Metal Reviews

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You people are fucked.

hey we're all metalheads here so we must all be fucking mental to begin with right?

besides it's impossible to have a sensible discussion of politics around here so why not say some completely outrageous BS

You're probably counting me among them. But you can't deny that, if it weren't for the oil, the world would've turned their backs on the whole conflict ages ago, and that the creation of Israel was nothing more than a geostrategical move along those lines. If the oil there suddenly dries up, a major reason for the conflict ceases to apply.

well oil and drugs (according to a conspiracy theorist former friend of mine anyway she believes that the allied forces are in the middle east to control the supply of opiads and heroin to increase the flow into western countries then use it as a weapon of sorts to dumb down the masses a la Brave New World)

What I meant in terms of the form of democracy is people marching out on to the streets to challenge who they democratically elected. Their occupation of Tahrir Square becomes a form of democracy that transcends what they did in the election. They occupy in order to overthrow the regime, they elect a new one, if it doesn't work they impeach it through civil unrest. That is what secessionists wish they could do. By that logic, a democratically elected party is never secure because it always has to respond to the people.

Well, that'd be great and I'm all for direct democracy, but it's a utopia. There were some clever chaps in '17 and '33 who found means to first be democratically elected, then to cow the people into submission and abolish all other political parties so they could rule forever (or a thousand years, according to one version). Still a lighting example for many a dictator in the world today, including Morsi.

But this may be what we're seeing in Egypt. It's utopian in your sense of the word only if we think it's going to solve all our problems. Maybe direct democracy is just a new form of the same old struggle, albeit with more participation which should be valued for the sake of itself, but only possible due to the structural inadequacies of the system that enable those large crowds to be free throughout the day to participate in it. I think what they're doing should be championed insofar as what you describe in terms of fascism being possible there. Maybe the Germans should have taken to the streets and resisted Hitler when he started undermining democracy.

And if you think direct democracy is utopian, remember when Chavez was overthrown via the American coup and the people took to the streets to have him freed? Eh? Utopian doesn't mean impossible and even if it is, looking towards it changes our categories of what is possible and what is impossible in the process of enacting it. Also before "Chavez is an evil dictator" talk, he was elected in the country that has the most honest and trustworthy electoral system in the world.

^ He's also a fucking dictator, thief, and kills his political opponents. But whatever so long as the fruits are of some mythical cooperative impetus, we could elect Willy Wonka and as long as the people are happy, POWER TO THE PEOPLE!

Source? The guy isn't a totalitarian dictator a la Stalin or Hitler. The dude is a democratically elected dictator, in that, he represents the will of the people. Much more efficient than our own process. And he is getting the dick out of South America's proverbial ass. They're becoming self-sustaining or attempting to rather than relying on the UN, the IMF and the World Bank, etc. who have consistently fucked over those countries. And given our polar opposition to one another politically, I agree that he is a thief in the best possible way. But why are we just bashing/defending Chavez when the discussion was about real-life forms of participatory democracy, which you smeared as incompetency?

I am no friend of democracy, when mobs turn out and rule individuals who comprise minorities always lose. Regrettably, in the third world as evidenced in the Middle East, parts of Sudo America, and Africa we've seen the failure of democracy as the process to transition inevitably leads into backlash, turmoil, and bloody revolution.

Congo, Ghana, Zimbabwe and other countries are proof of the failure of democracy one party gets in and then magically transforms from those images of happy politicians on placards and posters, to the military men in uniforms that are responsible for UN refugee camps, dismembered bodies, and high death tolls. The Middle east in largely the same fashion will topple a dictator, falsely claim to institute a democratic government and then rinse, cycle, repeat as seen with toppling Mubarak, Morsi's power grab in Egypt, and the failure of the provisional government in Libya to stem the violence which Gaddafi kept low during his reign.

Leftist ideological nematodes say the process to democracy, i,e quasi socialist states is bloody, yet in the third world and world abroad the conditions from which they are hammered more often then not as evidenced by these modern examples render the transition null and void.

So you were cool with Mubarak being a dictator ruling over a puppet regime established by the US to exert its will on the region while in the process kidnapping and murdering his own people, but ultimately keeping them in check?

I am cool with dictatorial rule when it gets certain tasks done. I think the liberal-democratic views of the West have espoused the problematic idea that democracy is good in itself when all too often democracy is neutered and ultimately pacifying. What you see in the case of Egypt is that democracy is being enacted and it's a struggle and that struggle is the good in itself of politics. Yes, politics should direct itself towards material conditions, but where freedom lies in is the process of taking to the streets and voicing one's opinion much moreso than simply casting a ballot.

It's cute that Americans think they count as part of the first world.

Re oil causing conflict, yeah, it does, but if it goes, there goes the world economy with it, unfortunately.

This guy is Scottish, everyone.

there is no political system that is perfect, they are all inherently flawed insofar as the people who function as government be they democratically elected or otherwise are flawed, democracy seems to be the closest to being perfect when it operates in the truest sense of the word however this is a rare occurence in modern times

You stole trapt's word.

nah, I stole Lord Buckmaster's word (having not studied law I doubt you would know who he is but how awesome is his name lol)

Please explain how we are not "first world".
Do you even know what that phrase means?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World



A whole new level of stupid right here.