Disqus - Latest Comments for dyfet

Re: What's behind Mitt's meltdown

David Sugar — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 08:19:54 -0000

The real problem is not his strategists, but Romney himself. Most actually had already figured out who and what he is long before the leaked video showed everyone else the simple truth. He wishes to run as the savior of white privilege; that is, one who believes some are a "privileged elect", and the rest of humanity can be treated as subhuman and damned. Fortunately it seems the majority have finally embraced that very basic premise that all people are born with equal human dignity, an idea that he clearly and utterly rejects.

In this respect he is both as out of touch with, and of similar worldview to another once famous presidential candidate; he is the new George Wallace.

Re: Joint Chiefs chairman praises 10 years of war as America’s ‘vengeance’

David Sugar — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 04:50:50 -0000

How is that in any way whatsoever different from Osama's own quest for vengeance other than the greater capacity for violence that the United States posses? Perhaps this Mullen would like to personally explain to a hundred thousand grieving families in Iraq why their children had to be slaughtered for America's vengeance? What I have learned is that vengeance is truly the perversion of justice.

Re: Do the Feds Need the Power to Wiretap the Internet? | The Atlantic Wire

David Sugar — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 17:57:30 -0000

“Privacy is ultimately about liberty while surveillance is always about control”

Speaking on behalf of the GNU Telephony project, we do intend to openly defy such a law should it actually come to pass, so I want to be very clear on this statement. It is not simply that we will choose to publicly defy the imposition of such an illegitimate law, but that we will explicitly continue to publicly develop and distribute free software (that is software that offers the freedom to use, inspect, and modify) enabling secure peer-to-peer communication privacy through encryption that is made available directly to anyone worldwide. Clearly such software is especially needed in those places, such as in the United States, where basic human freedoms and dignity seem most threatened.

In the United States the 4th amendment did not come about simply because it was impractical to directly spy on everyone on such a large scale. Nor does it end simply because it may now be technically feasible to do so. Communication privacy furthermore is essential to the normal functioning of free societies, whether speaking of whistle-blowers, journalists who have to protect their sources, human rights and peace activists engaging in legitimate political dissent, workers engaged in union organizing, or lawyers who must protect the confidentiality of their privileged communications with clients.

However, to fully appreciate the effect of such surveillance on human societies, imagine being among several hundred million people who wake up each day having to prove they are not a “terrorist” by whatever arbitrary means the government has decided to both define the terms of such a crime and whatever arbitrary methods unknown to you that they might choose to define you as such, and where even your prosecution is carried out under the immunity of “state secrets” that all police states use to abuse of their own citizens. Such a society is one who’s very foundation is built on the premise of everyone being guilty until proven innocent and where due process does not exist. It is the imposition of such a illegitimate society that we choose to openly oppose, and to do so in this manner.

David Alexander Sugar
Chief Facilitator
GNU Telephony

Re: Obama Administration Seeks Broader Internet Wiretap Authority | AHN

David Sugar — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 16:40:03 -0000

David Alexander Sugar
Chief Facilitator
GNU Telephony

Re: See, We Told You It Was a Dangerous Precedent

David Sugar — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 15:49:32 -0000

“Privacy is ultimately about liberty while surveillance is always about control”

David Alexander Sugar
Chief Facilitator
GNU Telephony

Re: ACLU Opposes Obama Effort To Wiretap The Web - Quick News - Talk Radio News Service: News, Politics, Media

David Sugar — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 15:44:35 -0000

I would love to speak with this Christopher Calabrese. We have in the past, and certainly plan to continue, to both openly develop and distribute secure peer-to-peer encrypted communication systems that are freely distributed directly to the public worldwide:

"GNU Telephony Statement on new Internet Surveillance Laws" - http://planet.gnu.org/gnute...

Re: ACLU Opposes Obama Effort To Wiretap The Web - Quick News - Talk Radio News Service: News, Politics, Media

David Sugar — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 15:42:25 -0000

I would be happy to speak with this Christopher Clabrese as we intend to openly and publicly challenge this and other wiretapping laws. We have already supplied and distributed secure peer-to-peer communication systems in the past directly to the public worldwide and we certainly do plan to continue doing so.

GNU Telephony Statement on new Internet Surveillance Laws:

http://planet.gnu.org/gnute...

Re: POOR NATIONS CAUSE FAILURE OF CLIMATE TALKS

David Sugar — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 18:10:35 -0000

One of the great contradictions of capital is it requires infinite growth when reality is finite. I think this is best exemplified in the story of Easter Island. One wonders if the continued growth of the wealthy was anticipated even as the very last tree was cut down. The world today lives in a similarly paradoxical delusion, starting with oil...

Re: Labor Day, Obama, and the Battle for Democracy

David Sugar — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 08:43:05 -0000

My own experience was that of being removed from my birth family when I was 3 and being raised in the foster care system until I could escape it. And I lived the early part of my life on the streets. It is not that we lived "outside" the wage-labor system of exploitation which LP suggests, but rather that the system was simply too small to accommodate exploiting us, as trickle-down jobs in a trickle-down economy are also an artificially scare commodity used to further reduce the cost of bargained labor, and with real unemployment around 20% today, I am sure this is true for many millions right now.

Re: http://paeditorsblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/recovery-jobs-and-gdp.html

David Sugar — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 23:49:20 -0000

It is called a "recovery" only because the wealthy have recovered having socialized their losses to everyone else while retaining their profits. This economy continues to be a depression for the working class, further strangled further by that accumulated debt burden of the wealthy that the entire society must now carry for them.

Re: Weekly Standard afraid of the Communist Party

David Sugar — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 00:04:28 -0000

There are times that to me he does seem like a kind of "Manchurian candidate" of the wealthy (yes, a rather amusing choice of words; that is "brainwashed" to do capitalists bidding ;). And I happen to agree even his most ambitious proposals would have done far too little.

Re: Taxing the rich can pay for everything

David Sugar — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 17:11:30 -0000

Some might argue the middle class, the "petite bourgeoisie", is often used in modern times as a kind of firewall against the proletariat, rather than the other way around ;).

But one thing is very clear, and that is modern taxation has at many levels (and income tax is only one part of the puzzle) become rather very regressive, that is with a disproportionate burden on the working class, while many in the capital class by comparison contribute little or in some cases nothing at all.

Re: Storm Troop Tactics Used by Enemies of Health Care Legislation by Norman Markowitz

David Sugar — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 14:54:06 -0000

I agree what we are seeing is a very crucial tipping point happening, in the open and very direct funding and organizing of the street thugs by the wealthy elites. This is so often where fascism goes from theory to the nightmare of practice, and where everything from death squads to dictators are born and made from.

Re: Top Five Health Care Reform Lies—and How to Fight Back

David Sugar — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 14:43:22 -0000

In respect to #1:

Private insurance can be a death penalty. Private insurers will choose and have demonstratively chosen to cancel policies and otherwise deny treatment for a terminal conditions knowing the patient will likely die before they can be forced to do so, thereby protecting profits over people's lives.

In respect to #2:

This is the very problem with this limited reform, IMHO, Obama's plan does nothing to remove the existing parasites from the system. Mandatory universal coverage may well reward them for the pain and misery of others if they are further able to disable or otherwise sink what is already a far too limited and inadequate public option.

With respect to #3:

Rationing is a result of the sociopathic system we have today, between HMO's and insurers profiting on the pain and misery of millions, and choosing who should live and who should die entirely for private profit. It is inhumane. What this limited plan of Obama's can truely do is at least add some equity back into the equation, even if failing to address other core issues.

In respect to #4 and 5:

One way to reduce cost would be to separate the way catastrophic healthcare and routine healthcare are covered and paid for. These are very different, and applying the heavily interventionist insurance process we have to routine care drives those costs to ridiculous levels. This is especially true when one has to consider several hours or more of administrative costs, different paperwork for each insurer, the possibility there will be no payment/collection costs, etc, for each and every one of those routine $5-$10 copay visits. Changing how those are covered and handled and reducing catatrophic health insurance to something closer to life insurance, perhaps through direct government management, would do much to provide rational care at much lower costs rather than rationed care. The real cure, especially for costs, can only come through the complete elimination of private insurers and HMO's that get between patients and doctors for the sole purpose of extracting profits.

Re: Recovery for whom?

David Sugar — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 15:57:07 -0000

First a few definitions may help. It is I think called a "recession" when only the working class suffers. It is called a "depression" only when it also effects the wealthy. For them there clearly was a recovery, from several trillion dollars that were extracted from present and future public funds through the federal reserve.

Incidentally, we also now "count" unemployment in a rather different way today then we did in the 1930's. If we applied the same methodologies in use then to the present, we would find statistics that are not very far from the peak unemployment back then.

Re: News of the Day

David Sugar — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 15:47:12 -0000

First and foremost, yes, fascism is not about goose stepping louts in black leather. I have heard one definition offered that fascism is when "the efficiency of the state (and police) is more important than the rights of citizens". Certainly that one is applicable in some respects to this specific situation.

I actually have a slightly more complex definition, based in part on the need to translate an enemy of the wealthy into the enemy of the state. This has a certain historical relevance to the rise of fascism in Europe in response to the formation of the Soviet Union, as well as in respect to landless peasants in Latin America seeking social justice. It is also a separate question to consider whether the formation of the modern American "security" state is fascism in practice and I happen to believe it is.

Of course none of these touch upon the root issues or facts of this particular dispute. The questions drawn by the response of the press, though, is worthwhile to consider in this larger context for what it says about America. Clearly, in America today, we can hold these truths as being so very self evident, that some people are created far more equal than others, that some are enabled with privileges by wealth and divided by race and gender while none are endowed with inalienable rights. We can choose to call this fascism, but we have to recognize the fundimental root causes are in capitalism.

Re: Orbitz.com's petition for free travel to Cuba

David Sugar — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 11:44:37 -0000

Especially since the U.S. government choose to close for part of last winter the only licensed hospital and medical clinic available to those on Pine Ridge reservation, there had been strong discussions on how to provide medical care to the reservation communities through a community supported medical center. Given both the very high cost and open discrimination many Lakota students do face in medical training in the United States and Canada, the best option was to send pre-med students to Cuba. This ridiculous embargo has made the process of arranging for that much more difficult than it needed to be.

Re: The End of a Course on the History of Socialism and Communism by Norman Markowitz

David Sugar — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 22:02:23 -0000

I think back when I was in University I would have really enjoyed a class like this...

Re: DREAMING UP AMERICA: BOOK REVIEW

David Sugar — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 21:12:04 -0000

As one might imagine, I have much to say on this particular topic. I will point out that rather than what Banks writes about, what really has made the United States unique among capitalist nations is what the Europeans learned from the indigenous people they encountered, lived with, and eventually came to dispose and exploit for their lands.

In addition to learning how to grow corn, these early colonists learned of the somewhat uniquely American Indian idea of individual freedom and self sovereignty. Unfortunately, the Europeans failed to learn one key lesson; where the American Indian, often living in a classless society, tied freedom directly to individual responsibility, the Euro-Americans combined freedom with greed and exploitation, and this is what created the mythic American dream (a nightmare really), rather than the feel good narrative that seems proposed by Banks.

To me, the United States is not about the sick and twisted "American Dream" of the world's slickest used car salesman, a man called Uncle Sam, that is of getting ahead at the expense of others by any means possible, the greed of the few trumping the real need of the many, but rather the America of Heymarket, the America of Hellen Keller, the America of the IWW, and yes, of course, the America of the CPUSA. The America of both individual and collective freedom, the America of human dignity, the America of all people matter, the America of scientific reason rather than fascist fantasies, the America of scientific economics, the America of equality and social justice.

Re: Huge Rally in Rome Launches Communist and Anti-Capitalist Campaign for European Parliament

David Sugar — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 17:23:41 -0000

European transnational governance is today perhaps the least democratic institution in all of Europe, and these anti-democratic elements of EU council government were to be further codified in a European constitution.

The problem is that essentially that unlike any functional democratic Parliamentary system, the European Parliament has very limited legislative powers. The European council, an unelected (appointed) body, has entirely separate powers to both create and implement legislation (legislative and executive powers). At most the European Parliament has the power to veto EC decisions and laws, and only through a large super-majority. Nor is even such a veto final.

The goal of political power through the European parliament must include establishing a legitimate democratic European Parliament in control of the legislative process, and hence democratic transnational institutions in Europe. Otherwise it matters not what the actual people of Europe want and express through elections in the European Parliament.

Re: http://paeditorsblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/some-thoughts-on-geithners-latest-bank.html

David Sugar — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 19:22:47 -0000

In one sense it is a "socialist" moment; in that of effectively socializing risk for wealthy investors. To me it seems like we have just created the world's largest hedge fund through public debt, and much like Iceland, I do not think it will end pretty.

I guess in a nation with an already marginal and further declining manufacturing base, and with few other economic opportunities that have not already been effectively destroyed by past and present policies, but rather than correct these problems, many of which would require diverting public funds from the wealthy to workers and public institutions, inflating and maintaining financial bubbles has been the strategy of failed empires since at least the time of Rome.

Re: A Right Turn For the Obama Administration in a Fast Moving Crisis by Norman Markowitz

David Sugar — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 19:08:26 -0000

Finally, a voice of sanity!

I was deeply shocked by this latest venture, essentially converting the United States into the world's largest hedge fund by explicitly socializing the risk of wealthy investors. It seems like we learned the wrong lessons from Iceland and have concluded doing something similar, but on a larger scale, would be a good idea!

Besides being an attempt to re-inflate the bubble through public funds, there is a key behavioral consequence. While banks until recently have been somewhat reluctant to foreclose, and hence write down further losses at a time they already had potentially insolvent balance sheets (and thereby triggering federal takeovers), this gives them a significant new incentive to force those stalled foreclosures through quickly, so they can collect what will be in the short term an inflated market in these securities while long term further destroying the real economy and base of people that can or will be able to mortgage in the future as a whole in the process. This is I think what we can call a kind of classic contradiction in capitalism as well.

Re: Science, Condoms and the Pope: The Long and Short of It

David Sugar — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 08:39:55 -0000

It is not simply a question of superstition, as the position held by the Pope on this topic is demonstratively internally inconsistent as well. That makes it not only unscientific, but also entirely irrational, unless one considers there to exist alternative motivations for it.

Re: Bonuses and Cutbacks by Norman Markowitz

David Sugar — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:58:18 -0000

I believe we can go straight to Marx for understanding not just the present crisis, but the past decade of American economics. Starting with "jobless recoveries", a slow but ever growing pool of permanently unemployed, and ever diminishing family incomes, all of which preceded the present crisis, I believe we are seeing the result of a classic contradiction between that of increasing productivity (and automation) making it possible to reduce the size of the labor pool, which at the same time diminishes the purchasing power, reduces demand for these very same products that capitalists can now produce ever more efficiently. Obama's economic policies, of partially re-flating the financial bubble, and creation of temporary infrastructure jobs, at most simply will forestall the inevitable results of this contradiction a little longer; it will neither structurally resolve or in any way ultimately prevent it.

Re: The Partisan in Philosophy: Lenin

David Sugar — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 11:19:11 -0000

That "relative freedom" is in fact a social illusion in a capitalist society. I do not accept the idea that the working class is ignorant or somehow "incapable" of understanding their potential or perceiving their open exploitation, but rather are simply, systematically, and deliberately incorrectly educated in those very same so called "democratic" societies you speak of.

My belief is that open fascist dictatorships occur when the elites are concerned enough about some threat that they need to turn it into the enemy of the state, whether landless peasants seeking social justice, or other threats to wealth and privilege. If the threat is small enough, then liberal democracy is "tolerated". But never mistake that limited toleration for either real democracy or true freedom.

Rather broadly I also do happen to agree with the idea of building socialism and social structures from the bottom up where possible for I think they would then become more enduring than simply creating them from the top down.

In respect to Allende, something like Allende's vision I think we see to some extent in Venezuela today, and some of the same tensions exist there as well. Rather than worker councils, we see a mixed "co-management" model in PDVSA, for one example. PSUV to me seems like a kind of "united front" approach. There is also a potential to build a society in Venezuela from the cordones. Imperfect as it may be to some, though, I think Venezuela is today far better off than what existed prior to Chavez.