International Politics Thread

[ralphwiggum 6]

Quote[/b] ]And 1% left Cuba. That is MORE than number of people moving from US to Cuba, mind you. Notice that in US if you want to go to Cuba and live there, US government cannot do much. Just look at your ido Michael Moore. He is still walking and talking, not dead.

No, it's illegal to go to Cuba for US-citizens. Moore probably went through Mexico. But, then he still can be charged for breaking the embargo by trading with cubans, eating food etc. I think he got into trouble when the movie was released.

Then how the heck did Michael Moore get there? Practically, Moore is still free to do whatever he wants in US right now. He got some criticism, but nothing came out of it.

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Quote[/b] ]Maybe you do some math, you will realize that

GDP/capita = consumption/capita + gross investment/capita + government spending/capita + (exports − imports)/capita

So indeed it it affected by number of people. You started the whole GDP/capita is better argument and now that I showed it is no better than nominal GDP, you are trying to say something to refute me but you can't.

Yes, that's what I've been saying all the time. It's obvious. GDP/Capita means GDP/people. So naturally -people- will affect the ratio. GDP measures total production. That is worthless if you want to measure standards of living. As I said you can have 100 in production and 1 citizen. If you have 10 citizens and 100 in production, the latter case is worse. Because people get much less. That's why GDP/capita is better. In the first case it would be 100, in the second 10. So if you want to compare countries with anything that has to do with GDP, you should use GDP/capita and not GDP. I don't see why it's hard to understand.

Then how come Lichtenstein is NOT the #1 world, which by the way has highest GDP/capita? I showed several times why GDP per capita is not the only measure, and nominal GDP is just as good as GDP per capita. You kept changing your story as "GDP is affected by number of people, so GDP/capita is better." Then when I pointed out your flaw, you said "GDP can be affected by other factors not just number of people." Now you are back to CDP/capita is better because of number of people.

Quote[/b] ]

Quote[/b] ]And they are still around to make money. How can that be?

They generally have to choose between the US and Cuban market.

In practice, not really. But in your dreams, yes.

Quote[/b] ]

Quote[/b] ]So you admit that US is better than Cuba here? Business people want to do business with US not Cuba. That says something! Even if your embargo idea is true it doesn't matter as tourists from around the world can goto Cuba and spend USD as free as they want.

US is a bigger market, you can sell more there, generally. A country is not better than another because people want to do business with it. Then Qatar and all those US-backed dictatorships would be the greatest. The system cuba has to offer is a lot better than the american one, that's why Cuba is better. It's more democratic and just. And you can't spend USD in Cuba.

contrary to your argument, USD is spent in Cuba. As you said Cuba is so great that their centralized planning by one leader system works, but now you are criticizing Qatar and all those backed by US?

Quote[/b] ]

Quote[/b] ]Election where there are only one candidate. If that kind of crap happened here in US you "socialist" would be calling it a dictatorship. But as long as your "uncle Fidel" can do it, it's good. The only candidate that is allowed is the ones who show their "patriotism" i.e. loyalty to communism. There are no other political party than Communist party.

No, not at all. I pointed out that there were 15 000 seats and more than 30 000 candidates. That's at least 2 per seat. Political parties don't participate in elections in Cuba. Cuba is a proletarian dictatorship, but it's more democratic than the bourgeois US.

LOL so dictatorship is better than democracy. Good grief, so you just admitted that other nations has to follow as Cuban system is better, especially with no choice of alternat party candidates.

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Quote[/b] ]You mean Cuba, with its so effective system can only do just as good as US, not better? Then there is no support to your argument that the Cuban system will work with US. Furthermore, the "inferior" US system is doing just as well as Cubans! How could this be?!?

You don't seem to understand simple logics. If you have starting conditions X1 and X2, then apply system S1 and S2 respectively, System S1 is better than system S2, lets say S1 means a 50% boost while S2 means a 30% boost. Starting condition X1=0.75 (75% of X2) is worse than X2=1. So X1+X1*S1=1.12500 while X2+X2*S2=1.3. Even if the first system is better you get a worse final score. S1 is Cuba, and S2 is the US.

Nice try. What makes S1 better than S2? This is NOT a mathematics question. is S1 > for all S2? Nope. then there is no superiority or 'better system' You can't even define S1 and S2, so your 'logic' goes no where.

Quote[/b] ]

Quote[/b] ]Yes, and there are so sociopaths in this world, right? Looking at motives, Castro had plenty too. Dissidents in Cuba get shot, in US they are yelled at. Look at all the dissidents in US. Are they shot? Nope.

Dissidents in Cuba aren't shot. They are shot in the US though. Kent State, Malcolm X, Marthin Luther King Jr and so on.

Sorry shooting was stopped, they just hang them. Keep grasping the straws. You are just assuming that the list of event above is political suppression.

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Quote[/b] ]You managed to pull 3 examples and call that the norm? I say if that's the logic, then Cuba is a muderous dictatorship as many were fleeing the country in 80s and many more were shot.

Maybe you are not reading things correctly, but as I said, last few presidents were leftwings. But I guess that does not fit into your argument of 'fascist state'.

Kwangju, while it was an uprising that signified the century is NOT a communist uprising. The same people who did taht ended up as major government figures. And you still call Korea a fascist nation? The strike of 1996 ended and that was it. Thesedays, the unions are looked down by Koreans as they ended up being fat cats themselves.

Left wing of korean politics is still right wing.

More riots and uprisings:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTPbK6YAF4M

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Revolution

That's South Korea for you. South Korea was a military dictatorship backed by the US, until recently.

LOL try portraying one small segment of society as whole again?

Here is the profile of the last president

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roh_Moo-hyun

Quote[/b] ]Before entering politics, Roh was a noted human rights lawyer.

<snip>

The emergence of a liberal reformist and anti-American political movement in the country was another factor in his victory. According to the Guardian post of the UK, the development of the internet across the entire country played a huge role in stimulating anti-American emotion

One before that

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dae_Joong

Quote[/b] ]he has been called the "Nelson Mandela of Asia"[2] for his long-standing opposition to authoritarian rule.

Before that

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Young_Sam

Quote[/b] ] Kim also granted amnesty to thousands of political prisoners, and removed the criminal convictions of pro-democracy protesters who had been arrested during the Gwangju massacre in the aftermath of the Coup d'état of December Twelfth

Wait, isn't Kwangju(Gwangju) the one that you claimed as the uprising in the past? But how come the US led dictator pardoned them?

Quote[/b] ]Cuba is far from a murderous dictatorship. That's a word people use for the US. Fake democracy.

Keep dreaming. US is better democracy than one party system of Cuba. There is a word for those USSR - Failure.

Quote[/b] ]

Quote[/b] ]Did you read the article correctly? It asks about fall of the nation, not the life style of the USSR. If the question is rephrased as the life style, I bet the numbers will be different.

Did you? It clearly says that 67% "regret the collapse of the

Soviet Union." Life style was a lot worse until just now. GDP fell by over 30%.

Collapse of Soviet Union is about disintegration of the union.

yup. GDP fell, right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Russia

1995 - 1,428,500

2000 - 7,305,600

2005 - 21,665,000

Funnier thing is there are hardly any reliable source for USSR's GDP as they refused to take note of it. If the figures to compare are missing, how can you claim it went down?

Quote[/b] ]

Quote[/b] ]So you do admit that USSR was not a socialist society as the Central planning and the country owned everything, not individuals.

The USSR was a socialist society. Planners were just like everyone else. Or do planners of big companies own the companies?

In other words, you just discounted your argument that USSR was a centralized planning society and everything was owned by the country itself.

Quote[/b] ]

Quote[/b] ]LOL Angola was under Portugese control! Keep grasping the straws. And while US did not severe its ties with SA all together, it did criticize South Africa without hesitation. Speaking of racist, Stalin did not like Jewish population in USSR too.

No, Angola got independent from Portugal 1975. The conflict with the west starts after that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angolan_Civil_War

South Africans and other capitalist were driven out from Angola and Namibia by Cuban and Angolan forces.

And now it's a better place that follow's cuba's footsteps

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angola

Quote[/b] ]Growth is almost entirely driven by rising oil production which surpassed 1.4 million barrels per day in late-2005 and which is expected to grow to 2 million barrels per day by 2007. Control of the oil industry is consolidated in Sonangol Group, a conglomerate which is owned by the Angolan government. In December 2006, Angola was admitted as a member of OPEC.[12] The economy grew 18% in 2005, 26% in 2006 and 17.6% in 2007 and it's expected to stay above 10% for the rest of the decade. The security brought about by the 2002 peace settlement has led to the resettlement of 4 million displaced persons, thus resulting in large-scale increases in agriculture production.

The country has developed its economy since political stability arose in 2002. However, it faces huge social and economic problems as a result of an almost continual state of conflict since 1961, although the highest level of destruction and socio-economic damage was reached after the 1975 independence, during the long years of civil war. Rapidly rising production and revenues from the oil sector have been the main driving forces behind the improvements in overall economic activity - nevertheless, poverty remains widespread. Anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International rated Angola one of the 10 most corrupt countries in the world in 2005. The capital city is the most developed and the only large economic center worth mentioning in the country, however, slums called musseques, stretch for miles beyond Luanda's former city limits.

So if the Cubans liberated Angola from Western influence, what happened? They are still having problems!

Quote[/b] ]

Quote[/b] ]LOL keep dreaming. YOU were born after USSR. You didn't see Chernobyl, the long lines for bread and the cold war. You only have fantasy of communism and don't even understand what it is. Your anti-social mind wants to go against what is in power right now.

How would that work out? I thought I said I visited the USSR?

So? You do a trip to selected places and think you got the whole picutre.

Quote[/b] ]

Quote[/b] ]Yeah that's what they said about 17 years ago while comparing to Japan. and beofre that with USSR and communism. Yet US is still here.

This is something different. The US is on a big decline.

How is it so?

[ralphwiggum 6]

Quote[/b] ]Marxism is a theory. It is not fact. Not a science. Don't see many Universities offering joint Marxism and Chemistry degrees. It's a social science. Studying people's behaviour. People are not logical (generally). Maths and science are logical.

Marxism is a scientific theory based on the foundations of economical analysis. It meets all the requirements of being a science.

And so is fascism.

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Quote[/b] ]You contradict yourself all the time.

Where? You fail to bring up any examples. Yet you accuse me of contradicting myself?

Read my post again.

Quote[/b] ]That's right, hundreds of millions. People in the west generally don't know anything about marxism. But if you look at South America or Asia you'll see a huge difference. In any society, even seen globally, the weakest link breaks first. That happened to Russia 1917 and that's what's happening at those places right now. Nepal, India, Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia to name a few.

So far that weakest link has been fixed and is getting stronger. China is turning to capitalism and so is Vietnam and others. Even you didn't know a thing about proletariat until I corrected you. Now you just don't talk about it.

Quote[/b] ]

Quote[/b] ]Just a couple. That we know about. Concentration camps. They are death camps, they either starve people to death or beat them to death, shoot them or experiment. Just like the Nazi regime. It's not a jail like in the US, yes the prisoners work in the US, but they don't die from working, neither are they beaten to death for no reason, neither are their families detained, neither are they generational camps.

Yes, there's abuse in US prisons too, but it gets reported and news spread out. Guard abuse is rarer than prisoner on prisoner abuse.

Bullshit. Who says that? Your teacher or the CIA? You're letting your fantasy slip. There is no proof, just propaganda.

And you can't prove it either. Keep blaming it on the propaganda.

Quote[/b] ]

People don't die from working, and they aren't beat to death in North Korea. If anyone claims he knows, he's lying. Sure there might be some deaths in prison. Loads of people have died at Guantanamo as well.

And you know South Korea better than anyone? Give me a break you linked Youtube of some small demonstrators and call it a frequent occurence. But then again using your logic, Nazis did not kill jews, but merely imprisoned them.

Quote[/b] ]If starvation is murder, hundreds of millions of people should be counted in the death toll of capitalism. "Photoshopped" pictures are common. The famous US Iwo Jima flag picture was arranged and there are numerous of other occurences where important images have been altered as well. It's a common procedure even today. Look at the Iraq war for instance.

So socialist don't alter photos? Wow that's amazing!

Quote[/b] ]Many nobel prize winners support our cause. Pinter, Lessing, Neruda, Garcia Marquez, Hemingway to name a few.

You mean the same Nobel prize that you did not like earlier?

Quote[/b] ]Communism has never existed. Kim Jong Il is no dangerous monster. That's US propaganda. Turkey, not very known for it's democracy even among liberals, an ally of the US, is free to do anything it wants as long as it supports the US war on "terror". I hope marxist PKK (called terrorists by west), manage to create a free independent socialist Kurdistan sometime.

Funny. Turkey did not allow US troops to go through its borders to North of Iraq in early phase of the war. But I guess fact means nothing to you. Kim Jong il is a dangerous man. He sends armed people to provoke attack in South Korea. So much fo r not being dangerous.

Quote[/b] ]I'm not trying to convice anybody. I point out their errors and misconceptions.

Which you have been miserably failing as you r own argument is full of holes.

[MehMan 0]

The liberal hegemony is manifested in many things in society. Teachers, books, political correctness, movies, talkshows, newspapers, media and so on. Things you see as common sense facts are in fact opinions. Who told you you live in a democracy? You don't question that because you think it's a fact. It isn't.

Well I steer clear of television because it is a lie box. I read two newspapers, one more neutral one biased. I see the BBC as partially non biased, so I read that too. The independant is also somewhat neutral. If you want a comparison of bias, check an article about Chavez in the Washington Post, the Independant and the BBC.

And don't jump to conclusions, you do not know how I think, I'm only showing you one side of me here. You also don't know me nearly well enough to judge yet.

I do question the democracy in my country, the intent of our parliament and the ammount of coruption.

And again, you can hardly politically influence maths or literature. The only time they expose us to bias is in uni, but by then it's expected that a person has enough of his head out of his ass.

About WWII, I've got this to say:

Yes, the USSR took a harsh beating, but saying you did it all alone is also a stretch too far. The allied bombings of Germany distrupted manufacturing, the invasion of Italy tied down troops, the partisan and resistance activity tied down troops. All I'm saying here is that you can't go around saying that we just sat on our ass and waited for you.

[Spokesperson 0]

Quote[/b] ]Flags of Our Fathers doesn't say the photo was arranged. The movie is about how a photo became a huge propaganda bonanza and how it affected the men who raised the flag. Just by chance Joe Rosenthal and others were there.  

It was arranged just like supah says. And that's what the movie tells too. But it wasn't edited.

Quote[/b] ]Those two groups are actually terrorists organizations. Additionally, in the 1980s, the Colombian Communist Party broke away from FARC.

http://www.tkb.org/Group.jsp?groupID=96

http://www.tkb.org/Group.jsp?groupID=85 (PFLP)

There was a coup. Also, btw, the communists had a coalition government before the coup because they didn't win majority of the vote.

http://www.radio.cz/en/article/63799

http://www.coldwar.org/articles/40s/czech_coup.asp

http://www.praguemonitor.com/en/280/czech_national_news/19102/

No, objectively there was no coup. But according to the bourgeoisie it was. Just like with Chavez. The right-wing parties withdrew voluntarily which only left communists and social democrats left. That's because they would have no bigger influence anyway. The communists was the biggest party.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki....2C_1946

So from that position they couldn't do much, but when the right wing parties skipped out, they got a majority. That is no coup by any means.

And for the terrorist part; those organizations aren't terrorists they are combatants who fight for freedom and independence. That's one of those "facts" I was talking about. It's nothing new that the US, Israel, Turkey and the EU call them terrorists. Naturally they are called terrorist by their enemies. So if you go to a US webpage where the western point of view is dominant, you'll read they are terrorists. The are not. In fact it's the US, Israel and Turkey who are conductig state terrorism. Assassinations, coups, mass-murder, bombs, terrorist backing etc.

Quote[/b] ]Then how the heck did Michael Moore get there? Practically, Moore is still free to do whatever he wants in US right now. He got some criticism, but nothing came out of it.

Meaning it's illegal it doesn't mean it's impossible. Moore is currently subject to a civil investigation...

I wrote about this in an earlier post.

Quote[/b] ]Then how come Lichtenstein is NOT the #1 world, which by the way has highest GDP/capita? I showed several times why GDP per capita is not the only measure, and nominal GDP is just as good as GDP per capita. You kept changing your story as "GDP is affected by number of people, so GDP/capita is better." Then when I pointed out your flaw, you said "GDP can be affected by other factors not just number of people." Now you are back to CDP/capita is better because of number of people.

If it has the highest GDP/capita the people there are generally richer than anywhere else. (if the income is fairly distributed). So if you can afford one car, they can afford three. I think the standard of living plays an important role if a country is good or bad, but there are more important factors. Like what kind of mode of production there is.

GDP is absolutely not as good as GDP/capita. I don't see why you don't understand that. As I said twice now, if you have a country with 100 people, who produce 1000. They will all have about 10 each. 1000 is your GDP. 10 is your GDP/capita.

Compare that to a country with 10 people who produce 1000. They will all have about 100 each. 1000 is GDP, and 100 is GDP/capita. So Liechtenstein might have a lower production, but people live better (seen to their material wealth). A high GDP doesn't mean much if you have a high population, yet you want to use it. There will be many mouths to feed. And sure, GDP will rise with the amount of people. More people who work gives a higher production. But there will also be more mouths to feed as I mentioned. GDP/capita eliminates that problem. Do you understand?

Quote[/b] ]In practice, not really. But in your dreams, yes.

You have no clue about what you're talking about. You're full of wishful thinking. I think wikipedia must dream with me.

Wikipedia:

Quote[/b] ]At present, the embargo, which limits American businesses from conducting business with Cuban interests, is still in effect, making it one of the few times in history that United States citizens have been restricted from doing business abroad, and is the most enduring trade embargo in modern history.

Quote[/b] ]International Sanctions against the Castro Government. Economic embargo, any non-US company that deals economically with Cuba can be subjected to legal action and that company's leadership can be barred from entry into the United States. Sanctions may be applied to non-U.S. companies trading with Cuba. This means that internationally operating companies have to choose between Cuba and the US, which is a much larger market.

Helms-Burton Act.

Quote[/b] ]contrary to your argument, USD is spent in Cuba. As you said Cuba is so great that their centralized planning by one leader system works, but now you are criticizing Qatar and all those backed by US?

USD is not spent in Cuba anymore. They briefly allowed it after the trade crisis after the USSR dissolution. Today they have two currencies, one peso convertible and one standard peso. You're naive if you think that Cuba is centrally planned by one leader. Cuba has a parliament and a government elected by it.

Quote[/b] ]LOL so dictatorship is better than democracy. Good grief, so you just admitted that other nations has to follow as Cuban system is better, especially with no choice of alternat party candidates.

There have never been any democracies, just dictatorships. Cuba is a proletarian dictatorship. The proletariat is the majority which means that Cuba per se is a democracy. The US is a bourgeois dictatorship of the capital, also known as "liberal democracy".

No choice of alternate party candidates?? People don't vote on parties in Cuba, party membership has no significance. Anybody over the age of 18 can be a candidate if he or she wants. Party as well as non-party members.

Quote[/b] ]Nice try. What makes S1 better than S2? This is NOT a mathematics question. is S1 > for all S2? Nope. then there is no superiority or 'better system' You can't even define S1 and S2, so your 'logic' goes no where.

I wrote:

Quote[/b] ]System S1 is better than system S2, lets say S1 means a 50% boost while S2 means a 30% boost.

So a 50% (say GDP increase for instance) is worse than a 30% boost? Well, if you think so then it isn't a question of mathematics, it's a question of sanity.

My point is that a better system does not automatically make a country richer. You asked how Cuba could be poorer when it had a better system.

Quote[/b] ]Sorry shooting was stopped, they just hang them. Keep grasping the straws. You are just assuming that the list of event above is political suppression.

They do? You're just fabulating. You have no knowledge about this subject, yet you keep discussing it.

Quote[/b] ]He sends armed people to provoke attack in South Korea. So much fo r not being dangerous.

He does? Who says that? Your granma? Or some US conservative funded documentary?

Quote[/b] ]Wait, isn't Kwangju(Gwangju) the one that you claimed as the uprising in the past? But how come the US led dictator pardoned them?

I wrote:

Quote[/b] ] South Korea was a military dictatorship backed by the US, until recently.

Did you intentionally stop at this one?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chun_Doo-hwan

And those before? You're promoting US backed fascism by ignoring it.

Quote[/b] ]Collapse of Soviet Union is about disintegration of the union.

yup. GDP fell, right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Russia

1995 - 1,428,500

2000 - 7,305,600

2005 - 21,665,000

Funnier thing is there are hardly any reliable source for USSR's GDP as they refused to take note of it. If the figures to compare are missing, how can you claim it went down?

According to your source:

Quote[/b] ]Economic impact

As of mid-1996, four and one-half years after the launching of Russia's post-Soviet economic reform, experts found the results promising but mixed. The Russian economy has passed through a long and wrenching depression. Official Russian economic statistics indicate that from 1990 to the end of 1995, Russian GDP declined by roughly 50%, far greater than the decline that the United States experienced during the Great Depression.

Then there was the major http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_financial_crisis

After that the oil prices have went up.

Soviet production was and is public. But one has to do the maths oneself.

Soviet History Wiki:

Quote[/b] ]Market economists believed that the dismantling of the administrative command system in Russia would raise GDP and living standards by allocating resources more efficiently. They also thought the collapse would create new production possibilities by eliminating central planning, substituting a decentralized market system, eliminating huge macroeconomic and structural distortions through liberalization, and providing incentives through privatization.

Since the USSR's collapse, Russia has faced many problems that free market proponents in 1992 did not expect: among other things, 25% of the population now lives below the poverty line, life expectancy has fallen, birthrates are low, and the GDP has halved. These problems led to a series of crises in the 1990s, which nearly led to election of Yeltsin's Communist challenger, Gennady Zyuganov, in the 1996 presidential election. In the recent years, the economy of Russia has begun to improve greatly, due to major investments and business development and also due to high prices of natural resources.

Life expectancy, health care etc was also a lot better before the dissolution of the union.

Quote[/b] ]The turmoil in the early 1990s and the economic crisis in 1998 caused life expectancy in Russia to go down while it was steadily growing in the rest of the world.

Demographics of Russia Wiki

Quote[/b] ]So if the Cubans liberated Angola from Western influence, what happened? They are still having problems!

Just because Angola and Namibia got independent it doesn't mean that things magically will be ok. Angola and Namibia are third world countries. You seem to think that that kind of countries can get as rich as western world countries just like that? And just so you know, the civil war ended in 2002.

The people of those countries got a problem less thanks to cuban help.

Quote[/b] ]So? You do a trip to selected places and think you got the whole picutre.

And you get he whole picture by not going anywhere?

Quote[/b] ]How is it so?

The economy is failing. Debts are growing. Trade-deficits as well. In a few years the value of the dollar has fallen by 50%. Things can't continue like that for a long time.

Quote[/b] ]And so is fascism.

No, fascism is no science, it's an ideology. Liberalism and socialism are other ideologies. Marxism is no ideology.

Quote[/b] ]So far that weakest link has been fixed and is getting stronger. China is turning to capitalism and so is Vietnam and others. Even you didn't know a thing about proletariat until I corrected you. Now you just don't talk about it.

What has proletariat to do with that? You don't even know what it is. Have you ever read Marx? No?

Communist parties in poor undeveloped countries support capitalism as a progressive stage in history. Capitalism is a pre-requisite for creating socialism. Even Lenin and the USSR implemented the NEP for a couple of years. You can't build socialism successfully out of a feodal society. So for instance, the nepalese maoist guerilla supports free markets and capitalism for X amount of years until capitalism has played out its role there. That's completely marxist. However, some countries try to reach socialism by other means. Cuba had a rather developed capitalism when the revolution began. Same thing goes for Venezuela and the other countries in that region.

Quote[/b] ]And you can't prove it either. Keep blaming it on the propaganda.

Is it up to me to disprove the existance of them? You can claim there's a banana orbitting Saturnus. It's impossible for me to disprove such a thing. However, if you claim it you prove it. Same thing with the North Korean concentration camps. Where I mean concentration, and not labour.

Quote[/b] ]Well I steer clear of television because it is a lie box. I read two newspapers, one more neutral one biased. I see the BBC as partially non biased, so I read that too. The independant is also somewhat neutral. If you want a comparison of bias, check an article about Chavez in the Washington Post, the Independant and the BBC.

And don't jump to conclusions, you do not know how I think, I'm only showing you one side of me here. You also don't know me nearly well enough to judge yet.

I do question the democracy in my country, the intent of our parliament and the ammount of coruption.

And again, you can hardly politically influence maths or literature. The only time they expose us to bias is in uni, but by then it's expected that a person has enough of his head out of his ass.

BBC is mostly biased. But content depends very much on the journalists. Most journalists have grown up in a liberal society and got its values. So whenever you hear anybody saying democracy or dictatorship or even dictator that person is being biased. Because those words reflect opinions.

[Sennacherib 0]

Paranoiac. be careful, some cameras are maybe hidden in your room. Big Brother watchs you.

if URSS was so good, why People were happy when this shit crumbled. if Staine were a god, why People destroyed his monuments.

and why? the wall of berlin?. please, give me your opinion, i want to laugh. (maybe because the western europeans wanted live in URSS, but the communists were afraid by this immigration and they closed the frontiers.)

oh! btw wikipedia is not the only database; try to buy a book or something

[Clavicula_nox4817 0]

I formulate all of my opinions and ideological stance based off of wikipedia editorials and youtube videos.

[baddo 0]

Quote[/b] ]But anyways, one thing I wanted to say about the losses of the Soviets in the WW II. In the totally stupid Winter War against Finland, the Soviets lost so many men that it almost makes me cry - not quite, I said almost. They made horrible tactical mistakes which cost them huge piles of men. I am glad that they could not conquer our country, but at the same time I'm sad not only for the losses of my country, but also sad for the losses of the Soviet Union. And what did they get with the price they paid? They got a forest cluttered with the corpses of their soldiers. Basically a cemetary. Must've been happy, Josif-man.

Yes, bad tactics, but I'm not sure what you're thinking. The USSR could've taken Finland any day. Or don't you think that a country that defeated a dozen of countries including Nazi-Germany would be able to "conquer" Finland? That wasn't their intention. After all, it was Stalin who signed the finnish independence from the bolshevik russian side. Before the war they wanted to secure the finnish border to Leningrad, first by leasing territory, second by offering a lot of territory in exchange and finally by force. They feared a german attack on Leningrad from finnish territory in the event of war. This was seen as probable because the finnish government consisted of anti-bolsheviks and pro-fascists (even if they were called social democrats).

There is substantial evidence backing the claim that their intent was indeed to conquer the whole country. It looks like you have either not actually studied the subject or you are making your own truths when it suits your purposes.

I think you go quite a lot too far when you say "any day". How many days were they fighting? Were the Soviets just fighting all those days just for the sake of fighting and not caring about getting any results? By your logic they must've been doing that.

Yes I too think that they could have conquered the country if they really wanted to do that. But not "any day" like you say, and actually what really happened backs my opinion and not yours. The cost of conquering Finland would have been far too great for the USSR and they dropped that idea. The cost proved to be far too great, and this is from the mouth of the Soviets themselves. They understood for the benefit of both sides that it is not sensible to try and conquer this country. Notice that it was a surprise to USSR that most Finnish socialists did not support their cause unlike they had expected! Socialists were fighting against socialists, together with the "pro-fascists". The USSR could conquer very easily the Baltic states but Finland is not like any of the Baltic states. They had no proper means to defend themselves but we had and we used them, rightfully so.

It is laughable how you try to portray Finland as deserving to get attacked when we did not bow to the Soviet demands of giving our territory to them. Why didn't they just move on when we refused the deal? Because they had intentions further than what they were saying. The negotiations, eventually leading to the staged Mainila shots, were just a prologue to the war which had been planned well before. They tried to portray us as the one to blame for the war, but they failed. Such a muppet show wasn't believable, and The League of Nations did not fall for it either and kicked the USSR out.

There is also substantial evidence that the Finnish Civil War of 1918 (socialist rebellion) was substantially backed up by Russia. Right after "giving" us the independence, they tried to take it back. You should also notice that it was the Finnish people who declared independence of Finland in 1917 and not Stalin, not Uljanov, not one Russian. Preparations for the independence were made by the Finnish people well before it actually happened. It was not a "gift" from Russia. It was planned by the Finns well before and it only needs to be looked at the Jäger training in Germany which backs this claim up. Vladimir Iljitsh Uljanov saw the Finnish independence "good" at first because it helped him to de-stabilize the Russian Empire, which suited his palace coup plans extremely well. After he had taken power in Russia, he had an intention to take Finland back because that at that time suited his plans. It is what lead to the socialist rebellion in Finland in 1918. So no, I'm not going to thank him for "giving" us independence no matter how nicely you try to put it. And this certainly does not mean that I'm a pro-fascist.

Your pro-fascist claims are certainly exaggerated, at least. You should study how the Finnish command behaved towards the Nazi-Germans when we were partners during our Continuation War. Have you heard that Nazi-German military officers gave Jewish people Iron Crosses for exemplary military service? It happened on the Finnish-Soviet front. This should ring bells in your head: how it was possible? There is an answer backed up by substantial evidence for that question but I'm not giving it to you, you should do your studying by yourself. And don't take my word for it, ask the Jewish people themselves. Pro-fascists were not following fascist policy? How weird...

As far as I know, you praised the Marxist ideas here. I don't see how the military success or defeat of the USSR is related to Marxism/socialism/communism. USSR was a dictatorship and not what you call the idealistic form of a state. Why do you use it as an example, then. If it is an attempt to show how socialism can work well, it is a failed attempt. Or did you change from one discussion into another on purpose.

[Clavicula_nox4817 0]

Finland's defense against the Red Army was nothing short of remarkable and a true testament to the sons of Odin. Studying the Winter War is one of the great treasures that often times goes ignored when compared to other conflicts of the period.

[Sennacherib 0]

Quote[/b] ]the sons of Odin

finland is not a scandinavian country, they are Finno-Ugric. they have not had odin as god.

you can see that wikipedia is not accurate all the time

Quote[/b] ]Studying the Winter War is one of the great treasures that often times goes ignored when compared to other conflicts of the period.

yes, this is true, this part of the ww2 is often forgotten. Yet this is an example of courage and selflessness

[-Snafu- 78]

Quote[/b] ]the sons of Odin

finland is not a scandinavian country, they are Finno-Ugric. they have not had odin as god.

you can see that wikipedia is not accurate all the time    

Loki's just been playing tricks with him.

Looks like there has been further developments in South America. Nicaragua cuts ties with Columbia.

[Necromancer- 0]

Spokesperson; you're such a laugh..

The FART eh.. FARC is nothing more than a bunch of criminals getting their income from abduction, drug trafficing and blackmailing. They're not fighting for a cause at all, they even butcher innocent neutral sided civillians who don't support them, even pillaging whole villages.

Want proof? Go to Colombia and join the FARC. You will probably be abducted and hold for ransom. I know I will even if I'm telling them the best lies about how much socialist I am.

[Clavicula_nox4817 0]

Quote[/b] ]the sons of Odin

finland is not a scandinavian country, they are Finno-Ugric. they have not had odin as god.

you can see that wikipedia is not accurate all the time

Quote[/b] ]Studying the Winter War is one of the great treasures that often times goes ignored when compared to other conflicts of the period.

yes, this is true, this part of the ww2 is often forgotten. Yet this is an example of courage and selflessness

My mistake, I had assumed incorrectly. What does wikipedia have to do with anything?

[billybob2002 0]

It was arranged just like supah says. And that's what the movie tells too. But it wasn't edited.

Again, it wasn't arranged. What movie are you looking at? Nowhere in the movie does it come out stating that the photo was arranged. It just happened that Rosenthal and company were on the mountain at the same time. The photographer didn't know ahead of time that the flag was being replaced.

Quote[/b] ]

No, objectively there was no coup. But according to the bourgeoisie it was. Just like with Chavez. The right-wing parties withdrew voluntarily which only left communists and social democrats left. That's because they would have no bigger influence anyway. The communists was the biggest party.

So from that position they couldn't do much, but when the right wing parties skipped out, they got a majority. That is no coup by any means.

Objectively there was a coup. Coups can be bloodless. There is a ton of evidence that supports my assertion that it was a coup. Most people agree it was a coup. I already provided you links, including a link to a Czech source, calling it a coup and explaining how it was a coup.

Even Wikipeadia, a source you love to use, calls it a coup d'état.

Quote[/b] ]

And for the terrorist part; those organizations aren't terrorists they are combatants who fight for freedom and independence.

Freedom and independence from who? FARC wants to change the legitimate socio-economic-political system in Colombia. PFLP wants to combine the Palestinian Arab lands and Israel to form a Marxist Palestinian nation. Those goals don't sound like fighting for freedom and independence.

[billybob2002 0]

USD is not spent in Cuba anymore. They briefly allowed it after the trade crisis after the USSR dissolution.

Cuba stopped using it in 2004 because Castro didn't like the tightened sanctions being imposed on their country by the United States.

Quote[/b] ]

He does? Who says that? Your granma? Or some US conservative funded documentary?

North Korea is known to provoke American and ROK forces along the DMZ and they have tried to infiltrate South Korea a few times.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/dmz-list.htm

http://www.iht.com/articles/1998/06/23/kor.t_4.php

[otk-member 0]

if URSS was so good, why People were happy when this shit crumbled. if Staine were a god, why People destroyed his monuments.

and why? the wall of berlin?. please, give me your opinion, i want to laugh.

"USSR" btw.

Why people was a happy? Do you realy think it was ALL people? No...

It was the most active part of reformers. They were certainly happy.

There was a referendum. People have supported preservation of the USSR. But Yeltsin ignored their opinion. People which were happy - it seemed to them that democracy is an opportunity to live as before. Only having what have been deprived. Jeans, fashionable technics, constant trips abroad, etc. But they also did not suspect, that under a beautiful facade of democracy, commodity-money attitudes such wild for them.

The USSR guaranteed to each fair person a worthy life. Let without excesses, but also without poverty. If you can work - for you necessarily there will be a work, only ask. If you cannot work - you will receive pension on which can to live. And it will suffice you for a life. Any worker it is guaranteed had rest yearly. Rest for 36-45 days. (now - For example, I have no last four years rest in general. Only weekends)

As soon as the USSR has failed - reformers needed to change very strongly public opinion. The huge quantity "fullshit" has poured out in mass-media. The information blackened all in our history. And separate idiots trusted all. Stalin instantly named the maniac. Lenin - the schizophrenic and the syphilitic. Khruschev - stupid. Brezhnev - the vegetable. Antropov - the bloody despot. Chernenko - the clown. Gorbachev - the weakling. One Yeltsin was "democrat-reformer". Even when the parliament from tanks shot.

And from Moscow corpses of "communists" took out by lorries. The "democrat", motherfucker...

After several years, people have understood that they have lost. They have understood what country they have broken. But was already late. Sheeps always would like to guzzle nourishingly and to do nothing. Here only it is necessary to pay for all. And they thought that to them on free of charge there will be the most scarce goods in the world. The Calmness. The USSR did not allow to grow fat strongly, but provided to herd calmness. We were protected by the best wolfhounds in the world. Which terrorists and extremists were afraid all. Acts of terrorism was not! Now - act of terrorism usual business.

When the USSR did not become - we have seen set of advertising, an opportunity to steal many easy money, corruption. And still we have seen gangsters, addicts, vagabonds, prostitutes. Old persons, who dig in garbage in searches of empty bottles to hand over them as empties and to buy breads. Because on their pension to live it is impossible.

You cannot imagine - as it disgustingly for the person who worked all life on the country. Which has received higher education. To what condition it have finished that it, among day has started to dig in garbage? And these old mens - they not alcoholics. They not homelesses. They have apartments. Here only their all pension - leaves in payment for habitation. And on meal - does not remain. It were years of wild capitalism in Russia. The years of freedom for press, liberalism, democraty... They were when the world was pleased that "the empire of Evil" has failed. This empire was not evil. It was just simply another. And people there were others. Kind and good. Now - already is not present. From us have beaten out in 90th years and kindness and trustfulness. We now closed, hope only for ourselves.

Sorry, all this was simply recollected... All that was...

So if you think it was all so funny - you can laugh. The better laugh that one, who is laugh by last (russian proverb).

[Sennacherib 0]

Quote[/b] ]the sons of Odin

finland is not a scandinavian country, they are Finno-Ugric. they have not had odin as god.

you can see that wikipedia is not accurate all the time

Quote[/b] ]Studying the Winter War is one of the great treasures that often times goes ignored when compared to other conflicts of the period.

yes, this is true, this part of the ww2 is often forgotten. Yet this is an example of courage and selflessness

My mistake, I had assumed incorrectly. What does wikipedia have to do with anything?

I misunderstood one of your sentence, my fault sorry

[Spokesperson 0]

Quote[/b] ]Paranoiac. be careful, some cameras are maybe hidden in your room. Big Brother watchs you.

if URSS was so good, why People were happy when this shit crumbled. if Staine were a god, why People destroyed his monuments.

and why? the wall of berlin?. please, give me your opinion, i want to laugh. (maybe because the western europeans wanted live in URSS, but the communists were afraid by this immigration and they closed the frontiers.)

oh! btw wikipedia is not the only database; try to buy a book or something

If you look at the youtube videos I posted you'll see the biggest uprising since the 1917 revolution. If you read the 20 polls I posted you would know that people regret the dissolution of the union. The monuments of Stalin were removed a few years after he died. However, 2-3 new monuments are going to be errected now. Stalin has an enormous popular support in russia. People have lived in both a socialist and capitalist system. Many people didn't believe that capitalism was that bad. Now they have changed their opinions.

I use wikipedia and youtube because it's the easiest way to provide a source you can check and read. I read many books, but I don't buy them. Tens of thousands of people went to the east. Honecker was one. Even americans like Dean Reed (a more famous one) went and lived there.

Quote[/b] ]There is substantial evidence backing the claim that their intent was indeed to conquer the whole country. It looks like you have either not actually studied the subject or you are making your own truths when it suits your purposes.

Your claims are absurd. The finns were forced to a peace treaty after having suffered series of defeats and after bombing raids on key towns. The victory was definitively on the Soviet side, as it got the territory it demanded (in the first war) and more (after the continuation war). If Finland was of interest to the USSR, that country would've fallen within a week. Sure, not while in the middle of world war 2. But at any other time.

Nazi-Germany lost the war, half of Europe was liberated by Soviet forces, but taking finland would be impossible? Sounds like you've heard too much nationalist propaganda.

And besides the "socialists" you're talking about are just as much socialist as social democrats or even less.

Peace Conditions, Wiki:

Quote[/b] ]The conditions for peace were similar to what had been agreed in the Moscow Peace Treaty of 1940: Finland was obliged to cede parts of Karelia and Salla, as well as certain islands in the Gulf of Finland. The new armistice also handed all of Petsamo to the Soviet Union, and Finland was further compelled to lease Porkkala to the Soviet Union for a period of fifty years (although, in the event, the area was returned to Finnish control in 1956).

Other conditions included Finnish payment of $300,000,000 to the Soviet Union as war reparations. Finland also agreed to legalize communist parties and ban organizations that the Soviet Union considered fascist. And the armistice compelled Finland to drive German troops from its territory, leading to a military campaign in Lapland.

Quote[/b] ]Spokesperson; you're such a laugh..

The FART eh.. FARC is nothing more than a bunch of criminals getting their income from abduction, drug trafficing and blackmailing. They're not fighting for a cause at all, they even butcher innocent neutral sided civillians who don't support them, even pillaging whole villages.

Want proof? Go to Colombia and join the FARC. You will probably be abducted and hold for ransom. I know I will even if I'm telling them the best lies about how much socialist I am.

FARC is a bunch of criminals if you ask Washington, Bogota or the press. FARC isn't dealing drugs and there's no blackmailing either. The world is ruled by enemies of socialism, and naturally enemies of FARC. Media reflects their opinions, and it's what you hear. Sure FARC is taking people as prisoners, which is right. When the political wing of FARC, before FARC was formed, had huge successes in elections in Colombia, their representatives and candidates were murdered, kidnapped and tortured. Colombia still is the country where the highest amount of left-wing and people active in unions disappear. FARC was formed as a reaction to liberal and fascist volence.

Quote[/b] ]Objectively there was a coup. Coups can be bloodless. There is a ton of evidence that supports my assertion that it was a coup. Most people agree it was a coup. I already provided you links, including a link to a Czech source, calling it a coup and explaining how it was a coup.

Even Wikipeadia, a source you love to use, calls it a coup d'état.

You seem to think that the nationality of a source is important. It isn't. In the hypocrite eyes of liberals it was a coup. But seen to the law and seen to the election results it wasn't. If bourgeois parties don't want to participate in parliament or elections it's their choice.

Wikipedia usually reflects the liberal point of view. Most of my linked wikipedia sources do.

So what if most people think it was a coup. So what if most people think there's a god, that there's democracy, that the sun orbits earth and that 1+1=3. That doesn't make anything right.

Quote[/b] ]Freedom and independence from who? FARC wants to change the legitimate socio-economic-political system in Colombia. PFLP wants to combine the Palestinian Arab lands and Israel to form a Marxist Palestinian nation. Those goals don't sound like fighting for freedom and independence.

Those organizations want to introduce economic democracy, a pre-requisite of democracy. They fight for freedom from the exploitation of the capitalist system where some people work and some people own. Instead they want to see a society where all own and rule the means of production, a society without parasites.

Quote[/b] ]Cuba stopped using it in 2004 because Castro didn't like the tightened sanctions being imposed on their country by the United States.

No, that's not the reason. The reason is that there was a better system, the one that is used now. The USD was briefly allowed after the dissolution of COMECON trading bloc in order to ensure some economic stability. Now things have returned to normal.

Quote[/b] ]North Korea is known to provoke American and ROK forces along the DMZ and they have tried to infiltrate South Korea a few times.

Provocations? Why would they want that? There are border clashes, where both sides are responsible. After all the war hasn't ended officially.

Your (conservative) sources are quite funny. US and South Koreans always accidentally cross the border while North Korea always has some dark scheme going on. Homeland-security, "terrorist threat" meter blah blah. Code yellow "significant risk of terror attacks". Significant risk of witches flying over Washington DC that is.

If you want to know more about the USSR from a real source, and not some western-media or wikipedia, you should read otk-members post.

It's too bad that people have lost faith in the ideals of democracy. Because democracy wasn't what they have or had. Democracy, communism, is what the USSR tried to achive.

[billybob2002 0]

So what if most people think it was a coup. So what if most people think there's a god, that there's democracy, that the sun orbits earth and that 1+1=3. That doesn't make anything right.

Still haven't proven how it wasn't a coup. The elections happened two years before the coup. The election caused a coalition government because no party had a majority. What the communist did was undemocratic and they had the blessings of the Soviet Union to do it. Instead of conducting early elections, the communists decided to take complete control. Gosh, sounds like a coup!

Quote[/b] ]

No, that's not the reason.

Castro didn't drop it because the Cuban economy improved or whatever. He dropped it in response to the increase sanctions imposed onto Cuba by the United States. It was a tit for tat thing.

http://media.www.blackcollegeview.com/media....7.shtml

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2004/10/26/cuba_dollar041026.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/oct/27/cuba.gilestremlett

Quote[/b] ]

Provocations? Why would they want that? There are border clashes, where both sides are responsible. After all the war hasn't ended officially.

Because North Korea acts strange. For example, during the late 1960s, the North Koreans tried to push the US and the ROK into war against them by killing their servicemen and they tried to assassinate then South Korean President Pak. I guess the North Koreans thought they get away with it because the United States was heavily involved in Vietnam at that time.

Quote[/b] ]

Your (conservative) sources are quite funny. US and South Koreans always accidentally cross the border while North Korea always has some dark scheme going on. Homeland-security, "terrorist threat" meter blah blah. Code yellow "significant risk of terror attacks". Significant risk of witches flying over Washington DC that is.

What are you talking? Going over the deep in? Those Korean incidents did happen and they were documented.

Quote[/b] ]

FARC isn't dealing drugs and there's no blackmailing either.

I guess you are right because you say so.

Quote[/b] ]

When the political wing of FARC, before FARC was formed, had huge successes in elections in Colombia, their representatives and candidates were murdered, kidnapped and tortured.

FARC was the armed wing of the Colombian Communist Party. Why did they split up in the 1980s? eh?

[MehMan 0]

What has proletariat to do with that? You don't even know what it is. Have you ever read Marx? No?

You can't apply Marx to a modern society. If you've noticed, nearly, 200 years have since passed. And things have changed a lot since then. Farmers and poorly paid factory workers don't make up 90% of nations anymore.

And I'm not going to explain how buisness works over and over again, but I'm only going to tell you this: those that own also work. There are some that don't ofcourse and that's why they go down the drain. Do you really think big buisness men just wait and jack off all day or what? And profit comes out of where? Those that are successful work and own. Those that don't work fail. Simple as that. Do you think Bill Gates got that stinking large pile of money from doing nothing?

And also the two richest people on this planet also donate massive ammounts of money around to various charities, billions, BILLIONS! Even goverments don't give charities that much money. They build schools, give jobs, save people with that money. And they're not going to get that money back.

But still you think that since workers will own all the means of production that magically greed and explotation will end. You forget that the people at the top are still the same flesh and blood as you. Greed is in every one of us, some are more greedy, some are less. The problem is that as soon as somebody gets more than before he will want more if he can't control himself enough.

[baddo 0]

Quote[/b] ]There is substantial evidence backing the claim that their intent was indeed to conquer the whole country. It looks like you have either not actually studied the subject or you are making your own truths when it suits your purposes.

Your claims are absurd. The finns were forced to a peace treaty after having suffered series of defeats and after bombing raids on key towns. The victory was definitively on the Soviet side, as it got the territory it demanded (in the first war) and more (after the continuation war). If Finland was of interest to the USSR, that country would've fallen within a week. Sure, not while in the middle of world war 2. But at any other time.

Nazi-Germany lost the war, half of Europe was liberated by Soviet forces, but taking finland would be impossible? Sounds like you've heard too much nationalist propaganda.

And besides the "socialists" you're talking about are just as much socialist as social democrats or even less.

Peace Conditions, Wiki:

Quote[/b] ]The conditions for peace were similar to what had been agreed in the Moscow Peace Treaty of 1940: Finland was obliged to cede parts of Karelia and Salla, as well as certain islands in the Gulf of Finland. The new armistice also handed all of Petsamo to the Soviet Union, and Finland was further compelled to lease Porkkala to the Soviet Union for a period of fifty years (although, in the event, the area was returned to Finnish control in 1956).

Other conditions included Finnish payment of $300,000,000 to the Soviet Union as war reparations. Finland also agreed to legalize communist parties and ban organizations that the Soviet Union considered fascist. And the armistice compelled Finland to drive German troops from its territory, leading to a military campaign in Lapland.

Eh... did you just not read my post at all? What the hell are you talking about?

There IS substantial evidence that USSR wanted to conquer the whole country. My claim is NOT absurd.

I have not said that Finland won. Why you start to dispute such a claim when I never even made it in the first place?

I did not say that taking Finland would be impossible for the USSR! I said the opposite! Again, what the hell are you talking about?

"But at any other time." ? Like during the Winter War for example? It was not in the middle of the WW II. Look what fighting was happening during that war. Was USSR fighting some other big battle then? Was USSR fighting against Germany during Winter War? The Soviets showed major incompetence during Winter War and there is no way you can get around that. It is widely recognized, but you don't agree? Maybe you are right again, and everyone else is wrong.

When you say that half of Europe was "liberated" by USSR, don't you actually mean that half of Europe was occupied and oppressed by USSR? Do you think that the Baltic states for example were "liberated" by the USSR? And all the rest of the countries which were left behind the iron curtain to the Soviet side. Do you think they were happy with that situation? It was liberation? We are on a Czech company forum now. Ask the Czech were they liberated by the USSR.

Why do you think that you need to post some peace conditions to me from Wikipedia? Does that prove that what I said is wrong? In no way it does.

You are disputing something else than what I wrote.

Useless discussion. Spokesperson, I told you earlier to re-think your approach. The way you just replied to me is what you are doing all the time... sorry state for a discussion, this is. You are trying to prove that USSR was great. You are trying to prove something about socialism/communism by praising the USSR. Yet it was a failier politically, and this doesn't take much to prove, just look if you can find USSR today. And yet you continue to praise it to make a point about socialism/communism. Don't you see a problem with this logic of having an argument.

[Spokesperson 0]

Quote[/b] ]Still haven't proven how it wasn't a coup. The elections happened two years before the coup. The election caused a coalition government because no party had a majority. What the communist did was undemocratic and they had the blessings of the Soviet Union to do it. Instead of conducting early elections, the communists decided to take complete control. Gosh, sounds like a coup!

If some parties don't want to appear in parliament and vote. Their votes don't count. That's how it works everywhere. A MP has to be present for his vote to count.

Quote[/b] ]Castro didn't drop it because the Cuban economy improved or whatever. He dropped it in response to the increase sanctions imposed onto Cuba by the United States. It was a tit for tat thing.

There was no need for the dollar anymore, evidently. All countries have their own currencies. Cuba has its pesos. The situation had stabilized so they could rely on the peso.

Quote[/b] ]Because North Korea acts strange. For example, during the late 1960s, the North Koreans tried to push the US and the ROK into war against them by killing their servicemen and they tried to assassinate then South Korean President Pak. I guess the North Koreans thought they get away with it because the United States was heavily involved in Vietnam at that time.

There is a reason for every action. The reason why liberal thinks North Korea acts strange is because their view of the world is incorrect. Reality and propaganda don't fit. Just read otk-members post and you'll see the difference. If you don't accept the facts, otk-member is presenting, you have to come up with new reasons, and if you can't you call other peoples actions "strange".

Assassination of heads of states has been conducted by the CIA a dozen of times. Say an american president tries to assassinate another president, why would it be more wrong of the other president to try to assasinate that american president? After all the american president set the tone.

Quote[/b] ]What are you talking? Going over the deep in? Those Korean incidents did happen and they were documented.

I check your sources and found that the page was republican. That is reflected in the claims, sure North Korean troops have crossed the border some times, especially at sea. Americans and South Koreans have to. The difference is that Americans always did it by accident according to that page.

Quote[/b] ]FARC was the armed wing of the Colombian Communist Party. Why did they split up in the 1980s? eh?

That has nothing to do with the fact that the members of the political wing were assassinated by criminals and right wingers.

As to why they split, Wiki:

Quote[/b] ]Gradually the PCC and FARC-EP grew apart politically, in particular during the later 1980s. Both organizations had their share of internal debates, for example as to which entity would have greater influence and control over the Unión Patriótica (in the end the PCC accepted FARC supremacy in this regard) during its formation, and later on the issue of continuing to participate in elections as the UP suffered violent suppression (the FARC began to separate itself from legal UP activities starting in 1987).

Other disagreements would include that the PCC may have allegedly tended to follow the changes that developed within the official Soviet line during the Cold War, which the FARC-EP did not consider as strictly binding. After the Berlin Wall fell, confusion among the two sides increased. The principle of the "combination of all forms of struggle" was also brought into question at the time by some members of the PCC and UP leadership. The PCC officially broke with the FARC in 1993.

As a result, a separate Clandestine Colombian Communist Party was officially formed in 2000, though some sort of separate FARC-based internal party structure had been in de facto existence during most of the 1990s. Both organizations have remained completely distinct in their activities, though individual members of both parties may have continued to maintain working relationships on occasion.

There are different kinds of communists.

In my post I mentioned the assassinations of communist party members as a reason to why FARC was formed. It still continues on a huge scale.

Government sponsored Colombian terrorism, Wiki:

Quote[/b] ]A recent example is the assassination of a leading PCC figure, Arturo Díaz García, on December 21, 2005 in the corregimiento of Toche in the municipality of Ibague, Tolima.

During the last ten years, about 6000 people, members of PCC and other left-wingers, have been murdered.

It's always right to fight back.

Quote[/b] ]You can't apply Marx to a modern society. If you've noticed, nearly, 200 years have since passed. And things have changed a lot since then. Farmers and poorly paid factory workers don't make up 90% of nations anymore.

And I'm not going to explain how buisness works over and over again, but I'm only going to tell you this: those that own also work. There are some that don't ofcourse and that's why they go down the drain. Do you really think big buisness men just wait and jack off all day or what? And profit comes out of where? Those that are successful work and own. Those that don't work fail. Simple as that. Do you think Bill Gates got that stinking large pile of money from doing nothing?

And also the two richest people on this planet also donate massive ammounts of money around to various charities, billions, BILLIONS! Even goverments don't give charities that much money. They build schools, give jobs, save people with that money. And they're not going to get that money back.

But still you think that since workers will own all the means of production that magically greed and explotation will end. You forget that the people at the top are still the same flesh and blood as you. Greed is in every one of us, some are more greedy, some are less. The problem is that as soon as somebody gets more than before he will want more if he can't control himself enough.

Nothing has changed structurally. Sure, people are richer today than 20 and 200 and 2000 years ago. But the worker class still makes up more than 90% of the population. It's a question of power, not relative wealth.

Marxism isn't based on an analysis of how much money one has, it's based on how the hierarchies of capitalism work. The foundations of capitalism haven't changed. If they had, we wouldn't have capitalism here any longer.

Marxist theory has proved to be correct seen to observations and it still applies to capitalism of today. Marxism provides an analysis of the whole history.

Profit comes out of people who produce. Production is the only key to growth of value. Profit is what you get when you've made your 100 workers produce a value of X, then pay them and production costs Y<X X-Y is what you call profit. That's what the owners, share holders, gets by doing nothing.

Bill Gates, if the movie about him is correct, didn't do a thing to earn what he has now. He bought the OS from someone else.

Yes some capitalists donate billions. So what? That doesn't make anything right. The US gives billions to Africa every year, and that is highlighted in media. But US companies take ten times the amount back out of the place. Same thing with capitalists.

I don't think a society should rely on charity. Kings do charity too, and they like capitalists choose how much and who the benefiter will be. Distribution of wealth should be done democratically by the state for instance.

Nobody asked capitalists to build schools, fund politicians, troops or anything. That is not democratic. Without capitalists the money that was profits before could be used by the society as a whole to democratically decide where funds are needed or not.

If there are no capitalists, exploitation will end. Greed is the result of a harsh society where people have to be greedy to survive. But naturally socialism is representing what's in the self-interests of the working class just like liberalism is in the self interests of the corporations. Of course, this is not always the case. If you look at Cuba that country is pretty altrustic seen to what it has done to the world.

[lwlooz 0]

Hello there,

to save everyones nerves I figure you should stop debating with Spokesperson. There is not much point debating with someone who calls everything "liberal propaganda" , believes to be right about everything , has picked "communism" as his religion and brutal power-hungry dictators as his gods. So either he is a fraud supporting a label called "communism" or he is just a troll.

One at least could have the dignity to accept they a lot of people have suffered through "communist" oppressors in the 20th century, but you can't even accept even one mistake by "communistic" regimes.

I for one rather live in my European democracy "dictatorship" than in any of your "utopian" communist regimes.

[MehMan 0]

Quote[/b] ]Nothing has changed structurally. Sure, people are richer today than 20 and 200 and 2000 years ago. But the worker class still makes up more than 90% of the population. It's a question of power, not relative wealth.

Not really. There's a middle class, more people living in cities, higher general education. The structure is far different. You know, we get to vote now. We have a choice. No matter how much you like to trash it and say it's a lie, it's not really that much. The power has shifted and people have more power here.

Quote[/b] ]Profit comes out of people who produce. Production is the only key to growth of value. Profit is what you get when you've made your 100 workers produce a value of X, then pay them and production costs Y<X X-Y is what you call profit. That's what the owners, share holders, gets by doing nothing.

You still fail basic buisness. Share holders invest money in the company ensuring that it can actually exist, they pour money into it and they expect it back. Like a bank gives you a loan and there's intrest. Share holders keep a lot of companies afloat. Middle class citizens usually have some shares. Also share holders take a risk by investing in a company, because they can lose the money. Many people got rich and then went broke because they made bad decisions. So if they strike gold, great, the risk paid off. It's like gambling. Are you calling gamblers who can win a lot of money bad too because they earned it without working by your definition? What about people who won the lottery?

Again, owners are usually executives, in many cases they own 51% of the shares so that they can still make decisions. And I already told you how this part works.

Quote[/b] ]Yes some capitalists donate billions. So what? That doesn't make anything right. The US gives billions to Africa every year, and that is highlighted in media. But US companies take ten times the amount back out of the place. Same thing with capitalists.

How is a library or a musem ever going to make profit and bring back 10x as much money?

Quote[/b] ]I don't think a society should rely on charity. Kings do charity too, and they like capitalists choose how much and who the benefiter will be. Distribution of wealth should be done democratically by the state for instance.

Who said they should? They are doing it as a good gesture. It's their money afterall. And they can choose where to put it.

And states should not have a hand in private money.

Quote[/b] ]Nobody asked capitalists to build schools, fund politicians, troops or anything. That is not democratic. Without capitalists the money that was profits before could be used by the society as a whole to democratically decide where funds are needed or not.

So it's a bad thing all of the sudden to share money and help fund a school? Yes, they also donate to politicans who are on a campaign, so do regular people. Yes they put massive ammounts into the campaign of the one they support, but in the end they still have to get the votes.

Without capitalists there would be no profits like these. Individuals take risks and sometimes they work, many times they don't. There are far more failed buisnesses than successful ones.

And the state already decides where funds are needed or not. States make a  shitload more money than capitalists ever do.

Quote[/b] ]If there are no capitalists, exploitation will end. Greed is the result of a harsh society where people have to be greedy to survive. But naturally socialism is representing what's in the self-interests of the working class just like liberalism is in the self interests of the corporations. Of course, this is not always the case. If you look at Cuba that country is pretty altrustic seen to what it has done to the world.

No greed is not a result of a harsh society. Even in a perfect society people are greedy. It's called wanting more than somebody else. Liberalism isn't in the self interests of the corporations. I'm going to quote your favourite source, wiki:

Quote[/b] ]

Liberalism refers to a broad array of related ideas and theories of government that consider individual liberty to be the most important political goal.

If you're going to throw the term liberal around, know what it means. Also, for many of us liberal has a different meaing than it has to you. So if we had to adjust to calling your commie states socalist, you need to adjust to us and stop throwing the word liberal around.

Quote[/b] ]Hello there,

to save everyones nerves I figure you should stop debating with Spokesperson. There is not much point debating with someone who calls everything "liberal propaganda" , believes to be right about everything , has picked "communism" as his religion and brutal power-hungry dictators as his gods. So either he is a fraud supporting a label called "communism" or he is just a troll.

One at least could have the dignity to accept they a lot of people have suffered through "communist" oppressors in the 20th century, but you can't even accept even one mistake by "communistic" regimes.

I for one rather live in my European democracy "dictatorship" than in any of your "utopian" communist regimes.

But no, we are oppressed sheep and communism through socialism is our long lost shepherd. That and Spokesperson.

Oh yeah. BAA!

[billybob2002 0]

If some parties don't want to appear in parliament and vote. Their votes don't count. That's how it works everywhere. A MP has to be present for his vote to count.

Pick up a book or search the internet to find out what happened in 1948.

Quote[/b] ]

There was no need for the dollar anymore, evidently. All countries have their own currencies. Cuba has its pesos. The situation had stabilized so they could rely on the peso.

Try again. Tit for tat. If the sanctions weren't tightened, Cuba would had likely kept the dollar because it helped their economy.

Quote[/b] ]

There is a reason for every action. The reason why liberal thinks North Korea acts strange is because their view of the world is incorrect. Reality and propaganda don't fit. Just read otk-members post and you'll see the difference. If you don't accept the facts, otk-member is presenting, you have to come up with new reasons, and if you can't you call other peoples actions "strange".

Assassination of heads of states has been conducted by the CIA a dozen of times. Say an american president tries to assassinate another president, why would it be more wrong of the other president to try to assasinate that american president? After all the american president set the tone.

Gibberish and ignoring what I typed. North Korea tried to assassinate the South Korean president. The United States has nothing to do with the attempt. Furthermore, assassination as a political tool has been used for a long time. The United States didn't invent it.

Quote[/b] ]

I check your sources and found that the page was republican. That is reflected in the claims, sure North Korean troops have crossed the border some times, especially at sea. Americans and South Koreans have to. The difference is that Americans always did it by accident according to that page.

Oh please. The senior fellow is a Democrat.

Quote[/b] ]

That has nothing to do with the fact that the members of the political wing were assassinated by criminals and right wingers.

Honestly, I really don't care anymore.

[MehMan 0]

Spokesperson, here's a nice saying:

It's not so much a matter of what banner you fly, but whether you let it wrap around your eyes while it waves.

You're going to think that it's ironic that this comes from me.