Metal Reviews

These people fulfill some kind of role in Egyptian society prior to the market's entrance into the country. They found some form of self-worth and they eked out a living. We're agreed on that. However, I don't think that their world needs to be torn asunder in order for them to be brought into History. These people are persecuted by their culture, but to think that a private company entering into the region will alter that fact is ludicrous. Now, they still face religious/cultural oppression from Muslims, while they must wrestle with the private corporation to not be oppressed in their working conditions. I don't see how markets are guarantors of eventual freedom. The assumption seems to be that religious discrimination will be wiped clean under the guise of markets and I'm not convinced.

It rather sickens me that you're defending the Coptics not by recognising their right to practice their religion openly, but instead by finding a very small and insignificant (to them anyway) common ground in their economic existence, removed as it is from the big bad capitalists. You're rightly denying markets will combat religious discrimination in Egypt, but your marxist ideology combats both the markets and the religions.

Not having the resources to eke out a living isn't insignificant to them. It radically alters their social fabric. For instance, the act of maturing into a man from boyhood requires getting married. The boys can't get married unless they have an apartment built atop their parents' home. Without the resources to do that, you have a lot of young men who don't feel that they can achieve life goals. And isn't that the very thing that encourages extremism in other Middle Eastern countries? Warlords offer money and goods to their families if they sacrifice themselves through a suicide bombing. I think these are parallel occurrences. One that is just now boiling up, while the latter has occurred more and more often in the last decade or so.

As for thinking that Marxism battles religious discrimination, I don't think it necessarily will. The more important thing, first, is to enable these people to earn a living. Then after that is taken care of, maybe solidarity across workers, opposed to a single enemy, could begin to overcome ethnic strife. It has happened in the past.

Disclaimer: I'm neither an expert on Egypt or Middle Eastern studies, but I have made out with a PhD student who researches the subject.

Anyone been following the Pussy Riot case?

Yep, pretty shocking. Gary Kasparov has been arrested in the protests outside the court, too.

I read all of that via Twitter this morning and I am equally as shocked. There was no reason to jail the girls and they said that Kasparov wasn't demonstrating/protesting; he was just there watching the proceedings.

Did anyone catch Dave Mustaine's comments that he made to a crowd in Singapore? That was all over Twitter yesterday.

He's a fucking moron is all I have to say, not only a moron but a moron that's made shit music for nearly three decades and has held a lifelong inferiority complex to another shitty overrated band AKA Metallica. But hey, I guess that's what you expect from someone that appears on the Alex Jones show.

Mustaine is ridiculous, of course, but let's not damn the entire works of Megadeth just because of that.

Hey, Zad, Zad! Hey!

http://newsnetscotland.com/index.php/sc ... in-england

How's it feel?

http://www.euprofiler.eu/page/1/

taking the test now.

Another poll t'other day had us on 18%. Depends who you ask, the news that we're unpopular int'north is not stunning. Most of our seats are Tory-facing, the expected annihilation just won't happen. Obviously we'll go down a few, but hey, price of power. One of our sister parties in Holland halves each time they go into coalition. I could talk about Salmond getting booed at public appearances, but hey, that's cheap.

That's an older test, think it was from the last EU elections in... 2009? Hence the mention of UK issues like ID cards, which were scrapped by the current coalition.

Live debate commentary?

CNN just said that Ann Romney is one of the campaign's stronger suits lol.

Count me in for the upcoming foreign policy debate, but busy tonight.

Screw Obongo and Magic underpants man, I don't want to hear glistening generalities about how to deal with the Palestine problem, why we need laser scanners that can detect trace amounts of hot cheetos on my shirt on a molecular scale, and I don't need to hear Obongo talk about his rationale for the upcoming Iran war and why he hasn't released any details about his oversight with drone programs. Romney isn't going to win anyways, anyone seriously watching these debates looking for one minute difference in policy between two largely similar candidates is borderline retarded.

I thought that was the war Romney and Netanyahu wanted...

But yes, I agree that the similarities are striking, especially on their utter inability to come up with a sound fiscal policy.

I did watch the closing statements, and Romney making his pitch for the "tough on defense" stance in a "domestic" debate is disturbing. I am so sick of the US military-industrial complex.

It's all free market policies have going for them.

Its utter corruption of the free market, stop being a smartass. You have the government subsidizing Raytheon, Halliburton, Blackwater, and all of these other munitions, intelligence, and different military firms and it pays them billions of taxpayers to do whatever the fuck they want. That's crony capitalism and a perversion of the free market.

It's exactly what the logic of the free market always has been. An illusion has been created that business was ever allowed to thrive free of manipulation, but intervention and manipulation has always been a part of the package.

That post is so outwardly fucking retarded I don't know where to even begin.

Manipulation we've seen where that ends up, just look at Leninist and Stalinist Russia with Nationalized farming, Pol Pot's Cambodia by eliminating currency and making everyone farmers, and Marx's number one goal itself making individuals who are superior in varying circumstances equalized. Intervention by the state fucks up everything, and its because of the state that man can never freely trade because morons like you think we can't possibly make decisions for ourselves. Let me be blunt, Marxism in every form has failed, and the more crazed ideological variants you nuts have devised are so theoretically improbable that even if they were to be practiced you people would have no idea how to implement them.

And before you go into your nonsensical rants about how Nordic countries enjoy the highest standard of living, guess what the entire EU system is crumbling from the ground up because centralization fails. I'll say it again Leftists have no grasp of economics whatsoever, this is evident in every argument I have with liberals, socialists, and anyone that believes we could fleece productive human beings to feed social leaches.