Che Guevara: Cuban revolutionary or puppy-eating serial murderer?

Okay, here’s a fun little intellectual exercise to try out:

Let’s see if we can spot the irrational, blinded-by-ideology individual amongst these two writers using only a writing sample from each on a similar topic.

Keep in mind, that some characteristics of irrational people are that they tend to:

1) Be incapable of using even-headed arguments without resorting to ad hominem attacks.

2) Unable to give an account of their opponent’s behaviour without using over-simplification or straw-men.

3) View those they disagree with as inherently evil, often attributing sadistic and/or even satanistic motivations to their opponent’s actions.

4) Ignore evidence which suggests that the subject of their attack is not the embodiment of pure evil seeking to destroy all of humanity and/or enslave all of humanity.

5) Believe their account to be the only valid account.  This last characteristic is often associated with a belief that every one either already agrees with their account or that every one would agree with their account if they could simply realize just how popular this account really is.

So keep these items in mind and look for which one of these two writing samples portrays their subject as a caricature — this will work even if you actually know nothing whatsoever about Che Guevara.

Updates galore

For those of you who are interested, several of the Paulitics resources have been updated in the past couple of days.

•I’ve updated the Quotes Resource by adding a new section for atheist and other deliciously sacreligious quotations. →

•I’ve also updated the Ontario 2007 Polling Resource to include three new polls (two of which I had previously missed, and one that is very recent).
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•There have also been updates made to the Marx-to-English Dictionary Resource.  Some of the new entries in the dictionary include “bourgeoisie”, “petite bourgeoisie” and “proletariat”.  ↓

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Our entire existence summed up in one cartoon

I just came across this cartoon over on reddit.com.  This is the best cartoon I’ve read in a very very long time.

See also:

Peace is overrated

Why capitalism can’t continue forever and why socialism will prevail

From Bolivian President Evo Morales’ recent speech to the United Nations (the text of which has never been seen in the mainstream media).

“It is important that we learn lessons from some sectors, from some regions. Let me avail myself of this opportunity: I come from a culture based on peace, from a lifestyle based on equality, of living not only in solidarity with all people, but also living in harmony with Mother Earth. For the indigenous movement, land cannot be a commodity; it is a mother that gives us life, so how could we convert it into a commodity as the western model does?

This is a profound lesson which we must learn in order to resolve the problems of humanity that are being discussed here, climate change and pollution. Where does this pollution come from? It comes from, and is generated by, the unsustainable development of a system which destroys the planet: in other words, capitalism.

I want to use this opportunity to call on sectors, groups and nations to abandon luxury, to abandon over-consumption, to think not only about money but about life, to not only think about accumulating capital but to think in wider terms about humanity. Only then can we begin to solve the root causes of these problems facing humanity. “

Hat tip to our good comrade Ian Angus who runs the fantastic ecosocialist blog “Climate and Capitalism“. He published the full text of Morales’ speech.

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See also:

All that glitters is not golden

An apology is owed…

Support for capitalist parties in Canada

Is socialism violent or is liberalism hypocritical?: Dispelling the myths of socialism – PART I

Is Capitalism Justified?: Dispelling the myths of socialism – PART II

Propaganda in Action: Ontario’s election “priorities”?

A new poll just released by Environics, shows something more revealing than it bargained for. What it shows can be considered even more proof that the media does not have a left-wing bias.

The Environics poll asked Ontarians what they thought the most important factor/issue determing their vote in the upcoming election would be.

The results are interesting.

Now, some of these factors can be broadly categorized into socialist/social democratic issues (namely heath care and social programs/poverty/minimum wage) and conservative/capitalist issues (namely the economy and taxes). Recompiling the list with these ideological concerns grouped together results in this list of what Ontarians care about:

So what do Ontarians care about? Notice that by far, the answer, according to Environics, is overwhelmingly coherently socialist/social democratic issues, followed by two ideologically neutral issues, then followed by coherently conservative or capitalist issues.

But now let’s take a look at what the mainstream media coverage of the Ontario election considers to be the important issues.

We can see that the media has little interest in the issues that Ontarians actually cares about:

I compiled the data for this table using targeted advanced Google news searches and can be verified, if you’re interested, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

We progressives can easily convince ourselves that society is hopelessly biased and political culture hopelessly corrupted by the mainstream media, but I see these results as reason for optimism rather than forlornness.

Voters aren’t clamoring for tax cuts despite the hugely disproportional media coverage of the issue and voters continue to support socialist issues as their #1 election issues. If that, in and of itself, does not give progressives great faith in the prospects for the kind of changes we seek, then I don’t know what will.

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See also:

The ‘Propaganda in Action’ series (the rest of the series)

The NDP are cowards, what should true progressives do?

What do politics and monkey shit fights have in common?

The propaganda & hypocrisy of 9/11 anniversary media coverage

The Paulitics coverage of the Ontario 2007 election