Assange seeks asylum in Ecuador

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moderate heroism (translated: vapid liberal moralism) takes the thread

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it's great to see that for the first time since the fall of the USSR we have a functioning counter-power bloc in world geopolitics, no matter how weak or flimsy it may be.  viva Castro, viva Chavez, viva Correa, viva Morales.

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You really are a bunch of disgusting people. 

Moderators are allowed to say such things?

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You really are a bunch of disgusting people.  

Moderators are allowed to say such things?

It's a moral imperative to speak out against certain things even if there is a punishment connected to it. Like, I'm fighting the system, dude. Totally.

Report it if you want.

and I have a similar moral imperative not to report posts, as to limit the power held by people like you -- unless for theatre or jest.

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also the Swedish prosecutor has refused to interview him in the UK or in the Ecuadorian embassy despite having done so in previous cases.

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I was making a general comment and don't care that much about Lief and Tweed's nasty little hypocrisy.

I am the most morally consistent poster on this forum.

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I was making a general comment and don't care that much about Lief and Tweed's nasty little hypocrisy.

I am the most morally consistent poster on this forum.

You want to enjoy Western freedoms while other people suffer for the sake of "political balance". It's one of the most disgusting notions out there.

I enjoy Western privilege because I was born white and into relatively significant wealth (thanks to the unionization drives of the 20th Century, fought tooth and nail by the ruling class that you'd have supported and are not part of the official Western Freedoms narrative that you're spewing - my grandfather a railroad worker, both parents schoolteachers/employees).  such privilieges simply do not exist for a majority of the population here -- consider, the median black household net worth is $2200!  and 1/5 of all US households have zero or negative net worth.

I don't support balance for its own sake in some neo-realist sense, but because I prefer the other side of the coin.

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Naomi Wolf has been very much an FF on this issue.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/11/17/naomi-wolf-slams-feminists-reponse-to-the-assange-rape-prosecution/

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I understand you were born the way you are. But what prevents you from moving to one of the socialist paradises on Earth? I'm sure they'd be delighted to have you and I'm sure you would have no problem being a lackey to a proper dictator.

It'd also help your rebellious message, since most of their people want to move here. It'd be very alternative to not just support oppression and misery in theory (for other people) but actually for yourself. 

this inane point has been brought up multiple times, so I'll address it -- the fact as I see it is I am more able to change the course (or destroy the breadth) of US power from within than I would be from without.  this is my motivation and I seek broadly to make my living out of doing so -- in the tradition of Kunstler, Ramsay Clark, etc.

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nor do I generally support the ruling classes.

...and this here is the goof of all time.

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Please lock this thread.

not at all -- the passions arising in this thread are due to how this case is such a strong articulation of the gulf between the 'respectable' center-left and the actual left.

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I understand you were born the way you are. But what prevents you from moving to one of the socialist paradises on Earth? I'm sure they'd be delighted to have you and I'm sure you would have no problem being a lackey to a proper dictator.

It'd also help your rebellious message, since most of their people want to move here. It'd be very alternative to not just support oppression and misery in theory (for other people) but actually for yourself. 

this inane point has been brought up multiple times, so I'll address it -- the fact as I see it is I am more able to change the course (or destroy the breadth) of US power from within than I would be from without.  this is my motivation and I seek broadly to make my living out of doing so -- in the tradition of Kunstler, Ramsay Clark, etc.

Lol. How convenient for you. I'll extend you the same respect that I expect you extend to really rich people who support low taxes, not because they benefit from it, but because it is best for society.

Now, the society I support has led to the best standard of living ever seen in human history for poor people. Your preferred society (the USSR) was one of mass starvation and genocide. But all your beloved countries (Belarus, Venezuela, North Korea and so on) have ruling classes that live in splendour.

So, please, prove your point. If you can.

I'm not sure what point I'm supposed to prove -- your interjection here didn't have anything to do with what you've quoted, and I'm not about to start repeatedly playing on your home turf.

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a few general points.


-there are plenty of places under still US dominion that have similar or worse living standards than the countries we've been talking about.  and the move away from a US-dominated Latin America has been accompanied by an increase in living standards for the majority of the population.  the typical model has been a Europeanized elite ruling over a morass of the destitute and indigenous.  the reason that Chavez and Castro* and the rest are so hated by the Western media is because they actually invest in and rely on their own populations for support instead of taking US dollars to fund a military dictatorship, allow for foreign capital "investment" to exploit cheap labor and natural resources and then expatriate the profits, etc.  the people who pay for mass media (and run economics schools) hate this sh**t and back coups whenever they can in the name of stability (Chile, Honduras, Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti have all been subjected to at least one US-backed coup attempt in the past fifty years, three of them in the last ten years).


-even assuming that Gustaf's statement is true, "I support an order that has led to the best standard of living the poor have ever seen", what does it prove?  it does not prove that this order should persist.  surely he is aware of the most elemental Marxist-Leninist doctrine, that of "stages of history", when the agrarian pre-capitalist gives way to the capitalist which gives way to the socialist.

two sub-points are instructive here.  a) the evidence is that the time for this transition is beyond ripe.  in the US the wage rate per unit of productivity has hit the absolute toilet since the 1970s, meaning the charms of growth have ceased to be dispersed around the society at all -- now this phenomenon is expanding beyond the underclass and through the middle class, as even the top 20% 'political class' has been smashed here in the late neoliberal era.  Gustaf will retort that, even as wages and wealth are falling, quality-of-life is increasing... I don't see how this is true?  sure the underclass can now dilly time away on their iPhone that they bought on a credit card at 30% APY, but they're also working 80 hours per week and can't afford to take advantage of that beautiful new medical technology... where's the quality of life if there's no time?  this phenomenon has hit the middle classes as well... I could go on forever, but one more thing.  6-year-olds now have 50% less lingustic capacity than 6-year-olds did in the 1950s.  why?  people their parents are always working and there are 34 kids for one teacher in their first grade class, so they never interact with adults, only with each other, and development is stunted.

the second sub-point is an old point, that all of the economics models in your textbooks treat natural resources as infinite, the "dirty secret" (Wallerstein) that is externalization of costs... yes, in the perfect fictional world the government then legislates to take care of the externalization, but in the real world economic power is political power, capital captures the democratic process with ease, leading to a vicious cycle (in the midst of an environmental crisis the US is not discussing new, tougher standards but instead wants to eliminate the EPA).


*using Castro mostly in past tense here.  the old Castro that had the USSR to rely on.

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"People should live in the best places on Earth, like Belarus - except for me, I'll endure the hardships of the US"

this is the total straw man that opebo was speaking of a few days ago.

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back on the original topic, Chomsky weighs in.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/interviews/Noam-Chomsky-Julian-Assange-deserves-applause/articleshow/15621507.cms

The accusations should be taken quite seriously, just as all such accusations should. Independent of that, no decent country would permit a person to be sent to a country where the chances of his receiving a fair trial are very limited. The apparent conflict can be easily resolved. Sweden claims only that they want to interrogate Assange. They have been invited to do that in England, or in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London. They refuse. They could also issue a statement that they will not extradite Assange to the United States. They refuse.

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Chomsky is flat-out wrong about the way the Swedish justice system works.

You're arguing the letter of the law, Nathan, which really has nothing to do with what everybody's talking about.

I'm trying (to no apparent avail because most people have already made up their minds on whether or not they want to spend their political energies fellating this tiresome person) to explain why the Swedish authorities could not, in fact, have done what people like Chomsky are arguing they ought to have done.

you either 'get it' or you don't, my buddy.  you're naive and idealistic and live largely inside your own head -- submission to anything but that which is imaginary eludes you.

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if I provoke, I hit a nerve -- I succeed.

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I attempt to address some of these issues here.  https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=158043.0

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as if I'm incapable of fallibility?  there's a double standard, I don't care to flesh it out here, but it's so easy for you, you Obama voters, and everyone else in between... there's such a sence of self-worship that comes with the flag!  and yet we on the real left, the left-of-liberal, express one opinion, say one silly thing, and what do you do?  no surprise, you take it as evidence of your own righteousness.  all I say is, how easy it is to convince yourself your righteousness when every media stream, every College Board, every 101 professor, every parent at a Memorial Day parade will assent, will commend you for your feigned courage.


there's a sad fact for you sad fckers.  there is another life!  and it's understood!  it's understood by men like William Kuntsler, Ramsay Clark, Aaron Burr if we go back far enough.  they understood the flip side of this fcking dumb ass coin that you worship.  oh man, you treat me like a joke, but there's a light here, brilliant people have seen it.  if you want to see that light, come to me, come to us!  and if you don't, don't!  don't convince yourselves of some superiority, all you'll be left with is a moment, at age 50, when you stare at the wall, thinking, well, what if the road had forked in Tweed's direction...?