Chavez says US-Colombia bases may risk war

[gambit]

Why communists kill? Because they kill who kills. They wanted to establish a right social order that couldn't be achieved in a peaceful manner. And the rise of communism in poor countries was supported by the vast poor. But it was usurped undemocratically by a few in the top who abused the power.

This argument would be acceptable IF there were no communist countries since every time communists gathered enough popular support the people would be set upon by those evil 'democrats', right? But history proved you silly, silly boy. Practically half the world was 'communist' during the Cold War and guess what -- THEY REMAINED POOR.



Communists rallied the vast poor and created several communist countries, then kept the vast poor that way so they can live the life that ordinary middleclass people in democratic countries dreamed about. I have been to East Berlin when it existed. Compare West Berlin to East Berlin was like day to night or food to feces. That is how I usally put it to anyone who asked what was it like. And yet East Berlin was considered a prime assignment by the Soviet military.

My own country -- Viet Nam -- was reunified and the country remained poor. Communists who know diddly-squat about economics and agriculture ended up mismanaging fertile land and the people ended up hungry. An entire generation of knowledge from teachers, doctors and other professionals killed in 're-education camps'. The money I and other Viet-Kieus sent back all these years bought black market medicines, paved local streets, maintained schools and other things that made life barely tolerable.

Do not bother to bring up the American trade embargo on Viet Nam as a feeble excuse. The US did not stationed its Navy off Viet Nam's coast to prevent other countries from trading with Viet Nam. The problem was that communist countries produces nothing but crap that no one with any taste wanted to buy so the communists ended up foisting their crap on each other's 'vast poor' and those 'vast poor' got no choice but to live with their crap. I got plenty of testimonies from South Korea and Japan, two US allies who defied the US embargo and traded and invested in Viet Nam before Clinton lifted the embargo, and the executives recalled how often their countries came to withdrawal from Viet Nam due to lack of education, corruption and assorted social ills that communist countries are famous for.

You are nothing but a communist wanna-be who probably does not have the courage to live under communism. I know more about communism, real life communism, than you will ever learn.

 

[gpit]

This argument would be acceptable IF there were no communist countries since every time communists gathered enough popular support the people would be set upon by those evil 'democrats', right? But history proved you silly, silly boy. Practically half the world was 'communist' during the Cold War and guess what -- THEY REMAINED POOR.



Communists rallied the vast poor and created several communist countries, then kept the vast poor that way so they can live the life that ordinary middleclass people in democratic countries dreamed about. I have been to East Berlin when it existed. Compare West Berlin to East Berlin was like day to night or food to feces. That is how I usally put it to anyone who asked what was it like. And yet East Berlin was considered a prime assignment by the Soviet military.

My own country -- Viet Nam -- was reunified and the country remained poor. Communists who know diddly-squat about economics and agriculture ended up mismanaging fertile land and the people ended up hungry. An entire generation of knowledge from teachers, doctors and other professionals killed in 're-education camps'. The money I and other Viet-Kieus sent back all these years bought black market medicines, paved local streets, maintained schools and other things that made life barely tolerable.

Do not bother to bring up the American trade embargo on Viet Nam as a feeble excuse. The US did not stationed its Navy off Viet Nam's coast to prevent other countries from trading with Viet Nam. The problem was that communist countries produces nothing but crap that no one with any taste wanted to buy so the communists ended up foisting their crap on each other's 'vast poor' and those 'vast poor' got no choice but to live with their crap. I got plenty of testimonies from South Korea and Japan, two US allies who defied the US embargo and traded and invested in Viet Nam before Clinton lifted the embargo, and the executives recalled how often their countries came to withdrawal from Viet Nam due to lack of education, corruption and assorted social ills that communist countries are famous for.

You are nothing but a communist wanna-be who probably does not have the courage to live under communism. I know more about communism, real life communism, than you will ever learn.

As I said many times, people use the name of communism but do the things of feudal dynasty, which are the tradition in the East.

In China, before the communist took over, American Empire supported KMT and against communist purely on the basis of ideology. As a matter of fact, some wise Americans proposed that US should not alienate communist China and but abandon corruptive KMT. &#8220;The consul General in Shanghai, John M. Cabot, was more convinced than most Americans that China would do the way of Yugoslavia and that Russia would fail to control the independent-minded Chinese. He pointed out to the Secretary of State that the Chinese Communists were even less beholden than Tito to the Soviets for their assumption of power; that the Chinese were not committed to the Soviet economic bloc, that the Chinese had traditional likes with the West; the Russia was historically an imperialist threat to China; and that Chinese Communism hardly resembled Soviet Communism.&#8221; <Meeting the Communist Threat: Truman to Reagan> Now in retrospect, how true those statements are, and how silly to consider communism is monolithic across the world.

Now get back to the poorness. According to you funny logic, communism makes countries poor and keeps them stay poor. Let me tell you that communism most likely arises from poor countries where inequality is a norm. Thus communism is a result of poorness, not the cause of the poorness.

Soviet Russia was very poor before the October Revolution. In early 50s, it was the richest in the world. One can arguably state that non-democratic behavior deeply rooted in a backward serfdom dominant Russian culture creates dictators in the system.

Before Communist took over China, China had about 90&#37; illiteracy; average life span was about 50 years. Please don&#8217;t mention infant mortality, which was perhaps the same as today&#8217;s some non-communism African countries&#8230; Now China&#8217;s infant mortality is close to world medium; literacy is 90+%; life expectancy is about 73; &#8230; If it were not those &#8220;communists&#8221;, instead China were still ruled by USA supported corruptive KMT, China would be no better off now than before.

Take for another big country India for example. There has been no substantial communist control over the country. In general, however, people&#8217;s life is no better off than &#8220;communist&#8221; China. Though there is no so called &#8220;state sanctioned&#8221; human rights abuse (per Western point of view), human rights violations are rampant, corruption is worse than &#8220;communist&#8221; China. Look at the non-communist illiteracy, non-communist mal-nutrition, non-communist life expectancy. Yes, you may say there is not much people died of political purge. That&#8217;s right. But political purge is not a part of communism, and there are more people dying due to government negligence.

Now cast your eyes on Africa, which country is communist? Zimbabwe? Congo? They just stay as poor as when they were under their democratic colonizer. So stop being joking!

For your own home country Vietnam, dare you tell us it was richer before VC control?

 

[paritosh]

I don't understand why the Americans hate communism so badly?
my own country is a mixed economy...so we have the best of both( and the worst also)
all I know is that healthcare in India or any communist nation for that matter is free of cost or is highly subsidized....
for countries India,Cuba,vietnam,china....majority can't afford the costly American treatment...many Americans are choosing to come to India/china to get treated for cheap.
communism in concept is pure...it removes that various things that divide man from man...makes everyone work as a collective society...removes the feeling of competition and jealousy...which happens to be also a reason for it's failure in practice....the feelings of competition and jealousy instigate a human quest for betterment and hence development in general...that is the reason why northrop grumman or a lockheed martin would kick any russian/chinese design bureau's a$$ in efficiency...the sole reason behind people living the "american dream"...
but as the saying goes..."a society is best judged by the way it treats the worst of it's lot."
and communism wins hands down in this department.

 

[TruthSeeker]

I don't understand why the Americans hate communism so badly?

The answer to this one is simple. Americans value individual liberty (a God-given right) over social equality (a utopian outcome). They believe that the pursuit of social equality as the highest value always degrades into the exercise of stifling state power over individuals. And, more that that, the exercise of this state power is always managed by a Party elite over the non-Party masses -- thereby achieving neither individual liberty nor social equality. In reality all states are blends of democratic system (individual rights) and a communist system (collective rights). The Chinese political system is migrating along this axis from Maoist collective rights towards the American Jeffersonian system of State-protected individual rights. And, vice-versa, for the American political system. Barring world wide human catastrophe, all the world's nations may have very similar political systems, somewhere in the middle, by the 22nd Century. By then the Federation Starship Enterprise will be launched to find the next group of creatures for we humans to mess with, since we will all get along with each other.

 

[paritosh]

The answer to this one is simple. Americans value individual liberty (a God-given right) over social equality (a utopian outcome). They believe that the pursuit of social equality as the highest value always degrades into the exercise of stifling state power over individuals. And, more that that, the exercise of this state power is always managed by a Party elite over the non-Party masses -- thereby achieving neither individual liberty nor social equality. In reality all states are blends of democratic system (individual rights) and a communist system (collective rights). The Chinese political system is migrating along this axis from Maoist collective rights towards the American Jeffersonian system of State-protected individual rights. And, vice-versa, for the American political system. Barring world wide human catastrophe, all the world's nations may have very similar political systems, somewhere in the middle, by the 22nd Century. By then the Federation Starship Enterprise will be launched to find the next group of creatures for we humans to mess with, since we will all get along with each other.

well now the part that makes my question a tad bit complex is that why is America against other countries going the socialist way?
I liked your post a lot...but there is one point that we generally miss talking about...it's the genesis of the nations and the politico-social system based on that...
meaning...USA was founded by the 13 colonies of the British empire...the land was full of resources...and there was no problem of over-population...or an unbearable density of population as in many third world countries that got independent quite recently...most of these countries were ravaged by oppressors and invaders and conquerors...they suffered from social evils like caste system in our case...and religious disparity etc.....so considering these aspects...the people of these impoverished nations decide to go red...because such a country would only accelerate the expending of it's scarce and almost exhausted resources by trying to compete with other countries...or by going the capitalist way....
so IMO....the application of socialism and capitalism should also have the aforesaid in consideration.

 

[Durran3]

@Paritosh

Communism looks great theoretically on paper, without a doubt it would seem like the best system to live in but humans generally are competitive and jealousy exist. Both are a part of our nature and both natural human instincts can not suppressed. I do like Socialism mixed with capitalism like they have in Canada and Western Europe. Not a complete hard Capitalist system because then you just become a slave to a system working 40 hours a week with a standard pay and forgetting that Life is actually about having Fun. Certain things like health care are not games that people in the US play around with. I am very thankful to the Canadian government for setting up universal healthcare, i absolutely love it and get all my meds or treatment when ever i need without any problems, my bosses wife was in the hospital and had a knee surgery for 3 weeks and she only paid 67 dollars when she left the hospital.

The Univerisity education here is heavily subsidized as well. Though international students pay around 15000 dollars a year, Canadian citizens or permanent residents pay only 5000 a year for their education including free education all the way up to K-12. Now compare that to the US where almost all the people in US pay around 10,000-15,000 dollars a year. Of course all these things come at a cost via taxes but i don't mind paying 13&#37; taxes at all. When it comes to Healthcare it should be a collective thing, when i go and get treatment for free at a clinic i want the next person in line to get free treatment as well. Unlike the US where one guy stands up in the town hall and screams 'I want government hands out of my medicare', which just cracked me up. Many people don't have health insurance and are at a mercy of insurance companies when something like that really shouldn't be a burden on someone who is already working 40 hours a week to pay his bills. Unfortunately the word 'Socialism' is deemed evil by networks like Fox news and I laugh every time. I just wish Obama succeeds in doing what he wants to do with Health care, although i understand the situation the US is in with regards to debt and bringing in Universal health care, they should nonetheless cut down on military spending in my opinion. The amount of money they spent in the whole Iraq war could have easily been used towards Universal Health care and building broken infrastructure at home.

 

[TruthSeeker]

well now the part that makes my question a tad bit complex is that why is America against other countries going the socialist way?
I liked your post a lot...but there is one point that we generally miss talking about...it's the genesis of the nations and the politico-social system based on that...

I agree with your point here. The US is against socialism in other countries only if it is accompanied by repression of individuals or sub-groups. That is, the US does not "oppose" the socialism of Sweden because Swedes have democratically chosen their socialism, and appear genuinely happy with it. The US opposes Hugo Chavez's socialism because he is trying to install it through the repression of the liberties of many Venezuelans. He is establishing the "Party vanguard (himself) dictatorship of the Proletariat" aspect of Lenin's model. Again, the highest American political value is liberty. If a given nation's socialist system has enough individual rights to genuinely satisfy the people within that nation, then the US does not oppose that system, even if it is "too" socialist for the taste of US citizens.