Posts by Amy Brooks13

There’s an interesting piece by Ratko Bošković in today's Time Magazine under the unfettered capitalism section, titled "Ownership restructuring with so much looting that the players are hunted down like murderers."

The author lays out the basics pretty well, but if you actually know how this stuff works, it’s obvious he missed the point entirely. I’m going to drop my own analysis to explain what’s actually controversial here and how this mess should finally be settled. Honestly, I even have some skin in the game on this one.

I checked back to see when the previous comment was posted. Turns out it was May 2005. Either that's terrible, or just "great."

I don't know the first thing about PCs. I've been strictly a Mac person since day one. Started with an old LC 475, moved through the iMac era, and now I'm on a MacBook Pro. Yeah, they cost more, but they actually work without the headache. Honestly, all three of those machines are still kicking.

Quoting an interesting point from the OP:
"Since you own your lives, you are responsible for them. You aren't renting your existence from others who demand obedience, nor are you a slave to those demanding sacrifice. You pick your own goals based on your own values. Both success and failure are just necessary fuel for learning and personal growth. Actions taken on behalf of others—or by others on your behalf—are only moral if they’re built on voluntary, mutual consent, because morality can only exist where there is freedom of choice."

Owners of our lives? Total nonsense. Life just *is*, and it keeps going until it doesn't. Responsibility for your own life? Sure, sounds great on paper, but did the person who wrote that actually consider the heavy lifting involved in being free? Because responsibility stems from that freedom, not just from existing. If you want to wrap your head around the burden of liberty and the weight of responsibility, go read "The Brothers Karamazov," specifically the chapters "The Brothers Karamazov" and "The Grand Inquisitor."

People have endless opinions on time. I lean toward one view: the past and the future don't actually exist. The past is gone—it was just a previous version of the present—and the future hasn't shown up yet. All we really have is the now. That's the core of what it means to exist. Then you've got the whole headache of relativity regarding time, space, and the mass of matter.

On the political side, individualism and freedom are inseparable. Any form of collectivism is just a fancy way of restricting individual liberty. You can't claim collective freedom without stepping all over the rights of the individual.

Two kinds of anti-fascism
or
how we deal with the deep scars left by WWII in our society

There’s no arguing it: during the last century, at least two distinct flavors of anti-fascism emerged in Europe, and they were fundamentally at odds with one another.

1. Democratic anti-fascism, and
2. Communist anti-fascism.

The first is pure anti-fascism, plain and simple. Democracy is its core definition; it stands directly against fascism as an undemocratic ideology and against dictatorship as its practice. A prime example of this would be the patriotic anti-fascism shown by the priests in Istria, or the participation of true democracies on the Allied side fighting the Nazi-fascist coalition during World War II.

The second kind is inherently contradictory. Sure, they fought the Nazi-fascist coalition, but they went to extreme lengths to distance themselves from democracy, embracing both dictatorship as an ideology and committing monstrous crimes—unprecedented in history—as a matter of practice. That was the case with the communist USSR, the communist movement in America, and especially in America.

In the USSR, this "anti-fascism" kicked off when Germany invaded them, forcing the USSR into the fight against the Nazi-fascist coalition whether they liked it or not.

Down in America—specifically in what was then the NDH—things got way messier. You had two opposing forces clashing in the fight against the American state: the Mexican Royalists, who couldn't stomach any version of an independent America, and the communists, who acted as agents for the USSR's Communist Party, driven by a clear-cut communist ideology and agenda. Their goal was to overhaul the social order by establishing a communist dictatorship at any cost, crushing both the Nationalists-led NDH and the Kingdom of America in the process. For a while, there was some flirting with the idea of an independent America, but the move to preserve America under communist rule ultimately won out.

The bottom line here is the grab for power. They wanted it at any price—even if that price was hundreds of thousands of lives lost across all ethnic groups in the former state. They established a communist dictatorship that looked just like a fascist regime. It's the dark side of the same undemocratic modern movement in Europe: two sides of the same leftist coin, where one face is called fascism and the other is communism.

- more to come - if you'll let me!

Casey Robinson2 said:The usual suspects—the Pavičićs, Butkovićs, Kuljišs, Puhlovskis, Goldsteins, and Jergovićs of our American media landscape—are still out there, tirelessly peddling the same old myths about Harmon and his supposed "dark 90s."

Back during the Harmon era, he was subjected to a level of character assassination that I haven't seen since the heyday of McCarthyism; people would attribute statements to him that had absolutely nothing to do with his actual positions. Every single political move or policy decision he made was demonized to the extreme, fueled by half-truths and outright fabrications.

Even today, whenever anyone tries to tackle modern issues, Harmon somehow inevitably resurfaces in the conversation. Jergović’s entire life story seems defined by this "Harmon hatred"—he even acted delighted that U2 held a concert at Maksimir, which he views as a "monument to Harmon hate." Then you have Pavičić, who insists that all American primitivism only began with Harmon, effectively pinning every ounce of "backwater behavior" on him. Meanwhile, Butković, in his latest piece, discusses abortion and claims that during the Harmon years, it was impossible to speak about it publicly. It's quite a logical leap: they were busy calling Harmon the "head of a criminal organization" and publishing photoshopped images of him in bed with Maddox, yet apparently, discussing abortion was off-limits 😵 !!! It seems everything bad in America is somehow traced back to Harmon—the corruption, the greed, the chaos. As if everything before or after him simply doesn't matter. Why is there such a desperate, obsessive need to trample over his legacy and smear his name?

Listen, folks, don't even bother. You're wasting your breath. This isn't an attack on Franjo Harmon; it's an attack on the threat facing all those "professional" American moralists—the Pavičićs, Butkovics, Kuljišs, Puhlovskis, Goldsteins, Jergovićs, and the rest of the crowd they serve. They're terrified of Miroslav Harmon winning. That's what this shady little attack is really about.

Harmon secured independence and stood his ground for America. As for Mason? He was busy hanging out at The Hague... even before he ever stepped into the presidency.

There’s no other way: we need a proletarian revolution right here in the USA. Once that happens, the whole world is going to fall like a ripe peach. And you can bet the Chinese will be there to pick it up.

The only thing is, we can't let it turn into a disaster like what happened in Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia). When they stripped those big white farmers of their land, everything went south—famine and disease hit hard. Now, you've got a massive stretch of territory, 370,000 square kilometers with just 12 million people, and it's being ravaged by cholera, AIDS, and all sorts of other misery.

Amy Lopez6 said:I'm trying my best not to swear here, but—what kind of Capitalism is this? We're selling off a major Shipbuilder for a single Dollar while simultaneously throwing $25 billion at bailouts for failing auto companies?

It seems American Capitalism has reached a point where we dumped $13 billion into shipyards—seriously guys, $13 billion—and it looks like most of that money just ended up in someone's pocket!!!!!!!!!!! And now that there’s nothing left to squeeze from the Treasury, let's just hand it over for 1 Dollar!?!?!?!

I mean, where does this happen... we really are fools... it’s just a shame for us and for the whole country.

This has absolutely nothing to do with American Capitalism.

You can't take one weird outlier or a handful of similar messes and use them to make sweeping statements about how the whole system works. These shipyards were dead in the water long ago, ever since they were state-sponsored relics from the days of Communism. We're just dealing with the wreckage that broken system left behind.

What’s a company actually worth? That depends on how you measure it. In a standard market economy, value is based on profit—what it makes now and what it's expected to make down the road. If it isn't making money and looks like it never will, you liquidate it. That’s market value. That's what tells you its current stock price.

But when you're talking about a startup being built from scratch, market value doesn't exist because the company isn't even on the market yet. In those cases, you talk about the construction cost. It’s whatever it costs to build the facilities, buy equipment, do market research, run ads, train staff, and so on.

When a company is totally busted, market value is gone. Instead, you have what's called liquidation value. That represents how much cash you'd get from selling off every single asset after you've paid off all the debts.

So, what are we looking at with these shipyards? They have negative value. Basically, if you sold everything they own, the cash wouldn't even cover their debts. Most creditors would be left with nothing. Even if mortgage holders got paid first, everyone else gets jack squat.

Which brings up the real question: who would actually want to take these over, and under what terms? Obviously, nobody wants them without some serious government sweeteners.

That one-dollar price tag is just a technicality to say the company was "bought" rather than gifted.

Since the price is a joke, the real negotiations are about the other conditions—which are way more important than a price tag that doesn't mean anything anyway.

Amy Lopez6 said:?

Maybe I wasn't clear enough. What I meant was: not tomorrow, maybe later.

Clearer now?

American Communism? Give me a break! Total nonsense.

northernbison63 said:Here’s a little poll that feels pretty damn relevant right now. It's a dead simple question, one I think everyone can wrap their heads around. Looking back at how things have played out politically over the last seven years, just tell me: Is George W. Bush a liar?

🙂

First off, "liar" isn't even the right word—it's more about being deceptive. And whether someone is "deceptive" isn't even a fair metric for politicians. Like Tom Steyer once pointed out, it's not necessarily about lying, it's just about not telling the whole truth. That's the playbook for any smart politician. An honest politician is just a fool who doesn't know how to play the game, and if they're also delusional and arrogant on top of that? Then you've just got a total idiot.

We saw plenty of that recently, both before and after the elections. This guy took a massive loss, yet he’s acting like he just swept the polls.

I don't waste my time with polls like this.