Ian Hoopingarner

 shipoftheworld.blogspot.com

In these times I think it is ever more important that we pull together and stand up for each other.   I reject Trump’s use of “both sides” rhetoric and pledge to always get to the truth.  I pledge to attain, interrogate, critique, and transform measures of attitude, perception and belief revealing epistemological conclusions about the nature of what people know, and thereby stay on my way. 

Locke’s labor theory of value. In the 17th century, John Locke wrote his two treatises on government.  In chapter five of the Second Treatise, he describes the labor theory by which property is created.  Labor and labor alone removes from a state of nature and into man’s belonging the fruits of nature admixed with man’s labor and this is how come property exists.  God gave the fruits of the Earth to man in common .  But private property can arise out of common ownership.  In a hunt, man may take a rabbit, or gather apples or acorns, and it is his labor in doing so that makes those resources his property.  By mixing his labor with the fruits of nature, man has removed them from the state of nature and acquired a right to have them.  Private property, however, is distinct from the things of nature from whence it was created; labor is a creative force and the ne plus ultra of private property.  “As much as can be enjoyed, with enough and as ...

  Julian Assange is a free man.     That is not a thing many people thought they would ever say.     This has to be admitted.     Although through his long imprisonment many hoped and worked to get him free, this will set a precedent in history I think, as a victory for human rights and civil liberties.     I was just thinking that the image many people saw of Julian being carried out of the Ecuadorian embassy with two books clutched in his hand, that image looks different now that he’s free.     As far as what the public at large saw, the story led from that image to the plea entered on Saipan where he said that he believed the Espionage Act and the First Amendment were still in contradiction with one another.     And it shows or should show, Julian’s bravery throughout this process.     All I can add, is that through it all, Julian stayed ever the intellectual in the broadest sense of the term.

 “ So brothers and sisters, that’s where we’re at.     We are at a pivotal moment in American history.     And what we are talking about is something pretty simple.     The status quo.     The current economy.     The current political system which is dominated by billionaires.     It is working very well for the people on top.     They love the status quo.     And they’re going to do everything they can to protect the status quo.     And our job is the very opposite.     What they have nightmares about is that workers stand up and fight back for a nation that works for all of us.     That is their nightmare.     And our job is to make sure that that nightmare takes place.” Bernie Sanders, UAW CAP conference 1/22/2024

 Nov. 17, 2023 Moody's turns negative on US credit rating, draws Washington ire | Reuters The ratings agency Moody downgrades the United States’ credit rating, citing “continued political polarization” basically saying to stop the political infighting in Congress.    A voice on the radio says, “the dysfunction is all that is going on right now.”

  Taiwan in the Winter of 2023-2024