Stalins Organ
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Posts posted by Stalins Organ
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So nothing has really changed since the Roman Empire then?
In the good ol' days you could buy Roman citizenship to get the vote & be protected from torture & whipping.
Of course it was massively expensive to do so - for non-citizen plebs who didnt' have the dosh it required 25 years service in the Auxiliaries - the non-citizen part of the army that was always first into the fight so the Legions (the citizens) didn't have to work too hard.
Back in 2002 the NY Times ran this piece on corruption through the ages.....
It seems the peasants are willing to tolerate a certain amount of it as long as their own lot continues to improve - or even a vast amount of it if their own lot improves markedly as well - "we" really don't give a rotund rodent's rectum who is ripping off the system as long as "we" are fat & happy too - bread & circuses all 'round eh what!
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So it was lately then?
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You haven't ben over here for a while, have you?
They're all Holden Commodores these days, and if that's inadequate then it's probably on account of it's Aussie designed & built.......
In fact they've been Holdens or Aussie Fords (Falcons) for decades now.......when did you say you were nabbed by a Subaru while you were trying to trying to race your 1100 over here??
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I was wondering if anyone knows how much the "withdrawl" from Iraq is going to change the US military budget over the next few years, and presumably total Govt spending too?
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We had Golden Delicious & Granny's on trees when I was a kid.
I never liked Braeburn - & don't like Jazz much either (it's a Braeburn cross IIRC) - I find the Pacific Rose pretty much perfect.
But today's 5+ for the day was 3 nectarines from the US, & a Packham pear & an orange both from Aus
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As I understand it you are still getting "old" varieties such as Granny Smiths & Golden Delicious, and missing out on the new "crispy" types such as Rose & Jazz.
I pay about $2.50-3.00/kg for either at my local supermarket.
You can still get Granny's here, and the occasional Braeburn, but Red Delicious hasn't been seen on shelves for years, and Pink Lady is completely unknown (I had to look it up).
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Apples could be cheaper & better in Aus tho.....& will be once you get over your non-tarrif trade barriors.....
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I'm sure there's a rugby one you could use too...when was the last time the Wallabies beat the AB's??
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There are few women who don't look a bit better with a smile & a makeover......the liverpudlian in another thread is an obvious case....but generally most of them scrub up nicer
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Jerome Boateng - plays for Man City - come on folks - all you had to do was look up the link!!
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Ah - yes good ol' anecdotal evidence and confirmation bias....and then moving the goal posts - it's not HOW the wealth is being used, not that it exists....
Sorry guys......all too flakey for me to consider it a rational hypothesis.
Which doesn't make it false of course......just to confuse you even further!
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Gunner that post illustrates my point - if the lower & middle classes have been increasing their relative wealth then I don't believe you can say that it is the uppoer classes that have been "pillaging".
Relative wealth has been increasing since hte 1930's for everyone....and if the middle classes cannot offer their children better economic conditions then that seems to me to be a result of a fairly massive depression/recession over the last few years......which should not be a great surprise.
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I think if I carry the track link for you it serves as proof of concept. Engineering is easily scaled up.
If the scaling up works you probably need to loose some weight.
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Much as I think ASL's "libertarianism" is bollocks, Gunner I think you also show a lamentable blindness to information that doesn't suit your purpose.
For example in table 1 in that article it says that the bottom 90% of income earners had their incomes increase by an average of 3.9% per annum 2002-2007, and gives much higher figures for the richer sections of society.
For me, being part of the 90% albeit not in the USA, the question is not whether that figure is higher or lower than that for others.
The question is whether those people are better off or not in 2007 than they were in 2002.
What was the average rate of inflation in that same time span? If it was <3.9% then the bottom 90% are actually better off - despite the "depredations" of the top 0.1%.
If inflation has been greater than 3.9% then you have a case.
But to simply stand there and scream "they got 100% and I only got 4% - it's not fair!" smacks of nothing more than jealousy, and that's not a basis for any sort of regulation at all!
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An inspired guess....but a little wiki-fu shows it is not so - their team had 1 player from clubs in each of Sitzerland, Japan, German & Russia - the Captain plays for Rostov.
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I look forward to you giving us a demo of that
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Probably easier to drive away a light tank than carry it......
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Sorry ASL - I'm a reasonable person - not a libertarian at all.
Without taxes BFC probably wouldn't exist either - rival companies would have machinegunned Steve & Charles long ago - or just kidnapped them to work as slaves in the bowels of Redm...er....somewhere
alternatively they might have paid "fees" to local "Security Providers" in order to be able to do business "peaceably"......
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AFAIK the middle class is also getting richer......as is the working class....and even the poor (according to Wiki over 70% of "poor" households in the USA in 2000 had a car, 76% had aircon, 62% had cable or satellite TV, etc, and 46% of them owned their own homes) ....in fact it pretty much looks like the whole world is actually getting richer over time and so it is not a zero-sum game - the rich getting richer does not mean someone else is getting poorer.
Does anyone know of stats showing how the "poverty line" has moved over the ages?
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That would be the Carrier, Bren, No 2 Mk I or II
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The peoples comissars are obviously the best people to determine and then overseea the coming redistribution of wealth.
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did you actually read what you quoted, or just leap in to a preconceived notion of what you think I said?
Look - the only issue I have is with your idea that extreme wealth is ANTI_democratic.
It's a very limited issue - just one of wording really - as you would ahve realised if you'd bothered to comprehend my posts - whether you agree with them or not.
I have no problem whatsoever with the notion that extreme wealth can influence democracy in ways that the voters may not realise and that thsi is normally not a good thing . I said as much in the 3rd paragraph you quoted above but clearly didn't bother to read!
Sometimes I despair of the ability of people here to understand that not everyone is talking about world shattering revelations......some times a little point is just a little point!
And jsut to show that _I_ do read _your_ posts, I dont' believe there is only 1 "party of money" either - that populist headlining - the moneyed elite have as many different opinions as anyone else - there are moneyed fascists and moneyed socialists, moneyed Greens and moneyed Industrialists and hte idea that htey are all secretly having tea together and laughing at us poor schmucks is a nice conspiracy theory that's right up there with the elders of Zion.
Afghanistan IED overview
in General Discussion Forum
Posted
Uh...I don't think Hitler's opposition to communism had much to do with the "peace in our time" stuff of the 30's - that was mainly down to internal political and military weakness - the French were desperate not to fight another war and had a socialist Govt in 1936-39, and the British knew that they simply couldn't - unfortunately neither of them realised that Germany couldn't either!