From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V10 #149 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Tuesday, April 24 2001 Volume 10 : Number 149 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: the encyclopedia of everything nasty ["Kenneth Johnson" ] Nonstop Violence [Christopher Gross ] RE: peaceful & violent ["Kenneth Johnson" ] Re: Enough. [Ken Ostrander ] [none] ["Kenneth Johnson" ] Re: Oh no! They burned down my favorite McDonalds! [Christopher Gross ] RE: peaceful & violent ["Poole, R. Edward" ] Re: Worst joke of the week [HAL ] RE: peaceful demonstrators & violent idiots ["Brian Huddell" ] Re: Enough. [Tom Clark ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 14:26:45 -0700 From: "Kenneth Johnson" Subject: Re: the encyclopedia of everything nasty it was a friend's birthday last night, and after ignoring my normal dietary needs and habits and eating unhealthy greasy foods and drinking copious libations,...... I woke up this morning and the first thing I did............I swear it felt like I had just shat a car or maybe a baby elephant. K >From: "Aaron L." >Reply-To: "Aaron L." >To: fegmaniax@smoe.org >Subject: the encyclopedia of everything nasty >Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 13:38:45 -0500 > >At 01:19 PM 4/24/2001, Stephen Mahoney wrote: >>the average person eats about three pounds of food a day, 1095 pounds per >>year. by the time you blow out the candles on your 70th birthday cake, you >>will have eaten 33 tons of food, or a pile about the size of six >>elephants. Your total waste exiting from a certain orifice will amount to >>the size of a car! > >What I find particularly interesting/fascinating about this information, if >it is close to true, is how very much food must be assimilated into our >bodies -- stored as fat, consumed for energy, etc. -- because the >difference between the size of "a car" and that of "six elephants," is of >course, *signfiicant*. > >* > >C. Aaron Lowe >mailto:aaron@hollowstreets.net >http://aaron.hollowstreets.net _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 14:28:59 -0700 From: "victorian squid" Subject: Re: I read the news today, oh boy Terry Marks wrote: >> Look, I'm all for being against genocide, but can we skip the >> history-related plattitudes about it? Adolf Hitler had known about ethnic >> cleansing, genocide, and pogroms. It's not like he thought the whole >> "kill-the-Jews" thing was so novel it just _had_ to be tried once. Noe Shalev wrote: >To a certain extent u r probably right. but (there always a but isn't it?) > >Things that you see today from distance people didn't see there. (snip) Oh I must beg to differ with both of you. Unless Hitler -didn't- in fact say "Who now remembers the Armenians?". It's pretty simplistic for Terry to say "Hitler knew about ethnic cleansing". Of course he did. That's how he knew it was possible. He'd seen one and a half million Armenians killed without the world making much fuss. And he saw what happened to the Armenians from a distance. Educated Germans saw this from a distance. Anyone who knew anything about CURRENT history, would have known mass genocide was possible and (most importantly) had even taken place fairly close to home and within the past 30 years. Hitler was in essence emboldened and inspired by lack of widespread knowledge about/world reaction to other genocides, specifically that one. loveonya, susan Join 18 million Eudora users by signing up for a free Eudora Web-Mail account at http://www.eudoramail.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 16:29:32 -0500 (CDT) From: GSS Subject: Re: the movie madness madness On Tue, 24 Apr 2001, Ken Weingold wrote: > I have Laserdisc, DVD, VHS, and DSS. Does that make me a SUPER geek? Only if you also have a VIS system. gSs ps does anyone have any good VIS discs ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 17:40:06 -0400 (EDT) From: Christopher Gross Subject: Nonstop Violence Well, Capuchin, I don't really want to make this a huge prolonged debate. In summary, you think our political system is hopelessly corrupt, no significant good can be accomplished through legal means, and violence is justified, even necessary; while I think our system needs reform, but that reform can be accomplished peacefully and legally, and that peaceful, legal action can accomplish a lot of important good even under our current unreformed system. I also think violent protest (not to mention actual violent revolution) is unjustified, counterproductive, and exists mainly to make violent protestors feel cool. Call me naive or stupid (though clearly you don't need my permission to do that), but anyway that's where we stand. I started to think up replies to each point in your last post, but really they all boiled down to the above. (Anyway, the debate has already moved past me.) But here are a few more specific replies: On Tue, 24 Apr 2001, Capuchin wrote: > Both Bush and Gore support FTAA. Clinton and Bush, Sr. supported > NAFTA. Clinton and Dole both supported WTO. > > Why? Because the folks that paid for their campaigns (and other little > kickbacks and direct bribes) insisted on it. I hate this attitude that the enemy must be hypocritical. People can disagree with you (and even me) honestly, not just because they hope to thereby line their pockets. There are actually good arguments that can be made for neoliberal free trade, just as there are for anarchism and communism. (Which is not to say that *I* agree with them.) This isn't a major point, but it does really annoy me. > The goal in Quebec City was to stop the conference. Same as Seattle, > Geneva, etc. Stop the conferences and you'll see that they're a sham. > The policies will be enforced by the biggest and the strongest. Okay, so assume the larger goal is "exposing the sham." I don't see the logic here. First of all, physically stopping the conferences would only cause a shift to virtual conferences; the participating governments all have telephones and Internet access, y'know. So there would still be conferences, and thus no shams would be revealed by their absence. Secondly, you've argued that that we're all powerless and public opinion is irrelevant. If that's the case, what does it matter if the conferences are revealed as a sham? > Chris, get out your head out of your ass. Why, you smooth-talking silver-tongued devil, you. No wonder you have such great success winning people over. > The situation is hopeless if you are stuck in the rut that leads you only > to voting and boycotting. THAT is hopeless. THAT is why we need to move > to different methods of combat. So smashing windows and clubbing cops will succeed where massed public opinion is doomed? I'll need convincing there. Seriously, I have yet to hear a good argument as to what violent protest is supposed to accomplish. You think democracy is a fraud and public opinion has no legal way to make itself felt, so you obviously aren't saying violence is good as a political PR tactic. So what good *is* violent protest? Are you advocating seizure of state power by force and the abolition of the current government, ie, a coup or violent revolution? If not, then what? > You cannot vote against them. You cannot boycot them meaningfully. If > everyone was like you, the situation would be hopeless. > > Thankfully, that's not the case. There are people with vision and courage > to see beyond the veil that's been pulled over American eyes. *Everyone* thinks they're the only ones who see clearly and their opponents are blind. This is just empty rhetoric, a more flowery way of saying "We're right and you're wrong." > > How did it "prove" that? In my humble opinion, ANY democratic > > government should be armed and afraid (or at least wary) of violent > > people. People who advocate their political points by smashing and > > burning and chucking rocks have no place in a democratic polity. > > You're saying that you can't have a democratic system that doesn't respect > personal property? > > I think that's completely untennable. Well, I don't. Violence against property is still violence -- and after all it hurts the owners of the property destroyed (who are not necessarily huge evil multinational corporations), so it's still personal violence at one remove. It promotes force over debate. It invites retaliation in kind. It causes fear and contributes to a breakdown of civic society in general. It alienates the vast majority of people who aren't as casual as you about property destruction. And it tends to escalate. If you're willing to resort to property violence because you don't think you can accomplish anything peacefully, what do you do when you decide you can't succeed through property violence either? - --Chris, a zillion posts behind ______________________________________________________________________ Christopher Gross On the Internet, nobody knows I'm a dog. chrisg@gwu.edu ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 14:42:12 -0700 From: "Kenneth Johnson" Subject: RE: peaceful & violent >I do the max( portland areas train system) and buses- I have no car. >we also do car sharing. we have that on taken care of, at least. >has anyone read ishmael by daniel quinn? not a great literary work, but >some it has some really great ideas about humankind! > I recommend all his his books, quick reads and by no means fine literature, but the things he brings up are things we all should be thinking about. Along with Ishmael, there's THe Story of B, My Ishmael, and Beyond Civilization (non-fiction). I too ride the bus and max and bike around Portland with very little dependence on our single car in the family. yea! Portland! K _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 17:52:13 -0400 From: Ken Ostrander Subject: Re: Enough. ooh la la! whuddathunk that this would be so contentious? i like to see all of this discussion. i hope we can keep it civil. perhaps it's too late for that. >Violence isn't a means to an end. so...you're saying that there's never a reason for violence? jesus turned the other cheek and became a martyr. excuse me if that's not what i want. there are different levels of violence. personally, i consider the way that corporations have turned our representative democracy into an oligarchic plutocracy to be a sinister form of violence that trickles down like olestra. profit over people is violence. environmental devestation to turn a quick (as in short sighted) buck is violent. forcing local merchants out of business and sapping valuable local dollars out of communities is violence. structural adjustment programs are violent. certainly forcing communities to accept multinational policies against their will is violence. these forms of violence are insidious in their sweeping dismissal of people. throwing a rock over a fence built to keep out voices of disent is also violent; just like tear gasing an entire crowd because one person throws a rock over a fence is violent. >Civil disobedience is one thing. >Intentional destruction of property is a crime (and rightly so.) some might consider property to be a crime...there is a difference between a child throwing a rock through a window for kicks and anarchists trashing a bank window. civil disobedience is the most respectful form of protest; but it is certainly not the only one. it's easy for us to sit at our computers and judge the actions of others in the street. for the record, the vast majority of the people protesting were canadians. many of the people in quebec city were against the free trade area of the americas taking place in their neighborhoods. and not just because they were worried about their windows getting broken. there are protests in the city quite frequently. most storefronts had boarded up their windows and put up anti-ftaa messages on them. these people had to deal with tear gas in their homes. by the way, the summit was closed down early one afternoon because the tear gas had seeped into the ventilation system. >The car culture isn't an ideal one but it's what we have right now. oh well...let's give everyone an suv and drill in the artic wilderness for a couple of years of juicy profits for the oil companies that have demonstrated time and time again their complete disregard for alternatives. hand in hand with the auto manufacturers. who's going to change this? when i think of the extent of the environmental devestation, i am glad that there are folks out there with the resolve of earthfirst. ken "what we need is a break from the old routine" the kenster np showbusiness chumbawamba ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 14:57:37 -0700 From: "Kenneth Johnson" Subject: [none] Dear Eb what you find unreadble might be just the opposite for many others out there. Some might find it interesting or engaging or perverse or upsetting whatever...to each his/her own. Don't pretend to speak for the entire list. And anyway, everyone's is allowed to spout/write/say whatever they wish. Who are you to pass judgment on the content of other people's post merely because you don't like them or its content? THere are plenty of discussions that go on around here that I don't care for, I could bitch about the silly personal infighting and childish jabs for instance that clog my inbox. At least some people when they are engaged in this manner have something pertenent to say. There are discussions on topic and off that the majority of us for whatever reason won't have any interest in. It is a free forum however. If you don't like something or it doesn't pander to your personal taste of what should be discussed here, than be a big boy and ignore it or let it roll off your back or at least have an intelligent argument to counter should you feel inspired. Kenneth _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 17:58:23 -0400 (EDT) From: Christopher Gross Subject: Re: Oh no! They burned down my favorite McDonalds! On Tue, 24 Apr 2001, Viv Lyon wrote: > > Chris: > > > > > On the other hand, I am quite sure that all the rock-throwing > > >testosterone-soaked 21-year-old anarchists in their black bandannas had a > > great time, and they will no doubt cherish memories of the Battle of > > Quebec in twenty years when they're all stockbrokers and lawyers and > > college professors. > > > > When they're not busy beating up their wives or abusing their children. Again, > > they've crossed the line. They're capable of physical violence. The only thing > > they need to do is rationalize it, like they (wrongly) did here. > > You don't know any anarchists, do you? Beating up their wives... you're > hilarious, you know that? That's not much of a reply. His point, if I understand correctly, was that people who have crossed the line into violence once are more likely to do it again. I don't agree that that's *always* true, but it can be. Do you think anarchists are all, without exception, noble souls who only use violence to bring about a better society and will never ever acquire a taste for violence for its own sake? Personally, I suspect that a lot of today's crop of violent-protest anarchists are attracted to anarchism because it offers a chance to unleash the violent side of their personalities, and that side of their personalities is likely to still be there after their political ideas have changed. Today's violently-protesting anarchist might not be an anarchist who beats his kids in 20 years ... he's more likely to be a Christian conservative gun nut who beats his kids. [PS: lest the nested quotes confuse anyone, I wrote the paragraph starting "On the other hand...," Pat wrote the one starting "When they're not busy...," and Viv wrote the one starting "You don't know any anarchists...."] - --Chris self-proclaimed anarchist, 1985-86 ______________________________________________________________________ Christopher Gross On the Internet, nobody knows I'm a dog. chrisg@gwu.edu ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 18:03:21 -0400 (EDT) From: Christopher Gross Subject: Re: Enough. On Tue, 24 Apr 2001, Thomas, Ferris wrote: > The Quail, acid tongue and all, is the man. He's the original acid bird! - --Chris, catching up ______________________________________________________________________ Christopher Gross On the Internet, nobody knows I'm a dog. chrisg@gwu.edu ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 18:06:07 -0400 From: "Poole, R. Edward" Subject: RE: peaceful & violent Kenneth proclaimed: >It doesn't necessarily have to sacrifice identity at all. I believe >people can work together for the good of all. It requires a humble spirit >and compassionate kindness that is altogether foreign to the modern American >monster. Am I the only one who sees the contradiction between not "sacrific[ing] identity" and the described mindset that is "altogether foreign" to today's American? For good or ill, you ARE talking about sacrificing people's present identity -- which you, not without reason, posit as a good thing -- but that's what you are talking about. If we assume, for the sake of this discussion, that those changes are good, warranted, necessary, etc -- the question resolves into one of PROCESS. Far be it from me to interject a couple of musical references to the list, but consider: "but if you want money for people with minds that hate / all I can tell you brother is that you've got to wait." "'cause if you wanna fight then you're just dying to get killed." I understand the problem vis-a-vis the process question -- you believe so strongly in your position or cause, and are so frustrated by the complacency and/or ignorance of most people, that you feel compelled and/or justified in taking extreme measures. Sorry, self-defeating, hate-perpetuating, tis no good to anyone. (and I'm not accusing you, though you seem to condone "throwing rocks.") Make no mistake -- PETA, for instance, are comprised of "minds that hate," and it's clear they "wanna fight." Does this meat-eating, leather jacket wearing, pet owning man feel swayed by their passionate statements and actions? Not a bit of it; to the contrary, every time I hear about their antics, I want to grab a cheeseburger. On the other hand, there's what I like to call "the public TV paradox." Assuming, for the moment (and this is a very rare moment for me) that Ayn Rand was right (ouch, I can't stand even reading that phrase), and we're all a bunch of enlightened self-interest seekers in the marketplace of society, we would be inclined to contribute to public broadcasting fund drives in proportion to its worth to us. However, we can maximize our return (i.e., enjoyment of public tv broadcasts) with little or no investment, provided that the other schmucks out there pony up their pledges. However, if we all think this way, nobody send in their pledge cards, public tv goes bankrupt, and Newt does a little dance. How is this relevant, you ask? If I use public transport every day (I do, BTW), recycle every recyclable in my purview (getting there), foreswear all products produced by corporate interests that oppress and pillage (umm, not ALL), and, in short, do everything that you've been talking about to build a better society and a sustainable ecosphere, I get NOTHING (other than the warm fuzzies deep inside), unless A LOT of other people send in their eco-pledge cards. Likewise, if you can convince most everybody else to pitch in, I can sit back in my gas guzzling el camino, spraying chloroflorocarbons into the air for fun, whilst sprinkling DDT on my neighbors' vegetable garden, all with no fear that I am materially damaging my environment. Answer? Change yourself. If you don't go all the way (and I don't), you can feel guilty about it and/or teach your kids to do better than you (I try). If you want to prosthelytize, great, do it, but make sure no one gets hurt. Remember, those public tv pledge drives do not involve fire bombings, buckets of red paint, or name calling. They give you rewards for doing the right thing (look at this lovely tote bag!) I think there is a lesson in there somewhere. - -ed ============================================================================This e-mail message and any attached files are confidential and are intended solely for the use of the addressee(s) named above. This communication may contain material protected by attorney-client, work product, or other privileges. If you are not the intended recipient or person responsible for delivering this confidential communication to the intended recipient, you have received this communication in error, and any review, use, dissemination, forwarding, printing, copying, or other distribution of this e-mail message and any attached files is strictly prohibited. If you have received this confidential communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by reply e-mail message and permanently delete the original message. To reply to our email administrator directly, send an email to postmaster@dsmo.com Dickstein Shapiro Morin & Oshinsky LLP http://www.legalinnovators.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 16:16:40 -0600 From: HAL Subject: Re: Worst joke of the week JH3 wrote: > Hal did say "punk joke," so maybe he wasn't being so much > disrespectful of the genre as of B. Idol himself only. Right, Hal? I wasn't intending to be disrespectful of the original musical movement/genre (which *was* exciting for all of five minutes...OK, a couple of years.) I was, indeed, being extremely disrespectful of Billy Idol on Letterman Monday night (OK- so he's "faux". Weren't they all? Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?) And, I do laugh at the current Punk True Believers (i.e. Suckers For Sid) arguing about who was "more authentically punk", when all of their (anti-)"heroes" were mainly about trying to sell their plastic waffles. (And "gobbing". And self-mutilation/destruction.) It's always the fanboys who fuck it up and who turn something real into something you buy at the mall. Same as it ever was. Granny glasses and beads gave way to safety pins and then to flannel and now we're back to bubblegum. Rock as (*yawn*) Fashion. And what makes the punk-era "pogo" dance "craze" any different or "hipper" than that stupid hackey-sack whiteboy Phish-fan "dance" or the equally idiotic practice of slam-dancing or crowd-surfing, or for that matter, the Twist or the Lindy Hop? The only performers from those hallowed punk days that aren't laughable today (that I can think of right now) are Henry Rollins and Jello Biafra. I was also dissing Punk Nostalgia as a concept (which seems to me like the antithesis of true "punk ethic") by comparing it to Hippie Nostalgia (which all today's "punks" seem to disdain, while they themselves weep and wail at their own Lost Youth.) John Lennon was a "dinosaur/wanker", but Joey R. and Sid were Gods Of Rock? Har! /hal, waiting for another flame from Rupert's boytoy, who pouts and stamps his feet each time Ebmaniax! gets interrupted (ignored) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 17:32:21 -0500 From: "Brian Huddell" Subject: RE: peaceful demonstrators & violent idiots Jeme: > A summit on global warming that ends in a treaty could just as well be > protested by volunteer private citizens that oppose such a > treaty. Surely. But it isn't going to happen because the people DO > support treaties that work against global warming... by overwhelming > majority. I was asking you to entertain a hypothetical situation in which the players in Quebec City were reversed: good guys inside, bad guys out. Your response is that that isn't going to happen. You may be right. It may also be that racists, xenophobes, homophobes, religious fundamentalists, cannibals, etc... simply will never have the numbers, or the organization skills, to create an effective popular movement. I'm guess I'm not idealistic enough to have that kind of faith in "the people". > > And since I'm just as likely to be on the "wrong" side of a bunch of > > people who are willing to tear up shit to make a point, as I am to be > > on the "right" side, I'm a bit uneasy with the notion that it's okay > > for the "right" people to tear up shit. > > Is this moral relativism? Do you really not believe you are right? I have no control over who is going to decide they are right enough, justified enough, to use violence against me, or mine, or something I believe in. Neither do you. My point was that we are just as likely to be on the receiving end of violence. As someone who chooses not to arm himself, who admits to being afraid of violence, I would prefer it if even those activists whose goals are my own (such as those opposed to FTAA) didn't contribute to the atmosphere of "desperation" that Jeme has identified. +brian ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 18:33:29 -0400 (EDT) From: Christopher Gross Subject: Re: Enough. On Tue, 24 Apr 2001, Ken Ostrander wrote: > ooh la la! whuddathunk that this would be so contentious? i like to see all > of this discussion. i hope we can keep it civil. perhaps it's too late for > that. > so...you're saying that there's never a reason for violence? jesus > turned the other cheek and became a martyr. excuse me if that's not > what i want. there are different levels of violence. personally, i > consider the way that corporations have turned our representative > democracy into an oligarchic plutocracy to be a sinister form of > violence that trickles down like olestra. [snip more in this vein] Okay, so the other side is violent. This proves neither that violence on the part of the demonstrators is justified, nor that such violence is politically effective. Actually I'd argue that violence is only justifiable if it is necessary and not gratuitous (ie, it will actually do some good). I don't think these criteria were met in Quebec (or Seattle in '99). Were you pissed off by the fence around the conference zone? Guess what -- the violent demonstrators provided all the justification for that fence that the police could ever want. The rock-chuckers might think that their violence was only a response to unfair police tactics -- that *might* even be true -- but most viewers are going to think "So they couldn't march as close to the meetings as they wanted. So what? Does that justify a riot?" If you want to be politically effective, you should take things like that into account. > >Civil disobedience is one thing. > >Intentional destruction of property is a crime (and rightly so.) > > some might consider property to be a crime... Most people don't. People might have different ideas about what sort of property laws we should have, but very very VERY few think that the whole idea of property is wrong. Quick quiz (open to everyone, not just Ken) -- name me a society past the hunter-gatherer level that has no concept of property at all. > it's easy for us to sit at our computers and judge > the actions of others in the street. Maybe I'm misreading you. Are you saying the violent protesters were right, or just that you refuse to judge them? > >The car culture isn't an ideal one but it's what we have right now. > > oh well...let's give everyone an suv and drill in the artic wilderness for a > couple of years of juicy profits for the oil companies that have demonstrated > time and time again their complete disregard for alternatives. hand in hand > with the auto manufacturers. who's going to change this? Not Earth First, that's for sure! Broad social and economic change will only be brought about by changing people's attitudes and developing real alternatives. Small bands of terrorists (even those who scrupulously limit themseslves to property damage) do nothing for the latter and are actually counter-productive as far as public attitudes are concerned. One corporate engineer who helps develop a slightly more cost-effective solar cell could do more for the environment than Earth First ever will. - --Chris ______________________________________________________________________ Christopher Gross On the Internet, nobody knows I'm a dog. chrisg@gwu.edu ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 15:33:51 -0700 From: Tom Clark Subject: Re: Enough. on 4/24/01 2:52 PM, Ken Ostrander at kenster@MIT.EDU wrote: > forcing local merchants out of business and > sapping valuable local dollars out of communities is violence. Ken brings up an issue I've been grappling with for a little while now. There exists a funky little shopping district in my part of town that for years had just one locally owned coffee shop. As the "yuppies" moved in (I must confess I fit the demographic...) it became kind of a chic place to hang out. Well, lo and behold Starbucks came to town, set up shop right across the street from "Willow Glen Coffee", and got the locals in an uproar - - yours truly included. But as it turned out, the people at Starbucks were actually NICE to me when I went in there. I mean they smiled, and acted as though they actually cared that I was there. In contrast, WGC across the street is usually manned (for lack of a better term) by these goth gen-Xer's who make me feel like I'm inconveniencing them by asking for a cuppa joe. So you tell me, should I patronize the local guy even though he's an asshole, or go across the street and funnel my not-so-hard-earned cash to Seattle? - -tc (Luckily, there's a Peet's at the other end of the block, so my problem is solved. But still...) ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V10 #149 ********************************