[Moore] would be a much more obvious target for the “Bushie-fascists” than for the “Islamofascists.”

Except there aren’t any such Bushie-fascists.

Also, on the seed issue, you seem to be conflating a number of issues. Surely you don’t think Monsanto goes in to an area, scoops up a bunch of indigenous seeds, and tries to patent those?

I doubt from your description of your friends’ “leftist narrative” that they have any clear idea what they are talking about. I suspect that what they consider compelling, moral arguments consist not of assertions that are right or wrong, but of assertions that are really meaningless in economic or legal terms. Those who have responded here have found it difficult to address the arguments you are describing, and the economic and legal questions you are asking, because 1) it’s not clear what you already understand, and 2) the arguments and questions are so general that they are susceptible to different interpretations.

As to economic issues relevant to “privatization,” I join the prior posters in urging you to read Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose, which is a superb introduction to the basic economic concepts that must be understood before the economic plusses and minuses of privatization can even be discussed meaningfully.

As to legal issues relevant to “multilateral corporations” and what “community resources” they can own through “privatization,” the issues are very complex, and must be addressed by lawyers. Some basics will illustrate that. 1. A corporation is an artificial person recognized by law as able to own and take action that has legal effect, just as if it were a human. The reason corporations exist, at least in America, is so that those who own them can have their corporations, not themselves personally, owe the debt that must be incurred in doing business. 2. Most countries’ laws allow investors to create corporations. In America, state laws do that. The world’s largest corporations (some of which now are called “multilateral” because of their international ownership or global scope of operations) exist because some country or, in America, some state, allowed their original owners to incorporate their business. 3. “International” legal problems for such businesses arise because laws can conflict. What happens, e.g., when a Delaware or California corporation wants to buy from Thais, sell to Germans, or operate a factory in Italy? Some, but only a few such problems, are resolved because countries have treaties addressing them, or agree to allow international organizations to decide disputes or to issue rules that the countries will accept and enforce as if they were their own laws. 4. Corporations can own things like seeds. But what does “own” mean? An American lawyer considers a seed to be just a bundle of different rights to possession and use that different people can have at the same time. One person may have a right to possess a seed now, but not to use it; another to possess or use it tomorrow; another to purchase it the day after; another to take it if a debt is not repaid; still another to take it if one of the other persons dies. One or more governmental entity may at the very same time have a right to possess the seed if taxes aren’t paid, or if it’s used to commit a crime, or if there is a need to purchase it for a public purpose. Another country’s lawyer, however, may conceptualize ownership of a seed in very different terms. 5. “Privatize” or “community resources” are not terms that have any meaning to an American lawyer. What they might mean under some other country’s law, if anything, would depend on that country’s law.

Sorry about the length. I hope this is helpful.

To Roger – my apologies for hijacking the thread. I do remember, however, from the movie “The Player” – the scene where folks pitch the basic concept of the movie. How about: “agricultural seed patent law (in the context of globalization and the WTO) meets radical Islamic jihad”? Now there’s a blockbuster in the making!

There is an Arab political movement called “Baathism” ( sometimes spelled “Ba’ath” ). In recent times, there were Syrian and Iraqi forms of it. The Baath party could be roughly described as an arab nationalist form of National Socialism – substituting arab nationalism for the German nationalist core.

Baathism was a mostly secular, albeit fanatical, Arab socialist variation. It had a relation to Nasserism although both Nasserites and Baathists would deny it.

Osama Bin Laden and many of his ideological kin are advocating a weird ideology that is as if Wahabism and Baathism merged with Bin Laden taking the role of Adolph Hitler did with National Socialism. Hitler deemphasized the socialist economics and emphasized the German nationalism. The emerging “Islamofascism” also dumps most of the socialist economics and grafts on a extremist Islamic religious ideology to the arab nationalism of Baathism.

The result is that “Islamofascism” is a more valid use of “fascism” than 99% of Leftist ravings.

“What’s up with the seeds?” (Knucklehead): I was referring to the general issue of agricultural seed patents and how these patents are impacting indigenous farmers in countries brought under WTO regulations. On the surface – without knowing any details – it looks worrisome – more proof that the multinationals are taking over the world and all that! And as I’m not a seed patent lawyer it is difficult to evaluate the claims but Roberts is probably correct in calling it another “leftist boogyman”.

To BeckyJ – I read your link. Very interesting. Actually it confirms my worst fears about the left. And I also think it explains why anti-globalization protesters find themselves marching next to Islamic radical sympathizers. They’re both freaked out by modernization and they retreat to some idyllic fantasy that they wish to impose on everyone else. I think they’re suffering from a crisis of “meaning” and projecting a collectivist (thank you Jerry) solution to their personal crisis onto everyone else. My own sister is pretty much a radical leftist and the Iraq war created a definite division between us. I guess I was hoping to find common ground somewhere. And yes – she is enamored by anything “indigenous”. The whole hippy thing with all the handmade crafts etc. But I agree with a previous post that the evidence mounts that leftists tend to love humanity but hate individuals ( I have noticed this unfortunate tendency in my sister sadly). This stuff gets really personal for me. Its like I have an ongoing argument with my sister in my head – wanting to believe that she is expending so much effort for something valuable and not ultimately destructive!

Well by the time the world’s (second or third?) slowest poster completed this, others have already stated much of this. Oh boy. Time to change my party registration. Next thing you know I’ll be buying a gun?..

The “multinationals” you refer to – as if that actually meant anything – just sound like another Leftist conspiracy theory. You seem to be repeating third-hand some idea that there are a handful of companies in complete control of all of our lives. Just isn’t true.

The genetically-modified corn you are afraid of is just another Leftist boogyman popularized by Leftist Luddites who truly would prefer people starve in the name of ideology. Witness Greenpeace’s opposition to genetically engineered rice that would erase vitamin deficiencies in children.

“In a recent conversation with a struggling liberal screenwriter, I brought up the Clancy film as an example of Hollywood shying away from what really affects filmgoers–namely, the al Qaeda threat vs. the neo-Nazi threat. He vehemently defended the script switch. ‘It’s an easy target,’ he said of Arab terrorism, repeating this like a parrot, then adding, ‘It’s a cheap shot.”

Ms. Johnson then addressed the last part. I would like to address the first part. Arab terrorism is not an easy target for Hollywood, as the Clancy movie and the hysterical reaction to True Lies make clear. Neo-Nazis, on the other hand are an easy target. They have no nations that fund a global terror network. They have no system of education like the madrasas. They have no effective lobbying and PR outfits in Washington, our state capitals and our universities. That a liberal screenwriter gets it completely backwards is not surprising, but should be instructive to the rest of us as to the magnitude of the problem we face in getting our fellow citizens to appreciate the nature of the threat we face in this war.

Of course, Caroline is right that any media that would attempt to reflect reality instead of political correctness will be viewed by a fair chunk of the Left as propaganda. However, I think that is precisely the worldview that is causing the Left to lose elections here. Thus, I view any such debate as a teachable moment. There may be some on the Left who are beyond education, but it seems increasingly clear that folks in the middle of the political spectrum are turned off by the anti-U.S., anti-capitalism propaganda of the Left. So, to quote both of the nominees for President this past year, “Bring It On!”

Cuba is still held up as a socialist paradise that the US would do well to emulate. 98% literacy rates, free health care, etc. are cited. However, the only things people have to read are government approved books, and articles. They are not allowed to use the great gift of a high literacy rate to educate themselves in any direction they might choose. And every time I ask about the almost continual attempts by Cubans to cross 90 miles of shark-infested waters to reach Florida (given that Cuba is such a paradise) the subject gets rapidly changed. The most disengenuous make some attempt to argue that those refugees have been brainwashed by the US into believing that life is better here…in other words they’re too stupid to figure out that they have a great life in Cuba, random arrests, centralized control, and all.

Also conveniently overlooked by American & European leftists were the arrests of some 70-odd journalists and writers by Castro back in spring 2003; a news item that got swept under the rug by the Iraq invasion.

These are just some of the issues that leftists choose to ignore when making their arguments regarding the virtues of socialism vs. free-market capitalism. This puts them into Lenin’s “useful idiots” category.

Paul Hollander’s book _Political Pilgrims_ documents, for example, field trips taken by American socialists & communists to Stalin’s USSR. They were shown “model prisons” that had no walls and to which “prisoners” claimed they returned voluntarily after release. They believed these lies and asked for more, please.

By the 1960s and 1970s, there would be no excuse left to believe that kind of nonsense, yet leftists would visit Cuba & fall for the same games.

Whatever was in their heads, it was not compassion or understanding.