Global Politics
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Re: Global Politics
-- Updated Thu Feb 23, 2017 3:23 pm to add the following --
Go get absolutely specific, the question in the OP seems to be: should we be allowed to vote in each other's elections?
My answer: Yes. Probably. I've actually suggested it myself in previous topics. Here for example:
onlinephilosophyclub.com/forums/viewtop ... 57#p242757
- Rr6
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Re: Global Politics
Efficently and effectively doing what needs to be done to sustain our ecological environment, that, sustains humans is the name of the game.
Competition, as the lowest common denominator i may be efficient but not effective in humanities survival. China is currently the only country that has the ability to rapidly supply mass-production of solar to humanity.
Some believe Parts Per Million of greenouse gases is already beyond the limit of what humanity will be able to survive the next 500 or 1000 years.
Sure, there has always been hope that we could find cure for cancer ergo bring on the nukes plants and all the ionizing radiation that goes with them.
So there is always that hope we will find the cure for rising greenhouse gases effects.
Humanity is efficicently and effectvively digging there own graves on Earth. imho
Not to mention the current idiot in power wants to increase the number of hydrogen bombs. Did he not live through the 50's, 70's 90's?
r6
Rr6 wrote:If Earth's ecological environment is going sour--- from one or more impediment threats --- then it is rational, logical common sense that those with most money will have best opportunities to live through a sour dark age.
Those with more money can install more underground storage bunkers in more places. Money will buy water filtering and other devices to have best opportunity to have clean drinking water.
Carl Sagan and Bucky Fuller both state in there final books, that, humanity is in a dark age or about to enter a dark age.
Fullers prognostications say that, if humanity does not become one-world-nation by year 2000 it would be curtains for humanity.
U.S. power is balanced between commander in chief, congress and justice/judicial system and inadverently the power of the people.
Humanity has a balance of peace keeping hydrogen weapons.
Humanity has moved nearly whole-heartedly towards capitalism's 'survival-of-the-fattest'.
Humanity has barely begun begun to consider Earths ecological concerns that sustains us all.
There are many who believe the particle parts per million of greenhouse gases has already breached a limit that humanity will have rough time surviving if any or many of the potential dire effects come true.
Fuller believed we would not get beyond 6 billions people and poo-pooed ideas of ever reaching 10 billion people.
Here is link to World Population Meter http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
r6
- Rederic
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Re: Global Politics
It is at its worst when it deludes us into thinking we have all the answers for everybody else.
Archibald Macleish.
- Ranvier
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Re: Global Politics
To visualize this, one can think about a video game with some avatar running around to collect some flowers to produce health potions. Other avatars run around collecting crystals to produce power up potions. Others still run around collecting knowledge scrolls to combine as potion books. The quality of such products depend on avatar skills and the rarity of items found. Now, the real game begins with the Global Market, where all these products are sold. If one has sufficient wealth to purchase a large enough amount of resources, one can temporarily corner the market for that specific product that can be sold in small amounts at a very high price. In essence a few "smart" players can control the entire Game World Market.
This is the driving force for the ever growing corporations and the economic Globalization. Brexit or other countries leaving EU is nothing more than a self preserving knee jerk that will have little effect in the long run. The problem begins when the growth is unsustainable because all these silly running around avatars can't afford to purchase the items they were collecting, where 30% of them live in poverty (elderly, unemployed, underemployed), 20% are poor living from paycheck to paycheck, 20% are in the "middle class" living on credit paying for mortgage and school loans , and the rest work for the government.
Globalization in a nutshell.
- Burning ghost
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Re: Global Politics
So no, politics is not about monetary profit. It is undeniably an important factor that is part of our culture.
If every human being had an equal amount of money it would not make us all instantly equal. So money is not the driving force, merely a cultural trend taken more seriously by some than by others.
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Re: Global Politics
A statement like this seems to me to be more or less meaningless unless elaborated upon. Just a sound bite attempting to be an aphorism.Personal wealth doesn't 'trickle down'. Business wealth does.
- LuckyR
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Re: Global Politics
It isn't meaningless, it is incorrect as stated. Business wealth can trickle down, but in Modern times is doing so less and less.Steve3007 wrote:Rederic:A statement like this seems to me to be more or less meaningless unless elaborated upon. Just a sound bite attempting to be an aphorism.Personal wealth doesn't 'trickle down'. Business wealth does.
- Ranvier
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Re: Global Politics
When I was a kid I wanted to believe in rainbows, butterflies, and unicorns while frolicking on an open green spring field. Then I grew up!Burning ghost wrote:Politics means the people coming together. We come together for "profit" for sure. Monetary profit is not the driving force of human existence though.
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Re: Global Politics
Two out of three isn't bad.When I was a kid I wanted to believe in rainbows, butterflies, and unicorns...
- Ranvier
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Re: Global Politics
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Re: Global Politics
European Union Parliament moves to censor “offensive speech”
POSTED AT 8:01 AM ON FEBRUARY 27, 2017 BY JAZZ SHAW
This is a story which would never take place in the United States, at least not yet and not with the official permission of the government. The European Union has obviously become increasingly alarmed over trends in popular sentiment rippling through their member countries. This started with Brexit, but has more recently cropped up with the candidacies of Marie Le Pen and Geert Wilders. Clearly such rabble rousing is not to be tolerated in the largely socialist paradise so something had to be done. The solution? The EU has passed new rules which will allow them to cut the broadcast of any “hate speech or offensive material” and then purge such speech from the official record.
[Associated Press;
With the specter of populism looming over a critical election year in Europe, the European Parliament has taken an unusual step to crack down on racism and hate speech in its own house.
In an unprecedented move, lawmakers have granted special powers to the president to pull the plug on live broadcasts of parliamentary debate in cases of racist speech or acts and the ability to purge any offending video or audio material from the system.
Trouble is, the rules on what is considered offensive are none too clear. Some are concerned about manipulation. Others are crying censorship.]
To be clear here, they are obviously not talking about concerns over any of the members giving speeches endorsing slavery, a new Holocaust or racial purging. They are talking about so-called “nationalist” platforms supporting some of these upstart candidates who threaten the permanence of the European Union Parliament itself. With more “exits” being threatened in places like France, the Netherlands, Hungary and Poland, supporters of the EU clearly feel they are in danger.
Anyone who is acting surprised clearly hasn’t been paying attention to the news. This is representative of most of Europe in a nutshell. Despite the fact that we tend to think of most of our allied nations on the continent as being “westernized” in nature, their citizens (and indeed their lawmakers as well) do not have the same freedoms in terms of speech, religion and other things which Americans take for granted. It is still standard practice in many European countries for laws to remain on the books which allow for the prosecution of people who are overheard saying unpopular things, even if that option is not frequently exercised. Let’s not forget that Geert Wilders was recently convicted of a crime for chanting the word “fewer” at a political rally when asking how many Moroccan immigrants the crowd wanted to see.
This censorship at the European Union Parliament may be going even one step further. The Associated Press article brings up the fact that they are already looking at some sort of delay button for the live broadcast of parliamentary speeches. We have such things in the United States to prevent the seven dirty words from being heard on network programming (and yes, we’re looking at you, Joe Scarborough) but such a thing is not employed to prevent the airing of political diatribes, even when they include unpopular speech.
The only conclusion I can draw at the moment is that candidates like Le Pen and Wilders really have the wizened heads at the European Union in a panic. The lesson we can take from this is found in observing the response. Actual freedom requires a robust rebuttal and persuasive argument against real hate speech. But in the EU they can simply make your speech disappear, and the powers that be get to determine what qualifies as acceptable.
http://hotair.com/archives/2017/02/27/e ... ve-speech/
- JMTelevideos
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Re: Global Politics
Furthermore, when people do not like what people are saying, people love to invent stories if they can get away with them in order to retaliate against anyone for saying politically incorrect things.
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Re: Global Politics
You use the word "people" three times here. It's not clear which people you're talking about in each case. Could you be more explicit? Your general point seems to be that even if in principle a country has freedom of speech it is always possible in practice to discourage it by other means. This is of course true. It is, for example, possible to make it clear to journalists that if they say things that are critical of government policy their lives will generally be harder and more dangerous than if they say complimentary things. This can be done without any overt threats. Do you agree?Furthermore, when people do not like what people are saying, people love to invent stories if they can get away with them in order to retaliate against anyone for saying politically incorrect things.
- Sy Borg
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Re: Global Politics
The crux of the current problems is that legitimate concerns about immigration from fairly regular people are being swept aside by politicians eager for boosted GDP figures and migrants whom they hope will not complain in the future about their taxes keeping afloat a growing army of elderly locals.
Complaints about overcrowding or social problems from concentrations of one nationality in poor areas are dismissed as "racist", which I see as an abuse of kind of consideration and goodwill that originally lay behind the "political correctness" movement - until practitioners got carried away with power and influence, falling into extreme preciousness. This preciousness has lead to unfair misrepresentations of the motivations of regular people complaining about their reduction in living standards due to poorly planned migration practices. It doesn't help that racist groups horn in on the issue, in much the same way as the Socialist Alliance "brought down the neighbourhood" when they piggy-backed on the Iraq war protests.
Now there is a backlash against polite and considerate speech in general. Yet many of the complaints from the "right" about being gagged about issues that directly affect them are legitimate, as are the fears of the "left" that the pendulum may swing too far back the other way.
Alas, it seems that humans must repeat every mistake multiple times before the lessons of history sink in. Three steps forward, two steps back.
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Re: Global Politics
Well, I think it is true that protesting Hollywood celebrities, protesting immigration policy, won't be getting their wealthy heads together to formulate a plan of creating a refugee housing complex for Beverley Hills.Greta wrote:I would much rather live in a society that limited people's capacity for hate speech, even if a tad oppressive, than one that gave free reign to hate speech. That was tried in the past and it created so many problems that legislation was introduced to encourage order. That worked for a while but it's been abused, and my concern is that the baby will go out with the bathwater.
The crux of the current problems is that legitimate concerns about immigration from fairly regular people are being swept aside by politicians eager for boosted GDP figures and migrants whom they hope will not complain in the future about their taxes keeping afloat a growing army of elderly locals.
Complaints about overcrowding or social problems from concentrations of one nationality in poor areas are dismissed as "racist", which I see as an abuse of kind of consideration and goodwill that originally lay behind the "political correctness" movement - until practitioners got carried away with power and influence, falling into extreme preciousness. This preciousness has lead to unfair misrepresentations of the motivations of regular people complaining about their reduction in living standards due to poorly planned migration practices. It doesn't help that racist groups horn in on the issue, in much the same way as the Socialist Alliance "brought down the neighbourhood" when they piggy-backed on the Iraq war protests.
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