[eastbay]

Yes, the jail example is but one. Other socialist benefits include equitable health care and education, as well as advances in basic science. Plus, generally socialist econimies have historically used FAR less energy and if we had know what was coming 100 years ago we would have embraced a worldwide Soviet system if for nothing else, just to stretch out the life of the Oil Age a few hundred years more. The crash would have been gentle and in the distant future. Now look at the pending disaster capitalism and greed have caused.

And don't compare body counts. I can do that too. Comparing that of a nation under attack and fighting for its very existence (USSR) with one (the US) which has killed millions for nothing at all is an apples and oranges comparison. And now, seemingly just for kicks, the USA is adding to the tally. Recently, the list of Muslim countris the USA has not bombed is shorter than the list of Muslim countries the USA has bombed. The US has started a war with Islam and it has nothing to do with the continued existence of the USA.

Capitalist greed started WWII. It's starting the current wars too.

[eastbay]

I just noticed my new title!!! Yippee!!!


Thanks to whomever did this! It's well deserved, I must say. I will be sure to carry this new honor well.


What a nice day!

[smiley]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')ow much do you know about Gitmo, Smiley?

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('eastbay', 'I') just noticed my new title!!! Yippee!!!


Thanks to whomever did this! It's well deserved, I must say. I will be sure to carry this new honor well.


What a nice day!

[eastbay]

I'm always waiting for the screen to change and when it does I just read the messages. I must have missed the title change... typical of me these days... heh. Getting a bit worse each year too, darn it.

It's nice to finally get some recognition. I do deserve this new title.

And PMS, are you affected by the fires? My sister lives near the U and I can't reach her cuz her cell phone isn't working. A couple we know were given one hour to get out of their house. They left immediately. Tough to get a hotel room in your area so started driving north.

[Fredrik]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('eastbay', 'C')omparing that of a nation under attack and fighting for its very existence (USSR)

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('eastbay', ' ')
And PMS, are you affected by the fires?

[holmes]

Fred,
It is the hive/herd mentality of the simian elements of the human race. Humans are basically weak and prone to follow scumbags. They are prone to breed with scumbags as well. also humans seem to really dig being in cults. any system that consolidates power into one big ponzi scheme is bound to be a violation to the natural world and humans place in it. These cults suck the last vestiges of environment and nature out of the human.

[TheDude]

Joke going around Warsaw, early 80s:

"Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man.
Communism is the opposite."

Good luck meeting your quotas!

[eastbay]

Dude, I remember that joke from the 70's in the US too.

Did I read that book PMS?

Well, I'll consider such a discussion after you or anyone else, without stooping to a personal attack, can explain how the moral high ground is held by the assorted capitalist imperialists pigs who brought humanity:

(partial list)

WWI
Armenian Holocaust
WWII
Dresden
Holocaust
Hiroshima/Nagasaki
Post-war prisoner slaughters (Read Other Losses)
Korean War
Vietnam War
War on Islam
USA with 1% of it's adult population behind bars.

Marxism-Leninism is far preferable by any reasonable, rational, compassionate, and humane measure. Plus, again, communism uses unbelievably less energy. It's the only system that's sustainable in an era of dwindling energy.

[TheDude]

Marxism-Leninism? Are you disowning Stalin, then? He was one sanguinary sumbitch. Ukranian Terror-Famine (6 million starved systematically), millions dead in the gulags. Read in Norman Davies' Europe how he had unprotected workers mining uranium - and cleaning out sub reactors. That last puzzles me though since the Soviet sub fleet post dates Joe, right? Maybe that was on Nikita's clock.

Anyway. Can't see a worker's paradise helping us to Powerdown. Probably geographical factors will constraint the ultimate outlook of nation states in the future, as they have done before. Mostly your bread and butter despots. I view communism like suffrage and abolition of slavery, indulgences we've partaken of in the luxury of our 280 billion energy slaves. In the aftermath of total collapse about the only thing that will let us build another enlightened republic is exploitation of human slaves.

[jasonraymondson]

I thought about asking for my title to be "Huge in the Pants" but then people would think I was talking about my cock, when it reality I would be referring to the size of my ass and there would be all of this confusion...

[max_power29]

Communist governments are the # 1 leading cause of death for the last century. NOTHING else even comes close; fascists, cancer, heart disease, car accidents,neocons, NOTHING!

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('eastbay', ' ')
Did I read that book PMS?

Well, I'll consider such a discussion after you or anyone else, without stooping to a personal attack, can explain how the moral high ground is held by the assorted capitalist imperialists pigs who brought humanity:

(partial list)

WWI
Armenian Holocaust
WWII
Dresden
Holocaust
Hiroshima/Nagasaki
Post-war prisoner slaughters (Read Other Losses)
Korean War
Vietnam War
War on Islam
USA with 1% of it's adult population behind bars.

Marxism-Leninism is far preferable by any reasonable, rational, compassionate, and humane measure. Plus, again, communism uses unbelievably less energy. It's the only system that's sustainable in an era of dwindling energy.

[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('eastbay', '
')WWI
Armenian Holocaust
WWII
Dresden
Holocaust
Hiroshima/Nagasaki
Post-war prisoner slaughters (Read Other Losses)
Korean War
Vietnam War
War on Islam
USA with 1% of it's adult population behind bars.

[eastbay]

What's got into you lately?

Put away the bottle for a change dude. It's a differing opinion. That's all. It's tough, but please try to be more tolerant of other opinions.

Who said anything about personal attacks?

Just in case. And I was right... again.

I take it you did not read The Gulag Archipelago and you just don't know and don't want to know how wicked Russian Communism was. There, I hope you are happy as I suppose that could be construed as a personal attack. At any rate, there's plenty of ugliness in the world to go around, but to praise Marxism/Leninism is just sick.

-re-write- hope you don't mind.

I take it you did not read the countless published books and personal testimonials detailing the past centuries capitalist horrors. Maybe you just don't know and don't want to know how wicked imperialist capitalism is. I don't blame you. It's too horrifying for words. At any rate, there's plenty of ugliness in the world to go around, but to praise the recurring capitalist war machines and it's inherent inequalities is truly unkind.

[TheDude]

No one's unreservedly praising das kapital, just reiterating the fact that for brutality Stalin and Mao were every bit the equivalent and more of any capitalist dictator.

Your list of wars isn't any more exceptional than the usual course of history, thus so what? In defense of Stalin and Mao I'd say the had access to energy and infrastructure that allowed them to commit atrocity on a scale that wasn't available to previous despots - which is what they were, not leaders of the Party. Same is true of the brutality of modern war itself, of course. Horror can scale upward, great.

I liked the concept Frank Herbert used in Dune of the Orange Catholic Bible - a sort of consensus religious tome, agreed upon after hundreds of years of deliberation, hence the title (which is a contradiction in terms for anyone familiar with Northern Ireland's politics). Wish we could do the same for societal constructs and build the best of all possible worlds. Too bad we're bastard coated bastards with bastard filling.

[smiley]

The problem that I have with this kind of arguments is that the statistics are dodgy.

If I would take an opposite stance I could blame the war deaths in Africa to the West. After all these people were mostly killed for our diamonds and oil and by our weapons. Doesn't that make us responsible?

We might not massacre our own people, but we do flood the world with our weapons and we are directly responsible for a lot of people starving by our embargo's.

Last week I discovered that the beans I bought at the supermarket were coming from Ethiopia. Don't you find that ironic, to buy food from the country with the highest starvation rate in the world. Sure a very small amount of the money I paid goes to Ethiopia, but you cannot eat banknotes. I am thus responsible for denying some poor ethiopian his meal.

We could spend several treaths disseminating all the deaths in the world and who is responsible for them, and still not have an answer to who is more wrong.

I think that human nature is more to blame than whichever political system.

In that respect I love the comment of the dude.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '.')Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man.
Communism is the opposite."

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('smiley', ' ')
In that respect I love the comment of the dude.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')apitalism is the exploitation of man by man.
Communism is the opposite."

[threadbear]

Eastbay, How did you come to be a Communist sympathizer. Was it a single epiphany or a number of other events, and or observations that pushed you in that direction?