I know it sounds nuts but what if

I think I understand what you're getting at, here... and I can imagine an outcome where the overall result would be salutary if it were successful. The economy would be devastated, but I think that's going to happen anyway. There would, however, be an organized mass of people - there would have to be, in order to coordinate the bank runs/tax strike - and the government and banks would be stripped of much of their power. Except for, you know, the army.

I think, though, that if you had a sufficiently organized and mobilized population, you could do a lot more with it than merely trash the economy. A series of general strikes would scare the powers that be enough to make significant changes - in whatever direction the people decided - without creating so much disruption. A whole parallel economy - one, say, based on labor exchange, like a LET$ or a time-dollar system - could be implemented. Christ, you could stop the fucking wars.

Like everything, it comes down to organization. And organization comes down to people seeing what's in their interest. Easy to say, hard to do... but it's been done before.

If every comments thread didn't become a libertarian tag-team cage match. Awesome.

I'll defend to the death you guys' rights to speak, but not totally dominate the thread.

Disagreeing without resport to ad hominem: also totally appreciated!

I should think that "silence" would be the most appropriate choice

Has Glenn has made an unannounced appointment of you as UT's Arbiter of Legitimate Mockery?

The obvious structural adjustments--medicare, social security, government benefits and jobs, state owned institutions--cannot be liquidated in the same way, at least not in what was known as the "shock" method, entailing sudden and extreme measures. There are too many political liabilities here.

Possibly, possibly. But I'd have said the same thing about the PATRIOT Act pre-9/11.

The parallel in my mind is that a lot of people I know are scared... to a degree that they were not after the planes hit the buldings and the anthrax letters went out.

We've already seen what fear does to "political liabilities."

I'm just sayin'.

One of the reasons (besides simple immaturity) that I am generally a snarky assclown in these threads is that I believe the political questions we're discussing will pretty much be moot in a few years. I've been following Dmitry Orlov for some time, and have found his predictions to be frighteningly accurate.

Orlov - born in Leningrad and raised in the US - has long noted the parallels between the decline of the Soviet Union and what's going on now in the United States. He's getting a lot more attention - as Roubini is in the economic sphere - as what formerly looked laughably alarmist seems prescient.

He outlines five stages of collapse:

• Financial collapse
• Commercial collapse
• Political collapse
• Social collapse
• Cultural collapse

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2008/02/five-stages-of-collapse.html at sig

Interestingly, he also notes how much better prepared the USSR was for collapse, both because and in reaction to State infrastructure. People already had home garden plots because they were used to supply shortages, and free housing was pretty much a given.

In short: compared to the Soviet Union, we're fornicated.

lovies, pda

New post: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/03/26/comparisions/index.html

Up to crusty old Cabal Members like me to take our country back. Maybe start by making PC a hanging offense.

Nothing says Liberty and Freedom like political murder.

It is such a shame Allende did not get to turn Chile into a paradise like East Germany or Cuba.

It's interesting how someone can write all sorts of heinous shit, and you think 'wow, what a random nut job...' and then he writes something that strikes close to you, and all of a sudden your perspecitve changes.

Speaking on behalf of a dear Chilean friend, whose family was forced to flee Pinochet's misrule, whose countrymen and -women died and disappeared in the thousands:

Fuck you, sir. With a chainsaw, sir, slowly. You sick old fuck.

...it wastes your time, and annoys the pig.

Aren't you still trying to grow a piece of lung back?

No you hadn't, actually, so I was giving you the benefit of the doubt that you weren't just reprising the junior-high-school-sarcastic-wit shtick that's so popular with the in-crowd of kewl kids regularly posting here in the UT cafeteria.

He said" "giving you."

huh huh, huh huh, huh huh, huh huh, huh huh huh, huh, huh, huh huh huh, huh, huh huh, huh huh huh, huh, huh huh, huh huh huh, huh huh, huh huh, huh huh, huh huh...

I'd have to know the person who was responding to Glenn or already be following them in order to view what they say, correct?

If you know a particular person wrote a twitter reply to Glenn - ay username blah - you can go to their Twitter feed at http://www.twitter.com/blah.

To see all the replies to Glenn - that is, anyone who wrote an @glenngreenwald tweet - search at http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%40glenngreenwald

I just learned way more about this than I want or need to...

If they're direct messages you can't see then at all... if they're replies (e.g. @glenngreenwald) then you will see them on the replier's Twitter feed.

Hope this helps.

Beyond this ONE CLASS ACTION court case very few other examples have been presented

Binyam Mohamed v. Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. is not, not not not a class action suit. This was explained to you multiple times. Please ask Mr. Bernbart.

But then it's only been 60 days and counting and he has not yet not walked on water for you.

Nobody is complaining because the Obama administration is acting too slowly in renouncing these policies. The opposite is true: they are rushing to actively embrace them.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/03/15/obama/

Oy, Jebbie. Oy.