Metal Reviews

Europe is a lot more conducive to growing crops than Africa. It's not that difficult. Natural resources aren't worth shit till industrialization and industrialization wants population, lumber and food to feed the people.

So since the election is controlled by the two party system, I'm supposed to just ignore it?

Hey, man, follow your heart.

As fer industrialization, etc., goes... true, but industrialization didn't just materialize from out of nowhere; it was concieved and built and utilized.
Science and technology were not "given" to anybody, they were invented.

snip from Wiki:
"The climate of Africa ranges from tropical to subarctic on its highest peaks. Its northern half is primarily desert or arid, while its central and southern areas contain both savanna plains and very dense jungle (rainforest) regions. In between, there is a convergence where vegetation patterns such as sahel, and steppe dominate.

Africa boasts perhaps the world's largest combination of density and "range of freedom" of wild animal populations and diversity, with wild populations of large carnivores (such as lions, hyenas, and cheetahs) and herbivores (such as buffalo, deer, elephants, camels, and giraffes) ranging freely on primarily open non-private plains. It is also home to a variety of jungle creatures (including snakes and primates) and aquatic life (including crocodiles and amphibians)(see also: Fauna of Africa)."



Animals THRIVE there, why cant the people?

from wikipedia:

Diamond argues that Eurasian civilization is not so much a product of ingenuity, but of opportunity and necessity. That is, civilization is not created out of sheer will or intelligence, but is the result of a chain of developments, each made possible by certain preconditions.

In our earliest societies humans lived as hunter-gatherers. The first step towards civilization is the move from hunter-gatherer to agriculture with the domestication and farming of wild crops and animals. Agricultural production leads to food surpluses and this in turn supports sedentary societies, rapid population growth, and specialization of labor. Large societies tend to develop ruling classes and supporting bureaucracies, which leads in turn to the organization of empires.

Although agriculture arose in several parts of the world, Eurasia gained an early advantage due to the availability of suitable plant and animal species for domestication. In particular, the Middle East had by far the best collection of plants and animals suitable for domestication - barley, two varieties of wheat and three protein-rich pulses for food; flax for textiles; goats, sheep and cattle provided meat, leather, glue (by boiling the hooves and bones) and, in the case of sheep, wool. As early Middle Eastern civilizations began to trade, they found additional useful animals in adjacent territories, most notably horses and donkeys for use in transport. In contrast, Native American farmers had to struggle to develop maize as a useful food from its probable wild ancestor, teosinte. Eurasia as a whole domesticated 13 species of large animals (over 100lb / 44kg); South America just one (counting the llama and alpaca as breeds within the same species); the rest of the world none at all. Diamond describes the small number of domesticated species (14 out of 148 "candidates") as an instance of the Anna Karenina principle: many promising species have just one of several significant difficulties that prevent domestication. For example horses are easily domesticated but their biological relatives zebras and onagers are untameable; and although Asian elephants are tameable, it is very difficult to breed them in captivity.

Eurasia's large landmass and long east-west distance increased these advantages. Its large area provided it with more plant and animal species suitable for domestication and allowed its people to exchange both innovations and diseases. Its East-West orientation allowed breeds domesticated in one part of the continent to be used elsewhere through similarities in climate and the cycle of seasons. In contrast, Australia suffered from a lack of useful animals due to extinction, probably by human hunter shortly after the end of the Pleistocene; the Americas had difficulty adapting crops domesticated at one latitude for use at other latitudes (and, in North America, adapting crops from one side of the Rocky Mountains to the other); and Africa was fragmented by its extreme variations in climate from North to South: plants and animals that flourished in one area never reached other areas where they could have flourished, because they could not survive the intervening environment. Europe was the ultimate beneficiary of Eurasia's East-West orientation: in the first millennium BC the Mediterranean areas of Europe adopted the Middle East's animals, plants, and agricultural techniques; in the first millennium AD the rest of Europe followed suit.

The plentiful supply of food and the dense populations that it supported made division of labor possible, and the rise of non-farming specialists such as craftsmen and scribes accelerated economic growth and technological progress. These economic and technological advantages eventually enabled Europeans to conquer the peoples of the other continents in recent centuries - using the "Guns" and "Steel" of the book's title.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns_germs_and_steel

In other words, V has never played Civilization.

It is an interesting theory, and one that I've heard before.
"Necessity is the Mother of invention" applies.
But, one thing that contradicts this is that Africa and has been in dire straits for quite some time now, and it isn't as if Africa is a barren wasteland. The necessity is there, where is the invention?
They rely largely on charity and groups such as the Peace Corps to develope infrastructure and disperse education.
The part about hunter-gatherer > farmer > Craftsmen > superior weapons / technology chain of events makes sense. But at the same time, these things were invented, they didn't just fall out of the sky, so there had to be a certain factor of ingenuity and cleverness at work.
At any rate we are straying far from the topic at hand, though perhaps not too far, after all.
Thanks for answering my question.

Silly Zad, games are for kids.

Point missed, yet again.

And http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQobIUE1zTU


And this is interesting: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00950.html

Are you suggesting that there's a relation between lions being able to survive in a natural environment and a natural environment being able to easily support an agrarian society?

^I think he did.

So yeah Geezer Butler spoke out against Palin for the whole aerial hunting business.

Whatever.
You think your sooo clever, don't you?

You must be thick; did I ever say I was voting for McCain?

There are herbivores in Africa.
There are resources to trade with.
The Middle East, hardly a fertile place, seems to have been able to build a pretty respectable civilisation.

But certain sections of the Middle east were very fertile- its no mistake that civilizations were built around the Khabur Basin (an entirely rainfed agricultural region) and other extremely fertile areas, which the Middle East did have a fair amount of (its much more barren now, due to overuse of land, than it was back in the day). Similarly, its not hard to figure out why the ancient Egyptians could build an agrarian society and the Berbers (Libyans) couldn't; the Egyptians had the Nile irrigating their plains once a year, making agriculture steady and easy.

For the most part, Africa didn't have these extremely fertile plains, and the population of its hunter gatherer tribes never became so big that agriculture became a necessity, as it did for the Egyptians. Ie, why stop being a hunter gatherer when being a hunter gatherer gets you and everyone enough food? You need more than herbivores and resources to trade with to get an agricultural society, Val.

Did I ever say you were? Posting a link makes me think I'm cleverer? Ridiculous, you're grasping at straws now in some vain attempt to not be out-argued, when all I'm trying to do is stop you using racist language, whilst simultaneously posting links of general interest.

I mean, they say Jews have persecution complexes, but no Jew I've met has a thing on you, dear V.

http://www.atlah.org/broadcast/ndnr09-03-08.html

Nonsense.
You have me mistaken for another poster, I'm afraid.

What arguments have you supplied? Seems to me you're the one "grasping at straws"... I have yet to see an answer as to why you think sexism is acceptable, but racism isn't.
Kinda like some animated avatars are better than others, eh?
Tsk, tsk, tsk...
What is racist about anything (other than calling obama obongo, ooohhh,THE HORROR!!!) that I have written?
They are valid points and questions.

Africa has it's share of rivers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rivers_by_length

Zimbabwe is a case in point: once flourishing under colonial rule, now in a state of crisis.
I read somewhere that Mugabe was trying to bring back the whites that were driven out.
Another case in point: Haiti. It wasn't always the way it is today.

Nonsense.
Colonial domination still applies for most of Africa except the state colonisation has been replaces by an economic colonisation that is supported by former colonialist nations.

Please, do not speak of which you do not know.

Ah, so that's all you care about? Too cryptic by far, you are.

As I said above, racism is against the rules of the forum, whilst sexism isn't. How do you make rules against sexism, anyways? Whenever men talk about women invariably sexism is a part of it, asking people to change their perception of "the weaker sex" is hard. On the other hand, social norms dictate that racism is wrong, shocking in polite society, and so rules dictate no racism. You have to draw the line somewhere; the line's drawn here. Racism and sexism are NOT equal.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/se ... sarahpalin

Boody hell.

I am going to make a long post because I am off work and feel strongly about the subject... I hope at least someone reads it!

Democracy as we understand it is a sham, requiring "representatives", to sanitise the will of the people and sort it into the narrow and comfortable straight-jacket of "liberal" and "conservative". God forbid you should have ideas that don't fit into one of these groups, because if you do then you are a demographic that coke and pepsi aka Obama and McCain don't cater for. You can veto them once every four years, but there is no place for you to actually contribute to the shaping of your community and take part in making decisions. The thing is, this disenfranchisement applies to nearly everybody. Everybody has their own beliefs and opinions, but because of the elitist and manipulative nature of our political culture we are all forced to choose between just one of two brands, each with their own catchphrases that mean nothing at all. ("No big government", "war on terror" or even less specifically "change we can believe in")

It is utter bullshit to say there is a "left-wing" bias to the media anywhere, let alone the US. There may well be a liberal bias- you would certainly say that about someone such as the BBC, but this is emphatically not the same thing. Liberalism in the modern sense refers to the welfare state and progressive taxation, as well as social measures such as civil rights legislation and, more controversially, "inclusion" techniques such as affirmative action and multicultural rhetoric. These are not left wing ideas, IMO, they are compromises made between radical social movements (i.e. the left) and the ruling capitalist establishment (i.e. the right)

For example, the New Deal is portrayed as the great liberal statesman, FDR, revolutionising US society through the creation of a welfare state and a "caring" government. It was all his vision, and he reached out to help the poor and downtrodden by giving them some social security. But this is bullshit... Social security was not something handed down from on high by generous politicians- it was fought for for centuries by working people who had been living in poverty, working seven day weeks and kowtowing to their employers, and then who were expected to just lie down and starve in the Great Depression. They didn't lie down and starve, they went on the attack against the system that was requiring this subservience of them. Ordinary people sticking it to the ruling establishment is a scary thing for politicians, so it suits their purposes nowadays to portray this episode in US history as the story of FDR and his New Deal, rather than the story of ordinary people adopting radical measures and eventually forcing a compromise from a bloodied government in the form of social security. The New Deal was not a left wing idea, it was a necessary step that the right wing establishment needed to take in a desperate (and eventually succesful) attempt to stop their citizens being won over by left wing ideas by offering them something else instead.

This is liberalism in a nutshell. It is capitalist, it is patriarchal, it is hierarchical, it is nationalistic.... Just ever so slightly less so that conservatism. So sure, there is a liberal bias to a lot of the media, but authentic left-wing ideas, like those that won the New Deal compromise from the US government, have virtually never been given a serious hearing in the US media, and hardly ever anywhere else. Are there any critiques of capitalism itself? Is there anyone in the media complaining about the lack of autonomous worker organisation? Is there anyone advocating an internationalist perspective? I mean not just "we shouldn't be bombing Iraqi civillians", but actually arguing that the rights of Iraqis not to be bombed is every bit as sacrosanct as the rights of US citizens not to be bombed and that the very idea of the "national interest" is flawed? There is not. People go on about "far left fanatics", but what they mean is liberals who are just slightly more aggressive in advocating the same positions as the DNC.

If you are interested in reading about genuine left-wing thought- what it means, what it stands for, then you need to ignore smears about the USSR and "the supremacy of the state", and ignore stupid elitist patriarchal welfare state liberals as well. You need an open mind... Read "Live Working or Die Fighting" by Paul Mason, and read Rudolf Rocker, and read "Horizontalism", and read about the Paris Commune. You will find that left-wng thought is the one which is truly anti-big government, and truly anti-state. It is about the levelling, not concentration of power, which is why I'd bet my house that if you could transport all those right winge Free Market republicans to 1980s Russia, they would be the ones opposing Gorbachev's reforms and wanting to strengthen Communist Party control over enterprise. Why? because it is about mindset. They may say that they support freedom from big government, but what they want to do is hand it to businessmen, who can be every bit as anti- human freedom as a KGB official. All of them want to prevent ordinary people taking a direct role in the running of their communities.

And it is the stupid system we have that means that the only people who can get close to power are the conservative capitalists that want to crush worker resistance to big business, or the liberals who want to play nice with the poor folk but will crush strikes and empower exploitative businessmen every bit as dedicatedly. But then, if you actually see a more radical alternative to this- such as actual industrial democracy, whereby industry is run, not by shareholders and managers, not by the government, but by the actual employees of that business themselves, you must be a nut, because there is no tv news channel that caters to that position.

Democracy shouldn't need people to elect "representatives", because these representatives simply take radical ideas and filter them through the same conservative/liberal lens until those ideas lose all their meaning. True democracy is direct democracy, which anyone in political power is terrified of. No rulers and ruled, no employers and employees, no leaders and followers.