Some ideas, Rusty. Posting them here so others can give input.

- I would like to see few more forums, mostly so that more topics stay visible.

- More members? We have a stable core. The Kucinich campaign is self-destructing, and there are some potential recruits there. Are there any disidents at PI we could recruit, or has that well gone dry? What about Rigorous Intuition, Kid? I spend a little time at Break for News (http://breakfornews.com/forum/index.php). Don't know if you are familiar with that board. DU members who are fed up? Or are the good ones all sock puppets for people here lol? Edwards is making a lot of FDR noises lately. Might poke around over there and see who he is attracting.

- Blogs - didn't Wolf say his blog site had gone South on him? Can we have a stable blog thing happening that we can offer people? Maybe pull in other blogs with RSS?

- Open up the bottom forums to public view?

The Edwards comments I was refering to:

Edwards vows fight against big business (http://www.fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070729/FOSTERS01/107290312)

As his Democratic rivals debate whether to talk with leaders of hostile nations, a tough-talking John Edwards told hundreds of people Saturday that he's against negotiating with the big insurance, oil and drug companies that he said are running the American government.

Instead, he pushed for taking on "entrenched interests" with "big change."

"Now, there are some people who believe ... the way to do this is to sit at the table with them and negotiate. I think that is a complete fantasy," he said.

<snip>

Big business interests have "rolled over" average citizens for decades, Edwards said in response to questions after his speech.

"They are the power behind what happens in Washington, D.C.," he said. "The only way to change things is to take these people on. You can't negotiate with them. They're not going to give away their power voluntarily. They have to be beaten, and I absolutely believe that."

<snip>

"All that money that they're making from investments, I want them to pay their fair share of taxes on those investments, and I want them not to be treated better than other Americans," he said.

Some ideas, Rusty. Posting them here so others can give input.

- I would like to see few more forums, mostly so that more topics stay visible.

- More members? We have a stable core. The Kucinich campaign is self-destructing, and there are some potential recruits there. Are there any disidents at PI we could recruit, or has that well gone dry? What about Rigorous Intuition, Kid? I spend a little time at Break for News (http://breakfornews.com/forum/index.php). Don't know if you are familiar with that board. DU members who are fed up? Or are the good ones all sock puppets for people here lol? Edwards is making a lot of FDR noises lately. Might poke around over there and see who he is attracting.

- Blogs - didn't Wolf say his blog site had gone South on him? Can we have a stable blog thing happening that we can offer people? Maybe pull in other blogs with RSS?

- Open up the bottom forums to public view?

No, the "best" of RigInt is comprised of folks who would generously view us as economic determinists. I think they have some pertinent things to say, but best to let them do play in their own sandbox.

I've been to Break For News but I mainly checked out the number theory links..some were pretty good, influenced by Bucky Fuller who had some *interesting* ideas.

I don't really go to DU or PI anymore so I can't say about those, with Chlamor and Rusty stirring things up I imagine it'd be pretty easy to spot the ones who are "sympathetic" towards socialism lol

About Kucinich: I had this hilarious notion that they were in total rearguard mode due to Mike Gravel stealing all of their "indie" supporters. Maybe that's died down since Gravel is so monotome (FAIR TAX!)

Hadn't been paying attention to Edwards..WHY is he saying stuff like that? It obviously isn't availing him in the polls or being played up by the media..maybe hes more complex than I think. Where's Chlamor to slap some sense into me lol

Looks like pretty slim pickins thus, partisanship precludes discussion of issues:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... id=3412199 (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=3412199&mesg_id=3412199)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... id=3412137 (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=3412137&mesg_id=3412137)

Some ideas, Rusty. Posting them here so others can give input.

- I would like to see few more forums, mostly so that more topics stay visible.

- More members? We have a stable core. The Kucinich campaign is self-destructing, and there are some potential recruits there. Are there any disidents at PI we could recruit, or has that well gone dry? What about Rigorous Intuition, Kid? I spend a little time at Break for News (http://breakfornews.com/forum/index.php). Don't know if you are familiar with that board. DU members who are fed up? Or are the good ones all sock puppets for people here lol? Edwards is making a lot of FDR noises lately. Might poke around over there and see who he is attracting.

- Blogs - didn't Wolf say his blog site had gone South on him? Can we have a stable blog thing happening that we can offer people? Maybe pull in other blogs with RSS?

- Open up the bottom forums to public view?

I've thought about another forum or two also, though I have been kinda resistant to messing with it unless they had some more purposeful aspect than just being some slightly different slice of an ongoing conversation.

I mentioned to wolf that he could - potentially - use some the blog feature on the main page. I'll confess tho that I am no smarter about drupal now than I was six months ago. That said, I do have as one of a couple of projects on the list, a plan to make a 'book' out of some of the 19th century Russian history posts Anax has put up on the forums. I work with a brilliant web developer who has special drupal skill and who is an unschooled but kinda inherent commie himself. He said he would be willing to help some, but I have not yet tried to reel him in fully, knowing how busy he is.

All that said, I am wide open to any suggestions, grabs for the keys, etc. :)

duplicate

I've thought about another forum or two also, though I have been kinda resistant to messing with it unless they had some more purposeful aspect than just being some slightly different slice of an ongoing conversation.

Two advantages - it gives (new) people more courage to jump in, and it keeps more posts at the top.


I mentioned to wolf that he could - potentially - use some the blog feature on the main page. I'll confess tho that I am no smarter about drupal now than I was six months ago.

I have had some experience with Drupal. Many of these programs have all sorts of idiosyncratic terminology and odd ways of structuring things and take quite a bit of time understanding. At least once a week I poke around the Drupal support pages, reading people's horror stories (and once in a while a success story). Usability - chronic and pervasive problem throughout the community. Users are expected to adapt to the software rather than the other way around. I have been analyzing community software this week for another project.

The danger - the worry - is that you can put a shitload of time into learning how to use a system, and the system then gets abandoned for some new piece of software, and what you learned about the old software will never be useful anywhere else. Hard to know going in, but Drupal has always been in my mind one of those "be really sure before you dive in" projects because of the non-standard way it is set up and its complexity.


That said, I do have as one of a couple of projects on the list, a plan to make a 'book' out of some of the 19th century Russian history posts Anax has put up on the forums. I work with a brilliant web developer who has special drupal skill and who is an unschooled but kinda inherent commie himself. He said he would be willing to help some, but I have not yet tried to reel him in fully, knowing how busy he is.

I can be the go-between there if that would help.


All that said, I am wide open to any suggestions, grabs for the keys, etc. :)

I wouldn't turn the keys down and would put them to good use.

I have had some experience with Drupal. Many of these programs have all sorts of idiosyncratic terminology and odd ways of structuring things and take quite a bit of time understanding. At least once a week I poke around the Drupal support pages, reading people's horror stories (and once in a while a success story). Usability - chronic and pervasive problem throughout the community. Users are expected to adapt to the software rather than the other way around. I have been analyzing community software this week for another project.

The danger - the worry - is that you can put a shitload of time into learning how to use a system, and the system then gets abandoned for some new piece of software, and what you learned about the old software will never be useful anywhere else. Hard to know going in, but Drupal has always been in my mind one of those "be really sure before you dive in" projects because of the non-standard way it is set up and its complexity.

I know there are vast numbers of content mgt apps out there. What gets used does not matter to me in any great measure, certainly not nearly so much as it matters to me That It Get Used.

Extra forums will never be sufficient to keep the most valuable content in site to new comers.

Even so, more forums are fine with me. If no one else has any objections, I am -fine- with you making them. Let's see however if some of our perpetually less-interested-in-this friends might care to weigh in....

What have ya'll got in mind? I'm guessing it's not the GD, GDP, LBN, etc that we're well famaliar with. Here, I'll pull a few out of my ass:

History

Theory

Action

Survival(environment,agriculture, climate, peak oil)

Reactionaries(Assholes)

World Revolution

I dunno,maybe a lounge where we could post kitty pix :twisted:

History

Theory

Action

Survival(environment,agriculture, climate, peak oil)

Reactionaries(Assholes)

World Revolution

I like those...

What have ya'll got in mind? I'm guessing it's not the GD, GDP, LBN, etc that we're well famaliar with. Here, I'll pull a few out of my ass:

History

Theory

Action

Survival(environment,agriculture, climate, peak oil)

Reactionaries(Assholes)

World Revolution

I dunno,maybe a lounge where we could post kitty pix :twisted:

That's good. We can keep talking about this, subject to Anax's and Chlamor's approval of course. I don't want to tromp on what they are doing, but you Kid and I are going a slightly different direction.

I think that the biggest part of the challenge is the difficulty we have seeing the social context we are living in. You have to know where you are before you can discuss where to go. You need to accurately identify what is wrong before you start proposing solutions. I mentioned watching a show about Indymedia on Free Speech TV. Hundreds of poor young uneducated people were talking pasionately, intelligently, and seriously about culture and politics. What a contrast to what we have here. I realized that it is not so much a matter of the wrong discussions happening here in the states, or the wrong politics winning, it is that there are virtually no serious intelligent discussions going on here. It is not a matter of how to promote the Left, or how to configure the Left, rather that there is no Left - there is really no serious politics of any kind at all happening here. I noticed that in Sicko, too. Something is really fucked up here, and it isn't being talked about. The social context is really odd and different than elsewhere and else when. People are seriously traumatized here. Something is really fucked up with everyday modern society here. Almost everyone knows that, that is why they are apathetic about politics, because politics does not scratch that itch, does not get to what is really wrong. That means that cracking open that subject is a powerful lever to move people, to get some momentum, some energy, some thinking, some passion back into people's lives.

We are trapped in a social, cultural and political nightmare. (Credit to chlamor - 10...9...8...7...) It permeates everything. You can see it in the faces and hear it in the voices of people, and the contrast between the way that every day Americans act and speak and people in Europe act and speak in Moore's film is stark. So long as we speak and act without examining that context, everything is perverted and corrupted. People are not turned off to the politics of the Left because those politics are too radical, rather because the politics are not radical enough and because the politicians and activists ignore the context and take modern American society as the given - the base line, standard normal.

It is no accident, it isn't arbitrary or insignificant or unimportant the way that the forums are arranged at the various so-called Leftist boards. It reflects a point of view, not so much about politics, but about the existing conditions.

"Modern American society is pretty much OK (although fundamental human nature needs a serious overhaul, and we are working on that) but we enlightened folks do need to fix a few things; like eliminate guns, get people to stop smoking, get rid of bad chemicals, get rid of cars and ride bikes, lower the incidence of rape, promote 'green' options, give consumers better choices, recycle, get legislation to allow same sex marriage, get rid of religion (or at least certain kinds of religion), find and support tech solutions to problems, get corporations to be socially responsible" and on and on and on and on.

The Current Conditions

Things are really fucked up I - for each of us - personal stories of individuals being crushed and don't give me any patronizing they made the wrong choices bullshit about that.
[/*:m:20kyfewh]
Things are really fucked up II - for all of us - stories about actions of the ruling class to exploit whole classes of people and don't give me any "yeah but at least we are doing something and little by little we are making progress" bullshit.
[/*:m:20kyfewh]
Things are really fucked up III - politics - the ruling class puts its final solution political game into full overdrive, with virtually no political opposition. Voting Republicans out of office is not a solution.
[/*:m:20kyfewh]
Things are really fucked up IV - the opposition - modern liberals, the house Negroes to the slave masters of the ruling class, do yeoman duty propping up the working class victims and holding their arms behind their backs so the ruling class can deliver a knockout blow. They do this in exchange for lucre and flattery.
[/*:m:20kyfewh]
Things are really fucked up V - suburbia - nerve center for the global empire, the promised shining city on the hill, the monument to class warfare, racism, greed, isolation, waste, alientation, and the destruction of all human culture. It isn't a postal address, it is a mentality. Home to the corporate boardroom, the investing class, the court jesters, the non-profit organizations, and the "we" that the ruling class, whether "liberal" and "conservative," says it is protecting.
[/*:m:20kyfewh]

The Battleground

Labor - fanning the few remaining feeble embers of working class resistance and organizing.
[/*:m:20kyfewh]
Agriculture - first you gotta get them off of the farm, then herd them into slums, fit them for their worker bee chains, and tell them about all that you are doing for them to make their lives better, and that when things aren't working for them it is their fault. Destroy rural cooperative self-reliant agricultural communities - the bedrock foundation of all culture and in all places until here and now -and you can control the world. Control food, land, people, resources, culture - that about handles it I think.
[/*:m:20kyfewh]
Politics - Lackeys do their master's bidding day in and day out, and sell all of us down the river. The working class (all of us even you auto) have no voice or representation - worse yet, we are enticed and deluded into supporting our own destruction "for our own good."
[/*:m:20kyfewh]
Culture - Everything is for sale on that giant slave auction block we call "life," including your soul. Human beings are valued and ranked solely on their wealth. Things are only deemed good for either their usefulness in turning a buck, or in amusing ourselves in the most simple-minded and degrading ways. If you can turn a buck by amusing people, you are elevated to the status of a god. Vicious anti-intellectualism, destruction of art and artists, and the uprooting and elimination of all culture are rigidly promoted at all levels. I know, I know - "but I kinda like South Park." Cotton candy laced with soma presented as though it were benign and would sustain you. Yum.
[/*:m:20kyfewh]

History

The history of struggle of the working class - organizing, resisting, rebelling. The leaders and ideas, what happened and why ad how. What applies to the current struggle.
[/*:m:20kyfewh]
The rise and development of American corporate capitalism - it isn't human nature, it isn't inevitable, it isn't the last chapter. It is very modern and it is unique.
[/*:m:20kyfewh]

The Current Conditions

Things are really fucked up I - for each of us - personal stories of individuals being crushed and don't give me any patronizing they made the wrong choices bullshit about that.
[/*:m:219f9ryy]
Things are really fucked up II - for all of us - stories about actions of the ruling class to exploit whole classes of people and don't give me any "yeah but at least we are doing something and little by little we are making progress" bullshit.
[/*:m:219f9ryy]
Things are really fucked up III - politics - the ruling class puts its final solution political game into full overdrive, with virtually no political opposition. Voting Republicans out of office is not a solution.
[/*:m:219f9ryy]
Things are really fucked up IV - the opposition - modern liberals, the house Negroes to the slave masters of the ruling class, do yeoman duty propping up the working class victims and holding their arms behind their backs so the ruling class can deliver a knockout blow. They do this in exchange for lucre and flattery.
[/*:m:219f9ryy]
Things are really fucked up V - suburbia - nerve center for the global empire, the promised shining city on the hill, the monument to class warfare, racism, greed, isolation, waste, alientation, and the destruction of all human culture. It isn't a postal address, it is a mentality. Home to the corporate boardroom, the investing class, the court jesters, the non-profit organizations, and the "we" that the ruling class, whether "liberal" and "conservative," says it is protecting.
[/*:m:219f9ryy]

The Battleground

Labor - fanning the few remaining feeble embers of working class resistance and organizing.
[/*:m:219f9ryy]
Agriculture - first you gotta get them off of the farm, then herd them into slums, fit them for their worker bee chains, and tell them about all that you are doing for them to make their lives better, and that when things aren't working for them it is their fault. Destroy rural cooperative self-reliant agricultural communities - the bedrock foundation of all culture and in all places until here and now -and you can control the world. Control food, land, people, resources, culture - that about handles it I think.
[/*:m:219f9ryy]
Politics - Lackeys do their master's bidding day in and day out, and sell all of us down the river. The working class (all of us even you auto) have no voice or representation - worse yet, we are enticed and deluded into supporting our own destruction "for our own good."
[/*:m:219f9ryy]
Culture - Everything is for sale on that giant slave auction block we call "life," including your soul. Human beings are valued and ranked solely on their wealth. Things are only deemed good for either their usefulness in turning a buck, or in amusing ourselves in the most simple-minded and degrading ways. If you can turn a buck by amusing people, you are elevated to the status of a god. Vicious anti-intellectualism, destruction of art and artists, and the uprooting and elimination of all culture are rigidly promoted at all levels. I know, I know - "but I kinda like South Park." Cotton candy laced with soma presented as though it were benign and would sustain you. Yum.
[/*:m:219f9ryy]

History

The history of struggle of the working class - organizing, resisting, rebelling. The leaders and ideas, what happened and why ad how. What applies to the current struggle.
[/*:m:219f9ryy]
The rise and development of American corporate capitalism - it isn't human nature, it isn't inevitable, it isn't the last chapter. It is very modern and it is unique.
[/*:m:219f9ryy]

I like this a lot too, especially the layered categorization of it.

I'm not too sure, foul mouthed (and just plain foul) as I am, about the carpet F-bombing tho 8)

I'm not too sure, foul mouthed (and just plain foul) as I am, about the carpet F-bombing tho 8)

I am trying to attract megan back. :lol:

Rusty are you kidding me? This should be on the front page, its great. Its beyond great. Its the mission statement we've been talking about all these months.

Tales from the sign of the blue balls. This is the view from my pawnshop. This is about the people I talk to every day.

This is about Thomas, who's worked for a major print advertising company for over 20 years, printing and packing all of that glossy junk mail burdening your mailbox. It's ass-busting work around dangerous machines. Two years ago he was layed off, then re-hired at a lower wage,sans senority. His health, aggravated by his work, declined to the point that he couldn't work, then he was diagnosed with cancer. Unemployment, workman's comp are inadequate, disability takes forever. He had pawned his gold jewelry(the last line of credit for the poor) before his latest sickness,and I haven't seen him in 7 months, he will lose his stuff.

This is about Elaine, a vivacious black woman, so upbeat it makes me cringe. She'd had a good office job but the company left the area. She tried her hand selling cars, but that didn't work. Now she's selling used merchandise at the flea market and out of her house, cheery, "Lord willing".

This is about Lonnie, on disability for his kidney disease, taking the bus down town for dialaysis twice a week. He's been staying with his mother in the public housing around the corner, he was thrown out cause he smoked reefer. He died a month later, heart failure.

This about John, a hunter and outdoorsman who'd worked for DNR for years until his position was eliminated. He got a job at Walmart in sporting goods, running the firearms section. He's a humble, quiet guy, a Pietist in a camo cap. Walmart announced they were discontinuing firearms, looks like John will be stocking shelves on 3rd.

This is about Michael, he dropped out of high school for that "good paying" job at the mill, which closed 20 years later leaving him no pension, no skills. He's been installing insulation ever since, hard work, low pay, plenty hours. He won't wear a mask, too hot. He looks like shit and is starting to cough blood.

This is about Curtis, who has a warrant out on him for pawning his boss's nail guns. That he took the nail guns because his boss refused to pay him is irrelevant, even the detective thought it wrong, but" the law is the law".

This is for everybody who has to pawn something to put gas in the car until pay day.

I could go on and on and on. Yes, some of the people who come in here are thugs, junkies, thieves and grifters, but those really are a minority. The only crime of most of my customers is being poor. So ya have to ask, would they be here but for an exploitative economic system? Would such a business exist but for an exploitative economic system?

I'd strike it BP, its entirely too hard on yourself. The rest speaks for itself.

The Cube Rats

"I was losing weight because I couldn't afford to buy food."

Today, a microcosm: a single floor in a single workplace. Seven years ago, their salaries were steadily growing, and gas was less than $1.50.

"I keep the heat off in the winter and wear sweaters and blankets, and leave the car parked in the driveway all weekend."

Since then, pay cuts, almost no raises, gas is around $2.90, and co-pays have climbed.

"He doesn't want anyone to know this but he had to file for bankruptcy."

A little shift in the economy, a little shift in management styles, a little shift in the competition. It all adds up.

One floor in one building, all "management employees". Responsible long-term jobs at an employee-friendly company, believe it or not. They all make much more than 'minimum' -- well, except perhaps the invisible janitors who come at night, but that's a job that's "outsourced" to some other company, and hence they ought not be considered "one of us"...

"I don't want to complain, I'm grateful for a job, but they took these medicines off the list and they cost me $200 a month now and it's really hard for me to afford it."

I saw Sicko last week. In a staff meeting today, I opened my ears and eyes and saw it again all around me, on my own office floor.

The one who told me of her year of hunger actually cried.

I am a little different from these long-term employees, hard-working, dedicated people. I worry about politics, and the state of the country. They worry about paying for gas, food, heat and medicine. The trouble is, I know it doesn't need to be this way. I know what it's like for the favored few. I can grasp what a 15% tax on capital gains means, and that brokerage accounts usually yield more than checking accounts. And I can somewhat grasp what it means for a country to be spending a trillion dollars on a war over there. What it would mean for the country to be spending a trillion dollars here, on infrastructure or clean energy projects or health care. What those kind of projects would do for the job market here.

Quite a bit came pouring out when the floodgates opened today. But I happened to hear another story today, earlier in the morning -- a more upbeat story of a young relative, a college grad in a different, more "favored" industry, who had just received $90,000 in severance pay plus 4 months worth of paid time off when she was laid off, and she bounced into a better job at another company in the same field. She is in one of those few industries where the money is really flowing because the industry -- indeed, the company -- has simply bought and paid for the government, and is raking in billions from .. well, from the former middle class. Well, from people like the desperate staff that I was just mentioning.

And yes, this particular lucky young person is not only lucky but hard-working, beautiful and smart, I believe. The go-getters that I regularly meet in business who 'do the big deals' for certain large companies and make six figures are also hard-working and smart -- and completely vested in a system where the best and brightest work frightfully hard to make money for their companies, for specific companies that have become more powerful than "the government". A system that finds me frequently in meetings where 10 or 15 of the best and the brightest figure out ways to eke out an extra few million dollars here or there from a contract, or how to properly count the beans, or how to "improve productivity". That sometimes finds me observing presentations where the best and the brightest are trying to sell nearly-useless services to us at exhorbitant prices using fancy presentations and fifty-dollar words. In my lovely office, I sometimes get phone calls from those who suggest that I should follow the latest management trend; that I should, for example, use the services of Arthur-Andersen-reborn-as-Accenture (in Bermuda-to-avoid-paying-taxes) in order to outsource the entire floor, to cut labor costs in half or in thirds, and to take advantage of tax loopholes. At this, I have to admit, I simply laughed.

But back to those big meetings where the bean-counting and productivity sessions occur. I suspect that many of those best and brightest feel some kind of discontent, in spite of their six-figure salaries; some inner spirit in them would prefer to be using their talents finding ways to reduce malaria or poverty or traffic accidents or homelessness, or to truly improve health care or education or the environment. I find myself wondering, as I look around and think about the thousands of other conference rooms also filled with similarly privileged, talented, and bored people: what kind of country or world would we have, if half of this talent had a better chance to actually focus on -- forgive the overstatement here -- purely human problems, rather than purely corporate ones?

Inside those big meetings all across the country, the Multinational's fortunate ones are engaged in tug-of-war or in "brainstorming sessions" to increase the pot of gold and security for the various owners -- including, admittedly, some middle-class 401K plans and small investors, but largely for the benefit of the 'most fortunate ones'. Outside those rooms, or on a floor below, the squeezed "middle class" is becoming fearful of the precipice, when the paycheck runs out, the car breaks down, or the job is lost and the health insurance along with it. At night, the "invisible ones" come to empty the trash cans, wipe the tables, vacuum the carpets, and clean the bathrooms. The "most favored ones" are busy buying the politicos, to ensure that the goodies keep coming, whether to themselves or to their corporations (and to their "privately held" firms), and trying to keep criminal elements from stealing their money -- which admittedly can be quite a pervasive problem for the semi-rich, as they must trust others to manage their accounts and their businesses, and there are many opportunities for fraud and theft.

I'd strike it BP, its entirely too hard on yourself. The rest speaks for itself.

I'll take your advice on that, Kid. Not for the reason you stated, but because it is gratuitus.

So, I had to attend this premilminary hearing for this kid who had robbed us. He was fifteen years old and the court was to decide whether he should go to trial as an adult. (A few weeks after robbing us he had killed a man). His parents were there, both wearing prison jump suits.What the fuck kind of chance did that kid have? His doom was fore-ordained, as was the murder victim's. I have no idea why his parents were in the system, don't think it matters. What kind of society would allow this, all but encourage this?

"I've got to pay my bill before they turn my water off"." I've got to pay my bill before they turn my lights off." "I've got pay my car insurance today or they'll cancel." "I've got to get my little brother/boyfriend/who ever out of jail.""I've got to pay the rent by 5 or the landlord will put me out." What I hear every day. And I nod a say something about the thieving bastards and we get on with business.

There was this Iraq war vet in the shop the other day. About my age, he'd retired after Oil War I but was "kept on retainer" for 7K a year, easy money. He got called back. His humvee took an IED hit in Afganistan and he took some shrapnel in his back. He was in severe pain. He cursed the VA, he cursed the government. He said the boys over there were being shit on. I've been talking to a lot of young guys going over there, second, third tour. Their views vary but most acknowledge that we shouldn't be there, they all hate KBR and many complain about the rules of engagement, feeling that they endanger their lives. Most say that they're proud of what they do. One couldn't wait to go back to kill some more ragheads. He'll be on the police force in a few years , wanna bet?

I was just talking to Jimmy, who was layed off in March. He's 50, and doesn't seem inclined to return to the grind. He's been writing poetry and essays and would like to do some on line publishing. Somehow we got to talking about politics,about the Pentagon and taxes and oil consumption and race and divide and conquer and then I mentioned something Mike said about 8% of the best and brightest of the black community being recruited into the privlidged class, decapitating the community. He said, "Yeah, yeah! That's what's going on!" So I gave him this web address.

Angel and her boyfriend showed up here around a year ago. Homeless and from NYC, they were staying with relatives. They dressed weird(he in an overcoat, even in summer,she always in a full length dress), acted a little strange, and I expect were a little nuts. But they were cool, and would get small loans on their oddball silver jewelry. For some reason they took to calling me "Father"(the beard?). They purchased a TV and DVD player(we're really cheap) but pawned them when they were having trouble with the people they were staying with. Got their stuff out but were being thrown out from where they were staying and had a falling out between themselves. Best I know they returned to the City separately.

Tim's parents came and got his keyboard again. Tim is in rehab again, about the 6th time, by my count. He's very religious, plays at church, has a crack habit. On occasion he's wept even as he pawned his instrument ,his self-loathing is so great. I've suggested to his parents that I cut him off, but they say no, at least this way they know were to find his stuff. Somehow that doesn't leave me feeling all warm and fuzzy.

Somehow that doesn't leave me feeling all warm and fuzzy.

Wrenching. You really should not feel bad about what you do. Better to be you among the least of them than someone of other predilections.

Somehow that doesn't leave me feeling all warm and fuzzy.

Wrenching. You really should not feel bad about what you do. Better to be you among the least of them than someone of other predilections.

Sorry about the whine, I'll bring some cheese next time. :) Not to worry, I got training, 10 years of Catlick school!

BTW, you're absolutely right about health care, it is the one immediate thing that damn near everybody will get behind right now. The trick is to make it a starting point, not an end in itself.

The Current Conditions

Things are really fucked up I - for each of us - personal stories of individuals being crushed and don't give me any patronizing they made the wrong choices bullshit about that.
[/*:m:1o6bhs65]
Things are really fucked up II - for all of us - stories about actions of the ruling class to exploit whole classes of people and don't give me any "yeah but at least we are doing something and little by little we are making progress" bullshit.
[/*:m:1o6bhs65]
Things are really fucked up III - politics - the ruling class puts its final solution political game into full overdrive, with virtually no political opposition. Voting Republicans out of office is not a solution.
[/*:m:1o6bhs65]
Things are really fucked up IV - the opposition - modern liberals, the house Negroes to the slave masters of the ruling class, do yeoman duty propping up the working class victims and holding their arms behind their backs so the ruling class can deliver a knockout blow. They do this in exchange for lucre and flattery.
[/*:m:1o6bhs65]
Things are really fucked up V - suburbia - nerve center for the global empire, the promised shining city on the hill, the monument to class warfare, racism, greed, isolation, waste, alientation, and the destruction of all human culture. It isn't a postal address, it is a mentality. Home to the corporate boardroom, the investing class, the court jesters, the non-profit organizations, and the "we" that the ruling class, whether "liberal" and "conservative," says it is protecting.
[/*:m:1o6bhs65]

The Battleground

Labor - fanning the few remaining feeble embers of working class resistance and organizing.
[/*:m:1o6bhs65]
Agriculture - first you gotta get them off of the farm, then herd them into slums, fit them for their worker bee chains, and tell them about all that you are doing for them to make their lives better, and that when things aren't working for them it is their fault. Destroy rural cooperative self-reliant agricultural communities - the bedrock foundation of all culture and in all places until here and now -and you can control the world. Control food, land, people, resources, culture - that about handles it I think.
[/*:m:1o6bhs65]
Politics - Lackeys do their master's bidding day in and day out, and sell all of us down the river. The working class (all of us even you auto) have no voice or representation - worse yet, we are enticed and deluded into supporting our own destruction "for our own good."
[/*:m:1o6bhs65]
Culture - Everything is for sale on that giant slave auction block we call "life," including your soul. Human beings are valued and ranked solely on their wealth. Things are only deemed good for either their usefulness in turning a buck, or in amusing ourselves in the most simple-minded and degrading ways. If you can turn a buck by amusing people, you are elevated to the status of a god. Vicious anti-intellectualism, destruction of art and artists, and the uprooting and elimination of all culture are rigidly promoted at all levels. I know, I know - "but I kinda like South Park." Cotton candy laced with soma presented as though it were benign and would sustain you. Yum.
[/*:m:1o6bhs65]

History

The history of struggle of the working class - organizing, resisting, rebelling. The leaders and ideas, what happened and why ad how. What applies to the current struggle.
[/*:m:1o6bhs65]
The rise and development of American corporate capitalism - it isn't human nature, it isn't inevitable, it isn't the last chapter. It is very modern and it is unique.
[/*:m:1o6bhs65]

And from: http://populistindependent.org/phpbb/vi ... =4762#4762 (http://populistindependent.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=4762#4762)

Why don't we gather up posts from wherever they are, rework and organize them, convert them to static html documents, and put a modern "committees of correspondence" up? I volunteer to do all the work, provided I am not the only one doing the thinking.

Yes please. This is very much along the lines of my designs on using the drupal content management app for...

But if you mean gather up your 3000+ posts at the other place, umm... that'll be a veritable shit ton of work.

But if you mean gather up your 3000+ posts at the other place, umm... that'll be a veritable shit ton of work.

Less work relative to the impact. What we are doing now is much more work, relative to the impact.


Yes please. This is very much along the lines of my designs on using the drupal content management app for...

There is the tool, and then there is the job. The problem with database driven sites is that they are just the opposite of what they should be, if we think about what the job is rather than what the tool can do. A database site makes less from more. It just soaks up, absorbs and buries the communications. Programmers love this, because for them data is just a big pain in the as and one piece of data is the same as any other. "Get that crap filed away and out of sight, would you?"

We have the opposite challenge - how to make more from less. For programmers, incoming communications are a problem rather than an opportunity. The more quickly they can get it tucked away into a museum of ideas - neat and orderly - the better. Most programmers don't really understand why human beings communicate and don't think that much of interest goes on between humans.

Database driven sites punish activity and diminish it rather than supporting it and increasing it. The more active a site, the more difficult it becomes to have any intelligent conversations, any consistency or continuity, any work accomplished. Database sites encourage play and discourage work. They reward the frivolous, the casual, and punish the serious and the permanent.

Let's say for the sake of argument, that we put together 300 articles from posts. Those get published as permanent static pages - highly indexable and linkable, not buried somewhere in some database accessible by finding and accessing a pseudo page that is portion of a thread in a board.

I am imagining them as difficult to ignore - very controversial. That we already do. In fact, if we opened up the board to view by non-members, with the inflammatory things we are saying, we would be deluged with TLC folks bashing the shit out of us, and that would be the end of any meaningful or thoughtful discussions. If those outrageous things we are saying are etched in stone, as it were - permanent documents with permanent URL's in the web, they become much more powerful.

Authorship should be pseudonyms. We aren't trying to earn PHDs or impress anyone or enhance our CV's, we are trying to stir up trouble. Also, we want the ideas, not the personality of the poster, or what the other lunkheads around the web think are the personalities of the posters, to be the focus. Some authors, like wolf and auto, may wish to use their real names, and other writers may contribute article. The rabble rousing think tank that generates the permanent documents, and the editorial staff, must be by invitation only, if we want to continue to accomplish any work.

Now here is how we break through the dynamic versus static problem and make each work for us. Each static page has a "comment" link at the bottom, but rather than going to a pseudo board as most blog software does, those links go to a section in PHPBB. This brings people to the discussion in a much more productive way than a list of forum topics does. Those sections of the board can be public, and can be configured to match the look and feel of the article pages. They will function as a board, but without that free-for-all or insider's club feel that boards have.

This is not censorship, not a matter of hiding anything to deceive people, and not a closed club. All are free to participate - but the question is, what are they participating in? That step is skipped over by most board owners and operators. When the question comes up - and sooner or later it will - the answer is "the board is privately owned and the owner can decide anything they want to decide and you are a guest in their house so STFU" and the owner can be held to no standards and you don't even get to ask WTF the whole purpose of the group is to begin with. Within that context, we are all supposed to imagine ourselves "free."

What we are doing is managing the effort, giving the effort a purpose, and judging everything by that.

Rather than having people show up and look at a list of ongoing discussions, and think "gee is there anything here that I can see that is of any interest to me, or where I might be able to pee on a tree and mark my territory, or where I might be able to get into a good fight" imagine if people come to an article - and articles have much more weight than a forum post does in people's minds, and will be given much more consideration - and think "I have never read anything like this on this subject anywhere." From there, they will then search for more, and they will be directing their own search and developing an interest in what we are doing and understand the context they are in before they start joining in. That self-directed method is the strength of the web, and database sites obstruct that.

But if you mean gather up your 3000+ posts at the other place, umm... that'll be a veritable shit ton of work.

Less work relative to the impact. What we are doing now is much more work, relative to the impact.


Yes please. This is very much along the lines of my designs on using the drupal content management app for...

There is the tool, and then there is the job. The problem with database driven sites is that they are just the opposite of what they should be, if we think about what the job is rather than what the tool can do. A database site makes less from more. It just soaks up, absorbs and buries the communications. Programmers love this, because for them data is just a big pain in the as and one piece of data is the same as any other. "Get that crap filed away and out of sight, would you?"

We have the opposite challenge - how to make more from less. For programmers, incoming communications are a problem rather than an opportunity. The more quickly they can get it tucked away into a museum of ideas - neat and orderly - the better. Most programmers don't really understand why human beings communicate and don't think that much of interest goes on between humans.

Database driven sites punish activity and diminish it rather than supporting it and increasing it. The more active a site, the more difficult it becomes to have any intelligent conversations, any consistency or continuity, any work accomplished. Database sites encourage play and discourage work. They reward the frivolous, the casual, and punish the serious and the permanent.

Let's say for the sake of argument, that we put together 300 articles from posts. Those get published as permanent static pages - highly indexable and linkable, not buried somewhere in some database accessible by finding and accessing a pseudo page that is portion of a thread in a board.

I am imagining them as difficult to ignore - very controversial. That we already do. In fact, if we opened up the board to view by non-members, with the inflammatory things we are saying, we would be deluged with TLC folks bashing the shit out of us, and that would be the end of any meaningful or thoughtful discussions. If those outrageous things we are saying are etched in stone, as it were - permanent documents with permanent URL's in the web, they become much more powerful.

Authorship should be pseudonyms. We aren't trying to earn PHDs or impress anyone or enhance our CV's, we are trying to stir up trouble. Also, we want the ideas, not the personality of the poster, or what the other lunkheads around the web think are the personalities of the posters, to be the focus. Some authors, like wolf and auto, may wish to use their real names, and other writers may contribute article. The rabble rousing think tank that generates the permanent documents, and the editorial staff, must be by invitation only, if we want to continue to accomplish any work.

Now here is how we break through the dynamic versus static problem and make each work for us. Each static page has a "comment" link at the bottom, but rather than going to a pseudo board as most blog software does, those links go to a section in PHPBB. This brings people to the discussion in a much more productive way than a list of forum topics does. Those sections of the board can be public, and can be configured to match the look and feel of the article pages. They will function as a board, but without that free-for-all or insider's club feel that boards have.

This is not censorship, not a matter of hiding anything to deceive people, and not a closed club. All are free to participate - but the question is, what are they participating in? That step is skipped over by most board owners and operators. When the question comes up - and sooner or later it will - the answer is "the board is privately owned and the owner can decide anything they want to decide and you are a guest in their house so STFU" and the owner can be held to no standards and you don't even get to ask WTF the whole purpose of the group is to begin with. Within that context, we are all supposed to imagine ourselves "free."

What we are doing is managing the effort, giving the effort a purpose, and judging everything by that.

Rather than having people show up and look at a list of ongoing discussions, and think "gee is there anything here that I can see that is of any interest to me, or where I might be able to pee on a tree and mark my territory, or where I might be able to get into a good fight" imagine if people come to an article - and articles have much more weight than a forum post does in people's minds, and will be given much more consideration - and think "I have never read anything like this on this subject anywhere." From there, they will then search for more, and they will be directing their own search and developing an interest in what we are doing and understand the context they are in before they start joining in. That self-directed method is the strength of the web, and database sites obstruct that.

I thought this is what I have been saying (though I really didn't mention authorship, it was because I really saw that as a nameless collective). Now the point on the sort of content manager, if any, is well taken. But am not suggesting being slaves to any programmer or anything at all like that. Rather I am thinking merely of using the application as a means to

-easily update/edit (yes, based precisely on a designated, linked PHPBB discussion specifically about the page/article/content)

- organize content (most of all, in the manner we find along the way but also) with some sort of meaningful coherence that leads not just to a rote knowledge but that deeper epiphany that accompanies genuine learning. As an example, recall the threads Anax put up that all, though not immediately recognizably, eventually wove into one more or less overarching theme about the conditions in 19th century Russia. Maybe you saw KOBH respond exuberantly that he was finally following where Anax was going at one point as this history began to accrue over several posts. To my mind, one also very impressed to connect Zoya and Chernyshevsky and Pisarev over his ladling it out to us, that ability to induce a sort of flowering of understanding is the goal in disseminating our information. And that ain't just in relaying a history, it's in the whole effort of making writing, yeah, something more than just writing.

That needn't be drupal though. I don't have a marriage to that. I suppose I see pages as sheet of paper in my mind's eye. And, at least in those years gone by when I did any serious writing, it was a messy affair. All the more so as the pages pile up. To be able to have some sort of framework, malleable and viewable from different angles is what grabs my concern. How does one segue from a discussion of Philosophy to Ron Paul in a page without each of the matters losing something, kinda like those stereos that had everything?

http://www.norbern.com/images/equip%20pics2/phto0008.jpg

Gotta have the components separate to play the music no?

Lamely wielded analogy I know. But maybe it will pluck your strings, hehe.

And the board is open for reading by anyone with an internet connection...were you thinking our current discussions have been locked down all this time? Only the old threads that have all our early cat fights are invisible.

And the board is open for reading by anyone with an internet connection...were you thinking our current discussions have been locked down all this time? Only the old threads that have all our early cat fights are invisible.

Is that right? How come I am not getting the usual hate mail?

Not so, guys. These forums are visible only to members.

I hesitated to post this out of fear that you will run off and make them visible, Rusty. Let's at least have a discussion before we make any changes. :D

My opinion:

This (the forums on the bottom) is the kitchen. The top forums (that people can see and that include our cat fights) is the dining room.

People can ask to tour the kitchen - we aren't hiding anything - and we can always bring in more chefs. But we should not let everyone have access at all times to the kitchen to throw the pots and pans around and shit in the food.

That is, unless we don't care what we serve the public, or don't recognize that the public is starving, or have the modern liberal notion that it is "unfair" if you don't let just anyone and everyone, without qualification, have a hand in preparing the food.

Even the most "progressive" groups - for all of their yammer about fairness - don't let just anyone in the kitchen. They just use devious means and unwritten rules for expelling people from the kitchen, and the criteria for expelling people is this - anyone who knows anything about cooking will be eliminated as quickly as possible, with the only restraint on that being the need to hide that this is what is actually happening from the other members.

This happens all the time in modern liberalism. We saw it at PI. "Fairness" meant that bullies got "equality" with the talented, knowledgeable, informed, experienced and passionate. "It isn't fair that those who are saying things that interest people are the ones who get to be seen as the ones saying things that are interesting to people."

Not so, guys. These forums are visible only to members.

I hesitated to post this out of fear that you will run off and make them visible, Rusty. Let's at least have a discussion before we make any changes. :D

When I come to the site without being logged in, I see the bottom forums only and not the top ones

Not so, guys. These forums are visible only to members.

I hesitated to post this out of fear that you will run off and make them visible, Rusty. Let's at least have a discussion before we make any changes. :D

When I come to the site without being logged in, I see the bottom forums only and not the top ones

WTF? I am getting the opposite. I think. I had better pay more attention. I will take another look.

Not so, guys. These forums are visible only to members.

I hesitated to post this out of fear that you will run off and make them visible, Rusty. Let's at least have a discussion before we make any changes. :D

When I come to the site without being logged in, I see the bottom forums only and not the top ones

WTF? I am getting the opposite. I think. I had better pay more attention. I will take another look.

I just checked again and I'm 100% on that

I just checked again and I'm 100% on that

You are correct.

:oops:

I just checked again and I'm 100% on that

You are correct.

:oops:

Huh?

I know you get frustrated Rusty that we don't move ahead. I do too.

I think we are waiting for two things to emerge - consensus and leadership.

I don't think I am appropriate for leadership of the sort needed for the board - wrong skill set and temperament. So I just keep tossing ideas out there to see what catches the interest of the other members, and to see if anyone emerges who wants to run with the ball. As I said before, I am willing and able to do any grunt work, programming, and tech management as and if needed.

The longer we postpone decisions, the more opportunity we have for learning - the discussions about PI the last few days have been valuable I think in that regard.

I would say that we do not want admin to be charged with managing and herding the members - I think that is a big part of the problem with DU and PI. The mods are charged with a futile and miserable task of keeping the peace and maintaining political putrity. I would also say that we want to create a context for discussion, not have a mission of steering people a certain way. Let the writers write, let the readers read, give the folks a place to talk it out. Admin and management should be the servants of the members, not the other way around.

I do have a vision - establishment of a strong working class struggle context, providing a place for writers to own their own efforts and be free of suppression, connecting up with the real world in the form of opening communication channels with labor organizations, immigrant and minority groups, reaching 70% of the population in a clear and powerful way, and counbtering the deadly and paralyzing influence of the ruling class agenda in liberal clothing.

Rather than admin banning members, I think members should be able to fire admin. Rather than members giving money to admin, I think writers should be given resources generated from the board so they can buy groceries and focus more on writing and thinking. Rather than exquisitely fine-tuning the smallest difference between people and bringing them into stark relief, I want to see common ground and could not support socialism if I was not firmly convinced that socialism is the inevitable conclusion to any effort at finding common ground. Rather than being content with "being" socialists and seeing others as "wrong" because they are not, I would rather that we take responsibility for our own failure to accurately and effectively communicate with people who mare not "like minded," our own cowardice that leads us to hide behind the skirts of upscale aristocratic liberalism.

But hey what do I know? I am just a performer and a hobo, a wandering musician and a story teller, a refugee from polite liberal intellectual circles and legitimate society, who prefers the railyard, the shop, and the farm to suburbia, a dreamer and an airhead, a big blabbermouth, a chronic trouble maker without ever trying to be.

I am not a journalist, a political analyst, a scholar, or an organizer. But others here do have those skills in abundance.

I say all of that because I think it is important that we know who we are, and because I think that the cult of self-actualization that permeates liberalism is a fancy way of denying who you are.

The problem is not that people don't "agree" with us, the problem is they can't hear us, and that is because the communication lines are being suppressed, and there is too much static. We can open those communication lines.

- Software - have narrowed it down to two choices. We will need mugga to do an installation for us.

- I will admin for a while just to get things rolling. I am just the interim editor, not the publisher. Servant of the members, not boss.

- Let's take another look at the categories and forum ideas. Carpet f-bombing is probably not efffective, so we can re-word those.

Of the well known software Moveable Type is the hands down choice for our needs. I have been slumming around in the Internet marketing world, as well, and found something there that might be the ticket. Looked at hundreds of programs - most of the Internet marketing software is proprietary and that is a big drawback - and narrowed the choice down to one outfit - some guys writing for dating sites and such. Boonex (http://www.boonex.com/)

I am going to try to talk to the guys in person. Their mission statement -


BoonEx is all about uniting people. We want people to collaborate in reaching global and personal goals. We believe that entire world can be turned into a compassionate, humane and caring community. BoonEx can do it. BoonEx does it.

This is a big, global mission, which was very difficult to achieve in the past, but now we are in the age of global information exchange, age of Internet; and we now have truly effective tools to establish common values and change the world.

BoonEx is created to be in the forward motion of this initiative. By creating online communities and providing community software to like-minded people we bring people closer - we teach them to be friends again, en masse.

Moreover, BoonEx builds and powers communities on all stages - we build community sites; we give out community software; we create a community of community sites' webmasters; and we are a community ourselves.

Global community just can't be bad, by definition. United world can safe the Earth, can stop wars, and can heal itself.

You also have an opportunity to be a part of our noble mission by making a contribution. Your contribution (any kind of contribution: donations, elaborations, etc.) will help us to develop and improve our products. By making a contribution you become a member of the big "Unite People" movement. You come first and we acknowledge you as our front row co-fighter!

We are looking for like-minded people, organizations, movements and groups and wait for your comments.


The research for software proved interesting. The same divide exists there as in the political world. Republicans get the job done and market effectively and draw in all sorts of talent and are willing to innovate, while liberals obsess over process, focus on credentials and specialization, establish rigid hierarchies, are opne onlt to the leisure class since one must have the personal resources to afford spending time in a volunteer model, and are run as closed clubs and do a piss poor job of achieving any results.

In the software world, it is the con artists, hustlers and pornographers who have the most effective software. Since they are very goal driven - turning a buck - all they care about is what gets the job done, not what is whiz-bang kewl. Open source people are obsessed with process and see the public as their inferiors, etc. and the software that liberal organizations use is the worst of the worst. It is a question of seeing the software as a tool that anyone can easily use, or seeing people as agents of the software who need to adapt themselves to the software (the M$ model.)

OK these Russian guys at Boon are doing it right. How did the US fall so far behind in software development over the last ten years?

Forum software -

Orca (http://www.boonex.com/products/orca/features/)

Looks to me like we can move user database and posts over to this forum.

Community software -

Dolphin (http://www.boonex.com/products/dolphin/)

General Features -

* Blog (photo upload, user can create different categories, permissions, comments)
* The ability to sort member menu and groups on member menu
* The ability to approve "x" number of profiles simultaneously
* Cash profile info
* General folder for all pics
* Smiles Pack
* French, German, Russian, Dutch, Spanish Languages
* Default integration of Ray Web Multimedia Software free version
* Optional integration of phpBB, vBulletin
* Optional integration of Barracuda Traffic Development Software
* Speed Dating Module
* Registration Security Images
* Email member profile
* On-fly photos auto scaling
* Profile of the week and profile of the month
* "Links", "FAQ", "About us", "Contact us", "Privacy", "Terms of use", "Services" pages
* Affiliate system with commissions tracking routine and security tools
* Quick search
* Advanced search
* Sorting and search narrowing
* USA states and ZIP codes search options
* Matchmaking (auto search based on user-specified criteria)
* Cupid mail (matchmaking results auto-sending)
* Search for online members, searching members, communicating (in IM) members
* Advanced Credit System which can be used for buying variety of services: membership, contact information, access to chat or IM, etc. for registered users only, visitors are offered to register or log-in before buying credits
* Integrated with PayPal by default
* Supports recurring billing from PayPal
* Integrated with new 2checkout
* Can be integrated with any other payment processing company (PaySystems, Authorize.Net, iBill, 2checkout, etc.)
* 100% automated billing system. Script automatically sends purchased information after payment is processed and performs multi-level anti-fraud checks
* Several payment providers could work simultaneously


User Part Features

* Customizable profile view
* Browse profiles with narrowing ability
* Country flags on-fly selection
* E-mail confirmation routine
* Checking e-mails to be unique
* Members registration form - 2 steps by default
* Smart shopping cart with history
* Invite / tell a friend
* New members (auto-displaying of photos of latest registered users on the main page)
* "Online/Offline" user status
* Merchant account integration
* Personal Media Gallery (audio, video and pictures albums and categories)
* Personal Blog
* Friends List
* Guestbook
* Friends Only and Registered Only permissions to GuestBook comments
* ShoutBox
* 'Chicks' For Free
* Gmail Like Mailbox Conversations Archive
* Speed dating events subscription
* "Random Quotes" system
* One-click lists with online users
* Top-rated profiles lookup
* Zodiac signs lookup in profiles and search results
* Newsletter
* "Last logged-in" information
* Essay (extended "About me" section)
* Profile ratings
* Number of profile views with ability to list the members who viewed the profile
* Automatic member gender prompt for profiles search
* Dating polls
* Automatic photos upload system
* Search results can be presented in the form of a photo gallery
* Optional displaying of additional photos only to gold or purchased members
* Photos rating (similar to hotornot.com)
* Password-protected members' photos
* Personal Weblog commenting
* Double-blind virtual kisses
* Double-blind messaging
* Messenger with storing system
* Advanced control panel for members (profile status and all-contacts information)
* Media (video and audio support for profiles)
* Configurable Flash-based online live-chat system
* HotList (buddies, favorites)
* Block members (members can block all correspondence from certain members)
* Support of A/V Instant Messenger and A/V Chat by Ray Web Multimedia Software
* Ability to choose event, order ticket and provide matches ids


Administration Panel Features

* User-friendly, convenient online administration system
* Index page Drag&Drop structure building
* Moderators Accounts to approve and edit profiles
* News module with admin tab
* Automatic success stories posting with "latest story" feature
* Graduated pricing, credits system, customizable memberships
* Advanced Banner System and Adsense Integration
* Easy to follow calendar
* Members Pictures Customized Water Mark
* Individual member promotion and membership assignment
* Five types of user account status
* Search by ID, e-mail and nickname
* Confirmed User email notification for admin
* "Variables" section to manage sitewide functions
* User-friendly profile fields modification system
* Site's styles file modification
* Integrated language file modification capabilities
* Automatic update availability alerts
* Admin interface to create moderators
* Updated admin finance calculator
* Multiple languages support
* Featured profiles generating
* Optional profiles auto-approve
* Installation wizard for fast and easy scripts installation
* Easy texts, code, graphics modification
* Free trial membership (admin ability to set up the period length and conditions)
* Automatic database cleaning (administrator can specify allowed inactivity period)
* Displaying the number of registered members from defined countries who are online/present
* Links exchange campaign
* E-mail notifications/newsletter system
* "Articles" system for more text content
* Admin ability to set Cupid mail options
* Plugin configuration features
* Banners rotation system management
* Ability to bring random profiles, online profiles, last profiles, and top rated profiles to home page
* ability to set minimal number of characters for "About me" and "About you" fields
* ability to set required size of "Password" field
* Customizable number of photos a member can upload
* ability to choose currency image used for transactions
* Admin ability to set up events, place, time and events' manager contact info
* Admin ability to set up events' pricing based on gender
* Admin ability to show events' place picture
* Admin ability to set matches number
* Printer-friendly users' list, matching users
* Automatic billing and transactions generation
* Credits pricing modification system in admin panel
* Ability to create any membership type
* Ability to define membership access level
* Ability to define customized membership requirements
* Admin ability to give permissions to all users to contact each other for free
* Admin ability to give gender type users gold membership during sign up

Orca (http://www.boonex.com/products/orca/features/)

Looks to me like we can move user database and posts over to this forum.

Community software -

Dolphin (http://www.boonex.com/products/dolphin/)

I'm on my mobile and so a bit hamstrung, but yeah that's looking really good... I'ma sucka fer ~AJAX

These guys are diamonds in the rough - a lucky find. They are in some village in Russia. You guys have to poke around their site.

http://www.boonex.com/img/about/photos/2007dd300.jpg

LOL.

BoonEx Community Charity Projects


BoonEx is a socially responsible company that always looks for ways to thank community it operates in for all benefits and goods it enjoys. Currently all BoonEx charity projects are small and not organized into long-term programs. However, this will not be the case within earliest time period. BoonEx is open to any proposals of charity activities both offline and online.

On the 26-27th of July, 2006 BoonEx - community software experts - with assistance of NGO "Center for Public Policy" has carried out a charity action to support old people living in Bishkek (Kyrgyz Republic). BoonEx representatives visited 15 elders and provided them with various foodstuff such as buckwheat, rice, sugar, oil, sausage, biscuits, tea, sweets - all that is not always possible to get on scanty monthly payments. The goal of this charity action was to support elders living in Bishkek and let them know they're not alone, that there are some people who care about their lives

We could help them as much as they could help us. They are doing good work and their heads are in the right place, so to speak.

They have some link directory software that looks good - a link directory is an excellent way to organize resources and network with other organizations.

What a riot. Here we are talking communism and they are over there in Siberia trying to be entrepreneurs.

These guys are diamonds in the rough - a lucky find. They are in some village in Russia. You guys have to poke around their site.

http://www.boonex.com/img/about/photos/2007dd300.jpg

LOL.

BoonEx Community Charity Projects


BoonEx is a socially responsible company that always looks for ways to thank community it operates in for all benefits and goods it enjoys. Currently all BoonEx charity projects are small and not organized into long-term programs. However, this will not be the case within earliest time period. BoonEx is open to any proposals of charity activities both offline and online.

On the 26-27th of July, 2006 BoonEx - community software experts - with assistance of NGO "Center for Public Policy" has carried out a charity action to support old people living in Bishkek (Kyrgyz Republic). BoonEx representatives visited 15 elders and provided them with various foodstuff such as buckwheat, rice, sugar, oil, sausage, biscuits, tea, sweets - all that is not always possible to get on scanty monthly payments. The goal of this charity action was to support elders living in Bishkek and let them know they're not alone, that there are some people who care about their lives

We could help them as much as they could help us. They are doing good work and their heads are in the right place, so to speak.

They have some link directory software that looks good - a link directory is an excellent way to organize resources and network with other organizations.

What a riot. Here we are talking communism and they are over there in Siberia trying to be entrepreneurs.

This is cracking me up! I'm just picturing those topless dudes delivering sausage and buckwheat to old ladies :P

I can't wait to try out the "speed dating module"!

Maybe eventually I'll actually follow the links and look at the actual software

:oops:

Maybe eventually I'll actually follow the links and look at the actual software

:oops:

If the software works like they say it should be perfect. The Russians tend to be one step ahead in software development anyway.

If the software works like they say it should be perfect. The Russians tend to be one step ahead in software development anyway.

So I actually looked at it, and as you say, if it does what they say it does it's great. I don't have much basis for comparison.

And btw, when I come here I can only see one set of forums - not sure if it's the top or bottom set but it's whatever one I keep posting in. When I first joined I could see 2 sets of forums. I don't know if it matters.

Just to say I like these:

1. Rename this joint "Socialist Independent". It is a low enough threshold to begin with and I don't know what no "populist" is.

2. Consider this a broad (very broad) coalition of socialists:
Mike's "I hate all theory" socialism
KOBH's "socialism with Tourettes"
PPLE's "just sayin' socialism"
Wolf's "fire and brimstone socialism"
Raphaelle's "I ain't forgetin' nothin' socialism"
chlamor's "You better be splittin' some wood with that..." socialism
blindpig's "Baltimore socialism with a SC woodsy face"
autorank's "Don't know if its socialism but its a plot!" socialism.
megan's "just tryin' to learn somethin'" socialism.
and my "never met a nit I didn't like" socialism.

3. Use this as a home base, develop biting social criticism and post everywhere that is appropriate. Consider it as cyber-leafleting. Let PPLE talk us into creating longer lifespan words.

4. Let anyone join this place who wants to.... and let them ask all the questions they want with a local responsibility to try to answer them.

5. Don't compete with the mass boards and don't try to change them... they play their role.

If ya wanna do somethin', start modest and base it off of what you are doing already.

Just sayin'...

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Current Conditions


* Things are really fucked up I - for each of us - personal stories of individuals being crushed and don't give me any patronizing they made the wrong choices bullshit about that.

* Things are really fucked up II - for all of us - stories about actions of the ruling class to exploit whole classes of people and don't give me any "yeah but at least we are doing something and little by little we are making progress" bullshit.

* Things are really fucked up III - politics - the ruling class puts its final solution political game into full overdrive, with virtually no political opposition. Voting Republicans out of office is not a solution.

* Things are really fucked up IV - the opposition - modern liberals, the house Negroes to the slave masters of the ruling class, do yeoman duty propping up the working class victims and holding their arms behind their backs so the ruling class can deliver a knockout blow. They do this in exchange for lucre and flattery.

* Things are really fucked up V - suburbia - nerve center for the global empire, the promised shining city on the hill, the monument to class warfare, racism, greed, isolation, waste, alientation, and the destruction of all human culture. It isn't a postal address, it is a mentality. Home to the corporate boardroom, the investing class, the court jesters, the non-profit organizations, and the "we" that the ruling class, whether "liberal" and "conservative," says it is protecting.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

What have ya'll got in mind? I'm guessing it's not the GD, GDP, LBN, etc that we're well famaliar with. Here, I'll pull a few out of my ass:

History

Theory

Action

Survival(environment,agriculture, climate, peak oil)

Reactionaries(Assholes)

World Revolution

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

If the software works like they say it should be perfect. The Russians tend to be one step ahead in software development anyway.

So I actually looked at it, and as you say, if it does what they say it does it's great. I don't have much basis for comparison.

And btw, when I come here I can only see one set of forums - not sure if it's the top or bottom set but it's whatever one I keep posting in. When I first joined I could see 2 sets of forums. I don't know if it matters.

my fault fer sure

there are only the old threads up there where we did the PI redux thing early on. All but the bitterest arguments are reposted down here. not sure what I did to lock you out. I think KOBH also was saying he has something funky, but I don't understand what and he never clarified. If you want access to that old stuff, say the word (it might oughtta be a prayer), and we'll make it happen.

If the software works like they say it should be perfect. The Russians tend to be one step ahead in software development anyway.

So I actually looked at it, and as you say, if it does what they say it does it's great. I don't have much basis for comparison.

And btw, when I come here I can only see one set of forums - not sure if it's the top or bottom set but it's whatever one I keep posting in. When I first joined I could see 2 sets of forums. I don't know if it matters.

my fault fer sure

there are only the old threads up there where we did the PI redux thing early on. All but the bitterest arguments are reposted down here. not sure what I did to lock you out. I think KOBH also was saying he has something funky, but I don't understand what and he never clarified. If you want access to that old stuff, say the word (it might oughtta be a prayer), and we'll make it happen.

no, Mike was saying that he could see the top forums but not the bottom forums when he wasn't logged in. It turns out he just had it backwards. I can see all the forums.

Things are really fucked up I - for each of us - personal stories of individuals being crushed and don't give me any patronizing they made the wrong choices bullshit about that.


I am a 49 years old and husband to a sick wife. I lost my job 10 weeks ago and after 50+ resumes, visits to EDD and every effort to find work, I am clueless as to where else to turn. My wife is very sick I can't afford to even buy her medication. I hate to ask anyone for financial help because I have always been so independent. In less than a week I stand to lose everything I have worked for, which isn't much, The bills are stacking up and there is nothing left to cover them. I am scared out of my wits right now and have no where else to turn. I am desperate. Is there anyone that can help! Please! Where can I go or who can I turn too? I can't handle this much longer.


I am a single mom and make $28,000 which is too much to qualify for HUD housing, ccis (cheap daycare), welfare, wic. So I bring home $1500 a month after taxes and when I add my daughter to my health insurance Il bring home $1350 (daycare is $700-1000 where I live) and I have looked for single moms or other daycare options and have found none. Therefore I have $700 a month to live on and rent is $500 - I live in a cheap one bedroom, and with gas and electric and food, clothes, copays, I cannot make my bills. I have no cable or phone because I cannot afford it.


My name is Michelle and I am a 17 year old in high school. My mom seperated from her husband during the summer and in order to attend my same high school and graduate I had to move in with family friends. My mom can barely get by and she certainly has no money to spare and no room for me to live. I have to move out after graduation and me and my boyfriend of 2 years were going to get a place and attend college. Means we are both going to college full time we will not be able to work as much as we should. With cost of living so expensive I think that it is imposible. I'm saving for a car and have not been able to purchase one yet.


I am a grandmother raising 4 grandkids. My income is $401 a month. I'm 60-years-old and the children need shoes and clothing. I'm raising 4 grandchildren with one social security check. I need help. We are homeless survivors of Hurricane Katrina. I been struggling since I been out here. FEMA is not doing my grandkids and I any good. I cant get my security deposit from my landlord from New Orleans. I just can't get nothing.


I am currently in the Military and my wife has just got out due to the birth of our daughter and we did not want her to have to go over seas and both of us be away from her. Since she has gotten out she has not found a job and is looking very hard which has hurt us. We are in desperate need of help with our rent. We are not trying to take the easy way out but we have done all we can. I work about 60 hrs a week and on my one or two days off I try to find side jobs to make ends meet. She has put applications out to probably 40 different employers.


Please help me to help my three kids to have a life, the right way. Hey, my name is Katie i have 3 kids , 7yr. old girl, 5yr. old boy, and a 2yr. old boy. 15 years ago i thought i met the man of my dreams, got married had kids and now i do not even really know the man i am married to, because of his second life he has been living that is fixing to cause my kids to severly suffer!!! To make a very long story short he is currently out of jail on about 5 bonds, made headline news, and fixing to go to jail for probably life.meanwhile i have 3 kids no where to go, no babysitter to work and no GED, or other schooling past 10 grade. Does anybody have any suggestion of where i can get assistance for my kids future?


I'm a 49 year old military veteran. My wife and I wasn't educated too much about real estate. I know it's not an excuse, but I received a letter from my 1st mortgage company stating that our interest rates would increase from 7-10% starting 1 October. We also have a 2nd and a 3rd motgage. That would be an increase of $900 a month. I tried to refinance, but was turned down everytime. The reason was the income to debt ratio. I'm will be transfering back to sea duty with a deployment scheduled in April 2007. I'm worried about my wife and daughter during the upcoming months. My wife suffers with anxiety attacks. It's a stressful time for us.


I have a brother that is mentally ill. We recently had to remove him from the Group Home that he was a resident, They abused, neglected and misstreated my brother. They abandon him on the streets. Because of this I have taken on the responsiblity of providing him assistance. Providing him a place to stay. Taking him places that he needs to go, doctors appts, grocery store, shopping etc. My car broke down and now I have no transportaion to do these things for him. He was recently placed back in a mental insitution. Sitting at home stirring at walls allday got to Him. He had a set back, because I did not have a car to get him out of the house. I do work, but bills have overwhelmed me. While I was working, My sister shared my car to do things also for my brother. Now we are both without a car. My bills are behind and the is no public transportation in our area, so I can't take the bus or subway. I have missed a couple of days from work. Noew I just walk to keep from losing my job(10 minute Drive turns into a 1hr 26min walk). I also have elderly parents whom live off $687 a month in SS. I have to provide transportation for them to get around. Is there really any assistance out there that we can benefit? I really need the help or just enough to purchase a new car, so My sister and I can continue to do these things for my family.


I am a 36 year old woman in need of help, money wise and friendship too. I have a 15 year old son, and we just have each other. His father left us after he had us in debt so far we could never get back ahead in life. I am disabled for more than one reason. First I have Major depression, along with ADD, and I am borderline line Bi-Polar. Well that just about does it for my mental state, now for the other. I have DDD, I have lost most of my Lumbar section of my back. The disc I do have left are either buldding or herinate , I have one disc that is pushing in on my spinal cord, and another disc pinching a nerve in my back. As you can guess I can't hardly do anything at all, but I do try. It is hard for me to even go to the bathroom by myself. My son helps me around the house as much as he can, and my sister takes me to my doctors appointments. But right now I am financial broke. Me and my son live from disablity check to check, which is not much. I applied for foodstamps and they only gave me $10.00 a month, based on child support I am suppose to be receiving, which I am not. The father of my child, has a Aunt that works at the Child Support place, and she turns in that he has paid the support when he has not. I have always provided for my family, and made ends meet, but I just can't now.


I am a single mother of two children currently in a bad situation I am currently not working I do not have a car to get around in to get a job or get my children to places they need to go such as to dr's appoints in such. I have rent due and bills and I am about to have to start paying on school loans that I can not pay for. Any ideas I really could use the help.


I am a 49 year old woman who has lost everything do to the stupidity of my husband, who is now in prison.

I am threatened with foreclosure. My car is on the verge of getting reposed by the bank. And I can't pay my property tax. I have a Bi-polar child who is unable to to keep a job do to her illness. Please help!


I'm a married 47yr. old woman who is unable to work due to medical issues that prohibet me from standing long lengths at a time or walking far distances, not to mension heat is an absolute no..no..! I'm about to be evicted from my home and I need some help with housing. I've been looking thru Hud homes and Indian housing, but thus far I have come up empty handed. I am looking for help with housing.


Hello my name is Iris and I am in desperate need of a grant where I don't have to pay any fee, My debt is up to the skies and I can have a life without food for my child help me.


I was in a car accident on 5/05/07. I was hit by a drunk driver going 70mph with his headlights off and running a red light. I was thrown from my car and sustained minor head injuries a few broken ribs and a bruised heart. I ended up losing my business because of all the time I needed to recover.


I am in financial trouble. I am a single mom with a sick parent that support and take care of also. The IRS is taking a long doing my 2000 taxes and I can't file for last year yet. They are shutting off my utilities one by one and will take my car next. This can all be solved if the IRS moves quickly and gives me the money that is owed to me. Somebody please pray for me I am scared. I have prayed for 30 days straight... I need help.


My name is Rick. I am 50 years old and married. I lost my job in Jan-2006, and have been back sliding ever since. We have deleted our savings trying differant schools and nothing to show for it. I don't want to lose my house but it is looking more like it every day. I have never asked for help. In fact we have always tried to help others. We could realy use some now. Anything will help.


I am a 35 year old, married with two boys ages 7 and 3. I was off work for surgery and I am 5 months behind on my bills. My home is being threatened to be foreclosed on and my cars are going to be repossessed. I am in need of help to pay my bills. I wish for a guardian angel to come from the heavens to lead the way for me. Please help me.


We need help. We are not making or monthly bills. We don't even have enough to cover regular bills. This doesn't include groceries. We are paying the minimum on everything. We have spoke with our church and they have helped with food. We tried to go to the county for help but we make $2.00 over the amt to get help with food stamps and cash. We drive old cars no extras and we can't make it. I don't know what else to do. I am completely desperate. We pray every night and I pray during the day all day. I am so depressed now days. I just want to catch up some how. I want our children not to feel poor. I have to say I am sorry we can't do that we don't have the money....I cry about that at night. We try so hard. We just need a break.


My husband is getting ready to go on deployment in Iraq, and we have one son and are having huge problems with our bills right now and no company are willing to give us a loan because of our credit report.


I am a single mother of two kids, 13 and 9 years old. I am having financial difficulties at this particular time. I am suffering with depression and panic disorders too. I am so behind on my rent. They are talking about putting me any my kids out. My daughter is a Chronic Asthma patient. I is very hard living from paycheck to paycheck.


Hello my name is Vicki and I have 2 sons. I have a 5 year old starting Kindergarten and a 19 month old disabled son. I am unable to work because I have to be a nurse to my baby. He has numerous health issues and is severely developmentally delayed. Daycares will not take him because he is so medically fragile. We are living on his SSI and foodstamps. Our rent is $650 a month and I have to pay all utilities and need gas money and insurance to get back and forth to doctor appointments and get my 5 year old to school. His SSI is only $603 a month and their father is living out of state and not able to pay child support due to his low income.


In the last two years we have been hit again and again. I was diagnosed with Post Polio Syndrome, my son was killed in a car accident and now my husband David is dying due to a compromised immune system letting a fungas go rampant in his lungs. The doctors give him 3 to 4 months to live. Our savings has been wiped out. Our home has just gone into default and we have until Sept. 25th to raise $11,000.00. He is too ill to handle a move. Our faith sustains us and we have prayed for a miracle.


I broke my upper dentures beyond repair this past weekend and am unable to chew anything as I have a partiel plate on the bottom. I am a disabled RN and find it so hard to be without means to replace such small things. I live from monthly check to check and can only afford to make small monthly payments for new ones. None of the dentists here want to allow that so please let me know if you know of any way to find assistance.


Hi, my name is Lisa, I have 2 children and one on the way. I currently lost my job and my poor husband has been juggling work and school. We barely have any time together as a family and it's tearing our relationship apart. I am at a high risk for premature labor so I have been advised not to work. We have a ton of bills piled up that we really need to take care of. We cant afford to file for bankruptcy and we dont want to move.


I am a divorced mother of 4 boys and i'm in desperate need of help. I was left with nothing throughout the divorce and I'm struggling to put food on the table to feed my children. I was told by my landlord that court proceedings has been filed to have me & my children removed from his property, and Im heartbroken to have to move and have nowhere to go! Not to mention spending the holidays on the street. I don't own a vehicle so we cannot sleep in a car, and I was told that all of the lists for assistance housing programs are closed! So we have nowhere to go. I drive a schoolbus and my income just isn't enough to support all of my bills.


My son had an emergency appendectomy in July. We were uninsured at the time and the bills are mounting to near $30,000.00 and still coming. We were just starting to get ahead when this happened and now I'm worried we'll be ruined financially. I'm an honorably discharged Army veteran of 12 years, but the VA says they can't do anything for me.


I am a single mother of a beautiful daughter and we are in jeopardy of being evicted from our apartment. I am working full time and make roughly $1600 a month. The state says that I make too much money to qualify for any assistance, yet my salary can't even cover my rent and childcare. In addition to that my vehicle recently broke down and needed to be repaired immediately in order for me to continue to work! I am scared and don't know what we will do next. My 21 month old daughter should not have to be in this situation.

Things are really fucked up I - for each of us - personal stories of individuals being crushed and don't give me any patronizing they made the wrong choices bullshit about that.

...


Thanks for posting these. I hear the same stories every day at work. This is becoming the NORM for people everywhere, and no one is immune to it. The gov't dicks people around, making them beg and jump through hoops for the most basic (and inadequate) assistance. Where I work we don't require any income guidelines or 'conditions' or other bullshit for people to get food, if they say they need it then they get it - so people don't need to tell me their story or prove that they are 'needy' - it always surprises me, the number of people who want to tell me their story anyway, maybe because no one else listens when they do. It's kinda rough, because I am not a social worker, I don't know how to help people other than listen and tell them where they can get food.

I've been doing this long enough that I don't react emotionally most of the time anymore. There is no point in that. Usually it's the calls from the elderly that hit me the hardest. But I had one phone call last year, sometime around Thanksgiving, that I'll never forget. It was a woman, a single mom with 2 kids, husband left, had no car, was getting evicted...she started describing where she was, in a dark room with stone walls, no windows and no doors, it took me a minute to realize she was referring not to a physical space but her own mind. No way out. She was so overwhelmed by the most basic tasks that she couldn't function. The thought of the 'holidays' was about to drive her over the edge. I wish I knew what happened to her.

Anyway, this goes way beyond 'personal choices'. This is indicative of a system and a culture with really fucked up priorities. Anyone who claims that this comes down to bad personal choices is trying to justify their own privilege in a sea of poverty and struggle. There is NO EXCUSE for a little kid to go hungry. There is NO EXCUSE for a sick person to get sicker because they can't afford the doctor or the meds.

It's not about personal choices, it's about COLLECTIVE PRIORITIES and it's about time we all took a real long hard look at what our priorities are.

Things are really fucked up I - for each of us - personal stories of individuals being crushed and don't give me any patronizing they made the wrong choices bullshit about that.

...


Thanks for posting these...It's not about personal choices, it's about COLLECTIVE PRIORITIES and it's about time we all took a real long hard look at what our priorities are.

Mom was just telling me about her friend and former coworker who'd moved to Oklahoma only to be fired after a asshole of a manager mom also knows was moved there too. Mom said Donna is "just like me" (e.g. no savings, not a big wage earner, no family to fall back on) and that she is not returning calls now. This concerns mom because Donna has talked of killing herself before.

On a brighter note, my project of getting mom a 'new' car is coming to a close. It's been a real bitch, earning so little and spending so much. But she will have a great car, even if great means 25 years old and over 200,000 miles...

Things are really fucked up I - for each of us - personal stories of individuals being crushed and don't give me any patronizing they made the wrong choices bullshit about that.

...


Thanks for posting these...It's not about personal choices, it's about COLLECTIVE PRIORITIES and it's about time we all took a real long hard look at what our priorities are.

Mom was just telling me about her friend and former coworker who'd moved to Oklahoma only to be fired after a asshole of a manager mom also knows was moved there too. Mom said Donna is "just like me" (e.g. no savings, not a big wage earner, no family to fall back on) and that she is not returning calls now. This concerns mom because Donna has talked of killing herself before.

On a brighter note, my project of getting mom a 'new' car is coming to a close. It's been a real bitch, earning so little and spending so much. But she will have a great car, even if great means 25 years old and over 200,000 miles...

It's no wonder struggling people end up depressed or suicidal, being told they are personally responsible for being a victim of systemic problems, of course people are gonna feel like shit about not being able to do much about it. What a sick culture we are in. I hope your mom hears from her soon and she's doing alright.

Well, that's good news about your mom's car - she's lucky to have you around, despite your lack of financial success :wink:

btw, I've been meaning to tell you - remember that fleece shirt you found on the sidewalk in DC and you gave it to me and I was all -"Ew, it's Old Navy and it smells like bad perfume" but you made me take it anyway? Well, I want you to know that after a few washes to get the perfume out it has become a vital part of my wardrobe especially on these cool late-summer nights, so thanks, man. :P

remember that fleece shirt you found on the sidewalk in DC and you gave it to me and I was all -"Ew, it's Old Navy and it smells like bad perfume" but you made me take it anyway? Well, I want you to know that after a few washes to get the perfume out it has become a vital part of my wardrobe especially on these cool late-summer nights, so thanks, man. :P

I reckon the thanks goes to whatever drunken IMF employee dropped it on the street in front of the place, heh. Bad perfume? Ain't that redundant?

It is an ocean of despair, Megan.

"Single mother, husband left...."

We need to have an understanding about that. Racists have been ranting for years about the "breakdown in the family" in the African American communities, cleverly insinuating that some moral failure on the part of the young men (running off joining gangs or dealing drugs) or the young women (not staying chaste and having babies to get on welfare) is the explanation.

The problem with the Black family is not the absence of fathers from the home, it is the absence of jobs for young men in the Black community. Today, two jobs are not adequate to support a family.

Applying the liberal ideal of the striving self-actualized woman - independent and enlightened, too smart to let herself get into the kind of trouble that millions of poor mothers are in - to these problems is a cruel joke. Liberalism has failed those millions of people. Liberals love to attack religion - the traditional religions of the poor people, not the pseudo-eastern religious bullshit that is in favor with the wealthy and the enlightened strivers - failing to see that in poor rural areas and in the AA neighborhoods it is only the church that is holding the community together, that is helping desperate people.

"My husband is in jail..."

Blaming the men, as liberals do, implying that their hateful rants against the "losers" have something to do with "feminism," and calling for stricter penalties, more law enforcement, more excuses for the police to stop and detain poor and minority men is despicable.

They "want to tell me their story..."

That is the most important need. People are living in a WTF? nightmare and they are not being heard, they are not being seen. People cannot cope with the challenges when their reality - their very existence - is being denied. "Oh you just need to...." is a kick in the teeth of the first order, and is the preliminary step to horrific and inhumane abuse. First people's stories are disappeared, then their voices are disappeared, then their place in the community, then their well being, then the people themselves are disappeared. When people are trying to tell their stories they are fighting for their very lives. This is a vicious and widespread pattern. At PI our stories were denied, then our voices were silenced, then we were excommunicated from the community, then our lack of well being - our anger at being misunderstood, mistreated, and eliminated - was used as an excuse for the way the community treated us - "see? They are a bunch of angry unbalanced lunatics and we are better off rid of them. We made the right decision. They are nothing but trouble."

"...a sick person to get sicker..."

There is a cycle of abuse and despair. In some ways the health crisis in this country is worse than that in the most impoverished parts of the world, because there is a crushing psychological and spiritual aspect to poverty here that people are laboring under. There is no community, no rules to depend upon - the "winners" are lying, cheating, and stealing, the social institutions are perverted and corupted - people are isolated and are blamed for their own misery.

"I am not a social worker..."

People don't need or want a social worker, or a counselor, or to be analyzed or to be fixed. People don't expect all of their problems to disappear, they don't expect to be happy all of the time nor to live forever. People want to be part of a community that is fighting back, part of a solution for everyone around them, not just for themselves. They want and need people to listen to them, to speak for them, people to stand with them, people to go to the barricades for them and with them. If they are going down, they want to go down fighting, together. They want and need political people, and political solutions, political radicals and political fighters. They want and need to be part of something bigger than themselves. They want dignity, purpose and meaning in their suffering.

"My brother was in a car accident ... my mother is an invalid ... I am raising my grandkids ... my sister needs help...my children are hungry..."

People who are themselves desperately poor, are trying to save others and are unable to. People are suffering because they made the right choices - the humane choices, the compassionate choices, the self sacrificing choices, the humble choices - not because they made the wrong choices. The supposed "right" choices are selfish, competitive, striving, clever, materialistic. Those "right" choices are the problem, not the solution.

I will tell a story from my days working in eldercare. You may have heard it before. I was called in to perform for the folks in an eldercare facility that was converted from an old luxury hotel on the riverfront in Detroit. It was a last resort facility for the very poor. Staff had set up chairs, maybe 100 or so, in this elegant if fading old fancy ballroom with high ceilings, chandeliers and beautfiul antique furniture. The gals - and it is always 80-90% gals; the guys are all dead - dressed up and put on makeup and jewelry and perfume like they were attending the opera. They were adorable. I gave my usual mix of old music and stories from the old days. About 10 minutes in a woman in the back raised her hand and I called on her. I noticed that the women in the front row rolled their eyes and sighed, so I knew that the woman - Frieda was her name it turned out - must have had a reputation as a pain in the ass.

She said in a thick German accent "Yes, but vot I vant to know ees, how do you get the resonance?" with a spectacularly rolled "r" on the word "resonance." One of the women in the front row said "oh God, not that again."

I said "good question. The strings vibrate, those vibrations are transferred through the bridge to the soundboard. Since the soundboard is larger than the strings, it moves more air than the strings would alone. That gives us more resonance."

"Zank you" Frieda says, and I go on with the show. A few minutes later, Frieda's hand goes up again and I call on her. Now there is more muttering from the other gals - "can she ever be still?" and "what is the matter with her?"

Frieda says "yes, but vot I vant to know ees, how do you get the resonance?"

The front row is in open rebellion now. "Would you be quiet? He already answered that question. She ruins everything."

I went ahead and answered her. "Oh, I see what you mean. How do we perceive the resonance. The instrument causes the air to vibrate at different frequencies that we call musical notes. That cause our eardrums to vibrate at the same frequencies, and we hear that as resonance."

It is not uncommon for an older person to get stuck like this, repeating the same thing over and over again, so it isn't a new thing for me. "Zank you" Frieda says, and I go on with the show.

Again her hand goes up, again the same question, again the anger from the crowd directed at her, again I answer it as though it were the first time she asked - "oh I see what you are asking" and launched into a description of room acoustics and how sound is reinforced, and she thanks me.

I start the show again.

After a few minutes, Frieda's hand goes up again and I call on her. Now all decorum is gone, and a riot is about to break out. "That bitch Frieda! Always ruining everything!! Every time we have a musician here the same damned question over and over again! Will she ever shut up? We want to enjoy the music!!"

"Yes, but vot I vant to know ees, how do you get the resonance?" She again asks the question just as though it were the first time she had asked it. I quiet down the mob, and walk back to where Frieda is sitting, take her hand and look into her eyes.

"Frieda, music is a wonderful thing and we don't really fully understand it and why it has such power over us. It is beautiful and mysterious thing. It moves us, it connects us. We don't really know how we get the resonance, we don't have the words to explain music very well."

This transformation came over her face, and the room fell silent. Then Frieda told her story in a clear steady voice, the words pouring out. "We lived in Silesia, my husband and I. We were young and very happy. My husband played the violin, and the music was so beautiful that I listened for hours. He was a wonderful man. I loved him very much. I always wanted to ask him how he made such beautiful music, where did it come from, what did it mean? The resonance! It filled your whole being! It was a spiritual connection between us, the music, and I was afraid that if I asked questions about it the spell would be broken and something would be lost so I kept quiet and listened. But I always wanted to talk about that with him. Then the Germans took him, and I never saw him again. He was killed in the camp, and I think about him everyday and I can still hear that beautiful music in our little house back in those days. If I can find where that music comes from - that beautiful resonance - it seems that maybe I can find him again or remember what we had together. I don't want to ever forget."

I sat with her for another minute or so. When she had started her story, I heard gasps around the room. By the time she finished several staff members were openly weeping and the other folks were sitting in stunned silence. I later learned that the question she was asking me was the only thing anyone had ever heard her say, and they had long since given up on her and shunned her.

I said "Frieda, I think the resonance is love. I think that is where the resonance comes from. I think that is how we get the resonance."

"I think that must be so" she says.

Just to reiterate what Mike said, because its so important: the problem in poor neighborhoods, and thats a euphemism for minority neighborhoods is NOT because of mooching off welfare, laziness, promiscuity, slinging drugs, gang culture, gun violence, smoking dope, jail birds or anything like that.

The problem is unemployment. Unemployment -- lack of jobs -- is heavily correlated with ALL of the problems above. Interestingly, when you adjust for the unemployment disparity, blacks are no more likely to use drugs than whites. In fact, the one glaring statistic is how much more likely whites are to be alcoholics..

It is an ocean of despair, Megan.

"Single mother, husband left...."

We need to have an understanding about that. Racists have been ranting for years about the "breakdown in the family" in the African American communities, cleverly insinuating that some moral failure on the part of the young men (running off joining gangs or dealing drugs) or the young women (not staying chaste and having babies to get on welfare) is the explanation.

The problem with the Black family is not the absence of fathers from the home, it is the absence of jobs for young men in the Black community. Today, two jobs are not adequate to support a family.

Applying the liberal ideal of the striving self-actualized woman - independent and enlightened, too smart to let herself get into the kind of trouble that millions of poor mothers are in - to these problems is a cruel joke. Liberalism has failed those millions of people. Liberals love to attack religion - the traditional religions of the poor people, not the pseudo-eastern religious bullshit that is in favor with the wealthy and the enlightened strivers - failing to see that in poor rural areas and in the AA neighborhoods it is only the church that is holding the community together, that is helping desperate people.

"My husband is in jail..."

Blaming the men, as liberals do, implying that their hateful rants against the "losers" have something to do with "feminism," and calling for stricter penalties, more law enforcement, more excuses for the police to stop and detain poor and minority men is despicable.

They "want to tell me their story..."

That is the most important need. People are living in a WTF? nightmare and they are not being heard, they are not being seen. People cannot cope with the challenges when their reality - their very existence - is being denied. "Oh you just need to...." is a kick in the teeth of the first order, and is the preliminary step to horrific and inhumane abuse. First people's stories are disappeared, then their voices are disappeared, then their place in the community, then their well being, then the people themselves are disappeared. When people are trying to tell their stories they are fighting for their very lives. This is a vicious and widespread pattern. At PI our stories were denied, then our voices were silenced, then we were excommunicated from the community, then our lack of well being - our anger at being misunderstood, mistreated, and eliminated - was used as an excuse for the way the community treated us - "see? They are a bunch of angry unbalanced lunatics and we are better off rid of them. We made the right decision. They are nothing but trouble."

"...a sick person to get sicker..."

There is a cycle of abuse and despair. In some ways the health crisis in this country is worse than that in the most impoverished parts of the world, because there is a crushing psychological and spiritual aspect to poverty here that people are laboring under. There is no community, no rules to depend upon - the "winners" are lying, cheating, and stealing, the social institutions are perverted and corupted - people are isolated and are blamed for their own misery.

"I am not a social worker..."

People don't need or want a social worker, or a counselor, or to be analyzed or to be fixed. People don't expect all of their problems to disappear, they don't expect to be happy all of the time nor to live forever. People want to be part of a community that is fighting back, part of a solution for everyone around them, not just for themselves. They want and need people to listen to them, to speak for them, people to stand with them, people to go to the barricades for them and with them. If they are going down, they want to go down fighting, together. They want and need political people, and political solutions, political radicals and political fighters. They want and need to be part of something bigger than themselves. They want dignity, purpose and meaning in their suffering.

"My brother was in a car accident ... my mother is an invalid ... I am raising my grandkids ... my sister needs help...my children are hungry..."

People who are themselves desperately poor, are trying to save others and are unable to. People are suffering because they made the right choices - the humane choices, the compassionate choices, the self sacrificing choices, the humble choices - not because they made the wrong choices. The supposed "right" choices are selfish, competitive, striving, clever, materialistic. Those "right" choices are the problem, not the solution.

I will tell a story from my days working in eldercare. You may have heard it before. I was called in to perform for the folks in an eldercare facility that was converted from an old luxury hotel on the riverfront in Detroit. It was a last resort facility for the very poor. Staff had set up chairs, maybe 100 or so, in this elegant if fading old fancy ballroom with high ceilings, chandeliers and beautfiul antique furniture. The gals - and it is always 80-90% gals; the guys are all dead - dressed up and put on makeup and jewelry and perfume like they were attending the opera. They were adorable. I gave my usual mix of old music and stories from the old days. About 10 minutes in a woman in the back raised her hand and I called on her. I noticed that the women in the front row rolled their eyes and sighed, so I knew that the woman - Frieda was her name it turned out - must have had a reputation as a pain in the ass.

She said in a thick German accent "Yes, but vot I vant to know ees, how do you get the resonance?" with a spectacularly rolled "r" on the word "resonance." One of the women in the front row said "oh God, not that again."

I said "good question. The strings vibrate, those vibrations are transferred through the bridge to the soundboard. Since the soundboard is larger than the strings, it moves more air than the strings would alone. That gives us more resonance."

"Zank you" Frieda says, and I go on with the show. A few minutes later, Frieda's hand goes up again and I call on her. Now there is more muttering from the other gals - "can she ever be still?" and "what is the matter with her?"

Frieda says "yes, but vot I vant to know ees, how do you get the resonance?"

The front row is in open rebellion now. "Would you be quiet? He already answered that question. She ruins everything."

I went ahead and answered her. "Oh, I see what you mean. How do we perceive the resonance. The instrument causes the air to vibrate at different frequencies that we call musical notes. That cause our eardrums to vibrate at the same frequencies, and we hear that as resonance."

It is not uncommon for an older person to get stuck like this, repeating the same thing over and over again, so it isn't a new thing for me. "Zank you" Frieda says, and I go on with the show.

Again her hand goes up, again the same question, again the anger from the crowd directed at her, again I answer it as though it were the first time she asked - "oh I see what you are asking" and launched into a description of room acoustics and how sound is reinforced, and she thanks me.

I start the show again.

After a few minutes, Frieda's hand goes up again and I call on her. Now all decorum is gone, and a riot is about to break out. "That bitch Frieda! Always ruining everything!! Every time we have a musician here the same damned question over and over again! Will she ever shut up? We want to enjoy the music!!"

"Yes, but vot I vant to know ees, how do you get the resonance?" She again asks the question just as though it were the first time she had asked it. I quiet down the mob, and walk back to where Frieda is sitting, take her hand and look into her eyes.

"Frieda, music is a wonderful thing and we don't really fully understand it and why it has such power over us. It is beautiful and mysterious thing. It moves us, it connects us. We don't really know how we get the resonance, we don't have the words to explain music very well."

This transformation came over her face, and the room fell silent. Then Frieda told her story in a clear steady voice, the words pouring out. "We lived in Silesia, my husband and I. We were young and very happy. My husband played the violin, and the music was so beautiful that I listened for hours. He was a wonderful man. I loved him very much. I always wanted to ask him how he made such beautiful music, where did it come from, what did it mean? The resonance! It filled your whole being! It was a spiritual connection between us, the music, and I was afraid that if I asked questions about it the spell would be broken and something would be lost so I kept quiet and listened. But I always wanted to talk about that with him. Then the Germans took him, and I never saw him again. He was killed in the camp, and I think about him everyday and I can still hear that beautiful music in our little house back in those days. If I can find where that music comes from - that beautiful resonance - it seems that maybe I can find him again or remember what we had together. I don't want to ever forget."

I sat with her for another minute or so. When she had started her story, I heard gasps around the room. By the time she finished several staff members were openly weeping and the other folks were sitting in stunned silence. I later learned that the question she was asking me was the only thing anyone had ever heard her say, and they had long since given up on her and shunned her.

I said "Frieda, I think the resonance is love. I think that is where the resonance comes from. I think that is how we get the resonance."

"I think that must be so" she says.

Great story Mike

Rename this joint "Socialist Independent". It is a low enough threshold to begin with and I don't know what no "populist" is.

Agreed. We are stuck with the domain name, though.


Use this as a home base, develop biting social criticism and post everywhere that is appropriate. Consider it as cyber-leafleting. Let PPLE talk us into creating longer lifespan words.

Agreed. The Russian softare, on further examination, is too beta, too slow and too unstable at this point. We can work with them in the future. Now that MT has gone open source I think it is the best choice for now. Have decided to use it for client projects.


Let anyone join this place who wants to.... and let them ask all the questions they want with a local responsibility to try to answer them.

Agreed. At one time I bought into PI's "keep the undesirables out" approach, since it always seemed that it was the disrupters that caused the problems and that made it impossible to carry on a discussion. But that is not true. It was the rigid exclusion of socialism from the discussion that caused the vulnerability and confusion. It was the authoritarianism of management that caused the uproars.


Don't compete with the mass boards and don't try to change them... they play their role.

If ya wanna do somethin', start modest and base it off of what you are doing already.

Just sayin'...

I agree.

Rename this joint "Socialist Independent". It is a low enough threshold to begin with and I don't know what no "populist" is.

Agreed. We are stuck with the domain name, though.


Actually, I bought that domain too... :wink:




Use this as a home base, develop biting social criticism and post everywhere that is appropriate. Consider it as cyber-leafleting. Let PPLE talk us into creating longer lifespan words.

Agreed. The Russian softare, on further examination, is too beta, too slow and too unstable at this point. We can work with them in the future. Now that MT has gone open source I think it is the best choice for now. Have decided to use it for client projects.



What's MT? Did I miss something upthread? Probably.

...It's not about personal choices, it's about COLLECTIVE PRIORITIES and it's about time we all took a real long hard look at what our priorities are.

That is key. The Koochies were yacking about Edwards and SUVs the other day. It is so easy to jump in and say never mind about SUVs. Rebuild the public transportation infrastructure and the whole problem is solved.

It is absurd to spend all of your time and energy trying to convert people to a new personal spirituality of "no SUVs." Most people drive because they have no choice. Bike paths are no answer, and rails to trails is insanity along the lines of burning food crops as fuel.


It's no wonder struggling people end up depressed or suicidal...

The mental health field is dedicated to making people comfortable with the nightmare. "Mentally healthy" means successful. "Mentally ill" means not successful. "Treating" people amounts to another form of oppression and makes the problems worse, not better.

Rename this joint "Socialist Independent". It is a low enough threshold to begin with and I don't know what no "populist" is.

Agreed. We are stuck with the domain name, though.


Actually, I bought that domain too... :wink:




Use this as a home base, develop biting social criticism and post everywhere that is appropriate. Consider it as cyber-leafleting. Let PPLE talk us into creating longer lifespan words.

Agreed. The Russian softare, on further examination, is too beta, too slow and too unstable at this point. We can work with them in the future. Now that MT has gone open source I think it is the best choice for now. Have decided to use it for client projects.



What's MT? Did I miss something upthread? Probably.

Oh, you did buy that domain. Smart guy. The MYSQL database can be moved from one PHPBB installation to another - have done it successfully before.

MT is Moveable Type. Stable, easy to use, mature, big community. Now that they have gone open source that is a plus. It is in Perl.

Unemployment -- lack of jobs -- is heavily correlated with ALL of the problems above

We should probably say "work" rather than "jobs." In areas where there aren't jobs and for people for whom there are not jobs, people move to other things, and all of those things are suppressed by the authorities, not just the drug trade. Urban gardens, independent contractors in farm country, artists and others who try to set up street vendor operations and the like are all under continual pressure. "Jobs" are for suburbanites - at least the way "jobs" are defined now. In the cities and in the country people hustle and scramble to find work. There are all sorts of what the suburbanites would call "fly by night" operations. Most farm work is more along the lines of independent contract work rather than jobs.

We don't need more WalMart jobs.

Unemployment -- lack of jobs -- is heavily correlated with ALL of the problems above

We should probably say "work" rather than "jobs." In areas where there aren't jobs and for people for whom there are not jobs, people move to other things, and all of those things are suppressed by the authorities, not just the drug trade. Urban gardens, independent contractors in farm country, artists and others who try to set up street vendor operations and the like are all under continual pressure. "Jobs" are for suburbanites - at least the way "jobs" are defined now. In the cities and in the country people hustle and scramble to find work. There are all sorts of what the suburbanites would call "fly by night" operations. Most farm work is more along the lines of independent contract work rather than jobs.

We don't need more WalMart jobs.

Sorry, thats more correct. I was drawing from specific surverys that used the terminology "jobs". Its an important distinction although we've also talked about the underground economy before, both what it is and what it could possibly be.

Any more feedback on new forums?

Any more feedback on new forums?

I like most of the ideas you and BP had earlier on, tho I would say not to get too married to anything until you have contemplated the impact of having forums related to MT. That said, I am surprised nothing new has been opened up...

I like most of the ideas you and BP had earlier on, tho I would say not to get too married to anything until you have contemplated the impact of having forums related to MT. That said, I am surprised nothing new has been opened up...

Still waiting on MT. Muga ran into some more problems.