Jermaine Preyear Transferring?

and yeah lets compare the living standards of cuba to the dominican reppublic or venezuala to columbia. what about brazil to argentina and nicaragua to honduras? just because the standard of living is nice in the West is nice doesn’t mean capitalism and in particular the late 20th century version that MF is the father of known as “neo-liberalism”, is going to inherently raise the standard of living, in fact as i pointed out, many countries who have tried to create an alternative model have faired much better than their peers when it comes to economic development and standard of living issues like infant mortality literacy and access to education and health care. ask a hatian if he’d mind the vile evil specter of communism that so many of his neighbors have suffered under in cuba. he’d take that in a heartbeat over continuing to toil in a slave labor camp (that is just about the most and only accurate description you can give to 3rd world countries foolish/corrupt enough to participate in the kind of “structural adjustment programs” handed down by the IMF and World Bank)

and you’re right there is no one “free market system” there is only the fantasy of it that is constantly trotted out as the ideal by corpratists/fascists/republicans/weirdo right wing academics. if you want to see a good example of an economy that is neither communist or capitalist, you can look to japan. that small, resource deficient country, raised itself out of the devistation it suffered at the end of WW2 and has become one of the worlds leading economies,and it was due to state “interventionalism/management” of the economy, not a strict dogmatic adherence to marxism or neo-liberalism.

for us to pretend that there are only 2 methods and 1 was proven correct, the other wrong, is just juvenile and ignorant. furthermore i think it serves to keep people ignorant about the other options we might have. corporations and capitalists have shown themselves incapable of successfully running an economy (please explain TARP and TALF if capitalism works, and dont try and give me that bullshit line about “the democrats force fannie and freddie to insure 5 % of the loans that recently defaulted. 5%!” anyone who cares to do the research already knows the mortgages that defaulted in the highest rates are the jumbo mortgages followed by sub prime, none of those are loans the government “forced” on anyone, those are the loans the “innovators of modern capitalism” created. they shat the bed, not freddie and fannie. furthermore the real issue was the M3 supply, which since the repeal of Glass Stegal (1999), jumped up something like 1000% in 8 years )

as far as chomsky’s position on a basis to run an economy, i’ve read a shit ton of his books and haven’t yet seen him offer an economic model that he says would work best for the interests of humanity. thats one of his most common criticisms in fact, that he “only sees the problems but not the solutions man” well like Ray Callahan said in Tommy Boy, “step 1 is finding out the source of the problem, step 2 would be to do something about it.” (“it’s a pine scented air freshener”).

overall though i certainly dont agree with many “left” policies and models either, i just understand more where they’re coming from. at least in the context of, a reaction to the last 100 years of the western capitalist model. frankly it makes more sense for bolivia to thumb their nose at the west and do what they’re doing. and as far as America goes, it makes no sense for us to pretend that what just happened wasn’t proof that we cannot allow a corporate agenda to be the basis of our economy. we need to manage it, or the greedy reckless morons on wall street really will be the death of us all. the era of neo-liberalism has been a failure, and the only responsible way to react to that is to call it for what it was, and insist that we move forward to find an alternative.

(apologies for the rambling nature of my response, the wife has been at me today to do crap around the house, i been in the office when i can sneak away from her ever watchful eye. it’s like being in a cambodian killing field, only i get in trouble for smiling or thinking about football instead of doing housework)

and tell me it’s for potheads… people who criticize chomsky (sorry to offend) often cant even fucking comprehend the inside cover flap of his books, not that more than 2% of them have ever even bothered to challenge the preconceived notions in their feeble scared ignorant minds. so to expect them to read something, anything really, is kind of asking alot.

I am as pinko as they come…It was pluck and cheek.

i dont think chomsky would have much, of anything that is positive, to say about chavez’s regime. i’m pretty sure ol noam would give chavez credit for surviving the Bush administration backed coup attempt that he survived though.

ultimately i dont think chavez would want chomsky in his backayrd poking around either. chavez just recognized how valid and also useful Chomsky’s critque of the USA is to him, and so like any power hungry politician/dictator/3 time elected executive who survived one coup, he’s willing and in fact eager to co-opt chomsky’s message for the furtherance of his own.

expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise!… Surprise and fear… fear and surprise… Our two weapons are fear and surprise… and ruthless efficiency! Our three weapons are fear, and surprise, and ruthless efficiency… and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope… Our four… no… Amongst our weapons… Hmf… Amongst our weaponry… are such elements as fear, surpr… I’ll come in again.