OT An obituary for facts

formatting link
"... To the shock of most sentient beings, Facts died Wednesday, April 18, after a long battle for relevancy with the 24-hour news cycle, blogs and the Internet. Though few expected Facts to pull out of its years-long downward spiral, the official cause of death was from injuries suffered last week when Florida Republican Rep. Allen West steadfastly declared that as many as

81 of his fellow members of the U.S. House of Representatives are communists.

Facts held on for several days after that assault - brought on without a scrap of evidence or reason - before expiring peacefully at its home in a high school physics book. Facts was 2,372. ...

... Facts is survived by two brothers, Rumor and Innuendo, and a sister, Emphatic Assertion.

Services are alleged to be private. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that mourners make a donation to their favorite super PAC."

Reply to
anorton
Loading thread data ...

"anorton" wrote in news:w4GdnQMIepPjjQ_SnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:

formatting link

Indeed, there is a problem with that claim: it's probably an underestimate.

Reply to
Doug Miller

Sure, just like a Right Wing guy pays his bills and doesn't rely on anybody and the Lefties are the guys cheating on their taxes and sponging off the government.

regards,

Just Asking

Reply to
justaskin

Would you know a scrap of reason if you heard it?

Do you know what a Communist is?

The difference between a Marxist and a Leninist?

Communists believe that history is a class struggle between haves and have-nots. That's exactly what those Congressmen believe.

Reply to
Tom Del Rosso

formatting link

One of my favorite paragraphs in the article was:

"People unable to understand how science works began to question Facts. And at the same time there was a rise in political partisanship and a growth in the number of media outlets that would disseminate information, rarely relying on feedback from Facts."

In my opinion, Any scientist would feel VERY nervous at the very thought of declaring anything as a "Fact". Science relates to issues as non-zero probabilities. I'm skeptical when presented with what some people call "Facts" and I'm skeptical of people that AREN'T skeptical. I guess I've had the "Scientific Method" drummed into me since I was very young. I never did finish my MME, and had a lot of science classes and 40 years of practical experience and I wish I had a nickle for every time I assumed a "Fact" and was wrong and got bit.

Anybody that believes in the "Scientific Method" knows EXACTLY what I mean. "Facts" hasn't died, it's been redefined along political lines.

Reply to
Tom Gardner

Before Facts died, I would have said a communist is a person who believes there should be a classless society, with no private property, no money, and where all the means of production are owned by the state, but where the state would gradually wither away in its final utopian stage.

Thank you for informing me that the new fact substitute is that anyone who believes class struggle happened throughout history is a communist. Based on this, we must immediately blacklist all history professors!

Reply to
anorton

Bless you, Tom.

Reply to
Richard

An interesting concept. Based on history, one might assume. Care to offer an example of a working communist state?

regards,

Just Asking

Reply to
justaskin

A Stalinist vs a Trotskyist?

formatting link

Or alternately they cynically believe they can buy the votes of the disgruntled and disenfranchised by pretending to.

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

What I stated above is just the basic definition of communism any educated person should have recognized. Communism is obviously a completely unworkable philosophy in practice, and the goverments that claimed to abide by those principles never really did.

However, other responders to this thread have made clear that they prefer to create whatever definition allows them to apply this word to whomever they want, whether it is "81 congressmen" (the statement that prompted the obituary for Facts referenced at the top of this thread) or " 205 known communists in the State Department". (The last is a reference to Joe McCarthy who was the guy who invented red baiting).

Reply to
anorton

Really? Cuba after the revolution? Of course, and Fidel was just a care taker, waiting for the proletariat to mature, one might say.

China before Mao... now that was the Republic of China, established in

1911, hardly a communist state.

Pre 1998 Russia... Remember Uncle Joe? Most people called him a dictator, didn't they?

In fact none of them even began to met the qualifications mentioned above. The classless society and even the state control of everything was a joke. Russia had to allow the peasants their own little veggie plot or there wouldn't have been enough to feed the country.

You can equally well call them fascist dictatorships and be as correct as calling them communist. In fact it sounds just like your Cuba and China and Russia under the Communists.

Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology.

Fascists seek rejuvenation of their nation totalitarian single-party state that seeks the mass mobilization of a nation through discipline,.

Fascism promotes political violence and war, as forms of direct action that create national regeneration, spirit and vitality.

The fascist party is a vanguard party designed to initiate a revolution

The fascist party and state is led by a supreme leader who exercises a dictatorship over the party, the government and other state institutions.

Fascists claim that their ideology is a trans-class movement, advocating resolution to domestic class conflict within a nation to secure national solidarity.

Fascism claims that its goal of cultural nationalization of society emancipates the nation's proletariat, and promotes the assimilation of all classes into proletarian national culture.

Fascists advocate a state-directed, regulated economy that is dedicated to the nation; the use and primacy of regulated private property and private enterprise contingent upon service to the nation, the use of state enterprise where private enterprise is failing or is inefficient, and autarky. It supports criminalization of strikes by employees and lockouts by employers because it deems these acts as prejudicial to the national community.

regards,

Just Asking

Reply to
justaskin

Probably not worth pointing out... but you are either hallucinating this perfect sign you claim to see or you are looking at a mirror.

Reply to
jim

formatting link

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

You have pointed out one of the worst consequences of the McCarthy era. Crying wolf diverts resources and attention from from where it is really needed. The real spies were low-key and they were not the same folks McCarthy blacklisted or paraded in front of his investigating committee. There were true espionage prosecutions with real evidence, but that is not what McCarthy concerned himself with. His entire circus show was for political gain. I have a hard time believing anyone can justify his witch hunt after so many years. I find it disturbing there seems to be effort to re-habilitate his tactics. In the end, of course, he was censured by the Senate for among other things, making so many false accusations and accusing other senators of being communist agents if they questioned his tactics.

Reply to
anorton

China.

According to the IMF, the US will remain the world's largest economy in

2012, followed by China, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Brazil, Italy, Russia and Canada.
Reply to
PrecisionmachinisT

A certainly remarkable proof.

Of course, even the FBI argued that the data was so fragmented and vague that its use in court was impossible.

As an example of FBI thinking the following from FBI Assistant Director Alan H. Belmont offers a example of "the tentative nature of many identifications" "concerning an individual with the cover name 'Antenna.'

A message dated 5 May 1944 carried information indicating an individual code-named 'Antenna' was 25 years of age, a member of CP USA, lived in New York, matriculated at Cooper Union about 1940, worked in the U.S. Army Signal Corps at Ft. Monmouth, NJ, and his wife's name was Ethel.

We made a tentative identification of 'Antenna' as Joseph Weichbrod since the background of Weichbrod corresponded with the information known about 'Antenna.' Weichbrod was about the right age, had a Communist background, lived in NYC, attended Cooper Union in 1939, worked at the Signal Corps, Ft. Monmouth, and his wife's name was Ethel.

He was a good suspect for 'Antenna' until sometime later when we definitely established through investigation that 'Antenna' was Julius Rosenberg."

While it may be that the fearless senator had a list it is obvious that the list was about as valid as the paper roll next to the porcelain throne.

-- Cheers,

John B.

Reply to
John B.

And as usual, the above has about the same validity as "useful Idiot" that the Gunner attributes to Lenin, while more educated researchers say: Despite often being attributed to Lenin, in 1987, Grant Harris, senior reference librarian at the Library of Congress, declared that "We have not been able to identify this phrase among [Lenin's] published works."

(Or Bull Shit!, in the vernacular) regards,

Just Asking

Reply to
justaskin

You are correct... this time. However you did provide us with the so called provenance of the statement some years ago and got shot down then too.

regards,

Just Asking

Reply to
justaskin

You aren't are you Gunner, trying to fob off that fake web site you just quoted as the National Security Agency, are you? You know, the one with the web site at

formatting link

That fake site you are quoting, the one at "permanent.access.gpo.gov", is so obviously a fraud that I can't believe that anyone, of even sub-normal intelligence, believes that stuff.

As for your "one example"? You have problems with your eyes? the quote I furnished said, in part, "offers a example of "the tentative nature of many identifications" . The example being a code name Antenna.... which I might point out is shown on your latest quote under the later proved correct identity, demonstrating that the FBI was correct that the identifications were too vague to be evidence.

-- Cheers,

John B.

Reply to
John B.

The conviction of one or a few spies isn't worth losing the source, which would very likely be compromised during the trial. Some known spies have never been prosecuted, merely steered away from sensitive material or fed disinformation. Anyway, VENONA lost its usefulness when the Soviet supply of duplicate one-time pads ran out, mostly by

1945.

"9sC4rb87"

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.