[bustgoesbust]

Forget the Devil wears prada - Debbie Stoller hasn't got taste enough to buy prada. She calls herself a feminist?????? What crap! What feminist borrows everyones ideas craftsters or people in general.? I know everyone in publishing does it,but come on.

I loved this magazine because I thought that the idea was coming from an indie mag. Meanwhile the Editor in Chief is picking on a small business. Maybe she'll give them credit. Don't pay no way then she takes Sew Fast Sew Easy's idea for her books and the stupid bitch doesn't even check to see if its trademarked.

Then she files two applications for trademarks - gets refused and then smacks it to them. Uhhh! Miss Debbie hits SFSE with a petition to take their trademark. SHe thinks everything is hers. She wants it even if she's the bully devil.

Take it first hand from an intern who watched her at it every day. You are being lead down the stoller road to HELL! Boycott BUST! By JANE or other magazines that do good with their money!!!!!!

[sevenseconds]

(this will be rushed and rambling: going dark for a week or so, but would like to quickly wave at all of you here )

ChingusKhan, yes, I've read Solzhenitsyn (a quirky and brilliant guy, fascinating, and I agree on the first two counts of his verdict but stop short of the Mother Russia and God the Father. We'll talk about point 3 later.)
And, absolutely, camps are among the worst human inventions. Unfortunately, that's a very old human invention. There were some other not so horrible but simply crappy things about that system, too (gotta stay tuned.)
But I would ask you to go see the movie Precious and agree with me that *this system here* has created a giant Gulag in its very own urban heart. The movie is a girl's true story, and there are thousands and thousands like it, for real, in these very cities we strut around our Donna Karan boots in. (I know the principal of a continuation school and the stories he tells me, Holy Child, your blood will curdle.)
One doesn't need to be locked up to be a prisoner. Ignorance and poverty are very cruel guards.

Just saying: such deprivation was unthinkable in the system I grew up in. Excellent quality education was free and in fact, very, very hard to evade. There was a responsibility to the health and employable, skilled future of all children. Every new human had full access to the gifts of civilization, and that right was not a question of how rich, educated or responsible the parents were. It was just theirs, part of the civil contract: they were members of humanity.
I find it hard to swallow that the advanced world doesn't think so.
I almost don't care who owns the wealth if that one thing (and health care) can be given freely. Can it, under *this sytem*?
I will tell you why I think not.

I'll post more when I return, and I have lots of crazy stuff to say, so please all of you smart people, keep the fire burning.

As Koffeewitch said: Thank you to both sides for going at this discussion with all you've got.

Koffeewitch, I'm gonna go get you a Koffee now.

[ChingusKhan]

7Seconsds, your point about access to health care was brought home to me when I went to Cuba: Nobody has bad teeth in Cuba. Go to other Latin American countries and you'll see the poor - or even the middle class - with bad teeth. Makes you think.

You're right, too, that there indictments of the political systems of the West anywhere, should you choose to look.

There was something so stunningly sinister about Magadan, though, and I think it was the fact that it was intentional and it was state sponsored. Yes, there are ghettos and yes there are stories like "Precious" - and many far, far worse - in the West but, there is also a concerted effort on behalf of the state to make those situations better. You can argue endlessly about effectiveness of those programmes and whether or not they work but you can't argue that the State is trying.

I don't want to be an apologist for the Western Market Economy / Political System. It is, though, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, the second worst political and economic system history has ever seen. The problem, to my mind, is that the only thing worse is everything else.