Karl

Not until we stop this altruistic, sacrificial none sense of being thy brothers keeper in a pragmatic state where whim is worshipped above reason. Until we resort reason to its rightful place we have no defence against things getting worse.

Absolutely. However, If you were a subjectivist then there is no existence as such, because of primacy of consciousness. As existence is secondary then identity is impossible. Therefore the sweets and lack of sweets are simply the same illusion. The simple structure 'existence is identity and consciousness is identification' makes it all clear for an objectivist. Simplicity prevails. Things are what they are, existence exists, A is A and consciousness is the faculty to grasp it. There can be no identity without there first being existence because consciousness would be a nothingness nothing. This is what subjectivists are intent on trying to prove in a myriad of different ways-the latest being quantum theory.

Everything has gone up under their watch. Higher taxes, more legalise, more complex tax, more surveillance, greater public debt, greater housing costs, greater interest rates on standard loans, greater immigration. Authoritarian nightmare.

Corporate vampirism is global. Before much longer we will learn of the new cashless banking system. It will be sold as the panacea for all those pesky market problems, speculators, shadow bankers, defaulting countries, tax avoiders/evaders, criminals and rogue dictators. Capital controls will soon be applied to all countries to block the movement of money and cash transactions will be decreased degree by degree. This will be heralded as a transparent, incorruptible, fair and stable system that will make our lives easier and safer. Coming to your country very soon.

Except it's not a conventional free market, it's the same kind of facist market presided over by Hitlers Government. The difference this time is it is corporate governance. Once they had control of the money, the die was cast. Everything else is just to prevent the sheep from realising their position. Keep the sheep dependent and scared of the wolves. Carrot and stick.

Except the market isn't a fixed pie in which there are a set number of jobs to do. It is, or should be, constantly expanding.

If anyone could....;-)

I think they are being sold it. There are thousands of travel agents intent on making a chunk of cash from moving refugees on. Then there is the herd mentality plus war. They watch their friends departing and then they don't want to remain. The more families seeking passage the greater the number of those willing to take their money and possessions. We should have stopped it, but Europe (principally Germany) won't allow it. All these countries with aging populations are a danger to the welfare Ponzi scheme. It's nothing to do with production. It's that these countries have promised their citizens heaven then taxed away any possibility of individual self reliance. The result is that it would soon expose the lie. Instead of some mythical 'pot' there are instead working people paying for all the non working people. Once the number of income earners falls then the income to pensions, health and all the rest dries up. When that happens the people turn on the Government. This is effectively what happened in Greece.

Yet it doesn't show anything of the sort. Zero is just a numerical convenience. You are creating a mathematical equivocation in which zero Is being equated to existence. Remember, the map is not the territory. Out of non existence comes nothing. There isn't anything at all for anything to arise. Things are existent, they only change from states due to causality. A candle doesn't manifest out of nothing, it has to be manufactured in accordance with existent principles and materials. The subjectivist does not accept this, or excepts it only on a limited basis depending on how radically subjective they are. It comes back to existence exists and the primacy of existence vs the primacy of consciousness.

If the host is not a Muslim that is exactly right. Muslims who have been brought up in Western democracies don't think that way, but those brought up on Islamic Wahhabism most certainly do. There was a short interview with a Calais side immigrant on the BBC-one of those who stormed the ferry. When asked what he would do he was indignant. He said Britain was ignoring his rights to come to Britain and that Britain should open the borders and let all the migrants in-as was their right. He demanded it and didn't know why there was a hold up.

That's 0=0 ; 1=1 Or in children's terms if you have a bag of sweeties then eat them all you have none remaining. (Brilliant give the child some of those sweeties as a reward). That's totally different from reification that posits zero is a special kind of something. So, having no sweeties is but the negative attribute of the traditionally existent sweeties, therefore is as existent as the sweeties themselves, or as non existent as the traditionally existent sweeties. I came across this idea sitting in the tv room of a B and B in Aberdeen around 1978. That 1=0, which is totally wrong, but still has tremendous world wide traction. Anyway it boils down to Kant/Hegel "no one can know anything for certain" or "it may be true for you but not for me". In other words it's subjectivity.

Make the non existent existent; make the existent non existent. 0=1 ; 1=0 A is-A ; -A is A Identicurgal

It is to me, but then my own philosophy is completely at odds with much of the current, modern Western world. We seriously have an ex Conservative party (Baroness Warsi) director suggesting that we should remove the minarets from mosques to make them fit in to our towns and cities. This is the same kind of thinking that turned shell shock into post traumatic stress disorder, or dead civilians into collateral damage. We don't have problems we have challenges.

To add further to this bonfire. We have a local area blog on which was posted the following. As reference, we live in a small, fairly quiet town in the North East of England. We have a small but flourishing Asian, Chinese and Polish communities which are a well integrated part of the community. The following incident is highly unusual, particularly the area in which it occurred. The writer is well known to me and is very liberal: Towards me, a woman walks alone from Bank Top. She carries her bag. Ahead of me walks a man in his late 20's. Suddenly, without warning the man collides with the woman - as if barging into her. She stops, distressed and looks shaken. She hurries away, passes me, but we do not speak. Moments later, I pass the man. Within two steps he grabs at my work bag. I do not release it. But I turn with speed. I grab his hand and hold it. He struggles. He shouts in Arabic. A witness rushes to assist me. The perpetrator pulls free. Within minutes, the matter is taken up by British Transport Police. Later I speak of the incident, and share my feelings. My close friends and fellow residents on the terrace show concern for me. Others - not my friends - are more concerned about the perpetrator - a migrant visitor to Darlington. "Was he is hungry?" More sinisterly, they seek to suppress mention of his ethnicity. But, with Cologne, Stockholm and Cairo - we may piece together wider issues arising from migration, especially the single young males whose attitudes to women, values and responsibilities may be in conflict with those of their host communities. Migration has been a fact of life since men and women left their caves. Britain is a migrant country in both senses of the word - our gene pool tells one story, and our colonial times tell another. But now, the rape and pillage of our ancestors has as much relevance to current problems as had our transportation of criminals to Australia. We live in times of social collaboration - in which we trust in order, responsibility and freedom. That is the basis of our society. Today at the World Economic Forum, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls stated, "the migrant crisis is putting the European Union in grave danger" and without adequate border control, "our societies will be totally destabilised". He added that any other message will, a few seconds later, be shared on the smart phones in the refugee camps in Libya. As a supporter of the Darlington Walk for Peace, and as a Quaker, I seek not to make a comment with any racial motive, but simply to promote open discussion about that which those bringing migrants to - or accommodating migrants within our community, avoid. Humanitarian support for those in need of refuge is vital. But so is the necessity to ensure shared values, and respect for the host. We need to think through the social implications of migration. A daylight attack by a migrant on two Darlington residents whilst they make their way to work within 300 metres of the terrace, is not conducive to integration or trust. For those that care to ask, I am alright. I know not whether his female victim bears a scar. But I sense that our community may, and if French Prime Minister Valls is correct, will bear a consequence unless we too, openly and without fear, think things through and speak about them without fear.

Pragmatic liberalism has no limit.

The tree which has no root penetrating deeply into the ground will find itself blown east, west, north, south by the lightest of breezes

...Or what he is doing.I see it more as expressing genuine fear. It's like shouting there is a train coming at the person you find yourself shackled to that seems oblivious to the danger. The pleas to get off the track turn from rational argument to hysterical screaming as the headlights get closer.

It's the other side of the same fallacy. So, yes, there is no real difference. I always think of it from the perspective of musical notes in which the interlude is regarded as the defining element and therefore similarly equal to the note. Negating the note and then concretising the interlude achieves the same aim. its the same sophism and scepticism presented in a marginally different way. It's only use is in a literary work, but then we shouldn't confuse the map with the territory.

Yes, one more candle power is gained, some extra joules of energy are released as are various gasses and ash. Wax, wick and oxygen are burned and converted to other things. There is no net loss or gain, but there is certainly specific, time stamped change. A candle existed and then it did not.

He is making a point emotionally. That we should question what we are doing letting thousands of Muslims into Europe. He is sounding a warning bell to the potential for Europe to be as overrun as we might well have been during the era of Nazi Germany. This is a religion driven from middle eastern governments who have condemned and threatened the West, have attacked the West in 9/11, 7/7, Lockerbie, Lee Rigby, Paris, Russian Passenger plane. They aren't kidding around. They a building mosques from which the extremist Islamic message is spread by Saudi sponsored Sunni Imam. Only recently we had an under cover television documentary in the UK showing extremist groups of females preaching hate and sharia law, who are using public money to organise themselves. We have had madras schools which had to be closed. Now we have documented rapes and abuses by these 'so called' refugees. Our countries have increased surveillance and curtailed our liberty in order to accommodate diversity and we are paying for it both monetarily and spiritually. We have roads blocked by trucks (operation stack) unable to flow from Calais to Britain due to attacks by immigrants camping at the port. Drives are routinely harassed and have been attacked. We can't just close our eyes and offer up our backsides to be kicked, or hope it will all get resolved by teaching Muslim women English (David cameron) or removing the minarets from mosques to make the 'fit in'. This is the pragmatism of morons. I think he has a very good point to make even if his argument is somewhat sprawling and occasionally graphic. The thing is, being raped, murdered, robbed, beheaded, blown up or machine gunned is a graphic, violent reality that we cannot just ignore. We should be objective, but not dismiss the sentiment.

I can only smile having been there once upon a time.

I don't object to the phrase per se, I object to it being said to be a value. Freedom is a value that one has and holds by ones actions. To say 'a belief in freedom' is to miss the linking word 'a belief in the Concept of freedom'. This is ethically unsound. That somebody believes in the idea of something does not mean they practice virtuously towards it. This must be done consciously and deliberately or it's just a throw away phrase. If at any time there is known evasion, then the value is uprooted. One must clearly know what freedom is in regard to existence. Is it freedom to run around stealing and killing ? How must it then accord with the other values you hold ? It cannot exist on its own, so what other concepts is it tied to ? Freedom isn't an axiomatic truth of and by itself, it must be defined in relation to other values and then finally to existence. Unless one is an intrincisist or subjectivist of course and then all bets are off.

It's unclear what our 'hard won values' are and it makes even less sense when you consider that we don't adopt a basket of values, or even earn the values we purportedly have as individuals. It's just another authoritarian belief in the power of social programming and if you don't accept the social programming then expect there to be ostracised. David Cameron: "a belief in freedom, tolerance of others, accepting personal and social responsibility, respecting and upholding the rule of law" These are the values Cameron believes should be instituted amongst the population. "A 'belief' in freedom" -only says 'belief' because freedom is whatever the state tells us it is. If that's the freedom not to worry about about personal freedom but to let the state be the arbiter of that, as it was in Nazi Germany/Soviet Russia then it isn't freedom at all. "Tolerance of others" no definition of tolerance, are we supposed to be tolerant of everybody no matter what they do or say ? No, of course the state has that sown up. We are to be tolerant of whatever the state decrees we should be tolerant of and intolerant of everything else. "Accepting personal AND social responsibility" these are in opposition with each other deliberately. This is the kind of doublespeak INGSOC would have been proud of. It points once again to the 'responsibilities' that a person should have towards the state-and more concretely the Government. "Respecting and upholding the rule of law" it's a truism. It's no longer a simple set of laws, but an entire library full of legalism which is added to daily in order that our freedoms are further restricted. Cameron's values are bunkum. He believes in nothing more than authoritarian rule 'might makes right' and 'do what I say or else'. It appears the only people giving freedom are the people to whom freedom is being gradually denied. We have given the state the freedom to take away our freedom.

"...Strong ethos and values based education..." "Today in the UK, there are numerous active extreme right-wing groups, sharing an ideology centring on an intense hostility to minorities and a belief that violence between ethnic and religious groups is inevitable. Alongside antisemitism and racism, hostility to Islam has now become a common element of extreme right ideology." This is the ethos and values the state wants children to be indoctrinated with. It's as if they believe children are empty vessels in which they can pour in values and ethos like programming a computer. It's a complete denial of reason or self education. It's ever more authoritarian. They even have the audacity to suggest "critical thinking" when it is clear that the children are to be steered towards excepting what they are being told. They can debate it by all means, but the debates will be led and informed by the teacher who just happens to be a Government licensed employee.

It all comes from the same place which is Ancient Greece and the philosophy of Plato. Plato believed in a world of perfect forms which we could never know. This perfect world of forms imparted their perfection upon the imperfect world that we inhabit. The Christian God is regarded as omniscient, omnipotent and the creator. Beyond our world, but creator of it. Not really that different.