RebelPundit has been all over the Occupy protests in Chicago. Check out the crowd of several thousand giving a “warm welcome and overwhelming applause” to John Bachtell from the Communist Party USA.
There you go - people using their freedom of speech to protest about taking away your freedom.
Ah yes…”wonderful” communism is trying to make a comeback to save us from the “evils” of capitalism.
Never forget, that under Stalin, tens of millions of people were murdered, either shot or they starved to death.
Did you know a delegation of German Gestapo and SS came to the Soviet Union to learn how to build concentration camps? That Stalin authorized children to be shot from the age of twelve?
Communism is pure evil and yet we now witness people applauding 21st century communists!
WTF!
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Andy, what you write here is to be feared. Because there is upheaval, uncertainty and too much and too rapid change, because capitalism has come under fire for seemingly having failed; because governments have not governed well, have been addicted to debt and people to handouts, the evil in the world seeks to take advantage, now the going gets tough.
One thing is for certain sure, capitalism can be rectified with good stewardship and more scrutiny, just as Australia can be drawn back from the brink by good government, which we don't have now, but will have again.
If groups like the sit-in movement, ripe for takeover by communism and other evils, get a strong hold, then we can expect far, far worse that mere belt-tightening as history will show all those who care to look.
I wonder how it is with Australia's low unemployment so many people can camp out for days at a time in a public place. Have they no work or university to attend?
Hopefully this era of unrest will pass, just as the Vietnam war protests passed. But it is also to be hoped that the current unrest does not spawn nasty repercussions such as those of the vietnam war protests which saw conscripted soldiers treated abominably when they returned from the war and for years into the future.
Posted by: ibbit | October 18, 2011 at 09:20 PM
I will pick up on this tomorrow but surprisingly as the OccupyWall Street protest movement unfolds there is a "coincidental" documentary on SBS tonight. So coincidental it is "spooky" to quote Dama Edna Everage, aka Barry Humphries.
The doco, first in a series of 3 is a very interesting exposition, that I suspect will not be agreed with here. A thesis too far, I would suggest BUT I personally would be delighted to read opinions on it.
>>>Tuesday 18 Oct 2011 8:30pm SBSONE
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace.
A powerful, provocative series from celebrated filmmaker Adam Curtis, which argues that humans have unwittingly been colonised by machines.
A series of films exploring the idea that we have been colonised by the machines that we have built, seeing everything in the world today through the eyes of computers.
Episode One: Love and Power
A dream rose up in the 1990s that computers could create a new kind of stable world, bringing about a new kind of global capitalism free of all risk and without the boom and bust of the past. They would also abolish political power and create a new kind of democracy through the internet where millions of individuals would be connected as nodes in cybernetic systems – without hierarchy. This episode tells the story of two perfect worlds.
One is the small group of disciples around the novelist Ayn Rand in the 1950s. They saw themselves as a prototype for a future society where everyone could follow their own selfish desires. The other is the global utopia that digital entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley set out to create in the 1990s. They were joined by Alan Greenspan who became convinced that the computers were creating a new kind of stable capitalism – “Like a new planet,” he said. But the dream of stability in both worlds would be torn apart by two dynamic human forces: love and power.
http://www.sbs.com.au/documentary/program/allwatchedoverbymachinesoflovinggrace/about/synopsis
Posted by: Pip | October 18, 2011 at 09:54 PM
That did not print out so well.
I guess the width on SBS was too wide.
Go there yourselves for:
EP2
Episode Two: The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts
This is the story of how our modern scientific idea of nature, the self-regulating ecosystem, is actually a fantasy based on cybernetic ideas that were projected on to nature in the 1950s by ambitious scientists. A static machine theory of order that sees humans, and everything else on the planet, as components, cogs in a system. But in an age disillusioned with politics, the self-regulating ecosystem has become the model for utopian ideas of human "self-organising networks" – dreams of new ways of organising societies without leaders, as in the Facebook and Twitter revolutions, and in global visions of connectivity like the Gaia theory.
This powerful idea emerged out of the hippie communes in America in the 1960s, and from counterculture computer scientists who believed that global webs of computers could liberate the world. At the very moment this was happening, the science of ecology discovered that the theory of the self-regulating ecosystem wasn’t true. Instead they found that nature was really dynamic and constantly changing in unpredictable ways. But the dream of the self-organising network had by now captured our imaginations.
EP3
Episode Three: The Monkey in the Machine and the Machine in the Monkey
This film argues that because our political dreams seem to have failed, we have retreated into machine-fantasies that say we have no control over our actions, to excuse our failure. At its heart is one of the most famous scientists in the world, Bill Hamilton, who argued that human behaviour is really guided by codes buried deep within us. This was later popularised by Richard Dawkins as "the selfish gene" and said that individual human beings are really just machines whose only job is to make sure the codes are passed on. The episode begins in 2000 in the jungles of the Congo and Rwanda.
Hamilton is there to help prove his dark theories. But all around him the Congo is being torn apart by "Africa’s First World War". The film interweaves the two stories – the strange roots of Hamilton’s theories, and the history of the West’s tortured relationship with the Congo over the past 100 years.
****
This is a fascinating thesis that links everything to everything else. It no doubt can be held up to criticism but makes fascinating viewing in view of the nightmare scenario's of AGW, Carbon markets, Globalisation and the OccupyWall Street movement.
http://www.sbs.com.au/documentary/program/allwatchedoverbymachinesoflovinggrace/about/synopsis
Posted by: Pip | October 18, 2011 at 10:06 PM
Even if you take out the excesses of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, the greatest advertisements for communism's failures were the Berlin Wall and East Germany. BMWs on one side, Trabants on the other, and this was communism's most advanced economy. Pity there are so many around now who don't even remember those days.
Posted by: Marksouth | October 19, 2011 at 12:01 AM
When Brown and Gillard fight to take away the freedoms of others they are just displaying their self centered,evil personalities. Evil, but understandable.
When Chris and his hate site mates fight to have their own freedoms taken away, what could be the rational explanation?
Who was it that said that idiots could be useful?
Posted by: Anton | October 19, 2011 at 01:50 AM
and products like iPads/iPhones would never have been invented without capitalism. The pinko's version of an iPad would have been a piece a cardboard with paper pinned on the front.
Posted by: Andy Semple | October 19, 2011 at 10:08 AM
I’m sorry my replies are somewhat tangential to your main beef, here. I must say that the exceedingly small minority of people who still espouse out-dated ideas of communism are so small and inconsequential that they are not worth bothering about.
The underground Marxist radicals like Saul Alinsky’s brand of “hide your radicalism, behind a good suit and neat haircut” are more to be feared viz Obama and GetUp. Or the Fabians with their logo of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. These people do actually have the power and have been educating the children for decades.
I saw Steve Brissenden’s 7.30 Report, investigative piece on the Mormons, Mitt Romney and the other Mormon guy last night. I know we are all en-cultured into our communities and religions but for me, to trust anyone who has not subjected themselves to scrutiny on a religion like Mormonism, I find terrifying. First principle is “know thy-self”. Surely, the Republicans have to come up with someone who is less divisive?
Talking about the 7.30 Report, Leigh Sales is doing a long interview with Alan Jones tonight, worth a watch I would say.
Regarding, ALL WATCHED OVER BY MACHINES OF LOVING GRACE, I have found a good review that does not consign the doco to the dustbin as you might be inclined to do. Andrew Anthony is critical of the linkages made in the piece and I think this might be further compounded in the Gaia episode next week but I think everyone must always be aware of how the other side thinks. “Know thy enemy”. This is more important than a few extremist refugees from a past age. The real power is with the people who have renewed and retro-fitted communism and changed the brand, like Gorbechev , Nancy Pelosi et al.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/may/29/machines-of-loving-grace-review
Posted by: Pip | October 19, 2011 at 11:09 AM
Notice how the eco-tards that troll MH avoid these posts about their beloved communism?
The truth hurts doesn't it PK, Johnson, Oldman, Terra and Dante to name just a few.
Posted by: Andy Semple | October 19, 2011 at 11:34 AM
Ah, Andy. One day you'll realise that there is a middle ground between unrestrained capitalism and totalitarian state socialism. Australia is a pretty good example. We've been implementing socialist policy for decades without setting up any gulags. See for example Medicare, the progressive income tax, superannuation, the welfare system, powerful government regulators like ASIC...
The free market ideologues in the USA have done a pretty good job of preventing, limiting or rolling back this kind of socialist 'big government' policy. How's that working out for them?
Posted by: liberal elitist | October 19, 2011 at 11:43 AM
Andy you use extreme examples to excuse you own extremists stand point, so it's generally not worth trying to argue against it. I must day however, I am intrigued by your constant referral to Ipad and Ipods.
People are allowed to cry out for more transparent market system and plea to get big business out of running government and back to a real democracy and still be digitally connected and of course you can use the basis of marketplace "if you don't like it, don't shop there" ethos - but if the means of production, maufacturing and profit are so obsucred by the current market systems, how can people make any choice at all?
That's one of the main gripes of the occupiers. Something youre oh so happy to overlook while you bag their clothing, their technology and call them commies.
Posted by: pk | October 19, 2011 at 11:59 AM
We've been implementing socialist policy for decades without setting up any gulags.
That's what the Greeks said. And many Greeks are still saying the answer to their problems is more socialism. People like you need it to get to gulags before they'll admit there's a problem.
The free market ideologues in the USA have done a pretty good job of preventing, limiting or rolling back this kind of socialist 'big government' policy. How's that working out for them?
I'm not quite sure how you've made that conclusion. Fanny Mae, Freddie Mac, bailing out banks, record-breaking stimulus and companies 'too big to fail' isn't exactly free market. However, if America does make the right decisions and turn from this behaviour back to free markets it will remain a global superpower and the leader of the free world. Europe, on the other hand will continue it's slide until it's a mid-tier power with mid-tier living standards. Australia can then decide if its wants to take the welfare state path to being the poor cousin of Asia, or it wants to use free market policies to ride the Asian growth into an exciting new future.
Posted by: Michael Sutcliffe | October 19, 2011 at 12:33 PM
They called themselves commies you idiot.... no wonder the world is getting attacked by communism , vast majorities have no idea what communism is ........ they will rue the day they supported it ..... they should read a bit of history .. but then , the commies will probably tell them it's all crap ..... poor fella Australia
Posted by: barrone | October 19, 2011 at 12:36 PM
A handful of communists exists on the fringe of the left, so gulags tomorrow!
Anti-scientific religious fundamentalists are running the show on the right, so we should trust them to guide us to a free and civilised future.
I'm not quite sure how you've made that conclusion. Fanny Mae, Freddie Mac, bailing out banks, record-breaking stimulus and companies 'too big to fail' isn't exactly free market.
Yes, the problem is that the finance industry wasn't deregulated enough. Apparently the global economy works like amnesia does in cartoons: bashing yourself on the head even harder will fix the problems cause by doing it the first time.
Interesting that Michael Sutcliffe mentions Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac. What was their role in this drama?
Posted by: Sancho | October 19, 2011 at 12:44 PM
I find it funny, but not out of Character that the Communist Party of America have a presence at Occupy Chicago. Whether it is coincidence or opportunism, the hallmark of a communist regime is the "Spontaneous Demonstration", where the masses turn up and apparently, with the same thought in mind, arrive and profess their love or anger over an issue. The party then arrives to focus or incense the group into action like the people's white knight in shining red, green or black armour.
The second form of "Spontaneous Demonstration" was used by Hitler where the organisers would actually go to a street corner and organise through intimidation people to join the "cause".
The one thing that spontanous demonstrations have in common is that they tend to be the favoured tool of some regime that will eventual become brutal in the future.
Whether the spontaneous demonstration was organised by the Communist Party of America or not, the individual protesters are being shaped and manipulated by the organisers.
Given the Communist Party of America and the far left have had little traction using the label Communist in America. I would not be surprised if they simply dropped it from their title and were in fact and re marketed themselves as some of the faces behind anonymous.
Whether there are a few aggrieved people having a loosely formed demonstration, or this is part of some organised event, there are few real aims at each of the occupy rallies until some force or party comes and focusses the people. This we have seen in Italy and Spain.
The individual demonstrators are being manipulated here and this manipulation smells has a distinctly subversive aroma. The occupy movement is simply a derivation of the old marketing trick that to sell an idea, you have to create a problem.
We are seeing a transition from green to black to red.
Posted by: Mike J Warr | October 19, 2011 at 12:50 PM
There is a story that goes, during the COld War the Americans were desperate to find a biro that could write in 0g. So they spent money and invented roller ball pens and all kinds of things.
The Russians just used a pencil. While the pencil may have been the practical solution for the time, it did not create thousands of jobs in design and manufacturing and distribution.
Posted by: Mike J Warr | October 19, 2011 at 12:53 PM
Yes, the problem is that the finance industry wasn't deregulated enough.
You're suggesting the government needed to regulate in more Fannie Maes and Freddy Macs? These organisations wouldn't exist without a regulation saying they exist?
Posted by: Michael Sutcliffe | October 19, 2011 at 12:54 PM
So really existing socialism is credited with the deaths of 100 million people. Its horrible. And it is the same amount that Sen argues have died in India due to 50 years of 'real existing capitalism' ( which yes I know is a model of capitalism that doesn't conform to the ideals of the Austrian school - but the USSR didn't look like anything Marx wanted). The greatest growth in life expectancy in modern times (see Minqi Li) was in China from the late 40s to the late 60s - and that is even with the massive famine caused by the Great Leap Forward and the near civil war conditions of The Cultural Revolution. Life expectancy has dropped in Russia since the fall of the USSR. The old New Left slogan of "The Communist world is communist and the Free world isn't free" seems to stand
Communist like me have no desire to recreate brutal and failed models - but rather invent communism anew.
For my money (pun intended) dissidents like G M Tamas have a lot of insight on the questions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0G7XljdSOI&feature=related
cheers
Dave
Posted by: Dave | October 19, 2011 at 12:56 PM
Tamas was a liberal parliamentarian in the government after the fall of real existing socialism - he has since become a Marxian.
Posted by: Dave | October 19, 2011 at 01:01 PM
We need to focus on the centre ground and the current government and the marketing dept of the ALP, GETUP need to be put in their place. When I was a kid, 3 ministers resigned over failing to pay sales tax on a $300 TV. Contrast that with Thomson and the unmitigated theft and fraud that was conducted at the HSU. There are just no standards anymore.
Thought I would be the last person to ever admit that.
The fact is that the left has stopped playing by the rules and has adopted an addiction to marketing. GetUp, StandUP and Anonymous are 3 of their brands. All of these brands were started by George Soros in the US. If you look at the PR machine behind the Left it is massive. It is the uninvited subversion of the Australian Democracy. We, Australia, appears to be a growth industry for the US Lobby interests.
The middle is the opposite to an extreme and we are bouncing between the extremes of corporate greed in the US and the Left's global marketing agenda. We need to debate and cooler heads to prevail while in places that have the sense to disect the failures and find the appropriate balance of middle ground that is required to ensure long term stability.
This does not involve interfering with the market. The US loves creating private monopolies and the Left love creating Public Monopolies that are controlled by an oligarchic class. I doubt that Breznhev's Son went to the same school as the son of the local bus driver.
Having a spontaneous demonstration behind a faceless brand of the left wing marketing machine does nothing to achieve these outcomes.
Posted by: Mike J Warr | October 19, 2011 at 01:14 PM
Communism anew - you have got to be kidding.
No desire to recreate brutal and failed models are you serious? Communism is and always will be a failed model – its brutal, murderous and pure evil - over 80 million dead people are proof of how evil communism was and you believe communism 2.0 will be kind and gentle.
FMD!
Posted by: Andy Semple | October 19, 2011 at 02:06 PM
What Occupy Wall Street Protesters Really Believe, http://fxn.ws/pjAxSU
and yeah - I'm a "real radical" - I believe in liberty, the free markets and smaller government.
As for the iPad reference - I'll spell it out to you because you're a little slow on the up take.
Apple Inc and their products have flourished because the free market allows for innovation to flourish
Innovation will only flourish when there is incentive to do so and the incentive is profit. Without the incentive of profit - who is going to invent the next ground breaking product and in turn create the next Apple Inc or Google or BHP?
Just look at the USSR – everything they manufactured was garbage – nothing worked except the AK47
Look a Greece now – they produced hardly anything and yet have a massive public service and look at the massive debt they have run up. The US is not much better but at least they still have an Entrepreneurial culture which in time, will get them out of their jam as they export their way out their current debt problems. What can Greece do? Nothing but put their hand out for a hand out.
Posted by: Andy Semple | October 19, 2011 at 02:23 PM
So in other-words Andy Communism as you call it kills the same number of people the neoliberal capitalism does every two years?
Posted by: Dave | October 19, 2011 at 02:53 PM
...and so because the free market is innovative and creates neat toys, they are then allowed carte blanch to manipulate the democratic process to their own end and excess profit benefit and dictate their own governance, taxation and regulation with this accured wealth over and above the voter's will?
These free marketers who are allowed to bet other peoples money on the rise and fall of the market, whilst contributing nothing to it at all?
These people who demand and recieve special treatment from their bought and paid for zombies on both sides of government becuase they are 'the job-makers' and 'improve our standard of living' (what was that about betting on the rise and fall again?) whilst the entire US middle class slides further into debt, never to be re-paid, thanks to hard won free market 'rights' like crappy minimum wages, cowboy financial markets and the worst healthcare system in the developed world?
Posted by: pk | October 19, 2011 at 03:15 PM
You are seriously deluded, comrade Dave.
Posted by: Andy Semple | October 19, 2011 at 03:19 PM
a few Commies on the fringe of a popular 'left' demonstration, not dissimilar to the far right ratbags who frequent say, anti carbon tax rallies and tea party rallies. Yes the ones that embarrass the 'true' conservatives, Are they indicative of what conservative grievances are about?
Posted by: tee | October 19, 2011 at 03:39 PM
Don't mention National Socialism and Communism as if they are similar ideologies mate, shows your historical ignorance.
Posted by: Sam | October 19, 2011 at 03:55 PM
Well exactly tee.
As for the Australian rallys - let me quote another message board poster who articluates just 2 gripes people in Australia have and just why they might be protesting....
"we live in a country with one of the highest house price to income ratios in the western world, long-standing bank bailouts in the form of Govt deposit guarantees, and home buyer grants that serve only to inflate prices further out of reach to ordinary people whilst the monopolists who own multiple properties continue to get handed tax breaks and capital gains exemptions."
"We have a substantial percentage of our wages directed straight into the hands of the financial services sector via mandatory superannuation which has on average returned less than a bank savings account whilst providing generous fees and bonuses to the finance industry."
Posted by: pk | October 19, 2011 at 03:56 PM
Andy, thanks for this piece, the videos and your comments. I was going to respond to some of the less than rational comments on here, but you and Michael Sutcliffe have already done it nicely.
I noticed the Che Guevarra tee shirts in the first clip (with the Communists). Glenn Beck did a great series on communism which started by asking the question, "Why is it cool to wear a Che tee shirt but close to illegal to wear a swastika?" (I paraphrase.)
The Soviet Story clip is disturbing, important and an apropo follow-on to the first clip. Keep up the great work!
Posted by: Janet H. Thompson | October 19, 2011 at 05:04 PM
Andrew Bolt called, he wants his poorly researched, heavily generalized, fear mongering back.
Posted by: Rick | October 19, 2011 at 05:21 PM
So what if the Comms are there. If there were more working class family Democrats who wren't so dumbed down by media propoganda in the USA, then the Comms would be further diminished.
The alternative of moneyed 'conservative' parties is no answer either.
Answers always originate by well formed Laborites/Democrats.
Posted by: Michael Webb | October 19, 2011 at 06:46 PM
Of all the great figures in history, Joseph Stalin was the most amazing. He was the grandson of owned serfs, the son of a drunken cobbler, who grew up in a hovel in Georgia. He was educated in a seminary to about Year 11 standard; he was short, ugly, and had a slightly withered arm. When he was born in 1879, the Romanov dynasty was still on the throne and Joseph’s chances of ever being anything other than wandering hobo were virtually nil. Russian was his second language - which he always spoke with a thick Georgian accent.
By 1946 he was the most powerful Tsar the Russian Empire had ever known. He was the conqueror of Berlin and was feted and crawled to by the aristocratic Churchill and the old-money millionaire, Roosevelt.
He dragged Russia out of backwardness and, in the space of 20 years, turned a peasant society with 80%+ illiteracy and virtually no heavy industry into a super power with atomic weapons and, shortly after his death, man's first step into space.
Stalin achieved probably more than any other leader in history.
He was also a megalomaniac with paranoid personality disorder. He was a sadistic murderer who had no compunction about killing his best friends and even his own family, let alone millions in the Ukraine plus the Chechens, Ingush, Volga Germans, Crimean Tartars and anyone else who incurred his displeasure. He even had Molotov's wife arrested and sent to the Gulag - but she survived. Bronka Proskrebysheva, the wife of Stalin's Secretary and devoted follower, wasn't so lucky - she was shot.
He ruled by fear and never gave a direct order to anyone. Every order was always ambiguous so that no-one ever really knew what was wanted. There was always uncertainty, instability and fear. If you guessed wrong about what the Great Father and Teacher wanted, you were dead - and so was your whole family. He micro-managed every aspect of Soviet life from heavy industry and foreign policy to biology, the cinema, linguistics and everything in between - even how to grow lemons!
We should all be wary of any politician who is a megalomaniac and who micro-manages everything and who tells his ministers what their policy is. Now, who in Australia could be like that?
Stalin was never really a "communist" - he was a Tsar and the Soviet Union was his personal property - as was everyone in it.
He achieved the impossible in the Five Year Plans; and was just what was needed to defeat Hitler's armies - but the price! At least 25 million dead in the war, and probably 10-15 million dead as a result of the purges and the collectivisation campaign.
His legacy lives on. Saddam Hussein modelled himself on Stalin. People with his "personality disorder" are still attracted to politics, and an imitation Stalin still runs North Korea. And we have Kevin Rudd, Bob Brown, and their minions who display all the same symptoms as Stalin.
Stalin also invented the word "Kulak" which no-one could actually define. Basically it effectively meant anyone Stalin wanted to silence and get rid off - anyone with an opposing view about anything. As soon as someone opened their mouth, they were screamed down with the accusation "Kulak!" or "Trotskyite!". Today in Australia the equivalent of "Kulak" is "Racist!" But we've also added "Denier" and "redneck" and "xenophobe" and "Hansonite".
The legacy of Stalin lives on and it is on display everyday in the left-wing press(e.g. the SMH's Mike Carlton, Sarah Hanson-Young et al),the ABC and SBS.
The life and methods of Stalin should be compulsory study in every school. Unfortunately, most people born in the last 50 years barely know who he was or what he did. And they don't realise it could happen again!
The leftists, the Greens, the Occupy ... Street fad, the Climate change scare mongers, the multi-culturists, the political correctness fanatics, are all cut from the same cloth as Stalin. Remember, the Soviet Union was the most "multi-cultural" country on earth and it also had the most "democratic" constitution in the world.
The price of liberty truly is eternal vigilance. The left and the Greens are well organised and it really is time that people who believe in freedom started to get organised and stand up to these subversive Stalinist bullies.
Posted by: Jack Richards | October 19, 2011 at 07:09 PM
[We should all be wary of any politician who is a megalomaniac and who micro-manages everything and who tells his ministers what their policy is. Now, who in Australia could be like that?]
Kevin Rudd fits the bill - just pray like Hell he never makes it back into The Lodge. Kevin has an explosive temper when he doesn't get his way....just ask this lass, or any of his long suffering staff. The problem with our Kevin is that he has a narcissistic personality and believes he is totally indispensable to situations - he projects this not only here, but also on the global stage.
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/rudd-a-pig-over-plane-food-hissy-fit-20090416-a85z.html
And btw: I enjoyed reading your very informative post.
Posted by: bluebell | October 19, 2011 at 07:39 PM
Cheers Janet.
Pity about some of the disturbed commentators who troll here.
Anyone who thinks communism is the solution is gone in the head. Dave is such a person who comes to mind.
Posted by: andy semple | October 19, 2011 at 08:35 PM
Congratulations on a fine history lesson. Your comment that "people who believe in freedom (should) start to get organised and stand up to these subversive bullies" is so true.
Alan Jones gave a great speech at the Press Club today, attacking coal seam gas mining and the trampling of people's - particularly farmer's rights, by Australian governments who seem intent on turning Australia into a quarry.
It is past time we stood up and protested farmers loss of rights, loss of agricultural land to overseas buyers and miners, potential pollution of aquifers,loss of food security, destruction of rural towns and loss of various freedoms.
Those sitting around protesting about corporate greed would do well to open their eyes and see
what their governments are doing in Australia.
The Federal Government is convinced it can buy the next election with compensation for the carbon tax, increases to pensions, lower taxes and so forth.
It is to be hoped that people are not so easily duped. I guess the new propaganda unit set up by the government will be tasked with doing just that - duping.
But I don't hold out much hope. The first question to Alan Jones on this serious subject was about his comment that police had prevented protesters in the "convoy of no confidence" from entering Canberra.
How intelligent and how concerned that young female reporter was about the serious issues Alan raised.
Posted by: ibbit | October 19, 2011 at 08:48 PM
Hubby and I watched the entire Press Club speech given by Alan Jones - one word: Magnificent. He project so well to what is happening to this country, from coast to coast, to town and city. It's utterly disgraceful what governments (both state and federal) are doing to this country. But what do you expect? Government are BROKE and hungry for revenue. They are now willing to rape and plunder the country for the almighty $$$. Stuff the farmers, stuff the towns people and pretty soon stuff the city dwellers. The scale of betrayal to the Australian people is the stuff worthy of people Revolution. Did you see the thick wads of paper that Jones was waving...pages and pages of ex-government officials now in the game of lobbying for the mining giants to incumbent governments. He only required that information by dogged efforts to obtain the details through freedom of information act.
And the opening question to Alan Jones was about his comment that police had prevented protesters in the "convoy of no confidence" from entering Canberra.
In your words:
How intelligent and how concerned that young female reporter was about the serious issues Alan raised.
So typical of the Left wing loon journos. She deliberately USED a deflection question which had NOTHING to do with the subject matter. Don't worry........millons of Australians watching that show would not have missed her grubby tactic. A paltry effort at character assassination. Thank God Jones was having none of it.
Back to Revolutions....at least the Arabs are willing to DIE for their causes....we on the other hand are to busy cowering like mongrel dogs while this government tramples over our rights, our democracy, and our livelihoods.
At least Jones won't hide or cower like a dog. It's time we stood by this man and supported him all the way on this issue of rampant coal seam gas and the utter destruction it is set to cause.
Posted by: bluebell | October 19, 2011 at 09:18 PM
Those communist, bald headed, angry (trying to look angry?), overweight and above all crazeee are scary indeed. They probably self publish their own books as well the egotistical communist bastards!
Posted by: Shane Fisher | October 19, 2011 at 09:44 PM
I can't help it, it is a good laugh.
Posted by: Shane Fisher | October 19, 2011 at 09:46 PM
Notice how the eco-tards that troll MH avoid these posts about their beloved communism?
The truth hurts doesn't it PK, Johnson, Oldman, Terra and Dante to name just a few.
What makes you think I am communist, socialist or any other ...ist Andy? Did you pull that out of your arse as well? You seem to be able to pull out reams of paper out of that hole, how ever did it get so large?
Posted by: oldman | October 19, 2011 at 10:13 PM
Your sarcastic reference to “The Spontaneous demonstrations” is apt. None of the so-called “spontaneous demonstrations” have been spontaneous, even the Tunisian, Egyptian etc. They were Gene Sharp revolutions, following the methods employed in Asia and Soviet satellite states.
OccupyWall street movement falls into the same camp.
See this Youtube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLIkyPtTuAU&feature=related
The notes below it are as concise a roundup of who is involved, as you will find.
Connections between The Working Family Party, Service Employees International Union (SEIU),, ACORN, The New Party, The DNC, Democratic Socialists of America, Tides, George Soros and The Obama Administration:
Patrick Gaspard, the current executive director of the DNC, former director of Obama's Office of Political Affairs, was an organizer for the New Party, the executive vice president of the SEIU Local 1199, political director for Bertha Lewis (the former president of ACORN) and a co-chair of the Working Families Party.
The New Party is a socialist political coalition co-founded in 1992 by academic and political activist Joel Rogers.
The first strategic meetings to plan the New Party were held in Joel Rogers' Madison, Wisconsin home; Wade Rathke, ACORN and SEIU founder and Gerry Hudson from Democratic Socialists of America and SEIU were in attendance at those meetings.
The New Party's influential Chicago chapter began to formed in January 1995. Its members consisted mainly of individuals from ACORN, SEIU and the Democratic Socialists of America. Obama attended a New Party function and received their endorsement in 1995.
In 1994, a New Party newspaper listed more than 100 activists "who are building the NP;" some names among the list of 100 were Noam Chomsky, Frances Fox Piven, Wade Rathke, Cornel West, Jon Barton of SEIU, Maude Hurd of ACORN and Margaret Shelleda of SEIU.
Gerry Hudson, SEIU Executive Vice President and original New Party member, serves on the board of the Apollo Alliance organized by Joel Rogers' group COWS Center on Wisconsin Strategy. The Alliance is a project of the Tides Center. Harry Reid credited the Apollo Alliance with helping to write the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
George Soros' Open Society Institute is a major source of money behind the Apollo Alliance and the Tides Foundation.
SEIU laid out the plans for Occupy Wall Street Months ago, as the story first broke byTheBlaze.com
I don't think it is generally recognized here in Australia how strong the Communist Party was in America and how strong the radical left remains.
Posted by: Pip | October 19, 2011 at 10:33 PM
The charge that the Occupy Wall Street movement is a vehicle to communism is idiotic one but it is worth noting that it is an effective means of undermining the mass movement; it attacks any example of insufficient political clarity that is not immediately rebuked; for example, attacking bankers rather than capital - which will happen in any mass movement (a matter of selective reporting) - it will invoke cries of gas chambers - just as it did with the German anti-G8 movement with a "foreshortened" critique of capitalism=racism=anti-Semitism. This is an absurd but common practice.
This first step is to use some idiot with a sign and a loudspeaker as a way to discredit the movement, see Andy's cut 'n' paste job above. (I am convinced he spends his days at the conservative glory hole waiting for these titbits to cut 'n' paste on this blog).
The second is to accuse the movement of totalitarian practices at any attempt to control the racist and bigots and therefore accuse them of being racists, bigots, Nazis and in this case, communists; Andy does this by invoking the image of Stalinist Russia. Clearly what he is attempting to do is to smear the whole movement with a "communist" tainted broad brush when it is hardly the case. A primary school student will tell you, after viewing the vid, that the vast majority of folk standing around Bachell are not taking notice of what he is saying, rather they are focused straight ahead. Also there is nothing in the vid to suggest that, "“warm welcome and overwhelming applause was some warm welcome for Bachell, the vid is much too heavily edited to assume that it was not applause for something the crowd are focused on.
The one thing we can be certain of is, the more successful protests become, the more viciously they will be attacked even here by Andy. Fox news will also ensure that the movement is continually vilified. Keep it in mind when you read Andy's next hatchet job.
Posted by: oldman | October 19, 2011 at 11:23 PM
whilst the entire US middle class slides further into debt, never to be re-paid
You're a believer in Swan-economics I take it
Posted by: Anton | October 19, 2011 at 11:39 PM
I think you are being extremely naive, Oldman or otherwise, maybe an old mate of Mark Aarons?
There is just a truck load of evidence about the organisations behind this OccupyWall Street and they all tie back into Barack Obama's organizer days with Acorn and the Industrial Areas Foundation, Chicago.
The Industrial areas Foundation is very active here in Australia, through the Sydney Alliance. The Sydney Alliance is basically a training body for Organizers like GetUP etc. They partner with all sorts of mainstream "partners" like George Pell et al.
Now, I know this video will be like a red rag to a bull!
But check it out.
Its Glenn Beck, but its correct.
The Left like to deny their "leftdom" because the Mum's and Dads might freakout if they are too open about it.
http://thelibertyjournal.com/2009/08/10/communist-linked-tides-foundation-funded-apollo-alliance-helped-write-obamas-stimulus/
Posted by: Pip | October 19, 2011 at 11:51 PM
For what it's worth I disagree with Andy on this issue. The people in the protests come from all sections of society. Left wingers yes, but many are just ordinary people who are fed up with the system the way it is operating. Ordinary every day workers who have seen their savings decimated, their homes devalued and their jobs at risk. The fact that Coomunists are infiltrating into these protests is damaging the reason why many are there. These people are justifably angry at government, and a system that fleeces decent people and treats them with utter disregard. Ordinary people have no defence from bad goverment and greedy corporations and amoral CEO's. Their only recourse is to protest in the streets when their politcans refuse to listen. It's the same with Gillard Carbon Tax. She made a promise to the Australian electorate to gain office, then backflipped when the Greens made it a demand in exchange for their support in forming a minority government. Citizens all over the West are revolting against the lies, the spin and the utter corruption infiltrating in government, our banking sector and business. When you put people's life savings at risk, their homes, and their jobs you can expect blowback. These are the things that bring down governments, cause social unrest and chaos. The elite in these circles have bought it upon themselves. Poverty is rising, the rich are growing fatter and the natives are restless.....these are dangerous times because it leaves an opening for undesirable political elements to move in. Hitler found such an opening and expoited it to devestating effect. Australia itself is not immune to dangerous change. People know longer trust politcans - and Gillard's behaviour has not helped.
Posted by: bluebell | October 20, 2011 at 12:05 AM
It seems there are very few rich countries, more a whole lot of rich people and corporations; those who got rich looting the public wealth and exhausting natural resources around the world.
The blood suckers have also rushed to the fore, with their wish lists of pro-corporate policies: privatizing education and social security, private health with it's $100,000 operating theatre bills, slashing public services, getting rid of the last constraints on corporate power, all amidst the economic crisis the world over.
More sickening is the trillions of dollars spent and been spent on the war machine and war technology that will make a human body explode without destroying the surrounding infrastructure and buildings. Enough to warm the blood of the extremist conservative.
Posted by: oldman | October 20, 2011 at 12:37 AM
Oh sorry I forget, if it wasn't for the war machine there may never have been iPods, iPhones phones and barcode scanning at the local supermarket. Thank god for small mercies.
Posted by: oldman | October 20, 2011 at 12:39 AM
I have written an ode to the Greens and left Labor (and now, the 99% occupiers):
Imagine there are no economic rationalists
It's easy when you're high
No rednecks below us
Above us only dole cheques
Imagine all the barking moonbats
Preparing for gaia's doomsday
Imagine there's no country
It isn't hard to starve
We can't hunt or eat meat
No authentic religions too
Imagine all the macrame moonbeams
Weaving baskets in peace...
You may say I'm the chief cat herder
But I'm not the only one
Hopefully some day you will join us
Knitting yogurt around the communal bucket bong
Imagine we're at year zero
You'll be reprogrammed if you can't
Forget about greed or hunger
Our brother chairman will outlaw it
Imagine all the people
Sharing a few cans of beans
You may say I'm the chief equality officer
But I'm not the only one
Hopefully some day you will join us
Where we can all claim victimhood as one
Posted by: . | October 20, 2011 at 10:00 AM
I liked your re-configuring of Imagine.
The problem is that we have more in common that what separates us as they say. Yet the difference, makes all the difference.
In response to Dave:
I watched the Interview with G.M.Tamas and I think once it gets to 5.55 mins in, we can all feel sympathy for the plight of the Hungarians as we do for the American's now even for the other Europeans and ourselves. Nobody is really immune.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0G7XljdSOI&feature=related
It is worth noting, for what its worth that G.M.TAMAS is a beneficiary of his fellow countryman, George Soros.
>>G.M. Tamás
(1948) served in the Hungarian parliament between 1989 and 1994. He was head of the Hungarian Academy’s Institute of Philosophy and is recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Soros Foundation in Hungary.
http://www.eurozine.com/authors/tamas.html
Posted by: Pip | October 20, 2011 at 10:55 AM
I liked your re-configuring of Imagine.
The problem is that we have more in common than what separates us as they say. Yet the difference, makes all the difference.
Typo!
Posted by: Pip | October 20, 2011 at 10:57 AM
I think you're misinterpreting sarcasm.
Lack of regulation allowed bankers to gamble and commit fraud on a massive scale, and FM & FM had very little to do with the subprime collapse.
Posted by: Sancho | October 20, 2011 at 11:28 AM
A person with limited reasoning ability, in reading Andy’s article, would form the opinion that communism has a monopoly on evil. I’m sure that is Andy’s shifty and dishonest purpose.
The truth is that the vast majority of dictatorships and military rules have dire consequence for the people. Extreme regimes have limited life span, and frequently they are replaced by regimes just as extreme. Only clever countries are capable of maintaining governments that are not too far to the right and not too far to the left. For this precise reason sites that, under the guise of ‘free speech’ encourage extreme views, e.g. Menzies House, are evil, poisonous and dangerous.
It’s up to moderate people to expose lies, half truths and sheer illogical arguments. For example it’s illogical and a lie to say that ‘capitalism’ in its recent and current form can survive forever. Capitalism and all western countries economies are based on increasing consumption year after year. ‘Capitalism’ dies if it doesn’t grow. You cannot keep on inflating a balloon, it will eventually bust. No matter what you measure (e.g. oil reserves, coal, uranium reserves, water, arable land, etc.), they all have a limited life span. It has taken millions of years to form the vast deposits of fossil fuel and it will take few generations to consume them. And what is going to happen to our way of life when these resources are extinguished? Of course those enamored with all aspects of ‘capitalism’ close their eyes to any negative consequence of ‘capitalism’. They refuse to admit that there are problems with this theory and hence do not look at alternatives or way to improve it.
Clever societies identify these problems and try to do something about (e.g. renewable energies … yes, Edison hade several tries before he perfectioned the light bulb, Rome wasn’t built in one day, and the longest march all start with a single step!!!), and the best people with limited mental abilities can do is object and oppose while remaining nailed in the past.
So Andy, instead of criticizing ‘communism’ and placing ‘capitalism’ on a pedestal, why not discuss the pro and con of each so that we can adopt the best policies of both? That would provide an honest and somewhat novel discussion for this site. I’ll give you a start, how about comparing literacy rate in Cuba before and after 1959? And no, I’m not a Castro supporter but I recognize that Cubans have better health outcomes than US citizens. Empirical evidences clearly demonstrate that the Cuban health system is superior to that of the USA, so why shouldn’t the USA, or any other country, consider the Cuban health model?
Posted by: dante | October 20, 2011 at 03:54 PM
There are so many flaws, errors and outright lies in that drivel that it's not worth anyone's effort to try and give you an education.
Your notion that you are taking some moderate centrist path that will provide an optimum outcome is like a guy choosing between a plate of fresh vegetables and a plate of arsenic and deciding the best option is a little of both.
Your notion that the Cuban government sacrificing the wellbeing of a whole nation to allocate funds towards a limited number of key areas so they can point the media cameras at them to promote the supreme rulers is a case of a simpleton idealist swallowing the propaganda regime of a totalitarian dictatorship. You know the Cuban health system uses forced abortions if the state declares the life of that child is not in the public interest? I suppose your type would support this so long as the key medical statistics remain higher than the USA.
Posted by: Michael Sutcliffe | October 20, 2011 at 07:54 PM
Hey Dante,
"A person with limited reasoning ability, in reading Andy’s
article, would form the opinion that communism has a monopoly on evil."
Didn't you read the excellent and well-written comment above by Jack Richards which was some very good history on Stalin and communism? If you did, maybe you didn't quite understand it? But then, who knows how the mind of a self-proclaimed moderate who supports the brutality and lack of freedom called communism thinks.
What intrigues me is how you got from "Occupy Chicago" etc.
to the Cuban health model - a bit mystifying that. But silly me, of course, you are discussing the pros and cons of capitalism (freedom) and communism (repression), how could I miss such profound intent.
"Clever societies identify these problems and try to do something about (e.g. renewable energies … yes, Edison hade several tries before he perfectioned the light bulb, Rome wasn’t built in one day, and the longest march all start with a single step!!!), and the best people with limited mental abilities can do is object and oppose while remaining nailed in the past."
With the "clever societies" para you have excelled yourself. How could we not take you and your reformist, moderate zeal seriously after such profound thinking?
Do keep communicating your thoughts, they are of intense interest and we MH inhabitants with our "evil, poisonous, and dangerous" thoughts are duly chastened, and deeply appreciative that we have such a great intellect to instruct us in the error of our ways.
Posted by: ibbit | October 20, 2011 at 08:35 PM
You are seriously deluded, comrade Dante.
Capitalism isn’t perfect, but it’s the best system we have. Capitalism allows anyone the greatest opportunity to succeed on their own.
Communism allows the selected elite the greatest opportunity to succeed at the expense of others.
Communism provides nothing but despair, misery and murder.
I suggest you read Animal Farm and 1984.
Then you might just realise what a false god communism is.
Posted by: Andy Semple | October 20, 2011 at 09:12 PM
The rot started with President Clinton and continued with Bush and Obama.
It was the US federal government that took the leash off Freddie Mac and Fannie May.
Wall Street just followed the money and leveraged the bejesus out of it.
If it wasn’t for the big push from big Government to get more people into their own homes (and a lot of people bought homes who didn’t have the ability to service the loan) , the subprime mess would never have happened.
Posted by: Andy Semple | October 20, 2011 at 09:17 PM
Andy, you realise that Orwell was a socialist and that line from Animal Farm "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which” effectively says that real existing socialism and real existing capitalism are the same thing, whilst the politics of 1984 is straight up Trotskyism of the Schatmanite variety.
omnia sunt communia
Dave
Posted by: Dave | October 20, 2011 at 10:01 PM
Dante referred to his favored communitarian example of Cuba’s healthcare outcomes as an example par excellence of the Communist model. Cuba is a relatively small, “isolated community”, intact, in its traditions and social demographic. In earlier iterations of the Australian culture, doctors were respected as model citizens and also fostered as keepers of communal health etc in a village setting.
Cuba reflects, in many respects a past which kept modernity at bay which even the “progressives of America” would describe as backward in other respects. This is not a model that either the socialists/communists or capitalists would valorize, maybe the Greens would but lets face it, its not going to happen. World population is too great to go back to such older models unless there was loss of life on a vast scale.
Posted by: Pip | October 20, 2011 at 10:18 PM
Jack Richards earlier referred to Kulaks.
As with the middle classes, Stalin and Lenin saw them standing in the way of their plans for collectivization. We might see the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and their plans under the Agra Foundation to collectivize GM cropping under their model of philanthro-capitalist, agri-business in Africa as similar, if we thought about it.
The Greens attitude to food production and the land here in Australia and their attitude to the farmer are no doubt similar to Stalin’s attitude. On the other hand, the affluent Australian farmer is just as resentful of whole scale plans to turn their traditional farming practices upside down and buy out their farms for some theoretical dystopian collectivist concept.
>>>Kulaks (Russian: кула́к, kulak, "fist", by extension "tight-fisted"; kurkuls in Ukraine, also used in Russian texts in Ukrainian contexts) were a category of relatively affluent peasants in the later Russian Empire, Soviet Russia, and early Soviet Union. The word kulak originally referred to independent farmers in the Russian Empire
According to the political theory of Marxism-Leninism of the early 1900s, the kulaks were class enemies of the poorer peasants.[1] Vladimir Lenin described them as "bloodsuckers, vampires, plunderers of the people and profiteers, who fatten on famine.”[2] Marxism-Leninism had intended a revolution to liberate poor peasants and farm laborers alongside the proletariat (urban and industrial workers). In addition, the planned economy of Soviet Bolshevism required the collectivization of farms and land to allow industrialization or conversion to large-scale agricultural production.
In practice, these Marxist-Leninist theories led to years of conflicts and disruption of agriculture when kulaks resisted expropriation of their private property, and Soviet officials responded with violent political repression
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak
The only difference now with the European project and Global project is that the elite have worked out how to achieve their ends without bloodshed. They use hedge funds and shifting capital to decimate the economic power of everyone except themselves, especially the Kulacs and the middle class by literally “taking down the economy” and then taking a leaf from the middle ages esoteric religions, where only the “elect” need to know about it.
The middleclass and the Kulacs are always a problem for Totalitarians because they are educated and they have money to form a resistance. If you decimate the whole economy it’s not so much of a problem.
Look at what Jeffery Sachs ( Director of UNEP) did to Russia and Eastern Europe with shock Capitalism in the same titled book by Naomi Kline. China will not give George Soros or any of his network of affiliates access. They know the score.
Posted by: Pip | October 20, 2011 at 10:42 PM
I very clearly said that pro and con are present in all models. What we need to do is make use of the positives and avoid the negatives. I don't think it's such a radical concept.
Posted by: dante | October 21, 2011 at 02:05 PM
Michael, it would be a good idea to point out the flaws, errors and lies in what I wrote. The problem is that you oppose to what I said because you fail to understand. I support no system in its totality. I take time to evaluate the lessons of history. It's evident that you are motivated by ideology that someone else has derived from you ... and you just repeat it without considering the consequences ...
Posted by: dante | October 21, 2011 at 02:13 PM
Am I deluded because I recognise that right and left regimes have been disastrous for the people? Or because I suggested that we can learn from the pro and con of each system? I think that you'll promptly recognise a deluded person next time you look in a mirror!!
Posted by: dante | October 21, 2011 at 02:17 PM
Ibbit, none of the comments on this site have spoken a word against right wing regimes. Have you ever heard of Augusto Pinochet?
If your fellow inhabitants of this right wing site have an "intense interest" or they mock my contribution has no effect on me. I have spent some 50 years reading, studying, discussing, evaluating and critically examining various political, economics, social and religious concepts. I've applied my scientific background to reach conclusions based on evidences and facts. I respect the opinion of people like yourself but unfortunately I find it shallow and second-hand because people like you just repeat what others have planted in your head, and you are are incapable of original thought.
Posted by: dante | October 21, 2011 at 02:28 PM
Thanks Dave, it's a pleasure to see that some of the inhabitants of MH (I classify myself as an unwelcome intruder!!) is well informed and recognises that extremes of each doctrine have similar outcomes because they have so many things in common. But to see this a person has to remove blinkers and pink-coloured glasses
Posted by: dante | October 21, 2011 at 02:36 PM
because people like you just repeat what others have planted in your head, and you are are incapable of original thought.
That's a bit ironic coming from Dante, who has done nothing but advocate extending the current social democratic model as the answer to all our problems. Mate, the West has done this for the last few hundred years and that's culminated in our current morally and financially bankrupt big government welfare states.
We're the ones who are saying that through reasoning we can see a better way to get out of this rut. Not you. You simply advocate more of the problems we have.
Posted by: Michael Sutcliffe | October 21, 2011 at 02:43 PM
(I classify myself as an unwelcome intruder!!)
As long as you (attempt to) put forward a rational argument you are always welcome and certainly not an intruder. It's only when people lose and resort to taking cheap pot shots of no real value that they fall from being welcome.
Posted by: Michael Sutcliffe | October 21, 2011 at 02:48 PM
Michael if the West has been social democratic for the "last few hundred years" which is what, since at least 1811, does that mean we when straight from mercantilism to social democracy and thus laissez faire capitalism never existed?
cheers
Dave
Posted by: Dave | October 21, 2011 at 04:02 PM
We didn't go straight to anything. Post feudalism it's all pretty much a grey mixture and societies are classified to the degree they have free markets vs controlled economies or individual freedom vs collective statism. There is no pure communist society you can show me as they all still have markets and individuals. You can show me societies that are highly communist (and they look like shit!), but all still have some level of private property, markets and individual choice. Similarly, there may be no complete capitalist society as they all have taxes, public programs and some violations of individual rights. I can show you societies that have substantial freedom, but I'm sure you can still point out socialist areas within them. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to pretend the differential between these ideas isn't important or of direct consequence to the members of those societies.
What we can see in the West is that after the Enlightenment we had smaller states with smaller government than we have now. What we have seen since that time is the gradual, but never ending, growth of the state reflected in such indisputable things such as the increasing size of government, increasing total taxation levels, amount of regulation a country has, or amount of legislation that's passed each year. So, if you want to put it in that way, the state has been progressing down the social democratic path substantially over that time. The nations that went faster down this path are the nations that are struggling, and ultimately failing, first. The Western nations that maintained more capitalism and freedom seem to be the ones that are best poised to be the better nations in which to live during the next century. (Or maybe you feel Greece would be a good place to live in the next century, but personally I don't).
Posted by: Michael Sutcliffe | October 21, 2011 at 04:50 PM
This bloody house is boring as shit. I've read a fair bit about forenamed and he would have been bored shitless with your carry on. He was a man of honour and did not suffer fools of any persuasion. Which many abound here, trolls included. OPPY was a good mate of Menzies and although he had the usual predujuices, expounded coherently, fuck the lot of you.
Posted by: Shane Fisher | October 23, 2011 at 12:02 AM