This is disturbing and rather Orwellian.

I simply refuted Landsberg's contention (and the contention of several other noted pundits) that saris and skin colour was a major reason for people vehemently rejecting Sunera Thobani's ideas, as promulgated in her recent speech.

If everyone must conform to a certain type of "LeftThink" (TM), then rabble has a dim future indeed. (Sort of an electronic Council of Canadians).

I'm not into Sea-Turtle costumes, Radical Cheerleaders, or Giant Protest Puppets. I happen to think that the ACTUAL WORDS of Thobani's speech were read, and rejected, my the vast majority of Canadians.

And speaking of lines not to cross -- I notice somebody's thread (Wingnut's) describes Mike Harris as a "prick". Whatever your feelings about the man, I think this is childish. What is I were to call Thobani a "twat" (remember, that would be the exact counterpart, genitally speaking). Not very nice, is it. But with a man, it's fair game.

[ October 15, 2001: Message edited by: Lalance ]

Let's see. Your topic heading was Leftists' fetish for appearances. Clearly a heading intended to engender thoughtful discussion as opposed to, say, I don't know, silly bullshit.

And I do think the Left has this "thing" for appearances. Sea turtle costumes. Giant puppets. Radical cheerleaders. Black bandanas. Street Theatre = a preoccupation with appearance, n'est-ce pas?

In fact, I did, recently, opened a thread with the title "JCL is an idiot." It was wrong. I admit that. I shouldn't have done it. But interestingly, the responses came in favour of JCL and generally chastised me for the thread. More interesting, all the responses as described came from people on this board who lean to the left.

There is a great tolerance here for a variety of opinion. There is far less tolerance for what I did re: JCL and for what you are doing re: Landsberg and with the title of this thread.

And there is always plenty of tolerance for a song.

quote:

---

And I do think the Left has this "thing" for appearances. Sea turtle costumes. Giant puppets. Radical cheerleaders. Black bandanas. Street Theatre = a preoccupation with appearance, n'est-ce pas?

---

They took the whole feminist nation
Locked them up, taught them masturbation.
Thobani's critics were concerned
Hedy said the crosses burned.

Feminist Nation Feminist Tribe
Wisdom to Give ... Courage to cry...

Re. Thobani's previous immigrant status: isn't it great that an immigrant can become the head of a national Feminist organization so soon after becoming a citizen. Shows how little prejudice there is in Canada.

quote:

---

I'd stand up while in the can
Maybe wear loose pants and a tie
(Maybe wear loose pants and a tie)

---

With the way my son splatters the seat that would be a necessity - but can`t now because of that damn left lower stomache - that damned left lower stomache is really pissing me off.

Audra is not that bad. You got to understand that sometimes this place turns into a meeting ground for our former teacher`s worst nightmares. She has to go through all these posts, whether she is interested in the topic or not, and make quick decisions. Sometimes we agree with those decisions sometimes we don`t. Some times we listen, sometimes we don`t.

Deap down she is a good person. She has to be and you know why? Since she is left-handed and almost has my name and writes stories she can`t be all bad.

quote:

---

The World Bank's former Chief Economist's accusations are
eye-popping - including how the IMF and US Treasury fixed the
Russian elections

by Greg Palast
The Observer, London
October 10, 2001

"It has condemned people to death," the former apparatchik told
me. This was like a scene out of Le Carre. The brilliant old
agent comes in from the cold, crosses to our side, and in hours
of debriefing, empties his memory of horrors committed in the
name of a political ideology he now realizes has gone rotten.

And here before me was a far bigger catch than some used Cold War
spy. Joseph Stiglitz was Chief Economist of the World Bank. To a
great extent, the new world economic order was his theory come to
life.

I "debriefed" Stigltiz over several days, at Cambridge
University, in a London hotel and finally in Washington in April
2001 during the big confab of the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund. But instead of chairing the meetings
of ministers and central bankers, Stiglitz was kept exiled safely
behind the blue police cordons, the same as the nuns carrying a
large wooden cross, the Bolivian union leaders, the parents of
AIDS victims and the other 'anti-globalization' protesters. The
ultimate insider was now on the outside.

In 1999 the World Bank fired Stiglitz. He was not allowed quiet
retirement; US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, I'm told,
demanded a public excommunication for Stiglitz' having expressed
his first mild dissent from globalization World Bank style.

Here in Washington we completed the last of several hours of
exclusive interviews for The Observer and BBC TV's Newsnight
about the real, often hidden, workings of the IMF, World Bank,
and the bank's 51% owner, the US Treasury.

And here, from sources unnamable (not Stiglitz), we obtained a
cache of documents marked, "confidential," "restricted," and "not
otherwise (to be) disclosed without World Bank authorization."

Stiglitz helped translate one from bureaucratise, a "Country
Assistance Strategy." There's an Assistance Strategy for every
poorer nation, designed, says the World Bank, after careful
in-country investigation. But according to insider Stiglitz, the
Bank's staff 'investigation' consists of close inspection of a
nation's 5-star hotels. It concludes with the Bank staff meeting
some begging, busted finance minister who is handed a
'restructuring agreement' pre-drafted for his 'voluntary'
signature (I have a selection of these).

Each nation's economy is individually analyzed, then, says
Stiglitz, the Bank hands every minister the same exact four-step
program.

Step One is Privatization - which Stiglitz said could more
accurately be called, 'Briberization.' Rather than object to the
sell-offs of state industries, he said national leaders - using
the World Bank's demands to silence local critics - happily
flogged their electricity and water companies. "You could see
their eyes widen" at the prospect of 10% commissions paid to
Swiss bank accounts for simply shaving a few billion off the sale
price of national assets.

And the US government knew it, charges Stiglitz, at least in the
case of the biggest 'briberization' of all, the 1995 Russian
sell-off. "The US Treasury view was this was great as we wanted
Yeltsin re-elected. We don't care if it's a corrupt election. We
want the money to go to Yeltzin" via kick-backs for his campaign.

Stiglitz is no conspiracy nutter ranting about Black Helicopters.
The man was inside the game, a member of Bill Clinton's cabinet
as Chairman of the President's council of economic advisors.

Most ill-making for Stiglitz is that the US-backed oligarchs
stripped Russia's industrial assets, with the effect that the
corruption scheme cut national output nearly in half causing
depression and starvation.

After briberization, Step Two of the IMF/World Bank
one-size-fits-all rescue-your-economy plan is 'Capital Market
Liberalization.' In theory, capital market deregulation allows
investment capital to flow in and out. Unfortunately, as in
Indonesia and Brazil, the money simply flowed out and out.
Stiglitz calls this the "Hot Money" cycle. Cash comes in for
speculation in real estate and currency, then flees at the first
whiff of trouble. A nation's reserves can drain in days, hours.
And when that happens, to seduce speculators into returning a
nation's own capital funds, the IMF demands these nations raise
interest rates to 30%, 50% and 80%.

"The result was predictable," said Stiglitz of the Hot Money
tidal waves in Asia and Latin America. Higher interest rates
demolished property values, savaged industrial production and
drained national treasuries.

At this point, the IMF drags the gasping nation to Step Three:
Market-Based Pricing, a fancy term for raising prices on food,
water and cooking gas. This leads, predictably, to
Step-Three-and-a-Half: what Stiglitz calls, 'The IMF riot.'

The IMF riot is painfully predictable. When a nation is, "down
and out, [the IMF] takes advantage and squeezes the last pound of
blood out of them. They turn up the heat until, finally, the
whole cauldron blows up," as when the IMF eliminated food and
fuel subsidies for the poor in Indonesia in 1998. Indonesia
exploded into riots, but there are other examples - the Bolivian
riots over water prices last year and this February, the riots in
Ecuador over the rise in cooking gas prices imposed by the World
Bank. You' d almost get the impression that the riot is written
into the plan.

And it is. What Stiglitz did not know is that, while in the
States, BBC and The Observer obtained several documents from
inside the World Bank, stamped over with those pesky warnings,
"confidential," "restricted," "not to be disclosed." Let's get
back to one: the "Interim Country Assistance Strategy" for
Ecuador, in it the Bank several times states - with cold accuracy
- that they expected their plans to spark, "social unrest," to
use their bureaucratic term for a nation in flames.

That's not surprising. The secret report notes that the plan to
make the US dollar Ecuador's currency has pushed 51% of the
population below the poverty line. The World Bank "Assistance"
plan simply calls for facing down civil strife and suffering
with, "political resolve" - and still higher prices.

The IMF riots (and by riots I mean peaceful demonstrations
dispersed by bullets, tanks and teargas) cause new panicked
flights of capital and government bankruptcies. This economic
arson has it's bright side - for foreign corporations, who can
then pick off remaining assets, such as the odd mining concession
or port, at fire sale prices.

Stiglitz notes that the IMF and World Bank are not heartless
adherents to market economics. At the same time the IMF stopped
Indonesia 'subsidizing' food purchases, "when the banks need a
bail-out, intervention (in the market) is welcome." The IMF
scrounged up tens of billions of dollars to save Indonesia's
financiers and, by extension, the US and European banks from
which they had borrowed.

A pattern emerges. There are lots of losers in this system but
one clear winner: the Western banks and US Treasury, making the
big bucks off this crazy new international capital churn.
Stiglitz told me about his unhappy meeting, early in his World
Bank tenure, with Ethopia's new president in the nation's first
democratic election. The World Bank and IMF had ordered Ethiopia
to divert aid money to its reserve account at the US Treasury,
which pays a pitiful 4% return, while the nation borrowed US
dollars at 12% to feed its population. The new president begged
Stiglitz to let him use the aid money to rebuild the nation. But
no, the loot went straight off to the US Treasury's vault in
Washington.

Now we arrive at Step Four of what the IMF and World Bank call
their "poverty reduction strategy": Free Trade. This is free
trade by the rules of the World Trade Organization and World
Bank, Stiglitz the insider likens free trade WTO-style to the
Opium Wars. "That too was about opening markets," he said. As in
the 19th century, Europeans and Americans today are kicking down
the barriers to sales in Asia, Latin American and Africa, while
barricading our own markets against Third World agriculture.

In the Opium Wars, the West used military blockades to force open
markets for their unbalanced trade. Today, the World Bank can
order a financial blockade just as effective - and sometimes just
as deadly.

Stiglitz is particularly emotional over the WTO's intellectual
property rights treaty (it goes by the acronym TRIPS, more on
that in the next chapters). It is here, says the economist, that
the new global order has "condemned people to death" by imposing
impossible tariffs and tributes to pay to pharmaceutical
companies for branded medicines. "They don't care," said the
professor of the corporations and bank loans he worked with, "if
people live or die."

By the way, don't be confused by the mix in this discussion of
the IMF, World Bank and WTO. They are interchangeable masks of a
single governance system. They have locked themselves together by
what are unpleasantly called, "triggers." Taking a World Bank
loan for a school 'triggers' a requirement to accept every
'conditionality' - they average 111 per nation - laid down by
both the World Bank and IMF. In fact, said Stiglitz the IMF
requires nations to accept trade policies more punitive than the
official WTO rules.

Stiglitz greatest concern is that World Bank plans, devised in
secrecy and driven by an absolutist ideology, are never open for
discourse or dissent. Despite the West's push for elections
throughout the developing world, the so-called Poverty Reduction
Programs "undermine democracy."

And they don't work. Black Africa's productivity under the
guiding hand of IMF structural "assistance" has gone to hell in
a handbag. Did any nation avoid this fate? Yes, said Stiglitz,
identifying Botswana. Their trick? "They told the IMF to go
packing."

So then I turned on Stiglitz. OK, Mr Smart-Guy Professor, how
would you help developing nations? Stiglitz proposed radical land
reform, an attack at the heart of "landlordism," on the usurious
rents charged by the propertied oligarchies worldwide, typically
50% of a tenant's crops. So I had to ask the professor: as you
were top economist at the World Bank, why didn't the Bank follow
your advice?

"If you challenge [land ownership], that would be a change in the
power of the elites. That's not high on their agenda." Apparently
not.

Ultimately, what drove him to put his job on the line was the
failure of the banks and US Treasury to change course when
confronted with the crises - failures and suffering perpetrated
by their four-step monetarist mambo. Every time their free market
solutions failed, the IMF simply demanded more free market
policies.

"It's a little like the Middle Ages," the insider told me,
"When the patient died they would say, 'well, he stopped the
bloodletting too soon, he still had a little blood in him.'"

I took away from my talks with the professor that the solution
to world poverty and crisis is simple: remove the bloodsuckers.

*

A version of this was first published as "The IMF's Four Steps to
Damnation" in The Observer (London) in April and another version
in The Big Issue - that's the magazine that the homeless flog on
platforms in the London Underground. Big Issue offered equal
space to the IMF, whose "deputy chief media officer" wrote:

"... I find it impossible to respond given the depth and breadth
of hearsay and misinformation in [Palast's] report."

Of course it was difficult for the Deputy Chief to respond. The
information (and documents) came from the unhappy lot inside his
agency and the World Bank.

At http://www.GregPalast.com you can read more about
globalization - and view Palast's reports for BBC Television's
Newsnight, including his broadcast interview with Joe Stiglitz
(Meirion Jones, Producer). We will soon post a complete
transcript of the 90-minute interview.

============================================

To subscribe to Greg Palast's e-mail list, go to
www.gregpalast.com

---

Taliban ...........

Latest news reports advise that a cell of 4 terrorists has been operating in Newfoundland (or insert your favorite province here), Canada.

Police advised earlier today that 3 of the 4 have been detained.

The Newfoundland and Provinical Police Commissioner stated that the terrorists Bin Sleepin, Bin Drinkin, Bin Fightin have been arrested on immigration issues.

quote:

---

a mind is a terrible thing to waste.

---

quote:

---

a mind is a terrible thing to taste

---

quote:

---

Question: is rabble a venue primarily for the airing of left-wing views? Or is it a place where all reasonable people can debate. If it is only the former, you're gonna go broke in a hurry.

---

Guess we'll find out sooner or later.

quote:

---

Hmmm -- a UBC academic campaigns for the curtailment of free expression on campus. Noteworthy? Nahhh.

---

The like minded people believes that no one dares challenge their views as if it's a sacred religion.

quote:

---

And speaking of lines not to cross -- I notice somebody's thread (Wingnut's) describes Mike Harris as a "prick". Whatever your feelings about the man, I think this is childish. What is I were to call Thobani a "twat" (remember, that would be the exact counterpart, genitally speaking). Not very nice, is it. But with a man, it's fair game.

---

Hey, WingNut went on a bender about what I said about Thobani. He makes his statement about Harris yet I didn't go on a bender about it.

quote:

---

I hope she doesn't shut down this thread. People need to see what the rabid right is really all about: attacking people not arguments.

---

quote:

---

So - the right has this thing for suits and (so it seems) wet-suits. What of it?

---

quote:

---

There is a great tolerance here for a variety of opinion. There is far less tolerance for what I did re: JCL and for what you are doing re: Landsberg and with the title of this thread.

---

Geez, if I had made a thread with the above mentioned topic, I'd have used more diplomatic words. But that's just me. I attack issues. Not people, WingNut. And that's why I don't take things, even if it vehemently opposes my view, on a personal level. I can get along with people all across the political spectrum. Know why? Because, as I said, I attack the issues, not the individuals. Let's say for example, Michelle says something I don't agree with. I'll say something about the issue but never on her personally. If it was personal, I wouldn't be joking around with some people.

Nice songs WingNut. Just goes to prove you attack the individual, and not the issue. Idiot.

Why do birds suddenly appear,
Every time your words are near?
Just like me,
They long to read
Posts by you.

But seriously, I am glad that some of the stuff posted on this board is culled. Hard enough to peruse what isn't.

Guess something that maybe shouldn't have been removed, was. But it appears that the response has been to let this thread remain in it's culled compadre's memory.

That seems rather judicious and fair.

(Stearns, Carroll and Clark, Geological Evolution of North America, Third Edition, 1979).

Am I right wingnut? If you digress please reread you thoughts on religion.

quote:

---

JCL, I thought you weren't talking to me. I was quite enjoying it. Now I know you are not only an idiot and hypocrite, but a liar too. Oh, wait, that is attacking the person, isn't it? Unlike you who only attacks the argument. You could try not displaying your hypocrisy and bullshit in the same post.

---

Well, if you were enjoying the fact I didn't say anything to you, why did you mention my name again? Trolling? You know, I would possibly consider donating some money to this site. But the facts show in other threads that when you respond to your like minded lefties, you answer their arguments or comments to support or add to it. When someone posts and is right wing, you attack them personally. And if they come up with a good point to counter yours, you call them an idiot or deride them. As I learned in my critical thinking classes in high school, the second one says to the other he is an idiot or doesn't know what he/she is talking about, they really don't know what they're really talking about nor can they defend their argument and/or then they resort to name calling. And I only post in threads in things I'm aware or know of. I don't post in some threads because I have no knowledge on the thread topic.

I may not agree what others say but I won't deride them for what they believe is right. Call me a hypocrite all you want. Call me a liar all you want. Call me a bullshitter all you want or even a liar. Doesn't bother me one bit. As I've observed, the ones who do the most name calling are in fact reflects their emotional maturity and stability.

quote:

---

Well, that whole thing, from the title on, was in poor taste, wasn't it?

---

Also: this thread is not "news" so I'm moving it -- not closing it -- to "rabble reactions."

(Thanks to people who get my back, but if you get my back by being just as bratty as the trolls, then I have to warn all of you.)

The tendentious title of the new Thobani thread caught my eye just as I was closing down last evening, and my first thought was Good night, how many of those are there, and I'm sure they're not all full ...

You are quite wrong. I respond to those on the right in much the same way as I respond to those on the left. I do at times take an exception. Exceptions include posts that attack the left as a whole as though we are all one. I noticed you don't like being lumped in with violent anti-abortionists. It works both ways. I take extreme exception to the likes of Chaos-Theory who salivates over what he calls "the great die-off." I actually asked you onec if you agreed with his views. A simple question. And contrary to what you say now, your response was not one of emotional maturity and stability.
Lastly, I take exception to wilfull ignorance. This is different than simple ignorance. It is not knowing, not caring to know and embracing not knowing. But feeling compelled to express a derisive opinion anyway.

And you are not being entirely correct. Some of your posts have been entirely insulting. Some of your posts have been on topics upon which you have no knowledge whatsoever.

I will give you an example. You asked why I used your name again in my post to Lalance. I believe you never actually read my post. You saw my name and yours and that was enough. Because if you read what I had to say, you would have read the following:
"I ... opened a thread with the title "JCL is an idiot." It was wrong. I admit that. I shouldn't have done it."

quote:

---

wingnuts thought process goes like this....
if it doesn't exist it cant be proven to not exist so hence it must exist because lack of proof is proof
Am I right wingnut? If you digress please reread you thoughts on religion.
If it doesn't exist it must exist including logic in the left wing.

---

We were talking about God. You know, the big guy in the sky.
Further, not being able to prove God doesn't exist is not proof God does exist. So, yes, you are wrong.

Shouldn't you be planning for the big die off? Is your survivalist camp ready yet?

quote:

---

I don't get you righties. You come on an obviously left leaning board and then get your knickers in a twist when people don't see things your way.Psssst there are right leaning boards.Try it you might like it. But don't expect to come here like some charged up super saviour and expect that one brilliant ( which I've yet to see ) post by you is going to set the rest of us 'back on the right path'

---

First of all, how could it be fun to post in a message board where everyone agrees with one another? I find it soooo intellectually boring. Where is the intellectual stimulation? I used to exclusively hang around with people who thought like me. But after awhile, they really bored me. There was no real intellectual stimulation. Or perhaps there is something we didn't see or consider. So I started making acquaintances and friends with people from all different political views. And that is a good thing. Some of my right leaning views have soften to either center or a tad left leaning. But if some of my views don't change, at least I understand what and why they protest it or are against.

NOTE: That smiley should signify drooling, not embarassment.

Lalance, good ridance to bad trash!

Finally, babble may move on with INTELLIGENT discussion, from many perspectives.

JCL, Markbo, and a big chunk of others, thank you all for being, more often than not, civil and working for productive discussion. You're gems in the right-of-centre crown

In other words, thanks for not being like Lalance!

And thanks of course to the civil lefties I'll join you in a minute, I just have to say a few things first.

As for Lalance:

M'gilgl zol er vern in a henglaykhter. Bay tog zol er hengen, bay nakht zol er brenen!

Okay, that was too mean. I take it back, and I apologize from the bottom of my heart. Instead, Ayngezunken zol er vern, Got in Himl!

That's for being such a zhlob Genug iz genug.

Audra, as always, you've got my full support, you're the best babble balebos there ever could be

Meades - Thank you for the compliment about me being more civil. You aren't a Loony Lefty. And I'm not a Rabid Righty. I already got my rabies shot. Well, each side has people that go too far. I say my politicis are center to right of center.

And for the record, no one should close this thread. The title is a perfect evocation of the real Audra - intimidating, menacing, bristling with (metaphorical, I grant) 6-inch fangs, a dark gleam of blood-hunger in her cold and unfeeling stare.

Oh sure, she seems all cute and innocent-like, some of you are no doubt saying, but you've probably never met her. She's terrifying, people. I'm serious! (shudders...)

quote:

---

skdadl, are *you* the only one who got it? There was a lot of punning packed into that short little post!

---

Howsomever, best I can tell: The literal translation of that aria is Woman is fickle. I thought we could give rasmus a tease over that. (rasmus has been building up to something, given how long he's been AWOL, no?)

So, like, now he tells me it's a pun. But no, not just a pun -- a bunch of puns. Puns. Hmmmn. There's "donna" -- that work for you? "mobile" -- Lalance certainly was that ... There're a bunch of "la"s in there -- variants on "la" have, it's true, played a major role in these threads. And then in the editorial note, "too many" again might refer back to the instigator of this thread, among a host of others ...

quote:

---

My Italian is pretty much non-existant

---

This reminds me of a line from Top Secret.

Also, the more I stare at it, the more I see
INNUMERABLE brilliant illusions. "la" = clearly a reference to Los Angeles (on one level); "donna" : here, he cleverly misquotes the song, as the word there is "donn' " with the "a" missing, or elided, or something. So, the reference is clearly to a mafia "don". From L.A.

Also, note: "la"lance, and also la"la"nce.
Also, note: Lalaland= West Coast, equals California, equals B.C.

Funny, but my memory of us-all in October 2001 has been that we were all very depressed. Memory: the tricks it plays.