Jay

Again with the double post. Yeah my family found Matewan boring and I can understand that. I'm a little biased I guess.

Carter was a saint compared to Reagan. Carter only conducted economic warfare against the Sandinistas (Nicaragua). Reagan did his Iran Contra thing. Made sure they had plenty of weapons to conduct terrorism against the democratic process and stop those commies. Right after Reagan came into office Ecuador and Panama's democratically elected leaders suddenly died in plane crashes (were assasinated IOW rather blatantly really) but with enough plausible denial that it was practically not mentioned at all in the US MSM. Reagan invaded Grenada even. Carter mostly tried to avoid using force but still did economic violence which really is pretty bad still. Same idea with Clinton really. He still had the IMF/WB which kills far more than the Iraqi war is killing and sanctions against Iraq which only killed at a slightly lower rate. The person who did the one peer-reviewed scientific study on the Iraqi war deaths says that about 300,000 have been killed so far. During Clinton's sanctions if I remember it is estimated conservatively that 500,000 were killed. It seems the main difference between democrats and republicans is their PR campaigns. Democrats pretend to be about peace so they use economic violence while Republicans seem to approve of military force so they don't bother with any pretenses. This is somewhat like the difference between the WB and IMF at least until Wolfowitz became head of the WB. I understand Machiavellianism just not the underlying reason for bothering. Beyond a certain point money/power just doesn't do anything for happiness. One possibility is that ALL these people in some way believe they really are helping people..??? I'm sure some fascists/monarchists/etc do believe their system is the best... for whatever reason. Bush, for example, may just be a raving christian who believes Revelations and that the end is near and by god he is called on to do what he does. Perhaps he's so clueless he believes all the free market crap through brainwashing...? Perhaps they all do and it's just a rudderless ship out of control. What I know about China is that they've had absolutely nothing to do with the free market zealotry of the IMF and WB and as a result they have sightly reduced poverty during the last 25 years and along with India having little to nothing to do with these evil organizations the resulting slight reduction in poverty their two billion peoples have experienced has just barely offset the huge increase in poverty experienced by all the other third nations who almost without exception have taken IMF/WB loans. As a result the IMF/WB like to claim the slight overall reduction in poverty can somehow be attributed to their work when nothing could be further from the truth. Don't know about dissent/democracy stuff. The thing about that, (that goes against the obvious pro-freedom of speech usual sentiments) is that foreign capitalist nations will try to secretly funnel money to "dissidents" within the country. And in that way overthrow whatever government they don't like. In Iran 1953 that is largely what they did. They paid people to become full time protestors thus creating the impression that Mossedegh(sp) was very unpopular in large part leading to his overthrow. In Cuba they would happily do the same but to the extent they've tried Castro has very clearly stopped it from happening and how can he stop it? By throwing such people in jail. Of course for doing that he is called a totalitarian dictator but what is the alternative? If he does nothing, the US will endlessly pump millions into the country for which non-political people will decide to be political for awhile. Fulltime protestors will come out of nowhere, etc as has been done in so many other nations until the government is overthrown. (Which reminds me of James Baker and all the "protestors" in Florida 2000. Have you heard about that? Baker paid to have them flown in from around the country.) Perhaps China is worried about this sort of thing happening? I don't know. It's a problem. It seems that this lack of democracy has to go along with socialism. The alternative is the nation being overthrown back to capitalism. If a benevolent socialist dictator is in charge it is understandable they wouldn't want to take the chance. Hugo Chavez in Venezuela seems to be the closest anyone has come to overcoming this seeming paradox. (It's a seeming paradox in that freedom of speech in capitalist nations is only free to the extent that you aren't heard by hardly anyone.) Chavez is democratic. And he just may be as socialist as Castro. But Chavez has done things very slowly, with the strong support of the military and as such he has been able to be very democratic. In Cuba they have control of things well enough that they do have some real bonafide dissidents-people they know are not receiving US money- and they leave them alone. But in many situations, how would you know who is "bonafide". In China with a billion people it could be very difficult. I don't know. In 1918 Russia the nation was in chaos and it would have been impossible although I'd like to think at some point they certainly should have allowed nonforeign funded dissent. I'm just thinking outloud. Don't mind me. What this is I think it can be described as, is Marxist-Leninism. Where the Marxism is basically economic (idealistic) socialism and the Leninism is the understanding of the reality of Imperialism and that as a result things have to deform to survive. The question to me, is, is it just better to say to heck with it and have a capitalist democracy instead? I don't think so. Curtailing freedom of speech is horrible. But virtual slavery and a 20 years lower life expectancy seems worse. And that is the choice in most countries. (Not the US or West Europe of course. For now there are plenty of resources to steal elsewhere to keep these people living pretty good.)

Oh you were probably talking about 9/11/2001. Sorry. Well the US 9/11 was a much smaller catastrophe of course, (except in what they've used it to justify) so it didn't come to mind at first.

I don't have time to watch the video but I agree there was an attempted cover-up of the US assasination of the democratically elected President of Chile, Salvador Allende, on 9/11/73 that resulted in the torture and murder of probably at least 10,000 leftists by the military dictator Augusto Pinochet. But Henry Kissinger finally admitted it all himself although denying he ordered that Allende actually be murdered.

Double post

Well, I think it has been successful in smaller groups, such as tribes or native peoples -- is that to what you refer? Talk away, Jay, you know I'd appreciate whatever you have to say on it. I'm just not, myself, well versed on this subject; so my general skeptic nature combined with a healthy dose of ignorance, may not lend a fruitful (for you) back-and-forth, be forwarned I am however, always willing to learn. I think it hasn't been successful nationwide(except in that mixed economies with socialized health care, etc are obviously more successful) because of imperialism. The US (primarily) has resorted to force to stop it from being successful in many, many instances. Now, I could go on and on about this and I think I probably should write up a short summary and post it on a webpage because the material is not summarized anywhere well enough. This guy has the best summary that I've seen: http://thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/William_Blum.html http://thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/KillingHope_page.html http://thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/US_Interventions_WBlumZ.html But he still leaves out all kinds of stuff. No mention of Columbia which gets the third most US aid (weapons/counterinsurgency training) and uses it to kill people who try to start unions, etc. Every year Colombia kills more union organizers than the rest of the world combined. He also leaves out the assasinations of Ecuadoran and Panamian presidents in 1981 who dared to go against US corporate interests. (Something I just finally heard about while reading Confessions of an Economic Hitman. Really good book.) Basically the US first tries to trick/bribe the leaders of third world countries to take their loans in exchange for right wing economic stipulations. This puts the country in extreme debt although it's understood the leader is free to get rich. But if the leader doesn't agree and instead tries to help his people by doing anything from outright socialism to anything that remotely looks like socialism, they bring in the "jackals", in the words of John Perkins (Confessions of an Economic Hitman). The jackals (the CIA or private companies tied into the CIA) will either identify rightwing oppositions elements and give them millions to try to win future elections and/or use terrorism/terror to win by a military coup. Or simply assasinate the offending democratically elected leader such as with Salvador Allende (Chile 1973), Jaime Roldós (Ecuador 1981), Omar Torrijos (Panama 1981), at least 20 attemtps on Castro, and a few others. Etc, etc, etc. If that doesn't work then step three is to bring in the military and/or economic embargos. This sort of activity has made it extremely difficult for any countries to be very successful with socialism. Of course, no third world country has been successful with capitalism either excepting a few nations the US has chosen to prop up. Well, just be careful not to swing too far the other way . The same dilution of truth on one side, could just as easily be diluted on the other. And while I don't always believe "the truth is somewhere in the middle," I think it's best to take "history" and "facts" as something to be accepted after a great deal of real consideration as well as documentation, neither of which may render any truth, anyway, but.... Yes, I know. This is actually part of standard politics. You don't need to win every argument. Just do enough to confuse people/put some doubt in people's head. Global warming for one example of many. What it always has been? Power. I have never considered the accumulation of personal wealth the primary reason for domination. Ultimately I don't really understand politicians. I don't understand the point in getting power just for the sake of having power. But when it comes to the corporations who to a large extent control the world today I definitely think it's solely about making money. It is much harder to understand the politicians who represent them. Interesting. Is there a book written about this? Yea, Hearst -- talk about power hungry. http://www.rationalrevolution.net/special/library/famine.htm I haven't researched them. But if i can't find any good books about North Korea or Vietnam today, then I'll pick one up on China.

Communism in general? Or the USSR? I'd say soviet style communism was a failure in that their state controlled media was no match for the sophisticated US media. And so the US media said how horrible the USSR was and people believed it because we supposedly have a free press. (Which we don't really have.) But the USSR media said how horrible America was and plenty of people didn't believe it because their press was controlled in a very straightforward and obvious way. I think the biggest mistake they (the USSR) made was way back with Lenin they got rid of press freedom/free speech. Excepting foreign funded media and foreign funded "dissidents" who should always be at least kicked out of the country or thrown in jail, they should have kept freedom of speech. They didn't and so they eventually lost the backing of the people. I don't think communism (socialism really) has been proven a failure in general and I can talk A LOT more about that if you want. Well, I don't really buy it when leaders claim(ed) they didn't know mass killings were going on. Sounds rather ludicrous. And, sadly, sounds familiar too. Perhaps. I have only begun to read about it. I haven't come to any final decision but what I've seen so far is that the main sources used to villify Stalin are mostly crap. Just flat out made up stuff. Despite that, he might still have been a horrible person i guess. Again, I wouldn't put this past *any* leader. As you say, it's rather easy to rewrite history; however, some evil stuff has been done by every country. What would make Stalin so special? What's his motive? He wasn't fabulously wealthy. Unlike Yeltsin (who was the real power behind Gorbachev) who had millions hide away in (I think Swiss) bank accounts, Stalin had pretty much nothing. Just enough for personal security. No money hidden away. No palace. Just nothing. He didn't even bother to dress decently wearing the same clothes till they were falling apart and not even sleeping in a bed. When the Tsar was in power he spent a decade constantly on the run. If he was in it for himself he really went about it all wrong. I guess maybe he was just a sadist? I guess that's a possibility but he really had less obvious motives than that of the usual dictators with their palaces or capitalist presidents like Cheney with his millions. He wasn't religious either like Bush possibly actually really is. Yes that's evil. But there still are fabricated holocausts. In the case of the USSR, there is for example ths supposed Ukranian famine engineered holocaust in 1933 or so. It supposedly killed 7 million. There is a book online about it called Fraud, Fascism and Famine at rationalrevolution The fraud was started up by Ukranian nationalists (pissed primarily that they were part of the USSR). It was first carried in the nazis press, showing pictures that in the book are proven to be fake/ fake journalists, etc. Eventually it made it's way to America through William Randolph Hearst's papers. It's all been shown to be crap. Just the usual from Hearst who had no problem lying to try to influence politics. Still it is repeated to this day. Reagen tried to bring it back and Robert Conquest, who is the most popular anti-Stalin writer cited, happily repeats such stuff. This brings up an interesting question about just what constitutes a holocaust. How about an Arab holocaust via aiding and acquiescence? That would make the U.S. guilty, realtime. I assume millions dying as a direct result of someone's actions means holocaust. Worse than the Palestinians being killed by bombs and guns in are the people dying from lack of health care, malnutrition throughout the ME thanks to the type of dictatorships that were put into place by the US, Britain and France and have been supported ever since. Even the democracy of Egypt is a total farce and they receive the second most US aid only behind Israel. Maybe I'm wrong to use the word holocaust but it seems to me the worst holocaust ever is the one being perpetrated by the IMF/WB. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20000412/ai_n14299769 Mr Livingstone said economists had estimated that in any year since 1981, up to 20 million people had died because governments cut back on health schemes to pay debts. "Every year the international financial system kills more people than World War Two. But at least Hitler was mad, you know?"

Pavel whathisname calls it "grease the groove" (GTG). I always push it too far though and find that taking every other day off works better for me. Also to be honest I think if you can just literally spend all day lifting (like a mechanic for example) that works even a lot better. Do a search for isaac nesser, he's legitimately in guiness as having the largest muscular chest in history. He would workout chest 8 to 10 days straight for 4 to 6 hours then take a couple days off and repeat. He was a recluse though and is largely dismissed (despite being in guiness) yet he did dwarf the usually accepted strongest/biggest men in the world. (bill kazmaier for example only had a 60inch chest.)

OK. Later when I have time. Think I will try to get a webpage and put up an article about it actually.

Had my former boss go out of her way to describe herself being cruel to animals everytime I was around in an attempt to get a rise out of me so she could use that as a reason for firing me. She didn't get a rise out of me and surprisingly she didn't lie and say otherwise when she falsely accused me of everything else under the sun.

Bastard! Of course, many millions actually died and they are still dying.

G told such jokes because he wanted to get rid of socialism. Duh! (Talking to the writer of the article, not you raVen of course.)

Well..... for starters the whole thing is quite negative to me because I know that there have been tons of lies fabricated about the communist countries in order to make sure Americans, etc think communism is a failure. Things like jokes are more easy to fabricate as people hardly expect you to provide references for jokes. This would be in reference to the Great Terror of 1936-1938 during which many innocent people were "purged". Purged meaning they lost their party membership, lost their jobs as generals, etc, in some cases were sent to work camps and in some cases even executed. Famously some very high ranking politicians were executed during this time. It is claimed by some that the high ranking politicians were innocent and plead guilty as a result of torture. There is actually no good evidence that this is true. But the winners write history you know. Furthermore it is claimed that this was all the work of Stalin (The Great Terror) in order to spread terror just for the sake of spreading terror supposedly.. I guess this was supposed to cement his rule. There are a lot of things left out by pro-capitalist propaganda concerning this. One, the USSR had some extremely good reasons to be very very paranoid of traitors within their country. Let's see: 1. There were tons of people still pissed that they lost their wealth after the revolution (kulaks). 2. There were tons of anti-semites who sympathesized with the Nazis. The Soviets actually flew men into villages pretending to be Nazis and were greeted as liberators. Furthermore there really were generals who were traitors to the Nazis. The Soviets were scared to death what might happen when Germany attacked... that possibly all these generals would sabotage/switch over causing the Nazis to take over the USSR. 3. When the monarchy was originally overthrown, 10 or so capitalist nations attacked/put up an embargo/etc to try to stop the Bolsheviks from holding on to power. It was a miracle they did manage to hold on to power but ever since they've known the capitalist nations desperately wanted to see them fail. The US for example did not even recognize the USSR as being a legitimate government until 1933. Up till that point they supported numerous other exiled groups (pro-capitalist/pro-monarchy/pro-fascism, etc) who claimed to be the true government. As such the Soviets responded a little too vigorously in trying to find any traitors. Innocent people were killed. There is contention by many that this was hardly controlled by Stalin and that in fact when he realized just how many innocent people were being wrongly convicted he had the people in charge of the purges... well purged. Anyway, it's very unlikely that Stalin ever said any such thing. There's a lot of crap out there with regards to Stalin. Also Beria tried to take power after Stalin died. (And according to some was trying to breakup the corruption of the bureacracy.) He was instead arrested and executed. With the exception of Stalin (and Lenin by some) Beria seems to get reviled the most. This is probably why. Along with Trotsky (who seems to primarily have been pissed that he got booted out of the country but usually went on about how the Soviets weren't doing enough to help third world countries (which I partially agree with)), Khrushchev is unfortunately the main man responsible for the anti-Stalin propaganda (even more than the capitalists). He smeared him to help himself gain power and have more leeway in introducing his own new policies. I've heard his secret speech is literally nothing but lies. I've seen some of the lies pointed out but not all. An obvious one is the cult of personality around Stalin. Krushchev went on about what a ing thing this was. But actually Stalin disliked it and said his enemies were building up this cult in order to later discredit him. And whaddya know? Krushchev was one of the biggest in building up the cult, having speeches filled with praise to "the great Stalin", etc. And indeed, he later used it to discredit him. As a matter of fact in the mid 80's the central committee talked about "rehabilitating" Stalin. In that Krushechev had done horrible damage to the image of the USSR with respect to his smear campaign of Stalin. Most agreed that such rehabilitation should have been done, except Gorbachev. From 1928 to 1940 the USSR went from third world to industrialized in record time. They managed this thanks to their nonsensical economic policies. If they had instead gone capitalist they would have stayed third world and lost to the Nazis. The only capitalist nations on earth that have gone from third world to industrialized (in the last 90 years) are the ones the US has propped up for one reason or another. (Bulwarks or examples to close by communist nations, etc.) When the USSR went to capitalism the life expectancy dropped from 64 to 57, which is a holocaust, a censored holocaust. If Cuba is invaded and it's nonsense economic politics are replaced by capitalism, the life expectancy which is currently 77 (despite being a small island that has had an embargo upon it for 45 years + terrorism/assasination attempts/etc by it's extremely powerful neighbor just 90 miles away) will drop by probably 25 years. This will also by a holocaust that will be censored by the MSM. Anything else?

It's a valid point that 'hey, those butterflies were collected and killed. Perhaps that's not something you want to be supporting as a vegan. (If you were supporting it.) And even if you weren't, perhaps it's not really so good to share this bit of murder in such a positive fashion on a vegan board?' It's just a matter of tact in pointing this out. Personally I'm not very good with tact so I don't have a lot of room to criticize but this: is very untactful. Really not the right approach at all. That's all.

Not what I know. Me neither. Big calves come from being really fat for a while, lots of time spent running with a heavy backpack or just genetics.

When you belong to any "group" it's important that when you see something wrong you take the time to voice your opinion that it's wrong, otherwise the "group" will turn into a very ugly thing. I have unfortunately seen this very clearly in other groups where certain people were afraid to rock the boat when they disagreed with something. Instead they just realized there was less and less reason to bother being involved there and eventually left; the leftover group being a nasty embarrassing thing. So with respect to this let me just say that it was completely out of line to go after BigBwi in the manner that the one poster did. And I'm surprised that Alex actually agreed wtih him. I'd hope enough people would disagree with those such sentiments that BB would stay around and this group won't eventually deform like many others have.

Whatever you do, pay attention to what your body is saying. Don't listen to the BS macho crap some lifters talk and try to "work through" the pain in your back. If it doesn't feel right, stop doing it.

They've obviously been influenced by those bizarre PETA campaigns.

That's really cool of you to offer. Maybe if I'm free then I'll look into this.

I saw Passion because I like to see what everyone's talking about. I've read and seen Da Vinci Code also. Flame warriors http://redwing.hutman.net/%7Emreed/ Harold and Kumar is good.

They may do as they please but there are still certain harmful attitudes that men will hold towards women. Still today it can be a surprise to find a woman in a powerful position in society. Women are judged far more by the appearance of their body then men. People should be judged by their actions and their minds. To a greater extent then men, women are still judged by their bodies. Carol Adams has a couple books: The Sexual Politics of Meat and The Pornography of Meat where she shows how treating women like a piece of meat (judging them by their bodies) is akin to meat eating. It should be expected that vegans would be more sensitive to sexism than the average meat eater. Yes, but I think the attention it gets turns off a lot of the sorts of people who would be most likely to become vegans. And they can get attention other ways. They could have a concert. They could even have their own menudo type band. They can use celebrities (although maybe stay away from Dennis Rodman, Brittany Spears, Pamela, etc?). They can do controversial stuff like comparing meat eating to slavery, genocide, etc.

Sorry bout your knees. I wonder what else you can try? When I got back into jogging here recently, at first my knees were horrible and if I tried to run without a warmup I might have just collapsed. After about ten good runs especially some long slow jogs, my knees feel great. That's probably not relevant to you though.

I only cry at movies but not during that one. I'm not a christian and that whole "He died for your sins!" thing just comes across very badly to me. Like I'm supposed to adopt a dogmatic life philosophy out of pity or something. And Mel's Passion really came across pretty close to just being a snuff film. Best movie I've seen the last year... maybe City of God. I liked Sin City too. I like Mickey Rourke playing tough guys.

Straps are these things you wrap around your wrist and then around the bar so that you can hold on to the bar beyond when your grip would normally give out. OAP/C is one armed pullups/chinups. Yes, those are funny cartoons. They even have Schulz there. I somehow assume he wouldn't be rightwing, although I guess I could see in 1958 liberal types taking part in that. You ever read Mallard Fillmore? Now there's a crappy rightwing cartoon. Not funny at all. They put it next to Doonesbury for equal time or something in one of the local papers. ------------------- Today was a very very good workout. Just touching my hand against the door frame in order to not spin out of the OAC position I did 8 or 9 singles on the right arm getting 2/3 to 1/2 up. (Where 1/2 is the upper arm parallel to the ground.) Only got 1/2 up once or twice on the left arm though. Did this first thing in the morning at a bodyweight of 220. Took 3 days off instead of the usual 1/occasional 2. Was planning on 3 or 4 days rest for a while as mentally I've felt a little sick of lifting. Yesterday ran that same course (it's probably only 4.7 miles as opposed to 5) and did it in 45 minutes.

It has absolutely nothing to do with being anti-sex. It has to do with sexism and also just the absolute bizarre irrelevance of being naked with respect to veganism. Again the vegans who object are generally the most liberal out there. I, for one, wouldn't care if people just casually walked around nude all the time. Anyway PETA has turned me off. I have nothing to do with PETA because of their bizarre stuff. I don't see the point in giving them suggestions because I find them so bizarre I think we have no common ground. That all their supporters seem unable to comprehend what sexism is, says a lot. Some of you can't even comprehend that women have been discriminated throughout history compared to men!!!!! I don't have time for a pointless long discussion trying to explain to people what sexism is, what exploitatin is, etc. PETAbodybuilder, that's good that Ingrid has got herself out there I guess. I couldn't find any mostly nude pics of her online though. Is she hot? Anyway I guess you pretty much answered my questions. I, in turn, explained why I think PETA is mistaken. That's that. I'm certain nothing of use will come of it.