how India will respond to the emergence of calamitous situation across its 800-kilometer open border with Nepal, but it is hard to think that it will do nothing. Most likely, it will commit itself actively to prevent the spread of violence, including the stationing of its own peace-keeping force to keep order. Of course, such a move will have unknown consequences for Nepal’s separate and independent existence.
There is little or nothing to take a bet on how the events are going to unfold over the coming months and years, but the present cat-and-mouse maneuverings by political parties and Maoists are likely to move the conflict to center-stage for a showdown. If this comes to pass, army will have a greater chance of claiming victory, provided that the conflict involves mostly the leadership on the top.
Another big uncertainty is if Nepal has the good fortune of some strongmen rising to the occasion – the likes of Korea’s Park Chung-Hee, Chile’s Pinochet, Indonesia’s Suharto – to take up the challenge of suppressing dissent and mobilizing the machinery of the State to focus on only one mission: Building a strong and prosperous nation.
With so many options tried over so many years to eradicate poverty and catch-up on the bandwagon of growth, opportunities and prosperity, this last option may just have a chance to succeed.
This is an extremely provocative title, but it’s meant to be that way. It’s about the War On Men. There are two types of women. Real women and feminists (cunts). The Cunts in the title refers to feminists. Feminists are females who not only embody the Female Spirit (that much is normal for any female) but wish to use utilize the Female Spirit as a template for society’s rules, mores and laws. Their project is to codify the Female Spirit and use it as a club to bash the Male Spirit (in reality, that just means real guys) with every day of their wretched existence. In effect, a Female Dictatorship over Men. Such a project can only be seen as an all-out frontal assault on males and the Male Spirit. What’s amazing is not that there is a female project to subject males. That follows from anthropology. What’s shocking is that, like the self-hating Whites who double over themselves to turn White countries into Third World wrecks, there are so many self-hating males who have joined the women in their jihad against Maleness. The two projects are similar, and both are part and parcel of PC crap. In PC language, White is shorthand for Evil, and non-White is transcribed as Good. For Good to prevail, the non-Whites must overthrow the Whites and put us under their thumb. Similarly, PC sees Males as Evil and Females as Good. For justice, light and beauty to triumph, Females must overthrow Males and put us under their 4-inch high heels. As a men’s rights activist (MRA) this is an issue near and dear to me. The war on men is being led, of course, by women. This is an age-old war, as old as mankind. I’ve studied many primitive cultures. It’s one of my hobbies. One of the things that I noticed about many primitive cultures is that there was often sort of a “war between the men and women” going on. In Patagonia, in New Guinea, everywhere, it seems. It wasn’t always, as the lunatic feminists insist, just guys being Guy-Nazis and keeping the ladies down. And why would they do that? As my favorite woman (my Mom) says, “Well, men are bigger and stronger, so they rule, they make the rules, and they keep the women down.” So it’s rule by force, the strong over the weak, the law of the jungle, kind of like the cats at this house here. A nice dominance hierarchy is ongoing with these five *female* cats in this place. It shifts around a bit, but everyone knows where their spot is. One cat, formerly a wimp who just got her ass kicked, moved to a new house with three other cats. Two the the three died, and the third is the wimpiest cat that God ever made. So formerly Wimp Cat (Callie) is now more or less Top Cat. She rules. Three new cats entered the household, and Callie is now Top Cat over all these except one, who wants to rule the roost. Cleo, a new cat, always beat up Callie until I guess one day Callie kicked Cleo’s ass. Now Callie’s on top, and Cleo is afraid of Callie. This sort of thing, ever-shifting, goes on and on. Anyone with cats understands me. Why do I bring this up? As it goes with cats, so it goes with men and women. Men didn’t just rule over women to be pricks, they did so because one must rule over the other. Men and women want very, very different things. The men want the Male Paradigm to rule, and the women want the Female Paradigm to rule. If the men don’t rule the women, the women will try to rule the men. Equality is impossible. If you don’t want to be lorded over by the ladies, you’d better keep them down so they don’t rise up and repress you. Many primitive societies, I noticed, had evolved a culture where the men and women were in conflict. The men, instead of being Guy-Nazis keeping the babes down for kicks, were really in fear of the women. They kept them down for fear of them being loosed from control and thereby running amok. The women needed to be controlled. At puberty, many tribes separated the males from the females. Boys went off to live in Guy Village and girls went off to live in Girl Village. Many tribes had separate languages for the sexes – in particular, there was a “Women’s language,” apparently invented to the women could talk and the guys could not understand them. On occasion, Pantagonians would engage in a ceremony where the guys would dress up like monsters and terrify the females. The females would be told from girlhood about the existence of these deadly monsters and to avoid them at all costs. Then during the ceremonies the guys would dress up like these monsters just to terrify the girls. After a while, females started telling the boys about other monsters, and then the women would raid the boys’ villages during these ceremonies and scare all the boys. I bring this up in the context of Child Molester Mass Hysteria, or Pedophile Mass Hysteria. Sure it’s ridiculous. But why is it so stupid? Because it represents a smashing victory of the Female Principle over the Male Principle. Wikisposure is an interesting webpage. It’s run by anti-pedophile activists, and it’s not a bad project. What’s nuts is that Pedophile Mass Hysteria is so insane that if I say I went to the Wikisposure site to learn about pedos, that means I’m a pedo! If I say I’ve been studying pedos intensively for many years now (I have been, as they fascinate me) that means I’m a pedo too! People have told me this right to my face! I told them I’ve been studying pedos for many years now, and have read half a forest of paper about them, and people either get this really weird look on their face when I say that and start moving away from me, or, in some cases, out and out tell me that all that reading proves right there that I’m a pedo. Check out the page of this guy, Siva. The Perverted Justice folks (they run Wikisposure) are launching a campaign against this guy, Siva. They are thinking of flyering his neighborhood. I have nothing against that. This guy is just an idiot, a nut, a weirdo and a jerk. I don’t know if what he does hurts kids. I don’t care. What he does is weird, and it can’t be allowed on that basis alone. On the other hand, these guys can’t go down just for admitting to be pedos. It’s not even illegal to claim to have engaged in illegal acts, as this idiot does. I can say I murdered 50 people. I can write about it every day on my website. I can make up names of fake victims, fake timelines, everything. Should I be arrested for that? Of course not. I’m a bit worried that we may start going after these guys just for being pedos (which in and of itself, is not and should not be against the law), or for “admitting to committing crimes” (in general, this is not illegal either unless you identify evidence of a crime, evidence of a victim, etc.) In other words, if this guy says he takes showers with little girls, that’s not illegal. But at some point, if you can get some statements from an actual victim, you may be able to build a case against the guy. Perverted Justice is a much more dubious enterprise than Wikisposure. It’s all about arresting adults for fucking teenagers. Except in most cases the guys don’t even fuck the teenagers. They just talk dirty to adults posing as teens, send them porn and porn links, show themselves naked on cam, etc. They also make plans to visit and have sex with adults posing as teens. I’m a bit mystified as to why this is illegal. There is no teenage girl, a 14 year old in this case. No porn was sent to a teenage girl. No porn links were sent to a teenage girl. No one talked dirty to a teenage girl. No one got naked on cam for a teenage girl. I don’t think anyone even made plans to screw a teenage girl, since there was no teenage girl, just an adult posing as one. I don’t think any of these Perverted Justice cases ought to see the light of day. There’s no victim. This whole legal mess is founded on the incredibly dubious legal minefield known as “conspiracy.” Now, if you want to get real teenagers and have them go online and entice these guys, that’s one thing. But adults posing as teenagers wrecks the whole thing, and makes it dubious whether any of these busts ought to even be allowed. Every day on Perverted Justice, they highlight new cases showing “the dangers of the Internet.” This is just another way of bashing males. The Internet is made out to be this creepy, horrible, evil place crawling with sick, perverted men all trying to fuck hot young teens. The cases allege that men abducted, raped, and drugged teenagers. Except in almost all cases, none of that happened. The girl who got “raped” was always way more than willing. This is how it happened. The girl went to see the guy. The guy said, “Let’s have sex.” The girl said, “We think alike, baby!” The guy fucks the girl. The girl has lots of fun. After it’s over, the girl says, “Wow, that was fun! Let’s do it again!” That’s called “rape.” Weird, huh? The “abduction” occurred when the teenager hopped a train or plane and flew out to meet some guy to screw him. In other words, the girl abducted herself to the train station, kidnapped herself onto a train, and then imprisoned herself across several state lines to go meet some guy. That’s called “abduction.” The “drugging” occurred when some guy asked a teenage girl if she wanted to smoke a joint and she said, “You’re reading my mind!” That’s called “drugging.” See what I mean? More mass hysteria. I don’t give a damn about adult queers fucking 15-17 year old queer boys. I don’t give a damn about some guy bonking a 15-17 year old teenybopper. I don’t care about 20-something female teachers fucking teenage boys. They should be given medals of honor. As far as fucking teenagers, it was a blast for a while, but at my age, it’s illegal. I wouldn’t do it myself, but I don’t much care if others do. Who are the punks at Perverted Justice who engage in entrapment of males seeking to screw a teenager? They’re women, of course, in this case Cunts. There also a lot of guys on there, but I noticed that almost all of them are fags. Well, of course, it makes sense. Queers, despite their promiscuity, embody in their essence the Female Spirit, and their very existence seems to be about waging war on the Male Spirit. Sure, there are macho queers like William S. Burroughs, but they’re the minority. Queers are manginas squared, the very embodiment of manginatude. Of course they’re lining up with the feminists against the Men. It’s asshats like Perverted Justice that are conflating pedophilia with statutory rape, tangling the two all up into mess of ivy vines where you can’t tell one from the other. To Catch a Predator is a much, much more dubious enterprise, a TV show in which the clowns who run Perverted Justice conflate pedos with guys trying too screw teenage girls. Of course it’s not the same thing, but the Female Paradigm says it is. According to the lunatic world of women, a guy who screws a girl aged 17 and 11.5 months is the same as that Siva pedo who surrounds himself with naked 6 year olds. Fuck that. Any sane person knows we are talking about two completely different things. But that leaves out 5
So we have To Catch a Predator. In which adult women pretend to be teenage girls, go online to chat rooms and talk dirty to moronic guys and pretty much entice them to come on over the get laid by a hot teenybopper. The sucker drives over the house, thinking he’s going to bag a 15 year old hottie. Instead he meets up with TV cameras and cops with handcuffs. He gets arrested and goes down for “Conspiracy to Try to Attempt to Think About Fucking a 15 Year Old Girl” or some BS. Perverted Justice supposedly gets paid $100,000 an episode for these stupid shows, which shows that they are corrupt as Hell. That TV show is pandering to the sleaziest and lowest of the Female Spirit in its most diabolically man-hating essence. To Catch a Predator is nothing more than society’s War On Men. Now, 10’s of millions of “men” probably love this show, but that’s because they’re manginas, not males. A mangina is worse than a Beta Male or even an Omega Male. Betas and Omegas are guys at least. They’re just guys who are trying to get laid but aren’t getting any. A mangina isn’t even a man, biologically, sure, but in spirit, he’s nothing but a woman. He’s a traitor, a spy, an agent who works for the enemy against his male brothers in the War of the Sexes. How do I feel about the guys getting cuffed? Well, they’re morons. They’re victims, but they’re also fools. The law’s the law. After age 20 or so, don’t mess with teenage girls. In the present climate, you’re going down hard. On the other hand, that show shouldn’t even exist. In the liberated 1970’s, it never would have seen the light of day. It only exists now as an expression of a malign Female Spirit waging a savage war against Maleness. At my age, I can’t even look at young girls. There are a bunch of silly little stupid twats around where I live. These bitches are about 12-14, I guess. They look at me all the time. I haven’t the faintest idea why they look at me, and if you try to look back and try to figure out what the stare means, you will be baffled. It could be anything. They seem like they’re checking me out. Or maybe they’re not. It’s not a hostile look. I don’t know how to describe it. I used to look back, but not anymore. Now, when I see these little Female Devil Twats, I try to look at the ground the whole time. I look anywhere but at them, at the sky, at the birds, at my feet, anywhere. Why? Because I figured out a while back that if you look back at them with any sort of look at all on your face, they might shout, “Pervert!” Ridiculous, huh? This is what the Feminist Dictatorship is doing to young girls. It’s training them to see all of us males as diabolical, criminal pedophiles, rapists and killers. The wicked To Catch a Predator show plays into this. Men are dangerous. Dangerous and evil. Girls and women are pristine, wonderful and good and must be on alert at all times against evil, sick, perverted males. Why are we sick, evil and perverted? Because we have dicks that get hard, and that is a dangerous thing. I find the notion of American teenage girls, age 15-17, as some kind of precious little snowflakes as comical. I’ve been to their forums, following links to this site, out of curiosity. According to Pedophile Mass Hysteria, that makes me a pedophile right there! I’m not allowed to look at the profiles teenage girls set up on the Internet! Looking over their profiles, about half of the teenage girls in America seem to be having a contest to see who can out-slut who. The notion that these Paragons of Female Goodness need to be protected chivalrously from the Perverted Male Spirit (perverted because it wants to fuck them, and no less of a reason) is so ridiculous it doesn’t even bear repeating. Things are so weird now that I can’t even talk to a teenager, especially a teenage girl. I taught kids for years, so it’s normal to talk to them. I can’t even smile and say, “Hello.” I can’t say anything, can’t ask directions, nothing. There’s about nothing that’s ok for me to say to them ever under any circumstances. Increasingly, this even applies to young women, aged 18-20 or so and maybe even older. I can’t talk to them either. If they’re behind the counter getting my order, I can’t chat them up. They’re perfectly legal, but the Female Paradigm says they’re still virginal little girls. Anyway, since I’m old enough to be Daddy, I’m sick and evil (because my aging dick still gets hard) so these woman-children need to be protected from Old Rapist Pedo Me. Sometimes, a few of them act real friendly and even flirty, but I’m usually terrified to talk to them much for fear of being called a pervert or a pedo. This is SHIT! Pedophile Mass Hysteria also applies to that horrible specter, Child Porn. Child Porn is very hard to find. I’m not going to say how I know that, but trust me. If you sit there at your computer for hours a day, days on end, and maybe know the right people who can send you some links, I’m sure you can find it. But the insane notion of an Internet swarming with child porn lurking behind every other hyperlink is a manifestation of the paranoia in the Female Spirit. That’s the way Feminist Woman sees the world. There’s an evil rapist hardon around every corner, just waiting to rape some double X innocent. I know lots of guys who have seen child porn. They told me that they’ve seen it. None of them are pedos. Most of them either saw it out of curiosity or stumbled upon it in darker corners of the Net, like the Chans. They all told me that it was either boring and some degree of disturbing, weird or sick, and they don’t want to see it anymore. They just wanted to see it to sate their curiosity and see what all the fuss was about. Pedophile Mass Hysteria says all these guys are pedophiles. Fuck that. Someone sent me to a link tonite. I won’t link it, but you can find it if you want. It’s Brooke Shields’ scene from Pretty Baby, a movie from the 1970’s. She plays a 12 year old prostitute, and there’s a bathtub scene where she stands up and yeah, she’s fully nude. It’s legal because 1978 was a era of sanity, before the Feminist Psychos won. No way would it be the legal nowadays. I just watched this clip, and I don’t understand the appeal of it. Am I supposed to get turned on by a 12 year old girl? I like full grown females, not little girls. 16 and up, minimum. 18 and up for play. The weird thing about the video was that it wasn’t even very erotic. A 12 year old girl, even a fully naked one, is sort of boring to me. It’s not a very erotic object. Since it’s not even very erotic in the first place, why all the fuss? Sure, it turns on the pedos, but they’re a tiny group. Why should we ban this scene? On the grounds that it’s boring? I don’t understand the mindset behind someone who wants to ban these things. But the malign Female Spirit not only wants to ban that dull clip, it wants to make you a criminal for yawning your way through it. Then it wants to label you “pedophile” and stamp it on your head like a scarlet A forever. In fact, just by admitting that I watched that tonite, the Pedophile Mass Hysteria shitheads will already label me pedo. Who else would look at such a clip, right? Excuse me? This is shit.Feminist shit. It’s nothing but War on Men. There is no patriarchy. The War Between the Sexes is over, and the Cunts (the feminists) won. We men live under a Feminist Dictatorship that seethes with hatred for male sexuality. The cops, the media, the therapists, the educators, everyone just about, are working for the Cunts. And millions of our brothers have cut off their dicks, grown manginas and gone over to the enemy. What bullshit.