»thoughts on recent events...«

I know this is a matrix board, and last time I tried to bring up a real life event on such a board (WB MxO) the thread mysteriously dissapeared without explanation. However, we are pretty much our own moderators now, with Mobil Ave. being the only one that comes to mind directly, i think he'll let me slide of direct film talk for a bit.

Anyways, here in America, some interesting things have been going on, and I just wanted to get some poster opinions on it.

The issue of Illegal (Mexican and Latino) Immigrants. I have been impressed by the numbers and continued turn out they have produced in protests the last few months. I live in houston and know all about the latino community, as my g/f is half Mexican herself. To me, it's pretty easy to understand why they come here, and I don't fault them for coming, I fault the government for not dealing with the reality of the situation. If you took the wages of poor Mexicans in Mexico, and compared them to people working for minimum wage here in the states, it would be the equivilant of about 75$ per hour... So imagine if say... Canada offered that as a minimum wage... would lots of Americans start moving? I would say yes.

The real problem is that our capitalist society is always promoting freedom of capital, and of goods and money (free trade agreements) but they are not willing to allow labor to do the same thing because of "national" boundaries. That to me is the core of the problem. Anyways, I support the immigrants, and hope they get what they deserve... which should be a path towards citizenship, not deportation. My other thought, is that we should let all the tribal native Americans decide what to do, since they are really the only ones who didn't move to this country... although African americans should probably get their normal 3/5's of a vote too since they were brought over against their will. That should be fair no?

Issue number 2: 2006 elections coming up this summer... Even though bush is in the worst shape ever, dems still seem impotent, and the "leaders" are still very centrist and always want to appear "tough", but no one is willing to get "tuff" with the Bush administration and all the malfeasences they are tied into. And many were afraid to show up in support of the recent immigrant protests. I shouldn't say no one, their are a few, it's just that it's sadly a very low number.

Issue number 3: Will Dubya nuke Iran? discuss lol...

Issue number 4: Does anyone remember that America overthrew a democratic Iran about 50 years ago? (installed the Shaw) and find it even a tiny bit odd that we are now saying they should be more democratic? Which leads to my final question... Why do we as a populace not know the history of our government and particuliarly it's forgien adventures and misadventures. Perhaps it's the matrix of mass media keeping everyone on soma and feeling happy. No one wants to know about matters which would tug at their moral heart strings, it doesn't get as good ratings as voting on American Idol.

We are supposed to be Blue Pill Mushrooms.

Kept in the dark and fed bullsh!t.

This relates to what The Matrix and "Good Science Fiction" are about. They are to educate us about the REAL WORLD. I don't think going off on endless trivia about the movie is what the Wachaoski brothers intended. Maybe some of the people runnin Matrix boards don't want to get out of that rut or are afraid of alienating some of the users that want to stay in that rut.

The immigration issue is about supply and demand. If you let in a supply of cheap labor it drives down the wages of domestic labor and the government pretends to ring its hands over what to do about it.

Do you hear anyone saying workers all over the world should know accounting?

To an amnesiac, the 89th time is just like the first. I'll get to that.

"The blue pill, the red states and depression" That was the name of the last Hexediter attempt on the old MxO boards. lol.

"Some things DO change." Strangely, US Foreign policy is noticeably absent in most history classes. Why, if everything is on the up and up? You are right, Hex, the US did overthrow a democracy and install a puppet dictator, the Shah.

hex wrote:

Does anyone remember that America overthrew a democratic Iran about 50 years ago? (installed the Shaw) and find it even a tiny bit odd that we are now saying they should be more democratic?

Well it's kinda hard to remember what they never understood in the first place. Most of the populace are willingly ignorant pawns. Will Dubya use nukes? With this guy, anything is possible.

psikey wrote:

Do you hear anyone saying workers all over the world should know accounting?

Yep. I hear you saying it. And my parents said that too. And I agree with you all. And I agree that all the consumers of the world should know macroeconomics. Because the cheap labor in and outside the US also can keep prices of certain goods low. But, of course in the matrix, everything affects every other thing. Cause and effect. Au revoir.

I had been itching to start a thread like this soon but I wasn't sure how to approach it. Thx Hex.

Thanks for this thread it does sometime feel like people want to remain in the rabbit hole and never look at the world and apply what they have learnt to it...

Just wanted to add that the americans are the ones who put saddam in power too... And as for Saddams woepens chache
they sold him that too.

What you guys say or the gist of this thread runs
very much inline with the Baudrillard view that the world
runs on media at the time of the desert of the real...

Also a taste of 1984...
The thing is aslong as you are an american you have to follow the patriot act and so there is no difference we can make.

Sorry dont have time to fill in related links but I am sure my good friend Psi will help with that...

If we changed the way we are toward each other on the internet we could do it in the real world. But we hate on each other at these forums and have no tolerance mirroring our lifes on the outside...