Chávez: America Bad, Russia Good.

[DC]

Calling the wars in Vietnam, Korea and Afghanistan "crimes" is absurd in-and-of-itself. Calling them "crimes in the name of Capitalism" is even more ludicrous.

how would you call those Wars?
and what for where those Wars?

 

[JihadJane]

You haven't moved to the fields. You haven't stopped consuming.

Psychic, stilicho?

 

[stilicho]

Psychic, stilicho?

Thanks for finally replying although to the wrong thing. You still have to demonstrate how and when Putin implemented any of the flowery prose at Davos into hard economic policy in Russia. He hasn't and he has no plans to.

I will use my psychic power now to predict that you will not acknowledge this because it is the basis of your statement about Putin's assumed mantle of responsibility.

Next:

You briefly made a statement about consumption =/= happiness.

This is an angular approach to the topic at hand. There are two ways that a government or any social structure can handle unhappy people. They can improve their income or they can establish authority. Kid misbehaves? Spank him or provide him something to keep his mind off pulling the cat's tail.

This is a simplification but not an oversimplification of two different approaches.

The West, in general, has taken the approach that an improved GDP/capita does provide their populations with happiness or better lives or at least keeps them off the streets. Much of the world prefers authoritarianism to keep people off the streets.

The stamp of authoritarianism sometimes creeps into Western culture. The most blatant example is the prohibition of narcotics. American prisons are full of people because of this mistaken policy. The per cent is smaller in Canada but it's still a huge waste of time and resources.

The purpose of explaining this to you is that there are examples of authoritarianism in the West and they can be shown not to work. Much of the world sticks with authoritarianism in spite of the misery it inflicts on its citizenry. On the other hand, an improvement in standard of living, or GDP/capita, has been shown to reduce the risks of civil unrest.

 

[Skeptic]

The "are you psychic?" objection -- "how can you be sure so-and-so is evil? Are you psychic? Can you read his mind?" -- is usually the objection of last resort: to wit, it's used when it is crystal clear, from so-and-so's words and actions, that he is evil.

 

[stilicho]

While I'm skeptical as to the chance of success for communism I certainly think things would have been very different had Lenin lived longer, Stalin not come to power, not discredited Trotsky and not became a ruthless tyrant.

Russian institutions tend to be authoritarian, RandFan. You can exchange the personalities like LEGO bricks.

Lenin and Trotsky (among others) were no less ruthless in their aims than Stalin was. They must have better biographers, though. Lenin bellowed all power to the soviets and then promptly ignored them once a Bolshevik victory was secured.

 

[dudalb]

Russian institutions tend to be authoritarian, RandFan. You can exchange the personalities like LEGO bricks.

Lenin and Trotsky (among others) were no less ruthless in their aims than Stalin was. They must have better biographers, though. Lenin bellowed all power to the soviets and then promptly ignored them once a Bolshevik victory was secured.

Lenin and Trotsky ran a ruthless dictatorship.
The reason Stalin gets more bad press was because he a batcrap crazy paranoid. Lenin and company were not quite as crazy.

 

[RandFan]

Russian institutions tend to be authoritarian, RandFan. You can exchange the personalities like LEGO bricks.

Lenin and Trotsky (among others) were no less ruthless in their aims than Stalin was. They must have better biographers, though. Lenin bellowed all power to the soviets and then promptly ignored them once a Bolshevik victory was secured.

I confess that my education of Lenin and Trotsky is limited and could very well be based on biased material.

I kinda doubt that either Lenin or Trotsky oppressed, starved to death or directly murdered on such a grand scale (assuming they did so at all). That's not to say they didn't want to.

I honestly don't know.

 

[stilicho]

I kinda doubt that either Lenin or Trotsky oppressed, starved to death or directly murdered on such a grand scale (assuming they did so at all). That's not to say they didn't want to.

I had to cheat and Google it because I'd forgotten the name of the group that was used by both Lenin and Trotsky in the Ukraine during the period of instability between 1917 and 1920.

It was the Makhnovists, led by Nestor Makhno, a nominally anarchist confederation that helped defeat both Denikin and Wrangel during the civil wars that followed the revolution. It is hard to find reliable figures of the number of victims the violence directed against them and their bases of support. Makhno himself survived in exile but the numbers of his followers and supporters who were executed could easily be in the tens of thousands. Some of this was accomplished by simply refusing them coal for fuel and grain for food and fodder.

As you suggest, it's probably more a function of scale and the fact that power was not as consolidated as it was under Stalin.

The contrast of the Berlin Airlift is rather instructive. It's always astonished me that the US went out of their way to assist a beleaguered city that had been the capital of their worst enemy as little as four years before. Whereas, even these days, Russia tries to influence politics in the Ukraine by using fuel supplies as a negotiating weapon.

Nevertheless, I am equally opposed to American sanctions against Cuba, Iran, and North Korea. I'm a free-trader at heart and figure that economic sanctions hurt not only the civilians in the target nation but are also a hidden tax on corporations willing to invest and engage in commerce.

 

[RandFan]

I had to cheat and Google it because I'd forgotten the name of the group that was used by both Lenin and Trotsky in the Ukraine during the period of instability between 1917 and 1920.

It was the Makhnovists, led by Nestor Makhno, a nominally anarchist confederation that helped defeat both Denikin and Wrangel during the civil wars that followed the revolution. It is hard to find reliable figures of the number of victims the violence directed against them and their bases of support. Makhno himself survived in exile but the numbers of his followers and supporters who were executed could easily be in the tens of thousands. Some of this was accomplished by simply refusing them coal for fuel and grain for food and fodder.

As you suggest, it's probably more a function of scale and the fact that power was not as consolidated as it was under Stalin.

The contrast of the Berlin Airlift is rather instructive. It's always astonished me that the US went out of their way to assist a beleaguered city that had been the capital of their worst enemy as little as four years before. Whereas, even these days, Russia tries to influence politics in the Ukraine by using fuel supplies as a negotiating weapon.

Nevertheless, I am equally opposed to American sanctions against Cuba, Iran, and North Korea. I'm a free-trader at heart and figure that economic sanctions hurt not only the civilians in the target nation but are also a hidden tax on corporations willing to invest and engage in commerce.

Thanks for the info on the Makhnovists. Given time, human perception tends to mold and chisel away at the truth. What many see as simply a single popular revolution lead by those opposed to the Czar was in fact a fragmented one both in time and power groups.

But then most of us got our history from Dr. Zhivago.

 

[Toke]

Lenin and Trotsky ran a ruthless dictatorship.
The reason Stalin gets more bad press was because he a batcrap crazy paranoid. Lenin and company were not quite as crazy.

Stalin got alot more time in power to be paranoid in.

Lenin was a ruthless dictator, his quote "the purpose of terrorism is to terrorise" sugest some rather nasty ideas for how to keep any opposition is check.

 

[stilicho]

Stalin got alot more time in power to be paranoid in.

Lenin was a ruthless dictator, his quote "the purpose of terrorism is to terrorise" sugest some rather nasty ideas for how to keep any opposition is check.

At least a few psychologists have called what afflicted Stalin 'malignant narcissism' and not paranoia. Among others supposed to be menaced by this condition were Hitler, Kim Jong Il, Mao, David Koresh and Charles Manson. Unlike true paranoids (whatever they might be) these people were/are able to command positions of authority. They cultivate(d) genuine admiration in the people closest to them. They did not isolate themselves deliberately from society as paranoids tend to.

On a slight tangent, I had an opportunity last year to watch a series of complete Hitler speeches from some time in the mid-Thirties. Usually you see or hear the screaming rants with the obligatory 'Sieg Heil'. What took me aback, slightly, was the tone of the complete speeches. They were subtitled in English but even without them there was a structure to his speeches that is rare and awe-inspiring. Hitler began almost in a professorial tone, with long sentences and a relaxed posture, hands sometimes held behind his back. As the speech went on, his voice rose, the sentences shortened, and the volume increased. More gestures. At the same time, the reaction of the audience became more enthusiastic until it became the staccato of applause and saluting at the quick, loud, phrases we've come to associate with Hitler's oratory. Apart from JFK, I doubt I've seen anyone even close to his ability to communicate and elicit such spontaneous outbursts of approval from crowds.

 

[Toke]

Yes, I heard Hitler was a good orator.

I am using paronoid loosely here, Stalin did have enemies and the purges served several purposes.
They supplied alot of slave labour and keept any real opposition very quiert.
Guess he took lenins advice "the purpose of terrorism is to terrorise".

 

[stilicho]

Guess he took lenins advice "the purpose of terrorism is to terrorise".

In all fairness, a similar employment of terrorism against the Tories occurred in the USA after their revolution. They didn't quite have the tools of technological oppression that Lenin or Stalin had. There was no telegraph, telephone, or railroads, so the institutionalised purges were a little more subdued.

However, those of us in Canada learn very early that the forced mass migration of what we call Loyalists created in Upper Canada a balance of anglophones to work with the abandoned francophones of Lower Canada to produce a single nation. The enmity of the recently independent Americans turned upon people who had every right to their own opinion within the new union yet they were driven out, their homes burned, their livestock and crop stolen, and their churches closed. There has yet to be a good accounting of the deaths or injuries incurred by the Tories after the American Revolution.

This is what happens after true revolutions. The abominable suffering is borne by those with an unpopular opinion. It is notable that, once defeating the French in combat at Quebec in 1759, the British did not expel the settlers as was the custom at the time. The Americans did after their victory at Yorktown.

 

[Toke]

Interesting, that is not given much publicity.

This talk of violent revolution reminds me of the french one.
Seems the victorius revolutionaries spend most of their time in a powerstrugle where the loosers were beheaded as enemies of the people.
Napoleon were the result. (short version)

So before calling for a revolution one should consider the concequenses.
They have a bad track record.

 

[stilicho]

Napoleon were the result. (short version)

More like Robespierre was the result.

He's another one of those 'malignant narcissists' I was talking about. If a man trembles when I speak then he is proved guilty.

As far as publicity about the victims of the American Revolution, it's not even a part of the American grade school curriculum. It's a uniquely Canadian thing and there are few if any corresponding examples anywhere else in the world. The treatment of the Anabaptists in the sixteenth & seventeenth century in Europe is probably the closest you have.

 

[RandFan]

Seems the victorius revolutionaries spend most of their time in a powerstrugle where the loosers were beheaded as enemies of the people.
Napoleon were the result. (short version)

So before calling for a revolution one should consider the concequenses.
They have a bad track record.

Nearly everyone who championed the guillotine fell under its blade including Robespierre as Stilcho, who has beat me to the punch, notes.

 

[DC]

would we still use guillotine's, Banksters would be alot more carefull in creating a crisis.

Back then they would end up a head shorter, now they get 20 Mil in Boni

 

[JihadJane]

Is the American Revolution over yet as there still seems to be a lot of killing going on?

Or have the European bankers won?

 

[Toke]

would we still use guillotine's, Banksters would be alot more carefull in creating a crisis.

Back then they would end up a head shorter, now they get 20 Mil in Boni

The idea is tempting, but there are probably some unfortunate sideeffects.

It could be something about laws and summary executions comming back to bite one.
So think of Robespierre before stating who would up against the wall when the revolution comes.

 

[RandFan]

Is the American Revolution over yet as there still seems to be a lot of killing going on?

"Seems"? Could you give us some hard numbers? It doesn't seem that way to me. In fact the data would seem to suggest that it's not that way at all. But then, can one really trust data?

Or have the European bankers won?

I didn't know there was a contest. How does one know it's over?