I spent a couple of hours reading about two hundred pages of Simon Sebag Montefiore’s bio of Stalin (The Red Tsar) yesterday, to prep for a blunty I wanted to write abut the difference between happiness and pleasure. (No, seriously, Satlin has much to tell us about this topic). But it got so thinky and grim that in the end I had to go detox with some teev.
So I wrote about that instead. (I’ll do Stalin next week).
I was listening to another cracker from RN the other day, I think it was LNL but I’m not sure, about all the pies Stalin stuck his fingers in, from economics & symbolic logic to wheat breeding & history. He believed that he had a great deal to offer the world on a huge variety of topics. The magins of his copies of serious works are seriously anotated in his handwriting. So unlike KI Sung who claimed to be an authority on everything, but just blatantly stole others efforts, Stalin actually seems to have expended some skull sweat.
He may not have been %100 in his assesment of the quality of his input and he was indoubidably a murderous psycopathic loon, which would tend to encourage others critiquing his work to, er, self censor. But perhaps he was a more thinky murderous psycopathic loon than most would give him credit for.
Ha! I knew you were a Stalinist. I just KNEW it!
+++As awesome as Whedon’s big screen effort will probably be, how much more awesome would it be to see the same characters work out their issues over four or five series.+++
Which of course is how the characters were originally developed: for the long-form (decades and counting) multithread stories in serialised comics. The characters had had so many years through so many writers and stories to get polished and build up a mythos, so that the films had a running start.
Doing Stalin with a fist, I hope.
Respects,
Murph
On the Outer Marches
I am sick and tired of the constant vilification Stalin’s memory is forced to endure.
Did you know he wrote poetry? Well, he did. Stalin was a sensitive bloke.
Only the crappest Stalinists drive a 2 door merc.
Comments are broken again. Sturgeon was right. 90 percent of EVERYTHING is crud. The TV shows you mention probably don’t even fill 10% of the schedule. The rest is pants.
there is TV and there is tv. When people ask me if i watch TV i usually reply no, cause most of what i watch is either Iview or stuff from the UK or US that we don’t get here. Australian networks or the majority of their viewers have the mental capacity of goldfish. It is unlikely to change until someone lets us buy direct off a US network and we buy it in such capacity the networks force a change.
Can’t wait until next week and the Spart Farts v Trotskyites
This is like most things, the vast majority know FK ALL about what they are spruiking , the greatest..well not even the greatest. Great shows at present: Miami Vice ( Horatio is a FKN LEGEND), then The WEST WING, then BBTHEORY, Then Alcatraz with Sam,. then WEEDS, then…THE FOOTY SHOW. ( not the bum sniffing one either BTW)
whats the problem with that line up I say
Its a good book and has some fascinating insights but geeze its a brick.
I think that after his first wifes suicide Stalin was never really able to be happy despite how much he sought it through pleasure. He had the added dilemma of being in the position where he could satisfy all his tangible whims thus making those intangibles that were out of reach all the more frustrating.
Havsy – Footy Show. lolz. Has one of the worst commentators in the world – I give you James Brayshaw OCT , (Order of Complete Tool.)
Anyone name any tv shows with good explodey bits?
Thank fuck the cricket’s on tonight.
People longing for American TV shows?
Dear God, the Apocalypse IS coming!
Australian TV must REALLY be godawful.
Mister Boylan, that’s the way it goes with Stalin. Write poetry, no one notices or cares. But just try to create the Worker’s Paradise by creating a concentration camp system and systematically working to destruction and killing a few million of your citizens, and everyone calls you a psychopathic mass murderer. Where’s the justice in that?
YD – we get possibly one decent TV show a year out of Oz. Two if we’re lucky.
Oh yeah, props to Santo, Sam and Ed for Sports Fever.
As for Stalin, he was just compensating, if you know what I mean.
Hmmm…..a Josh Whedon channel.
I’d probably become a complete shut in, unable to get off the sofa.
Therbs, Top Gear Sth Korea had a pretty impressive explody bit the other day, they drove a (retired) apache into the ground. oops. But on Australian TV, er, no.
Hmm. I think Lobes just wrote my blog.
Stalin, huh. Another seminary drop out. Imagine if he’d become a priest?
NBOB… i shall do a Charles ( CHAZ ) man on ya and point that it might well have been a Cobra AH1,…kinda a poor mans Apache. BUT…none the less, it was fucking awesome to watch it happen. musta hurt like fk
Aah, you are right Havock.
I must’ve been hanging around GreyBeard too much, infectious ol’ timers disease.
N BOB…remember how things can be contagious…mmmm GREYBEARD..like contagious..not good but all good.!..lol
Some crap TV, some crap movies. Personally, I love film more. I just love movies. Always have. But I’m selective. I watch a few TV shows, not many. More for light entertainment. Movies are the ones that move me. Apart from Lost. That was a great TV series. Alcatraz is OK but doesn’t match up at at all. Nope. I love me some movies.
One does not simply do Stalin.
Dear rich White oppressed.
its wunderbar how you are able to neatly judge the actions of your White forebears by todays politically correct and de sexed de raced standards. Also its really neat the way you condemn current era Whites based on the so called wrongs committed by their ancestors. l could go on and on but all l really need to say is you are an anti-White racist masquerading as a new age intellectual of indeterminate sex. Please donate all your wealth to George Soros, he will funnel it to various community organisations thus freeing you of your White guilt whilst ensuring that many more can suffer – just as you have suffered. Eventually the anti-White racism will cover the whole planet, not just ninety six point two per cent of it (todays reading of the anti-White ometer)
Yours in anti-White racism
ass
Ass:
“I could go on and on…”
Please do. I’m really into confusion.
I spend the day working for a change and miss all the fun.
It’s the fault of the anti-White racists, Paul.
I am almost definitely not against all those anti-White rascists. *
*This statement may or may not be, in fact, be a parody. **
** This is definitely not an untrue, opposite version of sarcasm.
Having read JB’s latest Blunty (the Senator from Queensland comes up with yet another thought-provoker), I feel compelled to do my manifesto (I know, most of you are thinking ‘Please, not here’), so I hope the Members of this august body will kindly indulge me, though we may roam off topic a bit.
I’m a member of His Majesty, The Working Class. And I lean more conservative than liberal on a lot of issues. It’s hard to be conservative around these parts, but I figure that nowhere else am I so badly needed.
There’s been a lot of talk of ‘class warfare’ and a general ‘beating up’ of the wealthy over the past few months. I suspect the general belief is that ‘If the rich would just give up their wealth, everyone would be all equal and everything would be great’.
But let’s all consider this-let’s say you work hard at your particular craft. You have a particular aptitude for it and start your own business. You do spectacularly at it. Your business expands through your hard work and the hard work of your employees, because neither labor nor management can run a business alone. You start making money-a little at first, than rather a lot. You’re well off, the business is going great guns. That business represents your blood and sweat and tears. How would you feel if, one day, someone came up to you and said ‘You need to give up your wealth to all of us because you don’t deserve it.’ I’d guess that most of you would tell that someone to go get bent. You did sacrifice a lot, after all, to build the business.
Something to think about before condemning all of the ‘wealthy’.
On the other hand-your business is protected by your country’s fire department, police, and miltary. Your business uses the country’s infrastructure to do its work. You use water and resources. That all needs to be paid for. No such thing as a free lunch, and all that. And you, the business owner, have to pay for what you use. I don’t deny that, and I rail at the companies who use the threat of moving to extort big breaks for themselves. If your company is a ‘resident’ of the community, than you have shoulder your share of the burden of supporting said community. Unfortunately, there are corporate owners who seem to have forgotten that. If you want to protest them, be my guest. But I believe in a system where, if I work hard, I can get ahead and be ‘wealthy’. To me, ‘wealthy’ isn’t a mark of shame, if the wealth is gotten honestly (or as honestly as possible. I’m not so ancient and feeble-minded as to believe that everyone is pure as the driven snow, though I am, in fact, fairly ancient and feeble-minded).
As for ‘helping the masses’: I’m just a simple Midwest River Rat from the interior (some might say anterior) of Septicstan, so I’ll put it simply. I’ll pay tons for a ‘handup’. I’m not so willing to pay for a ‘handout’. I’d also guess most of you feel the same way.
When I was young, my stepfather lost his job and wasn’t able to collect unemployment insurance. We got food stamps and got by on his veteran’s pension for a couple of years until, with the help of a government job-training program, he was able to get retrained and back to work. We got back on our feet and he started to pull in better money. The money the government poured into him I feel was repaid many times over in income taxes collected and money put back into the economy. I got low-interest loans to go to college. I’ve been working steadily for 25 years (30 years, I think, with all the overtime I put in over the years, but I digress). That loan got repaid and I have to think I’ve been worth the investment the government put into me. I’m a taxpaying dynamo. No, really. Ask the IRS and the Illinois Department of Revenue.
The point of the above paragraph was that, yes, we had to use the programs that some of my more ideologically hard-headed people on my side of the aisle would like to prune (Don’t laugh, left-wing. You’ve got rock-headed types on your side as well.). Bad things happen to people, and we should have the resources available to get them back on their feet. I consider that an investment in population. But government welfare can’t be a way of life for people. You get the help, be it unemployment insurance, or job-training, or student loans, and it should be up to you to pound the pavement looking for work, or get to math class, or study something you CAN use to use your talents to their fullest. We’re all (well, most of us) good at something. Even if it’s digging a ditch. There’s no dishonor in honest work well done.
I’ve worked with the ‘poor’ in our community. There were a lot of them who wanted to help with projects. In time, with luck and a push, they’ll get back into society. There are others who know how to game the system and have the opinion that the world, or failing that, the American taxpayer, owe them a living. Quite honestly, I don’t see why I should have to pay to support that type. Some of you may not like that. But I can only tell you what I’ve seen. And some of you know I’m right.
I want to live in a country and under a system where even someone who got a rough start or hit a bad patch can work hard (those two four-letter words keep showing up-sorry!) and make something of him-or-herself. It does happen. And they’re people we all can learn from.
And for some of the people who might think that ‘redistributing wealth’ is a good idea, I have a question.
What is ‘rich’? I think we all know on one sense what rich is, but what would constitute the exact figure that above which, you (theoretically, of course) get your wealth redistributed? $100 million? $10 million? $1 million? $500,000? $100,000? $50,000? $25,000? Doesn’t this become a bit of a slippery slope? And who gets to set the number?
Finally, before we all think ‘equality’ is a good idea, might I suggest a bit of light reading? Go find and read (if you haven’t already) Kurt Vonnegut’s short story ‘Harrison Bergeron’. His society is based on complete and total ‘equality for all’. But it isn’t quite the utopia you might think.
I thank the Senator from Queensland, Mr Birmingham, and all of my fellow Burgers for their forbearance. I might be interested in any differing opinions, because, God knows, I’m just a blowhole anyway.
I feel much better for having gotten this off my chest. And writing this saved me from having to watch the Blackhawks lose bad to the Blues.
YD
A couple of quotes for people of both sides of the argument to ponder:
“From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” -Luke 12:48
Yes , I know it’s a verse from the Bible. And it might be the last time you ever see one on the Burger. Truth is truth, though, and some of those people weren’t dummies. And none of you turned into a pillar of fire for reading it. Word to the greedy.
“Any government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have.”-Benjamin Franklin
Franklin was a drinker, carouser, and womanizer, possibly not in that order. He was also not a dummy. Word for the hardcore comrades done up in red.
A pretty solid post all up, YD, but I think you’re engaging with the subject at a fairly general level that talks past the specific issue that prompted the BI column. To rame it in terms of the media spat we’ve been having over here lately boils down to “at what point does the concentration of economic power, and the political power that derives from it, become harmful to the polity? Is this a concern? If it is, how should the polity act to address it?”
I think these are legitimate issues to be talking about, and I think there’s a bit of an excluded middle here between people concerned at said concentration of power and the “hardcore comrades done up in red” who apparently treat “Harrison Bergeron” as a manifesto.
Correct that to “Framing it in terms of…” Damn typenation errorisms.
Geeze! I just came here to say that some of the comments on Blunty are so depressingly stupid I can’t go back & read any more.
I like your style Mr Dog but maybe we aren’t such rabid egalitarian socialists as you might think (well I’m not anyway – NBob is a STALINIST)
I don’t condemn all the rich. Some earn it & use their wealth reasonably responsibly.
I resent that many uber-rich pay little or no tax. I hate it that they take pride in that fact. Maybe you don’t have that problem? (Mr 13.9% Romney?)
I don’t like the fact that the worst-behaved rich are usually the ones who inherited it (Gina Reinhart) or obtained it through cycles of boom-bust greed (Palmer). Even Reinhart’s father was famously bastardly, having dismissed the horrible deaths of workers from asbestos-related mesothelioma with his famous “Someone has to pay the price of progress”. Bill Gates with his billions in charitable contributions and Elon Musk are counter examples.
I don’t want undeserved total equality of wealth or an end to capitalism or to the ability of some to become very rich indeed. Though I’d prefer they did so with a social conscience. And that is my biggest beef. Our Forrests & Reinharts & Palmers and your Koch brothers & the boys at Lehmann Bros & Enron seem to lack that vital little ingredient – social conscience. Maybe in Gina’s boots I’d be different but I tend to think that if I had $20B, I wouldn’t be so keen on crushing unions, bringing in the lowest possible paid foreign workers, having driverless trains and doing all the other socially damaging, job-destroying things that might, collectively, get me another 0.5 billion. What the hell are you going to do with $20.5B that you can’t do with $20B anyway? And so Hancock was bright enough to spot an iron ore deposit? It’s in Australia. Where we all live in a Commonwealth. Sure, he can get rich but surely the country whose minerals he’s selling deserves a bit for, I don’t know, providing him with a secure & stable place to enjoy his wealth?
Above all, I fear and hate the perception by the rich that, having amassed their wealth by whatever means, they somehow have the right to rule. “Lord” Monckton’s little video on buying up an entire branch of the media so that people will never hear from our opposition is right scary, particularly when Gina R buys a large chunk of Fairfax, the nearest thing we have in Aust to a “fair” press. You don’t see it here so much, where we all troll the net for news from many different sources & viewpoints, but in real life those who get theirs predigested-pap views only from the Murdoch papers and the local current affairs crapfests are terrifying ignorant – and I mean that literally. It scares the crap out of me to see just how little people know and how few facts inform their opinions.
Last point (having gone further than anyone but NBob will read, and he’s only looking for typos): These three are united in their crack-brained denial of climate change, AGM, call it what you will. They are on record as wishing to use their wealth to crush discussion, education, study or anything that might save our grandchildren’s lives. And that is unforgivable.
I am in favour of redistributing everyone’s wealth except mine.
Greybeard what do you mean by “They are on record as wishing to use their wealth to crush discussion, education, study or anything that might save our grandchildren’s lives.” I would like to look at these records, preferably verbatim and in complete context. If what you say is veritably factual, even as a moderate right leaning conservative, I would be happy to assist when the revolution comes.
And on a previous point by “the ass”, as my boys keep reminding me, white is a shade not a colour…..
BPC, the discussion etc I mentioned was in relation specifically to climate change. I’ll put up a few links but I’m not interested in banging my head against a wall and I’m tired & my brain hurts. Google is your friend.
This links to the Monckton “hidden camera” thing where he proposes a super-rich media takeover & Aust version of Fox news. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/feb/08/fox-news-lord-monckton-australia. There are other links & transcripts from there.
A good primer http://www.skepticalscience.com/
Wikipedia (yeah, I know) Rinehart also founded the anti-tax and climate change sceptic lobby group ANDEV, (“Australians for Northern Development & Economic Vision”)[36] and has paid for the trips of climate change sceptic Christopher Monckton to Australia.[37][38]
This is another guardian link. Browse from there and you’ll find the full text including the involvement of the Heartland Inst, the Koch bros mentioned above, the scheme to present only one viewpoint – i.e. climate change ain’t happening – etc etc. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/feb/15/leaked-heartland-institute-documents-climate-scepticism.
http://www.readfearn.com/2012/02/the-curious-tale-of-lord-monckton-gina-rinehart-media-ownership-and-christian-fundamentalists/
These are the payments to “independent” climate change skeptics, who are generally not experts in the field. How do they get air time? Why? Read on.
Our current budget includes funding for high-profile individuals who regularly and publicly counter the alarmist AGW message. At the moment, this funding goes primarily to Craig Idso ($11,600 per month), Fred Singer ($5,000 per month, plus expenses), Robert Carter ($1,667 per month), and a number of other individuals, but we will consider expanding it, if funding can be found.
I’m not hijacking JBs blog to give the “verbatim and in complete context” of climate change deniers’ statements. It’s all over the web, if you’re interested. If not, just call me a lefty alarmist idiot and carry on. I’ve actually given up a long time ago. If old bastards like me live long enough to see it all go to shit, a bottle of really good scotch and a bottle of pills will fix everything. If I’m not too decrepit by then, it might be satisfying to find a few of the paid liars and drop them off at the coordinates of some idyllic Pacific island.
Mister Brother Bacon, the record there is pretty public. Australia’s defamation laws are very plaintiff-friendly at the moment. Thankfully we recently joined the USA in the list of nations sane enough to make truth a defense, but defending oneself is a very expensive process. Most individuals have to take the threat of court action very seriously. All three of the very powerful people generally in focus in the context of this discussion have exercised this option liberally. They say “don’t start an argument with someone who buys ink by the barrel”.
I’m not going to bother to come up with specific examples: it’s like asking someone to describe specific examples of a cow mooing. Powerful people use their influence to stifle criticism and dissent: it’s a truism. Rupert Murdoch is an interesting counterexample: but then he really does buy ink by the barrel.
It’s also worth noting that Australia has no law against barratry these days; this fact is essentially the reason Dick Smith had to lend Bob Brown a hand a couple of years ago.
JB, my comment seems to be in the “awaiting moderation” state. If you don’t mind – and on sober reflection – it might be preferable not to put it up in its present form? Twas the Black Dog barking.
@Brother chop.
Under international law White is a racial type. Your boys are wrong. So are you. The flooding of previously White countries with non Whites comes under the heading “Genocide”. Genocide is a crime. Saddam Hussein was hanged after being found guilty of genocide. When youve been charged with the crime of committing genocide against the White race it wont do you much good to attempt to argue there is no such thing as the White race.
Just as well I am not white then, more pink, maybe with a growing number of aging brown spots. Sounds disgusting really.
Black is not a colour either, both are just shades of grey……