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Christian

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Posts posted by Christian

  1. More neoconservative talking points?


    Yep. The world is a fucked up place. That’s kind of my point. 
    It always was, and it always will be. Fukuyama’s “end of history” was dogmatic ideology.

    The old “Cold War” mentality of good guys and bad guys no longer exists.
    Not that it was ever credible as an ideology, but it was a bipolar world (in more ways than one).  
    The US’ post-Eastern Bloc New World Order began breaking down in 2001, as the global economy took its first major hit. Things have just accelerated since 2008 when the system finally broke. 
    There are all sorts of interlocking sides across the globe.

    The Syrian civil war is an obvious case.  
    The rebel factions fighting the dictator Al-Assad are intertwined with Muslim fundie terrorist organizations. 
    Russia intervenes on the side of Al-Assad, fighting the forces aligned with Al-Qaeda and ISIS. 
    Turkey (a member of NATO whose government’s main concern seems to be a genocide against the Kurdish people) helps funnel more Muslim fundie fighters trained and equipped in the rebellion against Qaddafi in to Syria to help overthrow Al-Assad. 
    The United States enters the conflict, much like in Libya with no Congressional approval and without Al-Assad inviting the US military (obviously), in order to back the rebels who are attempting to overthrow Al-Assad. 
    Turkey and the United States only served to prolong a civil war which has devastated the country, helping make the chances of a Muslim fundie government displacing Al-Assad a greater possibility.

  2. Welcome to America:

    Since the pandemic began (March 2020), the net worth of all billionaires in the country increased by a trillion dollars.

    In that same time period, a new study reveals that 70% of Americans have $1000 or less in total savings.

    Keep that good-time money flowing! Keep that national debt growing! We are America and we can afford to do anything, there is no slowing!

  3. Hell, if everyone is so scared of those spooky Muslims…it’s Russia who is the only country which knew how to keep them under control.

    Chechnya was involved in a terrorist war against occupying country Russia, mostly led by Muslim fundies. 
    What does Putin do? Finds a puppet somewhat-moderate Muslim who is more concerned with staying on Putin’s good side than Islam. 
    The guy is totally insane, but he keeps the Muslim fundies in line. Most Muslims accept him because he is a seemingly devout Muslim (but really he’s more just insane).

    Tajikistan is a Muslim majority country. Russia backs the dictator. What does the dictator do? Has a secular government. Any extreme Muslim views are immediately stopped by the government. Only moderate Islam is allowed.

    Russia backs Al-Assad in Syria…as I said, a secular dictator. He kept the Muslim fundies in line.

    Russia and China were getting closer with Qaddafi…as I said, mostly a secular dictator. He kept the Muslim fundies in line.

    Russia and China were getting closer with Hussein in 2002, as the “West” was opposed to him…Why did Russia and China want to back Hussein? Because he was a secular dictator. He kept the Muslim fundies in line.

    Russia is allied with Iran because even though it’s a Muslim fundamentalist government, it keeps order in the country.
    There aren’t different Muslim terrorist squads killing each other in a civil war, as happened in Iraq, Libya, and Syria after the US overthrew the governments. 
    It’s also a bulwark against the similar Muslim fundamentalist Saudi Arabia (backed by the “West”). 
    Neither side can become a regional superpower.

    If it weren’t for the US’ meddling in Afghanistan, Russia would be maintaining a secular dictatorship to this day in the country. 
    Reagan backed the Mujahideen in Afghanistan against the “evil empire”, and the Muslim fundies (Taliban) took over the country after they toppled the Soviet-backed secular government. 
    If that didn’t happen, Russia would be keeping the secular Afghani government in power, just like it does in Tajikistan.

    It’s said that the US military most likely decided to stop the never-ending war in Afghanistan and just leave the country to the Taliban because the Taliban will be more opposed to China than the current-government in Afghanistan. 
    The current-government already has infrastructure deals with China.
    It’s become more in the US’ interest again (after twenty fuckin’ years of war!) to leave the Taliban in power than keep fighting them. 
    It’s considered that the US is most likely fighting for the cause of China in the country now, as China wants to make a deal in Afghanistan for its “One Road” initiative. 
    The Muslim fundies don’t really want the “godless” Chinese in the country…much the same as the Mujahideen didn’t want the godless Commie USSR controlling the Afghan government.

    Just like overthrowing Hussein in Iraq has only strengthened Iran. 
    The democratically elected Iraqi government, mind, has democratically voted to expel the US military from their country (as I pointed out), and the current Iraqi government is more willing to trust Iran than the United States. 
    Leaving well enough alone, Hussein would never have allied with the Iranian dictatorship. 
    So, while the US wasted trillions and trillions of dollars, killed millions and millions of people, and wasted years and years destabilizing the “Middle East”; China, Iran, and Russia were able to get more powerful.

    There’s a contradiction between trying to stop the Russians while also fighting a war against “Muslim terrorists”.

     

    Also, I don’t think you realize what is going on in Nigeria. 
    The US wasn’t involved in Nigeria.
    There are multiple factions fighting each other. The country is about to collapse. The bottoming out of the oil market last year (which basically props up the Nigerian economy) collapsed the economy, with Covid lockdowns not helping. 
    There are different factions fighting against the current-government, with only some being Muslim fundies, which government has been nothing less than draconian in its own actions. 
    He banned Twitter after Twitter censored a post he made for “racially insensitive remarks about Biafran/Igbo people”. 
    He has also banned cryptocurrencies, even though a lot of people have turned to cryptocurrencies in the expectation that the Nigerian government currency is going to be worthless soon (most likely accurate). 
    This has stirred up more protests against the government.

  4. It didn’t strengthen the Chinese economy. 
    China lost more in GDP than the US did in the trade war. China exports far more to the US than vice-versa. 
    The trade deficit between China and the US did decrease.
    It pretty much did harm to both economies with no benefits though.

    The reason it seemed like China “benefitted” was because it lowered other trade restrictions with the European Union. 
    So, China was able to recoup some of its lost trade imbalance with the US by turning to the EU.

    The reason it seemed the US was harder hit, macroeconomically speaking, is that US corporations began to import more from Taiwan, South Korea, Mexico, and India. Hence, the US’ overall trade deficit took a hit, even though it decreased with China.

    As far as “trashing the US economy”, that was a long time coming. 
    The recovery from 2008 never really happened. The US just kept printing more money, which helped speculators. Job growth was pretty anemic through the two Obama terms, except for university-educated white collar workers or minimum wage/part-time jobs. 
    Trump cut taxes, plus kept interest rates at record lows, even though the economy was “recovering” (big no-no in economics, Republicans would have lost their minds if a Democrat did that). 
    So, yeah, of course the economy started doing better. If you start handing out lots of free money and tell people to create jobs, that’s probably what will happen. They have nothing to lose.
    The US’ GDP was still growing at less than 3% a year. It was up slightly from the last Obama year, but that’s still considered a near-recession economy. 
    If the economy was actually recovering, GDP growth should be over 3%.
    By 2019, all that extra money flooding the market started to lose its shine. If the economy isn’t actually growing, but the government is just giving people money to create new jobs…eventually that’s going to come to a stop sign.
    See:Over-production. 
    Trump’s little trade war also didn’t help. 
    The economy was always on faulty ground though.

     

    No. The other presidents didn’t do that, but they also did nothing as more and more companies outsourced to China.
    This has been going on for over twenty years. It didn’t start with Trumpy. 
    George W. Bush’s administration voted in favour of China joining the WTO.

     

    You also don’t want to push China back in to Communism. 
    Remember the Chinese dictatorship is technically still Communist.

    If unemployment increases or the economy tanks, there is the threat that the country may go back to the time of Mao.

    Don’t forget how far China has advanced since the 1970s. 
    There is a nice middle class layer in China now. They love watching Marvel Comics movies too. 
    As Trump said, “The US and China colluded to eviscerate the middle class in the US to the benefit of a middle class in China.” 
    Is that supposed to be a horrible thing that China has a middle class now?
    We don’t want to go back to a time where everyone in China was either a prole or a Party member either.

  5. I don’t disagree with what you wrote about China. 
    You are probably correct with Trump’s motives in China also.

    Still, no president since before Nixon stood up to China. It’s unfair to single out Trump on China when other presidents did even less.

    You think Biden doesn’t benefit from China too? It’s not just crony Trump. Hunter Biden made money in China also. The whole system is riddled with corruption.

    Besides, rather than fawning over a dictator in China, it sounds like you are saying that Trump was cozying up to trans-national corporations…just like every other president.

    As you point out though, the economies of China and the United States are intertwined. 
    It would hurt the US economy to do that with companies like Wal-Mart too. They aren’t the only company doing it either.
    It would impact the US consumers. If prices go up, people don’t buy as much. It takes more money from working class people who are already heavily in-debt.

    I didn’t say I agreed with Trump’s little trade war. I was just pointing to it.

    It’s really easy to solve the China issue, and it requires less government, not more. 
    If the US changed its patent laws, it would completely destroy the supply chain, and it wouldn’t cause greater unemployment in China. 
    All those Nike sweat shops in China? Nike would lose their supply chain and the factories would remain in Chinese hands. 
    Then, Nike would be forced to open their own factories in the United States. 
    It wouldn’t impact consumer prices, since there would be no “trade wars” either. China could import their locally-made products to America and compete with the locally-made Nike products. 
    Nike wouldn’t be getting a 900% (or whatever) price mark-up on their shoes anymore either.

  6. Trump had a goal in mind with Russia. If he could weasel his way in to becoming Russia’s ally, the US could align with Russia in Syria fighting Islamic fundies. 

    From there, he could try to get Russia to break its ties with Iran and China.

    Basically, the same type of strategy that FDR used with the Soviet Union during WWII with ol’ Uncle Joe, a bloody despot that makes Putin look like Gandhi. 
    He got the US in an alliance with the Soviet Union to fight the Axis powers, you know.

    Trump saw China and Iran as the two biggest enemies and thought that he could form a US-Russia alliance to police the globe.

    As Trump said, “You can’t fight everyone at once.”

    It’s spelled out in Steve Bannon’s book. 
    He writes that Russia could be dealt with later after China and “radical Islam” is no longer a threat.

    The Democrats, the US military, and Putin really had no interest in pursuing that aim.


    Also, the Republicans just attacked Biden for being “soft on Russia”. Biden agreed to drop the threat of sanctions (threats initiated by Trump) against Germany and Russia if they finished their oil pipeline. 
    Poland and Ukraine are pissed at Biden for backing down on Trump’s threat. 
    Remember the pro-fascist Ukrainian dictatorship that Obama and Biden fawned over a few years back…
    The knife can cut both ways.

  7. 11 minutes ago, dogpoet said:

    Also Russia, China and Saudi Arabia. There's probably a few more I'm forgetting as well.

    George W. Bush, Obama, and Biden all kissed Saudi Arabia’s ass!

    They hold quite a bit of that US debt, you know? 
    The same debt used to fund those wars which have been so helpful for the world.

    Trump was helping Saudi Arabia because it was fighting Iran-funded rebels in Yemen.
    A country absolutely devastated by Saudi Arabia’s war. Ask Bernie Sanders. 
    A war just like Biden is continuing.

    Trump was harsher on China than any president since before Nixon. 
    He started a little thing called a trade war with China. 
    Did a lot of sabre-rattling with China…including threatening to cancel the US’ debt with China. 
    A move which would have destroyed the US economy, mind.

    In case you haven’t noticed, since 2001, a lot of the US economy has relied on cheap exports from China.

  8. Also remember, if the US economy hits hyper-inflation or goes in to another depression like the 1930s, you won’t be able to feel safe anymore either.

    The US has put itself in a situation where it is likely to lose its standing in the world.

    Utopian thinking about how beautiful America is making the world with its constant wars and future wars could very easily hit a brick wall and it’ll take the entire world economy with it.

    The incredibly low interest rates are creating inflation…normally a government would increase interest rates to deal with this situation. 
    Yet, if the interest rates are raised with the current economy, it could easily throw the entire economy in to a major freefall, as the entire economy relies on access to easy money to keep functioning. 
    This is a situation scarily reminiscent of Weimar Germany before the Nazis took power and stabilized the economy. 
    If inflation gets out of control, it leads to a spiral where the American dollar will continue to lose value. 
    Eventually the US will be forced to default on its debt. Once this happens, the US will not be able to sustain its debt monetization. Interest rates will have to be raised to save the dollar. 
    Once that occurs, hello Great Depression! 
    The US government won’t be able to afford to fund most anything…social spending, massive military. 
    The world economy won’t be in good shape once the US dollar is no longer being used to prop up all the surplus exports. 
    This is a situation akin to WWI or WWII, where the nations of the world will be all too willing to go to war in order to attempt to preserve their national economies.

  9. 2 hours ago, dogpoet said:

    I'm with Tigger on this. It looks like Biden's making a point of reminding the international community that his country does have a substantial military after Trump spent four years fawning to dictators and pulling them out of contested areas. It's sabre rattling, but if deterrence works, then it beats an actual war.

    Trump had no problem spending money on the military. The US military didn’t suffer under Trump. He raised the military budget every year as president above what it was under Obama. His final budget saw the most the US has ever spent on the military in history.

    What dictators did Trump fawn over? North Korea? 
    How was Trump wrong in North Korea? I wouldn’t treat the dictator like a boyfriend, no. 
    His policy was correct though. North Korea has been kept isolated for decades and decades. Who has suffered from that? Not the Communist Party. The North Korean people. 
    The best way to deal with North Korea is to begin to open the country up to trade. Keeping it isolated has done not one thing to change North Korea.

    Trump realized that there were contradictions and unwinnable situations and that wars cannot continue forever. Eventually, one has to admit defeat. 
    It was twenty years of non-stop wars.
    Nixon realized this in Vietnam. He eventually gave up. 
    Iraq democratically voted for the US to leave the country, and Trump said that the US military would never leave Iraq. That is plain and simple colonialism.

    It was a major reason that Trump won the election. Former Democrats and working class people were sick of wars and Hilary Clinton talked like a neocon (and had neocons saying they would support Clinton over Trump!). So, they decided Trump was the lesser of two evils.

    As far as sabre-rattling, Trump did the same with Iran…yet, everyone said that Trump was a horrible person when he did his bellicose sabre-rattling. 
    An Iran that Obama once signed a peace deal with which Trump and the Republicans immediately ripped up. 
    Now, Biden is following Trump in considering Iran an enemy nation.

  10. First, the US already has the largest military in the world. 
    Does continuing to spend money on the military just because Russia and China does make any sense? 
    A war with China would be the stupidest decision any country could make in history. There will not be a world left to speak of if the US decides to go to war with China.

    OK, now, let’s remember the details of what happened during the “war on terror”.

    Saddam Hussein, who was a secular dictator, was taken from power. This allowed the Islamic fundies to rise up, leading to a country engulfed in nearly two decades of civil war.

    In Syria, Al-Assad is also a secular dictator. His government was fighting against the Islamic fundies alongside Russia. Obama decided to start arming the opposition, ensuring the Syrian war would continue for far longer. If Al-Assad fell, it would have been the Islamic fundies which took power. At least Obama had the sense to realize that pursuing outright regime change in Syria would have been complete madness. Yet, there was absolutely no reason for the US to get involved. Al-Assad and Russia were handling the fighting of the Islamic fundies, but Obama decided to involve the US opposite of Al-Assad and Russia. Not that I think they should have backed Al-Assad either.

    In Libya, it was Islamic fundies who were rising up against, again, a mainly secular dictator in Qaddafi. Obama and NATO decide to kill Qaddafi. This allows, again, Islamic fundies free rein in the country. Turkey (the US and NATO’s ally) starts funnelling these Islamic fundies from Libya and in to Syria to fight against Al-Assad and Russia. Now, there are two rival warlords vying for power as Libya has been engulfed in a long civil war, which has made Libya almost ungovernable.

    In Afghanistan, the US fought the longest war ever. It cost trillions of dollars and killed untold numbers of people. After nineteen years of war, the result was that the Taliban controlled almost as much of the country as it did in 2001. That’s what nineteen years of war accomplished in Afghanistan. 
    Meanwhile, the US economy has suffered during that time.

    The US went from the strongest country in the world during 2000, to a country in 2021 with the largest debt in the history of the planet, whose economy is only sustained through taking  on ever greater levels of debt.

    China was dead-on when it told Trump that he is blaming China for the problems America created for itself. Maybe if it had spent the past two decades spending money at home instead of fighting wars across the world, it wouldn’t be in the position it is in today, where China is rising up to be the new world power, while America pitifully bombs countries as an attempt to show it still has power.

  11. So much for Biden even minimally curbing the insanity of the Trump administration.

    After Trump’s record increase in military spending for his final budget, Biden does him one better by actually increasing military spending again for his first budget.

    To a record $753 billion!

    Supposedly, at a time with no actual wars…the Taliban “won” in Afghanistan, Iraq voted to force the US military to leave, and the US basically gave up in Syria. 
    Although, like the world’s worst house guest, the US military seems to have a problem with leaving the area.

    Amidst record debt, a looming new housing crisis, and booming inflation…

     

    Meanwhile, a recent Wall Street Journal headline: “Tesla makes more money trading Bitcoin than selling cars!”

  12. You’re not missing anything.

    The “New 52” version is Hellblazer written for a PG-audience. 
    It’s not fun, just annoying.

    The “Rebirth” version is plain dull. John spends a year searching for Djinn and then the story just sort of ends. 
    There was no point to even attempting to publish another Hellblazer comic at that time.

    The Ming Doyle version is the most interesting series from this diversion period. It’s not a particularly good comic or really about John Constantine, as we know him. It might as well have been a new character. It was different though, and it gets points for that over the other two attempts to redo Hellblazer. 
    An interesting failure is the best description.

  13. Still one of my favourite books…well, three books, since it is a trilogy. No, four books since I love Masks of the Illuminati just as much. 
    A novel with James Joyce, Albert Einstein, and Aleister Crowley as the main characters is kind of hard to top.

  14. No. I know what the Greenwich Village Trilogy is…T.A. Waters, another counter-culture writer wrote the third one (I have a different dystopian hippie sci-fi novel that Waters wrote)…I found the Kurland novel at an used book store last year.

    This is a different trilogy, by one author.

    Yes, I do know about the Beatles song too. The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine doesn’t seem like it would be outright attacking authoritarians. 
    Robert Anton Wilson merged the anti-government submarine from Ayn Rand with the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine”. 
    I think the author of this book took the idea from Illuminatus.

    There is also a group called the New World Organ, which sounds like something straight out of Illuminatus also…but I forget if they’re supposed to be the good guys or bad guys.

     

    EDIT: Jogging my memory about The New World Organ made the search easier. 
    The series is called The Savage Report. It is by Brand’s old partner Howard Rheingold. It was supposed to be a trilogy, but only two books were published. 
    Apparently, Rheingold will no longer talk about writing the novels. 

  15. Actually science fictional, but pretty damn fantastic in today’s world. 
    Even Brand betrayed his ideals by the late-‘70s.

    I was collecting hippie genre fiction novels a number of years back, and I came across a (I think it was) trilogy from the early-1970s inspired by Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog.

    There was a peaceful revolution in the US and the government was now based on the Whole Earth Catalog philosophy. 
    The military has been abolished.

    The main plot revolves around ex-generals who are plotting a coup and planning to start a war with the USSR.

    There is also a yellow submarine which is the full defensive force of the current administration (obvious shades of Illuminatus), which attempts to stop the general’s counter-revolt.

    I had managed to hunt down all of the books listed…well, finally finding one novel in the Greenwich Village Trilogy last year…except for whatever this one was called. I forgot the name and can’t find the list online now.

    Does anyone know of these novels?

  16. Yeah, I am on a diet to try to lose weight I’ve put on too. 
    I know it’s not good for my health condition to be fat again.

    I was trying to stay active when the pandemic started, but as it continued, I gave up.

    People think being a vegetarian is healthy? I’m not one because of any health benefits. You know what are vegetarian foods though?
    Chocolate, potato chips, milk shakes, egg Mcmuffins…

  17. Did they get appropriated?
    The characters have always had a fascistic element, in that the justice system just doesn’t work, and we should get rid of the scum without having to worry about nancy-boy little liberal restraints like “right to a fair trial”. 
    It doesn’t matter what lengths the committed person must go to in order to protect Society.

    Spider Man at least operates with a code of ethics, where he refuses to kill, and is basically operating as a lone-unlicensed police officer.
    He makes sure everyone gets due process, and doesn’t consider himself judge or jury.

    I mean, even FOX News now accepts that the coup-attempters genuinely THOUGHT the government was being stolen, so they were in a sense right in their actions, regardless of how we might feel.  
    Don’t you understand? 
    Wild Dog would understand!

    I haven’t read many Wild Dog stories either, and I don’t think Collins outright intentionally intended Wild Dog to be a far Right caricature (it says online he fought against a Christian fundie group who were willing to use violence to stop pornography, although the alt-Right today would probably say Wild Dog should be declaring war on militant feminists instead), but yeah, some of the elements to the character certainly appeal to the fascist mentality. 

    The idea that these types of characters should be standing up to racist militias…well, maybe some writers can slant a character in that direction…but, let’s be honest, Antifa supporters aren’t fretting about drug dealers getting away and the cops getting their hands tied by stupid “laws”.


    Anyway, that sounds hilarious. I would want to read the comic to see Azzarello’s attempt to incorporate a sensitive real-life event in to a comic.

  18. I finally got a copy of a collection of Arno Schmidt’s fiction which contains the novella “Leviathan”. 
    I had to order the book.

    Schmidt lived through Nazi Germany, and the experience understandably traumatized him. 
    He lost his faith in anything good existing in this world, which led to his embracing a Gnostic view. 
    “Leviathan” was probably the fullest evocation of his personal rejection of the world as a nightmare from which we are trying to awake.

    His fiction is very personal and nihilistic, but much of it also absurd or playful.
    His writing style has been compared to Joyce.

    ”Leviathan” is Schmidt at his most intensely personal and pessimistic though.

  19. Stalin read it before continuing to ban it!
    “Zamyatin thinks Lenin was bad? Well, I can make the country look even more like this book!”

    It’s actually more popular than you would think. 
    George Orwell and Ayn Rand were both fans of the book, and readers who like to see the influences on 1984 and Anthem will come upon WE. 
    It’a not as well known with the general populace as 1984 or BNW though, true.

    Yeah, it’s a lot better book than 1984, as far as writing and style. 
    It can be read on different levels too, unlike 1984. I mean, Zamyatin’s point is quite clear, but it can be as easily read as a religious analogy.

  20. I’m reading Rex  Warner’s The Aerodrome, another warning about the rise of totalitarianism.

    Why is this novel not mentioned alongside the classics like 1984, Brave New World, and WE? 
    It features subtlety lacking in Orwell (even though I do love 1984).

     It juxtaposes a hedonistic, decadent peaceful land with a regimented, militaristic keep. 
    The main character finds himself drawn by the promise of the keep.

    There are elements that remind me of JG Ballard.

  21. It looks like I am going back to work as a writer.

    Julie’s friend (who moved to Italy in 2019) is a published author…that New Age Wicca mumbo-jumbo stuff…and she’s planning to expand her web-site (about the paranormal) to combine with a number of other of these types of web-sites, and begin paying people to write for the site. 
    Julie sent the owner some of my columns from when I was writing full-time for a local newspaper (with syndication rights), the one where I got to work alongside William Messner-Loebs (!), which closed a few years back due to increased cost of paper because of Trump’s trade war bullshit. Thanks a lot, Trump! 
    Anyway, she is interested in purchasing some of my “back catalogue” and taking me on as a writer.

    Since I’ve been furloughed from work since the pandemic lockdowns began, with no word on if they plan to bring me back (thanks a lot, Covid!), and my ever-declining health limiting my options, it’ll be nice to be able to have some income again.

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  22. As long as they are killed humanely though, Dog. Always remember to kill them humanely.

    ———————————-

    Most of the invasive species were introduced over one-hundred years ago too. It’s not as if they were recently introduced. 
    I’m pretty sure cattle are not a native species either.

    I’m not arguing against hunting. I would actively encourage people who eat meat to hunt their own animals for eating purposes, as often as possible. 
    I’m not a hunter. I don’t eat meat.
    A lot of the hunting laws in the US and Canada I find problematic too. I know of many Native Americans (among others) who are opposed to some of the bureaucratic nonsense that occurs. 
    Native Americans’ treaties do allow self-government of their own land, I should add. 
    I’m not trying to single out a certain country.
    Bureaucratic overreach is not restricted by borders. 
    Animal-rights types often don’t understand issues. Deer in the United States and Canada would face severe over-population if not for human culling. Deer dying of starvation or pandemics due to over-crowding causes a lot more suffering than being killed by humans. 
    Plus, the ones who want the government to ban the selling of meat. Do they realize how many farm animals there are? Are the farmers supposed to release all these cattle in to the wilderness? Do they know the result? Or, are we expected to pay farmers to keep their animals alive and well?
    Let’s not pretend that hunting is always a “humane” practice though.

    My uncle was a hunter. He knew a Native family in Montana. He would drive his trailer out to reservation once a year and spend a few months hunting. 
    One time his Native buddy told him, “Don, you kill too many damn animals. You aren’t killing for food. One day, the spirits of these animals are going to come back to haunt you.” 
    He died of a blood lot in his trailer. So, who knows? heh 

    Julie’s brother hunts sometimes. He’s one of those types who doesn’t care about “poaching laws”. If he’s in the mood to shoot a deer, he gets in his pick-up, drives out to some woods somewhere, and kills a deer; laws be damned.

     

    Remember that book The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair? 
    He wrote it show how shitty the people working in the meat packing plants had it. 
    A bunch of upper middle class reformers read the book and immediately said, “My god, look at the conditions of the factories that produce food we eat! We must do something about that!”. 
    Humans be damned. It wasn’t Sinclair’s point.
    That’s just hilarious.

    The United States and Canada have “humane slaughter laws” also. They have been challenged as “exclusionary” due to interfering with freedom of religion for Jewish or Muslim meat producers. 
    I don’t agree with granting special rights to certain individuals (equality before the law), so if there are exceptions to laws, then the law is (for all intents and purposes) invalid. 
    All these types of laws do is increase the size of bureaucracy as the expense of tax-payers. 
    Great for someone if they get a cushy government job….
    There are a multitude of laws which can be best democratically decided using the free market. No need for laws, no needs to increase bureaucracy, no need for people to spend more money, and it is truly democratic. 
    If the majority are concerned about an issue, they won’t buy the product. If a majority support one type of product over another than the other products will need to follow or go out of business. Problem solved. 
    If the majority doesn’t care and allows it to continue, then the majority never really cared about the issue and it was never democratic to begin.

     

    This discussion has well and truly moved far afield from the original contention as to whether parents should be forced to provide medical care for their children. That topic could be plausibly worked in to a thread about a pandemic. 
    Somehow it wound its way around to being about cows. 
    I, myself, don’t particularly want to continue discussing either topic, but of course you are free to discuss anything you want (don’t feel I am trying to shut you down). 
    I think I made my point about supporting the right of the individual and private lives over the right of governments or society.

  23. I like nature a great deal, myself. I love to be by myself. I hate living in a city.
    The idea that a tree leaf is of more importance than a human is extremist.

    Canada is 38% forested (equal to New Zealand) and has only had 1% loss of tree cover since 1990…without those types of extreme laws. 
    Canada is the fourth largest exporter of timber in the world also, so it’s not that logging isn’t an important part of Canada’s economy. 

    During the 21st century, NZ’s prison population has grown by 70%, so I guess those leaf laws are really helping. 

    Plus, there are not any bag-limits on hunting in New Zealand! 
    “Shoot as many animals as you want, but do not take any leaves off of trees…or else! Oh, and humane slaughter laws too.”


    Dogmatism?  
    People can do whatever else they want.
    “Nope.” 
    Glad you are the arbiter. 
    If a crime is victimless, how can there be any crime? Isn’t it an oxymoronic statement?

    Not only that, but your idealism of the State is, perhaps, the most dogmatic statement I’ve ever heard. 
    The idea that people working as part of the State lose all identity in the name of the mass man/collective is counterintuitive.
    The State is run by individuals.
    Individuals have self-interest.


    I don’t even know why I am bothering to argue. 
    There’s really nothing to argue about anymore. 
    Your side won a long time ago.

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