Grr-owl

I twice wrote up detailed replies to Dieter’s post but both times mi**** a link and lost them. Bloody heartbroken. In short, Toby Ord’s The Precipice is all about existential risks, including Climate Change. If the book is a bit daunting, check out his appearance on Sam Harris’s podcast. Elizabeth Colbert’s The Sixth Extinction is about the present state of things. As D has read in the fires and floods, the news ain’t good.

I'm still reading, so I won't say much in relation to Mitchell and Fazi yet except, Yes. I know jack-s@#! about economics, so the technical stuff is a little confusing, but the ideas chime with mine. So good to find out I have been right all these years..... ; ) I think the worm is turning. Let me know what you think of this: Globalization suits the neo-liberals in the pursuit of higher profits because it allow corporations to have things made in the place where labour and other costs are cheapest. And in the age of global products, iPhone for instance, which are manufactured by the billions, China is at a massive advantage because of its huge labour pool not only of workers but of engineers, and because it's Confucian systems of government over many millennia had impoverished everybody except a minuscule elite. And so China has risen in the neo-liberal age. However, there has been cost in terms of sovereignty as the CCP has at a central mission to encroach on the sovereignty of its partners, as recent events highlight: https://www.aspi.org.au/report/party-speaks-you https://www.aspi.org.au/report/chinese-communist-partys-coercive-diplomacy https://www.aspi.org.au/report/cyber-enabled-foreign-interference-elections-and-referendums So Australia needs to push back against this by reclaiming its sovereignty. But how? Well, any government who wanted to change the status quo would need people to vote for it, and that mean the middle and lower class or wage earners to do that, so there would have to be jobs in it to gain such people's vote. So the equation is: maintaining sovereignty equals shutting china out (at least somewhat, though profoundly) equals jobs for Australians. Well, China will source its iron ore from West Africa sooner or later, so Aus will need new customers, so the hydrogen idea and manufacturing steel in alliance with strategic allies such as Japan, Germany and US makes sense: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/iron-or-getting-energised-about-reducing-australias-trade-dependence-on-china/

Still reading. Making progress. In the meantime, I’d say there’s potential in this. Be interested in what you think. Seems to combine a few positives while eliminating some negs: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/iron-or-getting-energised-about-reducing-australias-trade-dependence-on-china/

You got me.

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Who goes to the city anymore? Tourists?

Last time I thought the door was ajar, LSD was involved. BOOM! BOOM!

A bit harsh, don’t you think?

No. The culture is fundamentally not western. I reckon that case could be made creditably made in relation to most of Italy and Spain and Portugal, too, even though they are Catholic. One of the major reasons that Europe will fail, but I don’t want to go into that. I’ll take the Souvlaki, though...

Neo liberalism has to go. See the thread about it. AF has interesting things to say....

Maybe it's a good idea to stop looking for things to believe?

It was Christian throughout the communist period. The impulses and idea that drove both are the same - uncritical acceptance of ideas. Dogma. The desire for a savior.... etc...

Education is the answer, and once the neo-liberals are gone, we might get some of that.

It's not the West, mate. No Orthodox country is Western....

I'm not sure why you bring all this up. No doubt he's right on some points, and certainly deluded on others; I love bluesy rock n' roll for instance. In any case, I'm not arguing .... Let me put it this way: Let's say it's hot out, 40 degrees or so. You have to go out and there's two cars in the driveway. Identical Datsun Sunnys. They are beaten up and broken in exactly the same way. The tires need some air. The window winders don't work. Everything is the same except for one thing: one has airconditioning and the other doesn't. Which one are you going to take to the shops? To argue that life in the USSR was better than life in the West over the equivalent period is just absurd.

We have this thing called science. It includes techniques to guard against bias. If you want to pick on the research, then come up with some evidence that it is wrong. Argue against it, for sure. That is your right. But gimme evidence. Debate is good and constructive.

I'll check this out. Though as you argue elsewhere that Russia is the West, perhaps what Solzhenitsyn really did was document how awful life was in the West, went to the West, then returned to the West cleaned of his illusion that the West was better. ??? To argue that life in the USSR was better than life in the West during an equivalent period is just a fantasy. In any case, as long as nobody tells me what I can write or draw or read or watch, I'll argue that life in the West is better than elsewhere, even given the litany of atrocities.

In reality. The West is pluralistic. Descended primarily from Protestantism, with a slug of Catholicism remaining, but with a big chunk of secularism driving it, and that's the most important bit if the discussion is about colonialism, capitalism, freedom of expression and what not. Russia is not Western in any sense. https://books.google.ae/books/about/Dominion.html?id=CWyGDwAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y https://books.google.ae/books?id=YhWtCJSSv2cC&dq=civilization+the+west+and+the+rest&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi31emTks_tAhUipnEKHapYDfYQ6AEwAnoECAIQAg

No problems. Well aware of these. Doesn't mean their wok is biased or wrong; simply means you need to take into account their characteristics as an organization, as is advisable in every instance when it comes to media. Skepticism is good. Cynicism is not, and neither is prejudice. Judge things on their merits.

In case anyone is interested in some issues relevant to this discussion, here's a couple of links to carefully composed and constructed articles: https://www.aspi.org.au/report/cyber-enabled-foreign-interference-elections-and-referendums https://www.aspi.org.au/report/mind-your-tongue

Depends where you go. Where I am he is referred to as 'the horned one,' as in the devil incarnate. Apparently he had horns on his forehead. Absolutely not. But for me it is not a dealbreaker. The crushing of freedom of expression would be a dealbreaker. Constantly. Often. And, yes. Not the point I was arguing against. Russia is not the West. In fact, any Orthodox dominated country is not the West. The division between Catholic and Orthodox is profound. The division between Orthodox and Protestant, even more so. In any case, Russia is not culturally European, though a part of it is in Europe. The Russ are an ancient Slavic tribe from Ukraine that spread far and wide, conquering and slaughtering as they went, and still go.... The point I am trying to make is the the crimes of the Rest are just as bad as the crimes of the West. But we have at least one saving grace that makes our societies better. Freedom of expression is the mechanism by which we acknowledge our mistakes and try to correct for the future. Ever wonder why so many emmigrants want to go to the West? If life is so much better where they come from, why would they bother.

Also, the votes from the cities tend be counted later. Country votes Republican. City votes Democrat... largely.

I believe this is a category error.

This issue is covered in the material I pointed you to.

No, I don't agree at all. We constantly and continually criticize ourselves in books, film, TV, art. For every claim of virtue, there is an acknowledgment of sin. How else would we get demonstrations in the street against the invasion of Iraq, and every other social evil? I'll give you an example from my life, again. A couple of years ago, every single citizen of that country beginning with the 17th letter of the alphabet was kicked out of the country I live in. Was there any protest against this racism? Did people march? Did people protest in print media? Did people even comment on social media? Like f$@k they did. They would have been murdered. So when you write this: "It doesn't seem to bother you that..." it sticks in my gut, because it does bother me. It bothers me a lot. People here deserve the same freedoms that Westerners have, but they don't get them, Deiter. I will point it out again: they would be murdered if they even commented. I might as well say to you it doesn't seem to bother you that other civilizations do exactly the same thing but you give them a free ride. In other words, you don't hold others to the same standard that you hold the West. You write, "There are no mirrors in their universe, it is always 'the other' who is at fault," but for you it is The West who is always at fault. You also wrote, "Genghis and his type learned their trade from Alexander the so-called Great" as if Genghis is not responsible for his own behavior, as if he needed a Westerner to teach him, as if 'others' don't have any of their own agency, as if Westerners are always pushing everybody else around and forcing them to do bad things against their own will.....as if they are puppets. There is in your ideas an underlying assumption that somehow Westerners are responsible for their own behavior and for everyone else's too. It is bollocks. It is fundamentally racist: "Only Westerners do bad things. Anyone who isn't a Westerner who does a bad thing is not responsible because no doubt a Westerner made them do it. Non-westerners are just poor inferior others who can't make their own decisions." Bollocks. See if this one fits your idea: It was the West's fault that during the cultural revolution when Red Guards identified a female counterrevolutionary, they would pass a steel hook into their [censored], through the intestinal wall and out their anus, then drag them naked through the streets to their execution. That bothers me. Does it bother you?