Politics & Stuff

[Fernando 6,585]

Anyone has any thoughts on the drastic fall of price of oil over the last month?

That has really been something, especially oil a heavily traded commodity.

I have heard that opec does not care about cutting production as they want to weed out competition, namely America shale gas production.

Any thoughts on this?

[Fulham Broadway 17,306]

Saatchi did some funny spots in the same vein in GR too, in the eighties as well as those you mention.

So you like Berlin wall.

If you think about it deeply, there is an anomaly with this one too.

Whenever one succeeded in staging a succesful escape, there was a mini celebration in West Germany.

But now we have mme Lepen who wants to give back to the Isis the Syrian refugees.

Me too thinks there is something phoney, but go on. Live under Honneker regime, with spray guns, raw corn to eat.

The Moscow reds were going too far, even by their own standards.

For example they did n't have to shoot down the Korean plane in 1983. Those who did it, wanted to harden the regime and stop the perestroika experiment.

But you can't say that was n't the real communism.

After all it calls for the stoppage of all economic activity - period.

All the rest like dictatorship of the proletariat, prohibition of religious practice are -to my mind- coincidental. Strenuously defended by the orthodox communists and rejected by some of the less orthodox, but coincidental.

The basic idea is to rob everyone, including the poor of course and make everything state owned.

''So you like Berlin wall'' Sorry thats a bit of a surreal leap into lala land.

''Communism calls for the stoppage of all economic activity-period'' Again completetly out there. I suggest you read a bit of Marx.

''Dictatorship of the proletariat'' Lol its actually In Marxist socio-political thought, the dictatorship of the proletariat. It refers to a state in which the proletariat, or the working class, has control of political power.

''The basic idea is to rob everyone, including the poor of course and make everything state owned.'' i think thats only in your head. Capitalism robs thr majority and exploits as much as possible for profit for a few, and when in crisis it always goes to war.

[cosmicway 1,333]

''So you like Berlin wall'' Sorry thats a bit of a surreal leap into lala land.

''Communism calls for the stoppage of all economic activity-period'' Again completetly out there. I suggest you read a bit of Marx.

''Dictatorship of the proletariat'' Lol its actually In Marxist socio-political thought, the dictatorship of the proletariat. It refers to a state in which the proletariat, or the working class, has control of political power.

''The basic idea is to rob everyone, including the poor of course and make everything state owned.'' i think thats only in your head. Capitalism robs thr majority and exploits as much as possible for profit for a few, and when in crisis it always goes to war.

Well if you are as it happens a real believer in communism, I cannot deprogram you - heaven forbid. I might as well come to terms with it.

As I always try to be objective, the term "dictatorship" was coined in the 19th century by Karl Marx and if his books were to be writen one century later he 'd never use that word. Whatever it was he meant by it, he 'd never use the word.

Our own Georgey Papadopoulos never used it. He used to call "national government" his stuff.

So we can really call anything what we like and some people will maintain "Ulbricht-Honneker were some horrible deviants and not real communists".

But you can't say communism allows people to live a free life in the economic sense. You have to be one of those chosen by the state or you are nothing. This is where it starts and where it ends - everything else belonging to the system is incidental or a product of historical coincidences, I might cautiously agree.

The fact is under communism, the state controls you all the way and only the functions that are deemed compatible by those who are streamlining the economy are allowed. Everything grinds to a shuddering halt and life becomes a nightmare.

Is that happening because of the shortcomings of those who operate the system, those who pull the strings ?

We have n't ever really seen anything different from them though.

Lastly I don't go by the teachings of the anti-communist literature, although I 'm familiar with it.

It's what comes out their own statements and words that I reproduce.

In the world of democracies it is -I believe- the system of social democracy that cares about the poor people and those without water, to the extent that this can be done. But social democracy's doctrine allows private enterprise, freedom of expression, free elections and is not enslaving man. Some of the protagonists of social democracy are hopeless failures, true, but I am talking about a doctrine here, not about politicians.

[Fulham Broadway 17,306]

Well if you are as it happens a real believer in communism, I cannot deprogram you - heaven forbid. I might as well come to terms with it.

As I always try to be objective, the term "dictatorship" was coined in the 19th century by Karl Marx and if his books were to be writen one century later he 'd never use that word. Whatever it was he meant by it, he 'd never use the word.

Our own Georgey Papadopoulos never used it. He used to call "national government" his stuff.

So we can really call anything what we like and some people will maintain "Ulbricht-Honneker were some horrible deviants and not real communists".

But you can't say communism allows people to live a free life in the economic sense. You have to be one of those chosen by the state or you are nothing. This is where it starts and where it ends - everything else belonging to the system is incidental or a product of historical coincidences, I might cautiously agree.

The fact is under communism, the state controls you all the way and only the functions that are deemed compatible by those who are streamlining the economy are allowed. Everything grinds to a shuddering halt and life becomes a nightmare.

Is that happening because of the shortcomings of those who operate the system, those who pull the strings ?

We have n't ever really seen anything different from them though.

Lastly I don't go by the teachings of the anti-communist literature, although I 'm familiar with it.

It's what comes out their own statements and words that I reproduce.

In the world of democracies it is -I believe- the system of social democracy that cares about the poor people and those without water, to the extent that this can be done. But social democracy's doctrine allows private enterprise, freedom of expression, free elections and is not enslaving man. Some of the protagonists of social democracy are hopeless failures, true, but I am talking about a doctrine here, not about politicians.

Again you are assuming the disaster areas of the USSR and Eastern Europe were communist. They could only trade with each other, thus bound to fail and were corrupt from the state officials. They were state capitalist though idealistically in their own minds were socialist. Their collapse was convenient for the West to say socialism doesnt work.

Democracy, founded as a concept in Greece is great, I just dont believe it exists in nation states very often. Once you have a hierarchical power structure, people will do whatever they can to hang on to that power.

Anyway it looks like SYRIZA will win in a couple of days. Will the trillion+ euro quantitive easing help or hinder Greece ?

[cosmicway 1,333]

Again you are assuming the disaster areas of the USSR and Eastern Europe were communist. They could only trade with each other, thus bound to fail and were corrupt from the state officials. They were state capitalist though idealistically in their own minds were socialist. Their collapse was convenient for the West to say socialism doesnt work.

Democracy, founded as a concept in Greece is great, I just dont believe it exists in nation states very often. Once you have a hierarchical power structure, people will do whatever they can to hang on to that power.

Anyway it looks like SYRIZA will win in a couple of days. Will the trillion+ euro quantitive easing help or hinder Greece ?

I 'm assuming nothing.

Even if I accept the albeit lame excuses re. USSR, things remain the same.

In addition we know the commies like false coins.

My mother's birthplace is called the red island, it's the island of Ikaria. In Ikaria it used to be either conservatives first - left second or left first - conservatives second. That way. I know their silly faces one by one and what they stand for.

The west was saying socialism does n't work a long time before the collapse.

From the early seventies to be accurate.

Before that we used to think of USSR as a totalitarian regime but with strong -regimentalized- economy.

I don't quite see how our democracy does n't work as such. Many other problem areas I do see.

SYRIZA will win but we hope without overall majority. This could make things a little hard for them, in terms of unleashing their mobs. The danger is big however because they are lunatic fringe.

In economic things they will make a mess, everyone knows that but they will rob the people with huge taxes to give to their party friends. That's the certain thing. What they will do with the euro-supremos is uncertain and waited to be seen, but the neo-marxist storm is certain and we are already storing candles and spaghetti.

Here is a video for the SYRIZA style public employees.

I expect you will get the meaning and it's not even a caricature. Those who made it -the New Democracy party- meant it to be a caricature, but it is n't. This is what they are really like:

[Fulham Broadway 17,306]

i'd be with these

[CHOULO19 24,332]

The state fires the shots even in capitalist societies.

We have the following state of affairs:

National companies - sitting ducks. The employees solve giant crosswords all day, play battleships, go to sleep in the office (the party bosses have made it so).

Overcharging private companies. Those have to pay huge amounts of tax. That makes it difficult for them to provide jobs and at the same time the consumer has to pay more. Those companies have to make profit just like their nationalized predecessor but also have to pay taxes whereas the nationalized predecessors did not have to.

Smaller and medium businesses. Those are hunted down. In one version of things they are troublesome to the big boys. In the other version they are "anti-socialist relic", "anti-peoples democracy".

I don't see any problem with the ads people - neither do I recall a time when they were telling the truth !

Sometimes they violate the trade descriptions act and they are caught, but that does n't happen very often.

All in all no system is perfect and many of you don't realise it's money that makes hammers go, in the world of national legislations. Thus if I have a just cause, some suitcases filled with euros will make it glide through that much more smoothly.

In marxist society how are things going to work then ?

Better ?

As if we did n't know !

The party supremos were after the Bolshoi ballet girls and very few of them escaped.

For them it was Cote D' Azur - Marrienband - Florida beach, for the common folk it was robot work for a dish of black soup in the factories.

In what regards industrial accidents they also have the world record (but when something happens in one of the capitalist shipyards they start demonstrations right away).

Yeah, poor multi-billion companies. It's so hard to buy good slaves these days and the nation states they control to protect their concentrated private interests are actually trying to take a very small percentage of their billions to try to benefit the whole community. The nerves of some people!

It's gotten so bad that gap between the rich and the poor is only increasing in a slightly accelerating manner and today the richest 1% in the world have more money than just the poorest 50%. Oh the humanity!

It's funny how you only talk about companies when discussing social political systems. I would have thought it was about the people, the community, the culture, the society, or at least the rights and state of the people working in those companies, the hands that actually do the work and that by many times outnumber the filthy rich CEOs. Silly me...

[cosmicway 1,333]

Yeah, poor multi-billion companies. It's so hard to buy good slaves these days and the nation states they control to protect their concentrated private interests are actually trying to take a very small percentage of their billions to try to benefit the whole community. The nerves of some people!

It's gotten so bad that gap between the rich and the poor is only increasing in a slightly accelerating manner and today the richest 1% in the world have more money than just the poorest 50%. Oh the humanity!

It's funny how you only talk about companies when discussing social political systems. I would have thought it was about the people, the community, the culture, the society, or at least the rights and state of the people working in those companies, the hands that actually do the work and that by many times outnumber the filthy rich CEOs. Silly me...

The 1% figure is exaggerated.

In any case the multi-billion corporations are well served by the neo-marxist orwellian system.

You hear them saying "so and so is a capitalist vulture, sucking the blood of the working class", but also "the other one is good, nice fellow, provides jobs for so many people, a model of succesful businessman" ...

Depends who is who.

In any case that's not what I 'm on about re. those companies. It's the modus operandi.

Personally I support the large corporations (electricity-railways-gas) should be state owned but with real managers, no crossword puzzle champions.

This is not what the neo-marxist system wants. They want armies of do-nothing employes and we pay through the nose for them.

[cosmicway 1,333]

The pinks are in a minority really but the other parties are hopelessly divided.

Their percentge is 32%.

It's less than the all time low defeat percentage of a major party throughout Greek history.

[kellzfresh 7,229]

Anyone has any thoughts on the drastic fall of price of oil over the last month?

That has really been something, especially oil a heavily traded commodity.

I have heard that opec does not care about cutting production as they want to weed out competition, namely America shale gas production.

Any thoughts on this?

Usa expected opec to reduce supply so that they can take some of their buyers with the oil they produce but they have refused to drop supplying. Infact I heard the general secretary of opec saying this is deliberate to drive off competitions from non opec oil producers who will be at a huge loss if they can't get any buyers like any new upcoming business would.

Even a Saudi Arabian minister said they can go with this price for a while, and their economy can stay 8years with low prices because of excess foreign reserves.

So the price won't go up any time soon imo, and even if it does I'm not expecting anything above 70dollars a barrel anymore.

[CHOULO19 24,332]

The 1% figure is exaggerated.

In any case the multi-billion corporations are well served by the neo-marxist orwellian system.

You hear them saying "so and so is a capitalist vulture, sucking the blood of the working class", but also "the other one is good, nice fellow, provides jobs for so many people, a model of succesful businessman" ...

Depends who is who.

In any case that's not what I 'm on about re. those companies. It's the modus operandi.

Personally I support the large corporations (electricity-railways-gas) should be state owned but with real managers, no crossword puzzle champions.

This is not what the neo-marxist system wants. They want armies of do-nothing employes and we pay through the nose for them.

Criticism of capitalism is not advocating Marxist thoughts. Some say that Marx was more of a capitalist theorist and that there is very little in his work about socialism. But I've never been good in Economics to tell.

Personally, I support democratically worker-run companies. The supposed need for a power hierarchy in companies is, to me, completely imagined as is the need for the huge salary gaps. The generally uncontested idea that people should sell themselves for a salary is pretty ludicrous to me.

[cosmicway 1,333]

Criticism of capitalism is not advocating Marxist thoughts. Some say that Marx was more of a capitalist theorist and that there is very little in his work about socialism. But I've never been good in Economics to tell.

Personally, I support democratically worker-run companies. The supposed need for a power hierarchy in companies is, to me, completely imagined as is the need for the huge salary gaps. The generally uncontested idea that people should sell themselves for a salary is pretty ludicrous to me.

Those socialist ran companies are lame ducks.

They don't care about anything.

If you make a complaint they say to you things like "we found a village in Spain and another one in Belgium where it is the same - so you are lying when you say we are the only ones in Europe with a problem".

Then the companies collapse and the bailiffs are called in to unscrew the light bulbs or whatever is handy and those characters whistle carefree and they also say "we are being wronged" !

I don't really care if they were done a favour to be in there, in 1914, by Lloyd George-Clemenceau government.

Most people put the emphasis on that, party favouritism, but to me it's of secondary importance.

The thing is they 're not real managers / workers, they are "what me worry" types.

That has been a major contributing factor in today's economic problems.

[cosmicway 1,333]

The best of all possible worlds in industry is nationalization but without monopoly.

So we could have a public electricity company, not some private firms taking advantage of the situation. What might be better ?
But at the same time anyone who wants to build a power station should be allowed to do it. Go on, do it sir we 'd say, so we see how your business functions. What might be better ?

Public corporations are -supposedly- serving the people.
They are supposed to offer cheap services by as much as possible and also take good care of their workers, they don't look for 11-12 year olds that fit into mine shafts to save on digging operations.

Could we have those ?
It is going to be Plato's ideal state,

What I don't like -and nobody likes- is the traditional do nothing model under which national companies operate.
They could say to their "golden boys", do something and then you will become golden. They could say to the workforce "it's over with backgammon-dominoes at work". Is it possible ?

It's tempi difficili per le principi though.
I wonder what the lefties have to say about it.

[Fulham Broadway 17,306]

Kicking off between Lebanon and Israel, with hezbollah saying theyve killed up to 15 israeli soldiers in a disputed territory. Israel now responding with heavy shelling of Lebanon.

Our on the spot TC correspondent Choulo19 - will this escalate ? Do Lebanon 'own' this Israeli occupied territory ? The BBC were saying Syria might have a claim on the land.

[CHOULO19 24,332]

Kicking off between Lebanon and Israel, with hezbollah saying theyve killed up to 15 israeli soldiers in a disputed territory. Israel now responding with heavy shelling of Lebanon.

Our on the spot TC correspondent Choulo19 - will this escalate ? Do Lebanon 'own' this Israeli occupied territory ? The BBC were saying Syria might have a claim on the land.

The attack was on a convoy of 8-9 Israeli vehicles in occupied Lebanese territory. It was in retaliation after Israeli helicopter destroyed a Hezboullah convoy in Syrian territory last week killing an Iranian general and son of former Hezboullah military leader "Imad Moghniyye".

The attack is not in violation of any treaties or international laws because the territory belongs to Lebanon and is occupied by Israel.

Could as well escalate to a full scale war but that depends mainly on the crazy Natanyahu. If he doesn't start a war he will most definitely lose the upcoming election. If he does start a war he'll kill a few thousand Lebanese people, lose the war and still lose the elections.

It's all about the image of both Hezboullah and the IDF and psychological war and a new equation of uniting the Lebanese and Syrian front.