Re Kylie's comments on my post:
> June Brough said:
> >All the attempts at "communism" have resulted in totalitarianism.
> >Pre-Gorbachev USSR was not a democracy, although they had "elections"
> >(with only communist organisations allowed to nominate candidates).
> >China isn't exactly my idea of a democracy either. People seem fairly
> >desperate to get away from Cuba too.
>
> so, are you saying that England, the US, and/or Australia are democratic?
> I say they are not. We all believe that its the majority that make the
> decisions as we elect representatives for us but do those representatives
> actually do what we vote them in to do? I will use Australia as it is what
> I am most familiar with. Polititians here are voted in on their policies.
> Recently (last 10 years) more so than before polititians have been getting
> away with reneging on thier promises and we can't do a damn thing about it.
> We have in effect a two party system. Both almost indistinguishable from
> each other. What choice do we have? As it costs money to put oneself up
> as a candidate and even more to run a campaigne - do we have a democracy
> for the rich? I do not have a snowball's chance in hell of ever getting
> elected to government because I will never have that kind of money. It's
> got nothing to do with what the majority ofthe people want. People vote on
> the information that they receive. This is mostly from the popular press.
> The press are owned by rich people (by definition). They are extremely
> biased and only report what they want. Where I live (WA) there is only one
> daily newspaper. At a recent election they refused to publish any of the
> Aust. Democrates press releases. As a result the Aust Dem lost most of
> their deposits.
>
> How is this democracy?
I'm not an apologist for the Australian, US or British government,
but I would still rather live under any of them than in a country
which didn't allow me to vote or nominate candidates or stand for
office myself if I wished (which I don't).
>
> >I wish it wasn't the case, but - look at the former Yugoslavia, and
> >the bloodbath happening right now in central Africa, not to mention
> >Mozambique, Chechenya - do you need any more evidence? If people
> >want or need something badly enough they will fight for it. I am not
> >saying that socialism automatically means physical violence, but any
> >system that has to be imposed forcibly on human society is unstable.
>
> And our system does no violence? How do you define violence. Surely
> leaving 10-20% of the population to starve is doing violence to them.
> Surely (in the US) allowing people to rot with gangrene and die, because
> the 'democratically' elected government won't provide adequate health care
> is doing violence? Surely allowing children to die from abuse (in the UK)
> because the govt won't provide enough support and social workers to deal
> with this domestic problem is doing a violence? Or am I the only one who
> is appaulled and considers these things violent?
>
My statement was a reply to J W N Wright's question to me "Are you
arguing that humans are rapacious and will compete each other to
death, and therefore cannot be trusted to living as socialists?" My
point was that people often are violent, and you seem to agree with
that.
> Yes, I'm emotional on this topic. But I have lived (past) in the
> underclass. IE Homeless, and getting heaps of police attention. So I know
> first hand that the police are there to protect the interests of the middle
> class and the status quo.
>
> On that other subject with which we disagree, June, I'd like to know why
> you say some work should be paid more than others. For example, should a
> doctor be paid more than a janitor? Is this because you think that
> erstwhile doctors would all be janitors?
Something like that. Why should people take up difficult and
dangerous work such as coalmining if they could get the same reward
for sitting in an air conditioned office or working in the open air?
And should people who work in the
> caring profession get less than people who are in business and say employ
> lots of people.
> What's your criteria of worth?
There is an enormous difference between saying that all people have
equal worth, as people, and saying that the contributions that they
make to the rest of society are equal. I wouldn't presume to judge
the value of anyone's worth as a person. I do still believe that some
people make very much greater contributions to the general good, by
their actions, than others, and that they should be rewarded accordingly.
Sincerely,
June Brough.
PS. Kylie - Live Long and Prosper!
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wed May 17 11:05:52 1995
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 10:07:29 -0700 (PDT)
From: Vanessa Micol Vanderbrug <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Feminism Ecology <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Poverty in the South
I would like to comment on the terminology used in the discussion
comparing industrialized nations to less developed nations. I have
recently learned that the term "Third World" is a degrading term. This
term implies that these nations are somehow inferior to "First World"
nations. A better term to use is the North(Industrialized narions) and
the South (less developed nations). In regards to the debate over where
the poor are worse off the north or the south, I think it is important to
acknowledge that there is a North in the South as well as a South in the
North, get my drift? If there are any questions about the use of this
terminology please feel free to write me, I have just recently figured it
out for myself!
Respectfully,
Vanessa Vanderbrug
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wed May 17 12:34:33 1995
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 14:36:23 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jayne S Docherty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Poverty in the South
In-Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
On Wed, 17 May 1995, Vanessa Micol Vanderbrug wrote:
> I would like to comment on the terminology used in the discussion
> comparing industrialized nations to less developed nations. I have
> recently learned that the term "Third World" is a degrading term. This
> term implies that these nations are somehow inferior to "First World"
> nations. A better term to use is the North(Industrialized narions) and
> the South (less developed nations). In regards to the debate over where
> the poor are worse off the north or the south, I think it is important to
> acknowledge that there is a North in the South as well as a South in the
> North, get my drift? If there are any questions about the use of this
> terminology please feel free to write me, I have just recently figured it
> out for myself!
> Respectfully,
> Vanessa Vanderbrug
Dear Vanessa and list members,
Another way of thinking about this is the idea of center and periphery.
The center being the locus of "development," wealth, power, etc. and the
periphery being those places where these things are more or less
absent. This concept was developed by the "dependency theorists". Among
their
many points was the fact that the center (i.e., industrialized nations or
the north) establish "outposts" of privilege and wealth in the periphery
(i.e., less developed countries or the south). These serve to drain off
resources from the truly marginalized periphery. There is a periphery in
the center as well as a center in the periphery. I used this theory to
analyze the construction of dependency among the Lakota during the time
that reservations were established.... and to analyze how and why these
peripheral places are now being labelled as dumping grounds for toxic wastes.
Jayne
