leftlib's Comments

Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton and Charles Goyette : Aaron Emery

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:51:26 +0000

They still have one choice that was available to the troops in Vietnam. Fraggin their commanding officers!

Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton and Charles Goyette : Aaron Emery

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:46:18 +0000

"who must choose redeployment or jail" FALSE! Matthis Chiroux refused to deploy on the grounds that it was an illegal order for various reasons, and WON. He got discharged and even got to keep his G.I. bill benefits. Look it up!

Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton and Charles Goyette : Winslow T. Wheeler

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 14:57:08 +0000

What do you mean by "live above our means?" If the government takes out a loan to buy a bomb to kill our brothers and sisters in another country, and then tells us we have to pay perpetual interest on the loan for that bomb, is our living standard then above our means? No, actually we're living BELOW our means, because we could afford a better living standard if we weren't paying the interest on that bomb. Really, though, it's not a question of living 'above' or 'below' means. It's a question of who is living OFF our means. Well let's see, who is collecting that interest exactly?

Antiwar.com Blog : Obama Will Go Naked to Stockholm

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 14:40:41 +0000

welfare? really? we get welfare?

Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton and Charles Goyette : Medea Benjamin

Thu, 8 Oct 2009 04:53:02 +0000

"They don't care if we holocaust Iraq as long as the commanding generals are black lesbians or whatever their favorite PC flavor is" my thoughts exactly

Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton and Charles Goyette : Jean MacKenzie

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:50:13 +0000

Ms. MacKenzie, "al Qaeda" is apaprently as expandable a term a "journalst" these days.

Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton and Charles Goyette : Jean MacKenzie

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:41:14 +0000

The Taliban wanted to manipulate the price of poppies by not growing ANY? Hello? HELLO? I suppose it would be too radical to point out on antiwar.com that heroin money gets processed through the Western banking system, and that maybe it's not entirely a coincidence that Afghanistan was invaded shortly after the Taliban destroyed that revenue stream, JUST IN TIME for a new crop to be planted. I'm not saying that's the only reason Afghanistan was invaded, these things are always coalition efforts, but DESTROYING *ALL* THE POPPIES TO MANIPULATE THE PRICE?!? That makes no sense whatsoever and you should be ashamed of yourself for uttering it, I don't go here to get nonsensical propaganda.

Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton and Charles Goyette : Rep. Ron Paul

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:56:59 +0000

I'm not sure where this theory comes from that you can't have an Empire if the currency is gold and silver. Wasn't the Spanish Empire based on gold and silver? Can't you "balance the budget" (and them some) by killing off the Incas and Aztecs and stealing *their* gold? By enslaving people and forcing them into mines? Did Alexander the Great have a Central Bank?____Nevertheless, thank you Dr. Paul for trying to end the Fed, because it is private, undemocatic, unaccountable and non-transparent.

Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton and Charles Goyette : Rep. Ron Paul

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:00:43 +0000

"Sound money" means gold and silver, which are all currently mostly owned by major banks and especially central banks. We could return to "sound money" tomorrow and be in exactly the same position, because the major owners of "sound money" are the creators of today's "fiat money." The question of whether a paper dollar is "backed" by gold or silver is basically irrelevant; the "backing" ended under Nixon and not much changed. Metal backing provides a limited check on money creation, but the paper "backed" by it can still be over-printed and over-leveraged, so it doesn't solve any fundamental problems. The real question is WHO is allowed to print money and BY WHAT PROCESS. Is it private, undemocratic and unaccountable, or public, democratic and transparent?

Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton and Charles Goyette : Philip Giraldi & Joe Lauria

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:03:44 +0000

If you guys are so concerned with ending/preventing U.S. wars, how about you invite someone on from NYCCAN, the New York City Coalition for Accountability Now. They've collected 80,000 signatures from NYC residents to put a referendum on the November ballot for a real, independent investigation into 9-11 WITH SUBPOENA POWER. Their ballot proposal names several independent citizens as investigation members, so there's no way it would be a whitewash. They need media support for their cause, however. Watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMucz6VjW34 then go to their website: http://www.nyccan.org/

Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton and Charles Goyette : Philip Giraldi & Joe Lauria

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:43:34 +0000

"an inside job kind of way of looking at 9-11 isn't really my kind of thing" Maybe you should make evidence "your kind of thing" and proceed from there.

Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton and Charles Goyette : Philip Giraldi & Joe Lauria

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:27:50 +0000

um, Pravda covers it.... http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/25-10...

Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton and Charles Goyette : Declan McCullagh

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 02:52:02 +0000

government cameras = bad, corporate cameras = good? This libertarian fairy-tale would make more sense if you acknowledged that the government *works for* corporations and the privately wealthy. As it stands, this view is a bit like criticizing the club that beats you while praising the man who wields it.

Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton and Charles Goyette : James Ostrowski

Wed, 9 Sep 2009 17:43:01 +0000

Sorry for the late reply, but I think your question about the definition of rights is really two separate questions, because rights in the abstract and rights in practice are two very different things. For example, I may have a self-evident inalienable right to life, but if I'm an 'undesirable' in a repressive regime, my right may no be worth very much in practice. Also, let's assume [for the sake of argument] that I do not have a right to food stamps, in the abstract. Nevertheless, if I live in a society where I'm eligible to receive them, in practice I do have a 'right' to them, because if I'm denied them despite being eligible, I can take action to secure them. So yes, direct democracy, representative democracy, a republic, a monarchy, anarchy, or any societal arrangement can and does change what 'rights' are in practice. Rights in practice are derived by a process of societal negotiation. My point about direct democracy is that it is by far the safest route for engaging in this process of societal negotiation, because it allows for the widest possible input of information and hence the closest approximation of the truth. It also equalizes power, which minimizes the risk of the powerful defining rights-in-practice in terms of their narrow group interest. I'd rather live in a society in which rights-in-practice were different from what I considered them to be in theory but where they were negotiated democratically than a society where rights in practice were exactly as I'd wish, but arrived at through an undemocratic process, because in the latte case if things changed and were not to my liking, I'd have no redress.

Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton and Charles Goyette : James Ostrowski

Mon, 7 Sep 2009 16:55:05 +0000

The powerful can *always* do whatever they want to the powerless. The more power is equally distributed, the fewer powerful and the fewer powerless there are. That is what direct democracy accomplishes, especially in a procedural framework which guarantees individual rights. What a free market with no democracy accomplishes very quickly is a small powerful class and a large powerless class. The powerful class will use its power to cement itself in place, and the free market will be over. With direct democracy, even with wealth disparity, the majority can prevent a minority from overturning the market for the benefit of a minority.

Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton and Charles Goyette : James Ostrowski

Mon, 7 Sep 2009 02:27:54 +0000

A gang of hooligans can cause some mischief. A very wealthy individual or clique of them can hire many gangs of hooligans and coordinate them for a common mischievous purpose. Individuals *do not* coerce their neighbors by conscription or taxation. Rarely do individuals break their neighbors door to force them into the army. Individuals hire groups of other individuals to coerce their neighbors. Police do not wake up in the morning thinking there should be more taxation or members of the army; they merely follow the direction of the people who pay them. The firewall is direct democracy, a situation where an individual's ability to participate in decision making is not tied to wealth or rank or station, but where decisions are made among equals and influence is tied to persuasiveness of arguments and desire to be involved in the process. The objection that '70 percent of the nation might wish to kill the other 30' is a specious objection to democracy. If 70 percent truly wish to kill the other 30 percent, then governments are neither necessary to do it nor able to stop it. The real question is who is best trusted to make such decisions; all individuals deciding together as a community, or a minority of individuals enforcing their decisions through hierarchy. Declaring that cliques have an absolute right to accumulate enough wealth to hire all the nations hooligans (because the right to property is sacrosanct) is deciding one way. Declaring that in matters which affect us all, we are all equal and these issues must be decided as equals, through direct democracy, is deciding in the opposite way.

Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton and Charles Goyette : James Ostrowski

Sun, 6 Sep 2009 01:40:27 +0000

Point taken, clearly under anarcho-capitalism there would be no formal government, so technically there would be no politicians running a government. There would nevertheless still be politics. My point is that in a free-market economy, there are winners and losers, but in right-wing libertarian thinking, there is hardly any acknowledgment that wealth equals power, and that some market winners will inevitably try to use their wealth (power) to protect their wealth through coercion. Put another way, if we lived in an anarcho-capitalist utopia, it would last exactly until a coalition of unethical market winners had accumulated sufficient wealth (power) to afford to purchase a government to impose on everyone else for their private benefit. In other words, anarcho-capitalism is the road to corporatism if there are no firewalls between wealth and coercive power. I agree 100% with Rothbard's criticisms of the State, but States are basically private security forces hired by the wealthy to protect their property and/or acquire more of it. I wish lefties would read libertarian economists so they could better understand healthy economies, and I wish right-wing libs would think through this problem, because their proposed solutions are self-abortive.

Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton and Charles Goyette : James Ostrowski

Thu, 3 Sep 2009 03:12:01 +0000

We don't differ in terms of values, we differ in how fully we apply them. I object to capitalism because it's not sufficiently responsive to or driven by market forces, it relies too little on persuasion and too heavily on state coercion for its survival. Capitalism is simply *inefficient,* and *for the same reasons* as state socialism. Economists like Mises and Hayek do a great job of explaining the 'fallacy of central planning;' that no centralized politburo can possibly have enough information, even with the best of intentions, to, for example, set prices effectively. Decentralized market participants have more knowledge of local conditions and are far more effective at running a market than a central authority. Yet, still, corporations are run by boards of directors, who give instructions to a CEO, who governs the entire structure through a bureaucracy, as if such central planning were effective or efficient. The reason democracy is more efficient than autocracy in the political sphere is the same reason that it's more efficient in the economic sphere. Both are also suppressed for the same reason.

Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton and Charles Goyette : James Ostrowski

Wed, 2 Sep 2009 13:41:11 +0000

It's the demand for direct, decentralized economic democracy which is the way out of the barbaric phase. It's not "capitalism" when the people who work there own it and decide what it does. Ron Paul had a pretty good idea when he backed a House Bill which would have exempted all employee owned and operated corporations from all Federal taxation. http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Employe...

Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton and Charles Goyette : James Ostrowski

Tue, 1 Sep 2009 19:30:46 +0000

I enjoyed the Hoppe article. A complete absence of government? So if two capitalists have a dispute about a deed, it would be resolved by who could field the more effective mercenary para-military force?