On Mar 18, 2:42*pm, Rick wrote:
On Fri, 18 Mar 2011 14:29:51 -0700 (PDT), Gunner
wrote:





On Mar 18, 11:08 am, Billy Wildbilly without a brain wrote:
"No one is asking for you to care about the on-going coup d'etat in
America"

OMG. *Frame it anyway you want and as many times as you want, yet
sometimes ya just gotta call stupid....stupid.

Good to see you finally got around to reading Sagan's *"Fine art of
Baloney Detection" link I sent ya but I don't think you understand
that it is designed to challenge idiots that want us to believe you
ideologues who propagates this propaganda, this macabre fantasy with
doomsday and paranoia stories you *and your other brother bill need us
to so desperately understand so as to save our very souls. *Nor do you
get to claim censorship while calling for censorship. *You brothers
bill and the other idiot fringe... on both ends.... have taken over
the microphone for too long now with this Westboro Baptist Church
argument you like to play. You have the right to have an opinion but
not to make up your facts nor proselytizing them. The smell will go
away when you get rid of the skunk. * *Its time for this group to get
back into gardening instead of The local *Amazon book club circle
jerks for the Fringe.

Ya got to get rid of this 60's Commie act, The Federal People's
Republic of Berkley was overthrown by the New World Order back in the
80s...long, long *ago. *We aren't going back to your glory days
growing up watching The Little House on the Prairie pretending your a
farmer. *BTW ya blew your KF lie again.

I have watched several groups I enjoy(ed) collapse over the past few
years. *While there are many reasons, Billy often shows up and
exacerbates their demise. *I try not to ever click on anything he has
written. *At least he doesn't nym shift- he's just a zealot without a
clue.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I agree, but I was hoping this one would be saved the fate. He does
attract a certain fringe click.

In article
,
Gunner wrote:

On Mar 18, 11:08*am, Billy Wildbilly without a brain wrote:
"No one is asking for you to care about the on-going coup d'etat in
America"

OMG. Frame it anyway you want and as many times as you want, yet
sometimes ya just gotta call stupid....stupid.

Apparently, Gunny has a compulsion to read "OT" posts, and then feels
has the obsession of needing to discredit it. To assuage this obsession,
he complains about the poster. He doesn't address the content of the
post, only obliquely refers to it, and seems completely helpless to
avert his eyes.

Oddly, Gunny continues participating in what he characterizes as an off
topic post.

No, he hangs around to attack the messenger. He'll talk about anything
but the message.

Another example of Gunny-Boy suppressing debate.
----

Gunny rages on. In true Gunny behavior, he falsely slanders Bill who
putters, but still hasn't proved his assertions

He didn't try show that the article is "dribble".
He didn't try show that Bill is "paranoid" or has "esteem issues".
He didn't try show that the article was "eco-fringe propaganda".
He didn't try show that he understand that when a post is tagged "OT",
that it will be "Off Topic".
He didn't try show anything, nothing at all, except, perhaps, poor
toilet training.

He doesn't seem to understand that everything is connected, just like in
a garden, e.g. soil and sky are connected. We can't garden without
understanding soil and weather.

The world is in chaos, and I may be having an argument with a hard drive
somewhere, programmed to respond to negative attitudes toward the
government. (How's you 1s and zeros today hard drive?)

Gunny, is a useless troll (even if he is a hard drive) who undermines
the First Amendment values of America by obstructing from the serious
discussion of matters important to the citizenery, i.e. the corporate
coup now taking place in America, along with its phantom posters and
lying corporate media. He could debate that, but he doesn't want to go
there. He wants to do character assassination, and obfuscate, not deal
in facts.

Gunny tries to block debate, and suppress the presentation of facts that
differ from his own seditious beliefs.

Why are you so UN-American, Gunny?

Gunny, why do you hate America?

--------

If you like week-ends, thank the unions.
If you like 40 hour weeks, thank the unions.
If you like sick days, thank the unions.
If you like 4 week holidays, thank the unions.(good only in Europe)
If you like guaranteed retirement, thank the unions.(good only in Europe)
If you like guaranteed health care, thank the unions.(good only in
Europe)


----

Germany is the #1 exporter in the world, and exports 60% of its
production. German jobs haven't been shipped overseas. We squandered our
lead in photo-voltaic cells, and transistors, and now appears that the
top 1% want to sell off whatever they can to enrich themselves with no
concern for the country. Why can German politicians lead Germany into
economic success when our leaders couldn't, even starting with a lead?
If your local government can be dissolved, and government operations
can be replaced by a for profit corporation, even gardeners should be
concerned.

-----


The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein

http://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine...ism/dp/0312427
999/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1300208360&sr=1-1
(Available at better libraries near you.)

SLAMMING THE DOOR ON HISTORY 181

In the early nineties, Balcerowicz's theory about periods of
"extraordinary
politics" attracted considerable interest among Washington economists.
And
no wonder: only two months after Poland announced that it would accept
shock therapy, something happened that would change the course of history
and invest Poland's experiment with global significance. In November
1989,
the Berlin Wall was joyously dismantled, the city was turned into a
festival of
possibility and the MTV flag was planted in the rubble, as if East
Berlin were
the face of the moon. Suddenly it seemed that the whole world was living
the same kind of fast-forward existence as the Poles: the Soviet Union
was on


182 THE SHOCK DOCTRINE €

the verge of breaking apart, apartheid in South Africa seemed on its
last legs,
authoritarian regimes continued to crumble in Latin America, Eastern Eu-
rope and Asia, and long wars were coming to an end from Namibia to
Lebanon. Everywhere, old regimes were collapsing, and the new ones rising
in their place had yet to take shape.

Within a few years it seemed as if half the world was in a period of
"extraordinary politics," or "in transition," as liberated countries
came to be
called in the nineties‹suspended in an existential in-betweenness of past
and future. According to Thomas Carothers, a leader in the U.S. govern-
ment's so-called democracy-promotion apparatus, "in the first half of the
1990s. . . the set of' transitional countries' swelled dramatically, and
nearly
100 countries (approximately 20 in Latin America, 25 in Eastern Europe
and the former Soviet Union, 30 in sub-Saharan Africa, 10 in Asia, and 5
in
the Middle East) were in some kind of dramatic transition from one model
to another."33

Many were claiming that all of this flux, and the fall of real and meta-,
phorical walls, would lead to an end of ideological orthodoxy. Freed from
the polarizing effects of dueling superpowers, countries would finally
be able
to choose the best of both worlds‹some hybrid of political freedom and
economic security. As Gorbachev put it, "Many decades of being mesmer-
ized by dogma, by a rule-book approach, have had their effect. Today we
want to introduce a genuinely creative spirit."34

In Chicago School circles, such talk of mix-and-match ideologies was
met with open contempt. Poland had clearly shown that this kind of
chaotic
transition opened up a window for decisive men, acting swiftly, to push
through rapid change. Now was the moment to convert former Communist
countries to pure Friedmanism, not some mongrel Keynesian compromise.
The trick, as Friedman had said, was for Chicago School believers to be
ready with their solutions when everyone else was still asking questions
and
regaining their bearings.

A sort of revival meeting for those who embraced this worldview was held
in that eventful winter of 1989; the location, fittingly, was the
University of
Chicago. The occasion was a speech by Francis Fukuyama titled "Are We
Approaching the End of History?"* For Fukuyama, then a senior policy
maker at the U.S. State Department, the strategy for advocates of
unfettered

* The lecture formed the foundation for Fukuyama's book The End of
History and the Last Man, published three years later.


SLAMMING THE DOOR ON HISTORY 183

capitalism was clear: don't debate with the third-way crowd; instead,
pre-
emptively declare victory. Fukuyama was convinced that there should be no
abandonment of extremes, no best of both worlds, no splitting the
difference.
The collapse of Communism, he told his audience, was leading "not to an
'end of ideology' or a convergence between capitalism and socialism . .
.. but
to an unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism." It was
not ide-
ology that had ended but "history as such."35

The talk was sponsored by John M. Olin, longtime funder of Milton
Friedman's ideological crusade and bankroller of the boom in right-wing
think tanks.36 The synergy was fitting since Fukuyama was essentially
restat-
ing Friedman's claim that free markets and free people are part of an
insep-
arable project. Fukuyama took that thesis into bold new terrain, arguing
that deregulated markets in the economic sphere, combined with liberal
democ-
racy in the political sphere, represented "the end point of mankind's
ideo-
logical evolution and . . . final form of human government."57 Democracy
and radical capitalism were fused not only with each other but also with
modernity, progress and reform. '1 hose who objected to the merger were
not
just wrong but "still in history," as Fukuyama put it, the equivalent of
being
left behind after the Rapture, since everyone else had already
transcended to
a celestial "posthistorical" plane.38

The argument was a magnificent example of the democracy avoidance
honed by the Chicago School. Much as the IMF had sneaked privatization
and "free trade" into Latin America and Africa under cover of emergency
"stabilization" programs, Fukuyama was now trying to smuggle this same
highly contested agenda into the pro-democracy wave rising up from War-
saw to Manila. It was true, as Fukuyama noted, that there was an emerging
and irrepressible consensus that all people have the right to govern
them-
selves democratically, but only in the State Department's most vivid fan-
tasies was that desire for democracy accompanied by citizens' clamoring
for
an economic system that would strip away job protections and cause mass
layoffs.

If there was a genuine consensus about anything, it was that for people
es-
caping both left-wing and right-wing dictatorships, democracy meant
finally
having a say in all major decisions rather than having somebody else's
ideol-
ogy imposed unilaterally and with force. In other words, the universal
princi-
ple that Fukuyama identified as "the sovereignty of the people" included
the
sovereignty of the people to choose how the wealth of their countries
would
be distributed, from the fate of state-owned companies to the level of
funding


184 THE SHOCK DOCTRINE

for schools and hospitals. Around the world, citizens were ready to
exercise
their hard-won democratic powers to become the authors of their national
destinies, at last.

In 1989, history was taking an exhilarating turn, entering a period of
gen-
uine openness and possibility. So it was no coincidence that Fukuyama,
from his perch at the State Department, chose precisely that moment to
at-
tempt to slam the history book shut. Nor was it a coincidence that the
World
Bank and the IMF chose that same volatile year to unveil the Washington
Consensus‹a clear effort to halt all discussion and debate about any eco-
nomic ideas outside the free-market lockbox. These were democracy-
containment strategies, designed to undercut the kind of unscripted
self-determination that was, and always had been, the greatest single
threat
to the Chicago School crusade.


The Shock of Tiananmen Square

One place where Fukuyama's bold pronouncement came in for early dis-
crediting was China. Fukuyama's speech took place in February 1989; two
months later, a pro-democracy movement exploded in Beijing, with mass
protests and sit-ins in Tiananmen Square. Fukuyama had claimed that
democratic and "free market reforms" were a twin process, impossible to
pry
apart. Yet in China, the government had done precisely that: it was
pushing
hard to deregulate wages and prices and expand the reach of the market-
but it was fiercely determined to resist calls for elections and civil
liberties.
The demonstrators, on the other hand, demanded democracy, but many op-
posed the government's moves toward unregulated capitalism, a fact
largely
left out of the coverage of the movement in the Western press. In China,
democracy and Chicago School economics were not proceeding hand in
hand; they were on opposite sides of the barricades surrounding Tiananmen
Square.

In the early 1980s, the Chinese government, then led by Deng Xiaoping,
was obsessed with avoiding a repeat of what had just happened in Poland,
where workers had been allowed to form an independent movement that
challenged the party's monopoly hold on power. It was not that China's
leaders were committed to protecting the state-owned factories and farm
communes that formed the foundation of the Communist state. In fact,
Deng was enthusiastically committed to converting to a corporate-based


SLAMMING THE DOOR ON HISTORY 185

economy‹so committed that, in 1980, his government invited Milton
Friedman to come to China and tutor hundreds of top-level civil servants,
professors and party economists in the fundamentals of free-market
theory.
"All were invited guests, who had to show a ticket of invitation to
attend,"
Friedman recalled of his audiences in Beijing and Shanghai. His central
message was "how much better ordinary people lived in capitalist than in
communist countries."39 The example he held up was Hong Kong, a zone of
pure capitalism that Friedman had long admired for its "dynamic, innova-
tive character that has been produced by personal liberty, free trade,
low
taxes, and minimal government intervention." He claimed that Hong Kong,
despite having no democracy, was freer than the United States, since its
gov-
ernment participated less in the economy.40

Friedman's definition of freedom, in which political freedoms were inci-
dental, even unnecessary, compared with the freedom of unrestricted com-
merce, conformed nicely with the vision taking shape in the Chinese
Politburo. The party wanted to open the economy to private ownership and
consumerism while maintaining its own grip on power‹a plan that ensured
that once the assets of the state were auctioned off, party officials
and their
relatives would snap up the best deals and be first in line for the
biggest prof-
its. According to this version of "transition," the same people who
controlled
the state under Communism would control it under capitalism, while en-
joying a substantial upgrade in lifestyle. The model the Chinese
government
intended to emulate was not the United States but something much closer
to
Chile under Pinochet: free markets combined with authoritarian political
control, enforced by iron-fisted repression.

From the start, Deng clearly understood that repression would be crucial.
Under Mao, the Chinese state had exerted brutal control over the people,
dispensing with opponents and sending dissidents for reeducation. But
Mao's repression took place in the name of the workers and against the
bour-
geoisie; now the party was going to launch its own counterrevolution and
ask
workers to give up many of their benefits and security so that a minority
could collect huge profits. It was not going to be an easy task. So, in
1983, as
Deng opened up the country to foreign investment and reduced protections
for workers, he also ordered the creation of the 400,000-strong People's
Armed
Police, a new, roving riot squad charged with quashing all signs of "eco-
nomic crimes" (i.e., strikes and protests). According to the China
historian
Maurice Meisner, "The People's Armed Police kept American helicopters


186 THE SHOCK DOCTRINE

and electric cattle prods in its arsenal." And "several units were sent
to
Poland for anti-riot training"‹where they studied the tactics that had
been
used against Solidarity during Poland's period of martial law.41

Many of Deng's reforms were successful and popular‹farmers had more
control over their lives, and commerce returned to the cities. But in
the late
eighties Deng began introducing measures that were distinctly unpopular,
particularly among workers in the cities‹price controls were lifted,
sending
prices soaring; job security was eliminated, creating waves of unemploy-
ment; and deep inequalities were opening up between the winners and los-
ers in the new China. By 1988, the party was confronting a powerful
backlash and was forced to reverse some of its price deregulation.
Outrage
was also mounting in the face of the party's defiant corruption and nepo-
tism. Many Chinese citizens wanted more freedom in the market, but "re-
form" increasingly looked like code for party officials turning into
business
tycoons, as many illegally took posession of the assets they had
previously
managed as bureaucrats. '"

With the free-market experiment in peril, Milton Friedman was once
again invited to pay a visit to China‹much as the Chicago Boys and the
pi-
ranhas had enlisted his help in 1975, when their program had sparked an
in-
ternal revolt in Chile.42 A high-profile visit from the world-famous
guru of
capitalism was just the boost China's "reformers" needed.

When Friedman and his wife. Rose, arrived in Shanghai in September
1988, they were dazzled by how quickly mainland China was beginning to
look and feel like Hong Kong. Despite the rage simmering at the grass
roots,
everything they saw served to confirm "our faith in the power of free
mar-
kets." Friedman described this moment as "the most hopeful period of the
Chinese experiment."

In the presence of official state media, Friedman met for two hours with
Zhao Ziyang, general secretary of the Communist Party, as well as with
Jiang
Zemin, then party secretary of the Shanghai Committee and the future Chi-
nese president. Friedman's message to Jiang echoed the advice he had
given
to Pinochet when the Chilean project was on the skids: don't bow to the
pressure and don't blink. "I emphasized the importance of privatization
and
free markets, and of liberalizing at one fell stroke," Friedman
recalled. In a
memo to the general secretary of the Communist Party, Friedman stressed
that more, not less, shock therapy was needed. "China's initial steps of
re-
form have been dramatically successful. China can make further dramatic
progress by placing still further reliance on free private markets."^


SLAMMING THE DOOR ON HISTORY 187

Shortly after his return to the U.S., Friedman, remembering the heat he
had taken for advising Pinochet, wrote "out of sheer devilry" a letter
to the
editor of a student newspaper, denouncing his critics for their double
stan-
dards. He explained that he had just spent twelve days in China, where "I
was mostly the guest of governmental entities," and had met with Commu-
nist Party officials at the highest level. Yet these meetings had
provoked no
human rights outcry on American university campuses, Friedman pointed
out. "Incidentally, I gave precisely the same advice to both Chile and
China." He concluded by asking sarcastically, "Should I prepare myself
for
an avalanche of protests for having been willing to give advice to so
evil a
government?"44

A few months later, that devilish letter took on sinister overtones, as
the
Chinese government began to emulate many of Pinochet's most infamous
tactics.

Friedman's trip did not have the desired results. The pictures in the
official
papers of the professor offering his blessing to party bureaucrats did
not suc-
ceed in bringing the public onside. In subsequent months, protests grew
more determined and radical. The most visible symbols of the opposition
were the demonstrations by student strikers in Tiananmen Square. These
historic protests were almost universally portrayed in the international
media
as a clash between modern, idealistic students who wanted Western-style
democratic freedoms and old-guard authoritarians who wanted to protect
the Communist state. Recently, another analysis of the meaning of
Tianamien
has emerged, one that challenges the mainstream version while putting
Friedmanism at the heart of the story. This alternative narrative is
being ad-
vanced by, among others, Wang Hui, one of the organizers of the 1989
protests, and now a leading Chinese intellectual of what is known as
China's
"New Left." In his 2003 book, China's New Order, Wang explains that the
protesters spanned a huge range of Chinese society‹not just elite
university
students but also factory workers, small entrepreneurs and teachers.
What ig-
nited the protests, he recalls, was popular discontent in the face of
Deng's
"revolutionary" economic changes, which were lowering wages, raising
prices and causing "a crisis of layoffs and unemployment."4' According to
Wang, "These changes were the catalyst for the 1989 social
mobilization."46
The demonstrations were not against economic reform per se; they were
against the specific Friedmanite nature of the reforms‹ their speed,
ruth-
lessness and the fact that the process was highly antidemocratic. Wang
says



188 THE SHOCK DOCTRINE

that the protesters' call for elections and free speech were intimately
con-
nected to this economic dissent. What drove the demand for democracy was
the fact that the party was pushing through changes that were
revolutionary a
in scope, entirely without popular consent. There was, he writes, "a
general
request for democratic means to supervise the fairness of the reform
process
and the reorganization of social benefits."47

These demands forced the Politburo to make a definite choice. The
choice was not, as was so often claimed, between democracy and Commu-
nism, or "reform" versus the "old guard." It was a more complex
calculation:
Should the party bulldoze ahead with its free-market agenda, which it
could
do only by rolling over the bodies of the protesters? Or should it bow
to the
protesters' demands for democracy, cede its monopoly on power and risk a
major setback to the economic project?

Some of the free-market reformers within the party, most notably General
Secretary Zhao Ziyang, appeared willing to gamble on democracy, con-
vinced that economic and political reform could still be compatible. More
powerful elements in the party were not willing to take the risk. The
verdict
came down: the state would protect its economic "reform" program by
crushing the demonstrators.

That was the clear message when, on May 20,1989, the government of the
People's Republic of China declared martial law. On June 3, the tanks of
the People's Liberation Army rolled into the protests, shooting
indiscrimi-
nately into the crowds. Soldiers stormed onto buses where student demon-
strators were taking cover and beat them with sticks; more troops broke
through the barricades protecting Tiananmen Square, where students had
erected a Goddess of Democracy statue, and rounded up the organizers.
Similar crackdowns took place simultaneously across the country.

There will never be reliable estimates for how many people were killed
and injured in those days. The party admits to hundreds, and eyewitness
re-
ports at the time put the number of dead at between two thousand and
seven
thousand and the number of injured as high as thirty thousand. The
protests
were followed by a national witch hunt against all regime critics and
oppo-
nents. Some forty thousand were arrested, thousands were jailed and
many‹possibly hundreds‹were executed. As in Latin America, the gov-
ernment reserved its harshest repression for the factory workers, who
repre-
sented the most direct threat to deregulated capitalism. "Most of those
arrested, and virtually all who were executed, were workers. With the
obvi-
ous aim of terrorizing the population, it became a well-publicized
policy to



SLAMMING THE DOOR ON HISTORY 189

systematically subject arrested individuals to heatings and torture,"
writes
Maurice Meisner.48

For the most part, the massacre was covered in the Western press as an-
other example of Communist brutality: just as Mao had wiped out his oppo-
nents during the Cultural Revolution, now Deng, "the Butcher of Beijing,"
crushed his critics under the watchful eye of Mao's giant portrait. A
Wall
Street Journal headline claimed that "China's Harsh Actions Threaten to
Set
Back [the] 10-Year Reform Drive"‹as if Deng was an enemy of those re-
forms and not their most committed defender, determined to take them into
bold new territory.49

Five days after the bloody crackdown, Deng addressed the nation, and
made it perfectly clear that it wasn't Communism he was protecting with
his
crackdown, but capitalism. After dismissing the protesters as "a large
quan-
tity of the dregs of society," China's president reaffirmed the party's
commit-
ment to economic shock therapy. "In a word, this was a test, and we
passed,"
Deng said, adding, "Perhaps this bad thing will enable us to go ahead
with
reform and the open-door policy at a more steady, better, even a faster
pace. . . . We haven't been wrong. There's nothing wrong with the four
car-
dinal principles [of economic reform]. If there is anything amiss, it's
that
these principles haven't been thoroughly implemented."*50

Orville Schell, a China scholar and journalist, summarized Deng Xiao-
ping's choice: "After the massacre of 1989, he in effect said we will
not stop
economic reform; we will in effect halt political reform."51

For Deng and the rest of the Politburo, the free-market possibilities
were
now limitless. Just as Pinochet's terror had cleared the streets for
revolution-
ary change, so Tiananmen paved the way for a radical transformation free
from fear of rebellion. If life grew harder for peasants and workers,
they
would either have to accept it quietly or face the wrath of the army and
the
secret police. And so, with the public in a state of raw terror, Deng
rammed
through his most sweeping reforms yet.

Before Tiananmen, he had been forced to ease off some of the more
painful measures; three months after the massacre, he brought them back,
and he implemented several of Friedman's other recommendations, includ-
ing price deregulation. For Wang Hui, there is an obvious reason why
"market

* Deng had some notable defenders. After the massacre, Henry Kissinger
wrote an op-ed
arguing that the party had no choice. "No government in the world would
have tolerated
having the main square of its capital occupied for eight weeks by tens
of thousands of
demonstrators. ... A crackdown was therefore inevitable."


190 THE SHOCK DOCTRINE

reforms that had failed to be implemented in the late 1980s just
happened to
have been completed in the post-1989 environment" the reason, he writes,
"is that the violence of 1989 served to check the social upheaval brought
about by this process, and the new pricing system finally took shape."52
The
shock of the massacre, in other words, made shock therapy possible.

In the three years immediately following the bloodbath, China was
cracked open to foreign investment, with special export zones constructed
throughout the country. As he announced these new initiatives, Deng re-
minded the country that "if necessary, every possible means will be
adopted
to eliminate any turmoil in the future as soon as it has appeared.
Martial law,
or even more severe methods, may be introduced."*55

It was this wave of reforms that turned China into the sweatshop of the
world, the preferred location for contract factories for virtually every
multi-
national on the planet. No country offered more lucrative conditions than
China: low taxes and tariffs, corruptible officials and, most of all, a
plentiful
low-wage workforce that, for many years, would be unwilling to risk de-
manding decent salaries or the most basic workplace protections for fear
of
the most violent reprisals.

For foreign investors and the party, it has been a win-win arrangement.
According to a 2006 study, 90 percent of China's billionaires
(calculated in
Chinese yuan) are the children of Communist Party officials. Roughly
twenty-nine hundred of these party scions‹known as "the princelings"‹
control $260 billion.5+ It is a mirror of the corporatist state first
pioneered in
Chile under Pinochet: a revolving door between corporate and political
elites who combine their power to eliminate workers as an organized
politi-
cal force. Today, this collaborative arrangement can be seen in the way
that
foreign multinational media and technology companies help the Chinese
state to spy on its citizens, and to make sure that when students do Web
searches on phrases like "Tiananmen Square Massacre," or even "democ-
racy," no documents turn up. "The creation of today's market society was
not
the result of a sequence of spontaneous events," writes Wang Hui, "but
rather of state interference and violence."55

One of the truths revealed by Tiananmen was the stark similarity between
the tactics of authoritarian Communism and Chicago School capitalism‹a

* As the New York University anthropologist David Harvey notes, it was
only after Tiananmen,
when Deng went on his famous "southern tour" of China, "that the full
force of the central
government was put behind the opening to foreign trade and foreign
direct investment."


SLAMMING THE DOOR ON HISTORY 191

shared willingness to disappear opponents, to blank the slate of all
resistance
and begin anew.

Despite the fact that the massacre happened just months after he had en-
couraged Chinese officials to push forward with painful and unpopular
free-
market policies, Friedman never did face "an avalanche of protests for
having been willing to give advice to so evil a government." And as
usual, he
saw no connection between the advice he had given and the violence re-
quired to enforce it. While condemning China's use of repression, Fried-
man continued to hold it up as an example of "the efficacy of free-market
arrangements in promoting both prosperity and freedom."56


Bush's 3rd term: Obama


.. . . why don¹t we say what¹s on the minds of many legal experts? That
the Obama administration is committing war crimes. And if Bush should
have been impeached, Obama should be impeached.
- RALPH NADER
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/1...s_peace_activi
sts_risking

I should have my main computer back up soon, and won't see Gunny's posts
anymore.

===
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_vN0--mHug
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyE5wjc4XOw

On Mar 18, 4:26*pm, Billy wrote more BS!

billy, there is a difference between manic and stupid, but boy, you
sure blur those lines often!

so called Republic as some would like to
say in Michigan may be coming to an end.

Big Brother is coming...

--
Enjoy Life... Nad R *(Garden in zone 5a Michigan)- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Sit this one out Dan, it wont do you any good to stay with stupid.
Catch up here and think it through!

Gunner wrote:
so called Republic as some would like to
say in Michigan may be coming to an end.

Big Brother is coming...

--
Enjoy Life... Nad R (Garden in zone 5a Michigan)- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Sit this one out Dan, it wont do you any good to stay with stupid.
Catch up here and think it through!

I will choose the one that uses reason. At least Billy backs up his
discussions with presuppositions in order to determine what side I want to
be on. It is those that just use insults without reason that are stupid.

Example: " Sit this one out Dan, it wont do you any good to stay with
stupid."

Why should I stay out?
What are you reasons?
Who are you to tell me what to do, mister authoritative type?

You insult without reason and that make you the idiot Gunner!

--
Enjoy Life... Nad R (Garden in zone 5a Michigan)

In article
,
Gunner wrote:

On Mar 18, 2:42*pm, Rick wrote:
On Fri, 18 Mar 2011 14:29:51 -0700 (PDT), Gunner
wrote:


I must be doing something right, the dogs are howling.





On Mar 18, 11:08 am, Billy Wildbilly without a brain wrote:
"No one is asking for you to care about the on-going coup d'etat in
America"

OMG. *Frame it anyway you want and as many times as you want, yet
sometimes ya just gotta call stupid....stupid.

Good to see you finally got around to reading Sagan's *"Fine art of
Baloney Detection" link I sent ya but I don't think you understand
that it is designed to challenge idiots that want us to believe you
ideologues who propagates this propaganda, this macabre fantasy with
doomsday and paranoia stories you *and your other brother bill need us
to so desperately understand so as to save our very souls. *Nor do you
get to claim censorship while calling for censorship. *You brothers
bill and the other idiot fringe... on both ends.... have taken over
the microphone for too long now with this Westboro Baptist Church
argument you like to play. You have the right to have an opinion but
not to make up your facts nor proselytizing them. The smell will go
away when you get rid of the skunk. * *Its time for this group to get
back into gardening instead of The local *Amazon book club circle
jerks for the Fringe.

Ya got to get rid of this 60's Commie act, The Federal People's
Republic of Berkley was overthrown by the New World Order back in the
80s...long, long *ago. *We aren't going back to your glory days
growing up watching The Little House on the Prairie pretending your a
farmer. *BTW ya blew your KF lie again.

I have watched several groups I enjoy(ed) collapse over the past few
years. *While there are many reasons, Billy often shows up and
exacerbates their demise. *I try not to ever click on anything he has
written. *At least he doesn't nym shift- he's just a zealot without a
clue.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I agree, but I was hoping this one would be saved the fate. He does
attract a certain fringe click.
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_vN0--mHug
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyE5wjc4XOw

In article
,
Gunner wrote:

On Mar 18, 4:26*pm, Billy wrote more BS!

billy, there is a difference between manic and stupid, but boy, you
sure blur those lines often!

Are you one of those agent provocateurs, who is here to direct our
attention away from our "everlasting wars on terror" that squanders half
of the worlds military budget, while supporting over a thousand military
bases around the world? Or are you here to distract us from the mad
use of fossil, or fissionable fuel? Or the oil depletion allowance that
oil companies get, while making more money than god? Or are you here to
distract us from the banditry, and suppression of labor that's going on
in this country? Are you here to keep us from thinking about the
neo-liberal coup that is taking place in this country as I type.

Gunny rages on. In true Gunny behavior, he falsely slandered Bill who
putters, but still hasn't proved his assertions

Gunny, is a useless troll who undermines the values of America
by distracting from the serious discussion of the corporate coup
taking place in America now, along with its phantom posters and lying
corporate media. He could debate that, but he doesn't seem to want to
go there. He wants to do character assassination, not deal in facts.

Gunny tries to block debate, and suppress the presentation of facts that
differ from his own seditious beliefs.

Why are you so UN-American?

Gunny, why do you hate America?

Intercourse him.

------

"Why don¹t we say what¹s on the minds of many legal experts? That the
Obama administration is committing war crimes. And if Bush should have
been impeached, Obama should be impeached."
- Ralph Nader
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/1...s_peace_activi
sts_risking

And Ralph stated out just wanting a safe car to drive.

"This is a Frontal Assault on Democracy, a Corporate Coup D¹Etat"
- Naiomi Klein
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/9/naomi_klein_on_anti_union_bills

The nation - the nation is not broke, my friends. There's lots of money
to go around. Lots! Lots! It's just that those in charge have diverted
that wealth into a deep well that sits on their well-guarded estates.
They know - they know that they have committed crimes to make this
happen. And they know - and they know that someday you may want to see
some of that money that used to be yours. So they have bought and paid
for hundreds of politicians across the country to do their bidding for
them. But just in case that doesn't work, they've got their gated
communities. They've got their luxury jet that's always fully fueled,
the engines running, waiting for that day, waiting for that day that
they hope never comes.

To help prevent that day when people, the people, demand their country
back, the wealthy have done two very smart things:

Number one, they control the message. By owning the media, they have
expertly convinced many Americans of few means to buy their version of
the American Dream and vote for their politicians. Their version of the
Dream says that you, too, might be rich some day. This is America, where
anything can happen if you just apply yourself. They have conveniently
provided you with believable examples to show you how a poor boy can
become a rich man, how a guy - how the child of a single mother in
Hawaii can become president of the United States, and how a guy with a
high school education can become a successful filmmaker. They - don't
fall for it! They will play these stories for you over and over and over
again, all day long, so that the last thing you'll want to do is upset
the apple cart, because, yes, you - you, you, too - might be
rich/president/Oscar winner some day. The message, though, is clear:
keep you head down, keep your nose to the grindstone, don't rock the
boat, be sure to vote for the party that protects the rich man that you
might be some day.

And here's the second smart thing the wealthy have done. They've created
a poison pill that they know you will never want to take. It's their
version of mutually assured destruction. And when they threatened to
release this weapon of mass economic annihilation in September of 2008,
we blinked. As the economy and the stock market went into a tailspin and
the banks were caught conducting a worldwide Ponzi scheme, Wall Street
issued this threat: either hand over trillions of dollars from the
American taxpayers, or we will crash this economy straight into the
ground! Crash it straight into the ground! There's a word for that,
isn't there? Terrorism. It's a form of terrorism, isn't it? Fork it
over, or it's goodbye savings accounts. Fork it over, or it's goodbye
pensions. Fork it over, or it's goodbye United States Treasury. Fork it
over, or it's goodbye jobs and homes and future.
- Michael Moore
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/3/7/michael_moore

I was very dismayed that the President, faced with accusations at such a
high level from his assistant secretary for public affairs, rather than
investigating and discovering, as he easily could have, that the
descriptions by Crowley¹s counterpart at the Defense Department, the
public affairs people there, have been totally false and that he has
been misinformed, his‹the President¹s reaction was very dismaying. He
was satisfied with having asked the Defense Department whether the
conditions were, quote, "appropriate" and met reasonable standards,
basic standards, and he was assured that they did. It was very like
asking‹President Nixon asking the White House plumbers or his counsel,
John Ehrlichman, "Was it appropriate and did it meet our standards for
you to be burglarizing Daniel Ellsberg¹s psychiatrist in Los Angeles?
Did that meet our basic standards?" and when told by Howard Hunt or G.
Gordon Liddy, "Yes, no problem," that¹s the end of that matter. It¹s so
absurd that it really raises very much a question about President
Obama¹s own understanding of the law or willingness to abide by it, in
this case, and not for the first time.
- Daniel Ellsberg
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/1...s_peace_activi
sts_risking

Count me among those who were glad to see the documentary ³Inside Job²
win an Oscar. The film reminded us that the financial crisis of 2008,
whose aftereffects are still blighting the lives of millions of
Americans, didn¹t just happen ‹ it was made possible by bad behavior on
the part of bankers, regulators and, yes, economists.
- Paul Krugman
Another Inside Job, March 13, 2011

Buried deep beneath the stories about executive bonuses, the stock
market surge and the economy¹s agonizingly slow road to recovery is the
all-but-silent suffering of the many millions of Americans who,
economically, are going down for the count.
- BOB HERBERT, At Grave Risk, February 21, 2011


If I'm crazy, I have very good company.


Bush's 3rd term: Obama

=====

======
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_vN0--mHug
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyE5wjc4XOw

you still have no clue, do you?

" If I'm crazy,"??????


IF???? billy, you've gone way beyond crazy and been so for a while
now.

Know I'm here for the duration of this latest episode of your BS.
Yes, I am pushing your buttons and will continue to do so as long as
you want to keep this pretense up . You can keep talking your
ideologue hippie commie crap, that is all up to you,. Maybe talk to
your therapist to see if that is when you first started to lose it,
but little billy, YOU , nor your other brothers bill are going to
continue to hijack this site with some half-baked neo liberal
political agenda BS pretense of you got some kinda "rights" that trump
ours, nor will any of the Neo-Cons get to trash talk either. Yet, I
don't see those boys here so much... your psychotropic results may
however, vary.

We are gardeners... you are just a Wikipus Hack. Too long we have
allowed your ilk to hog the microphone and claim ecology is some 60's
acid trip "we" don't get because "we" don't "understand" the issues as
you dictated . No, no, billy, we get to define our gardens, not
you.

Its rec.gardens.edible, not.... rec. gardens.political
agenda.billywithout a bath@

So,
Clearly, from the ****ing contest I'm watching, I've made my point.

Posting this kind of crap here is why I rarely check this group. VERY
little informative information regarding edible gardens...

Just a bunch of people with way too much time on their hands. Have you
considered getting out of the house?

I actually posted informative information regarding REC.GARDENS.EDIBLE
and this is the flaccid reply I get?

Bill S. Jersey USA zone 5 shade garden

http://uppitywis.org/ live WI





I'd suggest you stick some of that Thrive up your anal ass.

Uhh....Are you saying I'm anal by posting correctly to the group, or are you
just too ****ed and/or stupid to post on topic?

Entertaining in a very sad way.

Maybe Billy and Bill who Stutters should start a new group...
REC.ANGRY.IRRELEVANTS

Talk to the hand.

Reply at the end.

"Billy" wrote in message
...
In article
,
Gunner wrote:

On Mar 18, 4:26 pm, Billy wrote more BS!

billy, there is a difference between manic and stupid, but boy, you
sure blur those lines often!

Are you one of those agent provocateurs, who is here to direct our
attention away from our "everlasting wars on terror" that squanders half
of the worlds military budget, while supporting over a thousand military
bases around the world? Or are you here to distract us from the mad
use of fossil, or fissionable fuel? Or the oil depletion allowance that
oil companies get, while making more money than god? Or are you here to
distract us from the banditry, and suppression of labor that's going on
in this country? Are you here to keep us from thinking about the
neo-liberal coup that is taking place in this country as I type.

Gunny rages on. In true Gunny behavior, he falsely slandered Bill who
putters, but still hasn't proved his assertions

Gunny, is a useless troll who undermines the values of America
by distracting from the serious discussion of the corporate coup
taking place in America now, along with its phantom posters and lying
corporate media. He could debate that, but he doesn't seem to want to
go there. He wants to do character assassination, not deal in facts.

Gunny tries to block debate, and suppress the presentation of facts that
differ from his own seditious beliefs.

Why are you so UN-American?

Gunny, why do you hate America?

Intercourse him.

------

"Why don¹t we say what¹s on the minds of many legal experts? That the
Obama administration is committing war crimes. And if Bush should have
been impeached, Obama should be impeached."
- Ralph Nader
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/1...s_peace_activi
sts_risking

And Ralph stated out just wanting a safe car to drive.

"This is a Frontal Assault on Democracy, a Corporate Coup D¹Etat"
- Naiomi Klein
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/9/naomi_klein_on_anti_union_bills

The nation - the nation is not broke, my friends. There's lots of money
to go around. Lots! Lots! It's just that those in charge have diverted
that wealth into a deep well that sits on their well-guarded estates.
They know - they know that they have committed crimes to make this
happen. And they know - and they know that someday you may want to see
some of that money that used to be yours. So they have bought and paid
for hundreds of politicians across the country to do their bidding for
them. But just in case that doesn't work, they've got their gated
communities. They've got their luxury jet that's always fully fueled,
the engines running, waiting for that day, waiting for that day that
they hope never comes.

To help prevent that day when people, the people, demand their country
back, the wealthy have done two very smart things:

Number one, they control the message. By owning the media, they have
expertly convinced many Americans of few means to buy their version of
the American Dream and vote for their politicians. Their version of the
Dream says that you, too, might be rich some day. This is America, where
anything can happen if you just apply yourself. They have conveniently
provided you with believable examples to show you how a poor boy can
become a rich man, how a guy - how the child of a single mother in
Hawaii can become president of the United States, and how a guy with a
high school education can become a successful filmmaker. They - don't
fall for it! They will play these stories for you over and over and over
again, all day long, so that the last thing you'll want to do is upset
the apple cart, because, yes, you - you, you, too - might be
rich/president/Oscar winner some day. The message, though, is clear:
keep you head down, keep your nose to the grindstone, don't rock the
boat, be sure to vote for the party that protects the rich man that you
might be some day.

And here's the second smart thing the wealthy have done. They've created
a poison pill that they know you will never want to take. It's their
version of mutually assured destruction. And when they threatened to
release this weapon of mass economic annihilation in September of 2008,
we blinked. As the economy and the stock market went into a tailspin and
the banks were caught conducting a worldwide Ponzi scheme, Wall Street
issued this threat: either hand over trillions of dollars from the
American taxpayers, or we will crash this economy straight into the
ground! Crash it straight into the ground! There's a word for that,
isn't there? Terrorism. It's a form of terrorism, isn't it? Fork it
over, or it's goodbye savings accounts. Fork it over, or it's goodbye
pensions. Fork it over, or it's goodbye United States Treasury. Fork it
over, or it's goodbye jobs and homes and future.
- Michael Moore
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/3/7/michael_moore

I was very dismayed that the President, faced with accusations at such a
high level from his assistant secretary for public affairs, rather than
investigating and discovering, as he easily could have, that the
descriptions by Crowley¹s counterpart at the Defense Department, the
public affairs people there, have been totally false and that he has
been misinformed, his was satisfied with having asked the Defense
Department whether the
conditions were, quote, "appropriate" and met reasonable standards,
basic standards, and he was assured that they did. It was very like
asking John Ehrlichman, "Was it appropriate and did it meet our
standards for
you to be burglarizing Daniel Ellsberg¹s psychiatrist in Los Angeles?
Did that meet our basic standards?" and when told by Howard Hunt or G.
Gordon Liddy, "Yes, no problem," that¹s the end of that matter. It¹s so
absurd that it really raises very much a question about President
Obama¹s own understanding of the law or willingness to abide by it, in
this case, and not for the first time.
- Daniel Ellsberg
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/1...s_peace_activi
sts_risking

Count me among those who were glad to see the documentary ³Inside Job²
win an Oscar. The film reminded us that the financial crisis of 2008,
whose aftereffects are still blighting the lives of millions of
Americans, didn¹t just happen it was made possible by bad behavior on
the part of bankers, regulators and, yes, economists.
- Paul Krugman
Another Inside Job, March 13, 2011

Buried deep beneath the stories about executive bonuses, the stock
market surge and the economy¹s agonizingly slow road to recovery is the
all-but-silent suffering of the many millions of Americans who,
economically, are going down for the count.
- BOB HERBERT, At Grave Risk, February 21, 2011


If I'm crazy, I have very good company.


Bush's 3rd term: Obama

Was Gunner born an idot, or did he have to practise.

Richard M. Watkin.

======
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_vN0--mHug
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyE5wjc4XOw

In article ,
"R M Watkin" wrote:

Was Gunner born an idot, or did he have to practise?

Richard M. Watkin.

This is usenet. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?
----



"The man who has planted a garden feels that he has done something for
the good of the world." - Vita Sackville-West, poet and novelist,
1892-1962


====
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_vN0--mHug
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyE5wjc4XOw

Have you always pretended to be a man?

On Mar 20, 11:19*am, Billy wrote:
In article ,
*"R M Watkin" wrote:

* * * * * *Was Gunner born an idot, or did he have to practise?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *Richard M. Watkin.

This is usenet. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?


sorry billy but this one for sure plays for your team, ....Team Pink
or some such, right?

Gunner wrote:
Have you always pretended to be a man?

And the name, "Gunner" a mister macho handle, a handle for violence and
destruction. That you are so weak of a person that has to degrade others to
maintain that mister macho image that is probably making up for
deficiencies in other manhood areas.

That mister macho who has to prove his manhood by pushing others around,
telling other what to do and how to live their lives. I bet you yell and
scream and threaten your women to make up for you lack of your manhood.

--
Enjoy Life... Nad R (Garden in zone 5a Michigan)