Good Opinion Report

[Montgomery Burns]

I've already shown that is a lie.

Like hell you have.

But again, the facts aren't going to stop right-wing nuts like you and Peter Worthington from spewing your baseless drivel. I mean really: the Sun as a credible, unbiased source? Pathetic.

I'll take the Sun over indymedia, which is what you previously linked to. Of course, you indymidiots love your "alternative news" (read: BS news, certainly not facts).

Even your indymidiot link talks about Fox News Canada, not Fox News. Are CNN and CNBC required to have 35% Canadian content?

No.

[rightwinglogic]Well, it's easy for you given that right wingers love skull-fucking dead Arab babies and wants to put all brown non-Christian people into concentration camps.[/rightwinglogic]

Hmmm. Sounds like leftwing logic, except you want to exterminate whites and Christianity, not to mention your racist policies (affirmative action).

What party had the largest percentage of votes to end Jim Crow?

Republicans.

What party was the President when the North went to war against the South?

Abe Lincoln - a Republican.

What party has a former member of the KKK in the Senate?

The Democrats - Senator Byrd.

Back in May 2000, then Finance Minister Paul Martin attended a fundraising dinner sponsored by the Federation of Associations of Canadian Tamils (FACT). Martin attended the function with former cabinet minister Maria Minna even though he was warned by Canadian security agencies that FACT was a front for the Tamil Tigers, a terrorist group that has been waging civil war in Sri Lanka since 1983. The Tigers big claim to fame is that they were the first group to use suicide bombers as a weapon. Martin’s answer to those who criticized his attendance at the FACT dinner was to call his critics, racists.

Paul Martin also welcomed back the Khadrs--Canada’s first family of terrorism when Mommy Khadr brought little Abdul Karim back to the country that she despises for free medical treatment. Her little darling came out on the wrong end of a shootout with Pakistani forces last October.

You are a complete idiot if you think Hitler and Mussolini were socialists.

On the contrary, it is you who is the complete idiot for denying that they were socialists.

He championed the rights of workers, regarded capitalist society as brutal and unjust, and sought a third way between communism and the free market. In this regard, he and his associates greatly admired the strong steps taken by President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal to take large-scale economic decision-making out of private hands and put it into those of government planning agencies. His aim was to institute a brand of socialism that avoided the inefficiencies that plagued the Soviet variety, and many former communists found his program highly congenial. He deplored the selfish individualism he took to be endemic to modern Western society, and wanted to replace it with an ethic of self-sacrifice: "As Christ proclaimed 'love one another'," he said, "so our call -- 'people's community,' 'public need before private greed,' 'communally-minded social consciousness' -- rings out.! This call will echo throughout the world!"

The reference to Christ notwithstanding, he was not personally a Christian, regarding the Catholicism he was baptized into as an irrational superstition. In fact he admired Islam more than Christianity, and he and his policies were highly respected by many of the Muslims of his day. He and his associates had a special distaste for the Catholic Church and, given a choice, preferred modern liberalized Protestantism, taking the view that the best form of Christianity would be one that forsook the traditional other-worldly focus on personal salvation and accommodated itself to the requirements of a program for social justice to be implemented by the state. They also considered the possibility that Christianity might eventually have to be abandoned altogether in favor of a return to paganism, a worldview many of them saw as more humane and truer to the heritage of their people. For he and his associates believed strongly that a people's ethnic and racial heritage was what mattered most. Some endorsed a kind of cultural relativism according to which what is true or false and right or wrong in some sense depends on one's ethnic worldview, and especially on what best promotes the well-being of one's ethnic group

There is surely no doubt that the man I am describing sounds very much like a mainstream Leftist by current standards.

But who is the man concerned?

It is a historically accurate description of Adolf Hitler. Hitler was not only a socialist in his own day but he would even be a mainstream socialist in most ways today. I didn't mention Hitler's antisemitism above, but that too seems once again to have become mainstream among the Western-world Left in the early years of the 21st Century.

Hitler shared with the German Left of his day the slogan: "Gemeinnutz vor Eigennutz" (Common use before private use).

Educate yourself, son.

Cripes, were you sleeping during history class while in school? I thought everyone knew that Hitler's Nazi Party was short for the National Socialist German Workers' Party.

As for Mussolini, let's take a look at what Mussolini himself published in 1935:

"If the bourgeoisie think they will find lightning conductors in us they are the more deceived; we must start work at once.  We want to accustom the working class to real and effectual leadership".

And that was Mussolini quoting his own words from the early Fascist days. So while Mussolini had by that time (in his 30s) come to reject the Marxist idea of a class-war, he still saw himself as anti-bourgeois and as a saviour and leader of the workers. What modern-day Leftist could not identify with that?

"Therefore I desire that this assembly shall accept the revindication of national trades unionism"

So he was a good union man like most Leftists today.

When the present regime breaks down, we must be ready at once to take its place"

Again a great Leftist hope and aspiration.

"Fascism has taken up an attitude of complete opposition to the doctrines of Liberalism, both in the political field and in the field of economics".

The "Liberalism" he refers to here would, of course, be called "Neo-liberalism" today - the politics of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Mussolini opposed such politics and so do Leftists today.

"The present method of political representation cannot suffice".

Modern-day Leftists too seem to seek influence outside the normal democratic channels - from strikes and demonstrations to often successful attempts to get the courts - instead of votes by the people - to make law.

"Fascism now and always believes in holiness and in heroism; that is to say in actions influenced by no economic motive"

Here he also rejects the Communist emphasis on materialism. Leftism to this day is often seen as a religion and its agitators clearly often long to be seen as heroic and unmaterialistic.

"Fascism repudiates the conception of "economic" happiness"

Leftists today also tend to regard consumerism as gross (or say they do as they drive off in their Volvos).

" one would there find no ordered expression of doctrine but a series of aphorisms, anticipations and aspirations".

This is how Mussolini described early Fascist meetings. Modern-day Leftist agitators too seem more interested in slogans (No Blood for Oil, Bush Lied People Died) than in any form of rational debate.

"If the 19th century has been the century of the individual (for liberalism means individualism), it may be conjectured that this is the century of the State.

This is Mussolini's famous prophecy about the 20th century in the Enciclopedia Italiana. It came true with the aid of the modern-day Left and their love of big government. To underline that, note that in 1900 the ratio of government spending to GDP in Italy was 10%, in the 1950s 30%, and it is now roughly 60%.

"The Socialist party reaffirms its eternal faith in the future of the Workers' International, destined to bloom again, greater and stronger, from the blood and conflagration of peoples. It is in the name of the International and of Socialism that we invite you, proletarians of Italy, to uphold your unshakeable opposition to war".

And Mussolini's "Fascist Manifesto" of 1919 includes in Fascist policy such socialist gems as (I quote):

*The nationalization of all the arms and explosives factories.

* A strong progressive tax on capital that will truly expropriate a portion of all wealth.

* The seizure of all the possessions of the religious congregations and the abolition of all the bishoprics, which constitute an enormous liability on the Nation and on the privileges of the poor.

* The formation of a National Council of experts for labor, for industy, for transportation, for the public health, for communications, etc. Selections to be made from the collective professionals or of tradesmen with legislative powers, and elected directly to a General Commission with ministerial powers.

* A minimum wage.

* The participation of workers' representatives in the functions of industry commissions

I could go on and on, but perhaps you might be interested in educating yourself.

And if you are stubborn enough to try and rebut the actual words of these socialists themselves, please do better than linking to a stupid indymidiot article.

[Guest eureka]

Monty:

Let me just deal with your first point - I will read the rest when I have time for a major work of fiction.

Once every week, I meet with an old friend to talk of literature, politics, or whatever comes our way.

This man is in his early eighties now and, amomgst many interesting turns of a career, was once a write and producer for CBC. He, in fact, wrote the first investigative documentaries that CBC tried.

Bill is, and has always been a Socialist.His tenure at the CBC was troubled by this and his work was always second guessed in search of subtle meanings. He, however, adhered strictly to the CBC ehtic of no bias. None of its staff can publicly, or trough the programming, promote any political philosophy.

When there is any attempt to promote one side or the other it is through guests. Even then, the programs have their counterpointers. Only interviews on CBC carry direct political partisan content.

[Black Dog]

Like hell you have.

Actually I have. Can West global owns the license to broadcast Fox News. Therefore, it is not, as you and old man Worthington state "banned": they just have chosen (for whatever reason) not to launch it.

I'll take the Sun over indymedia, which is what you previously linked to. Of course, you indymidiots love your "alternative news" (read: BS news, certainly not facts).

Of course since you can't argue with the content attack the source. Dumb.

Even your indymidiot link talks about Fox News Canada, not Fox News. Are CNN and CNBC required to have 35% Canadian content?

If you had actually read the article (and I know there were a lot of big wordas in there), you'd see that no cable and/or satellite companies have even applied to import Fox News here.

On the contrary, it is you who is the complete idiot for denying that they were socialists.

No, you're still an idiot "son".

The problem with your hypothesis is that it makes assumptions about the socialism and the contemprary left that are not actually grounded in reality or logic and are coloured by your own biases. Only a total doctrinaire would acdept your premise.

Throughout its rise to power and rule, the Nazis were strongly opposed by left-wing and socialist parties, and Nazi rhetoric was virulently anti-Marxist, attacking both communists and social democrats. Established socialist movements did not view the Nazis as socialists and argued that the Nazis were thinly disguised reactionaries. Historians such as Ian Kershaw also note the links between the Nazis and the German political and economic establishment and the significance of the Night of the Long Knives in which Hitler purged what were seen as "leftist" elements in the Nazi Party and how this was done at the urging of the military and conservatives.

Nazi leaders were opposed to the Marxist idea of class conflict and opposed the idea that capitalism should be abolished and that workers should control the means of production. For those who consider class conflict and the abolition of capitalism as essential components of socialist progress, these factors alone are sufficient to categorize "National Socialism" as non-socialist.

Nazis proposed that only people who were considered "racially pure" or Aryan would benefit from their policies. This is contrary to the socialist notion of a society for the benefit of all.

In his rise to power, Hitler reassured German industrialists that he would respect private property and fight labor unions. Once in power, the Nazis jettisoned practically all of the socialistic aspects of their program, and worked with big business, frequently at the expense of both small business and the working classes.

Independent trade unions were outlawed, as were strikes. In place of the unions, the Nazis created the Deutsche Arbeitsfront. The Nazis took other symbolic steps to co-opt the working classes' support, such as the introduction of May Day as a national holiday in 1933. These were described by socialists as superficial moves designed to win the allegiance of workers rather than grant them any material concessions at the expense of capital.

Industries and trusts were not nationalised, with the exception of private rail lines (nationalised in the late 1930s to meet military contingencies). The only private holdings that were expropriated were those belonging to Jews. These holdings were then sold or awarded to businessmen who supported the Nazis and satisifed their ethnic and racial policies. Military production and even film production remained in the hands of private industries whilst serving the Nazi government, and many private companies flourished during the Nazi period. The Nazis never interfered with the profits made by such large German firms as Krupp, Siemens AG, and IG Farben. Efforts were made to coordinate business's actions with the needs of the state, particularly with regard to rearmament, and the Nazis established some state owned concerns such as Volkswagen. But these were functions of the new German expansionism rather than an implementation of socialist measures. Germany had moved to a war economy, and similar measures occurred in the western democracies during the first World War, and again once the second World War had begun.

He outlawed labor unions and guaranteed corporate profits for Krupp & Co.

The profits of large corporations soared under the Nazis.

Militarism was also a strong element of facist policy.

Ultimately, Hitler and Mussolini was interested in absolute power and are thus correctly classified as fascists.

But feel free to dredge up some more crap from the depths of the internet.

[Guest eureka]

I have skimmed your materpiece and I findit wanting. I will find time to deal with it in the next couple of days - assuming that you have not been blasted of the site by others before then. I shall enjoy doing so since I consider that the views you present are a blot on covolization.

Your ignorance is palpable; your sources - if you have sources are liars and cranks.

Just a little for you to absorb if your mind has even a few cells open to truth is:

Canada is one of the lower taxed nations in the advanced world: Ontario, for example, has lower taxes than any of the American Great Lakes States.

Canada spends some 9% of GDP on healthcare and covers its total population. The USA spends about 14% and has 45 million uninsured with no access to regular healthcare.

Europe now has a higher GNP than America and is closing in fast in per capita figures. The USA has had a recent net loss in jobs while Canada has created jobs at a higher rate than any Western Nation. And, if you get your head out of Hitler's manic ravings for a time, you may free up a few brain cells to take in reality.

[Montgomery Burns]

Eureka,

There is so much ignorance in your last post, that I don't know where to start.

But I am tired and will let you "deal with it" as you claim that you will. I anxiously look forward to seeing if you actually will...or if you will disappear.

Oh, and my source was the World Health Organization. For you to claim that Canada has a better healthcare system is sheer lunacy.

As is your claim that Canada has lower taxes than the US. Hell, even the UK's Tax Freedom Day is 1 month earlier than Canada's.

As is your claim that Europe is performing better economically then the USA. Even European economists lament why they can't compete with the USA economically.

Your claim of the US having a net loss of jobs is laughable. Their unemployment rate is now at 5.4%. Also, Canada never had a 9/11 that wiped out 1 million jobs and hit the economy for $27 billion.

As Dubya said...Bring.it.on.

[Montgomery Burns]

Actually I have. Can West global owns the license to broadcast Fox News. Therefore, it is not, as you and old man Worthington state "banned": they just have chosen (for whatever reason) not to launch it.

That was for soemthing called Fox News-CANADA, not Fox News. It even said that in your indymidiot link. Don't you read the articles you link to?

If you had actually read the article (and I know there were a lot of big wordas in there), you'd see that no cable and/or satellite companies have even applied to import Fox News here.

Yeah those big words like Bushitler and NO BLOOD FOR OIIIIILLLL are always confusing for me.

Oh, and here is the application to broadcast Fox News Channel - the one you said hasn't even applied to import it to Canada. It is dated April 15/04.

And you're still an idiot about Hitler/Mussolini not being socialists.

Throughout its rise to power and rule, the Nazis were strongly opposed by left-wing and socialist parties, and Nazi rhetoric was virulently anti-Marxist

As Ludwig Von Mises wrote:

"The Nazis have not only imitated the Bolshevist tactics of seizing power. They have copied much more. They have imported from Russia the one-party system and the privileged role of this party and its members in public life; the paramount position of the secret police; the organization of affiliated parties abroad which are employed in fighting their domestic governments and in sabotage and espionage, assisted by public funds and the protection of the diplomatic and consular service; the administrative execution and imprisonment of political adversaries; concentration camps; the punishment inflicted on the families of exiles; the methods of propaganda. They have borrowed from the Marxians even such absurdities as the mode of address, party comrade (Parteigenosse), derived from the Marxian comrade (Genosse), and the use of a military terminology for all items of civil and economic life. The question is not in which respects both systems are alike but in which they differ."

The resemblances between Hitler and Stalin are inescapable. Both tyrannies relied on a desperate ideology of do-or-die confrontation. Both were obsessed by battle imagery: 'The dictatorships were military metaphors, founded to fight political war.' And despite the rhetoric about a fate-struggle between socialism and capitalism, the two economic systems converged strongly. Stalin's Russia permitted a substantial private sector, while Nazi Germany became rapidly dominated by state direction and state-owned industries.

Just look at the policy manifesto of Hitler's National Socialist German Workers' Party:

The first duty of every citizen must be to work mentally or physically. The activities of the individual may not clash with the interests of the whole, but must proceed within the frame of the community and be for the general good.

Therefore we demand:

* That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished.

* Since every war imposes on the people fearful sacrifices in life and property, all personal profit arising from the war must be regarded as a crime against the people. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits whether in assets or material.

* We demand the nationalization of businesses which have been organized into cartels.

* We demand that all the profits from wholesale trade shall be shared out.

* We demand a land reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to confiscate from the owners without compensation any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land.

Sounds like the Liberal Party...or the Democrat Party, or the British Labour Party.

Further, as a good socialist does, Hitler justified everything he did in the name of "the people" (Das Volk). The Nazi State was, like the Soviet State, all-powerful, and the Nazi party, in good socialist fashion, instituted pervasive supervision of German industry. And of course Hitler and Stalin were initially allies. It was only the Nazi-Soviet pact that enabled Hitler's conquest of Western Europe. The fuel in the tanks of Hitler's Panzern as they stormed through France was Soviet fuel.

You mock my sources, but I have mostly used Hitler's and Mussolini's very own writings. To claim that they were not socialists, is sheer lunacy.

[Montgomery Burns]

Eureka, regarding your CBC tale.

The National Missile Defence system, as it is properly known, is not "Bush's missile plan", as the Canadian state-run CBC's Larry Zolf calls it (and nor is it called "stars wars", Larry, which you know is a term used by its opponents implying it is an scary science fiction fantasy designed solely to protect your arch enemy the Americans and conservatives and pro-free-trade non-government-owned corporations on the backs of the workers). I think the People's Web Site, state-run as it is, should get the facts straight, even if they do find it necessary to run an official state opinion as posted by Zolf.

The defense program in question (only by liberals) is a scaled-down version of Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defence Initiative, from where liberals garnered the cool name "Star Wars", but which sadly for them was partly responsible for Ronald Reagan winning the cold war.

However, in an article published in March of 2000 during Clinton's presidency, the CBC called it the "National Missile Defence system". They said it was designed to "defend the United States and its friends against missiles launched from rogue states and terrorists". Sounds clear and happy enough.

But in an article published in 2003 after Bush was elected, the description morphed to "...designed to give the U.S. the power to protect itself... "; and appealing to the CBC's same official anti-Bush innuendo stylebook, "rogue states and terrorists" became "what the Bush administration refers to as 'rogue states.'". Later in the same article: "so-called rogue states". After 9/11, the CBC was no longer so sure there were rogue states. In much the same way, the CBC is so-called not a state-run liberal-left biased anti-American media joke.

[Black Dog]

That was for soemthing called Fox News-CANADA, not Fox News. It even said that in your indymidiot link. Don't you read the articles you link to?

I made teh differnce quite clear, stupid.

Oh, and here is the application to broadcast Fox News Channel - the one you said hasn't even applied to import it to Canada. It is dated April 15/04.

If there's an application being considered, then it's not banned, now is it?

In any case, that would be the same application mentioned in the original indy media article:

That's because, in June, the Canadian Cable Television Association (CCTA) applied to the CRTC to add Fox News to the list of non-Canadian channels eligible for digital carriage here. The CCTA also wants to import HBO, Showtime and other popular U.S. cable services, mostly to hang on to customers who are hooking up to those black market dishes.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB), whose members include CanWest Global, is fighting the CCTA application because it cuts into its business. (For example, why go to Chum's Bravo for Sex And The City when you can get it off HBO directly?)

So, you've yet to actually debunk a single thing in the original article. That's a pretty poor batting average.

You mock my sources, but I have mostly used Hitler's and Mussolini's very own writings. To claim that they were not socialists, is sheer lunacy.

Hey, don't the fact that they discarded any pretense of socialism on assuming power stop your ravings, stupid.

Nevermind that the governments of both countries bore little resemblance to any envisioned by socialists.

The resemblances between Hitler and Stalin are inescapable. Both tyrannies relied on a desperate ideology of do-or-die confrontation. Both were obsessed by battle imagery: 'The dictatorships were military metaphors, founded to fight political war.' And despite the rhetoric about a fate-struggle between socialism and capitalism, the two economic systems converged strongly. Stalin's Russia permitted a substantial private sector, while Nazi Germany became rapidly dominated by state direction and state-owned industries.

You'd not find any socialists who'd argue that Stalin was socialist either. See, a key distinction that thinking people can make is to recognize the difference between socialism in doctrine versus socialism in practice. Fascism borrowed fromsocialst rhetoric of the day, but in practice, bore no resemblance to socialism.

BTW, Nazi Germany didn't actually have any state owned industries other than the railroads. Reeses von Pieces strikes out.

[Guest eureka]

Your source was not the WHO. Canada ranks 13rh amongst health systems. The USA ranks high only for the top end: it is very low for the rest. Infant mortality is higher in the US than in Canada: life expectancy is lower. Hospital survival rates are lower.

Corporate taxes are lower in Canada than in the US. The last I saw, 17 states there had increased their taxes in the last couple of years and several more were doing so: this to compensate for the lack of federal funding due to Bush's madness.

Tax Freedom days are nothing but "Right Wing" posturing. They do not take into account many taxes that are endemic in the USA: taxes such as user fees and private health insurance costs compared to the much lower costs incurred out of direct taxation in Canada. I don't know where you dredge up your dribble but you clearly do not have the intelligence to do more than parrot the crap.

Try thinking it through and try to ask yourself why the purveyors of that are what they are.

You are almost funny when you talk of individualism - almost, but not quite since you believe what you write. The USA is the most conformist society in the Western world. Every American is raised to pledge allegiance to a symbol: every American is raised to believe that the end of all existence is a piece of paper called a Constitution.

Not nearly enough Americans break out of that trap and think beyond that symbol and those fanciful words to understand the manipulation of their nation that they cover. Deference to the authority represented by those is the defining characteristic of America.

Polls showed that Americans almost as much as Canadians and Europeans opposed the Iraq war. It is only when asked whether respondents support the President in his war that a majority is achieved. Blind support for a symbol.What an indicator of free and independent thinking.

When you bring von Mises into this, I ask myself who you are. The last time I saw a poster with similar ideas to yours in an Internet Forum he, too, paraded that charlatan as an expert. I took little part in that discussion since people like you disgust me too much to be bothered with to any extent. I quit trying to reason with latterday Fascist sympathisers decades ago. However, I enjoyed the spectacle of a couple of participants slowly destroying that person's pshyche along with his ideas. He deserved it.

BTW, as Balck Dog pointed out in a different way, National and Socialist are a contradiction in terms and ideas. Nationalism is local and is rooted in the idea of a (mistaken) common ancestry and common history. Socialism is rooted in the ideal of the Common (and Universal) Man.

If you have any specific issues that you would like to be educated about, let us know. Your screeds (dredged up from the bowels of the Internet, no doubt) are tiresome and foolish.

[Greg]

Cut the sarcastic and demeaning language out in this thread. You've all made excellent points, there is no need to taint them with childish behaviour.

Greg

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